Notes on Schopenhauer

(Originally written April 30, 2006 in Book 3)

Written/Read by street light

Schopenhauer
by Michael Tanner

Arthur Schopenhauer - 1788 - 1860

- Apessimistic view of life
- the will is intrinsically evil
- the arts are vital to life, especially music
-Schopenhauer used many of Kant's fundamental arguments but rejected Kant's limitation of science to save room for faith
-Shopenhauer vehemently denied the categorical imperative
-Shopenhauer's book The World as Will and Representation follows Kant in book 1, but departs in book 2 because (like most philosophers) he cannot agree with Kant's view of the phenomenal world (the world we experience) and the noumenal world (the real world)
- believes that our bodies are the phenomenal representation of the will
- The will is not subject to reason. It is impatient, imperious and egoistic

The world is will and appears as representation.

The will is used to get what we lack. If we lacked nothing we would will nothing, but since we will things constantly, we are in a state of "perfect discontent".

This condition is incurable because as soon as we satisfy a deficiency, we find a new thing we lack. Thus, it is a never-ending cycle.

Life (the will) is 'endless flux'.

The will to live is the most absurd form of willing that man does. We love life in spite of the fact that existence is full of pain, want, misery, trouble and anxiety. If we were to look at it objectively we would not will to live, we would will-to-die. Yet, death (our biggest fear) is abhorred, when actually life should be detestable and death anticipated.

Life can either be lived by ceaseless wanting (which is painful) or by achieving what we want only to be bored by it.

Willing comes from a deficiency and thus, from suffering.

Pleasure is merely the absence of pain.

Even when we become satisfied with bodily needs (hunger, thirst, shelter, etc.) we begin to have imaginative needs, that is our minds are free to create speculative horrors that may befall us.

"The present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain and the past irrecoverable" (Tanner, 25).

"We notice that certain days of our life were happy only after they have made room for unhappy ones" (Tanner, 26).