Arthur Schopenhauer today is best known for his psychology, ethics, aesthetics and prose style. When it comes to metaphysics, however, his philosophy has been considered “so obviously flawed that some people have doubted whether he really means it” (J: 40). This is tragic, for I believe Schopenhauer’s most valuable legacy is precisely his metaphysical views: they anticipate salient recent developments in analytic philosophy, circumvent the insoluble problems of mainstream physicalism and constitutive panpsychism, and provide an avenue for making sense of the ontological dilemmas of quantum mechanics. There is certainly nothing “obviously flawed” about his views; much to the contrary. Had the coherence and cogency of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics been recognized, much of the underlying philosophical malaise that plagues our culture today—with its insidious effects on our science, cultural ethos and way of life—could have been avoided.
This essay is but a brief summary of some of the points discussed in my upcoming book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, where I clarify and summarize Schopenhauer’s ontology. Although the issues touched upon below required a book-length treatment to be done justice to, I’ve sought to present at least the main lines of my argument here. Be that as it may, in such a relatively short essay it is impossible to be thorough and anticipate rebuttals. Therefore, I urge potentially skeptical readers to peruse the book before concluding against my case.
Throughout this essay, I cite volumes one and two of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (Payne translation, published by Dover) as ‘W1’ and ‘W2,’ respectively. I also cite Christopher Janaway’s Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) as ‘J’; Jonathan Schooler’s paper “Re-representing consciousness: dissociations between experience and meta-consciousness” (Trends in Cognitive Science, Vol. 6, No. 8, pp. 339-344) as ‘S’; and Ned Block’s paper “On a confusion about a function of consciousness” (Behavioral and Brain Science, Vol. 18, pp. 227-287) as ‘B.’
Ridiculously brief summary of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics
Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is characterized by a partition of the world into two categories, which he called ‘Will’ and ‘Representation’ (I shall capitalize both terms to differentiate their usage in Schopenhauer’s sense from other denotations of the words). Representation is the outer appearance of the world: the way it presents itself to our observation, on the screen of perception. The Will, on the other hand, is the world’s inner essence: what it is in itself, independently of observation.
Schopenhauer’s Will is roughly equivalent to Immanuel Kant’s thing-in-itself, or noumena, whereas Schopenhauer’s Representations are equivalent to Kant’s phenomena. However, unlike Kant—who thought of the noumena as fundamentally unknowable—Schopenhauer thought that there is a way to know the noumena: when it comes to our own selves, we are not limited to perception—that is, Representation—but have direct, immediate, first-person access to what it is like to be us. As such, there is precisely one case in which we do know the thing-in-itself simply by being it: our own selves.
By introspecting, Schopenhauer thought we could make valid inferences about all the noumena. After all, since our own bodies are made of the same atoms and force fields that constitute the world at large, by pinning down what it is like to be us we can infer what it is like to be the world at large as well. And when he introspected into his own self, Schopenhauer found something he thought appropriate to call ‘Will.’
Dual-aspect theory?
The partition of the world into Will and Representation may, very superficially, resemble a form dual-aspect theory. Indeed, at the time of this writing, Wikipedia listed Schopenhauer’s metaphysics as an instance thereof. According to dual-aspect theory, mentality and physicality are two different aspects or views of the same underlying, fundamental ‘stuff’ of nature, which in turn is essentially neither mental nor physical. Whether we apprehend this fundamental ‘stuff’ through its physical or mental aspect is a question of perspective or point of view. Those who consider Schopenhauer’s metaphysics an instance of dual-aspect theory equate Will with mentality and Representation with physicality.
There is, however, no mention or hint in Schopenhauer’s argument of anything that could constitute an ontological ground underlying both Will and Representation; no mention or hint of anything that Will and Representation could be mere aspects of.
The only unifying ontological claim Schopenhauer ever makes is that everything is intrinsically Will, Representation being merely how the Will presents itself to observation. As he puts it, the Will “is the being-in-itself of every thing in the world, and is the sole kernel of every phenomenon” (W1: 118), whereas Representation is merely the “Will become visible” (W1: 107) or “translated into perception” (W1: 100). For Schopenhauer, Representations without underlying Will would be “like an empty dream, or a ghostly vision not worth our consideration” (W1: 99). There is nothing more fundamental than the Will—the “inner nature” (W1: 97) of everything—for, as Schopenhauer repeatedly affirms, “The Will itself has no ground” (W1: 107); that is, it is irreducible, a fundamental existent that cannot be explained in terms of anything else.
To say that Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is an example of dual-aspect theory requires postulating a fundamental ontological ground that is neither Will nor Representation. But Schopenhauer already starts his case by explicitly rejecting any such neutral ground: in his words, “this world is, on the one side, entirely Representation, just as, on the other, it is entirely Will. But a reality that is neither of these two … is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignis fatuus [i.e. a will-o’-the-wisp, a deceptive goal or hope] in philosophy” (W1: 4).
It is thus baffling that dual-aspect theory, as it is formally defined in philosophy, could ever have been attributed to Schopenhauer. Already on page four of this 1,200-page metaphysical treatise the notion is contradicted; and then it is contradicted again and again throughout Schopenhauer’s argument.
Phenomenal consciousness and meta-consciousness
Before we can clarify what Schopenhauer specifically meant by ‘Will’ we must understand the difference between consciousness and meta-consciousness.
To gain metacognitive access to an experience—i.e. to be able to report the experience to oneself—it is not enough to merely have the experience; one must also consciously know that one has it; that is, become explicitly aware of it by placing one’s attention on it. This conscious knowledge of the experience—which comes in addition to the experience itself—is what Jonathan Schooler calls ‘re-representation’:
Periodically attention is directed towards explicitly assessing the contents of experience. The resulting meta-consciousness involves an explicit re-representation of consciousness in which one interprets, describes, or otherwise characterizes the state of one’s mind. (S: 339-340, emphasis added)
Mental activity does not need to be re-represented in order to be experienced. Re-representation is only required for metacognitive access and reporting.
In philosophy of mind, an analogous analysis has been offered by Ned Block (B) through his notions of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (or ‘P-consciousness’) and ‘access consciousness’ (or ‘A-consciousness’). For Block, P-consciousness entails experiential states—that is, states in which there is something it is like to be. A-consciousness, in turn, entails what he calls “representational contents,” whereby the subject’s mind points to, or denotes, other ones of its own states. P-conscious states are not necessarily A-conscious, for they don’t need to denote other mental states. But, conversely, A-conscious states also aren’t necessarily P-conscious: in principle, a mental state could denote another without being itself experiential.
In Block’s terminology, what Schooler calls ‘meta-consciousness’ entails an extension of P-consciousness into A-consciousness, so to produce states that are both P-conscious and A-conscious (I shall call these ‘PA-conscious’ states): first, the subject has purely P-conscious states; then, by re-representing these original P-conscious states, the subject acquires PA-conscious states that enable metacognitive access, reasoning and reporting.
It is the reflections or re-representations—I use these terms interchangeably—of the original P-conscious states in PA-conscious states that give rise to our sense of self as knowing subjects (experiencing the reflections) separate from their known objects (the reflected lower-level experiences). After all, we don’t identify with what we perceive or feel, but with that which knows that it perceives and feels: we are not the table we see or the anxiety we feel, but that which knows that it sees a table and feels anxiety. Without the reflections, there is a sense in which the distinction between feeling the anxiety and being the anxiety would vanish; there would be no distinguishable observer of the anxiety, but only the anxiety itself, as felt.
By reflecting or re-representing our own mental states we thus create an experiential knower-known pair, which is the defining characteristic of meta-consciousness.
What did Schopenhauer mean by ‘consciousness’?
Schopenhauer was keenly aware of the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and meta-consciousness:
Reflection is necessarily the copy or repetition of the originally presented world of perceptions … Concepts, therefore, can quite appropriately be called representations of representations. (W1: 40, emphasis added)
Or, of course, re-representations.
Crucially, what Schopenhauer often meant by the word ‘consciousness’ (‘Bewustssein’)—even though he wasn’t always consistent in this usage—intrinsically entails some degree of meta-consciousness. In other words, often for Schopenhauer there was more to ‘consciousness’ than mere phenomenal consciousness:
Self-consciousness … contains a knower and a known, otherwise it would not be a consciousness. (W2: 202, emphasis added)
‘Consciousness,’ in this restrictive sense, necessarily entails the knower-known pair characteristic of meta-consciousness, whereas mere phenomenal consciousness doesn’t. It is because of the restrictive attribution of metacognition to consciousness—an attribution common to this day in cognitive science—that Schopenhauer could coherently say:
The Will in itself is without consciousness, and in the greatest part of its phenomena remains so. The secondary world of Representation must be added for the Will to become conscious of itself, just as light becomes visible only through the bodies that reflect it (W2: 277, emphasis added).
In other words, the Will, in its primordial or original state, entails no metacognition. Only through Representation is metacognition attained. By explicitly linking ‘consciousness’ to reflection or re-representation, Schopenhauer leaves the possibility open that the Will—as the name suggests—is experiential or phenomenal in nature.
Meta-consciousness and Representations
Schopenhauer attributes some degree of meta-consciousness—which, as in the passage below, he often refers to simply as ‘consciousness’—to all Representations:
the concept of consciousness coincides with that of Representation in general, of whatever kind it may be. (W1: 51)
As such, the knower—associated with our feeling of ipseity or I-ness—in any kind of Representation is merely a cognitive mirror that reflects—i.e. re-represents—lower-level experiential states. As a matter of fact, Schopenhauer said as much:
in self-consciousness the known, consequently the Will, must be the first and original thing; the knower, on the other hand, must be only the secondary thing, that which has been added, the mirror. They are related somewhat as the self-luminous is to the reflecting body; or as the vibrating strings are to the sounding-board, where the resulting note would be consciousness. (W2: 202, emphasis added)
Here again, what Schopenhauer calls ‘consciousness’ is the reflection, the re-representation. In all Representations there is already a knower—a cognitive mirror—re-representing the immediate experiential states of sense impression, which in turn become its known. As Schopenhauer put it, “Representation as such already presupposes a form, namely object and subject” (W1: 162).
As we shall now see, the realization that, unlike the Will, all Representations necessarily entail some degree of metacognition is crucial to understanding what Schopenhauer meant by ‘Will’ in the first place.
The nature of the Will
Indeed, philosophers have argued for two centuries about what the Will is. Some think—bizarrely—that it is some kind of force, while others throw their arms up and declare that the concept is either too vague to pin down or altogether incoherent. I find this baffling, for Schopenhauer was abundantly clear:
This Will constitutes what is most immediate in [man’s] consciousness, but as such it has not wholly entered into the form of Representation … it makes itself known in an immediate way in which subject and object are not quite clearly distinguished (W1: 109).
Ergo, the primordial Will is phenomenal consciousness, instinctive endogenous experience that is not yet (fully) re-represented or split between knower and known.
This should be self-evident, for Schopenhauer defined the Will as that which is experienced through introspection. According to him, the Will is “what is known immediately to everyone” (W1: 100, emphasis added), whereas “consciousness alone is immediately given” (W2: 5, emphasis added) (Notice that he now uses the word ‘consciousness’ in the less restrictive sense of phenomenal consciousness). So the Will can only be endogenous experiential states, for only these states can be known immediately. Everything else is only accessible through the mediation of Representation.
Indeed, here is another passage in which Schopenhauer explicitly linked the Will to endogenous phenomenal states experienced through introspection:
what as Representation of perception I call my body, I call my Will in so far as I am conscious of it in an entirely different way … the body occurs in consciousness in quite another way, toto genere different, that is denoted by the word Will (W1: 102-103, emphasis added).
Even in his extensive dismissal of solipsism—which he calls “theoretical egoism”—Schopenhauer used the terms “mere phantoms” and “phenomena of the Will” in reference to philosophical zombies and conscious organisms, respectively (W1: 104), thereby again equating the Will with phenomenal consciousness. And as if all this weren’t enough, at one point Schopenhauer referred to the Will as “the inner, simple consciousness” that constitutes “the one being” of nature (W2: 321). How could he be clearer?
One can legitimately accuse Schopenhauer of loose usage of the term ‘consciousness’—whose intended meaning is indeed only discernible from the context of each usage—but not of having failed to specify the intended meaning of ‘Will.’
Feelings and the Will
Schopenhauer identified a particular type of endogenous experiential state as the most defining characteristic of the Will: after having defined ‘feeling’ as “something present in consciousness [but which] is not a concept” (W1: 51), he claimed that
virtue and holiness [i.e. forms of conduct] result not from reflection, but from the inner depth of the Will … Conduct, as we say, happens in accordance with feelings (W1: 58, emphasis added).
In other words, at least some of the experiential states we call ‘feelings’ are the same thing as the “inner depth of the Will,” even when they are not reflected or re-represented in the form of concepts. Indeed, Schopenhauer repeatedly identified feelings with the Will. For instance:
the inner nature of the world [i.e. the Will] … expresses itself intelligibly to everyone in the concrete, that is, as feeling (W1: 271, emphasis added).
In contrast, Christopher Janaway claims that “when I am conscious of my own willing in action, what I know is a phenomenal manifestation of the Will, not the thing in itself” (J: 39, emphasis added). This cannot be correct, for after having listed pleasure and pain as examples of feelings (W1: 51), Schopenhauer proceeded to distinguish them from any kind of Representation:
we are quite wrong in calling pain and pleasure Representations, for they are not these at all, but immediate affections of the will (W1: 101, emphasis added).
If some feelings aren’t Representations, then either Schopenhauer was implicitly postulating a third category in his metaphysics—which would contradict his defining claim that the world is nothing but Will and Representation—or we have to understand these feelings as the thing in itself. In other words, these immediate affections of the Will must be the Will in action. Contrary to Janaway’s conclusion, when consciously experiencing at least some of our feelings we must become acquainted with the Will itself. Indeed, “the Will … shows itself as terror, fear, hope, joy, desire, envy, grief, zeal, anger, or courage” (W2: 212), feelings we are all directly acquainted with.
Why choose the word ‘Will’?
There are two reasons why Schopenhauer chose to call the experiential states at the foundation of all nature the‘Will.’
First, these states precede Representation ontologically, and thus cannot depend on Representation to exist. In other words, the experiential states of the Will cannot be about a world out there; they cannot entail contents of perception. Schopenhauer had to characterize the Will in a manner that would exclude intentional content and leave room only for endogenous experiences.
Now, the primary example of such endogenous experiential states is, of course, volition. For instance, if a human infant were to be isolated in an ideal sensory deprivation chamber from birth, it would arguably experience no intentional content but would still experience endogenous volitional states. The Will, thus, is called Will because its primordial states are of a purely endogenous volitional character.
Second, it is an empirical fact that nature is dynamic: things happen in nature, events unfold; the sun shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, animals come and go. So whatever experiential states underlie nature, they must not only accommodate, but also make sense of, this dynamism; they must provide an impetus for action. And here is where volition comes in again: for nature to move, it must want something, otherwise it would remain static. Without a volitional impetus, nothing would ever happen, for nature would be content to just remain in whatever state it happens to be. Schopenhauer clearly realized this, and so the Will must, well, will.
Schopenhauer’s characterization of what is effectively universal phenomenal consciousness as volitional in nature seeks merely to accommodate the two points above. It shouldn’t be seen as restrictive, for a variety of widely different endogenous—i.e. non-sensorial—experiential states can be considered volitional in nature, perhaps even the entire gamut. Schopenhauer himself includes “terror, fear, hope, joy, desire, envy, grief, zeal, anger, [and] courage” (W2: 212). Anything endogenous that provides an impetus for action or change in the world, or even merely within an individual mind, can be looked upon as volitional.
Refuting objections to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics
Janaway argues that, because Schopenhauer characterizes the Will as blind striving devoid of deliberate purpose, it unfolds “at a level beneath that of conscious thought” (J: 35). He also claims that Schopenhauer “clearly does not think that organisms entertain any conscious purposes—for the will works ‘blindly’” (2002: 45).
The confusion here is in mistaking meta-consciousness for phenomenal consciousness: the Will works ‘blindly’ insofar as it entails instinctual experiential states that aren’t re-represented; but the Will is still experiential, even where and when it isn’t reflected.
The confusion is forgivable in that Schopenhauer uses the term ‘consciousness’ loosely. Nonetheless, allow me to reiterate: whereas meta-consciousness is indeed required for deliberate choices—the sort we experience when we plan a trip or choose a mortgage package—conscious volition can be experienced in an immediate manner, without re-representation, such as when we choose our left or right foot to take our first step in the morning.
Janaway then makes a meal of Schopenhauer’s warning (W1: 110-111) that we must extend our understanding of the Will beyond ordinary human volition, so to grasp its manifestation in nature at large (J: 36-37). Bewilderingly, he implies that Schopenhauer doesn’t clarify what this extension entails and, therefore, the door is supposedly left open to other interpretations of the Will, besides phenomenally conscious volition. Yet, Schopenhauer immediately and comprehensively clarifies what he means: in humans, the Will is
guided by knowledge, strictly according to motives, indeed only to abstract motives, thus manifesting itself under the guidance of reason. (W1: 111, emphasis added)
‘Knowledge,’ ‘motive’ and ‘reason,’ in Schopenhauer’s usage, entail meta-consciousness (I trust nobody who has read Schopenhauer will dispute this claim). Therefore, although human beings ordinarily experience the Will as deliberate, metacognitive volitional states, the Will in nature at large is not capable of metacognition; it still consists of conscious volitional states, but no reflections or re-representations thereof. This is the required extension of our understanding of the Will beyond how we ordinarily experience our own volition. And because of it,
if I say that the force which attracts a stone to the earth is … Will, then no one will attach to this proposition the absurd meaning that the stone moves itself according to a known motive, [merely] because it is thus that the will appears in man. (W1: 105, emphasis added)
How could Schopenhauer be clearer? To understand the Will in nature at large we must abstract metacognition away from our own experience of volition. In the inorganic world, the Will is to be regarded as blind—though still consciously felt—impulses or instincts. That’s it.
Janaway argues that Schopenhauer’s claim that experiential states are the inner essence of the world—even the inanimate part of the world—is likely to be “dismissed as fanciful” (J: 35), “something ridiculous” and even “merely embarrassing” (J: 36). He suggests that to salvage Schopenhauer’s metaphysics we have to interpret the term ‘Will’ as a rhetorical metaphor (Ibid.). Whilst acknowledging that the Will must still be understood in terms of our privileged access to ourselves—i.e. in terms of what it is like to be us—he claims that “we must enlarge its sense at least far enough to avoid the barbarity of thinking that every process in the world has a mind, a consciousness, or a purpose behind it” (J: 37).
This is a subjective and rather arbitrary value judgment, as Janaway doesn’t argue for or substantiate it. Instead, he seems to be taking the mainstream physicalist commonsense—according to which phenomenal consciousness cannot be anything other than an epiphenomenon of material brain function—for granted. If so, he is simply begging the question: since the point in contention is precisely one of metaphysics, it is circular reasoning to take a non-trivial metaphysical conclusion for an axiom.
Setting aside vulgar beliefs and biases, there is absolutely nothing fanciful, ridiculous, embarrassing or barbaric about the notion that the inner essence of everything consists of experiential states. This is a coherent postulate integral to a number of ontologies proposed and debated in analytic philosophy today, such as the many variants of panpsychism, cosmopsychism and idealism.
Final thoughts
The Western philosophical tradition has a long history of blatantly misunderstanding and then misrepresenting many of its key exponents. This goes all the way back to Plato’s misinterpretation of Parmenides, as discussed by Peter Kingsley in his book, Reality. Friedrich Nietzsche’s is another particularly painful example in more recent times.
Unfortunately, Schopenhauer has been no exception to this pattern: in the hands of presumed experts, his metaphysical views have been abused and distorted beyond recognition. The critical views many of us today hold of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics are based on straw men, not his actual metaphysics.
Although Christopher Janaway’s inability to grasp Schopenhauer’s metaphysics (as I discuss more in depth in my upcoming book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics) is particularly harmful—given Janaway’s recognition today as a preeminent Schopenhauer scholar—the problem is widespread. For instance, in her popular 2018 biography of Nietzsche, I am Dynamite, Sue Prideaux attempted to summarize Schopenhauer’s metaphysics in this abhorrent passage:
The Representation is in a state of endless yearning and eternal becoming as it seeks unity with its Will, its perfectible state. The Representation may occasionally become one with the Will but this only causes further discontent and further yearning. The human genius (a rare being) may achieve wholeness in the union of Will and Representation but for the rest of the human herd it is an impossible state in life, only to be achieved in death. (p. 49)
It is remarkable in how many different ways this brief passage manages to be nonsensical. In just 77 words, Prideaux mistakenly claims that: (a) Representations yearn, as opposed to being the image of yearning; (b) Representations have Will, as opposed to being objectifications of the Will; (c) Representations and Will are not only separable, but initially separate, as if there could be Representations without Will; (d) the Will is a state of the Representations, as opposed to their ground; (e) for most human beings Representations and Will cannot be united, as if most humans were philosophical zombies without inner essence… The density and severity of errors here is just overwhelming, even when the passage is read charitably.
In this brief essay, I’ve attempted to clarify only a couple of salient points particularly prone to misinterpretation. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, however, is a very broad system that seeks to make sense of all existence. As I argue in Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, his is an idealist ontology: the world is seen as essentially experiential, made of transpersonal volitional states. This renders Schopenhauer an objective idealist in regard to the world as it is in itself. However, what we call the physical world—with its extension in space and time, its shapes, colors, sounds, etc.—is, for Schopenhauer, merely Representation produced by, and in, our own minds. Schopenhauer was thus also a subjective idealist with regard to the physical world presented on the screen of perception.
Yet, Schopenhauer is hardly described as a through-and-through metaphysical idealist in the secondary literature. His clarity of thought and expression is often met with bewilderment by the scholars who try to interpret and summarize his ideas. This is appalling. Perhaps we should require that the scholars who take on the enormous responsibility of chronicling the history of Western metaphysics should be decent metaphysicians themselves; for nothing short of it qualifies them to understand the greatest metaphysicians our civilization has produced, regardless of how many citations these scholars include in their work. It is too easy to get away with blatant interpretative errors when the victim is already dead and cannot correct the misrepresentations of his message. And so the jewels of our past are, tragically, presented to us coated in gunk.
In the meantime, the best we can hope for is that those of us who dedicate our lives to actually doing metaphysics—as opposed to chronicling the work of our dead predecessors—spare some time and energy to help correct this alarming state of affairs. With this essay, as well as Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, I am attempting to contribute my 2-cents, for what they are worth.
Bernardo Kastrup
Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories. His focus is on Idealism, and his work has been published in Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, and Big Think, among others.
“Schopenhauer was keenly aware of the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and meta-consciousness:
Reflection is necessarily the copy or repetition of the originally presented world of perceptions … Concepts, therefore, can quite appropriately be called representations of representations. (W1: 40, emphasis added)”
The distinction you speak of in this quote certainly is not to be found. “Representation” is a translation of the German “Vorstellung”, which literally translates as “presentation” — which does not carry the ‘meta’ association that re-presentation now (unjustly) seems to have.
Consciousness, the known, presents itself, to the knower. No meta state here.
“Indeed, philosophers have argued for two centuries about what the Will is. Some think—bizarrely—that it is some kind of force, while others throw their arms up and declare that the concept is either too vague to pin down or altogether incoherent. I find this baffling, for Schopenhauer was abundantly clear”
Abundantly clear, you say? I recommend you read https://doi.org/10.1515/kant.1994.85.3.257 although the discussion is not centered around whether “will” is, or is not, mental. Without /your/ distinction between phenomenal and meta-consciousness it is quite clear that without theknown-knower distinction, which in noumenal reality is not te be found, yet Schopenhauer declares a necessary condition for consciousness, it cannot be.
To me, the known-knower distinction is exactly that between the phenomenal and the noumenal which are related as left and right (i.e. they are inseparable). Hence, the claim that this distinction is not to be found in the noumenal is incorrect. Every left has a right.
Indeed, Schopenhauer is abundantly explicit and unambiguous, in many segments, that all representations (phenomena) entails a knower-known pair.
This echoes the story made up to motivate the latest (and utterly unnecessary, in my view) translation of Schopenhauer’s works. If one can’t figure out what he is saying, one invents imaginary dilemmas and re-translates the whole thing to try and force it into what one thinks Schopenhauer should have said. ‘Vorstellung’ means presentation indeed, but certainly also representation (in the context Schopenhauer uses the word), and even perception. Either way, the difference is largely immaterial once one understands Schopenhauer. My recommendation: get the cheap Payne translation, it’s good enough. And my rebuttal of this comment is simply this: read the Payne translation (or, even better, Schopenhauer’s original) after you have a quick look at my very short book on Schopenhauer. After that, make up your mind about what he meant.
I know about this translation; and I agree that Payne’s is good enough. I don’t need either one of them.
“Either way, the difference is largely immaterial once one understands Schopenhauer”. That is right. And what will one find? That the distinction between consciousness and meta-consciousness is not be found in any of his works. Presentation, perception, representation: all of them require the known-knower distinction. Schopenhauer is very explicit about this, as well as of this: this distinction is part of phenomenal, but not of noumenal reality. If you’ve read his works you’ll know this to be the case. Will you draw the conclusion yourself?
“try and force it into what one thinks Schopenhauer should have said”
This, ironically, is exactly what you are guilty of doing.
You are simply and factually wrong. I wrote a book making my case in detail. Have a look at it if you care. Otherwise, as far as I am concerned it’s okay that you continue to make arbitrary statements.
My thinking has led me to a metaphysics similar to that of Schopenhauer but, instead of Will and Representation, my distinction is between Future and Past where the first is conceptual and the second perceptual. By this understanding, past and future are joined in the present which is synonymous with consciousness (as with the present, consciousness is the only metaphysical certainty).
One of the advantages of my interpretation is that it also explains the wave/particle duality (waves explain what will happen and particles explain what has happened).
This article is nothing new under the sun… for many reasons. One, we need to read Schopenhauer´s books in his german language. We know it isn´t the whole truth about Schopenhauer´s metaphysics. Of course, only is my recommendation and my point of view for this topic.
And I agree. The point of this essay was precisely to show that there is nothing new to it: Schopenhauer already explained al this (with different words) more than two hundred years ago.
It seems to me that, as with science, the essential purpose of philosophy is to understand the fundamental nature of reality because, lacking that, all explanations are speculative. If that is accepted along with the fact that the present is the only reality, Will cannot be fundamental because it relates to the future. As I understand it, Schopenhauer claimed that Will is the creator and Representation the created in which case the future creates the present but that is not so because yesterday also played a part in creating today.
From this, it can only be concluded that the distinction between Will and Representation (as with that between Past and Future) is linguistic not actual and all consequent debate is about the meaning of words not the nature of reality i.e. it relates to vocabulary not philosophy (the resultant absurdity being that the nature of reality is determined by the dictionary) as seems to be the present case.
That is my 2-cent contribution for what it is worth.
Bernardo, what do you think of Janaway’s claim in ”Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy” (1989, p. 180), that the following ”disconcerting in the extreme passages” contradict Schopenhauer’s idealism by committing him to materialism (note that Janaway is quoting from the German editions of Schopenhauer’s works):
”What is knowledge? It is foremost and essentially representation. What is representation? A very complicated physiological process in the brain of an animal, whose result is consciousness of a picture in that same place” (W2 p.224).
”One is justified in saying that the whole objective world, so boundless in space, so unending in time, so unfathomable in its completeness, is really only a certain movement or affection of the pulpy mass of the skull.” (W2 p. 319)
”Kant…explained everything which makes genuine intuition possible, namely space, time, and causality, as brain-function; although he refrained from using this physiological expression.” W2 P. 334).
The idealist denies that consciousness can be reduced to matter whereas the materialist asserts that consciousness can be reduced to matter. How can Schopenhauer be considered an idealist given the passages above, each of which involve Schopenhauer providing a physiological, i.e. a material, account of consciousness? It is interesting that each of the passages above that Janaway cites are taken from Volume II of WWR; perhaps Schopenhauer came to modify the more strident idealism of Volume I?
Thanks.
Taking passages out of context leads precisely to the misinterpretations and misrepresentations that have plagued Schopenhauer, largely due to people like Janaway, who study everything he has ever written yet understands none of it.
If you preface the passages above with “from the point of view of representation, …” you will understand what Schopenhauer means. By the time he makes the statements you quoted, Schopenhauer has already explained ad nauseum that physicality, matter, is simply “the will become visible.” Once he has made this abundantly clear, he continues to talk about matter under the assumption that you already got what he means by it. So indeed, representation, from the point of view of representation itself, is just brain function, because material brain function is how the process of representation presents itself on the screen of perception. Kant explained that time, space, etc., are all categories of perception, and the process of perception presents itself to perception as brain function, so time, space, etc., are all brain function; from the point of view of representation. Only from that point of view can we talk objectively about things, for the point of view of the will is always, by definition, endogenous; it lacks what philosophers call “intentional content” or “aboutness.”
Quoting out of context is usually bad form. But quoting Schopenhauer out of context is disastrous. He prefaces everything, and failing to understand those prefaces leads to complete misunderstanding. It should have been very clear to Janaway that he didn’t understand Schopenhauer, since, according to his misunderstanding, Schopenhauer constantly contradicts himself. That he then assumed that Schopenhauer was just an idiot is astounding hubris. To be an expert one someone’s work takes more than mere study of that work; it takes understanding the work.
Sorry for the very late reply Bernardo, but in Vol 2 of the WaW&R Schopenhauer begins the first two essays with seemingly materialist arguments, that do in fact contradict his idealism in Vol I. Since these occur in the opening two essays in Vol 2, without making the argument you make (i.e., that when talks about the brain he’s talking about it from the view of representation). Subsequently, it Vol 2 opens with a seemingly materialist vibe. I’ll paste some quotes below.
“Essentially and unavoidably, this foundation [that Descartes gave us – the cogito] is the subjective, ones own consciousness, because only this is and remains immediate: everything else, whatever it might be, is first mediated and conditioned by it, and hence dependent on it…the true philosophy must in every case be idealistic: simple honestly requires this of it, because nothing is more certain than that nobody can climb out of himself and identify himself directly with things that are distinct from him: rather, everything he is certain of and therefore has immediate information about lies within his consciousness…it is entirely appropriate for the empirical standpoint of other science to accept the objective world as simply present: not so for philosophy, which must go back to what is first and primordial. Consciousness alone is immediately given and so the foundation of philosophy is limited to facts of consciousness”
Is followed right after by:
“This intuitive and [empirically] real world is clearly a phenomenon of the brain: and so there is a contradiction in the assumption that it might exist, as such as world, independently of all brains”
How can one go from all objects in experience are representations only to my representational world is caused by a brain, which is itself an object I represent…?
Note again:
“It now follows from this that the existence of my person or my body as something extended and causally efficacious always presupposes something separate from itself that cognizes it, because it is essentially an existence within apprehension, within representation, and thus an existence for another. In fact it is a brain phenomenon, regardless of whether the brain it presents itself in is one’s own or that of another”
So conscious experience of bodies is predicated upon consciousness, but consciousness is predicated on the brain, which is a representational body. Uhm? ?
On transcendental idealism:
“This idealism leaves the empirical reality of the world untouched, but insists that all objects, and thus the empirically real in general, are doubly conditioned by the subject: first materially, or as object in general, because an objective existence is conceivable only for a subject and as the representation of this subject; secondly, formally, since the manner of the object’s existence, i.e., of its being represented (space, time, causality) comes from the subject and is a predisposition of the subject”
Is instantly followed with this contradiction:
“Kantian idealism establishes that the whole of the material world w/ its bodies in space…and everything that depends on this does not exist independently of our minds; rather, it has its fundamental presuppositions in our brain functions. Only by these mean and in the brain is this sort of objective ordering of things possible”.
Okay so nothing exists independently of our minds, but our minds are the products of brains, so something exists independently of our minds.
The opening essays of Vol 2 go on, and on, and on, and on, like this. A final example
“The law of causality can never be used to refute idealism by building a bridge between things in themselves and our cognition of them, thereby securing absolute reality for the world that presents itself as a result of the application of that law… The law of causality only connects appearances and does not lead beyond them” one page later “the nerves of the sense organs give the appearing object their color sound taste smell temperature etc then the brain gives them their extension, form, impenetrability, etc, in short everything that can be represented only by means of time space and causality”
Very late to this but I just had to say that Schopenhauer explicitly contradicts at least part of your exposition of his views in his Essay on the Freedom of the Will. You write:
“To understand the Will in nature at large we must abstract metacognition away from our own experience of volition. In the inorganic world, the Will is to be regarded as blind—though still consciously felt—impulses or instincts. That’s it.”
Whereas he wrote:
“In a word: man does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily. But this is due to the fact that he already is what he wills. For from that which he is, there follows of necessity everything that he, at any time, does. If we consider his behavior objectively, i.e., from the outside, we shall be bound to recognize that, like the behavior of every natural being, it must be subject to the law of causality in all its severity. Subjectively, however, everyone feels that he always does only what he wills. But this merely means that his activity is a pure expression of his very own being. Every natural being, even the lowest, would feel the same, if it could feel.”
Schopenhauer is not a panpsychist and even rejects the notion that the Will in-itself is conscious. The Will is prior to consciousness/Intellect and is blind and void of knowledge. Consciousness develops later in certain organs, in higher grades of phenomenal objectification. Schopenhauer states that the experience of the world is the workings of the pulpy mass of the brain organ. In the passage at WWR1, SW2:126, Schopenhauer precisely denies that a stone is ”Consciously” willing, despite itself ”inside” being Will. Only higher grades of manifestation with certain arrangements are ”Conscious”. But we literally know from the workings of the brain, when people are unconscious and having no experience and when they are conscious. This fits perfectly into the empirical objective world of phenomenon, which Schopenhauer makes clear (He studied medicine, which literally leads you to accepting a realness of materialism, not reductionism but still a form of materialism). Like Kant, Schopenhauer essentially goes a middle way between Idealism and Materialism. He is also (Like Kant) a direct realist, Kant was also an ontological realist. Its important not to confuse the idealism of Kant and Schopenhauer with that of solipsism or Berkeleyan idealism.