The World as Will and Representation, by Arthur Schopenhauer
When I told my friend, my favourite philosopher was Arthur Schopenhauer, he said ‘ah the philosopher for smack heads.’ Alas I am not a smack head, but perhaps there is something in the notion. For Schopenhauer is a troubling read. He sees the world as it really is, behind the tyranny of modern existence, many people live lives that are embodiments of pain and heartache. As such I prefer the term liberator, for such philosophers, emancipate us from the bondage of the living condition into the sublime world of pure thought. In turn they show us a glimpse of recognition and understanding, even across the vast distance of space and time.
Jung says of Schopenhauer: ‘He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us [...] Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentals of the universe.’
Schopenhauer was not, like Nietzsche (who, incidentally, seems to be one of the most disgusting individuals who ever lived). He was a nihilist and he didn’t hate the world, he pitied it and spoke with the indignation of someone who has suffered from it. Alas, there is a method to his madness, and this is why I call him a liberator, for he was willing to plug life to the depths, and go deep down in the mire, in order to rescue it.
Nevertheless he was a strange character. He would give lectures to empty university halls, carry around a pet poodle, and repeat obsessively the same walk every day for approximately sixty years. Clearly a mind, that has reached the end of its tether but I love him for it!
And now what exactly did Schopenhauer say? First we must remember he was a follower of Plato and Kant. He believed the ‘allegory of the cave’, and of Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself.’ As such he is a shining star in the tradition of idealism.
In more simple terms, he believed behind the appearance of reality, there exists a greater spiritual one. His opening lines: ‘The world is my representation,’ means precisely this: The world is whatever I see it to be at any given moment. Everything in existence is really only a cheap imitation and poor copy, of an unborn, uncreated, and unconditioned archetype, which exists beyond the veil.
In today’s terms, this is idealism is quite unpopular. We tend to think as ‘Positivists’, meaning we think in terms of concrete physicality. Materialism is the only world that exists. There is no God, no Spirit, no Forms or Archetypes. In fact, the veil is a crude metaphor for something which doesn’t exist. We have one life and thats that.
Schopenhauer, on the other hand, did see something behind existence, and behind the everyday appearance of things. However, to him it was something diabolical and a constant thorn humanity had to deal with.
He called it ‘Will’ or in longer terms: ‘The Will-to-Live.’ He claimed behind the mere tapestry of phenomena was a blind and unified necessity, which compelled universe to life. A Buddhist would label it ‘Desire’ and it is fundamental core of existence. We can imagine it as a sort of unconscious energy which robs us of freewill, and only causes blind, hopeless striving. Another metaphor, would be, humanity as a blindfolded rider, and ‘Will’ is the out of control horse on which he is astride.
Why are we born? why do we procreate? why do the stars shine? why does the bird fly? why do plants grow? why do clouds arise? Why did the galaxies form, and the universe beget? The answer: ‘Will’, the ‘will-to-live’. A hidden magic which makes everything in existence blindly desire and compel it to life.
They are difficult concepts to get one’s head around but Schopenhauer makes things clear. It is his emotive and pristine language which is one of his chief appeals, not to mention his courageous attempts to pin down the world for what it is.
He states: ‘It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of the great majority of men [...] It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages [....] We are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement, and measure by measure with insignificant variations. Every individual every human apparition and its course of life is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature the persistent will-to-live is only one more fleeting form playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time [....] All these fleeting forms these empty fancies must be paid for by the whole Will to live in all its intensity, with many deep sorrows, and finally with bitter death [...] If [we were] Finally, we were to bring to the sight of everyone the terrible suffering and afflictions to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror.’
For Schopenhauer, because appearance is ‘representation’ and essence is ‘Will’ he came to some thoroughly alarming conclusions about life itself. If we are nothing more than bodies which imbibe the blind striving of an anonymous, incognate and insensate ‘Will’, then really, we are condemned to suffer, because desire also specifies a lack, and fulfillment a negation.
As such he states:
‘We see striving everywhere, struggling and fighting, and hence always as suffering. Thus there is no ultimate aim of striving, means that there is no measure or end of suffering’ and life swings ‘like a pendulum to a fro between pain and boredom’
There is only one cure for the world and it is not Christian eternity, but the opposite. It is the Buddhist concept of extinction, or more philosophically, renunciation, because in the long run, only by the voluntary divestment of power and life, can the cycle of birth, death and reincarnation end. Renunciation will extinguish the Will-to-Live, and also with it, the endless treadmill of suffering man is trapped on. This is not a call to suicide, but a call to the lofty heights of stoical compassion, and detachment. The supreme examples would be Buddha or Christ.
So Schopenhauer was a Pessimist, but to me, his conclusions are logically correct, and I would tend to agree with him on the quiet when he says:
‘Optimism...where it not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words under their foreheads, seem to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind.’ It is Schopenhauer’s chief merit, that before anyone else, he realized that often life is the bitterest pill to swallow.
Once in a while it is important to remember who we are:
We are like Buddha, who left the luxury world of royalty, pomp and glitz, to travel outside the palace walls, only to encounter old age, sickness, and death, yet somehow aimed to redeem suffering and turn it into truth and goodness.
As such, we need these liberators, to follow through such knowledge to its final end, and somehow rescue humanity from the jaws of destruction.
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