IV. “The World is my Will”
1. Inadequacy of the World as Idea: Since knowledge in the world as Idea is wholly dependent on the body as a representation, our body is just like every other body, or object, of sensation and perception. One’s own body is known in just the same way as any other body. While one can study one’s own body in the same way as other bodies and perhaps come up with accounts or laws for its actions, causes, and motives, one is not able to grasp their inner nature.
2. The Body and Will: The inner nature of our actions, causes, and motives can be grasped immediately through the will. The body exists in two ways. This is known as double knowledge. Specifically, the body exists as an idea or representation in intelligent perception or secondly as will, an understanding that takes precedence for Schopenhauer. The body therefore can be seen as the objectification of the will. Schopenhauer states, “Every true, genuine, immediate act of the will is also at once and directly a manifest act of the body; correspondingly, on the other hand, every impression on the body is also at once and directly an impression of the will.” It is the will that establishes the subject as an individual. Without will the body is an idea like all other bodies. Oneself as an “object of perception is essentially different from all others; that it alone of all objects is at once both will and idea, while the rest are only ideas, i.e. only phantoms. Schopenhauer does not think that theoretical egoism or solipsism can be taken seriously, although he does not think it can be demonstrably refuted either. Manifestations of the will can have many grades. For example, a stone falling to the earth is a manifestation of will but it cannot move with a known motive, whereas a human being as a manifestation of will can move with a known motive.
Schopenhauer writes, “The parts of the body must, therefore, completely correspond to the principle desires through which the will manifests itself; they must be the visible expression of these desires. Teeth, throat and bowels are objectified hunger; the organs of generation are the objectified sexual desire; the grasping hands, the hurrying feet, correspond to the more indirect desires of the will that they express. As the human form generally corresponds to the human will generally, so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the individually modified will, the character of the individual and therefore it is throughout and in all its parts characteristic and full expression.”
3. Nature of the Will: The will is “something known absolutely and immediately, and that so well that we know and understand what will is better than anything else.” It is not inferred. The nature of the will can never be demonstrated, or explained through the principle of sufficient reason, because it is prior to the principle and more directly known. “Will is the thing-in-itself, the inner content, the essence of the world.” Purely in itself, the will is “without knowledge” and a “blind incessant impulse,” although in human beings it can be guided to some small extent by knowledge. Will can function as blind impulse in human beings as happens with other animals, such as through vital and vegetative processes such as “digestion, circulation, secretion, growth, and reproduction.”
4. Will and the Natural World: Schopenhauer writes, “We shall judge all objects which h are not our own body, and therefore are given to our consciousness not in the double way, but only as representations, according to the analogy of this body.”
Schopenhauer writes further, “He will recognize that same will not only in those phenomena that are quire similar to his own, in men and animals, as their innermost nature, but continued reflection will lead him to recognize the force that shots and vegetables in the plant, indeed the force by which the crystal is formed, the force that turns the magnet to the North Pole, the force whose shock he encounters from the contact of metals of different kinds, . . . and finally even gravitation, . . .; all of these he will recognize as different only in the phenomenon, but the same according to their inner nature. He will recognize them all as that which is immediately known to him so intimately and better than everything else, and where it appears more distinctly is called will. IT is only this application of reflection which no longer lets us stop at the phenomenon, but leads us on to the thing-in-itself.”
Whereas “individuality stands out powerfully” as the phenomenon of will in human beings, the phenomena of will in nature “operate according to universal laws, without deviation, without individuality.” Instinct and mechanical skills in animals are manifestations of will but are also blind activities. In so far as well constitutes out inner nature and will also constitutes the inner nature of the natural world, will is timeless and does not die. So permanence, birth, and death have no meaning or effect for it. Death only occurs to us as a phenomenon. The form of life only exists in the present, as an endless present, whereas the past and future are just conceptions following from the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer records, “the man who has comprehended and retained this point of view may well console himself when contemplating his own death and that of his friends by turning his eyes to the immortal life of Nature, which he himself is”
