Category Archives: Philosophy

SCHOPENHAUER: Art

April 2, 2022 – 5:24 PM

Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 6.3 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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VI. The Wisdom of Life 

(3) Art

This deliverance of knowledge from servitude to the will, this forgetting of the individual self and its material interest, this elevation of the mind to the will-less contemplation of truth, is the function of art. The object of science is the universal that contains many particulars; the object of art is the particular that contains a universal. “Even the portrait ought to be, as Winckelmann says, the ideal of the individual.” In painting animals the most characteristic is accounted the most beautiful, because it best reveals the species. A work of art is successful, then, in proportion as it suggests the Platonic Idea, or universal, of the group to which the represented object belongs. The portrait of a man must aim, therefore, not at photographic fidelity, but at exposing, as far as possible, through one figure, some essential or universal quality of man.”* Art is greater than science because the latter proceeds by laborious accumulation and cautious reasoning, while the former reaches its. goal at once by intuition and presentation; science can get along with talent, but art requires genius.

*So in literature, character-portrayal rises to greatness—other things equai—in proportion as the clearly-delineated individual represents also a Universal type, like Faust and Marguerite or Quixote and Sancho Panza.

A work of art is successful, then, in proportion as it suggests the Platonic Idea, or universal, of the group to which the represented object belongs.

Our pleasure in nature, as in poetry or painting, is derived from contemplation of the object without admixture of personal will. To the artist the Rhine is a varied series of bewitching views, stirring the senses and the imagination with suggestions of beauty; but the traveler who is bent on his personal affairs “will see the Rhine and its banks only as a line, and the bridges only as lines cutting the first line.” The artist so frees himself from personal concerns that “to artistic perception it is all one whether we see the sunset from a prison or from a palace.” “It is this blessedness of will-less perception which casts an enchanting glamour over the past and the distant, and presents them to us in so fair a light.” Even hostile objects, when we contemplate them without excitation of the will, and without immediate danger, become sublime. Similarly, tragedy may take an esthetic value, by delivering us from the strife of the individual will, and enabling us to see our suffering in a larger view. Art alleviates the ills of life by showing us the eternal and universal behind the transitory and the individual. Spinoza was right: “in so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect it participates in eternity.”*

*Goethe: “There is no better deliverance from the world” of strife “than through art.” 

Art alleviates the ills of life by showing us the eternal and universal behind the transitory and the individual. 

This power of the arts to elevate us above the strife of wills is possessed above all by music.* “Music is by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas” or essences of things, but it is “the copy of the will itself”; it shows us the eternally moving, striving, wandering will, always at last returning to itself to begin its striving anew. “This is why the effect of music is more powerful and penetrating than the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, while it speaks of the things itself.” It differs too from the other arts because it affects our feelings directly,** and not through the medium of ideas; it speaks to something subtler than the intellect. What symmetry is to the plastic arts, rhythm is to music; hence music and architecture are antipodal; architecture, as Goethe said is frozen music; and symmetry is rhythm standing still. 

*”Schopenhauer was the first to recognize and designate with philosophic clearness the position of music with reference to the other fine arts.”—Wagner.
**Hanslick objects to this and argues that music affects only the imagination directly. Strictly, of course, it affects only the senses directly. 

This power of the arts to elevate us above the strife of wills is possessed above all by music. Music differs from the other arts because it affects our feelings directly, and not through the medium of ideas; it speaks to something subtler than the intellect. 

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SCHOPENHAUER: Genius

March 31, 2022 – 5:31 PM

Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 6.2 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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VI. The Wisdom of Life 

(2) Genius

Genius is the highest form of this will-less knowledge. The lowest forms of life are entirely made up of will, without knowledge; man in general is mostly will and little knowledge; genius is mostly knowledge and little will. “Genius consists in this, that the knowing faculty has received a considerably greater development than the service of the will demands.” This involves some passage of force out of reproductive into intellectual activity. “The fundamental condition of genius is an abnormal predominance of sensibility and irritability over reproductive power.” Hence the enmity between genius and woman, who represents reproduction and the subjugation of the intellect to the will to live and make live. “Women may have great talent, but no genius, for they always remain subjective”; with them everything is personal, and is viewed as a means to personal ends. On the other hand, 

genius is simply the completest objectivity,—i. e., the objective tendency of the mind. … Genius is the power of leaving one’s own interests, wishes, and aims entirely out of sight, of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of the world. … Therefore the expression of genius in a face consists in this, that in it a decided predominance of knowledge over will is visible. In ordinary countenances there is a predominant expression of will, and we see that knowledge only comes into activity under the impulse of the will, and is directed merely by motives of personal interest and advantage.

“Will” and “genius” are two dimensions of man, like “unconscious” and “conscious” of Freud; and “reactive” and “analytical” of Hubbard. The “will” is focused on the reproductive; and the “genius” is focused on knowledge.

Freed from will, the intellect can see the object as it is; “genius holds up to us the magic glass in which all that is essential and significant appears to us collected and placed in the clearest light, and what is ‘accidental and foreign is left out.” Thought pierces through passion as sunlight pours through a cloud, and reveals the heart of things; it goes behind the individual and particular to the “Platonic Idea” or Universal essence of which it is a form—just as the painter sees, in the person whom he paints, not merely the individual character and feature, but some universal quality and permanent reality for whose unveiling the individual is only a symbol and a means. The secret of genius, then, lies in the clear and impartial perception of the objective, the essential, and the universal. 

Freed from will, the intellect can see the object as it is. The secret of genius, then, lies in the clear and impartial perception of the objective, the essential, and the universal. 

It is this removal of the personal equation which leaves the genius so maladapted in the world of willful, practical, personal activity. By seeing so far he does not see what is near; he is imprudent and “queer”; and while his vision is hitched to a star he falls into a well. Hence, partly, the unsociability of the genius; he is thinking of the fundamental, the universal, the eternal; others are thinking of the temporary, the specific, the immediate; his mind and theirs have no common ground, and never meet. “As a rule; a man is sociable, just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and generally vulgar.” The man of genius has his compensations, and does not need company so much as people who live in perpetual dependence on what is outside them. “The pleasure which he receives from all beauty, the consolation which art affords, the enthusiasm of the artist, … enable him to forget the cares of life,” and “repay him for the suffering that increases in proportion to the clearness of consciousness, and for his desert loneliness among a different race of men.”

It is this removal of the personal equation which leaves the genius so maladapted in the world of willful, practical, personal activity. The genius is thinking of the fundamental, the universal, the eternal; others are thinking of the temporary, the specific, the immediate.

The result, however, is that the genius is forced into isolation, and sometimes into madness; the extreme, sensitiveness which brings him pain along with imagination and intuition, combines with solitude and maladaptation to break the bonds that hold the mind to reality. Aristotle was right again: “Men distinguished in philosophy, politics, poetry or art appear to be all of a melancholy temperament.” The direct connection of madness and genius “is established by the biographies of great men, such as Rousseau, Byron, Alfieri, etc.””By a diligent search in lunatic asylums, I have found individual cases of patients who were unquestionably endowed with great talents, and whose genius distinctly appeared through their madness.” 

The result, however, is that the genius is forced into isolation, and sometimes into madness; the extreme, sensitiveness which brings him pain along with imagination and intuition, combines with solitude and maladaptation to break the bonds that hold the mind to reality.

Yet in these semi-madmen, these geniuses, lies the true aristocracy of mankind. “With regard to the intellect, nature is highly aristocratic. The distinctions which it has established are greater than those which are made in any country by birth, rank, wealth, or caste.” Nature gives genius only to a few because such a temperament would be a hindrance in the normal pursuits of life, which require concentration on the specific and immediate. “Nature really intended even learned men to be tillers of the soil; indeed, professors of philosophy should be estimated according to this standard; and then their achievements will be found to come up to all fair expectations.”*

*The professor of philosophy might avenge himself by pointing out that by nature we seem to be hunters rather than tillers; that agriculture is a human invention, not a natural instinct. 

Yet in these semi-madmen, these geniuses, lies the true aristocracy of mankind. 

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SCHOPENHAUER: Philosophy

March 31, 2022 – 4:06 PM

Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 6.1 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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VI. The Wisdom of Life 

(1) Philosophy

Consider, first, the absurdity of the desire for material goods. Fools believe that if they can only achieve wealth, their wills can be completely gratified; a man of means is supposed to be a man with means for the fulfillment of every desire. “People are often reproached for wishing for money above all things, and for loving it more than anything else; but it is natural and even inevitable for people to love that which, like an unwearied Proteus, is always ready to turn itself into whatever object their wandering wishes or their manifold desires may fix upon. Everything else can satisfy only one wish; money alone is absolutely good, … because it is the abstract satisfaction of every wish.” Nevertheless, a life devoted to the acquisition of wealth is useless unless we know how to turn it into joy; and this is an art that requires culture and wisdom. A succession of sensual pursuits never satisfies for long; one must understand the ends of life as well as the art of acquiring means. “Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man is contributes more to his happiness than what he has.” “A man who has no mental needs is called a Philistine”; he does not know what to do with his leisure—difficilis in otio quies [quiet in leisure is difficult]; he searches greedily from place to place for new sensations; and at last he is conquered by that nemesis of the idle rich or the reckless voluptuary—ennui.

A life devoted to the acquisition of wealth is useless unless we know how to turn it into joy; and this is an art that requires culture and wisdom. “What a man is contributes more to his happiness than what he has.” 

Not wealth but wisdom is the Way. “Man is at once impetuous striving of will (whose focus lies in the reproductive system), and eternal, free, serene subject of pure knowledge (of which the focus is the brain).” Marvelous to say, knowledge, though born of the will, may yet master the will. The possibility of the independence of knowledge first appears in the indifferent way in which the intellect occasionally responds to the dictates of desire. “Sometimes the intellect refuses to obey the will: e. g., when we try in vain to fix our minds upon something, or when we call in vain upon the memory for something that was entrusted to it. The anger of the will against the intellect on such occasions makes its relation to it, and the difference of the two, very plain. Indeed, vexed by this anger, the intellect sometimes officiously brings what was asked of it hours afterward, or even the following morning, quite unexpectedly and unseasonably.” From this imperfect subservience the intellect may pass to domination. “In accordance with previous reflection, or a recognized necessity, a man suffers, or accomplishes in cold blood, what is of the utmost, and often terrible, importance to him: suicide, execution, the duel, enterprises of every kind fraught with danger to life; and in general, things against which his whole animal nature rebels. Under such circumstances we see to what an extent reason has mastered the animal nature.”

Not wealth but wisdom is the Way. Marvelous to say, knowledge, though born of the will, may yet master the will.

This power of the intellect over the will permits of deliberate development; desire can be moderated or quieted by knowledge; and above all by a determinist philosophy which recognizes everything as the inevitable result of its antecedents. “Of ten things that annoy us, nine would not be able to do so if we understood them thoroughly in their causes, and therefore knew their necessity and true nature. … For what bridle and bit are to an unmanageable horse, the intellect is for the will in man.” “It is with inward as with outward necessity: nothing reconciles us so thoroughly as distinct knowledge.” The more we know of our passions, the less they control us; and “nothing will protect us from external compulsion so much as the control of ourselves.” Si vis tibi omnia subjicere, subjice te rationi [If you would subject all things to yourself, subject yourself to reason]. The greatest of all wonders is not the conqueror of the world, but the subduer of himself.

The more we know of our passions, the less they control us. The greatest of all wonders is not the conqueror of the world, but the subduer of himself.

So philosophy purifies the will. But philosophy is to be understood as experience and thought, not as mere reading or passive study. 

The constant streaming in of the thoughts of others must confine and suppress our own; and indeed in the long run paralyze the power of thought. … The inclination of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacuum [empty flight] from the poverty of their own minds, which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others. … It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves. … When we read, another person thinks for us; we merely repeat his mental process…. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, … he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. … Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little experience, the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary. 

So philosophy purifies the will. But philosophy is to be understood as experience and thought, not as mere reading or passive study. 

The first counsel, then, is Life before books; and the second is, Text before commentary. Read the creators rather than the expositors and the critics. “Only from the authors themselves can we receive philosophic thoughts: therefore whoever feels himself drawn to philosophy must seek out its immortal teachers in the still sanctuary of their own works.” One work of genius is worth a thousand commentaries.

Read the creators rather than the expositors and the critics. One work of genius is worth a thousand commentaries.

Within these limitations, the pursuit of culture, even through books, is valuable, because our happiness depends on what we have in our heads rather than on what we have in our pockets. Even fame is folly; “other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness.”

What one human being can be to another is not a very great deal; in the end everyone stands alone; and the important thing is, who it is that stands alone. … The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings. … The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it. … Since everything which exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness, and happens for him alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitution of his consciousness. … Therefore it is with great truth that Aristotle says, “To be happy means to be self-sufficient.”

Within these limitations, the pursuit of culture, even through books, is valuable, because our happiness depends on what we have in our heads rather than on what we have in our pockets. 

The way out of the evil of endless willing is the intelligent contemplation of life, and converse with the achievements of the great of all times and countries; it is only for such loving minds that these great ones have lived. “Unselfish intellect rises like a perfume above the faults and follies of the world of Will.” Most men never rise above viewing things as objects of desire—hence their misery; but to see things purely as objects of understanding is to rise to freedom. 

When some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, and delivers knowledge out of the slavery of the will, the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will, and thus observes them without personal interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively,—gives itself entirely up to them so far as they are ideas, but not in so far as they are motives. Then all at once the peace which we were always seeking, but which always fled from us on the former path of the desires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us. It is the painless state which Epicurus prized as the highest good and as the state of the gods; for we are for the moment set free from the miserable striving of the will; we keep the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still.*

*Ixion, according to classical mythology, tried to win Juno from Jupiter and was punished by being bound to a forever-revolving wheeL 

Most men never rise above viewing things as objects of desire—hence their misery; but to see things purely as objects of understanding is to rise to freedom. 

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SCHOPENHAUER: The World as Evil

March 28, 2022 – 6:31 PM

Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 5 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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V. The World as Evil

But if the world is will, it must be a world of suffering.

And first, because will itself indicates want, and its grasp is always greater than its reach. For every wish that is satisfied there remain ten that are denied. Desire is infinite, fulfillment is limited—“it is like the alms thrown to a beggar, that keeps him alive today in order that his misery may be prolonged tomorrow. … As long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are subject to willing, we can never have lasting happiness or peace.” And fulfillment never satisfies; nothing is so fatal to an ideal as its realization. “The satisfied passion oftener leads to unhappiness than to happiness. For its demands often conflict so much with the personal welfare of him who is concerned that they undermine it.” Each individual bears within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. “At bottom this results from the fact that the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing besides it, and it is a hungry will.”

In every individual the measure of the pain essential to him was determined once for all by his nature; a measure which could neither remain empty, nor be more than filled. … If a great and pressing care is lifted from our breast, … another immediately replaces it, the whole material of which was already there before, but could not come into consciousness as care because there was no capacity left for it. … But now that there is room for this it comes forward and occupies the throne.

Desire is infinite, fulfillment is limited. And fulfillment never satisfies; nothing is so fatal to an ideal as its realization. Each individual bears within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. But there is a natural desire to evolve.

COMMENT: There is actual pleasure in evolving even when there is no end to evolution.

Again, life is evil because pain is its basic stimulus and reality, and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain. Aristotle was right: the wise man seeks not pleasure, but freedom from care and pain. 

All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is, in reality and essence, negative only. … We are not properly conscious of the blessings and advantages we actually possess, nor do we prize them, but think of them merely as a matter of course, for they gratify us only negatively, by restraining suffering. Only when we have lost them do we become sensible of their value; for the want, the privation, the sorrow, is the positive thing, communicating itself” directly to us. … What was it that led the Cynics to repudiate pleasure in any form, if it was not the fact that pain is, in a greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure? … The same truth is contained in that fine French proverb: Ie mieux est l’ennemi du bien [the better is enemy of the good]—Ieave well enough alone.

Schopenhauer is a pessimist. It is true as he says that life is evil because pain is its basic stimulus and reality, and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain.

COMMENT: But there is positive pleasure in research and discovery that leads to evolution. 

Life is evil because “as soon as want and suffering permit rest to a man, ennui is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion,”—i. e., more suffering. Even if the socialist Utopia were attained, innumerable evils would be left, because some of them—like strife—are essential to life; and if every evil were removed, and strife were altogether ended, boredom would become as intolerable as pain. So “life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and ennui. … After man had transformed all pains and torments into the conception of hell, there remained nothing for heaven except ennui.” The more successful we become, the more we are bored. “As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is the scourge of the fashionable world. In middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sundays and want by the week-days.”

Life is evil because the higher the organism the greater the suffering. The growth of knowledge is no solution. 

For as the phenomenon of will becomes more complete, the suffering becomes more and more apparent. In the plant there is as yet no sensibility, and therefore no pain. A certain very small degree of suffering is experienced by the lowest species of animal life—Infusoria and Radiata; even in insects the capacity to feel and suffer is still limited. It first appears in ‘” high degree with the complete nervous system of vertebrate animals, and always in a higher degree the more intelligence develops. Thus, in proportion as knowledge attains to distinctness, as consciousness ascends, pain also increases, and reaches its highest degree in man. And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows—the more intelligent he is—the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.

Life is evil because if all strife were altogether ended, boredom would become as intolerable as pain. We observe that the higher the organism the greater the suffering. The growth of knowledge is no solution. 

He that increaseth knowledge, therefore, increaseth sorrow. Even memory and foresight add to human misery; for most of our suffering lies in retrospect or anticipation; pain itself is brief. How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself! 

Finally, and above all, life is evil because life is war. Everywhere in nature we see strife, competition, conflict, and a suicidal alternation of victory and defeat. Every species “fights for the matter, space, and time of the others.” 

The young hydra, which grows like a bud out of the old one, and afterwards separates itself from it, fights, while it is still joined to the old one, for the prey that offers itself, so that the one snatches it out of the mouth of the other. But the bull-dog ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary example of this kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head; the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place every time the experiment is tried.  … Yunghahn relates that he saw in Java a plain, as far as the eye could reach, entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a. battle-field; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles, … which come this way out of the sea to lay their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs who with their united strength lay them on their backs, strip off the small shell from the stomach, and devour them alive. But often then a tiger pounces upon the dogs. … For this these turtles are born. … Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. Yet even the human race … reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will with itself; and we find homo homini lupus [man is a wolf to man]. 

Sorrow increases with knowledge for most of our suffering lies in retrospect or anticipation; pain itself is brief. Everywhere in nature we see strife, competition, conflict, and a suicidal alternation of victory and defeat. 

The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well. 

If we should bring clearly to a man’s sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror; and if we were to conduct the confirmed optimist through the hospitals, infirmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through the prisons, torture-chambers, and slave kennels, over battle-fields and places of execution; it we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, and, finally, allow him to look into the starving dungeons of Ugolino, he too would understand at last the nature of this “best of all possible worlds.” For whence did Dante take the materials of his hell but from our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell out of it. But when, on the other hand, he came to describe heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this. … Every epic and dramatic, poem can only represent a struggle, an effort, a fight for happiness; never enduring and complete happiness itself. It conducts its heroes through a thousand dangers and difficulties to the goal; as soon as this is reached it hastens to let the curtaIn fall; for now there would remain nothing for it to do but to show that the glittering goal in which the hero expected to find happiness had only disappointed him, and that after its attainment he was no better off than before.

The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well. 

We are unhappy married, and unmarried we are unhappy. We are unhappy when alone, and unhappy in society: we are like hedge-hogs clustering together for warmth, uncomfortable when too closely packed, and yet miserable when kept apart. It is all very funny; and “the life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole, … and only lay stress on its most significant features, is really always a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.” Think of it: 

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labor, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it. … Again, under the firm crust of the planet dwell powerful forces of nature, which, as soon as some accident affords them free play, must necessarily destroy the crust, with everything living upon it, as has already taken place at least three times upon our planet, and will probably take place oftener still. The earthquake of Lisbon, the earthquake of Haiti, the destruction of Pompeii, are only small playful hints of what is possible.

The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole, and only lay stress on its most significant features, is really always a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

In the face of all this, “optimism is a bitter mockery of men’s woes”; and “we cannot ascribe to the Theodicy” of Leibnitz, “as a methodical and broad unfolding of optimism, any other merit than this, that it gave occasion later for the immortal Candide of the great Voltaire; whereby Leibnitz’ oft-repeated and lame excuse for the evil of the world—that the bad sometimes brings about the good—received a confirmation which was unexpected by him.” In brief, “the nature or life throughout presents itself to us as intended and calculated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts and struggles; that all good things are vanity, the world in all its ends bankrupt, and life a business which does not cover expenses.”

To be happy, one must be as ignorant as youth. Youth thinks that willing and striving are joys; it has not yet discovered the weary insatiableness of desire, and the fruitlessness of fulfillment; it does not yet see the inevitableness of defeat. 

The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due to the fact that when we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible; it lies down at the bottom of the other side. … Towards the close of life, every day we live gives us the same kind of sensation as the criminal experiences at every step on his way to the gallows. … To see how short life is, one must have lived long. … Up to our thirty-sixth year we may be compared, in respect to the way in which we use our vital energy, to people who live on the interest of their money; what they spend today they have again tomorrow. But from the age of thirty-six onward, our position is like that of the investor who begins to entrench on his capital. … It is the dread of this calamity that makes love of possession increase with age. … So far from youth being the happiest period of life, there is much more truth in the remark made by Plato, at the beginning of the Republic that the prize should rather be given to old age, because then at last a man is freed from the animal passion which has hitherto never ceased to disquiet him. … Yet it should not be forgotten that, when this passion is extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and nothing remains but the hollow shell; or, from another point of view, life then becomes like a comedy which, begun by real actors, is continued and brought to an end by automata dressed in their clothes. 

The nature or life throughout presents itself to us as intended and calculated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts and struggles.

At the end, we meet death. Just as experience begins to coordinate itself into wisdom, brain and body begin to decay. “Everything lingers for but a moment, and hastens on to death.” And if death bides its time it is but playing with us as a cat with a helpless mouse. “It is clear that as our walking is admittedly nothing but a constantly-prevented falling, so the life of our bodies is nothing but a constantly-prevented dying, an ever-postponed death.” “Among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of Eastern despots there is always a costly vial of poison.” The philosophy of the East understands the omnipresence of death, and gives to its students that calm aspect and dignified slowness of carriage, which comes of a consciousness of the brevity of personal existence. The fear of death is the beginning of philosophy, and the final cause of religion. The average man cannot reconcile himself to death; therefore he makes innumerable philosophies and theologies; the prevalence of a belief in immortality is a token of the awful fear of death. 

The fear of death is the beginning of philosophy, and the final cause of religion. The average man cannot reconcile himself to death; the prevalence of a belief in immortality is a token of the awful fear of death. 

Just as theology is a refuge from death, so insanity is a refuge from pain. “Madness comes as a way to avoid the memory of suffering”; it is a saving break in the thread of consciousness; we can survive certain experiences or fears only by forgetting them. 

How unwillingly we think of things which powerfully injure our interests, wound our pride, or interfere with our wishes; with what difficulty do we determine to lay such things before our intellects for careful and serious investigation. … In that resistance of the will to allowing what is contrary to it to come under the examination of the intellect lies the place at which madness can break in upon the mind. … If the resistance of the will against the apprehension of some knowledge reaches such a degree that that operation is not performed in its entirety, then certain elements or circumstances become for the intellect completely suppressed, because the will cannot endure the sight of them; and then, for the sake of the necessary connections, the gaps that thus arise are filled up at pleasure; thus madness appears. For the intellect has given up its nature to please the will; the man now imagines what does not exist. Yet the madness which has thus arisen is the lethe of unendurable suffering; it was the last remedy of harassed nature, i. e., of the will.*

*A source of Freud. 

Just as theology is a refuge from death, so insanity is a refuge from pain. 

The final refuge is suicide. Here at last, strange to say, thought and imagination conquer instinct. Diogenes is said to have put an end to himself by refusing to breathe;—what a victory over the will to live! But this triumph is merely individual; the will continues in the species. Life laughs at suicide, and smiles at death; for every deliberate death there are thousands of in-deliberate births. “Suicide, the willful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself—the species, and life, and will in general—remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may chance to fall.” Misery and strife continue after the death of the individual, and must continue, so long as will is dominant in man. There can be no victory over the ills of life until the will has been utterly subordinated to knowledge and intelligence. 

Misery and strife continue after the death of the individual, and must continue, so long as will is dominant in man. There can be no victory over the ills of life until the will has been utterly subordinated to knowledge and intelligence. 

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SCHOPENHAUER: The Will to Reproduce

March 28, 2022 – 5:05 AM

Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 4.2 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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IV. The World as Will

2. The Will to Reproduce

It can, by the strategy and martyrdom of reproduction. 

It is interesting to note that the division of the Will has to do with living and reproducing. It doesn’t get into social or higher goals.

Every normal organism hastens, at maturity, to sacrifice itself to the task of reproduction: from the spider who is eaten up by the female he has just fertilized, or the wasp that devotes itself to gathering food for offspring it will never see, to the man who wears himself to ruin in the effort to feed and clothe and educate his children. Reproduction is the ultimate purpose of every organism, and its strongest instinct; for only so can the will conquer death. And to ensure this conquest of death, the will to reproduce is placed almost entirely beyond control of knowledge or reflection: even a philosopher, occasionally, has children. 

The will shows itself here as independent of knowledge, and works blindly, as in unconscious nature. … Accordingly, the reproductive organs are properly the focus of will, and form the opposite pole to the brain, which is the representative of knowledge. … The former are the life-sustaining principle,—they ensure endless life; “for this reason they were worshipped by the Greeks in the phallus and by the Hindus in the lingam. … Hesiod and Parmenides said very significantly that Eros is the first, the creator, the principle from which all things proceed. The relation of the sexes … is really the invisible central point of all action and conduct, and peeps out everywhere in spite of all veils thrown over it. It is the cause of war and the end of peace; the basis of what is serious, and the aim of the jest; the inexhaustible source of wit, the key of all allusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints.* … We see it at every moment seat itself, as the true and hereditary lord of the world, out of the fullness of its own strength, upon the ancestral throne; and looking down thence with scornful glance, laugh at the preparations made to bind it, or imprison it, or at least limit it and, wherever possible, keep it concealed, and even so to master it that it shall only appear as a subordinate, secondary concern of life.** 

*A source of Freud’s theory of ”wit and the unconscious.” 
**Schopenhauer, like all who have suffered from sex, exaggerates its role; the parental relation probably outweighs the sexual in the minds of normal adults. 

Every normal organism hastens, at maturity, to sacrifice itself to the task of reproduction. And to ensure this conquest of death, the will to reproduce is placed almost entirely beyond control of knowledge or reflection.

The “metaphysics of love” revolves about this subordination of the father to the mother, of the parent to the child, of the individual to the species. And first, the law of sexual attraction is that the choice of mate is to a large extent determined, however unconsciously, by mutual fitness to procreate. 

Each seeks a mate that will neutralize his defects, lest they be inherited; … a physically weak man will seek a strong woman. …Each one will especially regard as beautiful in another individual those perfections which he himself lacks, nay, even those imperfections which are the opposite of his own.* … The physical qualities of two individuals can be such that for the purpose of restoring as far as possible the type of the species, the one is quite specially and perfectly the completion and supplement of the other. which therefore desires it exclusively. … The profound consciousness with which we consider and ponder every part of the body, … the critical scrupulosity with which we look at a woman who begins to please us … the individual here acts, without knowing it, by order of something higher than himself. … Every individual loses attraction for the opposite sex in pro- portion as he or she is removed from the fittest period for begetting or conceiving: … youth without beauty has still always attraction; beauty without youth has none. … That in every case of falling in love, … what alone is looked to is the production of an individual of a definite nature, is primarily confirmed by the fact that the essential matter is not the reciprocation of love, but possession.

*A source of Weininger. 

And first, the law of sexual attraction is that the choice of mate is to a large extent determined, however unconsciously, by mutual fitness to procreate.

Nevertheless, no unions are so unhappy as these love marriages—and precisely for the reason that their aim is the perpetuation of the species, and not the pleasure of the Individual. “He who marries from love must live in sorrow,” runs a Spanish proverb. Half the literature of the marriage problem is stultified because it thinks of marriage as mating, instead of thinking of it as an arrangement for the preservation of the race. Nature does not seem to care whether the parents are “happy forever afterwards,” or only for a day, so long as reproduction is achieved. Marriages of convenience, ar­ranged by the parents of the mates, are often happier than marriages of love. Yet the woman who marries for love, against the advice of her parents, is in a sense to be admired; for “she has preferred what is of most importance, and has acted in the spirit of nature (more exactly, of the species), while the parents advised in the spirit of individual egoism.” Love is the best eugenics.

Since love is a deception practiced by nature, marriage is the attrition of love, and must be disillusioning. Only a philosopher can be happy in marriage, and philosophers do nat marry. 

Because the passion depended upon an illusion which represented that which has value only for the species as valuable for the individual, the deception must vanish after the attainment of the end of the species. The individual discovers that he has been the dupe of the species. If Petrarch’s passion had been gratified, his song would have been silenced.

Nature does not seem to care whether the parents are “happy forever afterwards,” or only for a day, so long as reproduction is achieved. Love is a deception practiced by nature, and marriage is the attrition of love.

The subordination of the individual to the species as instrument of its continuance, appears again in the apparent dependence of individual vitality on the condition of the reproductive cells. 

The sexual impulse is to be regarded as the inner life of the tree (the species) upon which the life of the individual grows, like a leaf that is nourished by the tree and assists in nourishing the tree; this is why that impulse is so strong, and springs from the depths of our nature. To castrate an individual means to cut him off from the tree of the species upon which he grows, and thus severed, leaves him to wither; hence the degradation of his mental and physical powers. That the service of the species, i.e., fecundation, is followed in the case of every animal individual by momentary exhaustion and debility of all the powers, and in the case of most insects, indeed, by speedy death,—on account of which Celsus said, Seminis emissio est partis animae jactura [The release of semen is part of the loss of the soul]; that in the case of man the extinction of the generative power shows that the individual approaches death; that excessive use of this power at every age shortens life, while on the other hand, temperance in this respect increases all the powers, and especially the muscular powers, on which account it was part of the training of the Greek athletes; that the same restraint lengthens the life of the insect even to the following spring; all this points to the fact that the life of the individual is at bottom only borrowed from that of the species. … Procreation is the highest point; and after attaining to it, the life of the first individual quickly, or slowly sinks, while a new life ensures to nature the endurance of the species, and repeats the same phenomena. … Thus the alternation of death and reproduction is as the pulse-beat of the species. … Death is for the species what sleep is for the individual; … this is nature’s great doctrine of immortality. … For the whole world, with all its phenomena, is the objectivity of the one indivisible will, the Idea, which is related to all other Ideas as harmony is related to the single voice. … In Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe (vol. i, p. 161), Goethe says: “Our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and its activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly.” Goethe has taken the simile from me, not I from him.

Procreation is the highest point; and after attaining to it, the life of the first individual quickly, or slowly sinks, while a new life ensures to nature the endurance of the species, and repeats the same phenomena.

Only in space and time do we seem to be separate beings; they constitute the “principle of individuation” which divides life into distinct organisms as appearing in different places or periods; space and time are the Veil of Maya,—Illusion hiding the unity of things. In reality there is only the species, only life, only will. “To understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself,” to see in “the constant change of matter the fixed permanence of form,”—this is the essence of philosophy. “The motto of history should run: Eadem, sed aliter.” The more things change, the more they remain the same. 

He to whom men and all things have not at all times appeared as mere phantoms or illusions, has no capacity for philosophy. … The true philosophy of history lies in perceiving that, in all the endless changes and motley complexity of events, it is only the self-same unchangeable being that is before us, which today pursues the same ends. as it did yesterday and ever will. The historical philosopher has accordingly to recognize the identical character in all events, … and in, spite of all the variety of special circumstances, of costumes and manners and customs, has to see everywhere the same humanity. … To have read Herodotus is, from a philosophical point of view, to have studied enough history. … Throughout and everywhere the true symbol of nature is the circle, because it is the schema or type of recurrence.

“To understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself,” to see in “the constant change of matter the fixed permanence of form,”—this is the essence of philosophy.

We like to believe that all history is a halting and imperfect preparation for the magnificent era of which we are the salt and summit; but this notion of progress is mere conceit and folly. “In general, the wise in all ages have always said the same things, and the fools, who at all times form the immense majority, have in their way too acted alike, and done the opposite; and so it will continue. For, as Voltaire says, we shall leave the world as foolish and wicked as we found it.”

In the light of all this we get a new and grimmer sense of the inescapable reality of determinism. “Spinoza says (Epistle 62) that if a stone which has been projected through the air had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add to this only that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me; and what in the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognize in myself as wilt, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognize as will.” But in neither the stone nor the philosopher is the will “free.” Will as a whole is free, for there is no other will beside it that could limit it; but each part of the universal Will—each species, each organism, each organ—is irrevocably determined by the whole. 

Everyone believes himself à priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life, which just means that he can become another person. But à posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity; that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns, and as it were, play the part which he has undertaken, to the very end.

Will as a whole is free, for there is no other will beside it that could limit it; but each part of the universal Will—each species, each organism, each organ—is irrevocably determined by the whole. 

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