The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 39 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1849
Clearly the aim was to point in the most impressive manner away from the death of the mourned individual to the immortal life of nature, and thus to indicate, though without abstract knowledge, that the whole of nature is the phenomenon and also the fulfilment of the will to live. The form of this phenomenon is time, space, and causality, and by means of these individuation, which carries with it that the individual must come into being and pass away.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2179
Fanatics, martyrs, saints of every faith and name, have voluntarily and gladly endured every torture, because in them the will to live had suppressed itself; and then even the slow destruction of its phenomenon was welcome to them. But I do not wish to anticipate the later exposition.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2089
We saw that the inner being of unconscious nature is a constant striving without end and without rest. And this appears to us much more distinctly when we consider the nature of brutes and man. Willing and striving is its whole being, which may be very well compared to an unquenchable thirst. But the basis of all willing is need, deficiency, and thus pain. Consequently, the nature of brutes and man is subject to pain originally and through its very being.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 191
Kant’s answer therefore could only run thus:—the _long_ dream (life) has throughout complete connection according to the principle of sufficient reason; it has not this connection, however, with _short_ dreams, although each of these has in itself the same connection: the bridge is therefore broken between the former and the latter, and on this account we distinguish them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 347
This itself is sufficient to prove that the lower animals can never learn to speak or comprehend, although they have the organs of speech and ideas of perception in common with us. But because words represent this perfectly distinct class of ideas, whose subjective correlative is reason, they are without sense and meaning for the brutes.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 310
Each of these reigns so absolutely in its own class of ideas that, as we have seen, when the special form of the principle of sufficient reason which governs any class of ideas is known, the nature of the whole class is known also: for the whole class, as idea, is no more than this form of the principle of sufficient reason itself; so that time itself is nothing but the principle of existence in it, _i.e._, succession; space is nothing but the principle of existence in it, _i.e._, position; matter is nothing but causality; the concept (as will appear immediately) is nothing but relation to a ground of knowledge.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1144
But all the knowledge that has been communicated in the two first books will gain greater completeness, and consequently greater certainty, from the two following books, in which I hope that several questions that have more or less distinctly arisen in the course of our work will also be sufficiently answered.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1331
All _willing_ arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering. The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, the demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out. But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent; every satisfied wish at once makes room for a new one; both are illusions; the one is known to be so, the other not yet.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 965
It may not perhaps be superfluous to elucidate further by an example how the law of causality has meaning only in relation to time and space, and the matter which consists in the union of the two.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1398
Even the vault of the starry heaven produces this if it is contemplated without reflection; but just in the same way as the vault of stone, and only by its apparent, not its real extent.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 399
That all this was only brought about slowly, and with great pains, and up till the time of Aristotle remained very incomplete, is evident from the awkward and tedious way in which logical truths are brought out in many of the Platonic dialogues, and still more from what Sextus Empiricus tells us of the controversies of the Megarics, about the easiest and simplest logical rules, and the laborious way in which they were brought into a definite form (Sext. Emp. adv. Math. l. 8, p. 112).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 462
But an abstract science of physiognomy to be taught and learned is not possible; for the distinctions of difference are here so fine that concepts cannot reach them; therefore abstract knowledge is related to them as a mosaic is to a painting by a Van der Werft or a Denner.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2380
The living knowledge of eternal justice, of the balance that inseparably binds together the _malum culpæ_ with the _malum pœnæ_, demands the complete transcending of individuality and the principle of its possibility. Therefore it will always remain unattainable to the majority of men, as will also be the case with the pure and distinct knowledge of the nature of all virtue, which is akin to it, and which we are about to explain.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1976
For example, in order that the relation may appear that exists in a given man between egoism and sympathy, it is not sufficient that he should possess wealth and see others in want, but he must also know what he can do with his wealth, both for himself and for others: not only must the suffering of others be presented to him, but he must know both what suffering and also what pleasure is.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2127
From every particular delusion of this kind one must inevitably be brought back later, and then when it vanishes must pay for it with pain as bitter as the joy its entrance caused was keen. So far, then, it is precisely like a height from which one can come down only by a fall. Therefore one ought to avoid them; and every sudden excessive grief is just a fall from some such height, the vanishing of such a delusion, and so conditioned by it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 363
We see then that a concept is not general because of being abstracted from several objects; but conversely, because generality, that is to say, non-determination of the particular, belongs to the concept as an abstract idea of the reason, different things can be thought by means of the same one.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2543
All things flee to thee that they may attain to God.” But a yet greater mystic, Meister Eckhard, whose wonderful writings are at last accessible (1857) through the edition of Franz Pfeiffer, says the same thing (p. 459) quite in the sense explained here: “I bear witness to the saying of Christ. I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto me (John xii. 32). So shall the good man draw all things up to God, to the source whence they first came.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2311
As if the inward disposition, to which alone morality or immorality belongs, the externally free will, would allow itself to be modified from without and changed by influences exerted upon it! Still more perverse is the theory that the state is the condition of freedom in the moral sense, and in this way the condition of morality; for freedom lies beyond the phenomenon, and indeed beyond human arrangements.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 413
Most scientific arguments, and especially philosophical demonstrations, are at bottom not much more than this, for how else would it be possible, that so much, in different ages, has not only been falsely apprehended (for error itself has a different source), but demonstrated and proved, and has yet afterwards been found to be fundamentally wrong, for example, the Leibnitz-Wolfian Philosophy, Ptolemaic Astronomy, Stahl’s Chemistry, Newton’s Theory of Colours, &c. &c.(15)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1813
That pure, true, and deep knowledge of the inner nature of the world becomes now for him an end in itself: he stops there.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2808
The only dogma which was regarded as fixed by all parties was the existence and attributes of God, and they all unceasingly move in a circle, because they seek to bring these things into harmony, _i.e._, to solve a sum that will not come right, but always shows a remainder at some new place whenever we have concealed it elsewhere. But it does not occur to any one to seek for the source of the difficulty in the fundamental assumption, although it palpably obtrudes itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1587
It is true that even the dullest of them accept on authority recognisedly great works, lest otherwise they should argue their own incompetence; but they wait in silence, always ready to express their condemnation, as soon as they are allowed to hope that they may do so without being left to stand alone; and then their long-restrained hatred against all that is great and beautiful, and against the authors of it, gladly relieves itself; for such things never appealed to them, and for that very reason were humiliating to them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 935
It is therefore senseless to demand a cause of gravity or electricity, for they are original forces. Their expressions, indeed, take place in accordance with the law of cause and effect, so that every one of their particular manifestations has a cause, which is itself again just a similar particular manifestation which determines that this force must express itself here, must appear in space and time; but the force itself is by no means the effect of a cause, nor the cause of an effect.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2121
The measure of our pain and our happiness is on the whole, according to our hypothesis, subjectively determined for each point of time, and the motive for sadness is related to that, just as a blister which draws to a head all the bad humours otherwise distributed is related to the body.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1332
No attained object of desire can give lasting satisfaction, but merely a fleeting gratification; it is like the alms thrown to the beggar, that keeps him alive to-day that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we can never have lasting happiness nor peace.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2230
For although here also the body objectifies in the genitals the will to perpetuate the species, yet this is not willed. Just on this account, because it is a denial or suppression of the will to live, such a renunciation is a hard and painful self-conquest; but of this later.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2643
Thus Plato speaks in the “Phædon” of men who up to the moment of their execution feast, drink, and indulge in sensuous pleasure, asserting life even to the death. Shakespeare shows us in Cardinal Beaufort the fearful end of a profligate, who dies full of despair, for no suffering or death can break his will, which is vehement to the extreme of wickedness.(89)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2689
But human nature has depths, obscurities, and perplexities, the analysis and elucidation of which is a matter of the very greatest difficulty.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1234
But how shall he who feels this, regard himself as absolutely transitory, in contrast to imperishable nature? Such a man will rather be filled with the consciousness, which the Upanishad of the Veda expresses: _Hæ omnes creaturæ in totum ego sum, et præter me aliud ens non est_ (Oupnek’hat, i. 122).(48)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 919
In this principle all our knowledge _a priori_ is expressed, but, as we showed above, this _a priori_ knowledge, as such, only applies to the knowableness of things, not to the things themselves, _i.e._, it is only our form of knowledge, it is not a property of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself is, as such, free from all forms of knowledge, even the most universal, that of being an object for the subject. In other words, the thing-in-itself is something altogether different from the idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2068
A solid tends towards fluidity either by melting or dissolving, for only so will its chemical forces be free; rigidity is the imprisonment in which it is held by cold. The fluid tends towards the gaseous state, into which it passes at once as soon as all pressure is removed from it. No body is without relationship, _i.e._, without tendency or without desire and longing, as Jacob Böhme would say.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1762
The conception is here, as everywhere in art, unfruitful. The composer reveals the inner nature of the world, and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language which his reason does not understand; as a person under the influence of mesmerism tells things of which he has no conception when he awakes. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separated and distinct from the artist.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2740
But if we turn our glance from our own needy and embarrassed condition to those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to perfect self-knowledge, found itself again in all, and then freely denied itself, and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with the body which it animates; then, instead of the restless striving and effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from joy to sorrow, instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope which constitutes the life of the man who wills, we shall see that peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the countenance, as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2696
But when the _principium individuationis_ is seen through, when the Ideas, and indeed the inner nature of the thing-in-itself, as the same will in all, are directly recognised, and from this knowledge an universal quieter of volition arises, then the particular motives become ineffective, because the kind of knowledge which corresponds to them is obscured and thrown into the background by quite another kind.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2322
Otherwise the positive legislation is, on the contrary, the establishment of a _positive wrong_; it is itself an openly avowed enforced wrong. Such is every despotism, the constitution of most Mohammedan kingdoms; and indeed various parts of many constitutions are also of this kind; for example, serfdom, vassalage, and many such institutions.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 166
The process by which children, and persons born blind who have been operated upon, learn to see, the single vision of the double sensation of two eyes, the double vision and double touch which occur when the organs of sense have been displaced from their usual position, the upright appearance of objects while the picture on the retina is upside down, the attributing of colour to the outward objects, whereas it is merely an inner function, a division through polarisation, of the activity of the eye, and lastly the stereoscope,—all these are sure and incontrovertible evidence that perception is not merely of the senses, but intellectual—that is, _pure knowledge through the understanding of the cause from the effect_, and that, consequently, it presupposes the law of causality, in a knowledge of which all perception—that is to say all experience, by virtue of its primary and only possibility, depends.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2527
If, however, this penetration of the _principium individuationis_, this direct knowledge of the identity of will in all its manifestations, is present in a high degree of distinctness, it will at once show an influence upon the will which extends still further.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1717
In the “Mohammed” of Voltaire this is actually expressed in the concluding words which the dying Palmira addresses to Mohammad: “The world is for tyrants: live!” On the other hand, the demand for so-called poetical justice rests on entire misconception of the nature of tragedy, and, indeed, of the nature of the world itself. It boldly appears in all its dulness in the criticisms which Dr. Samuel Johnson made on particular plays of Shakespeare, for he very naïvely laments its entire absence.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 330
It is by the help of language alone that reason accomplishes its most important achievements,—the united action of several individuals, the planned co-operation of many thousands, civilisation, the state; also science, the storing up of experience, the uniting of common properties in one concept, the communication of truth, the spread of error, thoughts and poems, dogmas and superstitions.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 444
If then we wish to have abstract knowledge of space-relations we must first translate them into time-relations,—that is, into numbers; therefore only arithmetic, and not geometry, is the universal science of quantity, and geometry must be translated into arithmetic if it is to be communicable, accurately precise and applicable in practice.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2747
11 The first four chapters of the first of the supplementary books belong to these seven paragraphs.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 939
In the higher grades of the objectivity of will we see individuality occupy a prominent position, especially in the case of man, where it appears as the great difference of individual characters, _i.e._, as complete personality, outwardly expressed in strongly marked individual physiognomy, which influences the whole bodily form.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2801
86 At the procession of Jagganath in June 1840, eleven Hindus threw themselves under the wheels, and were instantly killed. (Letter of an East Indian proprietor in the _Times_ of 30th December 1840.)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 862
Whatever the thing-in-itself may be, Kant is right in his conclusion that time, space, and causality (which we afterwards found to be forms of the principle of sufficient reason, the general expression of the forms of the phenomenon) are not its properties, but come to it only after, and so far as, it has become idea. That is, they belong only to its phenomenal existence, not to itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 835
All properly organic and vegetative changes of the animal body must therefore be referred to stimuli, not to mere causes. But the stimulus, like every cause and motive generally, never determines more than the point of time and space at which the manifestation of every force is to take place, and does not determine the inner nature of the force itself which is manifested.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2169
But as far as the life of the individual is concerned, every biography is the history of suffering, for every life is, as a rule, a continual series of great and small misfortunes, which each one conceals as much as possible, because he knows that others can seldom feel sympathy or compassion, but almost always satisfaction at the sight of the woes from which they are themselves for the moment exempt.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1750
Those nearer to the bass are the lower of these grades, the still unorganised, but yet manifold phenomenal things; the higher represent to me the world of plants and beasts. The definite intervals of the scale are parallel to the definite grades of the objectification of will, the definite species in nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2339
Now here a Kantian would inevitably reply that certainly according to this view the punished criminal would be used “merely as a means.” This proposition, so unweariedly repeated by all the Kantians, “Man must always be treated as an end, never as a means,” certainly sounds significant, and is therefore a very suitable proposition for those who like to have a formula which saves them all further thought; but looked at in the light, it is an exceedingly vague, indefinite assertion, which reaches its aim quite indirectly, requires to be explained, defined, and modified in every case of its application, and, if taken generally, is insufficient, meagre, and moreover problematical.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 241
I have explained in the essay referred to, how in this way double sight and double feeling take place if the organs of sense are brought into an unusual position; and have thus given an incontrovertible proof that perception exists only through and for the understanding.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1642
Ideas are essentially perceptible; if, therefore, in poetry only abstract conceptions are directly communicated through words, it is yet clearly the intention to make the hearer perceive the Ideas of life in the representatives of these conceptions, and this can only take place through the assistance of his own imagination.