The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 17 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 978
If by this exposition the difference between a force of nature and all its phenomena has been made quite distinct; if we have seen clearly that the former is the will itself at this particular grade of its objectification, but that multiplicity comes to phenomena only through time and space, and that the law of causality is nothing but the determination of the position of these phenomena in time and space; then we shall recognise the complete truth and the deep meaning of Malebranche’s doctrine of occasional causes (_causes occasionelles_).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1632
It consists of a great rich web of connected and highly ingenious allegories, that serve here as the fair clothing of moral truths, to which he thus imparts the most perceptible form, and astonishes us by the richness of his invention.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 431
Now, reason itself, strange as it may seem, is guilty of the same one-sidedness, indeed one might say of the same crude ignorance arising from vanity, for it classes under the one concept, “_feeling_,” every modification of consciousness which does not immediately belong to its own mode of apprehension, that is to say, which is _not an abstract concept_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1392
But at once there rises against this ghost of our own nothingness, against such lying impossibility, the immediate consciousness that all these worlds exist only as our idea, only as modifications of the eternal subject of pure knowing, which we find ourselves to be as soon as we forget our individuality, and which is the necessary supporter of all worlds and all times the condition of their possibility.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1760
And corresponding to this the nature of melody is a constant digression and deviation from the key-note in a thousand ways, not only to the harmonious intervals to the third and dominant, but to every tone, to the dissonant sevenths and to the superfluous degrees; yet there always follows a constant return to the key-note.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1672
The motive has significance only through its relation to the will, while the relation which it has as a thing to other things like itself, does not concern us here. As a circle of one inch in diameter, and a circle of forty million miles in diameter, have precisely the same geometrical properties, so are the events and the history of a village and a kingdom essentially the same; and we may study and learn to know mankind as well in the one as in the other.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 644
Through these concepts, in which it fixes the nature of the world, the whole individual must be known as well as the universal, the knowledge of both therefore must be bound together to the minutest point. Therefore the capacity for philosophy consists just in that in which Plato placed it, the knowledge of the one in the many, and the many in the one.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2473
Thus, in order to increase his own well-being, he will not inflict suffering upon others, _i.e._, he will commit no crime, he will respect the rights and the property of others. We see that for such a just man the _principium individuationis_ is no longer, as in the case of the bad man, an absolute wall of partition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 470
Dogmas occupy the idle reason; but action in the end pursues its own course independently of them, generally not according to abstract rules, but according to unspoken maxims, the expression of which is the whole man himself. Therefore, however different the religious dogmas of nations may be, yet in the case of all of them, a good action is accompanied by unspeakable satisfaction, and a bad action by endless remorse.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 283
These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an _antinomy_ in our faculty of knowledge, and set it up as the counterpart of that which we found in the first extreme of natural science. The fourfold antinomy of Kant will be shown, in the criticism of his philosophy appended to this volume, to be a groundless delusion.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1068
The hitherto infallible certainty and regularity with which it worked in unorganised and merely vegetative nature, rested upon the fact that it alone was active in its original nature, as blind impulse, will, without assistance, and also without interruption, from a second and entirely different world, the world as idea, which is indeed only the image of its own inner being, but is yet of quite another nature, and now encroaches on the connected whole of its phenomena.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 894
This is the specific nature of its action, _i.e._, the nature of its existence, its being. Of each particular effect of the thing a cause may be certainly indicated, from which it follows that it must act just at this time and in this place; but no cause can ever be found from which it follows that a thing acts in general, and precisely in the way it does.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2271
For all that happens from my side lies always within the sphere of the assertion of will essential to my person as such, and already expressed by it (which is the scene of the conflict), and does not encroach on that of the other, consequently is only negation of the negation, and thus affirmation, not itself negation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 688
“_Qua ratione queas traducere leniter œvum:_ _Ne te semper inops agitet vexetque cupido,_ _Ne pavor et rerum mediocriter utilium spes,_”
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2112
But if we have recognised that pain, as such, is inevitable and essential to life, and that nothing depends upon chance but its mere fashion, the form under which it presents itself, that thus our present sorrow fills a place that, without it, would at once be occupied by another which now is excluded by it, and that therefore fate can affect us little in what is essential; such a reflection, if it were to become a living conviction, might produce a considerable degree of stoical equanimity, and very much lessen the anxious care for our own well-being.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1652
Our own experience is the indispensable condition of understanding poetry as of understanding history; for it is, so to speak, the dictionary of the language that both speak.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2397
Therefore, most persons would demand that a man who had a very high degree of wickedness which might yet occur in many others, only not matched with other qualities such as are found in him, a man who also far surpassed others by extraordinary intellectual powers, and who inflicted unspeakable sufferings upon millions of others—for example, as a conqueror,—most persons, I say, would demand that such a man should at some time and in some place expiate all these sufferings by a like amount of pain; for they do not recognise how in themselves the inflicter of suffering and the sufferers are one, and that it is the same will through which the latter exist and live which also appears in the former, and just through him attains to a distinct revelation of its nature, and which likewise suffers both in the oppressed and the oppressor; and indeed in the latter in a greater measure, as the consciousness has attained a higher degree of clearness and distinctness and the will has greater vehemence.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 730
§ 18. In fact, the meaning for which we seek of that world which is present to us only as our idea, or the transition from the world as mere idea of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, would never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1835
Such _historical philosophising_ in most cases produces a cosmogony which admits of many varieties, or else a system of emanations, a doctrine of successive disengagements from one being; or, finally, driven in despair from fruitless efforts upon these paths to the last path of all, it takes refuge in the converse doctrine of a constant becoming, springing up, arising, coming to light out of darkness, out of the hidden ground source or groundlessness, or whatever other nonsense of this sort there may be, which is most shortly disposed of with the remark that at the present moment a whole eternity, _i.e._, an endless time, has already passed, so that everything that can or ought to become must have already done so.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 472
It plays the same part ultimately in art also, where it has just as little to do with the essential matter, but assists in carrying it out, for genius is not always at call, and yet the work must be completed in all its parts and rounded off to a whole.(17)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 228
A stupid man does not observe that persons, who apparently act independently of each other, are really in collusion; he is therefore easily mystified, and outwitted; he does not discern the hidden motives of proffered advice or expressions of opinion, &c. But it is always just one thing that he lacks—keenness, rapidity, ease in applying the law of causality, _i.e._, power of understanding.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1464
The reason of all this is, indeed, principally that all the parts and their relations are only made clearly visible by a bright, strong light; but besides this I am of opinion that it is the function of architecture to reveal the nature of light just as it reveals that of things so opposite to it as gravity and rigidity.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 311
This thorough and consistent relativity of the world as idea, both according to its universal form (subject and object), and according to the form which is subordinate to this (the principle of sufficient reason) warns us, as we said before, to seek the inner nature of the world in an aspect of it which is _quite different and quite distinct from the idea_; and in the next book we shall find this in a fact which is just as immediate to every living being as the idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 477
It often occurs in this way: two or more real objects are thought through _one_ concept, and the identity of the concept is transferred to the objects; it then becomes strikingly apparent from the entire difference of the objects in other respects, that the concept was only applicable to them from a one-sided point of view.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 712
The sciences teach how, according to an invariable rule, one condition of matter is necessarily followed by a certain other condition; how one change necessarily conditions and brings about a certain other change; this sort of teaching is called _explanation_. The principal sciences in this department are mechanics, physics, chemistry, and physiology.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 527
Therefore it must in some way be possible to know directly without demonstrations or syllogisms every truth that is arrived at through syllogisms and communicated by demonstrations. This is most difficult in the case of certain complicated mathematical propositions at which we only arrive by chains of syllogisms; for example, the calculation of the chords and tangents to all arcs by deduction from the proposition of Pythagoras.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1116
But we can very much increase the clearness of this insight if we go somewhat more closely into the manifestations of that outer teleology and agreement of the different parts of nature with each other, an inquiry which will also throw some light on the foregoing exposition. We shall best attain this end by considering the following analogy.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1338
This is shown by those admirable Dutch artists who directed this purely objective perception to the most insignificant objects, and established a lasting monument of their objectivity and spiritual peace in their pictures of _still life_, which the æsthetic beholder does not look on without emotion; for they present to him the peaceful, still, frame of mind of the artist, free from will, which was needed to contemplate such insignificant things so objectively, to observe them so attentively, and to repeat this perception so intelligently; and as the picture enables the onlooker to participate in this state, his emotion is often increased by the contrast between it and the unquiet frame of mind, disturbed by vehement willing, in which he finds himself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1946
Accordingly, the decision of one’s own will is undetermined only to the beholder, one’s own intellect, and thus merely relatively and subjectively for the subject of knowing. In itself and objectively, on the other hand, in every choice presented to it, its decision is at once determined and necessary. But this determination only comes into consciousness through the decision that follows upon it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2252
Other cases of wrong can all be reduced to the fact that I, as the doer of wrong, compel another individual to serve my will instead of his own, to act according to my will instead of according to his own. On the path of violence I attain this end through physical causality, but on the path of craft by means of motivation, _i.e._, by means of causality through knowledge; for I present to his will illusive motives, on account of which he follows my will, while he believes he is following his own.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 567
Certain passages from the works of Proclus, the commentator of Euclid, which Kepler translated into Latin in his book, “De Harmonia Mundi,” seem to show that he fully recognised this distinction. But Proclus did not attach enough importance to the matter; he merely mentioned it by the way, so that he remained unnoticed and accomplished nothing.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1152
For if, according to its will, all existing matter were collected in one mass, yet within this mass gravity, ever striving towards the centre, would still wage war with impenetrability as rigidity or elasticity. The tendency of matter can therefore only be confined, never completed or appeased. But this is precisely the case with all tendencies of all phenomena of will. Every attained end is also the beginning of a new course, and so on _ad infinitum_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 609
In the first place, repeated confirmation in experience brings the induction, upon which the hypothesis rests, so near completeness that in practice it takes the place of certainty, and is regarded as diminishing the value of the hypothesis, its source, just as little as the incommensurability of straight and curved lines diminishes the value of the application of geometry, or that perfect exactness of the logarithm, which is not attainable, diminishes the value of arithmetic.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1090
It is only the knowledge of the unity of will as thing-in-itself, in the endless diversity and multiplicity of the phenomena, that can afford us the true explanation of that wonderful, unmistakable analogy of all the productions of nature, that family likeness on account of which we may regard them as variations on the same ungiven theme. So in like measure, through the distinct and thoroughly comprehended knowledge of that harmony, that essential connection of all the parts of the world, that necessity of their gradation which we have just been considering, we shall obtain a true and sufficient insight into the inner nature and meaning of the undeniable _teleology_ of all organised productions of nature, which, indeed, we presupposed _a priori_, when considering and investigating them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2721
This means that the salvation is one which is quite foreign to our person, and points to a denial and surrender of this person necessary to salvation. Works, the result of the law as such, can never justify, because they are always action following upon motives.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 925
The multiplicity of these individuals itself belongs not to the will, but only to its manifestation. We may therefore say that if, _per impossibile_, a single real existence, even the most insignificant, were to be entirely annihilated, the whole world would necessarily perish with it. The great mystic Angelus Silesius feels this when he says—
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2771
54 The last sentence is the German of the _il n’y a que l’esprit qui sente l’esprit_, of Helvetius. In the first edition there was no occasion to point this out, but since then the age has become so degraded and ignorant through the stupefying influence of the Hegelian sophistry, that some might quite likely say that an antithesis was intended here between “spirit and nature.” I am therefore obliged to guard myself in express terms against the suspicion of such vulgar sophisms.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1783
This actual world, then, the world of particular things, affords the object of perception, the special and individual, the particular case, both to the universality of the concepts and to the universality of the melodies.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2087
In this way we fight with it every moment, and again, at longer intervals, through every meal we eat, every sleep we take, every time we warm ourselves, &c. In the end, death must conquer, for we became subject to him through birth, and he only plays for a little while with his prey before he swallows it up.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1141
I here conclude the second principal division of my exposition, in the hope that, so far as is possible in the case of an entirely new thought, which cannot be quite free from traces of the individuality in which it originated, I have succeeded in conveying to the reader the complete certainty that this world in which we live and have our being is in its whole nature through and through _will_, and at the same time through and through _idea_: that this idea, as such, already presupposes a form, object and subject, is therefore relative; and if we ask what remains if we take away this form, and all those forms which are subordinate to it, and which express the principle of sufficient reason, the answer must be that as something _toto genere_ different from idea, this can be nothing but _will_, which is thus properly the _thing-in-itself_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1224
The knowing individual as such, and the particular things known by him, are always in some place, at some time, and are links in the chain of causes and effects. The pure subject of knowledge and his correlative, the Idea, have passed out of all these forms of the principle of sufficient reason: time, place, the individual that knows, and the individual that is known, have for them no meaning.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 415
Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received. Of itself it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation. There is no absolutely pure rational knowledge except the four principles to which I have attributed metalogical truth; the principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason of knowledge. For even the rest of logic is not absolutely pure rational knowledge. It presupposes the relations and the combinations of the spheres of concepts.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1377
If, in the dead of winter, when all nature is frozen and stiff, we see the rays of the setting sun reflected by masses of stone, illuminating without warming, and thus favourable only to the purest kind of knowledge, not to the will; the contemplation of the beautiful effect of the light upon these masses lifts us, as does all beauty, into a state of pure knowing.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 745
The identity of the body and the will shows itself further, among other ways, in the circumstance that every vehement and excessive movement of the will, _i.e._, every emotion, agitates the body and its inner constitution directly, and disturbs the course of its vital functions. This is shown in detail in “Will in Nature,” p. 27 of the second edition and p. 28 of the third.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2517
Therefore men who are either hard-hearted or unimaginative do not weep easily, and weeping is even always regarded as a sign of a certain degree of goodness of character, and disarms anger, because it is felt that whoever can still weep, must necessarily always be capable of love, _i.e._, sympathy towards others, for this enters in the manner described into the disposition that leads to weeping.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 388
For logic is only a paraphrase of this principle, and, more exactly, only of that exemplification of it in which the ground that gives truth to the judgment is neither empirical nor metaphysical, but logical or metalogical. Besides the principle of sufficient reason of knowing, it is necessary to take account of the three remaining fundamental laws of thought, or judgments of metalogical truth, so nearly related to it; and out of these the whole science of reason grows.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 290
This explanation at which we have arrived by following the most consistent of the philosophical systems which start from the object, materialism, has brought out clearly the inseparable and reciprocal dependence of subject and object, and at the same time the inevitable antithesis between them. And this knowledge leads us to seek for the inner nature of the world, the thing-in-itself, not in either of the two elements of the idea, but in something quite distinct from it, and which is not encumbered with such a fundamental and insoluble antithesis.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1030
The combination of humours in the animal body and secretion are also analogous to chemical combination and separation. Indeed, the laws of chemistry are still strongly operative in this case, but subordinated, very much modified, and mastered by a higher Idea; therefore mere chemical forces outside the organism will never afford us such humours; but
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1959
Further, he must first know a thing to be _good_, and in consequence of this will it, instead of first _willing_ it, and in consequence of this calling it _good_. According to my fundamental point of view, all this is a reversal of the true relation. Will is first and original; knowledge is merely added to it as an instrument belonging to the phenomenon of will. Therefore every man is what he is through his will, and his character is original, for willing is the basis of his nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2562
But the description I have given above of the denial of the will to live, of the conduct of a beautiful soul, of a resigned and voluntarily expiating saint, is merely abstract and general, and therefore cold. As the knowledge from which the denial of the will proceeds is intuitive and not abstract, it finds its most perfect expression, not in abstract conceptions, but in deeds and conduct.