The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 13 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1093
We may, for the sake of simplicity, regard these different Ideas as in themselves individual and simple acts of the will, in which it expresses its nature more or less. Individuals, however, are again manifestations of the Ideas, thus of these acts, in time, space, and multiplicity.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 724
Thus we see that, with regard to those phenomena which we know only as our ideas, etiology can never give us the desired information that shall carry us beyond this point. For, after all its explanations, they still remain quite strange to us, as mere ideas whose significance we do not understand. The causal connection merely gives us the rule and the relative order of their appearance in space and time, but affords us no further knowledge of that which so appears.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 903
But we, who have in view not etiology but philosophy, that is, not relative but unconditioned knowledge of the real nature of the world, take the opposite course, and start from that which is immediately and most completely known to us, and fully and entirely trusted by us—that which lies nearest to us, in order to understand that which is known to us only at a distance, one-sidedly and indirectly.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 554
I must here refer to what I have said in the sixth chapter of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, and take for granted that it is fresh and present in the memory of the reader; so that I may link my observations on to it without explaining again the difference between the mere ground of knowledge of a mathematical truth, which can be given logically, and the ground of being, which is the immediate connection of the parts of space and time, known only in perception.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1193
Men followed the words,—such words as “_a priori_ ideas,” “forms of perception and thought existing in consciousness independently of experience,” “fundamental conceptions of the pure understanding,” &c., &c.,—and asked whether Plato’s Ideas, which were also original conceptions, and besides this were supposed to be reminiscences of a perception before life of the truly real things, were in some way the same as Kant’s forms of perception and thought, which lie _a priori_ in our consciousness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1361
That lightest, quickest, finest species of the action of bodies upon each other, that to which we owe by far the completest and purest of our perceptions, the action of reflected rays of light, is here brought clearly before our eyes, distinct and perfect, in cause and in effect, and indeed in its entirety, hence the æsthetic delight it gives us, which, in the most important aspect, is entirely based on the subjective ground of æsthetic pleasure, and is delight in pure knowing and its method.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 480
I shall not pause here to relate anecdotes as examples to illustrate my theory; for it is so simple and comprehensible that it does not require them, and everything ludicrous which the reader may remember is equally valuable as a proof of it. But the theory is confirmed and illustrated by distinguishing two species into which the ludicrous is divided, and which result from the theory.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2744
5 Kant is the only writer who has confused this idea of reason, and in this connection I refer the reader to the Appendix, and also to my “Grundprobleme der Ethik”: Grundl. dd. Moral. § 6, pp. 148-154, first and second editions.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1580
And now art ends with the representation of the free self-suppression of will, by means of the great peace which it gains from the perfect knowledge of its own nature.(56)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2626
Therefore their former misdeeds trouble their consciences no more, yet they willingly atone for them by death, and gladly see the end of the manifestation of that will which is now foreign to them and abhorred by them. The great Goethe has given us a distinct and visible representation of this denial of the will, brought about by great misfortunes and despair of all deliverance, in his immortal masterpiece “Faust,” in the story of the sufferings of Gretchen. I know no parallel to this in poetry.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2615
Therefore that peace and blessedness in the life of holy men which we have described is only found as the flower which proceeds from the constant victory over the will, and the ground in which it grows is the constant battle with the will to live, for no one can have lasting peace upon earth.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1595
We might carry comparison further, and say that they are like machines which mince fine and mingle together whatever is put into them, but can never digest it, so that the different constituent parts may always be found again if they are sought out and separated from the mixture; the man of genius alone resembles the organised, assimilating, transforming and reproducing body.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 448
What vast mazes of figures, what laborious calculations it would require to express in the abstract what perception here apprehends at a glance completely and with perfect accuracy, namely, how the co-sine diminishes as the sine increases, how the co-sine of one angle is the sine of another, the inverse relation of the increase and decrease of the two angles, and so forth.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 710
The passage of matter into these forms, that is to say, the origin of individuals, is not a special part of natural science, for every individual springs from its like by generation, which is everywhere equally mysterious, and has as yet evaded definite knowledge. The little that is known on the subject finds its place in physiology, which belongs to that part of natural science I have called etiology.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1770
It does not therefore express this or that particular and definite joy, this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or delight, or merriment, or peace of mind; but joy, sorrow, pain, horror, delight, merriment, peace of mind _themselves_, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without accessories, and therefore without their motives. Yet we completely understand them in this extracted quintessence.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1528
If the characteristic goes so far as actually to annul the character of the species, if it extends to the unnatural, it becomes caricature. But we can far less afford to allow grace to be interfered with by what is characteristic than even beauty, for graceful position and movement are demanded for the expression of the character also; but yet it must be achieved in the way which is most fitting, appropriate, and easy for the person.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2269
If an individual goes so far in the assertion of his own will that he encroaches upon the assertion of will which is essential to my person as such, and denies it, then my warding off of that encroachment is only the denial of that denial, and thus from my side is nothing more than the assertion of the will which essentially and originally appears in my body, and is already implicitly expressed by the mere appearance of this body; consequently is not wrong, but right.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2369
But even this separation lies only in the phenomenon, and not in the thing-in-itself; and on this rests eternal justice. In fact, all temporal happiness stands, and all prudence proceeds, upon ground that is undermined. They defend the person from accidents and supply its pleasures; but the person is merely phenomenon, and its difference from other individuals, and exemption from the sufferings which they endure, rests merely in the form of the phenomenon, the _principium individuationis_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 268
To the assertion that thought is a modification of matter we may always, with equal right, oppose the contrary assertion that all matter is merely the modification of the knowing subject, as its idea. Yet the aim and ideal of all natural science is at bottom a consistent materialism.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1784
But these two universalities are in a certain respect opposed to each other; for the concepts contain particulars only as the first forms abstracted from perception, as it were, the separated shell of things; thus they are, strictly speaking, _abstracta_; music, on the other hand, gives the inmost kernel which precedes all forms, or the heart of things.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 101
What a pretty thing it would be if a philosophy by which nobody could live were to gain for itself light and air, not to speak of the general ear! This must be guarded against, and all must oppose it as one man.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1650
The revelation of the Idea, which is the highest grade of the objectivity of will, the representation of man in the connected series of his efforts and actions, is thus the great problem of poetry. It is true that both experience and history teach us to know man; yet oftener men than man, _i.e._, they give us empirical notes of the behaviour of men to each other, from which we may frame rules for our own conduct, oftener than they afford us deep glimpses of the inner nature of man.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1866
Whoever has not yet recognised this, or will not recognise it, must add to the question asked above as to the fate of past generations of men this question also: Why he, the questioner, is so fortunate as to be conscious of this costly, fleeting, and only real present, while those hundreds of generations of men, even the heroes and philosophers of those ages, have sunk into the night of the past, and have thus become nothing; but he, his insignificant ego, actually exists?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 95
It lacks the first indispensable requisite of a well-paid professional philosophy, a speculative theology, which—in spite of the troublesome Kant with his Critique of Reason—should and must, it is supposed, be the chief theme of all philosophy, even if it thus takes on itself the task of talking straight on of that of which it can know absolutely nothing.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 458
It is, however, remarkable that in the first kind of activity, in which we have supposed that one man alone, in an uninterrupted course of action, accomplishes something, abstract knowledge, the application of reason or reflection, may often be a hindrance to him; for example, in the case of billiard-playing, of fighting, of tuning an instrument, or in the case of singing.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 507
It was known to the schoolmen,(19) that, as the syllogism requires two premises, no science can proceed from a single first principle which cannot be the subject of further deduction, but must have several, at least two.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2794
Therefore man may carry the assertion of his existence to the extent of denying the existence of the brute, and the will to live as a whole endures less suffering in this way than if the opposite course were adopted.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2556
There is a wide gulf between the two, which can only be crossed by the aid of philosophy, as regards the knowledge of the nature of the world. Intuitively or _in concreto_, every man is really conscious of all philosophical truths, but to bring them to abstract knowledge, to reflection, is the work of philosophy, which neither ought nor is able to do more than this.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2779
65 “Scholastici docuerunt, quod æternitas non sit temporis sine fine aut principio successio; sed _Nunc stans_, _i.e._, idem nobis _Nunc esse_, quod erat _Nunc Adamo_, _i.e._, inter _nunc_ et _tunc_ nullam esse differentiam.”—Hobbes, Leviathan, c. 46.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1732
Yet he was perfectly right, as he considered only its immediate external significance, its form. But if it were nothing more, the satisfaction which it affords would be like that which we feel when a sum in arithmetic comes out right, and could not be that intense pleasure with which we see the deepest recesses of our nature find utterance.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 543
But if we yet desire to give a proof of them, it can only consist in showing that what is to be proved is contained in some truth about which there is no doubt, either as a part of it or as a presupposition. Thus, for example, I have shown that all empirical perception implies the application of the law of causality, the knowledge of which is hence a condition of all experience, and therefore cannot be first given and conditioned through experience as Hume thought.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1033
According to the view I have expressed, the traces of chemical and physical modes of operation will indeed be found in the organism, but it can never be explained from them; because it is by no means a phenomenon even accidentally brought about through the united actions of such forces, but a higher Idea which has overcome these lower ideas by _subduing assimilation_; for the _one_ will which objectifies itself in all Ideas always seeks the highest possible objectification, and has therefore in this case given up the lower grades of its manifestation after a conflict, in order to appear in a higher grade, and one so much the more powerful.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 451
Our perceptions of numbers in their proper element, mere time, without the help of space, scarcely extends as far as ten, and beyond that we have only abstract concepts of numbers, no knowledge of them which can be presented in perception. On the other hand, we connect with every numeral, and with all algebraical symbols, accurately defined abstract concepts.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 638
For, as we have said, just what the sciences presuppose and lay down as the basis and the limits of their explanation, is precisely and peculiarly the problem of philosophy, which may therefore be said to begin where science ends. It cannot be founded upon demonstrations, for they lead from known principles to unknown, but everything is equally unknown and external to philosophy.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2518
The description which Petrarch gives of the rising of his own tears, naïvely and truly expressing his feeling, entirely agrees with the explanation we have given—
The World as Will and Idea, passage 687
The ethical system of Stoicism, regarded as a whole, is in fact a very valuable and estimable attempt to use the great prerogative of man, reason, for an important and salutary end; to raise him above the suffering and pain to which all life is exposed, by means of a maxim—
The World as Will and Idea, passage 61
It is impossible that an age which for twenty years has applauded a Hegel, that intellectual Caliban, as the greatest of the philosophers, so loudly that it echoes through the whole of Europe, could make him who has looked on at that desirous of its approbation. It has no more crowns of honour to bestow; its applause is prostituted, and its censure has no significance.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1944
Therefore it seems to the intellect that in a given case two opposite decisions are possible for the will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2410
The explanation of the concept _true_ has already been given in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, chap. v. § 29 _et seq._ The content of the concept _beautiful_ found for the first time its proper explanation through the whole of the Third Book of the present work. We now wish to discover the significance of the concept _good_, which can be done with very little trouble.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 886
Such crass, mechanical, clumsy, and certainly knotty theories, which remind one of Democritus, are quite worthy of those who, fifty years after the appearance of Goethe’s doctrine of colour, still believe in Newton’s homogeneous light, and are not ashamed to say so. They will find that what is overlooked in the child (Democritus) will not be forgiven to the man.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2709
On the other hand, it symbolises _grace_, the _denial of the will_, _salvation_, in the incarnate God, who, as free from all sin, that is, from all willing of life, cannot, like us, have proceeded from the most pronounced assertion of the will, nor can he, like us, have a body which is through and through simply concrete will, manifestation of the will; but born of a pure virgin, he has only a phantom body.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1353
With this subjective side of æsthetic contemplation, there must always appear as its necessary correlative the objective side, the intuitive comprehension of the Platonic Idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2038
And although, on the whole, he must remain true to himself, and fulfil his course, led by his dæmon, yet his path will not be a straight line, but wavering and uneven. He will hesitate, deviate, turn back, lay up for himself repentance and pain. And all this is because, in great and small, he sees before him all that is possible and attainable for man in general, but does not know what part of all this is alone suitable for him, can be accomplished by him, and is alone enjoyable by him.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 641
But the _why_ is here subordinated to the _what_, for it already belongs to the world, as it arises and has meaning and validity only through the form of its phenomena, the principle of sufficient reason. We might indeed say that every one knows what the world is without help, for he is himself that subject of knowledge of which the world is the idea; and so far this would be true.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 117
The defectiveness of this view will be corrected in the next book by means of a truth which is not so immediately certain as that from which we start here; a truth at which we can arrive only by deeper research and more severe abstraction, by the separation of what is different and the union of what is identical. This truth, which must be very serious and impressive if not awful to every one, is that a man can also say and must say, “the world is my will.”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 190
Kant answers the question thus: “The connection of ideas among themselves, according to the law of causality, constitutes the difference between real life and dreams.” But in dreams, as well as in real life, everything is connected individually at any rate, in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and this connection is broken only between life and dreams, or between one dream and another.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1175
So long as we are confined to the perception of these, we are like men who sit in a dark cave, bound so fast that they cannot turn their heads, and who see nothing but the shadows of real things which pass between them and a fire burning behind them, the light of which casts the shadows on the wall opposite them; and even of themselves and of each other they see only the shadows on the wall. Their wisdom would thus consist in predicting the order of the shadows learned from experience.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 929
The subject which will therefore be fully considered in the next book, and which has, doubtless, already presented itself to the mind of every student of Plato, is, that these different grades of the objectification of will which are manifested in innumerable individuals, and exist as their unattained types or as the eternal forms of things, not entering themselves into time and space, which are the medium of individual things, but remaining fixed, subject to no change, always being, never becoming, while the particular things arise and pass away, always become and never are,—that these _grades of the objectification of will_ are, I say, simply _Plato’s Ideas_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1721
Secondly, it may happen through blind fate, _i.e._, chance and error; a true pattern of this kind is the Œdipus Rex of Sophocles, the “Trachiniæ” also; and in general most of the tragedies of the ancients belong to this class. Among modern tragedies, “Romeo and Juliet,” “Tancred” by Voltaire, and “The Bride of Messina,” are examples.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2220
Now from these two necessary properties we have given the fact may be explained that every individual, though vanishing altogether and diminished to nothing in the boundless world, yet makes itself the centre of the world, has regard for its own existence and well-being before everything else; indeed, from the natural standpoint, is ready to sacrifice everything else for this—is ready to annihilate the world in order to maintain its own self, this drop in the ocean, a little longer.