The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,809 passages indexed from The World as Will and Idea (Arthur Schopenhauer) — Page 56 of 57
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The World as Will and Idea, passage 1314
A faint analogy of this kind of transition from pain to madness is to be found in the way in which all of us often seek, as it were mechanically, to drive away a painful thought that suddenly occurs to us by some loud exclamation or quick movement—to turn ourselves from it, to distract our minds by force.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 37
For apart from the difficulties and the effort which it requires from the reader, what cultured man of this age, whose knowledge has almost reached the august point at which the paradoxical and the false are all one to it, could bear to meet thoughts almost on every page that directly contradict that which he has yet himself established once for all as true and undeniable?
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1695
It describes the feeling of a drunk plumber falling from a tower, who observes in passing that the clock on the tower is at half-past eleven, a remark which is quite foreign to his condition, and thus belongs to knowledge free from will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 595
As time has only one dimension, counting is the only arithmetical operation, to which all others may be reduced; and yet counting is just intuition or perception _a priori_, to which there is no hesitation in appealing here, and through which alone everything else, every sum and every equation, is ultimately proved. We prove, for example, not that (7 + 9 × 8 - 2)/3 = 42; but we refer to the pure perception in time, counting thus makes each individual problem an axiom.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1735
Further, its representative relation to the world must be very deep, absolutely true, and strikingly accurate, because it is instantly understood by every one, and has the appearance of a certain infallibility, because its form may be reduced to perfectly definite rules expressed in numbers, from which it cannot free itself without entirely ceasing to be music.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 536
For example, the apparent motion of the planets is known empirically; after many false hypotheses with regard to the spacial connection of this motion (planetary course) the right one was at last found, then the laws which it obeyed (the laws of Kepler), and, lastly, the cause of these laws (universal gravitation), and the empirically known agreement of all observed cases with the whole of the hypotheses, and with their consequences, that is to say, induction, established them with complete certainty.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2662
§ 69. Suicide, the actual doing away with the individual manifestation of will, differs most widely from the denial of the will to live, which is the single outstanding act of free-will in the manifestation, and is therefore, as Asmus calls it, the transcendental change. This last has been fully considered in the course of our work.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1929
The person is never free although he is the phenomenon of a free will; for he is already the determined phenomenon of the free volition of this will, and, because he enters the form of every object, the principle of sufficient reason, he develops indeed the unity of that will in a multiplicity of actions, but on account of the timeless unity of that volition in itself, this multiplicity exhibits in itself the regular conformity to law of a force of Nature.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1268
The imagination then extends the intellectual horizon of the man of genius beyond the objects which actually present themselves to him, both as regards quality and quantity. Therefore extraordinary strength of imagination accompanies, and is indeed a necessary condition of genius. But the converse does not hold, for strength of imagination does not indicate genius; on the contrary, men who have no touch of genius may have much imagination.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 693
Here then a marked antagonism is brought out between the ethical system of Stoicism and all those systems referred to above which make virtue in itself directly, and accompanied by the most grievous sorrows, their aim, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1842
Will is the thing-in-itself, the inner content, the essence of the world. Life, the visible world, the phenomenon, is only the mirror of the will. Therefore life accompanies the will as inseparably as the shadow accompanies the body; and if will exists, so will life, the world, exist. Life is, therefore, assured to the will to live; and so long as we are filled with the will to live we need have no fear for our existence, even in the presence of death.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 77
Besides, they will find everywhere the reference to the corresponding passages of the first volume, the paragraphs of which I have numbered in the second edition for this purpose, though in the first edition they were only divided by lines.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 331
The brute first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant annihilation in the whole of life. Principally on this account man has philosophies and religions, though it is uncertain whether the qualities we admire most in his conduct, voluntary rectitude and nobility of feeling, were ever the fruit of either of them.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1969
What the man really and in general wills, the striving of his inmost nature, and the end he pursues in accordance with it, this we can never change by influence upon him from without by instruction, otherwise we could transform him. Seneca says admirably, _velle non discitur_; whereby he preferred truth to his Stoic philosophers, who taught διδακτην ειναι την αρετην (_doceri posse virtutem_). From without the will can only be affected by motives.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2773
It is worthy of serious consideration what an amount of time—both their own and other people’s—and paper is lost by this swarm of mediocre poets, and how injurious is their influence. For the public always seizes on what is new, and has naturally a greater proneness to what is perverse and dull as akin to itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1008
They referred the movements of the globe to the impact of a fluid, and the qualities of matter to the connection and form of the atoms, and hence they laboured to explain all the phenomena of nature as merely manifestations of impenetrability and cohesion.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 397
In this way what had formerly been followed only by tacit agreement, and instinctively, would be consciously recognised and formally expressed.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1046
Meanwhile we can recognise this strife, this subjugation, just as well in the lower grades of the objectification of will. Many insects (especially ichneumon-flies) lay their eggs on the skin, and even in the body of the larvæ of other insects, whose slow destruction is the first work of the newly hatched brood.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 842
For other motives, _i.e._, mere ideas, can determine the will to check it or accelerate it, and, as is the case with every other voluntary action, it seems to us that we could give up breathing altogether and voluntarily suffocate. And in fact we could do so if any other motive influenced the will sufficiently strongly to overcome the pressing desire for air. According to some accounts Diogenes actually put an end to his life in this way (Diog. Laert. VI. 76).
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1819
In this respect the following part of our work would, in ordinary language, be called practical philosophy, in opposition to the theoretical, which has occupied us hitherto. But, in my opinion, all philosophy is theoretical, because it is essential to it that it should retain a purely contemplative attitude, and should investigate, not prescribe. To become, on the contrary, practical, to guide conduct, to transform character, are old claims, which with fuller insight it ought finally to give up.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 96
Indeed my philosophy does not permit to the professors the fiction they have so cunningly devised, and which has become so indispensable to them, of a reason that knows, perceives, or apprehends immediately and absolutely.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2056
Hence it arises that innumerable permanent ills, such as lameness, poverty, low estate, ugliness, a disagreeable dwelling-place, are borne with indifference by innumerable persons, and are no longer felt, like healed wounds, just because these persons know that inward or outward necessity renders it impossible that any change can take place in these things; while those who are more fortunate cannot understand how such misfortunes can be borne.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 651
The detailed and thorough refutation of this Kantian principle of morality I have given later in the “Fundamental Problems of Ethics.” There remains, therefore, but little for me to say here about the actual influence of reason, in the true sense of the word, upon action.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1916
The whole content of Nature, the collective sum of its phenomena, is thus throughout necessary, and the necessity of every part, of every phenomenon, of every event, can always be proved, because it must be possible to find the reason from which it follows as a consequent. This admits of no exception: it follows from the unrestricted validity of the principle of sufficient reason. In another aspect, however, the same world is for us, in all its phenomena, objectivity of will.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1609
For example, the unnatural light in the “Night” of Correggio, which, though beautifully executed, has yet a merely allegorical motive, and is really impossible. If then an allegorical picture has artistic value, it is quite separate from and independent of what it accomplishes as allegory. Such a work of art serves two ends at once, the expression of a conception and the expression of an Idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2594
And even yet these precepts, whose origin reaches back more than four thousand years, are carried out in practice, in some cases even to the utmost extreme,(86) and this notwithstanding the fact that the Hindu nation has been broken up into so many parts.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1339
In the same spirit, landscape-painters, and particularly Ruisdael, have often painted very insignificant country scenes, which produce the same effect even more agreeably.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2684
181, and vol. xlviii. p. 95; also in Nasse’s “Zeitschrift für psychische Aerzte,” 1819, part iii. p. 460; and in the “Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,” 1809, vol. v. p. 319. In the year 1833 all the papers announced that the English historian, Dr. Lingard, had died in January at Dover of voluntary starvation; according to later accounts, it was not he himself, but a relation of his who died.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 369
This last case applies to all concepts whose spheres have nothing immediately in common, for there is always a third sphere, often a much wider one, which includes both.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1064
For such a stimulus must be waited for, but the food has now come to be of a more special and definite kind, and with the ever-increasing multiplicity of the individual phenomena, the crowd and confusion has become so great that they interfere with each other, and the chance of the individual that is moved merely by stimuli and must wait for its food would be too unfavourable.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2277
For the rest, I regard it as superfluous to show that all this completely agrees with what was said above about the unlawfulness of the lie and of violence. It may also serve to explain the peculiar theory of the lie told under pressure.(75)
The World as Will and Idea, passage 646
This task was already prescribed to philosophy by Bacon of Verulam when he said: _ea demum vera est philosophia, quae mundi ipsius voces fidelissime reddit, et veluti dictante mundo conscripta est, et nihil aliud est, quam ejusdem_ SIMULACRUM ET REFLECTIO, _neque addit quidquam de proprio, sed tantum iterat et resonat_ (De Augm. Scient., L. 2, c. 13). But we take this in a wider sense than Bacon could then conceive.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1673
It is also a mistake to suppose that autobiographies are full of deceit and dissimulation. On the contrary, lying (though always possible) is perhaps more difficult there than elsewhere. Dissimulation is easiest in mere conversation; indeed, though it may sound paradoxical, it is really more difficult even in a letter.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2610
He now looks back smiling and at rest on the delusions of this world, which once were able to move and agonise his spirit also, but which now stand before him as utterly indifferent to him, as the chess-men when the game is ended, or as, in the morning, the cast-off masquerading dress which worried and disquieted us in a night in Carnival.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2335
Nay, this would rather be the most presumptuous arrogance; and therefore the Bible says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” But man has the right to care for the safety of society; and this can only be done by interdicting all actions which are denoted by the word “criminal,” in order to prevent them by means of counter-motives, which are the threatened punishments. And this threat can only be made effective by carrying it out when a case occurs in spite of it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 469
The exposition of this belongs to another part of our work; this, however, I may remark here, that the dogmas relating to ethics may be the same in the reason of whole nations, but the action of every individual different; and the converse also holds good; action, we say, is guided by _feelings_,—that is, simply not by concepts, but as a matter of fact by the ethical character.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1568
For what is peculiarly significant in the former is not the individual, not the particular event as such, but the universal in it, the side of the Idea of humanity which expresses itself through it.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2099
It makes beings who love each other so little as men do, seek each other eagerly, and thus becomes the source of social intercourse. Moreover, even from motives of policy, public precautions are everywhere taken against it, as against other universal calamities. For this evil may drive men to the greatest excesses, just as much as its opposite extreme, famine: the people require _panem et circenses_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2141
Yet we shall see farther on that this kind of pleasure, through knowledge of our own well-being obtained in this way, lies very near the source of real, positive wickedness.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 119
§ 2. That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject. Thus it is the supporter of the world, that condition of all phenomena, of all objects which is always pre-supposed throughout experience; for all that exists, exists only for the subject. Every one finds himself to be subject, yet only in so far as he knows, not in so far as he is an object of knowledge. But his body is object, and therefore from this point of view we call it idea.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2690
It might be supposed that the entire exposition (now terminated) of that which I call the denial of the will is irreconcilable with the earlier explanation of necessity, which belongs just as much to motivation as to every other form of the principle of sufficient reason, and according to which, motives, like all causes, are only occasional causes, upon which the character unfolds its nature and reveals it with the necessity of a natural law, on account of which we absolutely denied freedom as _liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 122
So that any one percipient being, with the object, constitutes the whole world as idea just as fully as the existing millions could do; but if this one were to disappear, then the whole world as idea would cease to be. These halves are therefore inseparable even for thought, for each of the two has meaning and existence only through and for the other, each appears with the other and vanishes with it. They limit each other immediately; where the object begins the subject ends.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 2669
As we found this contradiction in the case of the lowest manifestations of will, in the permanent struggle of all the forces of nature, and of all organic individuals for matter and time and space; and as we saw this antagonism come ever more to the front with terrible distinctness in the ascending grades of the objectification of the will, so at last in the highest grade, the Idea of man, it reaches the point at which, not only the individuals which express the same Idea extirpate each other, but even the same individual declares war against itself.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 731
But he is himself rooted in that world; he finds himself in it as an _individual_, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the necessary supporter of the whole world as idea, is yet always given through the medium of a body, whose affections are, as we have shown, the starting-point for the understanding in the perception of that world. His body is, for the pure knowing subject, an idea like every other idea, an object among objects.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1214
But time is the most universal form of all objects of the knowledge which is subject to the will, and the prototype of its other forms.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1816
Tempore quo cognitio simul advenit, amor e medio supersurrexit.—_Oupnek’hat,_ _Studio Anquetil Duperron_, vol. ii. p. 216.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1924
So that the freedom which otherwise, as belonging to the thing-in-itself, can never show itself in the phenomenon, in such a case does also appear in it, and, by abolishing the nature which lies at the foundation of the phenomenon, while the latter itself still continues to exist in time, it brings about a contradiction of the phenomenon with itself, and in this way exhibits the phenomena of holiness and self-renunciation. But all this can only be fully understood at the end of this book.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 818
Only when all this has become quite clear to us through the subsequent examination of the phenomena and different manifestations of the will, shall we fully understand the meaning of the Kantian doctrine that time, space and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but are only forms of knowing.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1876
If, therefore, life as it is satisfies, whoever affirms it in every way may regard it with confidence as endless, and banish the fear of death as an illusion that inspires him with the foolish dread that he can ever be robbed of the present, and foreshadows a time in which there is no present; an illusion with regard to time analogous to the illusion with regard to space through which every one imagines the position on the globe he happens to occupy as above, and all other places as below.
The World as Will and Idea, passage 1354
But before we turn to the closer consideration of this, and to the achievements of art in relation to it, it is better that we should pause for a little at the subjective side of æsthetic pleasure, in order to complete our treatment of this by explaining the impression of the _sublime_ which depends altogether upon it, and arises from a modification of it. After that we shall complete our investigation of æsthetic pleasure by considering its objective side.