Another from First Things

This one is The Laughter of the Philosophers by David B. Hart. Here's the opening paragraph:

My favorite “whimsical” anecdote about a philosopher goes like this: Arthur Schopenhauer once threw an old lady down a flight of stairs. (Note how the first line immediately seizes one’s attention.) He claimed it was an accident, of course, but I for one prefer to believe that it was nothing of the sort, and that in fact he took the defenseless crone by her wizened weasand and—with full malice aforethought—flung her over the balustrade to the landing below, uttering a curse as he did so (it more nearly accords with my general impression of the man). Not that he acted without cause; he was never given to caprice. The old lady was a cleaning woman who had made too great a clamor outside his rooms, a transgression than which (as anyone familiar with his essay on noise should know) nothing could have vexed him more; and it was only when his rebukes were met by intolerable impudence that he resorted to force. Curiously, however, the magistrate failed to see the justice in his actions, and sentenced him to pay the woman a monthly pension for the rest of her natural life, which somewhat straitened his finances. When she was finally considerate enough to die, and Schopenhauer saw the notice in the morning obituary, his only reaction was to reach for his pen and write in the margin: “Anus obit, onus abit” (the old woman dies, the debt departs).