The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 52 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 2706
And because, in consequence of such a work of grace, the whole nature of man is changed and reversed from its foundation, so that he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely, so that it is as if a new man actually took the place of the old, the Church has called this consequence of the work of grace the _new birth_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1820
For here, where the worth or worthlessness of an existence, where salvation or damnation are in question, the dead conceptions of philosophy do not decide the matter, but the inmost nature of man himself, the Dæmon that guides him and that has not chosen him, but been chosen by him, as Plato would say; his intelligible character, as Kant expresses himself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 316
It is the enemy against which the wisest men of all times have waged unequal war, and only what they have won from it has become the possession of mankind. Therefore it is well to draw attention to it at once, as we already tread the ground to which its province belongs.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1738
Yet I recognise the fact that it is essentially impossible to prove this explanation, for it assumes and establishes a relation of music, as idea, to that which from its nature can never be idea, and music will have to be regarded as the copy of an original which can never itself be directly presented as idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2420
But, according to the investigations which have already been conducted in this Fourth Book, such a consummation is not even thinkable. The will can just as little cease from willing altogether on account of some particular satisfaction, as time can end or begin; for it there is no such thing as a permanent fulfilment which shall completely and for ever satisfy its craving. It is the vessel of the Danaides; for it there is no highest good, no absolute good, but always a merely temporary good.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 684
104.) Now this was only possible for a man if he determined himself entirely rationally, according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods; since, however, only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences nor the outward circumstances, are in our power, in order to be always consistent we must set before us as our aim only the maxims and not the consequences and circumstances, and thus again a doctrine of virtue is introduced.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1407
The charming or attractive, on the contrary, draws the beholder away from the pure contemplation which is demanded by all apprehension of the beautiful, because it necessarily excites this will, by objects which directly appeal to it, and thus he no longer remains pure subject of knowing, but becomes the needy and dependent subject of will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1598
For they belong to no age, but to humanity, and as on that account they are coldly received by their own age, to which they disdain to link themselves closely, and because indirectly and negatively they expose the existing errors, they are slowly and unwillingly recognised; on the other hand, they cannot grow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new down to the latest ages.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 605
The affection of one of the senses induces the understanding to infer a cause of the effect, but, as a conclusion from the consequent to the reason is never certain, illusion, which is deception of the senses, is possible, and indeed often occurs, as was pointed out above.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2718
We see that true virtue and holiness of disposition have their origin not in deliberate choice (works), but in knowledge (faith); just as we have in like manner developed it from our leading thought. If it were works, which spring from motives and deliberate intention, that led to salvation, then, however one may turn it, virtue would always be a prudent, methodical, far-seeing egoism.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 112
All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject. The world is idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2636
The approach of death and hopelessness are in other respects not absolutely necessary for such a purification through suffering. Even without them the knowledge of the contradiction of the will to live with itself can, through great misfortune and pain, force an entrance, and the vanity of all striving become recognised.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2307
Yet it will only do so for the purpose of making use of its reverse side, and regarding all the limits which ethics lays down as not to be transgressed, if we are to avoid _doing_ wrong, from the other side, as the limits which we must not allow others to transgress if we do not wish to _suffer_ wrong, and from which we have therefore a _right_ to drive others back. Therefore these limits are, as much as possible, from the passive side, barricaded by laws.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 140
Only as active does it fill space and time; its action upon the immediate object (which is itself matter) determines that perception in which alone it exists. The consequence of the action of any material object upon any other, is known only in so far as the latter acts upon the immediate object in a different way from that in which it acted before; it consists only of this. Cause and effect thus constitute the whole nature of matter; its true being is its action.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2239
For our horror at the murder committed, as also our shrinking from the committal of it, corresponds to that infinite clinging to life with which everything living, as phenomenon of the will to live, is penetrated.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1552
And conversely, poverty of mind, confusion, and perversity of thought, will clothe itself in the most far-fetched expressions and the obscurest forms of speech, in order to wrap up in difficult and pompous phraseology small, trifling, insipid, or commonplace thoughts; like a man who has lost the majesty of beauty, and trying to make up for the deficiency by means of clothing, seeks to hide the insignificance or ugliness of his person under barbaric finery, tinsel, feathers, ruffles, cuffs, and mantles.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1554
By character we mean generally, the representation of will at the highest grade of its objectification, when the individual, as giving prominence to a particular side of the Idea of humanity, has special significance, and shows this not merely by his form, but makes it visible in his bearing and occupation, by action of every kind, and the modifications of knowing and willing that occasion and accompany it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2538
He therefore disowns this nature which appears in him, and is already expressed through his body, and his action gives the lie to his phenomenal existence, and appears in open contradiction to it. Essentially nothing else but a manifestation of will, he ceases to will anything, guards against attaching his will to anything, and seeks to confirm in himself the greatest indifference to everything.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 14
That, then, which is really only misunderstanding, must take the form of active disapproval, and it is all the more difficult to recognise that it is misunderstanding, because although the laboriously-attained clearness of the explanation and distinctness of the expression never leaves the immediate sense of what is said doubtful, it cannot at the same time express its relations to all that remains to be said.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1072
Finally, when the will has attained to the highest grade of its objectification, that knowledge of the understanding given to brutes to which the senses supply the data, out of which there arises mere perception confined to what is immediately present, does not suffice.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2017
But, what is quite a different thing, there may arise a phenomenon of the human will which is quite impossible in the brute creation, if man altogether lays aside the knowledge of particular things as such which is subordinate to the principle of sufficient reason, and by means of his knowledge of the Ideas sees through the _principium individuationis_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 138
Further, whoever has recognised the principle of sufficient reason as it appears in the presentation of pure space, has exhausted the whole nature of space, which is absolutely nothing more than that possibility of the reciprocal determination of its parts by each other, which is called position. The detailed treatment of this, and the formulation in abstract conceptions of the results which flow from it, so that they may be more conveniently used, is the subject of the science of geometry.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 46
But even if such an endeavour has once succeeded in asserting itself, and the conception of it has thus been introduced, material interests and personal aims will immediately take possession of it, in order to make it their tool or their mask. Accordingly, when Kant brought philosophy again into repute, it had soon to become the tool of political aims from above, and personal aims from below; although, strictly speaking, not philosophy itself, but its ghost, that passes for it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1716
So is it with the steadfast prince of Calderon; with Gretchen in “Faust;” with Hamlet, whom his friend Horatio would willingly follow, but is bade remain a while, and in this harsh world draw his breath in pain, to tell the story of Hamlet, and clear his memory; so also is it with the Maid of Orleans, the Bride of Messina; they all die purified by suffering, _i.e._, after the will to live which was formerly in them is dead.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2673
But if a human being was ever restrained from committing suicide by purely moral motives, the inmost meaning of this self-conquest (in whatever ideas his reason may have clothed it) was this: “I will not shun suffering, in order that it may help to put an end to the will to live, whose manifestation is so wretched, by so strengthening the knowledge of the real nature of the world which is already beginning to dawn upon me, that it may become the final quieter of my will, and may free me for ever.”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2253
Since the medium in which the motives lie is knowledge, I can only accomplish this by falsifying his knowledge, and this is the _lie_. The lie always aims at influencing another’s will, not merely his knowledge, for itself and as such, but only as a means, so far as it determines his will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1500
Now that all these parts are in the proper fashion subordinate to the whole, and co-ordinate to each other, that they all work together harmoniously for the expression of the whole, nothing superfluous, nothing restricted; all these are the rare conditions, whose result is beauty, the completely expressed character of the species. So is it in nature. But how in art? One would suppose that art achieved the beautiful by imitating nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2614
For since the body is the will itself only in the form of objectivity or as manifestation in the world as idea, so long as the body lives, the whole will to live exists potentially, and constantly strives to become actual, and to burn again with all its ardour.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1380
Let us imagine ourselves transported to a very lonely place, with unbroken horizon, under a cloudless sky, trees and plants in the perfectly motionless air, no animals, no men, no running water, the deepest silence. Such surroundings are, as it were, a call to seriousness and contemplation, apart from all will and its cravings; but this is just what imparts to such a scene of desolate stillness a touch of the sublime.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2619
By the term _asceticism_, which I have used so often, I mean in its narrower sense this _intentional_ breaking of the will by the refusal of what is agreeable and the selection of what is disagreeable, the voluntarily chosen life of penance and self-chastisement for the continual mortification of the will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2375
Thus it becomes clear to whoever has attained to the knowledge referred to, that because the will is the in-itself of all phenomena, the misery which is awarded to others and that which he experiences himself, the bad and the evil, always concerns only that one inner being which is everywhere the same, although the phenomena in which the one and the other exhibits itself exist as quite different individuals, and are widely separated by time and space.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1520
Grace presupposes as its condition a true proportion of all the limbs, and a symmetrical, harmonious figure; for complete ease and evident appropriateness of all positions and movements are only possible by means of these. Grace is therefore never without a certain degree of beauty of person. The two, complete and united, are the most distinct manifestation of will at the highest grade of its objectification.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2697
Therefore the character can never partially change, but must, with the consistency of a law of Nature, carry out in the particular the will which it manifests as a whole. But this whole, the character itself, may be completely suppressed or abolished through the change of knowledge referred to above.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1328
§ 38. In the æsthetical mode of contemplation we have found _two inseparable constituent parts_—the knowledge of the object, not as individual thing but as Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form of this whole species of things; and the self-consciousness of the knowing person, not as individual, but as _pure will-less subject of knowledge_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 534
Thus it is only upon such a geometrical basis, that is, by means of an intuition or perception _a priori_, and also under the application of a law of nature, that much can be arrived at by means of syllogisms, for here they are merely like bridges from _one_ sensuous apprehension to others; but it is not so with mere pure syllogistic reasoning in the exclusively logical method.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2628
Many tragedies certainly end by conducting their strong-willed heroes to the point of entire resignation, and then generally the will to live and its manifestation end together, but no representation that is known to me brings what is essential to that change so distinctly before us, free from all that is extraneous, as the part of “Faust” I have referred to.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1276
While to the ordinary man his faculty of knowledge is a lamp to lighten his path, to the man of genius it is the sun which reveals the world. This great diversity in their way of looking at life soon becomes visible in the outward appearance both of the man of genius and of the ordinary mortal. The man in whom genius lives and works is easily distinguished by his glance, which is both keen and steady, and bears the stamp of perception, of contemplation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1045
Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its use. Yet even the human race, as we shall see in the Fourth Book, reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance with itself of the will, and we find _homo homini lupus_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1253
All these, of which the common name is science, proceed according to the principle of sufficient reason in its different forms, and their theme is always the phenomenon, its laws, connections, and the relations which result from them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 280
And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 911
I, on the other hand, consider the inner being, which alone imparts meaning and validity to all real necessity (_i.e._, effect following upon a cause) as its presupposition. In the case of men this is called character; in the case of a stone it is called quality, but it is the same in both. When it is immediately known it is called will. In the stone it has the weakest, and in man the strongest degree of visibility, of objectivity. St.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2759
34 Wenzel, De Structura Cerebri Hominis et Brutorum, 1812, ch. iii.; Cuvier, Leçons d’Anat., comp. leçon 9, arts. 4 and 5; Vic. d’Azyr, Hist. de l’Acad. de Sc. de Paris, 1783, pp. 470 and 483.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2804
But the miscalculation or the original weakness of Christian dogmatics lies—where it is never sought—precisely in that which is withdrawn from all investigation as established and certain. Take this away and the whole of dogmatics is rational; for this dogma destroys theology as it does all other sciences.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1656
And, on the other hand, actions of the highest significance of particular and very eminent individuals are not to be recorded by him if they have no consequences. For his treatment follows the principle of sufficient reason, and apprehends the phenomenon, of which this principle is the form. But the poet comprehends the Idea, the inner nature of man apart from all relations, outside all time, the adequate objectivity of the thing-in-itself, at its highest grade.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 333
It is the universal opinion of all times and of all nations that these manifold and far-reaching achievements spring from a common principle, from that peculiar intellectual power which belongs distinctively to man and which has been called reason, ὁ λογος, το λογιστικον, το λογιμον, _ratio_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 17
In each of these four books it is especially important to guard against losing sight, in the details which must necessarily be discussed, of the principal thought to which they belong, and the progress of the whole exposition. I have thus expressed the first, and like those which follow, unavoidable demand upon the reader, who holds the philosopher in small favour just because he himself is a philosopher.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2531
Why should he now, with such knowledge of the world, assert this very life through constant acts of will, and thereby bind himself ever more closely to it, press it ever more firmly to himself? Thus he who is still involved in the _principium individuationis_, in egoism, only knows particular things and their relation to his own person, and these constantly become new _motives_ of his volition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2624
Then we see the man who has passed through all the increasing degrees of affliction with the most vehement resistance, and is finally brought to the verge of despair, suddenly retire into himself, know himself and the world, change his whole nature, rise above himself and all suffering, as if purified and sanctified by it, in inviolable peace, blessedness, and sublimity, willingly renounce everything he previously desired with all his might, and joyfully embrace death.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 744
Weakness of the nerves shows itself in this, that the impressions which have only such a degree of strength as would usually be sufficient to make them data for the understanding reach the higher degree at which they influence the will, that is to say, give pain or pleasure, though more often pain, which is, however, to some extent deadened and inarticulate, so that not only particular tones and strong light are painful to us, but there ensues a generally unhealthy and hypochondriacal disposition which is not distinctly understood.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2113
But, in fact, such a powerful control of reason over directly felt suffering seldom or never occurs.