Schopenhauer

CHAPTER III
METAPHYSICS OF THE WILL

We have seen that scientific explanation does not go beyond presentations ordered in space and time. This is just as true of the sciences of causation—the 'ætiological' sciences—as it is of mathematical science. All that we learn from Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry and Physiology, is 'how, in accordance with an infallible rule, one determinate state of matter necessarily follows another: how a determinate change necessarily conditions and brings on another determinate change.' This knowledge does not satisfy us. We wish to learn the significance of phenomena; but we find that from outside, while we view them as presentations, their inner meaning is for ever inaccessible.

The starting-point for the metaphysical knowledge we seek is given us in our own body. The animal body is 'the immediate object of the subject': in it as presentation the 'effects' of 'causes' in the order of presentations external to it are first recognised. Now in virtue of his body the investigator is not pure knowing subject standing apart from that which he knows. In the case of the particular system of presentations constituting his organism, he knows what these presentations signify, and that is his will in a certain modification. The subject appears as individual through its identity with the body, and this body is given to it in two different ways: on one side as object among objects, and subjected to their laws; on the other side as the will immediately known to each. The act of will and the movement of the body are not two different states related as cause and effect; for the relation of cause and effect belongs only to the object, the phenomenon, the presentation. They are one and the same act given in different manners: the will, immediately to the subject; the movement, in sensible intuition for understanding. The action of the body is the objectified act of will. Called at first the immediate object of presentation, the body may now, from the other side, be called 'the objectivity of the will.'

Thus, as was said, the 'law of motivation' discloses the inner nature of causality. In causality in general we know only relations of phenomena; but in the case of our own body we know something else that those relations express; namely, the act of will determined by motives. Now there are in the world as presentation other systems like that which we call our body. Unless all these are to be supposed mere phantoms without inner reality, we must infer by analogy, in correspondence with like phenomena, other individual wills similar to that which we know in ourselves. This inference from analogy, universally admitted in the case of human and animal bodies, must be extended to the whole corporeal world. The failure to take this step is where the purely intellectual forms of idealism have come short. Kant's 'thing-in-itself,' which is not subject to the forms by which presentations become experience, but which experience and its forms indicate as the reality, has been wrongly condemned by his successors as alien to idealism. It is true that Kant did in some respects fail to maintain the idealistic position with the clearness of Berkeley; but his shortcoming was not in affirming a thing-in-itself beyond phenomena. Here, in Schopenhauer's view, is the metaphysical problem that he left a place for but did not solve. The word of the riddle has now been pronounced. Beyond presentation, that is, in itself and according to its innermost essence, the world is that which we find in ourselves immediately as will. By this it is not meant that a falling stone, for example, acts from a motive; knowledge and the consequent action from motives belongs only to the determinate form that the will has in animals and men; but the reality in the stone also is the same in essence as that to which we apply the name of will in ourselves. He who possesses this key to the knowledge of nature's innermost being will interpret the forces of vegetation, of crystallisation, of magnetism, of chemical affinity, even of weight itself, as different only in phenomenal manifestation but in essence the same; namely, that which is better known to each than all else, and where it emerges most clearly is called will. Only the will is thing-in-itself. It is wholly different from presentation, and is that of which presentation is the phenomenon, the visibility, the objectivity. Differences affect only the degree of the appearing, not the essence of that which appears.

While the reality everywhere present is not will as specifically known in man, the mode of indicating its essence by reference to this, Schopenhauer contends, is a gain in insight. The thing-in-itself ought to receive its name from that among all its manifestations which is the clearest, the most perfect, the most immediately illumined by knowledge; and this is man's will. When we say that every force in nature is to be thought of as Will, we are subsuming an unknown under a known. For the conception of Force is abstracted from the realm of cause and effect, and indicates the limit of scientific explanation. Having arrived at the forces of nature on the one side and the forms of the subject on the other, science can go no further. The conception of Will can make known that which was so far concealed, because it proceeds from the most intimate consciousness that each has of himself, where the knower and the known coincide.

By this consciousness, in which subject and object are not yet set apart, we reach something universal. In itself the Will is not individualised, but exists whole and undivided in every single thing in nature, as the Subject of contemplation exists whole and undivided in each cognitive being. It is entirely free from all forms of the phenomenon. What makes plurality possible is subjection to the forms of time and space, by which only the phenomenon is affected. Time and space may therefore be called, in scholastic terminology, the 'principle of individuation.' While each of its phenomena is subject to the law of sufficient reason, which is the law of appearance in these forms, there is for the Will as thing-in-itself no rational ground: it is 'grundlos.' It is free from all plurality, although its phenomena in space and time are innumerable. It is one, not with the unity of an object or of a concept, but as that which lies outside of space and time, beyond the principium individuationis, that is, the possibility of plurality. The individual, the person, is not will as thing-in-itself, but phenomenon of the will, and as such determined. The will is 'free' because there is nothing beyond itself to determine it. Further, it is in itself mere activity without end, a blind striving. Knowledge appears only as the accompaniment of its ascending stages.

Here we have arrived at the thought which, in its various expressions, constitutes Schopenhauer's metaphysics. That this cannot be scientifically deduced he admits; but he regards it as furnishing such explanation as is possible of science itself. For science there is in everything an inexplicable element to which it runs back, and which is real, not merely phenomenal. From this reality we are most remote in pure mathematics and in the pure a priori science of nature as it was formulated by Kant. These owe their transparent clearness precisely to their absence of real content, or to the slightness of this. The attempt to reduce organic life to chemistry, this again to mechanism, and at last everything to arithmetic, could it succeed, would leave mere form behind, from which all the content of phenomena would have vanished. And the form would in the end be form of the subject. But the enterprise is vain. 'For in everything in nature there is something of which no ground can ever be given, of which no explanation is possible, no cause further is to be sought.' What for man is his inexplicable character, presupposed in every explanation of his deeds from motives, that for every inorganic body is its inexplicable quality, the manner of its acting.

The basis of this too is will, and 'groundless,' inexplicable will; but evidently the conception here is not identical with that of the Will that is one and all. How do we pass from the universal to that which has a particular character or quality? For of the Will as thing-in-itself we are told that there is not a greater portion in a man and a less in a stone. The relation of part and whole belongs exclusively to space. The more and less touches only the phenomenon, that is, the visibility, the objectivation. A higher degree of this is in the plant than in the stone, in the animal than in the plant, and so forth; but the Will that is the essence of all is untouched by degree, as it is beyond plurality, space and time, and the relation of cause and effect.

The answer to the question here raised is given in Schopenhauer's interpretation of the Platonic Ideas. These he regards as stages of objectivation of the Will. They are, as Plato called them, eternal forms related to particular things as models. The lowest stage of objectivation of the Will is represented by the forces of inorganic nature. Some of these, such as weight and impenetrability, appear in all matter. Some are divided among its different kinds, as rigidity, fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties. They are not subject to the relation of cause and effect, but are presupposed by it. A force is neither cause of an effect nor effect of a cause. Philosophically, it is immediate objectivity of the will; in ætiology, qualitas occulta. At the lowest stages of objectivation, there is no individuality. This does not appear in inorganic things, nor even in merely organic or vegetative life, but only as we ascend the scale of animals. Even in the higher animals the specific enormously predominates over the individual character. Only in man is the Idea objectified in the individual character as such. 'The character of each individual man, so far as it is thoroughly individual and not entirely comprehended in that of the species, may be regarded as a particular Idea, corresponding to a peculiar act of objectivation of the Will.'

Schopenhauer warns us against substituting this philosophical explanation for scientific ætiology. The chain of causes and effects, he points out, is not broken by the differences of the original, irreducible forces. The ætiology and the philosophy of nature go side by side, regarding the same object from different points of view. Yet he also gives us in relation to his philosophy much that is not unsuggestive scientifically. His doctrine is not properly evolutionary, since the Ideas are eternal; but he has guarded incidentally against our supposing that all the natural kinds that manifest the Ideas phenomenally must be always represented in every world. For our particular world, comprising the sun and planets of the solar system, he sets forth in the Parerga an account of the process by which it develops from the nebula to man. This was referred to in the preceding chapter. In his fundamental work he describes a struggle, present through the whole of nature, in which the phenomenal manifestations of the higher Ideas conquer and subjugate those of the lower, though they leave them still existent and ever striving to get loose. Here has been seen an adumbration of natural selection: he himself admits the difficulty he has in making it clear. We must remember that it is pre-Darwinian.

Knowledge or intelligence he seeks to explain as an aid to the individual organism in its struggle to subsist and to propagate its kind. It first appears in animal life. It is represented by the brain or a large ganglion, as every endeavour of the Will in its self-objectivation is represented by some organ; that is, displays itself for presentation as such and such an appearance. Superinduced along with this contrivance for aid in the struggle, the world as presentation, with all its forms, subject and object, time, space, plurality and causality, is all at once there. 'Hitherto only will, it is now at the same time presentation, object of the knowing subject.' Then in man, as a higher power beyond merely intuitive intelligence, appears reason as the power of abstract conception. For the most part, rational as well as intuitive knowledge, evolved originally as a mere means to higher objectivation of the Will, remains wholly in its service. How, in exceptional cases, intellect emancipates itself, will be discussed under the heads of Æsthetics and Ethics.

That this view implies a teleology Schopenhauer expressly recognises. Indeed he is a very decided teleologist on lines of his own, and, in physiology, takes sides strongly with 'vitalism' as against pure mechanicism. True, the Will is 'endless' blind striving, and is essentially divided against itself. Everywhere in nature there is strife, and this takes the most horrible forms. Yet somehow there is in each individual manifestation of will a principle by which first the organism with its vital processes, and then the portion of it called the brain, in which is represented the intellect with its a priori forms, are evolved as aids in the strife. And, adapting all the manifestations to one another, there is a teleology of the universe. The whole world, with all its phenomena, is the objectivity of the one and indivisible Will; the Idea which is related to all other Ideas as the harmony to the single voices. The unity of the Will shows itself in the unison of all its phenomena as related to one another. Man, its clearest and completest objectivation, is the summit of a pyramid, and could not exist without this. Inorganic and organic nature, then, were adapted to the future appearance of man, as man is adapted to the development that preceded him. But in thinking the reality, time is to be abstracted from. The earlier, we are obliged to say, is fitted to the later, as the later is fitted to the earlier; but the relation of means to end, under which we cannot help figuring the adaptation, is only appearance for our manner of knowledge. And the harmony described does not get rid of the conflict inherent in all will.

In this account of Schopenhauer's metaphysical doctrine, I have tried to make the exposition as smooth as possible; but at two points the discontinuity can scarcely be concealed. First, the relation of the universal Will to the individual will is not made clear; and, secondly, the emergence of the world of presentation, with the knowledge in which it culminates, is left unintelligible because the will is conceived as mere blind striving without an aim. As regards the first point, disciples and expositors have been able to show that, by means of distinctions in his later writings, apparent contradictions are to some extent cleared away; and, moreover, that he came to recognise more reality in the individual will. On the second point, I think it will be necessary to admit that his system as such breaks down. But both points must be considered in their connection.

One of the most noteworthy features of Schopenhauer's philosophy is, as he himself thought, the acceptance from first to last of Kant's distinction between the 'empirical' and the 'intelligible' character of the individual. Every act of will of every human being follows with necessity as phenomenon from its phenomenal causes; so that all the events of each person's life are determined in accordance with scientific law. Nevertheless, the character empirically manifested in the phenomenal world, while it is completely necessitated, is the expression of something that is free from necessitation. This 'intelligible character' is out of time, and, itself undetermined, manifests itself through that which develops in time as a chain of necessary causes and effects. That this doctrine had been taken up, without any ambiguity as regards the determinism, by Schelling as well as by himself, he expressly acknowledges; and he finds it, as he also finds modern idealism, anticipated in various passages by the Neo-Platonists. His adaptation of it to his doctrine of the Ideas is distinctly Neo-Platonic in so far as he recognises 'Ideas of individuals'; but of course to make Will the essence belongs to his own system. 'The intelligible character,' he says, 'coincides with the Idea, or, yet more precisely, with the original act of will that manifests itself in it: in so far, not only is the empirical character of each man, but also of each animal species, nay, of each plant species, and even of each original force of inorganic nature, to be regarded as phenomenon of an intelligible character, that is, of an indivisible act of will out of time.' This is what he called the 'aseitas' of the will; borrowing a scholastic term to indicate its derivation (if we may speak of it as derived) from itself (a se), and not from a supposed creative act. Only if we adopt this view are we entitled to regard actions as worthy of moral approval or disapproval. They are such not because they are not necessitated, but because they necessarily show forth the nature of an essence the freedom of which consists in being what it is. Yet he could not but find a difficulty in reconciling this with his position that the one universal Will is identical in all things, and in each is 'individuated' only by space and time. For the Ideas, like the thing-in-itself, are eternal, that is, outside of time as well as space; and all the things now enumerated, forces of nature, plant and animal species, and individual characters of men, are declared to be in themselves Ideas.

He in part meets this difficulty by the subtlety that time and space do not, strictly speaking, determine individuality, but arise along with it. The diremption of individualities becomes explicit in those forms. Yet he must have perceived that this is not a complete answer, and various modifications can be seen going on. His first view clearly was that the individual is wholly impermanent, and at death simply disappears; nothing is left but the one Will and the universal Subject of contemplation identical in all. Metempsychosis is the best mythological rendering of what happens, but it is no more. Later, he puts forward the not very clearly defined theory of a 'palingenesia' by which a particular will, but not the intellect that formerly accompanied it, may reappear in the phenomenal world. And the hospitality he showed to stories of magic, clairvoyance, and ghost-seeing, is scarcely compatible with the view that the individual will is no more than a phenomenal differentiation of the universal will. A speculation (not put forward as anything more) on the appearance of a special providence in the destiny of the individual, points, as Professor Volkelt has noted, to the idea of a guidance, not from without, but by a kind of good daemon or genius that is the ultimate reality of the person. On all this we must not lay too much stress; but there is certainly one passage that can only be described as a definite concession that the individual is real in a sense not at first allowed. Individuality, it is said in so many words (Parerga, ii. § 117), does not rest only on the 'principle of individuation' (time and space), and is therefore not through and through phenomenon, but is rooted in the thing-in-itself. 'How deep its roots go belongs to the questions which I do not undertake to answer.'¹

This tends to modify considerably, but does not overthrow, Schopenhauer's original system. In very general terms, he is in the number of the 'pantheistic' thinkers; and it is remarkable, on examination, how these, in Europe at least, have nearly always recognised in the end some permanent reality in the individual. This is contrary to first impressions: but the great names may be cited of Plotinus, John Scotus Erigena, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza (in Part v. of the Ethics), and finally of Schopenhauer's special aversion, Hegel, who has been supposed most unfavourable of all to any recognition of individuality as real. It is more true, Hegel maintains, that the individuality determines its world than that it is determined by it; and there is no explanation why the determination should be such and such except that the individuality was already what it is.² And, if Schopenhauer's more imaginative speculations seek countenance from the side of empiricism, there is nothing in them quite so audacious as a speculation of J. S. Mill on disembodied mind, thrown out during the time when he was writing his Logic.³