Overcoming the Will to Live: An Introduction to Schopenhauer
Part 2

Portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer – Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, 1815

4,050 words

Part 1

What “Will” Is

In our last installment we began to discuss Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, and we covered, in essence, the “first half” of the case he makes: we discussed why the world is “representation.” Like Kant, who was a major influence on him, Schopenhauer holds that we only know a world of objects as it appears to us. All objects appear to us “within” subjectivity, and we cannot somehow get outside of subjective experience (our experience of “representations,” Vorstellungen) to know things as they “really” are.

While Kant had argued for the existence of multiple innate mental categories that structure our experience of the world, Schopenhauer boils this down to only one: the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) which holds that for everything there is a sufficient reason, sufficient to make it be or exist, or be the way it is. Belief in the PSR is innate and our minds are “programmed” to think in terms of it. It is by means of the PSR that we make sense out of appearances, but it is illegitimate to apply the PSR beyond the realm of what we experience (as theologians do, for example, when they posit God as a sufficient reason for the universe).

So much for why the world we experience is representation. Now we must turn to why it is will (Wille), a thesis Schopenhauer initially explores in Division Two of the text: “The World As Will, First Aspect.”

We often believe that science gives us the ultimate answers; that it peers into the inner nature of things and gives us the truth about them. But Schopenhauer says that this is quite false. Instead, science simply is a systematic application of the PSR. It deals with the world as it appears to us – via the senses aided or unaided. It may infer to forces or entities that are unseen by us, but this is only so that it may give a “reliable statement of the rule by which their phenomena appear.”[1] In other words, everything is somehow referred back to the phenomenal world.

Science can never get behind or outside the world of phenomena or representation. If it tries to do so, it makes the mistake of applying the PSR to that to which it cannot be applied: in Kantian language, things as they are in themselves, or “the thing-in-itself.” Schopenhauer identifies this “in-itselfness” of things with their “inner nature.” This is a questionable interpretation of what Kant meant by “things as they are in themselves,” but let us leave that issue aside for the moment.

Schopenhauer says that if we wish to know the inner nature of things it is obvious that we cannot get to it from without: from studying things and asking “what is their cause?” When he says this, he italicizes “from without,” just as I have done. The suggestion is that we may be able to get to the thing-in-itself from within – from within ourselves, he will go on to say. But how? In answering this question, Schopenhauer begins with the claim that Kant has left something out of his account of the structure of experience, something of absolutely crucial importance: our experience of our own bodies. The importance of this omission, according to Schopenhauer, is that our own bodies are given to us in a way radically different from how other bodies are given in space-time.

I have no internal awareness of other things. I am aware of the bottle of water standing next to my keyboard. I experience it in space-time, but I experience it “from without.” In other words, I cannot somehow get inside the bottle to know “what it is like to be a bottle.” And this is the case with every object that we represent to subjectivity, with one obvious exception: I know my body “from the inside.”

Now, there are actually two ways in which I know my body. One way is just exactly the same way I know other bodies in space-time. For example, I can see my hands moving on the keyboard, given to me visually in exactly the same way the bottle is. I can also hear the sounds my hands make. I can touch my right hand with my left hand and feel a rough spot on the former. I can use all my senses to be aware of my body, in just the same way I am aware of other bodies.

But I can also know my body on the inside in an immediate fashion (i.e., not mediated by the five senses, through which I am aware of external objects). Schopenhauer calls the body, therefore, the immediate object. It is the only immediate object. Further, Schopenhauer claims that known immediately, or on the inside, the body is will.

Here is an example: My hand is lying on the desk, and I raise it. I experience this as what I call an “act of will.” However, by “will” or willing Schopenhauer does not mean a conscious intention that precedes the act. Instead, he is referring to the mysterious power that makes the body move. Why is it mysterious? Let’s say I do deliberately, mentally intend to raise my hand. But how do I actually raise it? A physiologist can tell us a great deal about bones and muscles and sinews and electrical discharges but this does not remove the mystery.

How do I, myself do all this? Think about that. This mysterious power of the self to move the body is what Schopenhauer means by will. Now, from the outside someone just sees me move my hand. But on the inside I experience myself as doing this. This is willing. From the outside, I experience (or someone else experiences) my body as just another physical object. But on the inside I experience it as will. Therefore, we can say – from the inside – that every act of the body is an act of the will. Indeed, Schopenhauer goes so far as to say that the body is “objectified will.” The body can be understood to be, in a certain sense, the will’s “expression.” It is how will “operates”; its tool.

The next step in Schopenhauer’s argument involves spelling out the implications of what it means for us to know the will immediately. To say that I know the will immediately means that I know the identity of will and body directly, from the inside, without something else mediating this knowledge to me. Again, there is nothing else in experience that I can know in this way.

As a result, Schopenhauer claims I know one thing as it is in itself: I know my body as it is in itself. And what is my body in itself? Again, I experience it as will. That is the inner nature of our bodies. Therefore, we know the identity of at least one thing-in-itself: my body in-itself is will.

Let’s now put this in somewhat more technical language. In the terminology of Kant, I know my body “on the outside” as an object in space and time by means of the a priori categories of the understanding. But “on the inside” I have a direct experience of my willing, unmediated by those categories. This is our unique access to ourselves as we are in ourselves, not as phenomenal object.

In the language of Schopenhauer’s modification of Kant, our realization that our body in itself is will does not fit into any of the four types of sufficient reasons we talked about last time. We have not inferred to will as being the cause of a physical effect. Schopenhauer does not claim that the will causes bodily acts, as if the will were some distinct faculty or organ in our minds or bodies. Rather, will just is the acting body (and the body is always in act) as known from the inside. Further, will is obviously not a mathematical justification, nor is it the motive of an act, nor is it a logical implication.

However you might want to put it, we have not arrived at a realization of the will through the understanding and its PSR. Therefore, will is not phenomenal. What we experience as will is not a representation that somehow corresponds to a thing-in-itself “out there.” We know and experience will directly. This is a special type of direct knowing unlike any other.

We imagine that this will that we know ourselves to be is “ours”; that somehow we possess will. But Schopenhauer disagrees. We are only under the illusion that we move our bodies and act freely. We say that we raise our hands in order to defend ourselves and that we open our mouths in order to eat. And from the inside it really looks to us like we are doing this: we are willing. But the real truth is that we do these things because we must. We are under the control of drives that move us. Our doing, our will does not really belong to us – we only imagine it does. We do not have will, it has us.

One of Schopenhauer’s most insightful observations is that we think ourselves a priori free, but a posteriori determined. What he means by this is that we go through life with the preconception that we are free. When the subject comes up – for example, in philosophy class – we insist that we are free and that nothing could be more obvious. Indeed, we are offended by the very suggestion that we might be unfree or that our actions are determined.

And yet, when we look back at our actions and experiences, we always have some explanation for why we had to act the way that we did. Why was I testy with the waiter? Because I’m hypoglycemic and I hadn’t eaten in several hours. Why did I wear those awful baggy pants? Peer pressure. Why did I become an alcoholic? Because my father was an alcoholic. Why did I make that inappropriate remark at work? Because I’m autistic (or: because my “sex drive” is too high).

It’s not just a simple matter of “making excuses”: in every case where we are asked, or ask ourselves, to explain why we did what we did we always explain ourselves by reference to something that caused our behavior. Never, ever do we say “there was no cause; I just acted freely.” Two conflicting self-conceptions, alas, dwell in our breasts: the yarn that we spin about being “free” – and the explanations we give about our actions after the fact, all of which assume that they are “caused” and therefore unfree. Schopenhauer’s position here is very much in keeping with Kant, who held that while we have no experience of being free, we are nevertheless so constituted as to believe that we are.

The result of these reflections is that Schopenhauer’s “will” is most definitely not “free will.” We are actually under the control of will. What, then, is this will? It is a kind of force or power greater than our individual personality. We are being carried along by it, though we foolishly imagine we are in control.

Why the World is Will

Now that we have some sense of what Schopenhauer means by “will,” we must take the next major step in his argument. Schopenhauer will argue that will is not just my inner nature alone, it is the inner nature of all things. The innermost being of all that exists is this mysterious, striving force. Everything, in itself, is will; the thing-in-itself is will. He writes: “The reader who with me has gained this conviction [of the will as our innermost being], will find that of itself it will become the key to the knowledge of the innermost being of the whole of nature.”[2]

But how can he say this? First, Schopenhauer makes the claim that there cannot be multiple things in themselves. The reason for this is that things are differentiated – i.e., things are multiple – in virtue of space-time, which Schopenhauer calls the principium individuationis (principle of individuation). What makes things multiple is that they have different locations in space and time. On the desk in front of me are a number of objects: my laptop, a water bottle, a pen, a paperclip dispenser, etc. I experience the desk as covered with things (plural) precisely through the fact that they occupy different positions in space (and in time: now the bottle is on the desk, in an hour it will be in the trash).

Things appear to us as a plurality in virtue of space-time. But the thing-in-itself is beyond space and time and thus beyond appearances. There is therefore no basis for saying there are many things in themselves. Beyond the realm of phenomenal representations, we are justified only in speaking about the thing-in-itself. Thus, if we know ourselves in ourselves as will then we know the thing in itself, and can infer that the “in itself” of all things appearing to us in space and time is will.

The me in myself is will, therefore, the thing in itself is will. The innermost being of everything is will. The me in myself is identical to the desk in itself, the bottle in itself, the paperclip in itself. All is will. Stones-in-themselves, trees-in-themselves, squirrels-in-themselves are all one thing: will. To repeat, from our knowledge that our inner nature is will, we can infer that the inner nature of everything is will. Everything that exists is simply a fleeting expression of this mysterious, striving force.

Thus, Schopenhauer can claim that “The will reveals itself just as completely and just as much in one oak as in millions.”[3] The being, the “inner nature,” of one oak tree is the will, and thus the being of all oak trees. And the tree, in its stretching itself upwards to the heavens and its perpetual struggle to live and grow and repair, displays itself as an expression of will. We see this inner nature whole and complete in a single tree. Examining a million others would add nothing to our knowledge of the inner being of this sort of life form. Schopenhauer says that “the inner being itself is present whole and undivided in everything in nature.”[4]

He writes, further, that if “a single being were entirely annihilated the whole world would inevitably be destroyed with it.”^[v] If a single being – an oak tree, say – were truly and completely annihilated this would mean that both the phenomenal representation of the tree and its inner being would be destroyed. But, as we have seen, the inner being of one tree is the inner being of all things. Thus, if one oak tree were entirely annihilated, the inner being of all things would be annihilated, and thus the whole world would disappear.

This sort of “annihilation” of the oak tree is not the same thing as what we would refer to as the death of the tree. It is inevitable that all things eventually die (non-living things, similarly, are swept away by being crushed, broken, or transformed into other things). But “death” is merely the process of one manifestation of the will breaking down and making way for another. Indeed, in nature this very often means one living thing being killed and eaten by another. The lion eats the gazelle and the gazelle substance is transformed into the lion substance. Even a corpse buried in the earth becomes food for the worms. Death is thus ultimately the process by which will generates itself in new forms, replacing earlier forms.

Now, it is quite natural at this point for us to demand more information. What is will striving after? Why does it exist? However, these are illegitimate questions, for they stem from the PSR – the principle that holds that everything must have an explanation or a sufficient reason. But the PSR is applicable only to phenomena, not to the thing in itself. As a result, we can say nothing about why will exists or what it wants. All we know is that it is, it strives, without a purpose, and that we are in its grip all our lives.

Will as thing-in-itself displays itself as the various phenomena or representations we encounter in experience. Everything that exists, and every aspect of what exists, are just concretizations of the infinite, striving will to live (even inanimate things). The mouth is objectified hunger. The hands are objectified grasping or repelling. The genitals are objectified sex urge – and so forth. Why does will express itself thus? Again, for Schopenhauer there is no answer to this question at all.

Why Schopenhauer’s Argument Fails

Let us now step back and consider the argument thus far, with a critical eye. The points we have covered so far are the foundation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy; all his other claims flow from these basic positions. As we have seen, he presents his philosophy as a development of Kant’s. Yet he goes beyond Kant in one very radical way: while Kant had held that the thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich) is unknowable, Schopenhauer declares that he does know the thing-in-itself – indeed, that we all know it – and that it is will. This would be a major advance upon Kant, if the argument held up. Unfortunately, it does not, and the reason for this is that Schopenhauer has misunderstood Kant in a couple of basic ways.

Schopenhauer construes the thing-in-itself as the “inner nature” of something. We seem to be barred from knowing that nature because we only know things “from the outside.” But this misunderstands Kant. Kant does not conceive the thing-in-itself as the inner “essence” of something. Rather, things as they are in themselves are simply things insofar as they do not appear to me. For Kant, all empirical objects have two aspects. To take an example, there is the bottle as it appears to me (the phenomenal bottle), and there is the bottle as it is apart from or independent of my experience, the bottle as it is in itself.

By definition, I cannot experience the bottle in itself, but I can think that it is. Otherwise, Kant maintains, we would land in the absurd consequence of claiming that there is appearance (phenomenon) without anything appears! Speaking about thing-in-themselves is thus a way in which Kant emphasizes the “objectivity” of the object: it has an existence beyond my experience. I only know the bottle as it appears to me, but of course there is also this other aspect to the bottle – the bottle as it is in itself – which transcends my experience. It is in this way that Kant steers clear of subjective idealism. The thing-in-itself is thus simply the thing considered insofar as it does not appear. It is not the “inner nature” or “essence” of things.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer is mistaken to say that Kant simply ignores our internal experience of ourselves. Although he says little about our experience of our own bodies, Kant does describe time as the “form of internal sense” (with space as the form of external sense), meaning that even our inner thoughts and feelings appear to us in time. However, the major mistake that Schopenhauer makes in this regard is to think that our internal experience of our bodies is knowledge of ourselves as we are in ourselves.

It follows from what we have just said about Kant that my body “in itself” (an sich) would be my body insofar as it does not appear to me. But when Schopenhauer talks about our experience of our own bodies, he is talking about how they appear to us on the inside. This is a very special type of appearance because, of course, my body can only appear to me on the inside; no one else can get inside me to see how my body appears internally. Nevertheless, from my privileged vantage point, the body is still appearing to me. I am not having knowledge of a thing-in-itself, I am simply experiencing another variety of appearance.

And there is every reason to think that this internal experience is mediated by epistemic conditions, as is my experience of external objects. In other words, my internal experience of my body must be given to me (to subjectivity, to the experiencing “I”) by means of certain a priori cognitive structures. Contra Schopenhauer, my internal experience is therefore not immediate. As mentioned above, Kant had already named time as one such epistemic condition through which internal states are given to us (and he had argued that time only exists as, in effect, a “medium” in which appearances appear).

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Thus, when he asserts that knowing ourselves internally means knowing a thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer manages to misunderstand Kantian transcendental idealism in a very fundamental way. Further, the reader will recall that Schopenhauer argues next that in knowing one thing-in-itself we know them all. Again, there can’t be more than one thing-in-itself, because plurality is a function of the phenomenal realm of appearances. This too misunderstands Kant. “Plurality” does figure in Kant’s table of twelve categories, which function behind the scenes so as to structure our experience of objects. But what Schopenhauer misses is that “plurality” is one of a triad, the other members of which are “unity” and “totality” (the three together making up the categories of “quantity”). Thus, it is illegitimate to infer that since appearances are many (i.e., plural) the thing-in-itself must be one (i.e., a unity) since unity is also a category of the understanding, applicable to appearances alone!

At a basic level, if we understand that things in themselves are simply things considered insofar as they do not appear to us, then we have to believe there is a bottle in itself, separate from a paperclip in itself, separate from a laptop in itself, etc. In other words, there is a bottle as it appears to me and a bottle as it is itself; a paperclip as it appears to me and a paperclip as it is in itself, etc. Thus, we have to believe that things in themselves are a plurality. But, strictly speaking, we cannot assert with confidence that they are a plurality, because for Kant the concept of plurality applies only to appearances. However, we also cannot assert that things in themselves are one, since unity is likewise a concept applicable only to appearances.

These misunderstandings of Kant are surprisingly egregious, given Schopenhauer’s intellect and his professed admiration for Kant. And they are fatal to the argument he makes for the will as thing-in-itself. Should we therefore simply dismiss the Schopenhauerian metaphysics? That would be premature, for Schopenhauer’s philosophy could be rescued simply by jettisoning the cumbersome Kantian baggage in which he insists on containing it.

Setting aside all Kantian concepts, Schopenhauer could simply have argued that he experiences his body on the inside as will, construing this term just the same way as before. And he could affirm that he finds himself under the sway of this will, rather than will being his possession or a faculty under his control. Schopenhauer could then appeal to observation of nature as seeming to suggest that other creatures also exhibit will, or can be understood as its expressions. Then he could make the move of arguing, inductively, that all of nature is an expression of will. In fact, he does something very much like this in his 1836 essay On The Will in Nature.

Such an approach would be entirely legitimate. It would put Schopenhauer close to the early Pre-Socratic philosophers, who argued that there is a “one” from which emanate all natural phenomena. It would also put him close to Nietzsche’s approach to justifying the existence of his own “one,” “the will to power,” a concept which was influenced by Schopenhauer. Thus, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is salvageable.

But it could also be argued that this is the least important aspect of his philosophy. More important, some might say, are the lessons about life that Schopenhauer draws from his belief in will. We will begin to look at those lessons in our next installment.

Notes

[1] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), 98. (Henceforth WWR 1.)

[2] WWR 1, 109.

[3] WWR 1, 128.

[4] WWR 1, 129.

[5 WWR 1, 128.