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Below are my interpretations and a general overview of Schopenhauer’s work, specifically his book “The World as Will and Representation”
I personally think it’s pretty interesting and if you’ve never read or learned about him I’d say around here is where I'd start. I’ll also give some context for better understanding in case there’s anyone unfamiliar with where his ideas build from.
Regarded Immanuel Kant’s greatest accomplishment as being the proof that nothing exists without a subject. An object can’t exist without a subject. If you try to imagine a world without humans you can’t because you’re trapped in your own mind so it’s physically impossible. Everything we see is from our perspective and nothing is objective. It is all stuff that goes through the film of our brain. Knowledge of the world is impossible and we are stranded and can never look beyond the limit of our mind.
Schopenhauer disagrees with this and discovers the single narrow door to the truth. Schopenhauer starts at Kant’s starting point except he believes that objective metaphysical knowledge is actually possible. How? Schopenhauer notices that humans view our own bodies as an object among objects (look at hand or arm the way a sculptor might look at it) so my hand or arm aren’t that different from a cup on my desk as both are objects of the material world situated in time and space.
BUT THATS NOT THE WHOLE STORY. We can feel our body and we feel it as though we live in it where we can notice its hunger and control it. So it’s not just one object, it is yours, a unique object and one of its kind. So the body reveals itself in two way, an object among objects (Schopenhauer calls representation) or something which we live in (Schopenhauer calls this will.) So our body appears to us as both will and representation.
The body’s willful appearance is what Schopenhauer calls “the narrow door to the truth.” When you confirm that the body is both will and representation you must ask the question, what about the rest of the world? What if the rest of the world is both will and representation? Two answers to the question are:
A.) My body and my body alone is a completely unique object in the universe. (Leads to theoretical egoism meaning that you believe only you exist and everything else is mere fantasy.) This however, is not what he believes as he believes that though it can never be demonstrably refuted, it has never been used in philosophy for anything other than as a sceptical sophism, a pretense. As a serious conviction it stands in the need of a cure rather than a refutation and it to think it is mad.
B.) The entire world is will, not just my own body and it is as much will as the rest of the universe, however the only difference is that it’s impossible to experience the will of the world while it is possible to experience the will of my body.
His narrow door to the truth is that there is a will at work throughout the universe. The will, in his opinion, does not include concepts like time and space and the will is impossibly comprehensible. That is why the will is necessarily foreign, as it’s undifferentiated in time and space. Time, from, and space don’t belong to the thing itself and are only objects of knowing. He invites us to admire the world knowing beneath it all lies a strange will.
The characteristics of this will, abandoning theoretical arguments and taking a look at the world as it shows itself to us allow us to move to an empirical point of view when seeing it. Looking at the world in a scientific context to solve its inner workings.
He makes 2 important observations:
But why must this be the case? He decides to explain the suffering after having already observed it. He believes that the will must explain why the world is the way that it is. Beyond the world as we experience its there is no you, me, here, there, etc. there is just the will. All of existence is one big hole and the will is beyond time and space. Suffering is caused by multiplicity instead of unity. The will is unity and is one, beyond space and time. Multiplicity is not. In the domain of the will there are no different things and therefore no conflict because where would the conflict be? There is simply will. Conflict only arises in the illusion. Zooming out will show it is all illusion in one big will. We must be aware of this basic truth.
You and the world are one and the same. All is one.
Now that we know this, what about his ethics?
There are 2 paths he believes in that he thinks will thinks will ideally melt into one:
He realizes this and says that for the average person you should simply aim for compassion.
Schopenhauer believed that his ethics were what religion tried to teach through metaphor and allegories and that he had solved philosophy.
Aesthetics:
He believes art allows us to forget the suffering of the world and temporarily forget ourselves for a brief moment of enjoying simple beauty. We become freed from ourselves. Beauty is characterized by perfection and how close you reach a hypothetical will of perfection for what it is you’re trying to portray. A world of reason as opposed to the world of representation. And we like art because it allows us to escape from the evil world of representation and lose ourselves.
The aesthetic contemplation of nature can go beyond simple artistic pleasures. This is the “Sublime.” This overwhelming force of the beauty and constancy of nature allows us to learn more about ourselves. Being completely in awe of some form of nature is caused by some form of the sublime. It allows you to feel small and insignificant and it’s a reminder to your own mortality as opposed to undying nature. You might perish but nature will not. This is a powerful feeling that you can get lost in and it can let you forget yourself. It is a moment of enlightenment where you realize you are the world and the world is you.
To Schopenhauer, music is the most perfect art form by far, leaving the rest of the arts far behind. An artist (that isn’t a musician) is simply trying to recreate the platonic idea as perfectly as possible, taking a look at the world and then translating his interpretation into the art form. Music isn’t concerned with platonic ideas and allows us to participate in the world as will. It allows us to lose ourselves completely and is not a copy of a platonic idea or representation, but a copy of will itself. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful than that of the other arts. He says that music is not a part of this world and because this world is a hell, music brings us closer to heaven.
Apologies for simplifications of what is being said I tried to synthesize it to be as digestible as possible (while still going over all important details) for both myself and anyone that may be reading this.
I personally think it’s pretty interesting and if you’ve never read or learned about him I’d say around here is where I'd start. I’ll also give some context for better understanding in case there’s anyone unfamiliar with where his ideas build from.
Regarded Immanuel Kant’s greatest accomplishment as being the proof that nothing exists without a subject. An object can’t exist without a subject. If you try to imagine a world without humans you can’t because you’re trapped in your own mind so it’s physically impossible. Everything we see is from our perspective and nothing is objective. It is all stuff that goes through the film of our brain. Knowledge of the world is impossible and we are stranded and can never look beyond the limit of our mind.
Schopenhauer disagrees with this and discovers the single narrow door to the truth. Schopenhauer starts at Kant’s starting point except he believes that objective metaphysical knowledge is actually possible. How? Schopenhauer notices that humans view our own bodies as an object among objects (look at hand or arm the way a sculptor might look at it) so my hand or arm aren’t that different from a cup on my desk as both are objects of the material world situated in time and space.
BUT THATS NOT THE WHOLE STORY. We can feel our body and we feel it as though we live in it where we can notice its hunger and control it. So it’s not just one object, it is yours, a unique object and one of its kind. So the body reveals itself in two way, an object among objects (Schopenhauer calls representation) or something which we live in (Schopenhauer calls this will.) So our body appears to us as both will and representation.
The body’s willful appearance is what Schopenhauer calls “the narrow door to the truth.” When you confirm that the body is both will and representation you must ask the question, what about the rest of the world? What if the rest of the world is both will and representation? Two answers to the question are:
A.) My body and my body alone is a completely unique object in the universe. (Leads to theoretical egoism meaning that you believe only you exist and everything else is mere fantasy.) This however, is not what he believes as he believes that though it can never be demonstrably refuted, it has never been used in philosophy for anything other than as a sceptical sophism, a pretense. As a serious conviction it stands in the need of a cure rather than a refutation and it to think it is mad.
B.) The entire world is will, not just my own body and it is as much will as the rest of the universe, however the only difference is that it’s impossible to experience the will of the world while it is possible to experience the will of my body.
His narrow door to the truth is that there is a will at work throughout the universe. The will, in his opinion, does not include concepts like time and space and the will is impossibly comprehensible. That is why the will is necessarily foreign, as it’s undifferentiated in time and space. Time, from, and space don’t belong to the thing itself and are only objects of knowing. He invites us to admire the world knowing beneath it all lies a strange will.
The characteristics of this will, abandoning theoretical arguments and taking a look at the world as it shows itself to us allow us to move to an empirical point of view when seeing it. Looking at the world in a scientific context to solve its inner workings.
He makes 2 important observations:
- The world is full of suffering and is an infinite cycle of such. Human history is the tale of one bloody conflict leading to another. Even plant’s lives revolve around the struggle for sunlight. To exist is to suffer
- All that exists wants to live. This contrasts his earlier statement without contradicting it. Procreation and self preservation are the chief occupations of all that live. He’ll sometimes speak of the will to life, representing the will and compasses of reality. Even in inorganic matter.
But why must this be the case? He decides to explain the suffering after having already observed it. He believes that the will must explain why the world is the way that it is. Beyond the world as we experience its there is no you, me, here, there, etc. there is just the will. All of existence is one big hole and the will is beyond time and space. Suffering is caused by multiplicity instead of unity. The will is unity and is one, beyond space and time. Multiplicity is not. In the domain of the will there are no different things and therefore no conflict because where would the conflict be? There is simply will. Conflict only arises in the illusion. Zooming out will show it is all illusion in one big will. We must be aware of this basic truth.
You and the world are one and the same. All is one.
Now that we know this, what about his ethics?
There are 2 paths he believes in that he thinks will thinks will ideally melt into one:
- Compassion. He believes compassion is important because the world is one. There is no you or I. When you hurt your fellow man you hurt yourself. Showing compassion means you recognize the fundamental truth. Life is suffering but I feel you because you are me. He believes, in correspondence that the selfish are ignorant, as they act as if he himself and the other, are different beings when they are one and the same. They inflict cruelty without realizing they are hurting themselves.
- Asceticism. This is the voluntary practice of extreme self discipline and denying oneself simple pleasures. This is his doctrine of the Denial of The Will. The Will is the cause of all suffering so you should deny the Will. The path of the ascetic is the one to take and will lead to the path of compassion on its own without having to try to follow it on your own. The ascetic believes you shouldn’t have children because you are bringing them into a world of suffering
He realizes this and says that for the average person you should simply aim for compassion.
Schopenhauer believed that his ethics were what religion tried to teach through metaphor and allegories and that he had solved philosophy.
Aesthetics:
He believes art allows us to forget the suffering of the world and temporarily forget ourselves for a brief moment of enjoying simple beauty. We become freed from ourselves. Beauty is characterized by perfection and how close you reach a hypothetical will of perfection for what it is you’re trying to portray. A world of reason as opposed to the world of representation. And we like art because it allows us to escape from the evil world of representation and lose ourselves.
The aesthetic contemplation of nature can go beyond simple artistic pleasures. This is the “Sublime.” This overwhelming force of the beauty and constancy of nature allows us to learn more about ourselves. Being completely in awe of some form of nature is caused by some form of the sublime. It allows you to feel small and insignificant and it’s a reminder to your own mortality as opposed to undying nature. You might perish but nature will not. This is a powerful feeling that you can get lost in and it can let you forget yourself. It is a moment of enlightenment where you realize you are the world and the world is you.
To Schopenhauer, music is the most perfect art form by far, leaving the rest of the arts far behind. An artist (that isn’t a musician) is simply trying to recreate the platonic idea as perfectly as possible, taking a look at the world and then translating his interpretation into the art form. Music isn’t concerned with platonic ideas and allows us to participate in the world as will. It allows us to lose ourselves completely and is not a copy of a platonic idea or representation, but a copy of will itself. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful than that of the other arts. He says that music is not a part of this world and because this world is a hell, music brings us closer to heaven.
Apologies for simplifications of what is being said I tried to synthesize it to be as digestible as possible (while still going over all important details) for both myself and anyone that may be reading this.
