Arthur Schopenhauer the world as will and representation. Schopenhauer: the world as will and representation

Arthur Schopenhauer

The world as will and representation

Ob nicht Natur zulezt sich doch ergründe?

[And won’t nature finally reveal itself?]

Preface to the first edition

I want to explain here how this book should be read so that it can be better understood. What it has to communicate is one single thought. And yet, despite all my efforts, I could not find more shortcut than this entire book.

I consider this idea to be something that has been the subject of searches for a very long time under the name of philosophy, which is precisely why historically educated people have considered it as impossible to find as the philosopher’s stone, although Pliny already told them: “How many things are considered impossible until they come true.” "(Hist. nat. 7, 1).

Depending on which of the different sides to consider this single thought, it turns out to be what was called metaphysics, and what was called ethics, and what was called aesthetics. And, of course, she must “be all these things” if she really is what I say she is.

System of Thoughts must constantly have an architectonic connection, that is, one where one part always supports another, but is not supported by it, where the cornerstone finally supports all the parts, without itself being supported by them, and where the top is supported by itself, without supporting anything. Vice versa, one single thought, no matter how significant its volume, must maintain perfect unity. If, nevertheless, for the purpose of transmission, it allows division into parts, then the connection of these parts must still be organic, that is, one where each part supports the whole as much as it itself is supported by it, where no one is the first and not the last, where the whole thought from each part benefits from clarity and even the smallest part cannot be fully understood if the whole is not understood in advance. Meanwhile, a book must have a first and a last line, and therefore in this respect it always remains very unlike an organism, no matter how much its content resembles it: there will thus be a contradiction between form and matter.

From this it is clear that under such conditions there is no other way to penetrate into the thought presented here than read this book twice, and, moreover, for the first time with great patience, which can only be drawn from a benevolent trust that the beginning almost as much presupposes the end as the end presupposes the beginning, and each previous part presupposes the subsequent one almost as much as the subsequent one presupposes the first. I say “almost” because this is not quite the case, but honestly and conscientiously everything possible has been done to first present what is least likely to be explained only from what follows, as in general everything has been done that can contribute to the utmost clarity and intelligibility. To a certain extent, this could have been successful if the reader, while reading, thought only about what was said in each individual place, and did not think (which is very natural) about the possible conclusions from there, thanks to which, in addition to the many actually existing contradictions to the opinions of our time and, probably the reader himself, many more come, biased and imaginary. As a result, passionate disapproval arises where there is still only an incorrect understanding, all the less recognized as such that the clarity of syllable and precision of expression acquired with difficulty, although they leave no doubt about the immediate meaning of what was said, cannot simultaneously indicate its relationship to everything else. Therefore, as I have already said, the first reading requires patience, drawn from the trust that the second time much or everything will appear in a completely different light. In addition, serious concern for complete and even easy understanding of a very difficult subject should serve as an excuse if repetition is encountered here and there. The very structure of the whole - organic, and not like links in a chain - sometimes forced me to touch the same place twice. It was this structure, as well as the very close interconnection of all parts, that did not allow me to carry out the division into chapters and paragraphs that I so valued and forced me to limit myself to four main sections - as if four points of view on one thought. However, in each of these four books special care must be taken not to lose sight of the details that are necessarily discussed. main idea, to which they belong, and the consistent course of the entire presentation. This is the first and, like the following, inevitable demand presented to the unfavorable reader (unfavorable to the philosopher, because the reader himself is a philosopher).

The second requirement is that before this book the introduction to it should be read, although it is not in it itself, but appeared five years earlier, under the title “On the Fourfold Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason.” Philosophical treatise." Without acquaintance with this introduction and propaedeutics, it is absolutely impossible to correctly understand the present work, and the content of the said treatise is as much assumed here as if it were in the book itself. However, if he had not appeared several years before her, he would not have opened my main work as an introduction, but would have been organically introduced into his first book, which now, since it lacks what was said in the treatise, shows a certain imperfection by this very fact. gap and must constantly fill it with references to the mentioned treatise. However, it would be so disgusting for me to copy from myself or painstakingly retell once again what had already been said once that I preferred this path, even though now I could better present the content of my early treatise and clear it of some concepts arising from my then excessive enthusiasm for Kantian philosophy - such as, for example, categories, external and internal feeling, etc. However, these concepts are also there only because until then, I had never, in fact, plunged deeply into working on them . Therefore, they play a secondary role and do not touch the main subject at all, so the correction of such places in the mentioned treatise will be accomplished in the reader’s thoughts by itself thanks to familiarity with “The World as Will and Representation.” But only if from my treatise “On the Fourfold Root” it is completely clear what the law of sufficient reason is and what it means, what its power does and does not apply to; if it is understood that this law does not exist before all things and that the whole world does not appear only as a result and in force of it, like its corollary, and that, on the contrary, the law of sufficient reason is nothing more than a form in which an object constantly conditioned by the subject is recognized everywhere , whatever kind it may be, since the subject serves as a cognizing individual - only in this case will it be possible to begin the method of philosophizing that was first tried here, completely different from all that existed before.

The work presents the material systematically, but, as Schopenhauer assures, it must function as a single thought. To understand the book, you need to study three sources: the works of Plato, Kant and the Upanishads. According to Schopenhauer, Hindu literature has a great influence.

The first book puts forward the thesis: “The world is my idea” - a truth that is true for all living beings, but only a person can bring it into consciousness. The world, as a conscious idea, is the starting point of the philosophical spirit. It expresses all types of every possible and conceivable experience in the world. Everything that exists for knowledge (the whole world) is an object in relation to the subject, a representation. The subject knows everything and is not influenced by anyone. Object - body, representation.

Schopenhauer divides ideas into intuitive, the conditions of which are time, space and causality (intuitive reason) and abstract (concepts) - reason.
Matter is causality. Schopenhauer's philosophy is Kant's transcendental idealism.

The second book (ontology) states that the world is will. The will is revealed by the inner experience of the body. The action of the body is an act of will that has entered into contemplation. The will is the knowledge of the body a priori, the body is the knowledge of the will a posteriori. Subjects are an individual thanks to such a relationship to their own body, which outside this relationship is only a representation for him. The unconscious will takes precedence over the conscious intellect.
Will is the essence of man, intelligence is its manifestation. The only self-knowledge of the will as a whole is the idea as a whole, the entire contemplated world.

The third book (aesthetics) talks about the world as a representation. Various manifestations of a single will should be identified with the “ideas” of Plato and the “thing in itself” of Kant - forms outside of space and time, independent of the principle of reason. The individual knows only individual things, the pure subject knows ideas. Brilliant individuals are subject to strong emotions and passions. Genius and madness have a common ground. Genius is liberated from the power of the principle of reason. The genius cognizes ideas and becomes a pure subject of knowledge. All people are able to endure this experience (enjoyment of beauty, for example). If you do not cognize the idea, but are guided by the will, then desires will never be satisfied. The idea is quite conceivable.

The fourth book (ethics) talks about the world as will, and sets out the philosophy of “practical life”. Philosophy is theoretical in nature.
The basis of life according to Schopenhauer is suffering. The affirmation of the will to live is expressed in selfishness and injustice. When only knowledge remains, the will disappears. The will is destroyed by coming to awareness of itself. The only act of free will is liberation from the world of phenomena.

Thus, Schopenhauer's work examines the question of the status of the nature of the world as objects of philosophical reflection.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) began his philosophical activity as a privatdozent at the University of Berlin in 1820, and his interests had previously undergone a number of metamorphoses.

The study of natural science, and in particular medicine, at the University of Göttingen soon gave way to a deep passion for the philosophy of Kant. In 1813–1814, in the literary salon of his mother, at that time a famous writer, he became quite close to J. V. Goethe, who had a great, although very contradictory, influence on him. In the same year, 1813, Schopenhauer published his first philosophical treatise, “On the Fourfold Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason,” in which he quite sharply diverged from the entire previous philosophical tradition. The treatise, as if in embryo, anticipates almost his entire philosophy, which was soon set forth in Schopenhauer’s main work, “The World as Will and Representation” (1818, published in 1819).

Already his early works are distinguished by a style of presentation that combines the visionary, prophetic intonations of the German mystic J. Boehme, and the bile, sarcasm, dark wit, and causticity of the French thinker Voltaire.

The lectures of J. G. Fichte, listened to by A. Schopenhauer in 1811, as well as the unsuccessful competition with Hegel’s lecture courses, forever pushed the philosopher away from the field of “academic” philosopher and developed in him a persistent hostility to modernity and its problems. From now on, the solitary life of the thinker becomes Schopenhauer's life style. The only major event was the flight in 1831 from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main due to the cholera epidemic that swept through Germany and, in particular, caused the death of Hegel. In Frankfurt, Schopenhauer complements and interprets in detail the main ideas set out in his work “The World as Will and Representation”, writes an essay devoted to “will in nature”, as well as collections of aphorisms that reveal in a new way certain facets of his teaching. He pays a lot of attention to the study of Buddhist philosophy, which affected his ethical ideas.

Schopenhauer characterized his teaching as the revelation of a secret that other thinkers could not reveal before him. The philosopher put the solution to the mystery of the world and what lies at its basis in the title of his most important work, “The World as Will and Representation” - everything else, like the work itself, was only a commentary, addition and clarification of this basic idea.

Starting from Kant's idea of ​​the primacy of practical reason, the most important component of which was free, “autonomous” will, Schopenhauer defends the primacy of will in relation to reason, which essentially meant a movement in the anti-Kantian direction. On this path, he developed many interesting and sensible ideas regarding the specifics of the volitional (related to will) and emotive (related to emotions) aspects of the human spirit, their role in people's lives. Criticizing rationalist philosophy for being contradictory real life transformation of the will into a simple appendage of the mind, Schopenhauer argued that the will, that is, the motives, desires of a person, incentives to action and the very processes of its implementation are specific, relatively independent and largely determine the direction and results of rational knowledge.

“Reason,” as the previous philosophy understood it, was declared by Schopenhauer to be a fiction. Will must be put in place of reason. But in order for the will to be able to “measure its strength” with the “omnipotent” reason, as the philosophers made it, Schopenhauer, firstly, presented the will as independent from the control of reason, turned it into “absolutely free will,” which has neither causes nor grounds. Secondly, the will was, as it were, thrown over the world, the Universe: Schopenhauer declared that the human will is akin to the “mysterious forces” of the Universe, some of its “volitional impulses.” So, the will was turned into the first principle and the absolute - the world became “will and idea.” The “mythology of the mind” gave way to the “mythology of the will.” The one-sidedness of rationalism was opposed to the extremes of voluntarism. All the diversity of the surrounding reality, all forms of life appeared in Schopenhauer as manifestations of substantial will, intuitively, by analogy with the “cognitive subject”, transferred from inner world to the outside world. In a person, his feelings become an adequate manifestation of the will, and above all sexual desire, representing the “real focus of the will.” In the context of the ever-becoming will as the will to live, the intellect, according to Schopenhauer, can appear in the following forms: as “intuition” that knows the will; in the form of a servant, an “instrument” of the will; in the form of weak-willed aesthetic contemplation and, finally, in the form of conscious opposition to the will, struggle against it through asceticism and quietism. The last aspect, associated with opposition to the will, is the subject of Schopenhauer's ethics, which substantiates his theoretical and personal pessimism and misanthropy. Suffering cannot be eliminated from people’s lives, so he sees liberation from it in asceticism, in the renunciation of the body as a manifestation of the will and, finally, in the immersion of the individual will into the world, that is, its transformation into non-existence.

In Schopenhauer's philosophy, the individual is the center of self-interpretation, knowledge itself is of a kind of anthropological nature, it is anthropomorphic, moving from subject to object, always by analogy with the subject. Hence, all categories of the world opposing the subject - space, time, causality - are interpreted by the philosopher, in essence, physiologically. The world as a representation is a product of the activity of the brain of a subject who not only knows, but first of all wants, drives.

Assessing Kant’s transcendental idealism, Schopenhauer wrote: “Kant quite independently came to the truth that Plato tirelessly repeated, expressing it most often as follows: “This world that appears to the senses has no true being, but is only eternal becoming; it simultaneously exists and does not exist, and its knowledge is not so much knowledge as a ghostly dream." It is not at all accidental that this particular philosophy in the middle of the 19th century found such a wide resonance among the creative intelligentsia. The composer R. Wagner, the Basel historian J. Burckhardt, and especially the young professor of classical philology, who spent a lot of time studying the philosophy of Plato and the philosophy of pre-Socratic Greece, F. Nietzsche, became followers of Schopenhauer.

The world around us- this is a mirage, a phantom, a creation of a functioning mind - a myth that is created by each individual under the guise of objective reality, projected by him outside himself.

I want to explain here how this book should be read so that it can be better understood. What it has to communicate is one single thought. And yet, despite all my efforts, I could not find a shorter way to present it than this entire book.

I consider this idea to be something that has been the subject of searches for a very long time under the name of philosophy, which is precisely why historically educated people have considered it as impossible to find as the philosopher’s stone, although Pliny already told them: “How many things are considered impossible until they come true.” "(Hist. nat. 7, 1).

Depending on which of the different sides to consider this single thought, it turns out to be what was called metaphysics, and what was called ethics, and what was called aesthetics. And, of course, she must “be all these things” if she really is what I say she is.

System of Thoughts must constantly have an architectonic connection, that is, one where one part always supports another, but is not supported by it, where the cornerstone finally supports all the parts, without itself being supported by them, and where the top is supported by itself, without supporting anything. Vice versa, one single thought no matter how significant its volume, it must maintain perfect unity. If, nevertheless, for the purpose of transmission, it allows division into parts, then the connection of these parts must still be organic, that is, one where each part supports the whole as much as it itself is supported by it, where no one is the first and not the last, where the whole thought from each part benefits from clarity and even the smallest part cannot be fully understood if the whole is not understood in advance. Meanwhile, a book must have a first and a last line, and therefore in this respect it always remains very unlike an organism, no matter how much its content resembles it: there will thus be a contradiction between form and matter.

From this it is clear that under such conditions there is no other way to penetrate into the thought presented here than read this book twice, and, moreover, for the first time with great patience, which can only be gained from a benevolent trust that the beginning almost as much presupposes the end as the end presupposes the beginning, and each previous part presupposes the subsequent one almost as much as the subsequent one presupposes the first. I say “almost” because this is not quite the case, but honestly and conscientiously everything possible has been done to first present what is least likely to be explained only from what follows, as in general everything has been done that can contribute to the utmost clarity and intelligibility. To a certain extent, this could have been successful if the reader, while reading, thought only about what was said in each individual place, and did not think (which is very natural) about the possible conclusions from there, thanks to which, in addition to the many actually existing contradictions to the opinions of our time and, probably the reader himself, many more come, biased and imaginary. As a result, passionate disapproval arises where there is still only an incorrect understanding, all the less recognized as such that the clarity of syllable and precision of expression acquired with difficulty, although they leave no doubt about the immediate meaning of what was said, cannot simultaneously indicate its relationship to everything else. Therefore, as I have already said, the first reading requires patience, drawn from the trust that the second time much or everything will appear in a completely different light. In addition, serious concern for complete and even easy understanding of a very difficult subject should serve as an excuse if repetition is encountered here and there. The very structure of the whole - organic, and not like links in a chain - sometimes forced me to touch the same place twice. It was this structure, as well as the very close interconnection of all parts, that did not allow me to carry out the division into chapters and paragraphs that I so valued and forced me to limit myself to four main sections - as if four points of view on one thought. However, in each of these four books, one must be especially careful not to lose sight of the main idea to which they belong, and the consistent course of the entire presentation, due to the details that are necessarily discussed. This is the first and, like the following, inevitable demand presented to the unfavorable reader (unfavorable to the philosopher, because the reader himself is a philosopher).

The second requirement is that before this book the introduction to it should be read, although it is not in it itself, but appeared five years earlier, under the title “On the Fourfold Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason.” Philosophical treatise." Without acquaintance with this introduction and propaedeutics, it is absolutely impossible to correctly understand the present work, and the content of the said treatise is as much assumed here as if it were in the book itself. However, if he had not appeared several years before her, he would not have opened my main work as an introduction, but would have been organically introduced into his first book, which now, since it lacks what was said in the treatise, shows a certain imperfection by this very fact. gap and must constantly fill it with references to the mentioned treatise. However, it would be so disgusting for me to copy from myself or painstakingly retell once again what had already been said once that I preferred this path, even though now I could better present the content of my early treatise and clear it of some concepts arising from my then excessive enthusiasm for Kantian philosophy - such as, for example, categories, external and internal feeling, etc. However, these concepts are also there only because until then, I had never, in fact, plunged deeply into working on them . Therefore, they play a secondary role and do not touch the main subject at all, so the correction of such places in the mentioned treatise will be accomplished in the reader’s thoughts by itself thanks to familiarity with “The World as Will and Representation.” But only if from my treatise “On the Fourfold Root” it is completely clear what the law of sufficient reason is and what it means, what its power does and does not apply to; if it is understood that this law does not exist before all things and that the whole world does not appear only as a result and in force of it, like its corollary, and that, on the contrary, the law of sufficient reason is nothing more than a form in which an object constantly conditioned by the subject is recognized everywhere , whatever kind it may be, since the subject serves as a cognizing individual, only in this case will it be possible to begin the method of philosophizing that was first tried here, completely different from all that existed before.

The same aversion to literally copying from oneself or retelling the former in other and worse words - for I myself anticipated the best - led to another gap in the first book of this work, namely, I omitted everything that was said in the first chapter of my treatise “On Vision and Color” and what would otherwise be given here verbatim. Consequently, familiarity with this previous short work is also assumed here.

Finally, the third requirement for the reader could even be silently implied by itself, for this is nothing other than familiarity with the most important phenomenon that philosophy has known for two Millennia and which is so close to us: I mean the main works of Kant. The effect they have on the mind of the one who actually perceives them can be compared, as has already been done, with the removal of cataracts from a patient. And if we continue this comparison, then my plan should be characterized as follows: I wanted to give glasses to those for whom the named operation was successful, so that it itself constitutes necessary condition to use them. Although, therefore, my starting point is entirely what the great Kant expressed, it was precisely the serious study of his works that allowed me to find significant errors in them, which I had to isolate and reject, so that, purified from them, his teaching could serve me foundation and support in all its truth and beauty. But in order not to interrupt or confuse my presentation with private polemics against Kant, I put it in a special appendix. And just as much as, according to what has been said, my book presupposes familiarity with Kant’s philosophy, it also requires familiarity with this application. Therefore, it would be advisable to read the appendix first, especially since in its content it is closely related to the first section of this work. On the other hand, due to the very essence of the subject, it was impossible to avoid the fact that the appendix sometimes did not refer to the work itself. It only follows that the application, like main part books must be read twice.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) - German irrationalist philosopher. Born in. Danzig (today Gdansk), a small rentier who lived his entire life on interest from inherited capital.

After graduating from university, Schopenhauer came to get a job with Hegel himself, who accepted him as a teacher. Schopenhauer scheduled his lectures at the same time when Hegel, the rector of the university, a philosopher at the zenith of his fame, spoke to the students. Schopenhauer, of course, failed - the students went to listen to Hegel. Having worked, with grief in half, until the end of the semester, Schopenhauer never engaged in teaching again, for which, however, he did not particularly grieve. Indicative, however, was the very fact of a direct collision between two people representing two completely different eras in philosophy.

In 1819, Schopenhauer completed the main work of his life, the book “The World as Will and Representation,” which was far ahead of its time, but was not noticed by his contemporaries, was not understood, and the author was forced to take almost the entire circulation of the book from the publishing house and keep it at home for decades .

"The World as Will and Representation" (1818) is Schopenhauer's main philosophical work. In this work, A. Schopenhauer puts forward the following concept: at a certain stage of development, two different worlds. One does not exist objectively, but only in our imagination. What we call reality (nature, society, culture, history and our lives) is only an appearance, a play of imagination, what in the Hindu tradition is called “maya” (that is, deception, temptation, ghost).

The second, true world is the world of a secret, invisible essence, will, this is Kant’s “thing in itself.”

Will is the absolute beginning of all existence, the root of everything that exists, what a cosmic force (in a certain sense biological in nature) that creates the world and man.

Subject and object, space and time, the diversity of individual things and the causal relationship between them appear. All this “exists” because this is how human consciousness is structured with its a priori forms of sensuality and reason.

A person in this world is a slave of the will, the latter created his intellect so that he would learn the laws of the world, survive better and adapt to this world. Man always and everywhere serves not himself, not his interests, but freedom. The will forces her to live, no matter how meaningless and pitiful human existence may be.

Will is the otherworldly core of the shell of life, and representation is the objectification of will, its manifestation. The concepts we developed in our illusory world cannot be applied to freedom: time, space, number, causality, etc.

In will there is no past, no future, no plurality, which means that it is given all and at once as the only world will.

Will is “wanting”, “aspiration”, but since in the world of essence there is nothing else besides will, then it does not have the object of desire, desire. Since freedom has no goal outside itself, it is necessarily directed towards itself, it only “wants to want” and nothing more.

“The world as idea” and “the world as will” are two sides of a split world, which as a whole can be described as suffering.

A. Schopenhauer argued that any suffering is “positive”, and satisfaction is “negative”. At the same time, he started from an obvious psychological fact: we feel all needs and all desires only when they are dissatisfied, and the state of dissatisfaction is suffering. Even a sufficient desire only temporarily stops suffering. Everyone's life is thus a chain of changing sufferings that constantly arise.

For A. Schopenhauer, good does not exist at all - people traditionally call the temporary absence of suffering good. People strive to end suffering by realizing their aspirations and getting pleasure. Those who have the appropriate means (means) and opportunities, or have a limited range of desires, can even satisfy all of them for a time. But then they are overcome by boredom, which causes new suffering.

You can stop suffering only by giving up any desires, ceasing to exist, turning into nothing, reaching the state of “nirvana.”

A. Schopenhauer describes the world with black colors. The world is bad in every way: aesthetically it looks like a caricature, intellectually it looks like a madhouse, from a moral point of view it looks like a fraudulent nest, and in general it looks like a prison. According to Schopenhauer, it would be better for such a world and such a person not to exist at all.

Author of the term "pessimism" (from the Latin Pessimyc - worst). Man lives in the worst possible world. She is pathetic and suffering. Human egoism is extremely strong. Most of a person's troubles are rooted in it and are explained by it. Many people would prefer the destruction of the world over the preservation of their own lives.