In WWR2, standard red cover version, pg. 486. He makes the case that Will as subject precedes phenomena, as object. I am highly tempted to disagree with this, but, because the distinction is so critical, I want to get some push back. My interpretation is matter is Object. Mind and Will are subject. Subjects perceive and exist within the context of Objects. Object MUST precede Subject with respect to the Universe. Matter had to exist first to house a Mind that perceives it. If his argument is that there was first a great Subject Will which gave rise to matter, then I think he is making the case for God, an intelligent, Subjective Creator. And to this end, his Ontology is the same as Aquinas, who argued as much in Summa Contra Gentiles. Thoughts?

i am looking for inspiration through dark times

I do not know if you guys seen the movie but at the very end Schopenhauer is mentioned. Quote: “how intensely you can talk to her about Schopenhauer in some elegant French restaurant”

I do recommend to watch it. It’s one of my favourites. I do believe you can find it on archive.org but today it seems down.

Anyways, have a pain and responsibilities free weekend 😎

Planning to read it soon

I finished the first book of the world as will and representation. It's good, but there's something that looks like a contradiction that I can't wrap my head around. That being, Schopenhauer claiming causality only exists in representation / the phenomenal.

If thats the case, how does the noumenal connect to the phenomenal at all, if not by some form of cause and effect? If no cause and effect relationship between the noumenal and phenomenal, how can we claim to understand anything about it? Furthermore, doesn't that posit the noumenal as a totally irrelevant "other" universe with no relation to our own?

I was wondering if he using the term in a special manner, like when he talks about causality in relation to space and time in representation. However, I still feel a bit confused. Does anyone have anything to add to my understanding of this?

I am looking for an audio book of "The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason".

I have come across many free audio books of "The World as Will and Representation", but never one about "The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason". Have you?

If it doesn't exist, Can this sub make one for the benefit of the public? (libreVox?)

One that is, medium - high Quality Audio.

With about 4-8 contributors. (I think the sub has 4-5k people)

2-4 to recite the passages in even-tones.

2-4 to mix, master and balance the audio.

What do yall think?

Lemme know!

Can someone indicate to me where Schopenhauer talks about matter and how it relates to the Will in the World as Will and Representation ?

Is matter merely a representation as well?

Can you include citations in your post as well. Thank you!

I picked up The World as Wil and Representation, and in the preface to that Schopenhauer really emphasizes I should read that essay first. Looking on Amazon, I see a lot of cheap prints and am not sure which one is the best.

Anyone have a preferred translation in mind I should pick up?

From his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

“The Schoolmen left me cold, and the Aristotelian intellectualism of St. Thomas appeared to me more lifeless than a desert….Of the nineteenth-century philosophers, Hegel put me off by his language; as arrogant as it was laborious; I regarded him with downright mistrust. He seemed to me like a man who was caged in the edifice of his own words and was pompously gesticulating in his prison.

The great find resulting from my researches was Schopenhauer. He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil - all those things which the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility. Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentals of the universe. He spoke neither of the all-good and all-wise providence of a Creator, nor of the harmony of the cosmos, but stated bluntly that a fundamental flaw underlay the sorrowful course of human history and the cruelty of nature: the blindness of the world-creating Will. This was confirmed not only by the early observations I had made of diseased and dying fishes, of mangy foxes, frozen or starved birds, of the pitiless tragedies concealed in a flowery meadow: earthworms tormented to death by ants, insects that tore each other apart piece by piece, and so on. My experiences with human beings, too, had taught me anything rather than belief in man’s original goodness and decency. I knew myself well enough to know that I was only gradually, as it were, distinguishing myself from an animal.

Schopenhauer’s somber picture of the world had my undivided approval, but not the solution of the problem….I was disappointed by his theory that the intellect need only confront the blind Will with its image in order to cause it to reverse itself….I became increasingly impressed by his relation to Kant….My efforts were rewarded, for I discovered the fundamental flaw, so I thought, in Schopenhauer’s system. He had committed the deadly sin of hypostatizing a metaphysical assertion, and of endowing a mere noumenon, a Ding an such [thing-in-itself], with special qualities. I got this from Kant’s theory of knowledge, and it afforded me an even greater illumination, if that were possible, than Schopenhauer’s pessimistic view of the world….It brought about a revolutionary alteration of my attitude to the world and to life.”

I thank Arthur Schopenhauer for reviving my interest in listening to Western classical music - and loving it at the same time as well. I remember listening to classical music as a kid because we have CDs before of J. Haydn, Beethoven, JS Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi. I loved them but it later became "boring" because there are only 15-20 pieces per CD and I forgot about classical music ever since. I had a gut feeling that there still many pieces out there but soon lost my interest in them.

It wasn't until I revived my interest in reading books - I was a bookworm when I was a kid - thanks to COVID and soon, I started reading philosophy books. One of the philosophers that I have read a year ago or two is Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer.

The first book that I have read is the Penguin Classics compilation "Essays and Aphorisms" (selections from Parerga and Paralipomena vol 2) and boy I was impressed. There is a quote there regarding music:

Music is the true universal language which is understood everywhere, so that it is ceaselessly spoken in all countries and throughout all the centuries with great zeal and earnestness, and a significant melody which says a great deal soon makes its way round the entire earth, while one poor in meaning which says nothing straightaway fades and dies: which proves that the content of a melody is very well understandable. Yet music speaks not of things but of pure weal and woe, which are the only realities for the will: that is why it speaks so much to the heart, while it has nothing to say directly to the head and it is a misuse of it to demand that it should do so, as happens in all pictorial music, which is consequently once and for all objectionable, even though Haydn and Beethoven strayed into composing it: Mozart and Rossini, so far as I know, never did. For expression of the passions is one thing, depiction of things another.

And after reading the quote, I remember classical music and I had a strong desire listening to it again. I knew right away that there are so many classical music compositions out there, and if you listen to the "famous" ones, you'll get bored easily. What I did was I downloaded mp3s of all the classical music compositions of the composers. Now, my mp3 collection lasts for 117 days - Baroque, Classical, Romantic era - if I play it nonstop and I'm not finished downloading. If there's a piece that I don't like on my 1st listen, I delete it of course but believe me, there are SO MANY likable pieces that are not famous.

Regarding music, to those who read Schopenhauer's books, read about Vol 3, especially music and say that it applies to ALL music (Kpop, hiphop etc), you've misunderstood what he meant. He cited classical music because that was the only music available in his time.

THANK YOU Arthur Schopenhauer :)

You, I want to know/read what 'lessons' will you thank Arthur Schopenhauer for? Thank you for reading!!!

PS: I am not a musician nor knows any musical instrument. I only listen and I appreciate and love it. There are people who appreciate paintings but don't know how to paint, so also there are people who listen to classical music without knowing any instrument whatsoever.

For our podcast this week, we read Schopenhauer's essay - On The Indestructibility of Our Essential Being By Death. In it he argues about the ending of a personal life cannot be seen as something bad as their conscious suffering would come to and end while will would live eternally, passing on to all living things to follow. Further, that sate of being dead is equatable to the state of not being born yet.

I personally find this type of nihilism - the negation of the importance of conscious, personal, existence to be forsaking the importance of what we know for the hope of non-existence - to be a mistake. But maybe I am missing something.

What do you think?

Indeed, since mature consideration of the matter leads to the conclusion that total non-being would be preferable to such an existence as ours is, the idea of the cessation of our existence, or of a time in which we no longer are, can from a rational point of view trouble us as little as the idea that we had never been. Now since this existence is essentially a personal one, the ending of the personality cannot be regarded as a loss. (Schopenhauer - On The Indestructibility of Our Essential Being By Death)

Link to full episode if you're interested:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-28-1-schopen-how-life-is-suffering-w-brother-x/id1691736489?i=1000670002583

YT - https://youtu.be/SyLV4TEXQps?si=bz57bF7h5nvZugcE

https://open.substack.com/pub/notsosmart/p/hedgehogs-dilemma-and-the-human-condition?r=1if3vt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Do we all share the same will? Someone may have above average intelligence based on nurture and nature. Can anyone be born with or accomplish greater will? Or do I just share the same slice of will that the vital force imparts equally to myself and my dog?

"Philosophers:who changed history" published by DK in 2024! Says that: "Seeking consolation in music, Schopenhauer spent his evenings in Berlin at concerts, the ballet, and the opera. This brought him into contact with the young opera singer Caroline Medon in 1821, with whom he had an on-off affair lasting some 10 years. Quite apart from the misogyny for which he was famous, Schopenhauer was uncomfortable with intimate relationships of any kind; the couple never married, although they did have a son together."

I can't find any sources saying that Arthur schopenhauer had a son with Caroline Medon!

Is this true if yes please provide me a source!

Schopenhauer elluded roughly speaking, that we can have access to reality through our minds. since we are a manifestation of will. if we look on the inside, we realize that all there is is either pleasure or pain. sensations and feelings are all a mixture of pleasure and pain. and if consciousness is an aspect of will, and we boil consciousness down to pain and pleasure, then will can be broken down to a boolean of sorts. either that or something else is going on. 

my theory is that will is a monad and cannot be broken down. will is essentially a force or can be described as one. it strives "forwards" and cannot be directed by any other thing above it. unless it conflicted against itself. if will is like a force, the only thing that guides it is an inversion of itself. if you're trying to describe reality or really any system you can't work with a singular, you need at least a binary. like a language, that's the minimum variation to build anything. will, with its inversion (anti-will?) is the basis of all of reality or consciousness. in mind, the conflict of will is what causes the sensation of pain; the release caused by the cessation of the conflict is pleasure. in what we percieve as the world, as in quantum physics, in the often described quantum field theory by physicists, it's where particles in empty vacuum with opposite values arise and annihiliate each other. it's essentially will against itself in action. and again, the inversion of will is of course, not a secondary or discrete force; it is just a redirection, inversion, or conflict of the same force.

I only skimmed the metaphysics of Schop, so please correct me on any misunderstanding.

What do physicians - I already know for Einstein - think of Schopenhauer's work?

Has there been any connection between advances in physics, and even genetics, and Schopenhauer's thought?

I can act and cause certain objectifications, my body is the primary objectification but I can use this body to cause others.Thus far I am an agent that can will things.

However I am much more a patient, ideas are imposed on me from the outside. There is a will that can frustrate my will and this will can appear under all possible objectifications whereas my will only can take on a limited set of objetifications.

Therefore the immediate thing an individual is aware of is his or her own particular will opposed to a general, universal will.

Am I correct in seeing that the will replaces the "pull" of the platonic forms? If so, what does the philosophy of will and idea explain better than the theory of the forms and their "pull"?

Is there something contradictory according to Schopenauer in assuming that there is a world out there indepenent of the subject?