Philosophy- Squashed Schopenhauer - The World As Will And Idea - Condensed and Abridged  Glyn Hughes' Squashed Philosophers The Condensed Edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea ... in 3,500 words "We can surely never arrive at the nature of things from without." INTRODUCTIONSCHOPENHAUER'S magnificentwork, The World as Will and Idea (Die Welt als Wille undVorstellung), published in 1819, is not only a masterlyexposition of philosophy, but a comprehensive record ofSchopenhauer's own views on mankind. The keynote of hisphilosophy is that the sole essential reality in the universe isthe will, and that all visible and tangible phenomena are merelysubjective representations of that 'will which is the onlything-in-itself' that actually exists. The defect of his systemis its tendency to a sombre pessimism. An enlarged editionappeared in 1844. The chief of Schopenhauer's other works are Onthe Will in Nature (1836), The Main Problems of Ethics (1841),and Parerga and Paralipomena (1851).TheWorld as Will and Idea(DieWelt als Wille und Vorstellung)by Arthur Schopenhauer,1844The condensedversion first published by Sir John Hammerton in 1919.Squashedversion edited by Glyn Hughes © 2004I - THE WORLD AS IDEA'THE world is my idea' is a truth valid for every livingcreature, though only man can consciously contemplate it. Indoing so he attains philosophical wisdom. No truth is moreabsolutely certain than that all that exists for knowledge, and,therefore, this whole world, is only object in relation tosubject, perception of a perceiver - in a word, idea. The worldis idea.This truth is by no means new. It lay by implication in thereflections of Descartes; but Berkeley first distinctlyenunciated it, while Kant erred by ignoring it. So ancient is itthat it was the fundamental principle of the Indian Vedanta, asSir William Jones points out. In one aspect, the world is idea;in the other aspect the world is will.That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject;and for this subject all exists. But the world as idea consistsof two essential and inseparable halves. One half is the object,whose from consists of time and space, and, through these, ofmultiplicity; but the other half is the subject, lying not inspace and time, for it subsists whole and undivided in everyreflecting being.Thus, any single individual endowed with the faculty ofperception of the object constitutes the whole world of idea ascompletely as the millions in existence; but let this singleindividual vanish, and the whole world as idea would disappear.Each of these halves possesses meaning and existence only in andthrough the other, appearing with and vanishing with it. Wherethe object begins the subject ends.One of Kant's great merits is that he discovered that theessential and universal forms of all objects - space, time,causality - lie a priori in our consciousness, for they may bediscovered and fully known from a consideration of the subject,without any knowledge of the object.Ideas of perception are distinct from abstract ideas. The formercomprehend the whole world of experience; the latter areconcepts, and are possessed by man alone amongst all creatures onearth; and the capacity for these, distinguishing him from thelower animals, is called reason.Much vain controversy has arisen concerning the reality of theexternal universe, owing to the fallacious notion that, becauseperception arises through the knowledge of causality, therelation of subject and object is that of cause and effect. Forthis relation only subsists between objects - that is, betweenthe immediate object - and objects known indirectly. The objectalways presupposes the subject, and so there can be between thesetwo no relation of reason and consequent.Therefore, the controversy between realistic dogmatism anddoctrinal scepticism is foolish. The former seems to separateobject and idea as cause and effect, whereas these two are reallyone - the latter supposes that in the idea we have only theeffect, never the cause, and never know the real being, butmerely its action. The correction of both these fallacies is thesame - that object and idea are identical.The greatest value of knowledge is that it can be communicatedand retained. This makes it inestimably important for practice.Rational or abstract knowledge is that knowledge which ispeculiar to the reason as distinguished from the understanding.The use of reason is that it substitutes abstract concepts forideas of perception, and adopts them as the guide of action.The many-sided view of life which man, as distinguished from thelower animals, possesses through reason makes him stand to themas the captain, equipped with chart, compass and quadrant, andwith a knowledge of navigation, stands to the ignorant sailorsunder his command.Man lives two lives. Besides his life in the concrete is his lifein the abstract. In the former he struggles, suffers and dies asdo the mere animal creatures. But in the abstract he quietlyreflects on the plan of the universe as does a captain of a shipon the chart. He becomes in this abstract life of calm reasoninga deliberate observer of those elements which previously movedand agitated his emotions. Withdrawing into this serenecontemplation, he is like an actor who has played a lively parton the stage and then withdraws and, as one of the audience,quietly looks on at other actors who are energeticallyperforming.II - THE WORLD AS WILLWE are compelled to further inquiry, because we cannot besatisfied with knowing that we have ideas, and that these areassociated with certain laws, the general expression of which isthe principle of sufficient reason. We wish to know thesignificance of our ideas. We ask whether this world is nothingmore than a mere idea, not worthy of our notice if it is to passby us like an empty dream or an airy vision, or whether it issomething more substantial.We can surely never arrive at the nature of things from without.No matter how assiduous our researches may be, we can never reachanything beyond images and names. We resemble a man going round acastle seeking vainly for an entrance, and sometimes sketchingthe facades. And yet this is the method followed by allphilosophers before me.The truth about man is that he is not a pure knowing subject, nota winged cherub without a material body, contemplating the worldfrom without. For he is himself rooted in that world. That is tosay, he finds himself in the world as an individual whoseknowledge, which is the essential basis of the whole world asidea, is yet ever communicated through the medium of the body,whose sensations are the starting-point of the understanding ofthat world. His body is for him an idea like every other idea, anobject among objects. He only knows its actions as he knows thechanges in all other objects, and but for one aid to hisunderstanding of himself he would find this idea and object asstrange and incomprehensible as all others.That aid is will, which alone furnishes the key to the riddle ofhimself, solves the problem of his own existence and reveals tohim the inner structure and significance of his being, his actionand his movements.The body is the immediate object of will; it may be called theobjectivity of will. Every true act of will is also instantly avisible act of the body, and every impression on the body is alsoat once an impression on the will. When it is opposed to the willit is called pain, and when consonant with the will, pleasure.THE essential identity of body and will is shown by the fact thatevery violent movement of the will - that is to say, everyemotion - directly agitates the body and interferes with itsvital functions. So we may legitimately say: My body is theobjectivity of my will.It is simply owing to this special relation to one body that theknowing subject is an individual. Our knowing, being bound toindividuality, necessitates that each of us can only be one, andyet each of us can know all. Hence arises the need forphilosophy. The double knowledge which each of us possesses ofhis own body is the key to the nature of every phenomenon in theworld. Nothing is either known to us or thinkable by us exceptwill and idea. If we examine the reality of the body and itsactions, we discover nothing beyond the fact that it is an idea,except the will. With this double discovery reality is exhausted.III - THE WORLD AS IDEA - SECOND ASPECTWE have looked at the world as idea, object for a subject, andnext at the world as will. All students of Plato know that thedifferent grades of objectification of will which are manifestedin countless individuals, and exist as their unrealized types oras the eternal forms of things, are the Platonic ideas. Thus,these various grades are related to individual things as theireternal forms or prototypes.Thus, the world in which we live is in its whole nature throughand through will, and at the same time through and through idea.This idea always presupposes a form, object and subject. If wetake away this form and ask what then remains, the answer must bethat this can be nothing but will, which, properly speaking, isthe thing-in-itself.Every human being discovers that he himself is this will, andthat the world exists only for him and does so in relation to hisconsciousness. Thus each human being is himself in a doubleaspect the whole world, the microcosm. And that which he realizesas his own real being exhausts the being of the whole world, themacrocosm. So, like man, the world is through and through will,and through and through idea.Plato would say that an animal has no true being, but merely anapparent being, a constant becoming. The only true being is theidea, which embodies itself in that animal. That is to say, theidea of the animal alone has true being and is the object of realknowledge. Kant, with his theory of 'the thing-in-itself' as theonly reality, would say that the animal is only a phenomenon intime, space and causality, which are conditions of ourperception, not the thing-in-itself. So the individual as we seeit at this particular moment will pass away, without anypossibility of our knowing the thing-in-itself, for the knowledgeof that is beyond our faculties.Thus do these two greatest philosophers of the West differ. Thething-in-itself must, according to Kant, be free from all formsassociated with knowing. On the contrary, the Platonic idea isnecessarily object, something known and thus different from thething-in-itself, which cannot be apprehended. Yet Kant and Platotend to agree, because the thing-in-itself is, after all, thatwhich lays aside all the subordinate forms of phenomena, and hasretained the first and most universal form, that of the idea ingeneral, the form of being object for a subject. Plato attributesactual being only to the ideas, and concedes only an illusive,dream-like existence to things in space and time, the real worldfor the individual.IV - THE WORLD AS WILL - SECOND ASPECTTHE last and most serious part of our consideration relates tohuman action. Human nature tends to relate everything else toaction. The world as idea is the perfect mirror of the will, inwhich it recognizes itself in graduating scales of distinctnessand completeness. The highest degree of this consciousness isman, whose nature only completely expresses itself in the wholeconnected series of his actions.Will is the thing-in-itself, the essence of the world. Life isonly the mirror of the will. Life accompanies the will as theshadow the body. If will exists, so will life. So long as we areactuated by the will to live, we need have no fear of ceasing tolive, even in the presence of death. True, we see the individualborn and passing away; but the individual is merely phenomenal.Neither the will, nor the subject of cognition, is at allaffected by birth or death.It is not the individual, but only the species, that nature caresfor. She provides for the species with boundless prodigalitythrough the incalculable profusion of seed and the great strengthof fructification. She is ever ready to let the individual fallwhen it has served its end of perpetuating the species. Thus doesnature artlessly express the great truth that only the ideas, notthe individuals, have actual reality and are complete objectivityof the will.Man is nature itself, but nature is only the objectified will tolive. So the man who has comprehended this point of view may wellconsole himself when contemplating death for himself or hisfriends by turning his eyes to the immortal life of nature, whichhe himself is. And thus we see that birth and death both reallybelong to life, and that they take part in that constant mutationof matter which is consistent with the permanence of the species,notwithstanding the transitoriness of the individual.V - THE WILL AS RELATED TO TIMEABOVE all we must not forget that the form of the phenomenon ofthe will, the form of life in reality, is really only thepresent, not the future nor the past. No man ever lived in thepast, no man will live in the future. The present is the soleform of life in sure possession. The present exists always,together with its content.Now all object is the will so far as it has become idea, and thesubject is the necessary correlative of the object. But realobjects are in the present only. So nothing but conceptions andfancies are included in the past, while the present is theessential form of the phenomenon of the will, and inseparablefrom it. The present alone is perpetual and immovable. Thefountain and support of it is the will to live, or thething-in-itself, which we are.Life is certain to the will, and the present is certain to life.Time is like a perpetually revolving globe. The hemisphere whichis sinking is like the past, that which is rising is like thefuture, while the indivisible point at the top is like amotionless present. Or, time is like a running river, and thepresent is a rock on which it breaks but which it cannot removewith itself. As life is assured to the will, so is the presentthe single real form of life.Therefore we are not concerned to investigate the past antecedentto life, nor to speculate on the future subsequent to death. Weshould simply seek to know the present, that being the sole formin which the will manifests itself. Therefore, if we aresatisfied with life as it is, we may confidently, regard it asendless and banish the fear of death as illusive. Our spirit isof a totally indestructible nature, and its energy endures frometernity to eternity.The problem of the freedom of the will is solved by theconsiderations which have thus been outlined. Since the will isnot phenomenon, is not idea or object, but thing-in-itself, isnot determined as a consequent through any reason, and knows nonecessity, therefore it is free. But the person is never free,although he is the phenomenon of a free will, for thisindisputable reason, that he is already the determined phenomenonof the free volition of this will, and is constrained to embodythe direction of that volition in a multiplicity of actions.  Arthur Schopenhauer1788-1860Schopenhauer'sgrave at Hauptfreidhof, Frankfurt-am-Main |
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