The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 26 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 663
From this double life proceeds that quietness peculiar to human beings, so very different from the thoughtlessness of the brutes, and with which, in accordance with previous reflection, or a formed determination, or a recognised necessity, a man suffers or accomplishes in cold blood, what is of the utmost and often terrible importance to him; suicide, execution, the duel, enterprises of every kind fraught with danger to life, and, in general, things against which his whole animal nature rebels.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2021
This necessarily determines all that is essential in our conduct in life, _i.e._, its ethical content, which must express itself in accordance with it in its phenomenal appearance, the empirical character; while only what is unessential in this, the outward form of our course of life, depends upon the forms in which the motives present themselves.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1726
This last kind of tragedy is also the most difficult of achievement; for the greatest effect has to be produced in it with the least use of means and causes of movement, merely through the position and distribution of the characters; therefore even in many of the best tragedies this difficulty is evaded.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2080
The upper half of his drawing represents women whose children have been stolen, and who in different groups and attitudes, express in many ways deep maternal pain, anguish, and despair. The lower half of the drawing represents sheep whose lambs have been taken away. They are arranged and grouped in precisely the same way; so that every human head, every human attitude of the upper half, has below a brute head and attitude corresponding to it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1323
Thus, while under its influence he retains the presence of mind which is necessary to enable him to repeat in a voluntary and intentional work what he has learned in this manner; and this repetition is the work of art. Through this he communicates to others the Idea he has grasped. This Idea remains unchanged and the same, so that æsthetic pleasure is one and the same whether it is called forth by a work of art or directly by the contemplation of nature and life.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2296
It is easily conceived, and little by little carried out by the egoism, which, through the use of reason, proceeds methodically and forsakes its one-sided point of view. This origin of the state and of law I have indicated was already exhibited as such by Plato in the “Republic.” In fact, it is the essential and only origin, determined by the nature of the matter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1262
Thus genius is the faculty of continuing in the state of pure perception, of losing oneself in perception, and of enlisting in this service the knowledge which originally existed only for the service of the will; that is to say, genius is the power of leaving one’s own interests, wishes, and aims entirely out of sight, thus of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for a time, so as to remain _pure knowing subject_, clear vision of the world; and this not merely at moments, but for a sufficient length of time, and with sufficient consciousness, to enable one to reproduce by deliberate art what has thus been apprehended, and “to fix in lasting thoughts the wavering images that float before the mind.” It is as if, when genius appears in an individual, a far larger measure of the power of knowledge falls to his lot than is necessary for the service of an individual will; and this superfluity of knowledge, being free, now becomes subject purified from will, a clear mirror of the inner nature of the world.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 824
Only those changes which have no other ground than a motive, _i.e._, an idea, have hitherto been regarded as manifestations of will. Therefore in nature a will has only been attributed to man, or at the most to animals; for knowledge, the idea, is of course, as I have said elsewhere, the true and exclusive characteristic of animal life.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 113
This truth is by no means new. It was implicitly involved in the sceptical reflections from which Descartes started. Berkeley, however, was the first who distinctly enunciated it, and by this he has rendered a permanent service to philosophy, even though the rest of his teaching should not endure. Kant’s primary mistake was the neglect of this principle, as is shown in the appendix.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1917
And the will, since it is not phenomenon, is not idea or object, but thing-in-itself, and is not subordinate to the principle of sufficient reason, the form of all object; thus is not determined as a consequent through any reason, knows no necessity, _i.e._, is _free_. The concept of freedom is thus properly a negative concept, for its content is merely the denial of necessity, _i.e._, the relation of consequent to its reason, according to the principle of sufficient reason.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2163
If we have so far convinced ourselves _a priori_, by the most general consideration, by investigation of the primary and elemental features of human life, that in its whole plan it is capable of no true blessedness, but is in its very nature suffering in various forms, and throughout a state of misery, we might now awaken this conviction much more vividly within us if, proceeding more _a posteriori_, we were to turn to more definite instances, call up pictures to the fancy, and illustrate by examples the unspeakable misery which experience and history present, wherever one may look and in whatever direction one may seek.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 937
The individual change always has for its cause another change just as individual as itself, and not the force of which it is the expression. For that which always gives its efficiency to a cause, however many times it may appear, is a force of nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1244
He will not believe with the vulgar that time may produce something actually new and significant; that through it, or in it, something absolutely real may attain to existence, or indeed that it itself as a whole has beginning and end, plan and development, and in some way has for its final aim the highest perfection (according to their conception) of the last generation of man, whose life is a brief thirty years.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1025
Indeed, since all things in the world are the objectification of one and the same will, and therefore in their inner nature identical, it must not only be the case that there is that unmistakable analogy between them, and that in every phenomenon the trace, intimation, and plan of the higher phenomenon that lies next to it in point of development shows itself, but also because all these forms belong to the world as _idea_, it is indeed conceivable that even in the most universal forms of the idea, in that peculiar framework of the phenomenal world space and time, it may be possible to discern and establish the fundamental type, intimation, and plan of what fills the forms.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 924
For this multiplicity is directly conditioned by time and space, into which the will itself never enters. The will reveals itself as completely and as much in _one_ oak as in millions. Their number and multiplication in space and time has no meaning with regard to it, but only with regard to the multiplicity of individuals who know in space and time, and who are themselves multiplied and dispersed in these.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 177
Opposed to this doctrine is scepticism, which makes the same false presupposition that in the idea we have only the effect, never the cause, therefore never real being; that we always know merely the action of the object. But this object, it supposes, may perhaps have no resemblance whatever to its effect, may indeed have been quite erroneously received as the cause, for the law of causality is first to be gathered from experience, and the reality of experience is then made to rest upon it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2692
But the one case in which that freedom can become directly visible in the manifestation is that in which it makes an end of what manifests itself, and because the mere manifestation, as a link in the chain of causes, the living body in time, which contains only phenomena, still continues to exist, the will which manifests itself through this phenomenon then stands in contradiction to it, for it denies what the phenomenon expresses.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 74
Yet, on the other hand, the reader will find some compensation for the inconvenience of using two volumes at once, in the variety and the relief which is afforded by the handling of the same subject, by the same mind, in the same spirit, but in very different years.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 685
But the ethical principle of Zeno—to live in harmony with oneself—appeared even to his immediate successors to be too formal and empty. They therefore gave it material content by the addition—“to live in harmony with nature” (ὁμολογουμενως τῃ φυσει ζῃν), which, as Stobæus mentions in another place, was first added by Kleanthes, and extended the matter very much on account of the wide sphere of the concept and the vagueness of the expression.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2425
In the first place, that in such a man an excessively vehement will to live expresses itself, extending far beyond the assertion of his own body; and, in the second place, that his knowledge, entirely given up to the principle of sufficient reason and involved in the _principium individuationis_, cannot get beyond the difference which this latter principle establishes between his own person and every one else.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 773
§ 20. As we have said, the will proclaims itself primarily in the voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as that which it is besides being object of perception, idea. For these voluntary movements are nothing else than the visible aspect of the individual acts of will, with which they are directly coincident and identical, and only distinguished through the form of knowledge into which they have passed, and in which alone they can be known, the form of idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2523
Thus, principally, he is seized with sympathy for the lot of all mankind, which is necessarily finite, so that every life, however aspiring, and often rich in deeds, must be extinguished and become nothing. But in this lot of mankind the mourner sees first of all his own, and this all the more, the more closely he is related to him who has died, thus most of all if it is his father.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1379
It is the faintest trace of the sublime in the beautiful; and beauty itself is indeed present only in a slight degree. The following is almost as weak an example.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2319
Legislation, as we have said, borrows the pure philosophy of right, or the doctrine of the nature and limits of right and wrong, from ethics, in order to apply it from the reverse side to its own ends, which are different from those of ethics, and to institute positive legislation and the means of supporting it, _i.e._, the state, in accordance with it. Positive legislation is thus the inverted application of the purely moral doctrine of right.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 380
It is, therefore, easier and surer to let it proceed itself according to its nature in each particular case, than to present to it the knowledge abstracted from this procedure in the form of a foreign and externally given law.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 604
The latter kind of knowledge is simply induction, _i.e._, from many consequents which point to one reason, the reason is accepted as certain; but as the cases can never be all before us, the truth here is not unconditionally certain. But all knowledge through sense-perception, and the great bulk of experience, has only this kind of truth.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 198
“We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”—_Tempest_, Act iv. Sc. 1.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1968
The motives which determine the manifestation of the character or conduct influence it through the medium of knowledge. But knowledge is changeable, and often vacillates between truth and error, yet, as a rule, is rectified more and more in the course of life, though certainly in very different degrees. Therefore the conduct of a man may be observably altered without justifying us in concluding that his character has been changed.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2764
36 Cf. Chap. xxii. of the Supplement, and also my work “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” p. 54 _et seq._, and pp. 70-79 of the first edition, or p. 46 _et seq._, and pp. 63-72 of the second, or p. 48 _et seq._, and pp. 69-77 of the third edition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 236
If any one desires additional proof of this, let him observe, for example, how a young dog is afraid to jump down from a table, however much he may wish to do so, because he foresees the effect of the weight of his body, though he has not been taught this by experience.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2437
Besides the suffering which has been described, and which is inseparable from wickedness, because it springs from the same root, excessive vehemence of will, another specific pain quite different from this is connected with wickedness, which is felt in the case of every bad action, whether it be merely injustice proceeding from egoism or pure wickedness, and according to the length of its duration is called _the sting of conscience_ or _remorse_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 421
§ 11. In this regard the direct opposite of _rational knowledge_ is feeling, and therefore we must insert the explanation of feeling here. The concept which the word feeling denotes has merely a negative content, which is this, that something which is present in consciousness, _is not a concept_, _is not abstract rational knowledge_. Except this, whatever it may be, it comes under the concept of _feeling_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1583
Meanwhile we leave this question alone and go on our own way, glad when we come upon traces of any great and noble mind, yet not following his footsteps but our own aim. The _concept_ is abstract, discursive, undetermined within its own sphere, only determined by its limits, attainable and comprehensible by him who has only reason, communicable by words without any other assistance, entirely exhausted by its definition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 463
In mosaics, however fine they may be, the limits of the stones are always there, and therefore no continuous passage from one colour to another is possible, and this is also the case with regard to concepts, with their rigidity and sharp delineation; however finely we may divide them by exact definition, they are still incapable of reaching the finer modifications of the perceptible, and this is just what happens in the example we have taken, knowledge of physiognomy.(16)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2013
Therefore, by true repentance, which, however, shows itself as action also, it can be obliterated, as a falsely drawn line, from that picture of our will which our course of life is. I may insert the remark here, as a very good comparison, that the relation between wish and deed has a purely accidental but accurate analogy with that between the accumulation and discharge of electricity.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 436
Thus, for example, the knowledge of the relation of cause and effect arrived at by the understanding, is in itself far completer, deeper and more exhaustive than anything that can be thought about it in the abstract; the understanding alone knows in perception directly and completely the nature of the effect of a lever, of a pulley, or a cog-wheel, the stability of an arch, and so forth.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1020
Now this reveals itself in the higher grades of the objectification of will, where the whole phenomenon is more distinct, thus in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, through the universally prevailing analogy of all forms, the fundamental type which recurs in all phenomena.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1704
For both in poetry and painting we demand the faithful mirror of life, of man, of the world, only made more clear by the representation, and more significant by the arrangement. For there is only one end of all the arts, the representation of the Ideas; and their essential difference lies simply in the different grades of the objectification of will to which the Ideas that are to be represented belong. This also determines the material of the representation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 58
To such an one we speak as those who are like us have spoken to us, and have so become our comfort in the wilderness of this life. Meanwhile the object is pursued on its own account and for its own sake. Now it happens curiously enough with philosophical meditations, that precisely that which one has thought out and investigated for oneself, is afterwards of benefit to others; not that, however, which was originally intended for others.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 491
This reproach is the significance of Schiller’s epigram, entitled “Scruples of Conscience.” When we speak, especially in connection with politics, of doctrinaires, theorists, savants, and so forth, we mean pedants, that is, persons who know the things well in the abstract, but not in the concrete. Abstraction consists in thinking away the less general predicates; but it is precisely upon these that so much depends in practice.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 359
It is not, as is commonly supposed, an essential characteristic of a concept that it should contain much under it, that is to say, that many ideas of perception, or it may be other abstract ideas, should stand to it in the relation of its ground of knowledge, _i.e._, be thought through it. This is merely a derived and secondary characteristic, and, as a matter of fact, does not always exist, though it must always exist potentially.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2612
From this we can understand the meaning of Madame Guion when towards the end of her autobiography she often expresses herself thus: “Everything is alike to me; I _cannot_ will anything more: often I know not whether I exist or not.” In order to express how, after the extinction of the will, the death of the body (which is indeed only the manifestation of the will, and therefore loses all significance when the will is abolished) can no longer have any bitterness, but is very welcome, I may be allowed to quote the words of that holy penitent, although they are not very elegantly turned: “_Midi de la gloire; jour où il n’y a plus de nuit; vie qui ne craint plus la mort, dans la mort même: parceque la mort a vaincu la mort, et que celui qui a souffert la première mort, ne goutera plus la seconde mort_” (Vie de Mad.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2497
The good man lives in a world of friendly individuals, the well-being of any of whom he regards as his own. Therefore, although the knowledge of the lot of mankind generally does not make his disposition a joyful one, yet the permanent knowledge of his own nature in all living beings, gives him a certain evenness, and even serenity of disposition. For the interest which is extended to innumerable manifestations cannot cause such anxiety as that which is concentrated upon one.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1501
But how is the artist to recognise the perfect work which is to be imitated, and distinguish it from the failures, if he does not anticipate the beautiful _before experience_? And besides this, has nature ever produced a human being perfectly beautiful in all his parts? It has accordingly been thought that the artist must seek out the beautiful parts, distributed among a number of different human beings, and out of them construct a beautiful whole; a perverse and foolish opinion.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2471
Before we speak of the _good_ proper, in opposition to the _bad_, which has been explained, we must touch on an intermediate grade, the mere negation of the bad: this is _justice_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2150
We find the stamp of this endlessness imprinted upon all the parts of its whole manifestation, from its most universal form, endless time and space, up to the most perfect of all phenomena, the life and efforts of man. We may theoretically assume three extremes of human life, and treat them as elements of actual human life. First, the powerful will, the strong passions (Radscha-Guna). It appears in great historical characters; it is described in the epic and the drama.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2274
Therefore a man acts with perfect right who assures a highway robber who is searching him that he has nothing more upon him; or, if a burglar has broken into his house by night, induces him by a lie to enter a cellar and then locks him in. A man who has been captured and carried off by robbers, for example by pirates, has the right to kill them not only by violence but also by craft, in order to regain his freedom.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2449
The course of life draws the image of the empirical character, whose original is the intelligible character, and horrifies the wicked man by this image. He is horrified all the same whether the image is depicted in large characters, so that the world shares his horror, or in such small ones that he alone sees it, for it only concerns him directly.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2519
“I vo pensando: e nel pensar m’ assale _Una pietà si forte di me stesso_, Che mi conduce spesso, Ad alto lagrimar, ch’i non soleva.”(82)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1615
Such, for example, is a tortoise, to represent feminine seclusion; the downward glance of Nemesis into the drapery of her bosom, signifying that she can see into what is hidden; the explanation of Bellori that Hannibal Carracci represents voluptuousness clothed in a yellow robe, because he wishes to indicate that her lovers soon fade and become yellow as straw.