The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 19 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 2223
In the consciousness that has reached the highest grade, that of man, egoism, as well as knowledge, pain and pleasure, must have reached its highest grade also, and the conflict of individuals which is conditioned by it must appear in its most terrible form. And indeed we see this everywhere before our eyes, in small things as in great.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2209
For generation is only reproduction passing over to a new individual, as it were reproduction at the second power, as death is only excretion at the second power. According to all this, the genitals are properly the _focus_ of will, and consequently the opposite pole of the brain, the representative of knowledge, _i.e._, the other side of the world, the world as idea. The former are the life-sustaining principle ensuring endless life to time.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 970
At once the same matter of the machine has become subject to another original force, galvanism, which now governs it according to its own laws, and reveals itself in it through its phenomena; and etiology can again tell us nothing about this force except the conditions under which, and the laws in accordance with which, it manifests itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 329
_Vernunft_ is derived from _vernehmen_, which is not a synonym for the verb to hear, but signifies the consciousness of the meaning of thoughts communicated in words.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1489
This knowledge of the Ideas of higher grades, which in painting we receive through extraneous means, we may gain directly by the pure contemplative perception of plants, and observation of beasts, and indeed of the latter in their free, natural, and unrestrained state.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2404
Asserting this will, he yet desires that in the drama which represents its nature no such fearful wrong shall ever appear again, and wishes to frighten ever future wrong-doer by the example of a vengeance against which there is no means of defence, since the avenger is not deterred by the fear of death.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 398
By degrees, more or less perfect expressions were found for the fundamental principles of logic, such as the principles of contradiction, sufficient reason, excluded middle, the _dictum de omni et nullo_, as well as the special rules of the syllogism, as for example, _ex meris particularibus aut negativis nihil sequitur, a rationato ad rationem non valet consequentia_, and so on.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 531
To these mathematical properties we have only to add one force of nature, gravity, which acts precisely in relation to the masses and the square of the distance; and, lastly, the law of inertia, which follows from the law of causality and is therefore true _a priori_, and with it the empirical datum of the motion impressed, once for all, upon each of these masses.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1027
Now, although the difference between phenomenon and thing-in-itself is never lost sight of, and therefore the identity of the will which objectifies itself in all Ideas can never (because it has different grades of its objectification) be distorted to mean identity of the particular Ideas themselves in which it appears, so that, for example, chemical or electrical attraction can never be reduced to the attraction of gravitation, although this inner analogy is known, and the former may be regarded as, so to speak, higher powers of the latter, just as little does the similarity of the construction of all animals warrant us in mixing and identifying the species and explaining the more developed as mere variations of the less developed; and although, finally, the physiological functions are never to be reduced to chemical or physical processes, yet, in justification of this procedure, within certain limits, we may accept the following observations as highly probable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 941
We know the physiological character of the species, and from that we know exactly what is to be expected from the individual; while, on the contrary, in the human species every individual has to be studied and fathomed for himself, which, if we wish to forecast his action with some degree of certainty, is, on account of the possibility of concealment that first appears with reason, a matter of the greatest difficulty.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1245
Therefore he will just as little, with Homer, people a whole Olympus with gods to guide the events of time, as, with Ossian, he will take the forms of the clouds for individual beings; for, as we have said, both have just as much meaning as regards the Idea which appears in them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 611
What conclusion of this kind seems more certain than that all men have the heart on the left side? Yet there are extremely rare and quite isolated exceptions of men who have the heart upon the right side. Sense-perception and empirical science have, therefore, the same kind of evidence.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1937
As the whole tree is only the constantly repeated manifestation of one and the same tendency, which exhibits itself in its simplest form in the fibre, and recurs and is easily recognised in the construction of the leaf, shoot, branch, and trunk, so all a man’s deeds are merely the constantly repeated expression, somewhat varied in form, of his intelligible character, and the induction based on the sum of all these expressions gives us his empirical character.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2510
Therefore we shall have no hesitation, in direct contradiction to Kant, who will only recognise all true goodness and all virtue to be such, if it has proceeded from abstract reflection, and indeed from the conception of duty and of the categorical imperative, and explains felt sympathy as weakness, and by no means virtue, we shall have no hesitation, I say, in direct contradiction to Kant, in saying: the mere concept is for genuine virtue just as unfruitful as it is for genuine art: all true and pure love is sympathy, and all love which is not sympathy is selfishness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2782
The first edition was sent to him in December 1818, and in March 1819, when I was at Naples, he sent me his congratulations by letter, through my sister, and enclosed a piece of paper upon which he had noted the places of certain passages which had specially pleased him. Thus he had read my book.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1891
For every individual is transitory only as phenomenon, but as thing-in-itself is timeless, and therefore endless. But it is also only as phenomenon that an individual is distinguished from the other things of the world; as thing-in-itself he is the will which appears in all, and death destroys the illusion which separates his consciousness from that of the rest: this is immortality.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 912
Augustine recognises, with a true instinct, this identity of the tendencies of all things with our own willing, and I cannot refrain from quoting his naïve account of the matter:—“_Si pecora essemus, carnalem vitam et quod secundum sensum ejusdem est amaremus, idque esset sufficiens bonum nostrum, et secundum hoc si esset nobis bene, nihil aliud quæreremus.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1877
In the same way every one links the present to his own individuality, and imagines that all present is extinguished with it; that then past and future might be without a present. But as on the surface of the globe every place is above, so the form of all life is the _present_, and to fear death because it robs us of the present, is just as foolish as to fear that we may slip down from the round globe upon which we have now the good fortune to occupy the upper surface.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 455
Thus, for example, a practised billiard-player may have a perfect knowledge of the laws of the impact of elastic bodies upon each other, merely in the understanding, merely for direct perception; and for him it is quite sufficient; but on the other hand it is only the man who has studied the science of mechanics, who has, properly speaking, a rational knowledge of these laws, that is, a knowledge of them in the abstract.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2225
But it appears most distinctly of all when any mob of men is set free from all law and order; then there shows itself at once in the distinctest form the _bellum omnium contra omnes_, which Hobbes has so admirably described in the first chapter _De Cive_. We see not only how every one tries to seize from the other what he wants himself, but how often one will destroy the whole happiness or life of another for the sake of an insignificant addition to his own happiness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2057
Now as with outward necessity, so also with inward; nothing reconciles so thoroughly as a distinct knowledge of it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1994
Therefore the necessity of the determination of the will by the motive, which is like that of the effect by the cause, can be exhibited perceptibly and directly only in the case of the brutes, because here the spectator has the motives just as directly before his eyes as their effect; while in the case of man the motives are almost always abstract ideas, which are not communicated to the spectator, and even for the actor himself the necessity of their effect is hidden behind their conflict.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2645
All suffering, since it is a mortification and a call to resignation, has potentially a sanctifying power. This is the explanation of the fact that every great misfortune or deep pain inspires a certain awe.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2213
The world exists as the mirror of this assertion, with innumerable individuals in infinite time and space, in infinite suffering, between generation and death without end. Yet from no side is a complaint to be further raised about this; for the will conducts the great tragedy and comedy at its own expense, and is also its own spectator. The world is just what it is because the will, whose manifestation it is, is what it is, because it so wills.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 407
A concept has almost always several others, which partially come under it, and each of these contains part of the sphere of the first, but also includes in its own sphere something more, which is not in the first. But we draw attention only to that one of these latter concepts, under which we wish to subsume the first, and let the others remain unobserved, or keep them concealed.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1409
The one species, a very low one, is found in Dutch paintings of still life, when they err by representing articles of food, which by their deceptive likeness necessarily excite the appetite for the things they represent, and this is just an excitement of the will, which puts an end to all æsthetic contemplation of the object.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 473
§ 13. All these discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of the application of reason are intended to show, that although abstract rational knowledge is the reflex of ideas of perception, and is founded on them, it is by no means in such entire congruity with them that it could everywhere take their place: indeed it never corresponds to them quite accurately.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 16
Moreover this construction, and the very close connection of all the parts, has not left open to me the division into chapters and paragraphs which I should otherwise have regarded as very important, but has obliged me to rest satisfied with four principal divisions, as it were four aspects of one thought.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2357
Only this world itself can bear the responsibility of its own existence and nature—no other; for by what means could another have assumed it? Do we desire to know what men, morally considered, are worth as a whole and in general, we have only to consider their fate as a whole and in general. This is want, wretchedness, affliction, misery, and death. Eternal justice reigns; if they were not, as a whole, worthless, their fate, as a whole, would not be so sad.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2783
67 This is expressed in the Veda by saying, that when a man dies his sight becomes one with the sun, his smell with the earth, his taste with water, his hearing with the air, his speech with fire, &c., &c. (Oupnek’hat, vol. i. p. 249 _et seq._) And also by the fact that, in a special ceremony, the dying man gives over his senses and all his faculties singly to his son, in whom they are now supposed to live on (Oupnek’hat, vol. ii. p. 82 _et seq._)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 561
However, in other respects the manner in which this has been accomplished by Euclid deserves all the praise which has been bestowed on him through so many centuries, and which has been carried so far that his method of treating mathematics has been set up as the pattern of all scientific exposition. Men tried indeed to model all the sciences after it, but later they gave up the attempt without quite knowing why.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2481
On the other hand, pure idleness and living through the exertions of others, in the case of inherited wealth, without accomplishing anything, may be regarded as morally wrong, even if it must remain right according to positive laws.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1623
Only the truth became very clear to me from these and similar views of Winckelmann connected with his peculiar metaphysic of the beautiful, that one may have the greatest susceptibility for artistic beauty, and the soundest judgment in regard to it, without being able to give an abstract and strictly philosophical justification of the nature of the beautiful; just as one may be very noble and virtuous, and may have a tender conscience, which decides with perfect accuracy in particular cases, without on that account being in a position to investigate and explain in the abstract the ethical significance of action.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2800
85 See, for example, “Oupnek’hat, studio Anquetil du Perron,” vol. ii., Nos. 138, 144, 145, 146. “Mythologie des Indous,” par Mad. de Polier, vol. ii., ch. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. “Asiatisches Magazin,” by Klaproth: in the first volume, “Ueber die Fo-Religion,” also “Baghnat Geeta” or “Gespräche zwischen Krishna und Arjoon;” in the second volume, “Moha-Mudgava.” Also, “Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu,” from the Sanscrit, by Sir William Jones (German by Hüttner, 1797), especially the sixth and twelfth chapters. Finally, many passages in the “Asiatic Researches.” (In the last forty years Indian literature has grown so much in Europe, that if I were now to complete this note to the first edition, it would occupy several pages.)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1293
Finally, they are given to soliloquising, and in general may exhibit certain weaknesses which are actually akin to madness. It has often been remarked that there is a side at which genius and madness touch, and even pass over into each other, and indeed poetical inspiration has been called a kind of madness: _amabilis insania_, Horace calls it (Od. iii. 4), and Wieland in the introduction to “Oberon” speaks of it as “amiable madness.” Even Aristotle, as quoted by Seneca (De Tranq.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1777
All possible efforts, excitements, and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, in the mere form, without the material, always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon, without the body.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1076
For although in the character the will has already taken its definite and unchangeable bent or direction, in accordance with which volition, when occasioned by the presence of a motive, invariably takes place, yet error can falsify its expressions, for it introduces illusive motives that take the place of the real ones which they resemble;(37) as, for example, when superstition forces on a man imaginary motives which impel him to a course of action directly opposed to the way in which the will would otherwise express itself in the given circumstances.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1803
We have seen in the preceding book that notwithstanding the self-adaptation of all the phenomena of will to each other as regards their species, which constitutes their teleological aspect, there yet remains an unceasing conflict between those phenomena as individuals, which is visible at every grade, and makes the world a constant battle-field of all those manifestations of one and the same will, whose inner contradiction with itself becomes visible through it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 459
Here perceptive knowledge must directly guide action; its passage through reflection makes it uncertain, for it divides the attention and confuses the man. Thus savages and untaught men, who are little accustomed to think, perform certain physical exercises, fight with beasts, shoot with bows and arrows and the like, with a certainty and rapidity which the reflecting European never attains to, just because his deliberation makes him hesitate and delay.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2256
The mere refusal of a truth, _i.e._, of an assertion generally, is in itself no wrong, but every imposing of a lie is certainly a wrong. He who refuses to show the strayed traveller the right road does him no wrong, but he who directs him to a false road certainly does.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1805
For if they are correctly related to the keynote, they can no longer be so to each other; because, for example, the fifth must be the minor third to the third, &c. For the notes of the scale may be compared to actors who must play now one part, now another.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1788
But the analogy discovered by the composer between the two must have proceeded from the direct knowledge of the nature of the world unknown to his reason, and must not be an imitation produced with conscious intention by means of conceptions, otherwise the music does not express the inner nature of the will itself, but merely gives an inadequate imitation of its phenomenon.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1507
He expresses in the hard marble that beauty of form which in a thousand attempts she failed to produce, he presents it to nature, saying, as it were, to her, “That is what you wanted to say!” And whoever is able to judge replies, “Yes, that is it.” Only in this way was it possible for the genius of the Greeks to find the type of human beauty and establish it as a canon for the school of sculpture; and only by virtue of such an anticipation is it possible for all of us to recognise beauty, when it has actually been achieved by nature in the particular case.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2190
It is always an exception if such a life suffers interruption from the fact that either the æsthetic demand for contemplation or the ethical demand for renunciation proceed from a knowledge which is independent of the service of the will, and directed to the nature of the world in general. Most men are pursued by want all through life, without ever being allowed to come to their senses.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2753
24 Omnes perturbationes judicio censent fieri et opinione. Cic. Tusc., 4, 6. Ταρασσει τους ανθρωπους ου τα πραγματα, αλλα τα περι των πραγματων δογματα (Perturbant homines non res ipsæ, sed de rebus opiniones). Epictet., c. v.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1509
For, as Empedocles said, like can only be known by like: only nature can understand itself: only nature can fathom itself: but only spirit also can understand spirit.(54)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 628
Therefore we do not ask why 2 + 2 = 4; or why the equality of the angles of a triangle determines the equality of the sides; or why its effect follows any given cause; or why the truth of the conclusion is evident from the truth of the premises. Every explanation which does not ultimately lead to a relation of which no “why” can further be demanded, stops at an accepted _qualitas occulta_; but this is the character of every original force of nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2328
Kant makes the fundamentally false assertion that apart from the state there would be no complete right of property. It follows from our deduction, as given above, that even in a state of nature there is property with complete natural, _i.e._, moral right, which cannot be injured without wrong, but may without wrong be defended to the uttermost. On the other hand, it is certain that apart from the state there is no right of punishment.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2500
Yet on the other hand, in the connection of my system, what to a certain extent corresponds and is analogous to that undertaking is the purely theoretical truth, of which my whole exposition may be regarded as merely an elaboration, that the will is the in-itself of every phenomenon but itself, as such, is free from the forms of the phenomenal, and consequently from multiplicity; a truth, which, with reference to action, I do not know how to express better than by the formula of the Vedas already quoted: “Tat twam asi!” (This thou art!) Whoever is able to say this to himself, with regard to every being with whom he comes in contact, with clear knowledge and firm inward conviction, is certain of all virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct road to salvation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 306
Materialism overlooked the fact that, with the simplest object, it assumed the subject also; and Fichte overlooked the fact that with the subject (whatever he may call it) he assumed the object also, for no subject is thinkable without an object.