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The World As Will and Representation (2-Volume Set)

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If you are clever enough to shave away the nagging scientific details which have expired with time (as they all do), as well as the great philosopher's personal opinions, you will find this to be one of the greatest works ever written. For me, it was the end of philosophy; good answers to the questions I have always wrestled. An important thing to remember about Schopenhauer is that, as far as I know, he is the last great system-builder, the last philosopher in the traditional sense, who set out to create an entire picture of the world. His concept of the will, when fully grasped, is powerful and very simple. He is simply saying that there is one reality within all phenomenon, a "blind, irresistible urge" in his words, manifesting itself as the world. It is a mind-blowing concept: that the hungers and desires that push and pull you along are actually the stirrings of the same "force" (for lack of a better word) that also reveals itself in such phenomenon as gravity, magnetism, and the very energy that composes all matter; and that this restless and indestructible power is your true being. The downside is that it is insatiable and forever striving, with no goal being final, and satisfaction an eternal delusion.

The hardest part of this book to grasp is Schopenhauer's acceptance of transcendental idealism, which states that you only know the world through your five senses and your brain, and that therefore the objects you think you know directly have been conditioned by the process of perception, and are not things-in-themselves (this was Immanuel Kant's contribution to philosophy). It is not quite as difficult as it reads, and it may sound rather mystical until a proper understanding of what he is talking about strikes you unexpectedly one day. When it struck me I immediately re-read the book, and it was like reading it for the first time. Anybody familiar with "The Matrix" will be ahead of the crowd here, for the creators of that film were very familiar with Schopenhauer (in "The Matrix Reloaded," it is Schopenhauer's book (with the title in the original German) that the Persephone character pulls to open the door to the Keymaker). Just keep in mind that the world you percieve around you is most assuredly a mental construct (or mental picture) that is created by your brain from data conveyed by the nerves. It is not the world directly, it is a "representation" of the world. The only thing which is known to you directly (at least in part), is yourself, and therein lies the will, forever hungry, all of your emotions being its acts within the field of time. To properly grasp the idealistic half of his work (the world as representation), I strongly suggest the essay in vol. II called, "On the Fundamental View of Idealism."

Schopenhauer proves that a German philosopher does not have to be nearly unintelligible to appear profound. Unlike Hegel and Heidegger, Schopenhauer does not hide behind ambiguous words or phrases. To the reader, Schopenhauer's views are as profound as they are clear. Starting where Kant left off, he gives new meaning to the word will; he makes will the thing in itself. Both volumes are essential reading. The first offers his entire system. From epistemology to metaphysics, to a great essay on where his philosophy differs from Kant's, the first volume is the foundation for the second. The second volume is classic Schopenhauer; this is the acid-tongued curmudgeon most people think of when they bother to think of him at all. The sections on death and the metaphysics of sexual love are mind-blowing. As it is expressed in his masterpiece, The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer's genius and originality of thinking tower over the views of most thinkers being pushed in universities today.

Although the scientific premises of his philosophy are now considered outdated, Arthur Schopenhauer's contribution to modern philosophy continues to be an enduring and endearing one. Despite the fact that he wrote in the framework of Kantian idealism -- (with its dual-world metaphysics of "phenomenon" and "thing-in-itself") -- his thought has branched out into several directions, proving to be influential on some of the literary and philosophical luminaries of the nineetenth as well as the twentieth centuries. In his metaphysics, he was a voluntarist, propounding the nonrational, universal will as the ultimate reality (the "thing-in-itself") and the driving force behind all the manifestations of organic life as well as inorganic nature. The voluntarist doctrine of the will to power of Nietzsche was evolved from Schopenhauer, as well as the metaphysical vitalism of Bergson and, most patently, Freud's theory of the unconscious. In his epistemology, he was a phenomenologist and idealist, following the footsteps of Berkeley and the critical idealist Kant. In his aesthetics, he was a Platonist, holding the ontologically originary Form, or what he terms the "Platonic Idea" to be anterior to the aesthetic representation. In his ethics, he argued that to live means to desire and desire entails nothing but suffering. His reasoning was that desire induces suffering when it is frustrated from acquiring its object; upon overcoming its hindrances and realising its object, desire results in boredom since it has a new object in view and the cycle continues indefinitely. As such, desire leads inevitably to suffering. Schopenhauer's answer is asceticism ("the denial of the will-to-live"). The wise man does not commit suicide, but abstains from this life of useless striving and hopes for an annihilating death. In the meantime, he will look with compassion and pity upon his suffering fellow creatures. This element of Schopenhauer's philosophy reflects his unremittingly melancholy and pessimistic temperament, culminating, according to his biographer, in intense paranoia and the habit of sleeping at night with a loaded pistol tucked under his pillow. His ascetic morality is unique in modern Western philosophy. Being an atheist, Schopenhauer was arguably the first philosopher to effect a thorough break with the Judaeo-Christian tradition and to introduce strong elements of Eastern religion in his thought. (His voluntarism and asceticism have Hinduist and Jain Buddhist roots in the doctrine of reincarnation "metempsychosis" and the application of austerities upon oneself to liberate the soul from the karmic matter which magnetises it and causes it to be painfully reborn into the world of pain.) In terms of his style, he was an undisputed master of German prose style, writing in a lucid, witty and jargon-free Romantic "essay-style". He has exerted an influence on a number of key modern literary figures, such as Mann, Conrad and Hardy. His stress on style anticipates contemporary philosophising and its emphasis on literary form, as can be seen in the works of figures such as Derrida, Baudrillard, Heidegger, Deleuze et al. In addition, the unaffected purity of his philosophy is an indication of the great extent to which it approximates his own difficult and powerful personality. Only someone like Schopenhauer, whose character combined such a vehemence of desire along with such a brooding sensitivity to suffering, could have produced such a philosophy which argues for the most extreme restraining of desire. Altogether, "The World as Will and Idea" is a fascinating encounter with one of the most impressive thinkers of all time. Imagine it as an intellectual dialogue, an after-dinner debate in which you are challenged and entertained with the insights of a truly giant mind. Even if one does not share his assumptions, or agree with his conclusions, he still provokes those who read him with admiration and respect for his insight and genius.

What do humans' social wish for power and their instinctual drives do to their attempts to create knowledge? What does the fact that our minds were created by evolution mean for us?

Schopenhauer thought hard about these issues that remain vital today, and his answers continue to ring true today. Schopenhauer, it is true, was hampered by writing before -The Origin of Species- appeared, but he managed to have figured out most of the implications of evolution prior to Darwin. Schopenhauer's evolutionary psychology is far more convincing and cogent than the "social Darwinism" associated with Spencer and Sumner, because he questions whether the struggle for existence -ought- to be given free rein.

And in the same way, Schopenhauer asks similar questions to those that were asked in the 1960's by Michel Foucault. Given that humans are wilful animals, motivated by power and other desires, in what sense can their attempts at knowledge, or their attempts to express it, ever be reliable? Or are they all somehow tainted by this wilfulness?

In his notion that all life is the result of a blind, unconscious Will, Schopenhauer also was a major influence on Freud, whose conception of the unconscious owes so much to this work. His ultimate conclusion, though, is not pretty. Life is evil because it requires pain: hunger, lust, and anger are goads that whip us into serving life's agenda, which we might not have chosen upon reflection. The requirement of desire as motivator means that life always carries with it a necessary measure of pain.

Not a happy conclusion, but a seemingly inevitable one. Schopenhauer is also to be praised for his style: writing about things that most people can in fact understand, he sees little use for jargon, and is rich in example. He is a pleasure to read after Hegel or Kant.

I have spent this past year becoming quite acquainted with Arthur Schopenhauer. I can say, without hyperbole, that it has been an experience unlike any other. Unlike Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer's prose is consistently beautiful, and his literary style is essential in conveying truths about the world and ourselves that can be quite unpalatable. Schopenhauer's view of the world is bleak, and I agree with his assessment. He speaks of the blind drives and cruelties that motivate our species, and indeed the world itself, years before Nietzsche; and unlike Nietzsche he certainly did not embrace that cruelty.

As a metaphysician, Schopenhauer reveals many insights and a few weaknesses. S. appropriated several facets of Kant's transcendental idealism, but whereas Kant believed that all things possessed the attribute of "things-in-themselves", S. asserts that all things are comprised in essence as "Will". It is essential to grasp that S. defines "Will" as blind desire, NOT as a conscious universal mind (i.e., God). Schopenhauer's philosophy is thoroughly atheistic, although many of his philosophical insights slot neatly with Buddhism and parts of Hinduism.

Personally, I feel that of all the philosophers of transcendental idealism that came after Kant, Schopenhauer's system of blind will as the noumenal thing-in-itself to be the only one that is remotely plausible.

Schopenhauer's metaphysical insights on the arts are a mixed bag, but still intriguing. As a music lover, Schopenhauer unsurprisingly rates music as the greatest art and the sole art form that completely circumvents the will. In other words, music appreciation is completely contemplative, and does not involve egoism. I would rate music as the greatest of the arts too, but music can easily involve egoism: sensual music can make me desire sex, harsh music can make me feel abrasive, etc. In my opinion, his ranking of the arts, as a part of his metaphysical system, easily collapses when viewed as literal fact, but as poetic metaphor it works quite well.

Schopenhauer's greatest flaws are in the areas of natural science. His views on the development of consciousness are brilliantly insightful and slot easily with Darwinian theory, but he falls far short in denying the existence of atoms and preferring Goethe's theory of color over Newton's.

On ethics, S. is consistently insightful, but few would find his ethical thought attractive. Schopenhauer's beautiful prose on the essential irrelevance of death (especially in Volume II) is some of the most sublime there is. I mostly concur with Schopenhauer's views on animals, although I disagree with his belief that there is occasional justification for the exploitation of animals for human survival. As a vegan, I find Descartes', Spinoza's, and Kant's views on animals to be repulsive, so Schopenhauer's views are definitely an advance. Schopenhauer's view on sex is of the St. Augustine school, and as such I find it to be the least attractive facet of his ethical thought. S. was quite right in stating that our existence is permeated by sexual desire, but I disagree in trying to eradicate something that is the essence of all of us. It's much better, in my opinion, to indulge those desires responsibly, than repress what will always be there anyway.

Schopenhauer's endorsement of compassion is a wonderful antidote to Kant's flawed view of ethics. Whereas Kant tried to shepherd theology through the ethical backdoor, Schopenhauer rightly tells us that compassion, not rationality, is the basis of morality. Incidentally, it is well worth searching out Schopenhauer's hard-to-find book, "The Basis of Morality", which is a masterpiece of ethical thought.

Finally, there are Schopenhauer's pessimistic conclusions about life itself. He argues that there is no God, no soul, and no hope of a hereafter. I most heartily concur with his conclusions, and his eloquent description of the suffering of the world is necessary reading for both the shallow humanist and the pompous religious fundamentalist. It may disturb us to realize that we are at the mercy of blind forces largely beyond our control, but that same realization can make us more humane to each other, and to other species. It was Arthur Schopenhauer who so eloquently described our predicament, and for that I'll always be grateful.

Schopenhauer stands out as one of the most gifted writers in the history of philosophy. This book is long, but every paragraph is packed with insight. The only time he ever gets long-winded is when he is tearing into something or somebody that bothers him. Other than that, the book offers a profoundly pessimistic, insightful, witty, and sophisticated worldview that has influenced me profoundly.

Volume two is a commentary that he wrote years later to flesh out the ideas developed in the first volume, and is every bit as insightful. We only have so much time to read, however, and volume one is a consistent whole. I do not recommend Safranski's biography, however, because it is incredibly melodramatic and wordy. I couldn't finish it.

I believe that most people would find Schopenhauer's worldview to be paralyzing and unbearable; however, if you have a melancholy or brooding temperament, you will feel as if you have finally come home after all those years of disillusionment. As Schopenhauer frankly puts it: aging is a process of exchanging hope for insight.

Imagine this. You are in your car at 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. It's hot. You're painfully lonely, you have no friends to speak of. The sun is beating on your face. You have absolutely nothing to do. You feel the pressure of time and consciousness. You hear an advertisement on the radio about another blow-out sale in a nearby mall. You want to scream. Sound familiar? This is when a nice cup of Arthur Schopenhauer is in order.

I first learned about Schopenhauer when I was in a rather low point in my life and was looking for a consolation in the philosophy section of a bookstore. There I stumbled across The Consolations of Philosophy, which had a section about Schopenhauer and his basic outlook on the human condition. I never had a problem with pessimism and in fact always looked for someone great to defend it. Anyway, I slowly started preparing myself for the first volume. I had no philosophical background, just an immense desire to understand Schopenhauer's point of view since I knew then it would become my metaphysical backbone.

One of the challenges was that English is my second language and I feared that philosophy in English will exact too big a demand on my language skills. But the realization that with Schopenhauer lay the answers to my angst was enough to commit to this project.

I first read The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, which I understood for the most part and became even more intrigued. I definitely gained some philosophical muscle and so I plunged into volume one shortly after. It took me three months and it was a rather grueling experience. Partly because of the terminology and new concepts, partly because of the style, partly because of the translation. As one of the readers noted, some of the Latin and Greek phrases are not translated, which infuriated me each time I encountered them. For crying out why? But all these problems are nothing compared with the immense pleasure I got from reading the work, which my body frequently heralded with goosebumps!

I just finished the second volume (took me another 5 or 6 months). I read just a few pages a day. But I'll never regret spending the time. If there's an intellectual equivalent of orgasm, this is it. This experience will be forever etched in my brain. Transcendental idealism (which is also the basis of Buddhist metaphysics) is a life changing idea. I kind of look at myself and everything that happens to me through that lens now.

One of the ideas that was always on the tip of my tongue and that I never was able to articulate even to myself is Schopenhauer's notion about the negativeness of happiness and positiveness of suffering. In other words, happiness is only a subtraction from suffering. Needs, discomfort and suffering is what we start from. Turns out Voltaire said it even more succinctly: "There are no great pleasures without great needs". To, me it's a profound insight and both volumes are worth reading just because of this. If this idea does not give you goosebumps, then Schopenhauer might not be for you. Later I read Ann Ryand's "Atlas Shrugged", where that idea was attacked at least once -- but just as a bare assertion. By the way, "Atlas Shrugged" is the most tedious and crude attempt at realism (or objectivism) I ever read. But I'm digressing again.

I do have a couple of gripes with Schopenhauer's style. Some sentences are REALLY long with sub-sentences and sometimes sub-sub-sentences. Sometimes, I needed to re-read them a dozen times. Also, Schopenhauer is surprisingly repetitive in places, which was also commented on by Magee. But if you think about it, in the age of no computers and fancy editors, it was probably difficult to spot repetition. On the flip side, I found the repetitiveness of his ideas helpful when a particular major concept was not clear, because sure enough he would describe it ten more times from slightly different angles.

Schopenhauer says several times that everything that he had written must be read to fully understand his philosophy. He prescribes a list of his works to be read before "The World as Will and Representation" (TWAWR) is begun. The list includes:

1) His doctoral thesis. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Dodo Press).
2) Hi prize winning essay. Schopenhauer: Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy).
3) On the Basis of Morality
4) His critique of Kant's philosophy at the end of volume one.

I started with the critique of Kant and quickly abandoned it because it required decent knowledge of Kant. By the way, Schopenhauer once said that he who hasn't read and understood Kant is a mere child. But I was not ready for Kant yet. So, I skipped Kant's critique and moved on to volume one. I can now say that at least a general idea about the fourfold principle of sufficient reason (FPSR) is required to fully get it. So, do yourself a favor, look it up and read at least a summary of it. Otherwise a lot of the meaning will be lost. But FPSR is all you really need to get started.

By the time you finish TWAWR, even if you don't agree with his ideas, you will definitely be amazed by the sheer breadth of his knowledge. For starters, he spoke four foreign languages fluently -- English, French, Greek and Latin. His knowledge of science of that time is also quite staggering. He frequently provides his insight on physics, math, logic, astronomy, medicine (anatomy and physiology), botany, zoology, biology and chemistry. His knowledge of philosophy is similarly awesome. He constantly refers to and quotes Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Locke, Berkley, Kant and others. Fine arts? Sure! He had a lot to say about poetry, music, sculpture and architecture. In fact, he had something to say about everything that matters.

To conclude, I love Schopenhauer. Too bad I can't thank him in person. To those who accuse him of pessimism, I can only say that just because something is pessimistic, doesn't mean it's not true. And Schopenhauer does make his case strong.

Remember to look at your life through the prism of eternity. Hang in there, accept your lot and carry it with pride. Everything passes...

Thank you, Arthur.

Schopenhauer's magnum opus towers high above the silly word games of the analysts. This book is philosophy at its very best- a book that no educated person should miss for Schopenhauer wrote primarily for the layman. Like Nietzsche, he was highly skeptical of the "professionals" of his time. One thing that immediately strikes the reader is Schopenhauer's clear and crisp command of the written word unlike the severe case of abstractionitis that both Hegel and Heidegger seem to suffer from.

The World as Will and Representation clothes Transcendental Idealism in a pessimistic dress and offers a glorious, bold and innovated view of Kant's critical philosophy. Its scope and breadth reaches the outer limitations of human understanding creating a new and beautiful, yet cold and austere, vision that will forever challenge, shake, and destroy most people's views of reality. This book along with Kant's Critique gives a possible answer to one of the most perplexing problems of human understanding: it challenges and attempts to disarm Hume's powerful attack against the perceived "illusion" of causality. Whether it succeeds or not is left to the reader to decide.

Schopenhauer starts where Kant stops and he easily transcends him showing us how the world is a hostile place to live in and how reality is forever unknown to the knower. Few professional philosophers would probably agree with Schopenhauer. This in no way dimishes the value of his philosophy.

It is amazing that today most people simply ignore Schopenhauer and take him as a minor figure in the Western tradition. Part of the reason for this is because of Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, who simply dismissed Schopenhauer and gave him a bad reputation in his popular book "History of Western Philosophy." (This book is heavily biased and is probably one of Russell's worst books causing more harm than good for people new to philosophy.) Russell basically rejected Schopenhauer's work on the premise of hypocrisy since Schopenhauer did not actually practice the philosophy that he preached; yet ironically enough, Russell, being a brilliant logician and no less than the father of modern analytic philosophy, succumbed to emotionalism via the tu quoque fallacy. (i.e. judging a claim as false based on the character of the person claiming it instead of its truth value)

The best thing to do is to simply read the book yourself. Commentaries are helpful after one has understood the work, never before. It is highly recommended that one read Kant and then follow-up with Schopenhauer's book. (Though many have still profited skipping Kant altogether.) Very few things in life will probably be more important or rewarding than doing this.

The only thinker from the West who reached the profound conclusions of the East. What Schopenhauer did single handedly, with some help from Kant and his own immeasurable reading to draw from, was conclude with stunning clarity and insight the answers to the world put forward by Hindu Vedantic philosophy and Buddhism. Vol 2 is even better than the first. The world is literally what we make of it. For those who have thoughts of hate and anger, the world reflects this as it's the representation of the organs of perception and world-view of that person. To the beautiful mind, the world is beautiful. It is full of pain and suffering, but depending on the application of the mind, the torment can be negated and sublimated into freedom and peace. Schopenhauer is a genius, and his work is the staggering achievement of the mind.

These are wonderful books. I say about them what Schopenhauer said about the Upanishads, they have been the consolation of my life, they'll be the consolation of my death. Please read these books rather than the mediocre collection of essays offered by Penquin. If the two volumes are initmidating, just read volume one. It definitely stands alone. A way to ease into Schopenhauer is Rudiger Safranski's biography. A good read and an excellent intro. If you read Safranski's bio and vol. one of the World as Will and Representation in the next year, you'll be freshly fortified to face the new millenium.