What I never understood about Schopenhauer's idealism is that if the Idea is the result of the Will, and the Will is an unrelenting, striving force, then why is the world not even worse than it is? We certainly do "will" towards things, but then again we can tame this will. We can meditate, look at aesthetics, sublimate into projects, hang out with good friends, etc. Why are we able to do this? And why are we even able to understand the Will (for understanding leads to attempts to reject the Will - the exact thing the Will would not want). — darthbarracuda
If there really is a Will, then I wonder why the world is not just an exponentially-growing pit of never-ending slavery to desire, with the inhabitants literally dragging their feet on the ground as they attempt to cope with the desire but ultimately unable to reflect upon it. — darthbarracuda
This is a good point. It is more of a tepid Will than a ferocious Will. But maybe, even if we can think of a worst possible world, this is actually how bad it can get? — schopenhauer1
but why is it this kind of world with this hefty PSR/Time/Space/Causality? Why would that be how it manifests itself? — schopenhauer1
But if the Will is the source of the Idea, then I don't understand why the Will seems to be constrained. — darthbarracuda
It is not that it is trying to cause as much suffering as possible, but that it's constantly striving for nothing in particular and this causes constant action and force in lower gradations, and suffering in conscious and self-conscious gradations. — schopenhauer1
The nature of the Will, i.e. the "striving" of it, seems to have a correlation to creation and an abrupt halt in interest in this creation. Perhaps we can envision the Will as a kind of deistic god, one that creates things simply because it can and has a divine case of ADHD. I'm going off more of a metaphorical account of cosmology rather than a strict metaphysical account, but we can imagine the world being sustained by the very interest of the Will. As the Will loses interest, so does the Idea fade (entropy). — darthbarracuda
In a way, Schopenhauer's Will reminds me of the teleology of Aristotelian metaphysics. A substance is drawn towards its telos because of its very essence. But not everything can reach perfection. — darthbarracuda
It kind of leads to an implicit answer of contingency. There seems to be something contingent in the world of Ideas, but then this introduces an idea of radical contingency not radical Will behind things, or at least, it would seem so to me. Why must this non-space/time/causality be limited or manifested in this way, and not another? Will just automatically creates this and only this type of world of Idea with a space/time/casuality — schopenhauer1
There's something irreducible here. I wonder if it's a 'will'/idea split all the way down. A kind of panpsychism that (like those escher hands someone posted above) always relies on something outside of consciousness, which in turn relies on it. I really don't know though — csalisbury
Why must this non-space/time/causality be limited or manifested in this way, and not another? — schopenhauer1
Yeah, I know it works this way for Schop, I was speculatin' for myself there.Not all the way down, no, Schop. is explicit that presentation is only applicable to sentient creatures, and is an outgrowth of will which is prior. It's also not quite a split, in that presentation just is the objectification of will (though confusingly, Schop. calls it also 'toto genere distinct' from it)
I don't quite understand though why the Will would create something that can seemingly oppose it because it suffers due to the Will. Is it just by accident that the Will creates beings that can suffer? Why does there seem to be exceptions to the Will? Not everything in the world is chaotic, random, or striving. I'm not sure why or how the Will would create a world that is not in its own nature. — darthbarracuda
Yeah, I know it works this way for Schop, I was speculatin' for myself there. — csalisbury
A disturbing quote to this effect from Schop.: "...the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will." Schop's favored image of how the world works is one animal eating another. Since we are all objectifications of the same will, it is literally eating itself (and people in harming each other are aware in a vague and traumatic sense that they are harming themselves). — The Great Whatever
Yeah, when I try to think about panpsychism, I try to think of it by analogy to the onset of (certain) psychoactive drugs: adjacent moments, though different, are at least mutually intelligible. But the final state, the peak, is so unlike the beginning as to be unintelligible from its vantage. Again this is only a crudge analogy, because the difference between different 'levels' of consciousness would probably be much more dramatic.Okay. I'm not keen on panpsychism generally, sine it seems like a cop-out in the form of another retreat into the familiar or quasi-solipsism (I can only understand something else existing if it is 'like me').
I agree, (though i think ecosystem-like patterns crop up, for a time. There's just no great chain of being, no super-ecosystem. I wish I understood set theory better because it seems to offer some good metaphors.)The difficult conceptual twist is to think of this dependence without any ecosystem or larger picture.
How does the Will live on itself without eventually running out of anything to feed on? Like an ouroboros, it cannot constantly eat itself. — darthbarracuda
Unless of course the Will is outside of the laws of thermodynamics and energy conservation, in which case it just becomes a mystical metaphor with little actual explanatory power except for illuminating the human condition. — darthbarracuda
If life did not exist, would there be any Will to self-cannibalize? Are we talking entropy here? — darthbarracuda
It is outside those laws and all physical laws, because those laws are just objectifications of it. It isn't a metaphor because it's more real and concretely known than any physical or represented thing. — The Great Whatever
No offense but this is kind of a cop-out. If it's outside the laws, how can it act on them? — darthbarracuda
Why would the Will (to live) create something that would eventually lead to a rejection of the will to live? Why would it hasten its own demise? — darthbarracuda
the laws are an objectification of it. — The Great Whatever
Then why is it possible to not strive for life? Why is it possible to meditate, enjoy aesthetics, commit suicide, etc? Surely these would also be objectifications of the Will? — darthbarracuda
asking why presupposes the techniques to be found in the phenomenal realm subject to the principle of sufficient reason. — The Great Whatever
1) If subject needs object, how would that occur prior to the first organisms who create representations to know itself? How would the force of gravity allow Will to know itself? — schopenhauer1
2) If organisms can change, this contradicts the Schopenhauer's platonic forms. Evolution does not happen on grand scales as much as microchanges that might become catalyzed by large catastrophes. Anyways, it seems that the phenomena of mutations in DNA and natural selection, does not lend itself to the idea of stable Platonic gradations or Ideas that Schopenhauer thought existed and accounted for objects being the way they are when influenced by the PSR and space/time/causality. — schopenhauer1
Before there are sentient creatures, there are no subjects or objects. — The Great Whatever
Can new Ideas rise up in time? Well, yes and no -- Schop. claims that animals arose at some point in natural history. But the idea that an Idea arises as well is literally nonsensical -- for there to be an Idea is for it to appear timelessly, in the 'standing present,' like a rainbow over a storm, there as a 'result' of what's happening and yet not really there, not really interacting with anything. Schop. is very Eastern in considering time ultimately to be a kind of illusion. It only exists insofar as it services the will's ends and is tied to the individual organism seeking out satisfactions of its individual will, but to contemplate the Forms or Ideas is to represent independently of the will, and so not to see things as arising and disappearing in time. — The Great Whatever
My understanding of the Schoplatonic ideas is that they're bound up intimately with capacity. To understand the 'idea' of something is not merely to contemplate its appearance or structure, but to know how it would act or react under different circumstances. This is why he has recourse to Malebranche's theory of occasional causality. It seems that microchanges in an organism wouldn't lead to a new Idea unless they reached a critical mass and changed the ways that organism would act in a given situation. (Perhaps the critical point in a phase transition would be a better metaphor than 'critical mass')One possible way to solve this is to say that each micro-level change has an Idea but this is more of just a notion. I haven't fully developed it.
The force itself is a manifestation of will, and as such is not subject to the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, that is, it is groundless. It lies outside all time, is omnipresent, and seems as it were to wait constantly till the circumstances occur under which it can appear and take possession of a definite matter, supplanting the forces which have reigned in it till then. All time exists only for the phenomena of such a force, and is without significance for the force itself. Through thousands of years chemical forces slumber in matter till the contact with the reagents sets them free; then they appear; but time exists only for the phenomena, not for the forces themselves. For thousands of years galvanism slumbered in copper and zinc, and they lay quietly beside silver, which must be consumed in flame as soon as all three are brought together under the required conditions. Even in the organic kingdom we see a dry seed preserve the slumbering force through three thousand years, and when at last the favourable circumstances occur, grow up as a plant. — S
"For if bodies with their states, qualities, and quantities, assume all the characteristics of substance and cause, conversely the characteristics of the Idea are relegated to the other side, that is to this impassive extra-Being which is sterile, inefficacious, and on the surface of things: the ideational or the incorporeal can never be anything other than an 'effect'[...]These effects are not bodies[...]They are not things and facts, but events. We can not say that they exist, but rather than they subsist or inhere (having this minimum of being which is appropriate to that which is not a thing, a nonexisting entity.) They are not substantives or adjectives but verbs. They are neither agents nor patients, but results of actions and passions. They are 'impassive' entities - impassive results. — Deleuze
Here, he speaks as though there is always this otherworldly matrix of possible 'clashes' between forces (as well as of possible resolutions-through-subjugation-of-parts in higher ideas) and that these possibilities are actualized through the will's development in time. — csalisbury
A disturbing quote to this effect from Schop.: "...the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will." Schop's favored image of how the world works is one animal eating another. Since we are all objectifications of the same will, it is literally eating itself (and people in harming each other are aware in a vague and traumatic sense that they are harming themselves). — tgw
Yeah, I don't have an answer for that ( primarily because I don't think they actually do come out of nowhere at x particular time) but I don't think Schopenhauer does either.But again, I do not think this answers the question. How is it that representations come out of nowhere at "x" particular time? — schopenhauer1
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