The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 9 of 57
License: Public Domain
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1082
The diversity of the (Platonic) Ideas, _i.e._, grades of objectification, the multitude of individuals in which each of these expresses itself, the struggle of forms for matter,—all this does not concern it, but is only the manner of its objectification, and only through this has an indirect relation to it, by virtue of which it belongs to the expression of the nature of will for the idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1741
The (Platonic) Ideas are the adequate objectification of will. To excite or suggest the knowledge of these by means of the representation of particular things (for works of art themselves are always representations of particular things) is the end of all the other arts, which can only be attained by a corresponding change in the knowing subject.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1858
With the animal it is clearly quite the same. The process of nourishing is a constant reproduction; the process of reproduction is a higher power of nourishing. The pleasure which accompanies the act of procreation is a higher power of the agreeableness of the sense of life. On the other hand, excretion, the constant exhalation and throwing off of matter, is the same as that which, at a higher power, death, is the contrary of generation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1653
But history is related to poetry as portrait-painting is related to historical painting; the one gives us the true in the individual, the other the true in the universal; the one has the truth of the phenomenon, and can therefore verify it from the phenomenal, the other has the truth of the Idea, which can be found in no particular phenomenon, but yet speaks to us from them all.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 416
But concepts in general only exist after experience of ideas of perception, and as their whole nature consists in their relation to these, it is clear that they presuppose them. No special content, however, is presupposed, but merely the existence of a content generally, and so logic as a whole may fairly pass for pure rational science.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 938
As such, it is groundless, _i.e._, it lies outside the chain of causes and outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason in general, and is philosophically known as the immediate objectivity of will, which is the “in-itself” of the whole of nature; but in etiology, which in this reference is physics, it is set down as an original force, _i.e._, a _qualitas occulta_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 983
This is the will itself, to which the principle of sufficient reason has not application, and which is therefore groundless. Nothing in the world has a sufficient cause of its existence generally, but only a cause of existence just here and just now. That a stone exhibits now gravity, now rigidity, now electricity, now chemical qualities, depends upon causes, upon impressions upon it from without, and is to be explained from these.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1765
On the other hand, the _Allegro maestoso_, in elaborate movements, long passages, and wide deviations, signifies a greater, nobler effort towards a more distant end, and its final attainment. The _Adagio_ speaks of the pain of a great and noble effort which despises all trifling happiness. But how wonderful is the effect of the _minor_ and _major_!
The World as Will and Idea, passage 182
To dispute about its reality can only occur to a mind perverted by over-subtilty, and such discussion always arises from a false application of the principle of sufficient reason, which binds all ideas together of whatever kind they may be, but by no means connects them with the subject, nor yet with a something which is neither subject nor object, but only the ground of the object; an absurdity, for only objects can be and always are the ground of objects.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1521
It was mentioned above that in order rightly to portray man, it is necessary to separate the character of the species from that of the individual, so that to a certain extent every man expresses an Idea peculiar to himself, as was said in the last book. Therefore the arts whose aim is the representation of the Idea of man, have as their problem, not only beauty, the character of the species, but also the character of the individual, which is called, _par excellence_, _character_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1931
Therefore, as was said in the Second Book, every one regards himself _a priori_ (_i.e._, here in this original feeling) as free in his individual actions, in the sense that in every given case every action is possible for him, and he only recognises _a posteriori_ from experience and reflection upon experience that his actions take place with absolute necessity from the coincidence of his character with his motives.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1987
I may be misled by too good an opinion of others, or want of knowledge of the relative value of the good things of life, or some abstract dogma in which I have since lost faith, and thus I may act less egotistically than is in keeping with my character, and lay up for myself repentance of another kind. Thus repentance is always corrected knowledge of the relation of an act to its special intention.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1538
I cannot but wonder that such thoughtful and acute men should laboriously bring far-fetched and insufficient reasons, should resort to psychological and physiological arguments, to explain a matter the reason of which lies so near at hand, and is obvious at once to the unprejudiced; and especially I wonder that Lessing, who came so near the true explanation, should yet have entirely missed the real point.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1364
This quality belongs pre-eminently to natural beauty, which thus affords even to the most insensible at least a fleeting æsthetic satisfaction: indeed it is so remarkable how especially the vegetable world invites æsthetic observation, and, as it were, presses itself upon it, that one might say, that these advances are connected with the fact that these organisms, unlike the bodies of animals, are not themselves immediate objects of knowledge, and therefore require the assistance of a foreign intelligent individual in order to rise out of the world of blind will and enter the world of idea, and that thus they long, as it were, for this entrance, that they may attain at least indirectly what is denied them directly.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1505
That we all recognise human beauty when we see it, but that in the true artist this takes place with such clearness that he shows it as he has never seen it, and surpasses nature in his representation; this is only possible because _we ourselves are_ the will whose adequate objectification at its highest grade is here to be judged and discovered. Thus alone have we in fact an anticipation of that which nature (which is just the will that constitutes our own being) strives to express.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2738
Therefore we shall by no means evade the consequence, that with the free denial, the surrender of the will, all those phenomena are also abolished; that constant strain and effort without end and without rest at all the grades of objectivity, in which and through which the world consists; the multifarious forms succeeding each other in gradation; the whole manifestation of the will; and, finally, also the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject and object; all are abolished.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2491
He is now free from the perversity with which the will to live, not recognising itself, here in one individual enjoys a fleeting and precarious pleasure, and there in another pays for it with suffering and starvation, and thus both inflicts and endures misery, not knowing that, like Thyestes, it eagerly devours its own flesh; and then, on the one hand, laments its undeserved suffering, and on the other hand transgresses without fear of Nemesis, always merely because, involved in the _principium individuationis_, thus generally in the kind of knowledge which is governed by the principle of sufficient reason, it does not recognise itself in the foreign phenomenon, and therefore does not perceive eternal justice.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2012
In a healthy mind, therefore, only deeds oppress the conscience, not wishes and thoughts; for it is only our deeds that hold up to us the mirror of our will. The deed referred to above, that is entirely unconsidered and is really committed in blind passion, is to a certain extent an intermediate thing between the mere wish and the resolve.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1106
But we must now apply what has been said to the teleological consideration of the organism, so far as it concerns its inner design.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1358
In the case of hearing this is to some extent otherwise; sounds can give pain directly, and they may also be sensuously agreeable, directly and without regard to harmony or melody. Touch, as one with the feeling of the whole body, is still more subordinated to this direct influence upon the will; and yet there is such a thing as a sensation of touch which is neither painful nor pleasant. But smells are always either agreeable or disagreeable, and tastes still more so.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1098
This expression must be completed through the actions of the animal, in which its empirical character, common to the whole species, manifests itself, and only then does it become the full revelation of the Idea, a revelation which presupposes the particular organism as its first condition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2583
These preach, besides the purest love, complete resignation, voluntary and absolute poverty, genuine calmness, perfect indifference to all worldly things, dying to our own will and being born again in God, entire forgetting of our own person, and sinking ourselves in the contemplation of God.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 676
It followed from all this that happiness always depends upon the proportion between our claims and what we receive. It is all one whether the quantities thus related be great or small, and the proportion can be established just as well by diminishing the amount of the first as by increasing the amount of the second; and in the same way it also follows that all suffering proceeds from the want of proportion between what we demand and expect and what we get.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2303
On the other hand, will and disposition, merely as such, do not concern the state at all, but only the _deed_ (whether it is merely attempted or carried out), on account of its correlative, the _suffering_ on the part of another. Thus for the state the deed, the event, is the only real; the disposition, the intention, is only investigated so far as the significance of the deed becomes known through it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2635
And these changes in a man are really nothing great or interesting, but that _remarkable, catholic, transcendental change_ in which the whole circle is irreparably broken up and all the laws of psychology become vain and empty when the coat is stripped from the shoulders, or at least turned outside in, and as it were scales fall from a man’s eyes, is such that every one who has breath in his nostrils forsakes father and mother if he can hear or experience something certain about it.”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 358
If it were not a somewhat too pictorial and therefore absurd simile, we might very appropriately call the latter the ground floor, and the former the upper stories of the building of reflection.(13)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 654
In the same way the absence of reason confines the lower animals to the ideas of perception, _i.e._, the real objects which are immediately present to them in time; we, on the contrary, on account of knowledge in the abstract, comprehend not only the narrow actual present, but also the whole past and future, and the wide sphere of the possible; we view life freely on all its sides, and go far beyond the present and the actual.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 378
The individual case coming under these laws is determined in accordance with this general knowledge, which is valid once for all; because such application of the general principle is far easier than the exhaustive investigation of the particular case; for the general abstract knowledge which has once been obtained is always more within our reach than the empirical investigation of the particular case. With logic, however, it is just the other way.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2285
They are a fixed point in the scale of the very different degrees of strength with which the will to live asserts itself in human individuals, like the freezing-point on the thermometer; the point at which the assertion of one’s own will becomes the denial of the will of another, _i.e._, specifies through wrong-doing the degree of its intensity, combined with the degree in which knowledge is involved in the _principium individuationis_ (which is the form of all knowledge that is subject to the will).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1159
Second Aspect. The Idea Independent Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object Of Art.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2788
79 Observe, in passing, that what gives every positive system of religion its great strength, the point of contact through which it takes possession of the soul, is entirely its ethical side. Not, however, the ethical side directly as such, but as it appears firmly united and interwoven with the element of mythical dogma which is present in every system of religion, and as intelligible only by means of this.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2004
This is why, in great mental anguish, men tear their hair, beat their breasts, lacerate their faces, or roll on the floor, for all these are in reality only violent means of diverting the mind from an unbearable thought. Just because mental pain, being much greater, makes us insensible to physical pain, suicide is very easy to the person who is in despair, or who is consumed by morbid depression, even though formerly, in comfortable circumstances, he recoiled at the thought of it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2400
We sometimes see a man so deeply moved by a great injury which he has experienced, or, it may be, only witnessed, that he deliberately and irretrievably stakes his own life in order to take vengeance on the perpetrator of that wrong. We see him seek for some mighty oppressor through long years, murder him at last, and then himself die on the scaffold, as he had foreseen, and often, it may be, did not seek to avoid, for his life had value for him only as a means of vengeance.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 832
I call a _cause_, in the narrowest sense of the word, that state of matter, which, while it introduces another state with necessity, yet suffers just as great a change itself as that which it causes; which is expressed in the rule, “action and reaction are equal.” Further, in the case of what is properly speaking a cause, the effect increases directly in proportion to the cause, and therefore also the reaction.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1547
For shrieking does far more injury to the expression and beauty of the whole than music, which at the most only occupies the hands and arms, and is to be looked upon as an occupation characteristic of the person; indeed thus far it may quite rightly be painted, as long as it demands no violent movement of the body, or distortion of the mouth: for example, St. Cecilia at the organ, Raphael’s violin-player in the Sciarra Gallery at Rome, and others.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 890
Supposing, then, that this were possible, the whole world would be derived from the subject, and in fact, that would be accomplished which Fichte wanted to _seem_ to accomplish by his empty bombast. But it is not possible: phantasies, sophisms, castles in the air, have been constructed in this way, but science never. The many and multifarious phenomena in nature have been successfully referred to particular original forces, and as often as this has been done, a real advance has been made.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1370
If a single real act of will were to come into consciousness, through actual personal pressure and danger from the object, then the individual will thus actually influenced would at once gain the upper hand, the peace of contemplation would become impossible, the impression of the sublime would be lost, because it yields to the anxiety, in which the effort of the individual to right itself has sunk every other thought.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1885
Whoever carefully considers this peculiarity of human character will see that the psychological explanations of it, from habit and acquiescence in the inevitable, are by no means sufficient, and that its true explanation lies in the deeper ground we have given.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2486
This distinction is so great in the eyes of many that the suffering of others is a direct pleasure to the wicked and a welcome means of happiness to the unjust. The merely just man is content not to cause it; and, in general, most men know and are acquainted with innumerable sufferings of others in their vicinity, but do not determine to mitigate them, because to do so would involve some self-denial on their part.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2544
The Masters certify to us that all creatures are made for the sake of man. This is proved in all created things, by the fact that the one makes the use of the other; the ox makes use of the grass, the fish of the water, the bird of the air, the wild beast of the forest. Thus, all created things become of use to the good man.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1694
As specially adapted for this end I shall recommend only a few: “The Shepherd’s Lament,” “Welcome and Farewell,” “To the Moon,” “On the Lake,” “Autumn;” also the songs in the “Wunderhorn” are excellent examples; particularly the one which begins, “O Bremen, I must now leave thee.” As a comical and happy parody of the lyrical character a song of Voss strikes me as remarkable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2423
If a man is always disposed to do _wrong_ whenever the opportunity presents itself, and there is no external power to restrain him, we call him _bad_. According to our doctrine of wrong, this means that such a man does not merely assert the will to live as it appears in his own body, but in this assertion goes so far that he denies the will which appears in other individuals.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 245
The same false application of the laws of atmospheric perspective leads us to suppose that very high mountains, whose summits alone are visible in pure transparent air, are much nearer than they really are, and therefore not so high as they are; for example, Mont Blanc seen from Salenche. All such illusions are immediately present to us as perceptions, and cannot be dispelled by any arguments of the reason.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1958
The will indeed came to be regarded as an act of thought, and to be identified with the judgment, especially by Descartes and Spinoza. According to this doctrine every man must become what he is only through his knowledge; he must enter the world as a moral cipher come to know the things in it, and thereupon determine to be this or that, to act thus or thus, and may also through new knowledge achieve a new course of action, that is to say, become another person.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 429
With concepts, therefore, we are already at a one-sided point of view; but from such a point of view what is near appears distinct and is set down as positive, what is farther off becomes mixed up and is soon regarded as merely negative.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2262
The deep horror which is always excited by cunning, faithlessness, and treachery rests on the fact that good faith and honesty are the bond which externally binds into a unity the will which has been broken up into the multiplicity of individuals, and thereby limits the consequences of the egoism which results from that dispersion. Faithlessness and treachery break this outward bond asunder, and thus give boundless scope to the consequences of egoism.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2785
74 Thus the basis of natural right of property does not require the assumption of two grounds of right beside each other, that based on _detention_ and that based on _formation_; but the latter is itself sufficient. Only the name _formation_ is not very suitable, for the spending of any labour upon a thing does not need to be a forming or fashioning of it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2
The style of “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung” is sometimes loose and involved, as is so often the case in German philosophical treatises. The translation of the book has consequently been a matter of no little difficulty. It was found that extensive alteration of the long and occasionally involved sentences, however likely to prove conducive to a satisfactory English style, tended not only to obliterate the form of the original but even to imperil the meaning.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1690
Besides this, however, and along with it, by the sight of surrounding nature, the singer becomes conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-less knowing, whose unbroken blissful peace now appears, in contrast to the stress of desire which is always restricted and always needy. The feeling of this contrast, this alternation, is really what the lyric as a whole expresses, and what principally constitutes the lyrical state of mind.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1978
As ignorance of actually existing circumstances robs them of their influence, so, on the other hand, entirely imaginary circumstances may act as if they were real, not only in the case of a particular deception, but also in general and continuously.