The World as Will and Idea (vol. 1 of 3)
The World as Will and Idea (vol. 1 of 3)
Translated by R. B. Haldane (Richard Burdon Haldane), Viscount Haldane
The world you see is not the world that is. This is the explosive claim at the heart of Schopenhauer's masterwork, a book written by a young philosopher convinced he'd cracked the fundamental riddle of existence. Schopenhauer argues that reality has two aspects: the world as representation, the phenomenon we perceive through our mental machinery, and the world as Will, the noumenal essence beneath everything. Drawing on Kant while radicalizing him, Schopenhauer insists that what we call reality is forever filtered through the prism of consciousness. But beneath that veil of appearance lies the Will: blind, irrational, endlessly striving, the same force that moves atoms and agitates human desire. Satisfaction is impossible because the moment we get what we want, new want springs up. Suffering is baked into the fabric of existence. This dark, bracing insight would reshape philosophy, seeding Nietzsche, Freud, and the entire existentialist tradition. Conceived in the author's twenties and revised near the end of his life, this is the summation of a lifetime's relentless thinking about consciousness, reality, and the nature of desire.
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“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
“Genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world; and this not merely for moments, but with the necessary continuity and conscious thought to enable us to repeat by deliberate art what has been apprehended and "what in wavering apparition gleams fix in its place with thoughts that stand for ever!””
— Arthur Schopenhauer
