Schopenhauer

1. Schopenhauer German Philosopher: 1788-1860

2. The World As Will and Idea • Schopenhauer (following Indian philosophy) argues that the basic fundamental nature of the world is will. The will is the basic nature of all things. • Our goal should be to silence the will (which is very similar to nirvana). • Our lives are dominated by willing [striving] and thus they are filled with struggle, conflict and dissatisfaction. • Unfortunately, it is probably too difficult for most ordinary people to silence the will.

3. The Will • S. says: “time and the perishability of all things existing in time…is simply the form under which the will to live…reveals to itself the vanity [pointlessness] of its striving…” For Kant, the will is the faculty of choice. But for Schopenhauer, the will is a basic principle underlying reality. There is only one will and everything belongs to the will. The objects and experiences everything and everyone undergoes including human consciousness and animals and their activity are all part of this same will. • All activity of daily life-one animal eating another—are instances of the vanity/futilty of the striving of the will.

4. The role of music • Music is one experience that can silence the will within us. • How might it do that? • Other aesthetic experiences may also do this.

5. Ascetic saints • Some people are capable of silencing desire within themselves. • They can reject desire in an inner act he calls “denial of the will to live.” • The ascetic saint realizes that all earthly phenomena are moved by the will and it is useless to struggle against the will and compete against other manifestations of the will (other people!) • You must resign yourself. • Eventually such a person will become perfectly compassionate because they will see all living creatures are manifestations of the same will.

6. Today’s Reading • There are 2 levels of analysis we can use • (1) Some of Schopenhauer’s claims are metaphysical claims: They are about the nature of reality and what there is really. • Is reality the way we believe it to be purely via perception? (Science tells us it is not.) • For Schopenhauer, the idea that we live in a universe of stable and lasting objects is an illusion. Our belief that we have a separate and special identity is also an illusion.

7. Second level to read at • (2) Our own experience and the passage of time and the effect this passage has on us. How do we experience our lives?

8. First interpretive question • “The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists, in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists.” • How do you break down the passage? What do you look for? • What is the ‘vanity of existence’?

9. Time • “Time and that perishability of all things existing in time that time itself brings about is simply the form under which the will to live, which as thing in itself is imperishable, reveals to itself the vanity of its striving. Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.” (67) • Are all things perishable in time? • What is the point of the first section? What does the first section try to show us?

10. Time • Schopenhauer offers us a little encouragement: The ideality of time. We know that time is our way of conceptualizing the world—what Kant called an intuition—and so this is thought by Schopenhauer to offer some kind of comfort to us. Time itself isn’t real in the sense we tend to think something should be real—that is, not dependent on human cognition.

11. Our Life in Time • He offers a second sliver of hope: We see our lives slipping away constantly. We might become frightened by this fact. Why don’t we? He thinks it is because we at some level conscious that we belong to something outside of us—something eternal—this basic eternal will. • Is this a comfort? Suppose your individuality was a complete illusion. Suppose the narrative structure you give your life is an illusion. Is it comforting to know that you belong to this eternal single substance that makes up the entire universe?

12. Section 3 • Because we experience the world as in time—we are in constant motion and experience the world as constantly in motion forward. Thus we live like someone who is running down a very steep mountain and who would fall over if he stopped running.

13. Is personal happiness possible? • This lack of stability means that happiness is impossible for two main reasons. First, we are continually becoming and not being. Happiness as conceived of by Greek philosophers was a state of the soul. Most philosophers would consider genuine happiness to be something that is not fleeting within one second but something which could be relevant over a lifetime or at least a chunk of a lifetime • Second, a person’s life is never about fulfillment but always about striving after what one believes will fulfill one only to be disappointed by that object when it is attained. • Finally, happiness doesn’t mean that much Schopenhauer thinks if it is simply something that is a series of constant fleeting moments.

14. Section 4 • Schopenhauer goes on to give us more details about the illusion we live under—when things are at a distance, they appear beautiful. Thus, we are always either focused on the future or the past. The present simply seems like a road to our goal while we have nostalgia for the past. Oddly enough we have nostalgia for a time which we did not really enjoy when we experienced it. Finally, the future will not bring satisfaction. When we look back on our life we will realize that our life really was made up of a succession of moments which we never considered or enjoyed.

15. Section 5 • Schopenhauer is basically trying to persuade you that in fact the reason our life is like this is explained by his metaphysical view about the nature of existence as a will to live and the events and objects in the world as manifestations of this will. Because everything is a manifestation of the will to live there is a kind of competition between living creatures –and the sort of existence we live is unsatisfying if it involves the restless striving that constitutes the will.

16. Time/our struggles can reveal to us the true nature of things • Thus, not only are we stuck between the present and the past but we are also stuck with a need to ceaselessly strive to live and to attain. As long as we’re in the grip of the will we are destined to ceaselessly struggle. One aspect of our experience he thinks illustrates this is that we are constantly in the process of performing all kinds of tasks. Once we accomplish a task it quickly becomes a burden but when we take a minute away from our tasks, we become bored. It’s true that when we satisfy our desires we experience less pain than before but immediately boredom sets in.

17. Boredom • Boredom happens whenever we just ‘are’ and we aren’t striving. This shows us that existence—as this manifestation of the will—is valueless…because when we stop we start to become aware that existence is empty—that’s what causes the boredom. If our existence was valuable and had some real content, we wouldn’t be bored by it.

18. Present and past • “That which has been no longer is; it as little exists as does that which has never been. But everything that is in the next moment has been. Thus the most insignificant present has over the most significant past the advantage of actuality, which means that the former bears to the latter the relation of something to nothing.” (from Sec 2) • What is S. talking about? • Does the past really exist? Why might we think so? Why might we think not? Does it matter if the past exists now?

19. Possible interpretation of Section 1-top of 2 • The first section is concerned with the relationship of the human being and human life as well as the objects around us to the passage of time and the continual change in the passage of time. • [Heraclitus: You can never step into the same river twice.] • Time and space are infinite • The individual is finite. • Individual existence depends on a series of present moments. That is all it is: A collection of a series of present moments.

20. The psychology of the person in time • “…we suddenly exist, after having for countless millennia not existed; in a short while we will again not exist, also for countless millennia. That cannot be right, says the heart: and even the crudest intelligence there must, when it considers such an idea, dawn of a presentiment of why, though we live our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same long regretfully for what is past. The present on the other hand is regarded as…serving only as the road to our goal…”

21. The struggle against the will is pointless: Section 6 • Finally—Schopenhauer thinks that death shows something—Human beings are the highest manifestation of the will…They can seem to direct their wills. They exhibit the strongest wills. Yet human beings die and crumble into dust. What’s this show? It shows that the constant striving of the will is in vain. It’s pointless.

22. “On The Sufferings of the World” • S. claims that suffering cannot be separated from life. “Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.” (45) • What can be said in response to this view about suffering? • Does S. have a reply to the response?

23. Does the pleasure outwigh the pain? • S. doesn’t think so. He says “let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.” (45) • We console ourselves with the fault of people who are worse off. “But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole.” Why? • Sometimes we’re happy. But that’s just like being a lamb in the field, unaware the butcher is waiting for his moment. • Time’s always looming over us—but when time seems to stop, then we feel bored.

24. Do we need the strife and struggle? • S. thinks that without the struggle of work and striving, we’d “die of boredom,” kill ourselves or start “wars, massacres, and murders.” (46) • S. claims: Without the suffering nature inflicts on us, we’d inflict suffering on ourselves. • Why? Is this true?

25. Difference between childhood and adulthood • “Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life…” (46) • The example of two friends who meet at the end of their life. He claims they will only feel disappointment. • Hence, it may not be rational to bring children into the world. It may not be rational to think that the existence of a world with sentient beings is better than the existence of a world without it.

26. The problem of suffering • Q: How do we defend the point of life in the face of so much suffering for human beingsand other creatures who can suffer, including animals?

27. The problem of desire • Much of our attention/passion is focussed on the future. We have memory “a machine for storing up…pleasures and sorrows…” • But unlike animals, we also increase our needs extremely. We go much further than our needs. We struggle for luxuries, we have ambition, want honor, feel shame…” • Once we satisfy our needs, we become bored. (Schopenhauer thinks we can sometimes see through the illusion of existence when we are bored.)

28. Psychology of desire • One aspect of human psychology is “care/anxiety/hope.” Our imagination makes these possible. These cause problems for us if we are anticipating future satisfaction because future satisfaction ultimately becomes future boredom. Getting what we want is a let-down for S. We’re on to wanting the next thing.

29. Animals • Unlike us, animals can enjoy the present moment. (This is why we enjoy our pets.) p. 50 • But they also raise the problem of suffering because their suffering cannot be justified by any benefits. And humans cause their suffering.

30. A possible purpose for brute suffering • “There is nothing here to give the will pause; it is not free to deny itself and so obtain redemption. There is only one consideration that may serve to explain the suffering of animals. It is this: that the will to live, which underlies the whole world of phenomena must, in their case, satisfy its cravings by feeding on itself…” (50)

31. Explanations for the world’s existence & suffering in the world • “Brahma (Hindu God) is said to have produced the world by a kind of fall or mistake; and in order to atone for his folly, he is bound to remain in itself until he works out his redemption.” (50) • The Greeks looked upon the world and the gods as the work of an inscrutable necessity. • [Maybe good struggles with evil.] • But it is not plausible to solve the problem of evil with the existence of a good God.

32. The best of all possible worlds An answer to the problem of evil is a theodicy. How can evil exist with the existence of a perfectly good, all powerful God? Leibniz answers this problem by arguing that this is the best of all possible worlds. S. Says: [God] is not only the Creator of the world…but possibility itself; and…he ought to have so ordered possibility that it would admit to something better. [Voltaire wrote Candide in part to ridicule Leibniz.]

33. Sin • S. appears to endorse the idea that the suffering is caused by sin and the suffering is the human beings’ punishment. • S. sees the New Testament as being similar to his view: It requires renunciation of the will to live. (This is the only way to end suffering.)

34. The solution? • The solution is renunciation, no more wanting, striving, will. • “…regard the world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony…” (52) • Cicero: “the wise men of old used to teach that we come into this world to pay the penalty for the crime committed in another state of existence…” • Vanini: “Man…is so full of…misery…I should venture to affirm that if evil spirits exist at all, they have passed into human form and are now atoning for their crimes…”

35. Maybe we’ll be kinder • We should recognize that everyone’s faults are our own faults. • “They are the shortcomings of humanity, to which we belong…” • We’ll see other people as ‘fellow sufferers.’