Customer Reviews

The World as Will and Idea (Everyman's Library)

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For someone with no formal instruction in philosophy this is a very good book to begin with. Schopenhauer avoids the use of pretensious "philosophical" jargon and writes in a predominantly literary fashion.

The main value in this book is its ideas. Its basic premis is simple, yet the range of topics that Schopenhauer delivers treatises on is quite astounding - art, gambling, contract theory, sexual love and ascetic renunciation, to mention but a few. Only a man of his genius could have found a thread to link these diverse topics together. One does, however, sense at times that he distorts his philospophical beliefs in order to express his revulsion about his least favourite types of human activity.

I found the discussions on art the most insightful and rewarding. The book is a good dissection of the blind striving and willing of our world and has the potential to alter the way you view the nature of things.

This is a really excellent and readable version of Schopenhauer's seminal work. Any abridgements are very judiciously made, so that none of the essential ideas are left out. The introduction is excellent, and the translation very coherent and easy to follow. It is one of the most engrossing of philosphical primary texts, much easier to understand than Kant, and the presentation and translation are excellent. Anyone with an interest in philosophy, especially in the period of 19th Century philosophy from Kant to Nietzche, will find it indispensable.

Truth be told, I came to Schopenhauer's work reluctantly, having been put off by Nietzsche, who - despite an early infatuation with Schopenhauer - later turned against his "mentor" (of sorts) claiming his work lacked any ethical applicability.

Yet, as an avid reader of Buddhist and Western philosophical texts, I found myself repeatedly drawn towards Schopenhauer through various resources. So after putting my prejudices aside, I went to the text itself, and I have to say, I consumed this volume with great enthusiasm: I find Schopenhauer to be one of the clearest, most articulate philosophers in the Western tradition (not unlike a Zen master). His work is, in a word, genius.

OK, sure, the "Buddha of Frankfurt" (his nickname) was no saint, but then again, who is? If you ask me, Schopenhauer's thinking is not to be "followed" as such, but rather, "understood," as I find his quiet reserve inspirational and his attempts at personal fulfillment through ART to be wise and sagely advice.

Personally, I found that The World as Will and Idea reminded me of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. We are, it seems, reproduction machines. (I also think the fledgling terms Id and Ego might be brought into play as well.)

Finally, I must concur with Schopenhauer's university philosophy professor, G.E. Schulze, who told the young thinker to stick with ONLY Plato and Kant. But to that small list I would now add one more name: Arthur Schopenhauer, as he brilliantly merges the thought of Plato and Kant to form a truly original philosophy - and he does so in a much clearer way than, say, Hegel or any other German Idealist might have. That said, I think it is helpful to have read some Plato and Kant before dipping into this text, as I found - and perhaps this is a petty gripe, I dunno - that the introduction by Dave Berman was, unlike Schopenhauer's fine prose itself, dull, unhelpful and, ultimately, uninspiring.

I highly recommend this text for both beginners and experts in the field -it is THAT good...and it just might change your whole perspective, if not your way of life. Amazing!

this is actually the last part of the entire work although the advertising would have you believe you are buying the whole work
I regard this as a misrepresentation!

The Kindle edition of this work is a disaster. There is no Table of Contents, much less a Contents with active links. Worse, the text itself is full of formatting problems and typos. We very much need a Kindle edition of Schopenhauer's main work (in particular, the two volumes translated as The World as Will and Representation). But this is NOT that edition.

This "translation" of The World as Will and Idea printed by General Books LLC is terrible.
No translator is listed. It is incomplete, missing important parts, and was total waste of money.
The disclaimer at the beginning of the book says in part:
"...While the publisher and author have used their best efforts...they make no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book..." Further down it says:
"We have created this book from the original using Optical Character Recognition software to keep the cost of the book as low as possible. ...please forgive any spelling mistakes, missing or extraneous characters..."
That pretty well sums it up. General Books LLC books clearly aren't even worth the money put into making them.
If you want a usable copy look for more well-known publisher. This is unusable for anyone studying the text academically, and fairly worthless for anyone else.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. It is important to note that the Germans look on art as more than art. They look on art as a cultural phenomenon that has deep significance for understanding reality and not just to study experiences and such. Arthur Schopenhauer's book "The World As Will And Idea," shows an interesting relation between him and Nietzsche which is very important because Schopenhauer was an important influence on Nietzsche, but always in an ambivalent manner. Nietzsche followed Schopenhauer on his philosophical model of reality. At the bottom of Schopenhauer's philosophy is his belief that reality is chaotic, a surging force that has no purpose, no meaning. Of course Schopenhauer drew from the notion that that life is meaningless and pessimism is a philosophy that says the more you think properly about the nature of reality the more you have to come to a pessimistic conclusion, which is, there is no ultimate meaning in life. The proper thing to do would be to turn away from the manner of resignation.

Thus, Schopenhauer did Kant one better by taking "disinterest" as not only a mode of apprehension that had nothing to do with the personal interest of the subject. Schopenhauer thought that this gave the self, the person an inkling of the pleasures of renunciation. Another word, the pleasures of aesthetic contemplation is the first signal that it is desirable to turn off one's will to live. It is desirable to turn away from interests. If reality is ultimately chaotic and formless with no ultimate purpose, then the question arises from this statement. "Can life be meaningful given that truth"? Schopenhauer says no.

Schopenhauer follows Kant; he says art really does get us to the Platonic universals; however, he completely reinterprets Plato's universals as not being cognitive but being receptive. Almost as though Schopenhauer says, Plato is wrong that art couldn't be something expressive and universal. An interesting theory; for example, when you are looking at a portrait, what is really essential about the portrait is not the idiosyncrasies of the individual subject, what is important about a great portrait is that it expresses something universal about the human condition, you learn something about the human through the universal sense of art. Here he is objecting to Plato's notion that universals are purely cognitive, and art is purely sensuous, Schopenhauer says no, art can give us an experience of something that is universal, and far exceeds the power of sciences. Schopenhauer says for instance if we wanted to understand the sea, we could try to come up with a definition, or we could turn to oceanography, or science that categorizes the characteristics of the ocean, etc. Schopenhauer says that is not universal, that is a very narrow perspective on the meaning of what the sea is, however the painter or the poet that shows us the vastness of the sea is what gets us to the universal understanding of what the sea is, and as something that is significant.

However, Schopenhauer thought art was only a temporary refuge from the more chaotic elements of the will, and the will is this kind of aimless surging. What is interesting about Schopenhauer is that he ridicules optimism and he ridicules the idea that in all the characteristics of existence still somehow it all adds up, some how it is worth while it is meaningful, he ridicules these ideas with his very powerful analysis of the facts of life. Anybody that takes an honest look at life could easily conclude that life doesn't add up to anything. Life is just a cycle of births and deaths people strive for things all the time and they are crushed, and that is it. Plato was concerned about tragedy as a dark and dangerous message that he wanted to overcome, but Schopenhauer says of all the art forms, tragedy is the highest art form because it targets specifically the message of the futility of existence. What is interesting in Schopenhauer and where Nietzsche is different is there are interesting moments in Schopenhauer's analysis of tragedy is one would think the Greeks would give up trying to assert their wills and would cease to play the game. But, on occasion what he says its that what strikes him about the Greeks is that they were not pessimistic, in fact they were the very opposite, they were life affirming, active and productive, not a resigning race at all. Schopenhauer was stuck by this and found it strange, his explanation for it was well they may have invented tragedy but they haven't really lived up to the full implication. Later we had to learn more about tragedy and modern tragedy that gets more to the point, which he says the whole point of tragedy is to teach resignation. Therefore, Schopenhauer says the Greeks were kind of childish and started the whole thing, but they didn't quite understand what tragedy meant. I find this point is a preposterous analysis by, Schopenhauer!

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, and philosophy of art.

This copy of 'The World as Will and Idea' is replete with typing errors, to a point that makes it very difficult to read. If another edition is available I would like to exchange it.

Thank you,

Richard Ball

I have returned to this everyman edition of this book many times over the years...nearly every passage is underlined in a different color pen. I don't have much to add to what the other reviewers have said, except that if you are interested in reading Schopenhauer, I would *definitely* get this edition of the book. It is very readable, and the introduction by David Berman is *wonderful*...it concisely puts Schopenhauer's ideas in context, and it also provides an enlightening introduction that will inspire you to read on, augmenting the accessibility of this already very accessible version.

Enjoy!

Unfortunately this title is misleading and starts in the middle of the book. It is a fair price for what you get but this kind of heady reading is not something one wants to start in the middle. I was unable to find a "part I" to this series so instead purchased an abridgement of the entire work so I intend to read the abridged version until it catches up with this, more detailed part of the work.
It comes from a source that allows you to download books very inexpensively but I didn't look into that as it is not for me. It may be a way to find the volume I of this series.

G