Schopenhauer’s Philosophy
Schopenhauer
The world as Will and Representation
Kant’s distinction between the appearance and world-in-itself
Kant’s treatment of the appearance: two important ideas
1. There are certain rules and principles governing the appearance ; for instance, the empirical world is arranged in space and time, and things have cause and effect upon each other.
2. Ethics, or our moral judgment of what is right and wrong, has nothing to do with the empirical world, because there are certain determinist rules governing the empirical world, and Kant believes these rules forbid us to act in accordance to our free will and the freedom of choice. We must think, thereby, beyond the mere appearance, that we are free and rational beings unlimited by the determinist principles.
Plato vs Kant: for Kant, our knowledge is limited to the world of appearance; in other words, we could never acquire knowledge about things in-itself.
By contrast, Plato believes the ultimate goal of learning knowledge is to acquire knowledge of things-in-theirselves.
Fourfold roots of sufficient reasons
Nothing stands on its own, all things and events are caused by some reasons or explanations preceding them. Schopenhauer lists four ways in which things are related to their causes.
Schopenhauer is an idealist-that means, he believes in the existence of material things, solely on the basis of our mind and consciousness. In other words, objects exist as objects for a subject. Their relations with their reasons are relations we impose in our consciousness. Thus, casualty is important in the sense that it is the way in which we construct things and envisage their relations.
Schopenhauer’s account of will is anti-dualist; that means Schopenhauer rejects Descartes’ division between will(as in the mental realm) and body ( as in the physical realm). Schopenhauer believes this is the single occurrence which could be understood in two aspects.
In other words, we have inner will that could also be observed in empirical world as bodily movements or actions.
Furthermore, Schopenhauer goes on to claim that all natural processes are manifestations of will. Then the question for us is in what sense does Schopenhauer use the term “will”?
Janaway suggests that will should be understood as some sort of “striving” or “end-seeking”.it is worth noting that the world as will should be understood as a whole. Things-in-theirselves could not be individualized, and are not governed by cause and effect; and are not arranged in space and time.
The self-who am I?
Despite the seemingly conflicting objective and subjective accounts of the self, Schopenhauer believes the self is essentially a bodily manifestation of the will to life （i.e., the will to sustain life and procreate)
Schopenhauer believes that our experience are governed and guided by our end-seeking instincts of sustaining life and procreation; such as what fits our aims and benefits. One example Schopenhauer provides to further support this view is his illustration of people counting their money: when we count the money we have, sometimes we make mistakes. However most likely we make mistakes to our advantage instead of to our disadvantage. For Schopenhauer, our inclination to make mistakes to our own advantage illuminates our will to life. As such, Schopenhauer also argues our sexual desire and attraction is also a manifestation of will to life.
The will to life has a great force that transcends beyond individuals, and applies to species and world at large. Schopenhauer believes our bodily manifestations of our will to life ( in response to external stimuli) are similar because we are of the same species; however, these might differ as well because of our different characters.
The aesthetic experience for Schopenhauer is an disinterested approach to things. It makes no reference to one’s will; in other words, it does consider whether specific ends or benefits are fulfilled; it only consider objects of aesthetics as they present to us in our perception. Without the interference of our will in guiding our aesthetic experience, the aesthetic experience enables us to experience the world with little distortion, and perceive things as they really are.
The aesthetic experience is a unique and sublime experience that transcends beyond individual items and reaches the timeless reality of ideas ( or species to which the individual items belong). These ideas are one step closer to the platonic notion of form; and the apprehension of these ideas are the surest knowledge we could possibly attain.
For ordinary people, our intellect are subordinated to our end-seeking will; and the intellect are used as instruments to fulfill the ends. For artists, their intellect is not directed to be used by the will, but rather used to produce all these artistic work of aesthetics.
Arts both as an escape from the pressure of sustaining livelihood and as an intense form of knowledge.
Objections/counter-arguments:
How can we apprehend the timeless idea of lion through a specific artistic depiction of a lion?
Some artworks are not designed to illuminate a broader, and more significant idea? Some artworks are arbitrary and meaningless.
Ethics
Rationality is only an instrument which can be used to attain both moral and vicious outcome
Schopenhauer’s disparaging view of rationality and humanity is an important factor contributing to his pessimism.
Determinism
All actions are determined in the sense that they are orchestrated by the will to life.
Since Schopenhauer believes firmly in this idea that our actions are naturally orchestrated by the will to life( I.e, fulfilling one’s end), how is it possible for us to extend our compassion and sympathy to others? Schopenhauer believes that individualization ( taking me as an individual distinct from others) is a superfluous understanding of the world of appearance, the world at a more profound level has no individualization. Thus, there is no difference between I and Non-I; and we could naturally take other people’s suffering as our own.
This is rather hard to understand-Janaway suggests a more moderate interpretation of Schopenhauer’s position. That is, we should not take ourselves as distinct individuals to be of paramount important; we are more similar to others than we are different than them. This is a call for universal standpoint, rather than particularity.
