The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 41 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1181
Plato, on the other hand, did not attain to the fullest expression, and has only distinctly refused these forms to his Ideas in that he denies of the Ideas what is only possible through these forms, multiplicity of similar things, coming into being and passing away. Though it is perhaps superfluous, I should like to illustrate this remarkable and important agreement by an example. There stands before us, let us suppose, an animal in the full activity of life.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1355
But we must first add the following remarks to what has been said. Light is the pleasantest and most gladdening of things; it has become the symbol of all that is good and salutary. In all religions it symbolises salvation, while darkness symbolises damnation. Ormuzd dwells in the purest light, Ahrimines in eternal night. Dante’s Paradise would look very much like Vauxhall in London, for all the blessed spirits appear as points of light and arrange themselves in regular figures.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 504
This path which it follows to knowledge, the path from the general to the particular, distinguishes it from ordinary rational knowledge; therefore, systematic form is an essential and characteristic feature of science.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2426
Therefore he seeks his own well-being alone, completely indifferent to that of all others, whose existence is to him altogether foreign and divided from his own by a wide gulf, and who are indeed regarded by him as mere masks with no reality behind them. And these two qualities are the constituent elements of the bad character.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 390
The only practical use we can make of logic is in a debate, when we can convict our antagonist of his intentional fallacies, rather than of his actual mistakes, by giving them their technical names. By thus throwing into the background the practical aim of logic, and bringing out its connection with the whole scheme of philosophy as one of its chapters, we do not think that we shall make the study of it less prevalent than it is just now.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1148
Only if one had somehow shown that gravity and electricity were not original special forces of nature, but only the manifestations of a more general force already known, would it be allowable to ask for the cause which made this force produce the phenomena of gravity or of electricity here. All this has been explained at length above.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 581
That which is most certain, and yet always inexplicable, is what is involved in the principle of sufficient reason, for this principle, in its different aspects, expresses the universal form of all our ideas and knowledge. All explanation consists of reduction to it, exemplification in the particular case of the connection of ideas expressed generally through it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1827
From it proceeds not only its action, but also its world; and as the will is, so does its action and its world become. Both are the self-knowledge of the will and nothing more. The will determines itself, and at the same time both its action and its world; for besides it there is nothing, and these are the will itself. Only thus is the will truly autonomous, and from every other point of view it is heteronomous.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2651
When, finally, grief has no definite object, but extends itself over the whole of life, then it is to a certain extent a going into itself, a withdrawal, a gradual disappearance of the will, whose visible manifestation, the body, it imperceptibly but surely undermines, so that a man feels a certain loosening of his bonds, a mild foretaste of that death which promises to be the abolition at once of the body and of the will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2529
No suffering is any longer strange to him. All the miseries of others which he sees and is so seldom able to alleviate, all the miseries he knows directly, and even those which he only knows as possible, work upon his mind like his own. It is no longer the changing joy and sorrow of his own person that he has in view, as is the case with him who is still involved in egoism; but, since he sees through the _principium individuationis_, all lies equally near him.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1728
“Faust” belongs entirely to this class, if we regard the events connected with Gretchen and her brother as the principal action; also the “Cid” of Corneille, only that it lacks the tragic conclusion, while on the contrary the analogous relation of Max to Thecla has it.(61)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 563
The Eleatics first brought out the difference, and indeed often the conflict, that exists between what is perceived, φαινομενον,(21) and what is thought, νουμενον, and used it in many ways in their philosophical epigrams, and also in sophisms.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2514
We pass from the felt pain, even when it is physical, to a mere idea of it, and then find our own state so deserving of sympathy that we are firmly and sincerely convinced that if another were the sufferer, we would be full of sympathy, and love to relieve him.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2592
In such a case dissolution had to follow through the separation of these elements, arising from their different relationship to and reaction against the progressive spirit of the age. But even after this dissolution the purely ethical part must always remain uninjured, because it is indestructible. Our knowledge of Hindu literature is still very imperfect.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2023
Though everything may be regarded as irrevocably predetermined by fate, yet it is so only through the medium of the chain of causes; therefore in no case can it be determined that an effect shall appear without its cause. Thus it is not simply the event that is predetermined, but the event as the consequence of preceding causes; so that fate does not decide the consequence alone, but also the means as the consequence of which it is destined to appear. Accordingly, if some means is not present, it is certain that the consequence also will not be present: each is always present in accordance with the determination of fate, but this is never known to us till afterwards.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 55
Look only at their zeal against pantheism; will any simpleton believe that it proceeds from conviction? And, in general, how is it possible that philosophy, degraded to the position of a means of making one’s bread, can fail to degenerate into sophistry? Just because this is infallibly the case, and the rule, “I sing the song of him whose bread I eat,” has always held good, the making of money by philosophy was regarded by the ancients as the characteristic of the sophists.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1107
If in unorganised nature the Idea, which is everywhere to be regarded as a single act of will, reveals itself also in a single manifestation which is always the same, and thus one may say that here the empirical character directly partakes of the unity of the intelligible, coincides, as it were, with it, so that no inner design can show itself here; if, on the contrary, all organisms express their Ideas through a series of successive developments, conditioned by a multiplicity of co-existing parts, and thus only the sum of the manifestations of the empirical character collectively constitute the expression of the intelligible character; this necessary co-existence of the parts and succession of the stages of development does not destroy the unity of the appearing Idea, the act of will which expresses itself; nay, rather this unity finds its expression in the necessary relation and connection of the parts and stages of development with each other, in accordance with the law of causality.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2644
The more intense the will is, the more glaring is the conflict of its manifestation, and thus the greater is the suffering. A world which was the manifestation of a far more intense will to live than this world manifests would produce so much the greater suffering; would thus be a hell.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1172
But as our knowledge is conditioned by these forms, the whole of experience is only knowledge of the phenomenon, not of the thing-in-itself; therefore its laws cannot be made valid for the thing-in-itself. This extends even to our own _ego_, and we know it only as phenomenon, and not according to what it may be in itself.” This is the meaning and content of the doctrine of Kant in the important respect we are considering.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 405
On the other hand, the art of sophistry lies in casting only a superficial glance at the relations of the spheres of the concepts, and then manipulating these relations to suit our purposes, generally in the following way:—When the sphere of an observed concept lies partly within that of another concept, and partly within a third altogether different sphere, we treat it as if it lay entirely within the one or the other, as may suit our purpose.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2098
Accordingly we see that almost all men who are secure from want and care, now that at last they have thrown off all other burdens, become a burden to themselves, and regard as a gain every hour they succeed in getting through; and thus every diminution of the very life which, till then, they have employed all their powers to maintain as long as possible. Ennui is by no means an evil to be lightly esteemed; in the end it depicts on the countenance real despair.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 645
Philosophy will therefore be a sum-total of general judgments, whose ground of knowledge is immediately the world itself in its entirety, without excepting anything; thus all that is to be found in human consciousness; it will be _a complete recapitulation, as it were, a reflection, of the world in abstract concepts_, which is only possible by the union of the essentially identical in _one_ concept and the relegation of the different to another.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2806
So here, in spite of all the efforts and sophisms of Augustine, the guilt and misery of the world always falls back on God, who made everything and everything that is in everything, and also knew how all things would go. That Augustine himself was conscious of the difficulty, and puzzled by it, I have already shown in my prize-essay on the Freedom of the Will (ch. iv. pp. 66-68 of the first and second editions).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2681
Yet it seems that the absolute denial of will may reach the point at which the will shall be wanting to take the necessary nourishment for the support of the natural life. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the will to live, that such a completely resigned ascetic only ceases to live because he has already altogether ceased to will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2072
We have long since recognised this striving, which constitutes the kernel and in-itself of everything, as identical with that which in us, where it manifests itself most distinctly in the light of the fullest consciousness, is called _will_. Its hindrance through an obstacle which places itself between it and its temporary aim we call _suffering_, and, on the other hand, its attainment of the end satisfaction, wellbeing, happiness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 418
In all other sciences everything that is not derived from the sources we have just referred to belongs to experience. Speaking generally, _to know rationally_ (_wissen_) means to have in the power of the mind, and capable of being reproduced at will, such judgments as have their sufficient ground of knowledge in something outside themselves, _i.e._, are true.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1477
Artistic hydraulics, however, obtains no support from practical hydraulics, for, as a rule, their ends cannot be combined; yet, in exceptional cases, this happens; for example, in the Cascata di Trevi at Rome.(52)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 148
But we found that the whole essence of matter consisted in action, _i.e._, in causation, consequently space and time must also be united in matter, that is to say, matter must take to itself at once the distinguishing qualities both of space and time, however much these may be opposed to each other, and must unite in itself what is impossible for each of these independently, that is, the fleeting course of time, with the rigid unchangeable perduration of space: infinite divisibility it receives from both.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1856
Constant nourishment and renewal differ from generation only in degree, and constant excretion differs only in degree from death. The first shows itself most simply and distinctly in the plant. The plant is throughout a constant recurrence of the same impulse of its simplest fibre, which groups itself into leaf and branch. It is a systematic aggregate of similar plants supporting each other, whose constant reproduction is its single impulse.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 715
It thus determines the position of phenomena in time and space, according to a law whose special content is derived from experience, but whose universal form and necessity is yet known to us independently of experience.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 987
These proceed from the character which is the immediate manifestation of the will, and is therefore groundless. That one man is bad and another good, does not depend upon motives or outward influences, such as teaching and preaching, and is in this sense quite inexplicable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 41
Not to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots—to mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work through the course of a long life.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1895
What we fear in death is the end of the individual, which it openly professes itself to be, and since the individual is a particular objectification of the will to live itself, its whole nature struggles against death. Now when feeling thus exposes us helpless, reason can yet step in and for the most part overcome its adverse influence, for it places us upon a higher standpoint, from which we no longer contemplate the particular but the whole.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1888
But this that we have brought to clearest consciousness, that although the particular phenomenon of the will has a temporal beginning and end, the will itself as thing-in-itself is not affected by it, nor yet the correlative of all object, the knowing but never known subject, and that life is always assured to the will to live—this is not to be numbered with the doctrines of immortality.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 337
It is very remarkable that up till now no philosopher has referred these manifold expressions of reason to one simple function which would be recognised in them all, from which they would all be explained, and which would therefore constitute the real inner nature of reason. It is true that the excellent Locke in the “Essay on the Human Understanding” (Book II., ch.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1926
In this sense, not only the will in itself, but man also may certainly be called free, and thus distinguished from all other beings. But how this is to be understood can only become clear through all that is to follow, and for the present we must turn away from it altogether.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1167
I hope that in the preceding book I have succeeded in producing the conviction that what is called in the Kantian philosophy the _thing-in-itself_, and appears there as so significant, and yet so obscure and paradoxical a doctrine, and especially on account of the manner in which Kant introduced it as an inference from the caused to the cause, was considered a stumbling-stone, and, in fact, the weak side of his philosophy,—that this, I say, if it is reached by the entirely different way by which we have arrived at it, is nothing but the _will_ when the sphere of that conception is extended and defined in the way I have shown.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1657
Even in that method of treatment which is necessary for the historian, the inner nature and significance of the phenomena, the kernel of all these shells, can never be entirely lost. He who seeks for it, at any rate, may find it and recognise it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 696
And the inner contradiction referred to above, with which the ethical system of Stoicism is affected even in its fundamental thought, shows itself further in the circumstance that its ideal, the Stoic philosopher, as the system itself represents him, could never obtain life or inner poetic truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure of which nothing can be made.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 808
It is an abstraction from the province in which cause and effect reign, _i.e._, from ideas of perception, and means just the causal nature of causes at the point at which this causal nature is no further etiologically explicable, but is the necessary presupposition of all etiological explanation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1134
The latter is fructified, and then draws itself down again to the bottom by contracting its spirals, and there the fruit grows.(41) I must again refer here to the larva of the male stag-beetle, which makes the hole in the wood for its metamorphosis as big again as the female does, in order to have room for its future horns. The instinct of animals in general gives us the best illustration of what remains of teleology in nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2798
83 Cf. Ch. xlvii. of Supplement. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the whole ethical doctrine given in outline in §§ 61-67 has been explained fully and in detail in my prize-essay on the foundation of morals.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2708
Having regard, not to the individuals according to the principle of sufficient reason, but to the Idea of man in its unity, Christian theology symbolises _nature_, the _assertion of the will to live_ in Adam, whose sin, inherited by us, _i.e._, our unity with him in the Idea, which is represented in time by the bond of procreation, makes us all partakers of suffering and eternal death.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1522
But this is only the case in so far as this character is to be regarded, not as something accidental and quite peculiar to the man as a single individual, but as a side of the Idea of humanity which is specially apparent in this individual, and the representation of which is therefore of assistance in revealing this Idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 623
Both are inferences from the effect to the cause; the illusion brought about always in accordance with the law of causality, and by the understanding alone, thus directly, in perception itself; the error in accordance with all the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and by the reason, thus in thought itself; yet most commonly in accordance with the law of causality, as will appear from the three following examples, which may be taken as types or representatives of the three kinds of error.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2647
Therefore it inspires reverence when in Goethe’s “Torquato Tasso” the princess speaks of how her own life and that of her relations has always been sad and joyless, and yet regards the matter from an entirely universal point of view.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2578
It will further assist us much in obtaining a more definite and full knowledge of what we have expressed abstractly and generally, according to our method of exposition, as the denial of the will to live, if we consider the moral teaching that has been imparted with this intention, and by men who were full of this spirit; and this will also show how old our view is, though the pure philosophical expression of it may be quite new.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1133
In the spring-time the female flower of the diœcian valisneria unwinds the spirals of its stalk, by which till now it was held at the bottom of the water, and thus rises to the surface. Just then the male flower, which grows on a short stalk from the bottom, breaks away, and so, at the sacrifice of its life, reaches the surface, where it swims about in search of the female.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2061
§ 56. This freedom, this omnipotence, as the expression of which the whole visible world exists and progressively develops in accordance with the laws which belong to the form of knowledge, can now, at the point at which in its most perfect manifestation it has attained to the completely adequate knowledge of its own nature, express itself anew in two ways.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 304
If, however, it is thought I should specify the form of the principle of sufficient reason under the guidance of which Fichte derives the _non-ego_ from the _ego_, as a spider spins its web out of itself, I find that it is the principle of sufficient reason of existence in space: for it is only as referred to this that some kind of meaning and sense can be attached to the laboured deductions of the way in which the _ego_ produces and fabricates the _non-ego_ from itself, which form the content of the most senseless, and consequently the most wearisome book that was ever written.