The World As Will And Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
53 chapters
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53 chapters
Translators' Preface.
Translators' Preface.
The style of “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung” is sometimes loose and involved, as is so often the case in German philosophical treatises. The translation of the book has consequently been a matter of no little difficulty. It was found that extensive alteration of the long and occasionally involved sentences, however likely to prove conducive to a satisfactory English style, tended not only to obliterate the form of the original but even to imperil the meaning. Where a choice has had to be ma
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Preface To The First Edition.
Preface To The First Edition.
It is self-evident that under these circumstances no other advice can be given as to how one may enter into the thought explained in this work than to read the book twice , and the first time with great patience, a patience which is only to be derived from the belief, voluntarily accorded, that the beginning presupposes the end almost as much as the end presupposes the beginning, and that all the earlier parts presuppose the later almost as much as the later presuppose the earlier. I say “almost
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Preface To The Second Edition.
Preface To The Second Edition.
If Governments make philosophy a means of furthering political ends, learned men see in philosophical professorships a trade that nourishes the outer man just like any other; therefore they crowd after them in the assurance of their good intentions, that is, the purpose of subserving [pg xx] these ends. And they keep their word: not truth, not clearness, not Plato, not Aristotle, but the ends they were appointed to serve are their guiding star, and become at once the criterion of what is true, v
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First Aspect. The Idea Subordinated To The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: The Object Of Experience And Science.
First Aspect. The Idea Subordinated To The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: The Object Of Experience And Science.
§ 1. “The world is my idea:” —this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e. , only in relation to something else, the consciou
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First Aspect. The Objectification Of The Will.
First Aspect. The Objectification Of The Will.
We direct our attention to mathematics, natural science, and philosophy, for each of these holds out the hope that it will afford us a part of the explanation we desire. Now, taking philosophy first, we find that it is like a monster with many heads, each of which speaks a different language. They are not, indeed, all at variance on the point we are here considering, the significance of the idea of perception. For, with the exception of the Sceptics and the Idealists, the others, for the most pa
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Second Aspect. The Idea Independent Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object Of Art.
Second Aspect. The Idea Independent Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object Of Art.
§ 31. First, however, the following very essential remark. I hope that in the preceding book I have succeeded in producing the conviction that what is called in the Kantian philosophy the thing-in-itself , and appears there as so significant, and yet so obscure and paradoxical a doctrine, and especially on account of the manner in which Kant introduced it as an inference from the caused to the cause, was considered a stumbling-stone, and, in fact, the weak side of his philosophy,—that this, I sa
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Second Aspect. The Assertion And Denial Of The Will To Live, When Self-Consciousness Has Been Attained.
Second Aspect. The Assertion And Denial Of The Will To Live, When Self-Consciousness Has Been Attained.
§ 53. The last part of our work presents itself as the most serious, for it relates to the action of men, the matter which concerns every one directly and can be foreign or indifferent to none. It is indeed so characteristic of the nature of man to relate everything else to action, that in every systematic investigation he will always treat the part that has to do with action as the result or outcome of the whole work, so far, at least, as it interests him, and will therefore give his most serio
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Appendix: Criticism Of The Kantian Philosophy.
Appendix: Criticism Of The Kantian Philosophy.
It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the work of a great mind than to give a distinct and full exposition of its value. For the faults are particular and finite, and can therefore be fully comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very stamp which genius impresses upon its works is that their excellence is unfathomable and inexhaustible. Therefore they do not grow old, but become the instructor of many succeeding centuries. The perfected masterpiece of a truly great mind will
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First Half. The Doctrine Of The Idea Of Perception. (To § 1-7 Of The First Volume.)
First Half. The Doctrine Of The Idea Of Perception. (To § 1-7 Of The First Volume.)
Thus true philosophy must always be idealistic; indeed, it must be so in order to be merely honest. For nothing is more certain than that no man ever came out of himself in order to identify himself directly with things which are different from him; but everything of which he has certain, and therefore immediate, knowledge lies within his own consciousness. Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no immediate certainty; but the first principles of a science must have such certainty. F
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Second Half. The Doctrine Of The Abstract Idea, Or Thinking.
Second Half. The Doctrine Of The Abstract Idea, Or Thinking.
However, the law natura non facit saltus is not entirely suspended even with regard to the intellect of the brutes, though certainly the step from the brute to the human intelligence is the greatest which nature has made in the production of her creatures. In the most favoured individuals of the highest species of the brutes there certainly sometimes appears, always to our astonishment, a faint trace of reflection, reason, the comprehension of words, of thought, purpose, and deliberation. The mo
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Chapter Xviii.29 On The Possibility Of Knowing The Thing In Itself.
Chapter Xviii.29 On The Possibility Of Knowing The Thing In Itself.
I wish now first of all to make a few preliminary observations from a general point of view as to the sense in which we can speak of a knowledge of the thing in itself and of its necessary limitation. What is knowledge ? It is primarily and essentially idea . What is idea ? A very complicated physiological process in the brain of an animal, the result of which is the consciousness of a picture there. Clearly the relation between such a picture and something entirely different from the animal in
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Chapter Xix.30 On The Primacy Of The Will In Self-Consciousness.
Chapter Xix.30 On The Primacy Of The Will In Self-Consciousness.
We shall now first of all verify and also elucidate this thesis by the following facts connected with the inner life of man; and on this opportunity perhaps more will be done for the knowledge of the inner man than is to be found in many systematic psychologies. 1. Not only the consciousness of other things, i.e. , the apprehension of the external world, but also self-consciousness , contains, as was mentioned already above, a knower and a known; otherwise it would not be consciousness . For con
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Chapter Xx.34 Objectification Of The Will In The Animal Organism.
Chapter Xx.34 Objectification Of The Will In The Animal Organism.
To the evidence which is given in support of this proposition, both in our second book and in the first two chapters of the treatise “ Ueber den Willen in der Natur ,” [pg 469] I add the following supplementary remarks and illustrations. Nearly all that is necessary to establish the first part of this thesis has already been brought forward in the preceding chapter, for in the necessity of sleep, in the alterations that arise from age, and in the differences of the anatomical conformation, it wa
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Chapter XXI. Retrospect And More General View.
Chapter XXI. Retrospect And More General View.
If the intellect were not of a subordinate nature, as the two preceding chapters show, then everything which takes place without it, i.e. , without intervention of the idea, such as reproduction, the development and maintenance of the organism, the healing of wounds, the restoration or vicarious supplementing of mutilated parts, the salutary crisis in diseases, the works of the mechanical skill of animals, and the performances of instinct would not be done so infinitely better and more perfectly
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Chapter Xxii.1 Objective View Of The Intellect.
Chapter Xxii.1 Objective View Of The Intellect.
Although what I have said in the two preceding chapters concerning the life and the activity of the brain belongs to this method of consideration, and in the same way all the discussions to be found under the heading, “ Pflanzenphysiologie ,” in the essay, “ Ueber den Willen in der Natur ,” and also a portion of those under the heading “ Vergleichende Anatomie ,” are devoted to it, the following exposition of its results in general will be by no means superfluous. We become most vividly consciou
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Chapter Xxiii.3on The Objectification Of The Will In Unconscious Nature.
Chapter Xxiii.3on The Objectification Of The Will In Unconscious Nature.
As my essay, “ Ueber den Willen in der Natur ,” specially refers to the subject of this chapter, and also adduces the evidence of unprejudiced empiricists in favour of this important point of my doctrine, I have only to add now to what is said there a few supplementary remarks, which are therefore strung together in a somewhat fragmentary manner. First, then, with reference to plant life, I draw attention to the remarkable first two chapters of Aristotle's work upon plants. What is most interest
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Chapter XXIV. On Matter.
Chapter XXIV. On Matter.
Only where all a priori assertions cease, therefore in the entirely empirical part of our knowledge of bodies, in their form, quality, and definite manner of acting, does that will reveal itself which we have already recognised and established as the true inner nature of [pg 051] things. But these forms and qualities always appear only as the properties and manifestations of that very matter the existence and nature of which depends upon the subjective forms of our intellect, i.e. , they only be
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Chapter XXV. Transcendent Considerations Concerning The Will As Thing In Itself.
Chapter XXV. Transcendent Considerations Concerning The Will As Thing In Itself.
Let us now call to mind a truth, the fullest and most thorough proof of which will be found in my prize essay on the freedom of the will—the truth that on account of the absolutely universal validity of the law of causality, the conduct or the action of all existences in this world is always strictly necessitated by the causes which in each case call it forth. And in this respect it makes no difference whether such an action has been occasioned by causes in the strictest sense of the word, or by
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Chapter Xxvi.4 On Teleology.
Chapter Xxvi.4 On Teleology.
The astounding amazement which is wont to take possession of us when we consider the endless design displayed in the construction of organised beings ultimately rests upon the certainly natural but yet false assumption that that adaptation of the parts to each other, to the whole of the organism and to its aims in the external world, as we comprehend it and judge of it by means of knowledge , thus upon the path of the idea , has also come into being upon the same path; thus that as it exists for
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Chapter XXVII. On Instinct And Mechanical Tendency.
Chapter XXVII. On Instinct And Mechanical Tendency.
On the other hand, as has been said, the mechanical tendencies of insects reflect much light upon the working of the unconscious will in the inner functions of the organism and in its construction. For without any difficulty we can see in the ant-hill or the beehive the picture of an organism explained and brought to the light of knowledge. In this sense Burdach says ( Physiologie , vol. ii. p. 22): “The formation and depositing of the eggs is the part of the queen-bee, and the care for the cult
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Chapter Xxviii.6 Characterisation Of The Will To Live.
Chapter Xxviii.6 Characterisation Of The Will To Live.
Much more unsuitable, however, is the way in which so-called pantheists express themselves, whose whole philosophy consists chiefly in this, that they call the inner nature of the world, which is unknown to them, “God;” by which indeed they imagine they have achieved much. According to this, then, the world would be a theophany. But let one only look at it: this world of constantly needy [pg 106] creatures, who continue for a time only by devouring one another, fulfil their existence in anxiety
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Chapter Xxix.9 On The Knowledge Of The Ideas.
Chapter Xxix.9 On The Knowledge Of The Ideas.
Now what the Platonic Idea is, regarded as a merely objective image, mere form, and thereby lifted out of time and all relations—that, taken empirically and in time, is the species or kind. This, then, is the empirical correlative of the Idea. The Idea is properly eternal, but the species is of endless duration, although its appearance upon one planet may become extinct. Even the names of the two pass over into each other: ιδεα, ειδος, species , kind. The Idea is the species, but not the genus:
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Chapter Xxx.10 On The Pure Subject Of Knowledge.
Chapter Xxx.10 On The Pure Subject Of Knowledge.
I remark here that abstract thinking and reading, which are connected with words, belong indeed in the wider sense to the consciousness of other things , thus to the objective employment of the mind; yet only indirectly, by means of conceptions. But the latter are the artificial product of the reason, and are therefore already a work [pg 129] of intention. Moreover, the will is the ruler of all abstract exercise of the mind, for, according to its aims, it imparts the direction, and also fixes th
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Chapter Xxxi.11 On Genius.
Chapter Xxxi.11 On Genius.
The first manifestation which such a superfluity of the power of knowledge calls forth shows itself for the most part in the most original and fundamental knowledge, i.e. , in knowledge of perception , and occasions the repetition of it in an image; hence arises the painter and the sculptor. In their case, then, the path between the apprehension of genius and the artistic production is the shortest; therefore the form in which genius and its activity here exhibits itself is the simplest and its
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Chapter Xxxii.14 On Madness.
Chapter Xxxii.14 On Madness.
My own experience of many years has led me to the opinion that madness occurs proportionally most frequently among actors. But what a misuse they make of their memory! Daily they have to learn a new part or refresh an old one; but these parts are entirely without connection, nay, are in contradiction and contrast with each other, and every evening the actor strives to forget himself entirely and be some quite different person. This kind of thing paves the way for madness. The exposition of the o
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Chapter Xxxiii.17 Isolated Remarks On Natural Beauty.
Chapter Xxxiii.17 Isolated Remarks On Natural Beauty.
I would like to know why it is that while for the human form and countenance light from above is altogether the most advantageous, and light from below the most unfavourable, with regard to landscape nature exactly the converse holds good. Yet how æsthetic is nature! Every spot that is entirely uncultivated and wild, i.e. , left free to itself, however small it may be, if only the hand of man remains absent, it decorates at once in the most tasteful manner, clothes it with plants, flowers, and s
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Chapter Xxxiv.18 On The Inner Nature Of Art.
Chapter Xxxiv.18 On The Inner Nature Of Art.
Every work of art accordingly really aims at showing us life and things as they are in truth, but cannot be directly discerned by every one through the mist of objective and subjective contingencies. Art takes away this mist. The works of the poets, sculptors, and representative artists in general contain an unacknowledged treasure of profound wisdom; just because out of them the wisdom of the nature of things itself speaks, whose utterances they merely interpret by illustrations and purer repet
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Chapter Xxxv.19 On The ÆSthetics Of Architecture.
Chapter Xxxv.19 On The ÆSthetics Of Architecture.
Moreover, the support is not adapted to the burden when it is only sufficient to bear it, but when it can do this so conveniently and amply that at the first glance we are quite at ease about it. Yet this superfluity of support must not exceed a certain degree; for otherwise we will perceive support without burden, which is opposed to the æsthetic end. As a rule for determining that degree the ancients devised the line of equilibrium, which is got by carrying out the diminution of the thickness
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Chapter Xxxvi.20 Isolated Remarks On The ÆSthetics Of The Plastic And Pictorial Arts.
Chapter Xxxvi.20 Isolated Remarks On The ÆSthetics Of The Plastic And Pictorial Arts.
And again, analogous to this, that which in the poet, if it remained unseparated from the will, would give only worldly prudence, becomes, if it frees itself from the will by abnormal preponderance of the intellect, the capacity for objective, dramatic representation. Modern sculpture, whatever it may achieve, is still analogous to modern Latin poetry, and, like this, is a child of imitation, sprung from reminiscences. If it presumes to try to be original, it at once goes astray, especially upon
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Chapter Xxxvii.21 On The ÆSthetics Of Poetry.
Chapter Xxxvii.21 On The ÆSthetics Of Poetry.
But the intention with which the poet sets our imagination in motion is to reveal to us the Ideas, i.e. , to show us by an example what life and what the world is. The first condition of this is that he himself has known it; according as his knowledge has been profound or superficial so will his poem be. Therefore, as there are innumerable degrees of profoundness and clearness in the comprehension of the nature of things, so are there of poets. Each of these, however, must regard himself as exce
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Chapter Xxxviii.23 On History.
Chapter Xxxviii.23 On History.
In every class and species of things the facts are innumerable, the individuals infinite in number, the variety of their differences unapproachable. At the first glance at them the curious mind becomes giddy; however much it investigates, it sees itself condemned to ignorance. But then comes science: it separates the innumerable multitude, arranges it under generic conceptions, these again under conceptions of species, whereby it opens the path to a knowledge of the general and the particular, w
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Chapter Xxxix.25 On The Metaphysics Of Music.
Chapter Xxxix.25 On The Metaphysics Of Music.
That music acts directly upon the will, i.e. , the feelings, passions, and emotions of the hearer, so that it quickly raises them or changes them, may be explained from the fact that, unlike all the other arts, it does not express the Ideas, or grades of the objectification of the will, but directly the will itself . As surely as music, far from being a mere accessory of poetry, is an independent art, nay, the most powerful of all the arts, and therefore attains its ends entirely with means of i
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Chapter XL. Preface.
Chapter XL. Preface.
Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανατου μελετη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise. Therefore it will be quite in order that a special consideration of this should have its place here at the beginning of the last, most serious, and most important of our books. The brute lives without a proper knowledge of death; therefore the individual brute enjoys directly the absolute imperishableness of the species,
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Chapter Xli.27 On Death And Its Relation To The Indestructibility Of Our True Nature.
Chapter Xli.27 On Death And Its Relation To The Indestructibility Of Our True Nature.
However, after all that has been taught concerning death, it cannot be denied that, at least in Europe, the opinion of men, nay, often even of the same individual, very frequently vacillates between the conception of death as absolute annihilation and the assumption that we are, as it were, with skin and hair, immortal. Both are equally false: but we have not so much to find a correct mean as [pg 251] rather to gain the higher point of view from which such notions disappear of themselves. In the
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Chapter XLII. The Life Of The Species.
Chapter XLII. The Life Of The Species.
But without myth or symbol, the vehemence of the sexual impulse, the keen intentness and profound seriousness with which every animal, including man, pursues its concerns, shows that it is through the function which serves it that the animal belongs to that in which really and principally its true being lies, the species ; while all other functions and organs directly serve only the individual, whose existence is at bottom merely secondary. In the vehemence of that impulse, which is the concentr
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Chapter XLIII. On Heredity.
Chapter XLIII. On Heredity.
Now whether this also holds good of mental (subjective, internal) qualities, so that these also are transmitted by the parents to the children, is a question which has already often been raised, and almost always answered in the affirmative. More difficult, however, is the problem whether it is possible to distinguish what belongs to the father and what to the mother, thus what is the mental inheritance which we receive from each of our parents. If now we cast upon this problem the light of our
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Chapter XLIV. The Metaphysics Of The Love Of The Sexes.
Chapter XLIV. The Metaphysics Of The Love Of The Sexes.
— Bürger. This chapter is the last of four whose various reciprocal relations, by virtue of which, to a certain extent, they constitute a subordinate whole, the attentive reader will recognise without it being needful for me to interrupt my exposition by recalling them or referring to them. We are accustomed to see poets principally occupied with describing the love of the sexes. This is as a rule the chief theme of all dramatic works, tragical as well as comical, romantic as well as classical,
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Chapter Xlv.40 On The Assertion Of The Will To Live.
Chapter Xlv.40 On The Assertion Of The Will To Live.
But now the act through which the will asserts itself and man arises is one of which all are, in their inmost being, ashamed, which they therefore carefully conceal; nay, if they are caught in it, are terrified as if they had been taken in a crime. It is an action of which in cold reflection one generally thinks with dislike, and in a lofty mood with loathing. Reflections which in this regard approach the matter more closely are offered by Montaigne in the fifth chapter of the third book, under
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Chapter Xlvi.41 On The Vanity And Suffering Of Life.
Chapter Xlvi.41 On The Vanity And Suffering Of Life.
Thus old age and death, to which every life necessarily hurries on, are the sentence of condemnation on the will to live, coming from the hands of nature itself, and which declares that this will is an effort which frustrates itself. “What thou hast wished,” it says, “ends thus: desire something better.” Hence the instruction which his life affords to every one consists, as a whole, in this, that the objects of his desires continually delude, waver, and fall, and accordingly bring more misery th
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Chapter Xlvii.43 On Ethics.
Chapter Xlvii.43 On Ethics.
But my philosophy is the only one which confers upon ethics its complete and whole rights; for only if the true nature of man is his own will , and consequently he is, in the strictest sense, his own work, are his deeds really entirely his and to be ascribed to him. On the other hand, whenever he has another origin, or is the work of a being different from himself, all his guilt falls back upon this origin, or originator. For operari sequitur esse . To connect the force which produces the phenom
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Chapter Xlviii.44on The Doctrine Of The Denial Of The Will To Live.
Chapter Xlviii.44on The Doctrine Of The Denial Of The Will To Live.
But to speak without myth: so long as our will is the same, our world can be no other than it is. It is true all wish to be delivered from the state of suffering and death; they would like, as it is expressed, to attain to eternal blessedness, to enter the kingdom of heaven, only [pg 423] not upon their own feet; they would like to be carried there by the course of nature. That, however, is impossible. Therefore nature will never let us fall and become nothing; but yet it can lead us nowhere but
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Chapter XLIX. The Way Of Salvation.
Chapter XLIX. The Way Of Salvation.
If, then, suffering itself has such a sanctifying power, this will belong in an even higher degree to death, which is more feared than any suffering. Answering to this, a certain awe, kindred to that which great suffering occasions us, is felt in the presence of every dead person, indeed every case of death presents itself to a certain extent as a kind of apotheosis or canonisation; therefore we cannot look upon the dead body of even the most insignificant man without awe, and indeed, extraordin
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Chapter L. Epiphilosophy.
Chapter L. Epiphilosophy.
The ἑν και παν, i.e. , that the inner nature in all things is absolutely one and the same, my age had already grasped and understood, after the Eleatics, Scotus Erigena, Giordano Bruno, and Spinoza had thoroughly taught, and Schelling had revived this doctrine. But what this one is, and how it is able to exhibit itself as the many, is a problem the solution of which is first found in my philosophy. Certainly from the most ancient times man had been called the microcosm. I have reversed the propo
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Abstract.
Abstract.
Schopenhauer points out that Plato and Kant agree in recommending, as the method of all knowledge, obedience to two laws:—that of Homogeneity, and that of Specification. The former bids us, by attention to the points of resemblance and agreement in things, get at their kinds, and combine them into species, and these species again into genera, until we have arrived at the highest concept of all, that which embraces everything. This law being transcendental, or an essential in our faculty of reaso
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Chapter I.
Chapter I.
Schopenhauer in this chapter traces historically the forms in which the principle had been stated by his predecessors, and their influence. He points out that in Greek philosophy it appeared in two aspects—that of the necessity of a ground for a logical judgment, and that of a cause for every physical change—and that these two aspects were systematically confounded. The Aristotelian division, not of the forms of the principle itself, but of one of its aspects, the causal, exemplified a confusion
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Chapter II.
Chapter II.
In the third chapter Schopenhauer points out that the two applications of the principle of sufficient reason distinguished by his predecessors, to judgments, which must have a ground, and to the changes of real objects, which must have a cause, are not exhaustive. The reason why the three sides of a certain triangle are equal is that the angles are equal, and this is neither a logical deduction nor a case of causation. With a view to stating exhaustively the various kinds into which the applicat
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Chapter III.
Chapter III.
In the fourth chapter Schopenhauer deals with the first class of objects for the subject and the form of the principle of sufficient reason which obtains in it. This first class is that of those complete ideas of perception which form part of our experience, and which are referable to some sensation of our bodies. These ideas are capable of being perceived only under the forms of Space and Time. If time were the only form there would be no coexistence, and therefore no persistence. [pg 481] If s
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Chapter IV.
Chapter IV.
The fifth chapter commences with an examination of the distinction between man and the brutes. Man possesses reason , that is to say, he has a class of ideas of which the brutes are not capable, abstract ideas as distinguished from those ideas of perception from which the former kind are yet derived. The consequence is, that the brute neither speaks nor laughs, and lacks all those qualities which make human life great. The nature of motives , too, is different where abstract ideas are possible.
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Chapter V.
Chapter V.
The third class of objects for the subject is constituted by the formal element in perception, the forms of outer and inner sense, space and time. This class of ideas, in which time and space appear as pure intuitions, is distinguished from that other class in which they are objects of perception by the presence of matter which has been shown to be the perceptibility of time and space in one aspect, and causality which has become objective, in another. Space and time have this property, that all
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Chapter VI.
Chapter VI.
The remaining class of objects for the subject is a very peculiar and important one. It comprehends only one object, the immediate object of inner sense, the subject in volition which becomes an object of knowledge, but only in inner sense, and therefore always in time and never in space; and in time only under limitations. There can be no knowledge of knowledge, for that would imply that the subject had separated itself from knowledge, and yet knew knowledge, which is impossible. The subject is
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Chapter VII.
Chapter VII.
In this, the concluding chapter, Schopenhauer sums up his results. Necessity has no meaning other than that of the irresistible sequence of the effect where the cause is given. All necessity is thus conditioned, and absolute or unconditioned necessity is a contradiction in terms. And there is a [pg 486] fourfold necessity corresponding to the four forms of the principle of sufficient reason:—(1.) The logical form, according to the principle of the ground of knowledge; on account of which, if the
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Chapter VIII.
Chapter VIII.
Page xxxii. insert Preface to the Third Edition. What is true and genuine would more easily gain room in the world if it were not that those who are incapable of producing it are also sworn to prevent it from succeeding. This fact has already hindered and retarded, when indeed it has not choked, many a work that should have been of benefit to the world. For me the consequence of this has been, that although I was only thirty years old when the first edition of this work appeared, I live to see t
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Corrigenda And Addenda In Vol. I.
Corrigenda And Addenda In Vol. I.
In this third edition the reader will miss nothing that was contained in the second, but will receive considerably more, for, on account of the additions that have been made in it, it has, with the same type, 136 pages more than the second. Seven years after the appearance of the second edition I published two volumes of “Parerga and Paralipomena.” What is included under the latter name consists of additions to the systematic exposition of my philosophy, and would have found its right place in t
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