Arthur Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation 1 - Analysing Kant

The final part of the first edition of World as Will and Representation is an appendix, in which Schopenhauer recounts his opinions on different aspects of Kantian philosophy. His attitude is mostly critical, although he admits that Kant was a philosophical genius. Yet, what counts as genius in Kant’s philosophy in Schopenhauer’s eyes, is only a small part of what can be found Kant’s writings. Still, it is one of the core ideas - the differentiation between appearance and thing in itself. Of course, we have already seen that what Schopenhauer means by this distinction is not quite what Kant was up to with it. Schopenhauer’s reading of Kant’s distinction could be called Platonist, because he essentially equates distinction with Platonist distinction between sense world and reality behind it - or Hinduist, because he equates Kantian appearance with the notion of maya and thinks that Kant was trying to emphasise the illusionary nature of the world of experience.

Although Schopenhauer thus appreciates Kant’s philosophy and says that Kant managed to finally end the era of scholasticism, which Descartes didn’t really do, he also admits that Kant led to a crisis in philosophy, by which Schopenhauer apparently meant the later German idealists. This crisis was, according to Schopenhauer, at least partly due to Kant’s style. On the whole, Schopenhauer describes Kant’s style as glorious dryness, similar to Aristotle’s, that is, full of accurate distinctions. The problem is, according to Schopenhauer, that the topic of Kant’s philosophy is so difficult that he cannot really explain it well. In Schopenhauer’s opinion, this lack of clarity inspired other philosophers use even more obscure style in their writings.

Yet, the biggest problem Schopenhauer sees in Kant’s philosophy is his search for symmetry that doesn’t always exist. A particular point of criticism was Kantian table of categories, which reappears in the most perplexing places, as the supposed key for the system of human cognition. This search for symmetry, Schopenhauer states, makes Kant ignore such important questions as what a concept in general is and to give completely wrong explanations of e.g. the nature of reason. What Schopenhauer would have liked to see in Kant is a clear demarcation of everything conceptual to reason, leaving to understanding nothing but the task of connecting individual perceptions through causality.

It is then no wonder that Schopenhauer appreciated the first edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason more than its second edition, mainly because it fit better with his Berkeleyan-Hinduistic reading. Indeed, Schopenhauer was convinced that in the second edition Kant just tried to distance his own philosophy from Berkeley’s, which ended up just with a muddle. The major fault Schopenhauer sees even in the first edition is the unclear role of thing-in-itself, which is explained as a cause of experience: a notorious failing in Kant’s system. Furthermore, Schopenhauer is not fond of Kant placing, as it were, between thing-in-itself and concrete representations something called the object in general. Schopenhauer is here making another clear strike against conceptualisation of understanding, since Kant was convinced that the faculty of understanding attached this abstract notion of object to perceptions.

The core of Critique of Pure Reason, according to Schopenhauer, is clearly the transcendental aesthetic, and all the problems appears only at the level of transcendental logic. For Kant, transcendental logic and especially transcendental analytic dealt with understanding. Yet, Schopenhauer notes, understanding is not logical or conceptual in the sense that it does not deal with universalities - instead, it just combines individual phenomena through chains of causality into individual processes. In fact, Schopenhauer wants to make a clear demarcation between the perceptual and conceptual levels of human cognition.

Thus, he at once dismisses the Kantian notion that through sensibility objects are given to us and through understanding they are thought. Firstly, Schopenhauer insists that senses do not give us objects. Indeed, he makes fun of the idea that objects would just magically appear in our heads. Instead, senses give us mere sensations and only the combined use of the spatio-temporal form of intuition and the causality introducing activity of understanding brings about objects (in materialistic terms that Schopenhauer sometimes uses, our brains mold sensations into experiences). Schopenhauer notes that even Kant appears to accept this at times, when he says that e.g. understanding makes nature possible.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer says, understanding does not think, that is, it does not use any concepts in the Schopenhauerian sense, which always involves movement to a level of abstract universalities. Instead, this conceptual task Schopenhauer leaves for reason - thinking is second-order cognition, based on universalising individual phenomena. We have already seen that Schopenhauer coldly dismisses the primary logical task of understanding - that of connecting perceptions to an object in general, which could be only something thought. As an ally against this notion of object in general Schopenhauer mentions Berkeley, who had already dismissed the distinction between representation and its object - ironically, the notion of object in general was probably introduced by Kant to distinguish his philosophy from Berkeley’s. With this object in itself Schopenhauer dismisses also twelve categories, which were supposed to be concepts for thinking this very object in itself, leaving only the causality besides space and time as a priori elements of cognition. With categories goes also the need for the schematism of categories, which Schopenhauer suggests was nothing but a misguided attempt to create an analogy with the use of empirical concepts.

Although Schopenhauer discards Kantian categories, he admits that the other side of the equation - the forms of judgement - do form a possible topic of philosophy. Contrary to Kant, Schopenhauer doesn’t try to make statements about human cognition on basis of these forms, but instead, he derives these forms from the characteristics of human cognition. That is, some forms of judgement, he says, have their basis on the conceptual side of human cognition, other on the understanding or the experiential side, while finally some can be derived from the interplay of these two elements. Thus, universal and particular judgements, Schopenhauer insists, are just two different manners, in which reason connects abstract concepts while a so-called singular judgement (e.g. “this swan is white”) connects intuitive cognition with abstract concepts. The difference between affirmative and negative judgements is one of reason, since experience really has no negations; and infinite judgement is an unimportant addition, Schopenhauer adds.

Kantian divisions of judgements according to relation have very different sources, according to Schopenhauer. Hypothetical judgement Schopenhauer takes to be a general form of the principle of sufficient reason, which is mostly based on intuitive side of cognition. Categorical judgement is just a general form of judgement, Schopenhauer says, while disjunctive judgement expresses a logical relation between concepts excluding one another, with no connection to the notion of reciprocal causation, which Schopenhauer also dismisses as an absurdity, because causality in his eyes is always a process with one direction.

This leaves only the Kantian modalities, which Schopenhauer considers to have a mixed origin. The basis of the modalities, in Schopenhauer’s opinion, is necessity, which he takes to be a synonym for something having a cause and thus based on intuitive side of cognition. Other modalities originate then from the interaction of concepts with intuitions. Contingency is a meaningful concept only in relation to some context - while A is necessary, assuming certain conditions, some other thing B would be contingent under the same conditions. Nothing absolute contingent would exist, because all things do have some ground. Actuality, according to Schopenhauer, means just something being a necessary consequence of some cause, at the moment, when it is called actual. Possibility, then, is something which is actual at some moment, and impossible is something that is never actual.

We’ve already noticed that Schopenhauer isn’t convinced about the derivation of twelve categories from the supposed table of forms of judgement. Even less convinced he is of Kant’s attempts to use the symmetry of categories as a method for systematising various parts of philosophy. He explicitly notes that quality is just an arbitrary title for affirmation and negation and their connection with intensive quantities is even more contentious. Furthermore, he notes that Kant uses categories in two contradictory manners: both as preconditions of experience, which contains an intuitive component, and as forms of pure, non-intuitive thinking.

Schopenhauer has a low opinion also about Kant’s transcendental dialectic. Although Schopenhauer agrees with Kant that pre-Kantian metaphysics deserved criticism, he is far from accepting that the supposed search for unconditioned leading to such metaphysics would be inevitable part of human reason. In fact, Schopenhauer says, it’s just a sophism to conclude from the need of grounding individual events a need to give a complete chain of grounds to an event. Indeed, he points out, we can complete a chain of grounds only, when we are speaking of grounds of cognition, which end with concrete perceptions, but not when we are speaking of causes. Thus, there is no need to assume that all humans would form concepts like soul or God.

Schopenhauer points out many mistakes with Kant’s attempts to derive basic concepts in particular parts of dialectics. For instance, Kant assumes the notion of soul as final substance behind accidental properties, although the concept of matter would fit the bill much better. Furthermore, Schopenhauer finds it again absurd that Kant tries to derive the four antinomies from his titles for divisions of categories. For instance, while space and time have some connection with quantities, the relationship between wholes and parts has only a slight relation to qualities and their negations. Particularly ridiculous Schopenhauer considers Kant’s linking causality with freedom, when the concept of the creator in the fourth antinomy would have been a more natural choice.

In general, Schopenhauer doesn’t think that Kantian antinomies are real antinomies, because only the antitheses, holding the possible infinity of experience, are a credible option, while the proofs of theses are based on a mere personal inability to understand what infinity is like. Thus, Schopenhauer thinks that no absolute beginning for events can be thought, although one might think that events of the world end at some point. Against Kant’s proof of the thesis of second antinomy Schopenhauer points out that we need not assume that matter would consist of pre-existing parts, if we want to say that it is divisible into further parts - indeed, this was pointed out already by Hegel, and even Kant noted later that infinite divisibility of matter followed from infinite divisibility of space. Kant’s proof for the third and fourth antinomies, Schopenhauer says, again assume that we must have a complete series of causes with an absolute beginning to explain an event.

Finally, Schopenhauer notes that Kant’s general solution for antinomies actually assumes the truth of the antitheses. Schopenhauer is here clearly interpreting the infinity involved in the antitheses as what could be called potential infinities - that is, when an infinity of series is expressed, what is meant is an incapacity to give any absolute, finite series containing all antecedents. What Schopenhauer does agree with Kant - although he appears to not understand this himself - is that just because of this potential infinity of the world we experience, we must conclude that it is not the world in itself, but dependent on human representation.

A sort of exception in Schopenhauers eyes is Kant’s solution to the third antinomy, which Schopenhauer thinks has significant similarities with his own philosophy. Indeed, Kant’s suggestion that freedom might be possible with things in themselves does bear some resemblance with Schopenhauer’s suggestion that completely free volition lies behind the world of representation. Yet, Kant never suggests that we could ever just feel this freedom, and Schopenhauer is not very thrilled of Kant’s transcendental-style proofs that freedom must exist to make categorical imperative possible. Furthermore, Schopenhauer still thinks that Kant’s solution fails as a solution to the antinomy, because the antinomy is expressly about the world of experience, not about things in themselves. Within the world of experience, Schopenhauer confirms, no freedom exists.

The final part of Kant’s transcendental dialectics, his criticism of natural theology, receives a complete condemnation from Schopenhauer. He does admit that Kant was right in rejecting the traditional proofs of God’s existence, but firstly, he thinks that this rejection is historically quite unimportant, because the proofs themselves are just an uninteresting part of scholastic philosophy, and secondly, he is convinced that David Hume did even that better than Kant. But what Schopenhauer really dislikes in Kant’s account is his suggestion that the idea of God as the most real entity would be somehow necessary for human cognition, when many ancient and non-European cultures never had such an concept.

Schopenhauer puts most of his energy toward Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, primarily because he thought that the meat of his philosophy was to be found in that book. Then again, the primary idea of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason that reason could be the basis of morality, Schopenhauer finds wanting, because reason can at most, he says, tell how to achieve predetermined long-term objectives, like happiness in life. Furthermore, Schopenhauer is quite convinced that no absolute ought-tos or categorical imperatives, but only ought-tos in relation to certain consequences, like punishments: for instance, a child ought to behave, if she wants her allowance. Still, Schopenhauer does admit that true virtue is done for its own sake, even if he doesn’t want to use the term “ought-to” in this context. In fact, he thinks that Kant couldn’t uphold that ideal, mixing it with happiness in the idea of greatest good. In addition, Schopenhauer insists that this pure virtue is not as formal as Kant thought, but more generalisation of egoistic well-being over all living beings.

The other works of Kant get an even shorter shrift from Schopenhauer. For instance, he notes that Kant’s theory of right is simply wrong, because it tries to distance right from both ethics and from state, finding a third root for a priori judgements. Similarly dismissive Schopenhauer is of Critique of Judgment.

Arthur Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation 1 - Resignation of will

The final book of Schopenhauer’s major work could be called a treatise of practical philosophy. Yet, Schopenhauer notes that in a sense philosophy is never practical in the sense that it always just describes the world, but never prescribes any rules to it. Indeed, going against Kant, Schopenhauer notes that there can be no categorical imperatives based on mere pure reason, but all maxims of practice must assume some end, which a human being is aiming for.

Schopenhauer begins by noting that what he has thus far called simply will could as well be called will for life. His idea appears to be that life is what corresponds to will in the phenomenal level of the world, and of course, especially in the case of organic entities. Since will is outside the chains of time, Schopenhauer says, life will continue eternally - or as long as there is will. Of course, individual living beings might die, but this is just a natural part of the ever-going cycle of life, consisting of fluctuation of birth and death.

Now, a person who has understood that individuals are mere phenomenal embodiments of one and same primordial will might just embrace this will and happily live her own individual life to its inevitable end, in the full knowledge that this same will will live on in some other form. Yet, it is not inevitable that such is the result of this moment of enlightenment. Will is not in any manner determined, so some person might do completely opposite - will in this embodiment might actually cancel itself and the person would not anymore have urges to do anything. The only explanation for this choice would be the character of the person - and this character itself would be just an inexplicable fact, a free choice of the primordial will.

Although Schopenhauer thus accepts the freedom of will, this has nothing to do with freedom of individuals. Indeed, he is quite convinced that individual human beings, just like all phenomenal entities, must follow the principle of sufficient reason. In case of human actions, this principle says that all actions are based on motives and the inexplicable character - this type of person must do so and so in these and these circumstances. At the same time, while the actions of a human being are predetermined, they still have a feeling of freedom, due to being embodiments of a completely undetermined will.

Although Schopenhauer starts by saying that the choice of embracing or resigning will is completely free, his own character appears to fall on the resigning side of the equation. Indeed, he emphasises that will has no real end and merely drives forward without any hope of finding any final goal. In case of physical world, this just means that gravitational pull etc. will go on for the end of eternity, but with animal and human life results are more drastic. Because the animal urges are driven by pain and suffering, pain and suffering will continue forever.

One might say that Schopenhauer exaggerates the suffering intrinsic to living - most animals can endure feelings of hunger, thirst, tiredness etc., if they do not rise to overwhelming levels. Especially in case of humans Schopenhauer raises then another line of offence. The supposed happiness is just a momentary feeling of a pain passing by and cannot last for very long. Thus, Schopenhauer suggests, if all our needs are satisfied and no urge drives us forward, we are bound to feel bored, which is no better than being in constant pain. We might say that Schopenhauer is here complaining about a first-world problem: a pessimist will grumble, even if everything would be fine.

Schopenhauer does have something more in his side. Will, in Schopenhauerian philosophy, is what really drives human beings forward, while our cognitive side is merely a tool of will. Human cognition is tied to the individual outlook of the space-time world, while will is not. Will tries to renew itself and doesn’t really care about what happens to this individual. According to Schopenhauer, this is especially clear when we think of sexual urges, which do not follow any conscious control. Cognition then merely provides the rationalisation for the urges of will and tries to find means for realising these urges.

Now, due to the restriction to individual outlook, human beings care only for their own urges or only of this particular embodiment of will. Thus, all humans, Schopenhauer says, are natural egoists, caring only for their own agenda. Hence, they are quite willing to nullify the will of others, which leads naturally to Hobbesian war of everyone against one another. Interestingly, Schopenhauer admits that a Hobbesian warfare is a state of unrightness, and indeed, that a violation of anyone’s will, whether through violence or deceit, is a wrong. Indeed, Schopenhauer thinks the concept of wrong is the basis of ethics, in that rightness is just a derivative concept - without possibility of violation of rights, there would be no rights to speak about.

After describing the wrongness inherent in the natural egoism of humans, Schopenhauer takes a long detour to discuss the origin of states. In effect, he is just following the Hobbesian account, where state power comes about, because of attempt to restrict the field of wrong committed, thus actualising natural rules of justice. While state offers a sort of solution for all the wrongs caused by egoism, Schopenhauer also suggests that the primordial will has also an inherent sort of justice. In effect, this is just a butcher’s justice - everyone will die at the end, thus, an egoist who is completely deluded by her own self will fear her impending doom.

Schopenhauer notes that sometimes humans can win their egoistic outlook and tragically suffer or even die for the lives of others - it is in character of these humans to break their individual viewpoint. Yet, he is quick to point out that some characters do much worse than regular egoists. They are not just trying to fulfill their personal will, no matter at what cost, but they also actively want to kill and torture other individuals. Schopenhauer ties the existence of such characters to his own pessimistic outlook of life - these undeniably evil persons try to silence the suffering in their own life by making other embodiments of will suffer instead.

One might get the impression that Schopenhauer is trying to make his reader commit a suicide, just to escape all the suffering in the world. Yet, he notes, killing oneself wouldn’t solve anything. The result would be just the destruction of this one individual, who is just an embodiment of primordial will in the phenomenal world. But just like sun will rise again, after seemingly swallowed by night, so another embodiment of the same will will just take place of the deceased person. Indeed, Schopenhauer suggests that suicide is just one kind of appearance of will - person killing herself still wants to live, just without the confines of her bodily situation.

We now have four possible human characters. There are the evil monsters, driven by their own pain to cause suffering in others. There are unjust people, who are willing to hurt others, because of their own egoistic desires, although they have no specific desire to hurt others. There are just people, who are willing to ignore their egoistic desires, if they would hurt others. And there are good and virtuous people, who want to do good for others, out of love and compassion for them, that is, an instinctive feeling that these others are just embodiments of the same primordial will.

In addition to these four characters, Schopenhauer finally delineates a fifth one, which like the virtuous character might get its start from universal compassion. But unlike virtuous person, who is spurred to action by the suffering of others, this final character is just disgusted by all the suffering around her and feels the futility of the whole primordial will behind this horridness. And what happens now is a sort of miracle. Will, as embodied by this particular individual, sees and understands its own contradictoriness and nullifies itself - this person does not want anything anymore. This does not mean that her body wouldn’t have any urges - quite the contrary, sexual and other drives continue even after this enlightenment. Instead, this person falls into ascetic behaviour and consciously tries to cancel all these drives.

What then is the final fate of the ascetic in Schopenhauerian philosophy? Surprisingly, life of ascesis does something suicide couldn’t - it doesn’t destroy just the phenomenal individual, but also will itself. One might well wonder wouldn’t the world as a whole would have then disappeared altogether, once Christ or Buddha or some other saint had gone through this road. Indeed, Schopenhauerian emphasis on ascesis is in a sense way to incorporate religion - especially Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism - in his philosophy. Yet, Schopenhauer concentrates merely on the idea that the material world is full of suffering, and he seemingly ignores all ideas of a heaven beyond. But most confusingly, he still leaves open the possibility that after the resignation of will something might remain - something that must be better than this life.

Arthur Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation 1 - Ideas

Between the concrete individual objects and primordial will in itself Schopenhauer places ideas. These ideas are already objects or embodiments of will, but they should not yet be individuals and thus are free of ordinary causality. Instead, Schopenhauer conceives them as paradigmatic or prototypical objects for each level in the hierarchy of embodiments of will. Adding this Platonistic layer to a pseudo-Kantian worldview is, again, no novelty and similar attempts can be found e.g. in the philosophy of Schelling.

Similarly unoriginal is Schopenhauer’s notion as to what kind of cognition is required for conceiving these ideas. When a person conceives an idea, Schopenhauer suggests, she must herself be free of her own individuality and become a pure, timeless subject, who looks upon the idea without any urges of ordinary life and without the shackles of causality. In other words, she must be an artistic genius, capable of grasping what is essential in different genera of objects. Genius, Schopenhauer says, forgets her own individuality and is completely enamoured by her vision of the idea. Thus, Schopenhauer endorses the rather romantic notion of a genius, who has a special connection to the essence of the world. Another side of Schopenhauerian genius is her complete detachment from and even ignorance of practical concerns. Schopenhauer goes even so far as to suggest that no true genius could ever understand mathematics, which is essential for explaining the level of individuals.

Note that what make genius special in eyes of Schopenhauer is her ability to envision the idea. Meaning of works of art, then, is just to convey this vision of idea to other persons, who do not happen to have the abilities of genius. A work of art should, therefore, purge its viewer from all volitions. This might happen, for instance, by the work of art describing something that is completely without any interest, say, an ordinary landscape - or, it might try to forget our individual concerns and highlight on e.g. general tragedies of human life. When volition is cancelled, what is left is distinct type of peaceful pleasure in just watching the work. This state of aesthetic observing, Schopenhauer continues, can be achieved in two different manners - through beauty or through sublimity. Beautiful object lulls will peacefully, while sublime object - such as the conflict of powerful natural forces involved in storm - forcefully submits the individual will under their spell. On the contrary, any sort of titillation is bound to be quite unaesthetic, because it will just awaken the urges of volition.

Now, all of this concerns the subjective side of aesthetic experience - that is, what the object must do to us to convey such an experience. Otherwise, the object could be of any sort, and indeed, Schopenhauer says, everything is beautiful. Of course, some objects can be better in evoking the idea they embody - for instance, humans, according to Schopenhauer, are the most beautiful among all things.

Just like many other post-Kantians, Schopenhauer wants to give a sort of hierarchy of arts, which he bases mainly on the hierarchy of objects depicted. Thus, the lowest step in the hierarchy of arts is taken by architecture, which corresponds to lowest rungs in the hierarchy of phenomena, that is, gravity, hardness and other properties characteristic of mere matter. The level of plant life corresponds to art of gardening and to landscape painting, level of animality to animal sculptures and paintings.

As I have already mentioned, the highest rank of beauty in Schopenhauer’s theory is reserved for humans. Human beauty is also most multifarious in its forms. While sculpture shows best the bodily beauty and grace of human form, painting reveals the beautiful character of humans.

The arts mentioned thus far work directly through senses - they let us directly see the idea embodied in the works of art. Thus, these fine arts should be completely apart from conceptualisation and reasoning, Schopenhauer urges, because concepts and reason have developed for pragmatic use in the world of causality, but not for conceiving ideas. Hence, sculptures and paintings should not be used for symbolising general concepts, because such symbolisms and allegories would just distract from the proper purpose of art - a conclusion Schopenhauer shares with Hegelian aesthetics.

Poetry, on the other hand, has to use a completely different method for evoking the idea, because it is based on the very concepts so foreign to idea. Poetry must use allegories, but in a reverse direction - it must use words to convey images through our imagination. Poetry has then most to do with human actions, and its apex, in Schopenhauer’s view, is tragedy, which shows the utter contradictoriness of human life and its almost inevitable ending in tears, but also its solution, namely, the resignation of one’s individual will.

Completely removed from other arts in Schopenhauerian hierarchy is music, which does not convey any idea. Indeed, music is not meant to give us any aesthetic visions, but it directly produces an emotion in us. In other words, it lets us feel the primordial will, of which idea is merely the first embodiment. Schopenhauer goes even so far as to try to find analogies between different aspects of a composition and the hierarchy of phenomenal objects - a foolhardy attempt reminiscent of German idealism.