The Legacy of Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics

The general attitude towards Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is rather fiercely critical and at times even tendentious. It seems that the figure of Schopenhauer as an irredeemably flawed, stubborn, and contradictory philosopher serves as a leitmotiv among scholars. Julian Young describes Schopenhauer as “a stubborn personality unwilling to admit that the central claim of his philosophy–that the will is the thing in itself–rests on a fundamental error” (Young, Schopenhauer, 98). In his preface to Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, Christopher Janaway remarks, “Only a proper appraisal of the context in which, and the aims with which, Schopenhauer was arguing can bring out the true philosophical interest in studying him. That his metaphysics is flawed…does not detract from his historical importance or from the worth of the problems he raises” (Janaway, Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, viii). 

It has to be pointed out that as a result of this prevailing tendency in Schopenhauer scholarship, many have become so accustomed to treating Schopenhauer’s philosophy as in need of substantial correction and reconstruction. For instance, recent attempts at reconstructing/naturalizing Schopenhauer’s morality of compassion should be understood in this context (see, for instance, a review of Sandra Shapshay’s 2019 book Reconstructing Schopenhauer’s Ethics by Sophia Vasalou in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews). I do not particularly agree with this interpretative strategy, but it reflects the mainstream scholarly consensus, namely that Schopenhauer’s philosophical legacy, without his metaphysical vocabulary, might be maintained in the contemporary world.

In my forthcoming essay in The Review of Metaphysics: A Philosophical Quarterly, I especially take issue with certain interpretive routes that have been taken in Schopenhauer scholarship concerning his metaphysical system. In this blog post, I briefly outline the major points of my research without elaborating on the philosophical technicalities that are part of the business we have chosen for ourselves.

Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will continues to be a thorny puzzle in the secondary literature, and it presents perhaps the greatest challenge to Schopenhauer scholars. Schopenhauer borrows the term ‘thing-in-itself’ from Immanuel Kant, who uses it to refer to a reality that is distinct from what appears to us, and hence unknowable. Despite the fact that several interpretations have been offered to make sense of Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will, there appears to be no consensus about how to interpret this identification as well as his understanding of the term ‘thing-in-itself’. The proposed interpretations fall under two main categories: those who recognize a change of heart by Schopenhauer from his earlier views on the thing-in-itself (most prominently, John E. Atwell, Schopenhauer and the Character of the World: The Metaphysics of the Will (1995); David E. Cartwright, “Two Senses of ‘Thing-in-itself’ in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy,” Idealistic Studies (2001); Moira Nicholls, “The Influences of Eastern Thought on Schopenhauer’s Doctrine of the Thing-in-Itself,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (1999); Julian Young, Schopenhauer (2005)) and and those who do not (most recently, Shapshay, “Poetic Intuition and the Bounds of Sense: Metaphor and Metonymy in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy,” European Journal of Philosophy (2008)).

I agree with the first group of interpreters that there are noteworthy changes in Schopenhauer’s views. The gist of their discussion seems to implicitly suggest that there are two stages in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the first stage, where the young Schopenhauer identifies the thing-in-itself with the will, and a later second stage, where he takes a less stringent stance by qualifying his use of the term ‘thing-in-itself’. I do not believe, however, that one can trace clear-cut stages in Schopenhauer’s philosophical development given Schopenhauer’s simultaneous adherence to views that are seemingly contradictory and incompatible in nature. My interpretation significantly differs from that of the first and second group of interpreters insofar as they either entirely omit or overlook those changes in Schopenhauer’s thinking as greatly affecting the internal consistency of his position. Unlike the other interpretations, the interpretation that I offer here distinguishes between three distinct and mutually incompatible views that Schopenhauer formulates about the thing-in-itself. I believe any attempt to give a coherent, consistent account of Schopenhauer’s thought as a whole is inevitably bound to encounter difficulties because Schopenhauer’s writings are riddled with irreconcilable passages concerning the thing-in-itself. This is why, I suggest, that Schopenhauer’s multiple contrary views about the thing-in-itself leave any effort to reconcile them to reach a univocal representation of his thought a doomed task.

I separate out the three apparently contrary views as follows. The first view, whose first formulation dates back to 1815, is the most readily recognized, in which Schopenhauer refuses to ascribe a separate and distinct reality to the thing-in-itself and disagrees with Kant that the thing-in-itself is beyond human apprehension. On the contrary, he alleges that we all recognize the thing-in-itself immediately in the inner perception of our own will, which depends neither on any conceptual determination, nor on structured representations of the world of appearances. Schopenhauer then notoriously declares that the thing-in-itself is the will. 

The second view is somewhat subtler and for that matter rather more difficult to grasp: sometime during the period 1820-21, Schopenhauer begins to doubt that the thing-in-itself is accessible to the mind. Sensing the implausibility of identifying the thing-in-itself as the will, he seems to backpedal and admits that the will, strictly speaking, is not the thing-in-itself, but instead the most distinct phenomenal appearance of it. He modifies his claim by saying that he only names the thing-in-itself after its most distinct (or closest) appearance.

Beyond these views, it is possible to derive even a third view, in which it is no longer the immediate experience of one’s own willing, but rather withdrawal from the will-to-life that awakens in one a realization of the inner essence, the in-itself, of all being. While this third strand contradicts Schopenhauer’s previous understandings of the thing-in-itself, it evinces the apparently Kantian bent of his later writings. At times in his later writings, Schopenhauer seems reluctant to make any claim whatsoever about the thing-in-itself or its relation to the phenomenal world. He concedes, in the second volume of Parerga and Paralipomena (published in 1851, 9 years before his death), that a non-phenomenal reality can be conceived only negatively, as “that to which the denial of the will-to-live opens the way.” (Parerga and Paralipomena II § 144).

Now, the first question to be addressed is, ‘Are these three accounts perhaps representing the different stages in Schopenhauer’s philosophical development?’ The main problem with the suggestion of multiple stages in Schopenhauer’s thought is, as one commentator points out, that Schopenhauer regarded the first edition of The World as Will and Representation as the ultimate and complete metaphysical system, to which the rest of his works are a series of footnotes. That is why he refers to the subsequent additions to this work, constituting Volume II, simply as ‘supplements’ (Ergänzungen).  As a matter of fact, his later works other than The World as Will and Representation are just further elaborations of the original statement of his worldview. Thus, any thesis about different stages in Schopenhauer’s thought is outright false and unconvincing–just the idea of it is “enough to make Schopenhauer turn in his grave.” (R. Raj Singh, Death, Contemplation and Schopenhauer, 58). I believe, however, as with the first group of interpreters, that it is highly contentious to claim that there is no indication of any change in Schopenhauer’s views. The real difficulty lies in the fact that Schopenhauer himself never explicitly acknowledged his change of views about the thing-in-itself and its relation to the will. Moreover, he was not so effective in dispelling the ambiguity in his understanding of the term ‘thing-in-itself’ and apparently remained committed to incompatible views. To illustrate this with an example: in one place in the second volume of Parerga and Paralipomena, Schopenhauer claims, in line with the first view, that for Kant the thing-in-itself “was an x; for me it is will.” (Parerga and Paralipomena II § 61). Yet in another passage in the same text, he characterizes the thing-in-itself as that which remains outside of the will and its manifestation, which reflects the third view, but remains at odds with the first view (Parerga and Paralipomena II § 144). Therefore, we simply cannot understand Schopenhauer’s views on the nature of the thing-in-itself as going through different stages.

The question, which follows directly, is, ‘How are these three accounts to be reconciled?’ Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. Although Schopenhauer formulated different views on the thing-in-itself, and as a result, he came considerably closer to Kant’s stance on the unknowability of the thing-in-itself, till the very end, he remained faithful to the idea that the thing-in-itself is the will.  One may say Schopenhauer was ambiguous to the point of blatant self-contradiction. On the one hand, he prided himself on aspiring to the ideal of consistency, claiming that his philosophy is “the unfolding of a single thought.” (The World as Will and Representation I § 53, 285). On the other, he made claims, which taken together and in context, hardly form an expression of a single thought. And he admitted that he “was never concerned about the harmony and agreement of my propositions, not even when some of them seemed to me to be inconsistent.” (Parerga and Paralipomena I, “Fragments for the History of Philosophy,” § 14). Schopenhauer was aware of the difficulty of holding fast to a single thought, and therefore, he at times deviated from it, switching from one view to another, with no concern for consistency. 

It is not at all clear whether these three accounts are merely different ways of describing the same underlying reality. So far Schopenhauer’s understanding of the thing-in-itself defied all efforts to give a coherent account of it. What is even more troublesome is that such efforts come at the cost of ignoring the textual richness and depth of thought that Schopenhauer’s works offer. Therefore, I suggest, it is better to embrace the ambiguity in Schopenhauer’s understanding of the thing-in-itself and accept that these three accounts are to be primarily understood as incompatible views Schopenhauer happens to hold simultaneously.

In my forthcoming essay, I carefully examine each of Schopenhauer’s three views about the thing-in-itself and show why the existing interpretations, while impressive in their ingenuity, are ultimately unsatisfactory in that they vainly attempt and fail to integrate Schopenhauer’s views about the thing-in-itself and the will into a tight-knit, coherent philosophical system. There are basically two ways to deal with this interpretative challenge that do not in any obvious way suggest the unfolding of a single thought in Schopenhauer’s work. One can continue to try to solve the puzzling identification of the thing-in-itself with the will.  Shapshay, for instance, offers an interpretation that comes close to endorsing the second view described above. Her solution to the problem consists in retaining the original, Kantian sense of ‘thing-in-itself’ and attributing to the expression, ‘the will is the thing-in-itself’ a different meaning that can render it plausible. I argue, however, that this reading is not textually well-grounded. Alternatively, one can attempt to understand the meaning and extent of these apparent shifts in Schopenhauer’s thinking. One group of commentators (Atwell, Cartwright, and Young), for instance, proposes that Schopenhauer employs two different conceptions of the thing-in-itself in his philosophy: the thing in itself ‘in its relation to appearance’, or simply ‘in appearance’, and the thing in itself ‘outside its relation to appearance’. I object to this reading because it suggests that Schopenhauer simply misunderstood Kant’s concept of ‘thing-in-itself’ and unwittingly introduced a new, non-Kantian sense of ‘thing in itself’. 

I rely on the second approach and show that the differences in Schopenhauer’s views about the thing-in-itself and the will can only be interpreted in terms of his increasing emphasis on ascetic ideals of suffering and worldly withdrawal in his later writings. I maintain that this crucial point has been steadily neglected by commentators up to this day. I also suggest that Schopenhauer appears to share some significant parallels with Johann Gottlieb Fichte (his teacher at Berlin), who suggests that our knowledge, which is by no means connected with the thing-in-itself through representation, nevertheless may relate to it in a different way, through feeling. I then focus my attention on how Schopenhauer employs essentially a Fichtean strategy to approach the problem of the thing-in-itself. In concluding my analysis, I speculate whether we can understand these three accounts about the thing-in-itself as contrasting but not contradictory views, in other words, as different perspectives on the same reality.

Vasfi O. Özen

Vasfi O. Özen is a D.Phil candidate in philosophy and instructor at The University of Kansas. He is also the Andrew W. Mellon Coordinator of Academic Programs at The Spencer Museum of Art. He works currently in moral psychology and post-Kantian continental philosophy, though he also has strong research interests in social and political philosophy, and at the intersection of these fields. To contact him or learn more about his work, see his website: https://www.vasfiozen.com/