Maurilio Lovatti
Notes of Philosophy Lessons
Edited by Paola Volonghi
(2006-07)
Arthur Schopenhauer
English Translation by Helleyne Agnellini
Life
He was
born in Danzig on the 22nd of February in 1788, from a rich family of
merchants and bankers. His dad died a suicide in 1805, leaving him a huge
fortune. In 1809 he enrolled in the medical school of Gottingen, but he
soon left to attend philosophy. He studied Plato and Kant that influenced
his thought a lot. In 1813 he graduated at Jena. In 1814 he completely
broke his relations with his mother and moved to Dresden. In 1818 he
finished his masterpiece: The world as Will and Representation. He went to
Italy and he almost got married in this period.
Back in German to solve a financial crisis, he thought to start the
academic career. He would always feel resentment towards Hegel. From 1820
to 1831 he tried to challenge his fame, programming his collegeclasses at
the same time as the idealistic philosopher, but Hegel's classes were
crowded while his weren't. He called Hegel "the hired killer of truth"
and used to say that "his philosophical system was a foolery".
Schopenhauer, in fact, did not consider "Dialectic" a valid
method of thought . In 1831 he moved to Frankfurt. In 1836 he published
the writing about " The will in nature". During the forties a
group of admirers started following him and his ideas. He was the first
philosopher who studied the oriental philosophies deeply, especially the
Indian one, adding some of its teachings to his vision of the world. He
died in 1860, because of pneumonia. His fame as a philosopher came after
and was particularly related to the fortune of his "pessimistic
doctrine".
The
World as Will and Rappresentation
Schopenhauer
is inspired by two philosophers: the "divine" Plato and the
"astonishing" Kant.
Schopenhauer is a great admirer of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason".
He uses a Kantian vocabulary and, from this point of view, he appears to
be a real Kantian, but he actually uses the Kantian terms in a different
way from their creator: Schopenhauer agrees with Kant that we have only a
phenomenical knowledge, so the thing, as itself, in unknowable. But, if
for Kant the phenomenical knowledge was the true objective knowledge,
Schopenhauer believes that the phenomenical knowledge is only a kind of
trick, an illusory knowledge that hides the authentic truth of things. In
his writing we find two evaluations of the phenomenical knowledge:
1)the phenomenical knowledge is like a rope left on the ground that from
far away seems a snake, but if we get closer, it appears as just a rope.
He probably wants to mean that "appearances can be deceptive".
2)a traveller in the desert sees an oasis, but this is only a mirage.
Oases do not really exist.
In this sense the phenomenical knowledge is misleading. The purpose of
Schopenhauer's philosophy is to reach the truth, despite the obstacle of
the phenomenical knowledge; he needs to find a right way to do it. He
affirms that the subject gives validity to the objective world, applying
in it the prior shapes of sensibility and intellect: space, time and cause
(the only Kantian category that he considers indispensable and sufficient).
What is known in this way is not reality itself, but its phenomena. So,
how can we exit the phenomenical knowledge, how can we pass over it?
Everything that enters our mind is perceived, in space and time order, and
is a part if our phenomenical knowledge. Everything that I think is
already phenomenical knowledge. Schopenhauer believes there's something
that we can know besides the phenomenical knowledge: as for example the
fact that we have desires and we want something. We know this desire
immediately, we feel it by intuition.
E.G: when I'm hungry, I feel immediately the wish of eating; I do not need
the five senses to experience it. It's clear that, when I understand I'm
hungry, I need to use the reason to satisfy my desire, choosing the best
ways to reach my purpose. Schopenhauer says "Will is the real thing
itself of our being". Everything we know of ourselves by the five
senses or by the intellect is a phenomenical knowledge and so deceptive.
The essence of the whole reality is the will (that is the only thing as
itself).
"Will is the thing itself of the whole reality". Reality
is conceived in a monistic prospective: everything is will, there is only
one substance, in regard of it, people and things are like its modes (in
Spinoza's view). Will has four features:
Blind and Irrational: will has not a purpose. If we consider the
human will, when a person wants something is to reach an aim, a goal.. The
choice of the "ways" is determined by the aim. Schopenhauer says
that will wants just to want, it does not care of the purpose. So an
ultimate aim of the will does not exist. So the will is irrational, if we
consider as rational the choice of an adequate way to reach the purpose.
Unconscious: will is not always conscious. A plant has a will (the
instinct of surviving, that leads her to what maintains her alive), but it
is not conscious of this will. The will as a whole is unconscious. In
Christian theology the subject that is totally conscious of his will is
God. So the will is unconscious, because not aware.
The will is not determined by the specification principle: in the
scholastic philosophy this principle generated the individuality.
E.G: two pens have the same essence, but they are still different, they
are individual beings because they are distinct between them and from the
universal.
Schopenhauer thinks that will is not determined from the fact of being
individuated in an only man, or in a single alive creature, but it's
ontologically a whole, as the sea is one, even if it shows itself as
composed of different waves. Analysing Spinoza's ontology we compared the
sea to the substance, the waves to its modes. The will is the sea, the
single men's wills are the waves, which means a way of being of the will
as a thing itself. The sea stays to a wave, as the will as a thing itself
stays to the single men's will.
Human
knowledge is only phenomenical, so deceptive, the true reality comes from
the will that has these features. The will does not show itself as itself,
but it does so by objectifying itself.
The will is one, but the reality is various. Schopenhauer believes Plato
was right when he thought of the existence of an ideal world and of two
levels of reality(concepts and things). In fact, also the will, when it
objectifies itself , becoming reality, it does not do it immediately, but
in an indirect way; first the will becomes concept, model and then beings
and things. So from Plato he takes the conception that affirms that will
objectifies itself first in an ideal world.
Instrumental Reason
It's a
concept that spreads particularly in the 20th century, but we already find
it in Hume and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer, putting the will as the thing
itself, turns over that ?, which was the most widespread way to understand
the relations between reason and will.
E.G: in the platonic myth of the winged biga, the reason, which was
personified in the charioteer, guides the passions, and the horses are the
instruments that allow the actions of the rational soul.
So the reason decides and the volitive component of men is a way to reach
the rational deliberations. Schopenhauer turns over this speech: the will
is the one who guides (the horseman), while the reason is the way to reach
a purpose (the horses). We use reason to choose the adequate ways to reach
a goal. It's rational the choice of the right ways to reach the purpose. (E.g.
it's irrational to decide of going to America by swimming)
A->B->C->D->…->X
A is an adequate way to reach B; B is adequate to C…
X is the final purpose, of which it cannot be decided if it's rational or
irrational, if for being rational it has to be an adequate way to reach a
purpose. In fact, by definition, the final purpose is the one which cannot
be used to reach another purpose. So it is the will, not reason, which
determines the purpose. With reason we can only decide the qualified ways
to reach it.
Aristotle had said that man can deliberate the ways to be happy, but the
purpose must not be decided (in fact happiness is the natural purpose of
the human nature). Aristotle believed that being happy is a part of the
human nature, so reason can easily recognize it, but Schopenhauer believes
that, since the will is blind, it makes us want something just to want and
we cannot rationally justify this wish. The reason develops an auxiliary
duty.
From these reflections comes his pessimistic vision.
"No rose without a thorn, but many a thorn without a rose". For
every pleasure satisfied, there are other desires that we cannot please.
"Life swings as a pendulum backward and forward between boredom and
pain, sometimes passing through an illusory moment of pleasure". If
we do not have strong desires we are bored, but if we do have desires that
we cannot satisfy, we suffer. So we feel boredom and pain, and sometimes
pleasure when we are able to satisfy a desire, even if Schopenhauer
believes that this is just a small break of a life that is naturally
unhappy.
"For each desire that is fulfilled, there remain at least ten that
are denied". Man has always to choose, so he is frustrated. Besides
the human nature makes the pleasure unstable and momentary. These thoughts
confirm his pessimistic vision. Schopenhauer's affirms that every animal
is in the same condition as man, but for human beings it is worse because
more consciousness is equal to much more pain. Man, being self-conscious,
suffers more (he knows that, for example, after eating, his pleasure is
going to fade soon). Romantics believe love was an important element of
life. Schopenhauer, who is anti-romantic, writes that man deceives himself
to love; love is nothing more than a trick of the will for perpetuating
the specie. We are dominated by the will, which makes us desire
unconsciousness the re production of the species. Perpetuating the species,
the will perpetuates itself. Man, in front of will, can choose: he can
accept the will and try mostly to reach pleasure, or he has to do an
effort to weaken and cancel the power of the will. Schopenhauer believed
the first solution was to be avoided, because man, accepting the will,
walked toward unhappiness. He indicated the second one as the right way to
follow which means to weaken the will, that, by the way, cannot be
completely cancelled, but can be blunted.
To weaken it there are three steps to raise, three ways to follow:
- Artistic Creation and Contemplation: when the artist conceives
the work or when he creates it, or when we look at a work of art we feel
as if our regular interests are set aside. The desire of the artist to
obtain glory through his paintings, which is given to him by the will, is
set aside. Through the contemplation and the creation, man avoids the
conditioning of the will. However it's not the final solution, because
it's temporary.
- Ethics' level (sympathy, solidarity): if we see someone who is
suffering, we put ourselves in his condition and want to help him. In this
occasion we do not think of our own selves and act only to do the other's
good, putting in second place our desires( the will). But also this
solution is momentary and transitory.
- Asceticism: is chastity, fasting, the heroic sacrifice of the
self, the voluntary poverty. Asceticism was a reality also in the Middle
Ages, but that kind of asceticism was done to obtain salvation. The real
asceticism is such if man wants asceticism just for asceticism's sake,
without secondary purposes. Some objections can be done to asceticism.
First of all, Schopenhauer did not apply what he wrote to his real life,
but a lack of personal coherence cannot be the decisive reason to a
criticism.
There is also a contradiction, because the decision of cancelling will
comes from the will itself. Asceticism can be translated for Schopenhauer
in a moral of compassion. It consists in repealing every distinction
between me and the others, in the faculty of suffering with them,
rejecting the egoism which is the typical form that will assumes in our
lives, There are different types of asceticism. Chastity is the first and
essential step to reach it, because it represents the choice of the
creatures to free themselves from the subordination of the will, that also
uses love and its flatteries to reach its fixed purpose. Chastity, with
suicide, which is refused, represents the very division from the will of
living. It's not possible to define in a positive way the term "asceticism",
which does not mean in any case the nihilistic cancellation of man or of
his values, but rather their transformation. Schopenhauer can only express
it negatively through the term "noluntas", which indicates a
condition free from the will's power, not blind will of living anymore,
but its definitive catharsis, no more "will", but properly
"no will".
N. B. The Notes were written during the lessons by Paola Volonghi and they were not revisioned.
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