The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 45 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1322
We must therefore assume that there exists in all men this power of knowing the Ideas in things, and consequently of transcending their personality for the moment, unless indeed there are some men who are capable of no æsthetic pleasure at all. The man of genius excels ordinary men only by possessing this kind of knowledge in a far higher degree and more continuously.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2599
The Christian mystic and the teacher of the Vedanta philosophy agree in this respect also, they both regard all outward works and religious exercises as superfluous for him who has attained to perfection.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 309
The method of our own system is _toto genere_ distinct from these two opposite misconceptions, for we start neither from the object nor from the subject, but from the _idea_, as the first fact of consciousness. Its first essential, fundamental form is the antithesis of subject and object. The form of the object again is the principle of sufficient reason in its various forms.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 892
(For example, magnetism from electricity.) Etiology will have reached its goal when it has recognised and exhibited as such all the original forces of nature, and established their mode of operation, _i.e._, the law according to which, under the guidance of causality, their phenomena appear in time and space, and determine their position with regard to each other.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2551
So he practises fasting, and even resorts to chastisement and self-inflicted torture, in order that, by constant privation and suffering, he may more and more break down and destroy the will, which he recognises and abhors as the source of his own suffering existence and that of the world.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2315
If the state completely attains its end, it will produce the same outward result as if perfect justice of disposition prevailed everywhere. But the inner nature and origin of both phenomena will be the converse. Thus in the second case it would be that no one wished to _do_ wrong, and in the first that no one wished to _suffer_ wrong, and the means appropriate to this end had been fully employed.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2390
Never has a myth entered, and never will one enter, more closely into the philosophical truth which is attainable to so few than this primitive doctrine of the noblest and most ancient nation. Broken up as this nation now is into many parts, this myth yet reigns as the universal belief of the people, and has the most decided influence upon life to-day, as four thousand years ago.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 510
But this method of treatment is not essential to mathematics, and in fact each proposition introduces quite a new space construction, which in itself is independent of those which precede it, and indeed can be completely comprehended from itself, quite independently of them, in the pure intuition or perception of space, in which the most complicated construction is just as directly evident as the axiom; but of this more fully hereafter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2188
He moves and acts; his consciousness keeps him always working directly and actively towards the aims of his will; his thought is concerned with the choice of motives. Such is life for almost all men; they wish, they know what they wish, and they strive after it, with sufficient success to keep them from despair, and sufficient failure to keep them from ennui and its consequences.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2208
The genital organs are, far more than any other external member of the body, subject merely to the will, and not at all to knowledge. Indeed, the will shows itself here almost as independent of knowledge, as in those parts which, acting merely in consequence of stimuli, are subservient to vegetative life and reproduction, in which the will works blindly as in unconscious nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1572
Historical subjects are distinctly disadvantageous only when they confine the painter to a field which has not been chosen for artistic but for other reasons, and especially when this field is poor in picturesque and significant objects—if, for example, it is the history of a small, isolated, capricious, hierarchical (_i.e._, ruled by error), obscure people, like the Jews, despised by the great contemporary nations of the East and the West.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1918
Now here lies before us in its most distinct form the solution of that great contradiction, the union of freedom with necessity, which has so often been discussed in recent times, yet, so far as I know, never clearly and adequately. Everything is as phenomenon, as object, absolutely necessary: _in itself_ it is will, which is perfectly free to all eternity. The phenomenon, the object, is necessarily and unalterably determined in that chain of causes and effects which admits of no interruption.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 152
Only through the union of space and time do we reach matter, and matter is the possibility of co-existence, and, through that, of permanence; through permanence again matter is the possibility of the persistence of substance in the change of its states.(8) As matter consists in the union of space and time, it bears throughout the stamp of both.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 681
But that which alone is dependent upon us is the will; and here a transition gradually takes place to a doctrine of virtue, for it is observed that as the outer world, which is independent of us, determines good and bad fortune, so inner contentment with ourselves, or the absence of it, proceeds from the will. But it was then asked whether we ought to apply the words _bonum_ and _malum_ to the two former or to the two latter?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2117
Only the moment at which these changes occur affects us with unusual strength, as deep sorrow or exulting joy, but both soon pass away, for they are based upon illusion. For they do not spring from the immediately present pleasure or pain, but only from the opening up of a new future which is anticipated in them. Only by borrowing from the future could pain or pleasure be heightened so abnormally, and consequently not enduringly.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2149
All that we intend to bring out clearly through these investigations, the impossibility of attaining lasting satisfaction and the negative nature of all happiness, finds its explanation in what is shown at the conclusion of the Second Book: that the will, of which human life, like every phenomenon, is the objectification, is a striving without aim or end.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 922
The more and the less have application only to the phenomenon of will, that is, its visibility, its objectification. Of this there is a higher grade in the plant than in the stone; in the animal a higher grade than in the plant: indeed, the passage of will into visibility, its objectification, has grades as innumerable as exist between the dimmest twilight and the brightest sunshine, the loudest sound and the faintest echo.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1963
1220, and Eth. Nic., p. 1103, ed. Ber.) Stobæus quotes: οἱ δε κατα Ζηνωνα τροπικως; ηθος εστι πηγη βιου αφ᾽ ἡς αἱ κατα μερος πραξεις ρεουσι (_Stoici autem, Zenonis castra sequentes, metaphorice ethos definiunt vitæ fontem, e quo singulæ manant actiones_), ii. ch. 7. In Christian theology we find the dogma of predestination in consequence of election and non-election (Rom. ix.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2115
Thus his suffering and well-being would by no means be determined from without, but only through that measure, that natural disposition, which indeed might experience certain additions and diminutions from the physical condition at different times, but yet, on the whole, would remain the same, and would just be what is called the temperament, or, more accurately, the degree in which he might be ευκολος or δυσκολος, as Plato expresses it in the First Book of the Republic, _i.e._, in an easy or difficult mood.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2563
Therefore, in order to understand fully what we philosophically express as denial of the will to live, one must come to know examples of it in experience and actual life. Certainly they are not to be met with in daily experience: _Nam omnia præclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt_, Spinoza admirably says. Therefore, unless by a specially happy fate we are made eye-witnesses, we have to content ourselves with descriptions of the lives of such men.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1814
Therefore it does not become to him a quieter of the will, as, we shall see in the next book, it does in the case of the saint who has attained to resignation; it does not deliver him for ever from life, but only at moments, and is therefore not for him a path out of life, but only an occasional consolation in it, till his power, increased by this contemplation and at last tired of the play, lays hold on the real. The St. Cecilia of Raphael may be regarded as a representation of this transition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2386
What is here referred to is the myth of the transmigration of souls. It teaches that all sufferings which in life one inflicts upon other beings must be expiated in a subsequent life in this world, through precisely the same sufferings; and this extends so far, that he who only kills a brute must, some time in endless time, be born as the same kind of brute and suffer the same death.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 222
Hooke’s discovery of the law of gravitation, and the reference of so many important phenomena to this one law, was the work of immediate apprehension by the understanding; and such also was the proof of Newton’s calculations, and Lavoisier’s discovery of acids and their important function in nature, and also Goethe’s discovery of the origin of physical colours.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 743
This affection of them is so excessively weak an excitement of the heightened and specifically modified sensibility of these parts that it does not affect the will, but only furnishes the understanding with the data out of which the perception arises, undisturbed by any excitement of the will. But every stronger or different kind of affection of these organs of sense is painful, that is to say, against the will, and thus they also belong to its objectivity.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1202
But the particular things are no really adequate objectivity of the will, for in them it is obscured by those forms whose general expression is the principle of sufficient reason, but which are conditions of the knowledge which belongs to the individual as such.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1226
The Idea includes object and subject in like manner in itself, for they are its one form; but in it they are absolutely of equal importance; for as the object is here, as elsewhere, simply the idea of the subject, the subject, which passes entirely into the perceived object has thus become this object itself, for the whole consciousness is nothing but its perfectly distinct picture.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1982
Finally we come to know ourselves as quite different from what _a priori_ we supposed ourselves to be, and then we are often terrified at ourselves.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 700
Accordingly, directing our attention exclusively to the idea of perception, we shall now endeavour to arrive at a knowledge of its content, its more exact definition, and the forms which it presents to us.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 901
Men resigned themselves without a word to starting from mere _qualitates occultæ_, the elucidation of which was entirely given up, for they intended to build upon them, not to investigate them. Such an intention cannot, as we have already said, be carried out. But apart from this, such structures would always stand in the air. What is the use of explanations which ultimately refer us to something which is quite as unknown as the problem with which we started?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 165
But I have treated this important subject much more fully and thoroughly in the second edition of the essay on “The Principle of Sufficient Reason,” § 21. All that is said there would find its proper place here, and would therefore have to be said again; but as I have almost as much disinclination to quote myself as to quote others, and as I am unable to explain the subject better than it is explained there, I refer the reader to it, instead of quoting it, and take for granted that it is known.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1824
In considering it I shall faithfully adhere to the method I have hitherto followed, and shall support myself by presupposing all that has already been advanced. There is, indeed, just one thought which forms the content of this whole work. I have endeavoured to work it out in all other spheres, and I shall now do so with regard to human action. I shall then have done all that is in my power to communicate it as fully as possible.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2456
On the contrary, ethical discourses and preaching will just as little produce a virtuous man as all the systems of æsthetics from Aristotle downwards have succeeded in producing a poet. For the real inner nature of virtue the concept is unfruitful, just as it is in art, and it is only in a completely subordinate position that it can be of use as a tool in the elaboration and preserving of what has been ascertained and inferred by other means.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 845
We may also observe in passing that breathing affords us the most obvious example of the fact that motives act with just as much necessity as stimuli, or as causes in the narrowest sense of the word, and their operation can only be neutralised by antagonistic motives, as action is neutralised by re-action.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 142
The existence of matter is therefore entirely relative, according to a relation which is valid only within its limits, as in the case of time and space.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 68
I therefore give both works separately, and in the earlier exposition, even in many places where I would now express myself quite differently, I have changed nothing, because I desired to guard against spoiling the work of my earlier years through the carping criticism of age. What in this regard might need correction will correct itself in the mind of the reader with the help of the second volume.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1778
This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2270
That is to say: I have then a right to deny that denial of another with the force necessary to overcome it, and it is easy to see that this may extend to the killing of the other individual, whose encroachment as external violence pressing upon me may be warded off by a somewhat stronger counteraction, entirely without wrong, consequently with right.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1649
If, in the representation of the lower grades of the objectivity of will, plastic and pictorial art generally surpass it, because lifeless nature, and even brute nature, reveals almost its whole being in a single well-chosen moment; man, on the contrary, so far as he does not express himself by the mere form and expression of his person, but through a series of actions and the accompanying thoughts and emotions, is the principal object of poetry, in which no other art can compete with it, for here the progress or movement which cannot be represented in plastic or pictorial art just suits its purpose.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1790
The unutterable depth of all music by virtue of which it floats through our consciousness as the vision of a paradise firmly believed in yet ever distant from us, and by which also it is so fully understood and yet so inexplicable, rests on the fact that it restores to us all the emotions of our inmost nature, but entirely without reality and far removed from their pain.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1200
The particular thing that manifests itself in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason is thus only an indirect objectification of the thing-in-itself (which is the will), for between it and the thing-in-itself stands the Idea as the only direct objectivity of the will, because it has assumed none of the special forms of knowledge as such, except that of the idea in general, _i.e._, the form of being object for a subject.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2292
The reason, however, which is common to all these individuals, and which enables them to know not merely the particular case, as the brutes do, but also the whole abstractly in its connection, has also taught them to discern the source of that suffering, and induced them to consider the means of diminishing it, or, when possible, of suppressing it by a common sacrifice, which is, however, more than counterbalanced by the common advantage that proceeds from it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1179
It is clear, and requires no further proof that the inner meaning of both doctrines is entirely the same; that both explain the visible world as a manifestation, which in itself is nothing, and which only has meaning and a borrowed reality through that which expresses itself in it (in the one case the thing-in-itself, in the other the Idea).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 84
They are early accustomed to take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach some thought.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 12
I say “almost;” for this is by no means absolutely the case, and I have honestly and conscientiously done all that was possible to give priority to that which stands least in need of explanation from what follows, as indeed generally to everything that can help to make the thought as easy to comprehend and as distinct as possible.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1459
We would be affected in almost the same way if we were told that it was made of wood, when we had supposed it to be of stone, just because this alters and destroys the relation between rigidity and gravity, and consequently the significance and necessity of all the parts, for these natural forces reveal themselves in a far weaker degree in a wooden building.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1990
It is pain at the knowledge of oneself in one’s inmost nature, _i.e._, as will. It rests precisely on the certainty that we have still the same will. If the will were changed, and therefore the anguish of conscience mere repentance, it would cease to exist. The past could then no longer give us pain, for it exhibited the expressions of a will which is no longer that of him who has repented. We shall explain the significance of anguish of conscience in detail farther on.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1401
A man of sublime character will accordingly consider men in a purely objective way, and not with reference to the relations which they might have to his will; he will, for example, observe their faults, even their hatred and injustice to himself, without being himself excited to hatred; he will behold their happiness without envy; he will recognise their good qualities without desiring any closer relations with them; he will perceive the beauty of women, but he will not desire them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2093
To this is directly related the second claim, that of the propagation of the species. At the same time he is threatened from all sides by the most different kinds of dangers, from which it requires constant watchfulness to escape. With cautious steps and casting anxious glances round him he pursues his path, for a thousand accidents and a thousand enemies lie in wait for him. Thus he went while yet a savage, thus he goes in civilised life; there is no security for him.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1472
Here, when caissons, pointed roofs and towers were what was demanded, architecture could only unfold its own beauty within very narrow limits, and therefore it was obliged to make amends by resorting all the more to the borrowed ornaments of sculpture, as is seen in Gothic architecture.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 959
Through time and space the Idea multiplies itself in innumerable phenomena, but the order according to which it enters these forms of multiplicity is definitely determined by the law of causality; this law is as it were the norm of the limit of these phenomena of different Ideas, in accordance with which time, space, and matter are assigned to them.