The World as Will and Representation

[Anonymous No.15239931]

Does anyone know any refutations of Schopenhauer's WWR, especially considering the conclusion that only the denial of the will is a path away from suffering? Either professional refutations or just your own opinions are appreciated.

[Anonymous No.15239986]

If you follow Kant conclusions, schopenhauer philosophy is legit. You either ignore Kant ou have to go with him.

[Anonymous No.15239997]

>>15239931
There is none. He is the, and I cannot stress this enough, only serious philosopher of the West. Anyone else is either a sociologist, a schizophrenic or a fraud.

[Anonymous No.15240006]

>>15239986
How does Schopenhauer consider Kant's duties of virtue within his philosophy? If you follow Kant than why don't you just follow Kant?

[Anonymous No.15240019]

>>15239931
Schopenhauer is unmatched, imo. People like to slander him, but his conclusions are legit and hi logic is sound, as depressing as his outlook on things can be. People don't like him because he doesn't offer grand solutions.

[Anonymous No.15240020]

>>15239997
Even our boy Neetch the moustache superman?

[Anonymous No.15240027]

OP here. I'll post whatever I have, although they're all my opinions over professional statements, meaning their validity isn't ideal.

The entire work is built on the postulate that life itself is suffering, simply because it consists in continuous striving and lack. However, is this was disproved, I believe most of the work crumbles. Here's a few examples of a life without constant suffering:
> A life of drugs. This life is completely artificial but, if we theoretically found a drug which didn't react extremely badly on the body and created euphoria (something similar to Es or MDMA without the fall), surely this would be an alternative. Remember that I'm not looking for a life of meaning, only one without suffering.
> A life of stoicism over absolute asceticism. The ability to live life unharmed by the nagging voice of lack seems possible without completely abolishing the will.
> Perhaps life itself merely isn't as bad as Schopenhauer makes it seem. He claims that, in a utopia of law (no crime), only boredom and overpopulation are produced. However, I believe the philosophy of Rousseau (Social Contract) can remove the pointless boredom by living for a state will over a personal one. In addition, the overpopulation is obviously controllable, insofar as the state is competent (see Rousseau again).
> Finally, I believe Schopenhauer's true gem was Book 3 of V1 (aesthetics). If the ideal state was created, surely the civilian could either live a simple life of trade or live a life of art, both of which pleasing the will. The escape afforded by art, particularly music, is a much more solid point than that of Book 4.

In other words, I believe Schopenhauer's error was to start from the presupposition that life was something to be escaped, an innate suffering. This is the same manner in which Kant presupposed that life must be extremely architectonic and therefore made all of his systems parallel and mathematical.

[Anonymous No.15240054]

>>15240020
Nietzche said a few things of value (most of which, you'll find, are indebted to Schopenhauer) but was mostly just an asshole.

[Anonymous No.15240055]

>>15240006
Schopenhauer doesn't follow Kant's morals. He primarily only follows the Phenomena/Noumena distinction. In Book 4, he says that no moral dogma can change the will into a moral one (even the categorical imperative) and it can only give the will and invisible motive. In this way, Kant's Categorical Imperative and Christianity's promise of grace are equally dogmatic.

[Anonymous No.15240304]

>>15240027
>life is suffering
This is a simplistic reading of Schopenhauer. The great novels all corroborate Schopenhauer's "pessimism." What are the writers in works like War and Peace, The Red and the Black, In Search of Lost Time, The Possessed, etc., telling us about life? What is the picture that these minds paint of the world around them and the essence of the characters in them? It is nothing but a Drama, in its full form. Now Drama leads down two roads, tragedy and comedy. In both cases, characters are subject to Fortune, so that comedy is merely tragedy narrowly avoided. What does not become tragedy can afford to make us laugh, and that is all. What Schopenhauer, like all great thinkers, saw in "life," as man knows it, was Drama, and Drama is nothing but, to use his terms, the play of motives in the world of phenomena. These motives follow the causal law, so that the characters insofar as they act within a Drama, are as contingent as physical objects, only instead of the laws of physics, there are the laws of mimesis. Why is it that every man, every woman has the same "crisis" at some point in their life? This is the crux of Drama, for which every man serves as an axis. Hence, it is no wonder that Schopenhauer should have seen, as the only way out of this tragicomic facade, the denial of the will to live, which could only manifest itself in man as motive. Every step a man takes puts him in debt, and all he can ever accomplish is to pay off the debts he creates so long as he acts upon motive. Every sin leads to a confession. Respite from this comes in the form of the lucidity that led to the great novels mentioned above, that is to say, in the beholding of Drama itself, of its machinations. Hence novelists are often called great "psychologists"--but this is to miss the issue of the novelist himself, who certainly cannot be perceived in the drama, the object of psychology, since to write a novel one must stand outside it. Now the end of Drama is the end of life. Novelists, after finishing their work, shortly die, there being nothing left for them in this world.

[Anonymous No.15240501]

>>15240304
The events that continually reappear in Drama are those of which it might be said that "it was only a matter of time." That is what man is, insofar as he is subject to Drama, a "matter of time." All stories are of Fatalities--the fatality of the addict, of the romantic, the quixotic; the story goes on, and we wait to see what will happen, what will become of our hero, who stands for us, insofar as we are asking this very question of ourselves: what will become of us? That is to say, in what way are we ourselves a "matter of time?" If we desire any object in this world, any circumstance, we are necessarily subject to the whim of causality. Our actions are determined, insofar as we desire, that is to say, act upon motive. Thus, the only true freed act is that of motivelessness, to be unmotivated, unmoved. Though we think of "unmotivated" as synonymous with depressed, our meaning is totally the opposite. Is not our great novelist just he, the unmotivated One? He has no action within the Drama, no interest. Therefore, he is free from motive, and only in this way does he envision the Drama itself, disinterestedly. The novelist is no "matter of time." But in what way is he free in this world? He has nothing to acquire; what is not contingent has no appearance in the world of phenomena--therefore, he disappears! The physicist, the psychologist cannot discern him! He is gone, out of this world. All that remains is the crystalline figure of his work, the image of time brought to a standstill.

[Anonymous No.15240544]

>>15240055
by invisible motive, does he mean it makes the will harder to understand and see what it wants?

[Anonymous No.15241154]

>>15239997
>>15240019
Based

[Anonymous No.15241184]

>>15240304
>>15240501
>>15240019
>>15239997
Extremely based

[Anonymous No.15242120]

>>15240304
>>15240501
Schope was a bit dramatic too
just enjoy life ffs

[Anonymous No.15242502]

>>15239931
Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.15242518]

>>15240027
> A life of drugs. This life is completely artificial but, if we theoretically found a drug which didn't react extremely badly on the body and created euphoria (something similar to Es or MDMA without the fall), surely this would be an alternative. Remember that I'm not looking for a life of meaning, only one without suffering.
You can't invent a drugs like that. Not in the sense that it's immoral, it's literally impossible due to how suffering works neurologically

[Anonymous No.15242569]

Schopenhauer is The Truth.

As I like to say, any thought you could ever possibly imagine thinking, Schopenhauer has already thought that thought in its entirety.

My goal is to write an updated book that takes into account things like DNA, modern neuroscience, and quantum physics and apply it to his philosophy.

I wonder what relationship modern physics has with the will, where values in quantum experiments are not know until they are observed. This sounds so much like the will/representation boundary and I can't stop thinking about it.

[Anonymous No.15242621]

>>15240027
that euphoria will soon become suffering the moment you find a hindrance for your will

[Anonymous No.15242622]

His philosophy accounts for everything.

It's an inconvenient philosophy if you have a shitty character (i.e. someone who negates others' will to affirm his own will), because this philosophy basically defines you as even and far from understanding the inner essence of reality.

But someone with a good character, trying to understand why everyone around them makes them suffer so much, suddenly Schopenhauer's philosophy launches you into the inner essence of the world, and everything becomes magical once you load his "program" completely into your head.

It's overwhelming to understand the nature of the world, but you try to do your best to make it through it and leave a good impression on those around you.

[Anonymous No.15242740]

>>15239931
He literally is the end game. But the end game is depressing.

[Anonymous No.15242749]

Is there a commentary book on schoppy that breaks down his ideas for retards like me?

[Anonymous No.15242775]

>>15242120
>just enjoy life ffs
Anon, I...

[Anonymous No.15242777]

>>15242749
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer by Bryan Magee.

[Anonymous No.15242778]

>>15242777
Appreciate you

[Anonymous No.15242779]

>>15242518
How so?

[Anonymous No.15242870]

>>15240304

> Bro life is a collision of Wills. You will never succeed bro. Just go to Still Lanka and become a monk.

Firstly this idea is hardly revolutionary, Buddhism is literally based on unfulfillment of will. And Buddhism is more positive than his Philosophy also.

Secondly, and this is what Neitzche also said, Shopenhauer seems to think we all aspire towards the same singular will. This was true in the old times but not anymore. We have a plurality of Wills. You talk about tragic but you fail to mention that a tragic hero is still a hero. There is beauty in not being able to get what you want when you adopt a tragic disposition.

[Anonymous No.15242912]

One moment of true joy is worth a thousand moments of anguish: the opposite of what schoop thinks citing Petrarch: “A thousand pleasures do not compensate for one pain”.
When the unique cycle, that is your soul, completes. You will be presented the return of eternity—or rest, as schoopy wished. But there is no sleep without dreams.

[Anonymous No.15243025]

doesn't his will shit just sound... retarded and mystical though?

does anyone actually believe in it?

[Anonymous No.15243399]

>>15243025
>doesn't his will shit just sound... retarded and mystical though?
How much Schopenhauer have you actually read? Read the Fourfold Root and then WWR. You'll have that the derivation of the notion of the Will comes from lengthy argumentation that moves fundamentally from the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It's not mystical at all.
>does anyone actually believe in it?
Yes. Myself as one. And mind you, I'm not a fun of woowoo bullshit.

[Anonymous No.15243409]

>>15239931
Nietzsche was driven to insanity trying to refute Schopenhauer, which is all you need to know about schoppys legitness

[Anonymous No.15243561]

>>15242120
>just enjoy life ffs

[Anonymous No.15243583]

>>15242622
So basically a cope. Instead of objectively observing the disposition of those that live happy lives, i.e. ignorance + instinctive relentless drive/will towards pleasure, he goes for the cope that not playing the game makes you superior

[Anonymous No.15243779]

>>15243583
What would that "objective" observation entail?

[Anonymous No.15243797]

>>15243779
The psychological structure of those that live happy productive lives.

[Anonymous No.15244438]

>>15243797
Are you U.G.

[Anonymous No.15245147]

>>15243583

Broad strokes.

Happiness is an internal state.

Ignorance in the context of happiness implies not understanding why suddenly you might became unhappy.

Instinctive + relentless drive/will towards pleasure is exactly the thing Schopenhauer calls out most. It is suffering until the drive is satiated momentarily with whatever pleasure, and that pleasure becomes fleeting, as if it almost never exists, and the drive for the next pleasure begins immediately and you are no longer happy and satisfied, you are unfulfilled in the context of this next pleasure.

[Anonymous No.15245193]

Short answer: no. "A man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants."

[Anonymous No.15245306]

>>15242120
>just enjoy life ffs

[Anonymous No.15246494]

A full day later, OP is back and thinks he has an answer:

He quite convincingly explained how music is a reflection of the will. The harmonic tension reflects suffering and the release is the fulfilment. There's also the less convincing argument of higher notes = higher will (there is plenty of music which uses bass notes as a melody and higher notes to lay down harmony). Anyway, if music is the will and the will is suffering, why is music so pleasant? Even music with a lot of harmonic tension (think Wagner's Tristan Prelude) is pleasant to listen to. From this, I would either say that, if done in keeping with the will (alike how music is in keeping with its mathematical principles through temperament, key centres, etc.), the constant striving of life isn't something unpleasant and that saying life is merely about the fulfilment is massively reductionist. Here's a few musical and a few real examples of this in practise:

I find Coltrane's music more satisfying than modern pop. However, modern pop has a lot less harmonic tension than Coltrane.

I find that I'm happiest when I have a clear goal and I'm working towards it. For example, when I'm writing a novel or when I am working with a metronome to clean up some of my music. I'm not merely doing this for the satisfaction of getting the end result; I'm doing it because I enjoy the process and I value the outcome.

Let's say we found this constant 'striving' which he demonises in practical terms. Say you were writing a novel for 10 years of your life. Would those 10 years be constant pain until they were over? No, of course not.

Here's a final consideration: sometimes the thing you strive for and the fulfilment are both one and constant. If you strive to be a good person, you don't live your life waiting for the fulfilment of saying "I'm a good person". Instead, you have a constant fulfilment of being a good person. If you set yourself the goal to spend your life writing, every minute which you spend writing, every book you publish, even every reflection you have on your work, will be a fulfilment.

I.e., the whole will & fulfilment dichotomy is completely flawed, as is the will = suffering conclusion.

[Anonymous No.15246997]

>>15243409
Nietzsche was fucked in the head because of syphilis and drugs

[Anonymous No.15247071]

>>15239931
Let me get this straight to you, we only exist as change, his "will" is nothing more than motion, without motion we don't exist, just like a river doesn't exist if there is not an infinite flow of different waters, suffering is the natural response for we are not omnipotent beings nor could we be in an universe with infinite consciousnesses, its neither good or bad, just how things are
As Nietzsche said, how could I believe in god and not wanting to be one myself? Schope negates all life because he couldn't be one omnipotent being with no hindrances

[Anonymous No.15247092]

>>15240054
Nietzsche was great for the most part, certainly one of the best German philosophers, or philosophers in general

[Anonymous No.15247127]

>>15242120
Schopie BTFO

[Anonymous No.15247147]

>>15239931
How old do you need to be to read TWaWaR?

[Anonymous No.15247151]

>>15247071
I partially agree with you. I feel that his will is multiple different things combined into a false sense of a unity. That which he calls will on one hand is nature (food cycle, survival instinct), on another hand it is merely determinations of mass and motion as you say (gravity, terminal velocity, etc.). To put these into what he calls grades of the objectification of the will seems an illogical step. Instead, we should accept these forces for what they are empirically and possibly also permit that they have a metaphysical root, although this seems transcendental. Ultimately, he builds all natural force into some stereotypical villain with a twirly moustache and calls it will, as if it isn't merely an arbitrary unity.

[Anonymous No.15247164]

>>15247147
You need to understand Kant, understand Plato, be open minded to unfamiliar concepts and religions and not value your sanity much. You either reject his philosophy or spend your life torturing yourself because some German man said to do it.

[Anonymous No.15247535]

>>15242569
Thomas Metzinger and Michael Graziano have excellent books for you (Graziano is a neuroscientist btw), no popularization yet but check out Jeremy England's Dissipation-Driven Adaptation lectures on YouTube, there's two.
I can't unsee Will-to-live when I consider England and Graziano in conjunction

[Anonymous No.15247582]

>>15243583
>>15242870
This presupposes that happiness and positivity or constructiveness are desirable.
Why would enjoying life be desirable, especially since it's obviously been a will o' the wisp since Gilgamesh?
No, the non-cope courageous answer is to embrace pessimism and depersonalize, depsychologize and despiritualize.
The future is antihuman.

[Anonymous No.15247591]

>>15246494
>I find that I'm happiest when I have a clear goal and I'm working towards it
Happiness as absorption.
You'd like Maslow a lot. You should read Colin Wilson's Super Consciousness: Quest For The Peak Experience, it's about your line of thought.

[Anonymous No.15247941]

>>15240304
>This is a simplistic reading of Schopenhauer.
>It is nothing but a Drama, in its full form.
That's a simplistic view of life. You're assuming the narratives we tell about ourselves actually bear semblance to reality.

[Anonymous No.15247972]

Mfw the pater familias in Budenbrook reading this as a way to cope for his failure son

[Anonymous No.15248585]

>>15246494
Based based based
I find myself in that state a lot more lately after I've started writing a journal
Every thing I do now is kind of evaluated according to my journal, as in I try to do things I wish to write about at the day of the day, to the point where sometimes the journal becomes the meaning itself
And since the journal has a new goal every day it's like a self-perpetuating meaning

[Anonymous No.15248611]

>>15247582
We are slaves to our own self-propagation, we never had a chance
We must transcend this sad state of being

[Anonymous No.15249487]

>>15247972
Let's see what Thomas Mann has to say about Schopenhauer:
>The world as will and Representation - a highly factual headline, which in three words not only the content of the book, but also the person who created it, in its powerful darkness and equally powerful brightness, its deep sensuality and strictly pure spirituality, fully expresses his suffering and desire for redemption. It is a phenomenon of a book.

>This is a work of such cosmic unity and all-inclusive power of thought that one has a strange experience with it: If it has occupied you for a long time, everything else - but also everything - that you read in between or immediately afterwards comes to you as foreign, uninformed, incorrect, arbitrary.

>[I found in Schopenhauer] an experience of truth, so hard-hitting and stab-proof, right as I have not found it otherwise in philosophy. You can live and die with it - especially to die: I dare to say that the Schopenhauerian truth, that it can be accepted in the last hour, is suitable without effort, without deliberating, and without words.

>I called Schopenhauer's philosophy *modern*. I should have called it *one for the future*.

[Anonymous No.15249783]

>>15246494
why are you equating will to suffering? when schoppy talks about will, he makes the same point over and over again: he is talking about something that its "true nature" is outside our cognitive capability to understand. when he talks about pain and suffering, he is talking about the representation of that will, which is us and the rest of material existance. "will" is not "suffering". because "will" is outside time and space and there fore "is" not.

[Anonymous No.15249971]

>>15249783
Correct, suffering comes through "objectification" of the Will

[Anonymous No.15250143]

>>15249783
Correct, suffering comes through "objectification" of the Will. The Will as it is represented to us is under the fourth root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

[Anonymous No.15251521]

>>15242120
Baste

[Anonymous No.15251530]

>>15247151

Yes, everything you named, everything in experience is the APPEARANCE of the will.

The will is behind all humans, we see its appearances as acts of will. Why should anything else in the universe NOT be these same acts of will?

Everything physical needs a metaphysics to explain THAT it exists, not just WHY it exists. But we can't ever really access the metaphysical directly. We can only infer, as Schopenhauer here does. And he infers correctly when the conclusions he makes regarding the unity of the will behind the veil is reinforced by observations made in experience.

If we were completely, wholly, and eternally separate from mountains, animals, plants, forces, etc, how could we ever conceive of their beauty? Why does it enter our heads as such to see a beautiful landscape? As Schopenhauer says, if this stuff around us had metaphysics completely distinct from the metaphysics that make us, there would be no reason for us to necessarily feel beauty in the nature around us. It would be more inclined to feel alien, wouldn't it?

The unity of the will is the foundation for compassion and justice in ethics. Because we are really one metaphysical, but splintered off into individuation and multiplicity, the degree to which each one of us perceives himself as wholly distinct, alien, and alien from all other human beings, the more susceptible that person is to do these people harm for the benefit of himself. The more someone is tuned into the unity, the better their disposition will be, because to hurt my neighbor is to hurt myself, as evidenced by the pangs of consciousness ringing inside us afterwards.

Unity.

[Anonymous No.15251545]

>>15247147

I don't have a philosophy degree, nor did I read Kant, but I have read all of Schopenhauer's books at least once.

Schopenhauer explains so many things so clearly, and is much smarter than anyone he cites. All you need to do is pause during the reading and briefly use the internet to find out what he may be talking about here or there in reference to somebody.

[Anonymous No.15251689]

>>15240020
Schop was too based for Neetch to handle so he got prissy and attacked Schop's perceived personality.

[Anonymous No.15251695]

>>15247147
Your main struggle will be with the terminology in the first half of the first volume, and terminology in fourfold root which you should read eventually. Definitely read Kant’s transcendental aesthetic and maybe even do a few month dive on Kant. Stick with Prolegomena, first critique, and Adam Rosenfield lectures on YouTube. Read them each twice. For Schopenhauer, read some essays (online editions will work, and if he doesn’t win you over QUICKLY like he did for Nietzsche, who says he was one of those readers of S who knew instantly he could trust him), then you know something is wrong. You could still persevere, and know volume 2 of TWAWAR is easier to read. SERIOUSLY THOUGH: this is coming from a reader who read a couple of his essays (in a collection and taken from all over: metaphysics of love, on language, on physiognomy), and someone who also had to reread the first volume two or three times and refer to Kant and pause and think to get most of it. It will CHANGE YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS and MAKE YOU A THINKER. Hence prudence. Just like Proust who loved Schope you will come out an old man.

[Anonymous No.15251711]

Kierkegaard and Schop are two of my favorites. So it was interesting to discover SK read Schopenhauer.

> What Kierkegaard finds most attractive in Schopenhauer’s philosophy is his pessimism and his critique of philosophy professors who do not live in what they profess. Kierkegaard held that his fellow Danes related to Christianity as a pie-in-the-sky abstraction, especially the “assistant professors” who turned Christianity into a speculative, purely philosophical matter. For this reason he remarked that “theological students who are obliged to live here in Denmark in this nonsensical (Christianly) optimism could be advised to take a daily dose of Schopenhauer’s Ethics to guard against being infected by this drivel.” Schopenhauer’s pessimism was an effective “counter-poison” in relation to the poison of “eudaemonistic Protestantism, especially Danish epicureanism.”

> But what attracts Kierkegaard to Schopenhauer here is also what, in another sense, repels him. Schopenhauer is at once too pessimistic and yet not pessimistic enough. Schopenhauer represents all of life as suffering (rather than ethico-religious voluntary suffering, that of the self-denying Christian paradox-existence) and proposes Indian asceticism as the proper response to this pessimistic view of reality, an asceticism that amounts to denial of the will to live—a kind of non-existence, as it were. But this universal pessimism easily becomes an inverted optimism, for “if to exist is to suffer, then to exist in such a way that it is as if one did not exist … is clearly eudaemonism. … If to exist is to suffer, eudaemonism of course cannot be sought in the direction of existing, it must be sought in the direction of not existing…”

https://philosophy.livejournal.com/1965165.html

[Anonymous No.15252922]

>>15239931
Does anyone know if this version is any good? https://www.bokus.com/bok/9780460875059/the-world-as-will-and-idea/

[Anonymous No.15254335]

>>15251689
Literally too dumb to understand Nietzsche. Sad!

[Anonymous No.15254910]

>>15247582
> Why should I be happy?

You should not. Neck yourself.

[Anonymous No.15254956]

>>15254335
Elaborate then

[Anonymous No.15254968]

The noumenon is the most pointless idea ever