Overcoming the Will to Live: An Introduction to Schopenhauer
Part 4

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All parts here.

Music as Direct Expression of Will

As noted last time, Schopenhauer provides us with a detailed discussion of the different art forms – much too detailed to cover here. But we may note a few of the highlights of his discussion.

Schopenhauer treats song as a subvariety of poetry. Subtract the music to which the song is sung, and what is left is a poem.He states that the subject of most songs is the singer’s (or speaker’s) will. Think of the number of songs that deal, in one way or another, with satisfied or unsatisfied desires – aka satisfied or unsatisfied willing. For example, songs about requited or unrequited love. Songs are often fatalistic, depicting the subject of the song as in thrall to desire or destiny.

Tragedy, Schopenhauer tells us, is the “summit of the poetic art.” Here we realize that he is using the term “poetry” in a broader sense than we normally do. It is fairly obvious why Schopenhauer exalts the tragic form. In tragedies, men are generally undone by destiny – often by a “tragic flaw,” which reveals their enslavement to some desire, and thus to the will. When a man is “undone” by fate, he often renounces his old desires and aims and quits life. The tragedy is thus a very “Schopenhauerian” medium!

Having completed his discussion of the so-called “representational arts,” arts which depict or recreate aspects of reality, Schopenhauer turns to music. This is one of the important and profound sections of The World as Will and Representation. Music was Schopenhauer’s favorite art. As noted in part one, he could read music and play the flute. Music is not a representational art at all. Unlike the other arts, it is not striving to represent specific things or states of affairs, and through them Ideas. (Schopenhauer’s treatment of song focusses entirely on the lyrics of a song, which are representational, and which, as already noted, he regards as a type of poetry.)

Music does not “depict” things; instead, it appeals directly to the emotions. Even where a piece of music has been inspired by something – like Smetana’s The Moldau – the music does not literally depict the thing; it awakens in us the emotions associated with it. Music is also the most peculiarly powerful of the arts, for it has this ability to strongly affect the emotions. The shift from a major chord to a minor chord produces a shift in emotions that can be very powerful. Why? No one knows exactly.

Now, even though music is not representational, we can still say that it is “expressing” something. But what is it expressing? Schopenhauer claims that music expresses the will directly. Recall that, for Schopenhauer, the Ideas are expressions or objectifications of the will. It follows that art that depicts the Ideas – such as poetry or painting – is an expression of an expression of Will. As interpreted by our minds, such art has the power to awaken emotions in us. But music appeals directly to the emotions, with no mental interpretation necessary. It almost feels like emotion itself. Schopenhauer writes that

[…]music does not express this or that particular indefinite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without any accessories, and so also without the motives for them.[1]

Music has the power to instantaneously move us to feel happiness, joy, exhilaration, sadness, fear, confusion, even sexual excitation (listen to Ravel’s Boléro). These are all the things we feel in ourselves when we are tied to will. Therefore, Schopenhauer asserts that music is like a direct copy of the will itself. (Indeed, he goes so far as to say that “we could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will.”[2]) It is thus far more powerful than the other arts. He says, “these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”[3] And Schopenhauer speaks of the composer as follows:

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.[4]

He then goes on to speculate about how different aspects of the architecture of music, like high notes and low, correspond to different forms of the will’s manifestation – in just the same way that he theorized how the different forms of nature constitute grades of will’s manifestation. For example, he says that melody corresponds to the highest grade of will’s objectification: the intellectual life of man. Why? Because melody is to music as plot is to fiction. It is the logos (the order or structure) of music.

Schopenhauer says that music gives us direct insight into things; it seems to reveal their inner nature to us. At one point, many years ago, my commute to work involved driving past a large vacant lot overgrown with tall grass. Every morning, I would find myself stopped in traffic staring at that grass – and every morning I played music in the car. I noticed that if the music was light and cheerful the grass seemed to present itself as an image of benevolent nature.

If, on a different morning, I was listening to music dark and turbulent, the grass would present itself in Schopenhauerean fashion, as an image of the infinite, striving, and remorseless will in nature. Accordingly, Schopenhauer writes that “music makes every picture, indeed every scene from real life and from the world, at once appear in enhanced significance, and this is, of course, all the greater, the more analogous its melody is to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon.”[5]

In Schopenhauer’s time music sometimes accompanied dramatic works – chiefly opera. In our own time, the most familiar use of music in drama is in the cinema. Throughout the entire history of cinema, music has been regarded as an essential component. If one stops and thinks about it, this is a strange convention. Audiences seem to readily accept that an invisible orchestra accompanies the actions of the characters on screen. Yet accept it they do, and whenever they have a chance to watch a film without its music score, they feel strongly that something is missing.

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The purpose of the film score is to cause the audience to feel certain emotions. A good film composer can intuit the emotional subtext in a scene. The music expresses that subtext and, if successful, causes the audience to feel the appropriate emotions. In the following passage, Schopenhauer almost seems to be commenting on film music:

[The] close relation that music has to the true nature of all things can also explain the fact that, when music suitable to any scene, action, event, or environment is played, it seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears to be the most accurate and distinct commentary on it.[6]

To be sure, the dialogue and situations themselves can elicit an emotional response. And there are a small handful of films so powerful that they have needed no music, or music has been minimal. Ordinarily, however, music is an absolutely indispensable component of the emotional experience of cinema.

Near the end of Schopenhauer’s discussion of music he makes a tantalizing suggestion: since music expresses will, the inner being of all things, whoever could truly understand how music is able to produce emotions directly – how it is able to be joy and sorrow – would understand the secret of the universe. He would be in possession of what Schopenhauer calls the “true philosophy.”

Finally, at the very end of the third division of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer says that if we can regard the world free of the bondage of will, it is delightful. In other words, if we can disengage from will and its constant desire to use and manipulate everything, and simply appreciate the beauty and majesty of the world for its own sake, then that world need not entirely be a vale of tears. Art is a greater enhancement, a perfect development of such a perspective and art, he says, may be called “the flower of life.”

Schopenhauer’s Ethics of Pessimism

We now turn to the fourth division of the text: “The World as Will – Second Aspect.” This section opens with a quotation from the Upanishads: “The moment knowledge appeared on the scene, thence arose desire.” Schopenhauer chose this as the epigram for the last major part of The World as Will and Representation because here he is concerned with the issue of how we should live with the knowledge we have so far acquired.

In short, the fourth book is concerned with ethics, with how ought we to live. Schopenhauer begins, then, by telling us that engagement with the world entails desire. And, in true Buddhist fashion, he will go on to tell us that desire entails suffering. What is the answer to this problem, according to the Buddha? It is to end desire. But how do we do this?

In the first few pages, Schopenhauer tells us that his “ethics” will not be a set of principles or rules, like the Kantian ethics. And in a brilliant passage he identifies the fallacy of philosophical ethics: it is just as foolish to think that our moral philosophies will create virtuous men, as it is to think that our aesthetics will produce great artists. Both aesthetics and ethics deal with values: aesthetics with aesthetic values (beauty, etc.) and ethics with moral values. The former can give us certain principles for identifying excellence in art. But no sensible person would think that if Joe Schmoe just memorized those rules it would turn him into a great artist. Why then do we believe that learning moral rules will make men good?

It is in this book that we really reflect on what we have learned in the preceding three books and use this material as a guide to life. What have we learned, in essential terms? That our lives and everything around us is merely a transitory reflection of an eternal power, the will. And we ourselves are tools of the will. Life and all that is desirable in life, all our hopes and wishes and fears, are really ways that we are bound to will and do its bidding. But the following question arises: does knowing this provide us with some form of escape?

In knowing things we can, in a sense, rise above them. For example, even if I, personally, can do nothing to combat the lies spread by those who rule us, I can at least know that the lies are lies. I thus rise above them, for they no longer deceive me. By contrast, the “normie” lives in thrall to those lies (which is why we have such contempt for normies; they lack the insight we have achieved). Does knowing the truth about will free me from its control?

Schopenhauer has already shown us that through aesthetic experience we can momentarily rise above will. But is there some more permanent way? Does mere knowledge provide us with a key? Schopenhauer proceeds to show us that the knowledge we have acquired thus far of the world, and ourselves, can indeed liberate us from some of life’s most vexing problems.

For example, he discusses the will to live and the fear of death. As an expression of will, we strive tirelessly to advance ourselves, in one way or another. Our most primal drive, of course, is for self-preservation. We seek to stave off death for as long as possible, and few things frighten us more. Schopenhauer argues, however, that we can cancel this fear through the realization that though our phenomenal being will be annihilated, as reflections of an eternal being we are eternal ourselves. I leave it to the reader decide if this has alleviated his fear of death.

Schopenhauer also dives into the perennial problem of freedom of the will. Here we run into a terminological difficulty with reading Schopenhauer in translation, for, as noted in an earlier installment, what we mean by “free will” is not what Schopenhauer means by “will.” The infinite, striving, metaphysical will is Wille, in German, whereas Schopenhauer uses Willkür (free choice, or even “arbitrariness”) to mean “free will.” Please keep this distinction in mind in the discussion that follows.

When we ask if the will is free, this question has more than one answer for Schopenhauer. If we mean the metaphysical will (Wille) then, yes, the will is free. In the world of representation, all is determined: there is a sufficient reason for everything. Beyond phenomenal appearances, however, in the world of the will (the thing-in-itself), freedom must exist. The will, as we have discussed, has no why; nothing causes the will to do what it does, thus it is not governed by the principle of sufficient reason and is free.

However, if we ask if the will is free and mean “Am I myself, in my individual actions, in my choices free?” then Schopenhauer’s answer is no. To say that we are free in this sense would mean that we act without cause, without reason; that we act, in effect, in a random manner (as Willkür, “arbitrariness,” suggests). As already discussed, though we protest that we are free, every time we take an action we always have an explanation at the ready for what made us act as we did.

So, it looks like Schopenhauer is a determinist – and in a way he certainly is. But he actually winds up challenging the conception of freedom that we usually operate with. He says, in effect, “Wait a minute: isn’t it rather silly to think you could act causelessly, and to think that if you can’t then ‘woe is me’?” The standard conception of freedom that is offered in opposition to determinism is, in effect, “arbitrariness,” action that has no cause, no reason behind it. What kind of ideal is that? Why would I want to act arbitrarily?

To this, Schopenhauer opposes what he regards as a much more reasonable and substantive theory: the freedom of the individual should mean the freedom to become who you are; to realize your nature. Do you determine your own nature? Of course not. All sorts of factors, such as heredity and upbringing, determine it for you. Nevertheless, that nature is you. To be free means to be able to express your nature; to be unfree simply means being constrained in that same expression.

This occasions some reflections from Schopenhauer on the nature of character. Our character, for Schopenhauer, is something fundamentally fixed; it does not change. This may seem bleak, but he argues that knowledge of this fact and resignation to it, and to the necessity behind things, is a means to achieve contentment in life. The secret to inner peace must involve recognizing and accepting the things about ourselves that we cannot change.

Knowledge of our own mind and of our capabilities of every kind, and of their unalterable limits, is in this respect the surest way to the attainment of the greatest possible contentment with ourselves. For it holds good of inner as of outer circumstances that there is no more effective consolation for us than the complete certainty of unalterable necessity. No evil that has befallen us torments us so much as the thought of the circumstances by which it could have been warded off. Therefore nothing is more effective for our consolation than a consideration of what has happened from the point of view of necessity, from which all accidents appear as tools of a governing fate; so that we recognize the evil that has come about as inevitably produced by the conflict of inner and outer circumstances, that is, fatalism.[7]

But “fatalism” (Fatalismus) is very much the same thing as what is called “determinism” by philosophers today: the belief that all human actions are predetermined by fate or necessity. Determinism is understood to exclude the possibility of freedom. Schopenhauer’s position is therefore highly paradoxical. He is telling us that “freedom” consists in being exactly what we are, but that what we are is predetermined. Moreover, true serenity, which is arguably a feeling of freedom or liberation, comes about by accepting our determination. Hegel would make a somewhat similar argument in his Philosophy of Right, published two years after The World as Will and Representation (though we can be quite sure that Hegel never read Schopenhauer).

While Schopenhauer urges us to accept our determination, he does hold out the prospect of achieving ataraxia (tranquility, equanimity). Now, however, let us consider some of the statements that have earned him the reputation of the greatest pessimist in Western philosophy.

Recall that the will strives, but does so without an object and without end. This striving is incapable of final satisfaction – and we are in the grip of it. Schopenhauer argues that suffering is when the will is impeded (e.g., I am hungry but have nothing to eat). Satisfaction, well-being, and happiness essentially involves the will getting its way. However, because the will has no ultimate aim and can never be satisfied, there is no end to suffering.

And the more we know, the more we suffer. Like the Buddha, Schopenhauer is telling us that the quest for happiness is a trap. We must therefore try and seek a deeper satisfaction in going beyond this will-driven oscillation between pleasure and pain. Our life, Schopenhauer says, is merely a constantly prevented dying, just as walking is a constantly prevented falling. Ultimately, of course, death will triumph. We strive for security and pleasure. But when we get these things, we are afflicted by boredom, and people seek desperately to relieve themselves of boredom. They usually do this through activities that mirror those that are will-driven.

For example, when we are not faced by real-life struggle we set up “play struggles” in the form of sports; or we seek sexual satisfaction of more and complex and ingenious forms; or more and more rich and unusual food. We also invent sociability – though ordinarily, Schopenhauer says, we don’t desire each other’s company! None of this really works. In order to stave off boredom, everything has to continually become more thrilling, more novel. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer writes, “The ceaseless efforts to banish suffering achieve nothing more than a change in its form.”[8]

When one care is lifted from us, another quickly takes its place. In the absence of great sufferings, trivial ones are magnified. This is how “first world problems” arise. Relieved of the problem of day-to-day survival, we worry instead about abstract, manufactured difficulties like “transgenocide” or man-made climate change. We even worry about worry, avoiding harmless situations because of the anxiety they might provoke.

Even when we have attained some long-desired goal, there is immediate suffering because we quickly realize we are no different than we were before. Every keenly felt joy rests on the delusion that we have at last found permanent satisfaction! But instead of recognizing this ceaseless and futile cycle of desiring for what it is, we keep identifying this or that goal as the one thing that could make us happy and quench desire.

Schopenhauer argues that the highest form of will-less satisfaction is to be had in pure contemplation – pure detached knowing, such as that of the philosopher. But the better one gets at this, the more potential there is for suffering: the philosopher sees more of the problems with the world and the futility of the quest for true happiness. The good news, for most people, is that they are incapable of philosophical thought.

In our next installment, we will continue our discussion of Schopenhauer’s pessimism.

Notes

[1] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), 261. (Henceforth, WWR 1.)

[2] WWR 1, 262-263.

[3] WWR 1, 257.

[4] WWR 1, 260.

[5] WWR 1, 262-263.

[6] WWR 1, 262.

[7] WWR 1, 306.

[8] WWR 1, 315.