So you're not talking about any one person who allegedly made false claims about the NHS, including Mr. Farage, who has come under an avalanche of criticism for allegedly doing just this? What, then, are you talking about?

It's incorrect in one sense but not in another. The will clashes with itself in time, as the verb "clashes" implies. In itself, the will doesn't clash with anything, since there is nothing besides the will that exists or can be said to exist.

Sure it's present.

That about sums it up.

You're talking about things Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, allegedly said, whose party only has one sitting member in the House of Commons. When you have over 70% turn out and more than 50% of the vote choosing to leave, then it would be wise not to overgeneralize. Farage was by no means the only face of the leave campaign and to myopically focus on him or others like him is really to smear the leave campaign as a whole.

Why assume he is a good and decent man?

Nah, we need some real trve kvlt metal in here.

What I'm saying is that perhaps at some point in ancient history, it was perceived that having certain "virtues" meant better survival. — schopenhauer1

You mean that people thought that living in a morally dignified manner was better for survival? I would say that that's up for debate in terms of the historical record. Lots of villains do quite well for themselves, and lots of virtuous people get the shaft. This is the theme of Job, for example, which is quite an ancient book.

I think the truly virtuous understand that the good is pursued for its own sake. To instrumentalize it is to take away all meaning and uniqueness from it. But pursuing the good is not to pursue progress. Progress can be made in the pursuit of it, but progress in and of itself is value-neutral. One can make progress towards anything. including evil.

you can start by revealing what work(s) of his you have read, and also what specific 'obfuscatory' passages you had in mind. — Erik

Several years ago, I tried his so called magnum opus, Sein und Zeit, and thought it an almost unreadable, ponderous doorstopper of a tome best employed as a step ladder for toddlers than a book worth of study by serious philosophers. Perhaps some of his essays are better, but I wouldn't know yet. I have an anthology of his writings on my reading list which includes some of them, but I won't get to it for some time.

Anyhow, the idea that we get a deeper understanding of the world by removing ourselves from practical involvement with it in favor of detached gazing has indeed gone on for 2500 years — Erik

Straw man.

Like the idea of an inner/outer split between subject and object. These, to me, are extremely questionable presuppositions. — Erik

They're also ineradicable due to how language works.

For example, the idea that the external world or other minds may not exist was, to my knowledge, not part of the Greek or Medieval Christian experience. — Erik

It's okay, ignorance of these matters is widespread.

But hey, that would be also a triumph of democracy. — ssu

Indeed.

Yes, the Brits should have listened to the plutocrats and remained. Silly peasants. May God save the GDP.

Citing one incoherent obscurantist's (Habermas) praise of an even worse offender in this regard (Heidegger) does little to persuade me of your position. Nor does making blanket assertions about the supposedly dubious nature of the past several millennia of philosophy, seeing as Descartes's dualism was only a slightly new take on a very old problem, one from which the impenetrable word mountains that Heidegger and others like excavating have not extricated us.

I would like to know exactly "what" it is in some sort of epistemological sense (how do we go about knowing it") and and metaphysical sense ("how/why/what it is"). — schopenhauer1

It doesn't exist metaphysically. It's just an abstract concept used to describe the movement towards a particular goal. I would not link it to virtue, seeing as there is all around us the steady progress of injustice, ignorance, and evil just as much, if not greatly more so, than there is of justice, knowledge, and goodness.

Excellent decision by Great Britain. It's a nice smack in the face to those glib, corrupt, and incompetent bureaucrats in Brussels who've been shoving terrible austerity and immigration policies down the throats of their member states this past decade. It's also great to see Obama and Merkel eat humble pie after they patronizingly made silly warnings to the British if they voted leave. This is a triumph of democracy.

1) What is everyone's definition of "progress"? If you practice something real hard, you get "better" at it. Does progress have to do with getting better, for example? And if it does, what is the epistemological judgement for what is better? — schopenhauer1

The judgment depends on the degree to which one has accomplished a goal. If you shoot 50% on your free throws, and your goal is to reach 60%, then reaching 55% is progress. Politically speaking, progress is linked to freedom, which is negative. The degree to which one's natural rights are not restricted is the measure of progress in this sphere.

2) Is progress real in some metaphysical sense? — schopenhauer1

No. This is the delusion of the historicist. History is not a science.

3) Does progress occur at only the personal level, or can it describe humanity or the world as a whole? Some people claim that progress is the aim of existence. Here, I think of people like Hegel and his notion of historical dialectic. Some people claim that things are the same as they ever were. Here I think of Schopenhauer and his idea that all is really Will, and no matter how Will manifests itself, it is pretty much the same thing. — schopenhauer1

It can describe humanity as a whole, viewed as a collection of individuals.

Is Will akin to the inner "what it's like" aspect of things or is akin to the drive we have to move about to survive and pursue goals in general? — schopenhauer1

I'm not seeing a great difference here. It's both I would say.

What is it I will in general? — Ciceronianus the White

Life.

Well, he refers to "individual acts of will" which will always have a ground or reason outside themselves, and distinguishes them from what "I will in general"; but fine. It would still seem to me, however, that there is a distinction between the "individual acts of will" and what "I will in general." That distinction, presumably, is wrought by "time." So, what "I will in general" is outside time in some manner, I suppose, though it would seem to me that I am not. — Ciceronianus the White

This all sounds correct.

I rather doubt that there is anything "I will in general" so I don't need to struggle with how that is "groundless" as he says. "The Will" is starting to sound more and more like some kind of supernatural force. — Ciceronianus the White

I'm not sure I understand the force of your seeming criticism here. It's not that esoteric. There's the act of running to the store, running to the finish line, running to get out of the rain, etc, and then there's running in general. We use and understand the language of X qua X all the time.

Sounds pretentious and long-winded to me.

he presumes that there is a "Will" distinct from the ordinary "acts of will." — Ciceronianus the White

No, he doesn't. There is only one will that gets broken up into distinct acts by the form of time. The latter (which, being in time, are quasi-representational) are grounded in the former.

Both statements are so general and vague that I don't initially have a problem with either of them.

Thus, the odd conclusion is there is an organism that was always there along or as part of Will. I know it is odd, but I am just taking the logic to its full conclusion. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I quite agree that it's odd, or mind-bending as Wicks put it in that one comment about strange loops I made. It's really just a consequence of transcendental idealism. If you feel it's not merely odd but false or contradictory as well, then I don't know what else to say, as I don't find that it is for the above reasons.

Well said. I agree. He was too soon eclipsed, dismissed, misunderstood, or ignored by the 1920s as a new breed of obfuscatory philosophers like Heidegger appeared on the continent and overly zealous positivists began to dominate the Anglosphere.

I'll stick to this thread as you suggested.

The problem is when Schop talks about Will objectifying itself, as Will does not do "causality-like" things. — schopenhauer1

He does say that willing is causality seen from the inside, so to speak, though this is to speak metaphorically. As you know and have said, the only legitimate application of this concept is in relation to the world as representation, wherein physical bodies interact with one another in space and time. However, one of these bodies is my own. With all other objects, I know them superficially, but my own body I inhabit and know interiorly, which is to say, I know it as it is in itself, not merely as it appears. What is my body subjectively in itself? Not an object but a will, which then provides the key to understanding what all other objects are in themselves. The will, moreover, only wills one thing as a timeless act of will: life. The knowledge of distinct, individual objects and acts of will is, therefore, ultimately illusory.

In willing life, so too does the will simultaneously will knowledge of itself, the miracle par excellence as Schopenhauer calls it. Why is it a miracle? Because there is no reason the will should become aware of itself since the will has no reason for its existence to begin with. When you said that the PSR only applies to representations, not to the will itself, you were absolutely correct, but the will can still be and is the logical ground of representation. So we can ask: what grounds representation? The answer is the will. If we then ask what grounds the will, the answer is nothing. The will is groundless.

Being the reason or ground for something is not to be its cause. Reasons and causes are different things. Hence, the will did not and does not paradoxically cause representations to exist at some primordial point in time when a particular organism came on the scene and became self-conscious. It is rather the ground for the world as representation's existence. This is why what Schopenhauer is doing is called metaphysics and not physics. He's seeking a rational, philosophical explanation for the existence of the world, not a causal or physical one. This isn't to say the latter are not legitimate modes of explanation, however. The story we can tell about the evolution of inanimate matter, to simple celled organisms, and then to more complex forms of life is a perfectly legitimate explanation for our existence, but it's not the only one and is one-sided. So from this empirical perspective, it is true to say that the "first open eyed" organism is necessary in order to account for the world as representation, but only from this limited perspective.

There's objectively plenty of openly confessing Randroids in business and politics, so it's not mere speculation.

A morally and intellectually bankrupt movement filled with bitter man-hating, Western-civilization-hating children in adult bodies.

Right, so ever present "knowing subject". The knowing is the keyword here. — schopenhauer1

Indeed, and what does the knowing subject know? In consciousness, it knows representation, but in self-consciousness, it knows not a representation, or a "thing" called a self or a soul, but simply willing, or the will, which Schopenhauer calls the subject of willing.

It cannot be explained away because "really" everything is atemporal Will. There is still the illusion to be accounted for, and which CANNOT have arisen. — schopenhauer1

I still think you're confused by categories. Perhaps the following will help. The will can be said to be the reason for the existence of the world as representation, but not its cause. Reasons and causes are not the same, though often conflated, as Schopenhauer shows in the Fourfold Root. The will is a logical explanation of the world, not a physical one. If you recognize this distinction, then I think the force of your concern evaporates.

Will is atemporal/ aspacial striving. The existence we are used to is that of representation — schopenhauer1

See, here I think you must not understand or agree with the intuition that Schopenhauer is trying to communicate about the will. The existence we are used to, or to be fair, the existence I am used to and find confirmed in Schopenhauer's philosophy, is that of a certain feeling, called willing, which is prior to and more basic than representing. The will is just a word abstracted from the feeling of the present moment, which is strictly incommunicable. I can only communicate and have knowledge of my will in time, in terms of distinct acts of will that I perceive after they have occurred, but as for sheer willing itself, this "occurs" in the timeless present, and this timeless feeling of willing or striving Schopenhauer simply calls the affirmation of the will to life, since what is known to be willed after the fact (i.e. in time) is life or representation.

No, the will's grades clash with each other through their individuals in time.

If the US Senate can't even pass a bill rejecting firearm sales to people on terrorism watch lists, then what hope is there of progress? — Sapientia

There are two reasons at play, one a principled one and the other an interested one. The principled reason is that, according to one interpretation of the second amendment (one I don't agree with, by the way), individual private citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. Being on a terrorist watch list only means you are a potential terrorist and criminal, not that you actually are one. It would, therefore, infringe on such a person's constitutional rights to prohibit him to purchase a firearm simply because his name was on said list.

The interested reason is that this particular interpretation of the second amendment is endorsed by the gun manufacturers themselves, who, rather than out of any concern about constitutional rights, endorse this interpretation and push lawmakers and judges to as well out of financial reasons, since they worry about their profits.

war-grade assault weapons — Baden

What are you talking about here? This language seems calculated to spread fear and has little basis in reality.

Language itself is metaphorical.

There is no mode of expression that doesn't include progression. Language has verbs in it.

The objectification into different grades (Platonic Ideas) is not empirical, no. But these grades are not in space and time to begin with, so of course they don't change. What changes are individual objects that are in space and time, generalized as matter if you like, which are objectifications of the Ideas by means of the forms of knowing. Don't confuse the two.

Empirically, we can say conscious organisms arose at a certain point in time. Transcendentally, we can say that the knowing subject is atemporal. Other than that, I would only repeat that there can be no object without a subject and no subject without an object.

either I don't understand or I don't think it actually does answer this question of how representing can "come on" the scene AFTER pure Will is on the scene. — schopenhauer1

I didn't mean for it to answer this question, for my point has been that this question cannot be answered, as to do so would involve something like a category mistake.

To my mind, representation is ALWAYS there along with Will (as it's flipside double-aspect) because it cannot "arise" when "arising" implies causality. — schopenhauer1

So you say from an empirical perspective, which is quite correct. However, there is another perspective, resultant from the denial of the will, in which time ceases to be. While in time, timelessness is unthinkable, but while in timelessness, time is unthinkable.

You say that from an empirical perspective, and are correct.

My argument was that representation "always existing" comes with it the very odd notion that there was a representing organism that was always there as there was no "time" before "time" and "time" is only recognized in a representing organism according to Schop. — schopenhauer1

Two things: 1) there has always been a subject, we might say, but not necessarily a representing-organism, and 2) time is not recognized but supplied by this subject.

the thing is Schop explicitly discusses the will affirming itself in different ways before the debut of representation-forming animals. — csalisbury

Yes, as he is obliged to do when taking an objective perspective. No one apparently read my comment at the beginning of this thread. Transcendental philosophy employs a strange loop structure, whereby one starting place leads into another and vice-versa. In the present case, there can be no object without a subject and no subject without an object. They mutually presuppose one another, such that empirically speaking, the horizon of our knowledge extends back to the big bang and follows a sequence in which inanimate matter is formed, then single-celled organisms, then multicelled, and finally representation-forming organisms. Yet from a transcendental perspective, the knowledge of this whole history of objects depends upon a knowing subject, without which, nothing can be said to exist.

I would also add that Schopenhauer calls the positive freedom of the will a mystery. We cannot adequately understand it from our current perspective.