The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 51 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1048
The head seizes the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head: the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place every time the experiment is tried. (From a letter by Howitt in the W.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1300
It will be sufficient to convince us of this if we compare the number of really great men of genius that the whole of civilised Europe has produced, both in ancient and modern times, with the two hundred and fifty millions who are always living in Europe, and who change entirely every thirty years. In estimating the number of men of outstanding genius, we must of course only count those who have produced works which have retained through all time an enduring value for mankind.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2796
On the other hand, the insect does not suffer so much through its death as a man suffers from its sting. The Hindus do not understand this.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 51
Indeed I might say that no time can be more unfavourable to philosophy than that in which it is shamefully misused, on the one hand to further political objects, on the other as a means of livelihood. Or is it believed that somehow, with such effort and such a turmoil, the truth, at which it by no means aims, will also be brought to light?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 680
In accordance with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus began and ended with the doctrine as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should consider well and distinguish what depends upon us and what does not, and therefore entirely avoid counting upon the latter, whereby we shall certainly remain free from all pain, sorrow, and anxiety.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 223
All these discoveries are nothing more than a correct immediate passage from the effect to the cause, which is at once followed by the recognition of the ideality of the force of nature which expresses itself in all causes of the same kind; and this complete insight is just an example of that single function of the understanding, by which an animal perceives as an object in space the cause which affects its body, and differs from such a perception only in degree.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 899
It is a greater and a commoner error that the phenomena which we best understand are those which are of most frequent occurrence, and which are most universal and simple; for, on the contrary, these are just the phenomena that we are most accustomed to see about us, and to be ignorant of. It is just as inexplicable to us that a stone should fall to the earth as that an animal should move itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1457
The decoration of capitals, &c., belongs to sculpture, not to architecture, which admits it merely as extraneous ornament, and could dispense with it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 840
Now we might be asked to regard breathing as another link of this kind. It has been disputed whether it belongs to the voluntary or the involuntary movements, that is to say, whether it follows upon motive or stimulus, and perhaps it may be explained as something which is between the two.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1872
Thus it is that every one can say, “I am once for all lord of the present, and through all eternity it will accompany me as my shadow: therefore I do not wonder where it has come from, and how it happens that it is exactly now.” We might compare time to a constantly revolving sphere; the half that was always sinking would be the past, that which was always rising would be the future; but the indivisible point at the top, where the tangent touches, would be the extensionless present.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1935
I entirely adhere to this distinction, for the former is the will as thing-in-itself so far as it appears in a definite individual in a definite grade, and the latter is this phenomenon itself as it exhibits itself in time in the mode of action, and in space in the physical structure.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2467
It is conceivable that a perfect state, or perhaps indeed a complete and firmly believed doctrine of rewards and punishments after death, might prevent every crime; politically much would be gained thereby; morally, nothing; only the expression of the will in life would be restricted.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2083
§ 57. At every grade that is enlightened by knowledge, the will appears as an individual. The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them. He is projected into them, and, on account of their unlimited nature, he has always a merely relative, never absolute _when_ and _where_ of his existence; for his place and duration are finite parts of what is infinite and boundless.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1206
§ 33. Since now, as individuals, we have no other knowledge than that which is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, and this form of knowledge excludes the Ideas, it is certain that if it is possible for us to raise ourselves from the knowledge of particular things to that of the Ideas, this can only happen by an alteration taking place in the subject which is analogous and corresponds to the great change of the whole nature of the object, and by virtue of which the subject, so far as it knows an Idea, is no more individual.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2720
Thus in this faith there is implied, first of all, that our condition is originally and essentially an incurable one, from which we need _salvation_; then, that we ourselves essentially belong to evil, and are so firmly bound to it that our works according to law and precept, _i.e._, according to motives, can never satisfy justice nor save us; but salvation is only obtained through faith, _i.e._, through a changed mode of knowing, and this faith can only come through grace, thus as from without.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1404
For in the course of his own life and its misfortunes, he will consider less his individual lot than that of humanity in general, and will therefore conduct himself in its regard, rather as knowing than as suffering.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1576
These representations are in fact the highest and most admirable achievements of the art of painting; and only the greatest masters of this art succeeded in this, particularly Raphael and Correggio, and especially in their earlier pictures. Pictures of this kind are not properly to be classed as historical: for, as a rule, they represent no event, no action; but are merely groups of saints, with the Saviour himself, often still a child, with His mother, angels, &c.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1282
The disinclination of men of genius to direct their attention to the content of the principle of sufficient reason will first show itself, with regard to the ground of being, as dislike of mathematics; for its procedure is based upon the most universal forms of the phenomenon space and time, which are themselves merely modes of the principle of sufficient reason, and is consequently precisely the opposite of that method of thought which seeks merely the content of the phenomenon, the Idea which expresses itself in it apart from all relations.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1845
Birth and death belong merely to the phenomenon of will, thus to life; and it is essential to this to exhibit itself in individuals which come into being and pass away, as fleeting phenomena appearing in the form of time—phenomena of that which in itself knows no time, but must exhibit itself precisely in the way we have said, in order to objectify its peculiar nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2082
We desire to consider in this way, in _human existence_, the inner and essential destiny of will. Every one will easily recognise that same destiny expressed in various degrees in the life of the brutes, only more weakly, and may also convince himself to his own satisfaction, from the suffering animal world, _how essential to all life is suffering_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 44
Accordingly, as the whole history of literature proves, everything of real value required a long time to gain acceptance, especially if it belonged to the class of instructive, not entertaining, works; and meanwhile the false flourished. For to combine the object with its superficial appearance is difficult, when it is not impossible.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1890
Therefore the egoism of the individual (this particular phenomenon of will enlightened by the subject of knowing) can extract as little nourishment and consolation for his wish to endure through endless time from the view we have expressed, as he could from the knowledge that after his death the rest of the eternal world would continue to exist, which is just the expression of the same view considered objectively, and therefore temporally.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 649
§ 16. After this full consideration of reason as a special faculty of knowledge belonging to man alone, and the results and phenomena peculiar to human nature brought about by it, it still remains for me to speak of reason, so far as it is the guide of human action, and in this respect may be called _practical_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1561
Thus, for example, it is all the same, as far as inward significance is concerned, whether ministers discuss the fate of countries and nations over a map, or boors wrangle in a beer-house over cards and dice, just as it is all the same whether we play chess with golden or wooden pieces.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2403
It seems to me that the indignation which carries such a man so far beyond the limits of all self-love springs from the deepest consciousness that he himself is the whole will to live, which appears in all beings through all time, and that therefore the most distant future belongs to him just as the present, and cannot be indifferent to him.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1537
In our own day Hirt (Horen, 1797, tenth St.) finally decided the point, deducing everything from the highest truth of expression, that Laocoon does not cry out, because he can no longer do so, as he is at the point of death from choking. Lastly, Fernow (“Römische Studien,” vol. i. p. 246) expounded and weighed all these opinions; he added, however, no new one of his own, but combined these three eclectically.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 393
Though logic is of so little practical use, it cannot be denied that it was invented for practical purposes. It appears to me to have originated in the following way:—As the love of debating developed among the Eleatics, the Megarics, and the Sophists, and by degrees became almost a passion, the confusion in which nearly every debate ended must have made them feel the necessity of a method of procedure as a guide; and for this a scientific dialectic had to be sought.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2402
For in it there really lies the intention of an effect upon the future through the example, and that without any selfish aim, either for the avenging person, for it costs him his life, or for a society which secures its own safety by laws. For that punishment is carried out by individuals, not by the state, nor is it in fulfilment of a law, but, on the contrary, always concerns a deed which the state either would not or could not punish, and the punishment of which it condemns.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2633
They have learned to know both sides in full measure, the badness and the misery; and since at last they see the identity of the two, they reject them both at once; they deny the will to live. In what myths and dogmas they account to their reason for this intuitive and direct knowledge and for their own change is, as has been said, a matter of no importance.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 665
But I have fully explained in the Appendix, and illustrated by examples, that this is entirely different from and unrelated to the ethical worth of actions; that rational action and virtuous action are two entirely different things; that reason may just as well find itself in connection with great evil as with great good, and by its assistance may give great power to the one as well as to the other; that it is equally ready and valuable for the methodical and consistent carrying out of the noble and of the bad intention, of the wise as of the foolish maxim; which all results from the constitution of its nature, which is feminine, receptive, retentive, and not spontaneous; all this I have shown in detail in the Appendix, and illustrated by examples.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 607
Here also the causes are known from the effects, consequently all natural philosophy rests upon hypotheses, which are often false, and must then gradually give place to more correct ones. Only in the case of purposely arranged experiments, knowledge proceeds from the cause to the effect, that is, it follows the method that affords certainty; but these experiments themselves are undertaken in consequence of hypotheses.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1612
For example, if the desire of fame were firmly and lastingly rooted in the heart of a man, because he regarded it as his rightful possession, which is only withheld from him so long as he has not produced the charter of his ownership; and if the Genius of Fame, with his laurel crown, were to appear to such a man, his whole mind would be excited, and his powers called into activity; but the same effect would be produced if he were suddenly to see the word “fame,” in large distinct letters on the wall.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1504
But this other kind of knowledge _a priori_, which makes it possible to express the beautiful, concerns, not the form but the content of phenomena, not the _how_ but the _what_ of the phenomenon.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 683
Zeno, the founder, seems originally to have followed a somewhat different path. The starting-point with him was that for the attainment of the highest good, _i.e._, blessedness and spiritual peace, one must live in harmony with oneself (ὁμολογουμενους ξῃν; δ᾽ εστι καθ᾽ ἑνα λογον και συμφωνον ξῃν.—_Consonanter vivere: hoc est secundum unam rationem et concordem sibi vivere._ Stob. Ecl. eth. L. ii., c. 7, p. 132. Also: Αρετην διαθεσιν ειναι ψυχης συμφωνον ἑαυτῃ περι ὁλον τον βιον.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2110
If finally we succeed in driving this away, we shall hardly do so without letting pain enter in one of its earlier forms, and the dance begin again from the beginning; for all human life is tossed backwards and forwards between pain and ennui. Depressing as this view of life is, I will draw attention, by the way, to an aspect of it from which consolation may be drawn, and perhaps even a stoical indifference to one’s own present ills may be attained.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2515
But now we ourselves are the object of our own sympathy; with the most benevolent disposition we are ourselves most in need of help; we feel that we suffer more than we could see another suffer; and in this very complex frame of mind, in which the directly felt suffering only comes to perception by a doubly circuitous route, imagined as the suffering of another, sympathised with as such, and then suddenly perceived again as directly our own,—in this complex frame of mind, I say, Nature relieves itself through that remarkable physical conflict.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1933
But whoever has come to see clearly that the whole nature of man is will, and he himself only a phenomenon of this will, and that such a phenomenon has, even from the subject itself, the principle of sufficient reason as its necessary form, which here appears as the law of motivation,—such a man will regard it as just as absurd to doubt the inevitable nature of an action when the motive is presented to a given character, as to doubt that the three angles of any triangle are together equal to two right angles.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 79
It alone is able really to remove the inborn realism which proceeds from the original character of the intellect, which neither Berkeley nor Malebranche succeed in doing, for they remain too much in the universal, while Kant goes into the particular, and indeed in a way that is quite unexampled both before and after him, and which has quite a peculiar, and, we might say, immediate effect upon the mind in consequence of which it undergoes a complete undeception, and forthwith looks at all things in another light.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 411
Its sphere partially includes four others, to any of which the sophist may pass at will; these again partly include other spheres, several of them two or more at once, and through these the sophist takes whichever way he chooses, always as if it were the only way, till at last he reaches, in good or evil, whatever end he may have in view.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1719
I shall allow myself only one remark, more closely concerning the treatment of tragedy. The representation of a great misfortune is alone essential to tragedy. But the many different ways in which this is introduced by the poet may be brought under three specific conceptions.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1614
If then, in accordance with what has been said, allegory in plastic and pictorial art is a mistaken effort, serving an end which is entirely foreign to art, it becomes quite unbearable when it leads so far astray that the representation of forced and violently introduced subtilties degenerates into absurdity.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1462
The regularity of the building and its parts is partly produced by the direct adaptation of each member to the stability of the whole, partly it serves to facilitate the survey and comprehension of the whole, and finally, regular figures to some extent enhance the beauty because they reveal the constitution of space as such. But all this is of subordinate value and necessity, and by no means the chief concern; indeed, symmetry is not invariably demanded, as ruins are still beautiful.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2100
The strict penitentiary system of Philadelphia makes use of ennui alone as a means of punishment, through solitary confinement and idleness, and it is found so terrible that it has even led prisoners to commit suicide. As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is that of the fashionable world. In middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sunday, and want by the six week-days.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1336
But this is just the state which I described above as necessary for the knowledge of the Idea, as pure contemplation, as sinking oneself in perception, losing oneself in the object, forgetting all individuality, surrendering that kind of knowledge which follows the principle of sufficient reason, and comprehends only relations; the state by means of which at once and inseparably the perceived particular thing is raised to the Idea of its whole species, and the knowing individual to the pure subject of will-less knowledge, and as such they are both taken out of the stream of time and all other relations. It is then all one whether we see the sun set from the prison or from the palace.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1503
No knowledge of the beautiful is possible purely _a posteriori_, and from mere experience; it is always, at least in part, _a priori_, although quite different in kind, from the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, of which we are conscious _a priori_. These concern the universal form of phenomena as such, as it constitutes the possibility of knowledge in general, the universal _how_ of all phenomena, and from this knowledge proceed mathematics and pure natural science.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1840
§ 54. The first three books will, it is hoped, have conveyed the distinct and certain knowledge that the world as idea is the complete mirror of the will, in which it knows itself in ascending grades of distinctness and completeness, the highest of which is man, whose nature, however, receives its complete expression only through the whole connected series of his actions. The self-conscious connection of these actions is made possible by reason, which enables a man constantly to survey the whole in the abstract.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1185
Therefore this animal as we perceive it at this definite point of time, in this particular place, as an individual in the connection of experience (_i.e._, in the chain of causes and effects), which has come into being, and will just as necessarily pass away, is not a thing-in-itself, but a phenomenon which only exists in relation to our knowledge.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1430
Manufactured articles also serve to express Ideas, only it is not the Idea of the manufactured article which speaks in them, but the Idea of the material to which this artificial form has been given. This may be very conveniently expressed in two words, in the language of the schoolmen, thus,—the manufactured article expresses the Idea of its _forma substantialis_, but not that of its _forma accidentalis_; the latter leads to no Idea, but only to a human conception of which it is the result.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2071
It will also be remembered, from the Second Book, that the multitude of natural forces and organised forms everywhere strive with each other for the matter in which they desire to appear, for each of them only possesses what it has wrested from the others; and thus a constant internecine war is waged, from which, for the most part, arises the resistance through which that striving, which constitutes the inner nature of everything, is at all points hindered; struggles in vain, yet, from its nature, cannot leave off; toils on laboriously till this phenomenon dies, when others eagerly seize its place and its matter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1176
The real archetypes, on the other hand, to which these shadows correspond, the eternal Ideas, the original forms of all things, can alone be said to have true being (οντως ον), because they _always are, but never become nor pass away_. To them belongs _no multiplicity_; for each of them is according to its nature only one, for it is the archetype itself, of which all particular transitory things of the same kind which are named after it are copies or shadows.