“The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.”Arthur Schopenhauer · Parerga și Paralipomena · 1851 · vol. I, cap. 2
Health is the capital that gives all other goods their value; sacrifice it and every gain becomes a loss.
The line points to a miscalculation many people make: they spend health, the basic capital, on money, career, pleasures, or success. The mechanism is economic: health is the condition under which all other goods have value; without it, wealth and honors cannot be enjoyed. A man who ruins his body through thirty years of overwork ends up spending his fortune to partially regain what he could have had for free: sleep, movement, peace.
Schopenhauer treats health as a currency, not as one good among many. Every other pleasure is paid for in it. A gain that consumes this currency is not a gain but a trade at a losing rate. Think of someone taking an exhausting job for a higher salary, then finding the extra money goes to doctors and sleeping pills. They worked more to end up where they started, only more tired. The next question: how do you recognize the moment the price starts being charged?
Why it matters A direct warning for hustle culture: any gain paid for with health is a loss in disguise.