The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 55 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1546
When he was wounded he cried out loudly and wildly, which had a great and admirable effect, for it was exceedingly characteristic and therefore assisted the truth of the representation very much. On the other hand, a painted or sculptured model of a man shrieking, would be much more absurd than the painted music which is censured in Goethe’s Propylaen.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 905
Only by comparison with that which goes on in me if my body performs an action when I am influenced by a motive—only by comparison, I say, with what is the inner nature of my own changes determined by external reasons, can I obtain insight into the way in which these lifeless bodies change under the influence of causes, and so understand what is their inner nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1635
Such a picture will not be regarded as a work of art, but only as a significant symbol, and it makes no claim to pictorial, but only to poetical worth. Such is that beautiful allegorical vignette of Lavater’s, which must be so heartening to every defender of truth: a hand holding a light is stung by a wasp, while gnats are burning themselves in the flame above; underneath is the motto:
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1119
To this unessential belong the detailed events and actions which are the material in which the empirical character shows itself. These are determined by outward circumstances, which present the motives upon which the character reacts according to its nature; and as they may be very different, the outward form of the manifestation of the empirical character, that is, the definite actual or historical form of the course of life, will have to accommodate itself to their influence.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 634
In my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 51, I have shown how in the different sciences the chief guiding clue is one or other form of that principle; and, in fact, perhaps the most appropriate classification of the sciences might be based upon this circumstance. Every explanation arrived at by the help of this clue is, as we have said, merely relative; it explains things in relation to each other, but something which indeed is presupposed is always left unexplained.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1755
Lastly, in the _melody_, in the high, singing, principal voice leading the whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the unbroken significant connection of _one_ thought from beginning to end representing a whole, I recognise the highest grade of the objectification of will, the intellectual life and effort of man.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 386
But it has its real value, in relation to philosophy as a whole, in the inquiry into the nature of knowledge, and indeed of rational and abstract knowledge.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 713
If, however, we surrender ourselves to its teaching, we soon become convinced that etiology cannot afford us the information we chiefly desire, any more than morphology. The latter presents to us innumerable and infinitely varied forms, which are yet related by an unmistakable family likeness. These are for us ideas, and when only treated in this way, they remain always strange to us, and stand before us like hieroglyphics which we do not understand.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 21
However, my disinclination was so great either to quote myself or laboriously to state again in other words what I had already said once in an adequate manner, that I preferred this course, notwithstanding the fact that I might now be able to give the content of that essay a somewhat better expression, chiefly by freeing it from several conceptions which resulted from the excessive influence which the Kantian philosophy had over me at the time, such as—categories, outer and inner sense, and the like.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 234
We find that the manifestation of understanding in animals is sometimes above our expectation, and sometimes below it. On the one hand, we are surprised at the sagacity of the elephant, who, after crossing many bridges during his journey in Europe, once refused to go upon one, because he thought it was not strong enough to bear his weight, though he saw the rest of the party, consisting of men and horses, go upon it as usual.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2414
Like all other things that can come into relation to the will, men who are favourable to the ends which happen to be desired, who further and befriend them, are called good, in the same sense, and always with that relative limitation, which shows itself, for example, in the expression, “I find this good, but you don’t.” Those, however, who are naturally disposed not to hinder the endeavours of others, but rather to assist them, and who are thus consistently helpful, benevolent, friendly, and charitable, are called _good_ men, on account of this relation of their conduct to the will of others in general.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 613
In other respects, the law of causality, or the principle of sufficient reason of change, which guides empirical knowledge, is in itself just as certain as the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason which are followed by the _a priori_ sciences referred to above.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 435
Knowledge in the form of sense-perception is valid only of the particular case, extends only to what is nearest, and ends with it, for sensibility and understanding can only comprehend one object at a time. Every enduring, arranged, and planned activity must therefore proceed from principles,—that is, from abstract knowledge, and it must be conducted in accordance with them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1567
The costume alone can here indicate the particular historical case to the learned; but the costume is only of importance to the nominal significance, and is a matter of indifference to the real significance; for the latter knows only the human being as such, not the arbitrary forms. Subjects taken from history have no advantage over those which are taken from mere possibility, and which are therefore to be called, not individual, but merely general.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 650
But what there is to say upon this point has found its place elsewhere in the appendix to this work, where I controvert the existence of the so-called practical reason of Kant, which he (certainly very conveniently) explained as the immediate source of virtue, and as the seat of an absolute (_i.e._, fallen from heaven) imperative.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 996
Every movement, for example, although it is always a manifestation of will, must yet have a cause from which it is to be explained in relation to a particular time and space; that is, not in general in its inner nature, but as a _particular_ phenomenon. In the case of the stone, this is a mechanical cause; in that of the movement of a man, it is a motive; but in no case can it be wanting.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1366
But if these very objects whose significant forms invite us to pure contemplation, have a hostile relation to the human will in general, as it exhibits itself in its objectivity, the human body, if they are opposed to it, so that it is menaced by the irresistible predominance of their power, or sinks into insignificance before their immeasurable greatness; if, nevertheless, the beholder does not direct his attention to this eminently hostile relation to his will, but, although perceiving and recognising it, turns consciously away from it, forcibly detaches himself from his will and its relations, and, giving himself up entirely to knowledge, quietly contemplates those very objects that are so terrible to the will, comprehends only their Idea, which is foreign to all relation, so that he lingers gladly over its contemplation, and is thereby raised above himself, his person, his will, and all will:—in that case he is filled with the sense of the _sublime_, he is in the state of spiritual exaltation, and therefore the object producing such a state is called _sublime_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1257
And this particular thing, which in that stream was a small perishing part, becomes to art the representative of the whole, an equivalent of the endless multitude in space and time. It therefore pauses at this particular thing; the course of time stops; the relations vanish for it; only the essential, the Idea, is its object.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1230
These two are, therefore, in themselves not different, for in themselves they are will, which here knows itself; and multiplicity and difference exist only as the way in which this knowledge comes to the will, _i.e._, only in the phenomenon, on account of its form, the principle of sufficient reason.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1640
Therefore, as a poetical allegory, the Revelation of John stands much in the same position as the reliefs with _Magnus Deus sol Mithra_, which are still constantly being explained.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1681
The representation of the Idea of man, which is the work of the poet, may be performed, so that what is represented is also the representer. This is the case in lyrical poetry, in songs, properly so called, in which the poet only perceives vividly his own state and describes it. Thus a certain subjectivity is essential to this kind of poetry from the nature of its object.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 381
It is easier, because, while in the case of all other sciences, the general rule is more within our reach than the investigation of the particular case taken by itself; with the use of reason, on the contrary, its necessary procedure in a given case is always more within our reach than the general rule abstracted from it; for that which thinks in us is reason itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1073
That complicated, many-sided, imaginative being, man, with his many needs, and exposed as he is to innumerable dangers, must, in order to exist, be lighted by a double knowledge; a higher power, as it were, of perceptive knowledge must be given him, and also reason, as the faculty of framing abstract conceptions.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1083
As the magic-lantern shows many different pictures, which are all made visible by one and the same light, so in all the multifarious phenomena which fill the world together or throng after each other as events, only _one will_ manifests itself, of which everything is the visibility, the objectivity, and which remains unmoved in the midst of this change; it alone is thing-in-itself; all objects are manifestations, or, to speak the language of Kant, phenomena.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2395
It seems to me that what expresses itself here is nothing but the consciousness of that eternal justice, which is, nevertheless, at once misunderstood and falsified by the unenlightened mind, for, involved in the _principium individuationis_, it produces an amphiboly of the concepts and demands from the phenomenon what only belongs to the thing in itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2768
47 I also recommend the perusal of what Spinoza says in his Ethics (Book II., Prop. 40, Schol. 2, and Book V., Props. 25-38), concerning the _cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva_, in illustration of the kind of knowledge we are considering, and very specially Prop. 29, Schol.; prop. 36, Schol., and Prop. 38, Demonst. et Schol.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 624
(1.) The illusion of the senses (deception of the understanding) induces error (deception of the reason); for example, if one mistakes a painting for an alto-relief, and actually takes it for such; the error results from a conclusion from the following major premise: “If dark grey passes regularly through all shades to white; the cause is _always_ the light, which strikes differently upon projections and depressions, _ergo_—.” (2.) “If there is no money in my safe, the cause is _always_ that my servant has got a key for it: _ergo_—.” (3.) “If a ray of sunlight, broken through a prism, _i.e._, bent up or down, appears as a coloured band instead of round and white as before, the cause must always be that light consists of homogeneous rays, differently coloured and refrangible to different degrees, which, when forced asunder on account of the difference of their refrangibility, give an elongated and variously-coloured spectrum: _ergo—bibamus!_”—It must be possible to trace every error to such a conclusion, drawn from a major premise which is often only falsely generalised, hypothetical, and founded on the assumption that some particular cause is that of a certain effect.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1698
“I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling.”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1077
Agamemnon slays his daughter; a miser dispenses alms, out of pure egotism, in the hope that he will some day receive an hundred-fold; and so on.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 917
This is only in keeping with the dead view of nature which prevailed at Euler’s time as the correlative of the immaterial soul. It is only worth noticing because of its bearing upon the fundamental truth established by me, which even at that time this fine intellect saw glimmering in the distance. He hastened to turn in time, and then, in his anxiety at seeing all the prevalent fundamental views endangered, he sought safety in the old and already exploded absurdities.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 910
The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will. In the passage referred to, Spinoza had in view the necessity with which the stone flies, and he rightly desires to transfer this necessity to that of the particular act of will of a person.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 891
Several forces and qualities, which were at first regarded as different, have been derived from each other, and thus their number has been curtailed.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2382
The direct exposition we find in the Vedas, the fruit of the highest human knowledge and wisdom, the kernel of which has at last reached us in the Upanishads as the greatest gift of this century.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1109
In accordance with this, we now recognise these different parts and functions of the organism as related to each other reciprocally as means and end, but the organism itself as the final end of all.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1079
Yet we shall see in the Third Book how in certain individual men knowledge can deliver itself from this bondage, throw off its yoke, and, free from all the aims of will, exist purely for itself, simply as a clear mirror of the world, which is the source of art.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1939
In the year 1840 I dealt with the important chapter on the freedom of the will, thoroughly and in detail, in my crowned prize-essay upon the subject, and exposed the reason of the delusion which led men to imagine that they found an empirically given absolute freedom of the will, that is to say, a _liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_, as a fact in self-consciousness; for the question propounded for the essay was with great insight directed to this point.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 749
The identity of the will and the body, of which we have now given a cursory explanation, can only be proved in the manner we have adopted here. We have proved this identity for the first time, and shall do so more and more fully in the course of this work. By “proved” we mean raised from the immediate consciousness, from knowledge in the concrete to abstract knowledge of the reason, or carried over into abstract knowledge.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1651
The latter function, however, is by no means entirely denied them; but as often as it is the nature of mankind itself that discloses itself to us in history or in our own experience, we have comprehended our experience, and the historian has comprehended history, with artistic eyes, poetically, _i.e._, according to the Idea, not the phenomenon, in its inner nature, not in its relations.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1870
That which, empirically apprehended, is the most transitory of all, presents itself to the metaphysical vision, which sees beyond the forms of empirical perception, as that which alone endures, the _nunc stans_ of the schoolmen. The source and the supporter of its content is the will to live or the thing-in-itself,—which we are.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1382
The scene we have sketched affords us, then, an example of the sublime in a low degree, for in it, with the state of pure knowing in its peace and all-sufficiency, there is mingled, by way of contrast, the recollection of the dependence and poverty of the will which stands in need of constant action. This is the species of the sublime for which the sight of the boundless prairies of the interior of North America is celebrated.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1435
Nam plurimis ex iis, qui Platonem secuti sunt, minime placuit, arte factorum ideas esse, ut clypei atque lyræ; neque rursus eorum, quæ prætor naturam, ut febris et choleræ, neque particularium, ceu Socratis et Platonis; neque etiam rerum vilium, veluti sordium et festucæ; neque relationum, ut majoris et excedentis: esse namque ideas intellectiones dei æternas, ac seipsis perfectas_).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 338
xi., §§ 10 and 11), very rightly refers to general concepts as the characteristic which distinguishes man from the brutes, and Leibnitz quotes this with full approval in the “Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humaine” (Book II., ch. xi., §§ 10 and 11.) But when Locke (in Book IV., ch.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2795
This at once determines the extent of the use man may make of the powers of the brutes without wrong; a limit, however, which is often transgressed, especially in the case of beasts of burden and dogs used in the chase; to which the activity of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals is principally devoted. In my opinion, that right does not extend to vivisection, particularly of the higher animals.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1965
This we entirely agree with; but certainly the consequences which followed from the union of this perfectly correct insight with the dogmas that already existed in Jewish theology, and which now gave rise to the great difficulty, the Gordian knot upon which most of the controversies of the Church turned, I do not undertake to defend, for even the Apostle Paul scarcely succeeded in doing so by means of his simile of the potter’s vessels which he invented for the purpose, for the result he finally arrived at was nothing else than this:—
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2438
Now, whoever remembers and has present in his mind the content of the preceding portion of this Fourth Book, and especially the truth explained at the beginning of it, that life itself is always assured to the will to live, as its mere copy or mirror, and also the exposition of eternal justice, will find that the sting of conscience can have no other meaning than the following, _i.e._, its content, abstractly expressed, is what follows, in which two parts are distinguished, which again, however, entirely coincide, and must be thought as completely united.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1663
And as we compared history to portrait-painting, in contradistinction to poetry, which corresponds to historical painting, we find that Winckelmann’s maxim, that the portrait ought to be the ideal of the individual, was followed by the ancient historians, for they represent the individual in such a way as to bring out that side of the Idea of man which is expressed in it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 897
That which in the case of man is the unfathomable character which is presupposed in every explanation of his actions from motives is, in the case of every unorganised body, its definitive quality—the mode of its action, the manifestations of which are occasioned by impressions from without, while it itself, on the contrary, is determined by nothing outside itself, and thus is also inexplicable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 327
The motive that overcomes, in that it decides the question at issue, is the deliberate determinant of the will, and is a sure indication of its character. The brute, on the other hand, is determined by the present impression; only the fear of present compulsion can constrain its desires, until at last this fear has become custom, and as such continues to determine it; this is called training. The brute feels and perceives; man, in addition to this, _thinks_ and _knows_: both _will_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 690
But although it may to a certain extent be possible to attain that end through the application of reason, and through a purely rational system of ethics, and although experience shows that the happiest men are those purely rational characters commonly called practical philosophers,—and rightly so, because just as the true, that is, the theoretical philosopher carries life into the concept, they carry the concept into life,—yet it is far from the case that perfection can be attained in this way, and that the reason, rightly used, can really free us from the burden and sorrow of life, and lead us to happiness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2073
We may also transfer this terminology to the phenomena of the unconscious world, for though weaker in degree, they are identical in nature. Then we see them involved in constant suffering, and without any continuing happiness. For all effort springs from defect—from discontent with one’s estate—is thus suffering so long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting, rather it is always merely the starting-point of a new effort.