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Background
Background
Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was born in Danzig (modern day Gdansk) in what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Schopenhauer was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Kant. He agreed that our understanding of the world was, in some way, formed by us or our cognitive faculties, but he wanted to build on Kant’s ideas in quite radical ways.
His philosophy feels very dark and hopeless. He is famous for promoting a Philosophy of Pessimism. He never called it that himself, but didn’t seem to mind others characterising his work that way.
His most famous work is called The World as Will and Representation. He was a slightly unusual european philosopher for his time insofar as he was heavily influenced by eastern philosophies and religions, like Buddhism.
The World as Representation
The World as Representation
The book opens with the following line:
The world is my idea
—Arthur Schopenhaur, The World as Will and RepresentationHe argues that it is impossible to experience things-in-themselves. All we can experience are our ideas about things. For example, just as John Locke and the indirect realists thought, light bounces off an object and into our eyes - how are we to know that what we are seeing is the object itself? So all we know of the world is nothing but an idea.
However, Schopenhauere doesn’t think that we can invent the world as we want. Our ideas about the world, our representations of it, must conform to the Principle of Sufficient Reason - that is, the idea suggested by Leibniz that everything must have a reason or a cause. Every idea or representation that we have conforms to a web of interrelated explanations. This is, in effect, what science is.
Schopenhaur believed that there were four kinds of explanation for things:
In terms of causality
In terms of reasons and grounds
In terms of mathematics
In terms of motivation (what he called causality from within)
The World as Will
The World as Will
But Schopenhauer departs quite radically from Kant.
Schopenhauer thinks that all representations are manifestations of the Will.
The Will is like pure desire, longing. The will is that force that drives people to act - regardless of rationality. The will is autonomous. The will is being-in-itself of the experienced world. It exists beyond the principle of sufficient reason.
Our will is never an object for us, the subject. I.e. it doesn’t exist in the world, it is the thing that experiences the world. And therefore we can’t know it. An individual can only be aware of representations and ideas, not the will itself.
Schopenhauer’s description of the Will helps us to understand why his was called a Philosophy of Pessimism. The Will - the essence of our existence - is essentially a lacking. We can fulfil our desires but that feeling of satisfaction doesn’t last long, and normally results in new desires. Life is just an endless striving.
And when we do get what we want, we feel bored. For Schopenhauer, this is evidence that life has no real value in itself.
In nature-without-knowledge her inner being [is] a constant striving without aim and without rest, and this stands out much more distinctly when we consider the animal or man. Willing and striving are its whole essence, and can be fully compared to an unquenchable thirst. The basis of all willing, however, is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom come over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself become an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.
—Arthur Schopenhaur, The World as Will and RepresentationSchopenhauer described life as a ‘war of all against all’ - nothing but struggle:
This universal conflict is to be seen most clearly in the animal kingdom. Animals have the vegetable kingdom for their nourishment, and within the animal kingdom again every animal is the prey and food of some other. This means that the matter in which an animal's Idea manifests itself must stand aside for the manifestation of another Idea, since every animal can maintain its own existence only by the incessant elimination of another's. Thus the will-to-live generally feasts on itself, and is in different forms its own nourishment.
—Arthur Schopenhaur, The World as Will and RepresentationIs there a solution to the problem of life?
Is there a solution to the problem of life?
Schopenhauer thought that we could get a temporary reprieve from the pain of life (i.e. desire) through art. He thought we could control the power of the will through losing oneself in art.
Unfortunately, this was only ever temporary. The only real solution was to release oneself from the power of the Will through asceticism. Asceticism is a way of life where someone avoids all pleasures, all indulgences. Schopenhauer thought that living a life like this - like the monks did in the desert - a life which involved the ‘mortification of the will’ and the ‘denial of the will-to-live’ might enable us to be free.
Tasks
Tasks
Explain Schopenhauer's views:
Why did he think that ‘the world is my idea’.
Explain the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and Schopenhauer’s four types of explanation.
Explain what Schopenhauer meant by ‘the Will’ and why this leads to suffering.
What were Schopenhauer’s solutions to this problem?
Think of one objection to Schopenhauer's philosophy.
What do you think of Schopenhauer’s philosophy?
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