The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 23 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1102
This is why the physiognomy of plants is so interesting; while in order to know an animal in its Idea, it is necessary to observe the course of its action. As for man, he must be fully investigated and tested, for reason makes him capable of a high degree of dissimulation. The beast is as much more naïve than the man as the plant is more naïve than the beast.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1986
Yet it must be observed that, in order to deceive themselves, men prearrange what seem to be hasty errors, but are really secretly considered actions. For we deceive and flatter no one through such fine devices as ourselves. The converse of the case we have given may also occur.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2118
It would follow, from the hypothesis advanced, that a large part of the feeling of suffering and of well-being would be subjective and determined _a priori_, as is the case with knowing; and we may add the following remarks as evidence in favour of it. Human cheerfulness or dejection are manifestly not determined by external circumstances, such as wealth and position, for we see at least as many glad faces among the poor as among the rich.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1327
First of all we shall consider what takes place in a man when he is affected by the beautiful and the sublime; whether he derives this emotion directly from nature, from life, or partakes of it only through the medium of art, does not make any essential, but merely an external, difference.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2447
Death (the repetition of the comparison must be excused) is like the setting of the sun, which is only apparently swallowed up by the night, but in reality, itself the source of all light, burns without intermission, brings new days to new worlds, is always rising and always setting. Beginning and end only concern the individual through time, the form of the phenomenon for the idea. Outside time lies only the will, Kant’s thing-in-itself, and its adequate objectification, the Idea of Plato.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1437
Our whole exposition hitherto has maintained exactly the opposite, and Plato’s opinion is the less likely to lead us astray, inasmuch as it is the source of one of the greatest and best known errors of this great man, his depreciation and rejection of art, and especially poetry; he directly connects his false judgment in reference to this with the passage quoted.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1432
Bip.), but we say that they express the Ideas which are already expressed in their mere material as such. According to Aristotle (Metap. xi., chap. 3), however, Plato himself only maintained Ideas of natural objects: ὁ Πλατων εφη, ὁτι ειδη εστιν ὁποσα φυσει (_Plato dixit, quod ideæ eorum sunt, quæ natura sunt_), and in chap. 5 he says that, according to the Platonists, there are no Ideas of house and ring.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1303
A clear and complete insight into the nature of madness, a correct and distinct conception of what constitutes the difference between the sane and the insane, has, as far as I know, not as yet been found. Neither reason nor understanding can be denied to madmen, for they talk and understand, and often draw very accurate conclusions; they also, as a rule, perceive what is present quite correctly, and apprehend the connection between cause and effect.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1018
The schoolmen, who certainly would not have allowed such a doctrine, would rightly have said that it was a complete denial of the _forma substantialis_, and a degradation of it to the _forma accidentalis_. For the _forma substantialis_ of Aristotle denotes exactly what I call the grade of the objectification of will in a thing.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2701
For precisely what the Christian mystics call _the work of grace_ and _the new birth_, is for us the single direct expression of _the freedom of the will_. It only appears if the will, having attained to a knowledge of its own real nature, receives from this a _quieter_, by means of which the motives are deprived of their effect, which belongs to the province of another kind of knowledge, the objects of which are merely phenomena.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1724
In the other two kinds we may look on the prodigious fate and the horrible wickedness as terrible powers which certainly threaten us, but only from afar, which we may very well escape without taking refuge in renunciation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1519
Grace consists, according to what has been said, in every movement being performed, and every position assumed, in the easiest, most appropriate and convenient way, and therefore being the pure, adequate expression of its intention, or of the act of will, without any superfluity, which exhibits itself as aimless, meaningless bustle, or as wooden stiffness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 279
On the other hand, the law of causality and the treatment and investigation of nature which is based upon it, lead us necessarily to the conclusion that, in time, each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2652
Therefore a secret pleasure accompanies this grief, and it is this, as I believe, which the most melancholy of all nations has called “the joy of grief.” But here also lies the danger of _sentimentality_, both in life itself and in the representation of it in poetry; when a man is always mourning and lamenting without courageously rising to resignation. In this way we lose both earth and heaven, and retain merely a watery sentimentality.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 761
That other objects, considered merely as _ideas_, are like his body, that is, like it, fill space (which itself can only be present as idea), and also, like it, are causally active in space, is indeed demonstrably certain from the law of causality which is _a priori_ valid for ideas, and which admits of no effect without a cause; but apart from the fact that we can only reason from an effect to a cause generally, and not to a similar cause, we are still in the sphere of mere ideas, in which alone the law of causality is valid, and beyond which it can never take us.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1348
For as we think of days long gone by, days in which we lived in a distant place, it is only the objects which our fancy recalls, not the subject of will, which bore about with it then its incurable sorrows just as it bears them now; but they are forgotten, because since then they have often given place to others.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1637
Finally, of this kind is an old German genealogical tree, in which the last representative of a very ancient family thus expresses his determination to live his life to the end in abstinence and perfect chastity, and therefore to let his race die out; he represents himself at the root of the high-branching tree cutting it over himself with shears.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1533
And nature demands that it should be so; for in the case of the acutest physical pain, and the sudden seizure by the greatest bodily fear, all reflection, that might have inculcated silent endurance, is entirely expelled from consciousness, and nature relieves itself by crying out, thus expressing both the pain and the fear, summoning the deliverer and terrifying the assailer.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1434
Ουτε γαρ τοις πλειστοις των απο Πλατωνος αρεσκει, των τεχνικων ειναι ιδεας, οἱον ασπιδος η λυρας, ουτε μην των παρα φυσιν, οἱον πυρετου και χολερας, ουτε των κατα μερος, οἱον Σωκρατους και Πλατωνος, αλλ᾽ ουτε των ευτελων τινος, οἱον ρυπου και καρφους, ουτε των προς τι, οἱον μειζονος και ὑπερεχοντος; ειναι γαρ τας ιδεας νοησεις θεου αιωνιους τε και αυτοτελεις (_Definiunt autem_ IDEAM _exemplar æternum eorum, quæ secundum naturam existunt.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 586
Whoever denies the necessity, exhibited for intuition or perception, of the space-relations expressed in any proposition, may just as well deny the axioms, or that the conclusion follows from the premises, or, indeed, he may as well deny the principle of contradiction itself, for all these relations are equally undemonstrable, immediately evident and known _a priori_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 994
Now this is the direct work of the faculty of judgment, and that is why so few men are capable of increasing our insight in physics, while all are able to enlarge experience. Indolence and ignorance make us disposed to appeal too soon to original forces. This is exemplified with an exaggeration that savours of irony in the entities and quidities of the schoolmen. Nothing is further from my desire than to favour their resuscitation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2254
For my lying itself, inasmuch as it proceeds from my will, requires a motive; and only the will of another can be such a motive, not his knowledge in and for itself; for as such it can never have an influence upon _my_ will, therefore it can never move it, can never be a motive of its aim. But only the willing and doing of another can be this, and his knowledge indirectly through it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2003
It is these which are often unbearable to us—inflict torments in comparison with which all the sufferings of the animal world are very small; for even our own physical pain is not felt at all when they are present. Indeed, in the case of keen mental suffering, we even inflict physical suffering on ourselves merely to distract our attention from the former to the latter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 735
It is given as an idea in intelligent perception, as an object among objects and subject to the laws of objects. And it is also given in quite a different way as that which is immediately known to every one, and is signified by the word _will_. Every true act of his will is also at once and without exception a movement of his body.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1707
Now, what the engineer achieves with the fluid matter of water, the architect achieves with the rigid matter of stone, and just this the epic or dramatic poet achieves with the Idea of man. Unfolding and rendering distinct the Idea expressing itself in the object of every art, the Idea of the will which objectifies itself at each grade, is the common end of all the arts.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1597
The age, _i.e._, the dull multitude of every time, knows only concepts, and sticks to them, and therefore receives mannered works of art with ready and loud applause: but after a few years these works become insipid, because the spirit of the age, _i.e._, the prevailing concepts, in which alone they could take root, have changed. Only true works of art, which are drawn directly from nature and life, have eternal youth and enduring power, like nature and life themselves.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1044
For animals have the whole of the vegetable kingdom for their food, and even within the animal kingdom every beast is the prey and the food of another; that is, the matter in which its Idea expresses itself must yield itself to the expression of another Idea, for each animal can only maintain its existence by the constant destruction of some other.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1469
Unlike the works of the other arts, those of architecture are very seldom executed for purely æsthetic ends. These are generally subordinated to other useful ends which are foreign to art itself. Thus the great merit of the architect consists in achieving and attaining the pure æsthetic ends, in spite of their subordination to other ends which are foreign to them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 344
Such effects are language, preconceived and planned action and science, and all that results from these. Speech, as an object of outer experience, is obviously nothing more than a very complete telegraph, which communicates arbitrary signs with the greatest rapidity and the finest distinctions of difference. But what do these signs mean? How are they interpreted?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 580
In order to improve the method of mathematics, it is especially necessary to overcome the prejudice that demonstrated truth has any superiority over what is known through perception, or that logical truth founded upon the principle of contradiction has any superiority over metaphysical truth, which is immediately evident, and to which belongs the pure intuition or perception of space.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 723
Or, if I may use an absurd but more striking comparison, the philosophical investigator must always have the same feeling towards the complete etiology of the whole of nature, as a man who, without knowing how, has been brought into a company quite unknown to him, each member of which in turn presents another to him as his friend and cousin, and therefore as quite well known, and yet the man himself, while at each introduction he expresses himself gratified, has always the question on his lips: “But how the deuce do I stand to the whole company?”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 841
Marshall Hall (“On the Diseases of the Nervous System,” § 293 sq.) explains it as a mixed function, for it is partly under the influence of the cerebral (voluntary), and partly under that of the spinal (non-voluntary) nerves. However, we are finally obliged to number it with the expressions of will which result from motives.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1065
From the point, therefore, at which the animal has delivered itself from the egg or the womb in which it vegetated without consciousness, its food must be sought out and selected. For this purpose movement following upon motives, and therefore consciousness, becomes necessary, and consequently it appears as an agent, μηχανη, called in at this stage of the objectification of will for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2570
For it is the case with regard to everything, that each man can only prize that which to a certain extent is analogous to him and for which he has at least a slight inclination. This holds good of ethical concerns as well as of intellectual.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1158
The single example of self-knowledge of the will as a whole is the idea as a whole, the whole world of perception. It is the objectification, the revelation, the mirror of the will. What the will expresses in it will be the subject of our further consideration.(43)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1928
The freedom of the will as thing-in-itself, if, as has been said, we abstract from the entirely exceptional case mentioned above, by no means extends directly to its phenomenon, not even in the case in which this reaches the highest made of its visibility, and thus does not extend to the rational animal endowed with individual character, _i.e._, the person.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1417
Its necessary correlative, independent, like itself of the principle of sufficient reason, is the pure subject of knowing; just as the correlative of the particular thing is the knowing individual, both of which lie within the province of the principle of sufficient reason.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2096
Now it is well worth observing that, on the one hand, the suffering and misery of life may easily increase to such an extent that death itself, in the flight from which the whole of life consists, becomes desirable, and we hasten towards it voluntarily; and again, on the other hand, that as soon as want and suffering permit rest to a man, ennui is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion. The striving after existence is what occupies all living things and maintains them in motion.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1997
A fuller exposition of this power of deliberation, and the difference between human and brute choice which is introduced by it, will be found in the “Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics” (1st edition, p. 35, _et seq._; 2d edition, p. 34, _et seq._), to which I therefore refer. For the rest, this power of deliberation which man possesses is one of those things that makes his existence so much more miserable than that of the brute.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2757
32 This subject is fully worked out in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, in which therefore (pp. 29-44 of the “Grundprobleme der Ethik”) the relation of _cause_, _stimulus_, and _motive_ has also been fully explained.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 969
If, now, a strong magnet is made to attract the iron of the weight, and overcome its gravity, the movement of the machine stops, and the matter becomes forthwith the scene of quite a different force of nature—magnetism, of which etiology again gives no further explanation than the condition under which it appears. Or let us suppose that the copper discs of such a machine are laid upon zinc plates, and an acid solution introduced between them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2370
According to the true nature of things, every one has all the suffering of the world as his own, and indeed has to regard all merely possible suffering as for him actual, so long as he is the fixed will to live, _i.e._, asserts life with all his power.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1342
For at the moment at which, freed from the will, we give ourselves up to pure will-less knowing, we pass into a world from which everything is absent that influenced our will and moved us so violently through it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1036
In the same way every manifestation of the will, including that which expresses itself in the human organism, wages a constant war against the many physical and chemical forces which, as lower Ideas, have a prior right to that matter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1625
For in plastic and pictorial art it leads away from what is perceptibly given, the proper object of all art, to abstract thoughts; but in poetry the relation is reversed; for here what is directly given in words is the concept, and the first aim is to lead from this to the object of perception, the representation of which must be undertaken by the imagination of the hearer.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1586
So that just the most excellent works of every art, the noblest productions of genius, must always remain sealed books to the dull majority of men, inaccessible to them, separated from them by a wide gulf, just as the society of princes is inaccessible to the common people.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 6
I propose to point out here how this book must be read in order to be thoroughly understood. By means of it I only intend to impart a single thought. Yet, notwithstanding all my endeavours, I could find no shorter way of imparting it than this whole book. I hold this thought to be that which has very long been sought for under the name of philosophy, and the discovery of which is therefore regarded by those who are familiar with history as quite as impossible as the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, although it was already said by Pliny: _Quam multa fieri non posse, priusquam sint facta, judicantur?_ (Hist. nat. 7, 1.)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2758
33 Cf. Ch. xxiii. of the Supplement, and also the Ch. on the physiology of plants in my work “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” and the Ch. on physical astronomy, which is of great importance with regard to the kernel of my metaphysic.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1142
Every one finds that he himself is this will, in which the real nature of the world consists, and he also finds that he is the knowing subject, whose idea the whole world is, the world which exists only in relation to his consciousness, as its necessary supporter. Every one is thus himself in a double aspect the whole world, the microcosm; finds both sides whole and complete in himself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2235
To the doer of wrong, on the other hand, the knowledge presents itself that he is in himself the same will which appears in that body also, and which asserts itself with such vehemence; the one phenomenon that, transgressing the limits of its own body and its powers, it extends to the denial of this very will in another phenomenon, and so, regarded as will in itself, it strives against itself by this vehemence and rends itself.