The World As Will And Idea on Superphysics

The World As Idea or Object of Subject

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“The world is my idea.”

Subject-Object

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A subject is that which knows all things and is known by none.

Thus it is:

the supporter of the world
the condition of all phenomena, of all objects which is always pre-supposed throughout experience

For all that exists, exists only for the subject.

Abstract Space and Time

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Our ideas are either:

Abstract

These form a class of ideas called concepts.

Only humans have concepts through the ability of reason which separates us from animals.

Perception

These comprehend the whole visible world, or all of possible experience.

Temporal Succession and Spatial Position

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Concept	Element
Space	Position
Time	Succession
Material Cause-Effect	Material Action

The flow of cognition [principle of sufficient reason] which appears in pure time is the basis of counting and arithmetical calculation

The Faculty Of Perception

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Concept	Relation
space-time	emptiness
cause-effect	understanding

The object is only for the subject as its idea.

This means that every special class of ideas is only for an equally special quality in the subject.

Cause and Effect is not Subject and Object

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Perception arises through the knowledge of causality.

This makes us think that the relation of subject and object is that of cause and effect.

Cause and effect subsists only between objects

Is Life a Dream?

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The question of the reality of the outer world disappears with my:

principle of sufficient reason
relation of subject and object
the special conditions of sense perception

However, the question of the reality of the outer world is revived by dreams.

Consciousness

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In this Book 1, I consider everything as idea, as object for the subject.

Our own body is:

the starting-point for our perception of the world.
also an idea

The consciousness of every one is opposed to:

The Philosophy of Identity

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I did not start either from the object or the subject.

I started from the idea which contains and presupposes them both.

For the antithesis of object and subject is its primary, universal and essential form.

The Reflection of Ideas

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The light of the moon is from the sun.

Similarly, we pass from the immediate idea of perception, which stands by itself, to reflection, to the abstract, discursive concepts of the reason, which obtain their whole content from knowledge of perception, and in relation to it. As long as we continue simply to perceive, all is clear, firm, and certain.

What are Concepts?

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Concepts form a distinct class of ideas.

These:

exist only in the mind of man
are entirely different from the ideas of perception

We can therefore never attain to a sensuous and, properly speaking, evident knowledge of their nature, but only to a knowledge which is abstract and discursive.

The World As Idea

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How is certainty to be attained?

How judgments are to be established?

What constitutes rational knowledge and science, which we rank with language and deliberate action as the third great benefit conferred by reason?

What is Feeling?

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The direct opposite of rational knowledge is feeling.

Feeling denotes a negative content, something which is present in consciousness.

It is not a concept, is not abstract rational knowledge.

Feelings are not abstract concepts.

Rational Knowledge

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Rational knowledge (wissen) is then all abstract knowledge.

It is the knowledge which is peculiar to the reason as distinguished from the understanding.

Its contradictory opposite has just been explained to be the concept “feeling.”

Abstract rational knowledge

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Abstract rational knowledge is the reflex of ideas of perception and is founded on them.

But it is by no means in such entire congruity with them that it could everywhere take their place: it never corresponds to them quite accurately.

The Processes of Knowledge

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There are 2 processes of knowledge leads to concepts and direct knowledge.

One that belongs to the reason, rational knowledge, concepts

What is Perception?

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Perception is the primary source of all evidence.

Only direct or indirect connection with it is absolute truth.

The shortest way to this is always the surest, as every interposition of concepts means exposure to many deceptions;

What is Reason?

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Reason is a special faculty of knowledge belonging to man alone and the results and phenomena peculiar to human nature brought about by it, it still remains for me to speak of reason, so far as it is the guide of human action, and in this respect may be called practical.

The Sciences

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Book 1 considered the idea in its general form.

Resolutions of the will

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The meaning for which we seek of that world which is present to us only as our idea, or the transition from the world as mere idea of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, would never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body).

What is Will?

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The will enables us consciously to distinguish our own body from all other objects

How The Will Works

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The will proclaims itself primarily in the voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as that which it is besides being object of perception, idea.

The Will Versus Idea

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Whoever has gained from abstract nature of knowledge has clear and certain knowledge of feeling.

This is a knowledge that his will is the real inner nature of his phenomenal being which manifests itself to him as idea, both in his actions and in his body.

The thing-in-itself

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If we are to think as an object this thing-in-itself (I retain the Kantian expression as a standing formula), which, as such, is never object, because all object is its mere manifestation, and therefore cannot be it itself, we must borrow for it the name and concept of an object, of something in some way objectively given, consequently of one of its own manifestations.

The will as a thing-in-itself

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The will as a thing in itself is different from its phenomenal appearance.

It is free from all the forms of the phenomenal, into which it first passes when it manifests itself, and which therefore only concern its objectivity, and are foreign to the will itself.

Time, space and causality

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The great Kant has said that time, space, and causality, with their entire constitution, and the possibility of all their forms, are present in our consciousness quite independently of the objects which appear in them, and which constitute their content;

The thing-in-itself

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The lowest grades of the objectification of will are to be found in those most universal forces of nature which partly appear in all matter without exception, as gravity and impenetrability, and partly have shared the given matter among them, so that certain of them reign in one species of matter and others in another species, constituting its specific difference, as rigidity, fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties and qualities of every kind. They are in themselves immediate manifestations of will, just as much as human action; and as such they are groundless, like human character. Only their particular manifestations are subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason, like the particular actions of men. They themselves, on the other hand, can never be called either effect or cause, but are the prior and presupposed conditions of all causes and effects through which their real nature unfolds and reveals itself.

Etiology

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If, from the foregoing consideration of the forces of nature and their phenomena, we have come to see clearly how far an explanation from causes can go, and where it must stop if it is not to degenerate into the vain attempt to reduce the content of all phenomena to their mere form, in which case there would ultimately remain nothing but form, we shall be able to settle in general terms what is to be demanded of etiology as a whole.

The Diversity of Ideas

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We have considered the great multiplicity and diversity of the phenomena in which the will objectifies itself, and we have seen their endless and implacable strife with each other.

Yet the will itself, as thing-in-itself, is by no means included in that multiplicity and change.

Summary of Book 2

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This idea, as such, already presupposes a form, object and subject, is therefore relative; and if we ask what remains if we take away this form, and all those forms which are subordinate to it, and which express the principle of sufficient reason, the answer must be that as something toto genere different from idea, this can be nothing but will, which is thus properly the thing-in-itself.

Summary of Book 2

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In fact, freedom from all aim, from all limits, belongs to the nature of the will, which is an endless striving. This was already touched on above in the reference to centrifugal force. It also discloses itself in its simplest form in the lowest grade of the objectification of will, in gravitation, which we see constantly exerting itself, though a final goal is obviously impossible for it.

Remarks

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In the Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself appears so significant, and yet so obscure and paradoxical a doctrine.

Idea vs thing-in-itself

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Idea and thing-in-itself are not entirely one and the same.

This is in spite of the inner agreement between Kant and Plato, and the identity of the aim they had before them, or the conception of the world which roused them and led them to philosophise.

Knowledge

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Since now, as individuals, we have no other knowledge than that which is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, and this form of knowledge excludes the Ideas, it is certain that if it is possible for us to raise ourselves from the knowledge of particular things to that of the Ideas, this can only happen by an alteration taking place in the subject which is analogous and corresponds to the great change of the whole nature of the object, and by virtue of which the subject, so far as it knows an Idea, is no more individual.

Knowledge of the Idea

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The common knowledge of particular things changes to the knowledge of the Idea suddenly.

Plato's Ideas

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In order to gain a deeper insight into the nature of the world, we should distinguish the will:

as thing-in-itself from its adequate objectivity.
from the different grades in which this appears more and more distinctly and fully, i.e., the Ideas themselves, from the merely phenomenal existence of these Ideas in the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, the restricted method of knowledge of the individual.

We shall then agree with Plato when he attributes[235] actual being only to the Ideas, and allows only an illusive, dream- like existence to things in space and time, the real world for the individual. Then we shall understand how one and the same Idea reveals itself in so many phenomena, and presents its nature only bit by bit to the individual, one side after another.

Time

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History follows the thread of events.

It is pragmatic so far as it deduces them in accordance with the law of motivation, a law that determines the self-manifesting will wherever it is enlightened by knowledge.

What is Genius?

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Genius consists in the capacity for knowing the Ideas of such things by being one with the Idea.

This makes the idea no longer an individual, but the pure subject of knowledge.

What is Willing?

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The æsthetical mode of contemplation has 2 inseparable parts:

The knowledge of the object, not as individual thing but as Platonic Idea.

This is the enduring form of this whole species of things.

What is æsthetic pleasure?

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The subjective part of æsthetic pleasure is that pleasure of delight in perceptive knowledge as such, in opposition to will.

And as directly connected with this, there naturally follows the explanation of that disposition or frame of mind which has been called the sense of the sublime.

The charming or attractive

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Opposites throw light upon each other.

Therefore, the proper opposite of the sublime is something which would not at the first glance be recognised, as such: the charming or attractive.

The Beautiful Versus the Sublime

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A special modification of the subjective side distinguished the beautiful from the sublime.

The knowledge of the beautiful

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The knowledge of the beautiful always supposes at once and inseparably the pure knowing subject and the known Idea as object. Yet the source of æsthetic satisfaction will sometimes lie more in the comprehension of the known Idea, sometimes more in the blessedness and spiritual peace of the pure knowing subject freed from all willing, and therefore from all individuality, and[275] the pain that proceeds from it. And, indeed, this predominance of one or the other constituent part of æsthetic feeling will depend upon whether the intuitively grasped Idea is a higher or a lower grade of the objectivity of will. Thus in æsthetic contemplation (in the real, or through the medium of art) of the beauty of nature in the inorganic and vegetable worlds, or in works of architecture, the pleasure of pure will-less knowing will predominate, because the Ideas which are here apprehended are only low grades of the objectivity of will, and are therefore not manifestations of deep significance and rich content.

Aesthetic impression

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What the two arts we have spoken of accomplish for these lowest grades of the objectivity of will, is performed for the higher grades of vegetable nature by artistic horticulture.

Human beauty

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The great problem of historical painting and sculpture is to express directly and for perception the Idea objectified by the will.

The objective side of the pleasure afforded by the beautiful is here always predominant.

Laocoon

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Laocoon, in the celebrated group, does not cry out.

The universal and ever-renewed surprise at this must be occasioned by the fact that any of us would cry out if we were in his place. And nature demands that it should be so; for in the case of the acutest physical pain, and the sudden seizure by the greatest bodily fear, all reflection, that might have inculcated silent endurance, is entirely expelled from consciousness, and nature relieves itself by crying out, thus expressing both the pain and the fear, summoning the deliverer and terrifying the assailer. Thus Winckelmann missed the expression of crying out; but as he wished to justify the artist he turned Laocoon into a Stoic, who considered it beneath his dignity to cry out secundum naturam, [293] but added to his pain the useless constraint of suppressing all utterance of it. Winckelmann therefore sees in him “the tried spirit of a great man, who writhes in agony, and yet seeks to suppress the utterance of his feeling, and to lock it up in himself. He does not break forth into loud cries, as in Virgil, but only anxious sighs escape him,” &c. (Works, vol. vii. p. 98, and at greater length in vol. vi. p. 104).

Beauty and Grace

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Beauty accompanied with grace is the principal object of sculpture, it loves nakedness, and allows clothing only so far as it does not conceal the form. It makes use of drapery, not as a covering, but as a means of exhibiting the form, a method of exposition that gives much exercise to the understanding, for it can only arrive at a perception of the cause, the form of the body, through the only directly given effect, the drapery. Thus to a certain extent drapery is in sculpture what fore-shortening is in painting. Both are suggestions, yet not symbolical, but such that, if they are successful, they force the understanding directly to perceive what is suggested, just as if it were actually given. I may be allowed, in passing, to insert here a comparison

Art and Painting

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The truth which lies at the foundation of all that we have hitherto said about art, is that the object of art, the representation of which is the aim of the artist, and the knowledge of which must therefore precede his work as its germ and source, is an Idea in Plato’s sense, and never anything else; not the particular thing, the object of common apprehension, and not the concept, the object of rational thought and of science. Although the Idea and the concept have something in common, because both represent as unity a multiplicity of real things; yet the great difference between them has no doubt been made clear and evident enough by what we have said about concepts in the[302] first book, and about Ideas in this book.

Symbolism

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Art cannot be used to express a concept if it is forbidden to start from concept.

This is the case in the Allegory.

Art and Painting

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The aim of plastic and pictorial art to poetry is:

the revelation of the Ideas
the grades of the objectification of will
the communication of them to the hearer

Ideas are essentially perceptible.

Music

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Music stands alone cut off from all the other arts.

Music

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In the whole of the complemental parts which make up the harmony between the bass and the leading voice singing the melody, I recognise the whole gradation of the Ideas in which the will objectifies itself. Those nearer to the bass are the lower of these grades, the still unorganised, but yet manifold phenomenal things; the higher represent to me the world of plants and beasts. The definite intervals of the scale are parallel to the definite grades of the objectification of will, the definite species in nature. The departure from the arithmetical correctness of the intervals, through some temperament, or produced by the key selected, is analogous to the departure of the individual from the type of the species. Indeed, even the impure discords, which give no definite interval, may be compared to the monstrous abortions produced by beasts of two species, or by man and beast. But to all these bass and complemental parts which make up the harmony there is wanting that connected progress which belongs only to the high voice singing the melody, and it alone moves quickly and lightly in modulations and runs, while all these others have only a slower movement without a connection in each part for itself. The deep bass moves most slowly, the representative of the crudest mass. Its rising and falling occurs only by large intervals, in thirds, fourths, fifths, never by one tone, unless it is a base inverted by double counterpoint. This slow movement is also physically essential to it; a quick run or shake in the low notes cannot even be imagined. The higher complemental parts, which are parallel to animal life, move more quickly, but yet without melodious connection and significant progress. The disconnected course of all the complemental parts, and their regulation by definite laws, is analogous to the fact that in the whole irrational world, from the crystal to the most perfect animal, no being has a connected consciousness of its own which would make its life into a significant whole, and none experiences a succession of mental developments, none perfects itself by culture, but everything exists always in the same way according to its kind, determined by fixed law. Lastly, in the melody, in the high, singing, principal voice leading the whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the unbroken significant connection of one thought from beginning to end representing a whole, I recognise the highest grade of the objectification of will, the intellectual life and effort of man. As he alone, because endowed with reason, constantly looks before and after on the path of his actual life and its innumerable possibilities, and so achieves a course of life which is intellectual, and therefore connected as a whole; corresponding to this, I say, the melody has significant intentional connection from beginning to end. It records, therefore, the history of the intellectually enlightened will. This will expresses itself in the actual world as the series of its deeds; but melody says more, it records the most secret history of this intellectually-enlightened will, pictures every excitement, every effort, every movement of it, all that 339 which the reason collects under the wide and negative concept of feeling, and which it cannot apprehend further through its abstract concepts. Therefore it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the [336] language of reason.

Action

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This Book is the most serious for it relates to the action of men.

Bruno and Spinoza

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The first three books explained that the world as idea is the complete mirror of the will.

Bruno and Spinoza

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But real objects are only in the present; the past and the future contain only conceptions and fancies, therefore the present is the essential form of the phenomenon of the will, and inseparable from it. The present alone is that which always exists and remains immovable. That which, empirically apprehended, is the most transitory of all, presents itself to the metaphysical vision, which sees beyond the forms of empirical perception, as that which alone endures, the nunc stans of the schoolmen. The source and the supporter of its content is the will to live or the thing-in-itself,—which we are.

Free will

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Free will is from will being the thing-in-itself, the content of all phenomena.

The phenomena is subordinate to the principle of sufficient reason in its 4 forms.

Necessity is throughout identical with following from given grounds, and that these are convertible conceptions, all that belongs to the phenomenon, i.e., all that is object for the knowing subject as individual, is in one aspect reason, and in another aspect consequent.

The freedom of the will

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The freedom of the will as thing-in-itself, if, as has been said, we abstract from the entirely exceptional case mentioned above, by no means extends directly to its phenomenon, not even in the case in which this reaches the highest made of its visibility, and thus does not extend to the rational animal endowed with individual character, i.e., the person.

The Empirical freedom of the will

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The assertion of an empirical freedom of the will, a liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ, agrees precisely with the doctrine that places the inner nature of man in a soul, which is originally a knowing, and indeed really an abstract thinking nature, and only in consequence of this a willing nature—a doctrine which thus regards the will as of a secondary or derivative nature, instead of knowledge which is really so. The will indeed came to be regarded as an act of thought, and to be identified with the judgment, especially by Descartes and Spinoza. According to this doctrine every man must become what he is only through his knowledge; he must enter the world as a moral cipher come to know the things in it, and thereupon determine to be this or that, to act thus or thus, and may also through new knowledge achieve a new course of action, that is to say, become another person. Further, he must first know a thing to be good, and in consequence of this will it, instead of first willing it, and in consequence of this calling it good. According to my fundamental point of view, all this is a reversal of the true relation. Will is first and original; knowledge is merely added to it as an instrument belonging to the phenomenon of will.

The will to live

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This freedom, this omnipotence, as the expression of which the whole visible world exists and progressively develops in accordance with the laws which belong to the form of knowledge, can now, at the point at which in its most perfect manifestation it has attained to the completely adequate knowledge of its own nature, express itself anew in two ways.

The suffering and misery of life

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At every grade that is enlightened by knowledge, the will appears as an individual. The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them.

What is Happiness?

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Happiness is always essentially only negative, and never positive.

It is not an original gratification coming to us of itself, but is always the satisfaction of a wish.

The wish, i.e., some want, is the condition which precedes every pleasure.

Human Life

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Human life is:

Assertion of the Will

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We have now completed the two expositions it was necessary to insert;

The exposition of the freedom of the will in itself together with the necessity of its phenomenon, and the exposition of its lot in the world which reflects its own nature, and upon the knowledge of which it has to assert or deny itself.

Egoism

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Book 2 wrote that in the whole of nature, at all the grades of the objectification of will, there was a necessary and constant conflict between the individuals of all species; and in this way was expressed the inner contradiction of the will to live with itself.

The Will to Live

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The first and simplest assertion of the will to live is only the assertion of one’s own body, i.e., the exhibition of the will through acts in time, so far as the body, in its form and design, exhibits the same will in space, and no further.

Temporal Justice

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Temporal justice, which has its seat in the state, is requiting and punishing.

This only becomes justice through a reference to the future.

Without this reference, all punishing and requiting would be an outrage without justification, and indeed merely the addition of another evil to that which has already occurred, without meaning or significance.

Eternal Justice

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What is the nature of that eternal justice?

Good and Bad

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The conceptions of good and bad are simple conceptions.

Theory of Morals

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A theory of morals without proof is mere moralising.

It can effect nothing because it does not act as a motive.

A theory of morals which does act as a motive can do so only by working on self-love.