The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 36 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1848
It was precisely the same sentiment that led the Greeks and Romans to adorn their costly sarcophagi, just as we see them now, with feasts, dances, marriages, the chase, fights of wild beasts, bacchanalians, &c.; thus with representations of the full ardour of life, which they place before us not only in such revels and sports, but also in sensual groups, and even go so far as to represent the sexual intercourse of satyrs and goats.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 756
None of this information have we got directly with regard to the nature, action, and experience of other real objects.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 273
But as yet neither extreme has been reached, and it is only in the intermediate ground that something has been won. The prospect is indeed somewhat hopeless. The chemists, under the presupposition that the qualitative division of matter is not, like quantitative division, an endless process, are always trying to decrease the number of the elements, of which there are still about sixty; and if they were to succeed in reducing them to two, they would still try to find the common root of these.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2650
When through some such great and irrevocable denial of fate the will is to some extent broken, almost nothing else is desired, and the character shows itself mild, just, noble, and resigned.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2596
In the case of such radically different dogmas, customs, and circumstances, the inward life and effort of both is the same. And the same harmony prevails in the maxims prescribed for both of them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1312
If now such a sorrow, such painful knowledge or reflection, is so bitter that it becomes altogether unbearable, and the individual is prostrated under it, then, terrified Nature seizes upon _madness_ as the last resource of life; the mind so fearfully tortured at once destroys the thread of its memory, fills up the gaps with fictions, and thus seeks refuge in madness from the mental suffering that exceeds its strength, just as we cut off a mortified limb and replace it with a wooden one.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1274
This is why he is so soon done with everything, with works of art, objects of natural beauty, and indeed everywhere with the truly significant contemplation of all the scenes of life. He does not linger; only seeks to know his own way in life, together with all that might at any time become his way. Thus he makes topographical notes in the widest sense; over the consideration of life itself as such he wastes no time.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1934
Priestley has very sufficiently proved the necessity of the individual action in his “Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity;” but Kant, whose merit in this respect is specially great, first proved the coexistence of this necessity with the freedom of the will in itself, _i.e._, apart from the phenomenon,(69) by establishing the distinction between the intelligible and the empirical character.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2267
Therefore, for example, the refusal of help to another in great need, the quiet contemplation of the death of another from starvation while we ourselves have more than enough, is certainly cruel and fiendish, but it is not wrong; only it can be affirmed with certainty that whoever is capable of carrying unkindness and hardness to such a degree will certainly also commit every wrong whenever his wishes demand it and no compulsion prevents it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 591
He set about it, indeed, under the correct assumption that nature must everywhere be consistent, and that therefore it must also be so in space, its fundamental form. Since then the parts of space stand to each other in a relation of reason and consequent, no single property of space can be different from what it is without being in contradiction with all the others. But this is a very troublesome, unsatisfactory, and roundabout way to follow.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1754
The disconnected course of all the complemental parts, and their regulation by definite laws, is analogous to the fact that in the whole irrational world, from the crystal to the most perfect animal, no being has a connected consciousness of its own which would make its life into a significant whole, and none experiences a succession of mental developments, none perfects itself by culture, but everything exists always in the same way according to its kind, determined by fixed law.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 635
In mathematics, for example, this is space and time; in mechanics, physics, and chemistry it is matter, qualities, original forces and laws of nature; in botany and zoology it is the difference of species, and life itself; in history it is the human race with all its properties of thought and will: in all it is that form of the principle of sufficient reason which is respectively applicable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2507
And that we saw that every wish proceeds from a need, from a want, from suffering, and that therefore every satisfaction is only the removal of a pain, and brings no positive happiness; that the joys certainly lie to the wish, presenting themselves as a positive good, but in truth they have only a negative nature, and are only the end of an evil.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 100
Thus it is that with me there is no compromise and no fellowship, that no one reaps any benefit from my works but the man who seeks the truth alone, and therefore none of the philosophical parties of the day; for they all follow their own aims, while I have only insight into truth to offer, which suits none of these aims, because it is not modelled after any of them. If my philosophy is to become susceptible of professorial exposition, the times must entirely change.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1739
I can therefore do no more than state here, at the conclusion of this third book, which has been principally devoted to the consideration of the arts, the explanation of the marvellous art of music which satisfies myself, and I must leave the acceptance or denial of my view to the effect produced upon each of my readers both by music itself and by the whole system of thought communicated in this work.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2154
Every individual, every human being and his course of life, is but another short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will to live; is only another fleeting form, which it carelessly sketches on its infinite page, space and time; allows to remain for a time so short that it vanishes into nothing in comparison with these, and then obliterates to make new room.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2474
We see that he does not, like the bad man, merely assert his own manifestation of will and deny all others; that other persons are not for him mere masks, whose nature is quite different from his own; but he shows in his conduct that he also recognises his own nature—the will to live as a thing-in-itself, in the foreign manifestation which is only given to him as idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 758
If, however, he abstracts from that special relation, from that twofold and completely heterogeneous knowledge of what is one and the same, then that _one_, the body, is an idea like all other ideas.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 785
If, however, physiology tries to refer even these outward actions, the immediate voluntary movements, to causes in the organism,—for example, if it explains the movement of the muscles as resulting from the presence of fluids (“like the contraction of a cord when it is wet,” says Reil in his “Archiv für Physiologie,” vol. vi. p.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 109
It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, _i.e._, only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1605
No great completeness in the work of art is demanded for what is aimed at here. It is only necessary that we should see what the thing is meant to be, for, as soon as this has been discovered, the end is reached, and the mind is now led away to quite a different kind of idea to an abstract conception, which is the end that was in view.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1215
Knowledge now, as a rule, remains always subordinate to the service of the will, as indeed it originated for this service, and grew, so to speak, to the will, as the head to the body. In the case of the brutes this subjection of knowledge to the will can never be abolished. In the case of men it can be abolished only in exceptional cases, which we shall presently consider more closely.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 379
It is the general knowledge of the mode of procedure of the reason expressed in the form of rules. It is reached by the introspection of reason, and by abstraction from all content. But this mode of procedure is necessary and essential to reason, so that it will never depart from it if left to itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1399
Some objects of our perception excite in us the feeling of the sublime because, not only on account of their spatial vastness, but also of their great age, that is, their temporal duration, we feel ourselves dwarfed to insignificance in their presence, and yet revel in the pleasure of contemplating them: of this kind are very high mountains, the Egyptian pyramids, and colossal ruins of great antiquity.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1233
Whoever now, has, after the manner referred to, become so absorbed and lost in the perception of nature that he only continues to exist as the pure knowing subject, becomes in this way directly conscious that, as such, he is the condition, that is, the supporter, of the world and all objective existence; for this now shows itself as dependent upon his existence. Thus he draws nature into himself, so that he sees it to be merely an accident of his own being. In this sense Byron says—
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2349
But it is quite otherwise with _eternal justice_, which was referred to before, and which rules not the state but the world, is not dependent upon human institutions, is not subject to chance and deception, is not uncertain, wavering, and erring, but infallible, fixed, and sure. The conception of requital implies that of time; therefore _eternal justice_ cannot be requital.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 526
Therefore it is either empirical or founded upon the perception _a priori_ of the conditions of possible experience. In both cases it affords only immanent, not transcendent knowledge. Every concept has its worth and its existence only in its relation, sometimes very indirect, to an idea of perception; what is true of the concepts is also true of the judgments constructed out of them, and of all science.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 768
For what other kind of existence or reality should we attribute to the rest of the material world? Whence should we take the elements out of which we construct such a world? Besides will and idea nothing is known to us or thinkable. If we wish to attribute the greatest known reality to the material world which exists immediately only in our idea, we give it the reality which our own body has for each of us; for that is the most real thing for every one.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1789
All specially imitative music does this; for example, “The Seasons,” by Haydn; also many passages of his “Creation,” in which phenomena of the external world are directly imitated; also all battle-pieces. Such music is entirely to be rejected.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1799
And if, finally, we apply this view to the interpretation of harmony and melody given above, we shall find that a mere moral philosophy without an explanation of Nature, such as Socrates wanted to introduce, is precisely analogous to a mere melody without harmony, which Rousseau exclusively desired; and, in opposition to this mere physics and metaphysics without ethics, will correspond to mere harmony without melody.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 115
164), where he says, “The fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms.” These words adequately express the compatibility of empirical reality and transcendental ideality.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2459
Upon conduct, outward action, dogmas may certainly exercise a powerful influence, as also custom and example (the last because the ordinary man does not trust his judgment, of the weakness of which he is conscious, but only follows his own or some one else’s experience), but the disposition is not altered in this way.(80) All abstract knowledge gives only motives; but, as was shown above, motives can only alter the direction of the will, not the will itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1590
The _Idea_ is the unity that falls into multiplicity on account of the temporal and spatial form of our intuitive apprehension; the _concept_, on the contrary, is the unity reconstructed out of multiplicity by the abstraction of our reason; the latter may be defined as _unitas post rem_, the former as _unitas ante rem_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1317
The particular object of his contemplation, or the present which is perceived by him with extraordinary vividness, appear in so strong a light that the other links of the chain to which they belong are at once thrown into the shade, and this gives rise to phenomena which have long been recognised as resembling those of madness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 271
History has the past acts of men treated as a whole as problem, and the law of human motives as organon. Natural science has matter as problem, and the law of causality as organon. Its end and aim is therefore, by the guidance of causality, to refer all possible states of matter to other states, and ultimately to one single state; and again to deduce these states from each other, and ultimately from one single state.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 184
Among the abstract ideas, the concepts united in the judgment, the principle of sufficient reason appears in such a way that each of these has its worth, its validity, and its whole existence, here called _truth_, simply and solely through the relation of the judgment to something outside of it, its ground of knowledge, to which there must consequently always be a return.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1320
§ 37. Genius, then, consists, according to our explanation, in the capacity for knowing, independently of the principle of sufficient reason, not individual things, which have their existence only in their relations, but the Ideas of such things, and of being oneself the correlative of the Idea, and thus no longer an individual, but the pure subject of knowledge.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 428
Since then we have in German the nearly synonymous word _empfindung_ (sensation), it would be convenient to make use of it for bodily feeling, as a sub-species. This concept “feeling,” which is quite out of proportion to all others, doubtless originated in the following manner. All concepts, and concepts alone, are denoted by words; they exist only for the reason, and proceed from it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2354
The world, in all the multiplicity of its parts and forms, is the manifestation, the objectivity, of the one will to live. Existence itself, and the kind of existence, both as a collective whole and in every part, proceeds from the will alone. The will is free, the will is almighty. The will appears in everything, just as it determines itself in itself and outside time.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2591
If, as has often been feared, and especially at the present time, that excellent and salutary religion should altogether decline, I should look for the reason of this simply in the fact that it does not consist of one single element, but of two originally different elements, which have only been combined through the accident of history.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1846
Birth and death belong in like manner to life, and hold the balance as reciprocal conditions of each other, or, if one likes the expression, as poles of the whole phenomenon of life.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 487
Hence that clinging to the form, to the manner, to the expression and word which is characteristic of pedantry, and which with it takes the place of the real nature of the matter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1094
Now, in the lowest grades of objectivity, such an act (or an Idea) retains its unity in the manifestation; while, in order to appear in higher grades, it requires a whole series of conditions and developments in time, which only collectively express its nature completely.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2174
And yet he made a very proper hell of it. And when, on the other hand, he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this. Therefore there remained nothing for him to do but, instead of describing the joys of paradise, to repeat to us the instruction given him there by his ancestor, by Beatrice, and by various saints. But from this it is sufficiently clear what manner of world it is.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 629
Every explanation in natural science must ultimately end with such a _qualitas occulta_, and thus with complete obscurity. It must leave the inner nature of a stone just as much unexplained as that of a human being; it can give as little account of the weight, the cohesion, the chemical qualities, &c., of the former, as of the knowing and acting of the latter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 559
Often, as in the proposition of Pythagoras, lines are drawn, we don’t know why, and it afterwards appears that they were traps which close unexpectedly and take prisoner the assent of the astonished learner, who must now admit what remains wholly inconceivable in its inner connection, so much so, that he may study the whole of Euclid through and through without gaining a real insight into the laws of space-relations, but instead of them he only learns by heart certain results which follow from them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 626
As regards the _content_ of the sciences generally, it is, in fact, always the relation of the phenomena of the world to each other, according to the principle of sufficient reason, under the guidance of the _why_, which has validity and meaning only through this principle. _Explanation_ is the establishment of this relation.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2299
In order to found a perfect state, we must begin by providing beings whose nature allows them always to sacrifice their own to the public good. Till then, however, something may be attained through the existence of _one_ family whose good is quite inseparable from that of the country; so that, at least in matters of importance, it can never advance the one without the other. On this rests the power and the advantage of the hereditary monarchy.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2263
In the connection of our system we have found that the content of the concept of _wrong_ is that quality of the conduct of an individual in which he extends the assertion of the will appearing in his own body so far that it becomes the denial of the will appearing in the bodies of others.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1992
Now, although man and brute are with equal necessity determined by their motives, yet man, as distinguished from the brute, has a complete _choice_, which has often been regarded as a freedom of the will in particular actions, although it is nothing but the possibility of a thoroughly-fought-out battle between several motives, the strongest of which then determines it with necessity.