As stated to apokrisis:

"Social formulas" idea seems to make reasons a sort of nominalism.. Completely post-hoc fiction.
"Acting on reason" idea seems to imply some sort of "higher reason" like the Stoic idea of Universal Reason that is accessed by the sage.

Rather, reasons are formed by way of a being that can self-identify as an individual that can produce outcomes in the world and knows there are choices that lead to those outcomes. — schopenhauer1

You seem to be on the "social formulas" idea. Post hoc fiction seems a bit much. I can tell you why I decided to go to the park.

You are missing the obvious. Society requires us to have reasons for our actions. It is the "burden" of being civilised, or even just socialised. — apokrisis

Ooof.. is that a slight against any tribal society that doesn't have "civilization"? You save it by adding "socialized" though.

Most folk thus grow up learning to just fabricate excuses for their actions. They become expert sophists. They explain away why they did what they did in some socially-acceptable formula of words.

Actually learning how to act on reason is rarer. Rather than an imposed burden, it becomes an effective skill. It means life can be lived with rational goals in mind. Life can be shaped by measurable purpose. — apokrisis

That seems like a false dichotomy of "social formulas" and "acting on reason". Both seem off to me.
"Social formulas" idea seems to make reasons a sort of nominalism.. Completely post-hoc fiction.
"Acting on reason" idea seems to imply some sort of "higher reason" like the Stoic idea of Universal Reason that is accessed by the sage.

Rather, reasons are formed by way of a being that can self-identify as an individual that can produce outcomes in the world and knows there are choices that lead to those outcomes.

Reasons are attributed post hoc, to cats and horses and hedges as well as to philosophers. — Banno

Very Schopenhauerian of you.. But when you go to the fridge to get food, or you decide to pick up a book, or you decide to get this and not that product, are you not coming up with reasons? Perhaps your character make-up makes you "do" something and then you reason it later, you still have reasons for why you did it. Cultural things like learning new information, associations with certain experiences, and testing out new things might be various "reasons" for doing something. Disorders, unconscious habits, conditioned responses, etc. might be something different, and more akin to what other animals are doing though the line is blurry.

Also, very un-Witty of you not to purport that language use goes hand-in-hand with reasons. Language becomes the parsing of objects in the world, having self-identity of what one is doing with those objects, and being satisfied with abstract outcomes of those actions, and purposely manipulating objects to gain outcomes.

It's an interesting dualism (over here are humans who have reasons, over there is the rest of the universe that does not have reasons) that seems to boil down to "over here is language, over there is no language".

How else do we decide as to who has reasons? I mean this seriously : What should we assume if we meet a space-faring race that we can't communicate with? That they are simply sophisticated tool-using lizards (or mermen, or whatever)? Only humans have a claim on this ill-defined thing?

A number of species seem to recognize themselves in mirrors - bonobos, elephants, magpies. If they're self-aware, do they not have reasons for acting?

The point is, it's one of those poorly defined concepts that we all assume we know. Like saying, "I can't define art, but I know it when I see it." (By the way, it's probably NOT true that elephants can paint - at least not without a lot of cruel training.) — Real Gone Cat

Maybe but that's where we have to do comparisons. What does it mean to have a reason to do something? I would think it requires linguistic use.

The idea of reasons is connected to the development of language. It is the basis for logic and concepts. Rationality and reasoning are done on that basis but that doesn't mean that other aspects, such emotions don't come in as well, and irrationality. It is one thing to be able to find reasons and that is a starting point for philosophy and another to follow them always. It may be easier to come up with the a posteri or a priori aspects of reason than to live according to Kant's moral system. So, human beings are rational but even then human reason is limited and it probably requires a lot of discipline to develop reason to its furthest possibilities. — Jack Cummins

Yes, I agree with you about language and its centrality in reasons versus cause/effect. There is something that is different between the statements "My reason for..." and "The reason why.." (and it doesn't pertain to a human).

Way to not get the point :meh:.

IS the argument here that some people are capable of atrocities, therefore all people are atrocious? — Banno

No.

Thing is, we get to choose our reasons. "They're only as good as the world allows them to be".

So don't put people on an island without food. Build a world that allows people to work for each other. — Banno

So imagine a world where you didn't have reasons, but everything was purely done from instinctual drives. You didn't "have a reason".. you didn't even have what @180 Proof referenced as post-facto rationalizations. I mentioned fall into time and Exit from Eden, etc. The implications of an animal that survives and gets along through reasons. Then I mentioned cultural standards. We judge what we want and need on the foreground of the cultural standards. It is fully an existential way of being. It isn't that we just do things "for the fun of it" (even octopuses do that). It is that, at least consciously, must give ourselves reasons for why we did things. We got up because we were hungry.. We were not impelled by the food uncontrollably. Conditioning may be involved that unconsciously skews our preferences for reasons. However, we still find reasons nonetheless. I haven't made any deeper claims about where our reasons come from (habitual learning, conditioning, cultural conditioning, psychological makeup, basic drives to survive and be comfortable and to seek entertainment or equilibrium).

How do you know that "we are the only animals with reasons"? — 180 Proof

So this is the hill you stand on... Ok, so maybe all animals have reasons since we don't "really" know.

Either way, it's more the implications, not this point I am trying to get across. You knew that though. Or perhaps you didn't..

How do you know that our so-called "reasons" are not just ex post facto rationalizations — 180 Proof

Yes, I understand that. Have you ever at least felt you had a reason you did something? We must also make a distinction between the "rationalized" reason (what you believed you believed) versus, hidden motivations. Psychologists used to invoke the subconscious. Not sure if that's still a thing.

My dog's behavior appears intentional. I've never found the attempt to categorize humans in an entirely special class persuasive. It appears just to be one of degree. — Hanover

Is intentionality the same as "reasons" though? That's tricky, but I think they are two different things. A dog certainly has intentions (to get food, go for walks, play fetch, etc.). I don't think it would be the same to say dogs have reasons, however. A reason would be a self-recognized understanding of why you are doing something.

This isn't being pedantic or mincing words either. Intentions can come about through various instincts of play and food. Reasons are based on semantic abilities of symbolic reasoning. "I am doing this because I want X" is a self-aware statement. It is not simply that "I want X".

Don’t know if it is possible unless sleepwalking or in a trance.

I guess what I mean by this is that it seems like C.S. Lewis did not at all mention the modern understanding of the Bible at least since Spinoza, which deconstructs it into its historical context. That is to say, you can't understand Confucious really unless you understand what China was going through in the 500s BCE. The same with Jesus in Judea ruled under the Romans.

Then we must understand the literary style of the Gospels and compare it to the Greco-Roman literature of the time and see where things were borrowed.. So you have two layers...

The substratum which is the historical Jesus, ever interpreted and re-interpreted, and then the Gospel writers who were Greek-speaking elites (maybe Hellenistic Jews, but definitely Hellenistic, and probably only Judaic-adjacent, and not Jewish proper). How does a resurrecting son of god compare with other Greek literature? How does a god-man who has a "last supper" before death sharing blood and body compare to literature (like the Satyricon)? How does this differ from the probability of what an actual Galilean Jew may have said and did 40-70 years earlier than the when the Gospel writers wrote their fanfiction of Jesus (the man), turning him into more of Christ (reinterpreted to having a meaning of a literal "son of God")? Anyways, this type of academic analysis should have been familiar to Lewis being a scholar of his time. But he clearly chose to frame things as an oversimplistic dichotomy of those who think Jesus just a "moral teacher" and those who take the Gospels as if they are, um, gospel.

Why was C.S. Lewis so anti-historical in his analysis of the Gospels? The problem with ancient writers is they wrote fan fiction and people were and still are allowed to take it seriously as if it is documented history of what the person written about said and did.

I guess I was hoping someone could transfer the notion of will with respect to the empirical world, to the noumenal world. — Mww

I think Kant’s use of noumenal vs thing-in-itself is notoriously convoluted.
Is there a difference that makes a difference?
My crack at it is noumenal in its positive sense is an intuitive understanding of an object that somehow isn’t amenable to the senses. The negative sense is something akin to the thing-in-itself which can only be known in a sort of hedging way of what it is not.

But I’d like to know your interpretation before stepping forward with Schopenhauer’s demonstration of this or that.

But I can start by saying the demonstration was the use of one’s own internal willing nature and he took the leap to apply it to all phenomena where there are forces, and animals with a striving force etc.

Now...back to the noumenal world: what about it? — Mww

I have to go so can't spend much time on this right now, but are you looking for the specific term "nominal" in his writings? Or rather, are you simply trying to understand more about his notions of Will as the thing-in-itself? Seems like you sort of get it, etc.

Even through sarcastic jest, the lost boy may finally see some light. — universeness

Indeed you might.

Yeah cause that’s it. I’ve never presented any of my own thoughts :roll:. I’m just answering misconceptions on his philosophy of suicide.

Schopenhauer was saying that suicide shouldn't be condemned or made illegal (if they survive?). That's people's right. But he was actually not a strong advocate for it, and he was pretty "anti-life". His reasoning was nuanced. If someone "willed" their own death, then even ones own death was an act of "will".. Thus, suicide of the body isn't getting rid of will. Rather, ascetic denial of will does.

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment—a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer. — Schopenhauer- On Suicide

And conversely, whoever is oppressed with the burden of life, whoever desires life and affirms it, but abhors its torments, and especially can no longer endure the hard lot that has fallen to himself, such a man has no deliverance to hope for from death, and cannot right himself by suicide. The cool shades of Orcus allure him only with the false appearance of a haven of rest. The earth rolls from day into night, the individual dies, but the sun itself shines without intermission, an eternal noon. Life is assured to the will to live; the form of life is an endless present, no matter how the individuals, the phenomena of the Idea, arise and pass away in time, like fleeting dreams. Thus even already suicide appears to us as a vain and therefore a foolish action; when we have carried our investigation further it will appear to us in a still less favourable light. — Schopenhauer- WWR

Far from being denial of the will, suicide is a phenomenon of strong assertion of will; for the essence of negation lies in this, that the joys of life are shunned, not its sorrows. The suicide wills life, and is only dissatisfied with the conditions under which it has presented itself to him. He therefore by no means surrenders the will to live, but only life, in that he destroys the individual manifestation. He wills life—wills the unrestricted existence and assertion of the body; but the complication of circumstances does not allow this, and there results for him great suffering. — Schop- WWR

He only approves of ascetic denial of will which leads to a suicide...

There is a species of suicide which seems to be quite distinct from the common kind, though its occurrence has perhaps not yet been fully established. It is starvation, voluntarily chosen on the ground of extreme asceticism. All instances of it, however, have been accompanied and obscured by much religious fanaticism, and even superstition. Yet it seems that the absolute denial of will may reach the point at which the will shall be wanting to take the necessary nourishment for the support of the natural life. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the will to live, that such a completely resigned ascetic only ceases to live because he has already altogether ceased to will. No other death than that by starvation is in this case conceivable (unless it were the result of some special superstition); for the intention to cut short the torment would itself be a stage in the assertion of will. — Schopenhauer- WWR

I love how some posters think their moral claim against antinatalists is tell them to kill themselves (not talking about you, but one adjacent in this thread) :lol:. Somehow proof of the good of the world is measured in the ability for someone to make the choice not to violently end their own being. Strangely low threshold for “thus life being good”. :lol:.

Even worse than simple profiteerism is the sort of mythology of the economic Nietzschean ubermensch via Ayn Randian type libertarianism. That's either delusional or intellectual dishonesty. It's more pernicious because, you see, the entrepreneur deserves whatever he can, whilst his workers are simply adjunct tagalongs, to be discarded or ignored. They didn't earn it you see like the brilliant lights called the "entrepreneur".

Everyone can trash on the soulless investment group.. but people still have a soft spot for that ole entrepreneur who rendered their own ideas and fashioned it into tangible goods to be sold. See how they add value and the worker just maintains the template they rendered. They are but poor shadows to the true ideal sparkling entrepreneur and his bold will-to-power over thought and materials to fashion it into useful products for humanity. You see?

Antinatalism is a somewhat militaristic point of view. In this war movie - forgot the name, sorry - that depicted the allied landing in Normandy, the Germans on the hills above the beach aimed their guns on the boats (life) instead of the soldiers (suffering) in them! It's the same thing! :snicker: — Agent Smith

Natalism is militaristic as well... One person's enthusiasm becomes another person's burden.. And the post-facto excuses abound for this misguided notion! In what other realm can someone's enthusiasm be a justification for causing another person to be burdened?!

Or rather one person's enthusiasm causes another person's burden. I like X (life) so now you are burdened with X (life). What's the fuckn' point? Work, maintain, entertain, and so on. How is Schopenhauer wrong with the goal-seeking pendulum?

“The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence life swings like pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact it has ultimate constituents.” (The World as Will and Representation)/

I see no reason to posit some transcendent overarching Will to explain its phenomenal manifestations. I suppose you could say that just as there is the trees-in-themselves, which is thought as the counterpart of the trees-for-us, so you could have willings-in-themselves as counterpart of the willings-for-us. But I think it should be remembered that for Kant this is a merely formal or logical move and should be accorded no ontological status. — Janus

But this isn't Schopenhaurian but perhaps more Kantian. There is no "will-for-us" or "tree-for-us" or whathaveyou. Rather, there is representation, which is simply the "maya" of a conditioned existence (of space/time/causality) and there is the Will, which is a unified thing that is the principle with which the representation separates using the principium individuantionis that is illusory of some kind so that the will can present as if it was a subject-for-an-object.

Spinoza's idea of conatus is precisely that of "striving", not "sort of an enjoyment of being in its fullness"; that would be more thriving. — Janus

Well, now we are parsing out analyses and interpretations, but it can be derived from things like this:

each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being — "(Ethics,

I don't see will as a "negative principle" at all; will is a positive striving for what one wills. This is something we recognize in ourselves and generally project anthropomorphically onto other lifeforms as, most basically, will to live. But we also have the will to procreate, the will to consume, the will to seek pleasure and avoid pain, the will to understand and so on. — Janus

But you are parsing out Will into its various manifestations as it plays out in representation (in animal form). That is precisely what he is saying.. Will is a unified principle that plays out in how the human animal strives forward. That striving principle in all its variations as they play out (like the ones you list) come about through a "lack" of what is not present currently. There is an incompleteness, or more appropriately, a dissatisfaction that leads to the goal, want, need, etc.

No, I understand very well that is the way he is using it, and I think it is, as I said, an anthropomorphic reification. What else could he call it without losing the character he portrays it as exemplifying? — Janus

Again, I think it is an unfortunate use of the word Will here.. You can change it to a sort of impulsive force, that in humans/animals is more embodied as a will-towards/striving. I go back and forth as to whether he is truly an idealist proper or an early panpsychist.. He mentions the "force" being in inorganic matter because.. But perhaps he means simply the forces at play in the matter? Even if so, he discusses time going back billions of years earlier, yet not existing without the sentience of the animal. So there is some murkiness there.. but not quite in the way you are describing it. I think you are being just uncharitable rather than engaging with it.

valorized by those practices — Janus

I mean, certain sanghas /arhats would probably disagree.. There are a multitude of interpretations, but I don't think all of them are as non-ascetic as you portray.. Yes some Buddhists aren't advocating for hardcore ascetic practices, but there are some that are more about this.. And ones that deign to be close to achieving Buddhahood probably have this kind of rigor... It is very bohemian-convenient-modern to put a spin on it like.. "Nah, real Buddhists are too cool for ascetic stuff".

samsara is nirvana — Janus

Well, through living one achieves nirvana.. etc. The samsara can be considered the "veil of tears" with which the nirvana is the clarity of realization. It's all linked together. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, but there is sort of. It's all contradictory as the Zen exercises would at least have it..

We, as long as we live, are never going to lack will, and nor would we want to; it is attachment to that will, that is being unable to happily accept when things don't go our way, that is the real problem. So, will is not the negative, it is attachment that is the negative, and I cannot think of a philosopher whose life shows more attachment than Schopenhauer. — Janus

Just purely uncharitable and using old canards. He wasn't purely Buddhist by-the-way.. Clearly his ascetic ideas were of a much more rigorous idea about negating self. It is taking the negation of Will to its ultimate end. I don't think he expected most people to reach it or even try.

I'd like to reiterate here, I am just trying to answer this thread.. I don't agree with everything Schopenhauer said about metaphysics and epistemology. I'm not a blind follower. I have my own ideas on lots of things.

good analogy with the notion of the absolutely unknowable. For a start what is unconscious, unknown may become conscious and known. That said, it may reasonably be thought that there is always an ineffable aspect to anything: intelligence, love, fear, beauty, goodness, wisdom, whatever and of course including will, but that just speaks to the limits of human knowledge and understanding. Will is nothing special, it's just one aspect of life, or more accurately one way of thinking about certain aspects of becoming. — Janus

So I think here you are demonstrating a misunderstanding of how Schopenhauer is using "Will". It is NOT just a psychological aspect. It is a metaphysical principle at play. It may be unfortunate that he calls it "Will" because of precisely this misunderstanding whereby it is confused with other things. Willing rather is the background principle behind at work behind the representational playground of the subject-object conditioned by time/space/causality- that is to say, the world as it is in representation. Other psychological aspects may take place in this playground, but the foundation of it all is that striving principle.

Now, the ineffable part is mentioned because if you know of Schop's philosophy, his main recommendation is to escape one's own willing nature through ascetic practice. The question remains, how can one escape from something that is a sort of totality of being? That's where I mentioned that Will has the aspect of representation but there is also the aspect of Will submerged beyond the representation. Perhaps that is how one reaches a sort of Nirvana-like state whilst retaining Will.

The idea of "will" or volition is the idea of just one aspect of mind or awareness. — Janus

But it wasn't an aspect of mind.. It was simply the foundational principle that he named "will" for good or bad. It was to denote that the root of existence is the principle of striving (pace Buddhism). It does have similarities to conatus but whilst conatus was sort of an enjoyment of being in its fullness, will is a negative principle. That is to say, it is always becoming, something that it is not- at least in the world as representation.

As far as using one's subjective consciousness as "proof" that there is some striving force at play in existence-writ-large is an interesting one. I don't know that I would fully agree with that step he is doing. Rather, I would simply agree with the more modest conclusion that human (and animal) nature leads to a sort of striving principle which does lead to much suffering- the pendulum swing of trying to satisfy needs and wants. Again, this is all very familiar with Buddhist understandings of suffering.. And no, please don't try to "school" me in what "real" Buddhism means.. Of course we are just talking very generally here.. I am not going into whole analyses on the corpus of sutras and the Pali Canon and whatnot.. and variations on the Theravada school versus the Mahayana and such.

So, to get to the "implications" mentioned above, if everything we experience is a for-us, things-for-us, which leads logically to the idea of things-in themselves, then why would it not follow that space-for-us, time-for-us, causation-for-us lead logically to the ideas of space-in-itself, time-in-itself and causation-in-itself, thus defusing Schopenhauer's whole critique and transcendent reification of the thing-in-itself? — Janus

Because space, time, and causation are not just space-for-us, time-for-us, causation-for-us. It is rather space/time/causality are but conditions of the mind imposed on the thing(s)-in-it(them)self. Thus the thing-in-itself is not conditioned by space/time/causality. What can be a critique perhaps, is his step that the Will is somehow a "unity".. There are ways around this.. and it can be simply how language is used in our everyday usage (pace Wittgenstein), but one can make the critique that a "unified" Will is also a condition.. Schop himself I believe addressed this and really meant to say that Will is really only talked about in the negative (what it can't be).. And even such description as "unified" really is a category error. I don't think this creates any huge blow to the general idea though.

The "Ein Sof" in Jewish mystical thought has nothing whatever to do with "Will". And the creator God is not merely blind will either. — Janus

Well yeah, that's obvious. You've heard of analogies right? It doesn't have to be exact fits. Of course I know that Schopenhauer is explicitly atheistic. His Will is a striving force that just "is" and has no purpose. It has no telos and certainly no plan or scheme. However, the part that is analogous is that the Ein Sof is Kabbalah is the part of the godhead that is inaccessible. If you read what I said earlier about Will and its analogy to the iceberg, it nicely parallels Schop's idea about Will. I said:

Think of Will as an iceberg.

Most of the Will is "below the water".. It is a sort of unknown (not even an unknown..it's literally the thing-in-itself...An all encompassing nothingness/everythingness.. can't be described without being contradicting.. it can only be spoken about in the negative)....

However Will has the unfortunate aspect of having representation. Thus there is a form of Will that is subject-for-object. Pure subject-for-object is apprehended through aesthetic genius (the artist/musician and the experience of art and music). It is disinterested insight into the the object. However, most of life is not this, but rather the suffering version whereby subject-for-object is conditioned by space/time/causality imposed by the subject which is to say desiring, lacking, wanting, appropriating. It is the pendulum swing of pursuing a goal and boredom and being caught up in the negatives of conflict with environment, others, for survival, comfort, and such. — schopenhauer1

Now, it is not perfectly analogous of course. Obvious, the godhead in traditional Judaism is a metaphysical entity that directs, creates, and has a goal, etc. But that's not the part I was making a parallel to.

I also saw the 10 Sephirot idea as a sort of Platonic one (Neoplatonic to be more precise). There are "forms" that the godhead had cleared his own "being" to form for which other parts of the heavens/physical realm were created. Sort of templates that when combined, are like the blueprint of known existence. Anyways.. Way into the weeds here, but that can be analogous simply to Schop's use of Plato's Ideas/Forms.. Some sort of template forms that are not conditioned time/space/causality but are somehow part of the system of Will.

So anyways, it is an interesting debate in Schopenhauerian studies as to whether one can "deny the Will" if Will is all there is. I think, the system Schop was thinking was that "denying the will-to-live" (the will as it manifests in the subject-to-object) is what he meant, and that the rare state of Nirvana.. a kind of ego suicide through starvation and quietism, is really just having some sort of gnosis of Will proper, whilst diminishing the will via subject-to-object.

Why do you seek to interpret everything through the lens of a second-rate philosopher? — Janus

I don't interpret everything through the lens of Schopenhauer (who is not a second-rate philosopher). Why do you think he is second-rate? He did have some essays that were off-the-mark (on Women for example), but his philosophy proper was much more clearly written than much of the other philosophers of the time preceding, during, and after him. His ideas were indeed unique with much analytical force amongst his ideas. Second-rate to me is focusing on symbolic logic, for example, and using it to say very little. The fact is, he is the kind of philosopher that knew logic and kept up-to-date with the science (though it was obviously outdated within a generation). Luckily post-Kantian philosophy wasn't based on empirical findings in science so much as it was trying to understand how the mind is related to the world, and what the world is, in-itself. You may disagree with this approach, but it is indeed one way of approaching the problem. Science always rides upon the assumptions and a priori habits/forms that the human brain provides.. And that is what many post-Kantian philosophers tried to explore.

the question may still be raised, what that will, which exhibits itself in the world and as the world, ultimately and absolutely is in itself? i.e., what it is, regarded altogether apart from the fact that it exhibits itself as will, or in general appears, i.e., in general is known.

Yep. This very much goes with my analogy earlier.

Think of Will as an iceberg.

Most of the Will is "below the water".. It is a sort of unknown (not even an unknown..it's literally the thing-in-itself...An all encompassing nothingness/everythingness.. can't be described without being contradicting.. it can only be spoken about in the negative)....

However Will has the unfortunate aspect of having representation. Thus there is a form of Will that is subject-for-object. Pure subject-for-object is apprehended through aesthetic genius (the artist/musician and the experience of art and music). It is disinterested insight into the the object. However, most of life is not this, but rather the suffering version whereby subject-for-object is conditioned by space/time/causality imposed by the subject which is to say desiring, lacking, wanting, appropriating. It is the pendulum swing of pursuing a goal and boredom and being caught up in the negatives of conflict with environment, others, for survival, comfort, and such.

Of course, his suggestion will be to deny the will to negate the subject-for-object relationship all together. This would be akin to perhaps Nirvana/Enlightenment. This would be closest perhaps to a sort of pure gnosis of the Will "below the water" and not just will as it manifests in representation. — schopenhauer1

What I recommend, and I think most of us actually do, is to start somewhere and then move back and forth, expanding the picture, filling in gaps, and correcting the picture. — Fooloso4

Fair enough. Makes sense. Read what you want to and supplement when needed unless you want to make a point to read chronologically.

If the advice is to first read Schopenhauer in order to read Nietzsche, which is clearly not your advice since you recommend stopping with Schopenhauer, then since, as you point out, there are other things to read that shed light on Schopenhauer, the same advice, again not yours, to read Schopenhauer as a prelude to Nietzsche, could be extended to reading other thng as a prelude to reading Schopenhauer. — Fooloso4

Though this is throwing some shade on me... I do agree that philosophical traditions can have a sort of infinite regress of influence down to the earliest philosophers. But I do see the logic in specifically studying Schopenhauer before Nietzsche if only to understand what Nietzsche would invert. Denying the Will-to Live becomes embracing the Will-to-Power etc. etc. But, as you mention, it's not necessary. Nietzsche is a philosopher who can very much be read on his own terms.

Schopenhauer himself recommends reading mainly Kant, and some Plato; he would be right because those directly influenced him..

He himself draws parallels with Gnosticism and such, but Neoplatonism itself has parallels and interplay with ideas in Gnosticism and Jewish mysticism. I can also see ideas of Spinoza which he wrote about in regards to his brand of pantheism.

But yeah, I don't recommend Nietzsche other than to maybe understand what he said.. As far as the ideas (what can be distilled and organized from much of the aphorisms and disparate thoughts). Nah.

The first Schopenhauer, our own schopenhauer1, illustrates the problem, although his intent may lie elsewhere. — Fooloso4

Sorry, I am confused.. Are you saying I am stating the problem or am the problem? And what problem would that be?

Schopenhauer throws platonic forms into the mix as well — Albero

Yes, an unnecessary connection. However, if you think of it this way...The artist "knows" the object in its "purest form". This purer vision of the object is closer to directly communicating the world as the object is. He makes a parallel to Plato's forms.

I also think that you can see Schopenhauer somewhat in Neo-Platonic tradition.. Will is a unity that is broken into subject-object... This is similar to Jewish mysticism (ironically, since he didn't seem to look into the mystical parts of Judaism as much).. The Ein Sof is the unknowable nothingness/everythingness/infinite/unlimited/unified (you can only get at it from the negative of what it's not) aspect of God (Will below the iceberg).. The sephirot is like Ein Sof manifested into Platonic forms.. The bottom sephirot is the material world that is most concealed.. There are even more parallels in Lurianic Kabbalah whereby the perfect "vessels" of the sephirot are broken and are concealed. Gnosticism also has many parallels.. The One God of Light gets divided and many gods and worlds emanate down to the Demiurge who is an evil god that creates this world..

Schopenhauer had an admiration for some of these concepts which more for the kernel of truths about this world being a source of suffering and denying this world. He obviously didn't like the way it was believed literally.

Per Kant, we could never truly know, right? — Albero

Schopenhauer disagreed with Kant on a number of points, especially about being able to decipher the "thing-in-itself" so it probably wouldn't be a consideration whether Kant thought one can "truly know" or not.

Or is Xtrix correct in assuming that what Schopenhauer means is that the gnosis is the “closest we can possibly get” because anything else couldn’t exit the principle of sufficient reason? — Albero

In a sense yeah. We are all Will full-stop. So there is no need for any further understanding of this other than to recognize it. However, denying our natures as subjects-for-objects manifested in us as the animal's "will-to-live" would bring us as close as we get to understanding Will in and of itself not mediated as subject-for-object. At least, that's my interpretation.

Another interpretation might be that it is complete denial of Will to nothingness. But then "what" nothingness in this Nirvana-like state is, would have to be explained.. That's why I make the iceberg analogy.

So I've been trying to read Schopenhauer as a prelude to Nietzsche — Albero

I'd stop at Schop and respectfully advise to ditch the Nietzsche :smile:. Mainlander was a more interesting post-Schopenhauerian.

How does he draw the conclusion that the noumenal world (reality as it is in itself) is pure will? Schop says that the narrow door to the truth is that our bodies appears to us as both external physical objects (as representation) and as something we can experience such as touch hunger and desire I.e as will. And because our bodies appears to us as both will and as representation-the noumenal world is entirely constituted out of will.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding him, but this to me seems like a kind of invalid inference? To me it seems that both representation and the will that we experience are both just phenomenal experiences we perceive. I still don't get how Schopenhauer comes to this conclusion, can anyone explain his thought process for me more clearly? — Albero

Things to take away from Schopenhauer:

1) Space, time, causality are not "out there" independent of a subject. There is no object without a subject. If you take away the subject, the material world vanishes.

2) How can we ever to make metaphysical claims about the world if we cannot get beyond a subject-relation-to-object (that is conditioned by various principles of sufficient reason like causal necessity, logical necessity, spatial reasoning, and motives)?

3) Our own bodies are conditioned by time/space/causality. They are objects like other objects. However, unlike other objects, our own bodies have feelings like hunger, pain, desires, etc. (will). He sees this inner sense of self as revealing a force that underlies all being.

4) Schopenhauer is not a solipsist. He makes the jump that the entire world has this same internal "willing" nature. He simply takes it as a kind of self-evident truth that it isn't just yourself experiencing this inner nature.

5) The jump here is that he sees this willing nature as some suggesting a more fundamental aspect of reality. That is to say, this willing nature that we experience ourselves, is behind all phenomenal activities we observe (everything from gravity, sub-atomic particles, to animal behavior).

So here I think is the part where we have to parse out his idea of will/Will.

Think of Will as an iceberg.

Most of the Will is "below the water".. It is a sort of unknown (not even an unknown..it's literally the thing-in-itself...An all encompassing nothingness/everythingness.. can't be described without being contradicting.. it can only be spoken about in the negative)....

However Will has the unfortunate aspect of having representation. Thus there is a form of Will that is subject-for-object. Pure subject-for-object is apprehended through aesthetic genius (the artist/musician and the experience of art and music). It is disinterested insight into the the object. However, most of life is not this, but rather the suffering version whereby subject-for-object is conditioned by space/time/causality imposed by the subject which is to say desiring, lacking, wanting, appropriating. It is the pendulum swing of pursuing a goal and boredom and being caught up in the negatives of conflict with environment, others, for survival, comfort, and such.

Of course, his suggestion will be to deny the will to negate the subject-for-object relationship all together. This would be akin to perhaps Nirvana/Enlightenment. This would be closest perhaps to a sort of pure gnosis of the Will "below the water" and not just will as it manifests in representation.

I'm no good at that! All I can say is that to impose one's wishes, including but not limited to thinking on someone's behalf, herein the child to be born, amounts to treating the child as if s/he were an inanimate object (like robots). That's unethical, oui? — Agent Smith

Yes, it is overlooking their dignity, using them as a means..treating them like an inanimate chess piece to move around and foist significant existential conditions upon.

None of those statements are necessarily true.

You must survive by the social milieu your environment offers, you avoid discomfort (unless you are "cool" enough to seek it out)

Would you elaborate on: unless you are "cool" enough to seek it out? — ArielAssante

I mean the monks, the purposefully homeless, the hipsters who go without the comforts, etc. When you mistake pursuing discomfort for being more rugged or genuine or something. Some people do it to value signal they are environmentally more aware.

So what's your imaginary comfort on this one? That you live for your family? What if your family was dead and you didn't have any friends? Would you then still be comfortable that life has no meaning? — Skalidris

So you should focus on ways that society has manufactured your meaning.. Your employer has manufactured what you do for 40+ hours a week. Your home has determined the maintenance activities to keep it from deteriorating or making your feel discomfort. The people you must interact with, friends or otherwise, determine the sorts of entertainments, ventures, and adventures you may be missing out on.

Interesting how your life is already laid out for you...

You were never here because you wanted to be. You were never here of your own accord. You are simply a monkey with the trick of linguistic-symbolic thinking, in a situatedness of your environment. You must survive by the social milieu your environment offers, you avoid discomfort (unless you are "cool" enough to seek it out), and you pursue things to prevent boredom. Repeat this for how ever many years your genes and contingent circumstances have allowed for.

Things to look for:
Humor
Consolation in the idea of the willing nature of our animal being

Things that might help you understand the inertia of this specific repetition of keeping yourself alive:

Arthur Schopenhauer- The World as Will and Representation
His Ideas: World is ever present Will that manifests in space/time/causality from our mental framework that is intrinsically linked with the "Thing-in-Itself" (Will). This insatiable Will-in phenomenal world creates the suffering of dissatisfaction and the experience of harms in general.

E.M. Cioran- The Trouble With Being Born; The Fall into Time and others
His Ideas: There is no place to go and nothing to be. Rather, there is an inertia to existence and any direction is as insignificant as another. Insomnia reveals life's true state of extreme world-weariness.

Yet, Cioran, written in aphorisms and French and Romanian mostly clear and clever. Both considered existential in some way. Why is Cioran more interesting and funny to me? Nietzsche has some good zingers but meh. Ubermensch seems silly to me and ripe for misinterpretation because he made it obscurantist. It’s not as clear as clear Pepsi.

N is every reader's "N", that is, whatever each reader (milieu?) can make of "N". In practice, p0m0 readings "transvaluate" him (any text) into a rorschach-like "signifier" :mask: — 180 Proof

To be fair, Nietzsche’s self-obscurantist style doesn’t help him much.

Ubermensches and eternal returns oh my.