/lit/ - Literature

>>8633507
OP here. I've got little time to answer questions, but I think yours is an important one; allow me to quote what I think can be read as Schopenhauer's (overlooked) own solution, found in the the second volume of his Parerga and Paralipomena:

>The /geological/ events that preceded all life >on earth did not exist in any concsioucness at >all, either in their own because they had none >or in the consciousness of another because no >such consciousness existed. Therefore >through the lack of any subject, they had >absolutely no objective existence, that is, they >did not exist at all; but that what does their >having existed signify? At bottom, it is merely >/hypothetical/, namely, /if/ a consciousness >had existed in those primeval times, then such >events would have happened in it; thus far >does the regressus of phenomena lead us. >And so it lay in the very nature of the thing-in->itself to manifest itself in such events.

Now, the first criticism of this solution is found in the fairly obscure Early Notebooks of friend Nietzsche. Allow me to quote him:

>But how, we ask after these sober >explanations, was it ever possible for the >intellect to come into being? Surely, the >existence of the last step before the >appearance of the intellect is as hypothetical >as that of every earlier step, i.e. this step did >not exist because no consciousness existed. >And now, at the next step, the intellect is >supposed to have appeared, i.e. the flower of >knowledge is supposed to have burst forth >suddenly and abruptly from a non-existent >world. This is supposed to have happened in a >sphere of timelessness and spacelessness, >without the intervention of causality. But what >comes from such a world stripped of worldly >qualities must – according to Schopenhauer’s >principles – itself be the thing-in-itself. Now >either the intellect remains eternally joined >together with the thing-in-itself as a new >predicate or there can be no intellect at all >because an intellect could never have come >into being.

>It must be noted how carefully Schopenh. >avoids the question of the origin of intellect: as >soon as we reach the region of this question, >hoping that it will now come, he hides as it >were behind the clouds, although it is quite >obvious that the intellect in Sch.’s sense >presupposes a world caught up in the >pr[incipio] in[dividuationis] and the laws of >causality.

I believe Nietzsche's criticism to be fair, now as to the solution of the flaw: there could be many next to those proposed by Nietzsche, but all of them would require us to modify Schopenhauers philosophy.