The World As Will And Representation, Vol. 1 Book Pdf
The World As Will And Representation, Vol. 1 Book Pdf >>> https://bytlly.com/2t7ne2
Schopenhauer saw the human will as our one window to the reality behind the world as representation, i.e. the external world as we experience it through our mental faculties. According to Schopenhauer, the will is the 'inner essence' of the entire world, i.e. the Kantian thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), and exists independently of the forms of the principle of sufficient reason that govern the world as representation. Schopenhauer believed that while we may be precluded from direct knowledge of the Kantian noumenon, we may gain knowledge about it to a certain extent (unlike Kant, for whom the noumenon was completely unknowable). This is because, according to Schopenhauer, the relationship between the world as representation and the world as it is 'in itself' can be understood by investigating the relationship between our bodies (material objects, i.e. representations, existing in space and time) and our will. Another important difference between the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Kant is Schopenhauer's rejection of Kant's doctrine of twelve categories of the understanding. Schopenhauer claims that eleven of Kant's categories are superfluous "blind windows" meant for the purposes of architectonic symmetry. Schopenhauer argues that there are three a priori forms by which our minds render our experience of the world intelligible to ourselves: time, space, and causality.
Since, as we have said, this whole work is just the unfolding of a single thought, it follows that all its parts are bound together most intimately; each one does not just stand in a necessary connection to the one before, presupposing only that the reader has remembered it ... although we need to dissect our one and only thought into many discussions for the purpose of communication, this is an artificial form and in no way essential to the thought itself. Presentation and comprehension are both made easier by the separation of four principal perspectives into four Books, connecting what is related and homogeneous with the utmost of care. Nonetheless, the material does not by any means allow for a linear progression, as is the case with history, but rather requires a more intricate presentation. Thus it is necessary to study the book repeatedly, since this alone will clarify the connection of each part to the other; only then will they all reciprocally illuminate each other and become perfectly clear.[16]
The opening sentence of Schopenhauer's work is Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung: "the world is my representation" (alternatively, "idea" or "presentation"). In the first book, Schopenhauer considers the world as representation. Specifically, the first book deals with representation subject to the principle of sufficient reason (German: Satz vom Grunde). In Book III, Schopenhauer returns to considering the world as representation; this time, he focuses on representation independent of the principle of sufficient reason (i.e. the Platonic Idea, the immediate and adequate objecthood of the will, which is the object of art).
In Book II, Schopenhauer argues that will is the Kantian thing-in-itself: the single essence underlying all objects and phenomena. Kant believed that space and time were merely the forms of our intuition by which we must perceive the world of phenomena, and these factors were absent from the thing-in-itself. Schopenhauer pointed out that anything outside of time and space could not be differentiated, so the thing-in-itself must be one. All things that exist, including human beings, must be part of this fundamental unity. The manifestation of the single will into the multiplicity of objects we experience is the will's objectivation. Plurality exists and has become possible only through time and space, which is why Schopenhauer refers to them as the principium individuationis. The will, as thing-in-itself, lies outside of the principle of sufficient reason (in all its forms) and is thus groundless (though each of the will's phenomena is subject to that principle). The will, lying outside the principium individuationis, is free from all plurality (though its phenomena, existing in space and time, are innumerable).
If the whole world as representation is only the visibility of the will, then art is the elucidation of this visibility, the camera obscura which shows the objects more purely, and enables us to survey and comprehend them better. It is the play within the play, the stage on the stage in Hamlet.
The rest of the Third Book contains an account of a variety of art forms, including architecture, landscape gardening, landscape painting, animal painting, historical painting, sculpture, the nude, literature (poetry and tragedy), and lastly, music. Music occupies a privileged place in Schopenhauer's aesthetics, as he believed it to have a special relationship to the will. Other artworks objectify the will only indirectly by means of the Ideas (the adequate objectification of the will), and our world is nothing but the appearance of the Ideas in multiplicity resulting from those Ideas entering into the principium individuationis. Music, Schopenhauer asserts, passes over the Ideas and is therefore independent of the phenomenal world. He writes:
Thus music is as immediate an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, the multiplied phenomenon of which constitutes the world of individual things. Therefore music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself, the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this reason the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.[18]
In Book IV, Schopenhauer returns to considering the world as will. He claims in this book to set forth a purely descriptive account of human ethical behavior, in which he identifies two types of behavior: the affirmation and denial of the 'will to life' (Wille zum Leben), which constitutes the essence of every individual. Schopenhauer subsequently elucidated his ethical philosophy in his two prize essays: On the Freedom of the Will (1839) and On the Basis of Morality (1840). 2b1af7f3a8