/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.8632440]

Nine and a half out of ten times Schopenhauer is quoted out of context. This is not merely because few people bother to read his WWR, but also because the indespensable fundament of this work, Kant's transcendental idealism, is notoriously hard to grasp. Luckily, I'm well familiar with both Kant's CPR and Schopenhauer's WWR, partly because I've read philosophy at an esteemed university. If you have questions, submit them, for I've got some time to kill today.

[Anonymous No.8632445]

Who would win in a fist-fight?

[Anonymous No.8632449]

using schopenhauer language or system, convince me to not killing myself soon(i really love living but at the same it is hurting me so much and i desire so much things and i do not know what to do and i am feeling like it is a one big rollercoaster where nothing is true and certain)

[Anonymous No.8632455]

tell me something about schopenhauers ethics

[Anonymous No.8632491]

>>8632445
Schopenhauer would absolutely destroy Kant

[Anonymous No.8632500]

>>8632440
Did he write 'On Women' before or after he went bald?

[Anonymous No.8633507]

>>8632440

Do you think it's possible to balance both of Schopenhauer's claims - that animal intellects evolved naturally over the course of physical history from originally unconscious matter, and that the entirety of the material universe and physical history is only mental representation and could never exist independently of intellect? Or is this a fatal flaw in his system?

[Anonymous No.8633607]

>>8632440
Can you even call the transcendental analytic idealism? Sure it takes a lot of methods from Descartes but it's in its own category.

[Anonymous No.8633617]

What Soapandshower value in art? What are his aesthetics like? Are they comparable to Nietzsche's in Birth of Tragedy?

[Anonymous No.8633679]

>>8633607

This is interesting. What methodology do you think is Cartesian in the Analytic of the first critique?

[Anonymous No.8633695]

>>8633507
Think Suzumiya Haruhi's "The world was created two years ago already having billions of years of history".

[Anonymous No.8633703]

What is Kant talking about with the free-play in the Critique of Judgment?

How does depicting the Will in paintings/stories/poetry have the aesthetic effect of calming our own Will? How is the artist's act of Will that which neutralizes our own for a brief amount of time? Can music, being pure Will, also quiet the Will?

Doesn't the charitable Saint just help people keep Willing? Shouldn't he rather focus on trying to help them deny the Will? In this respect, is the genius artist a better person than the Saint?

[Anonymous No.8633708]

>>8632440

What is the Will to Schopenhauer?

What are the prerequisites (if any) to reading and understanding his Essays and Aphorisms?

[Anonymous No.8633733]

>>8633708

will is the thing in itself

no prerequisites. Hollingdale's introduction is fantastic and gives you all the background you need.

[Anonymous No.8633748]

>>8633733

Is there any further characterization of the will, or is that impossible given its noumenal nature? If it is impossible, how does he arrive at the idea that the thing in itself is will?

[Anonymous No.8633842]

>>8633617
Not op

Schopenhauer saw art as representation of will in its various platonic forms as represented to us. So something like architecture would be the lowest forms of will. Impenetrability, extension in space and time, effects of gravity. poetry would deal with higher gradations of will. Eg human desires and pains. He thought music was the purest form of art.
In terms of our relation to art. He believed art along with natural beauty was a consolation in this world of suffering. It allows unwilled knowing. We can escape from the passions and frustrations of the will momentarily by allowing art to fill our representation without us having to relate it to our will

[Anonymous No.8633849]

>>8633748
We are a part of the noumenal world through our physical form, but we are also phenomena to our consciousness. The knowledge of the will within ourselves allows us to bridge to gap between phenomena and noumena

[Anonymous No.8633856]

Do you ascribe to the dual-world or the dual-aspect interpretation of transcendental idealism?

Where do you find textual support for the position you take?

[Anonymous No.8633860]

>>8633695

Not familiar with Haruhi, but it seems like you're referring to Schopenhauer's repeated thesis that the present moment is the most real form of the phenomenon. Yet I don't see how this resolves the possible inconsistency I mentioned; even if the phenomenonal past is generated by/in the intellect (which seems to attribute more priority, more fundamentality, to the subject over its objects), the issue is how Schopenhauer could give a phenomenal/objective explanation *at all* for the intellect's being (since such an explanation seems to attribute more priority, more fundamentality, to objects rather than to the subject).

[Anonymous No.8633866]

>>8633733
>will is the thing in itself

Thanks, looks like you're useless

[Anonymous No.8633881]

>>8633856
holy fuck his fingernails

what is wrong with deleuze

[Anonymous No.8633888]

>>8633860

Not that fellow, but I think Schopenhauer is very reductive in his interpretation of transcendental idealism, which leads to just this kind of paradox. Certainly there is still a great deal of ambiguity in how Kant himself would resolve such a dilemma, and he certainly seems to hold a quasi-mystical view of "the intellect", the rational capacity of humankind. It is supposed to be the fragment of God within us, after all.

I think, though, that just the ability to 'project' a timeline into some distant past and organize for ourselves the 'course of events' from then until now, including the whole course of biological evolution, is sufficient to account for the historical-phenomenal 'emergence' of human intelligence, even though this intelligence is itself necessary to perform this projection.

[Anonymous No.8633892]

>>8633860
>>8633888

So we must take to positions regarding ourselves: our intellects are biologically determined phenomena and yet the precondition for knowing that they could be such. I don't perceive a fatal contradiction in this.

[Anonymous No.8633897]

>>8633881

He was very sick for a very long time and also French.

[Anonymous No.8633904]

>>8633860
I'll rephrase myself.
Both thesis you meantioned that, according to you, contradict each other, are:
>Intellect evolved naturally along history from unconscious matter.
>Material universe and physical history can only exist with the intellect's presence.
Problem with your interpretation is how you assume that history "exists beyond perception", which you just admitted is false. Rather, it could be said that "Intellect came, and along with it, in the exact same moment, a world with its history." Intellect created history, and history created intellect, at the same moment. Thus, you have both.

[Anonymous No.8633905]

>>8633892
>>8633888
>>8633860

It's important to keep in mind that there is never a claim that the human mind generates the physical objects it encounters, but merely determines a priori what is there to be determined, the = x, or the 'thing-in-itself', what Schopenhauer chooses to call Will but what is best understood as 'that which is absent cognition'.

[Anonymous No.8633910]

>>8633905
>>8633892
>>8633888
>>8633860

And this determination by the pure forms of intuition is just objecthood. Hence there is no object without a subject, and vice versa. Absent a subject, there is 'stuff', but not determinate object.

[Anonymous No.8634864]

Bump

Was any of this clarifying at all?

And what happened to OP? Started an AMA and just dipped. Rude.

[Anonymous No.8634921]

>>8632440
Why is Kant so terrible to read? Would Schopenhauer and Heidegger have been friends?

Recognizing inherent maleness and un-maleness is pretty opposite to what he was trying to get across, right? That one creature has a Will and yet another equally powerful creature exists only to subvert the Will. His ideas seem primitive imo but that was probably my fault for only reading Being and Time and then later trying to read other things from the same time period.

One thing I never understood about Kant is how a priori really works on a cognitive level. Everything we think has to have a known or inherent piece to it. You can't think entirely about things you don't know. So foreknowledge should always be present and constant truths have to be there regardless of our intent due to the necessary qualifications for something to be knowledge in the first place. Even if I have a posteriori claim about something it still isn't any larger or more complete than the a priori knowledge that the claim is made up of.

[Anonymous No.8634927]

>>8633860
thought this picture was someone bending over to do a line

[Anonymous No.8634952]

>>8633888

> I think Schopenhauer is very reductive in his interpretation of transcendental idealism which leads to just this kind of paradox

Yeah, I think in this case it's a result of him limiting the application of the ground/consequence relation to the domain of phenomena, unlike Kant, who allowed this logical relation to hold between noumena and phenomena; so while Kant felt fine maintaining that transcendental selves could be without the phenomenal world (but not vice versa) and thus they could logically ground the phenomenal world without being consequences of it, Schopenhauer doesn't have this option, since he's reducted the ground/consequence relation to form of phenomena only.

> I think, though, that just the ability to 'project' a timeline into some distant past and organize for ourselves the 'course of events' from then until now, including the whole course of biological evolution, is sufficient to account for the historical-phenomenal 'emergence' of human intelligence

But this whole historical account is still only empirical, at the level of phenomena, and as such presupposes the very intelligence it seeks to account for; it seems to me that this historical account could only be a *sufficient* explanation for consciousness if it's granted that objective natural processes can occur without a conscious subject, which Schopenhauer of course can't do.

> even though this intelligence is itself necessary to perform this projection.

A transcendental realist could maintain that consciousness is necessary for the recognition/discovery of this process while not being necessary for the existence of this process - but Schopenhauer, as a transcendental idealist, of course has to say that consciousness is necessary for the very existence of the process also.

Responses to the other posts to come soon.

[Anonymous No.8634982]

>>8632440
What are good preludes to fully grasping Kant and Schopenhauer in your opinion? Beyond the "read the Greeks" meme is their any person or few writings that are very important for grasping what they both have to say?

And what do you suggest to read afterwards to solidify and/or raise objections to them?

[Anonymous No.8635007]

>>8633892

> So we must take t[w]o positions regarding ourselves: our intellects are biologically determined phenomena and yet the precondition for knowing that they could be such.

But also the precondition for *being* such, and this seems to be the potential fatal contradiction. In ither words, as I just posted a minute ago

> A transcendental realist could maintain that consciousness is necessary for the recognition/discovery of this process while not being necessary for the existence of this process - but Schopenhauer, as a transcendental idealist, of course has to say that consciousness is necessary for the very existence of the process also.

> this whole historical account is still only empirical, at the level of phenomena, and as such presupposes the very intelligence it seeks to account for

[Anonymous No.8635013]

>>8635007

>But also the precondition for *being* such

No, merely being a possible object of knowledge. Objects being those things which "stand against" (Gegenstand) Being as such.

[Anonymous No.8635103]

>>8635013

For Schopenhauer:

Biological determination is a kind of phenomenal being. Phenomenal being is only representation for an intellect. So the very existence, the empirical reality, of biological determination - and not merely the abstract knowledge that such biological determination has occured - is conditioned by intellect. No?

(Though a related issue that I didn't mention yet is how Schopenhauer's system could allow for a subjective intellect to be a "condition" of its objects, when this seems to imply a relation of condition/conditioned between the subject and its object; yet this seems to be just another way of saying that there is a ground/consequence relation between subject and object, yet such a relation between them is one that Schopenhauer explicitly rejects.)

[Anonymous No.8635171]

>>8633904

> Intellect created history, and history created intellect, at the same moment. Thus, you have both.

Yes, I think this is basically what Schopenhauer has to say in order to maintain consistency (in this aspect of his system, at least). Magee describes it in colorful terms as subjectivity and objectivity "free-floating" over the noumenon, if I recall correctly - but I was intersted in your point of view.

Then a question that arises is whether the concept of such reciprocal dependence between empirical reality and transcendental ideality strikes the reader as plausible rather than unconvincingly ad hoc - but maybe any philosophical system will raise such a question when pursued to its foundations.

[Anonymous No.8635233]

>>8634921
>Everything we think has to have a known or inherent piece to it.

The form of knowledge exists a priori; the content comes from without.

[Anonymous No.8635237]

>>8635103
>Phenomenal being is only representation for an intellect. So the very existence, the empirical reality, of biological determination - and not merely the abstract knowledge that such biological determination has occured - is conditioned by intellect.

Only if you take 'intellect' to encompass all of the faculties of the human cognitive apparatus--which I believe Schopenhauer does, unfortunately--and only if 'is conditioned by' means 'determined as object for'.

As subject and object necessarily emerge together, they are mutually-conditioning. An object is only an object for a subject, and a subject is nothing without an object to 'subject' to itself.

[Anonymous No.8635238]

To understand Schopenhauer you must understand the difference between physiological processes and intellectual ones. Gathering and supplying sensory data is a physiological process; it can even be reduced in most cases to a purely mechanical process. Vision is more complicated than the other senses, likely because light is a more delicate stimuli than say an odor or a sound, which is at bottom a vibration of the air.

Vorstellung, which is often erroneously translated as 'Idea', means representation. This term is not simply a concept, but a description of a complex physiological and intellectual process. It also refers to the way in which our whole perceptual apparatus operates.

The human body deals only in effects, that is to say, everything we receive from without must be construed as effect. When you run your hand along the bark of a tree, nerve endings in your hand relay a particular kind of data up the nervous chain. It passes through the spinal column and is forwarded to the brain, specifically that faculty known as the Understanding. This faculty takes the raw sensory data and imposes the forms of the intellect upon it, namely time, space and causality. The last is most crucial in grasping the purpose of this function, for it is only through applying the law of causality to sensory data that we arrive at perception of an object. The EFFECT arrives first; it lingers as a kind of resonance, because it is awaiting its ground or sufficient reason, so that it may then ENTER active consciousness in a causal fashion, that is, as the effect of a cause. The cause however has to be worked up and PROJECTED by the Understanding. Only once this process has been carried out do you perceive the object which is the cause of the sensation you just experienced: you then perceive the surface of the tree as an object extended in space, enduring in time, and casually operative. It is just the same with vision: the sensation, that is to say, the stimulation of various cells within the retina, is classified as an EFFECT which needs a cause. The effect is traced back to its source by the Understanding; an object is worked up in the mind according to the data it has received from the eyes and PROJECTED into space to ground the EFFECT which has just arrived and which is currently waiting to appear in the proper fashion. The object then appears in your vision. Thus we pass from the effect to the cause without stopping. This process is automatic and consistent, and moreover it is integral to the human brain. It develops through experience, but it does not derive therefrom. Failure to distinguish this difference is the chief failing of English empiricism.

[Anonymous No.8635239]

>>8635238

The overarching consequence of this process is just what Schopenhauer states, namely:

>Therefore, the fact that, on the occasion of certain sensations occurring in my organs of sense, there arises in my head a PERCEPTION of the things extended in space, permanent in time, and casually operative, by no means justifies me in assuming that such things also exist in themselves, in other words, that they exist with such properties absolutely belonging to them, independent of my head and outside it. This is the correct conclusion of the Kantian philosophy.

[Anonymous No.8635293]

>>8632440
I never read schopenhauer because everything he says is either already covered in greater detail by scholastics, or not rigorous enough.
If it weren't for the disconnect in intellectual tradition caused by the french revolution and protestantism in germany then people might not look at schopenhauer in such admiration.
For instance, Aquinas laid down his 'Knowledge by connaturality or inclination' in the summa, which is simply incredible. Then schopenhauer comes along and says all that shit about art and how we shouldn't subject it to our reason, for example when listening to a symphony you shouldn't dissect it or else you would risk losing the intuitive, poetical aspects of the symphony, rather you should take it as it is, uncritically and without condition.
And then of course everybody thinks schopenhauer is a genius.

>>8633507
This shit, too, was already dealt with in greater clarity by far earlier thinkers.

[Anonymous No.8635296]

>>8632449
you'll stay in the circle of the will which is suffering (wanting). If you don't negate yur will before your death, your death is just an end of a phase of conciousness but not an end of your overall root of suffering, your desire.

[Anonymous No.8635299]

>>8633507
those claims are not contradictory, as the subject is pre-temporal and pre-spacial, so it doesn't come before history in time, but "der Sache nach", that is, as a requirement of being as such, rather than of being in this way, or at this point in time or space.

[Anonymous No.8635312]

>>8635293
Also he became popular because protestantism took over the world and they were eager to find a german intellectual who was not catholic.

[Anonymous No.8635316]

>>8635312
yeah couldn't think of any of those around Schopi's time, oh no.

[Anonymous No.8635331]

>>8635316
Oh, sorry, I just assumed there were german intellectuals, my bad.

[Anonymous No.8635368]

>>8635331
That quip just doesn't work since nowhere I negated your implicit claim that Schopi is an intellectual.

So try again, maybe call me a faggot.

[Anonymous No.8635396]

>>8635368
I believe there's been a misunderstanding, my dear companion of immaculate ironical intelligence

[Anonymous No.8635398]

>>8635396
well if there was I'm too stupid to spot it.

[Anonymous No.8635818]

>>8635293

Any scholastics who argued for the transcendental ideality of space and time?

[Anonymous No.8635820]

>>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.

[Anonymous No.8635824]

>>8635820
I see I messed up the green text. My bad.

[Anonymous No.8636710]

>>8635293
>I never read schopenhauer
>everything he says is either already covered in greater detail by scholastics

[Anonymous No.8637362]

>>8635820

>either the intellect remains eternally joined >together with the thing-in-itself as a new >predicate

I think Schopenhauer actually claims this when he says that the world of representation is "sure" to the will-to-life; though from what I can remember, he claims this vaguely and infrequently. In other words, as I interpret it, for the will-in-itself to be is for it to objectify as the phenomenal universe (which contains subjectivity and objectivity in union); just as surely as there cannot be phenomena without the noumenon, the will-in-itself cannot fail to manifest as the world.

[Anonymous No.8637820]

>>8634982

Not OP, but I'd say Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume are pretty essential; familiarity with the core epistemological theses of Locke and Berkeley are also crucial.

[Anonymous No.8637852]

>>8637820

And I forgot the Upanishads.

[Anonymous No.8637869]

>>8635293

You're a fucking idiot. Schopenhauer blew the scholastics out in P&P. I guarantee you've never read any of his major works. This is wiki-tier criticism.

[Anonymous No.8638329]

>>8637820
>>8637852
Thank you very much, anon.

Anything in particular you suggest taking home from refreshing Plato and Descartes as well as from studying Leibniz and Hume? Will a lower-surface understanding suffice or is a rigorous and deep understanding of the four essential?