World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1: Volume 1 (Revised)

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$33.99

World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1: Volume 1 (Revised)

$33.99

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Schopenhauer's Central Work

Arthur Schopenhauer was thirty years old when he published The World as Will and Representation in 1818. He believed it contained the answer to the fundamental problem of philosophy. The book sold almost nothing. Schopenhauer spent the next three decades watching Hegel dominate German philosophy while his own work gathered dust. He was eventually vindicated, but not in time to enjoy it much.

The Argument

Schopenhauer begins where Kant left off. The world as we experience it is representation: objects in space and time, structured by the categories of the understanding. But behind this world of appearances lies the thing-in-itself, which Schopenhauer identifies as will. Not rational will, not purposeful will, but a blind, ceaseless, irrational striving that drives every phenomenon in the universe, from the force of gravity to the hunger of an animal to the ambition of a human being.

The consequences of this identification are severe. If the will is insatiable, then all desire leads to suffering. Schopenhauer draws on this to build his ethics (compassion as the recognition that all beings share the same suffering), his aesthetics (art as temporary release from the tyranny of willing), and his soteriology (the denial of the will as the path to something resembling salvation). The system draws heavily on both Kantian epistemology and Indian philosophy, particularly the Upanishads and Buddhist thought.