DANIEL KOLAK, SERIES EDITOR

Arthur Schopenhauer
The W orld as Will and Presentation

Volume One

TRANSLATED BY
RICHARD E. AQUILA
THE UNlVERSITY OE TENNESSEE

IN COLLABORATION WITH
DAVIDCARUS
First published 2008 by Pearson Edueation, Ine.

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ISBN-13: 9780321355782 Cpbk)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788-1860.
[Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. English]
Arthur Schopenhauer : the world as will and presentation / translated
by
Richard E. Aquila in collaboration with David Carus.
p. cm. - (Longman library of primary sources in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-321-35578-4 (alk. paper)
1. Philosophy.2. Will. 3. Idea (Philosophy) 4. Knowledge. Theory of.
1. Title.
B3138.E5A65 2008
!93-dc 22

Library ofCongress Contro! Number: 2007001262

 Contents

PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION BY MATTHIAS KOSSLER vii

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
A. Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung xii
B. Principle of Sufficient Ground and Principium
Individuationis xvi
C. Der Wille xxiv
D. The A~ebung ofWill xxix
E. The Text xxxix
F. The Present and Other Translations xlvi
G. Selective Notes on Some Terms xi
H. Selective Bibliography [ii
1. Acknowledgments lvi

THE WORLD AS WILL AND PRESENTAnON

VOLUMEONE

Schopenhauer's Table ofContents Expanded 3

Preface to the First Edition (1818) 9
Preface to the Second Edition (1844) 17
Preface to the Third Edition (1859) 29

FIRST BOOK
The W orId as Presentation: First Consideration
Presentation as Subject to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground: The Object of Experience and Science 31

SECONDBOOK
The W orld as Will: First Consideration
The Objectification ofWill 131

iii
iv Contents

THIRDBOOK
The W orld as Presentation: Second Consideration
Presentation Independent of the Principle
of Sufficient Ground
The Platonic [dea: The Object of Art 2/1

FOURTHBOOK
The World as Will: Second Consideration
With the Achievement ofSelf-Cognizance Affirmation
and Denial of the Will for Life 321

APPENDIX
Critique ofKantian Philosophy 479

TRANSLATOR'S APPENDIX
Schopenhauer' s Diagrams for Book One §9 618

ENDNOTES 620

INDEX 656
FOR MY GRANDCHILDREN
Megan
Sam
Emilio
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface to the
Translation

German editors of Schopenhauer's works are confronted with a

well known "curse" that the author laid upon "everyone who in future
printings of my work will modify anything of them knowingly, be it a
sentence or just one word, a syllable, a letter, a punctuation mark."j With
this unequivocal testimony in the background, there is a long-Iasting
and, as it seems, never-ending discussion about the right approach to an
edition. The introduction to the following translation alludes to this
problem. Now, if even German editors are not able to follow Schopen-
hauer's instruction in a satisfying manner, how much more must this be
the case regarding translations of the editions of his works. For as
Schopenhauer explains in bis essay "On Language and Words," any
translation is "necessarily defective"; "We are hardly ever able to trans-
late from one language into another any characteristic, pregnant, and
significant passage in such a way that it would produce the same effect
on the reader in apreeise and complete manner."jj The reason for this
lies in the fact that concepts often do not correspond with each other in
different languages (so, writing this, I am aware that the concept of
"concept" does not correspond exactly to the German Begriff, and
neither does "idea"). Thus even "the very best translation will at most
be related to the original as the transposition of a given piece of music

iDer handschriftliche Nachlass, ed. Arthur Hübscher (Frankfurt: W. Kramer,

1966-1975), IV/2, p. 33.
iiparerga und Paralipomena, vol. H, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Arthur Hübscher,
vol. 6, p. 602.

vii
viii Preface to the Translation

into another key is to the given piece itself'; and as Schopenhauer adds,
"those who understand music know what that means."
According to this estimation there are two ways to proceed, both
of them unsatisfying: either a translation "remains dead and its style is
forced, stiff and unnatural" or "it becomes free, in other words, is con-
tent with an ci peu pres and thus is incorrect." Up to now, a translation
of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung has been available to Anglo-
American scholars that comes nearer to the first alternative. Even to
one who, like me, has no great competence in English, it is obvious that
the translation of Eric F. J. Payne, The World as Will and Representa-
!ion, sounds like a German text written in English words. This might be
an advantage for German readers but not to those to whom it is
addressed. So much the more it is therefore to be applauded that a
translation is here presented with a main aim of providing a readable
English text. Such a new translation is not only able to draw more
attention to one of the most important European thinkers for the Anglo-
American sphere - a11 the more appropriate inasmuch as Sehopenhauer's
philosophy was first discovered and aeknowledged in England 153
years ago, even before he became known in his homeland. It also con-
tributes to a better understanding of Sehopenhauer's philosophy by
English readers. Any translation that is truly readable, and yet as accurate
as a translation could be, is neeessarily the produet of the effort to fmd
a path between the Scylla of an artificial, inanimate style and the Cha-
rybdis of free transposition. From some discussions with the translators
in which I have margina11y participated, I know how much care has been
put into the best translation of some of the main concepts, as weIl as in
regard to the meaning of the words in their use in common English.
One may get an impression of these discussions from the translator's
introduction.
It is always a difficult task to minimize the general disadvantages
of translations, with their necessary give and take, not to mention the
danger of mixing translation with interpretation, which is partieularly
high in the case of Sehopenhauer's philosophy, because it is more in
need of interpretation than some others. As to how far the present trans-
lation succeeds in this task has to be judged by the experts. In any ease
I am very glad about this new translation, and ladmire the courage and
the work of Richard Aquila and David Carus. The translations of Erie
F. 1. Payne have been most important for the development of Anglo-
Ameriean Sehopenhauer research. They have undeniable merits, and
Payne has rightly been named an honorary president ofthe Sehopenhauer
Soeiety. But now -as indicated by an inereasing number of remarks from
many sides in the last years - the time has come for this new translation,
 The World as Will and Presentation ix

which I welcome in the name ofthe international Schopenhauer Society.

I am sure that it will contribute to a new era of occupation with
Schopenhauer's philosophy, not only in the Anglo-American world,
but no less in lndia, where Schopenhauer has recently been discovered,
and indeed aB over the world.

MATTHIAS KOSSLER
University ofMainz
President, Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft
This page intentionally left blank
 Translator' s
Introduction

In 1819 Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) published his chief

work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. i In 1844, rather than
subject the original to a major revision, he supplemented it with a
second volume:
for the reason that the twenty-five years that have passed ...
have brought such a notable alteration in my manner of
exposition and in the tone of delivery that it just would not do
to fuse the content of the second volume into a whole with that
ofthe first. . .I therefore put forth the two works in separation,
and have often changed nothing in the earlier exposition even
where I would now express myself quite differently; for I
wanted to guard against spoiling the work of my younger
years with the carping of old age. ii
The two-volume work then appeared in a third edition in 1859. The
present is a translation of the frrst volume of that edition. It has been
produced in collaboration with David Carus, whose translation of the
second volume reflects a reciprocal division oflabor. iii

i1819 per printed publication date, but in fact December, 1818.

üPreface to the second edition, p. 21. The page references in this introduction
are, where relevant, to this translation. However, for the widest convenience of
readers, the pagination ofthe German edition (see below), is inc1uded in the
margins of this volume and utilized in the index.
iiiThe main responsibility for the present volume and its introduction being
mine, and at least the initial impetus behind the project and some of its initial

Xl
xii Translator's Introduction

A. Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung

The world is a presentation to me. In this sentence, the first of the
book, Schopenhauer characterizes one of the two sides of die Welt, the
world, as he sees it. If there is such a thing as literal translation, the
present is, at least in one respect, decidedly non-literal. Why not: the
world is my (meine) presentation? On the other hand, the choice of
'presentation' as a translation of Vorstellung may seem overly literal.
Etymologically, Vorstellung connotes placement in a position
(Stellung) before (vor) or as present to someone; the 'pre' in 'present'
and 'presentation' captures this. i In ordinary usage, however, one's
Vorstellung of something is simply one's "idea" of it. And so, as we
might put it: the world is my idea. ii Furthermore, although it is an
overstatement, Schopenhauer says that "thorough acquaintance" with
Kant is required for this book. iii At least in philosophical contexts, Kant
equates Vorstellung with the Latin repraesentatio (A320/B376).iv And
so, as we might also put it: the world is my representation. v I return to
the notion of representation below. In any event, as suggested, the case
for "presentation" goes hand in hand with the need to avoid the sense of

determinations, I frequently write in the first person, at least through the first
four sections of this introduction. It is to be borne in mind, however, that with-
out the elose collaboration in which we have engaged throughout, this would
not be the translation that it iso
iThe 'pre' is from the Latin prae, which, like the corresponding English, of
course signifies a temporal notion in other contexts. (A few other examples of
the non-temporal "before": precinct, precipice, precipitation, preface, prefer,
prefix, preposition, preside, prescribe, pretend, prevail.)
iiThe Warld as Will and Idea, tr. in 3 vols., R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (Lon-
don: Trubner & Co., 1883-1886); The Warld as Will and Idea, abridged, ed.
David Berman, tr. li1l Berman (London: 1. M. Dent, 1995 [Everyman Library]).
iiiPreface to the first edition, p. 13; second edition, p. 23.
iV'Representation' and its cognates are fairly standard in translations ofKant,
e.g., in the translations of the Critique a/ Pure Reason most frequently cited in
the literature: Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929); Paul Guyer
and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). On the other
hand, Werner Pluhar opts for 'presentation' (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Co., 1996). References to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft appear in standard AlB
format, referring to the pagination of the first (1781) and second (1787) edi-
tions, typically so indicated in the margins of modern editions.
vThe Warld as Will and Representatian, tr. in two vo1s. by E. F. 1. Payne
(Indian Hills, Colorado: Falcon's Wing Press, 1958; repr. New York: Dover
Publications, 1966).
 The World as Will and Presentation xiii

possession generally attaching to possessive pronouns. More positively,

the point is to promote what we take to be the central intention in
Schopenhauer's use of the term: not possession by, but presentation of
objects to, a cognizant subject.
With respect to this central sense, it mayaiso be useful to note that
the term Vorstellung is commonly used to refer to theatrical presenta-
tions. Several times, Schopenhauer in fact calls the side of the world
that he calls meine Vorstellung a Schauspiel, or a "show" (or "play"Y: a
show that is "mine" in the sense that I am its spectator. But as it turns
out, it is also mine in another sense. Just as with the corresponding
English term, Vorstellung can refer either to what is presented or to
the process or action of presenting it. Thus we may say that Harnlet is
"our" presentation for the evening; but we may of course also speak of
the evening's presentation ofthat play, and of the doings of its various
characters. It is just here, however, that a decisive step is taken. For
what we soon leam in Book One of this work is that what always does
the ''presenting'' - what actually sets (stellt) the world as presentation
before (vor) one - is just that very spectator, the cognizant subject
(erkennendes Subjekt) itself. And even this falls short of fully captur-
ing the radical character of Schopenhauer's view. For one might still
suppose that, even ifwhat does the "presenting" is the cognizant subject
itself, what is presented is at least normally an independently existing
reality. But for Schopenhauer: ''No object without subject."ii And so, as

i § 52, p. 318; § 64, p. 417; also, at p. 524 in the Appendix ("Critique of

Kantian Philosophy"), a Puppenspiel, "puppet show"; at § 60, p. 387, a "tragi-
comedy" of which one is the spectator. Schopenhauer also compares the sense
in which, as he will argue in Book One, all the objects that one perceives in phys-
ical space are inseparable from the Vorstellung of them - and so exist only in
one's "head" as their entire Schauplatz - to the sense in which one can see
mountains, forests, and seas in the theater: The World as Will and Presentation,
vol. 11, eh. 2 (in Arthur Hübscher's edition of the Sämtliche Werke, vol. 3, p.
26). He also uses the term Schauplatz for the "stage" or "scene" of the world as
Vorstellung at § 7, p. 63; § 26, p. 177; § 62, p. 396; and vol. 11, pp. 408,651,
and 667. As one may note, while a theatrical presentation has its audience,
there is also a sense in which each audience has its presentation: one's presen-
tation for the evening may be a performance of Hamlet; another's may be King
Lear. (Throughout, references by page number to Hübscher's edition of Will
and Presentation, vol. 11, refer to the bracketed marginal pagination in that
edition, corresponding to that of the 1859 edition and on the whole identical
with Hübscher's own pagination in that volume.)
ii§ 7, p. 61; cf. §§ 1-2, and Appendix, p. 502.
XIV Translator's Introduction

it turns out, a still more apt analogy would be another upon which he in
fact dweIls at greater length: what gets presented to one in a dream (§
5).;
This does not mean that the spectating subject spins its show or
"dream" out of nothing. The point of departure is always some particu-
lar material state that, as Schopenhauer explains in §§ 4 and 6, is always
some portion of the subject's own body and, to that extent, always in
some sense the subject's "immediate object"; as he also explains,
however, it is thereby "presented," and as such an "object" of cognizance,
in only a loose sense of these terms. (The presupposition of materiality
by any sort of presentational activity, which - to the extent that we
regard matter as an abject - might of course seem to conflict with the
principle "No object without subject," is a point to which I return in
section D.) Most crucially, in any case, Schopenhauer repeatedly draws
a distinction between ordinary, individual cognizant subjects and that
"one" subject which is said to be "whoie and undivided in every being
that is engaged in presentation" (§ 2, p. 34), a subject that amounts to
distinct individuals only by virtue of a "special relation" to distinct bodies
(§ 19, p. 141; cf. § 18, p. 137). Schopenhauer describes this "subject"ii as
the "world's one eye that looks out from all cognizant beings" (§ 38, p.
242; cf. § 36, p. 229; § 54, p. 334); as a subject of which individual
subjects are only the "bearer," and that is itself in turn the "bearer of
the world" (§ 61, p. 387); and as a subject that, unlike any individual
subject, "is not in time, since time is only the more immediate form
belonging to all of its presentational activity."iii I return to this point
below.
With their main point unchanged, a number of passages can be
read with Vorstellung taken either way: referring either to what is pre-
sented (qua presented) or to the presentational activity involved. But this
is of course not the case when Schopenhauer describes the warld as

iOn account of the dual role of the cognizant subject (both as that to which
the world is, as its spectator, a presentation, and as that which ultimately "does"
the presenting), we translate (e.g., § I, p. 31) the distinetion between Vorstellung
and das Vorstellende - as one might wish to put it, between presentation and
"that which does the presenting" - as a distinction between presentation and that
which is "engaged in" presentation.
iiIt remains to be considered whether it is not in fact misleading to call it a
"subject," as opposed to "pure subjectivity" itself. As will be noted in section
D., however, there is also a certain ambiguity in the latter notion.
iiiist nicht in der Zeit: denn die Zeit ist erst die nähere Form alles seines Vor-
stellens (vol. H, eh. I, p. 18).
 The World as Will and Presentation xv

Vorstellung. (In other cases, other sorts of presentations are presented,

e.g., the abstract objects ofthinking andjudging (concepts, Begriffe), to
which Schopenhauer gives special attention in § 9 of Book One, or
those special objects that he calls Platonic Ideas (Ideen), which are
central to the theory of aesthetic awareness in Book Three.) And
Schopenhauer makes it sufficiently clear that, in his own usage, the
primary sense of Vorstellung is precisely that of what is presented to a
subject: the presented object (again, qua presented, as opposed to what-
ever it may be "in itself'). Thus in his essay On the Fourfold Root 0/
the Principle 0/ Sulficient Ground:
To be object for the subject and to be a presentation to us
(unsere Vorstellung) are the same thing. All presentations to
us are the subject's objects (Objekte des Subjekts), and all the
subject's objects are presentations to us. i
In Will and Presentation, Schopenhauer also equates Vorstellung both
with Objekt des Subjekts (§ 24, p. 158; § 27, p. 194) - employing, again,
an obviously non-possessive genitive - and with Objekt fiir ein Subjekt
(§ 30, p. 211)Y
As for 'represent' and 'representation,' I have not found a need for
the noun here, and 1 use the verb for both vertreten and repräsentieren,
never vorstellen. iii By contrast, as already noted, 'representation' has

iFourjold Root, 2nd ed., § 16. (Where, as here, a section is short enough for
easy location of a passage, I do not cite a page number; I also cite exclusively
from the second edition, unless otherwise noted). Cf. Will and Presentation, §
17, p. l32: "For we have no idea at all how to distinguish such an object from a
presentation, but find that they are one and the same thing, since all objects
always and etemally presuppose a subject and are therefore still presentations;
that is why we have recognized being-an-object as belonging to presentation's
most general form, which is precisely that of division into object and subject."
iiSchopenhauer uses the expression "object for a subject" on other occasions
as weIl (§ 32, pp. 217-18, e.g., twice), though less frequently than he does the
genitive construction (e.g., § 4, p. 41; § 6, p. 50; § 7, p. 60; § 19, p. 141). For
this reason, one might even prefer to say that the world is a presentation jor,
rather than to, cognizant subjects. But that is undesirable on account of its sug-
gestion of a transcendent purpose, not at all apart of Schopenhauer's thinking.
iiiAt § 52, p. 315, J also translate nachbildende Musik as "representational
music," although otherwise using 'copy' for nachbilden. For the verb darstellen
- with exceptions not worth noting - I have generally used 'depict' or 'display,'
employing the latter for reference to ways in which will is said to be displayed
or "manifested." But I generally reserve 'manifestation' and 'manifest' for
xvi Translator' s Introduction

become - but not without exception - commonplace in connection with

Kant, and also familiar in translations of Schopenhauer. But in addition
to failing to bring out the dual notion of that which is "set before" a
cognizant subject as its object, and the presentationaJ activity of the
subject therein engaged, it disguises the point by way of a misleading
suggestion. Namely, it suggests that what is in question is some sort of
internal item (a "representation"), internal to the state of the subject,
and toward which its cognitive activity is in the first instance directed.
Whether or not this leads to the additional supposition that such items
function by representing something existing independently of that
activity, it misdirects us from the main idea. i

B. Principle of Sufficient Ground and Principium

Individuationis
The first and third ofthe four Books of The Warld as Will and Pre-
sentation focus on the world as presentation. The subtitle of Book One

Manifestation and manifestieren, though on occasion also thus translating A'us-

serung and its verb - generally "expression" and "express" - when Ausdruck
(also "expression") is in elose proximity. For the highly versatile Darstellung, I
have used a variety of tenns, inc1uding of course 'depiction' and 'display.'
Sometimes, for example, what is in question is simply an "account" or an
"exposition" of something; with darstellen, in such contexts, I have on a few
occasions also used "set forth." 'Represent' and 'representation,' and even 'pre-
sent' and 'presentation,' might of course sometimes also be used, but they are
not so used in the present volume.
On a few occasions of non-substantive import, where it would sound pedan-
tic otherwise, 1 have also used 'idea' for Vorstellung, fOT example, referring to a
"grotesque idea" (groteske Vorstellung) at p. 587. However, T also use 'idea'
otherwise, generaHy, namely, for Gedanke, but only at points where 'thought'
does not seem quite right for the latter; I also use 'idea' for Einfall, sometimes
modified (e.g., "a sudden witty idea" [ein witziger EinfallJ). But these are not
common occurrences, and nothing of substance is connected with 'idea' in this
translation - as opposed to 'Idea' (with initial capital), which translates Schopen-
hauer's Idee.
iOf course, it is Schopenhauer's view that, with the exception of concepts
(Begriffe) - which are mere abstractions - aH ofthe objects coming before our
consciousness are, in their "inner essence," what he caHs "will." But it would
be wrong to take it to follow from this that those objects, those Vorstellungen,
are "representations" of the will in question. In any case, what Schopenhauer
himself in the first instance intends is that those objects are ways in which the
will in question is presented, displayed, or manifested to one.
 The World as Will and Presentation xvii

- titled "The World as Presentation: First Consideration" - is "Presentation

as Subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground (Vorstellung unter-
worfen dem Satze vom Grunde): The Object ofExperience and Science."i
As it is here, the word 'sufficient' (zureichender) is often omitted. But
it is standardly inserted in translations, and we follow this practice. We
depart from common practice, however, in that the principle is more
usually called the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I explain this point
below. (Throughout, we employ initial capitals to highlight the princi-
ple's importance for Schopenhauer.)
In 1813, Schopenhauer published the first edition of the work to
which 1 referred in the preceding section, On the Fourfold Root ofthe
Principle of Sufficient Ground (Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes
vom zureichenden Grunde)Y Referring to that work in the Preface to
the first edition of The World as Will and Presentation, he calls it the
latter's "introduction," and he says that "Without acquaintance with this
introduction and propaedeutic, true understanding of the present work
is altogether impossible." He had, in the first edition of Will and Presen-
tation, in fact titled its preface "Preface in Place of the Introduction."
At eight points, he also refers to the Fourfold Root not by title, but
simply as "the introductory treatise." Nevertheless, it is something of
an exaggeration to describe it as absolutely prerequisite to an under-
standing ofhis chiefwork. On the other hand, it will be useful to have a
brief overview of the principle with which it is concemed; some further
points will be added in endnotes to the translation.
The Principle of Sufficient Ground bears on all of the members of
what (with the need of a certain qualification) Schopenhauer calls the

i Book Three - titled "The World as Presentation: Second Consideration" - is

subtitled "Presentation Independent of the Principle of Sufficient Ground. The
Platonic Idea: The Object of Art." For brief comment, see section D., below.
iiHereinafter referred to as "the FOUlfold Root." The first edition has only
recently been translated into English for the first time: F. C. White, Schopen-
hauer's Early Fourfold Root: Translation and Commentary (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate Publishing Ud., 1997 [Avebury Series in PhilosophyD. The work was
accepted by the University of Jena as Schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation in
1813. For a translation of the second edition, to which I exclusively refer, see
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Fouifold Root 0/ the Principle 0/ SujJicient Reason,
tr. E. F. J. Payne (La SaUe, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1974); here
throughout, however, the translations are mine. (It might be noted that Payne
generally translates Grund with the disjunctive "ground or reason.") The origi-
nal second-edition (1847) pagination is reproduced in the margins ofHübscher's
edition, contained in the first volume ofhis edition ofthe Sämtliche Werke.
xviii Translator's lntroduction

"four classes" into which "everything can be divided that can become
an object for us, thus all our presentations."i (In Will and Presentation,
he simply refers to these as "objects of the first," sccond, ete., class.)
Corresponding to each of these classes of objects there is a distinct
"mode" (Gestalt, Gestaltung) of the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
Corresponding to the latter, in turn, there are four ways in which the
concept of necessity applies with respect to presentations.
(1) First class of objects: phenomena (Erscheinungen),ii or objects
perceptible (or imaginable) in space and time, insofar as such objects are
regarded as part of "empirical reality." In § 17 of the Fouifold Root he
calls these "perceptual,iii compiete, empirical presentations." Here the
principie in question - in its mode as Principie of the Sufficient Ground
of Becoming (des Werdens) - concems changes 0/ state with respect to
objects of this c1ass. According to this principle, all such changes have
a ground in antecedent changes with respect to objects ofthe same class;
given the ground in question, the consequent state is necessary in accor-
dance with causallaws. Although considerabIy expanded in the second
edition of the Fouifold Root, Schopenhauer's treatment of this c1ass of
objects, and of the concept of causality, occupies the largest portion of
both editions of that work. Where Will and Presentation goes further is
in considering this class of objects from two points of view: in Book

'§ 16, p. 26; p. 42 in Payne (tr.). The qualification relates to the special class
of presentation that Schopenhauer calls ldeas (Ideen); these are the focus of
Book Three.
iiWe follow Payne in translating Erscheinung as "phenomenon" rather than
"appearance" (except where the point is specifically to refer to the "appearing"
or the "coming to appearance" ofa phenomenon). This Is in order to avoid sug-
gesting that the "thing in itself' underlying the phenomenon is indeed some sort
of "thing" that appears in various modes by virtue of being variously perceived
by us, as opposed to some sort of "power" or "force" whose express ions or man-
ifestations are perceived and thus "appear" to uSo One might also note that the
same objects can in principle "appear" as mere figments of imagination, dream,
or hallucination as weil. We may still regard them as Erscheinungen in such
cases; but then, as noted, evcn empirical "reality" is comparable to a dream in
Schopenhauer's philosophy.
iiianschaulichen. We follow Payne (but are more consistent) in translating
Anschauung as "perception." As Schopenhauer notes, the objects in question are
"complete" in that they contain not simply what Kant had called a "formal" ele-
ment - to be found in the third cl ass of objects (space and time) - "but also the
material element (das Materiale) in phenomena," corresponding to the fact of
their apprehension through the medium of sensation (Empfindung).
 The World as Will and Presentation XIX

One, as they are subject to causallaw (as well as in their relation to the
second and third c1asses of objects); in Book Two, as they are "objecti-
fications" or manifestations of"wi11." But the concept of causality is also
the focus of discussion in both Books: most prominently, in Book One,
§ 4; in Book Two, §§ 17, 23-24, 26.
(2) Second c1ass of objects: abstract objects, concepts (Begriffe).
Here the principle in question - in its mode as Principle of the Sufficient
Ground of Cognition (des Erkennens) - concems those judgments that
can be formed by way of combinations of objects of this c1ass. Accord-
ing to tlIis principle, tlIe concept of tlIe trutlI of a judgment is correlated
with tlIe concept of necessity with respect to its adequately grounded
justijication. i In Will and Presentation, Schopenhauer focuses on objects
of this sort, on that particular type of cognizance tlIat is made possible
by their means, Le., knowledge and science (Wissen, Wissenschaft)/i
and on tlIe distinction between tlIe faculty of reason (Vernunft), to which
concepts pertain, and the faculty ofunderstanding (Verstand) or intellect
(Intellekt), whose province involves a pre-conceptual (and in certain
respects superior) grasp of causal relations: esp., §§ 8-10, § 12, and
§§ 14-15 ofBook One. He further discusses Wissenschaft (science)
at various points in Book Two, e.g., in §§ 17,24,27. In addition, at the
end of § 54 in Book Four, he emphasizes the role of abstract conceptual

i"Truth is thus the reference of a judgment to something distinet from it,

which is called its ground" (Fourfold Root, § 29; cf. Will and Presentation, §
15, p. 114: "truth is the referenee of a judgment to its eognitive ground." Four
kinds oftruth are distinguished by Schopenhauer (Fourfold Root, §§ 30-33): (i)
formal-logieal truth (grounded in a grasp of the laws oflogie, or the general "laws
of thought," as they are operative in the performance of formal-logical dedue-
tions; (ii) empirical truth, grounded in eonerete experience (and what we would
eaU "inductive" logie); (iii) transcendental truth, grounded in cognizance of a
priori conditions of the very possibility of experienee; (iv) metalogieal truth,
grounded in eognizance of the laws expressive of the essenee of reason (Ver-
nunft) as such, and thus underlying the possibility oftruth oftype (i). (Although
Schopenhauer isn't always c1ear about the question of "neeessity" in this
eontext, perhaps the best way to look at it is that, according to the sort of truth
that is in question in a judgment taken to be true, there are four sorts of grounds
that are necessarily adequate as grounds for taking it to be true.)
"Apart from non-technical referenees to knowledge as familiarity, aequain-
tanee, or expertise (kennen, Kenntnis), and an oeeasional referenee to that of
which one is "conseious" (bewusst), we reserve 'know' and 'knowledge' for
wissen and Wissen. We translate erkennen, Erkennen, and Erkenntnis in terms,
not of"knowing," but rather of"cognition," "cognizance," and (less frequently)
"reeognition. "
xx Translator's Introduction

thought in a certain sort of "authentie" affirmation of the will for life,

and again at the end of § 55, in his discussion of "acquired character."
In §§ 66 and 68, on the other hand, he emphasizes the intuitive (intuitiv)
and non-abstract character of the sort of cognizance that can ultimately
lead to true virtue - which consists precisely in a denial of the will for
life. i
(3) Third class of objects: space and time as objects of a special
sort of"pure perception" (reine Anschauung), characteristic ofthe mental
activity of pure mathematicians, but in some way implicated in all
ordinary empirical perception as well. ii Here the principle in question -
in its mode as Principle ofthe Sufficient Ground ofBeing (des Seins)-
concems relative location within the two special objects of this class.
According to this principle, all such locations are themselves "determin-
ing" (bestimmende) grounds with respect to all other possible locations.
Although Schopenhauer does not always put it with quite the same
emphasis as Kant, what he has in mind is what Kant had put, in the
"Transcendental Aesthetic" of the Critique 0/ Pure Reason, in terms
that might incline us to speak of space and time themselves, rather than
relative locations within them, as the true "grounds of being."iii Namely,
as Kant emphasizes and Schopenhauer presumably also holds, locations
in space and time are always apprehended precisely within aspace and
time that are in their own turn holistically apprehended, in the special

i For criticism of the notion of "practical reason" as a source of morality, see

also § 16 and, in the Appendix, pp. 594jJ.
ii These same objects, insofar as they are perceived (wahrgenommen) as filled
with perceptible matter - which Schopenhauer says may thus be called "the per-
ceptibility oftime and space" (die Wahrnehmbarkeit von Zeit und Raum) - are
said to be in some sense indistinguishable from tbe objects ofthe first dass, i.e.,
from ordinary objects perceptible in space and time (Fourfold Root § 35, p. 123;
Payne [tr.], p. 193). On the translation of Anschauung and Wahrnehmung -
generally , but with important exceptions, both of them "perception" - see the
notes on translation in section G., below. (Generally, in translations ofKant and
sometimes in other translations of Schopenhauer, reine Anschauung is "pure
intuition.")
iiiAnd in Will and Presentation, Schopenhauer in fact frequently refers to
space and time tbemselves (along with causality), not simply as what the Prin-
ciple of Sufficient Ground, in one of its modes, is concerned with, but precisely
as modes (Gestalten, Gestaltungen) ofthat Principle: e.g., § 24, p. 160; § 25, p.
168; § 35, p. 225. Perhaps most explicitly: "Thus time is nothing other than the
ground of being in time, i.e., suceession; spaee is nothing other than the Prin-
eiple ofSuffieient Ground with respect to spaee, thus loeation ... " (§ 7, p. 66).
 The World as Will and Presentation xxi

pure perception in question, as antecedently given with respect to any

such possible determinations. i For both Kant and Schopenhauer, in any
case, the pure perception in question is what grounds insight into the
necessities of arithmetic and geometry. In the present work, Schopen-
hauer introduces this mode of the Principle of Sufficient Ground in § 3,
and he focuses on its connection with mathematical knowledge in §§ 15
and24.
(4) Fourth class of objects: with respect to each individual subject,
that very individual itself, insofar as it is perceptible to itself through a
kind of inner cognizance, not in any way directly referring to existence
as a physical object in space. Here the principle in question - in its mode
as Principle of the Sufficient Ground of Action (des Handeins), other-
wise known as the Law of Motivation (Gesetz der Motivation) - concems
willed action on the part of objects of this class. ii According to this
principle, every action has a motive (a particular state of cognizance at
the moment of the action) with respect to which it constitutes a neces-
sary response, given the character ofthe subject in question. üi The role
of"character" is treated in § 46 ofthe first edition ofthe Fourfold Root;
the second edition only briefly alludes to it, at the end of § 43, referring
the reader instead to Schopenhauer's Prize Essay on the Freedom ofthe

iI say "apprehend" in this introductory context because it sounds more natu-

ral than "perceive," but the latter is the term (anschauen) that Schopenhauer
himself uses, both for the "apprehension" of pure space and time and of objects
therein. In the translation itself, however, I generally reserve "apprehend" for
auffassen. (For the exception, see the note on Wahrnehmung in section G.)
Schopenhauer does not use auffassen for the "perception" of pure space and time,
although he does regularly use it for that ofboth ordinary objects, and relations
involving them, and Ideas.)
iiAs Schopenhauer emphasizes, one is not in the same way cognizant of one-
self - indeed strictly speaking not at all cognizant of oneself (since that would
require cognizance of oneself as an object) - as a cognizant subject: Fowfold
Root, § 4l. In section D., below, r comment on the question ofthe identity of
the subjects of willing and cognition, and on the senses in which the cognizant
subject both is and is not cognizable as an object. In the meantime it should be
noted that, as an individual subject, both ofwilling and cognition, one is a phys-
ical individual existing in space, even if there is a special mode of awareness of
oneself that makes no reference to this mode of existence.
iiiGiven that the ground in question is astate of cognizance, it would seem
wrong to regard this as a special case of the sort of causality that bears on objects
of the first class. But Schopenhauer does speak of it in these terms: Fourfold
Root § 20, pp. 45ff(Payne [tr.], pp. 69jj); cf Will and Presentation, § 23, pp.
154ff.
xxii Translator' 5 Introduction

Will. i In Will and Presentation, the relevant notions receive particular

attention in §§ 20, 23, 26, and 28 of Book Three, and in § 55 of Book
Four.
Now Schopenhauer equates the general principle whose four modes
bear on these four c1asses of objects with what is known in Latin as the
principium rationis sufficientis. But apart from the fact that we are trans-
lating from German and not from Latin - and that 'ground' has the
advantage not only of an etymological connection with Grund, but with
a number of other terms whose translations standardly honor that con-
nection - Schopenhauer hirnself calls attention to the !imitations of
the Latin. As he emphasizes in the following passage, the word ratio
threatens to conflate a distinction that is fundamental in his philosophy,
namely, between the faculties of reason (Vernunft) and understanding
(Verstand). In commenting on the Principle ofthe Sufficient Ground of
Cognition, he first notes that, since the Grund in question "is always
something by which judgments are supported, or on which they rest
(darauf das Urteil sich stützt, oder beruht), the German term Grund is
fittingly chosen." But then he adds:
In Latin and all the languages derived from it, the term for a
cognitive ground (der Name des Erkenntnisgrundes) coincides
with the term for reason (mit dem der Vernunft): thus both are
called ratio, la ragione, la razon, la raison, the reason. This
testifies to one's recognition that cognizance ofthe grounds of
judgments is the most preeminent function of reason, its
business xa:r' eSOXriv Y
This is of course to grant that the Principle of Sufficient Ground
does indeed give expression to the preeminent business ofthe faculty of
reason. But the faculty of reason, for Schopenhauer, deals only in
abstractions. It deals only in the application of abstract concepts to
something already pre-conceptually understood. Thus in any instance of
actually applying the principle in question - and in particular therefore
in applying it to that "world as presentation" whose apriori formal

i See chapter III thereof. This essay, submitted in 1838 to a competition spon-
sored the Norwegian Society of Sciences, received its prize the following year
and was published by the Society in 1840. Schopenhauer then republished it,
along with an essay on The Foundation 0/ Morality, as one ofthe two parts of
his Two Fundamental Problems ofEthics (Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik).
iikat' exochen (par excellence): Fourfold Root, § 29.
 The WorId as Will and Presentation xxiii

structure is that of space, time, and causality - one is applying one's

faculty of reason precisely to certain structures, or "forms," that belong
as such to the faculty of understanding (part of what Schopenhauer calls
"intellect" [Intellekt]). That to which the principle in question gives
abstract expression is in the first instance a fact about these formal
structures. As one might even also note, at least in the particular case of
the formal structures of space and time, it is plainly unnatural to speak
of locations within them (as opposed to events occurring at locations) as
determining "reasons" with respect to one another, but not unnatural to
speak ofthem as mutually determining "grounds."
In any case, the special status of what Schopenhauer cal1s under-
standing or intellect consists in the particular role that this faculty plays
in the very generation of the world as presentation. lt achieves the latter
by accomplishing a kind ofmental "projection,,,j or "setting," of objects
of perception into the space and time of the perceiver. Therein, as
objects now presented to one, they are themselves merely discriminable
jj
portions ofthe perceiver's perceptual field. In turn, this is accomplished
by way of a pre-conceptual response to sensation (Empfindung), as
that which is thereby always in a certain sense part of one's body as
"immediate object."
Insofar as this cognitive accomplishment does not rest on the
possession of concepts, it of course does not presuppose the pos session
of concepts relating to relative position in, or to causallaws bearing on
the occupation of, the perceiver's space and time. Nevertheless, it rests
on one's cognitive faculty bringing about, with respect to one's percep-
tual field, what one will necessarily be ahle to conceptualize in those
terms, once one's faculty of reason has gone to work upon it. In this
sense, space, time, and causality - as apriori forms belonging to our
cognitive faculty - playa ground-level role in the constitution of the
world as presentation. But there is also a crucial distinction to be drawn
among these forms. Space and time - the only space and time ofwhich
we are able to conceive - concern the apriori perceptible form 0/ any
perceptual field within which our faculty of understanding is able to set
objects before us (i.e., is able to present them to us). Thus they are in an

iSchopenhauer uses the term projizieren in the Fourfold Rool § 21, p. 77

(Payne [tr.l, p. 119), and in Will and Presentation Il, eh. 22, p. 312. In the for-
mer passage, he refers to the latter and also to § 4 of volume I, although that
paiticular term is not there employed.
lIThese matters are the particular foeus of a seetion (§ 21) that was added in
the second edition ofthe Fourfold Rool, and of § 4 of Will and Presentation.
xxiv Translator' s Introduction

important respect a precondition for any causal understanding with

respect to the world as presentation. i But yet beyond that, the central
point of Book One is that, apart from our ability to conceive of things
within an at least conceivably possible perceptual field, we have no
ability so much as even to conceive of any individual thing in the first
place. For this reason, Schopenhauer singles out space and time as the
"principle of individuation," principium individuationis.

C. Der Wille
Book Two, titled "The World as Will: First Consideration. The
Objectification (Objektivation )ii of Will," tells us that der Wille is what
the world is "in itself," its "inner essence." It is, as Schopenhauer also
frequently puts it, the world's "essence in itself," as opposed to its being
as a mere presentation, i.e., as objectified either in the phenomena
projected by the faculty of understanding or in what Schopenhauer calls
those Platonic Ideas (Ideen) that, apprehended by way of a quite dif-
ferent manner of cognizance, are apprehended as archetypes of which
phenomena are mere expressions or manifestations; these ldeas, he
says, are what constitute the "true" world as presentation. iii Apart from
occasions where purely grammatical considerations recommend other-
wise, or where Schopenhauer is referring to will in more specific terms
(e.g., as the will for life [Wille zum Leben]), or referring to a specific
manifestation of will (e.g., to the will of a particular individual),iV we

iSchopenhauer also emphasizes, to be sure, that all the work ofunderstanding

is accomplished in terms of an understanding of causal relations. But this is
arguably because of the crucial role of the actual setting of anything within the
pure forms of space and time, an action that is responsive to sensation only by
way of some sort of causal understanding of the latter as an effect within one's
body. Thus he puts the matter quite differently in a passage from the Appendix
to the present work: "only through application ofthe understanding (i.e., ofthe
law ofcausality) and [my emphasis] ofspace and time as perceptual forms does
our intellect transform this mere sensation into a presentation that now stands
as an object in space and time" (p. 507).
iiSchopenhauer also frequently uses the term Objektität, which we translate
as "objectivization," reserving "objectivity" for Objektivität.
iiidie eigentliche Welt als Vorstellung (§ 34, p. 223). See the next section for
further discussion. It should be borne in mind that the apprehension (Auffas-
sung) in question is a special case of Anschauung, or "perception" as we trans-
late that term.
iVln cases involving the will of an individual subject, the relevant passages
might of course be read either way, given that the will in question is always an
 The World as Will and Presentation xxv

generally omit the artieie. There is no question, of course, with respect

to the title of the book; the article is not employed there. But Schopen-
hauer speaks of der Wille throughout the book, and it has become
commonplace to represent him as thereby speaking of something called
"the" will. At least as we read Schopenhauer, this would be just as
strange a procedure as if, upon being told by a philosopher, or scientist,
that the inner essence of matter is die Kraft (force or power), we were
to formulate this as the proposition that the inner essence of matter is
"the" force or "the" power. In any case, one thing needs to be clear, and
excessive talk about "the" will might tend to obscure it. Namely, the
will that Schopenhauer takes to be the inner essence of the world is not
any sort of "thing" that expresses itself in acts of willing; it is not any
sort of "subject" of such acts, but rather the inner essence of all subjects
of such acts. Willing subjects are only objectifications or manifestations
ofit.
When Schopenhauer says that der Wille is the inner essence of the
world, he is in fact saying that something that is at least like what we
think of as force or power (or energy) - as we, at least, might feel
reasonably comfortable using one or more of these terms - is the inner
essence of the world. (He explains his reason for choosing the term
Wille over Kraft in § 22 of Book Two.) And, while he emphasizes the
point more in the second than in the first volume of Will and Presentation,
he also holds that all phenomena, as empirically real objects - including
individual willing and cognizant subjects - are made out of various con-
figurations of matter, of which the will in question is in turn the inner
essence. i However, it would be amistake to suppose that the only limit
to what is clearly some sort of Schopenhauerian "materialism"ii - the

expression of "the" will that is the inner essence of nature as a whole.

iIt should be noted that this is not to say that will as such is therefore purely
"physical" force or energy, in the sense that the whole of its expression might
be captured in terms of concepts appropriate in the physical sciences. Much of
what Schopenhauer says in fact seems to imply that its all-encompassing
"direction" is simply toward whatever happens to be, given the circumstances
in question, the "highest" possible level of expression in those circumstances.
The notion of"levels" of expression is introduced in Book Two.
iiThe suggestion that Schopenhauer is adopting a materialist point of view is
stronger in the second volume and in some passages added to the first in its B
and C (second and third) editions. In those passages (§ 6, p. 50, added in B; § 7,
p. 59, added in C; and passages added in Band C to the Appendix, pp. 483,
487, 523), Schopenhauer attributes all cognitive activity to workings of the
brain. By contrast, in some first-edition passages, cognition is only said to be
xxvi Translator's Introduction

only respect in which it is not the case that everything is "material" for
Schopenhauer - lies in the fact that, while everything in the world is
made out of matter, anything material in nature is an objectification of
something more fundamental, namely, will. A further issue concems
the status of that very cognizance in relation to which anything is an
object in the first place. i
A number of things that Schopenhauer says suggest that der Wille
is not only supposed to be that inner essence which is expressing itself
in or through all cognizant subjects, just as through any thing in nature,
but, at least at a certain level of its objectification, also itself a cognizant
subject, dwelling within every individual cognizant subject. In other
words, der Wille would be that "one eye" which Schopenhauer describes
as "looking out" from any individual cognizant subject. Whatever may
be said for or against it, therefore, as a cosmic "subject" supposed to be
engaged in acts of willing, to the extent that der Wille has arrived at a
certain level of objectification - namely, at the level of animal life - it
may seem to be at least a cosmic subject engaged in cognition, and not
simply the inner essence of such a being, as of all others. For as Scho-
penhauer himself puts it, "the world is [the] will's self-cognizance."ii
And there are a number of other passages in which he speaks of self-
cognizance or self-consciousness on the part of will itself, at least at a
particular level of its objectification. iii In the next seetion, I try to
distinguish the senses in which it may or may not in fact be helpful to
put things in these terms.
Whether or not, or in whatever sense, we regard der Wille as itself
either a willing or a cognizant "subject," the view just formulated seems

represented (repräsentiert) or signified (bezeichnet) by the brain, which is of

course part of the world as presentation generated by cognitive activity in the
first place (§ 27, p. 194; § 39, p. 248; § 60, p. 386). At § 33, pp. 219-20, Schopen-
hauer also emphasizes that, insofar as the brain is part of the objectification of
will at a certain level, cognition is necessarily "in the service" ofwill.
iSchopenhauer takes the principle "No object without subject" to render
materialism "forever impossible" (§ 7, p. 61). But this is a principle turning on
the notion of cognizance as such, not on that of an underlying "thing in itself,"
which is what der Wille is for Schopenhauer.
iiSelbsterkenntnis des Willens: § 71, p. 476; emphasis added above.
iii E.g, § 27, p. 194; § 29, p. 209; § 34, p. 223; § 35, p. 227; § 52, p. 318; §
53. p. 323, § 55, p. 339; § 59, p. 362; § 65, p. 426; § 71, p. 477. At § 39, p. 249,
he speaks of the will becoming "anxious." At § 54, p. 327, he even speaks of
human beings as nature at the highest level of its self-consciousness (Selbst-
bewusstsein). There are also relevant passages in the second volume.
 The World as Will and Presentation xxvii

incoherent. Schopenhauer himself even highlights the fact. For as he

emphasizes, precisely as part of the world as presentation, animal life is
dependent upon presentation in the first place:
[A]nimals existed before human beings, fish before terrestrial
animals, plants still before these, the inorganic prior to
anything organic ... a long series of alterations before the first
eye could open. And nonetheless it remains ever upon the first
eye that opened, may it have even belonged to an insect, that
the existence of the entire world depends with respect to the
necessarily mediating element of cognizance, for which and
within which alone it exists and without which it is not even
thinkable; for it is simply a presentation, and as such has need
ofthe cognizant subject as bearer ofits existence. i
The difficulty is of course not exc1usively tied to an equation of
the cognizant subject with the will that is supposed to be the inner
essence ofall subjects. For, however one views the cognizant subject,
if it exists only as a function of animallife, and the latter in turn only
as presentation in the first place, there is a problem. Furthermore, as
already noted, presentational activity presupposes matter. That is, it
presupposes whatever portions of matter are the relevant parts of animal
bodies as "immediate" objects. But if will is the inner essence even of
matter itself, then the latter would seem to be part of the world as
presentation. In that case, it would presuppose, not be presupposed by,
presentational activity.
Quite apart from these difficulties, there is a major problem in the
way of identitying der Wille - even at a particular level of its objectifi-
cation - with the "one eye" of Schopenhauerian cognizance. This will
be made c1ear in the next section. But first I make a further point, not
altogether uncontroversial, on a matter of translation. lt concems the
use of reflexive constructions involving der Wille as grammatical sub-
ject. Here, we are given a variety of ways to talk about the process
whereby der Wille is made or "becomes"jj a presentation. In straight-
forwardly reflexive terms: der Wille expresses itself (sich aüssert, s.
ausspricht, s. ausdrückt), displays itself (s. darstellt), manifests itself
(s. manifestiert), objectifies itself (s. objektiviert), reveals itself (s.
offenbart), shows itself (s. zeigt) in various ways. Given that der Wille

i§ 7, pp. 61-2. Schopenhauer describes the situation as an "antinomy" with

respect to the question of cognition.
"On this 10cution, see, e.g., § 20, p. 144; § 24, p. 159; § 32, p. 217: §54, p. 330.
xxviii Translator' s Introduction

is Schopenhauer's tenn for something at least importantly like force,

power, or energy, these locutions are certainly apt in most cases. Purely
grammatically, on the other hand, it is not altogether out ofthe question
to consider at least some of them in tenns of a "passive reflexive" con-
struction. In that case, for example, instead of saying that der Wille
"objectifies" or "displays" itself, one might simply say that it is (or
"gets") objectified, or that it is (or "gets") displayed. In the case of just
these two verbs, I have in fact adopted this alternative.
Undeniably, der Wille gets objectified, "becomes" a presentation,
only by way of cognitive activity in which it is itself crucially involved. i
Still more strongly, it is, just as it is of all beings in nature, the inner
essence of any cognizant subject. As already suggested, however, there
is a major problem in the way of that further step which would consist
in actually identiry-ing, even at a particular level of its objectification,
der Wille with the cognizant subject. But this is what seems to be
entailed when one speaks of der Wille as objectifying, or making an
object, of itselfii To be sure, this rnight simply be a way of expressing
the fact that will is somehow essentially involved in all cognitive activity,
or that it is indeed the inner essence of any cognizant subjecL lt need
not be taken, in any further sense, to entail its equation with the cogni-
zant subject. In particular, it need not be taken to entail its equation
with the "one eye" of Schopenhauerian cognizance. In order to avoid
facilitating the latter suggestion, however, and yet without thereby
excluding it, I take Schopenhauer to be speaking, in these particular
passages, simply of will being objectified. In the next section, I then
attempt to say something in response to the question: what is doing the
objectiry-ing? (In tenns of the passive reflexive construction, I adopt
the same approach, but for a different reason, with respect to the verb
darstellen. Quite apart from the fact - relevant in Gennan but avoidable
in translation - of its association with vorstellen, iii I do tbis simply to

iAs I shall argue, the notion of "will-less" cognition, to be discussed in the

next section, will simply require the distinction between two very different
modes of such "involvement."
iiSchopenhauer also speaks ofldeas (Ideen: § 27, p. 184; § 34, p. 223; § 52,
p. 307), Art (§ 52, pp. 307, 316), and the body (§ 62, p. 390) as "objectifying"
der Wille. But I take this to be secondary with respect to the central notion of
"objectification" in Schopenhauer, namely, where the latter consists in a cogni-
tive action whereby something becomes an object for, i.e., a presentation to, a
sul>ject.
IIISchopenhauer does not, at least to my knowledge, ever use sich vorstellen
with der Wille as grammatical subjecL
 The World as Will and Presentation xxix

avoid any suggestion of intention or purpose, which may have a ten-

dency to attach to talk about "self-display."Y
Most crucially, der Wille is also self-affirming and - in special
circumstances - self-denying. I discuss the crucial notion of self-denial
in the next section. Whatever this might be supposed to involve, it
includes at least some sort of self-relation that would be unduly obscured
by a passive reflexive construction. Nevertheless, the reader is urged to
continue to bear in mind that when der Wille is so described, this is not
to be regarded as tantamount to reference to any sort of action on the
part of a willing subject as such. For again, the will in question is the
inner essence 0/ any willing subject, not itself one. In any case, in
particular connection with the notion ofwill's self-denial, we now need
to consider the notion of some sOrt of total "nullification" or "elimina-
tion" (Aufhebung) ofthe will ofan individual subject.

D. The Auflebung of Will

To whatever extent der Wille might or might not be, at least on a
certain level of its objectification, a cosmically cognizant subject, all of
our ordinary cognitive processes are in some manner in its service. ii
Schopenhauer compares this relationship to that between a strong blind
man and a sighted invalid whom he carries about on his shoulders to
find his way.iii In more standard scholastic terms:
Will, as the thing in itself, constitutes the inner, true, and
indestructible essence of aperson; yet in itself it is without
consciousness. For consciousness is determined by intellect,
and the latter is a mere accident with respect to our essence ...
we fmd will as the enduring substance, the intellect by contrast,
conditioned by its organ [brain], the variable accident. iv

iSehopenhauer also sometimes uses darstellen in reflexive eonstruetions

where it would be plainly odd to read it as a straightforward reflexive: speaking,
for example, of the eonditions relevant to matter and bodies "being displayed"
- displaying themselves? - in pereeption.
ii"Entering in as a tool (Hilfsmittel), f.lTJxavrl' on a partieular level of that
will's objeetifieation - "for maintenanee of the individual and propagation of
the speeies" (§ 27, p. 194) - eognition is "determined to the will's service," as a
means toward aehievement of its now more complieated aims at the level in
question (§ 33, p. 219; cf. § 55, p. 345).
iiiWill and Presentation, vol.ll, eh. 19, p. 233.
iVlbid., p. 224, and eh. 20, p. 279.
xxx Translator' s Introduction

Yet equally central is the possibility of a certain sort of Aufhebung of

will.
Although Schopenhauer uses the term Aufhebung more in connec-
tion with issues discussed in Book Four, it is introdueed in Book Three.
Like the first Book, the third focuses on the world as presentation. Its
title: "The World as Presentation: Second Consideration. Presentation
Independent of the Principle of Sufficient Ground. The Platonic ldea
(Idee): The Object of Art." Book FOllT focuses on the world as will.
Thus it eomplements Book Two's foeus on will as that which is objee-
tified in the world as presentation in general. But it does so with more
foeus on the will for life (der Wille zum Leben), and on various forms
ofthe latter's affirmation and denial (Bejahung and Verneinung): "With
the Achievement of Self-Cognizance: Affirmation and Denial of the
Will for Life."
The Aufhebung of will in question in Book Three is at the heart of
our eapacity for apprehension of that partieular sort of presentation -
that particular sort of objectification or objeetivizationi ofwill - which
Schopenhauer calls an Idea. Ideas are in one way like abstract concepts:
they are not either actual or possible spatiotemporal realities; rather,
they are the sort of thing that spatiotemporal realities can be regarded
as instantiating, exemplifying, or expressing. ii But Ideas differ from
concepts in that their apprehension is nonetheless perceptual (anschau-
lich).iii In Book Three, Schopenhauer argues that the apprehension of

iRespectively: Objektivation, Objektität. In fact, however, rather than speaking

of Ideas as objectifications or objectivizations of will, Schopenhauer tends
rather to speak of them as levels (Stufen) or degrees (Graden) thereof.
iiSchopenhuaer equates Ideas with the "particular species, or original unvary-
ing forms and properties of aIl natural bodies, both inorganic and organic, as
weIl as general forces that reveal themse1ves in accordance with naturallaws"
(§ 30, p. 211). This is no doubt why he says that they constitute the "true world
as presentation" (§ 34, p. 223). A question, however, that does not seem to me
conc1usively answerable in Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer seems to hold that
one can apprehend as ldeas what one might also apprehend in purely abstract,
conceptual terms. But how could that be, ifpresentations are what they are only
relative to one's apprehension ofthem?
iiiTheir further difference from concepts, made evident in Book Two's dis-
cussion of the relationship between natural forces and phenomena, also grounds
the use of terms for the relation between Ideas and phenomena that are not
normally applied to the mere instantiation of concepts, e.g., displaying, reveal-
ing, manifesting, etc. It should also be borne in mind that the fact that a certain
sort of apprehension is perceptual does not exclude, indeed is equivalent to, its
 The World as Will and Presentation xxxi

Ideas, as afforded by works of art, is, with the exception of the art of
music, what constitutes the properly aesthetic element in the apprecia-
tion of art. i
Inasmuch as ldeas are not apprehended as occupying spatiotem-
poral locations, and yet are apprehended in an immediately perceptual
way (and not merely, like concepts, as abstract presentations of aspects
of spatiotemporal reality), Schopenhauer regards their apprehension as
at least for a time removing the perceiver from the domain of the prin-
ciples of sufficient ground and individuation. For, as he claims, "this
can only occur with the nullification (Aufhebung) of individuality in the
cognizant subject."ii In such astate, the individual is "at the same time
no longer an individual - for the individual has lost itself precisely in
this perception - but is pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of
cognition."ili Insofar as the cognizant subject is wholly absorbed in the
object in such a case, Schopenhauer also describes the state in question
as one ofpure "objectivity."
The Aufhebung of will depicted in Book Four goes further than
this. iv Here it alters one's life as a whole, and involves an alteration in
the perception of one's world as a whole. For its expression is the life
of the ascetic saint, the fuHest embodiment of removal from the will for
life, even beyond the act of suicide. v Schopenhauer emphasizes the

being "intelleetual" in eharaeter. Thus unlike, for example, Kant, Schopenhauer

does not equate funetions ofthe intellect (Intellekt) or understanding (Verstand)
with conceptual functions.
iThe properly aesthetic element in musie, treated in § 52, and then more
extensively in vol. II, eh. 39 ("On the Metaphysies ofMusic"), is said to lie in a
still more direet apprehension ofthe will, not in the apprehension ofldeas.
ii§30, p. 212. Payne translates "by abolishing," and frequently elsewhere
speaks of"elimination."
iii§ 34, p. 222. Cf vol. H, eh. 30: the state in question is attained through "an
alteration in us that one eould also regard as an aet of self-renunciation (ßelbst-
verleugnung), insofar as it consists in the fact that cognizance completely turns
away from one's own will" (p. 417); "What renders this state difficult and
makes it rare is that in it the aecident (the intellect) overpowers (bemeistert)
and nullifies [Payne, p. 369: "eliminates"] the substance (the will), even if only
for a short while" (p. 420). Schopenhauer also speaks ofthe loss of individuality
in question as entailing a "nullifieation of that manner of cognizance which
follows the Principle ofSuffieient Ground" (§ 38, p. 242).
IVTo see the fuller breadth of topics covered in Book Four, the reader may
want to look at the "expanded" table of contents, below.
vOn suicide, see § 54, pp. 332-3 (cf § 60, p. 379); § 65, pp. 425-6; § 69, pp.
462.ff]. See also, but going less deep, Schopenhauer's essay "On Suicide" in
xxxii Translator's Introduction

dependence of this removal from will on the attainment of a cognitive

state that, like the apprehension of Ideas, is not a case of abstract knowl-
edge. He even characterizes it as a kind of extension of the apprehension
ofIdeas. For a person in such astate, namely, "one's entire cognizance
of the essence of the world that mirrors the will, having grown out of
apprehension of ldeas, becomes a quieter of the will, and so the will
freely nullifies itself (frei sich selbst aufhebt)."i
As suggested, it remains a question how to translate aufheben. In
some contexts, it may be appropriate to use such terms as "eIiminate"
or "abolish." Shortly, I explain why 1 think it is preferable to speak,
in the case of the Aufhebung of will, only of a kind of "nulIification."
Either way, a problem is bound to occur to the reader. Subservience to
will, for Schopenhauer, is at least the original state of any cognizant
and willing individual. So how is it even possible for such subservience
to be nullified? The following might occur to one. One might suppose
that any ordinary willing subject is really a complex of two distinct sub-
jects, a willing one and a cognizant one, originally conjoined or inter-
twined in such a way that the latter is subservient to the former; but in
certain special cases, the cognizant subject can get the better of the
wi1ling one. But Schopenhauer emphatically rejects this sort of dualism:
Every individual is on the one hand the subject of cognition ...
and on the other hand an individual phenomenon ofwill, of
the same will that is objectified in every thing. But this
double-sided character of our essence does not rest in a self-
subsistent unity.ii
And in any case he speaks, in the passage quoted earlier, precisely of
will nullifYing itself. Of course, the problem is only exacerbated if we
regard the cognizant subject as will, at least on a certain level of the
latter's objectification.
Now we earlier noted Schopenhauer's distinction between cogni-
zant individuals and some sort of single cognizant "subject," which he

Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. I.

i§ 54, p. 337; cf. § 48, p. 280. The fact that will nullifies itself, yet some form
of cognizance is central to its doing so, might of course seem to reinforce a
view of will as a cognizant subject, and not simply as the inner essence of any
co~nizant subject.
11§ 54, p. 329fn. It seems clear that, in referring to "a self-subsistent unity"
(in einer für sich bestehenden Einheit), Schopenhauer means a union of two
independently subsisting subjects, somehow joined together.
 The World as Will and Presentation xxxiii

describes as that "one eye that looks out from all cognizant beings." In
Book Three, he says that we in some sense become this one eye in the
apprehension of Ideas (§ 38, p. 242), and he describes it throughout
Book Three as a "pure" and "etemal" subject of cognition, a subject
that is pure precisely by virtue ofbeing purified ofwill. Or as he puts it
in a supplementary chapter in the second volume:
With the disappearances ofwill from consciousness, indivi-
duality, and with the latter its suffering and its hardship, is
nullified. Therefore, J have described the pure subject of
cognition which then remains over (das dann übrig bleibende
reine Subjekt des Erkennens) as the etemal eye ofthe world
that, albeit with very diverse degrees of clarity, looks out from
allliving beings ... and thus, as self-identical, as always One
and The Same, is the bearer ofthe world ofpersisting Ideas ... i

So there is of course something other than will at play. But as has

just been emphasized, there is also in some sense no cognizant subject
distinct from a subject ofwilling. This is to such an extent the case that,
as also emphasized earlier, Schopenhauer himselffrequently goes so far
as to present himself as a materialist - and more so even in the second
volume than in the first - and speaks as if it is simply a material organ
(the brain) that is the ultimate cognizant subject. And of course, as a
material organ, the "inner essence" of the brain is precisely will.
It would be in at least one way presumptuous to attempt to resolve
the difficulties raised by these points, or at least to do so in the name of
Schopenhauer. For they turn on the relation between the cognizant
subject and the subject ofwilling, by virtue ofwhich "they" are, in any
individual subject, somehow a single subject. And Schopenhauer repeat-
edly characterizes the latter precisely as an inexplicable puzzle, as the
unsolvable "knot of the world," "the miracle par excellence."ii None-
theless, I venture to offer a proposal as to what might be in question, and
might thus be the sort of "self-contradiction" that Schopenhauer sees in
the life of ascetic saints.iii

iYolume II, eh. 30, p. 422.

iidas Wunder xar' d;oxr/v (kat' exochen): § 18, p. 139; § 51, p. 300. "world
knot": Sufficient Ground, § 42 (der Weltknoten und daher unerklärlich ["and
therefore inexplicable")).
iii§ 55, pp. 340, 355; § 61, p. 390; § 68, p. 440; § 70, p. 467. As Schopenhauer
himse1f states, the key to reconciling the eontradietion in question "lies in the
xxxiv Translator's Introduction

In this regard, one eannot help but turn to a perhaps somewhat

surprising formulation in the first ehapter of the seeond volume of Will
and Presentation. There, after again emphasizing that the world as pre-
sentation is a funetion of aetivities of the brain, and after reminding the
reader that it exists only as a kind of "projeetion" on the part of the
faculty of understanding or inteUeet, through a proeess whereby one's
own body is always the "immediate objeet,"i Schopenhauer eharaeterizes
the world as presentation by referenee to a fundamental polarity, one of
the two poles of whieh is a cognizant subject that is identifiable with no
individual subject. What may be surprising at first is that he does not then
characterize the other pole as will. He charaeterizes it rather as matter,
and indeed as matter described in a somewhat strange way:
The world as presentation, the objective world, thus has as it
were two poles, namely, the cognizant subject as such (das
erkennende Subjekt schlechthin), apart from its cognitive
forms, and then cmde (rohe) matter apart from form and
quality. Both of them are altogether uncognizable: the subject
because it is that which is engaged in cognition, matter
because, apart from form and quality, it cannot be perceived.
Nonetheless, they are both the fundamental conditions of all
empirical pereeption. Thus emde, formless, entirely inert (i.e.,
will-less) matter, which can be given in no experience but is
presupposed in all of them, stands over against the cognizant
subject merely as such, which is likewise apresupposition of
all experience. This subject is not in time, for time is only the
more particular form belonging to all of its presentational
activity (die nähere Form alles seines Vorstellens) ... ii
Then he go es on to say that the two poles are "really one and the same

fact that the state in which one's character is removed from the power of
motives does not proeeed immediately from the will, but from an alteration in
one's manner of eognizanee" (§ 70, p. 468). (However, one should be eareful
not to eonflate whatever sort of"self-contradietion" is supposed to be in question
hefe with Sehopenhauer's repeated emphasis on will's "inner self-eonfliet"
(Widerstreit mit sich selbst), and even self-eontradietion (innerer Widerspruch:
§ 52, p. 317), insofar as various parts of its phenomenon are in constant battle
with one another.)
iSee toward the end of section B., above.
iiVolume n, eh. 1, p. 18.
 The World as Will and Presentation xxxv

thing regarded from two opposing points of view," and that the one
thing that they "are" is not will, but rather a phenomenon whose inner
being is will.
This is not the place to attempt to explain all of the wrinkles in
this passage, although I return shortly to what might be involved in
this particular way of characterizing "matter." But in light of what we
have seen so far, the particular emphasis on matter in this context,i and
Schopenhauer's general orientation in terms of a Kantian distinction
between form and matter, the following strikes me as a plausible way
of attempting to speak to the issue.
We may suppose, first of all, that Schopenhauer uses the expres-
sion "pure subject of cognition" in two ways. Sometimes he uses it to
refer to individual subjects, but precisely insofar as their state of cogni-
zance has been in some manner purified of will; of course, it remains to
ask what this involves. (On these occasions he also sometimes, but not
generally, uses the term rein, "pure," in its adverbial form.) But some-
times, we might suppose, he is rather referring to what might be called
a purely "formal" element in any cognitive state, over and above any of
the matter, or arrangements of the matter, of which that state might be
composed. As we have just seen, Schopenhauer emphasizes such an
element precisely in that context where he describes the pure subject
and matter as two poles of any concrete cognitive phenomenon, namely,
in emphasizing the projective action whereby there is any sort of world
as presentation for subjects in the fIrst place. It simply remains to see,
first, how this formal element might be more specifically regarded, and
in what sense it might be regarded as something "over and above" the
matter of which a cognitive state is composed; and second, how it
might be regarded as the seat of at least the possibility of a "pure subject"
in the other of the two senses just distinguished.
We need to allow that, in a signifIcant sense, a cognitive state is
always made out of matter and nothing else besides. Otherwise, we
could not account for Schopenhauer's tendency to put his view in
materialist terms, even ifhe at other times formulates it in opposition to
materialism. On the other hand, and just for the latter reason, there must
be something about a cognitive state "over and above" whatever matter
is in question. How are we supposed to think about this? Without
going so far as to claim that this is how Schopenhauer hirnself thought

iIt is also noteworthy that, in speaking of the body as "immediate object" at

the beginning of § 4, he does not speak of the latter as made out of matter, but
precisely as "matter."
xxxvi Translator' s Introduction

about it, we might at least appeal to the following analogy. Consider

any sort of situation or "state of affairs." It always involves certain
constituents or ingredients. For example, take a being to the left of b
relative to c: a, b, and c are the constituents of this situation. Yet clearly,
the situation is something more than, or over and above, those constitu-
ents. So first, we might at least use the term 'form' to refer to that factor
by virtue of which any situation or state of affairs is something "over
and above" the body of matter of which it is composed. But suppose
that Schopenhauer also intends something like the following distinction.
The particular situation in our example, although involving something
over and above the body ofmatter ofwhich it is composed, nonetheless
consists in nothing more than a certain relation (or set of relations) that
holds between portions of that body of matter. It is reasonable to sup-
pose that any ordinary situation is in fact of this sort. But now suppose
that, in Schopenhauer's thinking, this is precisely what distinguishes a
state of cognizance from any other sort of situation or state of affairs.
Wbile astate of cognizance is wbolly composed of some body of
matter, it is, like any situation or state of affairs, possessed of some
"form" wbereby it is sometbing more than that body of matter. But as
opposed to any other sort of situtation, for Scbopenhauer, tbe "more" in
question does not simply consist in relations holding between portions
of tbe body of matter in question. So of wbat does it consist? All that
we have, of course, is Schopenhauer's description in terms of what
such a situation amounts to, that is, in terms of the "total" situation or
state of affairs. In those tenns, it simply consists in whatever is involved
in the projection of a world as presentation, and of the various types of
presentation, precisely through the medium of such bodies of matter. It
is just this, we might then suppose, and any "more particular form
belonging to all of its presentational activity," that is the pure subject in
the sense that is now in question.
Now insofar as astate of cognizance is always a wholly material
affair, it should follow that its inner being is always and inevitably will.
Or at least, its inner being is will to the extent that will is the inner
being of the matter of which it is composed, just as it is tbe inner being
of the individual subject as a whole. But then, in what sense could there
possibly be such states purified of will, that is, a "pure subject" in the
first of the two senses now distinguished? At least a possible answer
lies in our characterization of tbe second of the senses in question.
Ordinarily, in projecting a world as presentation,i one's cognitive pro-

i Here again. see toward thc end of section B., abovc.

 The World as Will and Presentation xxxvii

cess does not simply project, say, an array of sensory quality into a
perceiver's pereeptual field. Ordinarily, at least, it also projects some
portion ofthe very willjor life that is the pereeiver's inner being. More
specifically, this amounts, as we might put it, not simply to "coloring"
one's world in terms ofvarious arrays ofsensory quality, but also to the
fact that, phenomenologically, various parts ofthat world "refer" to one
as an individual subjeet with partieular motivations and drives (and to
one another in terms ofthose motivations and drives). Various parts of
one's world thus refer, we might say, precisely in a sense that has to do
with the very meaning, for the subject, of that which is apprehended by
that particular subject, i.e., apprehended through that particular body of
matter. Such meanings are not simply products of some cognitive or
affective process distinct from that of perception itself. At least ordi-
narily, they are part of the projective act that constitutes perception in
the first place. i
What we need to suppose, then, is that the sort of alteration in an
individual subject that Schopenhauer describes as Aufhebung of its will
does not consist in an aetual (or at least in a total) elimination of the
will for life within that subject. Indeed, Sehopenhauer more than onee
states or implies, not only that the will for life still exists (as presumably,
after all, it must) within such a subject, but even that one's individual
character - which seems most reasonably to be regarded, in Schopen-
hauer's thinking, as the specificjorm ofthe will for life in any individual
subject - still continues to exist on some level. ii The respect in which
it continues to exist is that it is still present within the material of which
that subject, and even of which its cognitive states, are composed. At
most, it is eliminated from the process of cognitive projection; at most,
thereby, a certain sort of "servitude" to the will is eliminated. But the
will in question is not eliminated at all. It is simply nullified in the
respect that it is no longer projected into one's world as presentation,
no longer colors one's world. In this translation, therefore, we speak
only of "nullification," when what is said to undergo Aufhebung is
indeed the will within any individual subject.
This reading of Schopenhauer ean at least explain a number of
things. Besides bearing on the conjunction of his materialism and his
anti-materialism, as weIl as the apparent contradiction involved in
the Aufhebung of the inner being of (or at least the inner being of the

iIoccasionally comment to this effect in the notes, in connection with certain

oc~urrences of the term Beziehung (both relation and reference).
lIE.g., § 13, p. 94; § 68, p. 454; § 70, p. 468.
xxxviii Translator's Introduction

matter composing) the very states of cognizance whereby it is to undergo

Aufhebung in the first place, it also explains what might seem a further
contradiction. Namely, Schopenhauer emphasizes that cause and effect
apply only within the world as presentation; will itself cannot be affected,
only its phenomena. Yet he frequently speaks as if will is affected pre-
cisely by its Aufhebung. But the contradiction disappears ifwe suppose
that the alteration in question is fundamentally not in one's will as such,
but rather in cognition. For the will is "affected," on the proposal in
question, only in that it is prevented from being projected. But that is
precisely - in both of the senses distinguished - a question of the "pure
subject."
Without trying to account for all the details of its particular for-
mulation, this approach also goes some distance toward explaining the
terms in which Schopenhauer describes the matter that is supposed to
be the inseparable correlate of the pure subject in cognition. i For as
noted earlier, if matter (as the subject's "immediate object") is a precon-
dition for the world as presentation, then it cannot, as such, be anything
like matter as we ordinarily think of it. But then neither is it will. For as
we have seen, Schopenhauer contrasts both the pure subject and the
matter in question with will, characterizing the latter as the inner being
of phenomena that are relative to a world constituted by way of some
sort of union of the two. Finally, this approach also goes some way
toward explaining why Schopenhauer describes der Wille in terms that
imply that it is really that "one eye" which looks out from a11 of US, and
as if it is really what is having its effect when, by virtue of a special sort
of cognizance, it undergoes Aufhebung. For according to what has been
proposed, it is not only that der Wille is the inner essence of the matter
of which any cognitive state is composed, but any such state is wholly
composed out of matter. It is, however, up to the reader to judge the
extent to which this approach might be helpful. ii

iOn the concept of matter, in addition to passages in the present volume, and
in the first chapter of the second, to which I have referred above, the reader
should consult chapter 24 ofthe second volume.
iiA problem in any case remains as to the "identity" ofthe willing and cogni-
zant subject(s). If the "pure fonn" of cognition is indeed something over and
above any arrangement of the matter composing a cognitive state, then what
could possibly account for arrangements of matter ever coming to be the matter
of such states in the first place? Schopenhauer's view seems to be that cogni-
zance arises in animallife precisely because, under the circumstances in question,
it is the most effective way for will - in the fonn of the particular drives within
an organism at that point - to reach its goal (in general, namely, the goal of
 The World as Will and Presentation xxxix

E. TheText
All published works undergo changes, from their first inception
until they are ready for their fmal resting place on bookshelves. Thus a
great deal of philological work has preceded our efforts, and we make
no claim to add to it. In particular, with any work on a text that sterns
from an age before the microchip, when misprints were commonplace
and general editorial work was labor-intensive, one has to contend not
only with numerous grammatical and lexical slip-ups, but also with the
intentional "bettering" of grammar and punctuation by editors. In addi-
tion, Schopenhauer revised his chief work over aperiod of forty-two
years, and not always with complete consistency.
Schopenhauer completed The World as Will and Presentation in
1818, at the age of 30. He published it in December of that year with
Brockhaus of Leipzig; the official date of publication was listed as
1819. Brockhaus published the second edition (expanded to two vol-
umes) in 1844 and the third in 1859. Schopenhauer was not particularly
happy with Brockhaus. On sending his manuscript, he had included the
strict instruction that "not a single word should be changed, not even in
the face of censorship. In this instance I would express the utmost dis-
pleasure publicly."j But that proved easier said than done.
Schopenhauer's disillusionment with Brockhaus, which he voiced
on several occasions, undeniably inspired hirn to assign the testamentary
rights to his works to his trusted friend Julius Frauenstädt. Frauenstädt,
a private scholar, then took it upon hirnself to publish a new edition of
the work with Brockhaus, only this time as part of a complete edition of
Schopenhauer's works. This was the first time that Schopenhauer would
be published in summa, appearing on the shelves of German bookshops
in 1873, thirteen years after his death, and then again in a second edition
in 1877. The Frauenstädt edition was soon condemned by some for
containing numerous orthographical errors, as welJ as for not having
faithfully adhered to the fmal versions of texts as exactly and explicitly

achieving, whatever it may be, the "highest" possible level of manifestation

under the circumstances): § 27, pp. 193ff. Yet this appears to conflict with
Schopenhauer's view that the notion of a "sufficient ground" applies only pre-
cise1y within the world as presentation. On the other hand, the difficulty may
seem at least mitigated by the fact that the "effect" in question is not a new
form of will as such - for example, a new drive - but rather a new type of
manifestation ofwill, namely, a material state that is now also a cognitive state.
'Arthur Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Arthur Hübscher (Bonn:
Bouvier, 1978), p. 37; letter of 11 Ju1y, 1818.
xl Translator's Introduction

approved for publication by Schopenhauer himse1f: the so-called Aus-

gabe letzter Hand. i Ihis was first emphasized by Eduard Grisebach in
1891, in the introduction to his edition ofSchopenhauer's works,ii and
then by Gustav Friedrich Wagner, who compiled a list of problems
with both the Grisebach and Frauenstädt editions, as weH as undertak-
ing an encyclopedic index of names and concepts. iii Ihis work also
went hand in hand with the continuing efforts to deal with problems
stemming from the original editions themselves. iv

iRelevant to continuing debates over the final fonn to be given to the texts
are (sometimes conflicting) notes in Schopenhauer's manuscript books, annota-
tions and interleaved additions (Zusätze) made to personal copies (Handexem-
plare) of volumes published during his lifetime, and annotations made in
manuscripts ofthe texts. For Schopenhauer's manuscript notebooks, see Arthur
Hübscher's edition of Der handschriftliche Nachlass, 5 vols. (Frankfurt: W.
Kramer, 1966-1975); tr. E. F. J. Payne: Manuscript Remains, 4 vols. (New
York: Berg, 1988). For variations among the editions of The World as Will and
Presentation published during Schopenhauer's lifetime, and relevant annotations
and additions, see Hübscher's notes at the end ofthe second and third volumes,
and on pp. 97ffand 14~ff ofthe seventh, ofhis edition ofSchopenhauer's works,
utilized for the present translation in its latest edition: Arthur Schopenhauer,
Sämtliche Werke. Nach der ersten, von Julius Frauenstädt besorgten Gesamt-
ausgabe neu bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Arthur Hübscher, vierte Auflage,
durchgesehen von Angelika Hübscher (Mannheim: Brockhaus, 1988).
iiEduard Grisebach, ed., Arthur Schopenhauers sämmtliche Werke, 6 vols.
(Leipzig: Reclam, 1891).
iiiThe list of discrepancies was begun as part of a memorandum for the
Brockhaus publishers (in which, at least in part, Wagner acquitted Frauenstädt
of a number of Grisebach's complaints), then eventually appended to his index
upon its publication (Encyclopädisches Register zu Schopenhauers Werken
[1909]); see Arthur Hübscher's account in the introduction to his edition, vol.
I, pp. 12-13, 15. Wagner's index was subsequently re-issued by Hübscher:
Schopenhauer-Register (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1960).
(The Handexemplare, having passed into pos session of a third party in the
meantime, had only been available to Grisebach "over the course of some hours":
Hübscher, vol. 1, p. 14.)
iv In connection with Gennan writing refonns, for example, Schopenhauer's
own corrections led to inconsistencies even in the spelling of the same word on
a given page. He also insisted upon certain particular spellings and on the use
of a somewhat individualistic grammar. In our own citations from the Gennan,
we have simply modernized the spelling. As for Schopenhauer's style, many of
his sentences and clauses are notably marked by a certain "run-on" quality; we
have not generally tried to "correet" this. He also employs a larger array of
punctuation than is customary today, often, for example, marshalling a parade
 The World as Will and Presentation xli

Taking all such complications into account, Arthur Hübscher pub-

lished arevision ofthe Frauenstädt edition between 1937 and 1941. We
have chosen to base our translation on this editioni for two main reasons.
First, it seems to be at this time the most widely utilized and therefore
most generally available edition of Schopenhauer's works. To be sure,
unlike Hübscher's edition, the more (and most) recent edition of The
World as Will and Presentation, contained in Ludger Lütkehaus's edi-
tion ofthe works,ii strictly adheres the Ausgabe letzter Hand. But then,
at least as Hübscher himself judges matters:
The exact duplication in letter and form of Schopenhauer's
Ausgaben letzter Hand means nothing other than to ignore all
critical analysis and historical work on the text, means uncon-
ditional acceptance of all happenstance in its transmission, and
therefore turns a blind eye to determining the author' s true
intent, let alone to acting in accordance with it. iii
In any case, substantive questions regarding materials in the absence of
formal and explicit instructions regarding their employment in eventual
further editions bear only in relatively minor respects on the work that
concems us here (as opposed to the Parerga and Paralipomena, whose
versions in Frauenstädt and Hübscher incorporate a great deal of such
material).iv

of phrases punctuated by two or more colons. Without duplicating this particular

feature, but by way of combinations of colons and semi-colons (which latter,
like many authors of the day, Schopenhauer in any case employs with greater
frequency than a modem translation might want to reproduce), we have tried to
give some sense of this as weIl. Schopenhauer hirnself stated explicitly that the
unorthodox style of his writing was intimately connected with the manner of
his thinking: letter to Brockhaus of September 7, 1843 (Gesammelte Briefe, p.
202); cf. letter to Frauenstädt ofNovember 24, 1855 (p. 377).
iSee note above. The two volumes of The Warld as Will and Presentatian are
contained in vols. 2 and 3.
iiLudger Lütkehaus, Arthur Schapenhauers Werke in fonf Bänden. Nach den
Ausgaben letzter Hand (Zürich: Haffinans, 1988); there is also a supplementary
volume to this edition: Ludger Lütkehaus, Beibuch zur Schapenhauer Ausgabe
(Zürich: Haffinans, 1988).
iiiHübscher, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, p.18.
iVThere are, to be sure, significantly more instances of the incorporation of
handwritten Zusätze, or of notebook material to which they refer, in volume 2
of the present work. However, we are careful to note this in each case.
xlii Translator's Introduction

The second main reason for employing Hübscher is simply that,

again at least to date, it is the generally adopted standard for scholarly
citations. In particular, the Schopenhauer-GesellschaJt (Frankfurt) spec-
ifies this edition for citations in its Jahrbuch. Furthermore, given that a
new edition of Schopenhauer' s works is in progress at the Schopenhauer
Forschungsstelle (Mainz), we have no desire to enter into controversies
upon which others will soon pronounce with greater authority. Our aim
has not been to make a pbilological contribution, nor a statement bearing
on the latter. For the most part, our aim has simply been to produce a
translation that is much more easily readable than those that are currently
available, with a generally greater degree of consistency in the use of
the main terms, and at least to some extent better capturing the feel of
Schopenhauer's style ofwriting. i
The present translation, tben, is based on the text of the third
(1859) edition of Volume One of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,
as edited by Arthur Hübscher and as contained in vol. 2 of his edition
of Schopenhauer's Sämtliche Werke. (Pagination adjacent to lines in
the margins of the translation corresponds to that of the 1859 edition,
also to be found in Hübscher and on tbe whole identical with his own
pagination. Like Hübscher, however, we do not identi(y exactly where
in tbe line the page break occurs.) Our translation of Volume Two,
primarily the work of David Carus, should follow shortly upon the
present publication. In his preface to the second edition, Schopenhauer
explains the decision not only to add a second volume, but to do so
precisely by way of "supplementary chapters" (Ergzänzungen) linked
to sections of the first. As the reader will note, there are also numerous
revisions to the first volume in both its second and third editions. As
should also be noted, Schopenhauer refers throughout to the correspond-
ing supplements, and it is eminently worth pursuing the references in
every case.

VARIATIONS AND ADDITIONS (ZUSÄTZE)

In footnotes and endnotes, we have provided selective information
regarding variations among the editions (cited as A, B, and C, respect-
tively) published by Schopenhauer hirnself, as weIl as regarding his
handwritten additions (Zusätze). (In cases of the latter, however, we
generaIly simply note the change as between the relevant editions.) In
general, we provide this material in endnotes. However, where a foot-

iThis section, to this point, has owed a great deal to David Carus.
 The World as Will and Presentation xliii

note is attached for an independent reason, we inc1ude the relevant

information at that point, rather than adding an endnote as weH. Again,
we have been selective. In general, we omit changes that seem to us of
no substantive import (e.g., changes in spelling, or to merely stylistic
effect) and additions or revisions to citations of Schopenhauer's own
works, where the cited material had appeared between the editions and
so could not have been cited earlier. (We also remind the reader only
periodically that the Latin translations of Greek quotations were all
added in the third edition.) In addition, we take note of all those cases
where Hübscher follows Frauendstädt in the actual inclusion of a hand-
written Zusatz to the third edition.
The information regarding these variations has been derived pri-
marly from Hübscher's appendix to the second, and from pp. 97ffand
142ff of the seventh, volume of the Sämtliche Werke. In addition, we
have consulted the material contained in the sixth volume of the edition
of Paul Deussen. i In the latter respect, we have benefited from Karsten
Worm's electronic edition, Schopenhauer im Kontext, based on the
Deussen editionY This of course facilitated our work quite apart from
its utility in regard to variations and Zusätze. Without such an aid, it is
obviously considerably more difficult to maintain the ideal of a reason-
ably consistent translationiii and to undertake serious revisions of the
work in progress. However, except where noted, our [mal authority has
been Hübscher.

iSchopenhauers Sämtliche Werke (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1911.fJ). As Hübscher

notes, Deussen is particularly praiseworthy for having evaluated Schopenhauer's
Handexemplare. On the other hand, the latter fell into his possession too late to
apply them to his work on The World as Will and Presentation. But then
finally, according to Hübscher, with the Otto Weiss edition (Arthur Schopen-
hauers sämtliche Werke [Leipzig: Hesse and Becker, 1919]), "long years of
work came to a elose, diligent labour in interpreting and analysing the texts was
completed: today there is nothing more to be gained from Schopenhauer's
annotations" (Hübscher, vol. 1, p. 21).
iiVol. 5 ofthe series Literatur im Kontext au/CD-ROM, ed. Karsten Wonn
(Berlin: InfoSoftWare, 2001 [Release of 3/2002]).
iiiWhere no matter of substantive import is in question, we do not in fact
endeavor to maintain the strictest consistency. (Where comment to the effect is
judged of possible interest to the reader, we of course provide it in footnotes.)
This is because one of our primary aims has been to produce as highly readable
a translation as possible, as weH as one that so far as possible does justice to
Schopenhauer's own style. On the other hand, we of course aim at this without
sacrifice of substantive accuracy.
xliv Translator's Introduction

SECTIONS PARAGRAPHS BRACKETED MATERIAL

From the start, The World as Will and Presentation was divided
into four Books and an Appendix (titled "Critique of Kantian Philos-
ophy"); the latter amounted, after revisions, to over twenty percent of
the whole. Within each of the four Books, a division into sections was
first indicated by means of horizontal lines employed as breaks. The
second and third editions replaced this with a system of numbering
concluding with § 71. However, no tides were provided for the sections
or other indication of their contents. For the convenience of the reader,
we have followed each section number, in brackets, with a general
indication ofthe section's contents. (An overview ofthese contents can
then be found in our "expanded version" of Schopenhauer's own table
of contents.)
Schopenhauer does not by far, or at least not at first glance, use
paragraph breaks to the extent that a modem reader fmds almost indis-
pensable. But he does make frequent use of a dash (-) to the effect of
what others intend with paragraph breaks. We have therefore introduced
the latter at such points. (On a few occasions, however, Schopenhauer's
dashes are pretty elearly meant to function only as such.) In addition,
on a few occasions in the Appendix, a paragraph break has been added
where none is indicated in the text. This is of course meant for the
convenience ofthe reader, and indicated in footnotes.
Throughout, unless otherwise indicated, wherever brackets ([ ... ])
occur, they enelose material inserted by the translators.

FOOTNOTES, ENDNOTES, PAGINATION

Two types of footnotes are employed. Those that are designated
with "daggers" (t, t, tt) are Schopenhauer's. Those that are designated
numerically in lowercase roman (i, ii, iii.. .), and enelosed in brackets
([ ... ]), are ours. The latter are employed mainly for two purposes: to
inform the reader as to some bit of the German text, sometimes with
reference to further discussion in the Introduction, and for the provision
of information regarding Schopenhauer's citations and references. The
endnotes are ours, but again oftwo types. Where the endnote number is
in boldface, the corresponding note contains brief commentary thought
to be of possible interest to the reader. Otherwise, the endnotes contain
information regarding variations among, and Zusätze to, the A, B, and
C editions of Schopenhauer's text. (However, where a footnote has
been attached for independent reasons to a passage for which this is
relevant, the corresponding information is put in the footnote.)
 The World as Will and Presentation xlv

Again, marginal pagination adjacent to lines of the translation is

that of the third German edition, as also to be found in the margins of
Hübscher's edition of the Sämtliche Werke and on the whole identical
with his own pagination. (The only significant divergence in Hübscher
occurs in his edition of the second volume, occasioned by his insertion
of Zusätze.)

CIT ATIONS AND OTHER LANGUAGES

In our aim to expand upon Schopenhauer' s generally abbreviated
citations, and for help with translations from various languages, we
have relied to a large extent on the information provided by Hübscher
on pp. 217ff of the seventh volume of his edition of Schopenhauer's
works, on the index of names and subjects provided at the end of that
same volume, and once again on Deussen, upon whom (and upon others
going back to Frauendstädt and Wagner) Hübscher's own efforts are
founded. However, we have on a number of occasions provided addi-
tional information thought to be of likely interest to the reader. Since
these contributions pale in comparison with those preceding us, we do
not bother to note where in particular we go beyond them.
For material other than German, we provide translations in the
footnotes. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are our OWll. In
the case of translations from the Greek, except for Plato and Aristotle,
we rely on a combination of the translations provided by Deussen and
Hübscher, Schopenhauer's Latin translations (added in C), and (last and
to the least effect) our OWll expertise. For Plato and Aristotle, since
there are easily accessible "standard" collections available to the Anglo-
phone reader, we avail ourselves of their translations and note the fact
in footnotes: for Plato, those of the various translators contained in the
edition of Edith Hamilton and Huntington Caims;i for Aristotle, those
of the various translators contained in the edition of Jonathan Bames. ii
With regard to the Greek, we follow E. F. 1. Payne's practice in his
earlier translation of the present work, adding (and correcting) accent
and breathing marks. For this, we are thankful both to Payne and to
Karsten Worm's electronic edition ofDeussen.

iEdith Hamilton and Huntington Caims (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of

Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989; originally, The Bollingen
Foundation, 1961).
iiJonathan Bames (ed.), The Complete Works ofAristotle: the Revised Oxford
Translation, in two volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
xlvi Translator' s lntroduction

Within the body ofthe text, we retain Schopenhauer's own some-

times casual approach to citations, at least to the extent of replicating
his abbreviations and occasional inconsistencies. However, proper cita-
tions are provided in the footnotes; we also regularize Schopenhauer's
punctuation and provide italics for titles where appropriate. In general,
we also follow Schopenhauer in not using quotation marks to distin-
guish occurrences of words or phrases that are "mentioned" as opposed
to being "used." In citing the German in footnotes and endnotes, we
modemize the spelling.

F. The Present and Other Translations

There have already been two complete and one abridged English
translation of the present work: The Warld as Will and Idea, translated
in three volumes by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, i The Warld as Will
and Idea, abridged, edited by David Berman and translated by Jill
Berman/ i and The Warld as Will and Representation, translated in two
volumes by E. F. J. Payne. iii Payne's translation has long been standard,
we have frequently found it useful to consult it, and it is in some
respects certainly difficult 10 expec1 10 do better than he has done. As
already noted, however, one of our main aims is to provide a translation
that is generally more accessible to ordinary readers just by virtue of
being more "readable," more generally consistent in the use of main
terms, and coming at least closer to the actual feel of Schopenhauer' s
writing.
Part of achieving this aim concems the sheer rhythm of Schopen-
hauer's prose: sometimes quite strikingly staccato, but on the whole
much more fluid than one might otherwise have supposed. iv But part of

iLondon: Trubner & Co., 1883-1886.

iiLondon: J. M. Dent (Everyman Library), 1995.
iiiIndian Hills, Colorado: Falcon's Wing Press, 1958 (New York: Dover
Publieations, 1966 [slightly eorreeted re-issue]).
ivAlthough it is not exclusively by this means, the omission of eonjunetions
often contributes to the staeeato effect. For example: "wants nothing further,
ean get nothing further, has repose in pereeption, satisfaetion in the present" (p.
67); "is pereeptually eognizant, immediately and eompletely, of the mode of
effeetuality of alever, pulley, gear, the self-supporting eharaeter of domes,
ete." (p. 87); "have merely perceptual presentations, however, no concepts, no
reflection, are therefore bound to the present, can give no consideration to the
future" (p. 194); "the excellence, virtue, even the saintliness ofpartieular indi-
viduals, the perversity, wretchedness, guile ofmost, the profligacy ofmany" (p.
296); "is the object in itself; is an objeet that has no need of a subjeet, is an
 The World as Will and Presentation xlvii

it simply turns on terminology. In this regard, it seems to us that the

particular constructions that we have favored involving the ubiquitous
terms vorstellen and Vorstellung have not only the substantive advantage
highlighted in the first section of this Introduction, but also that of
conveying Schopenhauer' s thoughts in ways that are more natural to
ears not habituated to certain habits in academic philosophy. Similarly,
a less heavily academic feel, and even a certain degree of positive vital-
ity, seems to us to have been facilitated by the decision to employ a
fuHer array of terms than is customary for the equally ubiquitous erken-
nen and Erkenntnis. In this case, the decision against "know," "knowl-
edge," etc. - reserved, on the whole,i for wissen and Wissen - is only
the most obvious part of it. Of equal import to our desire for a height-
ened sense of vitality, and thereby also to our ability to preserve more
of the actual rhythm of Schopenhauer's prose, has been the liberation
brought by our decision not to hold with stubborn consistency to an
overly limited range of possibilities. Thus rather than make do, for
example, with the single term "cognition," we have made ftee use, as
particular contexts seems to us to recommend, to the whole array of
cognates familiar to readers in English: cognize, be cognizant of, take
cognizance of, recognize; cognition, cognizance, recognitionY
Further obstades to the ordinary reader have also been avoided
with the refusal of undue submission to some practices by now standard
for Kant, and just for that reason posing at least a temptation in the
translation of Schopenhauer. In this respect, but with greater consistency
than Payne, we follow hirn in translating Anschauung as "perception,"
and not as "intuition" (reserving the latter for Schopenhauer's Intuition).
Obviously, the term in question then needs to be taken sufficiently
broadly. In particular, it needs to be aHowed to extend beyond sense
perception and indeed even beyond ordinary "empirieal" perception in
general, in order to cover the fuH range indeed meant to be covered by
Anschauung, namely, in order to aHow the indusion of a special sort of

individual thing and yet not in time and space because it is not perceptual, is an
object of thought and yet not an abstract concept" (p. 5l3); "provided the
method for the inquiry, broke the path, fell short, for the rest, of the goal" (p.
612). I have also refrained, so far as possible, from breaking up Schopenhauer's
sometimes lengthy sentences. For example: pp. 64, 147-8,246-7,424-5,525
(2).
i Seethe next section for additional details on the translation of some terms.
iiObviously, we do not regard this as in conflict with our aim at a greater
degree of consistency than has been customary.
xlviii Translator's Introduction

"perception," first, ofpure space and time, as pure "forms" belonging a

priori to the eognitive process, and, seeond, of that special sort of pre-
sentation that Sehopenhauer caUs an Idee. But that is weIl within the
capacity of the English term in question. (The reader will soon discover
how we then deal, for example, with cases where Anschauung and
Wahrnehmung - both of them naturally "pereeption" in most eases -
oeeur in elose proximity.)
We depart from previous translations altogether, however, with
regard to the Sehopenhauerian-Kantian notion of purely "formal"
elements - in particular spaee, time, and eausality for Sehopenahuer -
as apriori eomponents of the cognitive process. The ears of academic
philosophers, or at least of those who are reasonably familiar with
Kant, are attuned to such phrases as "forms of cognition," "forms of
intuition (or perception)," "forms ofpossible objeets ofhuman eognition
(pereeption, ete.)." To such readers, these phrases may not carry a
particular misleading suggestion, namely, that certain types or kinds of
eognition or pereeption are in question, or particular types or kinds of
objeets thereof. They will simply suggest what is intended: the role of
certain forms or formal elements belonging or pertaining to the cogni-
tive process or, correlatively, to the corresponding objects. But to
other ears this is frequently unclear. For this reason - and regrettably,
somewhat ponderously - we generally have Schopenhauer speaking
here of either of forms "belonging to" (e.g.) perception, or else of forms
"pertaining to" the corresponding objects ofperception.
We do, however, follow Payne in a second instance of departure
from praetices that are common in the translation of Kant, namely, in
that we generally translate Erscheinung as "phenomenon" rather than
"appearance." (We use the latter only for the "appearing," or "coming-
to-appearance," ojphenomena.) in addition to sounding more natural,
as we believe, to the ordinary reader, this decision is aimed at avoiding
the suggestion that Schopenhauer's "will" - in making its various
appearances preeisely as phenomena - is to be thought of as doing so
simply by virtue of the fact that it is a single "thing" variously perceived.
For the same reason, we therefore generally translate erscheinen as "to
make its appearance," rather than "to appear" in the first place. i On the

iThe "perception-correlate" nation is certainly apart of what Schopenhauer

has in mind. But it is not simp/y a question, for Schopenhauer, of things that
"appear" in the particular sense connected with that notion. In particular, the
terminology of "appearance" runs the risk of obscuring the more fundamental
notion of "will" as what might in various contexts equally weH be called "force"
 The World as Will and Presentation xlix

other side, one might of course appeal to the fact that Schopenhauer is
critical of Kant's use of the distinction between "phenomenon" (Phä-
nomen) and Noumenon in connection with his own distinction between
Erscheinung and Ding an sich ("thing in itself').i But, given the other
considerations, this is to our mind an insufficient ground for avoiding
the English 'phenomenon' where, in connection with Schopenhauer's
own distinction between phenomenon and "thing in itself," he is not
equating the latter with any sort of "noumenon" at all, that is, with any
sort ofpurely intelligible or conceptual entity.
Apart from matters of translation as such, we have already noted
some other respects in which we are aiming at something more "reader-
friendly" than the alternatives, namely, with respect to paragraph breaks
and the addition of section-headings. Finally, and on a lighter note, an
equally central component of our endeavor to present a more vital and
spirited Schopenhauer finds expression in a somewhat less reserved
approach to Schopenhauer's sense of humor. Thus, for example, we
equate his frequently repeated accusations of Windbeutelei - generally
directed against Fichte, Schelling, and Hege! - simply and plainly as
accusations of "windbaggery," as opposed to, for example, a more gen-
tlemanly "bombast" or "humbug" (Payne). And we have Schopenhauer
refer to a certain line of Kantian argument - ein aufNadelspitzen einher-
schreitender Kantischer Beweis - as a proof that comes "striding on the
points of needles," rather than merely as one that is "hairsplitting"; and
to a certain other auf Stelzen einherschreitender proof as indeed one
that comes "striding upon stilts," rather than merely as a proof that is
"stilted." But in the first place, again, our aim has simply been this:
without sacrifice of accuracy in substance or in scholarly respects, to
provide a translation that is both more easily readable by intelligent
readers in general, and at the same time conveying something more of a
sense ofSchopenhauer's own style.

or "energy" or "power," and which also "appears" in the very different sense in
which forces can be said to manifest or express themselves. The two notions
may easily be regarded as integrated into the notion of a "phenomenon." And
they can of course also be regarded as integrated into the notion of an "appear-
ance." But with the latter, there is more of a tendency to favor the perception-
correlate notion. (We may in any case regret the suggestion that der Wille is
any kind of"thing" at all, conveyed by Schopenhauer's own description ofit as
"thing in itself. ")
i§ 15, p. 106fn.
xi Translator's Introduction

G. Selective Notes on Some Terms

In this section, for the convenience of the reader, we collect some
of the terms highlighted above, in some cases briefly recapitulate the
points made in their regard, and note a few additional terms. Where
exceptions of any significance occur in the translation, this will be indi-
cated in footnotes. (Unless otherwise noted, the treatment of verbs and
adjectives will be consonant with the corresponding nouns as treated
below.) We do not by any means aim at completeness. However, we
have also provided numerous footnotes with citations of the German
throughout the translation.
Anschauung - perception. This includes ordinary sense perception and
the apprehension of mental images, the apprehension of space and
time as "pure forms" belonging to the perceptual process apriori,
and the apprehension of ldeas (Ideen). (Though he does not do so
in the case of Ideas, Schopenhauer also uses the term Anschauung
to refer both to such apprehension on the part of a perceiver and to
what is thereby apprehended, considered just as such.) See also
Wahrnehmung.
Auffassung - apprehension. See also Wahrnehmung.
Aufhebung - elimination, nullification; always the latter when what is
in question is the Aufhebung ofwill. See section D, above.
(sich) besinnen - generally, to reflect. However, it should be noted that
we do not take this to recommend "reflection" for Besonnenheit
(below), insofar as the latter refers to a certain overall state of
mental/spiritual life, albeit one originally attained to, and in gen-
eral maintained, by way of the practice of reflective consideration.
GeneraHy, "refleetion" will be Reflexion or, for mirror-reflections,
Reflex. Besinnung will sometimes be "refleetion" as weH, but also
sometimes translated in ways more consonant with OUf understand-
ing of Besonnenheit. (Note also that "reflective consideration"
generally translates Überlegung, mainly in order to distinguish the
latter from Betrachtung: generaHy, consideration, but also -
particularly in the context of aesthetics - regard. However, (sich)
überlegen with respect to some matter is generally simply to
consider it.)
Besonnenheit - thoughtful awareness. This has been variously and
inconsistently rendered by other translators. i

i As for the extent of variation, it might be noted that, in the dramatic open-
ing passage of Book One ("'The world is a presentation to me' - this is a truth
 The World as Will and Presentation li

Beziehung - standing alone, generally relation (as likewise, Verhältnis

and Relation), hut sometimes reference. In the context Beziehung
... auf, frequently reference. See further notes within the transla-
tion and in section D., above.
Empfindung - sensation. See seetion B.
erkennen - to be cognizant of, to take cognizance of, on a numher of
occasions, to recognize (which latter also consistently translates
anerkennen and wiedererkennen); occasionally, to cognize.
Erkennen (the nominalized verb) - generally, cognition; occasionally,
cognitive activity.
Erkenntnis - generally, cognizance; sometimes, recognition or cognition.
("Recognition" also translates Anerkennung and Wiedererkennung
and, where noted, Rekognition.)
Note: "Knowledge" is generally Wissen - with Wissenschaft, as is
standard, science - hut also on occasion Kenntnis.
Erkenntisart - mode ofcognition.
Erkenntnisweise - manner of cognizance.
Erscheinung - generally, phenomenon (as also, consistently, Phänomen);
appearance, when what is in question is the appearing or coming-
to-appearance of some phenomenon. Die erscheinende Welt - the
phenomenal world. See toward the end of section F.
Form (followed by genitive) - frequently, "form" belonging to (aspects
of the cognitive process) or pertaining to (the corresponding
objects). This is mainly to avoid possible ambiguity in talk about,
for example, either "forms of perception" or "perceptual forms."
However, we generally use "cognitive form" for hoth Erkenntnis-
form and Form der Erkenntnis (or Form des Erkennens). See
toward the end of section F.
Gestalt, Gestaltung - mode, when used (as repeatedly) for one or more
of the four "forms" of the Principle of Sufficient Ground; other-
wise, Gestalt is generally form or structure.
Grund - ground; in compounds, generally fundamental, sometimes basic.

that applies to every living and cognizant being. However, the human being
alone can bring it to reflective [reflektierte] abstract consciousness; and when
he actually does this, philosophy's thoughtful awareness [philosophische Beson-
nenheit] has come to him."), it has been translated as diversely as "discernment,"
"discretion," and "wisdom." In any case, I cannot forbear from mentioning that
our final decision on this term has been one of the most satisfying upshots of
our discussion ofparticular terms.
lii Translator's Introduction

Idee - Idea (with upper-case initial). See section 0, as also for the
following.
Objektivität - objectivity.
Objektität - objectivization.
Objektivation - objectification.
Principium individuationis - principle of individuation; however, we
leave the expression in Latin See section B.
Satz vom [zureichenden} Grunde - Principle of Sufficient Ground. See
section B.
Vernunft - (the faculty of) reason. We translate Grund as ground, not
"reason." See section B.
Verstand - (the faculty of) understanding. See section B.
Vorstellung - presentation. See seetion A.
Wahrnehmung - perception. This is broader in one way than Anschau-
ung, in that it extends to the perception of truths, and also to the
inner perception of one's state apart from the spatial conditions of
perception. But it is in another respect narrower, applying (apart
from perception of truths) only to cases of empirical perception.
Where the two terms occur in sufficient proximity, we use "per-
ceptual apprehension" for Wahrnehmung; by itse1f, however,
"apprehension" is Auffassung.
der Wille - generally, will (as opposed to the will). See section C.
Wissen - knowledge. See note on Erkenntnis, above.

H. Selective Bibliography
SCHOPENHAUER: COLLECTED MATERIALS IN GERMAN
Der handschriftliche Nachlass, 5 vols. (Frankfurt: W. Kramer, 1966-
1975), ed. Arthur Hübscher; tr. E. F. J. Payne: Manuscript Remains,
4 vols. (N ew York: OxfordlBerg, 1988).
Gesammelte Briefe [Collected Letters], ed. Arthur Hübscher (Bonn:
Bouvier, 1978; 2nd ed. 1987).
Philosophische Vorlesungen [Philosophical Lectures]. Aus dem hand-
schriftlichen Nachlass, 4 vols., ed. Volker Spierling (Munieh: R.
Piper, 1984-1985).
Sämtliche Werke [Complete Works]. Nach der ersten, von Julius Frau-
enstädt besorgten Gesamtausgabe neu bearbeitet und herausge-
geben von Arthur Hübscher, vierte Auflage, durchgesehen von
Angelika Hübscher, 7 vols. (Mannheim: Brockhaus, 1988) - The
World as Will and Presentation is in vols. 2 and 3, the basis for
the present translation.
 The World as Will and Presentation liii

Schopenhauer im Kontext (vol. 5 of series Literatur im Kontext on CD-

ROM), foUowing Schopenhauers Sämtliche Werke, vols. I-VI, ed.
Paul Deussen (Munieh: Piper Verlag, 1911-1926).
Werke in fünf Bänden. Nach den Ausgaben letzter Hand, 5 vols., ed.
Ludger Lütkehaus (Zürich: Haffmans, 1988). See section E.,
above, regarding Ausgaben letzter Hand.

SCHOPENHAUER: W ORKS AND SELECTIONS IN ENGLISH

DIE WELT ALS WILLE UND VORSTELLUNG, 2 VOLS., 3RD EDITION
(1859; IST ED., 1819; 2ND ED., 1844)
The World as Will and Idea, tr. in 3 vols. by R. B. Haldane and J.
Kemp (London: Trubner & Co., 1883-1886).
The World as Will and Representation, tr. in two vols. by E. F. J. Payne
(Indian Hills, Colorado: Falcon's Wing Press, 1958; repr. New
York: Dover Publications, 1966).
The World as Will and Idea Abridged in one Volume, ed. David
Berman, tr. JiU Berman (London: J. M. Dent, 1995). (Everyman
Library).

OTHER WORKS CURRENTLY AVAlLABLE

Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grund

(referred to in this translation as On the Fourfold Root ofthe Principle
of Sufficient Ground; Schopenhauer himself also refers to it either as
"the treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Ground" or "the introductory
treatise").
1st edition (1813)
Schopenhauer's Early Fourfold Root: Translation and Commentary, F.
C. White (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1997 [Avebury
Series in Philosophy]).
2nd edition (1847)
On the Fouifold Root ofthe Principle of Sufficient Reason, tr. E. F. J.
Payne (La SaUe, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1974).

Über das Sehen und die Farben, 2nd edition (1854; 1st. ed, 1816).
On Vision and Colors, tr. E. F. J. Payne, ed. with introduction by David
E. Cartwright (New Y ork: Berg, 1994).

Über den Willen in der Natur, 2 nd edition (1854; 1st ed., 1836).
On the Will in Nature, tr. E. F. J. Payne, ed. with introduction by David
E. Cartwright (New York: Berg, 1992).
liv Translator's Introduction

Preisschrift über die Freiheit des Willens (written in 1839, publ. in

Norwegian in 1840).
On the Freedom of the Will, tr. Konstantin Kolenda (London: Blackwell
Publishers, 1991).
Prize Essay on the Freedom ofthe Will, ed. with introduction by GÜllter
Zöller, tr. by E. F. J. Payne (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999 [Cambridge Texts in the History ofPhilosophy]).

Tbe above published in German in 1841 (2 nd ed., 1860), along with the
following work, as part of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (The
Two Fundamental Problems ofEthics). Schopenhauer sometimes refers
to the latter simply as the Ethics, and sometimes as The Fundamental
Problems ofEthics.

Preisschrift über die Grundlage der Moral (1840; also titled Über das
Fundament der Moral, and referred to in this translation as Prize Essay
on the Foundation ofMorality).
On the Basis of Morality, tr. E. F. 1. Payne, with introduction by David
E. Cartwright (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998; repr.
of 1995 ed. by Berghahn Books, revising original translation by
Payne published by Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

Parerga und Paralipomena. Kleine Philosophische Schriften, 2 vols.

(1851).
Parerga and Paralipomena. Short Philosophical Essays, 2 vols., tr. E.
F. 1. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; reissue of
edition of 1974).
Selections from the above:
Essays and Aphorisms, tr. R. 1. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books,
1970).
The Wisdom ofLife (tr. of Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, from vol. I),
tr. T. Bailey Saunders (New York: Dover Publications, 2004). The
same translator also offers a number of other packagings of essays
from these volumes.

FREQUENTLY CITED IN NOTES

Aristotle. The Complete Works ofAristotle: the Revised Oxford Transla-
tion, 2 vols., ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984).
Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Royal Prussian Academy
of Sciences (and successors) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1900 - ).
 The World as Will and Presentation Iv

References in the form Ak. n.n are to volume and page number in
this edition.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique 0/ Pure Reason, cited in AlB format for
pagination in the first (1781) and second (1787) editions (standardly
indicated in current editions). Currently available translations, all
equally worth consulting: Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmil-
lan, 1929); Wemer Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.,
1996); Allen Wood and Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999). The latter is part ofthe Cambridge Edition
of the W orks of Immanuel Kant in Translation, containing author-
itative translations of all of Kant's works. (Other works of Kant
are referred to in footnotes throughout the present translation.)
Plato. The Collected Dialogues 0/ Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Hunt-
ington Caims (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 [Bollin-
gen Foundation, 1961]).

SOME USEFUL BOOKS ON SCHOPENHAUER IN ENGLISH

Atwell, John E. Schopenhauer. The Human Character (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1990).
Atwell, John E. Schopenhauer on the Character 0/ the World. The
Metaphysics 0/ Will (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press,
1995).
Cartwright, David E. Historical Dictionary 0/ Schopenhauer's Philos-
ophy (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press [Rowman and Littlefield],
2005).
Fox, Michael (ed.). Schopenhauer. His Philosophical Achievement
(Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980).
Hamlyn, D. W. Schopenhauer (London: RoutIedge, 1980; repr. 1999).
Hübscher, Arthur. The Philosophy 0/ Schopenhauer in Its lntellectual
Context: Thinker Against the Tide (tr. of Denker gegen den Strom.
Schopenhauer Gestern - Heute - Morgen [Bonn: Bouvier, 1973]),
tr. Joachim T. Baer and David E. Cartwrigbt (Lewiston, NY: Edwin
MeIlen Press, 1989).
Jacquette, Dale (ed.). Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Jacquette, Dale. The Philosophy 0/ Schopenhauer (MontreallKingston:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005).
Janaway, Christopher (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Janaway, Christopher. Schopenhauer (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994).
Janaway, Christopher. Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
lvi Translator's Introduction

Magee, Bryan. The Philosophy 0/ Schopenhauer, 2 nd ed. (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1997).
Safranski, Rüdiger. Schopenhauer and the Wild Years 0/Philosophy, tr.
Ewald Osers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990 [Gennan
original Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1987]).
von der Luft, Eric (ed.). Schopenhauer. New Essays in Honor o/his 20dh
Birthday (Lewiston, NY: Edwin MeIlen Press, 1988). (Includes
extensive bibliographies compiled by David E. Cartwright and
Eric von der Luft).
White, F. C. On Schopenhauer 's Fourfold Root 0/ the Principle 0/
Sufficient Reason (Leiden: E. J. BrilI, 1992).
Y oung, Julian. Willing and Unwilling. A Study in the Philosophy 0/
Arthur Schopenhauer (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987).
Young, Julian. Schopenhauer (London: Routledge, 2005).
Papers in English also appear in the Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch, annual
publication ofthe Schopenhauer-Gesellschaji (Frankfurt am Main).

I. Acknowledgments
I want first to emphasize the benefit of my collaboration with
David Carus. I look forward, as should readers of this first volume, to
the upshot of an equally fruitful collaboration on the second. Nor can I
forbear from reiterating my gratitude to the numerous scholars and
translators who have preceded us, but in particular to the inspiration of
E. F. J. Payne. While I venture to offer the present translation as in
some respects an advance, its possibility has owed much to resources
unavailable to Payne; perhaps it owes yet more to what he had already
done without them.
I also most warmly acknowledge the collegial and supportive
environment ofthe Philosophy Department ofthe University ofTennes-
see, which has not failed to be nurturing, and a virtual second family,
since I began teaching here in 1974. I am also greatly appreciative of
the College of Arts and Sciences' funding of Adam Winck as a research
assistant during one of my summers of work on the project. Adam
rescued me from various slip-ups. But more positively, I have benefited
from numerous thoughtful suggestions on his part.
On a more personal note, I mention the fmal years of my parents'
lives. Their states of mind did not pennit appreciation of the work that I
was doing at the time. But the ethic of work that I had received from
tllem kept me going as they faded. In particular, I thank Pat and Tim
Street, who cared for my mother and father for two years, and so made
it possible for them to live as long as possible in their own horne. And I
thank Peggy Anderson and Carolyn Brown, who cared for my father in
 The World as Will and Presentation lvii

Knoxville during his final year and a half. The stimulation that they
provided, and the love that they showed both hirn and rny entire family,
gave me a peace ofmind that I cannot forget. My memories ofwork on
this project are inextricably interwoven with memories of Peggy and
Carolyn.
But more irnportant than all: rny wife Jean and our granddaughter
Megan, who is very much like our own daughter. Without being able to
return to thern from work on this project, it could not have been done.
This page intentionally left blank
 The World
as Will and Presentation
BY ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

THIRD EDITION, IMPROVED AND GREATLY

EXPANDED

FIRST VOLUME

Four Books with an Appendix

Containing the Critique of Kantian Philosophy

That nature might in the endfathom itse!f?

-GOETHE1
This page intentionally left blank
 Schopenhauer'sTahle of Contents
Expanded

PREFACES TO THE THREE EDITIONS 9

FIRST BOOK
The W orld as Presentation: First Consideration
Presentation as Subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground:
The Object ofExperience and Science 31

§ 1. The One-Sided Approach ofBook One 31

§ 2. Correlativity of Subject and Object
Subjection of Object to the Principle of Sufficient Ground 33
§ 3. Space and Time as Ground ofBeing
Objects ofPure Perception 3S
§ 4. Causality and Pure Understanding
Matter in Essence Causality
Sensation vs. Perception
The Body as Immediate Object 37
§ S. Disputes about the Reality of the External W orld
Life as a Dream 42
§ 6. More on the Body as Immediate Object
Understanding without Concepts
Human and Animal 1ntelligence 49
§ 7. Systems that Proceed from the Object or Subject Alone
Natural Science
More on the Principle of Sufficient Ground S6
§ 8. Conceptual Reason vs. Perceptual Understanding 67
§ 9. Concepts as Abstractions
Logic as Science 7 I
§ 10. More on Logic, Science, and Knowledge 83
§ 11. The Concept of "Feeling" as a Negative Concept 84
§ 12. Advantages and Disadvantages ofReason 86
§ 13. A Theory of Humor 92

3
4 Expanded Table ofContents

§ 14. More on the Sciences

Superiority ofPerception over Proof 96
§ IS. Mathematics, Logic, Truth, Philosophy I04
§ 16. Practical Reason Properly and Falsely So-Called 120

SECONDBOOK
The W orld as Will: First Consideration
The Objectification ofWill 131

§ I7. The Inner Meaning ofPresentations - Not an Object

The Demand Not Satisfied by Science
Mysterious Character ofNatural Forces I3I
§ 18. The Body Given in T wo very Different Manners
Immediate Experience of the Body as \Vill
An Entirely Unique Sott of Cognizance 136
§ 19. Extension of this T wofold View to the W orld as a Whole 140
§ 20. Actions Deterrnined by Character plus Motive
Empirical vs. Intelligible Character
No Ultimate Explanation of the Latter
Individual Bodies as Individual Wills Objectified 144
§ 21. Will as Thing in Itself 147
§ 22. Extension of the Concept ofWill
Will and Force 149
§ 23. Groundlessness of Will as Thing in Itself
Beyond the Principle of Individuation
All Phenomena Subject to Complete Determinism
Causes, Stimuli, and Motives 15 I
§ 24. Time, Space, and Causality only Forms Belonging to Cognition
Pure Mathematics and Pure Natural Science
The Futile Attempts ofNatural Science to Fathom Ultimate
Reality IS8
§ 25. Space and Time as the Principle oflndividuation
Preliminary Comparison with Plato' s Theory ofIdeas 168
§ 26. Original Forces and the Characters ofThings as Ideas
Secondary Status ofNatural Laws and Causes [71
§ 27. More on the Limitations ofNatural Science
1ntimation of the Thing in Itself in Nature
A Cautious Philosophy ofNature 180
 Expanded Table ofContents 5

§ 28. Higher Levels ofObjectification ofWilllnseparable from Lower

Internal and External Purposiveness in Nature
Empirical and Intelligible Character Again 196
§ 29. Groundlessness ofIdeas
Will as Thing in ItselfWithout Ultimate Purpose 206

THIRDBOOK
The W orId as Presentation: Second Consideration
Presentation Independent of the Principle of Sufficient Ground
The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 2II
§ 30. Levels of Objectification ofWill as Platonic Ideas 211
§ 31. Platonic Ideas and Kant's Thing in Itself 212
§ 32. Platonic Ideas as Presentations/Not the Thing in Itself as Such
Kant's lnconsistency 217
§ 33. Cognition Freed from Relations in the Cognizance ofldeas 21 9
§ 34. The Subject Will-Iess in Its Cognizance ofIdeas
Release from the Principles of Sufficient Ground
and Individuation 221
§ 35. Ideas distinguished from their Phenomena 225
§ 36. The Replication ofldeas in Art
Genius and Madness 227
§ 37. Degrees of the lnnate Capacity for Cognizance ofIdeas 239
§ 38. The Subjective Side of the Aesthetic Experience 240
§ 39. The Aesthetically Sublime 245
§ 40. The Stimulating as the Contrary of the Sublime 253
§ 41. Everything Beautiful in its Own Way
Further Comparison with Plato 254
§ 42. The Subjective and Objective Sides of the Aesthetic Expetience 258
§ 43. The Aesthetic Display of the Most General Ideas of Matter
Architecture and the Fine Art ofWater-Conduction 259
§ 44. The Fine Art of Gardens
Painting that Depicts Incognizant Beings
Paintings and Sculptures of Animals 264
§ 45. Historical Painting and Sculpture
Human Beauty and Grace
Standards and Ideals of Beauty 266
§ 46. Why Laokoön does not Scream 273
6 Expanded Table ofContenls

§ 47. Nudity and Clothing - For Body and Mind 277

§ 48. Historical Painting and the Idea ofHumanity 277
§ 49. The Difference between Ideas and Concepts
Substance vs. Mannerism in Art 28I
§ 50. The Expression of Concepts in Art
Allegory and Symbol 285
§ 51. The Literary Arts
Poetry and History - Song - T ragedy
The ldea of Humanity 291
§ 52. The Special Case of Music 305

FOURTHBOOK
The W orld as Will: Se co nd Consideration
With the Achievement of Self-Cognizance
Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 321

§ 53. The Ethical Part of this W ork not Practical Philosophy

No "Ought" to be Prescribed
The Irrelevance or History 32 I
§ 54. Life and Death
The Eternal Present
No Individual Survival
Affirmation and Denial of the Will fOT Lift. 325
§ 55. Freedom and Detenninism
Compiete Self-Denial the Only Possible Freedom within the Phenomenon
Empirical, Intelligible, and Acquired Character 338
§ 56. Cognition as Motive and as Quieter ofWill
Will Lacking in Ultimate Purpose
Life as Constant Suffering 36I
§ 57. Life, Death, Suffering, Boredom 365
§ 58. Happiness Negative and Transitory
Reiigious Superstition 373
§ 59. More on the Misery of Life
Optimism and Pessimism 378
§ 60. Affirmation of the Will for Life
The Sex Drive lts Strongest form
A Glimpse of Eternal Justice 381
 Expanded Table ofContents 7

§ 61. The Egoism Inherent in Every Being 387

§ 62. Self-Affirmation Extended to Denial of the Will in Others
Right as a Purely Negative Concept
Moral vs. Legal Right and W rong
Purpose of the State
Justification ofPunishment 389
§ 63. Temporal vs. Eternal Justice 408
§ 64. Eternal Justice Obscurely Felt by Everyone 415
§ 65. Good. Bad, Evil. Malice
Conscience as Feeling 418
§ 66. True Virtue not a Matter ofMorality or Dogmas
Grounded in Intuitive, not Abstract Cognizance
Righteousness vs. True Goodness 427
§ 67. True Virtue as Pure Love
Its Grounding in Compassion
Crying and Compassion for Oneself 435
§ 68. From Virtue to Asceticism - Denial of the Will for Life
The Example of Saintly Individuals
Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism
T wo Paths to Self-Denial 438
§ 69. Suicide 462
§ 70. Denial ofWill the Only Real Freedom in the Phenomenon
Will and Phenomenon in Contradiction
Cognition in Contradiction with Will
Christian Symbolism 467
§ 71. Nothingness 474

APPENDIX
Critique of Kantian Philosophy 479
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface to the First EditionI vii

1818

How this book should be read in order that it may possibly be

understood: it is my intention to state that here. - What is to be commu-
nicated through it is a single thought. Nonetheless, despite all efforts, I
could find no shorter way to communicate it than this entire book. - I
take the thought to be that which has been sought at great length under
the name of philosophy, and whose discovery has been, precisely for
that reason, held by the historically cultivated to be as impossible as
that of the philosophers' stone, even if Pliny has already told them:
Quam multa fieri non posse, priusquam sint facta, judicantur? (Hist.
nat.7, lY
According to the various sides from which the one thought to be
communicated is considered, it shows itself to be that which has been
called metaphysics, that which has been called ethics, and that which
has been called aesthetics; and of course it would have to be all of this,
were it what, as I have already confessed, I take it to be.
A system of thoughts must always have an architectonic structure,
i.e., one in which one part always supports the other, but not the latter viii
also the former, the comerstone finally supports them all without being
supported by them, the pinnacle is supported without supporting. By
contrast, a single thought, however encompassing it may be, must pre-
serve the most complete unity. If nonetheless, for the sake of communi-
cation, it allows of a division into parts, then the structure of these parts

t'How much is judged to be impossible, until it is done?": Historia naturalis

(Natural History) VII, 1,6.]

9
 10 Preface to the First Edition (1818)

must yet in turn be an organic one, i.e., one where every part sustains
the whole just as much as it is sustained by the whole, none is the fIrst
and none the last, the whole thought gains in distinctness by way of
each part, and even the smallest part cannot be fuHy understood unless
the whole is already understood in advance. - In the meantime, a book
must have a fIrst and a last line and will to that extent always remain
very unlike an organism, however much like the latter its content may
be; consequently, form and content will stand in contradiction bere.
It is self-evident that, under such circumstances, the only advice
for penetrating the thought set forth is to read the book twice, and indeed
tbe fIrst time witb much patience, which can only be drawn from the
freely accorded belief that the beginning presupposes the end almost as
much as the end does the beginning, and every earlier part likewise the
later almost as much as the latter the former. I say "almost." For it is in
no way altogether so, and whatever is possible has been honestly and
conscientiously done to begin with that which least of a11 waits for
illumination from what comes later, and in general to do whatever could
facilitate the easiest possible comprehension and distinctness. Indeed, a
certain degree of success might have been achieved in this, if the reader
does not, which is very natural, think not merely of whatever has been
said in the course of his reading, but also of possible consequences. In
ix the latter case, besides the many contradictions actually at hand with
respect to opinions ofthe day, and presumably also ofthe reader, there
can be added so many other anticipated and imaginary ones that what is
still mere misunderstanding is bound to show forth as lively disapproval
- misunderstanding, however, of which one is a11 the less cognizant as
such, given that the laboriously achieved clarity of exposition and dis-
tinctness of expression surely never Jeaves doubt as to the immediate
sense of what has been said, even if it cannot simultaneously pronounce
its relations to everything else. For this reason, therefore, as stated, the
first reading requires patience drawn from the confIdence that, with the
second, one will see much or a11 in an entirely different light. In any
case, the serious striving toward full and even easy intelligibility, with a
very difficult subject, is what justifies the fact that a certain repetition is
found here and there. Indeed, the organic structure ofthe whole, unlike
the construction of a chain, sometimes makes it necessary to touch on
the same point twice. Precisely this construction as we11, and the very
tight interconnection of a11 the parts, has not permitted me the division,
which I otherwise fInd most worthwhile, into chapters and sections/ but

tKapitel und Paragraphen. The four Books are divided directly into a total
 The World as Will and Presentation 11

has forced me to make do with four main divisions: as it were, four

points of view on the one thought. In each of these four Books, on
account of the necessary treatment of relevant details, one needs to be
particularly careful not to lose sight of the main thought or progression
of the entire exposition. - Herewith, then, is pronounced the first and,
like those to follow, unavoidable demand on the unsympathetic reader
(unsympathetic to the philosopher, precisely because the reader is one
himsel!).
The second demand is this: that one read the introduction before
the book, even though it does not stand in the book, but appeared five
years earlier under the tide On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of x
Sufficient Ground: a Philosophical Treatise. i - Without acquaintance
with this introduction and propaedeutic, true understanding of the pres-
ent work is altogether impossible,ii and the content of that treatise is
presupposed throughout as if it stood in the book. In any case, if it had
not already preceded this work by several years, it would in fact not
properly head it as an introduction, but rather be incorporated into the
first Book, which now, in the absence of what is said in that treatise,
indeed shows a certain incompleteness on account of these gaps, which
it has ever to fill by reference to that treatise. Nevertheless, so great was
my aversion to plagiarizing from myseIf, or laboriously reproducing in
other words what was already sufficiendy stated, that I preferred this
path, despite the fact that I could now give the content of that treatise a
somewhat better exposition, particularly insofar as I have purified it of
many concepts stemming from having been too caught up in Kantian
philosophy at the time, such as the concepts of Categories, outer and
inner sense, and the like. Nevertheless, those concepts are yet to be
found even there only because I had so far not truly engaged with them
in depth, therefore only secondarily and quite out of contact with the
main issue. For this reason, then, through acquaintance with the present

of seventy-one numbered but untitled "sections," beginning with the second

edition. For convenience, headings have been added to indicate the general
contents ofthe sections (italicized and placed within brackets).1
tÜber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde: Eine
philosophische Abhandlung (1813; 2nd ed., 1847). Grund is traditionally trans-
lated "reason" with regard to this principle, but is "ground" throughout the
present translation; see introduction for discussion. To emphasize the importance
attached to it by Schopenhauer, I present it with initial capitals throughout:
Principle of Sufficient Ground.]
ii[This is something of an exaggeration; in any case, I comment on relevant
issues in the introduction and occasional endnotes.]
 12 Preface to the First Edition (1818)

work, correction of such points in that treatise will automatically take

effect in the reader's thoughts.
But only if, through that treatise, one has fully recognized what the
Principle of Sufficient Ground is and means, how far its validity does
and does not extend, and that this principle does not exist before all
things, with the entire world existing only as a consequence and in
Xl accordance with it, as it were as its corollary, but rather that it is nothing
more than the form within which objects, always conditioned by the
subject, ofwhatever sort they may be, are everywhere cognized insofar
as the subject is a cognizant individual - only then will it be possible to
enter into the method of philosophizing that is for the first time here
atempted, utterly diverging from everything preceding.
But the same aversion to plagiarizing my own words, or even to
saying exact1y the same thing a second time in other and worse terms,
having already preempted better ones, has occasioned yet a second gap
in the first Book of this work, insofar as I have omitted everything that
stands in the first chapter of my treatise On Vision and Colors i and
would otherwise have found its place here word for word. Thus also,
acquaintance with this earlier short work is here presupposed.
The third demand to be made on the reader, finally, could even be
tacitly presupposed. For it is none other than acquaintance with the most
important phenomenonii to have occurred in philosophy in two millennia
and that lies so near at hand to uso I mean the chief works of Kant. The
effectiii that they produce in a spirit to which they actuallyiV speak, I in
fact find to be, as has indeed already been said, altogether comparable
to the operation for cataracts on a blind person. And if we would con-
tinue the comparison, then my purpose is to be characterized by the fact
that Iwanted to put cataract lenses in the hands of those on whom that
operation has been successful, for the employment ofwhich that operation
itself is thus the most necessary condition.
As much, accordingly, as I take my point of departure from what
the great Kant has accomplished, serious study of his works has none-
theless allowed me to discover significant mi stakes in them, which I

tÜber das Sehen und die Farben: written in 1815, initially held from publi-
cation in the hope - proved vain - of an endorsement by Goethe, whose anti-
Newtonian views on light and color Schopenhauer shared, then published in
1816 and expanded in the second edition of 1854.]
ii[Erscheinung]
iii[Wirkung]
iv[wirklich]
 The World as Will and Presentation 13

have had to separate out and displayas objectionable, in order to be

able to presuppose and apply what is true and excellent in his doctrine, xii
pure of them and refined. In order, however, not to interrupt and con-
fuse my own exposition with frequent polemic against Kant, I have put
the latter into a separate Appendix. However much, then, in accordance
with what has been said, my work presupposes acquaintance with Kantian
philosophy, it thus to the same extent presupposes acquaintance with
that Appendix. i Therefore, it would in this respect be advisable to read
the Appendix first, all the more so as its content has definite connections
precisely with the first Book of the present work. On the other hand,
given the nature of the matter, it could also not be avoided that the
Appendix now and then refer to the work itself; from this nothing else
follows than that, just as much as the main part of the work, it must
likewise be read twice.
The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only one with which a thor-
ough acquaintance is directly presupposed by that which is to be here
expounded. - If beyond this, however, the reader has lingered in the
school of the divine Plato, he will be an the better prepared and the
more receptive to hearing me. But if he has even yet further shared in
the benefaction ofthe Vedas, access to which, opened up to us through
the Upanishads,ii is in my eyes the preeminent greatness that this still
young century has to show over earlier ones - in that Tpresume that the
influence of Sanskrit literature will be no less deep in its reach than that
of the revival of Greek literature in the 15 th CentuI")? - if, I thus assert,
the reader has in fact already received and embraced consecration from
the ages-old Indian wisdom, then he is best of all prepared to hear what
I have to expound to hirn. It will then not speak to hirn, as to many
others, in foreign, indeed hostile terms. For, if it does not sound too
vain, I would maintain that every one of the individual and disparate XJIl
pronouncements that constitute the Upanishads can be derived as a
consequence from the thought to be communicated by me, although in
no way, converse1y, is the latter already to be found there.
*********
But most readers have already risen up with impatience and burst
forth with the objection held back so long with difficulty: how dare I lay
a book before the public with demancis and conditions, of which the first
two are presumptuous and quite immodest, and for that matter at a time

i[Agam, something of an exaggeration on Schopenhauer' spart.]

"[See relevant note to § 1 ofBook One.]
 14 Preface to the First Edition (1818)

when there is such a general abundance ofunique thoughts that, by way

of the presses in Germany alone, they are made public property in three
thousand substantial, original, and quite indispensable works annually,
and in addition in countless periodicals, not to mention the daily papers?
- at a time when, in particular, there is not the least lack of quite original
and deep philosophers, but rather more of them living simultaneously
in Germany alone than could have been exhibited by any other span of
centuries? How is one ever to get through it all, asks the indignant reader,
if one has to set to work so circumstantially with a book?
Since I have nothing in the least to bring forth in the face of such
objections, I hope only for some thanks from these readers for having
wamed them in timely fashion, so that they not lose a single hour with
a book that it could not be fruitful to read without fulfilling the stated
dcmands, and that should therefore be neglected entirely, particularly
since one may in any case wager much that it is not able to speak to
them, that it will rather always bc only paucorum hominum,i and must
xiv therefore calmly and modestly await those few whose uncommon mode
ofthinking finds it enjoyable. For even apart from the complications and
cxertion that it imposes on the reader, what cultivated individual of
today, whose knowledge approaches that splendid point where ''para-
doxieal" and "false" are entirely the same thing, eould bear to eneounter
on almost every page thoughts that straightforwardly contradict what he
has yet onee and for all confirmed as true and settled? And then how
unpleasantly deeeived will many a one feel if he meets here with no
talk at all of that whieh he believes has altogether to be sought preeisely
here, because his way of speculating coincides with that of a stillliving
great philosopher, t who has written truly touching books and has only
the slight weakness that he takes everything of which he had leamed
and approved prior to his fifteenth year to be fundamental thoughts innate
to the human spirit. Who could bear all this? Therefore, my advice is
just to set the book back down.
But I myself fear that I cannot get out of it in this way. The reader
who has arrived at the preface, which dismisses him, has paid cash for
the book and is asking: where is my compensation? - My last refuge is
now to remind him that he yet knows how to utilize a book in many
ways, even without reading it at all. It can fill a gap in his library just as
weIl as many others, where, neatly bound, it is certain to make a good

i["a matter for a few men": Horace, Satires 1,9,44.]

tp. H. Jakobi. [Priedrich Heinrich Jakobi (1743-1819); the "talk" to be antici-
pated is presumably that ofmatters ofreligious faith. Note added in C.]
 The World as Will and Presentation 15

appearance. Or he can lay it on the dressing table of his learned lady

friend, or on the tea table. Or indeed fmally, which is certainly the best
of all and as I especially advise, he can review it.
*********
And so, after allowing myself the joke to which hardly a page in xv
this altogether ambiguous life can be too serious to grant a place, I put
the book forth with inner seriousness, in the conviction that it will sooner
or later reach those to whom alone it can be directed, and in any case
submitting with composure to the fact that it too will meet in full mea-
sure the fate that, in every cognitive achievement - thus all the more in
the most important - has always befallen the truth, to which is allotted
only a short celebration of victory between the two long periods in
which it is condemned as paradoxical and deprecated as trivial. The
former fate tends to strike its author as weIl. - But life is short and truth
far-reaching and long-lived. Let us speak the truth.

(Written at Dresden in August 1818.)3

This page intentionally left blank
Preface to the Second Edition xvi

1844

Not to contemporaries, not to fellow citizens - to humanity I consign

my now completed work, with the confidence that it will not be without
value for them, even if, as is entailed by the lot of that which is a good
of any sort, this may be recognized only late. F or it can only have been
for humanity, not for the quickly passing generation occupied with its
momentary delusion, that my mindi has been, almost against my will,
for a long life through uninterruptedly devoted to work on it. Nor could
the lack of interest in it during this time cause me to waver as to its
value. For I continually saw that which is false, bad, in the end absurd
and senseless, t standing in general admiration and reverence, and con-
sidered that, if those who are capable of recognizing the genuine and
right were not so rare that one can look around for them in vain for
some twenty years, there might not be so few who are capable of pro-
ducing it that their works subsequently constitute an exception to the
evanescence of earthly things - by which fact one then loses that xvii
quickening hope for posterity which is needed as fortification by any-
one who has set himself a high goal.
Whoever seriously takes up and pursues a matter that does not lead
to material utility must not count on the interest of contemporaries. But
he will surely for the most part see, in the meantime, that the semblance
of such matters gains authority in the world and enjoys its day. And this
is in the order of things. For the matter itself must also be pursued for

tKopj]
tHegelian philosophy.

17
 18 Preface to the Second Edition (1844)

itself. Otherwise it cannot succeed. For foresight is everywhere a threat

to insight. i Accordingly, just as the history ofliterature thoroughly testi-
fies, anything ofvalue, to gain authority, has needed a great deal oftime,
particularly when it is of the instructive, not of the entertaining, variety;
and in the meantime, falsehood glittered. For it Is difficult if not impos-
sible to unite a thing with the semblance of that thing. It is indeed
precisely the curse of this world of hardship and neediness that
everything has to serve and be indentured to them. Precisely for this
reason, the world is not made so that any noble and sublime striving
within it, such as that for light and truth, may thrive unobstructed and
for its own sake. Rather, even when such a thing has been able to gain
authority, and its concept is thereby introduced, material interests,
personal purposes, will at once appropriate it as their instrument - or
their mask. Accordingly, after Kant had brought philosophy once more
into repute, it too was indeed soon bound to become the instrument of
purposes - of political ones from above, or personaiones from below -
even if taken strictly it was not it but its double, which passes for it.
This must not even trouble uso For the unbelievably great majority of
human beings are, according to their nature, altogether capable of none
XVlll other than material purposes, indeed can comprehend none other. Thus
striving for truth alone is much too high and eccentric a sort of thing
that we might expect that all, that many, or even that only a few take an
honest part in i1. If one nonetheless sometimes sees, as, e.g., precisely
now in Germany, a striking mobility, a general state of doing, writing,
and talking in matters of philosophy, then one may confidently presup-
pose that the actual prim um mobile/i the hidden incentiveiii for such
activity despite all ceremonious airs and assuranees, is only real, not
ideal, purposes, namely, that it is personal, official, ecclesiastical, polit-
ical, in short, material interests that one has in view here, and that mere
partiality of purposes consequentJy imparts such powerfuJ movement to
the many pens iv of supposed philosophers, hence that foresight, not
insight, is the guiding star of this noisy bunch, v while truth is certainly
the last thing to be thought about. Truth is not a matter of partisanship. vi
Rather, it can make its way through such a weIter of philosophical dis-

i[Absicht ... Einsicht]

ii ["first mover"]
111 [Triebjeder]

iv [Feder]

V[dieser Tumultuanten]
vlSie findet keine Parteigänger.]
 The World as Will and Presentation 19

pute as calmly and unnoticed as through the winter night of the darkest
century caught up in the most rigid ecclesiastical faith, where it is
perhaps communicated only as a secret doctrine to a few devotees, or
indeed only entrusted to parchment. Indeed, I would say that no time
can be less favorable for philosophy than that in which it is shamefully
misused by the one side to make politics, by the other side to make a
living. i Or does one perhaps believe that, with such striving and in the
midst of such a fray, the truth will come to light as well, as a kind of
extra on which one had not set one's purpose? Truth is no whore who
throws herself on the neck of those who do not desire her. Rather, she is
so shy a beauty that even one who sacrifices everything to her can still
not be certain ofher favor.
Now if governments make philosophy into a means for their polit- xix
ical purposes, scholars, on the other hand, see in philosophical profes-
sorships a trade that feeds its man like any other; they thus press after
them amidst assurances of their good disposition, Le., intention to serve
those purposes. And they keep their word: not truth, not c1arity, not
Plato, not Aristotle, but the purposes that they have been employed to
serve, are their guiding star and at once also become the criterion of
truth, of value, of what is worthy of attention, and of their opposites.
What therefore does not correspond to those purposes - and it may be
the most important and most extraordinary thing in their discipline - is
either condemned or, where this is unseemly, strangled with unanimous
silence. Just look at their unanimous eagemess in opposition to panthe-
ism. Is there any fool who believes this proceeds from conviction? -
And however could that philosophy which has been degraded into a way
of eaming one's bread fail to degenerate into sophistry? Precisely
because this is inevitable and the rule has always applied, "Whose
bread I eat, his song I sing," eaming money with philosophy was for
the ancients the characteristic mark of the sophist. - But now there is
the added fact that, since nothing but mediocrity is to be expected
anywhere in this world, may be demanded, or is to be had for money,
one has to make do with it here as weIl. From this we then see, in all
the German universities, beloved mediocrity endeavoring to establish a
still quite non-existent philosophy by its own means, and indeed in
accordance with a prescribed measure and goal - a spectacle that it would
be almost cruel to ridicule.
While philosophy has to this extent long had to serve altogether as
a means, on the one hand for public, on the other for private, purposes,

i[als Staatsmittel...als Erwerbsmittel]

 20 Preface 10 the Second Edition (1844)

I have, undisturbed thereby, pursued the train of my thoughts for more

than thirty years, and precisely only because I had to and could not do
xx otherwise, from an instinctive drive that was yet supported by the
conviction that what truth an individual has thought and what obscurity
he has illurninated will yet at some time also be grasped by another
thinking spirit, will speak to it, give it pleasure, and console it; such a
one we are addressing, just as those similar to us have addressed us and
thereby been our consolation in this living wasteland. In the meantime,
one pursues his subject for its own sake and on its own terms. But then
the strange thing with philosophical meditations is that precisely only
that which one has thought through and examined for oneself is
subsequently also of benefit to others, but not that which was already
originally intended for others. The former is in the first instance marked
by its character of thoroughgoing honesty. For one does not seek to
deceive oneself, nor to pass off empty shells on oneself; thereby, all
sophistry and aB word-mongering then drop out, and in consequence of
this every sentence written repays at once the effort to read it. Accord-
ingly, my works bear the stamp of honesty and openness so distinctly
on their brow that they are just by that fact in glaring contrast with
those of the three famous sophists of the post-Kantian period. One
always finds me in the standpoint of rejlection,i i.e., rationally thought-
ful awarenessii and honest communication, never in the standpoint of
inspiration, otherwise known as intellectual perception,iii or also absolute
thought, but by its rightful name windbaggeryiv and charlatanism.
In this spirit therefore working, all the while continuing to see the
false and the bad standing in general recognition, indeed windbaggeryt
and charlatanismt most highly revered, I have long since given up on
the approval of my contemporaries. A body of contemporaries that has
xxi for twenty years raved about a Hegel, that spiritual Caliban, as the
greatest of philosophers - so loudly that it reverberated throughout the
whole of Europe - could not possibly cause one who has seen this to
lust after its approval. It has no more laurels to bestow; its approval has

i[Reflexion]
ii[der vernünftigen Besinnung. Normally, throughout, the less frequently
employed Besinnung will also be translated as "refleetion," while Besonnenheit
will be, by itself, "thoughtful awareness."]
iitintellektuelle Anschauung]
iV[ Windbeutelei]
tFichte and Schelling. [Note added in Cl
tHegel. [Note added in Cl
 The World as Will and Presentation 21

been prostituted, and its reproach can mean nothing. That I am serious
about this can be seen from the fact that, if I had ever sought the
approval of my contemporaries, I would have had to strike out twenty
passages that absolutely contradict all their views, indeed are bound in
part to give them offense. But I would count it as dereliction on my part
to sacrifice even a syllable to that approval. My guiding star has been
quite seriously the truth. Following it, I can in the first instance seek
only my own approval, entirely turned away from an age sunk deep
with respect to all higher spiritual endeavors and from a demoralized
nationalliterature in which, exceptions aside, the art of combining high
words with lowly dispositions has reached its pinnacle. From the
mistakes and weaknesses necessarily attaching to my nature, as to each its
own, I can of course never escape; but I will not augment them with
unworthy accommodation.
For what now concerns this second edition, it pleases me first of
all to find nothing to have to retract after twenty-five years, thus my
fundamental convictions have maintained themselves at least in my
own person. The alterations in the first volume,i the only one containing
the text of the first edition, accordingly never touch what is essential,
but rather concern partly only secondary matters; but for the most part
they consist in usually brief, elucidative additions here and there. Only
the "Critique of Kantian Philosophy"ii has received significant corrections
and extensive additions. For these could not here be brought into a
supplementary Book such as has been provided in the second volume xxii
for the four Books that expound my doctrine proper. With the latter I
chose that form of enlargement and improvement for the reason that the
twenty-five years elapsed since their composition have brought such a
notable alteration in my manner of exposition and in the tone of
delivery that it just would not do to fuse the content of the second
volume into a whole with that of the first, by which fusion both would
have been bound to suffer. I therefore put forth the two works in sepa-
ration, and have often changed nothing in the earlier exposition even
where I would now express mys elf quite differently; for Iwanted to
guard against spoiling the work of my younger years with the carping of
old age. What might need correction in this respect will, with the help
of the second volume, surely right itself automatically in the mind of

i[The second vohune, comprised of"Supplements (Ergänzungen) to the Four

Books ofthe First Volume," was added for the second edition.]
u[The Appendix to the first edition aud thus to the first volume of the subse-
quent editions.]
 22 Preface to the Second Edition (1844)

thl~ reader. Both volumes stand, in the fun sense of the term, as the
other's complement, namely, to the extent that this rests on the fact
that the one stage of a person's life is, in an intellectual respect, the
complementi of the other. Therefore, one will find not mere1y that each
volume contains that which the other does not have, but also that the
advantages of the one consist precisely in that which is absent from the
other. If, accordingly, the first half of my work has that advantage over
the second which only the fire of youth and the energy of initial concep-
tion can bestow, the latter, by contrast, will surpass the former through
its maturity and completeness in working out thoughts, which is imparted
only to the fruits of a long course of life and its industry. For when I
had the force for the original conception of my system's fundamental
thought, pursuing it at once into its fOUf branches, returning therefrom
to the unity of their stern, and then distinctly depicting the whole, I could
XX111 not yet have been in the position to work out all the parts of the system
with the completeness, thoroughness, and detail that can be attained
only through many years of meditation on it. The latter is required in
order to test and to illustrate it with countless facts, support it with the
most diverse sorts of confirmation, illuminate it brightly from an sides,
set the various points of view in accordingly bold contrast, cleanly
separate the multiplicity of materials and set them forth well-ordered.
Therefore. although it would of course have to have been more pleasant
for the reader to have my work as a whole from a single mold, instead
of its now consisting of two halves that need to be brought together in
use, I wish that he consider the fact that it would have been required for
this that I had accomplished at a single stage of life what is possible
only in two, in that I would have had to possess for the task at one stage
of life the properties that nature has distributed between two entire1y
different ones. Accordingly, the necessity ofproviding my work in two
mutually supplementary halves is comparable to that according to which,
since it is impossible to make it in a single piece, one produces an achro-
matic object lens by conjoining a convex lens of crown glass with a
concave lens of flint glass, the united effect of which alone accomplishes
one's purpose. On the other hand, however, the reader will find some
compensation for the inconvenience of the simultaneous employment of
two volumes in the variety and relief entailed by treatment of the same
subject, by the same mind,ii in the same spirit,iii but in very different years.

i[Ergänzung: thus sometimes "supplement" and sometimes "complement."]

ii[Kopj]
iii[Geist: sometimes, also "mind"]
 The World as Will and Presentation 23

In any case, for someone who is not yet familiar with my philosophy, it
is altogether advisable to read the fIrst volume from the start without
bringing in the supplements, and to utilize the latter only on a second
reading. For it would otherwise be too hard for hirn to grasp the system
in its interconnections, in which only the fIrst volume exhibits it, while XXIV
in the second the main doctrines are more thoroughly grounded and
completely developed individually. Even someone who should faH to
decide upon a second reading of the fIrst volume will do better to read
the second only after it and for itself, in the straight sequence of its
chapters, which of course stand in an (albeit looser) interconnection with
one another; its gaps will be completely fIlled for him by his recollec-
tion of the fIrst volume, if he has understood it well. In addition, he
fInds references everywhere back to the relevant passages of the fIrst
volume, in which, for the divisions that were designated in the fIrst by
mere separators, I have provided section numbers i for this purpose in
the second edition. -
I have already explained in the preface to the ftrst edition that my
philosophy takes its point of departure from Kantian philosophy and
therefore presupposes a thorough acquaintance with it; I repeat it here.
For Kant's doctrine produces in every mind that has grasped it a funda-
mental alteration so great that it can be counted as aspiritual rebirth. It
alone, namely, is actually capable of removing the realism innate to the
mind, stemming from the original function of intellect, something for
which neither Berkeley nor Malebranche suffices. For they remain too
much with generalities, while Kant goes into particulars, and indeed in
a manner that knows neither antecedent nor duplicate ii and has an entirely
unique, one might say immediate, effect on the spirit, in consequence
of which the latter undergoes a thorough undeceivingiii and thenceforth
views all things in a different light. Only hereby, however, does it
become receptive to the more positive insights that I have to give.
Someone, by contrast, who has not mastered Kantian philosophy, what-
ever else he may have done, has remained, as it were, in astate of
innocence, namely, caught up in thai natural and childish realism into xxv
which we are all born and which makes everything possible for us, only
not philosophy. Consequently, such a person relates to the former as

tParagraphenzahlen ofthe fonn '§ n.' In each case, on the other hand, the
bracketed section headings, indicating content, are added by the translator.]
ii[weder Vorbild noch Nachbild]
iii[Enttäuschung]
 24 Preface to the Second Edition (1844)

one not of age to one who iS.i That this truth sounds so paradoxical
nowadays, which would in no way have been the case in the first thirty
years following the appearance of the Critique ofPure Reason,ii comes
from the fact that a generation has since grown up that does not really
know Kant - for more is needed for this than a fleeting, impatient read-
ing, or areport at second hand - and this in turn from the fact that this
generation, in consequence of bad direction, has squandered its time
with the philosophical theses of ordinary minds, thus those without a
calling for it, or indeed of windbagging sophists whom one has irre-
sponsibly cried up to them. Thus the confusion in initial concepts and
in general unspeakable crudeness and plodding in its own philosophical
eJIorts, visible through the cover ofthe preciousness and pretentiousnessiii
of the generation thus educated. But anyone who supposes he can get to
know Kant's philosophy from other people's accounts ofit is caught up
in a hopeless error. Rather, r must give serious waming regarding reports
of this kind, particularly from recent times. And indeed, in these very
latest years, I have come across ac counts of Kantian philosophy in the
writings of Hegelians that actually tend toward the fantastic. How
indeed are minds already twisted and spoiled in the freshness of youth
by Hegelish nonsense iv yet supposed to be capable of following Kant's
profound investigations? They are early accustomed to taking the most
hollow word-mongering for philosophical thoughts, the most pitiful
sophisrns for mental acuity, and nitwitted silliness v for dialectics, and
their minds have been disordered by the reception of frenzied verbiage
in which, in an effort to think something, the mind tortures and exhausts
xxvi itself in vain. For them no critique of reason is in order; for them, no
philosophy. For them a medicina menüsvi is in order - to start, as a
cathartic, something like a petit cours de senscommunologie, vii and then
one has to wait to see whether in their case there can ever again be talk
ofphilosophy.
The Kantian doctrine will therefore be sought in vain anywhere
other than in Kant's own works; but these are thoroughly instructive,
even where he goes astray, even where he is mistaken. In consequence

i[wie ein Unmündiger zum Mündigen]

ii[First edition, 1781]
iii[Pretiosität und Prätensiosität]
iV[durch den Unsinn der Hegelei]
V[läppischen Aberwitz]
vt'a medicine for the mind"]
vii["a short course in commonsenseology"]
 The World as Will and Presentation 25

of his originality, that which really applies to all genuine philosophers

applies in the highest degree to him: one gets to know them only from
their own writings, not from the reports of others. For the thoughts of
those extraordinary spirits can never stand filtration through the ordinary
mind. Born behind broad, high, finely arched brows, beneath which
beaming eyes shine forth, when they are transported into the narrow
accommodations and low-roofed housing of narrow, flattened, thick-
walled skulls from which dull glances spy, directed toward personal
purposes, they lose all force and alllife and no longer seem themselves.
Indeed, one can say that this type of mind works like a curved mirror,
in which everything is twisted, distorted, loses the proportionality of its
beauty, and displays a deformed face. Only from the authors themselves
can philosophical thoughts be received; therefore, whoever feels driven
to philosophy has to seek out its immortal teachers in the still sanctity
of their works themselves. The main chapters of every one of these
genuine philosophers will provide one hundred times more insight into
their doctrines then the dragging and squinting reports about them that
everyday minds produce, which are usually deeply caught up in addition
in the philosophical fashion of the moment, or in their own fondest
opinions. But it is a matter for amazement how decisively the public
prefers to grab after those second-hand accounts. Here there seem in xxvii
fact to be working those elective affinities by virtue of which common
natures are drawn to their fellows, and would accordingly rather hear
from their fellows what even a great spirit has said. Perhaps this rests
on the same principle as that of the system of Mutual Instruction,i
according to which children learn best from their fellows.
*********
A further word for philosophy professors. - The sagacity, the
aeeurate and subtle taet, with whieh they have recognized my philos-
ophy, right from its appearanee, as something entirely at odds with,
indeed surely dangerous to, their own endeavors or, to speak in popular
terms, not their thingii - just like the sure and acute politics by virtue of
which they at once discovered the only correct proeedure to adopt in

i[des wechselseitigen Unterrichts. The earliest promoter of this method in

Germany seems to have been Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (1771-1848). It is
often discussed in connection with the contemporaneous "monitorial" system -
wherein the better students teach the inferior - developed in England by
Andrew Bell (1753-1832) and Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838).]
"[nicht in ihren Kram passt]
 26 Preface to the Second Edition (1844)

the face of it, the complete unanimity with which they put that procedure
into application, finaHy the persistence with which they stayed tme to it
- I have long since had to admire. This procedure, which is incidentaHy
to be recommended for its absolute ease of execution, consists, as is
weH known, in completely ignoring and thereby secreting a thing - in
the terms of Goethe's mischievous expression,i which really means
suppressing that which is weighty and significant. The effectiveness of
this silent method is heightened by the Corybantic damor with which
the births of the spiritual progeny of those who are in on it are mutuaHy
ce:lebrated, and which compels the public to look and take note of the
weighty airs that accompany the exchange of welcoming cheers in the
matter. Who could fail to recognize the purposiveness in tbis procedure?
Yet there is no objection to be raised against the principle prim um vivere,
xxviii deinde philosophari.ii The gentlemen would live, and in particular live
on philosophy: to this they have been directed, with wife and child, and,
despite Petrarch's povera e nuda vai filosofia,iii they have hazarded it.
But now my philosophy is altogether not set up for living on it. For
that, it is first of all entirely lacking, of the initial, indispensable prereq-
uisites for a weH-paid chair ofphilosophy, a speculative theology, which
yet - despite that bothersome Kant with his critique of reason - is
supposed to and must be the main theme of all philosophy, even if the
latter thereby assurnes the task of evermore speaking of that of which it
ean know absolutely nothing. Indee<L mine does not onee affirm the
fable, so shrewdly excogitated by philosophy professors and become
indispensable to them, of an immediately and absolutely cognizing,
perceiving, or internally registering reason/ v which one need only foist
upon his readers from the beginning in order subsequently, in the most

i[ maliziösem Ausdruck. Cf. Schopenhauer's reference in On the Will in Nature,

pp. 16-17 (Hübscher vol. 3; p. 32 in Payne (tr.), ed. Cartwright): "Literary
factions and fellowships dedicated to the allotrnent of censure and praise (auf
Tadel und Lob) are formed, and now the bad is lauded and trumpeted, the good
defamed, or indeed, as Goethe says, 'kept secret (sekretiert) through an un-
breakable silence, in which variety of inquisitorial censorship (Inquisitions-
censur) the Germans have made great advances' (Tag- und Jahreshefte for
1821)."]
it"First live, then philosophize."]
iit"Poor and naked you go, Philosophy": Francesco Petrarca, from Canzone
7 in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Fragments in the Vernacular), a collection of
poems ranging from 1335 to Petrarch's death in 1374, known traditionally as II
Canzoniere, or The Songbook.]
iV[erkennenden, anschauenden, oder vernehmenden Vernu'!ft]
 The World as Will and Presentation 27

comfortable manner in the world, to ride as if in a four horse carriage

into that domain beyond all possible experience, entirely and forever
shut offby Kant from our cognizance, where one then finds immediately
revealed and most finely arrayed before one precisely the fundamental
dogmas ofmodem, Judaicizing, optimistic Christianity. Now what in all
the world does my meditative philosophy, lacking in these essential
prerequisites, without conditions and deprived of sustenance - which
has for its North Star entirely the truth alone, the naked, unpaid, unbe-
friended, often persecuted truth, and, without looking to the right or the
left, steers straight toward it - have to do with that alma mater,i that
good, nourishing university philosophy which, laden with a hundred
intentions and a thousand conditions, cautiously tacks its way along its
route, always before its eyes the fear of the Lord, the will of the govem-
ment ministers, the ordinances of the state church, the desires of the xxix
publisher, the favor of students, the good friendship of colleagues, the
course of daily politics, the momentary orientation of the public, and
who knows what else? Or what does my quiet, serious inquiry into the
truth have in common with heated scholastic wrangling from profes-
sorial chairs and student benches, the innermost incentives for which
are always personal purposes? Rather, the two types of philosophy are
fundamentally heterogeneous. For this reason too, there is no compromise
on my part and no camaraderie, and nobody profits from me except
perhaps someone who sought nothing but the truth, and so none of the
philosophical parties ofthe day. For they all proceed according to their
foresights, while I have mere insightsii to offer, which accord with none
of the former precisely because they are modeled after none of them.
That even my philosophy might, however, become suitable for a profes-
sor's chair,iii entirely different times must first have drawn near.
It would therefore be something fme if such a philosophy, on
which one cannot live at all, won itself air and light, not to mention
general attention! Hence it was necessary to forestall this and for all to
stand against it as one man. With challenges and refutations, however,
one does not have such an easy game of it. And it is a questionable
method just by virtue of the fact that it directs the public's attention to
the matter, and reading my works could spoil its taste for the lucubrations
of philosophy professors. For to anyone who has tasted seriousness, jokes,
particularly of the boring sort, will 110 longer have flavor. Accordingly,

i["nüurishing müther"]
~l[Absichten ... Einsichten]
111[kathederfohig würde]
 28 Preface to the Second Edition (1844)

therefore, the system of silence so unanimously seized upon is the

only right one, and I can only advise that one stand by it and go on with
it as long as it works, until, namely, ignoring it turns into ignorance;
then it will be high time to give in. In the meantime, everyone is of
xxx course free to pluck a little quill for personal use. For at horne, there
does not tend to be a very pressing surplus of thoughts. So the system-
atic ignoring and silence can continue to hold for a good while, at least
for the length of time that I may still have to live; much is already won
with that. Even if here and there in the meantime an indiscreet voice
has let itself be heard, it will yet soon be drowned out by the loud
delivery of the professors, who know how to entertain the public, with
an air of importance, with entirely different things. I advise, however, a
stricter adherence to unanimity of procedure, and especially supervision
ofyoung people, who are sometimes frightfully indiscreet. For even then,
I can still not guarantee that the vaunted procedure will hold forever
and cannot vouch for the final upshot. It is after all a peculiar business,
having to give direction to a basically good and docile public. Even if
we see a Gorgias or a Hippias successful in just about any period,
absurdity rises to the top as a rule, and it seems impossible that the
voice of the individual could ever penetrate the chorus of the beguilers
and beguiled, there nonetheless always remains an entirely unique, still,
slow, powerful effect for works that are genuine, and one finally sees
them rise from the fray as if by a miracle, like a balloon that soars from
the thick atmosphere of this earthly space into purer regions, where,
finally arrived, it stays, and no one is able to pull it back down.

Written in Frankfurt am Main in February 1844.

 +
Preface to the Third Edition xxxi

1859

That which is true and genuine would more easily win a place in
the world if those who are incapable of producing it were not simulta-
neously swom to preventing its emergence. This circumstance has indeed
impeded and delayed, if not altogether strangled, much that was meant
for the benefit of the world. For me the consequence has been that,
although I was only thirty years old when the first edition of this work
appeared, I have lived to see this third no earlier than in my seventy-
second year. I find consolation for this, however, in Petrarch's words:
si quis, toto die currens, pervenit ad vesperam, satis est (de vera
sapientia, p. 140).i I have finally gotten there after all, and have the
satisfaction of seeing, at the end of my career, the beginning of my
effectiveness, in the hope that, in accord with an old rule, it will last
as long in proportion as it was late in beginning.
The reader will find, in this third edition, nothing missing of what
the second contains, but indeed get considerably more insofar as, by
virtue of additions made to it, it has 136 more pages, with the same
print, than the second.
Seven years after the appearance of the second edition I published xxxii
the two volumes of Parerga and Paralipomena. What is included under
the latter nameii consists of additions to the systematic exposition of my

i["If someone, running the whole day, arrives at evening he has done enough."
The dialogues "On True Wisdom" are no longer generally attributed to Petrareh,
but, at least in part, to Nicholas of Cusa. J
ii[Paralipomena = "omissions"; Parerga = "ineidentals" or "asides."]

29
30 Preface to the Third Edition (1859)

philosophy and would have found its proper place in these volumes.
But at the time I had to [md it a place where I could, since it was most
doubtful whether I would live to see this third edition. lt is to be found
in the second volume of said Parerga i and will be easily recognized
from the titles of the chapters.

Frankfurt am Main in September 1859.

i[l.e., the second volume ofthe work as a whole, published as volumes 5 and
6 in the Hübscher edition.]
 FIRST BOOK 3

+
The W orld as Presentation
First Consideration
PRESENTATION AS SUBJECT
TO THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT GROUND:
THE OBJECT OF EXPERIENCE AND SCIENCE
Sors de /'enfance, ami, reveille-foi!
-JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAUi

§ 1. 3
[ne One-Sided Approach oJ Book One]ii
"The world is a presentation to me"iii - this is a truth that applies
to every living and cognizant being. However, the human being alone
can bring it to reflective abstract consciousness; and when he actually
does this, philosophy's thoughtful awareness has come to him. iv It is
made explicit and certain to hirn then that he knows no sun and no earth,
but always only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth, that
the world that surrounds hirn is there only as presentation, Le., altogether
only in relation to something else, that which is engaged in presentation,v
which is himself.
If any truth can be pronounced apriori, it is this. For it is the
expression of that form belonging to allvi possible and conceivable expe-
rience which is more general than all others, than time, space, and
causality. For these all presuppose just that one, and while each of these
forms, all of which we have recognized as so many particular modes of

i["Emerge from childhood, friend, awaken!" (Julie: ou, la nouvelle Heloi's

[Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)], Part 5, Letter 1).]
ii[Throughout, seetion headings added by the translator.]
iitDie Welt ist meine Vorstellung. See introduction for Vorstellung and its
occurrence in "possessive" (here: meine) constructions.]
iv[sO ist die philosophische Besonnenheit bei ihm eingetreten]
V[das Vorstellende]
vtForm aller; see introduction on genitive constructions involving Form.]

31
 32 First Book. The World as Presentation

the Principle of Sufficient Ground,i only applies to a particular c1ass of

presentations, division into object and subject is to the contrary the
form common to aH those c1asses, is the form under which alone any
presentation, of whatever kind it may be - abstract or intuitive, pure or
empirical - is even possible and thinkable at alL Thus no truth is more
certain, more independent of aH others, and less in need of proof than
this, that everything that is there for cognizance, and so this entire world,
4 is only object in relation to the subject, perceptionii for that which
perceives it, in a word, presentation. Of course this applies, just as much
as it does to the present, to every past and every future as weH, as much
to the farthest as to the near; for it applies to the very time and space
in which alone this is all distinguished. Whatever belongs and can
belong to the world is inexorably infected with this fact of being
conditioned by the subject, and is only there for the subject. The world
is. presentation.
This truth is in no way new. It already lay in the skeptical consid-
erations from which Descartes began. Berkeley, however, was the first
to pronounce it in a decisive manner. l He thereby achieved undying
merit in philosophy, even ifthe rest ofhis doctrines cannot stand. Kant's
Hrst mi stake was neglect of this proposition, as is explained in the
Appendix?
How early by contrast this fundamental truth was recognized by
the sages ofIndia, appearing as it did as the fundamental principle ofthe
Vedanta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is attested by W. Jones iii in the
last of his treatises, "On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (Asiatic
Researches, vol. 4, p. 164): "The fundamental tenet of the Vedanta
school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is of
soJidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be
lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending
that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence
and perceptibility are convertible terms." These words adequately express
the conjunction of empirical reality and transcendental ideality.

i[Gestaltungun des Satzes vom Grunde; see introduction]

,,[Anschauung; see introduction]
III[Sir William Jones (1746-1794), Orientalist and co-founder of Sanskrit
studies. There are various schools of Vedanta thought, all of them grounded in
the Upanishads, to which Schopenhauer frequently refers: a later elaboration of
the Sanskrit writings known as the Vedas and forming the basis for much of
Hinduism. Vyasa was, according to legend, the author of the Mahabharata, of
which the Bhagavadgita is apart.]
 The Object of Experience and Science 33

Thus only from the side in question, only so far as it is presenta-

tion, do we consider the world in this first Book. But without detriment 5
to its truth, the fact that this consideration is one-sided, consequently
occasioned by a certain deliberate abstraction, is something of which
everyone is informed by his inner resistance to supposing that the world
is a mere presentation to him;i yet he can on the other hand never
escape that supposition. But the one-sidedness of this consideration will
be made good in the following Book, by way of a truth that is not as
immediately certain as the one from which we are beginning, but to
which we can be led only by deeper research, more difficult abstraction
- separating things that are distinct and uniting those that are identical -
by way of a truth that cannot fail to be urgent and, if not frightful, at
least troubling to everyone, namely, that the very same person can and
must also say: "The world is my will."
Until then, however, thus in this frrst Book, we need to be unswerv-
ing in considering that side of the world from which we are beginning,
the side of cognizability, and accordingly without resistance, considering
any and all existingii objects, indeed even one's own body (as we will
soon discuss in more detail), only as presentation, calling them all mere
presentation. It is hoped that everyone willlater be certain that what we
are hereby abstracting from is indeed only will, which alone constitutes
the other side ofthe world. For as much as it is on the one hand through
and through presentation, so it is on the other hand through and through
will. A reality, however, that would be neither ofthese, but an object in
itself (to which even Kant' s thing in itself regrettably degenerated in his
hands), is a fanciful non-thing and its assumption a will-o'-the-wisp in
philosophy.

§ 2.
[Correlativity ~ Subject and Object - Subjection ~ Object to tbe
Principle ~ Sufficient Ground]
That which is cognizant of all things and of which none is cognizant
is the subject. It is, accordingly, the bearer of the world, the pervasive,
constantly presupposed condition of all that appears, of all objects; for
whatever is there, it is only there for the subject. Everyone fmds himself
as this subject, but only so far as he is cognizant, not so far as he is
object of cognizance. But his body is indeed an object, and therefore
we call it, from this standpoint, presentation. For the body is an object

~[seine blasse Vorstellung]

urvorhandenen]
 34 First Book. The World as Presentation

6 among objects and subject to the laws for objects, although it is an

immediate objecL t It lies, like a11 objects ofperception, within the forms
that belong to a11 cognition, within time and space, through which plu-
rality exists. The subject, however - that which is cognizant, never
cognized - does not also lie within these forms, by which it is indeed
rather always presupposed; thus there pertains to it neither plurality nor
its opposite, unity. We are never cognizant of it, but it is just that which
is cognizant wherever there is cognizance of anything.
The world as presentation, then, in which respect alone we are
considering it here, has two essential, necessary, and inseparable halves.
The one is the object: its form is space and time, and through these
plurality. The other half, however, the subject, does not lie within space
and time; for it is whole and undivided in every being that is engaged in
presentation. Therefore a single one of these beings, just as fuHy as the
other millions that exist, completes the world as presentation with its
object. But should even that single one vanish, the world as presenta-
tion would be no more. 3 The halves are therefore inseparable even for
thought. For each of the two has meaning and existence only through
and for the other, is there with it, and vanishes with it. Their boundaries
are in immediate contact: where the object begins, the subject ends.
Ihis common boundary shows itself precisely in the fact that, even
apart from cognizance of objects themselves, one can discover and be
fully cognizant of the essential and therefore general [orms pertaining
to all objects - time, space, and causality - by proceeding from the
subject, i.e., in Kant's language, they lie apriori in our consciousness.
To have discovered this is one ofKant's main achievements, and a very
great one. I now go further in maintaining that the Principle of Suffi-
cient Ground is the common expression for a11 of the object's forms of
which we are conscious apriori, and that therefore whatever we know
in a purely apriori way is nothing but precisely the content of that
principle and what fo11ows [rom it, thus voice is rea11y given in it to the
entirety of our apriori certain cognizance. In my treatise on the Principle
7 of Sufficient Ground, I have shown in detail how any and every possible
object is subject to this principle, i.e., stands in a necessary relation to
other objects, in one respect as determined, in another respect as deter-
mining. This extends so far that the entire existence of a11 objects, so far
as they are objects, presentations and nothing more, comes altogether
down to their necessary relation to one another, consists only therein,
thus is entirely relative. [ say more ab out this soon. I have also shown

tOn the [Fourfold Roof ofthe] Principle ofSußicient Ground, 2"d ed., § 22.
 The Object ofExperience and Science 35

that this necessary relation, given general expression by the Principle of

Sufficient Ground, appears in other modes, corresponding to classes
that are deterrnined by what is possible for objects; the correct division
of those classes is thereby in turn confirmed. Throughout, I presuppose
all that was said in that place as familiar and present to the reader; for
were it not already said there, it would have to find its place here.

§ 3.
[Space and Time as Ground oj Being -
Objects oj Pure Perception]
The main distinction among all our presentations is between intui-
tive and abstract presentations. The latter constitute only one class of
presentations, concepts. And these are on earth the possession only of
human beings, whose capacity for them, distinguishing them from all
animals, has for ages been called reason. t We will later consider these
abstract presentations in their own right, but begin by speaking exclu-
sively of intuitive presentation. The latter encompasses the entire
visible world, or the whole of experience, together with its conditions
of possibility. It is, as stated, a most important discovery by Kant that
just these conditions, these its forms, Le., what is most general in the
perception of it and equally pertaining to all its phenomena, time and
space, can be not only on their own and apart from their content thought
in abstracto, but also immediately perceived, and that this perception is
not anything like amental imagei derived by replication of experience, 8
but so far independent of experience that, to the contrary, the latter must
be conceived as dependent on the former, insofar as the properties of
space and time, as objects of perceptual cognizance a priori,ü apply to
all possible experience as laws to which the latter must everywhere
conform. For this reason, in my treatise on the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, I considered time and space, so far as they are perceived in
a pure manner and as empty of their contents, as a special and self-
subsistent class of presentations. As important, however, as this charac-
teristic is, discovered by Kant in those forms belonging to perception in
general - nameIy, that, on their own and independently of experience,

tKant alone brought confusion to this concept of reason, for which I refer to
the Appendix as also to my [Two] Fundamental Problems 0/ Ethics, "The
Foundation of Morality," § 6, pp. 148-154 of the first (pp. 146-151 of the
second) edition [pp. 79-85 in Payne (tr.)].
i[Phantasma]
'Twie sie die Anschauung apriori erkennt]
 36 First Baale. The Warld as Presentatian

they are cognizable perceptually and with respect to the entirety of their
lawful character (whereupon rests the infallibility of mathematics) - it
is a no less remarkable property of them that the Principle of Suffi-
cient Ground, which determines experience as the law of causality and
motivation, and thought as the law of grounding for judgments, appears
here in the entirely unique mode to which I have given the name
ground of being, and which in time is the succession of its moments
and in space the location of parts in mutual determination ad infinitum.
Anyone to whom, by way ofthe introductory treatise,i the perfeet
identity of content of the Principle of Sufficient Ground has - throughout
all the diversity of its modes - been made explicit, will also be convinced
of the importance of the simplest of its modes, as such, for insight into
its innermost nature, and this is what we have recognized time as being.
Just as in time every moment exists only so far as it has annihilated the
preceding, its father, only in turn 10 be as quickly annihilated itself, and
just as past and future (apart from what follows from their content) are
as null as any dream, while the present is only the unextended and
insubstantial boundary between the two, in just the same way we will
also recognize the same nullity in all the other modes of the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, and we will see that space like time, and like space
whatever is in it and time together - thus whatever proceeds from causes
9 or motives - has only a relative existence, is only through and for
something else just like it, i.e., something subsisting in turn in just the
same manner. In its essentials this view is old: in it, Herac1itus bemoaned
the etemal flow of things; Plato denigrated its object as that which is
perennially becoming, but never is; Spinoza called it mere accidents of
the one single substance that is and endures; as mere phenomenon,
Kant opposed that which is cognized in this way with the thing in itself.
Finally, the ancient wisdom of the Indians speaks: "It is Maya, the veil
of deception, that envelops the eyes of mortals and lets them see a world
of which one can say neither that it is nor that it is not; for it is like a
dream, like the reflection of sun on the sand that the wanderer takes
from afar for water, or a rope thrown down that one sees as a snake."
(These comparisons are repeated at countless points in the Vedas and
Puranas.) But what they all intended and that of which they speak is
none other than what we are also in the process of considering: the
world as presentation, subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground.

i[Schopenhauer's treatise On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient

Ground.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 37

§ 4.
[Causality and Pure Understanding - Matter in Essence Causality -
Sensation vs. Perception - Tbe Rody as Immediate Object]
Anyone who has recognized the mode ofthe Principle of Sufficient
Ground that makes its appearance in pure time as such, and on which
aU counting and calculating rest, has just by that fact also recognized
the entire essence of time. It is nothing beyond just that mode of the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, and has no other character. Succession
is the mode of the Principle of Sufficient Ground in time; succession is
the entire essence oftime.
Anyone who has in addition recognized the Principle of Sufficient
Ground as it holds sway in mere, purely perceived space has just by
that fact exhausted the entire essence of space. For this is through and
through nothing other than the possibility of the mutual determination
of its parts, which is caUed loeation. Detailed consideration of the latter
and, for easier application, deposit of the results yielded by it in abstract
concepts, is the content ofthe entirety of geometry.
lnjust the same way, anyone who has recognized that mode ofthe
Principle ofSufficient Ground which holds sway over the content ofthe
forms in question (of time and space), over what is perceptible in them, 10
i.e., matter, thus recognized the law of causality, has just by that fact
recognized the entire essence of matter as such.i For it is through and
through nothing but causality, as everyone immediately sees as soon as
he reflects on it. Its being, namely, is its effectuality;ü no other being is
so much as thinkable for it. It fills space, it fiUs time, only insofar as it
is effectual: iii its effect on the immediate object (which is itself matter)
conditions the perception in which alone it exists. The consequence of
any other material object affecting another one enters our cognizance
only so far as the latter affects the immediate object differently than
before, consists only in that fact. Cause and effed v is thus the entire
essence of matter: its being is its effectuality. (For more detail about
this see the treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Ground, § 21,
p. 77.) v It is therefore most fitting that in German the totality ofwhat
is material is caUed Wirklichkeit t a word that signifies much more

i ISee the introduction for discussion ofthe concept ofmatter.]

"[Wirken]
Üi[Nur als wirkend]
iV[Ursache und Wirkung]
V[Pp. 118-119 in Payne (tr.)]
t Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo sermonis
 38 First Book. The World as Presentation

than reality.i What it affects is always in turn matter. Thus its entire
heing and essence consists only in the law-governed alteration that one
of its parts brings about in another, is consequently entirely relative by
way of a relation that applies only within its boundaries. So it is just
like time, just like space.
But time and space can be perceptually presented on their own
and apart from matter. Not matter, however, apart from them. lts very
form, inseparable from it, presupposes space, and its effectuality, in
which its entire being consists, always concerns some alteration, thus a
determination of time. But time and space are not merely each on their
own presupposed by matter. Rather, a union ofthe two constitutes its
essence, just because, as indicated, the latter consists in effectuality, in
causality. All ofthe countless conceivable phenomena and states might
lie juxtaposed in infinite space without mutual limitation, or in succes-
sion in infinite time without mutual disturbance; in that case, there would
be no need at all for their being necessarily referred to one another,ii nOT
11 for a rule determining them in accordance with that reference, indeed
the very idea would not even apply. Consequently, whatever juxtaposi-
tion in space and whatever change through time there might be, so long
as each of these fonns subsisted and ran its course on its own, without
connection with the other, there would still be no causality and, since
this constitutes the true essence ofmatter, also no matter.
The law of causality obtains its meaning and necessity only by the
fact that the essence of alteration does not consist in mere change in
states as such, but rather in there being in the same place in space now

antiqui quaedam ejJicacissimis notis signat. r"It is astounding how weil words
are suited to certain things, and the linguistic usage of the ancients is most
effective in its signification."] Seneca, Epistle 81 [Epistles X, 81, 9].
irRealität. [will generally use "actual reality" for Wirklichkeit.]
ii[eine notwendige Beziehung derselben auf einander ... keineswegs nötig.
Standing alone, Beziehung may gene rally be translated "relation," as mayaiso
Verhältnis and Relation, aJl frequently employed by Schopenhauer. But in the
context Beziehung ... auf - and for forms of the verb beziehen and sich
beziehen ... auf - I frequently use "reference" and "refer" (e.g., in connection
with a concept's reference, and not simply relation, to cognitive grounds). On
some occasions, to be noted, I also translate Beziehung by itself as "reference."
This becomes important, for example, where it is used in the same passage with
either or both Relation or Verhältnis. But as will be noted in connection with
such passages in Book Three, there may in fact be a substantive issue in play
here; see Introduction, sec. D.]
 The Object of Experience and Science 39

one state and then another, and there being at one and the same
particular time here this and there that state; only this mutual limitation
of time and space gives both meaning and necessity to a rule by which
alteration must proceed. What is determined by the law of causality is
thus not a succession of states in mere time, but succession with respect
to a particular space, and not the existence of states at a particular
place, but in this place at a particular time. Thus alteration, i.e., change
that occurs in accordance with causallaw, always concerns a particular
part of space and a particular part of time together and in union. Accord-
ingly, causality unites space and time. But we have found that it is in
effectuality, thus in causality, that the entire essence ofmatter consists.
Consequently, space and time have also to be united in matter, i.e.,
however much the two may conflict, matter must harbor the properties
of time and those of space together, and what is impossible for each of
the two on its own it must unite in itself, thus unite the insubstantial
flow of time with the rigid, unchangeable persistence of space, getting
its infinite divisibility from both. Accordingly, we find that matter first
of all introduces simultaneity, which can be found neitl1er in time alone,
which knows no juxtaposition, nor in space alone, which knows no
before, after, or now. But the simultaneity of a number of states is really
what constitutes the essence of actual reality. For only thereby is
duration at all possible, namely, in that there can be cognizance of it
only in a change of something existing simultaneously with something 12
enduring. But also, it is only by means of something enduring in the
midst of change that the latter takes on the character of alteration, i.e.,
change; of quality and form with respect to the persistence of substance,
i.e., matter. t In mere space the world would be rigid and immovable: no
succession, no alteration, no effectuality. But with effectuality, the
presentation of matter is to precisely the same extent eliminated. In mere
time in turn everything is fleeting: no persistence, no juxtaposition, and
thus no simultaneity, consequently no duration. Thus also again no
matter. Matter first emerges with the uniting oftime and space, i.e., with
the possibility of simultaneity and thereby duration, and by this in turn
of the persistence of substance through alteration of states,+ Having its

i[der Veränderung, dh. des Wandels. Usually "change" is Wechsel.]

tThat matter and substance are one is explained in the Appendix.
tThis also indicates the ground ofthe Kantian explanation ofmatter, namely,
"that it is the moveable in space." [Cr Metaphysical First Principles ofNatural
Science, Ch. I, Explanation 1 (Ak. 4.480: referring, as henceforth, to volume
 40 First Book. The World as Presentation

essence in the union of time and space, matter bears the stamp of both
throughout. It bears witness to its origin in space partly through its form,
which is inseparable from it, but (because change belongs only to time,
while in the latter alone and for itself nothing is enduring) especially
through its persistence (substance), whose apriori certainty has there-
fore altogether to be derived from that of space. t Sut it manifests its
origin in time by way of quality (accident), without which it never makes
an appearance, and which 1S always simply causality, affecting other
matter, thus alteration (a temporal concept). The lawful character ofthis
effectuality, however, is always with reference to space and time
together, and is meaningful only precisely by that fact. The legislation
of causality extends only so far as the determination of what state has to
occur at this time and in this place. 4 The fact that we recognize matter
as having certain properties apriori rests on this derivation of its
fundamental determinations from our cognitive forms, of which we are
conscious apriori, namely, the filling of space, i.e., impenetrability,
13 i.e., efficacy,i and then extension, infinite divisibility, persistence, i.e.,
indestructibility, and finaJly motility. Sy contrast, gravity is, despite its
exceptionless character, to be counted as belonging to cognition a pos-
teriori,ii although in his Metaphysical First Principles 0/ Natural Science
(p. 71), iii Kant puts it forth as cognizable apriori.
As, however, any object at all exists for the subject only as a pre-
sentation to it,iV so every particular dass ofpresentations exists only for
an equally particular aspect of the subject, what one calls a cognitive
faculty. Kant called the subjective correlate oftime and space, as empty
forms on their own, pure sensibility, which expression, because Kant
paved the way here, may be retained; however, it does not quite fit,
since sensibility presupposes matter. The subjective correlate of marter

and page in the "Academy Edition" of Kant's works)]. For motion consists
only in the uniting of space and time.
t Not from a cognizance oftime, as Kant would have it, as is explained in the
Appendix.
t
Wirksamkeit]
ita posteriori simply means, negatively, not apriori. More positively,
therefore, it indicates some sort of condition of being "posterior" to actual
experience, at least in the sense of being in some way - perhaps different in
different contexts - dependent on actual experience. In the German, both
express ions are generally employed adverbially. Where this may seem too
c1umsy in English, 1 use it adjectivally.]
iii[II, Theorem 8, Addition 2 (Ak. 4.518).]
iV[als dessen Vorstellung]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 41

or causality (for they are one and the same) is the understanding, and it
is nothing more than that. Cognizance of causality is its single function,
its sole power, and it is a grandly encompassing, multiply versatile, yet
unmistakable identity throughout an its expressions. Conversely, an
causality, thus all matter, hence the whole of actual reality, exists only
for the understanding, through the understanding, in the understanding.
The understanding's first, simplest, and ever-presenti expression is
perception of the actual world: this is through and through a cognizance
of causes on the basis of effects; therefore an perception is intellectual.
It could nonetheless never get to this, were one not immediately cogni-
zant of some effect that thereby served as its point of departure. But
this point of departure is effects on animal bodies. To that extent, the
latter are the subject' s immediate objects: perception of an other objects
is mediated by them. Ihere is an immediate cognizance of the alterations
experienced by any animal body, i.e., they are sensed,5 and insofar as the
effect is referred at once to its cause, there arises a perception of the
latter as an object. This reference is not an inference in tenns of abstract
concepts, does not occur through reflection, not by choice, but immedi-
ately, necessarily, and surely. Ihis is pure understanding's manner of
cognizance, without which there would be no perception, but only a
dun, plant-like consciousness of alterations in the immediate object, 14
which would pursue an utterly meaningless course had they not some
meaning as pain or pleasure for the will. But just as the visible world is
there with the arrival of the sun, so the understanding with a single
stroke, and through its single simple function, transfonns dull, mute
sensation into perception. What the eye, the ear, the hand senses is
not perception; it is mere data. Only when the understanding passes
from effect to cause is the world first there as a perception extended in
space, changing its fonn ii but persisting through all time with respect to
its matter; for the understanding unites space and time in the presentation
of matter, Le., efficacy. Ihis world as presentation only exists for the
understanding, just as it only exists through the understanding. In the
first chapter of my treatise On Vision and Calors I have already dis-
cussed how the understanding creates perception out of data provided
by the senses; how children leam to perceive through comparison of
impressions obtained from the same object by various senses; and how
this alone provides insight into a variety of perceptual phenomena such
as the simple fact ofbinocular vision, double vision produced by squint-

i[stets vorhandene]
ii[Gestalt]
 42 First Book. The World as Presentation

ing or by unequal distance in simultaneous focus on objects before or

behind others, and any illusion produced by a sudden alteration in the
sense organs. However, I have treated this important subject in greater
detail and more thoroughly in the second edition of the treatise on the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, § 21. Everything said there would have
its necessary place here, and should really be repeated here. But since
I have almost as much reluctance to copy myself as to copy others, and
am unable to give a better account here than I gave there, I refer to it
instead of repeating, but presume it to be familiar.
Learning to see on the part of children and of those who are born
blind and operated upon; the simple seeing of that which, with two eyes,
is doubly sensed; double vision and tactile doubling with the displace-
ment of sense organs from their usual location; the upright appearance
15 of objects while their image is inverted in the eye; the external referring
of color, which is merely an internal function, namely, of differential
polarization in the activity of the eye; and finally even the stereoscope6
- all these are constant and irrefutable proofs of the fact that all percep-
tion is not merely sensuali but intellectual, Le., the understanding 's pure
cognizance ofcauses on the basis of effects, consequently presupposes
the law of causality, cognizance of which is a condition of all perception,
and with it of all experience, with respect to any and all possibility. It is
not, to the contrary, that a cognizance of causallaw depends on experi-
ence, which latter was Humean skepticism, which is hereby first refuted.
For the independence of cognizance of causality from all experience,
i.e., its apriority, can only be demonstrated by reference to the depen-
dence of all experience on it. And this in turn can only occur if, in the
manner stated and as set forth in the places just indicated, it is established
that cognizance of causality is already contained in any perception at
all, within whose domain experience belongs, thus has an utterly a
priori standing with respect to experience, presupposed by the latter as
a condition, not presupposing it. But this cannot be demonstrated in the
way undertaken by Kant, which I have subjected to critique in the treatise
on the Principle of Sufficient Ground, § 23.

§ 5.
[Disputes about tbe Reality of tbe External World -
Life as a Dream]
Beware, however, of the gross misunderstanding of thinking that,
because perception is mediated by a cognizance of causality, a relation

i[sensual]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 43

of cause and effect therefore exists between object and subject; for that
relation rather occurs only between the immediate and the mediated
object, thus as always between objects. 7 The foolish dispute ab out the
reality of the external world in which dogmatism and skepticism stand
opposed, and where the former appears sometimes as realism and some-
times as idealism, rests on just that mistaken presupposition. Realism
posits the object as cause and its effect as something in the subject.
Fichtean idealismi turns the object into an effect of the subject. But since
- something that cannot be emphasized enough - between subject and 16
object there is no relation at all in accordance with the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, neither the one nor the other claim could ever be
proven, and skepticism made successful attacks against both.
In particular, just as the law of causality precedes perception and
experience as their condition, therefore cannot (as Hume supposed) be
learned from them, so object and subject altogether precede all cogni-
tion, and thus the Principle of Sufficient Ground as weH, as their prior
condition. For the latter is only the form that pertains to any object, the
pervasive mode and manner of the phenomenon that it iS.ii The object,
however, always presupposes the subject; thus between the two there
can be no relation of ground and consequence. My treatise on the Prin-
ciple of Sufficient Ground is meant to achieve precisely an account of
the content of that principle as the essential form pertaining to all
objects, i.e., as the general mode and manner in which anything is an
object, as something pertaining to the object as such, while the object
as such everywhere presupposes the subject as its necessary correlate;
the latter thus remains always outside the domain of application of the
Principle of Sufficient Ground. The dispute ab out the reality of the
extern al world rests on just that mi staken extension of the validity of
the Principle of Sufficient Ground to the subject, and, proceeding from
this misunderstanding, it could never make itself intelligible. On the
one hand, considering presentation as an effect ofthe object, the realistic
form of dogmatism would separate two things, presentation and object,
that are precisely one thing, and assurne a cause entirely distinct from
presentation, an object in itself, independent of the subject. Something
utterly unthinkable. For just insofar as it is an object, it always presup-

i[J. G. Fichte, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenscha/tslehre (Foundation 0/

the Camplete Dactrine 0/ Knawledge [1794]) and later works; "Fichtean"
added to the sentence in B.]
ii[seiner Erscheinung]
 44 First Book. The World as Presentation

poses the subject and thus always remains only a presentation to it. i
Laboring under the same mistaken presupposition, skepticism counters
with the claim that, with presentation, one has always only the effect,ii
never the cause, thus is never cognizant of the being, always only of the
eilectualityiii of objects. But the former might perhaps bear no res em-
blance to the latter, would indeed be altogether quite wrongly assumed,
since the law of causality is drawn from experience, the reality of which
is now taken to rest on it.
17 With this it is in order to inform both parties, first, that object and
presentation are the same thing; next, that the being of perceptual objects
is just their effectuality, that it is just in the latter that any thing's actual
realityiv consists, and the demand for existence of an object beyond
presentation to the subject, or for a being for any actualV thing distinct
from its effectuality, has no sense at all and is contradictory; that
therefore, so far as it is an object, i.e., presentation, an object ofpercep-
tion is likewise exhausted in our cognizance of its mode of effectuality,
since beyond that there remains nothing in it for cognizance. To that
extent, announcing its presence as sheer causality, the world perceived
in space and time is perfectly real,vi and is altogether what it purports to
be, and what it purports to be is entirely and unreservedly presentation,
interconnected in accordance with the law of causality. This is its empir-
ical reality.8 On the other hand, however, all causality exists only in the
understanding and for the understanding, thus the entire actual, i.e.,
effectual, world is always conditioned by the understanding and is
nothing without it. But it is not only for this reason that we have simply
to deprive the dogmatist of his reality - he who describes the reality of
the external world as independence from the subject - but more generally
because, without contradiction, no object can be thought without a
subject. The entire world of objects is and remains a presentation, and
just for that reason altogether and for all etemity conditioned by the
subject, i.e., it has transcendental ideality. But it is not for that reason
either lie or illusion. It purports to be just what it is as presentation, or
more particularly as aseries of presentations, the common bond of
which is the Principle of Sufficient Ground. As such, and even with

tdessen Vorstellung]
ii[Wirkung]
111[Wirken]
iv[ Wirklichkeit]
V[wirklichen]
vTreal]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 45

respect to its innermost meaning, it is intelligible to any sound under-

standing, and addresses it in perfectly distinct speech. To dispute its
reality can only occur to a rnind contorted by a sophistryi that can only
be due to illegitimate application of the Principle of Sufficient Ground,
which to be sure interconnects all presentations, of whatever kind they
may be, but not in any way with the subject, nor with anything that
would be neither subject nor object but a mere ground of the object:
something inconceivable,ii since only objects can be grounds, and indeed
always of other objects.
If we more dosely examine the source of this question regarding 18
the reality of the external world, we find that, beyond mistaken appli-
cation of the Principle of Sufficient Ground to what lies beyond its
domain, there is also a particular confusion with regard to the modes of
that principle. Namely, the mode that it assumes with respect to concepts
or abstract presentations gets carried over to perceptual presentations,
real objects, and a ground of cognition is demanded with respect to
objects that can have no other ground than one of becoming. With
respect to abstract presentations, the concepts that get connected in
judgments, the Principle of Sufficient Ground of course holds sway in
the form ofthe principle that every judgment has its value, validity, and
entire existence (here called truth) simply and solely through its reference
to something beyond it, its cognitive ground, to which recourse has
always to be made. By contrast, with respect to real objects, perceptual
presentations, the Principle of Sufficient Ground holds sway not as a
principle of the ground of cognition, but rather of becoming, as the law
of causality: just by the fact that it has come 10 be, i.e., has originated as
the effect of a cause, every object has already given that principle its
due; the demand for a cognitive ground here has no validity or sense,
but pertains to an entirely different dass of objects. Therefore also, so
long as one stays with it, the perceptual world excites neither scruple
nor doubt in the ob server: here there is neither error nor truth; these are
confmed to the domain of the abstract, of reflection. Here the world
rather lies open for the senses and understanding, offers itself in innocent
truth just as what it is, as a developing perceptual presentation, regulated
in accordance with the bond of causality.
As we have so far considered the question of the reality of the
external world, it has issued from an aberration on the part of reason
that goes so far as to amount to self-misunderstanding, and to that extent

tdurch VernünfteIn verschrobenen Geist]

ii[ein Unbegriff]
 46 First Book. The World as Presentation

we could only answer the question by clarifying its content. Upon

examination of the entire essence of the Principle of Sufficient Ground,
the relation between object and subject, and the real character of sense
perception, the question was bound to become self-nullifying, because
19 itjust no longer had any meaning at all. But the question also has another
origin, entirely distinct from the purely speculative one so far stated, a
properly empirical origin, although it is also repeatedly put with specu-
lative intent, and it has in its empirical meaning a much more intelligible
sense than it had in the former case, namely, as folIows: we have dreams;
is alllife perhaps a dream? - or more specifically, is there a sure criterion
for distinguishing between dreams and actual reality? between mental
imagesi and real objects?
The proposal that there is less vivacity and distinctness in dreamt
as opposed to actual perception deserves no consideration at all. For as
yet nobody has held the two together for comparison, but one could
only compare the recollection of dreams with present actual reality. -
Kant resolves the question thus: "The interconnection of presentations
in accordance with the law of causality distinguishes life from dreams."ii
But all the details in dreams likewise cohere in accordance with the
Principle of Sufficient Ground in all its modes, and the connection is
broken only between life and dreams, and between individual dreams.
Kant's answer could therefore only amount to this: the long dream
(life) maintains a pervasive internal connection in accordance with the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, but no such connection with the short
dreams; however, every one of the latter maintains the same internal
connection. Thus the bridge is broken between the latter and the former,
and that is how we distinguish them.
It would, however, be very difficult and often impossible to employ
this criterion to investigate whether something was dreamt or actually
happened. For we are in no way in a position to follow, link by link, the
causal interconnection between all experienced events and the present
moment, although we do not on that ac count declare them to be dreams.
Therefore, in distinguishing dreams from actual reality in actual life,
one does not usually employ that mode of investigation. The only sure
criterion for distinguishing dreams from actual reality is in fact nothing
other than the entirely empirical one of awakening, whereby the causal
interconnection between dreamt events and those of waking life is of

tPhantasmen]
il1t is not perfectly dear what text Schopenhauer has in mind here, but prob-
ably A224-61B272-4.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 47

course expressly and perceptibly broken. 9 Superb confrrmation of this 20

is provided by a comment made by Hobbes in Leviathan, chapter 2,
namely, that even after awakening we easily take dreams for actua}
reality when we have unintentionally gone to sleep while c1othed, or
even more easily when, in addition, some undertakllg or intention takes
possession of all our thoughts, occupying us in a dream just as if we
were awake. For in such cases, awakening is almost as little noticed as
was the state of falling asleep; dream and reality coalesce and inter-
mingle. Then we of course have no choice but to apply the Kantian
criterion. But if, as is often the case, the presence or absence of causal
interconnection with the present can simply not be determined, then it
has to remain forever undecided whether some incident was dreamt or
actually happened.
Here in fact the c10se affinity between life and dreams comes most
near to uso Nor will we shrink from admitting it, given that it has already
been acknowledged and pronounced by many great minds. With respect
to the entirety of our cognizance of the actual world - which they call
the web of Maya - the Vedas and Puranas know no better comparison
than to dreams, and they employ none with greater frequency. Plato
frequently says that human beings live only in a dream, philosophers
alone endeavor to awaken. Pindar says (Pythia VIII, 135): Cixui; ovap
av.9prmroq (umbrae somnium homo).i And Sophoc1es:
oiJ8ev ~v'rii &A.A.O 1tA.~Y
'Üpm ydp ~f.liiS
moroA', ÖaOtn6p i;m/l6V, ~ XOU<jll1V axuxv.
Ajax 125
(Nos enim, quicunque vivimus, nihil aliud esse comperio,
quam simulacra et levem umbram.)ii
Alongside of this Shakespeare stands most worthily:
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.-
Tempest, Act 4, Scene 110

i["Man is the dream of a shadow."]

"["I see that we who are living are no more than phantoms and fleeting
shadows." As with Schopenhauer's Latin translations throughout, this added
in C.]
 48 First Book. The World as Presentation

21 Finally, Calderon was so deeply taken with this point of view that he
sought to pronounce it in what might be called a metaphysical drama,
Life is a Dream. i
Following these several passages from poets, one will perhaps not
begrudge me my own use of metaphor. Life and dreams are pages from
one and the same book. Reading in context is what we call actual life.
But when the current hour for reading (the day) has ended, and the time
for recuperation has arrived, then we still often leaf idly through the
book, turning this or that page without order or interconnection: often it
is a page already read, often one still unfamiliar, but always from the
same book. A single page read in this way is, of course, removed from
the context of continuous reading. Yet it will not seem for that reason
so very deficient with respect to the latter, when we consider that the
whole of a continuous reading itselfbegins and ends with as much spon-
taneity,ii and is accordingly to be viewed as only a longer single page.
Thus while individual dreams are distinguished from actuallife by
the fact that they do not fit into the interconnected experience that runs
constantly through the latter, and awakening marks this difference,
precisely that interconnected experience belongs to actual life as its
form, and dreams have equally tbeir own interconnection to displayas
weIl. Adopting astandpoint for assessment outside ofboth, no particular
difference is found in their nature, and one is forced to concede to the
poets that life is a long dream.
Returning now to the speculative from this entirely independent
empirical origin of the question regarding the reality of the external
world, we have of course found that tbe former lies, first, in illegitimate
application ofthe Principle ofSufficient Ground, namely, to the relation
between subject and object; and then in turn in a confusion regarding
that principle's modes, insofar as the Principle ofthe Sufficient Ground
of Cognition was carried over into the domain governed by the Principle
of the Sufficient Ground of Becoming. But that question could hardly
have so persistently occupied philosophers were it entirely lacking in
22 some element of truth, and were there not at its core, as its true origin,
some right thinking and sense that, as one would then have to assurne,
entered into those perverse and unintelligible forms and questions only
in reflection and in the pursuit of expression. That is how I see things in
any case, and where that question was unable to do justice to it, I set
down the following as a pure expression of its innermost sense: what is

i[Pedro Calder6n de la Barca, La Vida es Suefio (1635)]

iteben so aus dem Stegreife]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 49

this perceptual world beyond its being a presentation to me?i Although

I am conscious of it in only one way, namely, as presentation, is it just
like my own body, ofwhich I am conscious in a double way, on the one
hand presentation, on the other hand will? - More explicit explanation
of this question and an affirmative answer to it will be the topic of the
second Book. Pursuit of its implications will take up the remainder of
this work.

§ 6.
[More on tbe Rody as Immediate Object - Understanding witbout
Concepts - Human and Animal Intelltgence]
In the meantime we are, in this first Book, considering everything
only as presentation, as object for the subject. And like all other real
objects, we are viewing even our own body, from which the perception
of the world proceeds in each of us, merely from the side of its cogni-
zability; and it is in this respect only a presentation. To be sure, everyone's
consciousness, which already balked at describing other objects as
mere presentations, is all the more resistant when one's own body is
supposed to be a mere presentation. This arises from the fact that every-
one is immediately familiar with the thing in itself so far as it appears
as one's own body, but only familiar with it in a mediated way so far as
it is objectified in other objects of perception. But the course of our
investigation necessitates this abstraction, this one-sided mode of
consideration, this forcible separation of what essentially goes together.
Therefore, that resistance must be for the time being suppressed and put
to rest through the expectation that the considerations to follow will
complement the present one-sidedness and lead to complete cognizance
of the essence of the world.
Here, then, the body is an immediate object for us, i.e., that presen-
tation which constitutes the point of departure for the subject's cognition, 23
in that, with cognizance immediately taken of its alterations, it itself
precedes application of the law of causality, and so provides the latter
with its initial data. The whole essence of matter consists, as shown, in
its effectuality. Effect and cause exist, however, only for the understand-
ing, which is nothing more than their subjective correlate. l1 But the
understanding could never find application if there were not something
else from which it proceeds. Such is merely sensory sensation,ii the
immediate consciousness of alterations in the body by virtue of which

tmeine Vorstellung]
ii ldie blass sinnliche Empfindung]
 50 First Book. The World as Presentation

the latter is an immediate object. The possibility ofthe perceptual world's

cognizability thus lies in two conditions: the first, if we are to express it
objectively, is the capacity of bodies to affect one another, to produce
alterations in one another. Apart from this general property of all bodies,
perception would not even be possible by means of an animal body's
sensibility. If, however, we would express this same first condition
subjectively, we would say that the understanding makes perception
possible in the first place. This is because the law of causality, the pos-
sibility of effect and cause, originates from and is also valid only for
the understanding, and the perceptual world therefore exists only for
it and through it. The second condition, however, is the sensibility of
animal bodies, or the property of certain bodies to be the subject's
immediate objects. Mere alterations undergone by the sense organs
through external affection specifically appropriate to them already count,
to be sure, as presentations, so far as such effects excite neither pain nor
pleasure, i.e., have no immediate significance for the will, and nonethe-
less are perceived, thus only exist for cognizance; and thus to this extent
I say that the body is immediately cognized, is an immediate object.
However, the concept of an object is not to be taken in its most proper
sense here. For through this immediate cognizance of the body, which
precedes application of the understanding and is mere sensory sensation,
it is not the body itself that really exists as an object, but the bodies that
are affecting it, because all cognizance of an object proper, i.e., of a
presentation perceptible in space, is only through and for the under-
24 standing, thus not before but only subsequent to applying the latter.
Therefore, one is cognizant of the body as object proper, i.e., as a
presentation perceptible in space,12 just as of all other objects, only in
a mediated way, through application ofthe law of causality to an effect
made by one of its parts on another, as when the eye sees the body,
when the hand feels it. Consequently, we are not acquainted with the
form of our own body through our mere general state of feeling, but it
is only through cognizance, only in presentations, i.e., only in the brain,
that one's body is first displayed as an extended, articulated, organic
thing. One who is born blind gets this presentation only gradually,
through data provided by touch: 13 a blind person without hands would
never come to know his form, or at best, might gradually infer and
construct it on the basis of the way other bodies affect hirn. This
qualification thus needs to be understood when we call the body an
immediate object.
In any case, according to what has been said, all animal bodies are
immediate objects, i.e., points of departure for perception of the world
on the part of the all-cognizing and just for that reason never cognized
 The Object of Experience and Science 51

subject. Cognition, together with movement in response to motives

determined by it, is therefore what really characterizes animality, just
as movement in response to stimuli is what characterizes plants. But the
inorganic displays no other movement than that effectuated through
causes proper, in the narrowest sense of the term. I have discussed this
all in greater detail in the treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Ground,
2nd ed., § 20; in part III of the first treatise of the Ethics;i and in On
Vision and Colors, § 1. To all ofthis I thus refer.
It results from what has been said that all animals, even the most
imperfeet, possess understanding; for they are all cognizant of objects,
and this cognizance determines their movements as a motive. - The
faculty of understandingii is the same in all animals and in all human
beings, has everywhere the same simple form: cognizance of causality,
passage from effect to cause and cause to effect, and nothing beyond
that. But its degree of acuteness and the extent of its sphere of cogni-
zance are highly diverse, with manifold and multiple levels ranging from
the lowest - where one is only cognizant of causal relations between 25
immediate and mediated objects and so, by way of passage from effects
undergone by bodies to their causes, nothing further is achieved than
perception of the latter as objects in space - up to the higher levels of
cognizance of the causal interconnection of merely mediated objects,
leading to an understanding of the most complex concatenations of
causes and effects in nature. For even the latter still belongs to under-
standing and not reason, whose abstract concepts can serve only for
taking up that which is immediately understood, for fixing and connecting
it, never for producing actual understanding. Every natural force and law
of nature, and every case in which they express themselves, must first
be an object of immediate cognizance on the part of the understanding,
intuitively apprehended, before it can enter in abstracto into reflective
consciousness for reason. An example of intuitive, immediate appre-
hension by the understanding was R. Hooke's discovery of the law of
gravitation and the tracing of so many and such major phenomena to
this one law, as was then confrrmed by Newton's calculations;14 the
same applies to Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen and its crucial role in

i["Will before Consciousness of other Things," in Prize Essay on the Freedom

of the Will, part of The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. Schopenhauer
sometimes refers to the latter simply as above, 01' also as The Fundamental
Problems of Ethics. The other part of the work is the Prize Essay on the
Foundation of Morality.]
ii[der Verstand]
 52 First Book. The World as Presentation

nature, and the same for Goethe ' s discovery 15 of the mode of origination
of physical colors. All these discoveries are nothing other than an
assiduous process of immediate retrocession from effects to causes, the
result ofwhich is cognizance ofthe identity ofthe natural force express-
ing itself in all causes of the same kind. And the whole of the insight
involved is an expression, differing merely in degree, of that same single
function of the understanding by which a cause, affecting an amimal 's
body, is perceived as an object in space. Thus even all of those major
discoveries, just like perception and every expression of understanding,
are a matter of immediate insight and as such the work of the moment,
an apperr;u, something immediately striking one, not the product oflong
chains of inference in abstracto, which latter by contrast serve to fix
immediate cognizance on the part ofthe understanding for the purposes
of reason, by depositing it in abstract concepts, i.e., by making it explicit,
i.e., by enabling one to point others to it, to refer to it. i
Such acuteness of understanding in apprehending causal relations
among objects of which we are not immediately cognizant finds its
26 application not only in natural science (all of whose discoveries are
due to it), but also in practicallife, where it is known as shrewdness; by
contrast, in the former application it is better known as mental acuity,
penetration, or sagacity. Taken strictly, shrewdness refers excIusively to
understanding in the service of will. 16 However, the boundaries of these
concepts cannot be sharply drawn, since it is all one and the same
function ii of the same understanding that is already active in all animal
perception of objects in space and that, at the point of its greatest acute-
ness, sometimes assiduously investigates unknown causes for given
effects in natural phenomena, and so provides reason with material for
conceiving of general roles as naturallaws; sometimes, through the
application of known causes directed toward intended effects, devises
complicated ingenious machines; sometimes, applied to motivations,
either penetrates and frustrates subtle intrigues and machinations of the
understanding, or even itself aptly arranges motives and the persons
susceptible to each, and sets them in motion and directs them to its
purposes just as it pleases, like machines with levers and gears.
Lack of understanding is in the true sense stupidity, and is just
dullness 0/ wit in applying the law 0/ causality, incapacity for immediate
apprehension of the concatenation of causes and effects, motives and
actions. A stupid person does not see the interconnection of natural

i[d.h. sie deutlich zu machen, d.h .... sie Andern zu deuten. zu bedeuten]
ii[Funktion; in A, Kraft ("force," "power," "faculty").]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 53

phenomena, either where they occur of themselves or where they are

intentionally directed, Le., made to function in machines;i for this reason,
he readily believes in magic and miracles. A stupid person does not
norice that various persons, seerningly independently of one another,
are in fact acting in prearranged concert; thus he is easily mystified and
susceptible to intrigues. He does not notice the motives concealed
behind advice he is given, judgments pronounced, etc. There is always
but one thing lacking: acuteness, quickness, facility in applicatiön of
the law of causality, i.e., power of understanding.
The greatest and, in the relevant respect, most instructive example
of stupidity I have ever encountered was the case of a completely retarded
boy of around eleven years of age in an insane asylum, who to be sure
possessed a faculty of reason since he spoke and understood, but stood 27
far behind many animals in understanding. For as often as I went there,
he looked at an eyeglass that I wore around my neck and in which, by
reflecrion, there appeared the windows of the room and the tips of the
trees behind them. He was always greatly amazed and delighted, and he
never tired of looking in astonishment; for he did not understand the
entirely immediate causality involved in the fact of reflecrion.
Just as the degrees of acuteness of understanding are most various
in human beings, they are even greater between the various species of
animals. With alJ of them, however, even those that are nearest to
plants, there is yet as much understanding as suffices for passage from
effects in the immediate object to mediated objects as their causes, thus
for perception, for apprehension of objects. For this is just what makes
them animals, giving them the possibility for movement in accordance
with motives, and thereby for seeking or at least capturing nourishment,
while plants have only the capacity for movement in response to stimuli,
whose immediate effects they need to await, or else wither away,
unable to pursue or capture them. We admire the great sagacity of the
most perfect animals, as in the case of dogs, elephants, or apes, or as in
the case of the fox, whose cleverness has been so masterfully depicted
by BuffonY We are able to estimate rather exactly, in the case ofthese
most clever of animals, how much is in the power of understanding
unaided by reason, i.e., abstract conceptual cognizance; we cannot be

tzu Maschinen dienstbar gemacht]

"[Georges-Louis Leclere de Buffon (1707-1788), Histoire naturelle generale
et particuliere, 36 vols. (1749jf, eight further volumes under different author-
ship completed after Buffon's death); vol. 7 (1758) devotes four pages to the
fox (renard).]
 54 First Book. The World as Presentation

so easily cognizant of this in ourselves, because understanding and

reason are always mutually supportive. We therefore often find expres-
sions of anima] understanding sometimes above, sometimes below our
expectation. On the one hand, we are surprised by the sagacity of the
elephant that, having crossed many bridges on its joumey to Europe,
now hesitates to set foot on one, over which it yet sees the usual train of
people and horses crossing, because it seems to it too flimsily built for
its weight. On the other hand, we marvel at the fact that clever orangu-
tans, having found a fIre at which they are warming themselves, do not
keep it going by replenishing the wood: proof that the latter requires
28 reflective consideration,i which cannot happen without abstract concepts.
That cognizance of causes and effects, as the understanding's general
form, indwells apriori even in animals is, to be sure, already utterly
ce:rtain from the fact that, for them as for us, it is the antecedent condition
of all perceptual cognizance of the external world. But if more specific
confirmation is wanted, just consider, for example, how even a quite
young dog, no matter how much it may desire to, does not dare to jump
down from a table, because it foresees the effect of its body's weight
without any prior acquaintance with the particular case from experience.
We need, nonetheless, in assessing the understanding of animals, to
avoid attributing to them that which is an expression of instinct, a
property as entirely distinct from it as it is from reason, but that is often
most analogous in effect to the combined activity of the two. Discussion
of instinct does not belong here, however, but will find its place in
our consideration of the harmony or so-called teleology of nature in
the second Book; and chapter 27 of the supplementary chapters is
specifically dedicated to it.ii
Lack of understanding is stupidity. Lack of application of reason
to practical matters we will later recognize as foolishness, as we will
recognize lack of judgment as simplemindedness, and finally partial or
altogether complete lack of memory as madness. But of each of these in
its place.
That ofwhich reason takes accurate cognizanceiii is truth, namely,
an abstract judgment with sufficient ground (treatise on the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, §§ 29jj). That of which the understanding takes
accurate cognizance is reality, namely, accurate passage from the effect
in the immediate object to its cause. Standing opposed to truth is error

tÜberlegung]
ii[A reference to the second volume of The World as Will and Presentation.]
iii[Das durch die Vernunft richtig Erkannte 1
 The Object ofExperience and Science 55

as a deception of reason; opposed to reality is illusion i as a deception of

the understanding. More detailed discussion of all this can be found in
the first chapter of my treatise on vision and colors.
Illusion comes in when one and the same effect can be produced
by two entirely different causes, one of which is very frequently effec-
tual, the other rarely: having no data by which to distinguish which
cause is effectual in a given case, since the effect is entirely the same,
the understanding always presupposes the usual cause, and because its
activity is not reflective or discursive, but direct and immediate, the 29
false cause confronts us as an object of perception; this is just false
semblance. ii I have shown in the cited location how in this way, when
the sense organs are brought into unusual positions, double vision and
tactile doubling arise, and have precisely thereby provided incontrover-
tible proof ofthe fact that perception exists only through the understand-
ing and for the understanding. Further examples of such deceptions of
the understanding, or illusion, are the stick submerged in water that
appears to be broken or images in spherical mirrors, where with convex
surfaces the images appear somewhat behind them, with concave surfaces
far in front of them. Here also belongs the seemingly greater size of the
moon on the horizon than at the zenith, which is not a matter of optics,
since, as a micrometer shows, the eye in fact apprehends the moon at
the zenith at an angle of vision somewhat greater than when it is at the
horizon. Rather, it is a matter of the understanding, which assumes
greater distance to be the cause of the weaker glow of the mo on and all
the stars on the horizon, estimating them as it would terrestrial objects
in accordance with atmospheric perspective,iii and thus takes the moon
to be very much larger on the horizon than at the zenith, and at the
same time the vault of the heavens to be more extended at the horizon,
thus flattened. The same false estimation in accordance with atmo-
spheric perspective allows very tall mountains whose peaks alone we
see in pure transparent air, e.g., Montblanc as viewed from Salenche, to
be taken to be nearer than they are, thus diminishing their height.
And all such deceptive illusions confront us in immediate percep-
tion, which no ratiocination on the part of reason can remove: the latter,
by way of a contrary true judgment, can at most prevent error, i.e., a
judgment without sufficent ground, as when one judges, e.g., in abstracto

i [Schein]
ii[der falsche Schein]
lJl[nach der Luftperspektive; for more extensive treatment: Fourfold Root,
§ 21, pp. 66ff(Pp. lOOffin Payne [tr.]).]
 56 First Book. The World as Presentation

that it is not their greater distance but murkier vapors on the horizon
that are the cause of the weaker glow of the moon and stars; but despite
that abstract cognizance, in an of the cases cited the illusion remains
irremovable. For the understanding is utterly and sharply distinct from
reason, which is an additional cognitive faculty present in human beings
30 alone, and is indeed even in human beings of itself irrational. Reason
can only ever know;i perception remains, free of its influence, with the
understanding.

§ 7.
[Systems tbat Proceed jrom tbe Object or Subject Alone - Natural
Science - More on the Principle of Sufficient GroundJ
With respect to an of our considerations so far, the following
should also be wen noted. In them, we have proceeded neither from the
object nor from the subject, but from presentation, which contains and
presupposes both; for division into object and subject is its first, most
general, and most essential form. Thus we have considered this form
first as such, and then (although in the main with reference to the intro-
ductory treatise) the others subordinated to it, time, space, and causality,
which pertain only to the object. However, because these are essential
to the object as such, and the object in its turn essential to the subject as
such, they can also be found by starting from the subject, i.e., there can
be cognizance of them apriori, and they are to that extent to be viewed
as the common boundary between the two. But they can all be traced
back to a common term, the Principle of Sufficient Ground, as is shown
in detail in the introductory treatise.
This procedure altogether distinguishes our mode of consideration
from all philosophies so far attempted, insofar as an of them proceeded
either from the object or from the subject, and accordingly sought to
explain the one in terms of the other, namely, in accordance with the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, from whose rule we by contrast remove
the relation between object and subject, leaving the object alone to it.
One might view the Philosophy of Identity that has arisen and
become generally familiar in our days as escaping the opposition in
question, so far as it takes neither object nor subject as its truly initial
point of departure, but rather a third thing, an absolutum perceptually
cognizable by way of reason,ii which is neither object nor subject but

i[wissen]
ii[durch Vernunft-Anschauung Erkennbare Absolutum]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 57

the indifferent oneness of the two. i While on account of a total lack of

all perceptions on the part of reason, I will not undertake to enter into
dialogue regarding said worthy indifferent oneness and absolutum, I
must nonetheless note, relying merely on protocols of the reason- 31
perceiversii that lie open to us an, even to us laypersons, that said
philosophy is not to be exempted from the two opposing errors set forth
above. For despite the fact that the identity of subject and object is not
supposed to be thinkable, but only intellectually perceivable or to be
experienced by way of one's own immersion in it, still that philosophy
does not avoid either of the two contrary errors, but rather simply
combines them, insofar as it divides into two disciplines, namely, first,
into the transcendental idealism that is the Fichtean doctrine of the J
and that consequently, in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, has the object brought forth or spun out of the subject,iii and
second, into a philosophy of nature that in just the same way has the
subject come gradually from the object by application of a method
called construction. iv Very little of the latter is clear to me, but enough
to be clear that it is a progression according to various modes of the
Principle of Sufficient Ground. Of the deep wisdom itself that is
contained in that construction, 1 will not avail myself, since to me, from
whom perceptions on the part of reason are utterly absent, any exposition
presupposing it has to be a book with seven seals. This is even to such a
degree the case that, strange to tell it, it always seems to me as if, in
those doctrines of deep wisdom, I hear nothing but horrific and, to boot,
the most boring windbaggery.17
To be sure, systems proceeding from the object always had to be
concemed with the entire world of perception and its order. Yet the
object that they take as their point of departure is not always this, nor
its fundamental element, matter; rather, one can divide those systems in
accordance with the four classes of possible objects set forth in the

tdie Einerleiheit Beider: presumably, a reference to F. W. 1. Schelling,

Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie (Exposition of my System of Phi-
losophy [1801 ]).]
ii[ Vernunft-Anschauer]
iiiref.1. G. Fichte, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (Foundation
of the Complete Doctrine of Knowledge [1794]) and subsequent works;
Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus (System of Transcendental
Idealism [1800]) and other works.]
iV[Konstruktion. Presumably, a reference to Schelling's Ideen zu einer
Philosophie der Nature (Ideas Toward a Philosophy of Nature (1797]) and
subsequent works ofthe 1790s.]
 58 First Book. The World as Presentation

introductory treatise. i Thus one can say that the following proceeded
from the first of those classes, or the real world: Thales and the Ionians,
Democritus, Epicurus, Giordano Bruno, and the French materialists.
From the second, or from abstract concepts: Spinoza (namely, existing
only in his definition, from the purely abstract concept of substance)
and before hirn the Eleatics. From the third class, namely, from time,
consequently from numbers: the Pythagoreans and the Chinese phi los-
ophy ofthe I Ching. Finally, from the fourth class, namely, from acts of
32 will motivated by cognizance: the scholastics, who teach of a creation
out of nothing by way of an act of will on the part of an otherwordly
personal being.
The objective procedure is most consistently and fully developed
when it appears as materialism proper. This takes matter, and with it
time and space, as subsisting in an absolute manner, and bypasses the
relation to the subject in terms of which alone it all exists. In addition,
it takes up the law of causality as the directing principle by which it
would proceed, regarding it as a self-subsistent rule for things, a veritas
aeterna,ii consequently bypassing the understanding, in which and for
which alone there is causality. It then seeks to discover the initial,
simplest state of matter, so as to develop all others out of it, rising from
the merely mechanical to the chemical, and then to polarity, vegetation,
and animality. And assuming success in this, the next link in the chain
would then be animal sensibility, cognition, which would consequently
appear as a mere modification of matter, astate of it brought forth by
causality. Let us suppose, then, that we have followed materialism this
far, arriving at perceptual presentations. Having thus accompanied it to
its pinnacle, we would feel suddenly seized by the inextinguishable
laughter of the Olympians. For, as if awakening from a dream, it would
suddenly occur to us that this final and so laboriously generated result,
cognition, had already been presupposed from the very first in our point
of departure, matter, as its inescapable condition, and while with this
we had indeed supposed ourselves to be thinking of matter, we had in
fact been thinking about nothing other than the subject engaged in
presentation of matter: the eye seeing it, the hand feeling it, the under-
standing cognizant of it. Thus the enormous petitio principiiiii was
unexpectedly uncovered. For the final link was suddenly shown to be
the support from which the first already hung, the chain to be a circle,

i[See discussion of the Principle of Sufficient Ground in the introduction.]

t'eternal truth"]
iiir"begging the question"; "the enormous ... For" added in B.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 59

and the materialist to be like that Baron von Münchhausen, who,

mounted on his horse and swimming in water, lifts the horse out with
his legs, and himself by pulling forward on his turned-up pigtail. i
Accordingly, the fundamental absurdity of materialism consists in the
fact that it proceeds from the objective, takes something objective as its
ultirnate ground of explanation, be it matter considered in abstracto as it
is merely thought, or empirically given matter as it has already taken on 33
form, thus some substanceii such as chemical elements together with
their nearest compounds. It takes things of this kind as existing in
themselves and absolutely, letting organic nature and fmally the cogni-
zant subject proceed therefrom and be wholly explained thereby -
whereas in truth, everything objective is already in manifold ways con-
ditioned by the cognizant subject, together with its cognitive forms, and
has these as its presupposition, hence entirely vanishes when one
abstracts from the subject. Materialism is thus the attempt to explain
the immediately given in terms of that which is given in a mediated
way. Everything that is objective, extended, effectual, thus everything
that is material - which materialism takes for so solid a foundation for
its explanations that (particularly as regards impact and repulsion)
nothing can be found wanting in tracing things back to it - all this, I
assert, is something that is given only in a manner that is highly mediated
and conditioned, thus only something that exists in relations.iii For it
has passed through the machinery and workings of the brainiv and
thus entered into the latter's forms, time, space, and causality, by virtue
of which it is in the first place displayed as extended in space and
effectual in time. On the basis of something given in such a way,
materialism would explain even that which is immediately given,
presentation (within which it all exists), and in the end explain even
will, on the basis of which, in truth, one has rather to explain all those
fundamental forces that express themselves according to the directing
principle of causes, and therefore in accordance with laws.

tin 1785 Rudolph Erich Raspe published Baron Münchhausen 's Narrative
ofhis marvellous Travels and Campaigns, relating the at least partly imaginary
adventures of the actual historical character Kar! Friedrich Hieronymus,
Freiherr von Münchhausen. The book was enlarged and translated into German,
with the addition of a satirical style, by Gottfried August Bürger. (The remain-
der ofthe paragraph added in c.)]
ii[Stoffl
iii[nur relativ Vorhandenes]
iV[See discussion of matter and "the subject" in the introduction, sec. D.]
 60 First Book. The World as Presentation

In response to the claim that cognition is a modification of matter,

there thus stands with equal right the contrary claim, that all matter is
only a modification of cognition on the part of the subject, as a presen-
tation to it. i Nonetheless, the goal and ideal of all natural science is
fundamentaHy a fully developed materialism. That we now recognize
this as obviously impossible is confmned by another truth to emerge
from our further considerations, namely, that all science in the strict
se:nse - by which I understand systematic cognizance according to the
direction of the Principle of Sufficient Ground - can never achieve an
34 ultimate goal or yield any fuHy satisfactory explanation, because it never
gets at the innermost essence of the world, can never get beyond presen-
tation, rather gets no further, fundamentaHy, than to acquaint us with
the relation between one presentation and others.
Every science always proceeds from two main data, of which one
is always the Principle of Sufficient Ground in some one of its modes
as an organizing principle; the other is the particular object with which
it is concerned. Thus, for example, geometry has space as its concern,
the ground of being in space as its organizing principle. Arithmetic has
time as its concern, and the ground of being in time as its organizing
principle. Logic has combinations of concepts as such as its concern,
the ground of cognition as its organizing principle. History has the past
deeds of human beings, in the large and en masse, as its concern, the
law of motivation as its organizing principle. Now natural science has
matter as its concern, and the law of causality as its organizing
principle. Thus, according to the directing principle of causality, its
goal and purpose is to reduce aH possible states of matter to others, and
in the end to a single one, and then in turn to derive them all from
others and in the end from a single one. Two states therefore stand at
the opposite extremes of natural science: thc state of matter where it is
to the least, and that where it is to the greatest extent, the subject's
immediate object, i.e., the deadest, the crudest matter, the primary
fundamental substance,ii and then the human organism. Natural science
pursues the first as chemistry, the second as physiology. But so far
neither extreme has been reached, and something has merely been won
in between. And the prospect is indeed rather hopeless. Laboring under
the presupposition that, unlike quantitative division, the qualitative
division of matter will not proceed ad infinitum, chernists seek evcr
further reduction in the numbcr of their fundamental substances (now

i[als Vorstellung desselben]

itder erste Grundstojj]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 61

around sixty);18 even were they to get down to two, they would still
want to trace them back to a single one. For the law of homogeneity
leads to the presupposition of an initial chemical state of matter, one
that precedes all others and pertains just to matter as such, with all
others not essential to matter as such, but merely contingent forms,
qualities. On the other hand, when there was as yet no second state to
affect it, it is impossible to see how the fonner could ever have under-
gone chemical alteration. In this way, the same embarrassment arises in 35
the chemical realm that Epicurus encountered in the mechanical, when
it came to explaining the initial deviation of an atom from its original
direction of movement. This is~indeed a contradiction that arises of
itself, neither avoidable nor resolvable, and it can be quite properly put
forth as a chemical antinomy. Found as it is at the first of the two
extremes that are pursued by natural science, a counterpart corresponding
to it will also show itself at the second extreme.
There is just as tittle hope for reaching the other extreme of
natural science, since it becomes ever more evident that something
chemical can never be reduced to something mechanical, nor some-
thing organic to something chemie al or electrical. But those today
striking out anew upon this old path of errors will soon be creeping
back like all of their predecessors, still and ashamed. 19 This will be
discussed in more detail in the following Book. The difficulties that are
here only mentioned in passing confront natural science in its own
domain. Taken as a philosophy, it would be materialism as well. But
this, as we have seen, already carries its death in its heart from birth,
since it bypasses the subject and its cognitive fonns; yet these are just
as much presupposed by the cmdest matter from which it might begin
as by the organism at which it would arrive. For ''No object without
subject" is a proposition rendering all materialism forever impossible.
We can talk, to be sure, about suns and planets without an eye that sees
them or an understanding that is cognizant of them; but with respect to
presentation, the words are a sideroxylon. i On the other hand, the law
of causality and corresponding consideration and investigation of nature
nonetheless necessarily lead us to the sure assumption that, within time,
every more highly organized state of matter initially followed upon a
emder one. For example, animals existed before human beings, fish
before terrestrial animals, plants still before these, the inorganic prior to
anything organic; so as a consequence, the original mass had to pass

tLiterally (composed from the Greek words for) iron and wood, a blatant
contradiction.]
 62 First Book. The World as Presentation

through a long series of alterations before the first eye could open. And
nonetheless it remains ever upon the first eye that opened, may it have
36 even belonged to an insect, that the existence of the entire world depends
with respect to the necessarily mediating element of cognizance, for
which and within which alone it exists and without which it is not even
thinkable; for it is simply a presentation, and as such has need of the
cognizant subject as bearer of its existence. Indeed that long temporal
series - filled with countless changes through which matter rose from
form to form, until there finally arose the first cognizant animal - this
entire time itself is indeed only thinkable within the identity of a
consciousness whose succession of presentations and whose cognitive
form it is, and apart from which it altogether loses all meaning and is
nothing at alL rhus on the one hand, we necessarily see the existence of
the entire world as dependent on the first cognizant being, as imperfect
as ever it may be. On the other hand, we also necessarily see this first
cognizant animal as utterly dependent on a long chain of preceding
causes and effects into which it enters as a tiny link. Again, one might
indeed call these two contradictory views, to each of which we are in
fact led with equal necessity, an antinomy with respect to our cognitive
faculty, and we might put it forth as a counterpart to the one that we
discovered at the first extreme of natural science; by contrast, in the
critique of his philosophy appended to the present work, the fourfold
All1tinomy ofKant will be shown to be a groundless game ofmirrors. i
The contradiction that has now necessarily arisen, however, finds
its resolution in the fact that, to speak in Kant's terms, time, space, and
causality pertain not to the thing in itselfbut only to its phenomenon, as
its form. Ihis is in my terms to say that the objective world, the world
as presentation, is not the only, but just one, as it were the external, side
of a world that has an altogether distinct side that is its innermost
essence, its core, the thing in itself; and we will consider this in the
following Book, naming it after its most immediate20 objectification,
will. Ihe world as presentation, however, which is all that we are
considering here, arises to be sure with the opening of the first eye,
without which cognitive medium it cannot ex ist, thus it did not indeed
37 previously exist. But without that eye, i.e., apart from cognizance, neither
was there a before or a time. Nonetheless, time did not on that account
have a beginning, but rather all beginnings are within it. Since, however,

tKant's "Antinomy of Pure Reason," and in particular his discussion of fouf

"antinomies" - at least apparently irresolvable conflicts between equally "prov-
en" theses - begins at A4051B432 of the Critique 0/ Pure Reason.]
 The Object of Experience and Science 63

it is the most general form for the possibility of cognition, to which all
phenomena conform by virtue of the bond of causality, time is indeed
standing there too with the first case of cognition, with its entire infini-
tude in both directions, and one must likewise be cognizant of the
phenomenon fiHing this initial present as causally connected and depen-
dent upon aseries of phenomena stretching infinitely into the past. But
that very past is just as much conditioned by the initial present as the
latter is conversely by it, so that, like the initial present, so also the past
from which it originates is dependent upon the cognizant subject and is
nothing without it, even though necessity dictates that the initial present
is not displayed as initial, Le., as having no past for its mother, and as
the beginning of time, but as following from the past in accordance
with the ground of being in time; and so too, the phenomenon fiHing it
is displayed as the effect of earlier states in accordance with the law of
causality.21 - Those who are fond of mythological allusions may view
the birth ofthe youngest Titan, Chronos (A;OOvcx;), as symbolizing what
has been expressed here as the debut of a time that is yet without begin-
ning. Thereby, unmanning his father, he puts a halt to heaven's and
earth 's crude offspring, and the divine and human races now take to the
stage.
The depiction at which we have arrived, pursuing materialism as
the most consistent of the philosophical systems proceeding from the
object, serves at the same time to give perceptual expression to i the
inseparable interdependence of, yet ineliminable opposition between,
subject and object. Recognition of this leads us no longer to seek the
innermost essence ofthe world, the thing in itself, in either ofthose two
elements of presentation, but rather in something entirely distinct from
presentation, not infected with that kind of original, essential, and thereby
indissoluble opposition.
Opposed to the way of starting from the object just discussed, so 38
as to have the subject arise from it, stands the way of proceeding from
the subject, which would force the object to come out ofthe latter. 22 As
often and as generally as the former existed in all of previous philosophy,
there is really only a single example to be found of the latter, and in
particular a most recent one, the pseudo-philosophy of J. G. Fichte.23 In
this respect we have thus to take note of it, however little genuine value
and inner substance his doctrine in fact had, and it was indeed nothing
but agame of mirrors that - delivered with an air of deepest seriousness,

i[anschaulich zu machen]
 64 First Book. The World as Presentation

measured tone, and lively enthusiasm, and defended with eloquent

polemics in the face of weak opponents - was yet able to glitter and
seem to be something. But the genuine seriousness that holds its goal,
truth, unswervingly before its eyes, unsusceptible to foreign influences,
was entirely missing in this as in all philosophers who, like hirn, adapt
to circumstances. 24 Of course it could not be otherwise for them. One
always becomes a philosopher by attempting to escape from a kind of
perplexity that Plato called .9aVJ-Ld':;slV and described as a J-Ld)"a rpl).,O-
aorplxov ffd.9oC;.i But what distinguishes phony from genuine philos-
ophers ii is that the perplexity grows in the latter out of their vision of
the world, in the former by contrast only from a book, from a preex-
isting system: this was in fact the case with Fichte, who became a
philosopher only by way of Kanfs thing in itself and would have
without it most probably pursued entirely different matters with far
better success, since he did possess significant rhetorical ski1l?5 Had he
only penetrated to some depth into the sense of the book that made hirn
a philosopher, the Critique ofPure Reason, he would have understood
that its rnain doctrine was, in spirit, that the Principle of Sufficient Ground
is not, as all scholastic philosophy would say, a veritas aeterna, i.e.,
does not have unconditioned validity before, beyond, and above the
whole world, but only a relative and conditioned validity with respect
to phenomena alone, be it appearing as the necessary nexus of space or
time, or as the law of causality, or as the law of cognitive grounding;
thus that the inner essence of the world, the thing in itself, can never be
found according to its directing principle, but everything to which the
latter leads is always in turn itself dependent and relative, always only
39 phenomenon, not thing in itself; thus further, that it does not concern
the subject at all, but is only a form pertaining to objects, which are just
for that reason not things in themselves, and that with the object the
subject is at once already there, and with the latter the former, so that
neither does the object possibly relate to the subject as a consequence
to its ground, nor the latter to the former. But not the least bit of all this
caught on with Fichte: the only thing of interest to hirn in the matter
was proceeding from the subject, for which Kant had opted in order to
show the error of the previous ways of proceeding from the object,

tthaumazein (wonderment), mala philosophikon pathos (most philosophical

emotion): Theaetetus, 155d but, as Hübscher and Deussen note, with some
alteration by Schopenhauer.]
ii[ die unechten Philosophen von den echten]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 65

which thereby tumed it into a thing in itself. But Fichte took proceeding
from the subject to be the point of it, supposing, after the manner of
imitators, that if he were to surpass Kant in this respect he would also
surmount him,26 and thus duplicated the mistake in this that earlier
dogmatism had made in the opposite direction, and which precisely
thereby had occasioned Kant's critique. So nothing was changed with
respect to the main point, and the old fundamental mistake of assuming
a relation of ground and consequence between object and subject
remained as before, thus the Principle of Sufficient Ground retained
unconditional validity just as before and, instead of being displaced as
otherwise into the object, the thing in itself was now displaced into the
subject of cognition, while the complete relativityi ofthe two - indicating
that the thing in itself, or inner essence of the world, is not to be sought
in these, but beyond these as beyond anything else that only exists
relationallyii - remained as before unrecognized. Just as if Kant had
never existed, the Principle of Sufficient Ground is for Fichte still just
that which it was for all the scholastics, an aeterna veritas. That is, just
as etemal fate held sway over the gods of the ancients, aeternae
veritates still held sway over the God of the scholastics: metaphysical,
mathematical, and metalogical truths, including for some even the
validity of the moral law. These veritates depended on nothing; but by
their necessity there existed both God and the world. Thus according to
one such veritas aeterna, the Principle of Sufficient Ground, the 1 is for
Fichte the ground of the world or not-I, of the object, which is just its
consequence and product. He therefore took care indeed to avoid further
testing or examining of the Principle of Sufficient Ground. But should I
specify the mode of the principle according to whose direction Fichte 40
derived - as from the spider its web - the not-l from the I, 1 find that it
is the Principle of Sufficient Ground with respect to being in space. For
it is only with reference to space that some kind of sense and signif-
icanceiii is retained by those agonizing deductions - constituting the
content of the most senseless and, just for that reason, most boring
book ever written - of the mode and manner in which the I produces
and fabricates the not-l from out of itself.
Otherwise not worth even a mention, the Fichtean philosophy is
thus interesting to us only as a latter-day and true counterpoint to an
ages-old materialism that was the most consistent way of proceeding

tRelativität]
~'[nur beziehungsweise Existierenden]
"'[Sinn und Bedeutung]
 66 First Book. The World as Presentation

from the object, as this was of proceeding from the subject. As materi-
alism overlooked the fact that the subject was already immediately
assumed with the simplest of objects, so Fichte overlooked the fact that
with the subject (whatever he might want to call it) he had already
assumed the object. This is not only because no subject is thinkable
without one, but he also overlooked the fact that any apriori derivation,
indeed any deduction at all, rests on a necessity, but all necessity solely
on the Principle of Sufficient Ground. For to be necessary and to follow
from a given ground are equivalent concepts, t but he overlooked the
fact that the Principle of Sufficient Ground is nothing other than the
general form pertaining to objects as such, hence already presupposes
the object, and cannot, as something applicable in advance of and
beyond it, let it come forth in the first place and arise by way of its
legislative force. Thus overall, proceeding from the subject shares a
common mi stake with proceeding from the object as depicted above,
namely, of assuming from the start that which one first claims to get by
derivation: the necessary correlate of one's point of departure.
Our procedure differs, then, toto genen! from both ofthese contrary
blunders, insofar as we proceed neither from the object nor the subject
but from presentation as the first fact of consciousness, for which the
first and most essential fundamental form is division into object and
subject, with the form pertaining to objects in turn being the Principle
41 of Sufficient Ground in its various modes, each of which holds such
sway over its own class of presentations that, as indicated, with cogni-
zance ofthat mode, one is cognizant ofthe essence ofthe entire class as
weIl. This class is indeed (as presentation) nothing other than that very
mode. Thus time is nothing other than the ground ofbeing in time, i.e.,
succession; space is nothing other than the Principle of Sufficient
Ground with respect to space, thus location; marter is nothing other
than causality; concepts (as will be shown presently) are nothing other
than reference to cognitive grounds. This complete and thoroughgoing
relativity of the world as presentation, with respect to its most general
form (subject and object) as weil as to that subordinated to it (Principle
of Sufficient Ground), points us, as has been stated, to the fact that the
innermost essence of the world is to be sought from an entirely different
direction, altogether distinct from presentation, which the next Book
will demonstrate in a fact that is just as immediately certain for every

tOn this, see The Fourfold Root ofthe Principle ofStifficient Ground, 2nd ed.,
§ 49.
t'in a way wholly different in kind"]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 67

living being.
But first we need to consider the c1ass of presentations that
pertains to human beings alone, the materiali for which is concepts and
the subjective correlate ofwhich is reason,just as the subjective correlate
of the presentations so far considered was understanding and sensibil-
ity, which are also attributable to all animals. t

§ 8.
[Conceptual Reason vs. Pel'ceptual Undel'standing]
As if from the direct light of the sun into the borrowed reflection
of the moon, we now move from perceptual, immediate presentation
that stands and vouches for itselfi to reflection, to abstract discursive
concepts ofreason, all ofwhose content is had only by way of, and with
reference to, cognizance of the perceptual sort. So long as our procedure
is purely perceptual, all is clear, firm, and certain. There are neither
questions, nor doubts, nor errors: one wants nothing further, can get
nothing further, has repose in perception, satisfaction in the present.
Perception is self-sufficient. Therefore, whatever has originated with 42
purity from it and stayed true to it, like genuine works of art, can never
be wrong nor with any passage of time refuted; for it offers no opinion,
but reality itself.iii But with abstract cognizance, with reason, doubt and
error appear on the theoretical level, concern and regret on the practical.
If with perceptual presentation, illusion momentarily distorts actual
reality, with abstract presentations error may hold sway for millennia,
throw its iron yoke over entire peoples, stifle the most noble stirrings of
humanity, and leave even those whom it is unable to deceive to be
enchained by those who are enslaved by its deceptions. It is the enemy
against which the wisest spiritsiv of all times have waged unequal battle,
and only what has been won from it has ever become apossession of
humanity. Therefore it is good to call attention to it at once, and set foot
on the ground in which its domain lies. Although it is often said that
one ought to track down the truth, even where there is no use to be seen

i[Stofl]
t Corresponding to these fIrst seven sections are the first four chapters of the
first Book of the supplementary chapters [i.e., fIrst Book of the second volume
ofthe present wode].
itsich selbst vertretenden und verbürgenden Vorstellung]
lIl[die Sache selbst. The preceding two sentences added in B.]
lV[Geister. Geist will be sometimes "spirit," sometimes ''mind.'' Frequently,
Gemüt will also be "spirit."]
 68 First Book. The World as Presentation

in it, since the latter may be indirect and come to the fore where it is not
expected, I find it in order to add that one should be just as diligent in
uncovering and rooting out every error, even where there is no hann to
be seen in it, since this too may be very indirect and one day come to
the fore where it is not expected. For every error harbors a poison within
itself. 27 Be it spirit, be it cognizance that makes human beings lords of
the earth, there are no hannless errors, let alone errors that are holy or
honorable. And as a consolation to those who put life and limb into the
noble and so difficult struggle against error, in all of its fonns and occa-
sions, I cannot forbear from adding that, so long as the truth is not yet
before us, error may indeed pursue its game, just like owis and bats in
the night. But one may sooner expect that owls and bats will drive the
sun back to the east, than that truth that has been recognized and explic-
itly and fully pronounced will again be suppressed, so that old errors
may take over their broad field yet again undisturbed. That is the force
43 of truth, whose victory is hard and laborious, but for that reason is not
to be snatched from it once it is won.
Beyond the presentations, then, that have been so far considered -
whose composition goes back to time and space and matter ifwe attend
to the object, or to pure sensibility and understanding (i.e., cognizance
of causality) ifwe attend to the subject - yet another cognitive power
has arisen in human beings, alone among all inhabitants of the earth, an
entirely new consciousness dawned that, most aptly and with prescient
accuracy, is called rejlection. For it is in fact a reflectioni of perceptual
cognizance, something derived from it, although it has taken on a fun-
damentally different nature and character, knows nothing ofthe latter's
forms, and even the Principle of Sufficient Ground that holds sway
over all objects is of an utterly different mode in this case. lt is alone
tbis new, more highly potentiated consciousness, tbis abstract reflectionii
of whatever is intuitive in non-perceptual concepts of reason, that
bestows upon human beings that character of thoughtful awarenessiii
which so thoroughly distinguishes theirs from animal consciousness,
and through which the entirety of their earthly way of life turns out to
be so different from that of their irrational brothers. They surpass them
by far in power and in suffering. Animals live only in the present;
human beings in addition in the future and past simultaneously. Animals
satisfy their momentary needs; by way of the most artful arrangements,

t'r~flection .. .reflection": Reflexion, Wiederschein ("reappearance").]

"[Reflex]
iii[Besonnenheit]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 69

human beings attend to their future, indeed even to times they will never
experience. Animals are wholly subject to momentary impressions and
the effects of perceptible motives; abstract concepts determine human
beings independently of the present. Thus human beings execute plans
that have been reflectively consideredi or act in accordance with maxims,
without regard for what is around them or chance momentary impres-
sions. They can with composure therefore mount, for example, artful
arrangements for their own death, dissimulate to the point of inscruta-
bility, and then carry the secret to the grave. In short, they have an
actual choice among several motives. For it is only in abstracto that
motives, coexisting in present consciousness, can be accompanied by
cognizance of the fact that they are mutually exclusive, and so take the
measure of one another with respect to their power over the will. In that
case, the one that weighs more heavily to the point of producing a result
is the reflectively considered decision of the will, and gives notice of 44
the latter as a sure sign of its character. By contrast, present impressions
control the animal: only fear in the face of present coercion is able to
curb its desire, until the fear has become ahabit and then determines it
as such, which is training. Animals sense and perceive; beyond this,
human beings also think and knowY Both will. Animals communicate
their sensations and attitudes through bearing and sounds; human
beings communicate their thoughts to others through language, or conceal
their thoughts through language. Language is the fIrst offspring and the
necessary instrument of their reason. Therefore in Greek and Italian,
speech and reason are signified by the same word: '0 A,oyo;, il discorso.
The term Vernunft comes from Vernehmen, which is not synonymous
with Hören iii but refers to the interna! awareness iv of thoughts
communicated by words. 28 With the help of language alone, reason
achieves its most important accomplishments, namely, the concerted
action of several individuals, the goal-directed collaboration of many
thousands, civilization, the state; in addition science, the pre-
servation of earlier experiences, the comprehension of commonalities in
single concepts, the communication of truth, the spread of error, the
work of thinkers and poets, dogmas and superstitions. Animals first
learn of death by dying. With each hour within their consciousness,

i[überlegte Pläne]
ii[weiss, from wissen]
iii[Vernunft: "reason"; Vernehmen: "hearing, perceiving, registering"; Hören:
"hearing."]
iv[Innewerden ]
 70 First Book. The World as Presentation

human beings walk nearer to their death, and this makes life at times a
troubling affair, even for those who have not yet recognized constant
annihilation as a feature of all life itself. lt is mainly for this reason that
human beings have philosophies and religions. But whether that which
we rightly esteem above all else in human action, freely willed recti-
tude and a generous disposition, have ever been the fruit of one or the
other is uncertain. What we find on this path as sure and legitimate
offspring of just these two and as products of reason, are to the contrary
the most wondrous, most daring opinions of the philosophers of various
schools and the strangest, at times even cruel practices of the priests of
various religions.
45 That all these so manifold and such far-reaching expressions orig-
inate from a common principle, from that particular spiritual poweri
that puts human beings ahead of animals and has been called reason, '0
)"oyo;, rot AOYlO"'{l}eoV, TO' AOYlfiOV, ii ratio, is the unanimous opinion of
all ages and peoples. And all human beings are weil able indeed to
recognize expressions ofthis capacity, and to tell what is rational, what
irrational, where reason comes in as opposed to other human capacities
and properties, and, finally, what is never to be expected of even the
most clever animals on account of their lack of it. Philosophers of all
times also speak on the whole in accord with this general knowledge of
reason, and in addition emphasize some of its particularly important
expressions, such as mastery of the emotions and passions, the capacity
to draw inferences and formulate general principles, including ones that
are certain in advance of aU experience, etc. Nonetheless, all their expla-
nations ofthe real essence of reason are vacillating, imprecisely defined,
vague, without unity and focus, sometimes emphasizing this or that
other of its expressions, thus often divergent. In addition, there is the
fact that many proceed on the basis of the opposition between reason
and revelation, which is entirely foreign to philosophy and serves only
to increase the confusion. It is most striking that no philosopher has as
yet rigorously traced all the manifold expressions ofreason to a simple
function to be recognized in aJl of them, on the basis of which they are
aB to be explained, and that would accordingly constitute the real inner
essence ofreason. To be sure, the superb Locke, in his Essay Concern-
ing Human Understanding (Book 2, eh. 11, sees. 10 and 11), most
accurately puts forth abstract general concepts as the characteristic
distinction between the animal and the human, and Leibniz repeats this

i[Geisteskrafll
iirlogos, logistikon, logimon]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 71

in utter agreement in his Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humaini

(Book 2, eh. 11, sees. 10 and 11). But when Locke gets to his real expla-
nation of reason in Book 4, eh. 17, sees. 2-3, he entirely loses sight of
its simple main character and slides as weil into a vacillating, indefinite,
incomplete specification of pieeemeal and derivative expressions of it.
Leibniz also does the same on the whole at the corresponding point in 46
his work, only with greater confusion and unclarity. As for how badly,
however, Kant confused and falsified the concept of the essence of
reason, I have spoken of this in detail in the Appendix. But whoever
takes the trouble to peruse in this respect the mass of philosophical
works appearing since Kant will see that, just as entire peoples have to
pay for the mistakes of their princes, the errors of great minds spread
their deleterious influence over entire generations and even centuries.
Indeed it grows and propagates, degenerating in the end into monstrosi-
ties. All of which goes back to what Berkeley said: "Few men think;
yet all will have opinions."ii
Just as the understanding has only one function, immediate cogni-
zance of the relation between cause and effect and perception of the
actual world, and as all shrewdness, sagacity, and inventiveness, however
manifold their application, yet are quite obviously nothing other than
expressions of that simple function, so reason as well has one function:
concept-formation. And on the basis of this single function it is most
easy and altogether self-evident how to explain all the phenomena that
have been cited as distinguishing human from animal life, and it is to
the application or failure of application of that function that absolutely
everything points that has anywhere, at any time, been denominated
rationalor irrational. t
§ 9.
[ Concepts as Abstractions - Logic as Sdence]
Concepts form a unique class of presentations that, toto genere
distinct from the perceptual presentations so far considered, exist only

i[G. W. Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding: a com-

mentary in dialogue form on John Locke's Essay (first edition, 1690),
completed by Leibniz in 1704 but remaining unpublished by Leibniz's decision
onaccount ofLocke's death in that year, appearing posthumously in 1765.]
II[George Berke1ey, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, 2nd
Dialogue (addition to the third edition of 1734), p. 214 in Works, ed. Luce and
Jessop. Schopenhauer added a note in C with translation into German.]
tThis section is to be compared with §§ 26-27 of the second edition of the
treatise on the Principle ofSufficient Ground.
 72 First Book. The World as Presentation

in the hwnan mind. We can thus never attain an intuitive, a truly evident
47 cognizance oftheir essence, but only one that is also abstract and discur-
sive. It would thus be absurd to demand that they be shown to us in
experience, to the extent that we mean by this the real external world,
which is precisely a perceptual presentation, or that they need to be
brought, like perceptual objects, before our eyes or imagination. i They
can only be thought, not perceived, and only the effects that people
produce by their means are objects of experience proper. Such are
language, reflectively considered intentional action, and science, together
with whatever results from all these. As an object of outer experience,
speech is obviously nothing other than a highly perfected telegraphy,
communicating chosen signs with the greatest speed and subtlety of
nuance. But what do the signs me an? How does their interpretation take
place? While the other person is speaking, for example, do we at once
translate the speech into imaginative pictures that fly past us with
lightning speed, and that move, concatenate, transform, and deck them-
selves out to the measure of the streaming words and their grammatical
inflections? What a tumult would then be in our heads while we were
listening to speech or reading a book! It does not happen that way at all.
The sense of the speech is immediately internally registered,ii precisely
and determinately apprehended with no mental imagesiii as a rule mixing
in. Here reason speaks to reason and keeps to 11s own domain, and what
it communicates and receives are abstract concepts, non-perceptual
presentations, which are formed once and for all and in relatively small
nwnber, yet encompass, contain, and representiv all of the countless
objects of the actual world. It is on this basis alone explicable why
animals can never speak or register speech, even though they have in
common with us the instruments for speech as weil as perceptual
presentations. But precisely because words signiry the wholly unique
class of presentations whose subjective correlate is reason, they are
without sense and significance for animals. So just like every other
phenomenon that we ascribe to reason, and like everything that
distinguishes human beings from animals, language is to be explained
in terms of this single and simple source, namely, concepts: abstract,

i[Throughout, as here, Schopenhauer tends to use Phantasie as opposed to

Einbildungskraft for imagination.]
ii[unmittelbar vernommen]
iitPhantasmen]
iV[ vertreten]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 73

non-perceptual, general presentations, without individuality in time and

48 space. lt is only in individual cases that we pass from concepts to
perception, form mental images as perceptual representatives i of con-
cepts, to which they are, however, never adequate. These representatives
of concepts are specifically discussed in the treatise on the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, § 28, therefore I will not repeat the matter here.
What is said there is to be compared with what Hume says in the
twelfth of his Philosophical Essays, p. 244, and what Rerder says in his
Metacritique (an otherwise poor book) Part I, p. 274. ii - The Platonic
Idea,iii which is made possible by the union of imagination and reason,
will be the main subject ofthe third Book ofthe present work.
While concepts, then, are fundamentally different from perceptual
presentations, they still stand in a necessary relation to them, without
which they would be nothing, which relation consequently constitutes
their entire essence and existence. Reflection is necessarily a copying
or replication of the perceptual world as its archetype, although it is a
copying of a kind entirely its own in an utterly heterogeneous material.
For this reason, concepts may quite fittingly be called presentations of
presentations. iv The Principle ofSufficient Ground has likewise a mode
of its own here, and just like the case where we have already seen that a
mode in which that principle holds sway within a class of presentations

t Repräsentanten]
"[David Hume, Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding
(1748), later retitled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section
XII, Part I. The relevant passage in Hume is quoted by Herder, Metakritik zur
Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Metacritique ofthe Critique ofPure Reason [1799]);
see Hans Dietrich lrmscher (ed.) Johann Gottfried Herder Werke (1985.9), vol.
8 (1998), p. 415. In both Herder and the passage cited from § 28 of the
Fourfold Roof (Payne [tr.], pp. 152-153), the point more specifically involves a
critique of the "Schematism" chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason (A137/
B176.9) and what is there at least taken to be Kant's view that concepts are
represented in thought by "schemata," viewed as mental images with a special
character of generality; Hume simply and briefly dismisses the notion of
"ideas" that are general in character. Whatever the correct reading of Kant,
neither Herder nor Hume is in any case sympathetic to Schopenhauer's view of
tho:ught as involving an irreducibly distinct type of"presentation."]
1I1[Jdee. This will be translated throughout as "ldea" with an initial capital.]
IV[Kant had spoken in this way of judgments in the Critique (A681B93), and
concepts for Kant are essentially "predicates of possible judgments" (A69/
B94).]
 74 First Book. The World as Presentation

always also in fact constitutes and exhausts the entire essence of that
class, so far as it is a class of presentations - so that, as we have seen,
time is through and through succession and nothing further, space
through and through location and nothing further, matter through and
through causality and nothing further - so too the entire essence of con-
cepts, or of the class of abstract presentations, consists only in that
relationi within them which is expressed by the Principle of Sufficient
Ground; and since this relation is that of a reference ii to cognitive
grounds, the entire essence of an abstract presentation consists simply
and solely in its reference to another presentation that is its cognitive
ground. To begin, the latter can of course again be a concept, or abstract
presentation, and even these can again have an equally abstract cognitive
ground, but it cannot go on forever; rather, in the end the series of
cognitive grounds has to terminate in a concept that is grounded in
perceptual cognizance. For the entire world of reflection rests on the
49 perceptual world as its cognitive ground. Therefore, the class of abstract
presentations differs from the others in that, with the latter, the Principle
of Sufficient Ground always demands a reference to another presentation
of the same class, while with abstract presentations, it demands in the
end a reference to a presentation from another dass.
One has preferred to call those concepts abstracta that, as just
stated, refer to perceptual cognizance not immediately but only through
the mediation of one or, more likely, several other concepts, and has by
contrast called concreta those that have their ground immediately in the
perceptual world. The latter denomination, however, is completely
unsuited to the concepts signified by it, since these are always still
abstracta and in no way perceptual presentations. Those denominations
have in fact proceeded from a most indistinct consciousness of the
difference thereby intended, but can be retained on the interpretation
here in question. Examples of the former kind, thus of abstraeta in the
preeminent sense, are concepts such as relation, virtue, investigation,
beginning, etc. Examples of the latter kind, or of concreta improperly
so-called, are the concepts human being, stone, horse, etc. Were it not
too pictorial a comparison and therefore lapsing into the jocular, one
might most fittingly call the latter the first floor, the former the upper
floors ofthe house ofreflection. t

i [Relation]
"[Beziehung]
tOn this, see chs. 5 and 6 ofthe second volume.
 The Object ofExperience and Science 75

That a concept comprehends a number of things under itself/ i.e.,

that a number of perceptual or even in turn abstract presentations stand
in the relation of cognitive ground to it,ii i.e., are thought through it, is
not, as generally claimed, an essential but only a derivative and second-
ary property, which need not always in fact, but must always possibly,
be there. This property issues from the fact that concepts are presenta-
tions ofpresentations, i.e., their entire essence lies only in their reference
to other presentations. But being distinct from the latter, which indeed
generally belong to an entirely different class of presentations, that of
the perceptual, which can thus have temporal, spatial, and other deter- 50
minations, and any number of relationsiii that are not at all thought in
the concept, it follows that a number of presentations that differ in
inessential respects can be thought through the same concept, i.e., can
be subsumed under it. But this applicability to several things is not an
essential but only an accidental property of concepts. There can there-
fore be concepts through which only a single real object is thought, but
which are on that account still abstract and general, in no way individual
or perceptual presentations. Such, for example, is someone's concept of
a particular city, but where it is known merely from geography: while
only this one city is thought through the concept, it would still be
possible for there to be several cities, differing in various respects, all
of which it fits. Thus concepts do not have generality because they are
abstracted from several objects, but to the contrary, because generality,
i.e., the failure to determine anything individual, is essential to concepts
as abstract presentations on the part of reason, various things can be
thought through the same concept.
From what has been said it results that, just because it is an
abstract and non-perceptual and just for that reason not a thoroughly
determinate presentation, every concept has what one calls an extension
or sphere, even in the case where there exists only a single real object
corresponding to it. Now we find that it is universally the case that the
sphere of any concept has something in common with the spheres of
others, i.e., that the same thing is partially thought in it as is thought in
the others, and the same thing in turn partially thought in the latter as in
the former, although, if they are actually distinct concepts, each of any
two of them contains, or at least one of them does, something that is

i Dass ein Begriff vieles unter sich begreift]

ii[Beziehung ... zu. Again, I generally translate Beziehung as "relation" in
contexts with zu but as "reference" in contexts with azif.]
iii[Beziehungen]
 76 First Book. The World as Presentation

lacking in the other: every subject stands in this relation to its predicate.
Taking cognizance of this relation is called judging. Depiction of these
spheres by means of spatial figures is an altogether felicitous idea.
Gottfried Ploucqueti was presumably the first to have had it, employing
squares for the purpose. Lambert,ii though succeeding hirn, still availed
hirnself merely of lines, which he set in a descending order; Euletii was
the first to carry it out entirely with circles. As to the ultimate foundation
51 of this so exact analogy between relations among concepts and spatial
figures, I can say nothing. It is in any case a circumstance most fortunate
für logic that, even with respect to possibilities, Le., apriori, relations
among concepts can be depicted in perceptual terms iv by such figures in
the following way:
I) The spheres oftwo concepts are entirely the same. For example,
the concept of necessity and that of consequence from a given ground;29
likewise those of Ruminantia and Bisulca (ruminants and animals with
cloven hoot); or those ofvertebrates and red-blooded animals (although
the case of annelids might prompt an objection). These are equivalent
concepts. They can thus be depicted by a single circle referring to the
one just as well as the other:
2) The sphere of one concept entirely includes that of the other.
3) One sphere includes two or more, which exclude each other but
together fill the sphere.
4) Each oftwo spheres includes apart ofthe other.
52 5) Two spheres lie within a third but do not fill it.
This last case applies to all concepts whose spheres have nothing
immediately in common, since there will always be a third, even if of-
ten much broader, that encompasses them both.
All combinations of concepts can be reduced to these cases and
the entire doctrine of judgments, with its conversion, contraposition,

i[Abriss der theoretischen Philosophie (Outline of Theoretical Philosophy

[1782]).]
itJohann Heinrich Lambert, Sechs Versuche einer Zeichenkunst in der
Vernunftlehre (Six Attempts at a Symbolic Technique in the Doctrine of Reason
[1777]).]
'ii[Leonhard Euler, Lettres a une Princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de
physique & de philosophie (Letters to a German Princess on Various Subjects
in Physics and Philosophy [1768-1772]). "Euler Circles" are aprecursor of
Venn Diagrams. ]
iv [anschaulich darstellen lassen]
V[The diagrams accompanying the remaining alternatives have been placed
in the translator's appendix.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 77

reciprocation, disjunction (the latter in accordance with our third figure),

can be derived from them. The same applies as weH to the properties of
those judgments on which Kant based his alleged Categories of the
Understanding,i but with the exception of the hypothetical form, which
is no longer a combination of mere concepts but of judgments; and with
the exception ofmodality, ofwhich, like all the properties ofjudgments
laid down as a ground for the Categories, the Appendix gives a detailed
ac count. With regard to the possible combinations of concepts in ques-
tion, it only remains to note that they can also be combined in manifold
ways, e.g., combining the fourth figure with the second. Only when a
sphere entirely or partially containing another is in turn entirely or
partially enc10sed within a third, do all of them together depict an
inference in the first figure,ii i.e., that combination of judgments whereby
one takes cognizance of the fact that a concept that is entire1y or partially
contained in another is likewise contained in a third containing the
second. Or in the contrary case, negation: its pictorial depiction can of
course only consist in the fact that two spheres combined with one
another do not lie within a third. When a number of spheres enc10se
one another in this way, there arise lengthy inferential chains.
Ihis way of schematizing concepts, already rather well elaborated 53
in several textbooks, can provide a foundation for the doctrine of
judgments as weH as the entirety of syllogistics, thereby making the
exposition of both quite easy and simple. For on its basis all of their
rules can be understood with respect to their orlgin, derived, and
explained. But it is unnecessary to burden our memory with them, since
logic can never be of practical utility, but only of theoretical interest for
philosophy. For although it can be said that logic relates to rational
thinking as the basso continuo to music, and even, if we take it less
strict1y, as ethics to virtue or aesthetics to art, one must on the other
hand consider that no artist has yet come into being tbrough a study of
aesthetics, nor any noble character through a study of ethics, that
compositions were assiduously and finely composed long before
Rameau, and neither does one need to be aware of the basso continuo
in order to notice dissonances; just as little does one need to know logic
to avoid being fooled by fallacious inferences. However, it must be
conceded that, if not for appreciation, nonetheless for the practice of

i[ Critique 0/ Pure Reason A70/B95-A80/B 106.]

ii[Here "fIrst fIgure" refers not to Schopenhauer's fIgures, but to a syllogism
in the traditional Aristotelian "fIrst fIgure," e.g., "All human beings are mortal;
Socrates is a human being; therefore, Socrates is moraL"]
 78 First Book. The World as Presentation

musical composition, the basso continuo is of considerable utility. It

may in fact also be, even if to a far lesser degree, that aesthetics and
even ethics are of some utility, although mainly negative, with respect
to practice, thus all practical value need not be denied of them either.
But for logic, one cannot even boast to that extent. For it is merely
knowledge in abstracto of what everyone already knows in concreto. 30
Therefore, as little as one needs it in order to avoid assenting to
fallacious lines of reasoning, one need just as little appeal to its rules to
produce correct ones, and in actual thinking even the most learned
logician sets them entirely aside. The explanation for this is as follows.
Every sciencei consists of a system of general, consequently abstract,
truths, laws, and rules in regard to objects of some kind. Individual
cases subsequently coming to the fore as falling under the latter are then
in every case determined in accordance with that general knowledge,
which is applicable to them all from the start. For such an application
of generalities is infinitely easier than investigating the individual cases
54 coming to the fore on their own all over again, general abstract cog-
nizance, once attained, always Iying nearer to hand than empirical
investigation of individuals. With logic, however, it is exactiy the other
way around. Logic is general knowledge of reason' s manner of proceed-
ing, ofwhich one has taken cognizance through reason's self-observation
and abstraction from all content, and expressed in the form of rules. Sut
this manner of proceeding is necessary and essential to reason; so
fI~ason will in no case deviate from it when left on its own. [t is thus
easier and surer in any particular case to let it proceed according to its
essence than, in the shape of a foreign and extemally provided law, to
confront it with knowledge abstracted from that procedure in the first
place. It is easier: far even if, in all other sciences, general rules lie
nearer to hand than investigation of individual cases alone and through
themselves, it is the other way around with the use ofreason, where the
procedure that is needed in a given case always lies nearer to hand than
the general rule abstracted from it; for that which is engaged in thinking
within us is in fact reason itself. 31 lt is surer: for with such abstract
knowledge or its application, it is much easier for error to occur than
for a procedure of reason to take place that runs contrary to its essence,
to its nature. From this comes the anomaly that, while in other sciences
the truth about an individual case is tested against rules, in logic to the
contrary rules have always to be tested against individual cases. And
when even the most practiced logician notices that he has made an

i [Wissenschqft (from wissen, "to know")]

 The Object of Experience and Science 79

inference in an individual case different from what was dictated by

some rule, he is always more apt to seek the mistake in the rule than in
the inference he has actually made. To want to make practical use of
logic thus means: that ofwhich we are in the individual case immediately
and with the greatest assurance conscious, we would now derive with
unspeakable effort from general rules. lt would be exactly like wanting
to consult the science of mechanics before moving, or physiology before
digesting; and whoever leams logic for practical purposes is like some-
one who would train a beaver to build its lodge.
While it is thus without practical utility, logic must nevertheless
be retained. For it has philosophical interest as specialized knowledge
of the organization and activity of reason. As a closed, self-subsistent, 55
internally complete, perfected, and consummately sure discipline, it is
rightly treated in a scientific manner on its own and independently of
all others, and with equal right taught in universities. 32 But it finds its
true value only in the context of philosophy as a whole, in the consid-
eration of cognition and in particular of rational or abstract cognition.
Accordingly, its exposition should not so much take the form of a
practically oriented science, not merely contain nakedly arrayed rules
for the correct conversion of judgments, inferences, etc., but be more
oriented toward recognition of the essence of reason and of concepts,
and toward detailed consideration of the Principle of the Sufficient
Ground of Cognition. For logic is merely a paraphrase of the latter,33
and in particular only with respect to cases where the ground that
provides judgments with their truth is not empirical or metaphysical,
but logical or metalogical. Besides the Principle ofthe Sufficient Ground
of Cognition, we therefore need to bring in the other three fundamental
laws of thought, or judgments of metalogical truth, so c10sely re1ated to
it;34 in this way, the entire methodology of reason gradually emerges.
The essence of real thinking, i.e., of judging and inferring, can be
displayed in the manner indicated above, on the basis of spatially
schematized combinations of spheres of concepts, and on the basis of
this all the rules for judging and inferring derived by construction. The
single practical use to be made of logic is that, in disputation, one
demonstrates not so much actual mistakes in inference as intentional
fallacies on the part of one's opponent, by giving them their technical
names. Suppressing its practical orientation in this way, and emphasiz-
ing the interconnection between logic and35 philosophy as a whole, as a
chapter of the latter, knowledge of logic should nonetheless not become
more rare than it is now. For nowadays, anyone who does not want to
remain uncultivated in things that matter most, and be counted among
the multitude of the ignorant mired in obtuseness, has to have studied
 80 First Book. The World as Presentation

speculative philosophy. And this on account of the fact that, since this
Nineteenth Century is a philosophical one - which is not so much to
56 say that it is in possession of philosophy or that philosophy holds sway
in it, as rather that it is ripe for philosophy and just for that reason in
need of it - it is the sign of highly developed cultivation, indeed a fixed
point on the cultural scale ofthe times."'"
As little practical utility as logic can have, it is nonetheless unde-
niable that it was invented for a practical purpose. I understand its orig-
ination to be as follows. As pleasure in disputation developed ever
more among the Eleatics, Megarians, and Sophists, and gradually grew
almost to a mania, the confusion into which almost every dispute slid
must have quickly made them sensitive to the need for a methodical
procedure, as a guide to which a science of dialectic had to be sought.
The first thing that must have been noticed is that, in disputation, both
parties to the conflict had always to be in agreement on some proposi-
tion to which the points at issue were to be traced back. The beginning
of methodical procedure consisted in formally pronouncing these
mutually acknowledged propositions and setting them at the head of an
inquiry. But in the beginning, these propositions concemed only the
matter in question in the inquiry. One sooo became aware that, in the
mode and manner of tracing things back to commonly acknowledged
truth, and of deriving one's claims from it, one also adhered to certain
forms and laws on which, although without antecedent agreement, one
nonetheless also never disagreed; from this one saw that the latter had
to be the procedure peculiar to reason itself, lying in its very essence,
the formal element in an inquiry. While this was not exposed to doubt
or disagreement, some pedantically systematic individuali then slid into
thinking that it would look truly fine, and be the culmination of method-
ical dialectic, if the formal element in every disputation, this ever lawful
procedure of reason itself, were likewise pronounced in abstract propo-
sitions that, just like the commonly acknowledged propositions concem-
ing the matter in question in an inquiry, would be set at the head of an
57 inquiry as the fixed canon for disputation as such, to which one had
constantly to look back and appeal. Consciously desiring in this manner
to acknowledge as law and formally pronounce what one had previously
followed as if by tacit agreement, or practiced as if by instinct, one
gradually found more or less perfect expressions for such logical prin-
ciples as those of contradiction, sufficient ground, excluded middle, de

tOn this, see chs. 9 and 10 of the second volume.

i[Kopj; literally, "head"]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 81

omni et nullo, as weH as more specialized ruIes of syllogistic such as,

e.g., ex meris particularibus aut negativis nihil sequitur, a rationato ad
rationem non valet consequentia, etc. i That one thereby advanced onIy
slowly and most laboriously, however, and that before Aristotle every-
thing still remained most incompIete, we can see in part from the clumsy
and wide-ranging way in which logical truths were brought to light in
many ofthe Platonic dialogues, but even better from what Sextus Empir-
icus reports to us of the Megarians' disputes regarding the easiest and
simplest logical laws and their laborious manner of making them
explicit (Sextus Empiricus, adv. Math., Bk. 8, pp. 112ff).ii But Aristotle
collected, organized, corrected what he found at hand, and brought it to
an incomparably higher state of completion. When one considers how
in this manner the course of Greek culture had prepared the way and
ushered in the work of Aristotle, one will be little inclined to lend
credence to the claim of Persian authors36 passed on to us by Jones,
who was most taken with the latter, namely, that Callisthenes discovered
a complete logic among the Indians and passed in on to his unc1e
Aristotle (Asiatic Researches, vol. 4, p. 163).iii
It is easily understandable how, to the disputatious scholastic mind
of the sorry Middle Ages, for lack of any real knowledge feeding only
on formulas and words, Aristotelian logic must have been most
we1come, was even greedily snatched up in its Arabic mutilation and
quickly e1evated to the position of a centerpiece for all knowledge. Since
then diminished in its prestige, to be sure, it has nonetheless preserved
to our own time the reputation of a self-subsistent, practical, and most
necessary science. Even in our days the Kantian philosophy, which 58
really found its cornerstone in logic, has again stirred new interest in it,

tde omni: "what holds of a whole dass holds of each individual in it, and
what is denied of a dass is denied of each individual in it"; ex meris: "nothing
follows from mere particulars or negative propositions"; a rationato: "an infer-
ence from a consequence to its ground is not valid." On the other principles see
endnote 36.]
itBook 2 of "Against the Logicians," the latter consisting of the first two
books of "Against the Dogmatists," in turn consisting of Books 7-11 of mate-
rials collected since antiquity under the Latin title Adversus mathematicos.
Currently, only Books 1-6 generally go under the latter title, which has been
variously translated as, misleadingly, "Against the Mathematicians" and as
"Against the Professors" (Bury, 1949) or "Professors of the Liberal Studies"
(BI.ank. 1998). At the location cited., Sextus is speaking of"the dialecticians."]
11I[Sir William Jones, "On the Philosophy ofthe Asiatics," also referred to by
Schopenhauer in § 1.]
 82 First Book. The World as Presentation

which in this respect, i.e., as a means toward recognition of the essence

of reason, it of course deserves.
While truly strict inferences arise from exact consideration of rela-
tions among spheres of concepts, and only when a sphere is entirely
contained in another, and that in turn entirely in a third, is the first also
recognized as entirely contained in the third, the art 0/ persuasion by
contrast rests on the subjection of relations among spheres of concepts
to merely superficial consideration and then one-sidedly defining them
in accordance with one's intentions: mainly when, with the sphere of a
concept under consideration lying only partly in another, but also partly
in an entirely different one, one passes it off as lying either entirely in
the first or entirely in the second, according to the speaker's intention.
For example, when speaking of passion, one can choose to subsurne this
concept under that of the greatest force, of the most powerful agencyi in
the world, or under the concept of the irrational, and the latter under
that of impotence, of weakness. One can then continue the same proce-
dure and apply it anew with every concept at which the discourse
alTives. It is almost always the case that, within the sphere of a concept,
several others divide up the domain so that each contains a part of the
domain of the first within its own, but encompasses still more as weH.
But among the latter spheres of concepts, only that one is allowed to be
highlighted under which one wishes to subsurne the first, not attending
to the others or keeping them concealed. It is reallyon this stratagern
that all the arts of persuasion rest, all the more subtle sophisms; for such
logical sophisms as mentiens, velatus, cornutus,ii etc., are obviously too
heavy-handed for actual employment. Since to my knowledge no one
has so far traced the essence of all sophistry and persuasion back to this
ultimate ground of its possibility, and demonstrated it in terms of the
peculiar character of concepts, i.e., in terms of reason's manner of
cognizance, I would, since my exposition has led to it, further elucidate
the matter, as easily understandable as it may in fact be, by way of the
59 schema in the table to follow;iii it is meant to show how spheres of
concepts overlap in manifold ways and thereby leave room for the play
of choice in passing from any concept to this or that other one. I would
only hope that one is not misled by the table into attaching, to this

tAgens, !Tom the present participle ofthe Latin agere, "to act."]
lI[mentiens, "the liar" ("The Cretan says 'I arn lying'; is he Iying or not?");
velatus, "veiled" ("Your brother in disguise: do you know hirn?"); cornutus,
"horned" ("Have you lost your horns or not?")]
iii[The diagram has been placed in the translator's appendix.]
 The Object of Experience and Science 83

minor casual discussion, more importance than its nature allows. For
the illustrative example I have chosen the concept of traveling. lts
sphere overlaps the domain offoUf others, to each ofwhich the persua-
sive speaker can pass arbitrarily. These overlap other spheres in turn,
many of them two or more simultaneously, through which the persua-
sive speaker makes his way as he will, always as if it were the only
way, and then in the end arrives according to the intention in question
at the concepts of Good or Bad. One has only, in following the spheres,
to keep always directed from the center (the main concept in question)
toward the periphery, never moving in the opposite direction. Such a
piece of sophistry can be clothed as running discourse, or even in strict
inferential form, as dictated by the weakness of the listener. Fundamen-
tally, most scientific, especially philosophical, deductions are not very
different in character from this. How else could it be possible that so
many things have been at various times not only erroneously accepted
(for error as such has a different origin), but demonstrated and proven,
and yet later found to be completely wrong: e.g., the philosophy of
Leibniz and Wolff, Ptolemaic astronomy, the chemistry of Stahl,
Newton's theory of colors, etc., etc. t

§ 10.
[More on Logic, Science, Knowledge]
Through all of this the question ever more strikes us: how then
is certainty to be attained, how are judgments to be grounded, in what
consists that knowledge and sciencei which, along with language and
thoughtfully aware action/i we hold in repute as the third great advantage
provided by reason?
Reason is of a female nature: it can only give after it has received.
Just on its own it has nothing but contentless forms for its operation.
There is no case of perfect1y pure rational cognizance besides that of 60
the fOUf principles to which I have attributed metalogical truth, i.e., the
principles of identity, of contradiction, of excluded middle, and of suf-
ficient cognitive ground. For even the rest of logic is in fact no longer
perfectly pUfe rational cognizance, since it presupposes relations and
combinations of spheres of concepts. But concepts exist at aB only as
following upon antecedent perceptual presentations, reference to which
constitutes their entire essence, which they consequently presuppose.

tOn this, see eh. 11 of the seeond volume.

i[das Wissen und die Wissenschaft]
ii[dem besonnenen Handeln]
 84 First Book. The World as Presentation

Nonetheless, since this presupposition does not extend to the particular

content of concepts, but only to their existence in general, logic can still
count, taken on the whole, as a pure rational science. In all the remain-
ing sciences, reason has obtained its content from perceptual presenta-
tions: in mathematics, from spatial and temporal relations of which we
are perceptually conscious prior to all experience; in pure natural
science,37 i.e., in what we know regarding the course of nature prior to
all experience, the content of that science proceeds from pure under-
standing, Le., from apriori cognizance of the law of causality and of its
connection with the pure perceptions of space and time. In all the other
sciences, everything belongs to experience that is not derived from the
aforementioned. 38 Knowledge in general means having in one's mental
power,i available for reproduction at will, such judgments as have
beyond themselves a sufficient cognitive ground, i.e., are true. Abstract
cognizance alone is thus knowledge. lt is therefore conditioned by
reason, and we cannot strictly speaking say of animals that they know
anything, even though they have perceptual cognizance, memory with
respect to the latter, and just on that account imagination (which the
fact oftheir dreaming additionally proves). We attribute consciousness ii
to them, the concept of which, although the word is taken from knowl-
edge,iii consequently coincides with that of presentational activity in
general, iv of whatever kind it may be. Therefore we attribute life to
plants, to be sure, but no consciousness. - Thus knowledge is abstract
consciousness, fixing in concepts of reason anything at all of which we
have become cognizant in a different way.

61 § 11.
[Tbe Concept rif"Feeling" as a Negative Concept]
In this respect, then, the real opposite of knowledge is feeling,V
discussion ofwhich we have therefore to insert here. The concept signi-
fied by the word feeling has an altogether merely negative content,
namely, that something present in consciousness is not a concept, not
abstract cognizance on the part of reason: beyond that it may be what
it will, it belongs under tbe concept of feeling, tbe disproportionately

tGewalt seines Geistes. Again, Geist is sometimes "'mind" and sometimes

"spirit."]
~~[ Bewusstsein]
IIl[Wissen]
iv [des VorsteIlens überhaupt]
v [G€!fiihl]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 85

broad sphere of which thus comprehends the most heterogeneous things,

into whose convergence one can never have insight as long as one has
not recognized the fact that they agree only in the negative respect of
not being abstract concepts. For the most diverse, indeed the most
incompatible elements He comfortably juxtaposed within that concept,
e.g., religious feelings, feelings of sensual pleasure, moral feelings,
corporeal feelings such as of touch, of pain, feeling for colors, for tones
and their harmonies and dissonances, feelings of hatred, abhorrence, of
self-contentment, of honor, of shame, of right, of wrong/ 9 feeling for
truth, aesthetic feelings, feelings of strength, weakness, health, friend-
ship, love, etc., etc. There is altogether nothing in common among them
but the negative fact that they are not abstract cognizance on the part of
reason. But this is most striking when even perceptual cognizance of
spatial relations apriori, and fuHy all of that on the part of pure under-
standing, are brought under that concept, and when it is said of
anything of which one is cognizant at all, of any truth of which one is
only just intuitively conscious, but has not yet set down in abstract
concepts, that one feels it. For the sake of elucidation, I would provide
some exarnples of this from recent books, because they are striking
confrrmations of my account. I recall having read in the introduction to
a German translation of Euclid that one should have beginners in
geometry first draw all the figures before proceeding to demonstrations,
because they would then have feit the geometrical truth in advance,
before demonstrations provided them with perfected cognizance of it. -
Injust the same way, F. Schleiermacher speaks in his Critique ofMoral
Theory of logical and mathematical feeling (p. 339), and even of a 62
feeling of the identity or difference of two formulae (p. 342);i and in
Tennemann's History ofPhilosophy, voL 1, p. 361, it is said: "Onefelt
that the fallacious inferences were not valid, but could not discover the
mistake."ii
So long as one does not regard the concept of feeling from the
proper point ofview, and does not recognize the single negative feature
that is alone essential to it, the concept is bound, on ac count of the
excessive breadth of its sphere and its purely negative, entirely one-
sidedly determined and most narrow content, to provide constant

i[Friedrich Schleiermacher, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sitten-

lehre (Fundamentals of a Critique of Moral Theory to Date [1803]).]
"[Wilhe1m Gottlieb Tennemann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie
fir den akademischen Unterricht (Outfine of the History of Philosophy for
Academic Instruction [1812]).]
 86 First Book. Tbe World as Prescntation

occasion for misunderstandings and disputes. Since we have in German

the almost synonymous word sensation, i it would be useful to appropri-
ate it for corporeal feelings as a sub-species. The following, however, is
without doubt the origin of the disproportionate character of the concept
of"jeeling with respect to other concepts. All concepts, and it is only
concepts that are signified by words, exist only for reason, have their
origin in it; with them one thus occupies a one-sided standpoint. But
from the latter, what is nearer to hand appears distinctly and is noted in
positive terms; what is further away runs together and is soon regarded
only negatively. Thus every nation calls all others foreigners, Greeks
call a11 others barbarians, the English call everything that is not England
or English the continent and continental,40 believers call all others
heretics or heathens, aristocrats call all others roturiers,ii students calls
a11 others philistines, etc. As strange as it may sound, reason itself is
guilty of the same one-sidedness, one might say of the same crude and
prideful ignorance, in encompassing under the single concept offeeling
every modification of consciousness that happens not immediately to
pertain to its manner of presentation, i.e., that is not an abstract concept.
Since no thoroughgoing self-cognizance has made its own procedure
explicit to it, it has so far had to pay a price for this with misunder-
standings and aberrations within its own domain, seeing that one has
even put forth aseparate faculty of feeling,iii and now theories of it are
being constructed.

63 § 12.
[Advantages and Disadvantages cif Reason]
Knowledge, as the contradictory opposite of which I have just
been discussing the concept of feeling, is, as stated, any case of abstract
cognizance, i.e., cognizance on the part of reason. But since reason
always merely brings back what it has received for cognitive purposes
from elsewhere, it does not really broaden our cognition, but merely
gives it a different form. Namely, it allows one to take cognizance in
abstract and general terms of that of which one had been cognizant
intuitively, in concreto. But so expressed, this is incomparably more
important than it seems at first glance. For a11 sure preservation, all

tEmpjindung]
"["commoners"]
IIl[The reference may be to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, David Hume über den
Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (David Hume on Faith. or Idealism
and Realism [1787; 2nd ed., 1815, in vol. 2 ofCollected WorksJ).]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 87

communicability, and all sure and far-reaching application of one's

cognizance to practical matters depends on its having become a case of
knowledge, of abstract cognizance. Intuitive cognizance always applies
only to individual cases, concems only what is nearest to hand and stays
with it, because sensibility and understanding can really only apprehend
one object at a time. Any continuing, complex, planned activity has
therefore to proceed according to principles, thus from knowledge of
the abstract kind, and be directed accordingly. So, for example, cogni-
zance of the relation of cause and effect on the part of the understanding
is to be sure in itself much more complete, deeper, and more exhaustive
than that which can be thought about it in abstracto: the understanding
alone is perceptually cognizant, immediately and completely, of the
mode of effectuality of alever, pulley, gear, the self-supporting charac-
ter of domes, etc. But on account of the property of intuitive cognizance
just touched on, its concern only with the immediately present, mere
understanding does not suffice for the construction of machines and
buildings. Here rather reason has to come in, setting abstract concepts
in the place of perceptions, adopting the former as its guide for opera-
tion,i and where they were accurate it will meet with success. In just the
same way, we are perfectly cognizant in pure perception of the essence
and lawful character of a parabola, hyperbola, spiral. But for sure appli-
cation of this cognizance to actual reality, it had first to have become
abstract knowledge, whereby it of course sacrifices its perceptual char-
acter but in exchange gains the assurance and determinateness of
abstract knowledge. Thus all of differential calculus really fails to 64
broaden our cognizance of curves in any way, contains nothing more
than is already contained merely in pure perception of them; but it
changes the mode of cognition, transforms the intuitive into the abstract,
which is of the highest consequence when it comes to application. But
still another peculiarity of our cognitive faculty is to be mentioned here,
which one could weH not have previously noted, given that the difference
between perceptual and abstract cognizance had not been made
completely explicit. It is that spatial relations cannot, immediately and
as such, be carried over into abstract cognizance, but only temporal
magnitudes, i.e., numbers, are suited for this. Numbers alone can be
expressed in exactly corresponding abstract concepts, not spatial magni-
tudes. The difference between the concept of a thousand and the
concept of ten is exactly the same as that between the two temporal
magnitudes in perception: with a thousand we are thinking of a particu-

tRichtschnur des Wirkens]

 88 First Book. The World as Presentation

lar multiple of tens, into which we can resolve it as we please for

temporal perception, i.e., count it. But between the abstract concept of a
mile and that of a foot, without any perceptual presentation of the two,
and without the aid of numbers, there is no exact difference that
corresponds to the magnitudes themselves. In both cases some kind of
spatial magnitude is thought, and if the two of them need to be
adequately distinguished, then one has simply either to bring in the aid
of spatial perception, thus of course leave the domain of abstract
cognizance, or else think the difference in numbers. If one would have
abstract cognizance of spatial relations, they have thus first to be
translated into temporal relations, i.e., into numbers. It is on this account
that only arithmetic, not geometry, is a general doctrine of magnitudes,
and that geometry has to be translated into arithmetic if it is to have
communicability, exact determinateness, and applicability to practical
matters. To be sure, a spatial relation as such can also be thought in
abstracto, for example, "The sine increases proportionally with the
angle"; but when it comes to stating the magnitude of the relation,
numbers are needed. The necessity that space with its three dimensions
65 has to be translated into time, which has only one dimension, if one is
to have abstract cognizance of its relations (i.e., knowledge, not mere
perception of them) - this necessity is what makes mathematics so
difficult. This is made very explicit when we compare the perception of
curves with analytic calculation of them, or even just logarithmic tables
of trigonometrie functions with perception of the changing relations
among the parts of the triangles that are expressed by them. That which
perception here apprehends completely at a glance and with utmost
exactness - how the eosine diminishes as the sine increases, how the
eosine of one angle is identical with the sine of another, the inverse
relation of increase and decrease of the two angles, etc. - what a huge
fabric of numbers, what laborious calculation would be needed to
express this in abstracto; how must time with its one dimension, one
might say, suffer torment in reproducing the three dimensions of space!
But it was necessary if, for the sake of application, we would have
spatial relations deposited in abstract concepts: the former could not
enter immediately into the laUer, but only through the mediation of
purely temporal magnitudes, of numbers, which alone immediately
conform to abstract cognizance. 'Noteworthy as weil is the fact that,
while space is so very well-suited to perception and, by way of its three
dimensions, even facilitates a survey of complex relations, but is to
the contrary elusive with respect to abstract cognizance, time enters
conversely easily indeed into abstract concepts, but has to the contrary
very little to offer perception: our perception of numbers in their pecu-
 The Object of Experience and Science 89

liar element, in mere time, without bringing in space, barely reaches to

ten; beyond that we have only abstract concepts, no longer perceptual
cognizance of numbers. By contrast, we connect exactly determined
abstract concepts with every numeral and with all the algebraic symbols.
It should also be noted in passing that many spirits find full
satisfaction only in that of which they are perceptually cognizant. Tbe
grounds and consequences of being in space perceptually exhibited:
that is what they are looking for. A Euclidean proof or an arithmetical
resolution of spatial problems does not speak to them. Other spirits by
contrast demand the abstract concepts that are alone useful for applica- 66
tion and communication: they have patience and a memory for abstract
propositions, formulas, deductions carried out in long chains of infer-
ences, and calculations whose symbols represent the most complicated
abstractions. The latter are looking for determinateness; the former for
perceptibility. Tbe difference lies in one's character. i
Knowledge, abstract cognizance, has its greatest value in its
communicability and in the possibility of being preserved in a fixed
form; only thereby does it become so inestimably important for practical
matters. A person can have immediate perceptual cognizance, in mere
understanding, of the causal interconnection among changes and move-
ments of natural bodies, and find utter satisfaction therein; but it is only
ready for communication once he has fixed it in concepts. Cognizance
of the former kind is even sufficient for practical matters, so long as
one undertakes the execution entirely on one's own, and in particular in
an action that can be executed while perceptual cognizance is still alive,
but not when one requires outside help or even action on one' s own at
different times, and therefore a reflectively considered plan. Thus for
example an accomplished billiard player can have, merely in his under-
standing, merely with respect to immediate perception, complete cogni-
zance of the laws of impact of elastic bodies, and get along perfectly
weIl with that; by contrast, only a specialist in the science of mechanics
really has knowledge of those laws, Le., a cognizance of them in
abstracto. A purely intuitive cognizance on the part of the understanding
even suffices for the construction of machines, if the machine's
inventor executes the construction on his own, as is often seen in the
case of talented craftsmen ignorant of all science. By contrast, as soon
as several persons and some complex activity on their part, occurring at
various points in time, are needed for the execution of a mechanical
operation, for a machine, for a building, then whoever is directing the

i[ist charakteristisch]
 90 First Book. The World as Presentation

activity needs to have projected the plan in abstracto, and it is only

with the aid of reason that such collaborative activity is possible. It is
noteworthy, however, that with the former kind of activity, where a
single person alone is to carry things out in an uninterrupted action,
67 knowledge, the application of reason, reflection can often be even a
hindrance to hirn, e.g., precisely in billiards, in fencing, in tuning an
instrument, in singing: here perceptual cognizance has to direct one's
activity in an immediate way; passage through reflection renders it
unsure, dividing one's attention and confusing aperson. That is why
savages and emde persons, who are very little accustomed to thinking,
engage in many physical activities, such as bullfights, marksmanship
with arrows, etc., with an assurance and swiftness that the reflecting
European never achieves, precisely because the latter's reflective
consideration makes hirn vacillate and be hesitant: he tries, for example,
to discover the right spot or the right moment on the basis of their
equidistance from the extremes of two wrong ones; the man of nature
hits on it immediately, without reflecting on alternate routes. In just the
same way, it is no help to me to be able to state in abstracto, in degrees
and minutes, the angle at which I need to set the razorblade if I am not
intuitively cognizant of it, i.e., do not have it in my grasp.41 In a similar
manner disturbing is also the application of reason to an understanding
of physiognomy: the latter too has to occur immediately by way of the
understanding; facial expression, the meaning of one's features, can
only be feit, one says, i.e., can simply not be put into abstract concepts.
Every person is immediately and intuitively cognizant of physiognomy
and pathognomy,i but yet some are more distinctly cognizant than
others of this signatura rerum. ii But it is impossible to establish a cogni-
zance of physiognomy on the level of teaching and learning in
abstracto, because the nuances are here so subtle that concepts cannot
descend to their level. Therefore, abstract knowledge relates to those
nuances as a mosaic to a van der Werft or a Denner: just as, however
delicate the mosaic may be, the boundaries of the stones are a constant
factor, and therefore no continuous passage from one color to another is
possible, so also concepts, with their rigidity and sharp boundaries,
however subtly they might be split up through finer determinations, are
always incapable of reaching the subtle modifications of the perceptual,

i[Pathognomik, the art of reading emotions from the form or features of the
body, as physiognomy is that ofreading character.]
it"signature ofthings": tide of a work by Jakob Böhme of 1622.]
 The Object of Experience and Science 91

which is precisely in question with our chosen example of physiognomy.t

The same characteristic of concepts by which they resemble the 68
stones of a mosaic, and by virtue of which they can only asymptotically
approach perception, is also the reason why nothing good in art is
accomplished by their means. If a singer or virtuoso wills to direct his
performance by way of retlection, it remains dead. The same applies to
composers, to painters, even to poets. Concepts remain ever unfruitful
for art: they can give direction only for the technical matters in it; their
domain is science. In the third Book we will more c10sely investigate
why all genuine art proceeds from perceptual cognizance, never from
concepts.
Even with respect to conduct, to pleasantness in interpersonal
dealings, concepts are only useful in the negative respect of preventing
gross outbursts of egoism and brutality. Thus manners are their laudable
outcome. But that which is attractive, gracious, captivating in one's
conduct, one's tender and amicable aspect, cannot have come from
concepts. Otherwise:
"the intention is feIt and one is put out oftune."j
All dissimulation is the work of retlection. But it cannot be maintained
at length and uninterrupted: nemo potest personam diu ferre fictam,
says Seneca in his book De clementia;ii and even then it is generally
recognized and fails in its effect. Given the elevated press of life with
its call for quick decisions, bold action, prompt and ftrm engagement,
there is indeed need for reason, but when it wins the upper hand and

tI am on this account of the opinion that physiognomy can never get with
assurance beyond putting forth a few entirely general mIes, such as, e.g., the
following: intellectual character is to be read in the forehead and eyes, ethical
character, expressions of will, in the mouth and lower half of the face (forehead
and eyes are mutually elucidating, each of the two, without seeing the other, is
only semi-intelligible); genius is never found in the absence of a high, broad,
finely vaulted forehead, but the latter often without the former; appearanee of a
spirited eharaeter is a surer ground for an inferenee to spirit in proportion as the
face is uglier, and the appearance of stupidity a surer ground for an inference to
stupidity in proportion as the face is more beautiful (for as suitableness to the
type Humanity, beauty already in and of itselfbears the expression of spiritual
el1l;rity, while it is just the opposite with ugliness); ete.
'[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso 11, 1: [So]fiihlt man Absicht
und man ist verstimmt.]
it"No one ean wear a mask for long": On Mercy I, 1, 6 (as Deussen and
Hübscher note, slightly modified by Schopenhauer).]
 92 First Book. The World as Presentation

hinders and confuses intuitive, immediate discovery and simultaneous

adoption ofthe right course of action, purely in terms ofunderstanding,
and generates indecisiveness, it easily ruins everything.
69 Finally, neither virtue nor saintliness proceeds from reflection, but
from the inner depth of the will and its relation to cognition. This
discussion belongs to an entirely different place in this work. I would at
most remark here that dogmas referring to ethical matters can be the
same with respect to the reason of nations as a whole, while action is
different for every individual. And so too conversely: action occurs, as
one says, fromJeelings, i.e., precisely not from concepts, in particular
when it comes to ethical content. Dogmas are a business for idle reason:
in the end, action goes its way independently of them, usually not from
abstract maxims, but from unpronounced ones whose expression is
precisely the entirety of the person hirnself. Therefore, as diverse as are
indeed the religious dogmas of peoples, yet for everyone a good deed is
accompanied by inexpressible contentment, an evil deed by infinite
horror: no mockery shakes the former; no confessor's absolution liberates
one from the latter. However, this is not meant to deny that the applica-
tion of reason is needed for maintaining a virtuous way of life. But it is
not the latter's source. Rather, its function is a subordinate one, namely,
maintenance of decisions once formed, holding up maxims for defense
against the weakness of the moment and for consistency in action. It
accomplishes the same thing in the end also in art, where it can likewise
do nothing for what is of main importance but supports its execution,
just because genius is not available on command around the clock,
while the work still needs to be completed in all its parts and rounded
out as a whole. t

§ 13.
[A Theory cf Humor]
All of these considerations regarding the utility and disadvantage
ofapplying one's faculty ofreason should serve to make it explicit that,
although abstract knowledge is arefleetion of perceptual presentation
and is grounded in the latter, it is yet in no way so congruent with it
70 that it could everywhere take its place; rather, it never exactly corre-
sponds to i1. Thus as we have seen, many human accomplishments are
indeed possible only with the aid of reason and reflective procedures,
but yet some things come out better without application of the latter.
Precisely this lack of congruence between perceptual and abstract

tOn this, see eh. 7 ofthe seeond volume.

 The Object of Experience and Science 93

cognizance, by virtue ofwhich the former only ever approximates to the

latter as mosaic does to painting, is the ground of a most remarkable
phenomenon that, just like reason, pertains exclusively to human nature,
but ofwhich all explanations so far repeatedly attempted are unsatisfac-
tory: I mean laughter. On account ofthis fact about its origin, we cannot
avoid discussing it at this point, even though it again slows our course.
Laughter always arises from nothing other than a suddenly perceivedi
lack of congruence between a concept and the real objects that are in
some respect or other thought through it, and it is itself just the expres-
sion of this lack of congruence. lt often occurs when two or more real
objects are thought through one concept, whose identity is carried over
to them, but where they are otherwise so entirely different that we are
struck by the fact that the concept fits them in only a one-sided respect.
But it is just as often a matter of a single real object whose lack of
congruence with a concept, under which it is in one respect rightly
subsumed, is suddenly made palpable. 42 All the more correct the sub-
sumption of such actual realities under a concept in one respect, and the
greater and more glaring in another respect their lack of fit with it, all
the stronger is the effect of the laughable that originates from the
contrast. Alllaughter is thus occasioned by a case of paradoxical and
therefore unexpected subsumption; it is all the same whether the latter
expresses itself through words or deeds. This is in brief the correct
explanation ofwhat causes laughter.
I will not pause here to relate any anecdotes, as examples that
might serve to elucidate my explanation. For it is so simple and compre-
hensible that it has no need of it, and for its proof, anything that the
reader recalls as causing laughter is equally useful. But our explanation
does in fact obtain both confirmation and elucidation through the
articulation of two types of things that cause laugher, the distinction 71
between which proceeds fromjust that explanation. Either, namely, two
or more very different real objects, perceptual presentations, are ante-
cedently within one's cognizance, and one has chosen to identify them
by way of the unity of a concept comprehending them both: this type of
cause oflaugher is called wit. Or conversely, the concept is within one's
cognizance from the start, and one proceeds from it to reality and to
effectuality with respect to the latter, to action: objects that are otherwise
fundamentally different, but are all thought in that concept, are now
viewed and treated in the same manner until, to the surprise and
amazement of the agent, their otherwise great difference comes to the

t wahrgenommenen]
 94 First Book. The World as Presentation

fore; this type of cause of laughter is called foolishness. Accordingly,

anything causing laughter is either a sudden witty idea or a foolish
action, depending on whether one has gone from discrepancies between
objects to conceptual identities, or conversely: in the former case always
at will, in the latter case never at will but by way of external obtrusion.
But then seemingly reversing the point of departure and masking wit as
foolishness, we have the art of court jesters and clowns: those who,
while conscious in fact of the diversity of the objects, unite them with
secret wit under concepts, only from thence to proceed to obtain from
their subsequently discovered diversity the very surprise they had
prepared in advance.
It results from this briefbut adequate theory ofwhat causes laughter
that, aside from the case of the joker last mentioned, wit has always to
show itself in words, but foolishness usually in actions - but in words
as well where it only gives voice to intentions instead of actually carry-
ing them out, or where it expresses itself in mere judgments and
opinions. 43
Foolishness also includes pedantry. This arises from having so
little trust in one's own understanding that one would not rely on it for
immediate cognizance of what is right in particular cases, accordingly
puts it altogether under the tutelage of reason and avails oneself every-
where ofthe latter, i.e., always proceeds on the basis of general concepts,
rules, maxims, and would hold oneself strict1y to them: in life, in art,
72 even for ethically good behavior. Thus we have pedantry's character-
istic attachment to form, to style, to expressions and words, which, for
i1., take the place of the heart of things. 44 Here then the incongruence
between concepts and reality is soon shown, soon shown how the
former never descend to the level of the individual, and how their
generality and rigid determinateness can never exactly fit the subtle
nuances and manifold modifications of actual reality. With his general
maxims, the pedant thus almost always comes up short in life, shows
himse1f to be dull-witted, insipid, of no use: in art, for which concepts
are unfruitful, he produces lifeless, stiff, mannered afterbirths. Even in
an ethical respect, the intention to act rightly or nobly cannot be every-
where realized in accordance with abstract maxims, because in many
cases the infinitely subtly nuanced character of the circumstances nec-
essitates that the right choice issue immediately from one's character,
while the application of merely abstract maxims yields, for one thing,
mistaken results on account of only halfway fitting the circumstances,
and is for another thing impracticable by virtue of being foreign to the
individual character of the agent, which never allows of renunciation
entirely;45 from this, inconsistencies then result. So far as he makes
 The Object ofExperience and Science 95

the condition of an action's moral worth its occurring on the basis of

purely rational abstract maxims, without any inclination or momentary
emotional upsurge, we cannot entirely acquit Kant of the charge of
occasioning moral pedantry. The charge is likewise the sense of the
epigram of Schiller entitled "Scrupulous Conscience."i
When, especially in political affairs, there is talk of doctrinaires,
theoreticians, scholars, etc., what is meant are pedants, i.e., people who
are very welJ familiar with things in abstracto, but not in concreto.
Abstraction consists in thinking away the finer determinations; but in
practical matters a great deal rests precisely on the latter.
To complete this theory, there is also need to mention a degen-
erate speciesii of wit, namely, wordplay, calembourg, pun, with which
one mayaiso connect ambiguity, l'equivoque, the main use ofwhich is
for obscenity (smut). Just as wit forces two very different real objects
under a single concept, so a pun, by taking advantage of happenstance,
forces different concepts under a single word: the same contrast re-
emerges, but in a fainter and more superficial way, because it has not 73
originated from the essence of things but from the happenstance of
nomenclature. With wit, the identity is in the concept, the difference in
actual reality, while with puns the difference is in the concepts and the
identity in the actual reality to which the words belong. It would be
only a somewhat stretched comparison to say that pun is related to wit
as the hyperbolic section of an upper inverted cone is to that ofthe cone
below it. Verbal misunderstanding, however, or the quid pro quo,iii is
unintentional calembourg, and it relates to the latter exactly as foolish-
ness to wit. Thus the hard of hearing are often bound to provide as
much material for laughter as the fool, and writers of bad comedy use
the former in place of the latter to excite laughter.

i[Gewissensskrupel (included in the group of verses The Philosophers):

"Gladly I serve my friends, but unfortunately from inclination. So it eats at me
often: I am not one who has virtue." The charge against Kant is most frequently
inspired by some of the perhaps merely unfortunately formulated expressions
ofhis doctrine in the Foundation for the Metaphysics ofMorals. The remainder
ofthe paragraph is added in c.]
it~erart: the term can be regarded as something of a pun in its own right,
with After- carrying connotations of the anal; generally, Schopenhauer would
use the term Ausartung instead. The word 'pun,' further on, is in English in the
text. In what follows, however, I use it for Schopenhauer's Wortspiel. The
remainder of the sentence, after 'pun,' is added in B.]
iii["something in place of another"]
 96 First Book. The World as Presentation

I have considered laughter only from the psychological side here.

With respect to the physical, I refer to what I have contributed to the
subject in Parerga, vol. 2, chapter 6, § 96, p. 134 (first edition). t

§ 14.
[More on tbe Sciences - Superiority of Perception over Proo/J
From all of these manifold considerations, through which I hope
to have brought to utter explicitness the difference and the relation
between reason's manner of cognizance, knowledge, concepts, on the
one hand, and immediate cognizance in pure-sensory mathematical
perceptioni and apprehension through understanding, on the other - and
from the digressions regarding feeling and laughter to which we were
almost inescapably led by consideration of that remarkable relation
between our manners of cognizance - I now return to further discussion
of science as, next to speech and thoughtfully aware action, the third
advantage that reason provides to humanity. The general consideration
of science to be undertaken here will concern in part its form, in part
the grounding of its judgments, but in the end its content as weIl.
74 We have seen that, with the exception of the foundation of pure
logie, no knowledge at all has its origin in reason itself, but rather,
obtained from elsewhere as perceptual cognizance, it is rationally depos-
ited in the latter through passage into an entirely different, the abstract,
manner of cognizance. All knowledge, i.e., all cognizance that has been
elevated to the level of consciousness in abstracto, relates to real science
as a fragment to the whole. Through experience, through the individual
matters that are made available to one, every person has attained some
knowledge in regard to many kinds of things. But only someone who
undertakes the task of attaining complete cognizance in abstracto with
regard to some species of objects is aiming at science. It is only by way
of a concept that he can mark out that species. Therefore, there stands
at the head of every science a concept through which one thinks that
part of the whole of all things of which it promises complete cognizance

tOn this, see eh. 8 of the second volume. [This paragraph of course added in
C. The page referred to in Parerga and Paralipomena is p. 179 ofvol. 60fthe
Hübscher edition. Schopenhauer is speaking there of Marshall Hall's views on
such reflex movements as those involved in yawning, breathing, and urination;
Hall was a pioneer in that area and the author of On the diseases and derange-
ments ofthe Nervaus System (1841) and Lectures on the nervaus system and its
diseases (1836).]
lin der reinsinnlichen, mathematischen Anschauung]
 The Object of Experience and Science 97

in abstracto, e.g., the concept of spatial relations, or of the interaction

of inorganic bodies, or of the character of plants or animals, or of the
succession of alterations in the surface of the earth, or of alterations in
the human race as a whole, or of the structure of a language, etc. Were
science to aim at knowledge of its object by individually examining all
of the things thought through that concept, until it was eventually cogni-
zant of the whole, then, for one thing, no human memory would suffice;
for another, there would be no way to be certain of completeness.
Therefore, it makes use of the peculiar character of conceptual spheres
discussed above, their capacity for mutual enclosure, and proceeds
mainly to the broader spheres that He within the concept of its object in
general: in determining their relations to one another, everything that is
thought within them is precisely thereby also determined in a general
way, and can then be more and more exactly determined by means of
the marking out of ever narrower conceptual spheres. In this way it is
possible for a science to encompass its object entirely. This path that it
takes toward cognizance, namely, from the general to the particular,
distinguishes it from knowledge of the common sort; thus systematic
form is an essential and characteristic mark of science. The connecting
of the most general conceptual spheres of any science, Le., knowledge 75
of their supreme principles, is an inescapable condition of its mastery.
How far one would go from these to more particular principles is a
matter of choice, and does not increase its thoroughness but only the
extent of one's leamedness.
The number ofhigher principles to which all the others are subor-
dinated is very different in the different sciences, so that in some there
is more subordination, in others more coordination. In this respect, the
formerplacemore demands on one'sjudgment, the lattermore on one's
memory. It was already known to the scholasticst that, because infer-
ence requires two premises, no science can proceed from a single higher
principle that is not derivable from others, but must have several, or at
least two. The strictly classificatory sciences - zoology, botany, and
even physics and chemistry, to the extent that the latter reduce all
inorganic operationsi to a few fundamental forces - involve the greatest
amount of subordination. By contrast, history strictly involves none at
all, since what is general in it consists only in a survey of major periods,
from which it i8 not possible to derive particular events, which are only

tSuarez [Francisco Suarez], Dispufationes metaphysicae [Metaphysical Dis-

putations (1597)], Disp. III, sec. 3, tit. [§] 3.
i[Wirken]
 98 First Book. The World as Presentation

subordinated to them temporally, coordinated conceptually; therefore,

stricdy speaking, history is indeed knowledge, but no science. i Now in
mathematics, to be sure, in its Euclidean treatment, the axioms are the
only indemonstrable higher principles, and all demonstrations are
stricdy subordinated to them in a step-by-step way. However, this
treatment is not essential to it, and in fact every theorem introduces its
own new spatial construction that is in itself independent of the preced-
ing theorems, and of which one can be cognizant in utter independence
of the latter in its own terms, within that pure perception of space in
which even the most convoluted constructions are really as immediately
evident as the axioms; but I explain this in detail further below. In any
case, the fact remains that every mathematical proposition is a general
truth applying to countless individual cases, and it is essential to it that
there is a step-by-step path from simple propositions to the complicated
propositions that are traced back to them. Thus mathematics is in every
respect a science.
76 A science's completeness,ii as such, i.e., with respect to its form,
consists in the fact that there is as much subordination and as litde
coordination of propositions as possible. Accordingly, scientific talent
in general is the capacity for subordinating conceptual spheres with
respect to their various determinations in such a way that, as Plato
repeatedly urged, a science does not merely consist in a general term
under which there is immediately spread a vast multiplicity of juxta-
posed items, but in a gradual descent of knowledge from the most general
to the particular through intermediate concepts and divisions in terms
of ever finer determinations. In Kanfs terms, this means doing equal
justice to the laws of homogeneity and specification. iii However, just
from the fact that this is what constitutes real scientific completeness, it
follows that the purpose of science is not greater certainty - for this is
just as weil to be had with even the most fragmentary particular cogni-
zance - but the facilitation of knowledge by way of its formal aspect
and the possibility that is given with this for completeness iv of knowl-
edge. It is, therefore, an indeed common but perverse opinion that the
scientific character of cognizance consists in greater certainty, and just
as false is the claim proceeding from this, that only mathematics and
logic are sciences in the strict sense, because only in them, on account

tWissen, aber keine Wissenschaft]

ii[ Vollkommenheit]
iii[Critique ofPure Reason A6581B686fJ]
IV[ Vollständigkeit]
 The Object of Experience and Science 99

of their complete apriority, is there incontrovertible certainty in one's

cognizance. The latter advantage is indeed not to he denied them. Only
this gives them no particular claim to a scientific character, which lies
not in the assurance hut in the form of systematic cognition, which is
grounded in step-by-step descent from the general to the particular.
This path of cognizance peculiar to the sciences, from the general
to the particular, has as a consequence that much that is in them is
grounded in derivation from antecedent propositions, thus in proofs,
and this has occasioned the old error of supposing that only that which
has heen proven is perfect1y true, and every truth is in need of a proof.
But to the contrary, every proof is in need of an unproven truth that in
the end supports it, or that in turn supports the proofs that have led to it
as well. Therefore, a truth that is grounded in an immediate way is as
much to he preferred to those that are grounded in proof as is water 77
from the source to that which comes from aqueducts. Perception - on
the one hand pure apriori perception such as grounds mathematics, on
the other hand empirical aposteriori perception such as grounds all the
other sciences - is the source of all truth and the foundation of all
science. (The only exception to this is logic, grounded in reason's non-
perceptual, but still immediate, knowledge ofits own laws.) Not proven
judgments nor their proofs, hut judgments drawn immediately from
perception and grounded in it without any proof: these are in science
what the sun is in the heavens. For from them issues all light, illumi-
nated by which the others in turn give light. To ground the truth of such
primary judgments directly in perception, to lift such bastions for science
up out ofthe vast multitude ofreal things: that is the work ofjudgment,
which consists in the capacity for accurately and exactly translating
into abstract consciousness that of which one is perceptually cognizant,
and is thus the mediator between understanding and reason. Only its
exceptional strength, exceeding the usual meaSure in an individual, can
effectively advance the sciences; but anyone at all of sound reason is
able to derive, to prove, to infer propositions on the basis of propositions.
By contrast, to set down and consolidate that of which one is perceptually
cognizant in concepts suited to reflection, so that on the one hand that
which is common to many real objects is thought through one concept,
on the other hand their differences are thought through just as many
different ones, and thus the differences, despite partial agreement, are
still cognized and thought as different, and the identical in turn, despite
partial difference, as identical, all according to the purpose and concern
that is dominant at the moment: all this is what judgment does. Lack
thereofis simple-mindedness. The simple-minded person fails sometimes
to recognize the partial or relative difference in things that are in one
 100 First Book. The World as Presentation

respect identical, sometimes the identity in things that are relatively or

partially different. In any case, Kant's division of judgment into
reflecting and subsuming judgmenti can be applied to this explanation
of judgment, namely, according to whether the latter passes from
objects of perception to concepts or from the latter to the former, in
78 both cases still mediating between understanding's perceptual and
reason's reflective cognizance.
There is no truth that could be brought forth just through inferences
alone, but rather, the need to ground truth through inferences is always
only relative, indeed subjective. Since all proofs are inferences, what is
in the first place to be sought for a new truth is not proof, but immediate
evidence, and a proof is only to be constructed when we fail with
respect to the latter. No science can be through and through subject to
proof any more than a building can stand on air: all its proofs must lead
back to something perceptual and thus no longer provable. For the
entire world of reflection rests and is rooted in the perceptual world. All
ultimate, i.e., original evidence, is perceptual evidence: the word already
betrays that fact. Accordingly, it is either empirical evidence, or else
grounded in perception apriori of the conditions of possible experience;
in both cases, therefore, it provides cognizance that is only immanent,
not transcendent. 46 Every concept has its value and existence only with
reference, be it even highly mediated, to a perceptual presentation. What
applies to concepts applies also to the judgments composed from them,
and to entire sciences. Therefore, for every truth that has been discovered
through inferences and communicated through proofs, it must also be
somehow possible to recognize it immediate1y without proofs or infer-
ences. This is certainly hardest to do with many complicated mathemat-
ical propositions, to which we attain only by way of chains of inference,
e.g., calculating the chords and tangents of all arcs by means of infer-
ences based on the Pythagorean Theorem. But even such a truth cannot
rest essentially and solelyon abstract propositions, and it must be
possible that the underlying spatial relations be elicited for pure
perception apriori as weH, so as to provide immediate grounding for
its abstract expression. However, I will speak in detail shortly ofproofs
in mathematics. 47
There is indeed frequent and elevated talk about sciences that
rest completely on valid inferences from sure premises, and are for that

i[Kant generally refers to this as a distinction between reflecting (or reflec-

tive) and "determining" (or determinative) judgment: Critique 0/ Judgment,
Introduction IV (Ak. 5.179) and throughout.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 101

reason incontrovertibly true. But through purely logical chains of infer-

ence, be the premises ever so true, one will never obtain more than 79
clarification and elaboration of that which lies ready in the premises;
one will thus only exhibit explicite the very same thing as was under-
stood implicite. The celebrated sciences that one has in mind, however,
are especially the mathematical ones, in particular, astronomy. But the
latter's sureness sterns from the fact that it is grounded in a perception
of space that is given apriori and is thus infallible, all spatial relations
following from others with a necessity (ground of being) providing a
priori certainty, and thus being reciprocally derivable with assurance.
In addition to these mathematical determinations, only a single natural
force enters in, gravity, which is effectual exactly in proportion to the
masses and the square of the distance, and finally the law of inertia -
assured apriori since it follows from the law of causality - besides the
empirically given fact of the movement impressed on each of the
masses from the start. This is all that astronomy has to deal with, which
leads by way of its simplicity and assurance to firm and, on account of
the magnitude and importance of its objects, most interesting results.
For example, if I know the mass of a planet and the distance of a satellite
from it, I can with assurance infer its period of revolution in accordance
with Kepler's second law. The ground ofthe law is the fact that, at this
distance, only this velocity simultaneously binds the satellite to the
planet and keeps it from collapsing into it.
Thus only on such a geometrical foundation, Le., by means of a
perception apriori, and only by application of a natural law besides,
are we able to go some distance with inferences; for they are, as it were,
mere bridges that lead from one case of perceptual apprehension to
another. We could not do just the same with bare and pure inferences,
following the exclusively logical path.
The origin of the primary fundamental truths in astronomy is,
however, really induction, i.e., encompassing in a valid and immediately
grounded judgment that which is given in many perceptions. On the
basis of the latter, hypotheses are subsequently formed, the empirical
confirrnation of which, as an induction approximating completeness,
yields a proof of the initial judgment. For example, we are empirically
cognizant of the apparent movement of the planets: after a number of 80
false hypotheses regarding the spatial interconnection of the movements
in question (planetary orbits), the correct one was finally found, and
then the laws that it follows (Kepler's laws),48 and finally also its cause
(universal gravitation), and it was the empirically apprehended agreement
of all the observed cases with the totality of those hypotheses and their
consequences, thus induction, that provided them with complete certainty.
 102 First Book. Thc World as Presentation

Discovery of the hypothesis was a matter of judgment, which accurately

apprehended the given facts and expressed them accordingly.49 lnduc-
tion, however, i.e., multiple perception, confirmed its truth. But it could
also be grounded immediately, through a single empirical perception,
if we could only travel freely through the realms of space and had
telescopic eyes. i Consequently, here too, inferences are not the essential
and single source of cognizance, but always in actuality merely a crutch.
Finally, to provide a third quite different example, we would note
that even so-called metaphysical 50 truths, i.e., those such as Kant put
forth in his Metaphysical First Principles 01 Natural Science, do not
owe their evidence to proofs. We are cognizant ofthat which is apriori
certain in an immediate way: as the form belonging to aJl cognition, it
is something ofwhich we are conscious with the greatest necessity. For
example, that matter persists, i.e., can neither arise nor pass away,51 we
know immediately as a negative truth. For our pure perception of space
and time provides the possibility of movement. The understanding
provides, in the law of causality, the possibility of change in form and
quality. But with respect to the arising or vanishing ofmatter, the forms
of possible presentation fail uso Therefore, that truth has been evident at
all times, everywhere, and to everyone, nor has it ever been seriously
doubted, which could not be the case were its cognitive ground nothing
other than - striding on the points of needles - a proof as difficult as
Kant's. Moreover (as explained in the Appendix), I have found Kant's
proofto be indeed mistaken and have shown above that the persistence
of matter is to be derived not from the contribution of time, but from
that of space, to the possibility of experience. The real grounding of all
81 truths called metaphysical in this sense,52 i.e., of abstract expressions of
necessary and general cognitive forms, cannot lie in turn in abstract
propositions, but only in immediate consciousness of the forms belong-
ing to presentational activity,ii announcing itself apriori through
apodictic statements unconcemed with refutation. If one would none-
theless give a proof of them, this can only consist in demonstrating that
the truth to be proven is already contained, either as apart or a pre-
supposition, in some truth that is not in doubt. So, for example, I have
shown that all empirical perception already contains an application of

tCompare the metaphol' proeeeding in the opposite direetion in lohn Loeke's

referenee to the imaginary possibility of "mieroseopieal eyes": Essay Concern-
ing Human Understanding Book I1, eh. 23, sec. 12. "and had telescopie eyes"
added in c.]
itFormen des Erkennens ... Formen des Vorstellensl
 The Object ofExperience and Science 103

the law of causality, cognizance of which is therefore a condition of aB

experience and thus cannot be first given and conditioned by the latter,
as Hume claimed.
Proofs are in generalless for those who would leam than for those
who would engage in disputation. The latter stubbornly deny tbis
immediately grounded insight: only truth can be consistent in every
respect. One must, therefore, show these people that, under one aspect
and in an indirect way, they grant what they deny under another aspect
and direct1y, thus show them the logically necessary connection between
the points denied and granted.
Furthermore, scientific form, the subordination of everything par-
ticular under something general, and continuing evermore upwards, has
the consequence that the truth of many propositions is grounded only
logically, namely, through their dependence on other propositions, thus
through inferences simultaneously making their appearance as proofs.
One should never forget, however, that this entire form is only a means
toward facilitating cognizance, not a means to greater certainty. It is
easier to recognize the character of an animal on the basis of the species
to which it belongs, and so on upwards on the basis of genus, family,
order, or class, than to investigate whatever animal is in question at the
moment on its own. But the truth of all propositions derived through
inferences is always mere1y conditioned and finally dependent on one
that does not rest on inferences, but rather on perception. Were the lat-
ter always as near to hand as derivation through an inference, it would
be altogether preferable. For all derivation on the basis of concepts, on
account of the manifold overlapping of their spheres as shown above,
and the frequently vacillating determination of their content, is exposed 82
to numerous deceptions; so many proofs of false doctrines and sopbisms
ofaB kinds are examples ofthis.
Inferences are, to be sure, utterly certain with respect to their form;
but they are most uncertain by virtue oftheir matter, concepts. For the
spheres of the latter are, for one thing, not sharply enough determined,
and for another thing intersect in such manifold ways that a sphere is
partly contained in many others, and one can thus pass from it at will
into one or the other of these, and from there further in turn, as already
depicted. In other words, both the terminus minor and the medius can
always be subordinated to different concepts, on the basis ofwhich one
chooses the terminus major and the medius as one pleases, whereby the
inferences then turn out to be different. i

i[ln the syllogistic inference "All human beings are mortal, Greeks are
 104 First Book. The World as Presentation

Everywhere, consequently, immediate evidence is far preferable

to proven truth, and the latter is only acceptable where one would have
to go too far afield to obtain the former, but not where the former is just
as near to hand or even nearer than the latter. Thus we saw above that
in fact in logic, where in every single case immediate cognizance lies
nearer to hand than that which is derivatively scientific, we always
conduct our thinking only in accordance with immediate cognizance of
the laws ofthought, and leave the logic unused. t

§ 15.
[Mathematics, Logic, Truth, Philosopby]
Ifnow, with our conviction that perception is the first source of a11
evidence, and an immediate or mediated reference to it alone is absolute
truth - as weH as that the shortest path to the latter is always the most
sure, since all mediation by concepts brings exposure to numerous
deceptions - ifnow we turn with this conviction to mathematics, as it
has been set forth by Euc1id and remained as a whole to the present day
as a science, then we cannot avoid finding the path that it follows to be
strange, even perverse. We demand that every case oflogical grounding
be traced back to a perceptual one. By contrast, mathematics has gone
83 to considerable pains in its willful endeavor to reject the unique sort of
perceptual evidence that is everywhere near to it, to replace it with
logical evidence. We must find this to be like the case of a person who
amputates his legs so as to walk with crutches, or like the prince in The
Triumph ojSensitivity,i who flees from the actual beauty ofnature so as
to take pleasure in theatrical scenery that imitates it.
I must here recall what [ said in the sixth chapter of the treatise on
the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and presume it to be fresh in memory
and wholly present to the reader, so that I may pick up from there
without once again discussing the difference between the mere cognitive
ground of a mathematical truth, which can be given logically, and the
ground ofbeing, which is the immediate interconnection ofthe parts of
space and time, ofwhich we can only be cognizant perceptually, and
insight into which alone guarantees true satisfaction and deeply grounded
knowledge,ii while mere cognitive grounds remain always on the surface,

human beings, therefore Greeks are mortal," the "major term" is martal, the
"minor" is Greeks, the "middle" is human beings.]
tOn this, see eh. 12 ofthe second volume.
i[Goethe, Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit]
ii[gründliche Kenntnis; usually, "thorough" or "thoroughgoing"1
 The Object ofExperience and Science 105

and can indeed provide knowledge that something is the case, but none
as to why it iso Euclid followed the latter path, to the obvious detriment
of the science. Right at the beginning, for example, where he was to
show once and for all how the angles and sides of triangles mutually
determine one another, and are mutually grounds and consequences in
accordance with the form belonging to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground in mere space - which there as everywhere yields the necessity
that something is as it is because something entirely different from it is
as it is - instead of in this way providing thoroughgoing insight into the
essence of triangles, he sets forth some disparate, arbitrarily chosen
propositions about triangles and provides a logical ground for cogni-
zance of the latter through laborious logical proof following the prin-
ciple of contradiction. Instead of exhaustive knowledge of these spatial
relations, one thus obtains only some of their arbitrarily communicated
consequences, and is as if in the position of someone to whom there
had been shown the various effects of a mechanical artifice, but from
whom its inner structure and workings were held back. That everything
demonstrated by Euclid is the case has to be granted, under compulsion
of the principle of contradiction; but one does not leam why it is the
case. One thus almost gets the uncomfortable feeling as if after a sleight 84
of hand, and in fact most of Euclid's proofs are strikingly similar to
one. The truth almost always enters by the back dOOf, following per
accidensi from some secondary circumstance. Frequently, an apagogic
proofi shuts all the doors one after the other, leaving only the one open
by which one therefore has to enter. Frequently lines are drawn, as with
the Pythagorean Theorem, without one knowing why. It is afterwards
revealed that they were slings, unexpectedly tightened and capturing
the assent of the student, who now has to grant in amazement what in
its inner connection remains utterly incomprehensible to hirn - to such
an extent that he might thoroughly study the whole of Euclid without
winning any real insight into the laws of spatial relations, but instead
only memorizing some oftheir consequences. Cognizance ofthis strict1y
empirical and unscientific sort is like that of the doctor who is knowl-
edgeable regarding sicknesses and remedies for them, but not regarding
the connection between the twO. This is all the consequence, however,
of capriciously rejecting the manner of grounding and evidence peculiar
to a particular mode of cognition, forcibly replacing it with one essen-
tially foreign to it. In any case, the way in which Euclid carried this out

t"by happenstance"]
ii[A proofthat establishes its conclusion by eliminating the alternatives to it.J
 106 First Book. The World as Presentation

nonetheless merits all the admiration it has received over so many centu-
ries, and which has gone so far that his way of treating mathematics
was declared the paradigm for all scientific exposition, after which all
other sciences in fact strove to pattern themselves, although they later
retreated from it without much knowing why. In our eyes, the Euclidean
method in mathematics can nonetheless only appeal' to be a case of the
most glaring perverseness. One can of course, however, for any major
intentionally and methodically pursued and generally applauded aberra-
tion, whether it have a bearing on life 01' on science, always demonstrate
its ground in the philosophy holding sway at the time.
To begin with, the Eleatics had discovered the difference, indeed
frequent opposition, between that which is perceived, rpatW}118VOV, and
85 that which is thought, VOOVI18VOV, t and employed it in manifold ways in
their philosophical theses as weIl as in sophistries. They were later fol-
lowed by the Megarians, Dialecticians, Sophists, members of the New
Academy, and Skeptics. The latter called attention to illusion, i.e., to
deception of the senses, 01' rather of the understanding that transforms
the data of the senses into perception, which often makes us see things
to which reason is secure in denying reality, e.g., the broken stick in
water, ete. One recognized that sensory pereeption is not to be trusted
unconditionally, and prematurely concluded that only rational, logical
thinking grounds truth. However, Plato (in the Parmenides), the Mega-
rians, Pyrrho, and the members of the New Academy showed by
examples (in the way Sextus Empiricus did later) how, on the other
hand, inferences and concepts also led one astray, indeed produced
paralogisms and sophistries that arise much more easily and are much53
more difficult to resolve than illusion in sensory perception. In any
case, the upper hand was held by the rationalism thus arising in opposi-
tion to empiricism, and Euclid developed his mathematics in accord
with it, thus only resting his axioms, perforce, on perceptual evidence
(rpat VdI18VOV) but everything else on inferences (VOOVI18VOV). His
method held sway through the course of centuries, and was bound to,
so long as pure perception apriori was not distinguished from that
which is empirical. To be sure, Euclid's commentator Proclus seems to
have fuHy recognized that distinction, as is shown by the passage in his
commentary that Kepler translated into Latin in his book De harmonia

tWe may ignore here Kanfs misuse of these Greek terms [phainomenon,
"phenomenon" (or "sensory appearance"); noumenon], for which 1 take hirn to
task in the Appendix.
 The Object ofExperience and Science 107

mundi;i but Proclus did not attach sufficient weight to the matter, put it
forth in too isolated a way, was ignored, and did not prevail. Thus it
was not before two thousand years that the Kantian doctrine, which was
destined to produce such major ehanges in all of the knowledge, thought,
and endeavor of the European peoples, oceasioned a similar effeet in
mathematies as well. For only onee we leam flum this great spirit that our
perceptions of spaee and time are entirely different from empirieal per-
eeptions, entirely independent of all sense-impressions, conditioning
them, not conditioned by them, i.e., that they are apriori and thus not at
all susceptible to sense-deception, only then can we see that Euclid's
logical mode of treatment of mathematies is a useless precaution, a crutch 86
for sound legs, that it is like a wanderer at night who rnistakes a brightly lit
and solid path for water, refuses to take i1, and steadily walks the rough
ground beside it, with each and every step content to keep the presumed
water hard by. Only then can we claim with assurance that what
announces its presence as necessary in our perception of a figure does not
come from the perhaps very inadequately drawn figure on the paper, nor
from the abstract concept that we think in connection with it, but
immediately from that form belonging to all cognition of which we are
conscious apriori: this is everywhere the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
Here, as a form belonging to perception, i.e., space, it is the Principle of
the Sufficient Ground of Being. But its evidence and validity is just as
great and immediate as that of the Principle of the Sufficient Ground of
Cognition, i.e., logical certainty.54 Thus we neither need nor may, just for
the sake of putting our trust in the latter, leave the domain peeuliar to
mathematics, thinking to validate the latter in a domain entirely
foreign to it, that of concepts. Keeping to the ground peculiar to
mathematics, we achieve the great advantage that knowledge that
something is the ease is henceforth one with knowledge of why it is
the case; instead of this, the Euclidean method eompletely separates
the two and gives us knowledge only of the former, not the latter.
But Aristotle says it quite superbly in Analyt. post. I, 27: ~XPI­
ßE:CH8pa 8' 81Clcrrr/J.lTf 87rUHr/J.lTft;; xal 7rpo.spa !f [8 rau ÖTt xa!
rau OIOTt 1] avrrb &Ud J.lri XOJPI; rau ÖTt ritt;; rau OIOTt.
(Subtilior autem et praestantior ea est scientia, qua quod aliquid
si!, et cur si! una simulque intelligimus, non separatim quod, et cur
si!. Yi In physics we are of course satisfied only when cognizanee of the

i[Johannes Kepler, Harmonices mundi (Harmony ofthe World [1619]).]

"["One science is more precise than another and prior to it hoth if it is at the
 108 First Book. The World as Presentation

fact that something is the case is united with thai as to why it is the
case. That the mercury stands at 28 inches in a Torricellian tube is a
poor example ofknowledge ifit is not accompanied by the fact that it is
held there by the counterweight of the air. But in mathematics the
circle's qualitas occulta,i such that rectangles contained by the
segments of any two chords intersecting within it are always equal,
should satisfY us? Euclid of course proves that this is the case in the
35th proposition of the third Book; the Why of it is left open. In just the
same way, the Pythagorean Theorem acquaints us with a qualitas
87 occulta of right triangles. Euclid's stilt-legged, indeed devious, proof
leaves us with the Why, and the following familiar and simple figure
provides at a glance, far more than that proof, insight into the matter
and a firm inner conviction of its necessity and of its dependence on the
character of right angles:

Even with unequal perpendiculars, it must be possible to bring the

matter to this kind of perceptual conviction, as is the case with any
possible geometrical truth, just because its discovery has always
proceeded from this kind of perceived necessity and its proof was only
subsequently excogitated. Thus one needs only an analysis of the
process of thought involved in the original discovery of a geometrical
truth to be perceptually cognizant of its necessity. On the whole, it is
the analytic method that I would wish for mathematical exposition,
instead of the synthetic method employed by Euclid. Of course this
will have, in the case of complicated mathematical truths, very great,
although not insurmountable, difficulties. Here and there already in
Germany, however, mathematical exposition is beginning to change

same time of the fact and of the reason why and not of the fact separately from
the science of the reason why": Posterior Analytics I, 27, 87a31-33 (tr.
Jonathan Barnes in Barnes [ed.], Complete Works). As usual, Schopenhauer's
Latin translation is added in C.]
t'hidden quality"]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 109

and to follow a more analytic path. Ihis has been most decisively done
by Herr Kosack, a teacher ofmathematics and physics at the gymnasium
in Nordhausen, having on 6 April, 1852 supplemented the pro gram of
school examinations with an extensive attempt at the treatment of
geometry in accordance with my principles. 55
In order to improve the mathematical method, it is preeminently
required that one abandon the prejudice that proven truth has some
advantage over that of which one is perceptually cognizant, or logical
truth resting on the principle of contradiction some advantage over
metaphysicaJ truth, which is immediately evident and also includes the
pure perception of space.
That which is most certain and everywhere inexplicable is the 88
content of the Principle of Sufficient Ground. 56 For the latter, in its
various modes, signifies the general form belonging to all of our
presentation and cognition. All explanation involves tracing things back
to it, demonstrating in individual cases the interconnection of presenta-
tions expressed in general terms by it. It is, accordingly, the principle of
all explanation and therefore not itself susceptible to explanation, nor in
need of it, since every explanation already presupposes it and has
meaning only through it. But none of its modes has an advantage over
the others: it is equally certain and unprovable as a principle with respect
to the ground of being, or of becoming, or of action, or of cognition.
The relation of ground to consequence, in any one or other of its
modes, is a necessary one, indeed it is the origin as weIl as the sole
meaning of the concept of necessity. There is no necessity other than
that of consequence given the ground, and there is no ground that does
not lead to a necessary consequence. Thus just as surely as the conse-
quence expressed in the conclusion of an inference flows from the
cognitive ground given in the premises, equally surely the ground of
being in space conditions its consequence in space: once I have become
perceptually cognizant of the relation between the latter two, then the
certainty is just as great as anything logical. Every geometrical theorem,
however, expresses such a relation just as weIl as any one of the twelve
axioms: it is a metaphysical truth and as such just as immediately
certain as the principle of contradiction itself, which is a metalogical
truth and the general foundation for all logical deduction. Someone
who denies the perceptually exhibited necessity of the spatial relations
expressed in any theorem can with equal right deny the axioms, and
with equal right the inference's concIusion from its premises, indeed
the principle of contradiction itself; for all ofthese are equally unprova-
ble, immediately evident, and apriori cognizable relations. Therefore,
if one would first derive the perceptually cognizable necessity of spatial
 110 First Book. The World as Presentation

relations by logieal deduetion on the basis of the principle of eontradi-

etion, this would be no different from someone who wanted to award
the direct owner of some land that same land itself as a fiefdom. This,
89 however, is what Euclid did. He allowed only his axioms, perforce, to
rest on immediate evidenee. All subsequent geometrical truths are
logically proven, namely, with those axioms presupposed, proven on
the basis of their agreement with assumptions made in the theorem, or
with some earlier theorem, or on the basis of a eontradietion between
the eontrary of the theorem and those assumptions, axioms, earlier
theorems, or even with themselves. But the axioms themselves have no
more immediate evidenee than any other geometrie al proposition, but
only greater simplieity by way oftheir narrower eontent.
When a eriminal is interrogated, his statements are put on record
so as to be able to judge the truth from their consisteney. But this is a
mere crutch to which one does not have reeourse when one ean imme-
diately examine the truth of each of his statements on its own. This is
particularly so given that he might consistently lie from the beginning.
lt is, however, the former method by which Euclid examined space. To
be sure, he thereby proeeeded from the eorreet presupposition that
nature has to be in every respect eonsistent, thus also in its fundamental
form, in spaee, and therefore, because the parts of spaee stand interre-
lated as grounds and eonsequenees, no single spatial determination ean
be other than it is without standing in eontradietion to all the others.
But this is a very burdensome and unsatisfying detour, preferring medi-
ated to equally eertain immediate eognizanee, and, to the considerable
detriment of science, separating eognizanee that something is from that
as to why it is, and finally entirely withholding insight into the laws of
spaee from students, indeed disaccustoming them from really exarnin-
ing the ground and inner eonneetion of things, indueing them instead to
rest satisfied with the historieal knowledge that it is the case. The
exereise of mental aeuity that is ineessantly vaunted with respect to this
method, however, consists merely in the fact that the student praetiees
the drawing of inferences, i.e., applieation of the prineiple of contradie-
tion, but in partieular exerts his memory in retaining all the data sup-
posed to be compared for consistency.
90 lt is in any case noteworthy that this method of proof has only been
applied to geometry and not to arithmetic. Rather, in the latter the truth
is actually brought to evidence only through perception, which here
consists merely in counting. For numbers are perceived in time alone
and therefore cannot, like geometrical figures, be represented by a
sensory schema. So the suspicion was removed that the perception
might merely be empirical and thus subject to illusion, a suspicion that
 The Object ofExperience and Science 111

was solely responsible for introducing the logical mode of proof into
geometry. Because time has only one dimension, counting is the only
arithmetical operation; all the others are to be reduced to it. But this
counting is nothing other than a perception apriori, to which no one
hesitates to appeal in this case, and through which alone all the rest,
every ca1culation and every equation, is confrrmed. One does not prove
for example that
(7+9)x8-2
3 = 42,

but one appeals to pure perception in time, to counting, and so makes

every single proposition an axiom. Instead of the proofs with which
geometry is replete, the entire content of arithmetic and algebra is thus
a mere method for the abbreviation of counting. To be sure, as mentioned
above, our immediate perception of numbers in time gets no further than
to ten or so. Beyond that, a verbally fixed abstract concept of number
has to take the place of perception, which is then no longer really actual-
ized but only designated in a precisely determinate way. However, with
the crucia1 aid of the system of numericalorder, which always allows
us to represent larger numbers by way of the same small ones, percep-
tual evidence is indeed made possible for every ca1culation, even in
cases where the appeal to abstraction is so great that not only numbers
but also indeterminate magnitudes and entire operations are conceived
in abstracto and designated accordingly, as with

"r '
!=b

so that one no 10nger carries out the operations, but only indicates them.
With the same right and same assurance as in arithmetic, one could
also have it that truths are grounded in geometry solely through pure
perception apriori. It is in fact always perceptually cognized necessity 91
according to the Principle of the Sufficient Ground of Being that bestows
the greatest evidence on geometry, and it is that upon which rests, in
everybody's consciousness, the certainty of its propositions. lt is in no
way the logical proof, striding upon stiIts, which, always foreign to the
matter at hand, is usually soon forgotten without detriment to conviction,
and could be dropped entirely without thereby diminishing the geome-
trical evidence. For the latter is entirely independent of that, and it
always proves only the That of something of which one has been ante-
cedently utterly convinced by way of a different mode of cognition; to
 112 First Book. The World as Presentation

that extent, it is like a cowardly soldier who inflicts a further wound on

an enemy slain by another, and then boasts of having dispatched hirn. t
In consequence of all of this it is hoped there will be no further
doubt that the evidence of mathematics, which has become a paradigm
and symbol of all evidence, rests in its essence not on proofs but on
immediate perception, which is thus here as everywhere the ultimate
ground and the source of all truth. However, the perception that grounds
mathematics has a great advantage over any other, and thus over empir-
ical perception. In particular, since it is apriori, hence independent of
experience, which is always given only in a piecemeal and successive
manner, everything is equally near to hand for it, and one can proceed
as one pleases from either the ground or the consequence. This gives it
utter immunity to deception by virtue of the fact that one is cognizant
of the consequence on the basis of the ground, the only sort of cogni-
zance that carries necessity. For example, one is cognizant ofthe equal-
92 ity of the sides as grounded by the equality of the angles, whereas, by
contrast, all empirical perception and the greatest part of all experience
proceed in the opposite direction, from consequence to ground, which
mode of cognition is not infallible, since necessity attaches to conse-
quences only to the extent that grounds are given, but not to cognizance
of grounds on the basis of consequences; since the same consequence
can originate from different grounds. This latter mode of cognition is
always only induction, i.e., when several consequences are pointing to
a single ground, that ground is assumed as certain. But since cases can
never be exhaustive1y collected, truth is never unconditionally certain
here. Only this kind of truth, however, is possessed by all cognizance
gained by sensory perception, and by practically all experience. The
affection of a sense organ occasions the understanding's inference from
the effect to a cause. But because inferences from the grounded to its

tSpinoza, who always boasted of proeeeding more geometrico ["in a

geometrieal manner"], aetually did this much more than he knew. For what was
certain and settled for hirn on the basis of an immediate perceptual apprehen-
sion ofthe essence ofthe world, he seeks to demonstrate Iogically independent-
Iy of that cognizance. Of course he attained the intended and antecedently
certain resuit only by the fact that he took arbitrarily eonstructed eoncepts (sub-
stantia, causa sui ["substance," "seIf-eaused"], etc.) as his point of departure,
and allowed hirnself whatever arbitrary moves in his proofs were essentially
faeilitated by the broad sphercs of those eoneepts. The truth and exeellenee of
his doetrine is thus even with him entire1y independent of the proofs, just as in
geometry.
On this, see eh. 13 ofthe seeond volumc.
 The Object ofExperience and Science 113

ground are never certain, false semblance in the form of sense decep-
tion is possible and often actual, as explained above. Only when several
or all five of the senses receive affections that point to the same cause,
has the possibility of illusion become extremely small, although none-
theless still present; for in certain cases, for example with counterfeit
coins, the whole of one's sensibility is deceived. 57 The case is the same
for all empirical cognizance and consequently for the entirety of natural
science, apart from its pure (in Kant's terms, metaphysical) part. 58
Here too, one is cognizant of causes on the basis of effects. Therefore,
all natural science rests on hypotheses that are often false and then
gradually give way to ones that are more accurate. Only with inten-
tionally arranged experiments does cognizance proceed from causes to
effects, and so on the secure path, but this is itself undertaken only in
consequence of hypotheses. 59 lt is for this reason that no branch of
natural science, e.g., physics or astronomy or physiology, ean be dis-
eovered all at onee, as mathematics or logie eould have been; rather,
they had and have need of the eollected and eompared experiences of
many centuries. Only multiple empirieal confirmation brings the indue-
tion on which hypotheses rest suffieiently near to eompleteness that it
replaces eertainty for practieal purposes,60 and its origin is seen as no
more of a detriment to an hypothesis than the incommensurability of
straight and eurved lines is to the applieation of geometry, or the unnat- 93
tainability of eompletely aeeurate logarithms to arithmetie. For just as
the squaring of a circle and logarithms are brought infinitely elose to
aeeuraey by way of infmitely many fraetions, so also induetion, i.e.,
cognizance of grounds on the basis of consequenees,61 is brought not
infinitely elose to mathematical evidenee, to be sure, Le., to cognizance
of eonsequences on the basis of grounds, but still so elose that the
possibility of error beeomes small enough to be negligible. But yet it is
still present. For example, an inferenee from eountless eases to all, or
really to the unknown ground on whieh they all depend, is still an
induetive inference. What inferenee of this kind seems surer than that
all human beings have their heart on the left side? Nonetheless there
are, as extremely rare and utterly isolated exeeptions, human beings in
whom the heart sits on the right side.
Sensory pereeption and empirieal seienee thus have the same kind
of evidence. The advantage over them possessed by mathematics, pure
natural scienee, and logie, as eases of eognizanee apriori, rests only on
the faet that the formal element in sueh cognizance, on whieh all
apriority is grounded, is given in its entirety and all at onee, and there-
fore one can always proeeed here from grounds to eonsequenees, but in
the former case for the most part only from consequenees to grounds.
 114 First Book. The World as Presentation

In itself, in any case, the law of causality, or the Principle of the Suffi-
cient Ground of Secoming which directs empiricaJ cognizance, is just
as sure as any of the other modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground
that are followed apriori by the above named sciences.
LogicaJ proofs on the basis of concepts, or inferences, just as
much as cognizance by way of perception apriori, have the advantage
of proceeding from grounds to consequences, whereby they are in
themselves, Le., with respect to their form, infallible. This has had
much to do with proofs in general gaining so great a reputation. Sut the
infallibility of the latter is relative: they merely involve subsumption
under higher scientific principles. It is these, however, that contain the
entire stock of truth in science, and they cannot simply be proven in
turn, but must be grounded in perception, which in the few cases of the
cited apriori sciences is a pure perception, but otherwise always
94 empirical, and only elevated by induction to the level of generality.
Thus even if individual cases are proved on the basis of that which is
general in empirical sciences, that which is general has still obtained its
truth in turn from individuals, is only a warehouse for gathered provi-
sions, not autonomously productive ground. i
So much for the grounding of truth. - Regarding the origin and
the possibility of error, many explanations have been attempted since
Plato's metaphorical answers in terms of the aviary from which one
grabs the wrong bird, etc. (Theaetetus 167jJ).ii With its image of the
diagonal between two motions, Kant's vague, indefinite explanation of
the origin of error can be found on p. 294 ofthe first and p. 350 ofthe
fifth edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. iii
Since truth is the reference of a judgment to its cognitive ground,
it is of course a problem how someone making a judgment can actually
believe himself to have such a ground and yet not have any, i.e., how
error, a deception of reason, is possible. I find its possibility to be
entirely analogous to that of illusion, or deception of the understanding,
which was explained above. My opinion, namely (and this makes the
explanation relevant at just this point), is that every error is an inference
from a consequence to a ground, which is to be sure valid when one
knows that the consequence can have that and absolutely no other
ground, but otherwise not. Someone who errs either supposes a ground

i[selbsterzeugender Boden1
ii[The more specific discussion of the possibility of error begins at Theae-
tetus 189b, with the aviary example introduced at 197c.]
iii[A294-51B350-1. This sentence was added in B.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 115

for a consequence that it cannot at all have - whereby he then shows an

actual lack of understanding, i.e., lack of the capacity for immediate
cognizance of the connection between causes and effects - or else, as is
more often the case, he determines what is indeed a possible ground for
the consequence, but appends to the major premise of bis inference
from consequence to ground the assumption that the consequence in
question arises in every case only from the ground that he has stated,
something for which he could only be justified by a complete induc-
tion, but which he presupposes without having made one: the in every
case is thus too broad a concept; in its place there shou1d stand only
sometimes, orJor the most part. In that way, the conc1usion would turn
out to be problematic,i and as such it would not be erroneous. That
someone who errs proceeds in the manner in question, however, is either
a matter of rashness or of a too limited know1edge of possibility, on
account of which he is ignorant of the necessity of the induction that 95
needs to be made. Error is thus entirely analogous to illusion. Both are
inferences from consequence to ground: illusion is always produced in
accordance with the law of causality and by the understanding alone,
thus immediately in perception itself; error is produced by reason, thus
in thought proper, in accordance with all the forms belonging to the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, most often however likewise in accor-
dance with the law of causality, as the following three examples confirm,
which may be viewed as types or representatives of three kinds of
errors. 62 1) SensOlY illusion (deception ofthe understanding) occasions
the error (deception of reason), e.g., when one views a painting as a
bas-relieJ and actually takes it for one. This happens through an infer-
ence based on the following major premise: "Ifthere is a gradual transi-
tion through all the shades from dark gray to white, the cause is in
every case unequal illumination of elevations and depressions: ergo - ."
2) "If money is missing from my strongbox, the cause is in every case
that my servant has a copy ofthe key: ergo -." 3) "Ifthe image ofthe
sun distorted by a prism, Le., displaced either upwards or down, now
appears elongated and colored instead of round and white as before, the
cause is in each and every case that light has variously colored and at
the same time variously refractable homogenous light rays concealed
within it that, separated by their difference in refractability, now display

;[Schopenhauer means "problematic" in the sense of judgments of the fonn

that such-and-such at least might be the case. See Critique 0/ Pure Reason
A 701B96ff.]
 116 First Book. The World as Presentation

an image that is elongated and at the same time colored: ergo -

bibamus!"i
Every error can he traced back to such inferences from a hypothet-
ical, often simply falsely generalized,63 major premise arising from the
assumption of a ground for a consequence. Only this does not apply, for
example, to mi stakes in calculation, which are not really errors at all,
hut merely mistakes: the operation that was indicated hy the numerical
concepts was not carried out in pure perception, in counting, hut some
other operation instead.
As for the content of the sciences in general, this is really always
the interrelationii of the world's phenomena according to the Principle
of Sufficient Ground and according to the directing principle of a Why
whose applicahility and meaning is by way of the latter alone. Demon-
strating the relation in question is called explanation. Tbe latter can thus
go no further than showing two presentations as they stand to one
96 another with respect to the relation pertaining to that mode of the
Principle of Sufficient Ground wh ich holds sway in the c1ass to which
they belong. Having gotten that far, there is no more Why at all to
inquire about. For the demonstrated relation is that which can absolutely
not be presented in any other way, i.e., it is the form helonging to all
cognition. Therefore, one does not ask why 2 + 2 = 4 is the case, or
why equality of the angles in a triangle determines equality of the sides,
or why any given cause is followed hy its effect, or why the tmth of a
conc1usion is made evident by that of the premises. Every explanation
that does not trace hack to a relation of which no further Why can he
demanded ends up with the assumption of a qualitas occulta; hut
every original natural force is also this kind of thing. In the end, every
explanation in the natural sciences has to end up with something of the
sort, thus with something utterly ohscure. It must therefore leave the
inner essence of a stone just as little explained as that of a human heing,
can as little ac count for the gravity, cohesion, chemical properties,64
etc., expressed by the former as for the cognition and action of the

'[bibamus, "Let's drink" - i.e., the assumption about light is so absurd one
might as weH infer anything from it. Ergo - Bibamus! is also the title of a
poem by Goethe (part ofthe group Gesellige Lieder [Convivial Songs]; Goethe
also used the expression in connection with Newton - "So too, Newton
attached his ergo to the most diverse premises" - in Zur Farbenlehre (On the
Theory ofColors [1810]), Polemical Part, no. 391.]
ii[Verhältnis ... zu einander; "relation" translates Verhältnis throughout this
paragraph.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 117

latter. Thus gravity, e.g., is a qualitas occulta; for it can be removed in

thought, thus does not proceed as a necessity arising from cognitive
form. The contrary is the case with the law of inertia, which follows
from that of causality; therefore, tracing things back to the latter is a
perfectly satisfactory mode of explanation. 65 Two things in particular
are absolutely inexplicable, Le., cannot be traced back to the relation
expressed in the Principle of Sufficient Ground: first, since it is the
principle of all explanation, that by reference to which alone the latter
has meaning, the Principle of Sufficient Ground itself in all four of its
modes;66 second, the That which is not reached by it, but from which
proceeds precisely that which is original in all phenomena. This iS 67 the
thing in itself, cognizance of which is not in any way subject to the
Principle of Sufficient Ground. The latter must remain for now entirely
outside our understanding, since it will be only through the following
Book, once again taking up this consideration of the possible achieve-
ments of the sciences, that it will be possible to render it intelligible.
But at the point where natural science, indeed any science, leaves things
standing, as a point beyond which not only its explanation of them, but 97
even the principle of its explanation, the Principle of Sufficient Ground,
cannot lead, here philosophy properly takes things up in its turn, and
considers them in its own manner, entirely different from the former.
In the treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Ground, § 51, I have
shown how one or another of its modes is the main directing principle
in the various sciences; in fact, it may that the most appropriate division
of the sciences can be made in these terms. As already stated, however,
every explanation given according to that directing principle is always
only relative: it explains things with reference to i one another but always
leaves Something unexplained, which is just what they presuppose. In
mathematics, for example, this is space and time; in mechanics, physics,
and chemistry it is matter, qualities, original forces, naturallaws; in
botany and zoology it is the diversity of species and life itself; in history
it is the human race with all its peculiarities of thinking and willing; in
all of these it is the Principle of Sufficient Ground, in whichever of its
modes is to be applied in each case.
Philosophy has its own special character in that it presupposes
absolutely nothing as known,ii but everything is in equal measure for-
eign and a problem to it: not only the relations among phenomena, but
even the latter themselves, even the very Principle of Sufficient Ground

trelativ: sie erklärt die Dinge in Beziehung auf einander]

"[bekannt]
 118 First Book. The World as Presentation

to which the other sciences are content to trace everything back,

although nothing is gained for philosophy by this way of tracing things
back, since one member of the series is as foreign to it as another, and
that very kind of interconnection is as much a problem to it as the
things thereby connected, and even as much again after as before the
connection had been revealed. For as stated, just that which the sci-
ences presuppose and lay down as the ground of their explanations and
set as their boundary, is precisely the real problem for philosophy,
which to that extent consequently begins where the sciences leave off.
Proofs cannot be its foundation. For these derive unknown propositions
from ones that are known; but everything is equally unknown and
foreign to philosophy. It can offer no proposition from which it would
in the first place follow that the world with all of its phenomena exists.
Therefore no philosophy can be, as Spinoza wished, derived in a
98 demonstrative manner exfirmis principiis.i Philosophy is also the most
general form of knowledge, whose main principles cannot be conse-
quences of others still more general. The principle of contradiction
merely establishes an agreement among concepts, but does not provide
the concepts themselves. The Principle of Sufficient Ground explains
connections among phenomena, not the latter themselves; thus philos-
ophy cannot set out to find either a causa efficiens or a causa finalii of
the entire world. The present philosophy at least in no way asksfrom
where or for what the world exists, but merely what the world iso The
Why is here subordinated to the What. For it is already part of the
world, since it ari!)es by way of the form pertaining to the latter's phe-
nomenon, the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and has meaning and
validity only to that extent. Tobe sure, one could say that everyone is
without further aid cognizant of What the world is, since he is himself
the subject ofthe cognition to wh ich it is a presentation; and this would
be to that extent true. But that cognizance is perceptual, in concreto. To
reproduce it in abstracto, to elevate successive and variable perception,
and in general all that the broad concept of feeling encompasses, and
merely negatively characterizes as knowledge that is not abstract and
explicit, to elevate it precisely to such a thing, to the level of enduring
knowledge: that is the task of philosophy. It must accordingly be a
statement in abstracto of the essence of the world as a whole, in its
entirety as in all of its parts. So as nonetheless not to lose itself in an
endless multitude of individual judgments, it has to avail itself of

t"from firm principles"]

ii["efficient (effective, affecting) cause," "final (end-oriented) cause"]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 119

abstraetion and eonsider all individual matters in general terms, but also
their differenees as weH in general terms. Thus it will on the one hand
separate and on the other hand unite, in order to deliver, for the sake of
knowledge, any and all ofthe manifold things in the world, incorporated
into a few abstract eoneepts according to their essenee. Through the
eoneepts in whieh it fixes the essenee ofthe world, however, cognizance
has to be taken of the entirely individual as much as of that which is
general, thus cognizance of them both combined in the most exact
manner; therefore, the capaeity for philosophy consists preeisely in that
in which Plato loeated it, in eognizance of the one in the many and of
the many in the one. Philosophy will be, accordingly, a summai of the
most general judgments whose immediate cognitive ground is the
world itself in its totality, without the exc1usion of anything: thus
everything that is to be found within human conseiousness. It will be a 99
complete replication, ii as it were a mirroring, of the world in abstract
concepts, which is only possible by uniting the essentially identical
within one concept and separating out that which is different in another.
Baeon of Verulam already set this task for philosophy when he said: ea
demum vera est philosophia, quae mundi ipsius voces fidelissime reddit,
et veluti dictante mundo conscripta est, et nihil aliud est, quam ejusdem
simulacrum et reflectio. neque addit quidquam de proprio, sed tantum
iterat et resonat (De augm. Seient., Bk. 2, eh. 13).iii We, however, take
this in a more extended sense than Bacon could have conceived at
the time.
The aceord that all aspects and parts of the world have with respect
to one another, just beeause they belong to one whole, must also be
found again in this abstract imageiv of the world. Accordingly, any one
of the judgments within that summa of judgments could to a certain
extent be derived from any other, and of course always mutually so.
But for that, they must in the first place exist and thus be anteeedently

i [Summe]
it Wiederholung]
iii["That and that alone is true philosophy which most faithfully repeats the
pronouncements of the world itself, and is as it were composed from dictation
by the world, and is nothing other than its image and rejlection, and adds noth-
ing of its own, but merely repeats and echoes": Francis Bacon, Baron of
Verulam, De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (On the Diginity and Advance-
ment ofLearning [1623], a revised and expanded version of On the Proficience
and Advancement of Learning Divine and Human [1605]).]
iv [Abbi/ci]
 120 First Book. The World as Presentation

put forth as immediately grounded by cognizance of the world in

concreto: all the more so, given that all immediate grounding is more
sure than that which is mediated. Their mutual harmony, by virtue of
which they in fact co ales ce into the unity of a single thought, and which
originates from the harmony and unity of the perceptual world itself,
which is their common cognitive ground, will therefore not be in the
first instance employed in their grounding, but will only enter in as
additional confirmation of their truth. - This task itself can only be
made perfectly explicit by carrying it out. t

§ 16.
[Praetical Reason Properly and Falsely So-CalleJj
After all of these considerations of reason as a special cognitive
power proper only to human beings, and the accomplishments and
phenomena peculiar to human nature brought about by it, it would now
100 remain for me to say something about reason so far as it directs the
actions of human beings, and so in this respect can be called practical.
But what is to be mentioned here has found its place for the most part
elsewhere, namely, in the Appendix to this work, where it was a ques-
tion of disputiug the existenee of the so-ealled practical reason of Kaut,
which he (of course most conveniently) depicts as the immediate source
of all virtue and as the seat of an absolute (i.e., coming from out of the
blue) ought. i The detailed and thorough refutation of this Kantian
principle of morality I later provided in my Fundamental Problems 0/
Ethics.
I have therefore only to say somewhat more here regarding the
actual influence of reason, in the true sense of the word, on action.
Already at the beginning of our consideration of reason, we noted in a
general way how much human doings differ from those of animals, and
yet that the difference is to be viewed onIy as the consequence of the
presence of abstract concepts in consciousness. The latter's influence
on our entire existence is so thoroughgoing and significant that it puts
us to a certain extent in the same relation to animals as that in which
sighted animals stand to those lacking eyes (certain larvae, worms, and
zoophytes): the latter are cognizant by touch alone of that which is
immediate1y present to them in space, that which is touching them;
sighted animals, to the contrary, are cognizant of a broad circle ofthings
near and far. In just the same way, then, their lack of reason limits

tOn this, see eh. 17 ofthe second volume.

t(d.h. vom Himmel gefallenen) SollJ
 The Object ofExperience and Science 121

animals to perceptual presentations immediately present to them over

time, i.e., to real objects. By virtue of cognizance in abstracto, we by
contrast also encompass, besides the narrow actual present, the entire
past and future as weIl, together with the broad realm of possibility; we
freely survey life in all its aspects, far beyond the present and actual
reality. Thus to a certain extent, reason is in time and for inner cogni-
zance what the eye is in space and for sensory cognizance. But just as
the visibility of objects derives its value and significance only from the
fact that it gives notice of their tangibility, the entire value of abstract
cognizance always lies in its reference to what is perceptually cognized.
Therefore too, natural man always finds much more value in that of
which he is immediately and perceptually cognizant than in abstract 101
concepts, in that which is merely thought: he prefers empirical to logical
cognizance. Of an opposite understanding, however, are those who live
more in words than deeds, who have looked into paper and books more
than into the actual world, and who, at the point of their greatest degen-
eration, become pedants and mongers of the literal. i Only in these terms
is it comprehensible how Leibniz, along with Wolf and all their succes-
sors, following the procedure of Duns Scotus, could go so far wrong as
to describe perceptual cognizance as merely confused abstract cogni-
zance!ii To the honor of Spinoza I must mention that his more accurate
understanding explained all general concepts as having to the contrary
arisen from an obfuscation of that of which one is perceptually
cognizant (Ethics TI, prop. 40, scholium 1).
From that perverse way of thinking has also arisen the fact that, in
mathematics, the evidence that is peculiar to it has been rejected in favor
of granting validity to logical evidence alone; that all non-abstract
cognizance is comprehended under the broad title of "feeling" and
denigrated; fmally, that Kantian ethics has explained the pure good will
(which speaks to one immediately upon cognizance of circumstances
and directs one toward the right and the good in action) as without any
worth or merit, as being mere feeling and emotional upsurge, and would
recognize moral worth only in actions that have proceeded from abstract
maxims. üi

i[Buchstabenmenschen]
ii[On the criticism ofChristian Wolf(f), advaneer ofLeibnizian ideas and ma-
jor representative of the Enlightenment in Germany, see Kant's Critique 01
Pure Reason A441B61-2. "following ... Scotus" added in c.]
IIl[Again, this may be an exaggeration of Kant's actual view, which is
perhaps better put by saying that the "pure good will," at least as Schopenhauer
 122 First Book. The World as Presentation

The survey of life as a whole from all sides, which puts human
beings by virtue of their reason ahead of animals, can also be compared
to a geometrical, colorless, abstract, miniaturized oudine of a person's
path through life. One thereby stands to animals as the navigator -
precisely knowledgeable of his course and position at sea by means of
chart, compass, and quadrant - to the uninformed crew that sees only
waves and the sky. Thus it is worthy of consideration, indeed marvel-
ous, how besides his life in conereto, a person always leads a second in
abstracta as weIl. In the former he is prey to all the turbulence of actual
reality and influence of the present, has to strive, suffer, die like an
animal. His life in abstraeto, however, as it confronts him in rational
reflection, is the still mirroring of the former and of the world in which
102 he lives, is that miniaturized oudine just mentioned. Here in the domain
of restful reflective consideration,i what fully possesses and intensely
moves him there appears cold, colorless, and for the moment foreign to
hirn: here he is mere spectator and ob server. In this withdrawal into
reflection he is like an actor who has played his scene and, until he must
appear again, takes his seat among the spectators, from which he views
with composure whatever might occur, even if it be the preparation of
his own death (in the play), but then again steps forth and acts and
suffers as he must. From this double life there proceeds, so very differ-
ent from the absence of thought in animals, that human composure with
which a person, after antecedent reflective consideration, adecision
made, or cognizance taken of some necessity, cold-bloodedly under-
goes, or carries out, that which is for him the most crucial, often the
most frightful thing: suicide, execution, a duel, life-threatening deeds of
every kind of daring, and anything at all against which his entire animal
nature rebels. Here then one sees to what extent reason masters one's
animal nature and cries out to the man of strength, az8r(pcu)v vv rot
frop! (jerreum eerte tibi eor!): lliad 24, 521. ii Here one can actually say
that reason is expressing itself praetieally. Thus wherever action is
directed by reason, where one's motives are abstract concepts, where
the determining factor is neither perceptual, individual presentations,
nor such momentary impressions as those directing animals, there
praetieal reason shows itself. But that this is entirely different from and
independent of the ethical worth of an action, that acting rationally and

would here describe it, is without any intrinsic, or absolute, "worth or rnerit."]
tder ruhigen Überlegung]
"[''You must have iron courage" (tr. Samue1 Butler)]
 The Object of Experience and Science 123

acting virtuously are two entirely different things, that reason fInds itself
as much in alliance with great malice as with great goodness, and is
what in the first place lends the one as much as the other major effica-
cy, that it is equally ready and serviceable for methodical, consistent
execution of noble as of bad intentions, of shrewd as of unintelligent
maxims - which is just a consequence of its feminine, receptive and
retentive, non-procreativei nature - I have discussed all of tbis in the
Appendix and elucidated it with examples. Here would be the proper
place for what I have said there, but on account of my polemic against
the alleged practical reason of Kant, it had to be put off to the latter 103
point; I therefore refer to in turn from here.
The most complete development of practical reason in the true
and genuine sense of the word, the highest pinnacle to which human
beings can attain through mere use of their reason, and upon which their
difference from animals shows itself most ciearly, is displayed as an
ideal in the Stoic sage. For Stoic ethics is originally and essentially not
a doctrine of virtue at all, but merely instructions for a rationallife, the
goal and purpose of which is happiness through spiritual repose. ii The
virtuous way of life is then found in the course of this as if only per
accidens, as a means, not an end. Therefore, in its entire essence and
point ofview, Stoic ethics is fundamentally different from those ethical
systems immediately urging us toward virtue, such as are the doctrines
of the Vedas, of Plato, of Christianity, and of Kant. The purpose of
Stoic ethics is happiness: rBAD; ,08vowj.tow;ly (virtutes omnesjinem
habere beatitudinem), as it says in Stobaeus's depiction of the Stoa
(Ecl., Bk. H, 7, p. 114; and likewise, p. 138).iii However, Stoic ethics
demonstrates 68 that happiness can be found with assurance only in
inner peace and repose ofthe spirit (a-rapaqla),iv and this in turn to be
achieved only through virtue: precisely this alone is the meaning of
the saying that virtue is the highest good. But of course when the end
gets gradually forgotten for the means and, too explicitly contradicting
it, virtue gets recommended in a manner betraying an interest

i[nicht selbst erzeugende]

ii[Glück durch Geistesruhe; Glück will also be translated "fortune," as the
opposite of"misfortune."]
"'[telos to eudaimonein ("All the virtues have happiness as their end"):
Eclogae (Eclogues). Hübscher and Deussen correct the reference to 11, 6, and
cite pp. 33 and 40, respectively, in the edition of August Meineke (1855- );
Schopenhauer' s citation is from the 1792 edition of Arnold Heeren.]
iv[ataraxia J
 124 First Book. The World as Presentation

entirely different from one's own happiness, then we have one ofthose
inconsistencies whereby, in every system, that of which one is
immediately cognizant, or as one says, a felt truth, is redirected upon
the right path by dint of forced inferences, as one distinctly sees for
example in Spinoza's Ethics, which, by way of blatant sophisms,
derives a pure doctrine ofvirtue from the egoistic suum utile quaerere.i
According to what I have gathered to be the spirit of Stoic ethics, its
origin lies in the thought that reason, the great prerogative of human
beings which, mediated by intentional action and its consequences, so
greatly eases life and its burdens, might also be able in an immediate
104 way, i.e., through mere cognizance, to withdraw one at once from the
sorrows and all manner oftorments filling one's life, either entirely or
quite nearly entirely. It is held to be unsuited to the preeminence of
reason that beings who are gifted with it, who through it encompass
and survey an infinitude of things and circumstances, should by the
present and by the incidents contained in the few years of so brief,
fleeting, and uncertain a life, be nonetheless prey to such intense pains,
such great fear and suffering as arise from the tumultuous press of
desire and avoidance, and supposed that proper application of reason
should be able to lift a person up out of all that, to render hirn
invulnerable. Therefore, stated Antisthenes: Lid xr/ia/)al vovv fi
ßpdzov (aut mentem parandam, aut laqueum. Plutarch, De stoic.
Repugn., ch. 14),ii i.e., life is so full ofplagues and annoyances that one
has either to rise above it with the help of straightened thinking, or
else leave it. One saw that deprivation, suffering, did not proceed
immediately and necessarily from not possessing something, but only
from wanting to possess and yet not possessing, thus that wanting to
possess is the necessary condition under which not possessing some-
thing first becomes deprivation and generates pain. 06 1iSVzCt kV1i1/v
8pydr;sral, a.V"a 81il.9vj.da (non paupertas dolorem ejjicit, sed cupidi-
tas): Epictetus, fragm. 25.iii In addition, one recognized from experi-
ence that it is only hope, only demand that gives birth to and nourishes

tOto seek one's own advantage": Ethics IV, proposition 20]

ii["either get yourselfunderstanding, or a noose": De stoicorum repugnantiis
(On the Contradictions 0/ the Stoics). The whole sentenee added in B with the
Latin, as usual, added in c.]
lii["It is not poverty that eauses pain, but desire": Epietetus, Fragments
(materials colleeted by three aneient authors, inc1uding Stobaeus); quotation
addedin C]
 The Object of Experience and Science 125

desire, thus that neither the many ills that are common to all and
unavoidable, nor unachievable goods, disturb and plague us, but only
the insignificant More and Less of the humanly avoidable and achieva-
ble, indeed that not only the absolutely but even the relatively unachiev-
able or unavoidable leaves us entirely at rest. Therefore, the ills that are
given from the start with our individuality, or the goods it must neces-
sarily forsake, are regarded with indifference, and in consequence of
this peculiarly human characteristic, every desire is extinguished and
thus can no longer generate pain just as soon as there is no hope to
nourish it. It resulted from all this that all happiness rests only on the
relation between our demands and that which we obtain - how great 105
or small the two magnitudes of the relation are is a matter of
indifference, and the relation can be produced equally by diminishing
the first magnitude as by increasing the second - and just for that
reason all suffering really proceeds from a lack of proportion between
what we demand or expect and what will come to be for uso The lack
of proportion obviously lies, however, only in that of which one is
cognizantt and could be completely eliminated with greater insight.
Therefore, stated Chryssipus: &f t;ijv xaT' &p,7(SlplaV TWV rpvaSI
CTVp,ßatVOVTOJV (Stobaeus, Ecl., Bk. II, 7, p. 134),i i.e., one ought to live
with a proper cognizance of the ways of things of the world. For as
soon as a person in any way loses his composure, is struck to the
ground by amisfortune, or becomes enflamed with anger, or gives up
hope, he precisely thereby shows that he is finding things to be other
than as he expected them, consequently that he had been caught up in
error, was ignorant of the world and of life, did not know that, just as
inanimate nature does it by chance, so through opposition of purposes,
or through malice, animate nature thwarts the will of the individual at
every step. Thus he has either not used his reason to arrive at a general
knowledge of this characteristic of life, or he lacks the judgment to
recognize in individual cases that which he knows in general terms, and

t Omnes perturbationes judicio censent fieri et opinione ["All disturbance

comes from judgment and opinion"]: Cicero, Tusculan Disputations IV, 6 [as
Hübscher and Deussen note, rather 7]. - TapdarYSI rou,; av[jp05ffovq ou ra
ffpdYlJara, aAAa ra ffspi rwy ffpaYlJdrwy &fYlJara (Perturbant homines non
res ipsae, sed de rebus opiniones ["Men are disturbed not by the things them-
selves, but by opinions regarding things"]: Epictetus, [Enchiridion] V.
l[Reference corrected to Il, 6, by Hübscher and Deussen, citing Meineke,
p. 39. The sentence added in C.]
 126 First Book. The World as Presentation

therefore is taken by surprise by the latter and made to lose his

cornposure. t And so too, every lively pleasure is an error, a delusion,
since no desire once achieved can lastingly satisfy, also because every
pos session and every happiness is only loaned to us for an indefinite
time by chance, and therefore can be demanded back in turn within
the hour. But every pain rests on the disappearance of such a delusion;
106 thus both arise from defective cognizance. Joy and pain thus remain
equally remote from the sage, and nothing that happens disturbs bis
arapa;lCx. i
In accordance with this spirit and purpose of Stoicism, Epictetus
begins from and constantly returns to the fact, as to the core of his wis-
dom, that one ought indeed to give thought to, and distinguish between,
what depends on us and what does not, and then not count on the latter
at all; thereby, one will remain reliably free from all pain, suffering, and
fear. But what depends on us is only our will. And here then occurs a
gradual transition to the doctrine of virtue, it being noted that, just as
happiness and unhappiness are determined by the external world, exist-
ing independently of us, inner contentrnent or discontent with ourselves
proceeds from the will. Subsequently, however, it was asked whether
one should apply the terms bonum and malumii to the former or to the
latter of these pairs. That was really a matter of arbitrary choice and
contributed nothing to the issue. But all the same, the Stoics endlessly
disputed the matter with the Peripatetics and Epicureans,iii amused them-
selves with inappropriate comparison of two utterly incommensurable
magnitudes and the ensuing opposition of paradoxical pronouncements
that they hurled at one another. We are offered an interesting compen-
dium ofthe latter, from the Stoic side, in the Paradoxa ofCicero. 69
Zeno, the founder, seems originally to have taken a somewhat
different path. His point of departure was this: to attain the ltighest

t rou'W rap sail rd al'ilov 'WIe; aV9pm1!Ole; 1!avrwv rmv xaxmv,

rd rae; 1!POArfIf/81e; rae; XOlvae; In? ovvaa8at srpaP/lot;8lv Tale; s1!i
/l8pOVe; (Haec es! causa mortalibus omnium malorum, non posse communes
notiones aptare singularibus ["For this is for men the cause of aB ill, that
they are unable to apply general concepts to particular cases"]). Epict.
Dissert. [Dissertationes (Discourses, as compiled by Arrian)] III, 26 [in more
modem editions: IV, 1,42].
t'unshakeability of spirit"]
T'good" and "bad" (or "evil")]
Ill[Followers of Aristotle and Epicurus, respectively.]
 The Object ofExperience and Science 127

good, i.e., blessednessi through spiritual repose, one must live in

harmony with oneself (O,uOAOyoV,u8vwq sffv· mvro /)' !farz xa9' l!va
AOYOV xal av,urpwvov sffv - Consonanter vivere: hoc est secundum
unam rationem et concordem sibi vivere. Stobaeus, Ecl., Bk. H, 7, p.
132. Similarly: ap&rriv 8za9&mv dvaz l/fvXiiq aVl1qJWvov lavrff 1C&pi
OAOV TOV ßIOV - Virtutem esse animi affectionem secum per totam
vitam consentientem, ibid., p. 104)Y However, this was possible only
by way of altogether rational self-determination, according to concepts,
not according to changing impressions and moods. But since only the
maxims for our actions, not success or external cireumstanees, are in
our power, one had to adopt, in order always to be able to maintain 107
eonsisteney, only the former and not the latter as one's purpose;
thereby, the doetrine ofvirtue is again brought in.
But Zeno's immediate followers already seemed to find his prinei-
pIe of morality, harmonious living, too formal and empty of eontent.
They thus gave it material eontent by way of an addendum - "living in
harmony with nature" (0I10AOYOVI18vWq Tff rpva&l sffv), whieh, as
Stobaeus (loc. eit.) reports, was first added by Cleanthes - and foreed
the issue rather far afield on aeeount of the large sphere of that eoneept
and the indefiniteness ofthe expression. For Cleanthes meant the whole
of nature in general, but Chrysippus meant human nature in partieular
(Diogenes Laertius 7, 89).iii After this, that which is suited to the latter
alone was supposed to be virtue, eomparable to the satisfaction of
anima! drives in the case of anima! natures, and we are onee again,
eome what may, foreibly diverted toward a doetrine of virtue, ethics
supposedly grounded by physics. For the Stoies were everywhere in
pursuit of unity of prineiple; God and the world, after all, were not in
any way two things for them.
Stoic ethies, taken on the whole, is in fact a most estimable and
admirable attempt to employ the great prerogative of human beings,
reason, for an important and salutaryiV purpose, namely, through the

t Glückseligkeit]
itRespectively, "To live in accord, that is, to live in accordance with one and
the same principle and in harmony with onese1f'; "Virtue consists in the soul's
harmony with itself during the whole of one's lifetime." Hübscher and Deussen
correct the reference to II, 6, and cite pp. 39 and 30, respectively, in the
Meineke edition. The second citation was added by Schopenhauer in C.]
iitLives ofEminent Philosophers]
iV[heilbringenden. The term, which might also be translated as "redemptive"
(as Heil might also be, in the same contexts, "salvation") is presumably
 128 First Book. The World as Presentation

following instruction, to lift them up out of the sufferings and pains to

which every life is subject -
Qua ratione queas traducere leniter aevum:
Ne te semper inops agitet vexetque cupido,
Ne pavor et rerum mediocriter utilium spes. i -
and precisely thereby render one in the highest degree a participant in
that dignity due one as a rational being as opposed to an animal: a
dignity ofwhich one can of course speak in this respect, but none other.
This view that I hold of Stoic ethics has required that it be
mentioned here, in connection with my account of what reason is and is
able to accomplish. But however much its purpose is to a certain extent
achievable through the employment of reason and through a purely
rational ethics - as experience in fact shows that those purely rational
characters commonly called practicaJ philosophers (and rightly so, since
108 real, i.e., theoretical, philosophers translate life into concepts, while they
translate concepts into life) are surely the happiest - it is nonetheless
very far from the case that anything perfect could be brought about in
this way, and that a rightly employed reason could actually withdraw us
from all of the burden and all the sufferings of life and lead us to astate
of blessedness. ii There is, to the contrary, a perfect contradiction in the
idea of wanting to live without suffering, a contradiction therefore also
carried by the often employed expression seliges Leben;iiI this will
certainly be evident to anyone who will have comprehended my account
all the way to the end in what follows. This contradiction in the ethics
of pure reason is indeed also revealed by the fact that the Stoic is
compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide into his instructions
for a blessed life (for thus his ethics always remains) - as when amidst
the splendid jewels and accoutrements of oriental despots one finds a
precious vial of poison as weIl, namely, for the case where bodily
suffering (something that cannot be philosophized away by means of

intended as a bridge to Schopenhauer's reference to Christ as the Heiland (savior)

of Christianity, and to his saintliness or holiness (Heiligkeit) in the final
sentence ofBook One.]
t'By which reason may you be able to pass your life gently: Ever needy,
may desire never disturb and vex you, nor fear and hope for things of little
use": Horace, Epistles T, 18,97.]
it Glückseligkeit]
Ill["blessed" or "happy" life 1
 The Object ofExperience and Science 129

propositions and inferences) is overwhelming and unsalvablei - and so

his single goal ofblessedness is after all frustrated, and nothing remains
for escape from suffering but death, which is then to be taken with
indifference like any other medicine. Here a stark contrast is made
evident between Stoic ethies and all the others mentioned above, whieh,
even given the harshest sufferings, make an immediate goal of virtue in
itself and would not have it that life be ended to escape suffering.
However, not one of all of them has been able to pronounce the true
reason for the rejeetion of suieide, but they laboriously seek out all
manner of pseudo-reasons; that reason will emerge in the context of OUf
considerations in the fourth Book. But the above contrast reveals and
confirms precisely the essential differenee in fundamental principles
between Stoicism, which is really only a particular form of eudemonism,
and the other doctrines mentioned, even if they all frequently coincide
and have a seeming affinity in their results. But the above-mentioned
inner contradiction, infecting Stoic ethics even in its fundamental idea,
further shows itself by the fact that, in the very depiction of its ideal of
the Stoic sage, it could never eome alive or achieve any inner poetic 109
truth. He remains rather a wooden, stiff stiek-figure that can mean
nothing to someone who does not already know where he is to go with
his wisdom, a figure whose perfeet repose, eontentment, blessedness
straightforwardly contradict the essenee of humanity and cannot help
present it to us perceptually. Alongside of that, how differently appear
the overeomers of the world and the voluntary penitents put forth and
actually produced by the wisdom of lndia, or indeed the savioti of
Christianity, that superb figure full of profound life, of the greatest
poetic truth, and the highest significance, who yet with eonsummate
virtue, saintliness,iii and sublimity, stands before us in astate of the
highest suffering. t

i[unheilbar]
ilHeiland]
iilHeiligkeit]
tOn this, see eh. 16 ofthe second volume.
This page intentionally left blank
 SECOND BOOK 111

The W orld as Will

First Consideration
THE OBJECTIFICATION OF WILL
Nos habitat, non tartara, sed nec sider coeli:
Spiritus, in nobis qui viget, illa facit. i

§ I7. 113
[ne Inner Meaning oJ Presentations - Not an Objeet-
Tbe Demand Not Satisfied by Seienee - Mysterious Cbaraeter oJ
Natural Forces]
We considered presentation in the fIrst Book only as such, thus
only with respect to its general form. To be sure, with regard to abstract
presentations, concepts, we also got to know their content, namely,
insofar as they have all of their content and meaning only through their
relation to perceptual presentation, without which they would be value-
less and empty. Thus directed entirely to perceptual presentation, we
will demand to know its content as weH, its fIner determinations, and the
structuresii that it brings before uso It will be of particular importance to
us to gain insightiii into its real meaning, into that otherwise mere1y feit

i["US it inhabits, not the nether world, nor the stars in heaven: the spirit,
livng within us, does these things": as Hübscher notes, from Heinrich Corne1ius
Agrippa von Nettesheim, Epistles, Opera Omnia V, 14, drawn (as indicated
by Schopenhauer in manuscript notes), from Johann Beaumont, Historisch-
Physiologisch und Theologischer Tractat Von Geistern, Erscheinungen, Hex-
ereien und andern Zauber-Händel (Historico-Physiological and Theological
Treatise on Spirits, Phenomena, Witchcraft and other Sorceries [1721]). In A,
the motto was instead the following from Goethe's Faust 1,382-385 (''Night''):
"[Devoted myself to magie,] That I may leam [erkenne] what holds the world
together in its innermost being, view all ofits working force [Wirkenskraft] and
seeds, and no longer monger words [nicht mehr in Worten kramen]."
~i[ Gestalten]
II1[Alfftch/uss; "insight" will also translate Einsicht.]

131
 132 Second Book. The World as Will

meaning by virtue of which these images do not, as would otherwise be

the case, pass before us utterly foreign and mute, but rather speak to us
in an immediate way, get understood by us, and acquire an interest that
lays claim to our entire essence.
We turn our eye to mathematics, natural science, and philosophy,
each ofwhich we hope might give us apart ofthe desired insight. - But
we find philosophy to be, first of all, a monster with many heads, each
of which speaks a different language. Regarding the point raised here,
to be sure, the meaning of that perceptual presentation, they are not
entirely at odds with one another. For, with the exception of skeptics
114 and idealists, the others speak for the most part in considerable agree-
ment about an object that would be the ground of presentation and that,
albeit in its entire being and essence distinct from presentation, would
yet be in all respects as like it as one egg to another. We get no help
from that. For we have no idea at all how to distinguish such an object
from a presentation, but find that they are one and the same thing, since
all objects always and eternally presuppose a subject and are therefore
still presentations; that is why we have recognized being-an-object as
belonging to presentation's most general form, which is precisely that
of division into object and subject. In addition, the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, to which one appeals in this case, can be for us likewise only a
form belonging to presentation, namely, for the interconnection of pre-
sentations in accordance with laws, but not for connection of the whole
finite or infmite series of presentations with what would not be a presen-
tation at all, and so not at all able to be presented to uso - I spoke of the
skeptics and idealists above, in my exposition of the dispute regarding
the reality of the external world.
If we then look to mathematics for the desired closer acquaintance
with those perceptual presentations which, with respect to their mere
form, we have only gotten to know in an entirely general way, it will
speak to us of those presentations only so far as they fill time and space,
i.e., so far as they are magnitudes. It will state the How Many and How
Much with great exactness. But since this is always only relative, i.e., a
comparison of one presentation with others, and indeed only with that
one-sided concern for magnitude, neither will this be the disclosure that
we are above all seeking.
If we look finally to the broad domain of natural science, with its
partition into several fields, we can begin by distinguishing two main
divisions. lt is either description of structures, which I call morphology,
or explanation of alterations, which I call etiology. The first considers
the enduring forms, the second the variable matter with respect to the
laws that govern its passage from one form into another. The first is that
 The Objectification of Will 133

which, although not properly speaking, one calls natural history, taken 115
in the entirety of its extent: particularly as botany and zoology, it
acquaints us with the various organic, and thereby fmnly determined,
structures that endure through the ceaseless variation of individuals,
which constitute a major part of the content of perceptual presentation;
these are c1assified, separated, united by it, ordered according to natural
and constructed systems, brought under concepts, which makes it pos-
sible to survey and take cognizance ofthem all. In addition, an infinitely
nuanced analogy of structures is demonstrated, pervading the whole
and its parts (uniüi de plan),i by virtue ofwhich they resemble the most
manifold variations on a tacit theme. The passage of matter into those
structures, i.e., the coming into being of individuals, is not a major part
of the consideration, since every individual proceeds through procreation
out of that which is like it, which, everywhere equally mysterious, so far
eludes distinct cognizance; but what little is known of it finds its place
in physiology, which pertains to the etiological side ofnatural science.
Tending in the latter direction is also mineralogy, which for the most
part concerns morphology, particularly when it takes the form of
geology. Etiology proper, then, is all the branches ofnatural science for
which cognizance of causes and effects is everywhere the main concern:
these tell us how, upon one state ofmatter, a particular other one neces-
sarily follows according to an infallible rule, how a particular alteration
necessarily conditions and brings forth a particular other one; the
demonstration of this is called explanation. Here then we find for the
most part mechanics, physics, chemistry, physiology.
When we devote ourselves to its instruction, however, we are soon
made aware that the disclosure we are above all seeking is as little
imparted to us by etiology as by morphology. The latter introduces us
to countless structures, infinitely manifold and yet with an affinity by
way of an unmistakable family resemblance, presentations that, on this
path, remain etemally foreign to us and, when merely regarded in this
way, confront us like unintelligible hieroglyphs. By contrast, etiology
teaches us that, in accordance with the law of cause and effect, this
particular state of matter brings forth that other one, and with that it has 116
explained the latter and done its job. It has nevertheless fundamentally
done nothing beyond establishing the lawful order in accordance with

i["unity of plan" (added in B). There was a prominent debate in the 1830s
between a proponent of the idea in question, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
(1772-1844), and his colleague at the Paris Museum ofNatural History, Georges
Cuvier (1769-1832).]
 134 Second Book. The World as Will

which states occur in space and time, and for every case teaching us
what phenomenon has necessarily to occur at this time, in this place. It
thus determines the position of states in time and space in accordance
with a law whose particular content experience has taught us, but of the
general form and necessity of which we are independently conscious.
In this way, however, we do not obtain the least insight regarding the
inner essence of any of those phenomena: the latter is called a natural
force and lies outside the domain of etiological explanation, which uses
the term natural law for the immutable constancy with which the
expressions of such a force occur whenever the familiar conditions are
present. This naturallaw, these conditions, this occurrence with respect
to a particular place at a particular time, however, are all that it knows
and can ever know. The very force that is expressing itself, the inner
essence of the phenomena that occur in accordance with those laws,
remains etemally mysterious to it, something entirely foreign and
unknown, just as much in the case of the simplest as in that of the most
complicated phenomenon. For while etiology has so far achieved its
purpose most completely in mechanics, least completely in physiology,
nonetheless the force by virtue of which a stone falls to the earth or a
body repels another is, in its inner essence, no less foreign and mys te-
rious to us than that which produces the movements and growth of an
animal. Mechanics presupposes matter, gravity, impenetrability, commu-
nicability of motion by impact, rigidity, etc., as unfathomable, calls
them natural forces, their necessary and regular appearance under certain
conditions naturallaws, and only thereafter does it begin its explanation,
which consists in providing a faithful and mathematically exact statement
as to how, where, when each force expresses itself, and tracing every
phenomenon that it encounters back to one of those forces. Physics,
chemistry, physiology do just the same in their domains, except that
they presuppose much more besides and accomplish less. Consequently,
even the most complete etiological explanation of the whole of nature
117 would really never be more than a catalogue of inexplicable forces and
a sure statement of the rules according to which their phenomena occur
in time and space, succeed one another, make way for one another. But
since the law that it follows does not take it there, it must leave
constantly unexplained the inner essence of the forces thus making
their appearance and remain with that appearance and its order. To that
extent, it would be comparable to a section of a block of marble that
displays a multitude of veins alongside one another but does not afford
cognizance of the course of those veins from the interior of the marble
to the surface. Or if, because it is more striking, I may allow myself
a humorous camparison: with a completed etiology ofthe entirety of
 The Objectification of Will 135

nature, the frame of mind of the philosophical inquirer would always

have to be like that of a person who, without at all knowing how, had
happened into entirely unfamiliar company, the members of which
were always successively presented as the friend or cousin of some
other, and in this way as sufficiently made known to one, but who in
the meantime, giving assurance in each case of his pleasure at making
the acquaintance, would himself have the question constantly on the
tip of his tongue: "But what the devil do I have to do with all of this
company?"
So etiology too cannot ever provide us with the desired insight into
those phenomena with which we are only acquainted as presentations
to us/ so as to lead us beyond those phenomena. For after all its expla-
nations, they still confront us as mere presentations whose meaning we
do not understand, uttedy foreign to uso Causally connecting them merely
provides us with the rule and relative order of their occurrence in space
and time, but does not tell us how better to know what is thus occurring.
In addition, the law of causality itself is valid only for presentations, for
objects of a particular class, under whose presupposition alone it has
any meaning. Thus, like these objects themselves, it exists only in rela-
tion to the subject, thus only in a conditioned manner, which is why we
are just as cognizant of it when we proceed from the subject, i.e., a
priori, as when we proceed from the object, i.e., aposteriori, precisely
as Kant has taught uso
What is now iInpelling us to inquire, however, is precisely that it
does not satis:fy us to know that we have presentations, that they are such
and such, and that they are interconnected in accordance with these or
those laws whose general expression is in every case the Principle of 118
Sufficient Ground. We want to know the meaning ofthose presentations:
we are asking whether this world is nothing more than presentation - in
which case it would have to be passing before us like a dream with no
essence, or a ghostly vision, unworthy of our regard - or whether it is
something else besides, something else beyond that, and what it might
then be. This much is certain at once: that this something after which
we are asking must be utterly and in its entire essence fundamentally
distinct from presentations, to which even the latter's forms and their
laws must thus be utterly foreign; thus we cannot attain to it starting
from presentation, under the direction oflaws that only connect objects,
presentations, with one another. Such are the modes of the Principle of
Sufficient Ground. I

tals unsere Vorstellungen]

 136 Second Book. The World as Will

We already see here that the essence of things can never be

approached from outside: however much we may examine things, we
gain nothing but images and names. We are like someone cireling a
castle, vainly seeking an entrance and occasionally sketching the
facades. And yet this is the path that all philosophers before me have
walked.

§ 18.
[ne Body Given in Two very Dijftrent Manners-
Immediate Experience oj the Body as Will -
An Entirely Unique Sort oj Cognizance]
lt would in fact never be possible to find the meaning after which
lamasking, that of the world with which I am confronted onIy as a
pn::sentation to me/ or to find passage from the latter to whatever it may
be beyond being mere presentation to the cognizant subject, were the
inquirer himselfnothing more than the purely cognizant subject (winged
head of a bodiless cherub). But he is himself rooted in that world, finds
himself in it, namely, as an individual, i.e., his cognition, which is the
conditioning bearer of the entire world as presentation, is nonetheless
altogether mediated by a body whose affections are, as has been shown,
the understanding's point of departure for perception ofthat world. This
body is to the purely cognizant subject as such a presentation like any
other, an object among objects. lts movements, its actions, are to that
extent known no differently to it than the alterations of all other percep-
119 tual objects, and would be just as foreign and unintelligible to it if its
meaning were not unriddled for it in an entirely different way. Other-
wise, it would see its actions ensuing in response to given motives with
the constancy of a natural law, just like the alterations of other objects
in response to causes, stimuli, motives. But it would have no eloser
understanding of the influence of those motives than of the causal
connection of any other effect that makes its appearance. It would then
equally weIl call the inner and, to it, unintelligible essence of its bodily
expressions and actions a force, a quality, or a character, as it pleases,
but beyond that would have no insight into it. But none of this is how it
is: rather, the answer to the riddle is given to the subject of cognition in
its appearance as an individual; and the answer is will. This and this
alone provides it with the key to the particular phenomenon that it iS,ii

i[lediglich als meine Vorstellung]

ii[zU seiner eigenen Erscheinung]
 The Objectitication of Will 137

reveals the meaning, shows it the inner workingsi of its essence, its
actions, its movements. To the subjeet of eognition, whieh appears as
an individualii through its identity with the body, this body is given in
two entirely distinet manners: on the one hand as presentation in pereep-
tion by way ofunderstanding, as an object among objects and subject to
their laws, but then at the same time also in an entirely different manner,
namely, as that, immediately familiar to everyone, which the word will
designates. Every true2 aet of its will is at onee and inevitably also a
movement of its body: it cannot actually will an act without at the same
time pereeivingiii that it makes its appearance as a movement of the
body. The act of will and action of the body are not two distinct
objeetively eognized states that are connected by the bond of causality,
do not stand in the relation of cause and effect, but they are rather one
and the same, only given in two entirely distinct manners: onee quite
immediately and onee in perceptioniv for the understanding. Aetions of
the body are nothing other than objectified acts ofwill, Le., aets ofwill
insofar as they have entered into pereeption. Further on it will be seen
that this applies to every movement of the body, not merely to those in
response to motives but even to involuntary3 movements ensuing in
response to mere stimuli, indeed that the entire body is nothing other
than objectified will, i.e., will that has beeome presentation; this is all 120
to be brought out and made explieit in what follows. Therefore the body,
which was called the immediate object aeeording to the deliberately
one-sided standpoint (that of presentation) adopted in the previous
Book and in the treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Ground, I will
call here in a different respect the objectivizationv ofwill. And in a
certain sense one can therefore even say: will is cognizance apriori of
the body, and the body is cognizance aposteriori ofwill.
Resolutions of the will that refer to the future are mere refleetive
considerations on the part of reasonvi regarding something to be willed
at some point, not rearii aets of will: only the exeeution seals the
deeision, whieh until then is always an alterable intention and only
exists within the faculty of reason, in abstracto. Willing and doing are

i[das innere Betriebe]

ii[als Individuum auftritt]
111 [ wahrzunehmen]

iv[Anschauung]
V[ Objektität]
Vi[Überlegungen der Vernunft]
vii[eigentliche]
 138 Second Book. The World as Will

only distinet in refleetion;i in aetual reality they are one. Every true,
genuine, immediate aet of will is also at onee and immediately an act of
the body as phenomenon/i and correspondingly, on the other hand,
every effect on the body is also at once and immediately an effect on
the wilt;4 as such it is ealled pain when it is contrary to the will, a good
feeling, pleasure,iii when it is in aeeord with it. The gradations of both
are most diverse. It would be entire1y wrong, however, to call pain and
pleasure presentations. This they are not in any way, but rather imme-
diate affections of the will in the body that is its phenomenon: compelled
momentary willing of, or willing against, the impression that the body
is undergoing. To be straightforwardly eonsidered mere presentations,
and thus to be exeepted from what has just been said, are only a certain
few impressions on the body that do not arouse the will, and through
whieh alone the body is an immediate object of eognition; tor as a
perception within the understanding, the body is of course an indirectiV
objeet like all others. What I have in mind here, namely, are affections
of the purely objective senses of sight, hearing, and touch, albeit only
so far as these organs are affected in their particularly characteristic,
specific, natural manner, which is so extremely weak an arousal of
these parts' heightened and speeifically modified sensibility that it
does not affect the will but, in the absence of disturbing arousal, only
121 provides the understanding with data from which pereeption is made.
But every stronger or any other sort of affection of those instruments of
sense is painful, i.e., eontrary to the will to whose objeetivization they
too therefore belong.
Enfeeblement of the nerves expresses itself in the fact that impres-
sions that should merely have the degree of strength sufficient to make
them data for the understanding reach that higher degree at which they
move the will, i.e., excite pain or pleasurable feeling, although more
often pain, which is sometimes dulI and indistinct, however, thus
allowing not only individual tones and strong light to be sensed with
pain, but also occasioning a general hypochondriacal malaise of which
one is not distinctly cognizant. - The identity of body and will further
shows itself in the fact, among other things, that every intense and
excessive movement ofthe will, i.e., every emotion,V quite immediately

i[Reflexion]
ii [erscheinender Akt des Leibes]
iii[ Wohlbehagen, Wollust]
iV[mittelbares Objekt]
V[Affekt]
 The Objectification of Will 139

reverberates through the body and its inner workings and disturbs the
course of its vital functions. This can be found specifically elaborated
in Will in Nature, p. 27 ofthe second edition. i
Finally, the cognizance that I have of my will, although it is
immediate, is still inseparable from that of my body. I am cognizant of
my will not as a whole, not as a unity, not completely with respect to its
essence, but rather, I am cognizant of it only in its individual acts, thus
within time, which is the form pertaining to the phenomenon of my
body as to that of any object; therefore, the body is a condition of cogni-
zance of my will. Apart from my body, accordingly, I cannot really
present this will to myself. ii To be sure, in the treatise on the Principle
of Sufficient Ground the will, or rather the subject of willing, is put
forth as a particular class of presentations or objects; but there we of
course saw this object coinciding with the subject, Le., precisely
ceasing to be an object. There we called this coincidence the miracle
xaT' i;oXrfv: iii To a certain extent, the entire present work is an expla-
nation of this.
So far as I am truly cognizant of my will as object, I am cognizant
of it as body. But then I am back to the first dass of presentations set
forth in the treatise in question, i.e., to real objects. We will see more 122
and more as we proceed that insight regarding the first dass of presenta-
tions, the unriddling of them, is to be found precisely only in the fourth
dass there set forth, which would really no longer confront the subject
as an object, and that, corresponding to this fact, it is [rom the law of
motivation holding sway over the fourth dass that we have had to come
to understand the inner essence of the law of causality that applies in
the first class, and of that which happens in accord with it.
The identity of will and body just depicted in a preliminary way
can only be demonstrated as it has been here, and indeed for the first
time, and as it will be more and more as we proceed, i.e., on the basis
of immediate consciousness, on the basis of cognizance in concreto that
has been elevated to knowledge on the part of reason, or carried over
into cognizance in abstracto. By its very nature, by contrast, it can
never be proven, i.e., derived as mediatediv cognizance on the basis of
some other more immediate, precisely because it is itself the most
immediate, and if we do not apprehend and retain it as such, we will

'[Hübscher, vol. 4, pp. 319-20; pp. 42-3 in Payne (tr.), ed. Cartwright.]
ll[Diesen Willen ... eigentlich nicht vorstellen]
iii[kat' exochen ("in the fullest sense," "par excellence")]
iv[mittelbare]
 140 Second Book. The World as Will

seek in vain ever to regain it in a mediated way, as derivative cogni-

zance. This is an entirely unique sort of cognizance, whose truth can
just for that reason not ever really be brought under any of the four
rubrics into which 1 divided all truth in the treatise on the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, §§ 29jJ, namely, logical, empirical, transcendental,
and metalogical truth. For it is not, like all the latter, reference of an
abstract presentation to another presentation, nor to the necessary forms
belonging to intuitive or abstract presentational activity/ but rather, it is
reference of a judgment to the relationii that a perceptual presentation,
the body, has to that which is not a presentation at all, but something
toto genere distinctiii from the latter: will. I would therefore like to
signal this truth above all others and call it philosophical truth xa,,'
il;oxr/v: One can express it in various ways, saying "My body and my
will are one," or "That which I call my body as a perceptual presenta-
tion, I call my will so far as I am conscious of it in an entirely distinct
manner, comparable to no other," or "My body is the objectivization of
123 my will," or "Apart from the fact that my body is a presentation to me,
it is still only my will." And so on. t

§I 9.
[Extension oJ tbis TwoJold View to the World as a Wbole]
If in the first Book, with inner resistance, we described our own
body, as we did all other objects of the perceptual world, merely as
presentation to the cognizant subject, what has now been made explicit
for us is what in everyone's consciousness distinguishes the presentation
of one' s own body from all others, otherwise entirely similar to it,
namely, that the body is also found within consciousness in an entirely
different, toto genere distinct way, which we designate by the word
will, and that it is just this double cognizance that we have of our own
body - regarding it itself, regarding its effectuality and movement in
response 10 motives, as also regarding its suffering by way of external
affection, in a word, regarding that which it is not as presentation, but
beyond this, thus in itself - that gives us the immediate insight that we
do not have with regard to the essence, effectuality, and suffering of any
other real object.

ldie notwendige Form des intuitiven, oder des abstrakten Vorstellens]

itBeziehung eines Urteils aufdas Verhältnis]
iit"wholly different in kind"]
tOn this, see eh. 18 ofthe seeond volume.
 The Objectification of Will 141

The cognizant subject is an individual precisely through this special

relationi to the one body that, considered apart from this relation, is only
a presentation to it like all others. But the relation by virtue of which the
cognizant subject is an individual is just for that reason on1y between it
and a single one among all the presentations to it. Therefore, it is only
of this single one that it is conscious not merely as a presentation, but at
the same time in an entirely different way, namely, as a will. But since
abstracting from that special relation - from that twofold and entirely
heterogeneous cognizance of one and the same thing - that one thing,
the body, is then a presentation like all others, the cognizant individ-
ual must, to make sense of this fact, either assume that the distinguishing
feature of that one presentation merely lies in the fact that it is only to
that one presentation that his cognizance stands in this double relation,
that it is only into this one perceptual object that insight is available 124
in two ways at once, but that this is not to be explained by a difference
between this object and all others, but rather only by a difference between
the relationship of his cognizance to this one object and all others; or
else he must assume that this one object is in its essence distinct from
all others, is entirely alone among all of them will and presentation at
the same time, with the rest to the contrary mere presentations, i.e.,
mere phantoms, thus his body is the single actual individual in the
world, Le., the single phenomenon ofwill and the subject's single im-
mediate objectY
That other objects, considered as mere presentations, are like his
body, i.e., that like it they fill space (itself able to exist only as presen-
tation), and like it too they are effectual in space, this is to be sure
demonstrably certain on the basis of the law of causality, assured a
priori for presentations, which allows of no effect without a cause. But
apart from the fact that only some cause or other can be inferred from
an effect, and not a cause that is similar to it, we still remain here
within the domain of mere presentation, to which alone the law of
causality applies and beyond which it can never lead. Sut whether the
objects familiar to the individual only as presentations are nonetheless,
like his own body, phenomena of a will, this is, as already pronounced
in the previous Book, the real meaning of the question regarding the
reality of the external world: its denial is the meaning of theoretical
egoism, which precisely by this fact takes all phenomena, beyond the

i[Beziehung is "relation" throughout this paragraph; but "relationship" at the

end is Verhältnis.]
iirdas einzige umittelbare Objekt des Subjekts]
 142 Second Book. The World as Will

individual that one iS,i as phantoms, just as practical egoism does exactly
the same in a practical respect, namely, views and treats only one's
own person as an actual person, but all others as mere phantoms.
Theoretical egoism can to be sure never be refuted by proofs; nonethe-
less, it has certainly never been used in philosophy except as a skeptical
sophism, i.e., for show. As a serious conviction, on the other hand, it
could be found only in a madhouse; as such, what is then needed in
response to it is not so much a proof as a eure. Therefore, we will in
this respect have nothing more to do with it, but will regard it as only
the last bastion of skepticism, which is always polemical. If, then,
125 constantly bound to individuality and just in that respect limited -
which limitation is just what really generates the need for philosophy -
it is thus a necessary feature of our cognizance that everyone can only
be one thing but can on the other hand be cognizant of all others, then
we who are just for that reason striving to broaden the limits of our
cognizance through philosophy may view the skeptical argument of
theoretical egoism that is here opposed to us as a minor border fortress
that, to be sure, can never to be forced into submission, but whose
garrison can also never come forth from it; thus it may be bypassed and
left in the rear without danger.
This double cognizance that we have, given to us in two utterly
heterogeneous manners, of the essence and effectuality of our own
bodies, now brought to a level of elevated distinctness, will accordingly
be further employed as a key to the essence of every phenomenon in
nature, and we will assess all objects that are not our own body, thus
are not given in a double manner but only as presentations to OUf
consciousness, precisely by analogy with that body, and therefore
assurne that, just as they are on the one hand, entirely like the body,
presentations, and in this respect of a kind with it, so on the other hand,
setting aside their existence as the subject's presentations, what remains
with respect to their inner essence must be the same as what we call in
our own case will. For what other sort of existence or reality are we to
attribute to the rest of the corporeal world? Where would we get the
elements out of which to compose such a thing? Beyond will and
presentation, nothing at all is known to us or thinkable. If we would
attribute the greatest reality known to us to the corporeal world, which
immediately confronts us only in a presentation to US,ii then we give it
the reality that one's body has for each person; for that is the most real

tausser seinem eigenen individuum]

"[unmittelbar nur in unserer Vorstellung dasteht]
 The Objectification of Will 143

thing to everyone. But when we analyze the reality of this body and its
actions, we meet with nothing in it, beyond its being a presentation to
us/ other than will: with that its very reality is exhausted. We can thus
never find any other sort of reality to attribute to the corporeal world.
So if the corporeal world is to be anything more than merely a presen-
tation to us, then we have to say that, beyond presentation, thus in itself 126
and in its innermost essence, it is that which we [md immediately in
ourselves as will. 5 I say, in its innermost essence. But we have first to
gain a better acquaintance with this essential will,ii so that we will
know how to distinguish it from that which pertains not to it itself, but
to its multi-leveled phenomenon. iii One such level, for example, is that
of its accompaniment by cognizance and its consequent subjection to
determination by motives. As we will see as we proceed, the latter
pertains not to its essence but merely to its most distinctiV phenomenon
as animal and human being. If I were thus to say that the force that
drives a stone to the earth is in its essence, in itself and beyond all
presentation, will, one would not take this proposition to express the
insane opinion that the stone is moved by a cognitive motive because
that is how will makes its appearance in human beings. t - But that
which has so far been set forth in a preliminary and general way, we
would now more thoroughly and explicitly establish, ground, and
develop in its entire compass. t

tunsere Vorstellung]
~tdieses Wesen des Willens]
lIl[viele Grade habenden Erscheinung]
iv [deutlichsten; in C, and in Deussen, simply "distinct" (deutlichen), but
regarded by Hübscher as a typographical error.]
tWe will thus in no way agree with Bacon ofVerulam (de augm. seient. [De
dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (On the Diginity and Advancement of
Learning [1623])], Book 4 infine [conclusion)) in supposing that all mechanical
and physical movements ofbodies first ensue upon antecedent perception in the
bodies in question, even though an intimation of truth in fact generated this
false proposition. [The following added in B:] It is just the same with Kepler's
claim, in his treatise de planeta Martis [On the Planets of Mars (1609)], that
the planets must possess cognizance, in order to strike their elliptical paths so
accurately and to measure the speed of their movement so that triangles swept
out in the plane of their path remain constantly proportional to the time taken to
traverse their bases.
tOn this, see eh. 19 of the seeond volume.
 144 Second Book. The World as Will

§ 20.
[Actions Determined by Character plus Motive -
EmpiricaL vs. Intelligible Character - No ULtimate Explanation of the
Latter - Individual Bodies as Individual Wills OhjectifielJ
As the essence in itself of one's own body, as that which this body
is beyond its being an object of perception, a presentation, it has been
stated that will first announces itself in the voluntary movements of this
body, namely, insofar as the latter are nothing other than the visibility
of individual acts of will, with which they occur in immediate and utter
127 simultaneity, as one and the same with them, distinguished from them
only by the form of cognizability into which they have passed, i.e.,
having become presentations.
These acts of will, however, still always have a ground beyond
themselves, in motives. But the latter never determine more than what I
will at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, but not that I
will in the first place nor what I will in the first place, i.e., the maxims
that characterize my willing as a whole. Therefore, my willing cannot
be explained in its entire essence on the basis of motives, but the latter
merely determine its expression at a given point in time, are merely
occasions for my will to show itself. It itself lies, by contrast, outside
the domain of the law of motivation: only its phenomenon at any point
in time is necessarily determined by this law. Only when presupposing
my empirical character is a motive a sufficient ground for explanation
of my action. But if I abstract from my character and then ask why I
will this and not that at all, no answer to the question is possible,
because it is precisely only wi11's phenomenon that is subject to the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, but not will itself, which is to that extent
to be called groundless. Here I am presupposing, on the one hand,
Kant's doctrine of empirical and intelligible character, as also the
relevant expositions in my Fundamental Problems of Ethics, pp. 48-58
and pp. 178ff of the first edition;i on the other hand, we will come to
speak of the matter in more detail in the fourth Book. For now I have
only to draw attention to the fact that one phenomenon's being grounded
by another - thus here the deed by the motive - does not at a11 conflict
with the fact that its essence is in itself will, which itself has no ground,

tpp. 46-57 and 174ff of the second edition. Prom the two parts, respectively,
of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (The Two Fundamental Problems of
Ethics): Prize Essay on the Freedorn of the Will, III (same pagination in
Hübscher, vol. 4, and in the margins of Payne [tr.], ed. Zöller); Prize Essay on
the Foundation ofMorality, § 10, Note. See Kant, A538/B566ff, A549/B577ff.J
 The Objectification of Will 145

while the Principle of Sufficient Ground in all Its modes is merely a

cognitive form, thus its validity extends merely to the presentation, the
phenomenon, the visibility of will, not to the latter itself, to that which
is made visible.
If, then, every action of my body is a phenomenon of an act of
will in which, under given motives, voice is yet again given to my will
itself in general and as a whole, thus to my character, then that action
must also have a phenomenon of will as its inescapable condition and
presupposition. For will cannot makes its appearance in dependence 128
upon something that would not exist immediately and solely through it,
which would hence be only contingent with respect to it; thereby its
appearingi would itself be merely contingent. But that condition Is the
body itself as a whole. The latter itself must thus be a phenomenonii of
will, and must relate to my will as a whole/ i.e., to my intelligible
character, whose temporal phenomenon is my empirical character, just
as individual actions of the body relate to individual acts of will. So the
entire body must be nothing other than my will become visible, must be
my will itself so far as the latter is a perceptual object, a presentation
belonging to the first class. - As confirmation of this, the fact has
already been cited that every effect on my body also at once and imme-
diately affects my will and is in this respect called pain or pleasure, in
a lower degree pleasant or unpleasant sensation, and also that every
intense movement of will, and so emotioniü and passion, reverberates
through the hody and disturhs the course of its functions.
To be sure, even if most incompletely, one might also give an
etiological account of the origination of my body and, somewhat better,
of its development and maintenance, which is just what physiology is;
hut the latter explains its suhject only exact1y as motives explain action.
Thus as little as the grounding of individual action by motives, and the
fact that the former follows necessarily from the latter, conflict with the
fact that action is in general and essentially only the phenomenon of
an itself groundless will,7 so just as Httle does physiological explana-
tion of functions 8 of the body detract from the philosophical truth that
the entire existence of this body and the whole array of its functions
are only objectifications of precisely the will that is making its appear-
ance in accordance with motives in the same body's external actions.
Yet physiology also seeks to reduce precisely these external actions,

tErscheinen]
ii[Erscheinung]
iii[4ffekt]
 146 Second Book. The World as Will

immediately voluntary movements, to causes within the organism, e.g.,

explain the movement of muscles in terms of an influx of fluids ("like
the contraction of a chord that has gotten wet," says Reil in his Archiv
für Physiologie, vol. 6, p. 153).i But even supposing that we have actu-
129 ally arrived at a thorough explanation of this sort, this would still not
nullify the immediately certain truth that every voluntary movement
ifunctiones animales) is a phenomenon of an act of will. Just as little
can physiological explanation of vegetative life (junctiones naturales,
vitales), however far it may extend, ever nullify the truth that the entirety
of the animal li fe thereby in development is in fact a phenomenon of
will. In general, as was discussed above, an etiological explanation can
never provide more than the necessarily determined position in time
and space of an individual phenomenon, its necessary occurrence just
there in accordance with a firm rule; by contrast, the inner essence of
any phenomenon remains ever unfathomable on this path, and is presup-
posed by every etiological explanation and merely designated by the
terms force and naturallaw, or, when actions are in question, character,
will.
Thus while every individual action, presupposing a particular
character, necessarily ensues given the motive in question, and while
growth, the nutritional process, and the totality of alterations within an
animal's body proceed in accordance with necessarily effectual causes
(stimuli), it is nonetheless the case that the entire series of actions,
consequently every individual one as well, and likewise their condition,
the entire body itself that executes them, consequently also the process
through which and within which it subsists, are nothing other than the
will's phenomenon, its coming into visibility, objectivization ofwill.
Upon this rests the complete suitableness of the human and animal
body to human and animal will in general, similar to that which, but
far surpassing it, an intentionally made instrument bears to the will
of its maker, and for this reason appearing as purposiveness, i.e., as
the teleological explicability of the body. The parts ofthe body must

i[Johann Christian Reil, early exponent of the notion of a "life force." The
journal, edited by Reil from 1796 to 1815, was the first dealing with physiology
in Gennany. Volurne 6 appeared in 1805. The article in question, "Über die
verschiedenen Arten (modi) des Vegetationsprozesses in der animalischen
Natur, und die Gesetze, durch welche sie bestimmt werden" ("On the Various
Species (Modi) of the Vegetative Process in Animal Nature, and the Laws by
which they are Detennined"), is cited by Hübscher as appearing anonymously
in the journal.]
 The Objectification ofWill 147

therefore completely correspond to the principal desires through which

the will manifests itself, must be the latter's visible expression: teeth,
gullet, and intestinal tract are objectified hunger; genitals are the
objectified sex drive; grasping hands, dashing feet already correspond
to the more highly mediated striving of the will that they display. Just
as the general human form corresponds to the general human will, so to
individually modified will, to the character of an individual, there corre- 130
sponds the individual corporealization/ which is thus altogether and in
all of its parts full of character and expression. It is most remarkable
that, in the following verses quoted by Aristotle (Metaph. IIl, 5),
Parmenides has already expressed this:
:a~ rap !!xacrroq !X81 xpaO'lv 11eJ.8WV 1fOAvxawerwv,
Toi~ vooq &V8poJ1WICFI 1lap8ar17x8v' rd rap auro
''EaTly, Ö1lfip rpPOViBl, 11818wv rpVO'l~ &V8PoJ1l0l0'l,
Kai 1laO'lV xai 1lavrt'· 'Cd rap 1lA80V sari VOT/l1a.

(Ut enim cuique complexio membrorum flexibilium se habet, ita mens

hominibus adest: idem namque est, quod sapit, membrorum natura
hominibus, et omnibus et omni: quod enim plus est, intelligentia est.) ii,t

§ 21.
[Will as Thing in Itseif.l
Whoever, then, through all these considerations, has also achieved
the cognizance in abstracto, hence distinct1y and surely, of the fact of
which everyone is already immediately cognizant in concreto, i.e., as a
fee.~ing, namely, that the essence in itself of the phenomenon that one
iS,1lI which is displayed to one as a presentation both through one's
actions and through their enduring substratum (one' s body), is one' s will -
which constitutes that which is the most immediate for one's COll-
sciousness but has not, as such, fully entered into the form of

tKorporisation]
"["For as in each ease the mueh-bent limbs are eomposed,l/So is the mind of
men; for in eaeh and all men//'Tis one thing thinks - the substanee of their
limbs://For that ofwhieh there is more is thought": Metaphysics rv [n.b.], 5,
1009b22-5 (tr. W. D. Ross in Barnes [ed.], Complete Worb').]
tOn this, see eh. 20 ofthe seeond volume, as also in my work On the Will in
Nature the ehapters on "Physiology" and "Comparative Anatomy," where that
which is only intimated here has been elaborated in detail.
iitseiner eigenen Erscheinung]
 148 Second Book. The World as Will

presentation in which object and subject stand over against one another,
but rather announces itself in an immediate manner in which subject
and object are not quite9 explicitly distinguished, yet is also not made
known to the individual hirnself as a whole, but only in his individual
acts - whoever, I assert, has won this conviction along with me, to hirn
the latter will, entirely of itself, become the key to cognizance of the
innermost essence of the whole of nature, insofar as one now transfers
131 it as weIl to all those phenomena that are not, as one's own, given in
cognizance both immediate and mediated, but merely in the latter way,
thus merely one-sidedly, only as presentation. Not only in those phenom-
ena that are quite like his own, in human beings and animals, will he
acknowledge that same will as their innermost essence, but further
reHection will lead hirn to recognize as weIl the force that drives and
vegetates in plants, even the force by which crystals form, that turns the
magnet toward the North Pole, that produces a shock when two hetero-
geneous metals are brought into contact, that makes its appearance in
the elective affmities of substancesi as repulsion and attraction, separa-
tion and union, fmally even the gravity that, so mightily striving in all
matter, draws the stone toward the earth and the earth toward the sun -
to recognize all of this as only distinct in the phenomenon, but with
respect to its inner essence the same as that which is in an immediate
way so intimatelylO and better known to hirn than anything else, and
which, at the point where it comes most distinctly to the fore,11 is called
will. It is only this application of reflection that makes it possible for
us no Ion ger to stay with the phenomenon, but carries us over to the
thing in itself. A phenomenon means a presentation and nothing beyond
that: every presentation, of whatever sort it may be, every object, is a
phenomenon. But thing in itself is solely will. As such, it is altogether
not a presentation but toto genere distinct from it; it is that ofwhich all
presentations, all objects, are the phenomenon, the visibility, the objec-
tivization. It is that which is innermost, the core of every individual
thing and likewise ofthe whole: it makes its appearance in every blindly
effectual natural force; it also makes its appearance in the reflectively
considered actions of human beings. The great difference between the
two concerns only the degree to which it makes its appearance, not the
essence of that which is making its appearance.

i[Stoffe]
 The Objectification ofWill 149

§ 22.
[Extension of tbe Concept of Will- Will and Force]
This thing in itself (we would retain the Kantian term as our
standing formula), which is never as such an object precisely because
aB objects are in turn its mere phenomenon, no longer it itself, had
nonetheless, if it was to be thought in objective terms, to borrow its
name and concept from some object, or from something that is some- 132
how objectively given, consequently from one of its phenomena. But as
a support for our understanding, this can be none other than that among
aB its phenomena that is the most complete, i.e., the most distinct, most
fully unfolded, immediately illuminated by cognition. But this is just
human will. lt must be weIl noted, however, that we are here of course
only employing a denominatio a potiori/ whereby just for that reason
the concept of will obtains a greater extension than it previously had.
Cognizance of the identical in distinct phenomena and of the distinct in
similar phenomena is precisely, as Plato so often notes, a condition of
philosophy. But one had not until now recognized the essential identity
with will of any force whatsoever that is striving and effectual in nature,
and had therefore not viewed in these terms the manifold phenomena
that are only distinct species of the same genus, but regarded them as
heterogeneous; on account of this there could also be no word at hand
for designation of the concept of this genus. I thus title the genus after
its most preeminent species, the more proximate and immediate recog-
nition of which leads us to indirect recognition of all the others. There-
fore, however, anyone who is incapable of achieving the broadening of
the concept here required would remain caught up in an everlasting
misunderstanding, still always wanting to understand with the word
will that one species alone so far designated by it, that of will directed
by cognition and expressing itself exclusively in accordance with
motives, indeed only in accordance with abstract motives, thus under
the direction of reason; that, as stated, is only the most distinct phenom-
enon ofwill. We must then achieve a pure separation in thought ofthe
immediately familiar innermost essence of just this phenomenon, and
then carry it over to all weaker, less distinct phenomena of the same
essence; thereby, we will have achieved the demanded broadening of the
concept ofwill.
I would be misunderstood in the opposite way, however, byanyone
who might suppose that it was all the same in the end whether that

t"naming (it) after apreeminent case"]

 150 Second Book. The World as Will

essence in itself of a11 phenomena were designated by the word will or

by some other. The latter would be the case if that thing in itse1f were
something whose existence we merely inferred, thus of which we were
133 cognizant only indirectly and merely in abstracto: then of course we
could ca11 it what we wanted; the name would stand as a mere sign for
an unknown quantity. But the word will, which like an incantation is
meant to unlock for us the innermost essence of every thing in nature,
in no way designates an unknown quantity, aSomething that has been
reached by inferences, but rather something of which we are in an
altogether immediate way cognizant, and so very familiar to us that we
know and understand much better wh at will is than anything else,
whatever it may be.
So far the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of
force. By contrast, I proceed exactly the other way around, and would
have every force in nature thought of as will. But do not think that this
is a dispute over words or a matter of indifference; it is rather of the very
highest significance and importance. Forunderlying the concept offorce
in the end, as a11 others, is perceptual cognizance of the objective world,
i.e., phenomena, presentations,12 and the concept is drawn from this
source. [t is abstracted from the domain where cause and effect hold
sway, thus from perceptual presentation, and it refers precisely to a
cause's status as a cause/ at the point where it is altogether inexplicable
any further etiologically, but precisely the necessary presupposition of
all etiological explanation. To the contrary, the concept of will is the
single one among all possible concepts that has its origin not in the
phenomenon, not in mere perceptual presentation, but comes from
within,13 proceeds from that most immediate consciousness possessed
by everyone, by which each cognizes and at the same time is his own
individual being with respect to his essence, immediately, apart from
all form, even from that of subject and object; for here the cognizing
and cognized coincide. If we therefore reduce the concept of force to
that of will, we have in fact reduced something less familiar to some-
thing infinitely more familiar, indeed to that alone which is actually
immediately and altogether familiar, and to a very great extent broad-
ened our cognizance. If, by contrast, as has been the case so far, we
subsume the concept of will under that of force, then we abandon the
single immediate cognizance that we have of the inner essence of the
world, letting it sink into a eoncept that has been abstracted from the
phenomenon; with that, we can then never get beyond the phenomenon.

i [das Ursachsein der Ursache 1

 The Objectification ofWill 151

§ 23. 134
[Groundlessness oJ Will as Thing in Itseif - Beyond the Principle oJ
individuation - All Phenomena Subject to Complete Determinism -
Causes, Stimuli, and Motives]
Will as thing in itself14 is entirely distinct from its phenomenon and
utterly free from all of the latter's forms, into which it first enters
precisely in making its appearance, which therefore concern only its
objectivization, are foreign to it itself. Even presentation's most general
form, that of object for a subject, does not concern it, still less those
that are subordinate to it, which together have their common expression
in the Principle of Sufficient Ground, where, as we know, even time
and space belong and, consequently, also the plurality that subsists and
is made possible only through them. In this latter respect, borrowing an
expression from the real scholasticism of old, I will call time and space
the principium individuationis,i which I ask be kept in mind from the
start. For it is by means of time and space alone that what is one and the
same in essence and concept yet makes it appearance as distinct, as a
plurality in juxtaposition and succession. They are consequently the
principium individuationis, the subject of so much rumination and
disputation among the scholastics, which can be found collected in
Suarez (Disp. 5, sect. 3).ii
Will as thing in itself lies, according to what has been stated,
outside the domain of the Principle of Sufficient Ground in all of its
modes, and is consequently absolutely groundless, although all of its
phenomena are thoroughly subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground;
it is also free from all plurality, although its phenomena in time and
space are innumerable; it is itself one, but not as an object is one, of
whose unity we are cognizant only in its contrast with possible plurality,
nor either as a concept is one, having arisen only by abstraction from
plurality, but it is rather one as that which lies beyond time and space,
the principium individuationis, i.e., the possibility of plurality. Only
when all ofthis is made fully explicit for us by the following considera-
tion of phenomena and various manifestations of will, will we fully
understand the sense ofthe Kantian doctrine that time, space, and causal-
ity do not pertain to the thing in itself, but are only cognitive forms.
The groundlessness of will has in fact actually been recognized 135

t"the princip1e of individuation"]

"[Francisco Suarez, Disputationes metaphysicae (Metaphysical Disputations
[1597]).]
 152 Second Book. The World as Will

where it most distinctly manifests itself, as the will of human beings,

and been caUed free, independent. At the same time, however, beyond
the: groundlessness of will itself, one overlooked the necessity to which
its phenomenon is everywhere subject, and deeds were described as free,
which they are not, since every individual action follows with strict
necessity from the effect of motives on character. All necessity is, as
has already been stated, the relationship between consequence and
ground, and altogether nothing beyond that. The Principle of Sufficient
Ground is the general form pertaining to all phenomena, and human
beings must be, like any other phenomenon, subject to it in their
actions. However, because one is cognizant of will immediately and in
itself in self-consciousness, there also lies in the latter the consciousness
of freedom. But one overlooks the fact that the individual, the person, is
noil will as thing in itself but rather already a phenomenon of will, as
such already determined and having entered into the form pertaining to
phenomena, the Principle of Sufficient Ground. Thus there arises the
wondrous fact that everyone takes hirnself apriori as entirely free,
even in his individual actions, and supposes that he might at any
moment begin another way of life, which would mean becoming another
person. But aposteriori, through experience, he fmds to his amazement
that he is not free but subject to necessity, that despite all intentions and
reflection his action does not change, and that he must from the begin-
ning of his life to its end carry throughi the very character of which he
disapproves, and as it were play out to the end the role he has taken on.
I cannot here further elaborate upon this consideration, since as ethical
it belongs to another place in this worle Here I des ire in the meantime
only to point out that the phenomenon of the will that is in itself
groundless is yet as such subject to the law of necessity, i.e .., to the
Principle of Sufficient Ground; thereby, in the necessity with which the
phenomena of nature ensue, we may find no difficulty in recognizing
the manifestations ofwill in them.
So far, only those alterations that have no other ground than a
motive, i.e., a presentation, have been viewed as phenomena of will.
Therefore one has attributed a will to human beings alone in nature, or
at most to animals, because of course, as I have already mentioned
136 elsewhere, cognition, presentational activity,ii is what genuinely and
exelusively characterizes animality. But the fact that will is also effec-
tual where no cognizance directs it, we see in the first instance in the

t durc~fiihren 1
itdas Erkennen, das Vorstellen]
 The Objectification ofWill 153

instincts and in the mechanical drives i of animals. t It is altogether irrel-

evant here that they have presentations and cognizance, since the
purpose they so straightforwardly work to effect, as if it were a motive
of which they were cognizant, is something of which they remain
entirely incognizant. Thus their action occurs without motive here, is
not directed by presentations, and gives us our first and most distinct
indication of how will can also be active in the absence of all cognition.
The one-year old bird has no presentation 15 of the eggs for which it
builds a nest. The young spider has none of the prey for which it puts
its web into effect, nor the ant-lion of the ants for which it for the first
time digs a pit. The stag beetle larva gnaws a hole in the wood where it
would undergo its metamorphosis, twice as large when it would become
a male as when it would become a female beetle, in the former case
making room for horns of which it has as yet no presentation. In such
action on the part of these animals, as in all their other action, will is
obviously active; but it is in blind activity, which is to be sure accom-
panied by cognizance, but not directed by it. Once having attained the
insight that presentation as a motive is not a necessary and essential
condition of activity of will, we will also more easily recognize the
effectuality of will in cases where it is less obvious, and then, for
example, as little ascribe the shell that houses a snail to a will foreign to
it and yet directed by cognizance, as suppose that the house that we
ourselves construct comes into existence by a will other than our own.
Rather, we will recognize both houses as works of will that is being
objectified in both phenomena, is effectual in us in accordance with
motives, but in snails still blindly, as an outwardly directed constructive
drive. ii Even in US, the same will is blindly effectual in multiple ways:
in all those functions of the body not directed by cognizance, in all of
its vital and vegetative processes,16 digestion, circulation, secretion, 137
growth, reproduction. Not only actions of the body but, as demonstrated
above, the body itself is altogether a phenomenon of will, objectified
will, concrete will. Everything that occurs within it has thus to occur
through will, although the will is not here directed by cognizance, not
determined in accordance with motives, but rather - blindly effectual -
in accordance with causes, which in this case are called stimuli.
I call a cause in particular, in the narrowest sense of the term, that
state of matter which, in bringing forth another one with necessity,

i[in den Kunsttrieben]

tThese matters are speeifieally treated in eh. 27 of the seeond volume.
ii[Bildungstrieb ]
 154 Second Book. The World as Will

itse1f undergoes as great an alteration as that which it causes, which

is expressed by the rule "Action and reactioni are equal." Further, with
causes proper, the effectii increases exactly in proportion to the cause,
and so in turn does the reaction. So just as soon as the mode of effectu-
ality is known, the degree of the effect can be measured and calculated
on the basis of the degree of intensity of the cause, and converse1y as
weIl. Such causes, properly so-called, are effectua1 in all mechanical
phenomena, chemical processes, etc., in short, in all alterations of
inorganic bodies. On the other hand, I call stimuli those causes which
do not themse1ves undergo reactions proportional to their effect, and
whose intensity altogether fails to parallel in degree the intensity of
their effects, which can thus not be measured by them. Rather, a small
increase in the stimulus can occasion a very great increase in the effect,
or even to the contrary entirely nullify the previous effect, etc. All
effects on organic bodies as such are of this sort. Thus it is in response
to stimuli, not to mere causes, that all properly organic and vegetative
alterations proceed in animal bodies. But the stimulus, like any cause at
all, and likewise motives, never determines more than the point of
occurrence in time and space of the expression of any force, not the
inner essence of the force itself that is being expressed, which according
to our preceding derivation we recognize as will; we thus ascribe both
unconscious and conscious alterations of the body to the latter. The
stimulus occupies a middle position, constitutes a transition between a
138 motive, which is causality that has passed through cognition,iii and a
cause in the narrowest sense. In individual cases, it lies sometimes
eloser to motives, sometimes to causes, but is nevertheless still always
different from both. Thus, for example, the rising of fluids in plants
occurs in response to stimuli, and is not explicable on the basis of mere
causes, neither in accordance with the laws ofhydraulics nor of capillary
action. Nonetheless, it is supported by these laws and is in general
indeed very elose to pure1y causal alteration. By contrast, the move-
ments of Hedysarnm gyrans and Mimosa pudica/ v although still ensuing
in response to mere stimuli, are nonetheless already very similar to
those in response to motives and seem almost wanting to make the

'[Wirkung und Gegenwirkung]

li[ Wirkung]
1l1[durch das Erkennen hindurchgegangene Kausalität]
iv[H. g.: variously named, inc1uding Desmodium gyrans, but today primarily
Codariocalyx motorius, of the family Fabaceae: called the Dancing Plant by
Darwin. M. p.: known as the Sensitive Plant, likewise ofthe family Fabaceae.]
 The Objectification of Will 155

passage. 17 The narrowing of the pupils with an increase in light occurs

in response to astimulus, but of course turns into movement in response
to a motive. For it occurs because too strong a light would have a
painful effect on the retina, and to avoid this we contract our pupils.
What occasions erections is a motive, since it is a presentation. But
it is effectual with the necessity of a stimulus, i.e., it cannot he resisted,
but one has to remove it to render it ineffectual. It is just the same
with disgusting objects that excite an inclination to vomit. As an actual
mediating link of an entire1y different sort between movement in
response to a stimulus and action in accordance with a motive of which
there is cognizance, we have just considered the instincts of animals.
We might be tempted to view respiration as yet another mediating link
of this sort. Namely, it has been disputed whether it belongs among
voluntary or among involuntary movements, i.e., properly put, whether
it ensues in response to motives or stimuli, which suggests that it might
be explicable as something between the two. Marshall Hall ("On the
diseases ofthe nervous system," §§ 293ff) explains it as a compound
function, since it stands under the influence partly of cerebral (volun-
tary) , partly of spinal (involuntary) nerves. i Nevertheless, we must
count it in the end among expressions of will ensuing in response to
motives. For other motives, i.e., mere presentations, can determine the
will to impede or accelerate it, and it seems that, as with any other
voluntary action, one could entire1y refrain and freely suffocate. This is
something one could in fact do, as soon as some other motive deter- 139
mined the will so strongly that it outweighed the urgent need for air.
According to some, Diogenes actually put an end to his life in this way
(Diogenes Laertius VI, 76). Negroes are also supposed to have done
this (F. B. Osiander, On Suicide [18l3]), pp. 170-180)Y This would
give us a strong example of the influence of abstract motives, Le., the
greater power of truly rational over merely animal willing. Speaking for
the at least partial conditioning of breathing by cerebral activity is the
fact that prussic acid kills in the first instance by paralyzing the brain,
and so indirect1y by impeding breathing;'8 but where the latter is
artificially maintained until the numbing of the brain has passed, death

i[Marshall Hall, pioneer in the area of reflex movements, was the author of
both On the diseases and derangements 01 the Nervous System (1841) and
Lectures on the nervous system and its diseases (1836). The sentence was
added inB.]
ii[Friedrich Benjamin Osiander, Über den Selbstmord. The bracketed portion
is Schopenhauer's.]
 156 Second Book. The WorId as Will

does not occur at all. At the same time, incidentally, respiration provides
us here with the most obvious example of the fact that motives operate
with just as much necessity of effect as stimuli and mere causes in the
narrowest sense, and can only be rendered ineffectual precisely by
opposing motives, as with pressure by counter-pressure. For in the case
of breathing, the appearance of being able to refrain is incomparably
weaker than with other movements ensuing in response to motives,
because the motive in that case is most pressing, most elose, its satis-
faction most easy, given the untiring character of the museles effecting
it, with nothing as a rule opposing it, and the entire matter supported by
the oldest habit of individuals. And yet all motives really operate with
the same necessity of effect. Cognizance of the fact that necessity is
common to movements in response to motives and to those in response
to stimuli will facilitate the insight that what in organic bodies proceeds
in response to stimuli and in an utterly lawful manner is nonetheless
also will with respect to its inner essence, which is indeed never in
itself, but in all its phenomena, subject to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, i.e., to necessity.t We will accordingly not rest with recognition
of animals as phenomena of will both in their actions and in their entire
140 existence, corporealization, and organization, but will even carry over
to plants, whose totality of movements ensues in response to stimuli,
this immediate cognizance of the essence in itself ofthings that is given
to us alone. For the absence of cognizance and ofthereby conditioned
movements in response to motives constitutes the only essential differ-
ence between animals and plants. Thus what makes its appearance with
respect to presentation as plants, as me re vegetation, blindly driving
force, we will address as will with respect to its essence in itself, and
recognize it as that which constitutes the basis of the phenomenon that
we are,i as it is given voice in our actions and indeed in the entire
existence of our very body.
lt only remains for us to take the fmal step, the extension of our
manner of consideration also to all those forces effectual in nature in
accordance with general, inalterable laws to which the movements of
all bodies conform that, entirely lacking in organs, have no sensitivity
for stimuli or capacity for cognizance of motives. Wehave thus to

tRecognition of this fact is fully secured by my Prize Essay on the Freedom

of the Will, where (pp. 30-44 of the Fundamental Problems of Ethics [2nd ed.,
pp. 29-41]) the relationship between causes, stimuli, and motives is thus also
discussed in detail.
tunserer eigenen Erscheinung]
 The Objectification ofWill 157

apply the key to understanding the essence in itself of things, which

only immediate cognizance of our own essence could give us, also to
those phenomena of the inorganic world that stand at the furthest
distance from uso - When we then consider these things with an inquir-
ing eye, when we see the mighty, ceaseless drive with which the
waters rush to the deep, the persistence with which the magnet turns
ever again to the North Pole, the longing with which iron flies toward
it, the intensity with which electricity's poles strive for reunification,
and which, exactly like that of human desires, is heightened by obsta-
cles;19 when we see crystals quickly and suddenly forming with so
much regularity of structure that it seems but evidence of a wholly
decisive and exactly determinate endeavor in various directions, gripped
and held captive by rigidification; when we take note of the selectivity
with which bodies, set free by their fluid state and withdrawn from the
bonds of rigidity, mutually attract and repel, unite and separate; when,
finally, we feel in an entirely immediate way how a weight whose
striving toward the mass of the earth impedes our body, incessantly
pressures and presses upon iti in pursuit of its one endeavor - then it 141
will cost us no great effort of imagination, even at so great a distance,
to recognize our own essence, the very same that pursues its purposes
in us by the light of cognizance, but here in the weakest of its phenom-
ena is only blindly, dully, one-sidedly, and inalterably striving, and
yet, since it is everywhere one and the same - just as first dawn shares
the name of sunlight with the rays of full midday - must also here as
there bear the name will, which designates that which is the being in
itself of every thing in the world and the one and only core of every
phenomenon.
The distance, however, and indeed the semblance of complete
diversity between phenomena of inorganic nature and the will that we
perceive as the inner being of our own essence, arises preeminently from
the contrast between the fully determined conformity to law in the one
and the seemingly unregulated choice involved in the other sort of
phenomenon. For individuality comes powerfully to the fore in human
beings: everyone has his own character. Therefore, even the same motive
does not have equal force with respect to everyone, and a thousand
secondary circumstances accommodated by the broad sphere of an indi-
vidual' s cognizance, but remaining unknown to others, modify its effect.
For this reason, actions cannot be antecedently determined on the basis
of motives alone, because the other factor is lacking, exact knowledge

i[auf diesen unablässig drückt und drängt]

 158 Second Book. The World as Will

of the individual character and of the cognizance that accompanies it.

By contrast, the phenomena of natural forces here show us the other
extreme: their effectuality accords with generaliaws, without deviation,
without individuality, in accordance with circumstances evidently pre-
sent, subject to the most exact predetenuination, and the same natural
force expresses itself in exactly the same manner in the millions of its
phenomena. In order to clarify this point, in order to demonstrate the
identity of the one and indivisible will in all of its so diverse phenomena,
in the weakest as in the strongest, we have first to consider the relation
that will as thing in itself bears to its phenomenon, i.e., that the world
as will bears to the world as presentation; thereby, there will open up
142 for us the best path toward a deeper-reaching examination ofthe whole
subject of this second Book. t

§ 24.
[Time, Space, and Causality only Forms Belonging to Cognition-
Pure Mathematics and Pure Natural Science-
The Futile Attempts oJ Natural Science to Fathom Ultima te Reality]
We have leamed from the great Kant that time, space, and causal-
ity, with respect to the entirety of their lawful character and to the
possibility of all the fonus involved, existi within our consciousness
entirely independently of the objects that make their appearance within
them, that constitute their content, or in other words, those forms can be
found just as weH by proceeding from the subject as from the object;
therefore, they may with equal right be called the subject's manners of
perception or also characteristics of the object so far as it is an object
(for Kant: appearance or phenomenon),ii i.e., presentation. Those fonus
can also be viewed as the indivisible boundary between object and
subject; therefore all objects must, to be sure, make their appearance
within them, but the subject, independently of the objects making their
appearance, completely possesses and surveys them.

j·On this, see eh. 23 ofthe seeond volume as weil as, in my work On the Will
in Nature, the ehapter on "The Physiology ofPlants" and, ofutmost importanee
for the eore ofmy metaphysies, the chapter on "Physical Astronomy."
i[vorhanden sind]
"[Erscheinung. In aeeordanee with what was said in the introduetion, I gener-
ally use 'phenomenon' for Erscheinung, and 'appearanee' only where the
appearing 0/ phenomena seems to be emphasized. But I will on oceasion use
both terms where Schopenhauer is specifically referring to Kant's use of the
term, which is most often, though not exclusively, translated in the latter way.]
 The Objectification ofWill 159

If, however, the objects making their appearance within these forms
are not to be empty phantoms, but have a significance/ then they must
signit)ii something, be the expression of something that is not like them
an object in turn - a presentation, something at handiii only in a relative
way (namely, for the subject) - but rather something that would existiV
without such dependence on that which, together with its forms, stands
over against it as its essential condition, i.e., would be precisely not a
presentation but a thing in itself. Accordingly, we can at least ask: are
those presentations, those objects, something else beyond and apart from
v
the fact that they are presentations, objects of the subject? And what
then would they be on this understanding? What is that other side of
them, toto genere distinct from presentation? What is the thing in itself?
- Will has been our answer; but I set it aside for now.
Whatever the thing in itself may be, Kant rightly inferred that 143
time, space, and causality (which we later recognized as modes of the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, and this as general expression of forms
pertaining to the phenomenon) are not determinations of it, but could
belong to it only once and so far as it has become a presentation, i.e.,
would pertain only to its phenomenon, not to it itself. For since the
subject cognizes and construes them completely in its own terms,
independently of all objects, they must attach to being-a-presentation
as such, not to that which becomes a presentation. They must be the
form belonging to presentation as such, not properties of that which has
assumed tbis fonn. They must be already given with the mere opposition
of subject and object (not in concept, but in fact), consequently be only
finer determinations of the form belonging to any cognition at all, the
most general determination ofwhich is that very opposition. That in the
phenomenon, then, in the object, which is conditioned in its turn by
time, space, and causality, insofar as it is can only be presented by their
means, namely, plurality through juxtaposition and succession, change
and duration through the law of causality, and that matter which can be
presented only under the presupposition of causality - in short every-
thing, again, that can be presented only by means of these forms - all
this is in essence not proper to that wh ich is there making its appearance,
to that which has entered into the form of presentation, but attaches

i[Bedeutung]
"[deuten]
iii [Vorhandenes]
iv[ existierte]
V[ Objekte des]
 160 Second Book. The World as Will

only to this form itself. Conversely, it will be precisely that which in

the phenomenon is not conditioned by time, space, and causality, nor
reducible to them or explicable in their terms, wherein that which is
making its appearance, the thing in itself, announces itself in an imme-
diate way. In accordance with this, then, the most complete cognizabil-
ity, i.e., the greatest clarity, distinctness, and exhaustive fathoming of
things, necessarily concems what is proper to cognition as such, thus to
cognitive form but not to what - in itself not presentation, not object -
has become cognizable, i.e., presentation, object, only by entering into
these forms. Thus only that which depends solelyon being cognized,
on being a presentation of any sort and as such (not on that which is
144 cognized and has become a presentation in the first place), which there-
fore belongs without distinction to everything of which one is cognizant
- which is just for that reason as easily found by proceeding from the
subject as from the object - that alone can unreservedly guarantee
cognizance that is satisfactory, utterlyexhaustive, clear unto its ultimate
ground. But this consists in nothing other than the forms pertaining to
alt phenomena, known to us apriori, which can be jointly pronounced
as the Principle of Sufficient Ground, whose modes are with reference
to perceptual cognizance (with which we are exclusively occupied here)
time, space, and causality. Grounded apriori in the latter alone is the
whole of pure mathematics and pure natural science. Only in these
sciences, therefore, does cognition find no obscurity, does not run up
against the unfathomable (the groundless, i.e., will), against that which
is not further derivable. In this respect, as has been stated, even Kant
would by preference, indeed exclusively, call those sorts of cognizance,
along with logic, science. But on the other hand, these sorts of cogni-
zance show us nothing beyond mere relationships, the relationi of one
presentation to another, form without any content. Any content they get,
any phenomenon filling those forms, already contains something of
whose essence one cannot be completely cognizant, no longer altogether
explicable by way of something else, thus groundless; thereby, cogni-
zance is diminished in its evidence and forfeits complete transparency.
That, however, which eludes our fathoming is precisely the thing in
itself, is that which is essentially not presentation, not object of cogni-
zance, but has become cognizable only insofar as it has entered into
that form. Tbe form is originally foreign to it, and it can never become
entirely one with that form, can never be reduced to mere form and,
since the latter is the Principle of Sufficient Ground, thus never be

i[ Verhältnisse, Relationen]
 The Objectification ofWill 161

complete1y jathomed. i Therefore, even if all of mathematics gives us

exhaustive cognizance ofthat which is magnitude, Ioeation, number, in
short, spatial and temporal relations in phenomena, even if all of etiol-
ogy provides a eomplete statement of the law-governed eonditions
under which phenomena, together with all their determinations, oeeur
in time and space - but for all of this still teaching us no more than why
any partieular phenomenon has to show itself precise1y now here and 145
precisely here now - we still never penetrate with their aid into the inner
essence of things, there yet still always remains something for which no
explanation can be hazarded but which it always presupposes, namely,
forces of nature, the partieular mode of effectuality of things, the qual-
ity, the character of every phenomenon, that which is groundless, which
does not depend on a form that belongs to the phenomenon, on the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, to which in itse1f this form is foreign
but into which it has entered and now comes to the fore in aecordance
with its law; but this law determines precisely only its eoming to the
fore, not that which comes to the fore, only the How not the What of
the phenomenon, only the form, not the eontfmt.
Mechanics, physics, chemistry teach us the mIes and laws ac cord-
ing to which the forces of impenetrability, gravity, rigidity, fluidity,
cohesion, elasticity, heat, light, e1ective affinities, magnetism, electrie-
ity, ete., are effeetual, i.e., the law, the rule, that these forces observe with
respect to their occurrence at any point in time and space; but the forces
themselves thereby remain, whatever we may do, qualitates occultae. ii
For it is precisely the thing in itself that, in making its appearance,
displays those phenomena,iii entirely distinct from the latter, is in its
phenomenoniv of course utterly subject to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, as the form belonging to presentation, but itse1f never to be
reduced to that form, and thus not in the end explieable etiologieally,
not ever eompletely fathomable: utterly eomprehensible, to be sure, so
far as it has taken on that form, i.e., insofar as it is a phenomenon, but
in its inner essenee not in the least explained by that comprehensibility?O
Thus the more there is of neeessity involved in one's cognizanee, the
more there is in it that eannot be otherwise thought or presented (as,
e.g., with spatial relations), the c1earer and more satisfaetory it therefore
is, all the less does it have any pure1y objeetive content, or all the less is

i[ergründet]
t'hidden qualities"]
ll'[indem es erscheint, jene Phänomene darstellt]
iV[Erscheinung]
 162 Second Book. The World as Will

any true realityi given in it. And conversely, the more there is in it that
has to be apprehended as purely contingent, the more there is that forces
itself upon us as merely empirically given, all the more there is of the
really objective and truly real ii in such cognizance, but at the same time
as well, all the more there is ofthe inexplieable, i.e., ofthat which can-
not be further derived from something else.
Of course, in all ages, an etiology that failed to recognize its own
146
goal has striven to reduee all organic life to ehemieal processes, or to
e1eetrieity, all ehemical proeesses, i.e., qualities, in turn to mechanism
(effeets produeed by the shapes of atoms), but these in turn partly to the
subjeet matter of phoronomy, i.e., to time and space as united in the
possibility of movement, partly to that of mere geometry, i.e., to loeation
in spaee (similarly to when, and rightly so, the diminution of an effeet
with the square of its distanee and the theory of levers are construed in
purely geometrical terms). Geometry, finally, allows ofresolution into
arithmetie, whieh on aceount of its single dimension is that mode of the
Principle of Suffieient Ground which is the most eomprehensible, the
most easily surveyed, fathomable all the way down. Confirmation of
the method here described in general terms: the atoms of Democritus,
the vortexes of Descartes,iii the mechanical physics of Lesage, who,
toward the end of the previous century, sought through impact and
pressure a mechanieal explanation of both chemical affinities and
gravitation, as can be seen in detail in his "Lucrece Neutonien,,;iv Reil's
"form and compounding" as the cause of animal life also tends in this
direction. v Of entirely the same sort, finally, is the cmde materialism
that, just now warmed over again in the middle of the 19 th eentury, and
ignorantly fancying itself something original, begins with a stupid

t eigentliche Realität]
iteigentlich O~jektives und wahrhaft Reales]
II![Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (1644; Fr. Edition, 1647) III,
Principles 46ff.J
iV[Georges Louis Le Sage, "The Newtonian Lucretius," Nouveaux Memoires
de l'Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres [BerlinJ, 1782 (published
1784).J
v[Johann Christian Reil. Hübscher provides two relevant citations: ··Über die
Lebenskraft' ("On the Life Force"), Archiv fiir die Physiologie, vol. I (1796),
pp. 8-162, more specifically p. 157; "Veränderte Mischung und Form der
thierischen Materie als Krankheit oder nächste Ursache der KrankheitszuJ?ille
betrachtet" ("Alteration in the Compounding and Fonn of Anima! Matter
regarded as Sickness or as the Proximate Cause of Sicknesses"), Archiv fiir die
Physiologie, vol. 3 (1799), pp. 424-461.]
 The Objectification ofWill 163

disavowal of the life-force, leaving phenomena pertaining to life to be

explained on the basis of physical and chemical forces, and these in
turn to arise out of the mechanical workingsi of matter, location, shape,
and movement of fictional atoms, and so would reduce all forces of
nature to impact and repulsion, which wou1d be Üs "thing in itself."
According to this approach, even light is supposed to be the mechanical
vibration, or even undulation, of an imaginary ether that is postulated
for this purpose, which, having arrived at the retina, beats upon it in
such a way that, e.g., 483 billion beats per second yields red, 727
billion violet, etc.; I suppose that the color-blind would then be those
who are unable to count the beats. The same sort of crass, mechanical,
Democritean, plodding, and truly knot-riddenii theories are entirely
worthy of people who, fifty years after the appearance of Goethe's
theory of colors, still believe in Newton's homogeneous lights and are
not ashamed to say so. They willieam that what was excused in the 147
child (Democritus) will not be forgiven in the man. They might even
end up reviled;iii but at that point everyone steals off and acts as if they
were not part oftheir company.21 We will soon have more to say about
this mi staken reduction of original natural forces to others; that is
enough for now. Supposing that we proceeded in this way, everything
would of course be explained and fathomed, even reduced in the end to
an algorithm, which would be the Holy of Holies in the temple of
wisdom to which the Principle of Sufficient Ground would happily
have conducted uso But all the content of the phenomenon would have
vanished and mere form remained over: what is making its appearance
would be reduced to how it is making its appearance, and this how
would indeed be something of which one could be cognizant apriori,
thus entirely dependent on the subject, thus something only for the
latter, thus finally a mere phantom, through and through presentation
and presentation's form; there could be no question of a thing in itself.
- Supposing that we proceeded in this way, the entire world would
accordingly then actually be derived from the subject, and there in fact
be accomplished that which, with his windbaggeries, Fichte sought to
give the semblance of accomplishing.
But we are not proceeding in this way: fantasies, sophistries,
castles in the air have been constructed in this manner, not science.
There has been success, and true progress whenever there has been, in

i[Wirken]
"[knollige]
iii[Sie könnten sogar einst schmählich enden]
 164 Second Book. The World as Will

reducing the many and manifold phenomena in nature to particular

original forces: a number of forces and qualities initially held to be
distinct have been derived from others (e.g., magnetism from electric-
ity)22 and their number thus diminished. Etiology will have reached its
goal when it has recognized and set forth all the original forces of nature
as such and established their modes of effectuality, i.e., the rules by
which, according to the directing principle of causality, their phenomena
occur and mutually determine their positions in time and space. But
primal forces i will always remain, there will always remain in the phe-
nomenon, as an irresolvable residuum, a content that cannot be reduced
to its form, thus is inexplicable on the basis of something else in ac-
cordance with the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
For in every thing in nature there is something ofwhich no ground
148 can ever be given, no explanation is possible, 110 further cause can be
sought: this is its specific mode of effectuality, i.e., precisely its mode
of existence, its essence. To be sure, for every single one of the effects
of a thing, there is always a cause to be demonstrated from which it
follows that the thing had to be effectual exactIy now, exactly here; but
never that it has to be effectual at an, or exactIy so. Even if it has no
other properties, even if it is a mote in the sunlight, it at least displays
that unfathomable Something in the form of weight and impenetrability.
But this, I say, relates to it as one's will relates to a human being and,
like that will, is not subject to explanation with respect to its inner
essence, is indeed in itself identical with the latter. Surely, for every
expression of will, for every single one of its acts at this time, in this
place, a motive can be demonstrated upon which, presupposing the
person's character, it necessarily had to ensue. But that he has this
character, that he wills at all, that out of a number of motives exactly
this and no other, indeed any at all, moves his will: for that, no ground
can be provided. That which is for a human being his unfathomable
character, presupposed by all explanations of his deeds on the basis of
motives, is for every inorganic body just the same as its essential qual-
ity, its mode of effectuality, the express ions of which are called forth
by external effects upon it, but which is itself, by contrast, determined
by nothing outside it, thus is inexplicable: the individual phenomena
through which alone it becomes visible are subject to the Principle of
Sufficient Ground; it itse1f is groundless. 23 The scholastics had in
essence already accurately recognized this and designated it as farma
substantialis. (On this, see Suarez, Disput. metaph., disp. XV, sect. 1.)

i[Urkräfte]
 The Objectification of Will 165

It is an equally great though ordinary error to suppose that the

most frequently occurring, most general, and simplest phenomena are
those that we understand best; for they are rather only those to the sight
of which, and to our ignorance of which. we have grown most accus-
tomed. It is just as inexplicable to us that a stone falls to the earth as
that an animal has self-movement. One has supposed, as mentioned
above, that by proceeding from the most general natural forces (e.g.,
gravitation, cohesion, impenetrability) one would explain on their basis
those that are less common and that are only effectual under particular
combinations of circumstances (e.g., chemical qualities, electricity, 149
magnetism), in the end in turn understand, on the basis of the latter,
organisms and the life of animals, indeed even human cognition and
willing. Tacit accommodation was made to proceeding from mere qual-
itates occultae, the illumination ofwhich was entirely abandoned, since
one intended to build on them, not to dig down under them. That sort of
thing can, as stated, not succeed. But apart from that, such a building
would always hover in the air. What help are explanations that end up
reducing things to something of which we are as ignorant as we were of
the initial problem? In the end, does one understand any more of the
inner essence of those general natural forces than of the inner essence
of an animal? Is not the one as little fathomed as the other? Unfathom-
able because it is groundless/ because it is the content, the What of the
phenomenon, which can never be reduced to its form, to the How, to
the Principle of Sufficient Ground. We, however, whose aim is not
etiology but philosophy, i.e., not relative but unconditioned cognizance
of the essence of the world, strike the opposite path and proceed from
that which is immediately, that which is most completely,ii known to
us and altogether familiar, which lies closest to us, in order to under-
stand that which is only known to us from afar, one-sidedly, and in a
mediated way. And on the basis ofthe most powerful, most significant,
most distinct phenomenon, we would come to understand those less
ii
perfect/ those weaker. With the exception of my own body, only one

i[ Unergründlich ... grundlos]

ii[am vollständigsten]
iii[ unvollkommenere. Except where there is independent reason for proceeding
otherwise, I generally prefer "complete" over "perfeet" for vollkommen: first, to
avoid possible moral connotations foreign to Schopenhauer's perspective in
this regard: second, because Schopenhauer himself elucidates the notion in
terms of a certain sort of completeness in the manifestation of will: see § 28. In
the Appendix, Schopenhauer says that the concept of Vollkommenheit "is in
 166 Second Book. The World as Will

side of things is known to me, that of presentation: their inner essence

remains closed off and a deep mystery to me, even if I know aB the
causes upon which their alterations ensue. Only on the basis of a
comparison with that which takes place in me when, being moved by a
motive, my body perforrns an action - with that which is the inner
essence of my own alterations as determined by external grounds - can
I obtain insight into the mode and manner in which those lifeless bodies
are altered in response to causes, and so understand what their inner
essence is; cognizance of the cause of the latter's appearance i provides
me with mere mies for occurrence in time and space and nothing further.
I can do this because my body is the single object of which I do not
know merely the one side, the side of presentation, but also the second,
150 which is called will. Thus instead ofbelieving that I would better under-
stand my own organie existence,ii then my cognition and willing and
my movement in response to motives, if I could only reduce them to
movements following from causes through electricity, through chemical
processes, through mechanism - to the contrary, so far as I pursue
philosophy, not etiology, I must first come to understand even the
simplest and commonest movements of inorganic bodies that I see
ensuing in response to causes, in their inner essence, on the basis of my
own movement in response to motives, and recognize the unfathomable
forces that express themselves in alt the bodies in nature as identical in
kind with that which is will in me, and only differing from it in degree.
This means: the fourth class of presentations set forth in the treatise on
the Principle of Sufficient Ground must become my key to cognizance
of the inner essence of the first class, and on the basis of the law of
motivation, I must co me to understand, in its inner meaning" the law
of causality.
Spinoza says (epist. 62)iii that a stone flying through the air as a
result of impact would, if it had consciousness, suppose it were flying
of its own will. I add only that the stone would be right. Impact is for it

and of itself entirely empty and lacking in content, since it designates a mere
relation that only gets its meaning from the things to which it is applied ... .In
particular, 'vollkommen' is almostjust a synonym for 'vollzählig' ['complete in
number'], insofar as it says that in a given case, or individual, all the predicates
are represented, thus are actually present, that lie in the concept of its species."]
i[Erscheinen]
U[ meine eigene Organisation]
iii[Letter to G. H. Schuller of October, J674 (numbered, according to edition,
as either Letter 62 or 58).]
 The Objectification ofWill 167

that which motives are for me, and what in the case of the stone makes
its appearance as cohesion, weight, persistence in a given state, is in its
inner essence the same as that of which I am cognizant in myself as
will, and of which, were cognizance to come to it as weIl, it too would
be cognizant as will. In that passage, Spinoza was focusing on the
necessity with which the stone is flying, and would rightly carry it over
to the necessity of a person's individual acts of will. By contrast, r am
considering that inner essence which imparts meaning and validity to
all real necessity (i.e., to effects as following from causes) as its presup-
position in the first place, is called character in human beings, quality
in stones, but is the same thing in both - called will where there is
immediate cognizance of it - and which in stones has the weakest, in
human beings the strongest degree ofvisibility, objectivization.
Even Saint Augustine recognized, with accurate sentiment, this
identical element in the striving of all things and in our willing, and I 151
cannot forebear from setting down his naive expression of the matter:
Si pecora essemus, carnalem vitam et quod secundum sensum ejusdem
est amaremus, idque esset sufJiciens bonum nostrum, et secundum hoc
si esset nobis bene, nihil aliud quaereremus. [tem, si arbores essemus,
nihil quidem sentientes motu amare possemus: verumtamen id quasi
appetere videremur, quo feracius essemus, uberiusque fructuosae. Si
essemus lapides, aut fluctus, aut ventus, aut flamma, vel quid ejusmodi,
sine ullo quidem sensu atque vita, non tamen nobis deeset quasi
quidam nostrorum locorum atque ordinis appetitus. Nam velut amores
corporum momenta sunt ponderum, sive deorsum gravitate, sive sursum
levitate nitantur: ita enim corpus pondere, sicut animus amore fertur
quocunquefertur (de. dv. Dei, XI, 28).i
It also deserves to be noted that even Euler saw that the essence of
gravitation must in the end be reduced to an "inclination or desire" (thus

i["If we were sheep, we would desire carnal life and what accords with its
sense, and this would suffice as our good, and if in accordance with this things
stood weH with us, we would ask for nothing else. Likewise, if we were trees,
we could indeed desire nothing as sentient beings in motion. Nevertheless, we
would seem as it were to seek after that by which we are made fertile and most
abundantly fruitfuJ. If we were stones, or flowing water, or wind, or flame, or
something ofthat sort, without any sense and life at all, we would nonetheless
not be lacking in some sort of seeking after our pI aces and order. For the
elements of weight in bodies are as if desires, either striving downward by
virtue of heaviness or upward by virtue of lightness. Thus indeed bodies are by
weight, as souls are by des ire, borne wheresoever they are borne" (On the City
ofGodX1, 28). This paragraph added in C.]
 168 Second Book. The World as Will

will) peculiar to bodies (in his 68 th letter to the Princess). Precise1y this
fact even turns him away from the concept of gravitation as it is found
in Newton, and he is inclined to attempt a modification of the latter in
ac cord with the earlier Cartesian theory,i thus to derive gravitation from
the impact of an ether on bodies, as something that would be "more
rational and, for people who prefer c1ear and comprehensible principles,"
more suitable. He would ban attraction from physics as a qualitas
occulta. This is precise1y in accord with the view of dead nature that, as
a correlate of the immaterial soul, held sway in Euler's time. But it is
worthy of notice with respect to the fundamental truth that I have set
forth, which al ready then, seeing it glimmering through the distance,
this subtle mind rushed to overturn in timely fashion, and from which,
in his fear of seeing all the fundamental views of the time endangered,
he even sought refuge in ancient, already discarded absurdities.

§ 25.
[Space and Time as the Principle oJ Individuation -
Preliminary Comparison with Plato's Theory oJ Ideas]
We know that any plurality at all is necessarily conditioned by
152 time and space and thinkable only within them, which in this respect we
call the principium individuationis. But we have recognized time and
space as modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, in which principle
is expressed all of our cognizance apriori, but which just as such, as
discussed above, belongs only to the cognizability of things, not to
them themse1ves, i.e., is only a form belonging to our cognition, not a
property of the thing in itself, which is as such free from all cognitive
forms, even from the most general, that of being object for the subject,
i.e., is something altogether distinct from presentation. So if, as I believe
I have adequately demonstrated and rendered evident, this thing in itself
is will, then considered as such and apart from its phenomenon, it lies
beyond time and space and accordingly knows no plurality, is conse-
quently one; yet as already stated, not as an individual or even as a
concept is one, but as something to which the condition ofthe possibility
of plurality, the principium individuationis, is foreign. The plurality of
things in space and time, all of which are its o~jectivization, thus fails
to concern it, and it remains, in spite of them, indivisible. It is not as if,

tLeonhard Euler, Lettres a une Princesse d 'Allemagne sur divers sujets de

physique & de philosophie (Letters to a German Princess on Various Subjects
in Physics and Philosophy [1768-1772]); Descartes, Principles 0/ Philosophy
IV, Principles 20-27. The present pargraph was added inB.]
 The Objectification ofWill 169

say, a smaller part of it is in a stone, a greater in a human being. For

the relation of part to whole pertains exc1usively to space and no longer
24
has any sense once one has abandoned this perceptual form. Rather,
even More and Less concern only the phenomenon, Le., visibility,
objectification: i a higher degree of the latter is in plants than in stones, a
higher in animals than in plants. Indeed, its emergence into visibility,
its obJectification, is as infinite in its gradationsii as between the faintest
dawn 5 and the brightest sunlight, the loudest tone and the softest echo.
We will return below to a consideration of these degrees of visibility,
which belong to its objectification, to the imageiÜ of its essence. But
even less than it is immediately touched by the gradations of its objecti-
fication, is it touched by the plurality of phenomena on these various
levels, iv i.e., the multitude of individuals of every form, or of individual
expressions of every force; for this plurality is immediately conditioned
by time and space, into which it does not itself enter. It reveals itself 153
just as entirely and just as much in one oak tree as in millions: their
number, their multiplicity in space and time, has no meaning at all with
respect to it, but only with respect to the plurality of individuals who
are cognizant in space and time and themselves multiplied and dispersed
therein, but whose plurality in turn concerns only its phenomenon, not
itself. 26 Therefore, one might also maintain that if, per impossibile, a
single being, be it even the most insignificant, were to be wholly anni-
hilated, the entire world must perish with it. In the grip of this sentiment
the great mystic Angelus Silesius says the following:
"I know that God without me cannot a moment stay living:
Render me naught; then from hirn too must the spirit be
driven."v
One has in all sorts of ways attempted to bring the immense great-
ness of the cosmos into doser proximity to everyone's power of com-
prehension, and then from there taken the occasion for edifying
considerations, such as regarding the relative minuteness of the earth,
not to mention of human beings; or to the contrary in turn, regarding
the greatness of the spirit within this so minute human being, who is
able to discover, grasp, even measure this cosmic magnitude, etc. All

t'objectivization" = Objektität; "objectification" = Objektivation.]

"[Abstufitngen]
iitzum Abbilde]
iV[Stujen]
V[Cherubinischer Wandersmann (The Cherubic Wanderer [1674-1675]) 1,8.]
 170 Second Book. The World as Will

very well! In any case, in considering the immensity of the world, what
seems to me the most important thing is just that the essence in itself of
which the world is the phenomenon - whatever else it might be - yet
cannot have its true self drawn apart and divided up in this way in
boundless space, but this infinite extension pertains entirely to its
phenomenon alone, it by contrast is itself entirely and undividedly
present in every thing in nature, in every living thing. Therefore, nothing
at all is lost if we remain with any individual thing, and true wisdom is
not to be attained by taking the measure of the boundless world or,
which would be more to the point, personally flying through infInite
space, but rather by examining any individual thing in its entirety,
seeking to arrive at complete cognizance and understanding of its true
and proper essence.
The following point, accordingly, which has here of itself already
pressed itself upon any student of Plato, will be the object of detailed
154 consideration in the following Book, namely, that the various levels of
the objectifIcation ofwill that, expressed in countless individuals, stand
before us as their unachieved paradigms or as the etemal forms of
things - not themselves entering into time and space, the medium of
individuals, but standing fixed, subject to no change, always being,
never having become, while individuals arise and pass away, are always
becoming and never are - these levels of objectification of will are, I
say, nothing other than Plato 's ldeas. I mention this here in a prelimi-
nary way, so as from now on to be able to employ the word Idea i in
this sense, which is thus in my case always to be understand in the
genuine and original meaning that was imparted to it by Plato, with
altogether no thought thereby being given to those abstract productions
of scholastically dogmatizing reason for whose designation Kant just as
unsuitably as illegitimately misused that word, already appropriated and
employed most supremely to the purpose by Plato. I thus understand
by Idea any particular and fIxed level of objectification of will, so far
as the latter is thing in itself and thus foreign to plurality, which levels
of course relate to individual things as their etemal forms, or their para-
digms. Diogenes Laertius gives us the briefest and most cogent expres-
sion of this famous Platonic doctrine (III, 12): (; flJearOJv qJT/CJl; iv
rfi qJva&1 rae; lo&ae; earaval XaSalf&p lfapaO&IYJ.1am, ra 0' aJeJea
rClVrale; eOlxival, TOvrOJv ol/OloJJ.1ara xaS&arwra. (Plato ideas in
natura velut exemplaria dixit subsistere; cetera his esse similia, ad

i[Idee]
 The Objectification ofWill 171

istarum similitudinem consistentia.)i I take no further notice of the

Kantian misuse; what needs to be said about it is in the Appendix.

§ 26.
[ Original ForctS and tbe Cbaracters of Things as !deas -
Secondary Status of Natural Laws and Causes]
The most general forces of nature are displayed as the lowest level
of the objectification of will, some of them making their appearance in
all matter without exception, such as gravity, impenetrability, others
dividing things up within the matter at hand, so that some hold sway
over this, others over that, precisely thereby specifically different matter,
such as rigidity, fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical 155
properties and qualities of every sort. They are in themselves as much
immediate phenomena of will as the actions of human beings, are as
such groundless like the characters of human beings, only their individ-
ual phenomena are subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, like
the actions of human beings, while they themselves can never be called
either effects or causes, but are the antecedent and presupposed condi-
tions of all causes and effects, through which their own essence unfolds
and reveals itself. It is for this reason unintelligible to ask after a cause
of gravity, of electricity: these are original forces whose expressions, to
be sure, proceed in accordance with cause and effect, so that every
single one of their phenomena has a cause that is itself in turn such a
single phenomenon, and that yields the determination that the force in
question had to express itself here, had to come to the fore at this point
in time and space; but the force itself is in no way the effect of a cause,
nor the cause of an effect.
Therefore it is indeed wrong to say: "Gravity is the cause of the
stone's falling." Rather, the nearness of the earth is the cause here,
insofar as it draws the stone to it. Remove the earth and the stone will
not fall, even though gravity remains. 27 The force itself lies entirely
outside the chain of causes and effects, which presupposes time insofar
as it has meaning only with reference to the latter; but the former lies
outside of time as weIl. An individual alteration always has in turn
another equally individual alteration as its cause, hut not the force of
which it is the expression. For that which always bestows efficacy on a
cause, however many times it may occur, is precisely a natural force, is

t"Plato said it was as if the Ideas subsisted in nature as paradigms; other

things resembled them, standing to them in the relation of a likeness." The
quotation added in B with Latin translation, as usual, added in c.]
 172 Second Book. The World as Will

as such groundless, i.e., lies entirely outside the chain of causes and in
general of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and is philosophically
recognized as an immediate objectivization of the will that is the in-
itself of the whole of nature, but in etiology, in this case physics, is
demonstrated as an original force, i.e., a qualitas occulta.
On the higher levels of objectivization ofwill we see individuality
come significantly to the fore, especially in human beings in the great
diversity of individual characters, i.e., as completei personality, already
156 extemally expressed by strongly delineated individual physiognornies,
understanding by this the whole of one's corporealization. No animal
has anything elose to this degree of individuality, but only the highe~8
animals have a touch of it, over which the character of the species still
altogether predominates, however, and just for that reason only little of
an individual physiognomy. The further down we proceed, the more is
any trace of individual character lost in the general character of the
species, the physiognomy of which alone is retained. From familiarity
with the psychological character ofthe species, one knows exactly what
is to be expected of the individual, whereas, by contrast, in the human
species every individual needs to be studied and fathomed on its own.
For any assurance in the antecedent determination of behavior, this is,
on account of the possibility of dissimulation entering only with reason,
a matter of the greatest difficulty. Probably connected with this differ-
ence between the human species and a11 the others is the fact that the
furrows and folds of the brain, which are entirely lacking in birds and
only very weakly present in rodents, are even in the higher animals far
more symmetrical on both sides than in human beings, and more
consistently the same in every individual. t It is in addition to be viewed
as a phenomenonii of the truly individual character, which distinguishes
human beings from a11 animals, that the sex drive finds its satisfaction
in animals without any notable selectivity, while in human beings the

i[vollständige]
'~[Josef] Wenzel, De structura cerebri hominis et brutorum [On the Structure
0/ the Brain in Human Beings and Animals; as corrected by Hübscher: De
penitiori structura ... (On the Deeper Structure ... )], 1812, eh. 3; [Georges]
Cuvier, Le90ns d'anatomie comparee [Lessons in Comparative Anatomy
(1801-1805)], Lesson 9, articles 4 and 5; [Felix] Vicq d'Azyr, Histoire de
l'academie des sciences de Paris, 1783, pp. 470 and 483. [The reference to
Cuvier added in B. In the text, the claim about the symmetrica1 character and
consistency ofthe foIds ofthe brain was originally made, without qualification,
with respect to "all animals."]
ii[Phänomen]
 The Objectification ofWili 173

selectivity is driven so far, and indeed in an instinctive manner that is

independent of all reflection, that it rises to the level of a mighty passion.
While every human being is then to be regarded as a particularly
determined and characterized phenomenon of will, even to a certain
extent as an Idea of its own,29 but in animals this individual character is
entirely lacking, with only species having a characteristic significance -
and its trace ever more vanishes with every greater distance from human
beings, with plants finally possessing no other peculiarly individual
characteristics than those that allow of a complete explanation in terms 157
of external favorable or unfavorable circumstances of soil and climate
and other contingencies - all individuality fmally entirely vanishes in
the inorganic realm of nature. Only a crystal is still to a certain extent to
be viewed as an individual. It is a unity of striving in determinate direc-
tions, gripped by a rigidification whose trace has been made permanent.
At the same time, it is an aggregate grounded in its core form,i bound
by an Idea into a unity, just as a tree is an aggregate that is grounded in
its individual driving fibers, whichii is displayed, replicated, in every rib
of its leaves, in every leaf, in every branch, and each of the latter is to a
certain extent to be viewed as a plant all its own, parasitically feeding
on the greater one; so that the tree, like the crystal, is a systematic
aggregate of small plants, although only the whole is the complete
display of an indivisible Idea, i.e., of the particular level of objectifica-
tion of will in question. Individuals that belong to the same type of
crystals, however, can possess no other differences than are introduced
by external contingencies; one can even arbitrarily make any type grow
in large or small crystals. Sut individuals as such, i.e., with traces of an
individual character, are altogether no longer to be found in inorganic
nature. All the phenomena of the latter are expressions of general
natural forces, i.e., of such levels of the objectification of will as are
altogether not objectified (as in organic nature) through the mediation
of a diversity of individualities giving partial voiceiii to the entirety of
the Idea, but are displayed only in the species, and the latter entirely and
without deviation in every single phenomenon. Since time, space, plu-
rality, and the fact of being conditioned by causes do not pertain to will
or Ideas (levels of the objectification of will), but only to the latter's
phenomena, it follows that in all the millions of phenomena of such a

i[aus seiner Kerngestalt]

ii[The reference is grammatically indifferent as between the core form, the
Idea, and the unity.]
iii[teilweise aussprechen]
 174 Second Book. The Worldas Will

natural force, e.g., of gravity or electricity, it as such has to be displayed

in precisely the same manner, and external circumstances can merely
modify the phenomenon. This unity of its essence in all its phenomena,
this immutable constancy ofthe latter's occurrence as soon as, accord-
ing to the directing principle of causality, the conditions for it are at
158 hand, is called a naturallaw. Once such a thing has become known to
us through experience, one can exactly predetermine and calculate the
phenomenon of the natural force, the character of which has been given
voice and deposited therein. This lawful character of phenomena on
lower levels of the objectification of will is, however, just what gives
them an aspect so different from phenomena of the same will on the
higher, i.e., more distinct, levels of its objectification, in animals, human
beings, and their actions, where the stronger or weaker emergence of
individual character and the fact of being moved by motives - which
since they lie within cognizance often remain concealed from the
spectator - has so far led to complete failure to recognize the inner
essential identity ofboth sorts ofphenomena.
The infallibility of naturallaws has something surprising about it,
indeed at times almost horrifying,i when one proceeds from cognizance
of individuals, not of Ideas. One might marvel that nature does not
forget its laws even a single time, that, e.g., if it is once in accOl'd with a
naturallaw that with the conjunction of certain substances under parti-
cular conditions a chemical compound, fonnation of agas, combustion
should take place, then indeed, when those conditions are conjoined, be
it by arrangement on our part or altogether by chance (where the punc-
tuality is all the more surprising on account of its unexpected character),
today as much as a thousand years ago, at once and without delay, the
particular phenomenon occurs. We get the most vivid sensation of this
marvel in the case of phenomena that are rare and ensue only given a
considerable compounding of circumstances, but given the latter are
predictable by us, thus, e.g., that when contact is established between
certain metals alternated with an acid solution between them, if silver
foil is put between the extremities of the chain it is immediately bound
to go up in green flames, or that under certain conditions hard diamonds
transform into carbonic acid. It is the eerie omnipresence of natural
forces that then surprises us, and we take note in this case of what no
longer strikes us in everyday phenomena, namely, how the interconnec-
tion between causes and effects is really as mysterious as that which

i [Schaudererregendes]
 The Objectification ofWilI 175

one imagines i between magic words and the spirit that necessarily 159
appears in response to their summons. By contrast, when we have pene-
trated into philosophical cognizance of the fact that a natural force is a
particular level of the objectification of will, i.e., of that of which we
are also cognizant as our innermost essence, and of the fact that, in itself
and as distinct from its phenomenon and the latter's forms, this will lies
beyond time and space; and thus the plurality conditioned by them
pertains not to it nor immediately to the levels of its objectification, i.e.,
to Ideas, but only to phenomena, while the law of causality has meaning
only with reference to time and space, determining locations within the
latter for the multiplied phenomena of the various Ideas in which will
manifests itself, regulating the order in which they have to occur -
when, I say, cognizance of this fact has absorbed the inner sense of the
great Kantian doctrine that space, time, and causality pertain not to the
thing in itself, but only to its phenomenon, are only our cognitive forms,
not characteristics of the thing in itself, then we will achieve the
insightii that this amazement over the lawful character and punctuality
of the working of a natural force, over the complete identity of all the
millions of its phenomena, over the infallibility of their occurrence, is in
fact comparable to the amazement of a child or a savage who, perhaps
for the first tirp,e observing a flower through a faceted glass, marvels at
the complete identity of the countless flowers it sees, and counts the
leaves of each one ofthem individually.
Every general original natural force is thus in its inner essence
nothing other than the objectification of will on a lower level: we call
every such level an etemalldea in Plato's sense. But a naturallaw is
the referring of an Idea to the form pertaining to its phenomenon. This
form is time, space, and causality, which have a necessary and insepa-
rable interconnection and reference to one another. Through time and
space Ideas are multiplied into countless phenomena, but the order by
which these enter into those forms of multiplicity is firmly determined
by the law of causality: this is as it were the norm that regulates the
borders between the phenomena of various ldeas, in accordance with 160
which space, time, and matter are allotted to them. This norm thus
necessarily refers toiii the identity of the whole of existing matter,
which is the common sub stratum of all those various phenomena. Were

i[dichtetl
"[einsehen]
iitbezieht sich ... auJJ
 176 Second Book. The World as Will

all the latter not referred i to that common matter, in whose possession
they have to share, there would be no need for such a law to settle
their claims: they could all simultaneously and in juxtaposition fill
infinite space through the course of infinite time. Thus only because
all those phenomena of the eternal Ideas are referred to one and the
same matter did there have to be a rule for their coming and going;
otherwise, none would make way for any of the others. In this
manner, the law of causality is essentially bound up with that of the
persistence of substance: both obtain meaning only through their mutual
interconnection. But space and time in turn also relate to them in just
the same way. For time is the mere possibility of contrary determina-
tions with respect to the same matter; the mere possibility of persistence
of the same matter under all contrary determinations is space. That is
why we described matter in the previous Book as the union of time
and space. This union shows itself as change in accidents with the
persistence of substance, the general possibility of which is precisely
causality, or becoming. We thus also said that matter is causality
through and through. We explained the understanding as the subjective
correlate of causality and said that matter (thus the whole world as
presentation) only exists for the understanding, that the latter is its
condition, its bearer in the sense of its necessary correlate. All of this
here only as an aside to recall what was elaborated in the first Book.
Attention to the inner accord between the two Books is required for
their fuH understanding. For what in the actual world are inseparably
united as its two sides, will and presentation, have been tom apart by
these two Books, so as the more distinctly to take cognizance of each in
its isolation.
It may perhaps not be superfluous to make still more explicit with
161 an example how the law of causality has meaning only with reference
to time and space and the matter consisting in the union of the two, in
that it determines the boundaries in accord with which the phenomena
of natural forces share possession of the latter, while the original natural
forces themselves - as immediate objectifications of that will which, as
thing in itself, is not subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground - lie
outside of those forms Only within those forms does any etiological
explanation have validity and meaning, and just for that reason can never
lead us to the inner essence of nature.
Let us imagine for OUT purposes a machine constructed according
to the laws of mechanics. Iron weights set it in motion with their gravity.

i[gewiesen]
 The Objectification of Will 177

Copper gears resist with their rigidity, push and lift one another and the
levers by virtue of their impenetrability, ete. Here gravity, rigidity,
impenetrability are original, unexplained forces: meehanics provides
merely the eonditions under which, and the mode and manner in whieh,
they express themselves, come to the fore, hold sway over particular
matter, time, and place. Now it might happen that a strong magnet
affeets the iron in the weights, that it overpowers gravity: the maehine
then grinds to a halt, and the matter is at once the stage for an entirely
different natural force, for which etiological explanation likewise
provides nothing further than the conditions for its appearanee, namely,
magnetism. Altematively, the maehine's copper sheets might be laid
upon sheets of zine, introducing an acid solution between them: the
same matter in the machine immediately falls subjeet to another original
force, that of galvanism, which now holds sway over it in aceordance
with its laws, reveals itself through its phenomena in the maehine; for
this, etiology again cannot provide more than the eircumstances under
which, and the laws in accordance with whieh, it shows itself. Now
we let the temperature be increased, pure oxygen be added: the entire
machine bums up, i.e., once again an entirely distinct natural force, that
of the chemical process, has at this time, in this plaee, laid undeniable
claim to that matter, and reveals itself in it as an Idea, as a particular
level ofthe objectifieation ofwill.
Now suppose that the resultant metal oxide is eombined with an
acid: a salt results, crystals form. They are the phenomenon of another
Idea, which is itself in turn entirely unfathomable, even though the occur-
rence ofits phenomenon depended on those conditions, which etiology 162
is able to state. The crystals erumble, are mixed with other substances,
some form of plant life rises out of them: a new phenomenon of will.
And so we might pursue the same persisting matter ad infinitum, and
observe how sometimes this, sometimes that natural force wins and
inexorably seizes the right to it, that it may eome to the fore and reveal
its essence. Determination of this right, the point in time and space
where it comes to apply, is provided by the law of causality; but it is
only this far that explanation grounded in the latter can go. Force itself
is will in its appearanee,i and as such not subject to the modes of the
Prineiple of Sufficient Ground, i.e., groundless. It lies beyond all time,
is omnipresent,30 and seems as if constantly to await the occurrence of
the circumstances under which it can come to the fore and take power
over some particular matter, suppressing the forces up until then holding

i[ist Erscheinung des Willens]

 178 Second Book. The World as Will

sway over it. All of time exists only for their phenomenon, without
meaning for the forces themselves: chemical forces slumber for
millennia in some portion of matter before contact with reagents sets
them free, then they make their appearance; but time exists only for this
phenomenon, not for the forces themselves. Galvanism slumbers for
millennia in copper and zinc, and they Jie comfortably alongside of the
silver that, as soon as all three come into contact under the requisite
conditions, necessarily goes up in flames. Even in the organie realm,
we see a dried grain, preserving its slumbering force for three thousand
years, with the eventual occurrence of favorable circumstances grow into
a plant. t
163 If the distinction between natural forces and all their phenomena
has been made explicit by these considerations, if we have seen that
they are will itself at this particular level of its objectiftcation, while
plurality pertains only to phenomena through time and space, and the
law of causality is nothing other than adetermination of positions for
individual phenomena within the latter, then we will also be cognizant
of the complete truth and deep sense of MaZebranche's doctrine of
occasioning causes, causes occasionelZes. It is well worth the effort to
compare my own present account with this doctrine of his, expounded

t ün 16 September 1840, at the Literary and Scientific Institute ofthe City of

London, Mr. Pettigrew displayed, in a lecture on Egyptian antiquities, kerneis
of wheat that Sir. G. Wilkinson had found in a grave at Thebes, where they
must have 1ain for thirty centuries. They were found in a hennetically sea1ed
um. He had sown twelve of the kerneis and obtained a plant from them that
grew to be five feet tall and whose seeds were now complete1y mature. From
the Times of21 September 1840. - Similarly, at the Medica1-Botanical Society
in London in 1830, Mr. Haulton produced a tuberous root that had been found
in the hand of an Egyptian mummy to which it was 1ikely given for religious
purposes, and that was thus at least 2,000 years old. He had planted it in a
flowerpot, where it sprouted and flourished at once. This is cited from the
Medical Journal of 1830 in the Journal ofthe Royal Institute ofGreat-Britain,
Oetober 1830, p. 196. - "ln the garden of Mr. Grimstone, of the Herbary,
Highgate, London, is now a pea-plant in full bearing, produc'd from a pea tak-
en by Mr. Pettigrew & the authorities of the British Museum from a vase ex-
tracted from an Egyptian sarcophagus, where it must have remained 2,844
years." - From the Times of 16 August 1844. [Tbe original passage here is as
cited by Hübscher, rather than a translation of Schopenhauer's translation;
Schopenhauer's citation of course added in C.l - lndeed, living toads found in
limestone lead us to assurne that even animallife is capable of such suspension
over the course of millennia, if it begins with hibernation and is maintained by
particular circumstances. [Except as indicated, this note added in B.]
 The Objectification ofWill 179

in his Recherehes de la verite, in particular in the third chapter of the

second part of the sixth Book and in the eclaircissementsi of the chapter
appended at the end, and to observe the most complete accord between
the two doctrines amidst such a great difference in lines of thought.
Indeed, I have to marvel at how Malebranche, entirely caught up in the
positive dogmas that his age irresistibly forced upon hirn, in such bond-
age, under such a burden, nonetheless struck so happily, so accurately
upon the truth and could at least verbally unite it even with those
dogmas.
For the power of truth is unbelievably great and inexpressibly
enduring. We find frequent traces of it in an, even in the most bizarre,
indeed most absurd dogmas of various times and lands, and in fact often 164
in strange company, in wondrous and yet still recognizable mixtures. It
is thus like aplant that germinates under a pile of large stones, yet
nonetheless climbs its way into the light, working its way through with
numerous detours and deviations, misshapen, faded, stunted - but none-
theless, into the light.
Malebranche is of course right: every natural cause is only an
occasioning cause, provides only occasion, opportunity for the phenom-
enon of that one and indivisible will which is the in-itself of an things,
and for its gradated objectification, this entire visible world. Only its
coming to the fore, its becoming visible in this place, at this time, is
brought about by the cause and is to that extent dependent on it, but not
the entirety of its phenomenon, not its inner essence: this is will itself,
to which the Principle of Sufficient Ground finds no application, which
is hence groundless. No thing in the world has a cause for its existence
plain and simple, but only a cause by which it exists precisely here and
precisely now. Whya stone displays now gravity, now rigidity, now
electricity, now chemical properties, this depends on causes, on extemal
effects upon it, and is to be explained in terms of them. But those
properties themselves, thus its entire essence, which consists in them
and accordingly expresses itself in an the manners in question, thus the
fact that it is such a thing as it is at all, that it exists at an, this has no
ground, but is the coming into visibility of groundless will. Thus all
causes are occasioning causes. Wehave found it to be so in incognizant
nature, but it is also precisely so where it is no longer causes and
stimuli, but motives, that determine the point of entry for phenomena,

t'elucidations": Nicolas de Malebranche, De la recherche de la verite (The

Search after Truth [1674-1675]). "Occasioning" causes are more often, but
misleadingly, also called "occasional" causes.]
 180 Second Book. The World as Will

thus in the actions of animals and human beings. For here as there it is
one and the same will that makes its appearance, highly diverse in the
degrees of its manifestation, multiplied in the phenomena of the latter
and with respect to those phenomena subject to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, in itse1f free of it all. Motives do not determine the character of
human beings, but only the phenomenon ofthis character, thus one's
deeds, the external shape of the course of one's life, not its inner
meaning and content: deeds proceed from one's character, which is the
165 immediate phenomenon of the will, thus groundless. Why one person is
malicious,i another one good, does not depend on motives and external
effects upon them, e.g., on doctrines and sermons, and is in this sense
absolutely inexplicable. But whether an evil person shows his malice in
petty injustices, cowardly intrigues, base villainy committed within
the narrow circ1e of his surroundings, or whether as a conqueror he
suppresses peoples, dashes a world into sorrow, spills the blood of
millions: this is the external form of the phenomenon that he iS,ii that
which is inessential in it, and depends on the circumstances in which
destiny places hirn, on his surroundings, on external influences, on
motives. But his decision in response to these motives is never explica-
ble on their basis; they proceed from the will of which this person is a
phenomenon. Of this, in the fourth Book. The mode and manner in which
a character unfolds its properties is entirely comparable to the way in
which all bodies in incognizant nature show theirs. Water remains water
with the properties intrinsic to it. But whether it reflects its shores as a
quiet lake, or plummets in foam over rocks, or by artificial arrangement
shoots high in a tall stream: that depends on external causes. The one is
as natural to it as the other, but depending on whatever the circum-
stances are it will show the one or the other, equally ready for all of
them, but in any case true to its character and always revealing only the
latter. So too will each human character reveal itself under every
circumstance; but the phenomena that proceed therefrom will always be
according to what the circumstances were.

§ 27.
[More on tbe Limitations oj Natural Science - Intimation oj the
Thing in Itse!! in Nature - A Cautious Philosophy oj Nature]
If, then, from all of the preceding considerations regarding the
forces of nature and their phenomena, it has been made explicit how far

tboshafl; inA, so böse ("so evil")]

n[seiner Erscheinung]
 The Objectification of Will 181

explanation on the basis of causes can go, and where it has to stop if it
would not degenerate into the foolish endeavor to reduce the content of
all phenomena to their mere form, with nothing but form then remaining
in the end, we will now also be able to determine in a general way what
is to be demanded of an etiology. It has to seek out causes for an the 166
phenomena in nature, i.e., the circumstances under which they always
occur. But then it has to reduce the multifarious phenomena in these
manifold circumstances to that which is effectual in an phenomena
and is presupposed by causes, to original forces of nature, accurately
distinguishing whether a diversity in phenomena arises from a diversity
of forces or only from diversity in the circumstances under which force
is expressing itself, and being as careful to avoid taking for a phenom-
enon of distinct forces what is an expression of one and the same force,
merely under diverse circumstances, as conversely taking what pertains
to a diversity of original forces for expressions of a single force. Here
in the first instance judgment belongs, which is why so few people are
capable of broadening their insight in physics but all are capable of
broadening their experience. Inertia and ignorance prematurely incline
one to appeal to original forces: this is shown to an extreme that borders
on irony in the entities and quiddities of the scholastics. The last thing I
would desire is to have given favor to their reintroduction. Instead of
giving a physical explanation, we are as little permitted to appeal to the
objectification of will as to the creative force of God. For physics
demands causes, while will is never a cause: its relation to phenomena
is altogether not according to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, but that
which is in itself will exists in another respect as presentation, i.e., is a
phenomenon; as such, it follows the laws that constitute the form per-
taining to phenomena. Thus, e.g., every movement, even though it is
always a phenomenon of will, must nonetheless have a cause on the
basis of which it is explicable with reference to a particular time and
place, Le., not in general terms with respect to its inner essence, but as
an individual phenomenon. The cause is a mechanical one with a stone,
is a motive with the movements of human beings; but it can never be
lacking. By contrast, that which is general in character, the common
essence of all phenomena of a particular sort, that without whose pre-
supposition causal explanations would have neither sense nor signifi-
cance, is general natural forces, which must remain as a qualitas occulta
in physics precisely because here etiological explanation ends and the
metaphysicae' begins. The chain of causes and effects is never broken, 167
however, by an original force to which appeal might have to be made,
never goes back to the latter as somehow its initial link. Rather, the
nearest link in the chain, as much as the most distant, presupposes orig-
 182 Second Book. The World as Will

inal force and could not otherwise explain anything. Aseries of

causes and effects can be a phenomenon of the most diverse forces, by
which they are led forth in their successive entrance into visibility, as I
have elucidated above with the example of a machine made out of metal.
But the diversity of these original forces, of which none is derivable
from the others, in no way interrupts the unity of that chain of causes
and the interconnection of all its links. The etiology of nature and the
philosophy of nature never interfere with one another, but proceed in
juxtaposition, considering the same object from different points of
view. Etiology provides an account ofthe causes that necessarily brought
forth the individual phenomenon to be explained and, as the foundation
of all its explanations, indicates the general forces that are activei in all
these causes and effects, exactly determines these forces, their number,
their differences, and then all the effects in which each force, correspond-
ing to variation in the circumstances, comes to the fore in various ways,
always according to its peculiar character, which it unfolds in accordance
with an infallible rule that one calls a natural law. Once physics has
fully accomplished all of this in every respect, it has achieved its
completion: then there is no longer any force in inorganic nature of
which we are ignorant, nor does any effect exist that has not been
demonstrated as a phenomenon of one of those forces under particular
circumstance according to natural law. 32 Nonetheless, a natural law
remains only a rule read off from nature, according to which the latter,
under particular circumstances, always proceeds as soon as these occur.
Therefore, one can of course define a naturallawas a fact that has been
pronounced in general terms, un fait generalise; but then according to
that, a full disclosure of all the natural laws would only be a complete
index of the facts.
Consideration of nature as a whole will then be completed by
168 morphology, which enumerates, compares, and orders all the enduring
forms of organic nature. Regarding the cause of the occurrence of indi-
vidual beings it has little to say, since this is in every case a matter of
procreation, the theory of which proceeds on its own terms, or in rare
cases a matter of generatio aequivoca. ii Belonging among the latter,
however, is also strictly speaking the way in which alliow levels of the
objectivization of will, thus physical and chemical phenomena, emerge
in individual cases, and it is precisely the task of etiology to state the

ttätig]
ii["spontaneous generation": the inexplicable generation of living organisms
from lifeless matter.]
 The Objectification of Will 183

conditions for this emergence. Philosophy, by contrast, considers in aB

things, thus also in nature, only that which is general. The original forces
themselves are in that case its subject matter, and in them it recognizes
the various levels of the objectification of will, which is the inner
essence, the in-itself, of this world that, when it abstracts from that
essence, it describes as mere presentation to the subject.
But if instead of preparing the way for philosophy, and providing
confirmation in support of the application of its doctrines, etiology
rather supposes its goal to be disavowal of all original forces but one,
that which is most general, e.g., impenetrability, which it fancies it
thoroughly understands and to which it accordingll 3 forcibly seeks to
reduce aB others, then it undermines its own foundation, and can only
provide error instead of truth. The content of nature is now suppressed
to the benefit of its form, everything is attributed 10 the effect of circum-
stances, nothing to the inner essence of things. If things were actuaBy
successful on this path, then, as already stated, an algorithm would in
the end solve the riddle of the world. But one foBows this path when, as
already mentioned, all physiological effects are to be reduced to form
and compounding, thus for example to electricity, and this in turn to
chemistry, and this to mechanism. The latter was the mistake of, e.g.,
Descartes and aB the atomists, who traced the movement of the heavenly
bodies to the impact of a fluid, and qualities to the interconnection and
shape of atoms, and who were working toward an explanation of all the
phenomena of nature as mere phenomenai of impenetrability and cohe-
sion. While there has been retreat from this position, the same thing is
still done in our own day by electrical, chemieal, and mechanical
physiologists, who would stubbomly explain the whole of life and all
the functions of organisms in terms of the "form and compounding" 169
of its constituents. That the goal of physiological explanation is the
reduction of organic life to the general forces considered by physics,
can still be found pronounced in Meckel's Archiv für Physiologie,
1820, vol. 5, p. 185.11
Lamarck too, in his Philosophie zoologique, vol. 2, ch. 3, explains
life as a mere effect of heat and electricity: le calorique et la matiere
electrique suffisent parfaitement pour composer ensemble cette cause

i [Erscheinungen ...Phänomene]
ii[Johann Friedrich Meckel, editor of the journal Deutsches Archiv for
Physiologie, a professor at Halle and grandson of the Johann Friedrich Meckel
who founded a famous anatomical collection subsequently continued by the
grandson. This sentence added in B.]
 184 Second Book. The World as Will

essentielle de La vie (p. l6).i According to that, he at and electricity

would reaHy be the thing in itself and the animal and plants worlds its
phenomenon. The absurdity of this opinion comes glaringly to the fore
on pp. 306ff of that work. 34 It is weH known that in very recent times
all of those so often exploded views have retumed with renewed audac-
ity. They can be seen, when considered with exactness, to be grounded
in the end in the presupposition that an organism is only an aggregate
of phenomena of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces that, coming
together by chance in this case, produced the organism as a quirk of
nature with no further significance. Accordingly, the animal organism,
or the human, would not, philosophically considered, display an Idea
all its own, i.e., not be immediately of itself the objectivization of will
on a particular higher level, but there would only appear in it the ldeas
that objectify will in electricity, in chemical processes, in mechanism.
Tbe organism would thus be blown together by the encounter of these
forces just as accidentally as human and animal shapes found in c10uds
or stalactites, thus in themselves of no further interest.
We will at once see, however, the extent to which that application
to organisms of physical and chemical modes of explanation might
nonetheless, within certain limits, be permitted and useful,35 insofar as I
will explain the fact that, to be sure, the life-force utilizes and employs
the forces of inorganic nature, but yet in no way consists of them, any
more than the smith consists of hammer and anvi!. Therefore, not even
the simplest case of plant life will ever be explicable on their basis, say
on the basis of capillary action or endosmosis, to say nothing of animal
170 life. The following consideration will prepare our way for this rather
difficult exposition.
It is indeed, following aH that has been said, an aberration on the
part of natural science when it aims to reduce higher to lower levels of
the objectivization of will. For misconstruing or denying original and
self-subsistent natural forces is just as mistaken as the groundless
assumption of unique forces when wh at is in question is merely a
particular mode of appearance of ones already known. Thus Kant is
right to say that it is absurd to hope for a Newton of ablade of grass,ii

i["Caloric [heat] and electrical matter are perfectly sufficient for the entire
composition ofthis essential cause of life": Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine Monet
de Lamarck, Philosophie zoologique, ou exposition des considerations relatives
cl l'histoire naturelle des animaux (Zoological philosophy, or exposition of
some considerations pertaining to the natural history of animals [1809]).]
itCritique ofJudgment. § 75 (Ak. 5.400)]
 The Objectification ofWill 185

Le., someone who would reduce ablade of grass to phenomena of

physical and chemical forces, of which it would then be the chance
concrescence, thus a mere quirk of nature in which no unique Idea made
its appearance, i.e., where will would not have immediately revealed
itself on a higher and particular level, but only just as it is in the
phenomena of inorganic nature, and by happenstance in this form. The
scholastics, who would in no way have permitted this sort of thing,
would have quite rightly said that it is a total disavowal of forma
substantialis and its demotion to the level of mere forma accidentalis. 36
For Aristotle's forma substantialis designates precisely that wh ich I
call a degree ofthe objectification ofwill in a thing.
Now on the other hand, however, we cannot overlook the fact that
in all Ideas, i.e., in all the forces of inorganic and all the structures of
organic nature, it is one and the same will that reveals itself, i.e., that
enters into the form of presentation, into objectivization. Its unity must
therefore make itself known by way of an inner affinity among all of
its phenomena. This affinity then reveals itse1f on the higher levels of
its objectivization, where the entire phenomenon is more distinct, thus
in the plant and animal realms, through a universally pervasive analogy
of all forms, the Fundamental Typei that recurs in all the phenomena.
This has accordingly become the directing principle of the superb
zoological systems coming from the French in this century, and is
most fully demonstrated in comparative anatomy37 as I 'unite de plan,
l'uniformite de l'element anatomique. ii To discover the latter has been
a main occupation, or at least certainly the most laudatory endeavor, of
the natural philosophers of Schelling's school,38 who have indeed 171
accomplished much in this respect, even if in many cases their hunt for
analogies in nature degenerates into a mere display of cleverness. But
they have been right in showing us this general affinity and family
resemblance even in the ldeas of inorganic nature, e.g., between elec-
tricity and magnetism, the identity of which was later confirmed,39
between chemical attraction and gravity, etc. They have called particular
attention to the fact that polarity, i.e., the separation of a force into
activities that are qualitatively different, in opposition to one another
and striving for reunification (which even for the most part reveals itself
spatially through movement in opposite directions), is a Fundamental
Type that pertains to almost all the phenomena of nature, from magnets
and crystals on up to human beings. 4o But in China, cognizance of this

irGrundtypus]
ii[See earlier reference to Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.]
 186 Second Book. The World as Will

fact has been widespread since the most ancient tirnes, in the doctrine
of the opposition between Yin and Yang.
Indeed, precisely because all things in the world are the objectivi-
zation of one and the same will, consequently identical in their inner
essence, there must not only exist such an unmistakable analogy among
them, and there be shown in everything less completei already the trace,
indication, disposition of its more complete neighbor; but also, because
all of those forms pertain only to the world as presentation, it may even
be assumed that, within presentation's most general forms, within that
which is really the fundamental framework for the phenomenal world/i
thus within space and time, the Fundamental Type is already available
for discovery and demonstration, the indication, outlineiii of all of that
which fills these forms. It seems to have been obscure recognition of this
fact that gave rise to the Kabbala and all the mathematical philosophy
of the Pythagoreans, as weIl as that of the Chinese in the I Ching. 41 And
even in Schelling's school, along with manifold endeavors to uncover
analogies among all the phenomena of nature, we also find several,
albeit unfortunate, attempts to derive natural laws from the mere laws
of space and time. In any case, one cannot know how far some brilliant
mindiv might someday go toward achieving the goal ofboth endeavors.
If, then, the distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself is
172 never to be lost sight of, and thus (because there are particular levels of
its objectivization) the identity ofthe will that is objectified in allldeas
never to be twisted into an identity between the individual ldeas them-
selves in which it makes its appearance, and thus, e.g., chemical or
electrical attraction never reduced to gravitational attraction, despite
OUT cognizance of their inner analogy and of the fact that the former can
be viewed as if they were higher powers v of the latter - just as little as
the inner analogy in the structure of all animals justifies confusing and

tUnvollkommeneren. For reasons noted earlier, I prefer "complete" over

''perfect'' for vollkommen. The discussion to follow here, and in § 28, also
seems to me to confirm that what Schopenhauer has in mind is movement from
astate oflesser to greater "perfeetion" that simply consists in movement from a
certain sort of lesser to a certain sort of greater completeness of expression of
will.]
ii[Grundgerüst der erscheinenden Welt]
Ul [An lage]

iV[Kopj]
v [Potenzen]
 The Objectification ofWill 187

identifying species, or perhaps explaining the more complete as chance

variations of the less complete - if, finally, neither can physiological
functions ever be reduced to chemical or physical processes, one can
nevertheless with considerable probability assume the following by
way ofjustification, within certain limits, ofthis sort ofprocedure.
When a number of phenomena of will on its lower levels of objec-
tification, thus on the level ofthe inorganic, come into conflict with one
another - with each of them, according to the directing principle of
causality, attempting to appropriate the matter at hand - there proceeds
from this conflict the phenomenon of a higher Idea, overpowering all
the more incomplete ones previously existent, yet in such a way as to
allow the essence of the latter a subordinate manner of subsistence,
taking up into itself an analogue thereof. This process is comprehensible
only precisely in terms of the identity of the will that makes its appear-
ance in all Ideas, and in terms of its striving for ever higher objectifica-
tion. Thus we see, e.g., in the solidification of bone an unmistakable
analogue of the crystallization that originally held sway in the calcium,
even though ossification can never be reduced to crystallization. The
analogy shows itself in a weaker fashion in the solidification of flesh.
So too, the compounding of fluids in animal bodies and their secretion
is an analogue of chemical compounding and precipitation; the laws of
the latter are still effectual even here, but in a subordinate way, greatly
modified, overpowered by a higher Idea. Thus merely chemical forces
outside of an organism will never produce such fluids. But:
Encheiresin naturae, Chemistry's own word,
Mocks it without knowing why it's absurd. i
The more complete Idea that emerges from such a victory over a 173
number of lower ldeas, or objectifications of will, wins an entirely new
character precisely by the fact that it takes up into itself a more highly
potentiated analogue of all of those that have been overpowered: will is
objectified in a new, more distinct way; originally through generatio
aequivoca, subsequently through assimilation into the available seed,
there arise organic fluids, plants, animals, human beings. Thus out of the

i[Goethe, Faust I, 1940-1941 ("Study"). Encheiresin naturae is a term in

alchemy signifying a pervasive force in nature, whose command via the
magical "philosophers' stone" would supposedly yield a general power over
nature (from the Greek encheirisis, from the term for "hand," signifying
management or control, and the Latin word for "nature"). The citation added by
Schopenhauer in C.]
 188 Second Book. The World as Will

conflict among lower phenomena, higher ones come forth, devouring

thema11 and yet to a higher degree actualizing a11 their striving. - Here
accordingly the law indeed holds sway: serpens, nisi serpentem comed-
i
erit, non fit draco.
Would that it were possible, through the clarity of my account, to
overcome the obscurity of the thoughts attaching to this material. But I
am very aware indeed that the reader' s own considerations are of much
needed help to me if I am not to remain uncomprehended ar to be
misunderstood. - According to the view in question, traces of chemical
and physical modes of effectuality are demonstrable, to be sure, in an
organism, but the latter is never explained on their basis: because it is
in no way a phenomenon that is produced by combining those forces'
effectuality, thus by chance, but a higher Idea that has subjected the
lower through an overpowering assimilation;ii because the one will that
is objectified in all Ideas, in that it is striving far the highest possible
objectification, here abandons the lower levels of its phenomenon after
a c:onflict in the latter, all the more powerfully to makes its appearance
on a higher one. No victory without a batde: able to come to the fore
only by overpowering lower ones, the lligher Idea, or objectification of
will, suffers resistance from them, which although made to serve it
yet continue strive to attain independent and completeiii expression of
their essence. Just as a magnet that has lifted an iron bar maintains a
continuing battle with gravity, which, as the lowest objectification of
will, has a more original claim to the matter in the bar - in which
constant battle the magnet is even strengthened, as if stimulated to
174 greater efforts by the resistance - likewise every phenomenon of will,
including that which is displayed in the human organism, maintains an
enduring battle against the many physical and chemical forces that, as
lower Ideas, lay prior claim to the matter in question. Thus sinks the
arm that one had for a while, overpowering gravity, held raised. Thus is
the good feeling of health, which expresses the victory of the Idea of
the self-conscious organism over the physical and chemical laws that
originally held sway in the body's fluids, yet so often interrupted, or
indeed really always accompanied, by a certain greater or lesser degree
of unpleasantness proceeding from resistance from those forces, and by

i["The serpent becomes a dragon only by devouring serpents": Francis

Bacon, Sermones Fideles (Latin version [1638] of Bacon's Essays [1597.D]),
Essay 38 (40 of Essays), "Defortuna" ("Of Fortune").]
ii[überwältigende Assimilation]
lll[vollständigen]
 The Obj ectification of Will 189

which the vegetative part of our life is in fact constantly joined with
mild suffering. Thus too, digestion depresses all the animal functions,
because it engages the entire life-force in an overpowering of nature's
chemical forces for the sake of assimilation. And thus the burden of
physical life in general, the necessity of sleep and in the end of death,
where, finally favored by the circumstances, those subjugated natural
forces win back, from an organism itself fatigued by constant victory,
the matter that had been tom from them, and attain to an unhindered
display of their essence. One can therefore even say that every organism
displays the Idea of which it is an imagei only after subtraction of that
part of its force expended in the overcoming of the lower Ideas that
make matter contestable for it. This seems to be what Jakob Böhme had
in mind, when he somewhere says that all human and animal bodies,
and all plants, are really half dead. ii Always according, then, as it is
more or less successful in overpowering the natural forces that express
deeper levels of the objectivization of will, an organism will achieve
more complete or less complete expression of its Idea, Le., stand nearer
or farther from the Ideal that pertains to beauty within its species.
Thus everywhere in nature we see conflict, battle, and the exchange
of victory, and will later more distinct1y recognize precisely in this
fact the internal division that is essential to willYi Every level of the
objectification ofwill makes matter, space, time contestable for others.

i[Abbild]
ll[Schopenhauer may be conflating, e.g., (1) weil du noch lebst, ein todtes
Cadaver ("while you yet live, a dead Cadaver": De incarnatione verbi, oder
Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi [On the Incarnation olthe Word, or 01
Jesus Christ Become Man (1620), H, VI, 7]), an deinem Reiche halb erstorben
("half dead to thine kingdom": Christosophia, oder Der Weg zu Christo [The
Path to Christ], Bk. 1, De poenitentia vera, oder Von wahrer Busse ["Of True
Repentance" (1622)], Kurze Form der Beichte vor Gottes Augen ["Short Form
of Confession before the Eyes of God"], par. 2), with more general pronounce-
ments such as (2) das Leben in sich selber streitig ... als man denn siehet wie
Hitze und Kälte einander anfeinden. sowohl Feuer und Wasser, Leben und
Tod ... und nicht allein im Menschen, sondern in allen Creaturen ("Life in itself
contradictory ... as one then sees how hot and cold battle one another, as well as
fire and water, life and death ... and not only in man but in all creatures": Sex
puncta theosophica, oder Von sechs Theosophischen Puncten [Six Theosophical
Points], Pt. 3) - all in the 1730 Amsterdam edition of Böhme, Theosophia
Revelata (repr. in facsimile, Will-Erich Pauckert [ed.], Sämtliche Schriften
[1957]), vol. 4. ]
iii[die dem Willen wesentliche Entzweiung mit sich selbst]
 190 Second Book. The World as Will

175 Persisting matter must constantly vary its form while, according to
the directing principle of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical,
organic phenomena, greedily pressing to come to the fore, tear that
matter away from one another; for each would reveal its Idea.
Through the whole of nature one may pursue this conflict, indeed it
exists only precisely through it: Bi rap Il~ 6v TO VclXO; Sv rot;
Jrpdrllamv, 8'v !Xv 6v c!JraVTa. d5; qJT/CT1V 'E1lJr{;t5ox2if~' (nam si non
inesset in rebus contentio, unum omnia essent, ut ait Empedocles.
Aristotle, Metaph. B, 5).i But this very conflict is only the revelation of
the internal division essential to will. This general battle achieves its most
disJinct visibility in the animal world, which has the plant world for its
nourishment and in which every animal itself is in turn prey and
nourishment for another, i.e., where the matter in which its Idea is
displayed has to make way for the display of another, every animal able to
maintain its existence only through constant elimination of another. So the
will for life is pervasively feeding on itself and, in various forms,ii its own
nourishment, until finall/2 the human species, because it overpowers
all the others, views nature as something fabricated for its own use,
even though that same species, as we will [md in the fourth Book,
reveals that battle within itself, that internal division of will, to the most
fearsome degree of distinctness, and homo homini lupus. iii In the mean-
time, we will equally recognize the same conflict, the same process of
overpowering, on the low levels of objectivization of Will. 43 Many
insects (especially the Ichneumonidae) lay their eggs on the skin and
even in the bodies of the larvae of other insects, whose gradual
destruction is the first work of the brood as it creeps forth. The young
hydra, emerging as a branch from of an old one and later separating
from it, already fights with it for the available prey while still firmly
attached, so that one arm will tear the prey from the mouth of another
(Trembley, Polypod. II, p. 110, and IIl, p. 165).iv But the most glaring

i["for if strife had not been present in things, all things would have been one,
as he [Empedocles] says": Metaphysics III [B], [n.b.] 4, lOOOb (tr. W. D. Ross
in Barnes [ed.], Complete Works). The quotation added in B, with the Latin
translation added, as usual, in c.]
ii[ Gestalten 1
iii["And man is a wolf to man": Plautus, Asinaria (The Comedy 0/ Asses) II,
495). Added in B.]
iv [Abraham Trembley, Memoires pour servir ci ['histoire d'un genre de po-
lypes d'eau douce (1744); German edition of 1791, Abhandlungen zur Ge-
schichte einer Polypenart des süssen Wassers (Treatises towards a History 0/ a
 The Objectification ofWill 191

example of this sort of thing is provided by the bulldog ant of

Australia. Namely, when it is cut in two, there begins a battle between
the head and tail portions: the former grabs hold of the latter with its
jaws, and the latter bravely defends itselfby stinging it; the battle tends 176
to last half an hour, until they die or are dragged off by other ants. The
procedure is always the same. (Prom a letter of Howitt in the W.
Journal, reprinted in Galignani 's Messenger of 17 November, 1855).i
On the banks of the Missouri one sometimes sees a mighty oak tree
with its trunk and limbs so bound, tethered, and enlaced by a massive
wild grapevine that it inevitably withers as if choked. ii The same thing
even shows itself on the lowest levels, where, e.g., water and carbon are
transformed into sap in a plant, or plants or bread into blood, and thus
wherever, given a restriction of the chemical forces to a subordinate
mode of effectuality, animal secretion takes place. Then also in
inorganic nature, when, e.g., crystals meet in the course of formation,
intersect, and so mutually interfere with one another that they are unable
to give a pure display to their crystalline forms - almost every geode is
an image of such conflict of will on this very low level of its
objectification - or when a magnet forces its magnetism on an iron
bar so as here too to display its Idea, or when galvanism overpowers
elective affmities, decomposes the most solid compounds, so far
nullifies chemical laws that the acid of a salt decomposed at the neg-
ative pole has to go to the positive pole, unable to combine with the al-
kalis passed on the way or even redden the litmus that it touches. On a
grand scale, it shows itself in the relation between central bodies and
planets: the latter, while in a decidedly dependent position, still continue
to resist, just like the chemical forces in an organism. Prom this there
proceeds that constant tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces
that keeps the heavens in movement and is in fact itself an expression
of the general battle essential to the phenomenon of will that we are just
now considering. For since every body must be viewed as the phenom-
enon44 of a will, while will is necessarily displayed as striving, the
original state of any heavenly body balled up into a sphere cannot be
rest but rather movement, striving forward into infinite space without
respite or goal. This 1S incompatible with neither the law of inertia nor 177

Species ofFresh Water Polyp).]

i[William Howitt (1795-1879), Wissenschaftliches Journal. "But the most
glaring ... 1855)" added in C.]
ii[Hübscher notes that, as indicated in his personal copy of A, Schopenhauer
takes this from Washington lrving's Bracebridge Hall I, p. 118.]
192 Second Book. The World as Will

that of causality. For since, according to the former, matter as such is

indifferent with respect to rest and movement, movement as weIl as rest
can be its original state. Therefore, if we find it in movement, we are as
little justified in presupposing that it was preceded by astate of rest and
inquiring as to the cause of the beginning of movement, as conversely,
if we found it at rest, we would have to presuppose an antecedent state
of movement and inquire as to the cause of its elimination. 45 Thus we
should not look for an initial impulse to account for centrifugal force,
but rather, in the case ofthe planets, according to Kant's and Laplace's
hypothesis, i it is a remnant of the original rotation of the central body
from which they separated upon its contraction. For the latter, however,
movement is essential: it continues to rotate and simultaneously traverse
endless space, or perhaps circles around some larger central body
invisible to US. 46 This view is in complete ac cord with the supposition
of astronomers regarding a central sun, as weH as the observed move-
ment of our entire solar system, perhaps 47 even of the entire mass of
stars to which our sun belongs, from which there may finally be
inferred a general movement of all the fixed stars, including the central
sun, which of course loses all meaning in infinite space (since move-
ment is not distinguished from rest in absolute spacet 8 and precisely
thereby, as already by the immediate fact of striving and flying without
goal, comes to give expression to the nullity, to the lack of ultimate
purpose that, at the conclusion of this Book, we will have to recognize
in the striving of will in an its phenomena. Therefore also, in turn,
endless space and endless time were bound to be the most general and
essential forms pertaining to the whole of the phenomenon that its
entire essence exists to express.
We are able, fmally, to recognize even in mere matter as such the
battle that we have been considering among all the phenomena of will,
namely, to the extent that Kant was right in pronouncing the forces of
repulsion and attraction to be the essence of the phenomenon of mat-
ter,ii so that it has its very existence only in a battle between opposite

i [Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Universal

Natural History and Theory of the Heavens [1755], esp. 1I, 7 [Ak. l.306jJ];
Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace, Exposition du systeme du monde (Exposition
ofthe System ofthe World [1796]) andMechanique celeste (Celestial Mechanics
[1799-1825]).]
ii[Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (Metaphysical First
Principles of Natural Science [1786]), eh. II, "The Metaphysical First Principles
of Dynamies" (Ak. 4.496jJ).]
 The Objectification ofWilI 193

striving forces. Abstracting from all the chemical diversity in matter, or

thinking so far back through the chain of causes and effects to where 178
there still are no chemical differences, we are left with mere matter, with
the world balled up into a sphere, the life of which, i.e., its objecti-
fication of will, is now constituted by that battle between the forces of
attraction and repulsion, with the first in the form of gravity pressing
from all sides toward the center, the second in opposition in the form of
impenetrability, be it by way of rigidity or elasticity. This constant
pressingi and resistance can be regarded as the objectivization of will
on its very lowest level, and expresses its character even there.
Here we then see, on the lowest level, will displayed as a blind
pressing, a dark, dull driving,ii far from all possibility of immediate
cognizance of it. It is its simplest and weakest mode of objectification.
As this sort of blind pressing and incognizant striving, however, it
continues to make its appearance in the whole of inorganic nature, in all
the original forces that it is the business of physics and chemistry to
seek out for the sake of knowledge of their laws, and of which each is
displayed to us in millions of entirely similar and law-governed phe-
nomena, giving no notice of any trace of an individual character but
merely multiplied through time and space, i.e., through the principium
individuationis, as an image is multiplied through the facets of a glass.
From level to level more distinctly objectified in the realm of
plants as weIl, where no longer causes in the strict sense but stimuli are
the bond of its phenomena, will is nonetheless still effectual in a wholly
incognizant way as dark, driving force, and thus finally also in the
vegetative part of the animal phenomenon, in the generation and forma-
tion of every animal and in the maintenance of its inner economy,
where it is still always only mere stimuli that necessarily determine its
phenomenon. The ever higher standing levels of the objectivization of
will finally lead to the point where the individuals displaying the Ideas
could no longer obtain the nourishment needed for assimilation through
mere movement in response to stimuli. For they would have to wait for
such stimuli, even though their nourishment is of an especially particular
sort and, with the ever increasingly manifold character of phenomena,
the welteriii and confusion has grown so great that they interfere with ) 79
one another, and the chances - upon which the individual moved by
mere stimuli has to wait for its nourishment - would be too unfavorable.

i[Drang]
,,[Treiben]
111 [Gedränge]
 194 Second Book. The WorId as Will

Nourishment must therefore be sought out, selected, from the moment

the animal has freed itself from the egg or the womb in which it was
incognizantly vegetating. Thereby movement in response to motives
and, on ac count ofthis, cognizance become necessary, the latter thus
entering in as a tool, J.L1]Xavrf,i required on this level of the objectifica-
tion of will for maintenance of the individual and propagation of the
species. It comes to the fore, represented by the brain or a larger gan-
glion, in just the same way that any other endeavor or determination of
thc will is represented by an organ in its objectification, i.e., displayed
as an organ with respect to presentation. t
With this tool alone, this J.L1]xavrf, there now stands with one stroke
the warld as presentatian with all its forms: object and subject, time,
space, plurality, and causality. The world now shows its second side. Up
until then mere will, it is now at the same time presentatian, object for
the cognizant subjecL The will that had so far pursued its drive in
obscurity, with the greatest sureness and infallibility, has lit a light for
itself on this level, as a means that became necessary for the elimination
of the disadvantage that would accrue precisely to that which is the
most complete,ii on account of the weiter and complicated make-up of
its phenomena. Tbe previous infallible sureness and lawfulness with
which it was effectual in inorganic and in merely vegetative nature
rested on the fact that it was only active in its original essence, as a
blind pressing, as will without the assistance of, although also without
interference from, a second entirely different world, the world as presen-
tation, which is to be sure only the image iii of its own essence, while yet
of an entirely different nature, and is now intervening with respect to
the interconnection of its phenomena. With this, the infallible sureness
of the latter comes to an end. Even animals are exposed to illusion, to
180 deception. They have merely perceptual presentations, however, no
concepts, no reflection, are therefore bound to the present, can give no
consideration to the future.
1t seems as if cognizance of this non-rational sort was not in all

tHiljsmittel, mechane)
t ün this, see eh. 22 ofthe second volume, as also in my work On the Will in
Nature, pp. 54ff and pp. 70-79 of the first, or pp. 46jJ and pp. 63-72 of the
second edition. [The same marginal pagination as the latter in Hübscher, vol. 4;
pp. 59jJ and 75-83 in Payne (tr.), ed. Cartwright. This footnote, and "i.e.... an
organ" in the text, added in B.]
U[ vollendetesten1
iii[Abbild]
 The Objectification ofWill 195

cases sufficient for the purposes of animals, and was sometimes, as it

were, in need of assistance. For we are confronted with the most
rernarkable phenomenon of blindly effectual will, and that which is
illuminated by cognizance, encroaching in a most surprising way, in two
kinds of phenomena, upon each other's domains. On the one hand we
find, co-existing with animal activities directed by perceptual cognizance
and its motives, an activity accomplished without the latter, thus with
the necessity of blindly effectual will, namely, in mechanicaJ drives i
that, directed by no motive or cognizance, have the appearance of in
fact producing their works in response to abstract rational motives. The
other and contrary case is where, conversely, the light of cognizance
penetrates the workplace of blindly effectual will and illuminates the
vegetative functions ofthe human organism: in magnetic clairvoyance.49
Finally, when will has attained to its highest degree of objectifica-
tion, that cognizance on the part of understanding which had dawned
upon animals - for which the senses provide the data from which, bound
to the present, mere perception proceeds - no longer sufficed. That
complicated, many-sided, malleable human being, most needy and
exposed to countless harms, had for the sake of survival to be illumi-
nated by a twofold cognitive faculty, perceptual cognizance had to be
raised, at were, to a higher power/i to a reflectioniii of itself: reason as the
faculty for abstract concepts. With this came thoughtful awareness,iv
including an encompassing view of future and past and, in consequence
thereof, reflective consideration,Vconcern, the capacity for premeditated
action independent of the present, and finaHy fuHy distinct consciousness
of the decisions of one's own will as such. But if the possibility of
illusion and deception arrived with merely perceptual cognizance, elim-
inating the previous infallibility in the incognizant driving of will - so
that instincts and mechanical drives, amidst those directed by cogni- 181
zance, had to come to the aid of the latter - now with the arrival of
reason, that sureness and immunity from deception in the expressions
of will (which at the other extreme, in inorganic nature, in fact makes
its appearance as strict conformity to law) is almost entirely lost:
instinct fuHy withdraws, the reflective consideration that would now

i[Kunsttrieben ]
"[gleichsam eine höhere Potenz der anschaulichen Erkenntnis musste zu
dieser hinzutreten]
iii[Reflexion 1
iV[Besonnenheit]
V[ Überlegung]
 196 Second Book. The World as Will

take the place of everything50 spawns (as was explained in the first
Book) vacillation and lack of assurance; error becomes possible, which
is in many cases a hindrance to adequate objectification ofwill through
deeds. For although, in one's character, will has indeed taken on its
particular and inalterable direction, according to which the very process
of willing occurs infallibly on the occasion of motives, error can still
falsify its expressions, delusory motives having as great an influence as
actual ones and nullifying the latter: t thus, e.g., when superstition inter-
poses imaginary motives that compel a person to act in a manner exactly
contrary to the way his will would otherwise express itself in the given
circumstances. Agamemnon slaughters his daughter; a miser gives a1ms
out of pure egoism, in the hope of eventual hundredfold recompense, etc.
Any sort of cognizance, rational as well as merely perceptual, thus
proceeds originally from will itself, belongs to the essence of the higher
levels of its objectification as a mere Jl1JXavr[, just as much a means for
maintaining the individual and the species as any ofthe body's organs.
Originally determined for service of the will, for the accomplishment of
its purposes, it also remains throughout almost entirely in its service: so
it is in all animals and in nearly all human beings. And yet we will see
in the third Book how, in individual human beings, cognizance is able
to withdraw from this subservience, throw off its yoke and stand purely
on its own, free from all the purposes involved in willing, as the bare
clear mirror ofthe world from which art proceeds. Finally, we will see
in the fourth Book how, when this mode of cognition works back upon
182 the will,i self-nullification of the latter can take place, i.e., resignation,
which is the ultimate goal, indeed the innermost essence of all virtue and
saintliness, and redemption from the world.

§ 28.
[Higber Levels ~ Objectification ~ Will Inseparable jrom Lower -
Internal and External Purposiveness in Nature -
Empirical and Intelligible Cbaracter Again]
We have considered the great multiplicity and diversity of the

tThus the scholastics said quite rightly: Causa jinalis movet non secundum
suum esse reale, sed secundum esse cognitum ["The final cause moves one, not
according to being as it really is, but according to being as one is cognizant of
it."] See Suarez, Disp. Metaph., disp. XXlII, sees. 7 and 8. ["See Suarez ... 8"
added in C.]
tauf den Willen zurückwirkt]
 The Objectification ofWill 197

phenomena in which will is objectified; indeed, we have seen the endless

and irreconcilable battle among them. Nonetheless, according to the
whole of our preceding account, will itself as thing in itselfis in no way
caught up in that plurality, in that exchange. The diversity of(Platonic)51
ldeas, i.e., gradations of its objectification, the multitude of individuals
in which each of the latter is displayed, the battle for matter among its
forms: none of this concems it, but is only the mode and manner of its
objectification, and has through the latter only an indirect relation to it,
by virtue of which it belongs to the expression of its essence with
respect to presentation. Just as a magic lantem shows us multiple and
manifold images, while it is but the selfsame flame that imparts visibility
to them all, so in all the manifold phenomena filling the world in
juxtaposition, or successively displacing one another as events, that
which makes its appearance is yet but the one will whose visibility,
objectivization all of this is, and which remains unmoved in the midst
of those changes: it alone is the thing in itself, while all objects are its
phenomenon,i its Phänomen in Kant's terminology.
Although it is in the human being, as a (Platonie )52 Idea, that will
finds its most distinct and most completeii objectification, this could
nonetheless not by itself express its essence. In order to appear in its
proper significance, the Idea of the human being cannot be displayed
by itself and tom out of context, but must be accompanied by the
sequence of levels downward through all animal structures,iii through
the realm of plants, to the inorganic: only in their complementarity
do they lead to complete objectification ofwill: iv they are as much pre-
supposed by the Idea of the human being as the blossoms of a tree
presuppose its leaves, limbs, trunk, and roots; they form a pyramid
whose apex is the human being. lt can also be said, if one takes satis- 183
faction in comparisons: their phenomenon accompanies that ofhumanity
as necessarily as full light is accompanied by continuous gradations of
all the intermediate shades through which it loses itself in darkness. Or

tErscheinung. It may be recalled that the fact that Schopenhauer generally

prefers to speak of Erscheinung rather than Phänomen for his own purposes,
should not be taken to suggest that, in English, "phenomenon" is not a legiti-
mate, and even perhaps preferable, choice for translation of the former term.
See introduction for discussion.]
H[ vollkommenste]
iii[Gestaltungen der Tiere]
iV[sie alle erst ergänzen sich zur vollständigen Objektivation des Willens]
 198 Second Book. The World as Will

one can call it the resonance i of humanity, saying that animals and
plants are the descending fifth and third of humanity, the inorganic
realm is its lower octave. The entire truth of this latter comparison,
however, will only become explicit for us when, in the following Book,
we seek to fathom the deep significance of music and it is revealed to
us how, progressing by way of an interconnection of freely moving
upper tones, melody is to be viewed as, in a certain sense, a depiction
of the reflectively interconnected living and striving of human beings,
whereas, by contrast, the disconnected voices of the ripieno ii and the
ponderously moving bass, from which proceeds the harmony necessary
for the complete musical work, provide us with an image of the rest of
animal and incognizant nature. But of this in its place, where it will no
longer sound so paradoxical.
We find, however, that the inner necessity that is inseparable from
adequate objectivization of will, in the sequence of the levels of its
phenomena when these are taken as a whole, is also expressed by an
external necessity, namely, that by virtue ofwhich human beings need
animals for their own maintenance, each of these in descending levels
needs others and then finally plants, which in turn need earth, water,
chemical elements and their compounds, the planets, the sun, rotation
and revolution around the latter, the declination of the ecliptic, etc. 53 -
Fundamentally, this originates from the fact that will has to feed on
itself, because beyond it there is nothing and it is a hungry will. Thus
comes pursuit, anxiety, and suffering.
Just as recognition ofthe unity ofwill alone, as thing in itself, in the
infinite diversity and multiplicity of phenomena, provides true insight
into the wondrous, unmistakable analogy among all the productions of
nature, into the family resemblance that permits us to regard them as
variations on a single tacit theme, so to the same extent, distinctly
184 and deeply holding to our recognition of that hannony - of that essential
interconnection of all the parts of the world, of that necessity in their
gradations which we have just been considering - there will open up
for us a true and satisfactory insight into the inner essence and meaning
of the undeniable purposiveness of alt the products of organic nature,
which we in fact presuppose apriori in the course of observing and
judging ofthe latter.
This purposiveness is of a double sort. On the one hand there is an

~[Nachhall]
"[The fuH orchestral ensemble, supported by the basso continuo and support-
ing in turn a sub-set offeatured instruments executing the melody.]
 The Objectification ofWill 199

inner purposiveness, i.e., an accord among an the parts of an individual

organism so ordered that the latter's maintenance and that ofthe species
is a consequence of it and is therefore displayed as the purpose of that
arrangement. But on the other hand there is an external purposiveness,
namely, a relation ofinorganic nature to organic nature in general, or of
individual parts of organie nature to one another, which renders possible
the maintenance of organic nature as a whole, or even of individual
animal species, and thus in our judging of it confronts us a means toward
that purpose.
Inner purposiveness fits in the fonowing way into the context of
our considerations. If, in accordance with what has been said so far, an
the diversity of forms in nature and an plurality of individuals pertains
not to will, but only to its objectivization and its form, then it necessarily
follows that will is indivisible and entirely present in all phenomena,
even though its degrees of objectification, the (Platonie )54 Ideas, are most
diverse. For the sake of easier comprehension, we can regard these
various Ideas as individual and inherently simple acts of will in which its
essence expresses itself to a greater or a lesser degree; but individuals
are in turn phenomena of Ideas, thus of those acts, within time and
space and plurality.
Now on the lowest levels of objectivization, such an act (or such
an Idea) retains its unity even in its phenomenon, while to make its
appearance on higher levels it needs a whole series of conditions and
temporal developments, only all of which taken together completei
the expression of its essence. Thus, for example, the Idea that reveals
itself in any general natural force has always only a simple expression,
even if the latter is variously displayed according to external relations.
Otherwise we could never at all demonstrate its identity, which is 185
accomplished precisely by abstracting from diversity originating from
merely external relations. In just the same way, the life of a crystal has
only one manifestation,ii the process of its growth, which subsequently
receives its fully sufficient and exhaustive expression in rigidified
form, the corpse of that brief life. But aplant already expresses the Idea
of which it is the phenomenon, not at once and by way of a simple
manifestation, but in a succession of developments of its organs, in

i[vollenden]
ii[Lebensäusserung. Generally, T translate both .J.usserung and Ausdruck as
"expression," reserving "manifestation" for Manifestierung. I depart from the
practice here, and occasionally elsewhere, since the former two terms occur in
elose proximity to one another.]
 200 Second Book. The World as Will

time. An animal not only develops its organism in the same manner, in
a succession of often highly diverse structuresi (metamorphosis), but
this structure itself, although of course an objectivization of will at this
level, is not sufficient for a complete displal of the Idea of the anima!.
Rather, this is only brought to completion by actions of the animal in
which voice is given to its empirical character/ii which is the same in
the entire species and which alone completely reveals the Idea; thereby,
the: particular organism is presupposed as an underlying condition.
With the human being, the empirical character is of course unique to
each individual (indeed, as we will see in the fourth Book, up until the
point of utter nullification of the character of the species, namely,
through self-nullification on the part of the entire process of willing). iv
That of which, through necessary temporal developments and division
into individual actions conditioned by the latter, we are cognizant as
empirical character is, with abstraction from the temporal form of the
phenomenon, intelligible character in the terminology of Kant, who, in
demonstrating the distinction and displaying the relation between free-
dom and necessity, i.e., properly speaking, between will as thing in itself
and its phenomenon in time, has in a particularly splendid way exhib-
ited his undying merit. t Intelligible character thus coincides with the
Idea or, more properly speaking, with the original act ofwill that reveals
186 itself in i1. Thus to that extent, not only the empirical character of every
human being, but also of every species of animal, indeed of every
species of plant and even of every original force of inorganic nature, is
to be viewed as the phenomenon of an intelligible character, i.e., of an
extra-temporal indivisible act ofwil!.
Here I would like to call incidental attention to the innocence v
with which every plant expresses and openly exhibits its entire charac-
ter through its mere structure, reveals its entire being and process of
willing, which is what makes the physiognomies of plants so interest-

i [Gestalten]
ii[DarstellungJ
iii[in denen sein empirischer Charakter ... sich ausspricht]
iv[Selbstaufhebung des ganzen Wollens I
t See Critique of Pure Reason, "Resolution of the Cosmological Ideas of To-
tality in the Derivation of Events in the World," pp. 560-586 ofthe fifth and pp.
532ff of the first edition [A532/B560ff; reference to the first edition added in B]
and Critique ofPractical Reason, fourth edition, pp. 169-179, Rosenkranz's edi-
tion, pp. 224fflAk. 5.94-100; reference to Rosenkranz's edition added in Cl. Cf.
my treatise on the Principle ofSufficient Ground, § 43.
v [Naivetät]
 The Objectification ofWill 201

ing, whereas animals, for one to be cognizant of them with respect to

their Ideas, call for observation of their actual doings, and human
beings for complete examination and testing, since reason makes them
capable of a high degree of dissimulation. Animals are to precisely the
same extent more innocent than human beings as plants are more
innocent than animals. 55 ln animals we see the will for life more naked,
as it were, than in human beings, where it is c10thed over with so much
cognizance, as weIl as c10aked by the capacity for dissimulation, that
one's true essence shines forth almost only by chance and sporadically.
Entirely naked, although much weaker, it shows itself in plants as bare,
blind pressing for existence, without purpose or goal. For plants reveal
their entire essence at first glance and in complete innocence, despite
the fact that they are holding their genitals, which in all animals are
kept in the most hidden place, for display at their very top. This inno-
cence on the part of plants rests on their incognizance: not in willing,
but in willing with cognizance, lies guilt. Thus every plant teIls us right
from the start of its horne, of the latter's climate, and of the nature of
the soil from which it sprouted. Therefore, even one with little practice
can tell whether an exotic plant belongs to a tropical or a temperate
zone and whether it grows in water, in swamps, on mountains, or on
the heath. Beyond that, however, every plant also gives voice to the
particular will of its species and says what can be expressed in no other
language. 56
Hut now as for the application of what has been said to the teleo-
logical consideration of organisms, so far as this concems their inner
purposiveness. If in inorganic nature an Idea, which is everywhere to be
regarded as a single act of will, also reveals itself in only a single and 187
always the same expression, and one can thus say that here the empirical
character participates immediately in the unity of the intelligible, as it
were coincides with it in such a way that no inner purposiveness can
show itself here; if, by contrast, all organisms display their Ideas by
way of successive stages of sequential development conditioned by the
juxtaposition of a multiplicity of diverse parts, thus only when they are
taken together is the sum of the manifestations of their empirical
character an expression of the intelligible - this necessary juxtaposition
of parts and successive development still does not nullify the unity of
the Idea that is making its appearance, of the act of will that is
manifesting itself. Rather, that unity now finds its expression in the
necessary relationship and interconnection among those parts and
developments in accordance with the law of causality. Since it is the
single and indivisible and precisely thereby entirely self-concordant
will that reveals itself in the entire Idea, as if in a single act, then its
 202 Second Book. The World as Will

phenomenon, although dispersed into a variety of parts and states, must

still in turn exhibit that unity in a thoroughgoing accord among the
laUer: this occurs through a necessary interrelation and interdependence
of all the parts, whereby the unity of the Idea is also reconstitutedi in
the phenomenon. In accordance with the latter, we are then cognizant of
the various parts and functions of the organism as mutually means and
purposes with respect to one another, but of the organism itself as the
ultimate purpose ofthem all. Consequently, both dispersal ofthe inher-
ently simple Idea into a multiplicity of parts and states of the organism
on the one hand, and its reconstitution through necessary connection of
those parts and functions, on the other hand, so as to make them mutually
causes and effects, thus means and purposes, is peculiar and essential,
not to will as such in the process of making its appearance, not to the
thing in itself, but only to its phenomenon within space, time, and
causality (mere modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, the form
pertaining to phenomena). They pertain to the world as presentation,
not to the world as will. They belong to the mode and manner in which
will becomes object, i.e., presentation, on this level of its objectiviza-
188 tion. Whoever has penetrated the sense of this perhaps somewhat
difficult exposition will now quite properlY understand the point of the
Kantian doctrine that the purposiveness of the organic and the lawful
character of the inorganic are first introduced into nature by our faculty
of understanding, thus both pertain only to the phenomenon, not to the
thing in itself. The above-mentioned amazement over the infallible
constancy of the lawful character of inorganic nature is in essence the
same as that over the purposiveness of organic nature. For in both cases
what surprises us is only our glimpse of the original unity of Ideas that,
with respect to the phenomenon, had assumed the form of plurality and
diversity. t
Now as concerns the second sort of purposiveness distinguished
in the division made above, the external purposiveness that shows itself
not in the inner economy of organisms but in the support and help that
they get from outside, both from inorganic nature and from one another,
this likewise fmds its general explanation in the exposition set forth
above, namely, in that the entire world with all its phenomena is the
objectivization of the one and indivisible will - the Idea that relates to
all other Ideas as a harmony to the individual voices - and therefore

t wiederhergestellt]
tCompare On the Will in Nature, at the end ofthe chapter on "Comparative
Anatomy."
 The Objectification ofWill 203

that unity of will must also show itself in mutual accord among all its
phenomena. But we can elevate this insight to a much greater level of
distinctness if we delve somewhat further into the phenomena of that
external purposiveness and mutual accord among all the parts of nature,
the exposition of which will simultaneously cast light back on the
preceding. We will best achieve this, however, through consideration of
the following analogy.
The character of every individual human being, so far as it is
thoroughly individual and not entirely comprised in that of the species,
can be viewed as a particular ldea corresponding to a unique act of
objectification of will. This act itself would then be his intelligible
character, but the empirical the latter's phenomenon. The empirical 189
character is altogether determined by the intelligible, which is ground-
less will, i.e., is as thing in itself not subject to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground (the form pertaining to phenomena). The empirical character
must in the course of one's life provide an image ofthe intelligible, and
cannot turn out otherwise than as the latter's essence requires. But this
determination extends only to that which is essential, not to that which
is inessential with respect to the course of life that is making its
appearance in accord with it. To that which is inessential belongs a
finer determination of the events and actions that are the material in
which the empirical character shows itself. These are determined by
extemal circumstances, which provide the motives to which the character
reacts according to its nature, and since these can be most diverse, the
external form in which the empirical character makes its appearance,
thus the particular actual or historical form of the course of one's life,
will have to follow the direction of their influence. This can turn out to
be very different, even if that which is essential in the phenomenon, its
content, remains the same. Thus, for example, it is inessential whether
one gambles for peanuts or money.i But whether one cheats at the game
or goes about it honestly: that is a matter of essentials. The latter is
determined by the intelligible character, the former by external influence.
Just as the same theme can be depicted in a hundred variations, so can
the same character in a hundred most diverse courses of life. 57 But as
various as external influences can be, nonetheless the empirical character
that expresses itself throughout the course of one's life must, however
it turns out, exactly objecti.ty the intelligible character, adapting its
objectification to the material of the actual circumstances at hand.

tLiterally, "for nuts or crowns" (Nüsse oder Kronen).]

 204 Second Book. The World as Will

We must then assume something analogous to the influence of

external circumstances on the course of a life that is in its essence
determined by character, ifwe would form a conception ofhow, in the
original act of its objectification, will determines the various Ideas in
which it is objectified, i.e., the various forms i of the natural beings of
all kinds into which it divides its objectification, and which on that
account must necessarily be interrelated in the phenomenon. We must
assurne that, among all the phenomena of one will, a general mutual
190 adaptation and accommodation has taken place, whereby, however, as
we will soon see more distinctly, all temporal determination must be
excluded, since Ideas lie beyond time. Accordingly, every phenomenon
has to adapt to the surroundings in which it occurs, but the latter in turn
also to the former, even when it is located much later in time; and we
see this consensus naturaeii everywhere. Every plant is therefore suited
to its soil and stretch of the heavens, every animal to its element, and
even the prey that is to be its nourishment is somehow to a certain
extent protected from its natural predator. The eye is suited to light and
its refractability,58lungs and blood to the air, the swim-bladder to water,
the eye of the seal to variation in the medium, water-retentive cells in
the cameI's stornach to the drought of the African deserts, the sail of
the nautilus to the wind that is to drive its little ship,59 and so on down
to the most specialized and amazing cases of external purposiveness. t
In this, however, we have to abstract from all temporal relations, since
these can concern only the phenomenon of the Idea, not the latter itself.
Accordingly, this mode of explanation can be employed retroactively
as weIl, and one is not only to assurne that every species has accommo-
dated itself to already existing circumstances, but that these temporally
antecedent circumstances themselves have had just as much regard for
beings that are some day yet to come. For it is of course one and the
same will that is objectified in the world as a whole: it knows no time,
since this mode of the Principle of Sufficient Ground pertains not to it,
nor its original objectivization, the Ideas, but only to the mode and
manner in which the latter come to be cognized by individuals who are
themselves transitory in character, i.e., pertains to the phenomenon of
Ideas. Therefore, with respect to our present consideration of the way in
which the objectification ofwill is divided into Ideas, temporal sequence
is entirely without meaning, and Ideas whose phenomena have occurred

i[ Gestalten]
t'natural accord"; "and we see ... everywhere" added in B.]
t See On the Will in Nature, the chapter "Comparative Anatomy."
 The Objectification of Will 205

earlier in the temporal sequence, according to the law of causality to

which they are as such subject, have thereby no prerogative over those 191
whose phenomenon occurs later, which are rather precisely the most
completei objectifications of will, to which the earlier had just as much
to adapt as the latter to the former. Thus the course of the planets, the
declination of the ecliptic, the rotation of the earth, the division into
continents and seas, atmosphere, light, heat, and all similar phenomena
- which are in nature what the basso continuo is in harmony - have
prescientlii accommodated themselves to the coming species of living
beings of which they were to be the bearer and sustainer. In just the
same way, soil accommodated itself to the nourishment of plants, these
to the nourishment of animals, these to the nourishment of other animals,
just as much as conversely all the latter to the former. All parts of nature
accommodate one another, because it is one will that makes its appear-
ance in them all, but temporal sequence is entirely foreign to its original
and only adequate objectivization (the following Book explains this
expression), the Ideas. Even now, when species have only to maintain
themselves, no longer to originate, we see such foresight here and there
on nature's part, extending to things future and really in some sense
abstracting from temporal sequence: an accommodation on the part of
that which exists to that which is yet to come. Thus the bird builds a
nest for the young it does not yet know; the beaver erects a lodge whose
purpose is unknown to it; ant, hamster, bee collect provisions for the
winter unknown to them; spider, ant-lion, as if with reflective cunning,
erect traps for future prey unknown to them; insects deposit their eggs
where the future brood will fmd future nourishment. When with the
arrival of the season for blossoming, the female flower of the dioecious
plant Vallisneria unrave1s the spirals of the stern by which it had been
held at the bottom of the water, and thereby rises to the surface, exact1y at
the same time the male flower, which had been growing attached to a
short stern at the bottom of the water, tears itself loose from the latter
and thus reaches the surface with sacrifice of its life. There it swims
about in search of the female flower, which, with the completion of
pollination, returns with contraction of its spiral to the bottom, where
development of the fruit takes place. t Here I must also recall the larva 192

i[vollkommensten1
lt[ahnungsvolTJ
t[Adolphe] Chatin, sur la Valisneria spiralis ["Memoire sur le Vallisneria
spiralis"], in Comptes rendus de l'acad. d. sc. [Proceedings ofthe Academy 0/
Sciences], 13 (1855). [This note of course added in C. However, a description
 206 Second Book. The World as Will

ofthe male stag beetle, which gnaws a hole in the wood for its metamor-
phosis twice as large as that of the female, to win room for its future
horns. Thus in general, animal instincts provide the best elucidation of
all of the rest of the teleology of nature. For just as instinct is action
re:sembling that according to the concept of a purpose, while yet entirely
in the absence of the latter, so any formative process in nature resembles
that according to the concept of a purpose, while yet entirely in the
absence of the latter. For in the external as in the inner teleology of
nature, what we are bound to conceive in terms of means and purpose
is everywhere only the phenomenon 0/ the unity 0/ the (to that extent)
selfconcordant will, dispersed into space and time with respect to our
manner of cognizance.
In any case, the mutual adaptation and accommodation of phenom-
ena that originates from this unity can still not eradicate the inner conflict
depicted above as essential to will, making its appearance as a general
battle within nature. That harrnony goes only so far as to render the
existence i of the world and its beings possible, which would thus have
long since perished without it. Therefore, it extends only to the existence
of species and their general life-conditions, but not to that of individ-
uals. 60 Ifby virtue ofthat harmony and accommodation, accordingly,
species in the organic realm and general natural/orces in the inorganic
rcalm exist alongside one another, and are even mutually supportive,
the inner conflict ofthe will objectified through all ofthose Ideas shows
itself, by contrast, in the ceascless war of extermination wagcd by
individuals of those species and in constantii wrestling among the phe-
nomena ofthose natural forces, as was cxplained above. Tbe battlefield
and object of this struggle is matter, which they strive to tear from one
another, as also space and time, whose union by way of the form of
causality is what matter really is, as shown in the first Book.t

193 § 29.
[Groundlessness c!f Ideas - Will as Thing in Itselj
Without Ultimate Purpose]
Here I conclude the second main part of my account in thc hope
that, so far as is possible with the very first communication of a thought

ofthe process, somewhat differently formulated in each case, occurs in all three
editions.]
tBestand; also in the next sentence, with bestehen in the one after that.1
ilbeständigen1
tOn this, see chs. 26 and 27 ofthe second volume.
 The Objectification of Will 207

that had not formerly existed, which thus cannot be entirely free of
traces of the individuality with which it was first begotten, I have
succeeded in communicating the distinct certainty that this world in
which we live and exist is in its entire essence through and through
will and at the same time through and through presentation; that this
presentation, just as such, presupposes a form, namely, ohject and suh-
ject, hence is relative; and if we ask what remains after eliminating the
latter and all of its subordinated forms, expressed by the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, this something that is toto genere distinct from pre-
sentation can be nothing other than will, which is accordingly the real
thing in itself. Everyone finds himself to be this will, in which the inner
essence of the world consists, just as he also finds himself to be the
cognizant suhject to which the entire world is presentation,i which to
that extent has an existence only in relation to his consciousness, as its
necessary hearer. Everyone is thus in this double respect the entire world
itself, the microcosm, fmds both sides of it whole and complete in
himself. And that of which he is thus cognizant as his own essence is
also the same thing that exhausts the essence of the entire world, the
macrocosm; the latter also is thus, as he is himself, through and through
will and through and through presentation, and nothing remains over.
Thus we see here a coincidence between the philosophy of Thales,
which was concemed with the macrocosm, and that of Socrates, which
was concemed with the microcosm, in that the object of the two has
shown itself to be the same. - But greater completeness and thereby
greater assurance will be won for all that of which cognizance has been
communicated in the first two Books, by way of the two Books yet to
follow; in them, as I hope, many a question that rnay have been explicitly
or inexplicitly raised by our considerations so far will find its satis-
factory answer.
In the meantime, one such question may be discussed on its own,
since it can really only be raised so Iong as one has not yet entirely 194
penetrated the sense of the account so far, and just to that extent can
serve to elucidate it. lt is the following. All will is will for something,
has an ohject, a goal of its willing. What then in the end is being willed
by the will depicted to us as the essence in itself ofthe world? For what
does it strive? - This question rests, like so many others, on a confusion
of the thing in itself with the phenomenon. To the latter alone, not to
the former, extends the Principle of Sufficient Ground, among the modes
of which is the law of motivation. A ground can be given everywhere

i[dessen Vorstellung die ganze Welt ist]

 208 Second Book. The World as Will

only for phenomena as such, for individual things, never for will itself,
nor for the ldeas in which it is adequately objectified. Thus for every
single movement, or for any alteration at all in nature, there is a cause
to be sought i.e., astate that has necessarily brought it forth, but never
for the natural force itself that reveals itself in them and in countless
similar phenomena. And there is therefore a true lack of understanding,
originating in a deficiency of thoughtful awareness, when one inquires
after a cause of gravity, electricity, etc. Only if perhaps it had been
demonstrated that gravity, electricity, were not original unique natural
forces, but only manners of appearance of some more general, already
familiar natural force, could one ask after the cause by which this
natural force was in the present case producing the phenomenon of
gravity, of electricity. All of this was discussed at length above. Now
in just the same way, every single act of will on the part of a cognizant
individual (which is itself only a phenomenon of will as thing in itself)
necessarily has a motive without which that act would never have oc-
curred. But just as the material 61 cause contains a mere determination of
the fact that an expression of this or that natural force has to occur at
this time, in this place, with respect to this material, so too the motive
only determines a cognizant being's act of will at this time, in this
place, under these conditions, as an entirely individual thing, but in no
way that this being wills anything at all and wills in this manner: the
latter is an expression of its intelligible character, which like will itself,
the thing in itself, is groundless, as something lying beyond the domain
of the Principle of Sufficient Ground. Therefore, every human being
195 always has purposes and motives according to which he directs his
actions and is at any time able to account for his individual doings. But
if he were asked why he wills at all, or why he has a will to exist at all,
he would have no answer; rather, the question would appear absurd to
hirn. And precisely herein his consciousness would really pronounce
the fact that he hirnself is nothing but will, whose willing something or
other thus goes without saying and only calls for finer determination by
motives in his individual acts at any point in time.
In fact the absence of all goals, of all boundaries, belongs to the
essence of will in itself, which is an endless striving. This was already
touched on above in OUf mention of centrifugal force. It also reveals
itselfin its simplest form on the very lowest level ofthe objectivization
ofwill, namely, in gravity, whose constant striving, despite the obvious
impossibility of an ultimate goal, is evident. For even if by its will all
existing matter were united into a single c1ump, the gravity within the
latter, striving for the center, would still always do battle with impene-
trability in the form of rigidity or elasticity. The striving of matter can
 The Objectification ofWili 209

thus only be constantly impeded, never evei fulfilled or satisfied. But

that is exactly how it is with aH striving on the part of all the phenomena
of will. Every goal achieved is in turn the start of a new race, and so on
ad infinitum. The plant elevates its phenomenon from the seed through
stern and leaf to blossom and fruit, which is in turn only the start of a
new seed, of a new individual, that again runs the old course, and so on
through infinite time. It is just the same with the course of an animal's
life: procreation is its pinnacle, after the achievement of which the life
of the original individual quickly or slowly declines, while a new one
assures nature maintenance of the species and repeats the same phenom-
enon. Indeed, even the constant renewal of every organism's matter
is to be viewed as a mere phenomenon of this constant pressing and
exchange. Physiologists are now ceasing to regard it as the necessary
replacement of material used up by the process of movement, since the
possible wear on the machine can in no way equate to the constant
intake through nuourishment: eternal becoming, endless tIux, belongs 196
to revelation of the essence of will. The same thing shows itself finally
in human endeavors and desires as weH, which always mask their fulfill-
ment in the guise of an ultimate goal of willing, but which, as soon as
they are achieved, no longer look the same and are thus soon forgotten,
antiquated, and really always, even if without admission, set aside as
vanished deceptions. Fortune enough if something remains to desire
and strive after, so that the game of constant passage from desire to
satisfaction and from the latter to a new desire may be maintained - the
quick course of which is called happiness, the slow course suffering -
without grinding to that halt which displays itself as frightful, life-
congealing boredom, faint longing without any particular object, dead-
ening languor.
According to all of this, when cognizance illuminates it, will always
knows what it is willing now, what it is willing here, but never what it
wills in general. Every individual act has a purpose, the whole process
of willing has none: just as every single natural phenomenon is deter-
mined by a sufficient cause to occur in this place, at this time, while the
force that is manifesting itself in it never has a cause at all. For the
latter is a level in the process of appearance of the thing in itself, of
groundless willing. - The only self-cognizance with respect to will as a
whole, however, is presentation in its entirety, the whole perceptual

tnie und nimmer]

210 Second Book. The World as Will

world. That is its objectivization, its revelation, its mirror. What it has
to say in this capacity will be the object of our further considerations. t

tOn this, see eh. 28 ofthe seeond volume.

 THIRD BOOK 197

+
The W orld as Presentation
Second Consideration
PRESENTATION INDEPENDENT OF THE PRINCIPLE
OF SUFFICIENT GROUND
THE PLATONIC IDEA: THE OBJECT OF ART

T{ '[() Sv IlSv ud, yaVBcnv 08 olm hov; xat ,{ ,0 ytyvoW;vov

1l8V xat unoAAuIlEVOV, ov't(J)~ 08 ouMno'E oV;
TIAATQNi

§ 30. 199
[Levels 0/ Objectification 0/ Will as Platonie ldeas]
After the world depicted in the first Book as mere presentation,
object for a subject, was considered by us in the second Book from its
other side, and we found that it is will - which was what alone that
world proved to be beyond presentation - we called the world as pre-
sentation, according to our cognizance of this fact, objectivizationii 0/
will, both in its entirety and in its parts. This accordingly means: will
become object, i.e., presentation.' We also recall that the objectification
of will had many, although definite, levels on which, with increasing
degrees of distinctness and completeness, the essence of will entered
into presentation, i.e., was displayed as an object. In these levels we
there already recognized Plato's Ideas, namely, so far as the levels are
just particular species, or original unchanging forms and properties of
all natural bodies, both inorganic and organic, as well as general forces
that reveal themselves in accordance with naturallaws. The totality of

t'That which is the etemally existent that has no beginning, and that which
begins and passes away, but is in truth never existent": Plato, Timaeus 27d (as
Deussen and Hübscher note, not quoted entirely literally by Schopenhauer).]
U[ Objektität: used interchangeably with Objektivation ("objectification"), as
shortly below.]

211
 212 Third Book. The World as Presentation

these Ideas is thus displayed in countless individuals and particularities

to which they relate as originals to these their copies. The plurality of
such individuals can be presented only through space and time, their
arising and passing away only through causality, in all of which forms
we recognize only the various modes of the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, which is the ultimate principle of all fmitude, of all individua-
tion, and the general form pertaining to presentation so far as it falls
200 within the cognizance of the individual as such. Ideas, by contrast, are
not covered by that principle; therefore, neither plurality nor change
pertains to them. While the individuals in which they are displayed are
countless, and ceaselessly come into being and pass away, they remain
standing unchanged as one and the same, and the Principle of Sufficient
Ground has no meaning in their regard. Since this, however, is the form
under which all ofthe subject's cognizance stands, so far as it is cogni-
zant as an individual, Ideas will also [ie entirely outside the cognitive
sphere of the latter as such. If, therefore, Ideas are to become objects of
cognizance, this can only occur with the nullification of individuality in
the cognizant subject. Closer and detailed explanation of this is what
will now first occupy uso

§3I.
[Similarities between Platonic Ideas and Kant's Thing in ltseif.l
First, however, the following most important comment. I hope
that I succeeded in the preceding Book in producing the conviction
that what in the Kantian philosophy is called the thing in itself and
plays a role there as such a significant and yet an obscure and
paradoxicaI doctrine - but that, particularll by the way that Kant
inltroduced it, namely, by an inference from something grounded to
its ground, has been found to be a stumbling-block and indeed the
weak side of his philosophy - that this, as J assert, when reached by
the entirely different path that we have taken, is nothing other than
will, with the sphere of that concept broadened and defined in the
manner indicated. I hope further that, after what has been expounded,
no objection will be raised against recognizing, in the particular
levels of objectification of the will that constitutes the in-itself of
the world, what Plato called the eternai Ideas or unchangeable
forms (dOT/) ,i which, while acknowledged to be the main yet
simultaneously most obscure and paradoxical dogma in his doctrine,
has been an object of reflection, dispute, ridicule, and of admiration on

i[eide, plural of eidos1

 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 213

the part of so many and differently minded thinkers over the course
of centuries.
Now ifwill is the thing in itself, while Ideas are the immediate 201
objectivization of that will on some particular level, then Kanfs thing
in itself and Plato's ldeas, that which to hirn is alone ovrtvq; oJ - these
two great obscure paradoxes from the two greatest philosophers of the
West - we find to be of course not identical, but still most closely related
and distinguished by only a single feature. The two great paradoxes are
even - precisely because, for all of the inner agreement and affinity,
they sound so very different on account of the extraordinarily different
individualities of their authors - the best mutual commentaries on one
another, resembling two entirely different paths that lead to one goal.
A few words will serve to make this explicit. Namely, what Kant
says, in its essentials, is the following: "Time, space, and causality
are not determinations of the thing in itself, but pertain only to its
phenomenon, insofar as they are nothing but our cognitive forms. Since,
however, all plurality and all arising and passing away are only possible
through time, space, and causality, it follows that they too attach only
to the phenomenon and in no way to the thing in itself. Because,
however, our cognizance is conditioned by those forms, the whole of
experience is only cognizance of the phenomenon, not of the thing in
itself; therefore, neither can its laws be made to apply to the thing
in itself. These assertions extend even to our own I, and we are
cognizant of it only as phenomenon, not with respect to what it may be
in itself." This, with respect to what is crucial for our considerations, is
the sense and content ofKant's doctrine.
But now Plato says: "The things of this world, which our senses
perceive, have no true being whatsoever: they are always becoming,
but never are; they have only a relative being, all of them existing only
in and through their relations to one another; one can thus just as weIl
call their entire existence a kind of non-being. They are, consequently,
not even objects of any real cognition (17rl(rrrlp:17)Y For the latter can be
only of that which has being in and for itself and always in the same
manner; they are, by contrast, only the object of opinion occasioned by
sensation (&fr;a f-IU' a{o'l}r/o8OJq; a2o'yov).iii So long, then, as we are

i[ontös on, "truly existent"]

~Tepisteme]
L11[doxa met'aistheseös alogou ("opinion via irrational sense perception")]
 214 Third Book. The World as Presentation

202 limited to perception of them, we are like men who sit so tightly bound
in a dark cave that they could not even turn their heads and, by the light
of a fire burning behind them, would see nothing but, on the wall in
front of them, shadowy images of actual things made to pass between
them and the fire; and even of each other, indeed of themselves, they
would see only just the shadows on that wall. Wisdom for them would
consist in predicting the succession of those shadows as learned from
experience. What, by contrast, can alone be called truly existent (Gvr"OJ~
GV), because they always are and never become nor pass away, are the
real archetypes i for those shadowy images: they are the eternal ldeas,
the original forms ii for all things. No plurality pertains to them, for
each is in its essence only One, being the velY archetype whose copies
or shadows are all named after it: individual, transitory things of a
given kind. Nor does arising or passing away pertain to them, for they
are truly existent, never becoming nor perishing like their constantly
vanishing copies. (In these two negative determinations, however, it is
necessarily contained as apresupposition that time, space, and causality
have no meaning or validity with respect to them, and that they do not
exist within the latter.) Ofthem alone is there thus any real cognizance,
since an object of the latter can only be that which has being always
and in every respect (and so in itself), not that which is while it again is
not, depending on how one views it."
That is Plato's doctrine. lt is obvious and in need of no further
demonstration that the inner sense of both doctrines is entirely the same,
that both describe the visible world as a phenomenon that is in itself
nothing and has a meaning and borrowed reality only through that which
is expressing itself in it (for one of them the thing itself, for the other
Ideas), while to the latter, to that which is truly existent according to
both doctrines, all and even the most general and most essential forms
pertaining to that phenomenon are altogether foreign. In order to reject
these forms, Kant comprehended them directly in abstract terms and, as
mere forms pertaining to phenomena, straightforwardly withheld time,
space, and causality from the thing in itself. Plato, to the contrary, did
not attain to the highest expression, and only indirectly withheld those
203 fOlms from his ldeas, denying of Ideas something that is only possible
through those forms, namely, plurality in things of any particular kind,
arising, and passing away. Although unnecessary, I would illustrate this

i[Urbilder]
"[ Urformen]
 The Platonie Idea: The Object of Art 215

remarkable and important accord with a further example. Suppose that

an animal is standing before us, in the fullness of its vital activity. Plato
will say: "This animal has no true existence, but only a seeming one, a
constant becoming, a relative existence that can just as weIl be called a
kind of non-being as being. That which is truly existent is only the ldea
that finds its image in that animal, or the animal in itself (avr-o ro .917P-
lOV), which is dependent on nothing, but has being in and for itself (xa.9'
eaure), dEi maavrOJq)/ not having become, not coming to an end, but
always being in the same manner (aEi Oll, xal /11708JrorE ourE YlYvd/1-
EVOv, ourE aJrOAAV/1EVOV).ii So far as we are cognizant ofits Idea in this
animal, then, it is all the same and without significance whether we have
this animal now before us or its ancestor that lived a thousand years
earlier, or whether it is here or in a distant land, whether it shows itself
to us in this or that manner, position, action, or fmally, whether it is this
or any other individual of its kind: all this is nothing and pertains only
to the phenomenon; the ldea of the animal alone has true being and is
an object of actual cognition."
Thus Plato. Kant would say something like this: "This animal is a
phenomenon within time, space, and causality, which together are the a
priori conditions of the possibility of experience that lie within our
faculty of cognition, not determinations of the thing in itself. Therefore,
this animal, as we perceive it at this particular time, in this given place,
as an individual that has come into being within the context of experi-
ence, i.e., in tenns of the chain of causes and effects, and is just as
necessari1y to pass away, is no thing in itself, but a phenomenon valid
on1y in relation to our cognition. In order to take cognizance of it with
respect to what it may be in itse1f, consequently independently of all
determinations that lie within time, space, and causality, another manner
of cognizance would be required than the only one possible for us,
through the senses and understanding."3
To bring Kant's terminology still c10ser to the Platonic, one might
also say: time, space, and causality are that structureiii of our intellect 204
whereby that which is really the one and only actual being of a given
kind is displayed to us as a plurality of beings of the same kind, ever
anew arising and passing away in endless succession. Apprehension of
things by means of and according to said structure is immanent appre-

tkat' heauto aei hösautäs: Phaedo 78d, but not quoted exactly.]
~:raei on kai medepote oute gignomenon, oute apollumenon: cf. Timaeus 27d.]
III[Einrichtung]
 216 Third Book. The World as Presentation

hension; that which by contrast consists in consciousness of what the

former involves is transcendental. We get the 1atter in abstracto from
the Critique of Pure Reason, but in exceptional cases it can also occur
in an intuitive manner. This latter is what I have to add, that which I am
endeavoring to elucidate precisely by way ofthe present third Book.
Rad Kant's doctrine, and since Kant's time Plato, ever really been
understood and comprehended, had one truly and seriously pondered
the inner sense and content of the doctrines of the two great masters,
instead of tossing around the technical terms4 of the one and parodying
the style ofthe other, then one could not have failed to have long since
discovered the extent to which these two great sages are in accord, and
to which the pure meaning, the ultimate goal of both doctrines, is
altogether the same. Not only would Plato then not have been constantly
compared with Leibniz, upon whom his spirit in no way rested, not to
mention being compared with a gentleman of note stilllivingt - as if
one would mock the shade of that great thinker of antiquity - but in
general we would have gotten much farther than we have, or rather, we
would not have regressed as shamefully far as we have, in these last
fortY years. We would not have let ourselves be led by the nose, today
by one windbag and tomorrow by another, and not have inaugurated the
19th century in Germany, so significant in its portent, with the perfor-
mance ofphilosophical farces on Kant's grave (as was sometimes done
with the ancients at the funeral rites for their own), to the justified
ridicule of other nations; for that sort of thing is not in the least flattering
to serious, indeed stiff, Germans. But so small is the real public for
genuine philosophers that even comprehending scholars are brought to
them only sparingly over the centuries. - E{cyi oq vap[)rpcoq)(fpOl P&V
205 JrOA-AOl; ßaX%Ol Otf y& Jravpol. (Thyrsigeri quidem multi, Bacchi vero
pauci.)i 'H aTZp/a rplAOIJDqJlq ola ravra JrPOIJJrlfJrTWX&Y, ÖTZ 06 xaT'
a';lCxv a6rijc; !iJrTOVTaz' 06 yap VO[)OVC; !!&l !iJrT&CY[)az, &'Ua yvrWl'--
ovc;. (Eam ob rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quod non pro
dignitate ipsam attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sed a legitimis erat at-
trectanda.) Plato. ii

t F.H. Jacobi. [Note added in C.I

t'Many carry the thyrsos [a statf symbolizing the god Dionysus or
BacchusI, but few become bacchants": Plato, Phaedo 69b.]
t'The disesteem that has fallen upon philosophy is caused by the unfitness
of her associates and wooers. They should not have been bastards but true
scions": Republic VII, 535c (tr. Paul Shorey in Hamilton and Cairns [eds.l,
 The Platonie Idea: The Object of Art 217

People only went for the words - such as "presentations apriori,"

"forms belonging to perception and thought known independently of
experience," "original concepts of pure understanding," etc. - and then
asked whether Plato's Ideas, which are indeed supposed to be original
concepts too, but also recollections of truly existing things from a
perception before one's Iifetime, were the same as the forms belonging
to perception and thought for Kant, lying apriori in our consciousness.
These two entirely heterogeneous doctrines, the Kantian doctrine of
forms that limit the individual's cognizance to phenomena and the
Platonic doctrine of ldeas, cognizance of which precisely denies those
forms - since they resembled one another a little in terminology, one
assiduously compared these so far diametrically opposed doctrines,
conferred and disputed as to whether they were indistinguishable, found
in the end that they were after all not the same, and conc1uded that
Plato's doctrine of ldeas and Kant's critique of reason were in no way
in accord. t But enough of that.

§ 32.
[Platonic ldeas as Presentations Not the Thing in Itself as Such -
Kant's Inconsistency]
In consequence of our considerations so far, for all of the inner
accord between Kant and Plato and the identity of the goal that the two
had in mind, or of the world-view that stimulated and led them to their
philosophizing, ldea and thing in itself are nonetheless not simply one
and the same thing. Rather, Ideas are the immediate and thus adequate
objectivization of the thing in itself, which is itself, however, will: will 206
insofar as it is not yet objectified, has not yet become presentation. For
the thing in itself is supposed to be, just as Kant held, free of all forms
attaching to cognition as such, and (as is shown in the Appendix) it is
only amistake on Kant' s part that he did not count among these forms,
before all others, being-object-for-a-subject, since precisely this is the
first and most general form pertaining to all phenomena, i.e., presenta-
tion; therefore, he should have expressly withheld the status of object
from his thing in itself, which would have protected him from that major,
soon uncovered, inconsistency. The Platonic Idea, by contrast, is neces-

Collected Dialogues; slightly emended to conform to Schopenhauer's citation).

Latin added in c.]
tSee, e.g., Immanuel Kant, ein Denkmal [1805] by Fr. Bouterweck [Friedrich
Bouterwek], p. 49 - and [Johann Gottlieb] Buhle's Geschichte der [neueren]
Philosophie [1800-1805], vol. 6 [1804], pp. 802-815 and 823.
 218 Third Book. The World as Presentation

sarily an object, something of which there is cognizance, a presentation,

and precisely thereby, but also only thereby, different from the thing in
itself It has merely shed the subordinate forms pertaining to the phenom-
enon, all of which we comprehend under the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, or rather has not yet entered into them, but it has retained the
first and most general form, that of presentation in general, of being
object for a subject. lt is the forms subordinate to the latter (the general
expression ofwhich is the Principle of Sufficient Ground) that multiply
Ideas into particular and transitory individuals, whose number with
respect to Ideas is wholly a matter of indifference. Thus in turn, the
Principle of Sufficient Ground is the form taken on by Ideas insofar as
they fall within the cognizance of the subject as an individual. The
particular thing that makes its appearance in accordance with the
Principle of Sufficient Ground is thus only an indirect objectification of
the thing in itself (which is will). Between the latter and the former
stands the Idea, as the only immediate objectivization of will, having
taken on no other form belonging to cognition as such than that of
presentation in general, i.e., of being object for a subject. Therefore, it
alone is the most adequate possible objectivization of will, or of the
thing in itself, is indeed the very thing in itself, but under the form of
presentation. And herein lies the ground of the great accord between
Plato and Kant, even though, most strictly speaking, they are not talking
about the same thing. No individual thing, however, is an entirely
adequate objectivization of will, but rather such objectivizaton is
obscured by the forms to which the Principle of Sufficient Ground gives
207 common expression, while these are in turn conditions of cognition so
far as it is possible for the individual as such.
We would in fact, if it is permissible to draw a consequence from
an impossible presupposition, no longer be cognizant of individual things
at aU, nor of events, nor change, nor plurality, but would in pure unob-
scured cognizance apprehend only Ideas, only the stepladder of objecti-
fication of the one will, the true thing in itself, and our world would
consequently be a Nunc stans, i if we were not, as subj ect of cognition, at
the same time individuals, i.e., if our perception were not mediated by a
body from whose affections it proceeds and which is itself only concrete
willing, objectivization of will, therefore an object among objects and,
thus entering cognizant consciousness, as such able to be an object only
within the forms belonging to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, conse-
quently already presupposes and thereby introduces time and all of the

i["standing Now," i.e., "eternity"]

 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 219

other forms that Principle expresses. Time is merely the individual's

divided and dismembered view of Ideas that are beyond time, hence
eternal; therefore, as Plato says, time is the moving image of etemity:
afii5vo~ c!xaJv X1V17T~ 0 xpdvo~.t

§ 33.
[Cognition Freed jrom Relations in the Cognizance of Ideas]
Since as individuals we thus have no other cognizance than that
which is subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, while this form
exeludes eognizanee of Ideas, it is eertain that if it is possible to rise
from cognizance of individual things to that of Ideas, this can only oc-
eur through an alteration taking place in the subject, corresponding and
analogous to that great change in the entire nature ofthe object, and by
virtue of which the subject, so far as it is cognizant of an Idea, is no
longer an individual.
It will be recalled from the previous Book that any sort of cog-
niition itself belongs to the objectification of will on its higher levels,
and sensibility, nerves, brain are, just like other parts of organic beings,
an expression of will in this degree of its objectivization, and therefore 208
the presentations arising from it are equally determined to the service of
will, as a means Vt17Xav17J toward achievement of its now more compli-
cated (lw:ivTsAfO'T&pa) goal, toward the maintenance of a multifarious-
ly needful being. Thus originally and in its essence, cognition is alto-
getber in tbe service of will, and just as that immediate object which
is made its point of departure by an application of the law of causality
is only objectified will, so all cognizance that follows the Principle of
Sufficient Ground also remains in a more or less elose relation i to
will. For the individual finds its body to be an object among objects,
to all of which it has manifold relations and references6 in accordance
with the Principle of Sufficient Ground, consideration of which thus
always leads back, by either a shorter or longer path, to its body and
so to its will. Since it is the Principle of Sufficient Ground that gives
objects this reference to the bodyii and thereby to the will, it will also
be the sole endeavor of cognizance serving the latter to get to know
objects precisely with respect to those relations determined by the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, thus to pursue their manifold references

tOn this, see eh. 29 of the seeond volume. [aiönos eikön kinete ho chronos:
drawn from Timaeus 37d, with the Greek added inB.]
i[Beziehung]
ii[der die Objekte in diese Beziehung zum Leibe ... stellt]
 220 Third Book. The World as Presentation

in space, time, and causality. For it is only through those references that
objects are interesting to the individual, i.e., have a relation to its will.
Therefore, cognizance serving the will really takes cognizance of
nothing more regarding objects than their relations, i takes cognizance
of objects only so far as they exist at this time, in this place, under these
circumstances, through these causes, with these effects: in a word, as
individual things. And were all these relations eliminated,ii all objects
would also vanish for this sort of cognizance, precisely because it took
cognizance of nothing further in their regard.
We mayaIso not conceal the fact that what the sciences consider
in regard to things is in essence Iikewise nothing other than all of that,
namely, their relations: iii temporal and spatial relations,iv the causes of
natural changes, similarities of form, motives for events. Thus mere rela-
tions. What distinguishes the sciences from ordinary cognizance is mere-
ly their form, systematicity, the facilitation of cognizance through the
comprehension of everything individual in general terms by means of
209 the subordination of concepts, and thereby the attainment of astate of
completion. All relations themselves have only a relative existence. For
example, all being in time is also in turn a kind of 110n-being. For time
is precise1y only that by which contrary determinations are able to per-
tain to the same thing. Therefore, every phenomenon in time is just as
much in turn nonexistent. For that which separates its beginning from
its end is precisely only time, something essentially vanishing, insub-
stantial, and relative, which we call duration. But time is the most gener-
al form pertaining to all objects of cognizance that stands in the service
of will, and is the prototype for all its other forms.
Now cognizance remains as a rule always subject to the service of
will, having arisen indeed for the sake of this service, indeed having
sprouted from the will, as it were, as the head from the trunk. In ani-
mals this subservience of cognizance to the will can in no way be elimi-
nated. In human beings, the elimination occurs only as an exception, as
we will now more c10sely consider. This difference between human be-
ings and animals is externally expressed by the difference in the rela-
tion between head and trunk. In lower? animals the two are still entirely
merged; in all of them the head points toward the earth, where He all
the objects of their will. Even in higher animals the head and trunk are

lRelationen]
l~[und höbe man alle diese Relationen auf)
lll[Relationen1
lV[ Verhältnisse]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 221

still much more one thing than in the human being, whose head appears
as if freely set upon the body, only borne by it, not serving it. This
prerogative of the human is displayed to the highest degree by the Apollo
ofBelvedere: the head ofthe god ofthe Muses stands on his shoulders,
gazing so freely far and wide that it appears as if it is wrenched entirely
away from the body, no longer a servant to concern for it.

§ 34.
[Tbe Subject Will-1m in Its Cognizance cf Ideas-
&lease from tbe Principles cf St#icient Ground and Individuation]
The possible passage - but, as has has been stated, it is to be
considered only an exception - from ordinary cognizance of individual
things to cognizance of ldeas occurs suddenly, with cognizance tearing
itself away from the service of will. Just by that fact the subj ect ceases
to be merely individual and is now the pure, will-Iess subject of cogni-
tion, which no longer pursues relations according to the Principle of 210
Sufficient Ground, but rests in constant contemplation i of the given
object beyond its interconnection with any others, and gets absorbed
therein. ii
Making this explicit necessitates a detailed discussion, the troubling
character of which has to be ignored for the time being, until it has
vanished of itself upon comprehension of the entire thought to be
communicated in this work.
Suppose that, lifted by the powe~ii of spirit, one abandons the usual
way of regarding things, stops merely pursuing relations among them,
the ultimate goal of which is always relation to one's will under the
direction of modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, thus no longer
considers the Where, the When, the Why, and the Whither of things,
but simply and solely the What, nor lets abstract thinking, concepts of
reason, consciousness occupy one's thinking; but instead of all this,
one devotes the entire powetv of spirit to perception, becomes entirely
absorbed in the latter and lets the entirety of consciousness be filled
with restful contemplation of a natural object just at that moment
present to oneself - be it alandscape, a tree, a cliff, a building, or what-
ever - entirely losing oneself, to employ a pregnant German expression,

i[Kontemplation]
lI[und darin aufgeht]
ll1[Kraft]
iV[Macht]
 222 Third Book. The World as Presentation

in this object, i.e., precisely forgetting the individual one is,i one's will,
and remaining only as pure subject, as dear mirror ofthe object, so that
it is as ifthe object alone existed without anyone perceiving it, and one
can thus no longer8 separate the perceiver from the perception, but
the two have become one, the entirety of consciousness entirely filled
and occupied by a single perceptual image. Suppose that the object has
been removed to this extent from all relation to anything beyond it, the
subject removed from all relation to will: then that of which one has
tak(~n cognizance is no longer the individual thing as such; rather, it is
the Idea, etemal form, immediate objectivization of will on this level.
And just by that fact, anyone caught up in this perception is at the same
time no longer an individual - for the individual has lost itself precisely
211 in this perception - but is pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of
cognition. This for now, taken on its own, so striking point (which I very
weIl know confirms the saying, stemming from Thomas Paine, that du
sublime au ridicule il ny a qu 'un pas),ii will be made gradually more
explicit and less troubling by what is to follow. It was also the point that
Spinoza had in mind when he wrote: mens aeterna est, quatenus res
sub aeternitatis specie concipit (Ethics V, prop. 31, scholium).t In such
contemplation, then, the individual thing becomes with a single stroke
the ldea of its species and the perceiving individual becomes the pure
subject of cognition. The individual iii as such is cognizant only of indi-
vidual iv things, the pure subject of cognition only of Ideas. For the
individual is the subject of cognition in its relation to some particular
individual phenomenon of will, and in the service of the latter. This
individual phenomenon of will is as such subject to the Principle of

i [sein Individuum]
t'There is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous." As noted by
Deussen but not by Hübscher, this was attributed to Napoleon in A and B. In
any case, as Hübscher notes, the statement was apparently made by Napoleon
during the retreat from Russia in 1812, with the attribution to Paine stemming
from The Age ofReason (1794).]
t["The mind is etemal insofar as it conceives things under the aspect of
etemity."] I also recommend consulting what he says in the same work in Bk.
H, prop. 40, scholium 2, and likewise in Bk. 5, props. 25 through 38, regarding
cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva ["knowledge of the third kind, or intuitive
knowledge"], toward elucidation of the manner of cognizance here in question,
and very much in particular prop. 29, scholium, prop. 36, scholium, and prop.
38, demonstration and scholium.
iii[Individuum]
iV[einzelne]
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 223

Sufficient Ground in all its modes. All cognizance referring to the indi-
vidual thus also follows the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and none
other than such cognizance is suited to the purposes of will, which has
always only relations as its object. The cognizant individual as such
and the individual thing ofwhich it is cognizant are always somewhere,
at some time, and links in the chain of causes and effects. The pure
subject of cognition and its correlate, Ideas, have stepped out of all
those forms belonging to the Principle of Sufficient Ground: time, place,
the cognizant individual, and the individual that is an object of cogni-
zance have no meaning for them. Only insofar as, in the way described,
a cognizant individual is elevated to the pure subject of cognition, and
precisely thereby one' s object of regard elevated to an Idea, does the
world as presentation come entirely and purely to the fore, and does
there occur completei objectification of will; for Ideas alone are the
latter's adequate objectivization. An Idea incorporatesii object and sub-
ject in equal manner within itself, since that distinction is its only form. 212
In it, however, the two are of entirely equal weight, and just as the
object here is nothing but presentation to the subject,iii so also the
subject, being entirely absorbed in the object of perception, has become
this object itself, its entire consciousness being nothing more than the
most distinct image of the latter. Precisely this consciousness - if one
thinks of the totality of Ideas, or levels of the objectivization of will, as
running through it in succession - really constitutes the entire world as
presentation. Individual things at any time and place are nothing but
ldeas, multiplied by the Principle of Sufficient Ground (the cognitive
form pertaining to individuals as such) and thereby obscured with
respect to their pure objectivization. Just as, with the ldea coming to the
fore, subject and object are no longer distinguishable in it - since it is
only when they completely fill and penetrate one another that ldeas,
adequate objectivization of will, the true world as presentation, arises -
so also in the same way, the individual thereby cognizant and the indi-
vidual cognized are as things in themselves not distinct. For with
complete abstraction from that true world as presentation, nothing
remains but the world as will. Will is the in-itself of Ideas, which
objectify it completely; it is also the in-itself of individual things and of

i[vollkommene. As noted earlier, except where there is independent reason

for choosing "perfeet," I translate vollkommen as "complete": see note to
section § 24. I also translate vollständig as "complete."]
'~Ischliesst ... in sich]
1Il[ Vorstellung des Subjekts]
 224 Third Book. The WorId as Presentation

the individuals cognizant of them, which objectify it incompletely. As

will, beyond presentation and all its forms, it is one and the same in the
object contemplated and in the individual who, soaring high in this
contemplation, becomes conscious of itself as pure subject. The two are
thus in themselves not distinct. For in themselves they are will, which
is here self-cognizant, and plurality and diversity exist only as the
mode and manner in which this cognizance comes to it, i.e., only in the
phenomenon, by virtue of its form, the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
As litde - without an object, without presentation - as I am cognizant
subject, but mere blind will, just as little, without me as subject of
cognition, is the thing of which I am cognizant an object, but mere will,
blind pressing. i This will is in itself, i.e., beyond presentation, one and
the same as mine: only in the world as presentation, whose form is
213 always at least that of subject and object, do we come apart as cognized
and cognizing individuals. As soon as cognition, the world as presenta-
tion, is eliminated, nothing at all remains but mere will, blind pressing.
That it attains to objectivization, becomes a presentation, means that
with a single stroke we have both subject and object. But the fact that
this objectivization is purely, completely, an adequate objectivization
of will, means that we have the object as Idea, free from the forms that
belong to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and we have the subject
as pure subject of cognition, free from individuality and subservience
to will. 9
Whoever, then, according to what has been said, has so far sub-
merged and lost hirnself in the perception of nature that he continues to
exist only as purely cognizant subject, is just by that fact made immedi-
ately aware that he is as such the condition, thus the bearer, of the
world and all objective existence; for the latter is now displayed to hirn
as dependent on his own existence. He thus draws nature into hirns elf,
so that he continues to experienceii it only as an accident with respect to
his essence. It is in this sense that Byron says:
Are not the mountains, waves and skies, apart
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?iii
Who then, feeling this, could take hirns elf to be, as opposed to im-
perishable nature, absolutely transitory? He will rather be seized by the

lDrang]
"[empfindet]
lii[George Gordon Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage III, 72 (Canto III
[1816, following J-II of l812 and preceding IV of 1818]).]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 225

consciousness that is pronounced by the Upanishad of the Veda: Hae

omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est.
(OupnekhatI, l22.)i.t
§ 35.
[Idtas distinguisbed ]rom tbeir Pbenomena]
To attain to a deeper insight into the essence ofthe world, it is un-
avoidably necessary that one leam to distinguish will as thing in itself
from its adequate objectivization, and the various levels of the latter's
more distinct and complete emergence, Le., Ideas themselves, from the
mere phenomenon of Ideas within modes of the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, the manner of cognizance in which individuals are caught up.
Then one will agree with Plato in attributing true being only to Ideas, 214
grant to things in space and time by contrast, to this world that is real
for the individual, only a seeming, dreamlike existence. Then one will
see how one and the same Idea reveals itself in so many phenomena
and offers its essence only piecemeal, one aspect at a time, to those
individuals who are cognizant of it. One will then distinguish the Idea
itself from the mode and manner in which its phenomenon falls within
the observation of individuals, recognize the former as essential, the
latter as inessential. We will consider some examples of this in matters
that range from the most trivial to the grandest.
When clouds pass, the figures they form are not essential to them,
are indifferent with respect to them. But that as elastic vapors they are
compressed by the impact of the wind, scattered, stretched, tom apart,
this is their nature, is the essence of the forces that are objectified in
them, is their Idea: the figures in each case are only something for the
individual observer. - To the stream that cascades over stones, the
eddies, waves, foam-shapes it displays are indifferent and inessential.
That it conforms to gravity, behaves like an inelastic, altogether displace-
able, formless, transparent fluid, this is its essence: this is, when it is an
object ofperceptual cognition, its Idea. Only so long as we are cognizant
as individuals do those formations exist for uso - Ice on the windowpane
forms in accordance with laws of crystallization. These reveal the essence
of the natural force coming to the fore in this case, display its Idea; but
the trees and flower that are thereby formed are inessential, and only
exist for uso

t"All these ereatures together am I, and beyond me no being exists":

apparently an addition by the Persian editors, pieeed together from two pas-
sages in the Brihadäranyaka-Upanishad and retained in the 1801-2 Latin edition
ofthe Persian translation by Abraham Hyaeinthe Anquetil-Duperron.]
t ün this, see eh. 30 ofthe second volume.
 226 Third Book. The World as Presentation

That which makes its appearance in clouds, stream, and crystal is

the weakest resonance of the will that comes more completely' to the
fore in plants, still more completely in animals, most completely in
human beings. But only what is essential in all the levels of its objecti-
fication constitutes an Idea. By contrast, the latter's unfolding as elabo-
rated into manifold and multifaceted phenomena subject to modes of
the Principle of Sufficient Ground, is inessential to an Idea, lies merely
in the manner of cognizance that pertains to individuals, and has reality
only for the latter. The same thing necessarily applies to the unfolding
of that Idea which is the most complete objectivization of will: as a
215 consequence, the history of the human race, the welter of events, the
changing times, the multi-structured forms of human life in different
lands and centuries - all of this is only the contingent form pertaining
to that Idea's phenomenon, pertains not to itself, in which alone lies
adequate objectivization of will, but only to that phenomenon which
falls within the cognizance of individuals, and is to the Idea itself as
foreign, inessential, and indifferent as are the figures to the clouds that
display them, eddies and foam-shapes to the stream, its trees and flowers
to the ice.
For anyone who has weIl understood this and can distinguish will
from Ideas and the latter from their phenomenon, worldly events will
have meaning only just so far as they are letters in which the ldea of
humanity can be read, but not in and for themselves. Such a person will
not agree with those who believe that time may bring forth something
that is actually new and significant, that through it or in it something
absolutely real might attain to existence, let alone that as a whole it
may have its own beginning and end, a plan and deve1opment, with
perhaps its ultimate goal the supreme perfection (in accordance with
their notions) of the latest generation of thirty-year-olds. Therefore he
will as tittle, with Homer, set up an entire Olympus full of gods to direct
the events of the day as, with Ossian, regard figures in the clouds as
individual beings; for as stated, in relation to the Idea that makes its
appearance in it, the one is just as meaningful as the other. In the mani-
fold forms of human life and ceaseless change of events, he will consider
as the enduring and essential element only the Idea in which the will for
life has its most complete objectivization, and which shows its diverse
aspects in the properties, passions, errors, and strengths of the human
race - in se1fishness, hate, love, fear, audacity, frivolity, stupidity,
slyness, wit, genius, etc. - all of which, in their convergence and flow

i [vollendeter1
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 227

into thousand-fold shapes (individuals), ceaseiessIy stage the history of

the world on the grand and small scaIe; in this, it is all the sarne whether
what sets it in motion is peanuts or gold. i He will find, finally, that it
is in the world as in the dramas of Gozzi, in all of which the same 216
characters always appear with Iike intentions and a like fate: the
motives and events are of course different in each pIay, but the spirit of
the events is the same. Characters in one play are even ignorant of the
proceedings in another in which they themselves had a roie. Therefore,
after all of their experiences in earlier plays, Pantalone has grown no
smarter or more generous, Tartaglia no more scrupulous, Brighella no
more courageous, and Columbina no more virtuous.
Were we but permitted a distinct glimpse into the realm ofpossi-
bility and over all the chains of causes and effects, were the spirit of the
earth to have stepped forth and shown us a picture of the most superb
individuals, world-illuminers, and heroes whom circumstances destroyed
before the time for their effectiveness - then shown us great events that
would bave altered world history and ushered in periods of the highest
culture and enlightenment, but which the blindest chance, the most
insignificant circumstance impeded in its origination, and the splendid
forces of great individuals who would have inseminated entire ages but
which, led astray by error or passion, or by the compulsion ofnecessity,
they squandered on unworthy and barren objects, or just frittered away
in play - were we to see all this, we would shudder and larnent over the
lost treasures of entire ages. But the spirit of the earth would smile and
say: "The source from which individuals and their forces flow is as inex-
haustible and infinite as time and space. For just Iike these forms pertain-
ing to all phenomena, they as weIl are mere phenomena, visibility of
will. No finite measure can exhaust that infinite source. Thus for any
event or work choked off in the germ, undiminished infinity stands ever
open for its recurrence. In this world of the phenomenon, true loss is as
little possible as true gain. Will alone exists: it the thing in itself, it the
source of all those phenomena. Its self-cognizance and consequent
decisive affirmation or denial is the single event in itself." _ t

§36. 217
[ne Replication oJ Ideas in Art - Genius and Madness]
History pursues the thread of events. It is pragmatic so far as it
derives them in accordance with the law of motivation, which law

tNüsse oder Kronen]

tThis last sentence cannot be understood without acquaintance with the f01-
lowing Book.
 228 Third Book. The World as Presentation

determines the will in its appearance,i where it is ilIuminated by cogni-

zance. On the lower levels of its objectivization, where will is still
effectual in the absence of cognizance, the laws for the alterations of its
phenomena are the concern of natural science as etiology, and what is
enduring in them is the concern of the latter as morphology, which
facilitates its almost infinite project with the aid of concepts, composing
generalities for the sake of deriving particulars from them. Finally,
mathematics is concerned with the mere forms within which ldeas, with
respect to cognizance on the part of the subject as an individual, make
their appearance as elaborated into plurality, that is, time and space. All
of these, whose common name is science, thus proceed in accordance
with the Principle of Sufficient Ground in its various modes, and their
theme remains phenomena, their laws, interconnection, and relations
arising from them.
What mode of cognition, however, is concemed with that aspect
of the world that is alone truly essential, standing beyond and indepen-
dent of all relation - the true content of its phenomena - that which is
subject to no change and thus for all time cognized with equal truth, in
a word: the Ideas that are the immediate and adequate objectivization
of the thing in itself, of will? - lt is art, the work of genius. It replicates
the eternal Ideas that are apprehended through pure contemplation, that
which is essential and enduring in all the world's phenomena, and
depending on the material in which it replicates them, it is plastic or
pictorial art, poetry, or music. Its single origin is cognizance of Ideas,
its single goal communication of this cognizance.
While science, following the unresting and insubstantial stream of
quadruply configured grounds and consequences, is always, with the
achievement of each goal, directed to something else - and can as litde
find an ultimate goal or fuH satisfaction as one could reach the point
218 where the clouds touch the horizon by walking - art, to the contrary, is
always at its goal. F or it tears the object of its contemplation out of the
stream ofthe world's course and holds it isolated before itself. And the
individual thing, which was a vanishingly small part of that stream,
becomes for it a representative of the whole, equivalent to infinitely
many things in space and time. It stays, therefore, with the individual
thing, it stops the wheel of time, relations vanish for it; only that which
is essential, the Idea, is an object for it.

tden erscheinenden Willen]

 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 229

We can therefore characterize art quite simply as that way of

regarding things wh ich is independent of the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, contrasting it with that regard which is precisely in accordance
with the latter, which is the way of experience and science. This latter
way of regarding things is comparable to an infinite horizontal1ine,
while the former is comparable to a vertical line intersecting it any
arbitrary point. The way of regarding things that follows the Principle
of Sufficient Ground is rational in character, which is alone applicable
and helpful in practical life as in science; that which turns away from
the Principle of Sufficient Ground is the genius's way of regarding
things, which is applicable and helpful only in art. The first way of
regarding things is Aristotle's; the second is, on the whole, Plato's. The
first is like the mighty storm that passes without beginning or aim,
bends and moves everything, carries everything with it; the second like
the restful sunbeam intersecting the storm's path, entirely unmoved by
1t. The first 1S like the countless forcibly propelled drops of a waterfall,
constantly changing, never halting for amoment; the second like the
rainbow resting still upon this raging turbulence.
Only through the pure contemplation described above, entirely
absorbed in its object, are ldeas apprehended, and the essence of genius
consists precisely in a predominating capacity for such contemplation.
Since this demands forgetting one's own person and relationships
entirely, genius is nothing other than the most compiete objectivity, i.e.,
an objective orientation of the spiriti as opposed to one that is subjec-
tive, directed at one's own person, i.e., the will. Accordingly, genius is
the capacity for maintaining a purely perceptual state, for losing oneself
in perception, and for withdrawing cognizance from service of the will 219
that it existed originally but to serve, i.e., entirely losing sight of one's
interest, one's willing, one's purposes, and thus getting utterly outside
one's own personality for a time,ii so as to remain as purely cognizant
subject, clear eye ofthe world. And this not merely momentarily, but so
consistently and with as much thoughtful awareness as is needed to
replicate what has been apprehended through reflectively considerediii
art, and "to solidify in lasting thoughts what hovers before one in a
fluctuating appearance."iv - It is as if, for genius to come to the fore in

i[Richtung des Geistes]

ii[seiner Persönlichkeit sich auf eine Zeit völlig zu entäussern]
iii[ überlegte I
iV[Goethe, Faust I, 348-349 ("Prologue in Heaven"); passage slightly altered
by Schopenhauer.]
 230 Third Book. The World as Presentation

an individual, a measure of cognitive power must have been granted the

latter which far exceeds what is required for the service of an individual
will; the liberated surplus of cognizance now becomes the subject puri-
fied ofwill,1O becomes the clear mirror ofthe essence ofthe world.
This is the explanation of the liveliness to the point of restlessness
in individuals of genius, the present rarely being able to satisfy them
because it does not fill their consciousness. This gives them that char-
acter of unresting endeavor, that ceaseless search for objects that are
new and worthy of regard, as weIl as the alm ost never satisfied demand
for beings who are like themselves, up to their level, with whom they
might communicate. Your ordinary fellow, by contrast, entirely filled
and satisfied by the ordinary present, gets absorbed in it, and then
finding his equals everywhere, he obtains that particular feeling of
comfort in everyday life that is denied to the genius.
Imaginationi has been recognized as an essential component of
genius, indeed it is sometimes taken to be identical with it: rightly so in
the former case, wrongly in the latter. Since the objects for the genius
as such are the etemal ldeas, the persisting essential forms pertaining to
the world and all its phenomena, but cognizance of ldeas is necessarily
perceptual, not abstract, the genius's cognizance would be limited to
Ideas of objects actually present to his person and dependent on the
concatenation of circumstances that bring them to hirn, if imagination
did not broaden his horizon far beyond the actual reality ofhis personal
experience and, from what little has entered his actual apperception, put
him in a position to construct everything else, and so to have almost all
of life's possible scenes passing before hirn. In addition, actual objects
220 are alm ost ever only highly deficient examples of the ldeas that are
being displayed in them. Therefore, the genius has need of imagination
to see, not what nature has actually constructed in things, but rather
what it has striven to construct but, on account of the batt1e among its
forms that was mentioned in the previous Book, failed to bring to pass.
We will return to this below in our consideration of sculpture. Imagi-
nation thus broadens the field of vision for the genius beyond those
objects that are actually available to his person, both qualitatively and
quantitatively. On account of this fact, then, unusual strength of imagi-
nation is a companion, indeed a condition of genius. But the former
does not, conversely, attest to the latter; rather, even persons greatly
lacking in genius can have much imagination. For just as one can
regard an actual object in two contrary manners - purely objectively,

i[Phantasie]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 231

with genius, grasping its ldea, or as is commonly the case, merely with
respect to its relations to other objects and one's own will, according to
the Principle of Sufficient Ground - so one can also perceive amental
image i in those two manners. Regarded in the first way, it is a means
toward cognizance of ldeas whose communication is a work of art. In
the second case, the mental image is employed in the building of castles
in the air that appeal to and momentarily deceive and delight one's own
self-interest and fancy; thereby, one is really always cognizant only of
the relations of the mental images thus connected. He who plays this
game is a fantast. He easily allows the images in which he takes his
solitary delight to intermingle with actual reality, and thereby becomes
useless for the latter. He will perhaps even record his imaginative
jugglery, producing the usual novels of all the genres that entertain his
likes and the public at large, with readers dreaming of themselves in the
position ofthe hero and then finding the depiction most "pleasing."
The ordinary person, that factory-work of nature such as it daily
produces by the thousands, is, as has been stated, altogether incapable
of at least sustaining a regard that is wholly disinterested in every sense,
which is what true contemplativenessii is: he can only direct his attention
to things insofar as they have some, even if a most indirect, relation to
his will. Since in the latter respect, which always requires only a cogni- 221
zance of relations, the abstract concept of a thing is sufficient and even
usually more useful, the ordinary person does not linger for long in mere
perception, thus does not fasten his glance for long on an object. Rather,
he but quickly seeks in everything available to hirn the concept under
which to bring it, as a lazy man seeks achair, and then it is no longer of
interest to him. Therefore, he is so quickly done with everything, with
works of art, beautiful natural objects, and that view of life in all of its
scenes that is truly of significance everywhere. He, however, does not
linger: he seeks only his path in life, or at most anything that might
some day be his path, thus topographical notations in the broadest sense;
he loses no time in the consideration of life itself as such. The genius
by contrast, one whose cognitive power withdraws, by virtue of its
predominance, from service of his will for a portion of his time, tarries
in the consideration of life itself, strives to grasp the Idea of each thing,
not its relations to other things; for that, he frequently neglects consider-
ation ofhis own path in life, and therefore often walks it rather clumsily.

i [Phantasmaj
ii[Beschaulichkeit. Beschauung will generally be, like Kontemplation, "con-
temp1ation," but Beschauer "beholder" (and Zuschauer "spectator").]
 232 Third Book. The World as Presentation

While the ordinary person's cognitive faculty is the lantem that

illuminates his path, the sun is what reveals the world to the genius.
These so different manners of looking into life will soon make them-
selves evident even in extemals. The glance of a person in whom genius
lives and is effectual easily distinguishes hirn, insofar as, simultaneously
lively and firm, it bears the character of contemplativeness, of contem-
plationi - as we can see this in the portraits of those few individuals of
genius whom nature has now and then brought forth among its countless
millions. By contrast, when it is not, as most of the time, stupid or dull,
the true contrary of contemplation is easily visible in the glance of the
other: scouting. ii Accordingly, "expression of genius" in an individual
consists in the fact that decisive predominance of cognition over willing
is visible in it, consequently cognition apart from all relation to anY will-
ing, i.e., pure cognition, also expresses itself therein. By contrast, with
222 individuals as they are as a rule, the expression of willing is predomi-
nant, and we see that cognition always swings into action only upon the
stimulus ofwilling, thus is directed merely toward motives.
Since the cognizance that is part of genius, or cognizance ofldeas,
is that which does not follow the Principle of Sufficient Ground - while
that which follows it imparts shrewdness and rationality in life and brings
the sciences into existence - individuals of genius will be burdened with
the deficiencies that neglect of the latter manner of cognizance entails.
However, the qualification must here be noted that what [ am going to
cite in this respect only bears on such individuals insofar as and while
they are actually in the grip of the manner of cognizance that is part of
genius, which is in no way the case in every moment of their life, since
the great, although spontaneous, exertion that i8 required for will-free
apprehension of Ideas necessarily abates and leaves those individuals
standing for long intervals, with respect to both strengths and weak-
iii
nesses, rather like ordinary people. For this reason, the working of
genius has for ages been called inspiration, indeed, as the very name
indicates, been viewed as the working of a superhuman being distinct
from the individual itself, only intermittently taking possession of the
latter. The aversion of individuals of genius to directing their attention
to the content of the Principle of Sufficient Ground will first show
itself with respect to the ground of being, as an aversion toward mathe-
matics, whose regard is directed toward the most general fonns pertain-

t der Beschaulichkeit. der Kontemplation]

ii[das Spähen. In A, the paragraph ends here.]
iii[Wirken]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 233

ing to the phenomenon, space and time, which are themselves only
modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and is therefore entirely
the opposite of that regard which seeks out precisely only the content
of the phenomenon, the Idea that is expressing itself in it, viewed apart
from all relations. In addition, the logical method of mathematics will
be repugnant to the genius, since, excluding real insight, it cannot give
satisfaction; rather, offering a mere concatenation of inferences in
accordance with the Principle of the Sufficient Ground of Cognition, it
calls above all upon memory out of all one's mental powers, namely, so
that one is always able to retain all the earlier propositions to which one
is appealing. Experience has also confirmed that great geniuses in art
have no capacity for mathematics: never was a person particularly
distinguished in both together. Alfieri relates that he could not even 223
comprehend Euclid's Fourth Theorem. Goethe has often enough been
taken to task for his lack of mathematical knowledge by ignorant
opponents of his theory of colors. üf course in this case, where it was
not a matter of calculating and measuring in accordance with hypotheti-
cal data, but of immediate cognizance of cause and effect on the part of
the understanding, the objection was so entirely perverse and misplaced
that they evidenced their total lack of judgment just as much by this as
by their other Midas-pronouncements." The fact that even today, almost
half a century after the appearance of Goethe's theory of colors, the
Newtonian nonsense remains even in Germany undisturbed in its posses-
sion of academic chairs, and one continues to speak in all seriousness of
seven homogenous kinds oflight and their various refractabilities - will
one day be counted among the major intellectual earmarks of humanity
in general, and of Germanity in particular.
On the ground provided above, one can explain the equally familiar
fact that, conversely, exceptional mathematicians have little receptive-
ness for works of fine art, which is rather innocently expressed in the
familiar anecdote about the French mathematician who, with a shrug of
his shoulders, asked after reading Racine's lphegenia: Qu'est-ce-que
cela prouve?i - Since, further, an acute apprehension of references ii
according to the law of causality and motivation is really what consti-
tutes shrewdness, while the cognizance that is part of genius is not

i["What does it prove?" Hübscher notes that the anecdote has been supposed
to concern the mathematician Gilles Personne de Roberval. See, e.g., Ferdinand
Hoefer, Histoire des Mathematiques (1874), p. 439.]
ii[Auffassung der Beziehungen]
 234 Third Book. The World as Presentation

directed toward relations,i a shrewd individual, so far as and while he is

so, will not be possessed of genius, and a genius, so far as and while he
is so, will not be shrewd.
FinaIly, perceptual cognizance, altogether the domain in which
ldeas lie, is exactly the opposite of that which is rational or abstract,
which the Principle of the Sufficient Ground of Cognition directs. And
it is weIl known that one rarely finds great genius paired with a
predominance of rationality; rather, individuals of genius are to the
contrary frequently subject to intense emotions and irrational passions.
The ground for this is, nonetheless, not weakness of reason, but on the
one hand unusual energyii on the part of that whole phenomenon of will
that is the individual of genius and that expresses itself through the
224 intensity of all his acts of will, on the other hand a predominance of
perceptual cognizance through the senses and the understanding over
that which is abstract, thus a decisive orientation toward the perceptual,
the supreme energy of whose impression so far outshines colorless
concepts for such individuals that their actions are no longer directed by
the latter but by the former, making them thereby precisely irrational: by
this fact, present impressions have a powerful effect on them, pull them
in the direction of the unreflective, of emotions, of passions. Thus also,
and particularly because their cognizance has partially withdrawn from
the service of will, they will not so much attend in conversation to the
person to whom, but more to the matter of which they are speaking,
which is vividly present to their mind. Thus they will judge or narrate
matters too objectively for their own good, not leave unsaid what it would
be shrewder to leave unsaid, etc. Thus, finally, they have a tendency
toward monologues and can in general show a number of weaknesses
that actually approach madness. That genius and madness have an
aspect with respect to which they border on one another, indeed pass
over into one another, has often been noted, and literary inspiration has
even been called a kind of madness: amabilis insania iii Horace calles it
(Odes IIl, 4), and Wieland "charming madness" in the beginning of
Oberon. iv Even Aristotle is supposed, from Seneca's citation (de tranq.
animi XV, 16), to have said: Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura

i[Relationen1
iTEnergie]
iii["charming madness"]
iV[holder Wahnsinn: Christoph Martin Wieland, Oberon, "First Song," 1. The
portion ofthe sentence following the colon, above, added in B.]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 235

dementiae fuit. i In the myth of the dark cave cited above (de Rep. 7),
Plato expresses it by way of the assertion that those who have viewed
the true sunlight and actually existing things (the Ideas) outside the
cave can afterwards, since their eyes have become disaccustomed to
darkness, no longer see in the cave, no longer recognize aright the
shadowy images below, and are for that reason ridiculed for their
blunders by the others, who have never gotten away from the cave and
these shadowy images. And he says directly in the Phaedrus (p. 317)
that without a certain madness no genuine poet can exist, indeed (p.
327) that anyone who is cognizant of the eternal Ideas in transitory
things gives the appearance of madness. ii Cicero also cites Democritus:
Negat enim, sine forore, Democritus, quemquam poetam magnus esse
posse; quod idem dicit Plato (de divin. I, 37).iii And finally Pope says:
Oreat wits to madness sure are near allied, 225
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. iv
Particularly instructive in this respect is Ooethe's Torquato Tasso,
in which he makes evident to us not only the suffering, the essential
martyrdom of genius as such, but also its steady passage into madness.
Finally, the fact that genius and madness are in immediate contact is
confmned in part by the biographies of men of great genius, e.g., Rous-
seau, Byron,12 Alfieri, and by anecdotes trom the lives of others. But on
the other hand 1 must mention that, from frequent visits to insane
asylums, I have found individual subjects with unmistakably great
talent whose genius was distinctly evident through the madness, which
in their cases, however, fully held the upper hand. This cannot be
ascribed to chance, since on the one hand the number of those who are

t'There has never been great genius without some mixture of madness": De
tranquillitate animi (On Tranquillity of the Soul; as Deussen and Hübscher
rather XVII, 10).]
ii[Phaedrus 245a and 249d, respectively. Schopenhauer's references are to
the Bipont edition ofPlato (so named after the Latin name for Zweibrücken, orig-
inallocation ofthe publishing house.)]
iii["For Democritus denies that anyone can be a great poet without madness,
which Plato also says": De divinatione (On Divination). See next note.]
!V[As noted by Deussen and Hübscher, this is in fact lines 163-165 of John
Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. As they also note, the following are from
Pope's Essay on Man, Epistle I (lines 225-226): "Remembrance and reflection
how allied; What thin partitions sense from thought divide." (The references to
Cicero and Pope were added in C, including a footnote translating the passage
attributed to Pope iuto German.)]
 236 Third Book. The World as Presentation

mad is relatively very smalI, while on the other hand an individual of

genius is a phenomenon that comes to the fore with a rarity beyond all
ordinary estimation and as the greatest exception in nature. One can
convince oneself of this simply by enumerating the actually great
geniuses who have been brought forth by all of cultivated Europe in all
of ancient and modem times - among whom are to be counted, however,
only those who have produced works retaining a value for humanity to
endure through all times - and, as I assert, comparing the number of
these individuals to the 250 13 millions who, being replenished every
thirty years, are constantly inhabiting Europe. Indeed, ] would not leave
it unmentioned that I have known some people of, to be sure not
significant, but still definite superiority of spirit, who simultaneously
betrayed a mild touch of dementedness. From this it might seem that, as
a kind of abnormality, every increase of intellect beyond the usual
measure in fact disposes one toward madness. In any case,14 I want to
present my view regarding the purely intellectual 15 ground of the
affinity between genius and madness with the greatest possible brevity,
226 since this discussion will of course contribute to explaining the real
essence of genius, i.e., ofthat spiritual character that can alone produce
genuine works of art. This, however, necessitates abrief diseussion of
madness itself. t
A clear 16 and complete insight into the essence of madness, an
accurate and distinct concept of what really distinguishes the mad from
the sane, has to my knowledge never been found. - Neither reason nor
understanding can be denied of the mad. For they speak and register
what is said, they often make very accurate inferences, and as a rule
they quite accurately perceive what is present and see the cOlmection
between causes and effects. Neither visions nor fevered fantasies are a
usual symptom of madness: delirium distorts perception; madness,
thoughts. In particular, the mad go for the most part in no way wrong in
their recognition of what is immediately present, but their insane talk
always refers to what is absent or past, and only thereby to its connection
with what is present. Therefore, their illness seems to me particularly to
affect their memory. Not, to be sure, that they are wholly lacking in it;
for many know a great deal by heart and sometimes recognize persons
whom they have not seen for a long time. It is rather that the thread of
memory is tom, its continuing interconnection eliminated, and no
uniformly interconnected recollection of the past is possible. Individual
scenes from the past maintain their accuracy, just like the individually

tOn this, see eh. 31 ofthe second volume.

 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 237

present. But there are gaps in recoUecting them, which they then fin out
with fictions that are either constantly the same, becoming fixed ideas -
then we get fixated delusions, melancholy - or always different, ideas
that happen to occur to them at the moment - then it is called folly,
fatuitas. This is why it is so hard to question the mad, upon their entry
into an insane asylum, 17 about their previous course of life. The true
ever more intermixes with the false in their memories. Even though
they take accurate cognizance of the immediate present, it is distorted
by its fancied connection with a delusional past. They therefore identifY 227
themselves and others with persons who merely lie in their fancied pasts,
no longer at an recognize many of their acquaintances, and so for all of
the accuracy of their ideas of things individually present, maintain wholly
false relations between the latter and things absent. If their madness
reaches a high degree, an utter loss of memory ensues, for which reason
the mad are then altogether incapable of concern for what is absent or
past, but are determined entirely by momentary mood alone combined
with the fictions that fin the past in their heads; and then, if one's posi-
tion of superior power is not constantly made evident to them, one is
never for a moment secure from violence, or murder.
Cognizance on the part of the mad shares with that of animals the
fact that both are limited to the present, but what distinguishes them is
this: the animal really has no presentation ofthe past as such, even though
the latter has an effect on animals through the mediation ofhabit. There-
fore, e.g., the dog recognizes its former master even years later, i.e., gets
the usual impression at the sight of him; but it still has no recollection
of the time that has since then flown past. The mad, to the contrary, still
always carry a past around in abstracto in their faculty of reason, but it
is a false one, which only exists for them, whether it be forever or just
for the moment; the influence of this false past then prevents them from
making the use that animals do of the accurately recognized present.
The fact that intense spiritual suffering, unexpected horrific events
frequently occasion madness, 1 explain in the following way. All such
suffering is as an actual event always limited to the present, thus only
passing, and to that extent never disproportionately difficult. lt only
be comes excessively great to the extent that it is an enduring pain; but
as such in turn it is only a thought and therefore lies in one's memory.
Now when such a sorrow, such painful knowledge, or remembrance, is
so agonizing that it becomes simply unbearable and would overcome
the individual - then nature, to such an extent fearful, grasps at madness
as the ultimate life-preserver. One's spirit, so greatly tormented, now
tears as it were the thread of its memory, fins up the gaps with fictions, 228
and so flees from spiritual pain exceeding its forces into madness 18 - as
 238 Third Book. The World as Presentation

when a limb smitten with gangrene is amputated and replaced with a

wooden one. - As examples, consider raging Ajax, King Lear, and
Ophelia. For the only creatures of true genius to which one can appeal
here as generally familiar are equivalent to actual persons in their truth;
in any case, abundant actual experience shows us altogether the same
thing. A weak analogy of this sort of passage from pain to madness is
the fact that we often all, as if mechanically, by means of some loud
exclamation or movement, seek to dispeJ a painfu! remembrance that
suddenly strikes US, to divert ourselves from it, forcibly to distract
ourselves.
Now ifwe see the madman in the way proposed, accurately cogni-
zant of the individually present, and of much that is individually past,
but mistaking the interconnection, the relations, and thus going awry
and talking awry, then precisely here we have his point of contact with
the individual of genius. For the latter too, insofar as he abandons
cognizance of relations according to the Principle of Sufficient Ground,
so as to see and seek only their Ideas in things, to grasp their true
essence in its perceptual expression - in which respect a single thing
represents its entire species and therefore, as Goethe says, one case is
as good as a thousandi - the genius too in this way loses sight of the
interconnection of things. The individual object of his contemplation,
or the present scene as apprehended by hirn with disproportionate
liveliness, appear in so bright a light that the other links in the chain to
which they belong thereby withdraw as it were into the dark, and this
produces precisely phenomenaii with a long since recognized similarity
to those of madness. What exists only incompletelyiii and weakened by
modifications in the individual things at hand is raised by the genius's
manner of regard to the level of Ideas, to the state of something com-
plete. He therefore sees extremes everywhere, and precisely thereby his
action tends to the extreme: he cannot strike the right balance, he lacks
levelheadedness, and the result is as has been said. He is completely
229 cognizant of Ideas, but not of individuals. Therefore, as noted, a poet
can know man deeply and thoroughly, but men very poorly; he is easily
deceived and a plaything in the hands ofthe cunning. t

tHübseher identifies this as from the seetion on Galileo in the third part of
Goethe's Theory ofColors.]
ii[ Phänomene]
iii[unvollkommen]
tOn this, see eh. 32 ofthe seeond volume.
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 239

§ 37.
[Degrees tif tbe Innate Capacity JOt' Cognizance tif ldeas]
Now although, according to our account, genius consists in the
capacity for cognizance independent of the Principle of Sufficient Ground
and therefore not of individual things, which have their existence only
in relations, but of their Ideas - and the capacity for being oneself, in
the face of the latter, the correlate of ldeas, thus no longer individual,
but pure subject of cognition - this capacity must nonetheless be inher-
ent to a lesser and distinct degree in all human beings. For otherwise
they would be as little capable of enjoying works of art as producing
them, and would have altogether no receptiveness for the beautiful and
sublime at an, indeed these words could have no sense for them. We
must therefore assume as present in all human beings - unless there are
perhaps some who are altogether incapable of aesthetic satisfactioni -
the faculty for cognizance of their Ideas in things, and just by that fact
for momentarily getting outside of their personality. The genius has
only the advantage of that much higher degree and more lasting duration
of this manner of cognizance which allows hirn to maintain with it the
thoughtful awareness required for replicating the object of cognizance
in a work of his choice; this replication is the work of art. Through this
he communicates the apprehended Idea to others. In the process, the
Idea remains unaltered and the same. Therefore, the aesthetic satisfaction
is essentially one and the same, be it caHed forth by a work of art or
immediately through perception of nature and of life. The work of art is
mere1y a means for facilitating the cognizance in which that satisfaction
consists. That Ideas confront us more easily through works of art than
immediately through nature and actual reality is due l9 to the fact that
the artist, who is cognizant only of Ideas, no longer of actual reality, 230
has also purely replicated only the Idea in his work, separated it out
from actual reality, omitting all disturbingly contingent factors. The
artist lets us look into the world through his eyes. That he has these
eyes, that he is cognizant of the essential element that lies in things
beyond aH their relations, is precisely the gift of genius, the part that is
inbom. But that he is in a position to bestow this gift on us as weH, to
give us his eyes: that is the acquired part, the technical side of art. For
this reason, then, having in the preceding depicted in its most general
basic lines the inner essence of the aesthetic mode of cognition, the
more detailed consideration of the beautiful and the sublime now to
follow will discuss them both in nature and art together, without any

t Wohlgefallen]
 240 Third Book. The World as Presentation

longer separating the latter. We will first consider the process in a person
when the beautiful moves him, when the sublime moves hirn: whether
his being moved derives immediately from nature, from life, or he
comes to share in it only through the mediation of art, is the basis for
no essential, but for a merely external distinction.

§ 38.
[The Subjective Side 0/ the Aesthetic ExperienceJ
We have found two inseparable components within the aesthetic
manner of regard: cognizance of the object not as an individual thing,
but as a Platonic Idea, i.e., as the persisting form of this entire species
ofthings,z° and self-consciousness on the part of one who is cognizant
not as an individual, but as pure will-less subject of cognition. The
condition under which the two components always occur together was
abandonment of the manner of cognizance bound to the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, which is, by contrast, the only one useful for the
service of will, as also for science. - We will see the satisfaction excited
i
by regarding the beautiful proceeding from those two components as
weIl, and in particular sometimes more from the one, sometimes more
from the other, depending on the object of aesthetic contemplation.
231 All willing originates from need, thus from lack, thus from suffer-
ing. Fulfillment puts an end to the latter; but in the face of one desireii
fulfilled, at least ten are given up. Further, desirousnessiii lasts long, its
demands continue ad infinitum; fulfillment is brief and sparse in measure.
But even final satisfaction is itself only illusory: fulfilled desire makes
way at once for a new one; the former is an error that has, the latter still
has not, entered one's cognizance. No object of willing, once attained,
can give lasting, unabated satisfaction, but it is always only like alms
tossed to a beggar, gets hirn by for another day of life so as to renew his
torment tomorrow.
Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled with our will, so
long as we are given over to the press iv of desires with its constant
hoping and fearing, so long as we are subjects ofwilling, lasting happi-
ness or rest will never come to be for uso Whether we give chase or
f1ee, fear disaster or strive for enjoyment, it is in essence a1l the same:
concern for will with its constant demands, in whatever form they take,

lBetrachtung; also "consideration." But Betrachter will be "observer."]

ii[Wunsch]
iitBegehren]
iv [Drang]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 241

fills and perpetually moves our eonseiousness; but without rest there is
altogether no possibility of true well-being. Thus lies the subjeet of
willing eonstantly on the turning wheel of lxion, eontinues to draw its
water in the sieve ofthe Danaids, is the eternally thirsting Tantalus.
But when an external oeeasion, or inner state of mind,i suddenly
lifts us out of the endless stream of willing, tears eognizanee away from
enslavement to will, our attention is then no longer direeted toward
motives of willing, but rather apprehends things free from their relation
to will, thus without interest, without subjeetivity, regarded purely for
themselves, entirely given over to them so far as they are merely presen-
tations, not so far as they are motives. Then the rest that is always
sought but is always fleeing on that first path of willing has all at onee
oeeurred of itself, and we are utterly eontent. It is the painless state that
Epieurus lauded as the highest good and as the state ofthe gods. For we
are, for that moment, unburdened of the base press of the will, we
eelebrate the Sabbath of the workhouse of willing, the wheel of Ixion
stands still.
This state, however, is just what I described above as required for 232
cognizance of Ideas, as pure contemplation, absorption in perception,
losing oneself in the object, forgetting all individuality, nullificationii of
that manner of cognizance which follows the Principle of Sufficient
Ground and comprehends only relations; thereby, simultaneously and
inseparably, the individual thing pereeived rises to the Idea of its
species, the individual who is cognizant of it rises to the pure subject of
will-Iess cognition, and the two as such now stand no longer within the
stream of time and all other relations. It is then all the same whether
one sees the sun setting from the prison or from the palaee.
An inner state of mind, a preponderance of cognition over willing,
can call forth this state in any surroundings. This is shown us by those
excellent Dutchmen who direeted so purely objeetive a perception upon
the most insignificant objects and produeed a lasting monument to their
objectivity and spiritual repose in stillIife, whieh the aesthetie beholder
cannot regard unmoved. For it makes present to the latter's mind the
restful, still, will-Iess state of mind of the artist that was needed for so
objectively perceiving, for so attentively regarding such insignificant
things, and for such thoughtful awareness in replicating this perception.
And insofar as the picture prompts hirn to share in such astate, he is
even often moved in a way that is magnified by its contrast with the

t Stimmung; sometimes also "mood"]

ii[Aujhebung]
 242 Third Book. The World as Presentation

frame of mindi in which he finds himself at the moment, restless and

obscured by intense willing. Landscape painters, particularly Ruisdael,
have often painted highly insignificant rural objects in the same spirit,
and thereby produced the same effect even more delightfully.
This much the inner power of an artistic spiritii accomplishes
entirely on its own. But that purely objective state of mindiii is facili-
tated and externally enhanced by accommodating objects, by the
abundance of natural beauty that invites us, indeed importunes us, to
perceive it. It almost always succeeds, suddenly striking our view, in
tearing us, even if only for moments, from subjectivity, from enslave-
ment to will, and in transporting us into the state of pure cognition.
Therefore even someone tormented by passions, or by hardship and
concern, is so suddenly quickened, cheered, and uplifted by a single
233 free glimpse into nature: the storm of the passions, the press of desire
and fear, and all the torment of willing are then at once and wonderfully
quieted. For at the moment in which, tom away from willing, we have
given ourselves over to pure will-Iess cognition, we have stepped as it
were into another world where everything that moves our will, and
thereby so intensely shakes us, no longer exists. That liberation of
cognizance lifts us out of all this just as much and entirely as sleep and
dreams: happiness and unhappiness have vanished; we are no longer an
individual, which is forgotten, but only pure subject of cognition. We
remain only as the world's one eye that looks out from all cognizant
beings, but in human beings alone can get utterly free of the service of
will; thereby, all differences in individuality so entirely vanish that it is
then all the same whether the gazing eye belongs to a mighty king or a
tormented beggar. For neither happiness nor sorrow is taken with one
across that border. So constantly elose to us lies a domain in which
we have entirely escaped from all our sorrow. But who has the power
to maintain himself there for long? As soon as some reference of that
very object so purely perceived to our will, to Our person, reenters
consciousness, the magic is over: we fall back into that cognizance over
which the Principle of Sufficient Ground holds sway, are no longer
cognizant of the Idea but of the individual thing, the link in achain to
which we too belong, and we are again given over to all our sorrow.
Most people, since they are entirely lacking in objectivity, Le.,
genius, almost always occupy the latter standpoint. Therefore, they

'[ GemütsverfassungJ
ii[Gemüt]
lii[Gemütsstimmung]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 243

prefer not to be alone with nature: they need society, or at least a book.
For their cognition remains in the service of will. They thus seek in
objects only some sort of reference to their will, and with anything that
has no such reference, there sounds in their interior, like a kind ofbasso
continuo, a constant desolate "To no avail"; thereby, in their loneliness,
even the most beautiful sUlToundings take on a barren, dark, foreign,
hostile aspect for them.
It is also that blessed state of will-Iess perception, fmally, that 234
spreads so wondrous a magie over the past and distant places and depicts
them in so very flattering a light, by way of a kind of self-deception.
For in recalling days long past, spent in a distant place, it is the objects
alone that our imagination calls back, not the subject of will that, then
just as now, carried about its unsalvablei sufferings; the latter are for-
gotten, having since then indeed made frequent place for others. Now
objective perception is just as effectual in recollection as present percep-
tion would be, were it in our power to give ourselves over to it in astate
free of willing. Thus it happens that, partieularly when we are made
more than usually fearful by some hardship, sudden recollection of
scenes from the past and distant places flies over us like a lost paradise.
Imagination calls back only the objective, not that which is individually
subjective, and we fancy that the objective part stood before us at the
time in just so pure a manner as its image now stands in our imagina-
tion, unobscured by any reference to our will; and yet the reference of
objects to our willing provided us with as much torment at the time as
they do now. We can withdraw from an suffering through present
objects just as wen as through distant ones, so long as we are able to
rise to regarding them purely objectively and so produce the illusion
that those objects alone were present, not ourselves. Then rid of the
suffering self, we become utterly one with those objects as pure subject
of cognition, and as foreign as our hardship is to them, so foreign is it
in such moments to ourselves. The world as presentation alone is then
still there, and the world as will has vanished. 21
By way of all these considerations, I hope to have explieated the
nature of the subjective condition of aesthetic satisfaction and the extent
of its participation in the latter, namely, the liberation of cognition from
the service of will, forgetting oneself as an individual, and raising
consciousness to the pure, will-less, time1ess subject of cognition,
independent of all relations. ii With this subjective side of aesthetie

tunheilbaren]
itRelationen. As usual, it may be important to distinguish Relationen (and
 244 Third Book. The World as Presentation

235 contemplation, there always at the same time enters the objective side as
its necessary correlate, the intuitive apprehension of PI atonie Ideas. 22
But before we turn to a closer consideration of the latter and of the
accomplishments of art in their respect, it is more to our purpose to
tarry somewhat longer with the subjective side of aesthetic satisfaction,
in order to complete our consideration of it with a discussion of impres-
sions of the sublime, which depend on that side alone and arise by way
of a modification of it. Following that, our investigation of aesthetic
satisfaction will receive its full completion with a consideration of the
objective side.
First, however, the following comments pertain to what has been
said so far. Light is the most delightful of things: it has become the
symbol of everything good and salutary.i In all religions it designates
eternal salvation/i as darkness does damnation. Ormuzd dweIls in the
purest light, Ahriman in eternal night. In Dante's Paradise, things seem
pretty much as in London's Vauxhall, with all the blessed spirits there
making an appearance as points of light that come together to form
regular patterns. 23 The absence of light makes us immediately sad; its
return makes us happy. Colors immediately stimulate a lively deligh~4
that, when they are transparent, reaches the highest degree. This all
comes from the fact alone that light is the correlate and condition of
the most perfect manner of perceptual cognizance, the only one that
does not at all affect the will. For vision is in no way like affection of
the other senses, susceptible - in itself, immediately, and through its
sensory effect - to pleasantness or unpleasantness of sensation in the
organ, i.e., has no immediate connection with the will. Rather, only the
perception that arises in the understanding can have such a connection,
which then lies in the relation of its object to the will. It is of course
different with hearing: tones can immediately excite pain and even be
immediately pleasant to sense,iii without any reference to hannony or
melody. The sense of touch, insofar as it is one with a feeling of one's
body as a whole, is even more greatly subject to this immediate
influence on the will. 25 Yet there is also a kind of touching that is free of
236 pain and of sensuous pleasure. iv Odors, however, are always pleasant or

Verhältnisse) among objects, and to one's will, and their Beziehungen or "refer-
ences" to one another and one's will; see endnote 6 to this Book.]
l heilbringend]
ti[Heil]
iii [unmittelbar sinnlich ... angenehm]
iV[ein Schmerz- und Wollustloses Tasten]
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 245

unpleasant, tastes even more so. The latter two senses are thus the most
highly contaminatedi with will. Therefore, they have always been
called the most ignoble, and by Kant the subjective senses.ii Pleasureiii
in light is thus in fact only pleasure in the objective possibility of the
most pure and perfect manner of perceptual cognizance and as such to
be derived from the fact that pure cognition, freed and unburdened of
all willing, is most delightful and has precisely as such a major share in
aesthetic enjoyment. iv
From this view of light, the unbelievably great beauty that we
recognize in the reflection of objects in water is in turn derivable. That
easiest, quickest, subtlest sort of interaction of bodies, that which we
have in fact to thank for the by far most perfect and pure of our percep-
tionsv - affection by means of reflected rays of light - is here made
evident to us in an entirely distinct, easily comprehensible, and complete
manner,vi in terms of causes and effects and on a macroscopic scale. 26
Thus our aesthetic pleasure in it, which, with respect to what mainly
concems us, is entirely rooted in the subjective ground of aesthetic
satisfaction, and is pleasure in pure cognition and its ways. t

§ 39.
[Tbe Aestbetically Sublime]
lmmediately connected with all ofthese considerations, which are
meant to emphasize the subjective part of aesthetic satisfaction, thus this
satisfaction so far as it is pleasure in mere perceptual cognition as such
as opposed to will, is the following explanation of that state of mind

tinquinirt: All three of Payne, HaldanelKemp, and Berman have "related." I

am assuming that Schopenhauer has adopted a form ofthe Latin inquinare.]
ii[In § 20 ofhis Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint (Ak. 7.157), Kant
says that these senses are "more subjective than objeetive."]
iii[Freude]
iV[Genuss]
V[Wahrnehmungen. Presumably, Schopenhauer would not say the same using
the term Anschauung, whieh I generally translate as "perception," insofar as the
Iatter includes both ordinary empirieal pereeption, and so Wahrnehmung, and
also our pure apriori "pereeptions" of spaee and time as such, as sub-speeies.
Exeept for the Appendix, where Wahrnehmung is used more frequently and
sometimes in proximity to Anschauung, I generally translate the former as
"perception" as weIl. When greater clarity is needed, I translate Wahrnehmung
as "perceptual apprehension"; by itself, however, "apprehension" is Auffassen.]
Vl[vollständig; "most perfect," above, is vollkommenste.]
"I"On this, see eh. 33 ofthe second volume.
 246 Third Book. The World as Presentatioll

which has been called the feeling of the sublime.

It was already noted above that transportation into the state of pure
perception occurs most easily when objects accommodate it, i.e., when
by their manifold and at the same time particular and distinct form they
237 easily become representatives of Ideas; therein, in the objective sense,
consists precisely beauty. Above all, natural beauty possesses this
property and thereby wins from even the most insensitive at least some
fleeting aesthetic satisfaction. Indeed, it is so striking in particular how
the plant world prompts us to the aesthetic mode of regard, and as it
were importunes us to adopt it, that one might say that this accommo-
dation is connected with the fact that these organic beings are not
themselves, like animal bodies, immediate objects of cognizance. For
that reason, they need individuals outside of them with a faculty of
understanding, in order to step out of the world of blind willing into
that of presentation; for that reason, they were as if longing to take this
step, so that they might at least indirectly attain to what is in an
immediate way denied them. In any case, I leave this thought as an
altogether open question, bold and perhaps bordering on a flight of
enthusiasm, since only a most inner and devoted contemplation of
nature can excite or justify it. t So long, then, as it is this natural
accommodation - the significance and distinctness ofthose ofnature's
forms through which the Ideas that are individualized in them easily
speak to us - that transports us from cognizance of mere relations in the
service ofwill into aesthetic contemplation, and precisely thereby raises
us to the subject of cognition free of will, it is merely the beautiful that
affects us and a feeling of beauty that is excited. But when those very
objects whose significant forms invite us to pure contemplation of them
stand in a hostile relation to human will in general - as the larter is
diisplayed in its objectivization, the human body - oppose it, threaten it
with their superabundance of poweri to eliminate all resistance, or

tI am all the more delighted and surprised now, 40 years after having so
timidly and hesitatingly recorded the above thought, by the discovery that Saint
Augustine has already expressed it: Arhusta formas suas varias, quibus mundi
hujus visibilis structura formosa est, sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut pro eo
quod nosse non possunt, quasi innotescere velle videantur. (De civ. Dei [On the
City of God] XI, 27) ["Plants offer their various forms, by which the visible
structure ofthis world is made beautiful, to the senses to be perceived; so that it
s(:ems as if, to compensate for their not being able to engage in cognition, they
wish as it were to be objects of cognition." This note added in C; emphasis
added to the passage by Schopenhauer.]
i[ Übermacht]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 247

reduce it to practically nothing in the face of their immense greatness,

while the observer nonetheless does not direct his attention to this
importuning hostile relation to his will but rather, while perceiving and 238
acknowledging it, consciously turns from it by forcibly tearing himself
away from his will and its relations and, given over to cognizance alone,
restfully contemplates the very objects frightful to the will as pure will-
less subject of cognition, apprehending their ldeas alone, foreign to all
relation, thus gladly tarrying to regard them, consequently is precisely
thereby lifted up out of himself, his person, his willing, and all willing
- then the feeling of the sublime fills him, he is in astate of elevation,i
and for this reason too one calls the object occasioning such astate
sublime. ii Thus what distinguish~s the feeling of the sublime from that
of the beautiful is this: with the beautiful, pure cognition has gained the
upper hand without a battle, insofar as the beauty of the object, i.e., that
characteristic of it which facilitates cognizance of its Idea, has without
any resistance and thus without notke removed the will and cognizance
ofrelations that serve it from one's consciousness, and left the latter as
pure subject of cognition,27 without even any recollection remaining
of the will. By contrast, with the sublime, the state of pure cognition is
first won through consciously and forcibly tearing away from refer-
encesiii of the same object cognized as unfavorable to the will, through a
free elevation, accompanied by consciousness, above the will and
cognizance referring to it. This elevation must not only be won with
consciousness but also maintained, and is thus accompanied by a con-
stant recollection of will, although not of any particular individual
willing, such as fears or desires, but rather of human willing on the
whole, so far as it has general expression in its objectivization, the hu-
man body. Should a real individual act of will enter consciousness
through some actual personal distress and danger from objects, then the
individual will thus actually moved would at once win the upper hand,

tErhebung]
~1[ erhaben 1
1\1 [Beziehungen. In this paragraph, up to this sentence. "relation" translates

three occurrences each of Relation and Verhältnis (with an additional occur-

rence of one more of each in the next paragraph). In part because that fact alone
suggests the need for a distinction, I translate Beziehung as "reference" rather
than "relation" here, but also because of the subsequent occurrence of beziehen
auf (see earlier notes.) As one might also observe, the present sentence and the
next emphasize relations insofar as they remain, at least in recoUection, within
one' s consciousness of them; the preceding had focused on our ability to "tear
away" from such consciousness.]
 248 Third Bonk. The World as Presentation

the repose of contemplation become impossible, the impression of the

sublime vanish to make place for that anxiety in which the individual's
efforts at self-rescue suppress any other thought.
239 Some examples will contribute a great deal to explicating this
theory of the aesthetic sublime and setting it beyond doubt; at the same
time, they will show us the variety of degrees of the feeling of the
sublime. For since the latter is one with that ofthe beautiful in the main
respect of pure, will-free cognition and its necessarily accompanying
cognizance of Ideas beyond all relation determined by the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, and is distinguished from the feeling of beauty only
by an additional factor, namely, elevation above one's cognizance of
the hostile relation ofthe very object contemplated to the will in general,
there then arises - according to whether this additional factor is strong,
loud, pressing, cIose, or only weak, distant, merely indicated - several
degrees of the sublime, indeed passages from the beautiful to the
sublime. I take it to be more suitable to my account to make these
passages, and in general the weaker degrees of the impression of the
sublime, first evident in examples, although those whose aesthetic
receptiveness is not at all very great, and whose imagination is not
lively, will merely understand the succeeding examples of the higher,
more distinct degrees of that impression. To this alone they must
therefore hold, and leave to themselves the examples to be cited first, of
VI~ry weak degrees ofthe impression in question.
Just as the human being is at the same time tempestuous and dark
pressingi ofthe will (signified by the pole ofthe genitals as its focus) and
etemal, free, cheerful subject ofpure cognition (signified by the pole of
the brain), so corresponding to this contrast is the sun at the same time
a source of light - condition of the most perfect mode of cognition and
just by that fact the most delightful of things - and a source of heat, the
first condition of all life, i.e., of all of the will's phenomenon on its
higher levels. Therefore, what heat is for will, light is for cognizance.
Light is thus just for that reason the greatest diamond in beauty's crown
and has the most decisive influence on cognizance of any beautiful
object: its presence is everywhere an indispensable condition; its favor-
able position heightens even the beauty of the most beautiful. But
above all else, the beauty of architecture is heightened by its favor,
240 through which even the most insignificant thing becomes a beautiful
object.
If then we view in harsh winter, amidst the general rigidification

i[Drang]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 249

of nature, the rays of the low-standing sun reflected by stony masses,

where they illuminate without warming, thus are favorable only to
the purest manner of cognizance, not to will, then contemplation of the
beautiful effect of the light on these masses transports us, like all beauty,
into the state of pure cognition, wh ich state, however, on account of the
gentle reminder of the lack of wanning from those very rays, thus of a
lack of the enlivening principle, indeed demands a certain elevating
above the interest ofwill, contains a gentle prompting to persist in pure
cognition, together with a turning away from all willing, and is precisely
thereby a case of passage from the feeling of the beautiful to that of the
sublime. It is the faintest breath of the sublime upon the beautiful,
which latter itself here comes to the fore to only a slight degree. An
almost equally weak example is the following.
Let us transport ourselves into a most lonely region, with unlimited
horizon, under utterly cloudless ski es, trees and plants in entirely
motionless air, no animals, no people, no moving waters, the deepest
stillness - then such surroundings are like a summons to seriousness, to
contemplation, together with a tearing of oneself away from all willing
and its neediness. Precise1y this, however, already gives a touch of the
sublime to such merely lonesome and slumbering surroundings. For
since they offer no objects, either favorable or unfavorable, to a will that
is in need of constant striving and achieving, there remains only the
state of pure contemplation, and whoever is incapable of this will be
left shamefully degraded, prey to the emptiness of unoccupied will, to
the tonnent of boredom. To that extent, they give us a measure of our
own intellectual worth, for which in general a good criterion is the
degree of our capacity for bearing, or for loving, loneliness. The depicted
surroundings thus provide an example of the sublime at a low degree,
insofar as there is in them, interrnixed with the state of pure cognition
in its repose and self-sufficiency, a recollection by contrast of the
dependency and pitifulness of a will that is in need of constant driving?S
- This is the species of the sublime that is reputed to attach to a view of 241
the endless prairies in the interior ofNorth America.
But now let such a region be denuded even of plants and show only
naked cliffs. Then with the complete absence of the organic material
necessary for our subsistence, the will becomes plainly anxious,i the
barren waste gains a frightful character, our state of mind becomes
more tragic; the elevation to pure cognition occurs with decidedly more

i[beängstigt. As emphasized in the introduction, it is misleading far

Schopenhauer to speak ofthe will itself as what gets anxious.]
 250 Third Book. The Wor/d as Presentation

of a tearing away from the interest of will, and while we are persisting
in the state of pure cognition, the feeling of the sublime comes distinctly
to the fore.
This can be occasioned to a still higher degree by the following
surroundings: nature in stonny movement; chiaroscuro i produced by
threatening black thunderclouds; monstrous, naked, overhanging cliffs
that block one's view with their folds; rushing, foaming waters; complete
barrenness; the wailing of the wind as it sweeps through the gorges. Our
dependency, our battle with a hostile nature, our will as broken in the
latter is now made perceptibly evident to uso But so long as our personal
distress does not win the upper hand, but we remain in aesthetic
contemplation, the pure subject of cognition looks through that battle
with nature, through that image of a broken will, and - at rest, unshaken,
unconcemedii - apprehends the Ideas attaching to the very objects that
are threatening and frightful to the will. In precisely this contrast lies
the feeling of the sublime.
But still more powerful becomes the impression when we have the
battle with raging natural forces before our eyes on a grand scale: when
in those surroundings a waterfall deprives us of the possibility of hearing
our own voices with its roar. Or when we are on the broad sea raging in
a stonn: the waves tall as houses rise and fall, violently dashed against
the rough cliffs of the shore, they shoot foam high into the air, the stonn
howls, the sea bellows, flashes of lightning dart from black clouds, and
blasts of thunder drown out the stonn and sea. Then in the unshaken
spectator of this scene, the two-fold character of his consciousness
achieves its highest level of distinctness: he feels hirnself at the same
242 time an individual, a fragile phenomenon of will that can be broken to
bits by the slightest blow from those forces, helpless before mighty
nature, dependent, prey to chance, a vanishing nothing in the face of
monstrous powers, and yet at the same time the etemal, restful subject
of cognition that, as the condition of all objects, is the bearer of precisely
this entire world, with the frightful battle with nature only a presentation
to it,iii it itself in restful apprehension of Ideas free and foreign to all
willing and all needs. This is the full impression of the sublime. It is
occasioned in this case by the sight of apower threatening the individual
with annihilation, incomparably superior to hirn.

tHelldunkel]
"[nicht mitgetrojJen: followed parenthetically in the text by "unconcemed" in
EIl:Slish.]
111 [ nur seine Vorstellung]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 251

In an entirely different manner, this can arise when a mere magni-

tude in space and time is made present to one's mind, the immensity of
which reduces the individual to nothing. We can call the first kind the
dynamical, the second the mathematical sublime, retaining Kant's
terminologi and his accurate division, although we diverge from hirn
entirely in our explanation of the inner essence of the impression in
question and grant a role neither to moraf9 reflections nor to hypostases
derived from scholastic philosophy.
When we lose ourselves in contemplation of the infinite
magnitude of the world in space and time, reflect on the millennia that
have flowed past and on those to come - or indeed, when the night sky
actually brings countless worlds before our eyes, and thus impresses
the immensity of the world upon our consciousness - we feel ourselves
reduced to nothingness, feel ourselves as individual, as animate body,
as transitory phenomenon of will, vanishing like a drop in the ocean,
dissipating into nothingness. But at the same time there rises against
such a specter of our own nullity, against such a lying impossibility,
the immediate consciousness that indeed all these worlds exist only in
a presentation to US,ii only as modifications of the etemal subject of
pure cognition that we find ourselves to be as soon as we forget
individuality, and that is the necessary, the conditioning bearer of all
worlds and of all times. The magnitude of the world that previously
caused us unrest now rests within us; our dependence upon it is
nullified by its dependence upon uso
All ofthis does not enter reflection at once, however, but shows 243
itself as a merely feit consciousness that we are in some sense (which
philosophy alone explicates) one with the world and thus not crushed,
but lifted, by its immensity. It is the feit consciousness ofthat which the
Upanishads of the Vedas 30 repeatedly pronounce in such manifold
variations, particularly in the passage already quoted: Hae omnes crea-
turae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est (Oupnek'hat,
vol. 1, p. 122).iii It is elevation above the particular individual that one
iS,iv the feeling ofthe sublime.
In an entirely immediate manner, we also get this impression ofthe
mathematical sublime from aspace that is in fact small in comparison

tCritique 0/Judgment, §§ 24jJ(Ak. 5.247.ff)]

ii[nur in unserer Vorstellung]
iii["All these creatures together am 1, and beyond me no being exists": cited
above at the end of § 34.]
iv [das eigene Individuum]
 252 Third Bonk. The World as Presentation

with the heavens but that, by the fact that it has become perceptible to
us as a whole in an immediate way, affects us with its entire magnitude
in all three dimensions; this suffices to make the measure of our own
body almost infinitely smalL This can never be a perceptibly empty
space, therefore never an open space, but only one that is immediately
perceptible in its boundedness in all dimensions: thus a very high and
great dome like that of St. Peter's in Rome or of St. Paul's in London.
The feeling of the sublime arises in this case from awareness of the
vanishing nothingness of Dur own bodies in the face of a magnitude
that, on the other hand, itself in turn lies only in a presentation to us i
and of which we are as cognizant subject the bearer, thus here as
everywhere arises from the contrast between the insignificance and
dependency of our self as individual, as phenomenon of will, and
consciousness of ourselves as pure subject of cognition. Even the dome
of the starry sky, when it is regarded without reflection, affects us just
like those domes of stone, and not with its true, but only with its
apparent magnitude. 3 ! - Many objects of our perception excite the
impression of the sublime by virtue of the fact that, on account of their
spatial magnitude or their great age, thus their temporal duration, we
feel ourselves diminished to nothingness in the face of them, and
nonetheless revel in the pleasure of their view: of such a sort are very
244 tall mountains, the Egyptian pyramids, colossal ruins of great antiquity.
Indeed, our explanation of the sublime can be extended even to
ethical matters,ii namely, to that which one characterizes as a sublime
character. Namely, this too originates from the fact that the will is not
excited by objects that would be obviously suited to exciting it, but
rather cognition retains the upper hand here too. Such a character will
accordingly regard people purely objectively, not in terms of relations
they might have to his wilL He will, for example, take note of their
failings, even of their hatred and injustice against hirn, without hirnself
thereby being excited to hatred; he will regard their happiness without
feeling envy; he will recognize their good qualities but without wishing
to have any doser connection with them; he will perceive the beauty of

tin unserer Vorstellung]

itCf. Kant, Critique ofPractical Reason, "Conclusion": "Two things fill the
spirit [Gemüt] with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more
often and more persistently reflection is occupied with them: the starry sky
above me and the moral law within me" (Ak. 5.161; Kant's emphasis). For
Schopenhauer, however, the notion of law is wholly foreign to that of ethical
worth.]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 253

women without desiring them. His personal happiness or unhappiness

will not affect him strongly, rather, he will be as Hamlet describes
Horatio:
for thou hast been
As one, in sutTering all, that sutTers nothing;
A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks, etc. (Act 3, scene 2)32
For in the course ofhis own life and its misfortunes, he will look less to
his individual lot than to that of humanity in general, and comport
himself accordingly more as cognizant than suffering.

§40.
[Ihe Stimulating as the Cmtrary cif tbe Sublime]
Since opposites are mutually illuminating, it may be in order to
note at this point that the real contrary of the sublime is something that
may weIl not be recognized as such at first glance: the stimu!ating. i By
this I understand that which arouses the will with the immediate pros- 245
pect of satisfaction, fulfillment.
If the feeling of the sublime arose from the fact that an object
plainly unfavorable to the will becomes an object of a pure contempla-
tion maintainable only by a constant tuming away from the will and
elevation above its interest, which is just what constitutes sublimity in
one's state of mind, then the stimulating, to the contrary, pulls the
be holder down from the pure contemplation that is required for any
apprehension of the beautiful, subjecting his will to the necessity of
stimulation from objects immediately appealing to it; thereby, the
observer no longer remains pure subject of cognition, but becomes the
needy, dependent subject of willing. - The fact that one usually calls
any beautiful thing of a cheerful sortii stimulating is, on account of its
lack of accuracy in distinetions, a conception with too broad a compre-
hension that I must leave entirely aside, indeed must censure. 33 - In the
sense that has been given and explained, I find only two species of the
stimulating in the domain of art, and both of them unworthy of it. The
one, truly lowly, I find in the stilllife of the Dutch, when in its depiction
of objects that are edible it goes wrong to the extent that their deceiving
depiction necessarily excites an appetite for them; this is precisely an
arousal of will that puts an end to any aesthetic contemplation of the

i[das Reizende]
ii[der heiteren Art]
 254 Third Book. The World as Presentation

object. Painted fruit is still allowable, since it offers itself as a further

de:velopment of the flower and, by its form and color, as a product of
natural beauty, without one being downright compelled to think of its
edible quality; but we unfortunately often find dishes served up and
prepared with illusory naturalism: oysters, herrings, crabs, buttered
bread, beer, wine, etc., which is entirely objectionable.
In historical painting and sculpture, the stimulating consists in
naked figures whose po sture, serni-nudity, and entire treatment is aimed
at exciting lewd feelings in the beholder; thereby, purely aesthetic
contemplation is at once nullified and the purpose of art undermined.
This mi stake corresponds entirely to that for which I have just taken
the Dutch to task. The ancients, for all the beauty and utter nakedness
of their figures, are almost always free of it, since the artist himself
created them in a spirit that was purely objective, filled with ideal
246 beauty, not in a spirit of subjective, base desire. - The stimulating is
thus everywhere to be avoided in art.
There is also such a thing as the negatively stimulating, which is
even more objectionable than the positively stimulating just discussed;
and this is the disgusting. Just like that which is truly stimulating, it
awakens the will in the beholder and thereby nullifies purely aesthetic
contemplation. But what is thereby aroused is an intense anti-willing,
of resistance: it awakens the will with the prospect of an object abhor-
rent to it. Therefore, it has long since been recognized that it is altogether
impermissible in art, where on the other hand even the ugly, so long as
it is not disgusting, can be tolerated in the right place, as we will see
further below.

§4I.
[Everytbing Beautiful in its Own Way-
Further Comparison with Plato]
The course of our considerations has made it necessary to insert a
discussion of the sublime at a point where that of the beautiful was only
halfway completed, merely with respect to one side of it, the subjective.
For it was precisely only a particular modification of this subjective
side that distinguished the sublime from the beautifuI. Whether, namely,
the state of pure will-Iess cognition that all aesthetic contemplation
presupposes and demands has occurred, with the object inviting and
drawing one to it, without resistance, one's will simply vanishing from
consciousness as if on its own, or whether this was first achieved by
way of free, conscious elevation above that will to which the very
object contemplated bears an unfavorable, ho stile relation, occupation
with which would destroy contemplation: that is the difference between
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 255

the beautiful and the sublime. With respect to their objects, the two are
not essentially different. For in every case, the object of aesthetic con-
templation is not the individual thing but the Idea striving for revelation
in it, Le., an adequate objectivization of will on a particular level. Its
necessary correlate, like itself withdrawn from the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, is the pure subject of cognition, just as the correlate of the
individual thing is the cognizant individual, both of which He within
the domain of the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
In calling an object beautifol, we thereby express the fact that it is 247
an object of our aesthetic contemplation, which includes two things,
namely, on the one hand, that our view of it makes us objective, Le.,
thaf 4 in the contemplation of it we are no longer conscious of ourselves
as individuals, but as pure will-Iess subject of cognition, and on the other
hand, that in the object we are taking cognizance not of the individual
thing, but of an Idea, which can only happen so far as our contemplation
of the object is not given over to the Principle of Suffieient Ground, is
not eoneemed with its relation to something beyond it (which in the
end is always connected with relations to i our willing), but rests upon
the objeet itself. For the Idea and the pure subject of cognition always
enter eonsciousness as neeessary eorrelates simultaneously, by which
entrance all temporal distinctions also vanish at onee, sinee both of them
are utterly foreign to the Prineiple of Sufficient Ground in all its modes
and lie outside ofthe relations brought in by the latter, like the rainbow
and the sun, which have no part in the constant movement and succession
of falling drops. Therefore, for example, ifl regard a tree aesthetically,
Le., with the eyes of an artist, thus take cognizanee not of it but of its
Idea, it is at onee without any significance whether it is this tree or one
of its aneestors blooming a thousand years ago, and equally whether the
one regarding it is this or some other individual living anywhere at any
time. Along with the Principle of Sufficient Ground, the individual
thing and the individual cognizant of it are nullified, and nothing remains
but the Idea and the pure subject of eognition, which together constitute
the adequate objectivization of will on this level. And the Idea is not

i[Preceding the parenthesis, "relation to" is Beziehung zu; within it, "to" is
auf. Possibly, the occurrence within should be translated rather as "references
to," the point being that, apart from the relevant sort of withdrawal or nullifi-
cation of will, we are not simply aware olobjects as "related" to OUf willing,
but those objects themselves reflect that relation, i.e., in some way "refer" to
the very will to which they are related. (In the following sentence, "relations" is
Relationen).]
 256 Third Book. The World as Presentation

only removed from time but also space. For the Idea is not really the
spatial figure hovering before me, but what it expresses, its pure
meaning, its innennost essence that discloses itself and speaks to me,
and this can be entirely the same along with a great difference in the
figure's spatial relations.
Since then, on the one hand, every existing thingi can be regarded
purely objectively and beyond a11 relation, and since, on the other hand,
248 will makes its appearance in each thing on some level of its objectiviza-
tion, and that thing is accordingly the expression of an ldea, it fo11ows
that each thing is also beautiful.
That even the most insignificant thing allows of a purely objective
and will-less regard and thereby proves itself to be beautiful is attested
by the stilllife of the Dutch, already mentioned above (§ 38) in this
respect. One thing is more beautiful than another, however, by the fact
that it facilitates that purely objective regard, accommodates to it, even
as it were compels one to it, in which case we then call it most beautiful.
This sometimes occurs by the fact that, as an individual thing with the
most distinct, purely detennined, altogether significant relationship
among its parts, it gives pure expression to the ldea of its species and,
completely unifying within itself a11 possible expression of its species,
completely reveals the latter's Idea, thus considerably facilitating the
observer's passage from the individual thing to the Idea andjust by that
fact also the state of pure contemplativeness. Other times, the advantage
of particular beauty in an object lies in the fact that the Idea itself,
speaking to us from within it, is a high level of the objectivization of
will and therefore altogether significant and multiply expressive. This
is why human beings are above all other things beautiful and revelation
of their essence the highest goal of art. Human fonn and human expres-
sion are the most significant objects of the plastic and pictorial arts, just
as human action is the most significant object ofpoetry.
Each thing has, nonetheless, its own peculiar beauty: not only
everything organic and displayed within the unity of an individuality,
but also every inorganic thing, fonnless things, even every artifacL For
a11 of these reveal the Ideas through which will is objectified on the
lowest levels, provide, as it were, the deepest, resonating bass tones of
nature. Gravity, rigidity, fluidity, light, etc., are Ideas that express
themselves in cliffs, buildings, bodies of water, etc. Landscape gardening
and architecture can do nothing more than help them unfold their
properties distinctly, multifariously, and completely, give them the

i[jedes vorhandene Ding]

 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 257

opportunity to express themselves purely; precisely thereby, they

prompt aesthetic contemplation and facilitate it. Inferior buildings and
surroundings, to the contrary, neglected by nature or spoiled by art,
accomplish this to little or to absolutely no extent. Nonetheless, not
even from these can those general fundamental Ideas ofNature entirely
vanish. They speak even here to the ob server who looks for them, and 249
even inferior buildings and the like are still susceptible to the aesthetic
regard: cognizance can still be taken of the general properties of their
materials, but the artificial form that has been given to them is not a
means for facilitating the latter, but rather an obstacle that makes the
aesthetic regard more difficult. Consequently, even artifacts serve to
express Ideas. Only it is not the ldea of the artifact that speaks through
them, but the Idea of the material to which the artificial form in question
has been given. In the terminology ofthe scholastics,35 this can be most
easily expressed in two words, namely, in an artifact voice is given to i
the Idea of its forma substantialis, not to that of its forma acädentalis,
which latter directs us to no ldea, but only to the human concept from
which it proceeded. It goes without saying that by artifacts here, works
of the plastic and pictorial arts are expressly not intended. In any case,
the scholastics in fact understood by forma substantialis that which 1
call the degree of objectification of will in a thing. Shortly, in our
consideration of fine architecture, we will return to the expression of
the Idea in a material.
According to our view, then, we cannot agree with Plato when he
maintains (De Rep. X, pp. 284-285, and Parmen., p. 79, ed. Bip.)ii that
a table and achair express the Ideas of Table and Chair; rather, we
say they express the Ideas to which voice is already given in their
mere materials as such. According to Aristotle (Metaph. XI, ch. 3),
however, Plato himself granted status only to Ideas of natural beings:
/; ll)"duJJV trp1] Örl dÖ1] 8crn'v o1Coaa rpva6l (Plato dixit, quod ideae
eorum sunt, quae natura sunt),iii and in ch. 5 it is said that, according
to the Platonists, there are no ldeas of House and Ring. In any case/6
the earliest students of Plato, as Alcinous reports (introductio in
Platonicam philosophiam, ch. 9), denied that there are ldeas of arti-

i[spricht sich ... aus]

"[Republic 597-598, Parmenides 130. Schopenhauer's page references here,
as ~o the Republic below, are to the Bipont edition; see earlier note.]
1Il["Plato said that Ideas are ofthose things that exist by nature": Metaphysics
1070a18.]
 258 Third Book. The World as Presentation

f:ae t s. 37 H e says, name Iy:

'Q'P1."OVTat
7" <0" TTfV lu8av
v8 '<0' '<0
1Capau81rpa -
nov
xaTa rpVO'lV atu5vlOv. O{)T8 rap wf; 1CA81CTTOl; TmV a1(() UAaTOJvo;
ap8ox81 TmV T8XVIXmV 8fval fMa;, Ol~V a01Cl't5o; fj lvpa~ o{)r8
pqv TmV 1Capa rpVO'lv, orov 1CVP8WV xal xo18pw;, o{)r8 rcov xara
p8pOr;, orav IOJxpawvr; xat nlaTOJvo~ aAA' 0608 TmV 8VT8AmV
250 Tl vor;, orav PV1COV xal xaprpov;, O{)T8 TmV 1CpO; Tl, orov p81(;OVO;
xal V1C8p8XOVTo;· 8fvat rap Tar; fMa; vor/a81r; .98ov afOJY/ovr; T8
)tal avwr81elr;. - (Definiunt autem ideam exemplar aetemum eorum,
quae secundum naturam existunt. Nam plurimis ex iis, qui Platonem
secuti sunt, minime placuit, arte factorum ideas esse, ut clypei atque
lyrae; neque rursus eorum, quae praeter naturam, ut febris et eholerae;
neque particularium, ceu Socratis et Platonis; neque etiam rerum vi-
tium, veluti sordium et festueae; neque relationum, ut majoris et exce-
dentis: esse namque ideas intellectiones dei aetemas, ae seipsis
perfeetas. )i
This makes it opportune to mention another point where our
doctrine of Ideas departs most eonsiderably from that of Plato. He
teaches, namely (De Rep. X, p. 288),ii that the objeet the fine arts aim to
depiet, the original for painting and poetry, is not Ideas but individual
things. The entirety of our preceding diseussion maintains exaetly the
opposite, and Plato's opinion will all the less lead us astray in this
matter, given that it is the souree of one of the greatest and weIl
reeognized errors of that great man, namely, of his denigration and
dismissal of art, partieularly of poetry: he direetly attaches his mistaken
judgment about this to the passage just cited.

§ 42.
[Tbe Subjective and Objective Sides 0/ tbe Aestbetic Experience]
I return to our diseussion of aesthetic impressions. iii Cognizance
of the beautiful always presupposes, of course, a purely cognizant

t'They rather define an Idea as an etemal paradigm ofthose things that exist
according to nature. For most of the followers of Plato do not grant that there
are Ideas of fabricated things such as a shield and a Iyre; nor again of those
things that are contrary to nature such as fever and cholera; nor of individual
beings sueh as Socrates and Plato; nor either of lowly things such as dirt and
stalks; nor of relations such as greater or exeeeding: for they regard Ideas as
divine thoughts, etemal and perfect in themselves."]
ii [Republic 601-602]
iii [des ästhetischen Eindrucks]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 259

subject and Ideas as objects cognized, simultaneously and inseparably.

But the source of aesthetic enjoyment will nonetheless sometimes lie
more in apprehension of the Idea cognized, sometimes more in the
blessedness and spiritual repose of pure cognition, liberated from all
willing and thereby of all individuality and the pain proceeding from it.
And in particular, this predominance of the one or the other component
of aesthetic enjoyment will depend on whether the intuitively appre-
hended Idea is a higher or lower level of the objectivization of will.
Thus (in actual reality or through the medium of art), in the aesthetic
contemplation of natural beauty in things inorganic and vegetative and 251
of works of fine architeeture, the enjoyment of pure will-Iess cogni-
tion will be predominant, because the Ideas that are apprehended here
are only low levels of the objectivization of will, therefore not phenom-
ena of deep significance or of multiply expressive content. By contrast,
when animals and human beings are the object of aesthetic regard or
depiction, the enjoyment consists more in the objective apprehension
ofthese ldeas, which are the most distinct revelations ofwill. For such
things exhibit the greatest multiplicity of forms, the richness and deep
significance of phenomena, and most completely reveal the essence of
will to us, be it in its intensity, terribleness, satisfaction, or its breaking
(the latter in tragic depictions), and even in its conversion or se1f-nulli-
fication, which is the particular theme of Christian painting, as it is in
general the case that historical painting and drama have as their object
the Idea of will that has been illuminated by full cognition. - We will
now go through the arts individually, precisely whereby the theory
of the beautiful that has been set forth will obtain completeness and
distinctness.

§43.
[The Aestbetic Display oJ tbe Most General Ideas oJ Matter -
Arcbitecture and tbe Fine Art oJ Water-Conduction ]
Matter as such cannot be the display of an Idea. For it is, as we
found in the first Book, causality through and through: its being is sheer
effectuality.l Causality, however, is a mode ofthe Principle ofSufficient
Ground; cognizance of Ideas, by contrast, essentially excludes the
content of that principle. In the second Book we also found matter to be
the common sub stratum of all individual phenomena of Ideas, conse-
quently to be the connecting link between Ideas and phenomena or
individual things. Thus for both the one and the other reason, matter

tlauter Wirken]
 260 Third Book. The World as Presentation

cannot of itself display an Idea. This is confirmed aposteriori, however,

by the fact that no perceptual presentation is possible at a11 of matter as
such, but only an abstract concept. In the former, namely, are displayed
only the forms and qualities of which matter is the bearer, and in a11 of
which Ideas reveal themselves. This also corresponds to the fact that
252 causality (the entire essence of matter) cannot of itself be perceptually
displayed, but only some particular causal connection.
On the other hand, every phenomenon of an Idea, since it has
entered as such into the form of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, or
into the principium individuationis, must be displayed38 in connection
with matter, as a quality thereof. Thus to that extent, as stated, matter is
the connecting link between ldeas and the principium individuationis,
which is the cognitive form pertaining to individuals, or the Principle of
Sufficient Ground. - Plato therefore quite rightly put forth matter as
yet a third thing besides and distinct from ldeas and their phenomenon,
individual things, the two of which otherwise comprehend alI things in
the world (Timaeus, p. 345).i The individual thing, as the phenomenon
of an Idea, is always matter. Every quality of matter is always also a
phenomenon of an Idea and as such susceptible to the aesthetic regard,
i.e., to cognizance of the ldea displayed in it. This applies even to the
most general qualities of matter without which it never exists, and whose
Ideas are the weakest objectivization of will. These are: gravity,
cohesion, rigidity, fluidity, reaction to light, etc.
Now when we consider architecture purely as fine art, in abstract-
tion from its dedication to practical purposes, in which it serves will,
not pure cognizance, and thus is no longer art in our sense, we can
attribute no other intention to it than that of making more distinctly
perceptible some of those ldeas that are the lowest levels ofthe objecti-
vization of will: in particuJar gravity, cohesion, solidity, hardness - the
general properties of stone, the primary, simplest, du11est cases of the
visibility of will, the basso continuo of nature - and then along with
these light, which is in a number ofrespects their contrary. Even on this
deep level of the objectivization of will, we already see its essence
reveal itself in conflict. For the battle between gravity and rigidity is
really the only aesthetic material for fine architecture: its task it to let it
come to the fore with complete distinctness in manifold ways. It accom-
plishes this by depriving those ineradicable forces of the shortest path
253 to their satisfaction and detaining them by way of adetour; thereby, the
battle is prolonged and the inexhaustible striving of both forces made

i[Timaeus 48-49]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 261

visible in manifold ways.

The entire mass of the building, left to its primordial inclination,
would depict a mere clump, bound as tightly as possible to the earth
toward which gravity, which is how will makes its appearance here,
incessantly presses, while rigidity, likewise an objectivization of will,
opposes it. But precise1y this inclination, this striving, is obstructed in
its immediate satisfaction by architecture and granted it only indirectly,
by way of detours. Thus, for example, the beams can press upon the
earth only by means ofthe columns; the dome has to be its own support
and can satisfY its striving toward the mass of the earth only through
the mediation of pillars, etc. But precisely in the imposition of these
detours, precise1y through these impediments, the innate forces of the
bare mass of stone are unfolded in the most distinct and manifold way;
and beyond this the pure1y aesthetic purpose of architecture cannot go.
Therefore, the beauty of a building of course lies in the evident
purposiveness of every part, not with respect to the external chosen
purposes of human beings (to that extent the work would belong to
practical architecture), but immediately with respect to the constitution
of the whole, to which the position, magnitude, and form of every part
has to bear so necessary a relation that, where possible, were any part
removed the whole would necessarily collapse. For only when every
part bears as much as it fittingly can, and each is supported exacdy
where and exact1y as much as it needs to be, does that interplay unfold
with the most complete visibility, that battle between rigidity and gravity
which constitutes the life, the expressions of will in the stone, and do
these deepest levels of the objectivization of will reveal themselves
to uso Likewise, the shape of each part has to be determined by its pur-
pose and its relation to the whole, not arbitrarily. The column is the
simplest of all forms of support, determined purely by its purpose:
twisted columns are tasteless; square pillars are in fact less simple,
even though they happen to be easier to make than round columns. In
just the same way, the forms of the frieze, beam, arch, dome are
thoroughly determined by their immediate purpose and thereby self-
explanatory. Embellishment of capitals, etc., belongs to sculpture, not 254
architecture, by which they could be merely permitted as supplemen-
tary ornament or be dropped.
According to what has been said, it is inescapably necessary for
the understanding and aesthetic enjoyment of a work of architecture to
have taken immediate perceptual cognizance of its matter in its weight,
its rigidity, and cohesion, and our pleasure in such a work would be
suddenly very much diminished by disclosure of the fact that pumice
was the building material; for it would then appear to us as a kind of
 262 Third Book. The World as Presentation

mock-uPn building. We would be affected in almost exactly the same

way by'9 the news that it was only of wood, while we were presuming
it to be stone, precisely because this now alters and shifts the relation
between rigidity and gravity, and thereby the significance and necessity
of all the parts, since those natural forces reveal themselves much more
weakly in buildings of wood. Therefore, no work of fine architecture
can really be made out of wood, no matter the extent to which it
assumes all its forms; this is explicable by our theory alone among all.
If, however, we were fully informed that a building whose view
delights us consists of quite various materials of most unequal weight
and consistency, but which were indistinguishable to the eye, then the
entire building would thereby become as little enjoyable to us as a poem
in an unknown language. This all just proves that architecture does not
merely affect us mathematically, but dynamically, and that what speaks
to us through it40 is not anything like mere form and symmetry, but
those fundamental forces of nature, those primary ldeas, those lowest
levels ofthe objectivization ofwill.
The proportionality of a building and its parts is, on the one hand,
produced by the immediate purposiveness of every part with respect to
the constitution of the whole, in addition it serves to facilitate a survey
and understanding of the whole, and finally, insofar as they reveal the
lawful character of space as such, proportional figures contribute to its
beauty. All this, however, is only of subordinate value and necessity
and in no way the main concern, since even symmetry is not unexcep-
tionably required; after all, ruins are still beautiful.
255 Works of architecture also have a quite particular relation to light:
they achieve a double level of beauty in full sunlight, with the blue sky
as background, and they display in turn an entirely different effect in
moonlight. Therefore, even in the production of a work of fine architec-
ture, particular consideration is always given to the effects of light and
orientation. All this, of course, has its ground for the most part in the
fact that bright and strong illumination makes all the parts and their
relations properly visible in the first place. Beyond this, however, I am
ofthe opinion that, as it does with gravity and rigidity, architecture has
at the same time the task of revealing the quite contrary essence of light.
lnsofar, namely, as it is captured, impeded, reflected by great, opaque,
sharpIy delineated, and manifoldly shaped masses, it most purely and
distincdy unfolds its nature and properties to the great enjoyment ofthe
beholder; for light is the most delightful of things, as the condition and
objective correlate ofthe most perfect manner ofperceptual cognizance.
Because, then, the ldeas that are brought to distinct perception
by architecture are the lowest levels of the objectivization of will, and
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 263

consequently the objective significance of what architecture reveals is

relatively small, aesthetic enjoyment at the view of a beautiful and favor-
ably illuminated building will He not so much in the apprehension of
Ideas as in the subjective correlate of the latter, which is introduced
with that apprehension, will thus consist predominantly in the fact that
with this view the beholder is tom away from that mode of cognition
which belongs to individuals, which serves the will and follows the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, and elevated to that of pure subject of
cognition free of will; thus it will consist in that pure contemplation
itself, liberated from all the suffering ofwilling and individuality. - In
this respect architecture's contrary, and the other extreme in the series of
fine arts, is drama, which brings to our cognizance the most significant
Ideas of all, by which fact, in the aesthetic enjoyment of the latter, the
objective side is altogether predominant.
What distinguishes architecture from the plastic and pictorial arts 256
and poetry is that it does not give us a copy but the thing itself. It does
not replicate, as they do, the Idea of which cognizance has been taken,
the artist thereby lending his eyes to the beholder, but rather the artist
here simply prepares the object for the beholder, facilitates his appre-
hension ofthe Idea by bringing the actual individual object to a distinct
and complete expression of its essence.
Works of architecture are very seldom, like works of the other fine
arts, produced for purely aesthetic purposes. Rather, these purposes are
subordinated to other practical ones, foreign to art itself, and herein
consists the great merit ofthe architect, namely, in yet putting through
and achieving purely aesthetic purposes in this their subordination to
those foreign ones, in being in manifold ways adept at aeeommodating
them to the chosen purpose in question, and aecurate in judging which
aesthetie-arehiteetonie beauty is eompatible and susceptible to union
with atempie, which with a palaee, which with a warehouse, ete. The
more a harsh climate increases those demands of neeessity, of praetieal-
ity, more rigidly determines and unavoidably prescribes them, all the
less is there leeway for the beautiful in arehiteeture. In the mild climates
of India, Egypt, Greeee, and Rome, where the demands of necessity
were less and more loosely determined, arehiteeture could most freely
pursue its aesthetic purposes. Under northem skies it grew rather stunted
in this respect; here where keeps, pointed roofs, and towers were in
demand, sinee it could unfold its own beauty only within the most
narrow limits, architeeture had the more to embellish itself as a substitute
with ornament borrowed from sculpture, as ean be seen in the case of
fine Gothie architecture.
If, then, architeeture must in this manner endure considerable
 264 Third Book. The World as Presentation

limitations by way of the demands of necessity and practicality, it has

on the other hand precisely in these a powernd support. For given the
extent and expense of its works and the narrow sphere of its aesthetic
effectiveness, it could not at all have survived as purely fine art without
simultaneously holding, as a practicaJ and necessary profession, a firm
257 and honorable place among human occupations. Lack of the latter is
precisely what prevents another art from standing as a si ster beside it,
although in an aesthetic respect it would quite properly be assigned a
position as its counterpart: I mean the fine art ofwater-conduction. i For
the same thing that architecture accomplishes for the Idea of gravity
where it makes its appearance combined with rigidity, the former
accomplishes for the same fdea where it is accompanied by fluidity,
i.e., formlessness, maximal capacity for displacement, transparency.
Waterfalls foaming and rushing as they plunge over rocks, cataracts
quietly dissipating into spray, spring-waters striving for the heights in
tall columns, and mirror-clear lakes reveal the Ideas of fluid, weighty
matter just as much as works of architecture unfold the Ideas of rigid
matter. In the practical art of water-conduction, this fine art fmds no
support. For the purposes ofthe former cannot, as a rule, be united with
those of the latter, this rather occurring only exceptionally, e.g., in the
Cascata di Trevi in Rome"~

§44.
[The Fine Art oJ Gardens -Painting tbat Depicts Incognizant Beings -
Paintings and Smlptures oJ AnimalsJ
What the two arts just mentioned accomplish for the lowest levels
of the objectivlzation of wi11, the fine art of gardens ii accomplishes to a
certain extent for the higher level of vegetative nature. The scenic beauty
of a place rests for the most part on the multiplicity of natural objects
that are to be found together in it, and then on the fact that the Iatter are
neatly segregated, come to the fore in a distinct manner, and yet are
displayed in a fitting combination and variety. These two conditions
are facilitated by the fine art of gardens. 41 However, it Is far from being
as great a master of its material as architecture is of its own, and thus its
effect is limited. The beauty that it shows us belongs almost entirely to
nature; it itself has added little. And on the other hand it can achieve

tdie schöne Wasserleitungskunst]

tOn this, see eh. 35 ofthe second volume. [The last two sentences ofthe para-
graph, and of course the note, added in B.l
ii[die schöne Gartenkunst]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 265

very litde in the face of an unfavorable nature, and where the latter works
not for but against it, its accomplishments are few.
Thus so far as the plant world, which offers itself everywhere for
aesthetic enjoyment without the mediation of art, is an object of art, it 258
belongs mainly to landscape painting. In the latter's domain, there also
lies along with it all the rest of incognizant nature.
With still life and mere painting of architecture, ruins, the inside
of churches, and the like, the subjective side of aesthetic enjoyment is
predominant. That is, our pleasure in it does not mainly lie in immediate
apprehension of the Ideas displayed, but more in the subjective correlate
of this apprehension, in pure will-less cognition. For insofar as the
painter lets us see things through his eyes, we here simuItaneously
obtain a sense of empathy and resonance of the feeling of deep spiritual
repose and complete silencing of will that were necessary for cognizance
to become so entirely absorbed in those lifeless objects and to apprehend
them with such love, Le., with such a degree of objectivity.
Now the effect of true landscape painting is, to be sure, also on
the whole of this sort. But because the ldeas displayed, as higher levels
of the objectivization of will, are of course more significant and more
highly expressive, the objective side of aesthetic satisfaction comes
more to the fore and maintains equilibrium with the subjective. Pure
cognition as such is no longer quite the main concern; rather, we are
with equal force affected by the Idea of which cognizance is taken, by
the world as presentation on a significant level of objectification of will.
Sut an even much higher level is revealed in anima! paintings and
sculptures, of which latter we have important ancient remains, e.g.,
horses in Venice, on Monte Cavallo, in the Elgin reliefs, also in Florence
in bronze and marble, and there likewise the ancient boar, the howling
wolves; and further, the lions at the Arsenal i in Venice, and in the
Vatican an entire hall full mostly of ancient animals, etc. In these
depictions,42 the objective side of aesthetic satisfaction maintains a
decided predominance over the subjective. The repose of the subject
cognizant of these Ideas, having quieted his own will, is of course
present here as in any case of the aesthetic regard; but its effect is not
feit, for we are occupied by the unrest and intensity of the will that has
been depicted. It is that willing, which also constitutes our own essence,
that becomes evident to us here, in forms in which its phenomenon is 259
not, as in us, ruied and mitigated by thoughtful awareness,ii but depicted

1ltalian, Arsenale. The old Venetian shipyard.]

"[Besonnenheit]
 266 Third Book. The World as Presentation

in starker traits and with an explicitness that borders on the grotesque

and monstrous,43 and yet, for all that, without any dissimulation, inno-
cently and openly, lying there for a11 to see, whereupon rests precisely
our interest in animals. The characters of species already came to the
fore in the depiction of plants, yet showed itself only in their forms.
Here it becomes much more significant and expresses itselfnot only in
shapes, but in action, po sture, and bearing, although still always only as
the character of the species, not of the individual.
We can also immediately partake of this cognizance of Ideas on
higher levels, which we receive only by way of external mediation in
painting, through purely contemplative perception of plants and obser-
vation of animals, and in particular of the latter in their free, natural, and
easi state. Objective contemplation of their manifold, wondrous forms
and of their doings is an instructive lesson from the great book of nature,
is the deciphering of its true Signatura rerurn: t we see in it the multiple
degrees and manners of manifestation of the will that, one and the same
in all beings, wills everywhere the same thing, that is objectified
precise1y as life, as existence, in such endless variation, such diversity
of forms, all of which are accommodations to a diversity of external
conditions, comparable to numerous variations on the same theme. But
were we to communicate far the sake of the observer's reflection, and
in a single word, an insight into that nature's inner essence, then we
could best employ for that purpose the Sanskrit formula that appears
260 so often in the holy books of the Hindus and is ca11ed Mahavakya, i.e.,
great word: ii Tat twarn asi. 44 Which means: "This living thing is you."

§ 45.
[Historical Painting and Sculpture - Huma1l Beauty -
Standards and Ideals 0/ Beauty]
To display in an immediately perceptual way the Idea in which
will achieves its highest degree of objectification is finally the great

Tbehaglichen]
t["signature of things"] Jakob Böhme, in his book de Signatura rerum
(1622), ch. I, §§ 15, 16, 17, says: "And there is no thing in nature that does not
reveal its inner form outwardly as weH: for the inner being works always
towards its revelation .... Every thing has a mouth for its revelation .... And that
is the language of nature, in which every thing speaks from its OWlll character
and always displays and reveals itse1f. ... For every thing reveals the mother that
gives it its essence and so the will for its formation."
itOr "dictum": one ofthe four major "dicta" ofthe Upanishads.]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 267

task of historical painting and sculpture. The objective side of pleasure

in the beautiful is altogether predominant here and the subjective is
moved into the background. Further, it should be noted that on the next
level below this, in paintings of animals, that which is characteristic of
a thing is utterly one with that which is beautiful: the most characteristic
lion, wolf, horse, sheep, bull has always been the most beautifu) as
weIl. The reason for this is that animals only possess the character of
the species, not an individual character. With the depiction of human
beings, however, the character of the species distinguishes itself from
the character of the individual: the former is now called beauty (in the
entirely objective sense), while the latter retains the title of character or
expression, and the new difficulty appears of displaying them both
completeli together in the same individual.
Human beauty is an objective expression that designates the most
complete objectification ofwill on the highest level ofits cognizability,
the Idea of the human in general wholll expressed in perceived form.
As much, however, as the objective side of beauty comes to the fore
here, the subjective yet remains its constant companion. And precisely
because no object so quickly pulls us into astate of purely aesthetic
perception as the most beautiful human countenance and form - at the
sight of which we are at once gripped by an inexpressible satisfaction
and raised above ourselves and all that torments us - this is only possi-
ble by virtue of the fact that this altogether most distinct and purest
cognizabiilty of will also transports us most easily and quickly into the
state of pure cognition in which our personality, our willing with its
constant pain, vanishes for as long as the purely aesthetic pleasure is
continued. Therefore, says Goethe: "Whoever espies human beauty can
be afflicted by no ill: he feels himself in accord with himself and with 261
the world."iii
That nature attains to a beautiful human form has to be explained
on the basis of the fact that will, in its objectification in an individual
on this highest level, through fortunate circumstances and its own force,
completely defeats all the obstacles and resistance put in its way by the
phenomena of will on lower levels; of such a sort are the natural forces 45
from which it must always in the first place win and wrench the matter
belonging to all. Further, the phenomenon of will on the higher levels
always contains a multiplicity within its form: even a tree is only a

i[vollkommen]
ii[vollständig; otherwise, generally, "completely."]
iitDie Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities [1809]) I, 6.]
 268 Third Book. The World as Presentation

systematic aggregate of innumerably replicated sprouting fibers. This

sort of composition grows ever greater the higher one goes, and the
human body is a highly complex system of wholly diverse parts, each
of which has a life subordinate to the whole but yet also its own, its vita
propria.' That all these parts are in exactly the appropriate way then
subordinated to the whole and jointly coordinated, conspire in harmony
for displayas a whole, that nothing is excessive, nothing stunted: all of
these are the rare conditions from which comes beauty, the completely
expressedii character of the species.
So it goes with nature. But what about art? One supposes, by
irnitating nature. - But by what standard is the artist to recognize work
ofthe latter that is successful and to be imitated, and to pick it out from
among the failures, if he has no anticipation of the beautiful prior to
experience? And besides, has nature ever produced a human being
completely beautiful in all his parts? - Here it has been supposed that
the artist has to seek out beautiful parts distributed among several human
beings and compose a beautiful whole from them: a perverse and sense-
less supposition. For we would have to ask yet again: by what standard
is he to recognize that exactly these forms are beautiful and those not?
- We also see how far with beauty the old German painters got by
imitating nature. Just consider their naked figures.
Purely aposteriori and on the basis of mere experience, no cogni-
zance of the beautiful is possible at all: it is always at least partly a
priori, although of an entirely different sort from the modes of the
Principle of Sufficient Ground that are known to us apriori. The latter
262 concern the general form pertaining to the phenomenon as such, in its
grounding of the possibility of cognition in general - the general, excep-
tionless46 How of their appearance - and from cognizance of this there
proceed mathematics and pure natural science. The other mode of
cognition apriori, by contrast, which makes depiction of the beautiful
possible, concems the content of phenomenaiii instead of the form, the
What of their appearanceiv instead of the How. That we all recognize
human beauty when we see it, but that this occurs with such clarity in
the genuine artist that he shows it as he has never seen it, and outdoes
nature in his depiction: this is only possible by virtue ofthe fact that we
ourselves are indeed that will whose adequate objectification is here, on

t"own life"]
itvollkommen ausgeprägte]
iitErscheinungen 1
iV[ des Erscheinens1
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 269

its highest level, to be judged and discovered. By that alone do we in

fact have an anticipation of that which nature (which is indeed just the
will that constitutes our own essence) is endeavoring to display. This
anticipation in the true genius is accompanied by such a degree of
thoughtful awareness that, in taking cognizance of the Idea in an indi-
vidual thing, in understanding nature 's half-spoken word, as it were,
and now purely pronouncing what it only stammers forth, he impresses
upon hard marble the beauty of form that went wrong in a thousand
attempts of its own, holds it up to nature as it were with the cry: "That
was what you wanted to say!" And "Yes, that was it!" comes the echo
from the critic. i
Only thus could the Greek genius discover the prototype of the
human form and establish it as a canon for their school of sculpture;
and only by virtue of such an anticipation is it also possible for aB of us
to recognize the beautiful where nature has actuaBy been successful in
individual cases. This anticipation is the Ideal: it is the Idea so far as it
is cognized at least halfway apriori and, in that it comes as such to
meet and fill out what is given by nature aposteriori, becomes effective
for art. The possibility of such apriori anticipation of the beautiful in
the artist, like its recognition aposteriori in the critic, lies in the fact
that the artist and critic are the in-itself of nature itself, the will that is
in the process ofbeing objectified. ii For only by like, as Empedocles 47
said, is like cognized: only nature can understand itself; only nature 263
will fathom itself. But also, spirit is only heard by spirit. t
The opinion, perverse despite the fact that it was pronounced by
Xenophon's Socrates (Stobaei Flori!., vol. 2, p. 384),iii that the Greeks'

i[hallt es aus dem Kenner wieder; the sentence added in B.]

"[der sich objektivierende Wille]
t[nur vom Geist wird der Geist vernommen] The final sentence is a German
rendering ofHelvetius's "il n ya que l'esprit qui sente l'esprit' [Claude Adrien
Helvetius, De I 'esprit (0/ Spirit [Mind], 1758), which I had no need to note in
the first edition. But sinee then, the times have been brought so low and made
so emde by the stupidifying [verdummenden] influenee of Hegelian pseudo-
wisdom [Afterweisheit (literally, "hind end wisdom")], that many might very
weIl faney that allusion is also made here to the opposition of "spirit and
nature." Thus I am expressly compelled to guard against the interpolation of
sm;h popular sophisms [pöbe/philosopheme]. [Note added in B.]
11I[The reference to Stobaeus's Florilegium (eiting the Gaisford edition
[London, 1812]) - included in editions subsequent to C on the basis of a
handwritten Zusatz - is identified by Hübscher as to eh. 60, 11, and the
reference to Xenephon as to Memorabilia III, 10.]
 270 Third Book. The World as Presentation

discovery of the ideal of human beauty that they set forth was entirely
empirieal, drawing together individual beautiful parts - here baring and
taking note of a knee, there an arm - has in any case an exact analogue
in the poetic arts, namely, in the assumption, e.g., that Shakespeare had
noted from his own worldly experience, and then reproduced, the innu-
merable manifold, so true, so solid, so profoundly elaborated characters
in his dramas. The impossibility and absurdity of such an assumption
U(~eds no discussion. It is obvious that, just as the genius produces works
of plastic and pictorial art only by way of a prescient anticipationi of
the beautiful, so he produces works of poetic art only by way of just the
same sort of anticipation of that which defines characterii - even if both
have need of experience as ascherna, as that by which alone what is
obscurely present apriori to their consciousness is called forth into full
distinctness and then finally arrives the possibility of thoughtfully aware
depiction.
Human beauty was described above as the most completeiii objec-
tification of will on the highest level of its cognizability. It expresses
itself through form; and this lies in space alone and has no necessary
relation to time, as, e.g., movement does. To this extent we can say: the
adequate objectification ofwill by a purely spatial phenomenon is beauty
in the objective sense. Plants are nothing other than such a purely spatial
phenomenon of will, since no movement and consequently no relation
to time (abstracting from their development) belongs to the expression
of their essence: their me re form expresses their entire essence and
264 openly exhibits it. But animals and human beings, for complete iV revela-
tion ofthe will making its appearance in them, also have need of aseries

i[ahnende Anticipation]
iTdes Charakteristischen1
iitvollkommenste. To repeat a point made earlier: except where there is inde-
pendent reason for proceeding otherwise, I generally prefer "complete" over
"perfect" for vollkommen: first, to avoid possible moral connotations foreign to
Schopenhauer's perspective in this regard; second, because Schopenhauer
himself elucidates the notion in te1lllS of a certain sort of completeness in the
manifestation of will: see § 28. In the Appendix, Schopenhauer says that the
concept of Vollkommenheit "is in and of itself entirely empty and lacking in
content, since it designates a mere relation that only gets its meaning from the
things to which it is applied ....In particular, 'vollkommen' is almost just a
synonym for 'vollzählig' ['complete in number'], insofar as it says that in a
given case, or individual, all the predicates are represented, thus are actually
present, that lie in the concept of its species."]
iv[vollständigen1
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 271

of actions whereby that appearance in them obtains an immediate rela-

tion to time. All of this was already discussed in the previous Book; it
is connected by the following with our present considerations. Just as
the purely spatial phenomeonon of will can completelyi or incompletely
objectify it on any particular level, which is just what constitutes beauty
or ugliness, so too the temporal objectification of will, i.e., action,
and in particular that which is immediate and thus movement, can
purely and completely correspond to the will that is being objectified in
it, without any foreign admixture, without anything superfluous, without
any deficiency,just exactly expressing the particular act ofwill in ques-
tion - or it can all happen to the contrary. In the first case the movement
occurs with grace, in the other without i1. Thus as beauty is any adequate
depiction of will through its purely spatial phenomenon, grace is the
adequate depiction of will through its temporal phenomenon, i.e., the
completely accurate and suitable expression of any act of will through
movement and po sture objectifying it. Since movement and posture of
course presuppose the body, Winckelmann's statement is most
accurate and to the point when he says: "Grace is the peculiar
relationship between the acting person and his action" (Works, vol. I,
p. 258).ii It follows immediately that beauty can of course be attributed
to plants, but no grace, unless it be in a figurative sense, but both beauty
and grace to animals and human beings. Grace consists, according to
what has been said, in the fact that every movement and posture is
executed in the easiest, most suitab1e, and most fitting way, and is
thereby the purely adequate expression of their intention, or of the act
of will, without anything superfluous getting displayed in counterpro-
ductive, meaningless behavior or contorted posture, without any defi-
ciency getting displayed in wo oden stiffness. 48 Grace presupposes
accurate proportion in all limbs, a regular harmonious build, as its
condition; for only by this means is complete ease and evident pur-
posiveness in all postures and movements possible. Thus there is never
grace without a certain degree of bodily beauty. The two complete 265
and in union are the most distinct appearance of will on the highest
level of its objectification.
It belongs, as mentioned above, to that which is distinctive about
humanity that the character of the species and of the individual separate

tvollkommen]
itJohann Joachim Winckelmann, "Von der Grazie in Werken der Kunst"
("On Grace in Works of Art" [1759]). Schopenhauer's references to the Werke
are to earl Ludwig Femow's edition of 1808ff.]
 272 Third Book. The World as Presentation

out in it, so that, as stated in the previous Book, every human being to a
certain extent displays an ldea peculiar to itself. The arts, therefore,
whose purpose is to display the Idea of humanity, have besides beauty,
as the character ofthe species, also the character ofthe individual, what
is preeminently called character, as their responsibility. Yet they have
the latter in turn only so far as it is not to be viewed as something
contingent, something altogether peculiar to the individual in his singu-
larity, but as a side of the Idea of humanity that is particularly emergent
in just this individual, whose depiction is therefore instrumental in
revealing it. Thus while it is indeed as such something individual, char-
acter must nonetheless be apprehended and depicted in ideal terms,
i.c., bringing to the fore its significance with respect to the Idea of
humanity in general (to the objectification ofwhich it contributes in its
own manner); apart from that, the depiction is a portrait, a replication
of the individual as such with all his contingent features. And even the
portrait should be, as Winckelmann says, the Ideal ofthe individual.
That character which is to be apprehended in ideal terms, which
brings to the fore a unique side of the Idea of humanity, is visibly
displayed in part by abiding physiognomy and corporealization,i in part
by transitory emotion and passion, interacting modifications of cognition
and willing, all of which expresses itself in mien and movement. Since
the individual always belongs to humanity, and on the other hand
humanity always reveals itself in the individual, and indeed with an
ideal significance peculiar to the latter, neither may beauty be nullified
by character nor the latter by the former. For nullifying the character of
the species by way of that of the individual, or nullifying that which is
individual by way of the character of the species, would amount to
266 either caricature or lack of significance. Therefore, in aiming at beauty,
which is what sculpture above all does, the depiction will nonetheless
always in some way modify the latter (i.e., the character ofthe species)
by way of the individual character, and always express the ldea of
humanity in a particular, individual manner, bringing a particular side
of it to the fore; for the human individual as such has, to a certain
extent, the dignity of its own Idea, and it is precisely essential to the
ldea of humanity that it be disp\ayed in individuals with a significance
all their own. Thus in the works of the ancients we find that beauty
which was distinctly apprehended by them expressed not in a single but
in several figures bearing various characters, always as it were grasped
from a different side, and consequently displayed in one way in Apollo,

tKorporisation]
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 273

in another in Bacchus, in another in Hercules, in another in Antinous.

Indeed, the element of character can limit the beautiful and even finally
emerge as ugliness: in the drunken Silenus, in fauns, etc. But should the
element of character extend to actual nullification of the character of the
species, and so to the point ofthe unnatural, then it becomes caricature.
Far less than beauty, however, may the element of character be
allowed to impair grace - whose posture and movement the expression
of character also requires - but it has to be brought forth in the way that
is most suited, most purposive, most easy with respect to the person.
Not only sculptors and painters will observe this, but any good actor as
weH; otherwise here too there arises caricature, in the form of contortions
and c1umsy behavior.
In sculpture, beauty and grace are always the main concern. The
true character of a spirit, coming to the fore in emotions, passions, the
interplay of cognition and willing - something that can be depicted only
by its expression in countenance and bearing - is preeminently the
province of painting. For although the eyes and complexion, which lie
outside the domain of sculpture, contribute much to beauty, they are yet
far more essential to character. Further, beauty is more fuHi unfolded
when regarded from several standpoints; by contrast, expression, char-
acter, can be completelyii apprehended from even a single standpoint.
Because it is obvious that beauty is the main purpose of sculpture,
Lessing attempted to explain the fact that Laokoön does not scream by 267
appeal to the fact that screaming is incompatible with beauty.iii Since
this subject became the theme, or at least the point of departure, of a
book all its own for Lessing, and so much has been written about it
before and after him, I might be incidentaHy permitted to expound my
opinion about it here, even though so specialized a discussion does not
really fit into the context of our considerations, altogether directed
toward that which is general.

§46.
[Wby Laokoön does not Scream]
That Laokoön, in the famous group, does not scream is obvious,
and the general, ever-recurrent unease over this must therefore rest on
the fact that we would all scream in his situation; and so nature in fact

i[vollständiger]
itvollkommen]
iitGotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon, oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei
und Poesie (Laokoön, or On the Limits ofPainting and Poetry [1766]).]
 274 Third Book. The World as Presentation

demands. For with intense physical pain and the sudden onset of the
greatest bodily anxiety, all reflection, which might possibly induce a
state of silent endurance, is entirely suppressed from consciousness,
and nature gives vent to itselfthrough screaming; thereby, it simultane-
ously expresses pain and anxiety, summons the reseuer, and terrifies
the attacker. Thus Winckelmann of course felt the absence of the expres-
sion of screaming. But in seeking to justify the artist, he really tumed
Laokoön into aStoie, who regards it as unsuited to his dignity to scream
secundum naturam,i but who superimposes on his pain the useless
constraint of stifling its expressions. Winckelmann thus sees in hirn
"the tested spirit of a great man who is wrestling with tonnents, and
who is seeking to suppress expression of his feelings and elose them up
within hirnself: he does not burst into a loud scream, as in Virgil, but
only anxious sighs escape hirn," etc. (Works, vol. 7, p. 98. - The same
in greater detail, vol. 6, pp. lO4f.f).ii Lessing criticized Winckelmann's
opinion in his Laokoön and improved it in the manner cited above: he
replaced the psychological with the purely aesthetic ground that beauty,
the principle of ancient art, does not pennit the expression of screaming.
268 Another argument that he adds, namely, that astate that is wholly
transitory and incapable of enduring cannot be depicted in an immobile
work of art, has against it a hundred examples of superb figures held
still in wholly fleeting movements, dancing, wrestling, snatching out
for something, etc. In fact Goethe, in his essay on Laokoön which opens
the Propyläen (p. 8)/ii regards the choice of so entirely transitory a
moment precisely as necessary. - In our days, then, Hirt (Horen, 1797,
no. 7),iv tracing everything back to the height of truth in expression,

i["in accordance with nature"]

itThe first part of the quotation is more or less as put by Winckelmann in his
Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History ofAndent Art [1764]), Part 1, eh.
4, sec. 2 ("On the Essential in Art") = Vol. Il, Bk. V, ch. 3, p. 252 in G. Henry
Lodge, tr. (1968; originally, 1849-1873). But overall the quotation appears to
combine this, a10ng with some additional modiflcations, with phrases from Part
Il ofthe same work (= Vol. IV, Bk. X, ch. 1, pp. 230-231, in Lodge, tr.) and
Wincke1mann's Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in
der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation o{ Greek Works in
Painting and Sculpture [1755; 2nd ed., 1756]).]
iii[Propyläen was a journal co-founded by Goethe and Heinrich Mayer in
1798.]
iV[Alois Ludwig Hirt, "Versuch über das Kunstschöne" ("An Essay on
Beauty in Art"), in Die Horen (a monthly journal edited by Schiller between
1795 and 1797).]
 The Platonic Idea: Tbe Object of Art 275

decided the matter with the claim that Laokoön does not scream because,
already at the point of dying of suffocation, he no longer can scream.
Finally, Fernaw (Römische Studien, vol. 1, pp. 426.ff/ discussed and
weighed all three opiniol1s, but did not add a new one hirnself, but rather
reconciled and unified the three.
I cannot help but marvel at the fact that such thoughtful and acute
men laboriously pull inadequate explanations from far afield, grasp at
psychological, even physiological arguments, to explain a matter whose
ground lies wholly near to hand and is immediately obvious to the
unprejudiced - and in particular that Lessing, who came so elose to the
correct explanation, nonetheless in no way hit on the real point.
Before any psychological or physiological investigation whether, in
his position, Laokoön will or will not scream, which I would incidentally
altogether affirm, it has to be deelared with respect to the group that
screaming may not be depicted in it just for the reason that its depiction
lies entirely beyond the domain of sculpture. One could not produce a
screaming Laokoön from marble, but only one with his mouth agape
and fruitlessly endeavoring to scream, a Laokoön whose voice remains
stuck in his throat, vax faucibus haesit. Ü The essence of screaming, and
cOl1sequently also its effect on the spectator, lies entire1y in the sound
alone, not in the mouth thrown open. This latter phenomenon,iii neces-
sarily accompanying the screaming, must first be motivated and justified
by the sound thereby produced; then, as characteristic of the action, it is
permissible, indeed necessary, even if it detracts from beauty. But in
the plastic and pictorial arts, to which the depiction of the screaming 269
itself is entirely foreign and impossible, it would actually make no
sense to depict the forcible means involved in screaming, distorting all
the features and the rest of one's expression with the mouth thrown
open. For then one would be confronted with those means and their
additional demand for a number of sacrifices, while their purpose, the
screaming itself, along with its effect on one's spirit, remained absent.
Even worse in fact, one would thereby produce the always humorous
spectac1e of an ineffectual exertion, actually comparable to what a
prankster would accomplish by plugging a night watchman's horn with
wax, then waking hirn with cries of fire and delighting in his fruitless

i[Karl Ludwig Fernow's Römische Studien was published in three volumes

between 1806 and 1808.]
ii[The Latin - not in connection with Laokoön - is from Virgil's Aeneid (II,
77~; III, 48); "a Laokoön .. .haesit" added in B.]
lll[Phänomen]
 276 Third Book. The World as Presentation

exertions in blowing it.

Where, by contrast, the depiction of screaming lies within the
domain of the art depicting it, it is altogether permissible because it
serves truth, i.e., the complete i display of Ideas. So it is in the poetic arts,
which lay claim to the reader's imagination for their perceptual
depictions: therefore in Virgil, Laokoön screams like a bull that has
gotten loose after being struck with an axe; therefore Homer (Iliad :XX,
48-53) has Mars and Minerva scream quite horrifically, without detri-
ment to either their divine dignity or divine beauty. Likewise in theatrical
art. Laokoön would absolutely have had to scream on the stage; and
Sophocles has Philoctetus scream, and he surely would actually have
screamed on the ancient stage. For an entirely similar case, I recall
having seen the famous actor Kemble in London, playing the American
Rolla in a play, Pizarro, translated from the Germanii - a half-savage
individual, but of most noble character; nonetheless, when he was
wounded he screamed loud and intensely, which was to considerable
and superb effect since, as highly characteristic, it contributed a great
deal to truth.
By contrast, a mute screamer, painted or in stone, would be far more
humorous even than painted music, which in fact is taken to task in
Goethe's Propyläen. For screaming detracts far more from the rest of
one's expression and from beauty than does music, which mostly occu-
pies only the hands and the arms and is to be viewed as an activity
characteristic of aperson, indeed can to that extent be quite fittingly
270 painted, just so long as it requires no forcible bodily movements or
distortion of the mouth: thus, for example, Saint Cecilia at the organ,
Raphae1's Violin Player in the Galleria Sciarra in Rome,49 etc.
Because, then, on account of the artistic limitations, Laokoön's
pain must not be expressed through screaming, the artist had to mobilize
every other expression of that pain. This he accomplished to the highest
perfection, as Winckelmann so masterfully portrays it (Wor/es, vol. 6,
pp. 104ffi; his superb description therefore retains its full value and
truth, so long as one abstracts from the attribution of a stoic disposition. t

i[ vollständigen 1
ii[John Philip Kemble in the play by Richard Sheridan (1799), identified in
the latter's "Advertisement" as based in turn on August von Kotzebue's The
Spaniards in Peru.]
tThis ineidental diseussion has also reeeived its supplement in eh. 36 of the
second volume.
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 277

§ 4f7.
[Nudity and elotbing - Far Bady and MindJ
Since beauty along with grace is the main subject of sculpture, it
loves the nude, and it tolerates clothing only so far as it does not conceal
its forms. It makes use of draping not for cloaking but as an indirect
depiction of form, which manner of depiction considerably occupies the
understanding, insofar as the latter only attains to a perception of the
cause, namely, the form of the body, through the only immediately
given effect, the folds of the garment. Accordingly, draping is to a
certain extent in sculpture what foreshortening is in painting. Both are
indications of something, however not symbolic but rather, when they
are successful, of such a sort as immediately to compel the understand-
ing to perceive what they indicate, just as if it were actually given.
It may be permitted me here to insert in passing a comparison
regarding the rhetorical arts. Namely, just as beautiful corporeaJ form is
most advantageously visible with the lightest of clothing or none at all -
and therefore a most beautiful man, if he had taste and was at the same
time able to follow it, would preferably walk around nearly naked,
clothed only after the manner of the ancients - just in the same way,
every beautiful and inspired spirit will always express itself in the most
natural, least involved, simplest manner, endeavoring whenever possible 271
to communicate his thoughts to others, so as thereby to alleviate the
loneliness that he is bound to feel in a world such as this. But conversely,
spiritual poverty, confusion, and contortedness clothe themselves in the
most contrived expressions and the most obscure modes of speech, so
as to cloak in weighty and pompous phrases trivial, minute, dull, or
everyday thoughts: like someone who, because he is lacking in beauty's
majesty, would compensate for the failure with clothing, and seek to
hide the minuteness or ugliness of his person under barbaric trimmings,
glitter, feathers, ruffles, puffs, and cloaks. Just as embarrassed as one
such as this would be, were he to have to go naked, many an author
would be were he compelled to translate bis so pompous, obscure book
into its trivial, clear content.

§ 48.
[Historical Painting and tbe ldea ~ Humanity]
Besides beauty and grace historical painting also has character as
its main subject, whereby we are in general to understand the depiction
of will on the highest level of its objectification, where the individual,
as a coming to the fore of a particular side of the Idea of humanity, has
a unique significance and - not through mere form alone, but through
all sorts of actions and modifications of cognition and willing that,
 278 Third Book. The World as Presentatioll

visible in mien and gesture, occasion and accompany them - lets cogni-
zance be taken of the fact. lnsofar as the Idea of humanity is to be
displayed to this extent, the unfolding of its multifaceted character has
to be made evident in significant individuals, and these in turn can be
made visible in their significance only by way of a multiplicity of
scenes, events, and actions. This its infinite task is met by historical
painting insofar as it sets scenes from every sort of life before our eyes,
both of great and of minor significance. Neither any individual nor any
action can be without significance: in a11 of them and through them a11
the ldea of humanity more and more unfolds itself. For this reason,
absolutely no event in human life is to be excluded from painting.
Consequently, one does a great injustice to the superb painters of the
272 Dutch school when one merely prizes their technical expertise, otherwise
looking down on them with disdain because they mostly depicted objects
from common life, while one to the contrary takes only incidents from
world, or from biblical, history to be significant. One should first stop
to think that the inner significance of an action is entirely distinct from
its outer, and the two often take separate paths. The outer significance
is an action's importance in relation to its consequences in and for the
actual world, thus in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
The inner significance is the depth of insight it opens into the Idea of
humanity, bringing to light sides of that Idea more seldomly coming to
the fore, allowing distincdy and decidedly self-expressive individualities,
by means of purposefully arranged circumstances, to unfold their uruque
qualities. Only the inner significance matters in art; the outer matters
in history. The two are utterly independent of one another, can occur
together or also each appear alone. An action that is highly significant
for history can be, in its inner significance, a very everyday and common
one. And conversely, a scene from everyday life can be of great inner
significance, if human individuals and human doing and willing make
their appearance in them, even down to their most concealed foIds, in a
bright and distinct light. With the most diverse outer significance the
inner can also be one and the same. So, for example, it matters just the
same with respect to the latter whether government ministers would
dispute about lands and peoples over a map, or farmers demonstrate
their mutual rights over cards and dice in the tavern, just as it is all the
same whether one plays chess with pieces of gold or wood. 50 Moreover,
the scenes and events that constitute the lives of so many millions of
people, all of their doings, their hardships and their pleasures, are just
for that reason sufficiently important to make them subjects for art,
and are in their manifold abundance bound to provide sufficient material
for unfolding the muItifaceted Idea of humanity. Even the fleeting
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 279

moment that art has fixed in such an image (today called genre paint-
ing) moves us in a gentle, unique way. For to hold firm, in an enduring 273
image, the fleeting world undergoing ceaseless transformation in its
individual events, which yet represent the whole, is an accomplishment
of the art of painting through which it seems to bring time itself to a
standstill, elevating the individual to the Idea of its species. 51 Finally,
historical and outwardly significant subjects of painting often have the
disadvantage that precisely what is significant about them cannot be
depicted perceptually, but has to be added in thought. In this respect, the
nominal significance of a painting must be distinguished in general
from its real significance: the former is the outer significance, but only
accruing to it as a concept; the latter is the side of the ldea of humanity
that is revealed for perception by the picture. For example, let the former
be Moses as found by the Egyptian princess: a highly important moment
for history. By contrast, its real significance, that which is actually
given to perception, is a foundling rescued from its floating cradle by
an aristocratic woman: an occurrence that may take place frequently.
Costume alone can make the particular historical incident familiar to
the learned, but costume only applies to the historical significance, but
is a matter of indifference with respect to the real; for the latter knows
only the human as such, not the forms that happen to get chosen.
Subjects drawn from history have no advantage over those drawn from
mere possibility and which therefore cannot be called individual, but
rather only general subjects. For what is really significant in the former
is still not that which is individual, not the particular event as such, but
the element of generality in it, the side of the Idea of humanity that
expresses itself through it. On the other hand, however, neither are
particular historical subjects to be in any way dismissed. It is only that
the strictly artistic view of them, both in the painter and the ob server,
never concerns that which is individually singular in them, which really
constitutes the historical element, but the element of generality that
expresses itself in them, the ldea. Also, only historical subjects should
be chosen where what is of main concern can actually be depicted, and
does not have to be merely added on in thought: otherwise, the nominal
departs too far from the real significance; what is merely thought in the
picture becomes most important and detracts from what is perceived. If
it is not even appropriate on stage (as in French tragedies) for the main 274
affair to proceed behind the scenes, then it is obviously a far greater
mi stake in a painting. Historical subjects have a decidedly detrimental
effect only when they limit the painter to a field that is chosen freely
and without artistic, but for other, purposes, most particularly when this
field is wanting in picturesque and significant objects, e.g., when it is the
 280 Third Book. The World as Presentation

history of a small, isolated, opinionated, nook-dwelling people i such as

the Jews, hierarchically, i.e., capriciously mIed, despised by the major
contemporary peoples of East and West.
Since human migration now distances us from all ancient peoples
just as the former shifting ofthe seabed distances the surface oftoday's
earth from that whose structures are shown to us only in fossils, so it is
to be viewed as in every way a great misfortune that the people whose
past culture was to serve in the main as the foundation for our own was
not, say, the Indians or the Greeks, or even only the Romans, but
precisely these Jews. But it was a particularly ill omen for thc Italian
geniuses of painting in the 15 th and 16th centuries that, given the narrow
circle to which they were arbitrarily rcstricted for a choice of subjects,
they had to have recourse to all manner ofwretchedness. For the New
Tf~stament is, in its historical side, almost more unfavorable to painting
than the Old, and the subsequent history of martyrs and of Church
Fathers was a most unfortunate subject. Yet one must definitely distin-
guish between paintings whose subject is the historical, or mythological,
part of Judaism or Christianity and those in which the true, i.e., ethical
spirit of Christianity is revealed for perception through the depiction of
pe:rsons who are fi1led with that spirit. These depictions are in fact the
highest and most admirable accomplishments ofthe art ofpainting. And
only the greatest masters of the art have achieved them, especially
Raphael and Correggio, the latter particularly in his earlier paintings.
Paintings of this sort are really not at all to be counted among the
historical; for they usually depict no event, no action, but are mere
275 groupings of saints, of the Redeemer himself~ often still as a child, with
his mother, angels, etc. In their countenances, particularly their eyes,
we see the expression, the reflection, of the most completeii cognizance,
namely, ofthat which is not directed toward individual things but Ideas,
thus has completely apprehended the entire essence of the world and of
life. In turn affecting the will within them, this cognizance does not,
like the other sort, provide it with motives, but to the contrary has
become a quieteriii of all willing, from which there has proceeded that
complete resignation which is the innermost spirit of Christianity as of
the wisdom of India, the surrender of all willing, withdrawal, nullifica-
tion of the will and with it of the entire essence of this world, thus
redemption. Thus through their works, those eternally praiseworthy

i[ Winkelvolk]
ii[ vollkommensten]
iiilQuietiv J
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 281

masters of art gave perceptual expression to the highest wisdom. And

here is the pinnacle of all art, which, having pursued will through all its
levels in its adequate objectivization, the Ideas - from the lowest where
it is moved by causes, then where it is moved by stimuli, and finally
where motives so manifoldly move it and unfold its essence - it now
ends with depiction of its free se1f-nullification through the one great
quieter, which dawns upon it from out of the most complete cognizance
ofits own essence. t

§49.
[Tbe Differente between IJeas and CMcepts-
Substance vs. M.annerism in Art]
All our considerations regarding art so far rest everywhere on the
truth that the object of art, that which it is the artist's purpose to
display, the cognizance of which must consequently precede his work
as its germ and origin, is an Idea in Plato's sense52 and altogether
nothing besides: not the individual thing, the object of common appre-
hension, and not concepts, the object of rational thought and science.
Although Ideas and concepts have something in common in that both,
as unities, represenf a plurality of actual things, yet the great difference
between the two will have been made sufficiently distinct and evident
by what was said in the first Book about concepts and in the present
about Ideas. I would in no way claim, however, that Plato himself in 276
fact grasped this difference in its purity; rather, many of his examples
of Ideas and his discussion of them are applicable only to concepts. In
any case, we leave it at that and go our own way, de1ighted whenever
we walk the path of a great and noble spirit, yet not following his foot-
steps, but pursuing our own goal.
Concepts are abstract, discursive, utterly indeterminate within their
own sphere, only determinate with respect to their boundaries, accessi-
ble and comprehensible to whomever has but reason, communicable
through words without further mediation, entirely exhaustible through
their definitions. Ideas, to the contrary, at best definable as an adequate
representativeii of concepts, are altogether perceptual and, although
representingiii an infinite multitude of individual things, nonetheless
completely determinate. The individual as such is never cognizant of

tThis passage altogether presupposes the following Book for its understanding.
Irvertreten]
ii[Repräsentant]
iitvertretend]
 282 Third Book. The World as Presentation

thern, but only one who has been elevated to the pure subject of cognition
above aB willing and aB individuality. Thus they are accessible only
to the genius or to one who, usually occasioned by works of genius, is
in the state of mind characteristic of genius i through a heightening of
his pure cognitive power. Therefore, they are not absolutely but only
conditionaBy communicable, the Ideas apprehended and replicated in
works of art speaking only to each one according to the measure of his
own inteHectual worth. For this reason, precisely the most superb works
of any form of art, the noblest offspring of genius, are bound to remain
etemally c10sed books to the dull-witted majority ofhuman beings and
are inaccessible to them, separated by a wide chasm from them, just as
the company of princes is inaccessible to the common crowd. To be
sure, even the dullest acknowledge admittedly great works on the basis
of authority, namely, so as not to betray their own weakness; yet they
remain quietly constantly ready to express their condemnation of them,
as soon as they are given hope they might do so without exposing
themselves, thus giving delighted vent to their long-contained hatred of
all that is great and beautiful, and of its authors, of that which never
spoke to them and precisely thereby humiliated them. For in order
freely and willingly to acknowledge and admit the worth of others, one
277 must have some of one's own. Upon this is grounded the necessity for
modesty in any achievement, as weH as the disproportionately loud
praise of that virtue, which alone among alI its sisters is always appended
to the praises of whomever dares to laud someone who is in any way
distinguished, as a consolation and to still the anger over one's own
worthlessness. 53 What is modesty, after all, but the feigned humility by
means ofwhich, in a world bursting with vindictive envy, one would
beg forgiveness for strengths and achievements from those who have
none? For whoever makes no claim to have any because he actually
does not have any is not modest, but only honest.
An Idea is a unity broken up into plurality by virtue of the temporal
and spatial form of our intuitive apprehension. By contrast, a concept is
a unity restored from plurality by means of abstraction on the part of
reason; it can be designated as a unitas post rem, and the former as a
unitas ante rem. i ; Finally, one can also express the difference between
concepts and Ideas metaphorically as follows. A concept is like a dead
receptac1e in which what is placed in it actually lies all juxtaposed, but

:[in einer genialen Stimmung]

"["unity after the fact" and "unity before the fact"; the paragraph to this point
added in C.]
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 283

from which no more can be taken out (by way of analytic judgments)
than has been placed in it (by way of synthetic reflection); an ldea, by
contrast, in whomever has grasped it, develops presentations that are
new with respect to the homonymous concept. It is like a living, self-
developing organism endowed with procreative powers, which produces
something that had not been lying packaged within it.
According to all that has been said, then, with as much use as
concepts have for life and as useful, necessary, and productive as they
are for science, they are etemally unfruitful for art. By contrast, an
apprehended ldea is the true and single source of every genuine work
of art. It is drawn in its primal forcei only from life itself, from nature,
from the world, and indeed only by the true genius, or by one who has
for the moment been inspired to genius. Only from this sort of immedi-
ate impregnationii do there arise genuine works of art that bear etemal
life within themselves. Precisely because the Idea is and remains percep-
tual, the artist is not conscious in abstracto of the intention and goal of 278
his work; he has not a concept, but rather an Idea in mind. Therefore,
he can give no account of his actions: he works, as it is popularly
expressed, on the basis of mere feeling and unconsciously, indeed
instinctively. By contrast imitators, manneristsiii - imitatores, servum
pecus iv - proceed on the basis of concepts in art: they take note of what
is pleasing and effective in genuine works of art, make it explicit to
themselves, apprehend it in a concept, thus abstractly, and then, openly
or in a hidden way, imitate it with shrewd purposefulness. Like parasitic
plants, they suck their nourishment from the works of others and bear,
like polyps, the color of their nourishment. Indeed, one could go even
further with the comparison to maintain that they are like machines
that, to be sure, mostly finely chop up what is put in them and mix it all
together, but are incapable of digestion, so that the foreign components
can always be found again, culled from the mix, and separated. The
genius alone, to the contrary, is like the organic, assimilative, transform-
ing, and productive body. For he is educated, to be sure, and cultivated
by his predecessors and their works, but he is immediately fructified
only by life and the world itself, through perceptual impressions;
therefore, even the highest level of cultivation never detracts from his

i[kräftigen Ursprünglichkeit]
ii[unmittelbare Empfängnis: perhaps a pun related to unbefleckte Empfäng-
nis, "Immaculate Conception."]
iii[Manieristen]
iv ["imitators, servile sheep": Horace, Epistles I, 19, 19]
 284 Third Book. The World as Presentation

originality. All imitators, all mannerists, grasp the essence of others'

paradigmatic accomplishments in concepts; but concepts can never
impart inner life to a work. The age itself, Le., whatever dull crowd
happens to be in question, knows only concepts and clings to them,
thus taking up manneredi works with quick and loud applause. After a
few years, however, those same works are na longer enjoyable, because
the spirit of the times i.e., the concepts holding sway, have changed; in
this alone they were able to take root. Only genuine works that are
immediately drawn from nature, from life, remain like the latter
etemally young and constantly primal in their force. ii For they belong to
no age, but to humanity. And just as for that very reason they were
coolly received by their own age, to which they did not deign to
accommodate thernselves, and, for indirectly and negatively uncovering
whatever aberrations there might be, were recognized late and reluctantly
- so in exchange they can never grow old, but still speak ever fresh and
279 ever new again in even the most distant times. They are then no longer
exposed to neglect or misunderstanding, for they stand crowned and
sanctioned by the applause of the few individuals who are capable of
making a judgment, who appear singly and sparingly over the centu-
ries, t and who cast the votes whose slowly accumulating sum grounds
the authority that is entirely alone the tribunal that is meant when one
appeals to posterity. It is entirely alone a matter of those successively
appearing individuals. For the mass and multitude of posterity will ever
be and remain just as perverse and dull-witted as the mass and multitude
of one's contemporaries ever was and ever iso
Just read the laments of great spirits, in anY century, regarding their
contemporaries: they always sound as if of today; for the human race is
always the same. In every age and in every art, manner takes the place
of spirit, which is always only the possession of individuals. But manner
is old clothing, discarded by the most recent and recently recognized
spiritual phenomenon. iii In accordance with a11 of this, the applause of
posterity will not, as a rule, be won otherwise than at the expense of the
applause of one's contemporaries. And conversely.+

i[manierierte. It seems unlikely that Schopenhauer means to be speaking

specifieally ofMannerism in art.]
ii[ urkräfUgJ
tApparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto. ["They appear singly, swimming on
the desolate waves": Virgil, Aeneid I, 118.]
iii[Erscheinung des Geistes]
tOn this, see eh. 34 ofthe seeond volume. [This paragraph added in B.]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 285

§ 50.
[Tbe EXJ'1'ession tif Concepts in Art - Allegory and Symbofj
If, then, the purpose of all art is communication of apprehended
Ideas that, precisely in such mediation through the spirit of the artist, in
which they make their appearance isolated and cleansed of anything
extraneous, can now be grasped by someone more weakly receptive
and with no productive capacity, if further, it is objectionable to proceed
from concepts in art, then we will be unable to approve when a work of
art is intentionally and avowedly dedicated to expression of a concept:
this is the case with allegory. An allegory is a work of art that signifies
something other than what it depicts. But the perceptual - consequently
an Idea too - is immediately and completelyi self-expressive, and has
no need of being mediated by something by which it is indicated.
Therefore, that which is indicated in this manner and represented by 280
something entirely different, because it cannot itself be brought before
perception, is always a concept. Through allegory, a concept is therefore
always supposed to be designated, and consequently the mind of the
beholder directed away from the perceptually depicted presentation
toward an entirely different, abstract, non-perceptual presentation, lying
utterly beyond the work of art: 54 thus here a painting or statue would
accomplish what writing, only much more completely, accomplishes.
What we declare to be the purpose of art, the display of an Idea that can
only be apprehended perceptually, is then not the purpose here. For
what is intended here, however, neither is any sort of great perfectionii
required in the work of art, but it suffices that one get the point, since as
soon as it is found, the purpose has been achieved and the mind is led
to an entirely different sort of presentation, to an abstract concept that
was the target from the start. Allegories in the plastic and pictorial arts
are consequently nothing other than hieroglyphs; the artistic value that
they might in any case have as perceptual depictions attaches to them
not as allegories but otherwise. That Correggio's Night, Annibale
Carracci's Genius of Fame, Poussin's Four Seasons are very beautiful
paintings Is altogether separable from the fact that they are allegories.
As allegories they accomplish no more than inscriptions, indeed even
less. We are reminded here of the distinction that was made above
between the real and nominal significance of a painting. The nominal
here is precisely the allegory as such, e.g., the Genius of Farne, the real

i[vollkommen]
l1[Vollendung]
 286 Third Book. The World as Presentation

is what is actually depicted: here a beautiful winged youth surrounded

in flight by beautiful boys. This expresses an Idea. The real significance
in question is effective, however, only so long as we forget the nominal,
allegorical significance: if one thinks of the latter, then one abandons
perception and an abstract concept occupies one's mind;i but the
passage from ldea to concept is always a fall. Indeed the nominal
significance, the allegorical intention, often does violence to the real
significance, to the perceptually evident truth: thus, for example, the
UJmatural lighting in Correggio's Night, which, as beautifuHy as it is
executed, is yet purely allegorically motivated and really impossible.
Thus when an allegorical painting also has artistic value, this is entirely
281 separate and independent from what it accomplishes as an allegory. Such
a work of art serves two purposes at the same time, namely, expression
of a concept and expression of an ldea. Only the latter can be an artistic
purpose. The other is an extraneous purpose, taking playful delight in
having a painting do simultaneous service as an inscription, as a hiero-
glyph, invented for the benefit of those to whom the real essence of art
can never speak. It is like a work of art that is at the same time a
practical tool, where it also serves two purposes, e.g., astatue that is at
the same time a candelabra or a earyatid, or a bas relief that is at the
same time Achilles' shield. Pure friends of the arts will approve of
neither the one nor the other. To be sure, an allegorical painting, even
in just this capaeity, ean produce a lively effeet on one's spirit;ii but
then the same would also be effectuated, under similar circumstances,
by an inseription. For exarnple, ifthe desire for fame is permanently and
firmly rooted in a man's spirit, and he views farne as indeed his rightful
possession, withheld from him only beeause he has not yet produeed
the documents of possession, and he steps before the Genius of Fame
with his crown of laurels, then his whole spirit will be aroused by it and
his forces summoned to action; but the same thing would also happen
were he suddenly to espy the word 'Fame' written large and distinctly
on the wall. Or if a man has announced a truth, of importance either as
a pronouncement regarding practical life or as a scientifie insight, but
has met with no credence, then a powerful effect would be made on
him by an allegorical painting that depicts Time removing her veil and
finally revealing the naked truth; but the same thing would be accom-

i[Geist]
ii[Gemüt]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 287

plished by the motto: "Le tems decouvre La verite."i For what is really
effectual here is always only the abstract thought, not what is perceived.
If then, according to what has been stated, allegory is a flawed
endeavor in the plastic and pictorial arts, serving a purpose entirely
foreign to art, it becomes completely unbearable when it gets carried so
far that the depiction of contrived and forcibly deployed subtleties sinks
to the level of absurdity. Such are, for example, a turtle to indicate 282
female withdrawnness; Nemesis looking down into the breast of her
robe, indicating that she can see even into what is concealed, Bellori's
interpretation of Annibale Carracci as clothing Lust in a yellow robe
because he wanted to indicate that her pleasures will soon fade and turn
as yellow as straw.
Now when there is altogether no connection at all between that
which is depicted and the concept thereby indicated, grounded in either
subsumption under that concept or association of ldeas, but rather the
signs and what they designate are connected in an entirely conventional
manner, through positive, contingently occasioned rules, I call this
degenerate formii of allegory a symbol. Thus the rose is a symbol of
secrecy, the laurel a symbol offame, the palm a symbol ofvictory, the
mussei a symbol of pilgrims,55 the cross a symbol of the Christian
religion. Directly with these also belong all cases of indication by way
of mere colors, as with yellow as the color of falsity and blue as the
color of loyalty. Symbols of this sort may often be useful in life, but
their value is foreign to art. They are to be viewed as just like hiero-
glyphs, or even like writing in Chinese characters, and actually stand in
the same class with coats of arms,56 with the bush that indicates a
tavem, with the key by which the chamberlain, or the leather by which
mountain folk are recognized.
Finally, if certain historical 01' mythical persons, or personified
concepts, are once and for all made identifiable by firmly established
symbols, then these should really be called emblems. 57 Such are the
animals of the Evangelists, the owl of Minerva, the apple of Paris,
the anehor ofhope, ete. 58 In any ease, one usually means by emblems
simple pictorial depictions, elucidated by a motto, that are meant to lend
visibility to amoral truth;üi there are large collections of these by 1.
Camerarius, Alciato, and others. They constitute a passage to poetical
allegory, ofwhieh more will be said further below. - Greek sculpture is

i["Time uncovers the truth": tems (sie), older form oftemps.]

"[Abart]
iii[veranschaulichen sollen]
 288 Third Book. The World as Presentation

oriented toward perception, thus it is aesthetic; that of the Hindus is

oriented toward concepts, therefore it is merely symbolic.
This judgment regarding allegory, grounded in our previous
consideration of the inner essence of art, and exactly cohering with it, is
283 directly opposed to the view ofWinckelmann, who, far from describing
allegory as we do, as something entirely foreign to art and often inter-
fering with it, speaks up for it everywhere, indeed (Wor/es, voll, pp.
55jj) even locates the highest purpose of art in the "depiction of general
concepts and ofnon-sensory things." lt is left for each person to decide
for the one or the other view. But for me, with these and simHar views
of Winckelmann, bearing on what is properly metaphysical about the
beautiful, the truth has been made most distinct that one can have the
greatest receptivity and most accurate judgment regarding artistic beauty,
yet not be in a position to provide an abstract and properly philosophical
account of the essence of the beautiful and of art: just as one can be
most noble and virtuous and possess a most tender conscience, deciding
individual cases with the precision of a gold-balance, without thereby
being in a position to fathom the ethical significance of actions in
philosophical terms and display it in abstracto.
Allegory has an entirely different relation to poetry than to the
plastic and pictorial arts, and while it is objectionable in the latter case,
it is most permissible and to the purpose in the former. For in the
plastic and pictorial arts it directs us from what is perceptually given,
from the real object of all art, toward abstract thoughts. In poetry,
however, the relationship is reversed: here that which is given immedi-
ately in words is concepts, and the main purpose is always to be directed
from the latter to the perceptual, the depiction of which must be
undertaken by the listener's imagination. i If, in the plastic and pictorial
arts, allegory leads from the immediately given to something else, this
must always be a concept, because here it is only the abstract that
cannot be immediately given; but a concept can never be the origin, and
its communication never the purpose, of a work of art. By contrast, in
poetry, concepts are the material, the immediately given, which one
may therefore very well abandon in order to call forth something
entirely distinct and perceptual to achieve one's goal. In the context of
a poem, it is possible for many a concept or abstract thought to be
indispensable, while it is in itse1f absolutely incapable of being made
284 immediately perceptible;ii it is then often brought to perceptibility

tPhantasie]
ii[gar keiner Anschaulichkeit fähig ist]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 289

through some example subsumable under it. This sort of thing of course
happens with every figurative expression, and it happens with every
metaphor, simile, parable, and allegory, all of which are distinguished
only by their length and the elaborateness of their depictions. On
account of this, similes and allegories work to superb effect in the
rhetorical arts. How beautifully Cervantes speaks of sleep, in expressing
the fact that it relieves us of all spiritual and bodily suffering: "it is a
cloak that covers the whole man."i How beautifully, in the following
verse, Kleist allegorically expresses the thought that philosophers and
inquirers enlighten the human race:
"Those whose noctumal lamp illumines the entire globe."ii
How strongly and perceptually Homer characterizes Ate, bringer of
disaster, when he says: "She has tender feet, for she treads not upon the
hard ground, but walks upon the heads ofmen" (Iliad XIX, 9l).iii How
greatly Menenius Agrippa's fable ofthe stornach and limbs affected the
Roman people in their wanderings abroad. How beautifully Plato's
already cited allegory of the cave, at the beginning of the seventh book
of the Republic, expresses a highly abstract philosophical dogma. Like-
wise to be viewed as a profound allegory with a philosophical tendency
is the tale of Persephone, who for tasting a pomegranate in the
underworld falls subject to the latter: this is made particularly evident
in the transcendently praiseworthiV treatment of the fable that Goethe
incorporated as an episode into The Triumph of Sensitivity.v I know of
three elaborate allegorical works. An obvious and avowed example is
the incomparable Criticon of Baltasar Gracian,vi which consists of a

i[Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote, Second Part (1615), ch. 68: el suefio,
capa que cubre todos los humanos pensamientos ("sleep, a cloak that covers all
human thoughts"). Schopenhauer's citation is in German.]
ii[Ewald von Kleist, Der Frühling (Spring [1749]). This sentence, with the
quotation, added in B.]
iii["She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of
men" (tr. Samuel Butler).]
iV[allem Lobe unerreichbare]
V[Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit (1777-1778). The remainder ofthis para-
graph added in B.]
Vl[Baltasar Gracian, El Criticon (The Critic). The three parts of the work
appeared in Spain under pseudonyms between 1651 and 1657. Another work of
the same author (also under a pseudonym), Oraculo manual y Arte de Prudencia
(Handbook and the Art of Worldly Wisdom [1647]), a collection of three
hundred aphorisms, was translated by Schopenhauer in 1862 as BaZthazar
 290 Third Book. The World as Presentation

grand rich web of interconnected, extremely witty allegories, serving in

this case as bright clothing for moral truths, to which he precisely
thereby imparted the greatest perceptibility, and that amazes us with the
richness of its inventions. Two veiled allegories, however, are Don
Quijote and Gulliver in Lilliput. i Tbe former allegorizes the life of any
man who would not, like others, merely tend to his personal welfare,
but pursues an objective, ideal purpose that has taken possession ofhis
285 thinking and willing; thereby, he of course stands out as an oddity in this
world. With Gulliver, one need only take all of the physical details in
spiritual terms to notice what the satirical rogue, as RamIet would call
hirn, ii had in mind.
Insofar as concepts are thus always the given element in a poetical
allegory, which it would make perceptible through an image, the allegory
may always on occasion also be expressed or supported by a painted
image. Yet the latter is not for that reason considered a work of
pictorial art, but only an illustrative hieroglyph, and makes no claim to
painterly but only to poetic value. Of such a sort is the beautiful vignette
of Lavater that is bound to have so heartening an effect on every noble
defender of truth. A hand holding a candle is stung by a wasp, while
above it mosquitoes are consumed in the flame. Beneath it the motto:
"And singe as it may the mosquito's wing,
Its skull and brains to bursting bring;
Yet light remains light!
And though even stung by the fiercest of wasps,
llet it not drop."
Here also belongs the gravestone with the extinguished, smoldering light
and inscription:
"Once the flame is spent, it's finally leamed
Ifwax or tallow 'twas that bumed."
Of this sort, finally, is an old German family tree in which the last
descendent of the far-reaching family expresses the resolve to live out
his life in complete abstinence and chastity, and thus to let his family
die off, by portraying hirnself at the root of that vastly ramified tree
cutting off the tree above hirn with shears. 59 Along with these belong in
general the above-mentioned symbols usually called emblems, which

Gracian 's Hand-Orakel und Kunst der Weltklugheit.]

Ühe first part of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver 's Travels (I 726)]
ii[Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2. "satirical rogue" in English in the text.]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 291

one could also characterize as short painted fables with an explicitly

stated moral.
Allegories of this sort are always to be counted among the poetical,
not the pictorial, and to be justified in just those terms. Here too the
pictorial execution always remains a secondary affair, and nothing more
is demanded of it than that it merely depict its subject in a recognizable
way. But just as in the plastic and pictorial arts, so also in poetry, allegory 286
passes over into symbol when there is no more than an arbitrary
connection between that which is put forth in perceptual terms and the
abstraction thereby designated. Just because everything symbolic
fundamentally rests on convention,60 symbols have among their other
disadvantages that their meaning is forgotten with time, and they then
go entirely mute. Who would guess after all, if it were not known, why
the fish is a symbol of Christianity? Only a Champollion: for it is
through and through a phonetic hieroglyph. i Thus the Revelation of
John confronts us today as a poetical allegory, much as do the reliefs
with magnus Deus sol Mithra ii that one is ever still interpreting. t

§5I.
[Tbe Literary Arts - Poetry and History - Song -
Tragedy - The ldea of Humanity]
Given our previous considerations regarding art in general, if we
now turn from the plastic and pictorial arts to poetry, we will have no
doubt that its intention is to reveal Ideas as weH - the levels of objecti-
fication of will - and to communicate them to the listener with the
distinctness and vivacity with which the literary spiritiii apprehended
them. Ideas are essentially perceptual. If, therefore, what is immediately
communicated by the words in poetry are only abstract concepts, then
the intention is still obviously to have the listener perceive life's Ideas
in the representatives iv of these concepts, which can only happen through
the aid of his own imagination. But to set the latter in a motion
appropriate to this purpose, the abstract concepts, which are as much

tJean-Fran<;:ois Champollion (1790-1832) pioneered the deciphering of

Egyptian hieroglyphies through his work with the Rosetta Stone. "Who
would ... hieroglyph" added in B.]
ii["the great sun-god Mithra"]
t ün this, see eh. 36 of the seeond volume. [In A the paragraph eoncluded:
"pr.etty mueh as Egyptian hieroglyphies eonfront us as pietorial depietions."]
I1I[Gemüt]
iv[Repräsentanten]
 292 Third Book. The World as Presentation

the immediate material of poetry as of the driest prose, have to be put

together so that their spheres intersect in such a way that none can
persist with its abstract generality; rather, in its place a perceptual
representative comes before one's imagination, which the words of the
poet then ever further modify in accordance with his intention. Just as
the chemist obtains solid precipitates from utterly clear and transparent
287 fluids by uniting them, so from the abstract, transparent generality of
concepts, through the way in which he combines them, the poet knows
how to precipitate, as it were, that which is concrete, the individual,
a perceptual presentation. For ldeas are only cognized perceptually;
cognizance of Ideas, however, is the purpose of all art. Expertise in
poetry, as in chemistry, enables one always to obtain precisely the
precipitate that one intends. Tbis purpose is served by the many epithets
in poetry through which the generality of any concept is more and more
limited, up to the point of perceptibility. Homer attaches to practically
every noun an adjective whose concept intersects, and at once
considerably diminishes, the conceptual sphere of the former, whereby
he indeed comes alJ the closer to perception, e.g.:
'Ev 0' 8"c:a' 'Qxc:cxvrj) :icxJt1fpOV rpdOt; 1d 1010,
''E}.xov vvxm 11&}.CXIVCXV &,,1 t;C:/&JJpOV apovpcxv.

(Occidit vero in Oceanum splendidum lumen soUs,

Trahens noctem nigram super almam terram.)i
And:
"A gentle wind from heaven blue is blown,
Tbe myrtle still, the taurel stands tall-growu."ii-
This precipitates from a few concepts, for the imagination, the full bliss
of the southern climate.
A quite particular device of poetry is rhythm and rhyme. Of its
unbelievably powerful effect I can provide no other explanation than
that our presentational powers, essentially bound to time, have thereby
obtained a peculiar character by virtue of which we inwardly follow
and, as it were, resonate with every regularly recurring sound. Rhythm
and rhyme then become, on the one hand, a me ans for binding our

t"The sun's glorious orb now sank into Okeanos and drew down night over
the land": Iliad VIII, 485 (tr. Samuel Butler). The example from Homer added
in B, the Latin translation as usual in c.]
itGoethe, Balladen, "Mignon"]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 293

attention so that we more readily follow the delivery; on the other hand,
there arises from it within us, antecedent to all judgment, a blind accord
with what has been delivered, whereby the latter acquires, independent
of all grounds, a certain emphatic power to convince uso
By virtue of the generality of the material of which poetry makes
use to communicate ldeas, thus the generality of concepts, the extent of
its domain is most great. The whole of nature, the Ideas of all its levels
can be depicted by poetry insofar as, in accordance with the ldea to be
communicated, it proceeds in its depiction sometimes descriptively,
sometimes narratively, sometimes in an immediately dramatic way. If, 288
however, the plastic and pictorial arts usually surpass it in the depiction
of lower levels of the objectivization of will, because incognizant and
even merely animal nature almost reveals its entire essence in a single
well-captured moment, human beings to the contrary - so far as they
express themselves not through their mere form and facial expression,
but through a chain of actions and the accompanying thoughts and
emotions - are the main subject of poetry, of which in this respect no
other art is the equal; for it has process at its disposal, which is absent
from the plastic and pictorial arts.
Revelation ofthe ldea that is the highest level ofthe objectiviza-
tion of will, depiction of humanity in the interconnected series of its
endeavors and actions, is thus the grand subject matter ofpoetry. - To
be sure, experience also acquaints us, history also acquaints us, with
human beings. Yet more often with human beings than humanity, Le.,
they do more to provide empirical observations on human interaction,
from which rules for one's own conduct proceed, than help us toward
deep glimpses into the inner essence of man. Nevertheless, the latter
also remain in no way excluded from them. However, so long as it is
the essence ofhumanity itselfthat discloses itselfto us in history, or in
our own experience, we have already taken up the latter, and the historian
the former, with artistic eyes, in fact poetically, i.e., apprehended the
ldea, not the phenomenon, according to its inner essence and not
relations. Inescapably, one's own experience is the condition of an
understanding ofthe literary arts i as ofhistory. For it is, as it were, the
dictionary of the language spoken by both. But history is really related
to poetry as portrait painting to historical painting: the former gives us
that which is true in the individual, the latter that wh ich is true in

i[Dichtkunst. Dichtung is sometimes "literary writing" and sometimes more

specifically "poetry," and then der Dichter correspondingly "the poet." Poesie is
of course always "poetry."]
 294 Third Book. The World as Presentatioll

general; the former has truth with respeet to the phenomenon and ean
authentieate it on this basis, the latter has truth with respeet to Ideas,
whieh are to be fOlmd in no single phenornenon, nonetheless speak frorn
out of thern all. The poet, with ehoice and purpose, depiets signifieant
clIaraeters in signifieant situations; the historian takes both as they
eome. Indeed, he must view and select events and persons not aecording
to their inner, genuine significance, as it is expressive of ldeas, but
289 according to their outer, seeming, relative significance, with reference
to connections, to consequences. He must eonsider nothing in and for
itself, according to its essential character and expression, but everything
according to its relations, in its concatenations, in its influence on what
follows, and indeed particularly on his own times. For this reason he
will not pass over some minimally significant, indeed intrinsically
common action on the part of a king; for it has consequences and
influenee. By contrast, intrinsically highly significant actions on the
part of single, most exceptional individuals, when they have no
consequences, no influence, are to go unmentioned by hirn. For his
consideration proceeds in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient
Ground and lays hold of the phenomenon for which the latter is the
form. The poet, however, grasps the ldea, the essence of humanity,
beyond all relations, beyond aIl time, the adequate objectivization of
the thing in itself on its highest level. While then even with the mode of
consideration that is necessary for historians, the inner essence, the
significance of phenomena, the kerne I within all those sheIIs, can
never get entirely lost, and can still be found and taken cognizance of
by someone who is seeking it, nonetheless that which is significant in
itself and not in its relations, the real unfolding of the Idea, is by far
more accurately and distinctly to be found in poetry than in his tory; to
the former, therefore, as paradoxical as it sounds, much more real,
genuine, inner truth is to be attributed than to the latter. For the historian
is to follow individual events exactly according to life, as they get
developed in time in multiply intertwined chains of grounds and
consequences, but it is impossible for hirn to possess all the relevant
data, to have seen everything or to have inquired into everything. He is
at every moment abandoned by the original of his picture, or a false
one gets interpolated, and this so frequently that 1 believe I can presume
that, in all ofhistory, there is more offalsehood than oftruth. The poet,
by contrast, has apprehended the Idea of humanity from precisely the
partieular side from which it is to be displayed, it is the essence of his
own seifthat is objectified for hirn in it: his cognizance is, as explained
above in connection with sculpture, halfWay apriori; his paradigm
stands before his spirit firm, distinct, brightly illuminated, cannot
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 295

abandon him. Thus he shows us the ldea purely and distinct1y in the 290
mirror of his spirit, and his portrayal is, down to the last particular, as
true as life itself. t The great ancient historians are therefore poets in
matters of the particular, where the data abandon them, e.g., in the
speeches of their heroes; indeed, their entire mode of treatment of the
material approaches the epic. Precisely this, however, gives unity to
their depictions and allows them to retain inner truth even where the
outer is inaccessible to them, or quite falsified. And if we previously
compared history with portrait painting as opposed to poetry, which
corresponded to historical painting, we also find that Winckelmann's
pronouncement that the portrait should be the Ideal of the individual is
followed by the ancient historians, since they so depict the individual
that the ldea ofhumanity that is expressing itselfin it comes to the fore.
Recent historians, to the contrary, with few exceptions, usually provide
us with only a "waste basket and a lumb er room, and at most a big to-
do and fuSS."i

tIt is of course to be understood that I am everywhere speaking exclusively

of the so rare, great, genuine poet, and have least of all in mind that shallow
population of mediocre poets, rhymesters, and fabulists that has been thriving
so much nowadays in Germany, but into whose ears there ought incessantly to
be shouted from all sides:
Mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.
["The right to be a mediocre poet is granted by neither men, nor gods, nor [book-
seilers' advertising] columns": Horace, Ars Poetica, 372-3]
It is indeed worthy of serious consideration what a multitude of their own
and of others' time and paper has been wasted by this swarm of mediocre
poets, and how damaging is their influence, with the public on the one hand
always grasping after something new, yet on the other hand even more inclined
by nature toward the perverse or banal, as more of a kind with itself. Thus those
works of the mediocre draw and keep the public away from genuine master-
works and from cultivation by their means, consequently, working in exact op-
position to the favorable influence of geniuses, ever more destroy its taste and
so impede the progress of the age. Thus critique and satire should, without con-
sideration or sympathy, lash the mediocre poets untiI, for their own good, they
are brought to the point of preferring to employ their muse in reading something
rather than in writing something bad. - For if even the gentle god of the muses
[Apollo] was transported into such astate of anger by the incompetence of those
who are without calling that he could flay Marsyas alive [a shepherd who had
challenged Apollo to a musical contest], I faH to see on what grounds mediocre
poetry would base its claims to tolerance.
i[Goethe, Faust I, 582-583 ("Night").]
 296 Third Book. The World as Presentation

291 Thus whoever would take cognizance ofhumanity with respect to

the inner essence identical in all of its phenomena and developments, its
Idea, to hirn the works of the great, immortal poets can hold up a
portrait much more faithful and distinct than the historians ever can; for
even the best among the latter are by far not the first as poets, and have
their hands tied besides. One can also elucidate the relation between the
t"ll"O, in this respect, with the following comparison. The mere pure
historian, working in accordance with the data alone, is like someone
who, without any knowledge of mathematics, on the basis of figures
that are at hand by chance, examines their relations by measuring them,
the empirically discovered result of which is therefore infected with all
the defects of the figures as drawn. The poet is by contrast like the
mathematician, who constructs those relations apriori, in pure
perception, and expresses them not as they are actually contained in the
figure as drawn, but as they are in the ldea that the drawing is meant
to make sensibly perceptible. - Thus Schiller says:
"That which has never or anywhere been the case,
That alone never ages."i
I must even, with respect to cognizance ofthe essence ofhumanity,
concede a greater value to biographies, preeminently autobiographies,
than to history proper, at least at it is usually treated. For one thing, the
data can be more accurately and complete1y synthesized in the former
than in the latter case; for another, in history proper it is not so much
human beings as peoples and armies that are engaged in the action, and
those individuals who do enter the scene make their appearance at so
great a distance, with so much surrounding thern and such a great
entourage, and cloaked in addition in stiff gannents of state or heavy,
inflexible armor, that it proves truly difficult to see human movement
behind it all. By contrast, a true portrayal of the life of individuals,
within some narrow sphere, shows the manner of action of human
beings in all its nuances and forms, the excellence, virtue, even the
saintliness of particular individuals, the perversity, wretchedness, guile
of most, the profligacy of many. In such matters it is indeed wholly
indifferent, in the only respect that is in question here, narnely,
regarding the inner significance of that which is making its appearance,
292 whether the objects around which the action revolves are, relatively
considered, trivial or mornentous, farmhouses or kingdoms. For all of

irAn die Freunde ("Ta Friends"). The reference to Schiller and the quotation
added in q
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 297

these things, without significance in themselves, acquire significance

only by virtue of the fact, and to the extent, that the will is moved by
them: motives have significance only through their relation to will; by
contrast, their status as things in relation to other such things does not
enter consideration at all. Just as a circle with a diameter of an inch and
one with a diameter of 40 million miles have fully the same geometrical
properties, so the events and history of a village and those of a kingdom
are in their essence the same; and one can study and leam about
humanity in the one as much as in the other. 61 One is also wrong to
suppose that autobiographies are fuH of deception and dissimulation.
Rather, lying (although possible everywhere) is perhaps harder there
than anywhere else. Dissimulation is easiest in a mere conversation. 1t
is in fact, as paradoxical as it sounds, even fundamentally more difficult
in a letter, because here aperson, left on his own, looks within hirnself
and not without, finds it difficult to make contact with matters that are
foreign and remote, and lacks any evident measure of his impression on
the other party. The other party to the contrary, with composure, in a
frame ofmind different from the writer's, peruses the letter, goes over
it again and reads it at various times, and thus easily discovers concealed
intentions. One also comes most easily to know an author as a human
being from his book, because all those conditions are more strongly and
persistently effectual here. And to dissimulate in an autobiography is so
hard that there is perhaps not a single one that is not on the whole truer
than any other written history. The person who writes his life story
surveys it as a whole and in the large, particulars grow small, that
which is near grows remote, that which is remote in turn draws near,
perspectives contract. He sits for confession before hirnself, and he
has sat voluntarily. A lying spirit cannot so easily take hold ofhim here.
For within every person also lies an inclination toward truth, which
must in the first place be overcome with every lie, and which has in
this particular case assumed an uncommonly powerful position. The
relation between biography and the history of peoples can be made
perceptible by the following comparison. History shows us humanity in
the way that a view from a tall mountain shows us nature: we see many 293
things at once, broad stretches, grand masses, but nothing becomes
distinct or cognizable with respect to the whole of its real essence. By
contrast, depiction of the life of individuals shows us human beings in
the way we are cognizant of nature when we are wandering among its
trees, plants, cliffs, and waters. But just as through landscape painting,
where the artist lets us look into nature through his eyes, our cognizance
of its Ideas and the state of will-Iess, pure cognition that it requires are
considerably facilitated, so with respect to depiction of the Ideas that
 298 Third Book. The World as Presentation

we can seek in history and biography, the art of poetry has a very great
advantage over both. For here too the genius holds the clarifying mirror
before us, in which everything essential and significant confronts us,
brought together and set in the brightest light, while contingent and
extraneous elements are removed. t
Now depicting the ldea ofhumanity, which is the task ofthe poet,
can either be accomplished in such a way that the one who is depicted
is also simultaneously the one who is doing the depicting - this occurs
in lyric poetry, in true song, where the poet is only perceiving and
describing62 his own state in a lively manner, whereby, on account of
its object, a certain subjectivity is essential to this genre - or, to the
contrary, the one who is to be depicted is entirely distinct from the one
doing the depicting, as is the case in all the other genres, where the
one doing the depicting is more or less concealed behind that which is
depicted, and in the end entirely disappears. In the romance, the one
doing the depicting still to some extent expresses his own state, through
the tone and manner of the whole work. Much more objective than
song, there is thus something still subjective about it, which further
disappears in the idyll, still further in the novel, almost entirely in the
true epic, and finally down to its last trace in drama, which is the most
objective and in more than one respect most perfect genre of poetry, as
weH as the most difficult. The lyrical genre is just for that reason the
easiest, and if art is otherwise only apossession of the so rare and
genuine genius, even a person who is not on the whole particularly
294 outstanding63 can, when it happens that through powerful extemal arousal
some inspiration heightens his spiritual forces, produce a beautiful
song; for what this requires is only a lively perception of one's own
state in the moment of arousal. This is proven by the number of songs
by individuals who have remained otherwise unknown, particularly the
German folk songs of which we possess a superb collection in the
Wunderhorn,i and by as innumerably many love songs and other folk
songs in all languages. 64 For capturing the mood of the moment and
embodying it in song is the entire accomplishment of this poetical
genre. Nonetheless, in the lyric poetry of genuine poets, an image is
formed of the inner being of humanity as a whole, and everything that

tOn this, see eh. 38 ofthe seeond volume.

i[Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Boy's Magie Horn"), a eolleetion ofsongs
published by Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Aehim von Arnim between 1805
and 1808, supposedly alJ of them authentie Gennan folk songs of eonsiderable
date.]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 299

millions of past, present, future human beings have feit and will fee] -
in the same, because constantly recurring, situations - finds therein its
corresponding expression. Because those situations endure through their
constant recurrence, just like humanity itself, and always summon the
same feelings, the lyric productions of genuine poets remain true,
effectual, and fresh throughout millennia. The poet is, after all, man in
general: all that has ever moved a human heart and that human nature
has in any situation brought forth from itself, that which anywhere
dwells or is hatched in a human breast - this is the poet's subject and
material, and along with it aH the rest of nature. Therefore, the poet can
sing of sensuous pleasure as weH as the mystical, be an Anacreon or an
Angelus Silesius, write tragedies or comedies, portray a sublime or a
common disposition, in whatever way is suitable to mood and calling.
Accordingly, no one may prescribe to the poet that he be noble and
sublime, moral, pious, Christian, or this or that, stilliess rebuke him for
being this and not that. He is the mirror of humanity and brings to its
consciousness that which it feels and does.
If we now more closely consider the essence of song proper, and
take as our examples specimens that are both excellent and pure, not
those that in fact approach some other genre, such as the romance, the
elegy, the hymn, the epigram, etc., then we will find that the peculiar
essence of song in the narrowest sense is as follows. - It is the subject 295
ofwill, Le., one's own willing, that fills the consciousness ofthe singer,
often as a released, satisfied willing (pleasure), yet surely more often
as impeded willing (sorrow), always as emotion, passion, astate of the
spirit in movement. i Besides this and together with it, however, through
the sight of nature surrounding hirn, the singer becomes conscious of
hirnself as subject of pure will-less cognition, whose unshakeable,
blessed repose now enters into contrast with the press of ever limited,
ever still needy willing. The sensation of this contrast, of this interplay, is
reaHy what expresses itself in the song as a whole and what constitutes
the lyric state in general. In the latter, pure cognition comes to US, as it
were, to redeem us from will and its pressing. We follow it, yet only for
moments: ever again, willing, recollection of our personal goals, tears
us from the repose of contemplation; but ever in turn we are lured away
from willing by the next occasion of a beautiful surrounding in which
pure will-less cognizance is made available to uso For this reason, there
interpenetrate in song and in the lyric state of mind, wondrously inter-
mixed, willing (personal interest in purposes) and pure perception of

i[bewegter GemütszustandJ
 300 Third Book. The World as Presentation

the surroundings made available to uso Cross-referencesi are sought out

and imagined. The subjective state ofmind, the affected state ofwill,
imparts a coloring to the perceived surroundings and the latter in turn,
in a reflection/i to the former; of the whole of this so mixed and divided
state of the spirit, genuine song is the reproduction.
For an example to facilitate comprehension ofthis abstract analysis
of astate most remote from all abstraction, one can turn to any of the
immortal songs of Goethe. As particularly distincdy relevant I will
recommendjust a few: "The Shepherd's Lament," "We1come and Fare-
weH," "To the Moon," "On the Lake," "Autumn Feelings," and the true
songs that are to be found in the Wunderhorn are also superb examples,
quite especially that which begins "0 Bremen, I must now leave you."
- As a comic, accurately striking parody of the characteristically lyrical,
a song by VOSS iii seems to me noteworthy, in which he depicts the
sensation of a drunken roofer falling from a tower, who makes the
observation while falling - most alien to his situation, thus pertaining to
296 cognizance free of willing - that the tower c10ck is just now reading half
past eleven.
Whoever shares with me the view of the lyric state that has been
set forth will also concede that it is really a perceptual and poetic
recognition of the proposition established in my treatise on the Prin-
ciple of Sufficient Ground, and already mentioned in the present
work, that the identity of the subject of cognition with that of willing
can be called the mirac1e xar' ll;oZrlV.iv So the poetic effect of song
rl~ally rests in the end on the truth of that proposition. 65 - In the
course of one's life the two subjects, or to put it in popular terms,
head and heart, move ever further apart: one ever more separates his
subjective sensations from his objective cognizance. In the child the
two are still entirely fused: it is hardly able to distinguish itself from
its surroundings, it is blended with them. In the youth, all perception
immediately generates sensation and mood,v indeed intermingles with
the latter, as Byron most beautifully expresses it:
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me

tBeziehungen zwischen Beiden]

"[im Reflex]
iii [J ohann Heinrich V oss (1 751-1 826)]
iV["the miracle par excellence"; cf. § 18.]
V[wirkt ... zunächst Empfindung und Stimmung]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 301

High mountains are a feeling. i

Just for this reason, the youth so strongly c1ings to the perceptual
exterior ofthings; just for this reason, he is suited only for lyric poetry,
and only the man for dramatic poetry. One can imagine old men at
most as epic poets, like Ossian, Homer; for storyteHing is part of the
character of old men.
In the more objective varieties of literary writing, particularly in
the novel, epic, and drama, the purpose in question, revelation of the
ldea ofhumanity, is particularly achieved by two means: by an accurate
and profoundly conceived depiction of significant characters, and by the
invention of significant situations in which they unfold. For just as it is
ii
the task of the chemist not only to display simple substances and their
main compounds in their pure and authentic state, but to expose them to
the influence of reagents as weH, to render their peculiar characters
distinctly and strikingly evident, it is likewise the task of the literary 297
writer not only, like nature itself, to bring significant characters forth in
true and faithful fashion, but that we may come to know them, he must
bring them into the sorts of situations in which their peculiar features are
completely unfolded and distinctly displayed in sharp contours; this is
why those situations are caHed "significant." In actual life and in
history, chance only seldom brings us situations with this property,
and they stand there singly, lost, and covered over with a mass of
insignificance. The thoroughgoing significance of situations should do
just as much to distinguish the novel, the epic, the drama from actual
life as the combination and selection of significant characters. In both,
however, strictest truth is an indispensable condition of their effective-
ness, and lack of unity in characters, self-contradiction in the latter, or
contradiction with respect to the essence of humanity in general, as
also impossibility in events or improbability approaching it,66 even if
merely in secondary circumstances, are just as offensive in poetry as
badly drawn figures or false perspective or mi stakes with illumination
in painting. For we demand there as here the faithful mirror of life, of
humanity, of the world, only c1arified by the depiction and rendered
significant by the composition. Since there is only one purpose for all
the arts, the displaying of Ideas, and the essential difference among
them only lies in the level of objectification ofthe Ideas to be displayed,
in accordance with which the medium of the display is in turn determined,

i[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage IIl, 72]

ii[Stojfe]
 302 Third Book. The World as Presentation

even arts that are the most remote from one another ean be mutually
illuminating when they are brought into eomparison. Thus, for example,
fully to apprehend the ldeas that express themselves in water, it is not
sufficient to observe it in resting pools or in evenly flowing streams;
rather, its ldeas are entirely unfolded only when water makes it appear-
ance under all the eircumstances and obstacles that, in their effeet upon
it, provide occasion for a full expression of all its properties. That is
why we find it beautiful when it plummets, rushes, foams, then leaps
again to the heights, or when it dissipates into spray in its fall or, fmally,
compelled by artifice, strives upward in a stream. Thus displaying itself
298 variously under various circumstances, it yet ever faithfully asserts its
character: it is just as natural to it to spurt upwards as to rest flat as a
mirror; it is equally ready for the one or the other as soon as the
circumstance arises. What the artist of water-conduetion accomplishes
with fluid matter, then, the arehiteet aceomplishes with rigid matter, and
epic or dramatie poets do just the same with the Idea of humanity. The
unfolding and clarifying of the Idea that is expressing itself in the
subjeet of any art, of the will that is being objeetified on any level, is
the common purpose of all the arts. Human life as it usually shows itself
in aetual reality is like water in pools and rivers. But in the epie, novel,
and tragedy, selected eharacters are transposed into circumstances in
whieh all their peeuliar features are unfolded, where the depths of the
human spiriti are opened up and made visible in exeeptional and signifi-
cant aetions. Thus the literary arts objeetify the ldea of humanity, a
special property of whieh is to display itself in highly individual
eharaeters.
Tragedy is to be viewed as the pinnacle of the literary arts, with
respect to the magnitude of its effeet as weIl as the diffieulty of its
aeeomplishment, and it is reeognized for this. It is most signifieant for
the whole of all our eonsiderations, and to be borne weIl in mind, that
the purpose of this highest poetie aecomplishment is depiction of the
frightful side of life, that what is here brought before us are nameless
pain, the misery of humanity, the triumph of malice~. the moeking
dominion of chance, and the hopeless fall of the righteous ll and innocent;
for herein lies a signifieant hint as to the character of the world and of
existence. 67 It is the conflict of will with itself that here, on the highest
level ofits objectivization, most completely unfolded, comes frighten-
ingly to the fore. It is made visible in the sutfering ofhumanity, whieh is

tGemüt]
itFall der Gerechten. Sometimes gerecht is "just," sometimes "righteous."]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 303

here brought forth on the one hand by chance and error appearing as
rulers of the world, and by their wiles to the point of a semblance of
deliberate purpose, personified as Fate; on the other hand, it proceeds
from humanity itself, through the cross-purposes of willful endeavor on
the part of individuals, through the malice and perverseness of most of
them. It is one and the same will that lives and makes it appearance in 299
all of them, but whose phenomena do mutual battle and are mutually
lacerated. In this individual it comes powerfully to the fore, in that one
more weakly, here more, there less, brought to reflection and mitigated
by the light of cognizance until fmally, in individual cases, purified and
heightened by suffering itself, this cognizance reaches the point where
the phenomenon, the veil of Maya, no longer deceives it, the form
pertaining to the phenomenon, the principium individuationis, is pene-
trated by it, the egoism resting on the latter by that very fact dies out;
thereby, one's previously so powerful motives lose their force, and in
their place completei cognizance of the essence of the world, working as
a quieter of the will, brings forth resignation, abandonment not merely
of life but of the entire will to life itself. Thus we see in tragedy the
most noble individuals in the end, after lengthy battle and suffering,
renouncing forever the purposes they had so intensely pursued to that
point, and all the enjoyments of life, or willingly and joyfully abandon-
ing life itself: thus Calderon's resolute prince;l1 thus Gretchen in Faust;
thus Hamlet, whom his Horatio would willingly follow, but who bids
the latter to stay and breathe on in pain for a while in this harsh world,
that he may shed light on Hamlet's fate and cleanse his memory - Thus
too the Maid of Orleans, the Bride of Messina: iii all of them die puri-
fied by suffering, Le., after the will to liveiv has first died out in them.
In Voltaire's Mohammed, it is even literally pronounced in the final
words that the dying Palmira cries out to Mohammed: "The world is for
tyrants: live on!"
By contrast, the demand for so-called poetic justicev rests on a
complete misunderstanding of the essence of tragedy, indeed even of
the essence of the world. In all of its banality, that demand makes an
arrogant appearance in the individual critiques of Shakespeare's plays

l vollkommene]
ii(Pedro Calder6n de la Barca, EI principe constante (1629)]
lII[Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Die Braut von Messina]
IV[ Wille zu leben. By contrast, J translate Wille zum Leben throughout as "will
for life."]
V[ Gerechtigkeit]
 304 Third Book. The World as Presentation

that Dr. Samuel Johnson has provided, quite naively complaining of

their thoroughgoing neglect of it. The neglect, to be sure, is there. For
of what were the Ophelias, the Desdemonas, the Cordelias guilty? -
But only the banal, optimistic, protestant-rationalistic, or strictly speak-
ing Jewish view of the world will make a demand for poetic justice, and
300 in satisfying it find its own. The true sense of tragedy is the deeper
insight that what the hero atones for is not his own particular sins, but
original sin, i.e., the guilt of existence itself:
Pues el delito mayor
Dei hombre es haber nacido.
(For the greatest guilt ofman
Is that he has been born.)
As Calderon straightforwardly pronounces it. i
Bearing more closely on tragedy's mode of treatment, I would
allow myself only one comment. Depiction of a great misfortune is all
that is essential to tragedy. The many paths, however, by which this is
aecomplished by the writer can be subsumed under the concepts of three
species. Namely, it can happen through the extraordinary malice of the
character who is the author of the misfortune, to the point of bordering
on the extreme limits ofpossibility: examples ofthis species are Richard
III, Iago in Othello, Shylock in The Merchant 0/ Venice, Franz Moor,ii
Euripides' Phaedra, Creon in Antigone,68 and the like. It can also happen
through blind fate, i.e., chance or error: of this species, a true paradigm
is Sophocles' Oedipus the King or the Thrachinian Women,69 and in
general most of the tragedies of the ancients belong here; modem
examples include Romeo and Juliet, Voltaire's Tancred, The Bride 0/
Messina. Finally, the misfortune can also be brought about merely
through interpersonal situations, through relationships, so that there is
no need for some monstrous error, nor for some unheard-of coincidence,
nor for a character approaching the limits of humanity in his evil.
Rather, morally ordinary characters, in circumstances that frequently
occur, are placed in such relationships that their situation compels
them, well-knowing and well-seeing, to inflict the greatest disaster on
one another, without the wrong thereby lying entirely on either side
atone. This last species seems to me far preferable to the other two. For
it shows us the greatest misfortune not as an exception, not as

i[La vida es sueiio (Life is a Dream [1635]) 1, 2. This paragraph added in C.

The parenthetical translation is my translation ofSchopenhauer's German.]
ii[In Schiller's Die Räuber (The Highwaymen)]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 305

something brought about by rare circumstances or monstrous characters,

but as something proceeding easily and of itself from the actions and
characters of human beings, almost as essential to them, and just by 301
that fact brings it frighteningly near to USo And if in the other two
species we get a glimpse of monstrous fate and horrific malice as
terrifying powers, but only threatening at a great distance from us, from
which we ourselves ought surely to be able to escape without flight into
renunciation, the last variety shows us those powers, destructive of
happiness and life, in such a way that their path stands open even unto
us at any moment, and where the greatest suffering is brought about by
entanglements that could in their essentials also be assumed by our fate,
and by acts that we are perhaps also capable of committing and thus
could not complain of injustice; then we feel with a shudder as if we
were already in the midst of hell. Success in this last species, however,
poses the greatest difficulty, since here one has to produce the greatest
effects with the least deployment of means and moving causes, merely
through their position and distribution; therefore, in even many of the
best tragedies this difficulty is evaded. As a perfect paradigm of this
species, however, there is a play to be cited that is in other respects far
surpassed by several others by the same great master: it is Ctavigo. i
Harntet belongs here to a certain extent, namely, when one attends
merely to his relationship with Laertes and with Ophelia; Wallenstein ii
also enjoys this preeminence; Faust is entirely of this sort, if one
considers merely the events involving Gretchen and her brother as the
main action;70 likewise with Corneille's Le Cid, except that it lacks the
tragic outcome such as is, by contrast, found in the analogous relation-
ship between Max and Thekla. t

§ 52
[Tbe Special Case oJ Music]
Having then considered in the preceding all the fine arts in the
generality that is appropriate to our standpoint, beginning with the fme
art of architecture, whose purpose as such is to render distinct the
objectification of will on the lowest level of its visibility, where it
shows itself as dull, incognizant striving of masses in conformity to 302
law, and yet already reveals its internal division and battle, namely,
between gravity and rigidity - and concluding our consideration with

i[By Goethe]
ii[By Schiller]
tOn this, see eh. 37 ofthe seeond volume. [Max und Thekla: in Wallenstein.]
 306 Third Book. The World as Presentation

tragedy, which, at the highest level ofthe objectification ofwill, makes

precisely that internal dis cord evident with frightful magnitude and
distinctness - we [md, nonetheless, that one of the fine arts has remained,
and has had to remain, excluded from our consideration, since, in the
systematic context of our account, there was no suitable place at all for
it: it is music. It stands entirely apart from all the others. We do not see
in it the copying, replicating of any Ideas pertaining to beings in the
world. Nonetheless, it is so grand and altogether splendid an art, has so
powerful an effect on a person's innermost being, is there so entirely
and so deeply understood by one as a completely general language,
whose distinctness surpasses even that of the perceptual world itself,
that we certainly have more to seek in it than an exercitium arith-
meticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi, which is how Leibniz
regarded it,t and as he was nonetheless quite right in doing insofar as
he was only considering its immediate and external significance, its
shell. Were it nothing beyond that, however, then the satisfaction it
provides 71 would have to be like that which we feel upon correct1y
solving some problem with calculations, and could not be that inner
pleasure with which we see a voice given to the deepest interior of our
essence. From our standpoint, therefore,72 with our eye on the aesthetic
effect, we have to attribute a much more serious and deeper signifi-
cance to music, referring to the innermost essence of the world and of
ourselves, with respect to which the nurnerical relations into which it
can be resolved stand not as that which is signified but as, in the first
instance, the sign. That it must in some sense relate to the world as a
depiction to that which is depicted, as a copy to the original, we can
infer on the basis of an analogy with the other arts, all of which have
this character, and with whose effect upon us that of music is on the
whole of the same kind, only stronger, quicker, more neeessary, more
303 infallible. Its relation as a eopy to the world must also be a most inner
one, infinitely true and aeeurately hitting its mark, because it is under-
stood at onee by everyone and displays a certain infallibility by virtue
of the reducibility of its form to entire1y determinate, numerieally
expressible ruIes, from whieh it can in no way deviate without entirely
eeasing to be music. - Nonetheless, this point of eomparison between
musie and the world, the respeet in which the former stands to the

t["an unconscious arithmetical activity in which the mind is unaware that it

is counting"] Leibniz, Epistolae, ed. Kortholt, letter 154. [Letter to Christian
Goldbach of April 17, 1712, contained in the first volume of Leibniz. Epistolae
ad diversos. published by Christian G. W. Kortholt between 1734 and 1742.]
 The Platonie Idea: The Object of Art 307

latter in the relation of imitation or replication, lies most deeply con-

cealed. Music has been practiced throughout all time without anyone
being able to account for it: content to understand it in an immediate
way, we have foregone any abstract comprehension of this immediate
understanding itself.
Having given my spirit entirely over to the impression of the art
of tones in its manifold forms, and then returned to reflection and to the
course of my thoughts set forth in the present work, an insight came to
me regarding its inner essence and, as it was necessary to presuppose
by analogy, regarding its copy-relation to the world. This is indeed
utterly sufficient for me personally and satisfactory with respect to my
inquiry, and will surely be just as evident to anyone who has followed
me so far and agreed with my view of the world. But I recognize that it
is in the essence of things impossible to prove this insight, since it
assumes and lays down as fact a relationship of music, as a presentation,
to that which can in its essence never be a presentation, and would have
music be viewed as a copy of an original that can never itself be
immediately presented. 73 I can, for this reason, do no more, here at the
conclusion of this third Book devoted mainly to a consideration of the
arts, than expound what is to me a satisfactory insight regarding the
marvelous art of tones, and must place acceptance or rejection of my
view at the mercy of the way in which the reader is affected on the one
hand by music, on the other hand by the entire and single thought
communicated by me in this work. Beyond this, I take it to be necessary,
for the possibility of genuine conviction in agreement with the account
of the significance of music to be given here, that one listen often to
music with steady reflection upon the latter, and it is in turn required 304
for this that one already be wen familiar with the entirety of the thought
set forth in that account.
Adequate objectification ofwill is to be found in (platonic)74 Ideas.
Arousing cognizance of the latter through display of individual things
(for this is what works of art themselves always are) - which is only
possible given a corresponding alteration in the cognizant subject - is
the purpose of all the other arts. They all thus objectify will only in a
mediated way, namely, by means of Ideas. And since our world is
nothing other than the phenomenon of Ideas in the form of multiplicity,i
by means of their entry into the principium individuationis (the form
belonging to the sort of cognition possible for individuals as such), it
follows that music, since it bypasses Ideas, is also entirely independent

i[die Erscheinung der Ideen in der Vielheit]

 308 Third Book. The World as Presentation

of the phenomenali world, completely ignores it, could even to a certain

extent exist if the world were not there. This cannot be said of the other
alts. In other words, music is just as immediate an objectification and
image of will as a whole as the world itself is, indeed just as much as
the Ideas whose multiplied phenomenon constitutes the world of
individual things. Thus music is in no way, like the other arts, an image
of Ideas, but an image of the very will of wh ich Ideas are also the
objectivization. Just for this reason, the effect of music is so very much
more powernd and penetrating than that of the other arts. For the latter
speak only of shadows; it, rather, speaks of the essence of thingS. 75
Since it is in any case the same will that is objectified both in Ideas and
in music, only in each of the two in entirely different manners, there
must of course not be any sort of immediate similarity, but still a paral-
lelism, an analogy between music and the Ideas of which the visible
world is the multiple and incomplete phenomenon. Demonstration of
this analogy will serve as an elucidation facilitating understanding of
this account, made difficult by the obscurity of its subject matter.
In the deepest tones of the harmony, in the basso continuo, I
recognize the lowest levels of the objectification of will, of inorganic
nature, of the mass of the planet. As is weH known, aH the upper
tones, freely moving and more quickly fading, are to be viewed as
305 having arisen through secondary vibrations of the deep keynote, with
whose resonance they always lightly co-resonate, and it is a law of
harmony that, along with a bass note, only those upper tones should be
sounded that actually sound of themse1ves along with it (their sons
harmoniquesii through secondary vibrations. This is analogous, then,
to the fact that the totality ofbodies and the organization ofnature must
be viewed as having arisen through a step-by-step development out of
the mass of the planet: the latter is as much their bearer as their source;
and the upper tones bear the same relation to the basso continuo.
There is a limit to the depth at which tones will still be audible.
This corresponds to the fact that no matter is perceptible without form
and quality, i.e., without the manifestation of same ultimately inexpli-
cable force in which precisely an ldea is expressing itself, and more
generally the fact that no matter can be entirely without will. Thus just
as from a tone as such a certain degree of pitch is inseparable, so a
certain degree of expression of will is inseparable from matter. - The
basso continuo is thus for us in the harmony what inorganic nature is in

terscheinenden]
ii[their "harmonics"]
 The Platonic ldea: The Object of Art 309

the world, the emdest mass upon whieh all things rest and from which
all things rise and develop. - Then further, in the totality of the voices
ofthe ripieno i producing the harmony, between the bass and the leading
voice performing the melody, I recognize the total sequence of levels of
the ldeas in which will is objectified. Those standing nearer to the bass
are the lower of these levels, bodies that are still inorganic but already
expressing themselves in a multiplicity of ways; those lying higher
represent the plant and animal worlds to me.
The particular intervals of the scale are parallel to the partieular
levels of the objeetifieation of will, to the particular species in nature.
Deviation from arithmetical exactness in an interval through any sort of
tempering, or produced by the selection ofkey, is analogous to individ-
uals deviating from the type of their species. lndeed, impure discords,
which yield no particular interval, may be compared to the monstrously
malformed offspring of animals of two species, or of a human being and
an animal.
Now all of the bass and ripieno voices that constitute the harmony
lack that interconnected progression found only in the upper voice that
performs the melody, which alone also moves quickly and freely in 306
modulations and runs, while all of the former have only a slower move-
ment, without any independent interconnection within eaeh of them.
Most ponderous in its movement is the deep bass, representative of the
emdest mass: its rises and falls occur only in large intervals, in thirds,
quarters, fifths, never by a single tone except for displaced bass notes in
double eounterpoint. This slow movement is also physieally76 essential
to it: a quick mn or trill in the lower register is not even imaginable.
The upper voices of the ripieno, whieh parallel the animal world, move
more quickly, although still without melodie interconnection and mean-
ingful progression. The disconnected movement and law-govemed
determination of all the voices of the ripieno are analogous to the fact
that, in the whole of the world devoid of reason, from the crystal to the
most completeii animal, no being has a truly interconnected conscious-
ness making its life a meaningful whole, nor does any experience77 a
succession of spiritual developments, none cultivates astate of perfeetion
for itself,iii but they all exist at every point in homogeneity, in accor-
dance with their species, determined by rigid law.

i[The full orchestral ensemble, supported by the basso continuo and support-
ing in turn a sub-set offeatured instruments executing the melody.]
'1vollkommensten]
lll[keines durch Bildung sich vervollkommnet]
 310 Third Book. The World as Presentation

Finally in the melody, in the upper, singing main voice - directing

the whole and, with unfettered volition/ displaying a whole in the
uninterrupted, significant interconnection of a single thought progressing
from beginning to end - I recognize the highest level ofthe objectifica-
tion ofwill, the thoughtfully aware life and striving ofthe human being. ii
Just as the human being alone, because he is gifted with reason, looks
constantly forward and back on the path of his actual reality and of
countless possibilities, and so achieves a thoughtfully aware and thereby
interconnected course of life as a whole, correspondingly, melody alone
has a significant, intentional interconnection from beginning to end. It
consequently relates the history of will as illuminated by thoughtful
awareness, the imprint of which in actual reality is the series of its deeds.
But it says more, it relates the most secret history of will, paints a
picture of every stirring, of every striving, of every movement of will,
of all of that which reason comprehends under the broad and negative
concept of feeling and cannot any further absorb into its abstractions.
307 Therefore too, it has always been said that music is the language of
feeling and passion, just as words are the language of reason. Plato
in fact describes it as ;, TWV Jl&AWV x {VTf[JU; Jl&JllJl17Jl&v17, sv mit;
tra.9r!JlacTlv I/mv I/fvx~ Y/VTfTaI (melodiarum molus, animi affectus
imitans), De leg. VII. iii And Aristotle says: oia n' ol PV9JlOl xal Ta
JlSATf, qxvV~ ooaa, f[9&O'lV 801X& (cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces
sunt, moribus simi/es sese exhibent?), Probl., ch. 19. iv
Now just as the essence of the human being consists in the fact that
his will strives, is satisfied and strives anew, and so on forever, indeed
his happiness and well-being consists only in the fact that passage from
desire to satisfaction and from the latter to new desire moves quickly
forward - since the absence of satisfaction is suffering, that of a new

t mit ungebundener Willkür; added in B.]

ii[ das besonnene Leben und Streben des Menschen]
iii["the movement of melodies, imitating the passions of the soul": loosely
quoted from De legibus (On Laws) 812c, Plato referring there more specifically
to the possibility of "competence to distinguish a good musical imitation of a
soul under the stress of its emotions from a bad" one (tr. A. E. Taylor in
Hamilton and Caims [eds.], Collected Dialogues). The citation added in B, the
Latin translation in c.]
iV["Why do rhythms and tunes, which after all are only voice, resemble
characters ... ?": Problems 920a (tr. E. S. Forster's in Bames [ed.], Comp/ete
Works). Added in C.l
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 311

desire is empty longing, languor, boredom - so is the essence ofmelody,

correspondingly, a constant deviating, digressing from the keynote by a
thousand paths, moving not only to the harmonie intervals, to the third
and the dominant, but to every tone, to the dissonant seventh and the
augmented intervals, but always pursuing an eventual return to the
keynote. On all of these paths the melody expresses the multiform
striving of will, but always also, by eventually finding its way back to a
harmonie interval, and still more to the keynote, expresses its satisfac-
tion. The invention of melody, the exposing of all the deepest secrets of
human willing and feeling, is the work of genius, whose workingi lies
more open to sight here than elsewhere, far from all reflection and
conscious intention, and could be called a kind of inspiration. Concepts
are here, as everywhere in art, unfruitful. The composer reveals the
innermost essence of the world and pronounces the deepest wisdom in
a language his reason does not understand, just as a hypnotized sleep-
walker provides information about things of which he has no concept
while awake. Therefore, in the composer more than in any other artist,
the human being and the artist are entirely separate and distinct. Even
in giving an account of this marvelous art, concepts show their poverty
and their limits. I will nonetheless attempt to pursue our analogy.
Just as quiek passage from desire to satisfaction and from the 308
latter to new desire is happiness and well-being, so quick melodies in
the absence of major digressions are cheerful; slow melodies that lead
into painful dissonances and meander back to the keynote only after
several measures are, by analogy with delayed, impeded satisfaction,
sad. The delay of a new stirring of the will, languor, could have no
other expression than the sustained keynote, the effect of which would
soon be unbearable; very monotonous and inexpressive melodies in fact
approach this. The short, comprehensible phrases of quick dance music
seem to speak only of easily achievable common happiness. By contrast,
the allegro maestoso, with grand phrases, long passages, broad digres-
sions, signifies a grander, nobler striving after a distant goal and its
eventual achievement. The adagio speaks of the suffering that belongs
to grand and noble striving, that which scoms all petty happiness. But
how wonderful is the effect of minor and major! How amazing that the
change of half a tone, the entry of the minor third instead of the major,
at once and inexorably impresses an anxious, painful feeling upon us,
from which the major then just as quickly redeems uso In the minor, the
adagio attains to expression of the greatest pain, becomes a shuddering

tWerk ... Wirken]

 312 Third Book. The World as Presentation

lament. Dance music in the minor seems to signify failure at petty

happiness that one should rather have scorned, seems to speak of the
achievement of some lowly purpose in the face of tedious and annoying
obstacles.
The inexhaustibility ofpossible me10dies corresponds to the inex-
haustibility of nature in the diversity of its individuals, physiognomies,
and walks of life. The passage from one key to an entirely different
one, insofar as it entirely destroys the interconnection with that which
had preceded, is like death insofar as the individual ends with it. But
the will that made its appearance in the individual lives on as before,
making its appearance in other individuals whose consciousness has yet
no interconnection with that of the first.
One should never forget, however, in demonstrating all of the
analogies brought forth, that music has no direct but only a mediated
rdation to them, since it never gives voice to the phenomenon, but only
the inner essence, the in-itself of a11 phenomena, will itself. 78 lt does
309 not, therefore, express this or that individual and particular pleasure,
this or that sorrow, or pain, or outrage, or joy, or merriment, or spiritual
repose, but pleasure itself, sorrow itse(f; pain itse(f, outrage itself, joy
itself, merriment itself; spiritual repose itself, to a certain extent in
abstracto, that which is essential to them apart from anything acces-
sory, thus even apart from their motives. Nonetheless, we completely
understand them in this abstracted quintessence. From this originates
the fact that our imagination is so easily excited by them and then
attempts to give shape to this invisible and yet so lively and mobile
spirit-world, one that speaks to us in so altogether immediate a way, and
to clothe it with flesh and bone, thus to embody it in an analogous
example. This is the origin of song with words and eventually of opera
- the text of which should just for that reason never depart from its
subordinate position and make itself the main concern, with the music a
rnere means for its expression. This would be a major blunder and a
terrible perverseness. For rnusic everywhere expresses only the quintes-
sence of Iife and its events, never the latter themselves, the differenti-
ating elements of which thus never flow into it. Precisely this generality
exclusively peculiar to it, despite its most exact determinateness, gives
it the great value that it enjoys as a panacea for all our sufferings. Thus
when music too greatly seeks to attach itself to words and model itself
on events, it is endeavoring to speak a language that is not its own.
None has kept himself so pure ofthis failing as Rossini. Therefore, his
music so distinctly and purely speaks its own language that it has no
need of words at a11, and therefore also has its full effect when performed
with instruments alone.
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 313

In accordance with all of this we can regard the phenomenal world/

or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same subject
matter, which is thus itselfthe only thing mediating the analogy between
the two, cognizance of which is required in order to see the analogy.
Music is accordingly, when viewed as an expression of the world, a
language with the highest degree of generality, in fact relating to the
generality of concepts much as these to individual things. Its generality
is, however, in no way the empty generality of abstraction, but of an 310
entirely different sort, and is combined with thoroughly distinct determi-
nateness. In this it is like geometrie al figures and numbers, which, as
general forms pertaining to all possible objects of experience and
applicable to all of them apriori, are yet not abstract, but perceptual and
thoroughly determinate. All possible endeavors, excitations, and expres-
sions of will, all those internal human processes that reason throws into
the broad negative concept of feeling, are expressible by the infinitely
many possible melodies, but always within the generality of mere form,
without the substance/9 always only with respect to the in-itself, not
with respect 10 the phenomenon, as it were the innermost soul of the
latter without the body. On the basis of this inner relationship between
music and the true essence of alI things, it is also possible to explain80
the fact that, with the sounding of music suited to some scene, action,
event, surrounding, it seems to open up the latter's most secret meaning
to us and comes forth as the most accurate and distinct commentary
on it. And likewise to explain the fact that, to a person devoting himself
entirely to the impression of a symphony, it is as if he were seeing all
the possible events of life and the world passing by; nonetheless, when
he reflects on it, he can state no similarity between the play of tones and
those things that were passing before his awareness. ü For music, as
stated, differs from all the other arts in that it is not an image of the
phenomenon, or more accurately, of an adequate objectivization of
will, but immediately an image of will itself,81 and thus for all the
physical reality of the world it depicts the metaphysical side, for all
phenomena the thing in itself. One could accordingly just as well call
the world embodied music as embodied will. On this basis it is thus
explicable why music makes it possible for any painting, indeed for
any scene from actuallife and the world, to come to the fore at once in
astate of heightened significance. All the more so, of course, as its
ot
melody is more analogous to the inner spirit 2 the given phenomenon.

tdie erscheinende Welt]

ii[die ihm vorschwebten]
 314 Third Book. The World as Presentation

On this rests the fact that a poem can be set to music as a song, or a
perceptual depiction as pantomime, or the two together as opera. Such
individual scenes from human life, set to the generallanguage of music,
are never bound to nor correspond to it in a thoroughly necessary way;
311 rather, they stand to it only in the relation of an arbitrary example to a
general concept. They depict in terms of the determinateness of actual
reality that which music pronounces in terms of the generality of mere
form. For melodies are to a certain extent, like general concepts, an
abstraction from actual reality. The latter, namely, thus the world of
individual things, provides that which is perceptual, the particular and
individual, the single case, both for the generality of concepts and the
generality of melodies; these two types of generality, however, are in a
certain respect opposed to one another. While concepts are forms that
are only gotten by abstraction from perception, as it were contain the
stripped-off outer shell of things, thus are in an entirely strict sense
abstracta, music by contrast gives us the innermost core antecedent to
aU its particular forms, or the heart of things. This relationship can be
quite weH expressed in the language of the scholastics, saying that
concepts are universalia post rem, while music gives us universalia
ante rem, and actual reality gives us universalia in re. i Other equally
arbitrary examples of the generality expressed in it83 could correspond
to the same degree with the general sense of a melody to which some
poem has been set. Thus the same composition fits many verses, and
thus we have vaudeville. ii But that any relation at all is possible between
a composition and a perceptual depiction rests, as stated, on the fact
that the two are only entirely different express ions of the same inner
essence of the world. If, then, such a relation is actually at hand in an
individual case, thus the composer has been able to pronounce the
stirrings of will constituting the core of some event in the general
language ofmusic, then a song's melody, an opera's music is expressive.
The analogy between the two that the composer has discovered must,
however, have proceeded from immediate cognizance of the essence of
the world, unbeknownst to his reason, and cannot be imitation mediated
by conscious intention, through concepts. Otherwise, music does not
expresses the inner essence, will itself, but only irnitatesiii its phenomenon

i[universals "after the fact (thing, reality)," "before the fact," "in the fact";
"For melodies ... in re" added in B.]
ii[daher auch das Vaudeville ("street songs")]
111 [ nachahmt]
 The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art 315
i
in an unsatisfactory way, as is done by all strictly repn::sentational
music, e.g., The Seasons by Haydn, and his Creation at those many
places where phenomena of the perceptual world are directiy imitated; 312
and likewise in all battle pieces, which is altogether objectionable.
The inexpressibly inner elementii in all music, by virtue of which
it is to us in its passage like a so entirely familiar and yet eternally
distant paradise, so entirely intelligible and yet so inexplicable, rests
on the fact that it reproduces all the stirrings of our innermost essence,
but entirely apart from actual reality and far from its torments. Like-
wise,84 its essential seriousness, which entirely excludes the humorous
from its immediately proper domain, is to be explained by the fact that
its object is not presentations, with respect to which alone deception
and humorousness are possible; rather, its object is immediately will,
and this is in its essence the most serious thing of all, as that upon which
all things depend. 85 - How contentful and significant its language is,
attest even the repetition signs, along with the da capo,iii which would
be unbearable in works in the language of words but are by contrast
most to the purpose and beneficial in music; for to comprehend it
entirely, one has to hear it twice.
Having then endeavored, in this entire account of music, to make
explicit the fact that it pronounces in a highly general language the
inner essence, the in-itself of the world - which, with reference to its
most distinct manifestation, we are thinking in terms of the concept of
will - in a unique material, namely, mere tones, and with the greatest
determinateness and truth; and given that philosophy is, in accordance
with my view and endeavor, nothing other than a complete and accurate
replication and pronouncing of the essence of the world in most general
concepts (since only in such terms is an everywhere sufficient and
applicable survey of its entire essence possible) - then anyone who has
followed me and entered into my way of thinking will not find it so
very paradoxical if I say that, were one to succeed in providing a
perfect1y accurate, complete and detailed explanation of music, thus a
detailed conceptual replication of that which it expresses, this would at
once also be a satisfactory conceptual replication and explanation of the
world, or something entirely synonymous with one, thus would be true
philosophy; or if as a consequence, in terms of our view of music, 313
higher than Leibniz's, whose above-cited pronouncement is entirely

i[nachbildende]
ii[Das unausprechlich Innige]
iii["from the beginning"]
316 Third Book. The World as Presentation

accurate from a more lowly standpoint, I say that we can parody it in

the following way: Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nesci-
entis se philosophari animi. i For scire, knowledge, means to have
everywhere set things down in abstract concepts. But since, further,
by virtue of the manifold confirmation of the truth of the Leibnizian
pronouncement, music is, apart from its aesthetic or inner significance,
and regarded merely extemally and pure1y empirically, nothing other
than the means for an immediate apprehension in concreto of larger
numbers and the more complex numeri ca1 relations - of which we
would otherwise be able to take cognizance only indirectly, by appre-
hending them in terms of concepts - we can now form a concept that
unifies these two so distinct and yet accurate views of music, name1y,
that of the possibility of a philosophy of numbers such as were those of
Pythagoras and also of the Chinese in the / Ching, and we can then in
this sense interpret the saying of the Pythagoreans that was cited by
Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math., Bk. VII): rij) apI8j.1ij) öd rd 7ravr'
87r80IX&V (numero cuncta assimilantur).ii And if we finally bring this
view into relation with oUf interpretation of harmony and melody
above, we will find a mere moral philosophy without an explanation of
nature, such as Socrates would introduce, entirely analogous to melody
without harmony, which Rousseau would exclusively have; and in
contrast to this, a mere physics and metaphysics without ethics will
correspond to mere harmony without melody.
May it be granted me to attach to these incidental considerations
some still further comments bearing on the analogy between music and
the phenomenal world. We found in the previous Book that the highest
le:vel of the objectification of will, the human being, could not make its
appearance alone and out of context, but presupposed the levels standing
beneath it, and these in turn those deeper; in just the same way music,
which, just like the world, irnmediately objectifies will, is only complete
within the full context of harmony.iii The upper, directing voice of the

t'Music is an unconscious metaphysical [in A, "philosophieal"] activity in

which the mind is unaware that it is philosophizing."]
ii["With respect to number all things are alike"; Latin added in C. Currently,
the title Adversus mathematicos - variously translated as "Against the
Mathematicians," "Against the Professors," and "Against the Professors of the
Liberal Studies" - is used only for Books 1-6 of the eleven books formerly
kl10wn under that title, with Books 7-11 titled "Against the Dogmatists." Book
7 is in turn the first of Sextus's two Books "Against the Logicians."]
iii[erst vollkommen in der vollständigen Harmonie]
 The Platonie Idea: The Object of Art 317

melody needs, in order to make its fu11 impression, the aceompaniment

of all the other voiees down to the deepest bass, which is to be viewed
as the origin of them an; the melody even eneroaehes upon the harmony
as an integral part of it, as also the latter upon the former. And just as 314
only so, in the eomplete whole of its voiees, does musie pronounee
what it aims to pronounee, so the one and extra-temporal will finds its
eomplete objeetifieation only within the full eontext of unifieation of
all of the levels revealing its essence in countless degrees of increasing
distinetness.
Most remarkable is also the following analogy. We saw in the
previous book tImt, despite the mutual adaptation of all of the phenomena
of will with respeet to the kinds of things there are, which oeeasions
teleological eonsiderations, an ineradieable eonfliet nonetheless remains
among those phenomena as individuals, is visible on all levels of the
latter, and makes the world into a eonstant battleground for all those
phenomena of one and the same will, whose inner self-eontradietion
thereby beeomes visible. There is even something that also corresponds
to this in musie. Namely, a eompletely pure, harmonie system of tones
is not only physically, but even in faet arithmetically impossible. The
very numbers through whieh tones are expressible eontain irresolvable
irrationalities: no seale is so mueh as thinkable in which every fifth
would relate to the keynote in the ratio of 2 to 3, every major third in
the ratio of 4 to 5, every minor third in the ratio of 5 to 6, ete. For ifthe
tones are correct in relation to the keynote, they no longer are to one
another, since the fifth, e.g., would have to be the minor third of the
third, ete.; for the notes ofthe seale are comparable to actors who have
sometimes to play this role, sometimes that one. 86 Thus, for this reason,
a eompletely eorrect piece of musie is not even thinkable, let alone
performable, and on account of this all possible music falls short of
complete purity; it can merely coneeal the dissonances essential to it by
distributing them among all of the tones, i.e., through tempering. On
this, one should eonsult Chladni's Acoustics, § 30, and bis BriefOverview
ofthe Theory ofVibration and Sound, p. 12.i ,t
I would gladly add still more regarding how music is pereeived,ii
namely, simply and solely in and through time, with the entire excIusion
of space and without the influence of any eognizanee of eausality, and

i[Ernst Chladni, Akustik (1802), Kurze Übersicht der Schall- und Klanglehre
(1827); referenee to the latter added in c.]
tOn this, see eh. 39 ofthe seeond volume.
iifpercipiert wird]
 318 Third Book. The World as Presentation

315 so of the understanding; for tones make an aesthetic impression just by

a1Tecting us, and without our reverting to their causes as in the case of
perception. - I would nonetheless extend these considerations no further,
since I have perhaps already gone into too much detail on a number of
points in this third Book, or concemed myself too much with individual
cases. My purpose made it necessary, however, and one will disapprove
of it all the less when the seldom sufficiently recognized importance
and great value of art is brought to mind, considering that if, in
accordance with our view, the whole of the visible world is only the
objectification, the mirror of will, accompanying it to the point of its
self-cognizance, indeed, as we will soon see, to the possibility of its
redemption - and at the same time considering that, as separately
contemplated, when, being tom from willing, only it alone is allowed to
occupy one's consciousness, the world as presentation is the most
ddightful and the only innocent side of life - then we have to view art
as heightening all of this, as a more complete development of it all,
since it accomplishes in essence, only in a more concentrated way, more
completely, with intention and thoughtful awareness, the very same
thing as the visible world itself, and it may thus be called, in the full
sense ofthe term, the blossom oflife. i Ifthe entire world as presentation
is only the visibility of will, then art is the process of making this
visibility distinct, the carnera obscura that shows us objects more
purely and lets us better survey and apprehend them: the playii within
the play, the stage upon the stage in Harnlet.
The enjoyment of everything beautiful, the consolation that art
affords, the enthusiasm of the artist that allows hirn to forget the
difficulties of life, this one advantage of the genius over others, which
alone compensates for the suffering that has increased in equal measure
with clarity of consciousness, and for desolate loneliness among a race
different in character - all of this rests on the fact that, as will be shown
to us further on, the in-itself of life, will, existence itself, is constant
suffering and on the one hand pitiful, on the other hand terrifying. But
as presentation alone, the same thing purely perceived, or replicated by
art, free from torment, affords us a significant spectacle. iii This purely
316 cognizable side of the world, and its replication in any sort of art, is the
artist's element. Contemplation ofthe spectacle ofwill's objectification
holds hirn captive. He dweIls in it, does not tire of contemplating it and

i[Blüthe des Lebens]

ilSchauspiel]
iii[bedeutsames Schauspiel]
 The PI atonie Idea: The Objeet of Art 319

replicating it in his depictions, and in so doing he himself bears the

costs ofmounting the spectacle i.e., he is indeed himselfthe will that is
thus objectified and remains in constant suffering. This pure, true, and
deep cognizance of the essence of the world now becomes an end in
itself for him: he dwells in it. Therefore it does not become for him, as
we will see in the following Book it does for the saint who has attained
to astate of resignation, a quieter of the will, does not forever, but only
momentarily, redeem hirn from life, and so is still not for him the path
out of the latter, but only for a time a consolation within it - until his
forces, strengthened thereby, finally tired of the game,i come to grips
with harsh reality. We can regard Raphael's Saint Cecilia as a symbol
of this passage. To this harsh reality, then,87 we would now ourselves
turn in the following Book.

tdes Spieles]
This page intentionally left blank
 FOURTHBOOK 317

The World as Will

Second Consideration
WITH THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SELF-COGNIZANCE
AFFIRMATION AND DEl'\TIAL
OF THE WILL FOR LIFE

Tempore quo cognitio simul advenit, amor e medio supersurrexit.

Oupnek'hat, studio Anquetil Duperron, vol.ll, p. 216i

§ 53. 319
[ne Ethical Part ojthis Work not Practical Philosophy-
No "Ought" to be Prescribed _. ne Irrelevante oj History ]
The final part of our considerations promises to be the most
serious, since it concems the actions of human beings, that subject
which concerns everyone immediately, can be foreign or indifferent to
no one, is indeed that to which all else is to be referred, so much in
accord with the nature of a human being that, in any systematic investi-
gation, he will always regard that part of it referring to action as the
upshot of all that it contains, at least so far as the latter interests him,
and therefore dedicate to this part, even if to no other, the most serious
attention.
In the respect in question, to express things in the usual terms, one
would call the upcoming part of our considerations practicaI philosophy,
as opposed to the theoretical philosophy so far treated. In my opinion,
however, all philosophy is always theoretical, in that it is of its essence
always to proceed purely contemplativelyii ooatever the immediate

t'The moment knowledge arrived, love rose up from its midst." As Deussen
and Hübscher note, while the reference to Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-
Duperron's Latin edition (1801-2) ofthe Persian translation ofthe Upanishads is
to the Ätma-Upanishad 3, the passage is apparently an interpolation of the
Persian translators drawn from elsewhere in the Upanishads.]
ii[rein betrachtend zu verhalten]

321
 322 Fourth Book. The World as Will

object of its investigation, and to inquire, not to prescribe. By contrast,

to become practical, to direct action, to transform l character, are old
pretensions that, with matured insight, it should fmally abandon. For
here, where the worth or worthlessness of an existence, where salvation
or damnation is the issue, philosophy's dead concepts do not setde
matters, but rather the innermost essence of the person hirnself: in
Plato's language, the guiding spiriti that directs hirn and has not chosen
hirn, but rather been chosen by hirn, his intelligible character, as Kant
320 expresses it. Virtue cannot be taught, no more than genius; indeed,
concepts are as unfiuitful for it as for art and of use only as tools. We
would thus be just as foolish to expect that our moral systems and
ethics might awaken the virtuous, noble, and saintly as that our aesthetics
might awaken poets, sculptors, and musicians.
Philosophy can never do more than interpret and explain what
exists, than bring to the level of distinct, abstract, rational cognizance
the essence of the world that expresses itself intelligibly to everyone in
concreto, Le., as feeling. 1his, however, in every possible respect and
from every point of view. Just as it was the aim of the preceding three
Books to accomplish this from other points ofview, with the generality
peculiar to philosophy, so i8 human action to be considered in the same
manner in the present Book, which side of the world would surely be
found, as I previously noted, to be the most important of all, not only
when judged subjectively, but objectively as weIl. In this I will remain
utterly faithful to our previous manner of consideration, fmd support in
the preceding exposition as apresupposition, indeed really only develop
now for human action the one thought that is the content of this entire
work, in just the same way that I have for all the other subjects so far,
and thus do my utmost toward the greatest possible completeness in
communicating that thought.
The point of view in question and the announced manner of treat-
ment make it obvious that in this ethical Book no prescriptions, no
doctrine of duties is to be expected. All the less is a general moral
principle to be formulated, as it were a kind of universal recipe for the
production of all the virtues. We will also speak of no "unconditioned
Ought," because such, as is explained in the Appendix, contains a
contradiction, nor of a "law for freedom," which finds itself in the same
situation. We will simply not speak ofOught at all. For that is how you

tDämon. Cf. Apology 40a (pavwcr/ q rou oazpov{ov [mantike he tou

daimoniou, "prophetie voice of a spirit"]); also 31d and 40b, and Xenophon,
Memorabilia 1. J.4, 4.8.3, and 4.8.5.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 323

speak to children and to peoples still in their childhood, but not to those
who have appropriated the entire culture of an age that has attained to
its maturity.i lt is surely a blatant contradiction to call the will free and 321
yet prescribe it laws by which it ought to will: "ought to will"- wooden
iron! It follows from our entire view, however, that will is not only free
but even omnipotent: from it comes not only its action, but also its
world; and just as it is, so appears its action, so appears its world. They
are both its self-cognizance and nothing besides: it determines itself
and just by that fact the both of them; for beyond it is nothing, and they
are it itself. Only thus is it truly autonomous, but from every other
viewpoint heteronomous. ii Our philosophical endeavor can merely
extend to interpreting and explaining human action, and the so diverse,
indeed opposing, maxims whose living expression it is, in its innermost
essence and substance,iii in connection with our considerations so far,
and precisely as we have so far sought to interpret the other phenomena
of the world, to bring their innermost essence to the level of distinct,
abstract cognizance. In this, our philosophy will lay claim to the same
immanence as in the entirety of our considerations so far. It will not, to
the contrary of Kant' s great doctrine, wish to employ the forms pertain-
ing to phenomena, whose general expression is the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, as a vaulting pole by which to fly past the very phenomena
that alone give them meaning, and land in the boundless domain of
empty fictions. Rather, this actual world of whatever is cognizable,
within which we are and that is within us, remains both the material as
well as the bounds of our considerations: that which is so rich in content
that it could not be exhausted by even the deepest inquiry of which the
human spirit is capable. Because, therefore, the actual cognizable world
will no more leave our ethical than our previous considerations lacking
in material and reality, the last thing we will need is to resort to empty,
negative concepts, or to do anything at alllike making ourselves believe

i[Presumably, an ironie referenee to Kant's essay Beantwortung der Frage:

Was ist Aufklärung? (An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
[1784], Ak.8.33ff). Kant's ethies famously rests on the notion of an ''uneondi-
tional ought." The essay in question begins: "Enlightellment is humanity's
emergenee from the state ofits self-imposed immaturity (Unmündigkeit)."]
"[Another implicit eriticism of Kant, for whom the ollly ethical prilleipies
expressive of truly autollomous willillg express an absolute - albeit self-
imposed - "ought": Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Foundation for
the Metaphysics of Morals [1785]), Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of
Practical Reason [1788]).]
iii[ Gehalt]
 324 Fourth Book. The World as Will

we were saying something when, with eyebrows raised, we spoke of

"the Absolute," of "the Infinite," of "the Supersensible," or of whatever
other such bare negations there may be (OVoBV ian, fj ro' rfjr:; au;prfa8OJr:;
ovo/1a, /18'[(1 a/1vOpiir:; imvo{ar:;.- nihil est, nisi negationis nomen, cum
obscura notione. Jul., Or. 5)/ in place of which one could more briefly
322 say Cloud-Cuckoo-Land (v8((Jdoxoxxvyta): ii we will not have a need
to serve up covered empty dishes of this sort.
Finally, here too, just as little as we have so far, will we relate
histories and give them out as philosophy.iii For we are of the opinion
that anyone is still heavens away from philosophical cognizance of the
world if he supposes himself able, be it ever so finely decked out, to
comprehend the essence oE the world historically. But this is the case
whenever, in his view of the essence in itself of the world, we find any
sort of becoming, or of having become, or of being about to become,iv
where any sort of earlier or later has the least bit of meaning, and
consequently, whether explicitly or covertly, a beginning and an endpoint
of the world, along with a path between the two, is sought and found,
and where the philosophizing individual is of course also thoroughly
cognizant of his own position on this path. Such historical philosophiz-
ing provides a cosmogony admitting of several varieties in most cases,
or even a system of emanation, a doctrine of The Fall,v or finaUy, to the
contrary, when driven upon this final path by despair over fruitless
attempts on the former paths, a doctrine of constant becoming, germinat-
ing, originating, coming forth into light from obscurity, from the dark
ground, primaI ground, Unground,vi or whatever such other twaddle,
which is in any case most briefly dispatched with the observation that
an entire etemity, i.e., an infinite time, has elapsed up to the present

t"lt is nothing but the negation of a word, connected with an obscure idea":
Julian, fifth Oration; as noted by Deussen and Hübscher, chapter 2, where it is
applied to neo-Platonic ideas. Quotation added in B, the Latin translation as
usual in c.]
ii[nephelokokkugia]
1Il[Presumably, an allusion to Heget and Schelling.]
iV[Werdenwerden]
V[Abfall: cf. F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophie und Religion (1804).]
Vl[Grund, Urgrund, Ungrund. Another allusion to Schelling; cf. Über das
Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (On the Essence 0/ Human Freedom [1809]).
In the Fourfold Root, § 8, Schopenhauer speculates that Schelling "took the
whole fable from Jakob Böhme's Gründlicher Bericht vom irdischen und him-
mlischen Mysterio [A Thorough Report on the Mystery 0/ Earth and Heaven]."]
 AffIrmation and Denial ofthe Will fOT Life 325

moment, so that everything that can or is supposed to come into being

must already have come into being. Fo? all such historical philosophy,
however elegant its manner, regards time as adetermination of things
in themselves, as if Kant had never existed, and therefore remains with
what Kant calls the phenomenon as opposed to the thing in itself, and
what Plato calls that which becomes, never being, as opposed to that
which has being, never becomes, or finally what is among the Indians
ca1led the web of Maya. It is precisely cognizance so far as it is subject
to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, with which one never attains to
the inner essence of things, but only pursues phenomena ad itifinitum,
moves without end or goal, comparable to a squirrel in a treadmill, until
perhaps finally exhausted, up or down, stands still at any arbitrary 323
point, and would now demand begrudging respect from others for having
done so. The genuine philosophical manner of regarding the world, Le.,
that which makes us cognizant of its inner essence and so leads us
beyond phenomena, is precisely that which does not ask after the
Whence and Whither and Why, but always and everywhere only after
the What of the world, i.e., which regards things not with respect to any
relation, not as becoming and passing away, in short, not in accordance
with one of the four modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground. But
rather, to the contrary, it has for its object what remains after separating
off the entire manner of regard that proceeds in accordance with that
principle, the always selfsame essence of the world that makes its
appearance in all relations but is never itself subject to them, their
Ideas. From such cognizance there proceeds, just like art, so also philos-
ophy, and as we will find in this Book, also that disposition of spiriti
that alone leads to true saintliness and redemption from the world.

§ 54.
[LiJe and Deatb - Tbe Etemal Present - No Individual Survival-
Jlffirmation and Denial qj tbe Will JOl" Lift]
It is hoped that the first three Books will have brought forth
distinct and certain cognizance of the fact that, with the world as
presentation, a mirror has risen for will in which it is cognizant of itself
with increasing degrees of distinctness and completeness, the highest of
which is the human being; the latter's essence, however, obtains its
complete expression only through the interconnected series of its actions,
the self-aware interconnection of which is made possible by reason,
which always permits it to survey the whole in abstracto.

lStimmung des Gemüts I

 326 Fourth Book. The World as Will

The will that, considered purely in itself, is incognizant and only a

blind cease1ess pressing,i such as we see also appearing in inorganic
and vegetable nature and its laws as well as in the vegetative part of our
own life, obtains with the arrival of the world of presentation, developed
for its service, cognizance of its willing and of that which it is willing,
namely, that it is nothing other than this world, this life, precisely as it
stands before it. For this reason we called the phenomenal world its
324 mirror, its objectivization. And since that which the will always wills is
life,just because the latter is nothing more than a display ofthat willing
with respect to presentation, it is all the same and only a pleonasm if,
instead of simply saying "will," we say "will for life."jj
Since will is the thing in itse1f, the inner substanceiii of the world,
that which is essential to it, while life, the visible world, the phenom-
enon, is only the mirror of will, the latter will accompany will as
inseparably as its shadow accompanies a body; and if will exists, so too
life, the world will exist. To the will for life, life 1S thus certain, and so
long as we are filled with the will for life, we cannot be concemed for
our existence, not even at the sigbt of death. We of course see individ-
uals arise and pass away. But the individual is only a phenomenon,
only exists for cognizance caught up in the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, the principium individuationis. With respect to the latter, of
course, the individual receives its life as a gift, proceeds from nothing,
then suffers the loss of that gift througb death and returns to nothing.
But we would regard life precisely in a philosophical manner, i.e., in
accordance with its Ideas, and here we will find that neither will, the
thing in itself in all phenomena, nor the subject of cognition, the spectator
of all phenomena, is in any way touched by birth or death. Birth and
death belong precisely to the phenomenon of will, thus to life, and it is
essential to the latter to be displayed in individuals that arise and pass
away in the form of time, as fleetingly appearing phenomenaiv of that
which knows no time in itself, but must simply be displayed in the
manner in question in order to objectify its true essence. Birth and
death belong in equal manner to life and counterbalance one another as
reciprocal conditions or, if one should happen to find the expression
congenial, as poles of the total phenomenon of life. The wisest of all
mythologies, the Indian, expresses this by giving precisely to the god

i[Drang]
~1 Wille zum Leben1
!"[Gehalt]
iv[auftretende Erscheinungen]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 327

who symbolizes destruction, death (just as Brahma, the most sinful and
most lowly god of Trimurti, symbolizes procreation, origination, and
Vishnu preservation), that is to say, precisely by giving Shiva,3 together
with the necklace of skulls, the phallus as an attribute, the symbol of 325
procreation, which thus enters the scene by balancing out death; thereby
it is indicated that procreation and death are essential correlates that
neutralize and nullify one another.
It was entirely the same disposition that impelled the Greeks and
Romans to embellish their precious sarcophagi precisely as we still see
them, with festivals, dancing, weddings,4hunts, animal combat, baccha-
nals, thus with depictions of the most powerful press of life,i which
they bring before us not only in such entertainments, but in group
debauchery extending even to the point of copulation between satyrs
and goats. The purpose was obviously to direct one's attention most
emphatically from the death of the individual mourned to the immortal
life of nature, and thereby, even if apart from abstract knowledge,
indicate that the whole of nature is the phenomenon and indeed the
fulfil1ment of the will for life. The form pertaining to this phenomenon
is time, space, and causality, by means of these in turn individuation,
with the attendant consequence that individuals have to arise and pass
away; this, however, disturbs the will for life, of whose phenomenon
the individual is only, as it were, a single example or specimen, as little
as the whole of nature is harmed by the death of an individual. For it is
not the latter but the species alone that is of import for nature, and for
whose maintenance it presses with all seriousness, so lavishly concemed
for the species with a huge overabundance of seeds and the great power
of the drive to impregnate. Sy contrast, the individual has and can have
no value for it, since its realm is infinite time, infinite space, and within
these an infinite number of possible individuals. Thus it is constantly
prepared to let go of the individual, which is accordingly not only
exposed to destruction in a thousand-fold manner, through the most
insignificant of chances, but in fact originally destined for it and led to
face it by nature itself, just as soon as it serves the maintenance of the
species. In an entirely innocent manner, nature itselfhereby pronounces
the great truth that only Ideas, not individuals, possess true reality, Le.,
are completeii objectivizations of will. Since, then, the human being is
nature itself, and at the highest degree of its self-consciousness, while 326
nature is only objectified will for life, the person who has comprehended

i[Lebensdrang]
"[vollkommene]
 328 Fourth Book. The World as Will

this point of view and stays with it may indeed and with right console
hirnself over his death and that of his friends, through reflection on the
immortallife ofthe nature that he himselfis. So accordingly is Shiva to
be understood with the phallus, so the ancient sarcophagi with their
images of the most fervent life, calling to those who regard them in a
state oflamentation: Natura non contristatur. i
That procreation and death are to be regarded as belonging to life,
and essential to this phenomenon 01' will, also emerges from the fact
that they are both displayed to us only as more highly potentiatedii
expressions of that of which all the rest of life consists. The latter,
namely, is through and through nothing other than a constant exchange
of matter underlying constant persistence of form; and precisely this is
the transitory condition of individuals in relation to the permanence of
the species. Constant nourishment and reproduction differs from procre-
ation only in degree, and constant excretion only in degree from death.
Tbe former sbows itself most simply and distinctly in the plant. The
latter is through and through only a constant replication of the same
drive, of its simplest tibers grouped together into leaves and branches,
is a systematic aggregate 01' homogeneous, mutually supporting plants,
the constant regeneration of which is their single drive. It rises to a more
complete satisfaction of that drive by means of the ladder of metamor-
phosis, tinally arriving at blossoms and fruit - at that compendium of
its existence and striving - in which it now attains by a shorter path to
that which is its single goal, and now witb a single stroke accomplishes
a thousand-fold what unti! then it had only effectuated within tbe
individual: self-replication. Hs drive to the fruit relates to the latter as a
manuscript relates to the pub!ication of a book. It is obviously just the
same witb animals. The nutritive process is one of constant generation,
tbe process of procreation a more highly potentiated process of nourish-
ment, the sensual pleasure in procreation a more highly potentiated
I~njoyment of the feeling of life. On the other band excretion, tbe
constant exhalation and casting off of matter, is the same thing as, to a
327 higher power, deatb, the opposite of procreation. So just as we are
always content to preserve the form without mourning tbe cast-off
matter, we must comport ourselves in the same manner when, with
death, the same tbing bappens to a higher power and in tbe large tbat
occurs daily and hourly in the individual with excretion: just as we are
indifferent in the first case, we should not recoil trom the second. From

i["Nature is not saddened."]

"[potenzierten]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 329

this standpoint, it therefore appears just as perverse to demand continu-

ation of one's individual case, which is replaced by other individuals,
as to demand permanence of the matter of one's body, which is con-
stantly replaced by new; it appears just as foolish to embalm corpses as
to be conscientious in preserving one's excrement. As for the individual
consciousness bound to the individual body, it is entirely interrupted by
sleep every day. Deep sleep, with respect to its present duration, is not
at all different from death, into which it often quite steadily passes, e.g.,
in freezing to death, but only with respect to the future, namely, so far
as waking is concemed. Death is a sleep in which individuality is for-
gotten; everything else reawakens, or rather has remained awake. t
Above all, we must distinctly recognize that the form pertaining to
will's phenomenon, thus the form of life or reality, is really only the
present, not future nor past: these exist only in concepts, exist only in 328
the context of cognizance so far as it follows the Principle of Sufficient
Ground. No human being has lived in the past, and none will ever live
in the future; rather the present alone is the form pertaining to all life,
but it is also its sure possession, which can never be tom from it. The
present always exists, together with its content; both stand firm, without
wavering, like the rainbow on the waterfall. For5 life is sure and certain
for will, and the present for life.
Of course, when we think back on the millennia that have flowed
past, on the millions of human beings who have lived in them, then we
ask: what were they? what has become of them? - But we need only,
on the other hand, recall the past of our own life and renew its scenes
vividly in imagination, and then again ask: what was all this? what has
become of it? - As with that, so it is with the life of those millions. Or

tThe following consideration mayaIso, for those for whom it is not too
subtle, serve to make explicit the fact that the individual is only phenomenon,
not thing in itself. Every individual is on the one hand the subject of cognition,
i.e., the complementary condition of the possibility of the entire objective
world, and on the other hand an individual phenomenon of will, of the same
will that is objectified in every thing. But this double-sided character of our
essence does not rest in a self-subsistent unity. Otherwise, we could become
conscious of ourselves in ourselves and independently of the objects of eogni-
tion and willing. But this we can simply not do. Rather, as soon as we attempt it
by entering into ourselves and, directing eognizanee inward, would for onee be
utterly reflective, we lose ourselves in a bottomless void, find ourselves to be
like a crystal ball from whose emptiness there speaks a voice whose cause is
yet not to be found therein and, wishing in this way to eatch hold of ourselves,
we cateh, with a shudder, nothing but an insubstantial ghost.
 330 Fourth Book. The World as Will

should we suppose that by being sealed by death the past gains a new
existence? Our own past, even the dosest, the day before, is but a null,
imaginary dream, and the past of all those millions is the same. What
was? What is? - The will ofwhich life is the mirror, and that cognition
free of will which gets a distinct glimpse of itself in that mirror. Whoever
has not yet recognized this, or would not recognize it, must add to the
question regarding the fate of past generations this further one: why is
precisely he, the questioner, so fortunate as to be in possession of this
precious, fleeting present, that which alone is real, while those hundreds
of human generations, and the heroes and sages of those times, have
sunk into the night of the past and by that become nothing? He by
contrast, his insignificant 1, actually exists? Or more briefly, even if
strangely: why is this Now, his Now, in fact precisely now, and not -
was now long ago?
In asking such strange questions, he views his existence and his
time as mutually independent, and the former as having been injected
into the latter; he really assurnes two Nows, one that pertains to the
object, the other to the subject, and marvels over the fortunate circum-
329 stance oftheir coincidence. In truth, however (as has been shown in the
treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Ground),i only the point of
contact between the object, whose form is time, and the subject, which
has none of the modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground for its
form, constitutes the present. All objects are will insofar as it has become
presentation, however, and the subject is the necessary correlate of all
objects. Ihere are real objects only in the present, however: past and
future contain mere concepts and mental images,ii therefore the present
is the essential form pertaining to will's phenomenon and inseparable
from the latter. The present alone is that which always exists and stands
immovably firm. Empirically apprehended, the most fleeting of all
things, it is displayed to a metaphysical view that looks beyond empir-
ical perception's forms as that which alone persists, the Nunc stansiii of
the scholastics. The source and bearer of its content is the will for life,
or the thing in itself - which we are. That which evermore becomes and
passes away, either already having been or still to come, pertains to the
phenomenon as such, by virtue ofthe latter's forms, which make arising
and passing away possible. Iherefore one should think: Quid fuit?

i[§ 19]
itPhantasmen]
iit"standing Now," or "etemity"]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 331

Quod est. Quid erit? Quodfitit. i - and take this in the strict sense ofthe
terms, thus meaning not simile but idem. ii For6 life is eertain for will,
and the present for life. Therefore, everyone can also say: "I am onee
and forever lord of the present, and it will aecompany me through all
etemity as my shadow; accordingly, I do not marvel at the fact that,
wherever it came from and however it goes, it is precisely now."
We ean compare time to an endlessly tuming circle: the constantly
falling half would be the past, the one constantly rising the future, but
on top, the indivisible point touched by the tangent would be the
unextended present. Just as the tangent does not roll on with the circle,
neither does the present, the point of contact between the object, whose
form is time, and the subject, which has no form because it does not
belong among objects of possible cognition, but is a condition of all
objects of possible cognition. Or: time is like a ceaseless stream and the
present like a rock on which it breaks, but does not sweep along with
it. 7 Will as thing in itself is not, any more than the cognizant subject, 330
which is in the end in a certain regard itself, or an expression of itself,
subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground; and just as life, which is
will's own phenomenon, is certain for it, so too is the present, the
single form that pertains to actual life. We need not, accordingly,
inquire into the past before life nor into the future after death. Rather,
we need only recognize the single form within which will appears to
itself, the present; t the latter will not eseape it, nor in truth it escape the
latter. Whomever, therefore, life as it is satisfies, whoever affirms it in
every way, he can with confidence regard it as endless, and ban fear of
death as a deception that instills the absurd fear in hirn that he can ever
be deprived of the present, and deludes hirn with the idea of a time with
no present in it: the same deception with respect to time as that other
with respect to space, by virtue of which everyone in his imagination
views the position on earth that he occupies right now as above and
all others as below. In precisely the same way, everyone connects the

t"What has been? That whieh iso What will be? That whieh has been."]
"[not "similar," but "identieally the same"]
t Scholastici docuerunt, quod aeternitas non sit temporis sine fine aut
principio successio, sed Nune stans; i.e. idem nobis Nune esse, quod erat Nune
Adamo: i.e. inter nune et tune nullam esse differentiam. Hobbes, Leviathan, eh.
46. ["The seholasties taught that etemity was not temporal sueeession without
end [added in C: "or beginning"] but a standing Now, Le., that the same Now
that is ours was the Now of Adam: i.e., there is no differenee between now and
then."]
 332 Fourth Book. The World as Will

present with his individual case and supposes that with this all the
present is extinguished; past and future then exist without it. But just as
everywhere on earth is above, so too is the present the form that
pertains to alllife, and to fear death because it tears the present from us
is no wiser than to fear that one might slide off the round earth, on top
of which one is fortunately just now standing. Essential to the objectifi-
cation of will is the form of the present, which, as an unextended point,
intersects the time that is infmite on either side and stands immovably
firm, like an everlasting noon without a cooling evening: like the actual
sun that bums without halt, while it only seemingly sinks into the lap of
night. Therefore, if a person fears death as his annihilation, it is no
331 different from thinking that the sun might lament in the evening: "Woe
to me! I go down into etemal night."t
Quite to the contrary: whomever life's burdens press, whoever
would of course have life and affirms it, but abhors its torments, and
would in particular no longer bear the hard lot that has befallen him of
all people - such a one cannot hope for liberation by death and cannot
rescue himselfby suicide. Only with false illusion does cool dark Orcus
lure him as a harbor of repose. The earth roUs on from day into night,
the individual dies; but the sun itself bums without remission for an
etemal noon. Life is certain for the will for life: life's form is a present
without end, no matter how individuals, phenomena of ldeas, arise and
pass away in time, comparable to fleeting dreams. - Suicide thus indeed
appears to us here as a futile and therefore foolish act. When we have

tIn Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe (second edition [1848], vol. 1,

p. 154), Goethe says: "Our spirit is a being of an entirely indestructible nature.
It is something ever active from eternity to eternity. lt is similar to the sun,
whieh seems merely to our earthly eyes to go down, but whieh really never
goes down, but eontinues uneeasingly to shine." [Johann Peter Eckermann,
Gesprächen mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (Conversations
with Goethe in the Last Years 0/ his Life, 1st ed., 1836)] - Goethe takes the
comparison from me, not I from hirn. Without a doubt he employs it, in this
conversation held in 1824, in consequence of a perhaps unconscious recol-
lection ofthe passage above. For the latter, in the same words as here, stands in
the first edition, p. 401. And it likewise returns there, p. 528, as here at the
cone1usion of § 65. The first edition was sent to hirn in December 1818, and in
March 1819 he allowed me to be informed of his approval in Naples, where I
happened to be at the time, by way of a letter from my sister, and had attached
a card on which he had noted the numbers of some pages that particularly
pleased hirn. So he had read my book. [Footnote added in c.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will fOT Life 333

further penetrated into our considerations, it will be displayed to us in

an even more unfavorable light.
Dogmas change and our knowledge is deceptive, but nature does
not err; its course is sure and it does not conceal it. Everything is entirely
within it, and it is entirely within everything. It has its center in every
animal. The animal found its way into existence with surety, as it will
with surety find its way out. In the meantime, it lives without fear of
annihilation and unconcerned, borne by the consciousness that it is
nature itself and, like nature, imperishable. Only the human being 332
carries the certainty of his death about in abstract concepts. This can
nonetheless, which is most strange/ only cause hirn anxiety at particular
moments, where some occasion makes it present to his imagination.
Against the powerful voice of nature, reflection can do little. In hirn
too, as in unthinking animals, that assurance holds sway as a permanent
condition - originating from the innermost consciousness that he is
nature, that he is the world itself - by virtue of which the thought of
certain and never remote death causes no marked unrest for a human
being, but rather everyone goes on living as if he must live forever.
This is so much the case that I venture to say that nobody has a truly
living conviction ofthe certainty ofhis death, since there could otherwise
be no particularly great difference between his state of mind and that
of condemned criminals. Rather, everyone indeed acknowledges that
certainty in abstracto and theoretically, but sets it aside like other
theoretical truths that have no practical application, without ever taking
it up into his living consciousness. Whoever takes good note of this
peculiar character of the human disposition will see that psychological
ways of explaining it, in terms of habit and accommodation to that
which is unavoidable, are in no way sufficient, but that its ground is the
deeper-lying one that I have stated. On its basis it is also explicable
why at all times, among all peoples, dogmas of some sort of survival of
the individual after death are to be found and stand in repute, while yet
proofs of it are always bound to be highly inadequate, and those of the
contrary strong and numerous. Indeed, this really needs no proof, but is
recognized by sound understanding as a fact and fortified as such by
the confidence that nature lies as little as it errs, but rather exhibits its
doings and essence openly, even innocently pronounces them, while it
is only we who obscure them with our delusions, seeking to read out of
them just what appeals to our limited viewpoint.

tseltsam. This could also be "rare," which, while considered antiquated at

the time in Hochdeutsch, was still found in common speech.]
 334 Fourth Book. The World as Will

What we have now, however, brought to explicit consciousness,

the fact that, although the individual phenomenon of will temporally
begins and temporally ends, will itself, as thing in itself, is not touched
333 by this - nor is the correlate of all objects, the cognizant but never
cognized subject - and the fact that life is always ce11ain for the will
for life, this is yet not to be counted among those doctrines of survival.
For to the will regarded as thing in itself, as also to the pure subject of
cognition, the eternal world-eye, persistence pertains as little as passing
away, since the latter are determinations that only apply within time,
while the former lie beyond time. Therefore, the egoism of the individual
(this particular phenomenon of will illuminated by the subject of cogni-
tion) can draw as little nourishment and consolation from the view we
have set forth, with respect to his des ire for self-assertion throughout an
infinite time, as it could from recognizing that after his death the rest of
the external world will yet continue in time, which is only an expression
ofjust the same view, but objectively and therefore temporally regarded.
For only as phenomenon, to be sure, is everyone transitory, while as
thing in itself he is timeless and so endless; but only as phenomenon is
he also distinct from other things in the world, as thing in itselfhe is the
will that makes its appearance in them all, and death eliminates the
deception dividing his consciousness from that of the others. This is
survival. 8 His being untouched by death, which pertains to hirn only as
thing in itself, coincides for the phenomenon with the rest of the
external world's survivaU From this too comes the fact that the inner
and merely feit consciousness of that which we have just elevated to
the level of distinct cognizance does indeed, as stated, prevent the
thought of death from poisoning the life even of rational beings - such
consciousness being the basis of that vital spiriti which sustains an
living things and allows them to live blithely on as if there were no
death, at least so long as they have life in sight and are directed toward

tIn the Veda this is expressed by the statement that, when a person dies, his
power of vision becomes one with the sun, his smell with earth, his taste with
water, his hearing with air, his speech with tire, etc. (Oupnek'hat, vol. 1, pp.
249ff.), as also by the fact that, in a special ceremony, the one who is dying
passes on his senses and all his capacities to his son, as to the one in whom they
are now to live on (op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 82ft). [The references to Anquetil-
Duperron's edition are identified by Deussen and Hübscher as, respective1y, to
the Brihadäranyaka-Upanishad 4, 4, 2 - with elaboration drawn from elsewhere
by the Persian translator, e.g., from 3, 2, 13 - and to the Kaushitaki-Upanishad
2, 15.]
i [ Lebensmut]
 Affinnation and DeniaI ofthe Will for Life 335

it - but it is not thereby prevented that when death approaches the 334
individual in a particular case and actual reality, or even only in imagi-
nation, and he must now look it in the eye, he would be gripped by a
mortal fear and seek in any manner to escape it. For just as when his
cognizance was directed toward life as such, he had to recognize what
was imperishable in it, so when death confronts hirn he has to recognize
it for what it is, the temporal end of an individual temporal phenomenon.
What we fear in death is not in any way pain: for one thing, the latter
obviously lies on this side of death; for another, we often flee pain into
deathjust as well as, conversely, sometimes taking on the most horrific
pain so as only, even when it would be quick and easy, to escape death
for a while longer. We thus distinguish between pain and death as two
entirely distinct ills. What we fear in death is in fact that destruction of
the individual, which it openly gives notice of being, and since the
individual is the will for life itself in a particular objectification, its
entire essence struggles against death.
Now where feeling leaves us helpless to such an extent as this,
reason can yet enter in and largely overcome its unwelcome impresssion,
insofar as it sets us on a higher standpoint from which, instead of the
individual, we now have our eye on the whole. Therefore, philosophical
cognizance of the essence of the world that has arrived at the point
where we now stand in our considerations, but gotten no further, could
in fact even from this standpoint overcome the terrors of death, in
proportion to the power had by reflection over immediate feeling in the
given individual. A person who had firmly assimilated into his way of
thinking the truths so far expounded, but who had not at the same time
arrived, through his own experience or through more extensive insight,
at a recognition of lasting suffering as essential to all life; rather, a
person who found satisfaction in life, to whom aIl in it was perfectly
fme, and who in the repose of reflective considerationi desired the course
of his life as he had experienced it so far to be of endless duration, or
ever anew recurring, and whose vital spirit was so great that, for the
sake of life's enjoyments, he would willingly and gladly accept in the
bargain all the hardship and pain to which it is subject - such a person 335
would stand ''with ftrm, solid bones on the well-rounded lasting earth,"ii
and would have nothing to fear. Anned with the cognizance that we
attribute to hirn, he would face with indifference the death that is rushing
toward him on the wings of time, regarding it as a false semblance, an

i[bei ruhiger Überlegung]

ii[Goethe, Die Grenzen der Menschheit (The Limits of Humanity), 21-24.]
 336 Fourth Book. The World as Will

impotent specter to frighten the weak but that has no power over one
who knows that he is indeed himself the will whose objectification or
image is the entire world, one for whom life thus remains at all times
certain, and so too the present - the true, single form pertaining to
will's phenomenon - thus one whom no infinite past or future in which
he fails to exist can frighten him, since he regards the latter as the vain
deception and web of Maya, thus one who has to fear death as little as
the sun fears the night.
It is on this standpoint that, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna sets his
prospective disciple Ariuna, when the latter is gripped by melancholy at
the sight of the armies ready for batde (in something of the manner of
Xerxes), would give up and abandon the battle to prevent the destruction
of so many thousands: Krishna sets hirn on this standpoint, and the
death of those thousands can no longer give him pause; he gives the
signal for battle. - Goethe's Prometheus also characterizes this stand-
point, particularly when he says:
"Here sit I, forming men
To fit my image,
A race to resemble me,
To suffer, to cry,
To enjoy and delight,
Unheeding ofyou,
Like me!"i
The philosophy of Bruno and that of Spinoza could also lead one to this
slandpoint, if his conviction is not disturbed or weakened by their
mistakes and imperfections. That of Bruno does not have an ethics
proper, and the latter in the philosophy of Spinoza does not at all
proceed from the essence of his doctrine but, though in itself laudable
and fine, is tacked on to it only by means ofweak and blatant sophisms.
336 - Surely many people would be at the characterized standpoint, finally,
if their cognizance kept equal pace with their willing, i.e., if they were
in a position, free from all delusion, to become clear and distinct to
themselves. For this is, with respect to cognizance, the standpoint of
complete affirmation of the will jar life.
That will affirms itself means: insofar as in its objectivization, i.e.,
in the world and in life, its own essence is given to it completely and
distinctly as presentation, this cognizance does not in any way impede

i[Prometheus, 49-55]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 337

its willing. Rather, the very life of which it is thus cognizant is also
willed by it as such: just as it was up to this point without cognizance,
as blind pressing, so now with cognizance, consciousness, and thought-
ful awareness. i
The opposite of this, denial of the will for life, shows itself when
willing comes to an end in response to that cognizance, in that the
individual phenomena of which one is cognizant are then no longer
effectual as motives for willing, but rather one's entire cognizance of
the essence of the world that mirrors the will, having grown out of
apprehension of Ideas, becomes a quieter of the will, and so the will
freely nullifies itself. It is hoped that these quite unfamiliar and, in this
general expression, hardly intelligible concepts will be made distinct
through depiction of the phenomenaii shortly to follow, namely, of
manners of action in which voice is given on the one hand to affirma-
tion in its various degrees, and on the other hand to denial. For both of
these proceed from cognizance, to be sure, but not from an abstract sort
that expresses itself in words, but rather from a living cognizance that
expresses itself only through one's deeds and way of life and remains
independent of dogmas involved in the matter, which, as abstract cogni-
zance, occupy reason. To depict both sorts of phenomena and bring
them to the level of distinct rational cognizance can be my only purpose,
but not to prescribe or recommend one or the other, which would be as
foolish as it would be purposeless, since will in itself is that which is
absolute1y free and uniquely self-detennining, and there is no law für it.
We must first explain and more exactly determine this freedom and
its relation to necessity, however, before we proceed to the discussion
in question, and then, with reference to will and its objects, undertake
some further general considerations regarding that life whose affirmation 337
and denial is our topic. With all of that, we will facilitate our intended
recognition of the ethical significance of those manners of action, with
respect to their innermost essence.
Since, as has been stated, this whole work is only the unfolding
of a single thought, it follows that all of its parts are most intimately
interconnected, and each does not simply stand in a necessary relation
to the one immediately preceding, and thus in the first instance presup-
pose the reader's recollection of just that - as is the case with all philos-
ophies consisting merely of aseries of inferences - but every part of the
entire work is related to and presupposes all the others. For this reason

i[mit Erkenntnis, bewusst und besonnen]

ii[Phänomene]
 338 Fourth Book. The World as Will

it is demanded that the reader recollect not only the immediately pre-
ceding but all the earlier parts as well, so that he will be able to connect
them with whatever is in question at the moment no matter how much
else has intervened: a demand that Plato also made on his readers with
the highly convoluted meanderings of his dialogues, which only resume
the main thought, but precisely thereby in a more illuminating way,
after long digressions. In our case the demand is necessary because
dividing our one and only thought into several considerations is the
only means for its communication, to be sure, but with respect to the
thought itself not an essential but only an artificial form.
The division into four Books, from four main points of view, and
the most painstaking connection of related and homogenous material,
serves to facilitate the account and its comprehension. Nonetheless, the
material altogether exeludes advance in a straight line, like that with
historical material, but necessitates a more convoluted account, and
precisely the latter a repeated study of the book; through this alone is
the interconnection of all the parts made distinct, and are all of them
together finally mutually illuminating and made perfectly elear. t

§ 55.
[Freedom and Determinism -
CompLete Seif-Denial the Only Possible Freedom within the
Phenomenon - Empirieal, Intelligible, and Acquired Cbaracter]
That will as such is free already follows from the fact that, accord-
ing to our view, it is the thing in itself, the content of all phenomena.
338 We know the latter, by contrast, as altogether subject to the Principle of
Sufficient Ground in its four modes. And since we know that necessity
is altogether identical with consequence from a given ground, and that
the two are interchangeable concepts, everything that belongs to the
phenomenon, i.e., that is object for the subject cognizant as individual,
is on the one hand ground and on the other hand consequence, and in
the latter quality it is determined with complete necessity, therefore
cannot be in any respect other than it iso The entire content of nature,
the totality ofits phenomena, is thus altogether necessary, and the neces-
sity of every part, of every phenomenon, of every event, can be demon-
strated in every case, in that it must be possible to discover the ground
on which it depends as a consequence. This suffers no exception: it
follows from the unlimited validity of the Principle of Sufficient Ground.
On the other hand, however, this same world in all of its phenomena is

tOn this, see chs. 41-44 of the second volume.

 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 339

the objectivization of will, which, since it is not itself a phenomenon,

not a presentation or an object but thing in itself, is also not subject
to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, the form pertaining to all objects,
thus not determined as consequence by a ground, thus knows no neces-
sity, i.e., isfree. The concept of freedom is thus really a negative one,
in that its content is merely the denial of necessity, i.e., of the relation
of consequence to its ground according to the Principle of Sufficient
Ground.
Here then lies most distinctly before us the point of unity in that
great opposition, that unification of freedom with necessity of which
there has been much talk in recent times, yet, so far as I am aware,
never in a distinct and proper fashion. Every thing as phenomenon, as
object, is absolutely necessary; the same thing in itself is will, and the
larter is urterly free, for all eternity. The phenomenon, the object, is
necessarily and unalterably determined in terms of the concatenation of
grounds and consequences, which can have no interruption. The very
existence of this object and its mode of existence, however, i.e., the
[dea revealed in it, or in other words its character, is in an immediate
way a phenomenon of will. In accordance with the freedom of this will,
it thus might not have existed at all, or even have been in origin and
essence something entirely different; in that case, however, the entire
chain in which it is a link, which is itself in turn a phenomenon of the 339
same will, would be an entirely different one. But once it is there and at
hand, it has entered into the series of grounds and consequences, is
always necessarily determined within it, and can accordingly neither
become something else, i.e., change, nor exit from the series., i.e., vanish.
The human being is, like any other part of nature, an objectivization of
will; therefore aH that has been said applies to him as weH. Just as
every thing in nature has its forces and qualities, which react in
particular ways to particular effects and constitute its character, so too
he has his character, by which motives caU forth his actions, with
necessity. In this very manner of his action his empirical character
reveals itself, and in this in turn his intelligible character, the will in
itself of which he is a particular phenomenon. But the human being is
the most completei phenomenon of will, which in order to survive, as
shown in the second Book, had to be illuminated by so high a degree of
cognizance that with the larter there was in fact made possible an urterly
adequate replication of the essence of the world under the form of
presentation, which is the apprehension of Ideas, the pure mirror of the

i[vollkommenste]
 340 Fourth Book. The World as Will

world, as we came to Ieam in the third Book. Thus in the human being,
will can attain to utter self-consciousness, to distinct and exhaustive
cognizance of its own essence as mirrored in the entire world. From the
actuaI presence of this degree of cognizance, as we saw in the previous
Book, comes art. 9 At the end of our entire consideration, however, it
will also resuIt that, through the same cognizance with reference of the
will to itseIf, the latter's nullification and self-denial is possible in its
most complete phenomenon. In this way freedom, which otherwise, as
pertaining only to the thing in itself, can never show itself in the
phenomenon, also comes to the fore in the latter and, nulli(ving the
essence underlying i the phenomenon, while the latter yet continues to
ex ist, brings ab out a self-contradiction within the phenomenon, and
precisely through this displays the phenomenaii of saintliness and self-
renunciation. However, all ofthis can be made entirely intelligible only
at the end of this book.
By way of anticipation, this has only indicated in a general way
340 how the human being is distinguished from all other phenomena of will
by the fact that freedom, i.e., independence ofthe Principle ofSufficient
Ground, which pertains only to will as thing in itseIf and is contrary to
phenomena, can nonetheless even possibly enter into the phenomenon,
although it is then necessarily dispIayed there as a seIf-contradiction
within the phenomenon. In this sense, not only will in itseIf, but even
the human being can to be sure be called free and be distinguished
thereby from all other beings. But how this is to be understood can only
be made explicit on the basis of everything to follow, and for now we
must continue to abstract from it entirely. For the first thing to do is
avoid the error of supposing that the action of the individual particular
human being is subject to no necessity, i.e., that the power ofmotives is
less sure than the power of causes, or than the drawing of conclusions
from premises. Freedom of will as thing in itself - so far as we are
abstracting, as stated, from the case above, which only concerns an
exception - in no way transfers immediately to its phenomenon, not
even where the latter has achieved the highest level of visibility, thus
not to rational animals with individual characters, i.e., persons. The
latter are never free, although they are the phenomenon of a free will.
Fm it is preciseIy the already determined phenomenon of the latter's
free willing, and, entering into the form for all objects, the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, it develops, to be sure, the unity of that will into a

i[zum Grunde liegende Wesen; inA, "the inner essence of"1

itPhänomene]
 AffInnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 34]

plurality of actions, but these, on account ofthe extra-temporal unity of

that willing in itself, are displayed with the character of a natural force's
conformity to law. Since, however, it is nonetheless that free willing
which is rendered visible in the person and its entire way of life, relating
to the latter like a concept to its definition, so too every single one of its
deeds is ascribable to free will and immediately announces itself to con-
sciousness as such. Therefore, as stated in the second Book, everyone
takes hirns elf apriori (i.e., in this case in accordance with his natural i
feeling) to be free even in his individual actions, in the sense that, in
any given case, any action would be possible for hirn, and he only rec-
ognizes aposteriori, from experience and reflection on experience, that
his action proceeds with complete necessity from the conjunction of
character and motives. From this comes the fact that all of the most 341
cmde, following their feelings, defend an utter freedom in individual
actions with the greatest intensity, while the great thinkers of all times,
indeed even the more profound doctrines of faith, have denied it. But to
whomever it has been made explicit that a person's entire essence is
will and that he is hirnself only a phenomenon of will, while such a
phenomenon has the Principle of Sufficient Ground for its necessary
form, as indeed something cognizable even when starting from the
subject - which, in the present case, takes the form of the law of
motivation - to such a one, any doubt as to the inevitability of the deed,
given the character and motives at hand, would strike him as like doubting
the equivalence of the three angles of a tri angle to two right angles.
The necessity of individual actions has been most satisfactorily
demonstrated by Priestley in his "Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity."ii
But the compatibility ofthis necessity with the freedom ofwill in itself,
i.e., beyond the phenomenon, was fIrst demonstrated by Kant,t whose
achievement is particularly great in this case, insofar as he set forth the
distinction between intelligible and empirical character; this I retain in
its entirety, since the former is will as thing in itself so far as it makes

t ursprünglichenJ
itJoseph Priestley, The doctrine of philosophical necessity illustrated, an
appendix to the Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit (1777); see also A
free discussion of the doctrines of materialism, and philosophical necessity, in
a correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley (ed. Priestley, 1778).]
t Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, pp. 532-558; fifth edition, pp. 560-
586 [A532-5581B560-586]; Critique of Practical Reason, fourth edition, pp.
169-179 [Ak. 5.94-100] - Rosenkranz edition [Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Kar!
Rosenkranz and F. W. Schubert (1838)], pp. 224-231.
 342 Fourth Book. Thc World as Will

its appearance in a particular individual, to a particular degree, while

the latter is this appearance itself just as it is displayed in manners of
action, with respect to time, and even in one's corporeal form with
respect to space. In order to make the relationship between the two
comprehensible, the best way of putting it is the one already employed
in the introductory treatise: i the intelligible character of any person is to
be regarded as an extra-temporal, thus indivisible and unalterable, act
of will, of which the empirical character is the phenomenon, developed
and elaborated within time and space and all of the forms belonging to
the Principle of Sufficient Ground, as that character is experientially
displayed in the person' s entire manner of action and course of life. Just
as the whole tree is only the constantly replicated phenomenon of one
and the same drive, which is most simply displayed in its fibers and
342 r~~plicated in the process of composition into leaf, stern, branch, trunk,
and most easily recognizable therein, so all of a person's deeds are only
the constantly replicated, somewhat chan ging expression of his intelli-
giible character, and the induction proceeding from their sum yields his
empirical character. - I will not in any case replicate Kant's masterful
account by reworking it here, but presuppose it as something familiar. 10
In the year 1840, I gave thorough and detailed treatment to the
important topic of freedom of will, in my crowned prize essay on the
latter,ii and I exposed in particular the ground ofthe deception in conse-
quence of which one supposes he can find in self-consciousness, as a
fact in the latter's pos session, an empirically given absolute freedom of
will, thus a liberum arbitrium indijJerentiae;iii for the prize question
was, most insightfully, directed at precisely this point. Thus in referring
the reader to that work, as weH as to § 10 of the Prize Essay on the
Foundation of Morality, published together with it under the tide The
Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics,iv ] now drop the still imperfeet

i[i.e., On the Fourfold Roof afthe Principle ofSufficient Reason.]

iip840 was the year ofthe Norwegian publication ofthe essay submitted in
1838, awarded its prize in 1839, and appearing in Gennan in 1841 under the
title Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will, as part of The Two Fundamental
Problems of Ethics. As the fuH title continues: "crowned [Schopenhauer's
emphasis] by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in Trondheim, 26
January 1839."]
iii["free choice of indifference," i.e., choice which could equally weH go
either way.]
iV[The second essay, submitted in 1839 but not receiving the prize despite
being the only one submitted, appeared under the tide Prize Essay on the
Foundation ofMorality. [ts fuH tide continues: '"not [Schopenhauer's emphasis]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe WiJJ for Life 343

ac count of the necessity of acts of will that was given at this point in
the first edition, and would further elucidate in place of it the above-
mentioned deception by way of abrief discussion; this presupposes the
nineteenth chapter of our second volume, and therefore could not have
been in given in the prize essay mentioned. ll
Apart from the fact that, since will as the true thing in itself is
something actually original and independent, the feeling of its original
and independent status is also bound to accompany its - albeit, here
already determined - acts in self-consciousness, the illusion of an empir-
ical fteedom ofthe will (instead ofthe transcendental, which is the only
attributable to it), thus of a fteedom of individual deeds, arises ftom the
separate and subordinated position of intellect with respect to will, as
set forth in the nineteenth chapter of the second volume, particularly
under item 3. lntellect, namely, leams of resolutions of the will onlya
posteriori and empirically. Accordingly, in the case ofany choice before
one, it has no information as to how the will would decide. For the
intelligible character by virtue of which, given the motives in question, 343
only one decision is possible, and this accordingly a necessary one,
does not fall within the intellect's cognizance, but rather only the empir-
ical character, through its individual acts, is made successively known
to it. So, therefore, it appears to cognizant consciousness (intellect)
that, in any case before one, two contrary decisions are equally possible
for the will. With this, however, it is precisely as when, conftonted with
a vertically standing pole that has become unstable and begun to
wobble, one says "it can fall to the right or to the left side," where the
"can" of course has a merely subjective meaning and really means
"with respect to the data known to us"; for objectively, the direction
of the fall is already necessarily determined as soon as the wobbling
begins. So too, accordingly, the decision of one's own will is merely
undetermined with respect to its spectator, one's own intellect, thus
only relatively and subjectively, namely, in relation to the subject of
cognition; by contrast, in itself and objectively, with every choice set
before us, the decision is at once determined and necessary. But the
determination only enters consciousness with the ensuing decision. We
even obtain an empirical confirmation of this when some difficult and
important choice lies before us, yet is impending only under a condition
that has not yet occurred, but is merely a matter for hope, so that we
can do nothing about it for now, but have to maintain a passive stance.

crowned by the Royal Danish Society of Sciences in Copenhagen, 30 January

1840."]
 344 Fourth Book. The World as Will

We reflectively consider which way we will decide when circumstances

occur that permit us some free activity and decision. Usually, farseeing
rational reflection speaks more for the one, immediate inclination more
for the other of the choices. So long as, perforce, we remain passive, it
seems that the side of reason would prevail; but we anticipate how
strongly the other side will pull when the occasion for action exists.
Until then, we keenly endeavor, with cold meditation on the pro et
contra,i to set both sides' motives in the brightest light, so that each
might affect the will when the time is at hand with its full force, and no
mistake on the side of the intellect perhaps misdirect tbe will into
344 deciding otherwise than it would were everytbing affecting it equally.
Tbis sort of explicit unfolding ofthe motives on both sides, however, is
all that tbe intellect can do when it comes to choice. lt awaits the real
decision just as passively and with thc same suspenseful curiosity as
that of someone else's will. Prom its standpoint, therefore, botb decisions
must appear to it equally possible; precisely tbis, tben, is tbe illusion of
empirical freedom of tbe will. Tbe decision of course enters the spbere
of intellect in an entirely empirical way, as tbe final upshot of tbe
matter; nonetheless, it proceeded from tbe inner make-up/i from tbe
intelligible character, of the individual will in its conflict with given
motives, and therefore with complete necessity. The intellect can do no
more in this than illuminate the make-up of tbe motives sharply and
from all sides; but it is incapable of determining the will itself, since
tbe latter is entirely inaccessible to it, indeed even, as we have seen,
unfatbomable.
If a person could, under the same circumstances, act one time one
way, another time anotber, then his will would have to have changed in
tbe meantime and therefore lie within time, since change is only possible
in the latter; but tben tbe will would either have to be a mere pbenom-
enon or time adetermination of the thing in itself. 12 Accordingly, tbe
dispute over tbe freedom of individual actions, over a liberum arbitrium
indifferentiae, really turns on tbe question whcther the will lies witbin
time or not. If, as botb Kant's doctrine and the whole of my account
require, it is as tbing in itself beyond time and every form belonging to
tbe Principle of Sufficient Ground, then not only must tbe individual
person act constantly in tbe same manner in the same situation, and not
only every evil deed provide asolid guarantee of countless others that

t"for and against"]

ii[ Beschaffenheit]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 345

he must and cannot Jail to perform, but it would also be possible, as

Kant says, if only the empirical character and motives were completely
given, to calculate a person's future behavior like an eclipse ofthe sun
or moon. Just as nature is consistent, so is character: every single action
must turn out in accord with it, just as every phenomenoni must turn out
in accord with naturallaw; the cause in the latter case and the motive in
the former case are only occasioning causes, as has been shown in
the second Book. The will of which a person's entire being and life is 345
the phenomenon ii cannot be renounced in an individual case, and what
a person wills on the whole, he will constantly will in the individual
case. 13
The assertion of an empirical freedom of will, of a liberum arbi-
trium indifJerentiae, is most exactly connected with the fact that one
has placed the essence of a person in a soul that would be originally a
cognizing, indeed really an abstractly thinldng, being and only in conse-
quence thereof a willing being; so one has made will into something of
a secondary nature, while this is in truth what cognizance iso Will was
even regarded as an act of thought and identified with judgment, namely,
in Descartes and Spinoza. According to that, then, every person would
have become what he is only as a consequence of his cognizance: he
entered the world as a moral zero, took cognizance of the things in it,
and on that basis resolved to be this or that person, to act in this or that
way, could even, in consequence of new cognizance, adopt a new manner
of action, and so become someone else in turn. He would further, accord-
ing to that, first recognize something as good and in consequence thereof
will it, instead of first willing it and in consequence thereof calling it
good. Now following my own fundamental viewpoint, all of that is a
revers al of the true relationship. Will is the first and original thing,
cognizance merely added on to it, pertaining to the phenomenon of will
as a tool for the latter. Every person is accordingly what he is by his
will, and his character is at the origin of things;iii for willing is the basis
of his essence. Through the added element of cognizance he leams, in
the course of experience, what he is, i.e., he comes to know bis character.
He is thus cognizant of himself in consequence of and according to the
make-up of his will, instead of, as on the old view, willing in conse-
quence of and according to his cognition. According to the latter view,

i[Phänomen]
itErscheinung]
lllUS! ursprünglich]
 346 Fourth Book. The World as Will

he need only reflectively consider how he would most like to be, and he
would be it; that is its freedom of the will. Thus it really consists in a
person being his own work, by the light of cognizance. I, to the contrary,
say: he is his own work in advance of all cognizance, and the latter is
merely added on in order to illuminate it. For this reason, he cannot
346 resolve to be such OT such aperson, nor can he become another, but he
is once and for all, and after that recognizes what he iso For the others,
he wills what he recognizes; fOT me, he reeognizes what he wills.
The Greeks called character -1.9oC; and the express ions of the latter,
i.e., customs,i -1.9TJ. This word comes from l.9oc;, habit, however; they
chose it to express constancy of character metaphorically in terms of
constancy ofhabit. To rap -1.9oc; (XtrO TOD l.9o~ &x&l r17V 87rOJvU/1lav.
~.91X~ rap XaA&lTaZ ola m' i.9l~&G".9az (a voee gSoc;, Le., eonsuetudo,
~SOc; est appelatum: ethiea ergo dicta est uno 'tou eS tsecrSat, sive ab
assueseendo), says Aristotle (Eth. magna I, 6, 1186, and Eth. Eud., p.
1220, and Eth. Nie., p. 1103).ii Stobaeus quotes: Ol 0& xa-ra Zr[vOJYa
~ooTClx05C;· -1.9dc; BG"t"! 1rTJr~ ß IOU. arp' f/c; al xara /18POC; 1rpa';&IC;
PEOUG"l (Stoici autem, Zenonis eastra sequentes, metaphoriee ethos
definiunt vitae fontem, e quo singulae manant aetiones), ll, ch. 7. iii
In the doctrine of Christian faith we find the dogma of predestina-
ti on in consequence of'4 election and non-election by grace (Romans 9,
11-24), obviously originating from the insight that a person does not
change; rather, his life and ways, i.e., his empirical character, is only
the unfolding of the intelligible character, the development of settled,
unalterable dispositions already recognizable in the child, therefore his
way of life is already, as it were, determined at his birth and remains in
its essence the same to the end. We are also in agreement with this. But
of course I do not undertake to speak for the consequences that pro-
ceeded from the unification of this entirely correct insight with dogmas

i[Sitten; could be also "morals."]

ii['''Character (~()oq [ethos])' derives from 'custom (/!()oq [ethos])'; for it is
called moral (Q()IX17 [ethike]) excellence because it is the result of accustom-
ing": Magna Moralia, Bk. I, ch. 6, 1 186a, tr. St. G. Stock in Bames (ed.),
Camplete Works. Tbe other references: Eudemian Ethics 11, 2, 1220a-1220b;
Nichamachean Ethics 11, I, II03a. The quotation and references added in B,
Latin translation in c.]
iii["The followers of Zeno define ~()dq as the source of life, from which
individual actions arise": Ec10gues Il; Deussen corrects the reference to II, ch. 5
or -likewise Hübscher - ch. 6 in the edition of August Meineke. Quotation and
reference added in B, Latin translation in c.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 347

that were at hand in the doctrine of Jewish faith and that then provided
the supreme difficulty, the eternally irresolvable Gordian knot around
which revolve the great majority of disputes within the church;lS even
the apostle Paul was surely hardly successful here, with the metaphor
of the porter that he put to the purpose. For the result could still be no
other than this:
"Let the race of mankind
Have fear for the gods!
They hold their rule
In eternal hands: 347
And can employ it
As they see fit."i
But considerations of this sort are strictly foreign to our subject.
Much more to the point now will be some discussion of the relation
between character and the cognition in which all of its motives He.
Since the motives that determine character's coming to appearance,
or action, affect it through the medium of cognizance, but cognizance is
subject to change, often shifts back and forth between error and truth-
however, is as a rule ever more corrected with the advance of life,
although to very different degrees - a person's manner of action can
become markedly altered without one being thereby justified in inferring
an alteration in his character. What a person really and on the whole
wills, that for which his innermost essence strives and the goal that he
accordingly pursues, we can never change through external effects on
,hirn, through instruction; otherwise we could transform him. Seneca
says it superbly: velle non discitur. ii With this he prefers truth over his
Stoics, who taught, ()U5a)(T~V 8fval T~V ap8TT(v (doceri posse virtutem)Yi
The will can be externally affected only by motives. These, however,
can never change the will itself; for they themselves have power over it
only under the presupposition that it is precise1y such as it iso All they
can do is thus change the direction of its striving, i.e., make it seek on a
different path that which it has been unalterably seeking so far. There-
fore instruction, cognitive berterment, thus effects from the outside, can
of course teach it that it has erred in its means, and can accordingly

tOoethe, Iphigenie aufTauris (Iphigenia in Tauris) IV, 5.]

t'willing is not leamed": Epistles X, 81, 13.]
l1I[didakten einai ten areten, "virtue can be taught": Diogenes Laertius VII,
91; "with this ... virtutem") added in B, with the Latin in c.]
 348 Fourth Book. The World as Will

make it pursue on an entirely different path, even in an entirely different

object than before, the goal for which, in accord with its inner essence,
it was already striving. But it can never make it actually will something
different from what it has so far willed; rather, this remains unalterable,
for it is indeed just that willing itself, which would otherwise have to
be nullified. As for the other matter, in any case, the modifiability of
348 cognizance and thereby of action, this extends so far that the will seeks
to achieve its constantlyl6 unalterable goal- even ifit be, e.g., Moham-
med's paradise - at one time in the actual world, at another time in an
imaginary world, assessing the means accordingly and thus at one time
employing shrewdness, force, and deception, at another time abstinence,
righteousness,i alms, pilgrimages to Mecca. Its striving itself, however,
has not thereby changed, still less it itself. So even if, to be sure, its
action is very differently displayed at different times, its willing has yet
remained entirely the same. Velle non discitur.
For the efficacy of motives, it is not merely their existence that is
required, but also that one be cognizant of them; for according to a
most fine formulation ofthe scholastics already mentioned, causafinalis
movet non secundum suum esse reale; sed secundum esse cognitum. ii
For example, for the relationship between egoism and compassion to
come to the fore in a given person, it is not sufficient that the latter
possess wealth, say, and observe the misery of others, but he must also
know what can be done with wealth, both for hirnself and for others;
and not only must the suffering of others be displayed to hirn, but he
must also know what suffering, and also what enjoyment, iso Perhaps
he did not know all this on an initial occasion as weH as he did on the
next, and if he then acts differently when the occasion is the same, this
only has to do with the fact that the circumstances were really different,
namely, with respect to the part that depends on his cognizance of
them, even if they seem to be the same.
Just as ignorance deprives actually existing circurnstances of their
efficacy, so can entirely imaginary circumstances, on the other hand, be
as effectual as real ones, not only in the case of an individual deception,
hut on a large scale and at length as weIl. If, for example, a person is
firmly convinced that every benefaction will be repaid hirn a hundred-
fold in a future life, then such a conviction applies and is altogether as

tGerechtigkeit. This will sometimes be "justice," sometimes "righteous-

ness."]
t'The final cause moves one, not according to being as it really is, but
according to being as one is cognizant of it."]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 349

effectual as a secure bill of exchange with very long terms, and he can
give out of egoism just as, were he seeing things differently, he would
take out of egoism. He has not changed: velle non discitur. By virtue of
this great influence of cognizance on action while the will remains
unalterable, it is only gradually that one's character is unfolded and its 349
various traits come to the fore. Therefore, it shows itself differently at
every period of life, and a composed, moderate age of manhood can
follow upon an intense, wild youth. Particularly the evil in a character
will come to the fore ever more powerfully with time; but sometimes
passions that one indulged as a youth are also later voluntarily reined
in, merely because the opposing motives have only now entered one's
cognizance. Therefore too, we are all innocent at first, which merely
means that neither we nor others know the evil in our own nature; it
comes to the fore only in connection with motives, and motives only
enter one's cognizance over time. In the end, we come to know our-
selves as an entirely different person from the one we took ourselves to
be apriori, and we are often then terrified by ourselves.
Regret never arises from the fact (which is impossible) that the
will, but rather from the fact that cognizance, has changed. That which
is essential and true in what I have ever willed, I must continue to will;
for I am myself this will, which lies beyond time and alteration. I can
therefore never regret what I have willed, but surely what I have done
if, directed by mi staken concepts, I did something other than what was
in accord with my will. lnsight into the latter, with more accurate
cognizance, is regret. This extends itself not merely to such things as
shrewd living, to the choice of means and assessment of the suitability
of purposes to my true will, but also to the truly ethical. Thus, for
example, I may have acted more egoistica1ly than accords with my
character, led astray by exaggerated ideas of the hardship in which I
found myself, or of the cunning, falsehood, malice of others, or by the
fact that I acted too rashly, i.e., without reflective consideration,ii deter-
mined not by motives of which I was distinctly cognizant in abstracto,
but by merely perceptual ones, by the present impression and by the
emotion that it excited, and that was so strong that I was not really in
pos session of my reason; reflection's retumiii is then here too only a
cognitive correction from which regret can proceed, which then always
announces itself, so far as is possible, in setting things right. Yet one

TReue]
ii[ohne Überlegung]
iii[die Rückkehr der Besinnung]
 350 Fourth Book. The World as Will

350 may notice that, in order to deceive oneself, cases of seeming rashness
are staged that are secretly really reflectively considered actions. For
with devices so subtle, we deceive and flatter nobody but ourselves.
The contrary of the case just cited can also occur: too much trust
in others, or ignorance of the relative values of worldly goods, or some
abstract dogma in which I have by now lost faith, can mislead me into
aGting less egoistically than accords with my character, and thereby
provide me with regret of a different sort. Always, therefore, regret is
cognitive correction with respect to the relation between the deed and
one's true intention.
Just as will, insofar as it reveals its Ideas in space alone, Le.,
through mere figure, is opposed by a matter that is already under the
sway of other Ideas, here natural forces,17 and seldom allows the figure
that is striving for visibility here to come forth with complete purity
alld distinctness, Le., beautifully, so the will as it is revealed in time
alone, i.e., through actions, finds an analogous obstacle in cognizance,
which is seldom entire1y accurate in providing it with data; thereby, the
dleed does not turn out quite exactly in accordance with the will, and
thus occasions regret. Regret therefore always proceeds from cognitive
correction, not from a change in the will, which would be impossible.
Pangs of conscience i over what has been done are not in the least bit
regret, but rather pain at cognizance of what one is in onese1f, i.e., as
will. They rest precisely on the certainty that one has ever the same
will. Rad the will changed and therefore one's pangs of conscience
been mere regret, the latter would be self-nullifying; for that which is
past could then no longer arouse anxiety,ii since it would depict expres-
sions of a will that was no longer that of the regretful person. We will
discuss the significance of pangs of conscience in detail further below.
The influence that cognizance has, as the medium for motives, not
on will itself to be sure, but on its coming to the fore in actions, also
grounds the main difIerence between the doings of human beings and
those of animals, the manner of cognizance on the part of the two being
different. Namely, the animal has only perceptual, the human being
also, through reason, abstract presentations, concepts. While, then, ani-
351 mal and human being are determined with equal necessity by motives,
the human being yet has over the animal the advantage of full decision-
making,iii which has even often been viewed as a freedom ofthe will in

t Gewissensangst]
itAngst]
iiteine vollkommene (in A, eigentliche ["real," "true"]) Wahlentscheidung]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 351

individual deeds, although it is nothing other than the possibility of a

batt1e to the finish between several motives, of which the stronger then
determines it with necessity. To this end, then, motives have to have
assumed the form of abstract thoughts; for only by means of these is
any real deliberation possible, i.e., the weighing of opposing grounds
for action. With animals, choicei can only occur between motives that
are perceptually at hand, whereby it is limited to the narrow sphere of
its present perceptual apprehension. 18 Therefore, the necessity in the
determination of the will by motives, which is the same as that in the
determination of effects by causes, can be perceptually and immediately
displayed only in animals. For here too, the motives are as immedi-
ately evident to the spectator as their effects, while with human beings,
motives are almost always abstract presentations to which the spectator
is not privy, and even to the agent himself, the necessity in their effec-
tuality remains concealed behind their conflict. For only in abstracto
can several presentations, such as judgments and chains of inferences,
lie juxtaposed in consciousness and then, free from all temporal deter-
mination, interact until the strongest overpowers the others and deter-
mines the will. This is full decision-making, or capacity for delibera-
tion,19 which is an advantage of human beings over animals, and on
account ofwhich freedom ofthe will has been attributed to the former,
under the supposition that their willing is a mere result of operations of
the intellect, without a particular drive serving as its basis, whereas, in
truth, motivation is only effectual on the foundation and under the pre-
supposition of the will's particular drive, which with human beings is
something individual, i.e., a character. A more detailed account of this
capacity for deliberation, and of the consequent difference between
human and anima] choice,ii can be found in The Two Fundamental
Problems 0/ Ethics (1 sI edition, pp. 35jj),iii to which I therefore here
refer. In any case, this capacity for deliberation on the part of human
beings also belongs among the things20 that make their existence so 352
very much more of a torment than that of animals, just as in general
our greatest pains He not in the present in the form of perceptual
presentations or immediate feelings, but in reason in the form of
abstract concepts, tormenting thoughts, from which animals living
only in the present, and therefore with enviable unconcem,21 are
utterly free.

i[Wahl]
~'[Willkür]
III[Prize Essay on the Freedom 0/ the Will III, pp. 29ff in Payne (tr.), ed.
ZäHer]
 352 Fourth Book. The World as Will

The just-explained dependence of the human capacity for delib-

eration on the faculty for thinking in abstracto, thus for judging and
inferring as weIl, seems to have been what misled both Descartes and
Spinoza into 22 identifying decisions of the will with the faculty for
affmning and denying (the faculty ofjudgment), trom which Descartes
concluded that will- for hirn, indifferently free - even bore responsibil-
ity for all theoretical error, Spinoza by contrast that will is necessarily
determined by motives, like judgments by their grounds;t the latter
opinion has, in any case, something right about it,23 yet comes on the
scene as a true conclusion from false premises.
The demonstrated difference between the way in which animals
and human beings are moved by motives has a far-reaching influence
on the essence of both, and contributes the most to the pervasive and
evident difference in the existence of both. Namely, while animals are
always motivated only by a perceptual presentation, human beings
endeavor entirely to exclude this sort of motivation and to be
determined onIy by abstract presentations, whereby they employ the
prerogative of their reason to the greatest possible advantage and,
independently of the present, do not choose or flee passing enjoyments
or pains, hut give thought to the consequences of both. In most cases,
aside from entirely insignificant actions, abstract, thought-out motives
determine us, not present impressions. Therefore, every individual
sacrifice made for the moment is relatively easy, but every renunciation
horrifically difficuIt; for the former bears only on the present rushing
past us, while the latter bears on the future and therefore incorporates
353 eountless sacrifices as its equivalent. The cause of24 0ur pain, just like
our pleasure, therefore lies mostly not in the real present, but merely in
abstract thoughts. It is the latter that often befall us unbearably, provide
us with torments in comparison with which all the suffering of the
animal word is minute. For even our own physical pain is often not feIt
above such torments; indeed, with intense spiritual sufferings, we cause
ourselves physical ones merely to direct our attention thereby from the
former to the latter. Thus in the greatest spiritual pain, one tears out his
hair, beats his breast, lacerates his countenance, rolls on the ground, all
of which are really only forcible means of distraction from a thought
that is unbearably befalling one. Just because spiritual pain, as the far
greater, renders one insensible to the physical, suicide becomes most
easy for someone in despair, or consumed with malignant depression,

tDescartes, Meditations 4; Spinoza, Ethics, Part Il, props. 48 et 49, et alia.

 Affinnation and Denial of the Will for Life 353

even if previously, in pleasant circumstances, he recoiled from thoughts

about it. Similarly,25 concern and passion, thus the play of one's
thoughts, grate on our body more often and more strongly than physical
hardships. Accordingly, therefore, Epictetus spoke rightly: TapdorY6l
t'Ovq av.9pw1iovq ou .a 1ipdYJlam, aAAa .a 1iepl .Wv 1ipaypd.wv
&fYJlam (Perturbant homines non res ipsae, sed de rebus decreta) (V.Y
and Seneca: Plura sunt, quae nos terrent, quam quae premunt, et
saepius opinione quam re laboramus (Ep. 5).ii Even Eulenspiegelüi
quite superbly caricatured human nature, laughing on his way uphill but
crying on the way down. Indeed, children who have hurt themselves
often cry not over the pain, but only, when someone commiserates with
them, over the thought of tbe pain thereby excited. Such great differ-
ences in acting and in suffering flow from the difference between
animal and human manners of cognizance. Further, the emergence of
that distinct and decisive individual character that above all distin-
guishes human beings from animals, which have almost only the
character of their species, is likewise conditioned by choice among
several motives, possible only by means of abstract concepts. For it is
only in accordance with antecedent choices that decisions variously
formed in various individuals are a sign of their individual character,
which is different in each of them, while the actions of animals depend 354
only on the presence or absence of impressions, presuming the latter
are in general a motive for their species. Thus finally with human
beings, the decision alone, not the mere desire, is a valid sign of one's
character, for oneself as for others. But the decision is made certain
only by the deed, for oneself as for others. The desire is merely a
necessary consequence of a present impression, be it from an external
stimulus or an inner, passing mood, and is therefore as immediately
necessary and devoid of reflective considerationiv as the action of
animals; therefore too, just like the latter, it merely expresses the
character of the species, not the individual character, i.e., merely

t"It is not the things themselves that trouble human beings, but what is
believed ofthem" (Enchiridion V); Latin translation, as usual, added in C.]
U["More things frighten us than oppress us, and we often suffer more from
opinion than actual reality." Deussen and Hübscher correct Schopenhauer's
refe.rence from Epistle 5 to Epistle l3 (II, 13,4).]
1I1[Till Eulenspiegel, the North German peasant and prankster, was the pro-
tagonist oftales collected into book form in the early 1500s, apparently first by
Hermann Bote.]
iv [Überlegung]
 354 Fourth Book. The World as Will

indicates what a human being in general, not the individual feeling the
desire, would be capable of doing. The deed alone - because as human
action it always has need of a certain reflective consideration, and
because human beings are as a rule in control of their reason, are thus
thoughtfully aware,i i.e., make decisions in accordance with thought-
out, abstract motives - is an expression of the intelligible maxims of
one's action, the result of one's innermost willing, and occupies a
position as a letter in relation to the word that designates one's
empirical character, which is itself only the temporal expression of
one's intelligible character. Therefore, only deeds weigh on the
conscience of someone of sound mind, not desires and thoughts. For
only our deeds confront us with the rnirror of our will. The deed
mentioned above, utterly devoid ofreflective consideration and actually
done with blind emotion, is to a certain extent something between a
mere desire and adecision; therefore, like a badly drawn line, it can be
erased by true regret (which, however, also shows itself as deeds) from
that image of our will that is the course of our lives. - In any case, as a
curious comparison, the comment may be in order here that the relation
between desires and deeds has an entirely accidental but exact analogy
with that between electrical diffusion and electrical conduction.
In consequence of the whole of this consideration regarding
freedom of the will and what relates to it, we find that, although in
itself and beyond the phenomenon will is to be called free, indeed
355 omnipotent, it is in its individual, cognitively illuminated phenomena,
thus in human beings and animals, determined by motives to which the
character in question always reacts in the same manner, lawfully and
necessarily. We see human beings, by virtue ofthe additional element
of abstract or rational cognizance, having the advantage over animals of
decision-making,ii which however only makes them into a battleground
for conflicts among motives without removing them from their dominion,
and therefore certainly makes possible a complete expression of indi-
vidual character, but is in no way to be viewed as freedom of individual
willing, i.e., independence of the law of causality,26 whose necessity
extends to human beings as to aIl other phenomena. Up to the point in
question, then, and no further, extends the difference between human
and animal willing that is introduced by reason, or cognizance by
means of concepts. But what an entirely different phenomenoniii of the

i[besonnen]
ii[Wahlentscheidung; in A, Wahlbestimmung (",determination of choice").]
"'[Phänomen]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 355

human will can come forth, impossible in the animal world, when a
person abandons the whole of his cognizance of individual things as
such, subject to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and by means of
cognizance of Ideas penetrates the principium individuationis - where
there is then made possible an actual emergence of that true freedom of
will as thing in itself by which the phenomenoni enters into a certain
sort of self-contradiction, which the word self-renunciationii designates
- indeed in the end nullifies the in-itself of his essence. This true and
unique immediate expression of the freedom of will in itself, even in
the phenomenon, can yet not be distinctly depicted here, but will be the
object of our consideration at the very end.
Now, however, that the present discussion has made explicit for
us the unalterability of empirical character as a mere unfolding of the
extra-temporal intelligible character, and also the necessity with which
actions proceed from its conjunction with motives, we have first of all
to set aside a conclusion that might most easily be drawn from it to the
advantage of objectionable27 inclinations. Since, namely, our character
is to be viewed as the temporal unfolding of an extra-temporal and
hence indivisible and unalterable act of will, or of an intelligible char-
acter, through which all that is of the essence in our way of living, i.e., 356
its ethical content, is unalterably determined, and which must accord-
ingly express itself in the empirical character as its phenomenon, while
only the inessential in the phenomenon, the external shaping of our
life's course, depends on the shape under which motives are displayed,
one might infer that it would be vain endeavor to work at bettering
one's character, or at resisting the power of evil inclinations, therefore
that it would be more in order to submit to the inevitable and, be it even
an evil one, accede at once to every inclination. - But this would be
altogether the same sort ofthing as we get with the doctrine ofunavoid-
able fate, and as the conclusion that has been drawn therefrom called
&pyd~ Adyaq, iii or in more recent times the Turkish Creed/v the proper
refutation of which, in the way that Chrysippus is supposed to have

i [Erscheinung]
ii[Selbstverleugnung]
iitargos logos, "lethargie reason"]
iV[Türkenglaube; Nietzsehe refers to this, e.g., as "Turkish fatalism (Fatalis-
mus)" in The Wanderer and his Shadow, § 61: "Turkish fatalism makes the
fundamental error of supposing that a person and fate are two different and
opposed things ... "]
 356 Fourth Book. The World as Will

provided it, Cicero sets forth in his book defato, eh. 12, 13. i
Although, namely, everything can be viewed as irrevocably
predetermined by fate, it is so precisely only by means of the: chain of
causes. Therefore, in no case can it be determined that an effect will
occur without its cause. What is predetermined are thus not events plain
and simple, but events as the result of antecedent causes; thus not the
resu1t alone but also the means by which the result is determined to
occur, is decided by fate. Accordingly, should the means not occur,
then surely neither will the result: both of them always in accordance
with the determination offate, ofwhich, however, we always first learn
after the fact.
Just as events will always turn out according to fate, i.e., the
endless concatenation of causes, so our deeds will always turn out
according to our intelligible character. But just as we do not know the
former in advance, so too we are given no insight apriori into the
latter; rather only aposteriori, through experience, as we come to know
others, so too ourselves. Were it a consequence of the intelligible
character that we could make a good decision only after long battle
against an evil inclination, then the batde must precede and be waited
out. Reflection on the unalterability of character, on the unity of the
357 source from which all of our deeds flow, must not mislead us into
anticipating the character's decision in favor of one or the other side; in
the ensuing decision we will see what sort of person we are, and be
mirrored in our deeds. It is just this that explains the satisfaction, or the
psychic anxiety,ii with which we look back on the path of the life we
have laid behind uso Both of them come not from the fact that the past
deeds still have an existence - they are past, have been, and are now no
more - but their great importance for us comes from their meaning,
comes from the fact that these deeds are the imprint of character, mirror
of the will into which we look and recognize our innermost self, the
core of our will. Because we thus 1eam this not before but only after the
fact, we have to strive and do battle over time just so that the image
effectuated by our deeds turns out to ren der us maximally calm, not
anxious. But as stated, the meaning of such calm, or psychic anxiety,
will be investigated further below. Here, by contrast, belongs the
following independent consideration.

t'appelatur ... a philosophis Argos Logos"]: De fato (On Fate): as Deussen

and Hübscher note, 12,28.]
ii[Seelenangst]
 At1irmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 357

Besides the intelligible and the empirical character, yet a third is

to be mentioned, different from both, the acquired character that one
gets only by living, through practice in worldly affairs, and of which
one is speaking when someone is praised as a person who has charac-
ter, or reproached for lacking character.
One might of course suppose that, since the empirical character,
as phenomenon of the intelligible, is unalterable and, like any natural
phenomenon, internally consistent, human beings must just for that
reason also make their appearance as always the selfsame and consis-
tent, and therefore have no need for constructing a charactet through
experience and reflection. The matter is otherwise, however, and although
one is always the same, yet one does not always understand oneself, but
often fails at self-knowledgeii until he has acquired a certain degree of
true self-cognizance.iii The empirical character, as a mere natural drive,
is in itself irrational; indeed its expressions are even disturbed by reason,
and in particular all the more as a person possesses more thoughtful
awareness and power ofthinking.iv For these keep hirn always apprised
of what pertains to a human being in general, as the character of the 358
species, and what is possible for that being in willing as in achieving.
Thereby, he is hampered in his insight into what he alone out of all, by
virtue of his individuality, is willing and can do. He finds in hirnself
dispositions for all so various human endeavors and powers; but without
experience he will be unc1ear as to their various degrees in his individ-
ual case. And when he in fact seizes upon endeavors that accord with
his character alone, he still feels, especially in particular moments and
moods, aroused to those that are exactly the opposite and incompatible
with them, which, were he to pursue the former undisturbed, would have
to be entirely suppressed. For, just as our physical path on earth is
always only a line, not a surface, so in life, if we would seize upon and
possess one thing, we must leave countless others lying, right and left,
renouncing them. If we cannot make the decision to do that, but grab
like children at the fair after everything that stimulates us in passing,
then this is the perverse endeavor to transform the line of our path into
a surface; we then run a zigzag course, flit here and there like a will-o'-
the-wisp, and attain to nothing.

:rkünstlich einen Charakter zu erwerben]

'~[verkennt sich oft]
lII[eigentliche Selbstkenntnis ]
iV[Besonnenheit und Denkkraft]
 358 Fourth Book. The World as Will

Or to ernploy another cornparison, just as, according to Hobbes's

doctrine of right, everyone has originally a right to everything but an
exclusive right to nothing, yet can attain to the latter for a particular
thing by renolmcing his right to everything else, in exchange for others
doing the same with respect to the one chosen by hirn, so it is precisely
the same in life, where we can only pursue some particular endeavor
with true seriousness and fortune - be it for enjoyment, honor, wealth,
knowledge, art, or virtue - only if we abandon all extraneous claims,
forego everything else. For this reason, mere willing and even abilities
are in themselves still insufficient, but a person must also know what he
wills, and know his abilities; only thus will he show character, and only
then can he really accomplish something. Before he attains to this,
despite the natural consistency of empirical character, he is still without
character, and although he must stay on the whole true to himself and
run his course to the end, drawn by his guiding spirit,i he will yet trace
359 not a perfectly straight line, but a shaky unsteady one, vacillate, deviate,
reverse, afford himself regret and pain: all of this because, in matters
great and small, he sees so much before him as possible and attainable
by a human being, and does not yet know what among it accords with
him alone and can be carried out by hirn alone,28 or is even enjoyable
only by him. He will thus envy many a person for situations and
relations that are yet suited only to their characters, not to his, and in
which he would feel unhappy, indeed not be able to survive at all. For
just as fish do well only in water, birds only in air, moles only under
the earth, so every human being does weIl only in the atmosphere that
is suited to him; the air of the court, for example, cannot be breathed by
everyone. From a lack of sufficient insight into all of this, many a
person will 29 engage in all sorts of failed efforts, will do violence to his
character in particular details, and yet again on the whole have to yield
to it; and what he so laboriously attains, contrary to his nature, will give
him no enjoyment, what he learns in this way will remain dead. Indeed
even in an ethical respect, a deed too noble for one's character, origi-
nating not from pure immediate impulse, but from a concept, from a
dogma, will through subsequent egoistic regret lose all merit even in
one's own eyes. Velle non discitur. Just as we become aware of the
inflexibility of others' characters only through experience, and up until
then childishly believe that, by presenting things in a rational way, by
begging and pleading, by example and generosity, we might bring
someone to abandon his ways, to change his manner of action, to depart

i [Dämon]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 359

from his way of thinking, or even broaden his capacities, so it goes with
ourselves as weH. We must first leam from experience what we are
willing and what we can do; until then we do not know it, are without
character, and have often to be pushed back to our own path by hard
blows from without.
But when we have finally leamed, then we have attained to what
is familiarly known as character, acquired character. This is accordingly
nothing other than maximally complete cognizance of one's own indi-
viduality: it is abstract, consequently distinct, knowledgei ofthe unalter-
able properties of one's own empirical character and of the measure
and direction of one's spiritual and physical forces, thus ofthe totality 360
of the strengths and weakness of one' s own individuality. This sets us
in a position to carry out, now with thoughtful awareness and methodi-
cally, the inherently unalterable role of our own person, which we had
previously regarded as a kind of citizen without strict norms for natu-
ralization,ii and to fi11 the gaps that whims or weaknesses occasion
therein under the direction of firm concepts. That manner of action
which is in any case necessary by virtue of our individual nature we
have now brought into distinctly conscious, constantly present maxims,
according to which we execute it with such thoughtful awareness that it
is as ifit were leamed by study, without being distracted by the passing
influence of mood or present impressions, without being impeded by
that which is bitter or sweet in some detail met on the path, without
hesitation, without vacillation, without inconsistencies. We will now no
longer, as novices, wait, attempt, feel our way around, to see what we
are reaHy willing and of what we are capable, but we know it once and
for all, have only to apply general principles to individual cases in any
matter of choice, and arrive at once at adecision. We know our will in
general and do not allow ourselves to be misled by mood or external
demands into individual decisions that are opposed to it on the whole.
We know in just the same way the nature and the measure of our
strengths and our weaknesses, and will thereby spare ourselves many
pains. For there is really no other enjoyment than that of employing and
feeling one's own forces, and the greatest pain is a perceived lack of
forces where one needs them. Having then undertaken an examination
as to where our strengths and where our weaknesses lie, we will seek to
develop, employ, in every manner to utilize our conspicuous natural
dispositions, and always occupy ourselves where these are of use and

~rWissenl
U[die wir vorhin regellos naturalisierten]
 360 Fourth Book. The World as Will

applicable, but aitogether and with se1f-overcoming avoid endeavors

for which we have little natural disposition, will guard against attempt-
ing that which simply does not work for uso Only someone who has
gotten this far will be entirely hirnself with constancy and complete
thoughtful awareness, and will never be left in the lurch by hirnself,
because he would always know what he was able to presume in his own
361 regard. He will then frequently partake of the pleasure of feeling his
strengths, and seldom experience the pain of being reminded of his
weaknesses. The latter is a humiliarion that perhaps causes the greatest
spiritual pain; therefore, one can much more easily bear distinct evidence
of one's ill fortune than of one's ineptitude. i
If we are completely familiar with our strengths and weakness,
then, we will also not attempt to display forces that we do not have,
will not play with counterfeit coin, because that sort of game of mirrors
simply misses its target in the end. For since the entire person is only
the phenomenon of his will, nothing could be more perverse than,
proceeding on the basis of reflection, willing to be something other
than one is; for that is an immediate contradiction ofthe will with itself.
Imitating someone else's qualities and peculiar features is much more
cleplorable than wearing someone else's clothes; for it is judgment of
one's own worthlessness pronounced by onese1t: Knowledge of one's
owo disposition and one's capacities of every sort, and their unalterable
limits, is in this respect the surest way to attain to the greatest possible
se1f-content. For the same thing applies to inner circumstances as to
outer, namely, that there is no more effective consolation for us than
the fuH certainty of unalterable necessity. An ill that has befallen us
does not torment us as much as the thought of the circumstances by
which it could have been averted. Therefore, nothing is so effective for
our composure as regarding events [Tom the point of view of a neces-
sity through which all contingencies are displayed as instruments of a
prevailing destiny, and hence we recognize the ill that has occurred as
inexorably entailed by the conflict between inner and outer circum-
stances, in other words fatalism. 30 In fact we really wail or rage only so
Ilong as we either hope to affect others by i1 or to rouse ourselves to un-
precedented exertion. But children and adults know very weil to rest
content, once they distinctly see that there is altogether no other way in
the matter:
SV/lOV lVI crrr!S8(7!Jl qJlA,OV oaj.la(7aVT8C; avayxT!.
(Animo in pectoribus nostro domito necessitate.Y

i[sein Missgeschick, als sein Ungeschick]

 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 361

We are like captured elephants that horrifically rage and wrestle for 362
many days, until lhey see that it is fruitless and then, suddenly composed,
offer their necks to the yoke, forever tamed. We are like King David,
who, while his son still lived, incessantly besieged Jehovah with en-
treaties and showed desperation in his demeanor, but as soon as his son
was dead no longer thought about it. From this comes the fact that
countless enduring ills, such as deformity, poverty, lowliness of status,
ugliness, the repulsiveness of one's abode, are borne quite indifferently
by countless people and indeed no longer felt, like healed-over wounds,
simply because they know that inner and outer necessity leave no
alternative in lhe matter, while lhose more fortunate fail to see how one
can bear it. Now as with outer necessity, so also with inner, nothing
reconciles one so firmly as distinct familiarity. If we have once and for
all distinctly recognized our good qualities and strengihs as well as our
failings and weaknesses, set our goal accordingly, and rested content as
regards the unachievable, then we thereby most surely escape, so far as
our individuality permits, the most bitter of all sufferings, discontent
with ourselves, which is lhe inevitable consequence of a lack of knowl-
edge of one's own individuality, of false conceit, and the presumption
arising therefrom. This verse from Ovid allows of superb application to
the bitter topic of self-cognizance here recommended:
Optimus ille animi vindex laedentia pectus
Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque seme!. ii
So much for acquired character, which is to be sure not as important
for ethics proper as for mundane living, but whose explanation coordi-
nates with that of the intelligible and the empirical as the third kind of
character. Regarding the first ofthese, we have had to allow ourselves a
somewhat detailed consideration, to make it explicit to ourselves how
will is subject to necessity in all its phenomena, while it can nonetheless
be called free in itself, indeed omnipotent.
§ 56.
[Cognition as Motive and as Quieter of Will- 363
Will Lacking in Ultimate Purpose - Life as Constant Sl@'ering]
Now this freedom, this omnipotence, as the expression and

i["1 will force my soul into subjeetion as I needs must": Wad 18,113 (tr.
Samuel Butler); Latin translation added in c.]
it"That is of the greatest help to the spirit, onee and for all breaking the
bonds that entangle and torment one's breast": Ovid, Remedia amoris (The
Remedies ofLove), 293.]
 362 Fourth Book. The World as Will

image of which the entire visible world, its phenomenon, stands

before us and progressively develops - in accordance with the laws
entailed by cognitive form - can find a new expression,i namely,
where there has arisen for it, in its most complete ii phenomenon, a
consummatelyiii adequate cognizance of its own essence. Namely, it
either here too wills, at the pinnacle of reflection and self-consciousness,
the same thing that it had been willing blindly and without self-
cognizance - in which case, in matters of detail as on the whole,
cognizance remains constantly a motive for it - or to the contrary, this
cognizance becomes a quieter for it, stilling and nullifying all willing.
This is the affirmation and denial of the will for life already introduced
in general terms above, which as a general, not a particular, expression
of will with respect to an individual's way of life does not disruptively
modify the development of his character nor find expression in
individual actions, but, either through ever stronger emergence of
one's entire manner of action so far, or to the contrary through its
nullification, vividly pronounces those maxims of which the will,
with the cognizance now attained, has freely taken hold.
Wehave somewhat facilitated and paved the way for more explicit
development of all this, the main subject of this final Book, with our
intervening considerations regarding freedom, necessity, and character.
It will be all the more facilitated, however - yet again postponing those
matters - after we have first directed our considerations to life itself,
the willing or non-willing ofwhich is the great question, and in particular
in such a way that we seek to recognize in general terms what this
affirmation of life really means for will itself, which is after all every-
where its innermost essence, in what way and how far this satisfies it,
indeed can satisfy it, in short, what, in general and essential terms, is in
fact to be viewed as its condition in this its own world, one in every
respect belonging to it.
364 First of all, I desire that one recall here those considerations with
which we conc1uded the second Book, occasioned by the question that
was posed there conceming the goal and purpose of will. Instead of an
answer to that question, it became evident to us how, on all the levels
of its phenomenon from the lowest to the highest, will is entirely
devoid of an ultimate goal and purpose, is always striving because

i[ von Neuem sich äussern]

ii[ vollendetesten]
iiTvollkommen]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 363

striving is its sole essenee, to which no end is put by the achievement of

any goal, which is therefore capable of no final satisfaction but can
only be held up by impediments, but in itself proceeds ad infinitum. We
saw this in the simplest of all natural phenomena, gravity, which does
not cease to strive and to press toward an unextended center, the
reaehing ofwhich would be its own and matter's annihilation, does not
eease if the entire universe is already compressed into a ball. We see it
in the other simple natural phenomena. That whieh is solid strives, be it
by melting or dissolving, toward a fluidity in whieh alone all its
chemieal forees would be liberated; rigidity is their imprisonment, in
which they are held by coldness. That which is fluid strives for the
form of a vapor, into whieh, as soon as it is freed from all pressure, it
passes at onee. No body is without affinities, Le., without striving, or
without longing and desire, as Jakob Böhme; would say. Eleetrieity
propagates its inner self-division ad infinitum, even if the mass of the
earth eonsumes its effeet. Eleetromagnetism is likewise, so long as the
battery lasts, a purposeless, ceaselessly renewed act of self-division and
reeonciliation. The existence of plants is just the same sort of unresting,
never satisfied striving, a ceaseless driving through ever more highly
elevated forms until the endpoint, the seed, beeomes the starting point
again. This repeated ad irifinitum: never a goal, never final satisfaetion,
never a point of repose. At the same time we will reeall from the
second Book that the multiplicity of natural forces and organic forms
makes the matter in which they would come to the fore everywhere
mutually eontested, each of them possessing only what it is has tom
from another, and so a constant battle for life and death is maintained,
precisely from which there above all proceeds that resistance by which
the striving that constitutes the innermost being of every thing is every- 365
where impeded, vainly presses, yet cannot get free of its own essence,
is thoroughly tormented until this phenomenon perishes, whereupon
others eagerly take hold of its plaee and its matter.
Wehave long since recognized this striving that constitutes the
core and the in-itself of every thing as one and the same as that whieh
in us, where it manifests itself most distinctly in the light of fullest
consciousness, is called will. We then call its impediment by an obstacle
intervening between it and its momentary goal suffering, its achieve-
ment of the goal by contrast satisfaction, well-being, happiness. We can

i[Cf. Aurora oder Morgenröte im Aufgang (Aurora, or the Dawn in its Rising
[1612]), eh. 2.]
 364 Fourth Book. The World as Will

also carry these titles over to the phenomena of the incognizant world,
weaker in degree but identical in essence. These we then see in the grip
of constant suffering and without any lasting happiness. For all striving
arises from a lack, from discontent with one's state,3l and so is suffering
so long as it is not satisfied. But no satisfaction is enduring; rather, it is
always only the starting point for some new striving. We see striving
everywhere multiply impeded, everywhere in battle, thus to this extent
always as suffering: no ultimate goal for the striving, thus no measure
or goal for the suffering.
What we in this way discover only with sharpened attention and
effort in incognizant nature, however, confronts us distinctly in cogni-
zant nature, in the life of the animal world, the constant suffering of
which is easily demonstrable. But without tarrying on this middle level,
we would turn to where, illuminated by the clearest cognizance, every-
thing comes most distinctly to the fore in the li fe of the human being.
For as the phenomenon ofwill becomes more complete,i so too the suf-
fering becomes more and more obvious. In plants there is as yet no
sensibility, thus no pain. A certainly very low degree ofboth inhabits
the lowest animals, infusoria and radiata; even in insects the capacity
for feeling and suffering is stilllimited. Only with the complete nervous
system of vertebrates does it occur to a high degree, and in ever higher
clegrees as intelligence is more highly developed. 32 In equal measure,
then, as cognizance attains to distinctness, as consciousness rises higher,
366 there also grows that torment which consequently reaches its highest
clegree in the human being, and there in turn all the more as the human
being is the more distinctly cognizant, the more intelligent: he in whom
genius lives suffers the most. In this sense, namely with respect to the
degree of cognizance in general, not to mere abstract knowledge, I
understand and here employ the passage from Koheleth: Qui auget
scientiam, auget et dolorem. ii
This exact proportion between the degree of consciousness and
that of suffering has been altogether beautifully expressed with a
perceptual and striking depiction in a drawing by the philosophical
painter, or painting philosopher, Tischbein. The upper half ofthe picture
depicts women whose children are being abducted and who, in various
groups and postures, give manifold expression to deep matemal pain,
anxiety, despair. The lower half of the picture shows, in entirely the

i[vollkommener]
itEcc!esiastes. "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" (l: 18
[King James Version]).]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 365

same order and grouping, sheep from whom their lambs are being
taken, so that every human individual, every human posture in the upper
half of the pieture corresponds to an animal analogue below, and one
then distinctly sees how the pain that is possible within a dull animal
consciousness relates to the powerful torment that fIrst becomes possible
through distinctness of eognizanee, through clarity of eonseiousness.
We wish for these reasons to consider within human existence the
inner and essential fate ofwill. Everyone will easily find the same thing
expressed in the life of animals, only more weakly, to varying degrees,
and even in the world of animal suffering be able to gain a convietion
as to how essential suffering is to al/life.

§ 57.
[Life, Deatb, Suffering, Boredom]
On every level that eognizance illuminates, will makes its appear-
anee as an individual. i Within infinite space and infinite time, the
human individual fmds himself as a finite, eonsequently eomparatively
vanishing quantity thrown into them, and has on aecount of their
boundlessness always only a relative, never an absolute, When and
Where for his existence; for his place and his duration are finite parts of
something infinite and boundless. - His true existenee is only in the 367
present, whose unimpeded flight into the past is a constant passage into
death, eonstant dying, sinee his past life, apart from whatever may be
its eonsequenees for the present, as also apart from the witness it bears
to his will, which is imprinted in it, is already utterly done with, dead,
and is no more. Therefore, from a rational perspeetive, it must also be
indifferent to hirn whether the content of that past was torments or
enjoyments. But the present is eonstantly turning into the past under his
hands; the future is entirely uneertain and ever brief. Thus his exis-
tenee, just regarded from the formal 33 side alone, is a eonstant plunging
of the present into the dead past, constant dying. But if we now view
it from the physieal side as weIl, then it is obvious that, just as our
walking is, as is weH known, only constantly impeded falling, the life
of our body is only continuingly impeded dying, ever postponed death;
finally, likewise, the mobility of our spirit is eontinuingly suppressed
boredom. Every breath wards off the eonstant intrusion of death, with
which we do battle in this manner every second, and then again at
greater intervals with every meal, every sleep, every warming, ete. In

tals Individuum J
 366 Fourth Book. The World as Will

the end it is bound to be victorious, for we have of course fallen subject

to it by birth, and it plays but a while with its prey before devouring it.
We go on nonetheless with our li fe with considerable engagement and
much care, for as long as possible, just as one inflates a soap bubble as
long and as large as possible, although firmly certain that it will burst.
If we already saw, in incognizant nature, its inner essence as a
constant striving, without a goal and without rest, the fact confronts us
still more distinctly in considering the animal and the human being.
Willing and striving is his entire essence, entirely comparable to an
unquenchable thirst. But the basis of all willing is need, lack, thus pain,
to which in his origin and by his essence he has of course consequently
fallen subject. Should he on the other hand be lacking in objects of
willing, with too easy a satisfaction snatching them from hirn, then a
368 frightful emptiness and boredom befalls hirn, i.e., his essence and his
very existence become an unbearable burden to hirn. His life thus
swings34 like a pendulum, back and forth, between pain and boredom,
both of which are in fact its ultimate constituents. This was also bound
to express itself most strangely in the saying that, after man had
transported all sufferings and torments into hell, nothing then remained
for heaven but boredom.
The constant striving that constitutes the essence of every phenom-
enon of will, however, obtains its first and most general foundation on
the higher levels of objectification in the fact that will here makes its
appearance to itself as a Iiving body, with the iron command to nourish
it; and what gives force to this command is precisely that this body is
nothing other than objectified will for life itself. Tbe human being, as
the most complete objectification of that will, is accordingly the needi-
est of all beings: he is through and through concrete willing and need-
ing, is a concretion of a thousand needs. With these he stands upon the
earth left to hirns elf, in uncertainty about everything but his need and
his hardship. Accordingly,35 concern for maintenance of that existence
in the midst of such heavy demands, daily renewed, fills as a rule the
entirety of a human life. To these there is then immediately joined the
second demand, that of propagation of the species. At the same time,
from all sides, the most diverse dangers threaten hirn, to escape from
which he has need of constant alertness. 36 With cautious step and
anxiously scouting about, he follows his path; for a thousand contin-
gencies and a thousand enemies lie in wait for hirn. Thus he went in the
wild, and thus he goes in civilized life. There is no security for hirn:
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 367

Qualibus in tenbris vitae, quantisque perielis

Degitur hoee' aevi, quodeunque est! - Lucr. Il, 15.i

The life of the vast majority is indeed only a constant battle for this
existence itself, with the eertainty of losing it in the end. What allows
them, however, to endure in this so arduous battle is not so much love
of life as fear of death, which yet stands inexorably in the background 369
and can at any moment step forth.
Life itself is a sea fuH of reefs and whirlpools that a person avoids
with the greatest of caution and care, even though he knows that, if he
should succeed in winding his way through it with every effort and
artifiee, he is with every step just by that fact nearing the greatest, the
total, the unavoidable and unsalvageableii shipwreck, indeed steering
right toward it - death: this is the final goal ofthat arduous joumey, and
worse to him than all the reefs he has avoided.
Now it is at onee most noteworthy, however, that on the one hand
the sufferings and torments of life can so easily increase that even that
death from which one's entire life consists in a flight becomes desira-
ble, and one voluntarily rushes toward it; and on the other hand in turn,
as soon as hardship and suffering grant a person respite, boredom is at
once so elose that he is in dire need of something to pass the time.
What occupies allliving things and keeps them in movement is striving
for existence. With existence, however, when it is assured them, they
have no idea what to do. Therefore, the second thing that sets them into
movement is striving to be rid of the burden of existence, to render
oneself insensible to it, to "kill time," i.e., to escape boredom. Aecord-
ingly,37 we see that almost all persons who are made safe from hardship
and concerns, having finally cast off all other burdens, are now a burden
to themselves and now esteem every hour through which they have
gotten as again: that is, every subtraetion from preeisely that life
toward whose longest possible maintenance they had until then put
forth their forces. Boredom, however, is least of all to be deemed a
minor i11; it paints one's face in the end with true despair. It is respon-
sible for the fact that beings who love each other as little as human
beings do yet so strongly seek each other out, and it thereby becomes
the source of sociability.38 Public provisions against it are even every-

i["In what shadows of life, in what great dangers, is this lifetime lived, so
long as it lasts": Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature ojThings).1
itunheilbaren: presumably with allusion to salvation (Heil) and the saintly
(das Heilige) oflater relevance. I translate the term elsewhere as "unsalvable."]
 368 Fourth Book. The World as Will

where adopted, as against other general calamities, out of political

shrewdness; for this ill, just as much its opposite extreme, starvation,
can drive people to the most unbridled behavior. 39 The people need
370 panem et Circenses. i The strict penitentiary system of Philadelphia, by
means of solitary confinement and inactivity, makes boredom alone an
instrument of punishment; and it is so frightful a one that it has in fact
le:d inmates to suicide. Just as hardship is the constant scourge of the
people, so boredom is that of the elegant world. In civil life it is repre-
sented by Sunday, just as hardship is represented by the six weekdays.
Altogether every human life flows on between willing and achiev-
ing. Desire is by its nature pain; its achievement gives quick birth to
satiation. Tbe goal was only illusory: possession removes the stimulus;
under a new form, the desire, the need recommences. Where it does
not, there follows desolation, emptiness, boredom, against which the
battle is just as tormenting as that against hardship.
That desire and satisfaction alternate without too short and with-
out too long of an interval reduces the suffering that both provide to the
lowest degree, and constitutes the happiest course of life. For that which
one might otherwise call the finest part, the purest pleasures of life, just
because it lifts us out of real existence and transfonns us into disengaged
spectators ofthe latter, thus40 the pure cognition that remains foreign to
all willing, enjoyment of the beautiful, genuine pleasure in art - this,
because it of course demands rare dispositions, is only granted to the
very few, and even to these only as a passing dream. And then for
precise1y these few, their higher intellectual power renders them sensi-
tive to far greater suffering than the duller can ever feel, and sets them
besides in a lonely position among a variety of beings markedly differ-
ent from them; thereby, even this is then cancelled out. For the vast
majority of people, however, purely intellectual enjoyments are not
accessible. They are almost entirely incapable of the pleasure that lies
in pure cognition: they are wholly involved in willing. If, therefore,
something is to win their engagement, be interesting to them, it must
(this indeed lies in the meaning ofthe word) somehow arouse their will,
be it only through a distant and merely possible reference to it, but it
can never remain entirely out of play, because their existence lies by far
more in willing than in cognition: action and reaction are their single
371 element. Innocent expressions of this characteristic can be drawn
from trivial matters and everyday phenomena. Thus, for example, they
inscribe their names at the spot of interesting sights that they visit, in

t'bread and circuses": Juvenal, Satires X, 81.]

 Affinnation and Denial of the Will for Life 369

order to have an effect on the spot since it had no effect on them.

Further, they cannot easily merely contemplate some strange rare animal,
but they have to stir it up, tease it, play with it, just in order to feel
action and reaction. Most especially, however, this need for arousal of
the will shows itself in the invention and preservation of card games,
which is quite truIy an expression ofthe pitiful side ofhurnanity.
But whatever nature, whatever fortune may have done, whoever
one is and whatever one possesses, the pain essential to life cannot be
cast off:
n17J.d{j17~ {j' 45/lw;sv, t{jaJv d; o6pavov s6pvv.
(pelides autem ejulavit, intuitus in coelum latum.y
Andagain:
Z17vd; f.l&Y "ai; ~a Kpoy/oyO;, a6rap oi"(VY
Efzov amlzpfXnr,v.
(Jovis quidem filius eram Saturnii; verum aerumnan
Habebam infinitam. )ii
The ceaseless efforts to banish suffering accomplish nothing beyond
altering its form. This is originally lack, hardship, concern for the main-
tenance of life. If one has had the good fortune - which is most unlikely
to last - to suppress pain in this form, it commences at once in a thou-
sand others, varying in accordance with age and circumstances, as the
sex drive, passionate love, jealousy, envy, hate, anxiety, ambition,
miserliness, sickness, etc., etc. If it can find entry finally in no other
form, then it arrives in the sad gray raiment of surfeit and boredom,
against which all sorts of things are then tried. If one finally succeeds in
driving these off, it will be unlikely to happen without thereby readmit-
ting pain in one of its previous forms, and so beginning the dance all
over; for every human life is tossed back and forth between pain and
boredom. As defeating as this consideration is, I would yet call inciden-
tal attention to one side of it from which a consolation can be drawn,
indeed, perhaps even a Stoic indifference attained in the face of the ills 372
confronting one. For our impatience over the latter for the most part
arises from the fact that we understand it as contingent, as brought forth

i["And he ['A1pdo'l]c; (Atreides), not Peleides] cried, looking towards

Heaven": lliad 3,364 (tr. Samue1 Butler).]
it"I was son of Zens, but I went through an infinity of suffering": Odyssey
11,620 (tr. Samue1 Butler).]
 370 Fourth Book. The World as Will

through a chain of causes that could easily have been different. For we
te:nd not to be troubled by immediately necessary and quite general ills,
e.g., the necessity of aging and death and of many daily discomforts. It
is rather consideration of the contingency of the circumstances that
brought a suffering precisely to us that gives the latter its sting. When,
however, we have recognized that pain as such is essential to life and
inexorable, and nothing beyond its bare shape, the form under which it
is displayed, depends on chance, that our present suffering thus occupies
a place into which, without it, some other would at once enter that is
now excIuded from it, that accordingly, in essence, fate can do litde to
us, then such a reflection might, were it to become a living conviction,
bring forth a significant degree of Stoic equanimity and greatly diminish
the anxious concern for one's own welfare. In fact, however, one may
rarely or never fmd so powernd a dominion of reason over immediately
feIt suffering.
In any case, through this consideration of the unavoidability of
pain and of the suppression of one by another and the drawing in of
new ones by the departure of those foregoing, one might even be led to
the paradoxical, but not absurd, hypothesis that, in every individual, the
measure of pain essential to him is once and for all determined by his
nature, which measure could neither remain empty nor grow overfull,
however much the form of suffering may vary. His suffering and well-
being would accordingly not be at all externally determined, but only
precisely by that measure, that disposition, which might, to be sure, on
account of his physical condition, experience some decrease or increase
at various times, but would on the whole still remain the same and be
nothing other than what one calls his temperament or, more exactly, the
degree to which he is, as Plato expresses it in the first Book of the
Republic, SVXOA~ or OV(J"XOA~, i.e., easily or with difficulty contented.i
373 For this hypothesis there speaks not only the familiar experience
that great suffering makes us entirely unable to fee) alliesser suffering,
and conversely, that in the absence of great suffering even the slightest
discomforts torment us and foul our mood. But experience also teaches
that, once a great misfortune before which we had shuddered at the
mere thought has actually occurred, nonetheless our mood, as soon as
we have overcome the initial pain, stands on the whole quite unaltered,

i[eukolos, duskolos. The former but not the latter occurs at Republic I, 329d
and 330a.]
 Aftinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 371

and also conversely, after the occurrence of a good fortune for which
we had for some time been longing, we do not feel on the whole and
enduringly markedly better off or more content than before. Only the
moment of occurrence ofthose alterations moves us unusually strongly,
as deep sorrow or sheer joy; but both soon vanish, because they rested
on a deception. For they arise not from the immediately present enjoy-
ment or pain, but only from the prospect of a new future that is
anticipated in them. Only by virtue of the fact that pain and pleasure are
borrowed from the future could they get so abnormally heightened,
consequently not for long.
As additional confirmation of the hypothesis set forth, according
to which, as with cognition so also with feelings of suffering or well-
being, a very great part of it is determined subjectively and apriori, the
observations may be introduced that human cheer and melancholy are
evidently not determined by external circumstances, by wealth or c1ass,
since we encounter at least as many happy faces among the poor as
among the wealthy, and further, that the motives upon which suicide
ensues are so highly diverse, in that we can cite no misfortune that
would be great enough to lead to it, in the case of every character, with
even much probability, and few that would be so slight that something
equivalent has not in fact occasioned it. If, then, the degree of our
cheerfulness or sadness is not the same at all times, we will not, accord-
ing to this view, ascribe this to change in external circumstances, but
rather to that of one's inner state, one's physical condition. For when
there occurs an actual, although always only temporary, increase in our
cheerfulness, even to the point of joy, it tends to find its way into us
without any external occasion. 41 To be sure, we often see our pain as
proceeding only from some particular external relation, and are 374
evidently oppressed and troubled only by the latter; we then believe
that, if this were only lifted, the greatest contentment would be bound
to occur. But this is deception. The measure of our overall pain and
well-being is, according to our hypothesis, at every moment subjectively
deterrnined, and with respect to it, that external motive for sorrow is
only what a boi! is to the body, adestination for all of its otherwise
dispersed bad humors. The pain that is grounded in our essence for this
period of time, and is therefore unshakeable, would be dispersed into a
hundred points without that particular external cause for suffering, and
would make its appearance in the form of a hundred minor annoyances
and whims in regard to things we now entirely overlook, because our
capacity for pain is already filled with that main ill, which has concen-
trated all otherwise scattered suffering into one point. 42 This also agrees
with the observation that, when through a fortunate outcome a great
 372 Fourth Book. The World as Will

concern that has gripped us is tinally lifted from our breast, another
takes its place as quickly, the entire material for which was already there
in advance, yet could not enter consciousness as a concern because
the latter had no capacity left for it; for this reason, the material for
concern merely remained standing as an obscure, unnoticed foggy shape
at the extreme end of its horizon. But now that a place has been made
for it, this ready material at once steps forth and takes the throne as the
ruling (trPVTaV8vovaa) concern of the day. Even if, then, in a material
respect, it is much lighter than the stuff of the concern that has just
vanished, it is yet able to inflate itself to such an extent that it
becomes its equal in apparent magnitude and so, as the main concern of
the day, completely tills the throne.
Disproportionate pleasure and very intense pain always settle into
the same person. For the two are mutually conditioning and are also
jointly conditioned by great liveliness of spirit. Both are produced, as
we have just found, not by that which is purely present, but by anti ci-
pation of the future. Since, however, pain is essential to life and is also
determined in its degree by the nature of the subject, therefore sudden
changes, because they are always external, cannot really change its
375 d€:gree, it follows that an elTor and delusion always lies at the founda-
tion of inordinate joy or pain; consequently, these two strains on the
spirit can be avoided through insight. Every disproportionate joy
(exultatio, insoiens laetitia) always rests on the delusion that one has
found something in life that is not at a11 to be met with in it, namely,
lasting satisfaction of one's tormenting, constantly self-regenerating
desires or concerns. One must inevitably be brought back later from
every single delusion of this sort, and then, when it vanishes, pay for it
with pains as bitter in proportion as the pleasure caused by its alTival.
To this extent, it is altogether like a height from which one can return to
the ground only by falling; therefore, one ought to have avoided it. And
every sudden, inordinate pain is likewise but a fall from such a height,
vanishing of such a delusion, and therefore conditioned by it. One
could consequently avoid both, if one had such power over oneself as
always to survey things with utter clarity as a whole and in their
interconnection, and steadfastly guard against actually lending them the
colors that one desires they have. Stoic ethics was above all concerned
with liberating one's spirit from all such delusion and its consequences,
and in its stead giving it unshakeable equanimity. Horace is filled with
this insight in the familiar ode:
Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem, non secus in bonis
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 373

Ab insolenti temperatam
Laetitia. i -
Usually, however, we shut ourselves off from cognizance of the
fact that, comparable to a bitter medicine, suffering is essential to life
and therefore does not come flowing to us from outside, but everyone
carries about its indomitable source in his own inner being. We seek
rather, for that pain which never leaves us, always an external individ-
ual cause, like a kind of pretext, just as a free man fashions an idol for
himself in order to have a master. For we strive tirelessly from desire to
desire, and while every satisfaction attained, however much it promised,
yet does not satisfy us, but usually soon stands before us as a
humiliating error, we still do not see that we are drawing water with the 376
vessel ofthe DanaYds, but hurry on to ever new desires:
Sed, dum abest quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur
Caetera; post aliud, quum contigit illud, avemus;
Et sitis aequa tenet vitai semper hiantes. (Lucr. III, 1095Yi
So it goes then either ad infinitum or, what is rarer and indeed presup-
poses a certain force of character, until we come to adesire that cannot
be fulfilled and yet cannot be given up. Then we have in a way what we
were seeking, namely, something that, instead of our own essence, we
can blame at every moment as the source of our sufferings, and by
which we are now alienatediii from our fate, but in exchange reconciled
with our existence, insofar as the cognizance once again grows remote
that suffering is essential to that very existence and true satisfaction is
impossible. The consequence of this final development is a somewhat
melancholy mood, the constant bearing of a single great pain and resul-
tant disdain for alliesser sufferings or pleasures, consequently, an indeed
worthier phenomenon than constant snatching after ever different phan-
toms,iv which is much more usual.
§ 58.
[Happiness Negative and Transitory - Religious Superstition]

t'Keep in mind to preserve equanimity in difficult affairs, but no less to

refrain from excessive joy in good fortune": Odes Il, 3.]
t'For so long as we lack what we would have, it seems to surpass all other
things in worth; later, when that is attained, we would have something else; and
the same thirst keeps us ever [onging for life": Lucretius, De rerum natura;
added inB.]
iii[entzweitl
iV[Truggestalten 1
 374 Fourth Book. The World as Will

All satisfaction, or what one commonly calls happiness,i is really

and essentially always only negative and never at all positive. It is not a
gratificationii that comes to us originally and of itself, but must always
be the satisfaction of adesire. For desire, i.e., lack, is the antecedent
condition of every enjoyment. iii With satisfaction, however, the desire
and consequently the enjoyment cease. Therefore, satisfaction or grati-
fication can never be more than liberation from a pain, from a hardship.
For to the latter belongs not only every actual, obvious suffering, but
also every desire, the importuning of which disturbs our calm, and
indeed even the deadening boredom that makes our existence a burden.
- But it is so difficult to achieve anything and carry it through: every
intention is confronted with difficulties and troubles without end, and
377 with every step the obstacles mount. When, however, all is finally over-
come and attained, still nothing else can ever be won than the fact that
one is liberated from some suffering, or some desire, consequently only
finds oneself as one was before its arrival.
What is immediately given is always only lack, i.e., pain, while
we can be cognizant only indirectly of satisfaction and enjoyment,
through recollection of the antecedent suffering and sacrifice ending
with its arrival. From this comes the fact that we are never at all
properly aware of the goods and advantages we actually possess, nor
prize them, but suppose nothing other than that this is precisely how it
must be; for they always gratify only negatively, holding suffering at
bay. Only after we have lost them do we become sensitive to their
value. For lack, sacrifice, suffering is the positive thing, that which
makes itself immediately known to uso Therefore too, we are pleased at
the recollection of some hardship, sickness, lack, etc., overcome,
because such is the only means toward enjoying present goods. It is
also not to be denied that in this respect and from this standpoint of
egoism, which is the form ofthe will for life,iv the sight or depiction of
the sufferings of others gives us satisfaction and enjoyment in precisely
the way that Lucretius finely and openly pronounces it at the beginning
of the second Book:
Suave, mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem:

i[ Glück; also frcquently, "fortune" or "good fortune."]

ilBeglückung]
iii[Genuss]
lV[Form des Lebenswollens; elsewhere, "will tor life" is Wille zum Leben.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 375

Non, quia vexari quemquam estjucunda voluptas;

Sed, quibus ipse maUs careas, quia cernere suave est. i
However, it will be shown to us further on that this sort of pleasure,
through a cognizance ofwell-being mediated in this way, lies most near
to the source oftrue positive malice.
That all happiness is only of a negative, not of a positive nature,
that it can just for that reason not be lasting satisfaction and gratifica-
tion, but always only redeems one from some pain or lack - upon which
either a new pain, or even languor, empty longing and boredom, must
follow - this also finds a confirmation in that true mirror of the essence
of the world and of life, in art, especially in poetry. Every epic or
dramatic poem, namely, can always depict only a wrestling, striving,
and battling for happiness, but never lasting and complete happiness 378
itself. It conducts its hero through a thousand difficulties and dangers to
his goal; once this has been achieved, it quickly lets the curtain fall. For
there would be nothing left for it than to show that the dazzling goal in
which the hero had been fancying to find happiness had only mocked
hirn as well, and he was no better off after achieving it than before.
Because a genuine, lasting happiness is not possible, it cannot be a
subject for art. To be sure, the purpose ofthe idyll is really supposed to
be depiction of such a thing; but one also sees that the idyll as such
cannot be sustained. It always either becomes something epic in the
poet's hands, and is then always a most insignificant epos put together
from minor sufferings, minor pleasures, and minor endeavors, which is
what most frequently happens, or it becomes purely descriptive poetry,
depicts the beauty of nature, i.e., really,ii pure cognition free of will,
which is of course also in fact the single pure happiness, to which
neither suffering nor need is antecedent, nor regret, suffering, empti-
ness, surfeit necessarily consequent; but this happiness cannot fill one's
entire life, but only moments of it.
What we see in poetry we find again in music, in whose melody
we have indeed recognized the innermost history of self-conscious will
expressed in general terms, the most secret life, longing, suffering and
joy, ebbing and flowing of the human heart. Melody is always devia-

t'Pleasant, when on the ocean stonny sea winds are raging, to view another's
mighty labors from land; not because viewing another's vexations is a happy
pleasure; but because it is pleasant to be aware of oneself as having avoided
those ills": De rerum natura 11, 1-4.]
ii[eigentlich]
 376 Fourth Book. The World as Will

tion from the keynote, through a thousand wondrous meanderings up to

the point ofthe most painful dissonance, whereupon it finally rediscov-
ers the keynote, which expresses satisfaction and calming of the will,
but with which it can subsequently then do nothing further and whose
more lengthy continuation would be only a burdensome and unexpres-
sive monotone, corresponding to boredom.
Everything that these considerations are supposed to make explicit,
the unachievability of lasting satisfaction and the negative character of
all happiness, finds its explanation in that which was shown at the
conclusion ofthe second Book, namely, that will, ofwhich human life,
just like any phenomenon, is an objectification, is a striving without
goal and without end. We indeed find the stamp of this endlessness
impressed upon all the parts of the whole of its phenomenon, from
379 the most general form pertaining to the latter, time and space without
end, to the most complete of all phenomena, the life and striving ofthe
human being.
One can theoretically ass urne three extremes of human life and
regard them as elements of actual human life. First, powerful willing,
great passions (Rajas-Guna). This comes to the fore in great historical
characters; it is depicted in epic and drama. But it can also show itse1f
on a small scale, because the magnitude of objects is measured here
only by the degree to which they move the will, not by their external
relations. Then second, pure cognition, apprehension of Ideas, condi-
tioned by the liberation of cognizance from service to the will: the life
of genius (Sattva-Guna). Finally, third, the greatest lethargy of will and
therewith of cognizance bound to it, empty longing, life-rigidifying
boredom (Tamas-Guna).43 The life of the individual, far removed from
persisting in one of these extremes, only seldom touches them, and is
usually only a weak and vacillating approximation to this or that side, a
needy willing ofpetty objects, constantly recurring and so escaping from
boredoffi.
1t is actually unbelievable how unexpressively and insignificantly,
viewed from the outside, and how dully and unreflectively, felt from
within, the life of the vast majority of human beings flows on. It is a
faint longing and torment, a dreamlike stumble toward death through
the four stages of life, in the company of aseries of trivial thoughts. 44
They are like clockworks that have been wound up and are running,
without knowing why, and every time a human being is begotten and
born, the clock of human life is wound up again, now to repeat once
more its music box tune, already played to the end countless times,
measure for measure and beat for beat, with insignificant variations.
Every individual, every human visage and the course of its life, is
 Affinnation and Denial of the Will for Life 377

only one more brief dream on the part of the infinite spirit of nature, of
the persisting will for life, is only one more fleeting shape that it play-
fully draws on its infinite page, space and time, and lets stay a while,
vanishingly short in comparison with them, then erases to make more
room. Nonetheless, and here lies the troubling side oflife, each ofthese 380
fleeting shapes, these shallow caprices, must be paid for by the entire
will for life, in all of its intensity, with numerous and deep pains, and in
the end with a bitter death' long-feared, finallyarriving. That is why the
sight of a corpse makes us so suddenly serious.
The life of every individual, when one surveys it on the whole and
in general and only emphasizes the most significant features, is really
always a tragedy; but when it is gone through in detail, it has the char-
acter ofa comedy.i For the doings and troubles ofthe day, the unresting
mockery ofthe moment,45 the desires and fears ofthe week, the misfor-
tunes of every hour by way of chance always bent on its tricks,46 are
sheer scenes from a comedy.H But the desires never fulfilled, striving
rendered idle, hopes mercilessly trampled by fate, the unhappy errors of
one's entire life, with increasing suffering and death at the end, always
give us a tragedy. Thus, as if fate would add mockery to the sorrows of
our existence, our lives are bound to contain all the woes of tragedy,
and yet we are thereby not even able to maintain the dignity of tragic
figures, butrather, in the spread oflife's detail, we are inescapably fool-
ish comic characters.
As much, however, as troubles great and small fill every human
life and keep it in constant unrest and movement, they are yet unable to
conceal the inadequacy of life for fulfillment of the spirit, the emptiness
and shallowness of existence, or to exclude boredom, which is always
ready to fill every pause left by the departure of concern. From this it
has come that the human spirit, still not content with the concerns,
worries, and occupations that the actual world lays on it, creates for
itself an imaginary world in the shape of a thousand different super-
stitions, then busies itself in every manner with it and wastes time and
energy on it, whenever the actual one would grant it the repose for
which it has absolutely no receptivity. This is therefore also by nature iii
most often the case with peoples for whom the mildness of c1imate and
earth makes life easy, above all in the case of the Hindus, then the 381
Greeks, Romans, and later the ltalians, Spanish, etc.

tLustspiel]
I1[Komödienscenen]
iii[ ursprünglich]
 378 Fourth Book. The World as Will

Man creates guiding spirits,i gods, and saints in his own image. To
these must then incessantly be offered sacrifices, prayers, temple adom-
ments, oaths and their fulfillment, pilgrimages, salutations, embel-
lishment of images, etc. Service to them is everywhere interwoven with
actual reality, indeed obscures it: every event in life is then interpreted
as reciprocity on the part of those beings. Communion with them occu-
pies half of one's lifetime, constantly supports one's hopes, and, stimu-
lated by the deception, often becomes more interesting than that with
actual beings. It is the expression and the symptom of the double needi-
ness of humanity, on the one hand for help and support, and on the
other hand for occupation and amusement; and even if it often works
directly against the first need - when confronted by misfortunes and
dangers, uselessly expending precious time and energy on prayers and
sacrifices instead of averting them - it serves the second need all the
better in turn with the fantastic entertainment of a dreamed-up spirit-
world. And this is the not at all contemptible gain from all superstations.

§ 59.
[More on the Misery <if Life - Optimism and Pessimism]
Now that we have, through the very most general considerations,
through an investigation of the first, elementary distinguishing features
of human life, convinced ourselves apriori at least that the latter, just
by virtue of its entire makeup, is capable of no true happiness,ii but is
essentially multifarious suffering and a thoroughly unhappyiii state, we
might now arouse this conviction much more vividly in ourselves if,
proceeding in a more aposteriori manner, we wished to go into more
particular cases, to bring images before our imagination, and to depict
in examples the nameless sorrow that experience and history offer us,
wherever we may look and in whatever respect we may inquire. But the
chapter would be without end and remove us from the standpoint of
generality that is essential to philosophy. In addition, one might easily
382 take such a depiction for a mere declamation on human misery, such
as there has indeed often been, and accuse it as such of one-sidedness
hecause it proceeds from individual facts. From such reproach and
suspicion, our completely cold and philosophical demonstration of the
inescapable suffering that is grounded in the essence of life, proceeding
in general terms and conducted apriori, is therefore free. Confirmation

i[Dämonen]
ii[Glückseligkeit; could also be "blcsscdness."]
iii[ unselig]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 379

aposteriori, however, is everywhere easily gotten. Anyone who has

awakened from the ftrst dreams of youth, attended to his own and
others' experience, looked about in life, in the history of the past and
his own age, and in the works of great poets, will, unless his judgment
is paralyzed by some indelibly imprinted prejudice, surely recognize
the outcome, that this human world is the realm of chance and error,
which hold merciless sway in it, in matters great and small, while
alongside them folly and malice wield the scourge. For this reason, that
which is better only asserts itself with difftculty, that which is noble
and wise very seldom attains to appearance and ftnds an effect or hear-
ing, while that which is absurd and perverse in the realm of thought,
banal and without taste in the realm of art, evil and devious in the realm
of deeds, truly maintains its rule, disturbed only by brief interruptions.
By contrast, excellence of any sort is always only an exception, one
case out ofmillions. Therefore too, ifit has made itselfknown in a last-
ing work, once the latter has survived the animosity of its contempo-
raries, it stands isolated afterwards, gets stored away like a meteorite
originating from an order ofthings other than what holds sway here.
As concerns the life of the individual, however, every story of a
life is a story of suffering. i For the course of each life is, as a rule, a
continuing series of great and small misfortunes,47 which everyone does
bis best to conceal, to be sure, since he knows that others are bound to
feel sympathy or compassion only seldom, but almost always satisfac-
tion when presented with troubles from which they are just then spared.
But perhaps a person will never, at the end of his life, if he is both
thoughtfully aware and honest, desire to go through it again, but before
that much rather choose complete non-being. The essential content of
the world-renowned monologue in Harn/et is, to sum it up, this: Our 383
state is such a miserable one that complete non-being would be decid-
edly preferable to it. And if suicide actually offered that, so that the
alternatives "to be or not to be" lay in the full sense of those terms
before us, then it would be absolutely the choice to make, as a "consum-
mation devoutly to be wish'd."ii But there is something in us that teUs
us it is not so, it does not end with that, death is no absolute annihilation.
- Likewise,48 what the father of history in fact sayst has surely not
since been refuted, namely, that no person has existed who has not

iUede Lebensgeschichte eine Leidengeschichte1

ii[Hamlet, Act III, scene 3. Schopenhauer's rendering in the text: eine höchst
wünschenswerthe Vollendung, with the English following in parentheses.]
tHerodotus VII, 46.
 380 Fourth Book. The World as Will

more than once wished not to experience the next day. Accordingly, the
so often lamented brevity of life might perhaps be precisely the best
thing about it. 49
If one would still in the end make evident to anyone the horrific
pains and torments to which his life stands constantly open, dreadi
would take hold of hirn. And if one would conduct the most stubborn
optimist through hospitals, infirmaries, and chamhers of surgical martyr-
dom, through prisons, torture chambers50 and slaves' quarters, over
battlefields and scenes of execution, then open up to hirn all the dark
dwellings of misery where it shuns the glances of cold curiosity, and
finally let hirn glance into the tower of Ugolinos's starvation,51 then
surely he too would in the end see what sort of meilleur des mondes
possiblesii this iso Where else, after all, did Dante get the material for
his hell than from this our actual world? Still, it is a thoroughly weH
done hell. iii By contrast, when he came to the task of depicting heaven
and its pleasures, he was confronted with an insuperable difficulty; for
our world simply offers no materials at all for such a thing. Therefore,
nothing remained for hirn than to pass on to US, instead of the pleasures
of paradise, the instruction that was there imparted to him by his
ancestor, by his Beatrice, and by various saints. From this, however, it
is made sufficiently clear what sort of world this is. 52 Of course, with
384 human life as with any bad wares, the exterior is coated with false
luster. The suffering part is always kept concealed, while everyone
makes a show ofwhatever he can manage by way ofpomp and splendor,
and the more he lacks inner contentment, the more he desires to stand
as a fortunate man in the opinion of others. To this extent goes folly,
and the opinion of others is a major goal of everyone's striving,
although its entire nullity already expresses itself through the fact that
in almost allianguages vanity, vanitas, originally meant emptiness and
nullity.
But even beneath all this deception, life's torments can very easily
grow so great, and it happens indeed daily, that one eagerly takes hold

i[Grausen]
ii["best of all possible worlds": Voltaire's fonnulation in Candide (1759)
parodying Leibniz's view in his "Theodicy": Essais de Theodicee sur la bonte
de Dieu, la liberte de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Essays in Theodicyon the
Goodness 0/ God, the Freedom 0/ Man, and the Origin 0/ Evil [1710]).]
iitPayne's translation is undeniably nice: "And indeed he made a downright
hell of it." The fate of Count Ugolino and his sons is recounted in Dante's
Inferno, Canto XXXlIl.]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will fOT Life 381

of the death that is otherwise feared above all. Indeed, if fate would
show the entirety of its guile, then even this refuge can be barred to the
victim of suffering, and under the hands of bitter enemies, he be left
subjected to crue1, slow tortures without rescue. In vain the victim of
torment then beseeches his gods for help: he remains at the mercy of
his fate without reprieve. This hopelessness, however, is precisely the
mirror of the indornitability of his will, of which his person is the
objectivization.
As litde as an external power can change or nullity this will, just
as little can any foreign power liberate it from the torments that proceed
from that life which is the phenomenon of that will. Man 1S always
referred back to himself, as with every, so with his main concern. In
vain does he make gods for himse1f, to beg or wheedle from them what
only the force ofhis own will can bring forth. Ifthe Old Testament had
made the world and man the work of a god, so the New Testament, in
order to teach that salvation and redemption from the sorrow of this
world can only proceed from itse1f, found itself forced to have that god
53
become man. Man's will is and remains that upon which everything
depends for hirn. Sannyasis, martyrs, saints of every faith and title
voluntarily and gladly endured any torture because the will for life had
been nullified in them; after that, the slow destruction of its phenomenon
was even we1come to them. Yet 1 would not anticipate our further
account ofthis.
In any case, I cannot here hold back from dec1aring that optimism
seerns to me, where it is not the more or less mindless talk of those 385
whose flat brows house nothing but words, not merely an absurd but
even a truly unconscionable way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the
nameless sufferings of humanity. - Do not think for a moment that the
doctrine of Christi an faith favors optimism; for in the Gospels, to the
contrary, world and ill are used as nearly synonymous expressions. t

§ 60.
[Affirmation iif tbe Will for Life - Tbe Sex Drive Its Strongest Form -
A Glimpse iif Eternal Justice]
Having now completed a discussion of two issues that it was
necessary to insert, namely, regarding freedom ofwill in itse1ftogether
with the necessity of its phenomenon, and then regarding its lot in the
world that mirrors its essence, and through the cognizance of which it
has to affmn or deny itself, we can now elevate this affmnation and

tOll tbis, see eh. 46 ofthe seeond volume.

 382 Fourth Book. The World as Will

denial to greater distinctness - having pronounced and explained it only

in general terms above - by depicting the manners of action in whieh
alone they find their expression, and eonsidering them with respeet to
their inner signifieanee.
Affirmation ofwill is constant willing, undisturbed by any eogni-
zanee, as it oeeupies the life of human beings in general. Sinee the
human body is already objeetivization ofwill, as it makes it appearanee
on a partieular level and in a particular individual, its temporally unfold-
ing willing is as it were a paraphrasei of the body, an elueidation of its
meaning in the whole and its parts, is another manner of display of the
same thing in itself of whieh the body is already a phenomenon.
Tberefore, instead of saying affirmation of will, we ean also say affIr-
mation of the body. Tbe fundamental theme of all the manifold aets of
will is satisfaetion of those needs that are inseparable from the body's
existenee in astate of health, indeed have their expression in it, and are
reducible to maintenanee of the individual and propagation of the
386 species. Dnly indireetly do the most diverse motives thereby gain power
over the will and bring the greatest manifold of aets of will to the fore.
Eaeh of these is only a speeimen, an example, of the general eharacter
of the will that is here making its appearanee. The partieular sort of
specimen, the partieular shape that the motive has and imparts to it, is
not essential, but what matters is only that something or other is willed,
and with what degree of intensity. Will ean only become visible in eon-
neetion with motives, just as the eye expresses its power of vision only
in eonneetion with light. Motives eonfront the will as a many-shaped
Proteus: they eonstantly promise utter satisfaetion, a quenehing ofthe
will' s thirst, but as soon as the motive is aehieved, it is immediately
there in another shape and moves the will anew in this one, always
aeeording to its degree of intensity and its relation to eognizanee, whieh
are made manifest as empirieal eharacter preeisely through these spee-
imens and examples.
The human being finds himself, from the advent of his eonscious-
nl~ss on, engaged in willing, and as a rule his eognizanee remains in
constant relation to his will. He seeks first to become eompletely
familiar with the objeets of his willing, then of the means to the latter.
Then he knows what to do, and he does not, as a rule, strive for any
other knowledge. He aets and keeps going: eonseiousness, always so as
to work toward the goal of his willing, keeps hirn up and engaged; his
thinking eoncems the choice of means. Thus is the life of almost all

i[ Paraphrase]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 383

human beings: they will, know what they will, strive with enough suc-
cess in accordance therewith to protect them from despair, and enough
faHure to protect them from boredom and its consequences. From this
there proceeds a certain cheerfuIness, or at least composure, to which
wealth or poverty really make no difference. For the rich and the poor
do not enjoy what they have, since this, as has been shown, is only
negatively effectual, but rather what they hope to attain by their doings.
They drive ahead with much seriousness, indeed with an air of
importance; children do the same with their games.
It is always an exception when the course of such a life is inter-
rupted by the fact that either the aesthetic demand for contemplativeness
or the ethical demand for renunciation proceeds from cognition indepen-
dent of service to the will and directed toward the essence of the world
in general. Hardship pursues most people through life, without giving 387
them a chance for reflection. By contrast, the will is often enflamed54 to
a degree that far exceeds affirmation of the body, which is then shown
in intense emotions and powerful passions in which the individual not
merely affrrms his own existence, but denies and seeks to eliminate that
of others where it stands in the way.
Maintenance of the body by its own forces is so low a degree of
affirmation ofwill that, were it left voluntarily at that, we might assume
that with the death of this body the will making its appearance in it is
also to be extinguished. But even satisfaction of the sex drive goes
beyond affirmation of one's own existence, which occupies so short a
time, affmning life for an indefinite time beyond the death of the indi-
vidual. Nature, always true and consistent, here even innocent, quite
openly exhibits the inner significance of the act of procreation. One' s
own consciousness, the intensity of this drive, teaches us that the most
decisive affirmation of the will for life is pronounced in this act, pure
and without further addition (such as a denial of other individuals). And
then within time and the causal series, i.e., within nature, a new life
makes its appearance as a consequence of the act: the begotten presents
itself to the begetter, distinct from the latter in the phenomenon, but in
itself, or with respect to the Idea, identical with it. Thus it is through
this act that species of living things join each thing into a whole and
perpetuate themselves as such wholes. 55 Procreation is, with respect to
the begetter, only the expression, the symptom, of its decisive affirma-
tion of the will for life. With respect to the begotten, it is not, as one
might think, the ground of the will appearing in it, since will in itself
knows neither ground nor consequence, but it is like any cause, only
the occasioning cause for the appearance of will at this time in this
place. As thing in itself, the will of the begetter and that of the begotten
 384 Fourth Book. The World as Will

are not distinct; for only the phenomenon, not the thing in itself, is
subject to the principium individuationis. With this affirmation extend-
ing beyond one's own body, and to the setting forth of a new one,
suffering and death, as belonging to the phenomenon of life, are
388 affirmed anew along with it, and the possibility of redemption that is
entailed by the most completei cognitive capacity is for the time being
declared fruitless. Here lies the deep ground of our shame regarding the
business of procreation. ii
This view is depicted mythically in the dogma of the Christian
doctrine of faith, according to which we all have a share in the original
sin of Adam (which is obviously only the satisfaction of sexual desire)
and are through the latter indebted to pay with suffering and death. In
this, that doctrine of faith goes beyond considering things in accordance
with the Principle of Sufficient Ground and recognizes the Idea of
humanity, whose unity, from its fall into countless individuals, is recon-
stituted through the all-embracing bond of procreation. In consequence
of this, on the one hand, it views every individual as identical with
Adam, representative of the affirmation of life, and to that extent as
having fallen subject to sin (original sin), suffering, and death. On the
other hand, its recognition of the ldea shows it that every individual is
also identical with the Redeemer, representative of the denial of the
will for life, and is to that extent participant in his self-sacrifice,
redeemed by his merit, and rescued from the bonds of sin and death,
i.e., ofthe world (Romans 5, 12-21).
Another mythical depiction of our view of sexual satisfaction as
affirmation ofthe will for life beyond one's individuallife, as a fall into
subjection to that will consummated by that very means, or as a kind of
renewed dedication to life, is the Greek myth ofProserpine, for whom a
return from the underworld remained possible so long as she did not
taste ofthe fruits ofthe underworld, but who falls completely subject to
the latter for tasting a pomegranate. This sense of the myth speaks most
distinctly through Goethe's incomparable depiction of it, particularly
when, immediately after tasting the pomegranate, the invisible chorus
of the Parcae intervenes:
"You are ours!
Fasting wert thou to return:

tvollkommenste]
itZeugungsgeschäftl
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 385

And the apple's bite makes you ourS!"i

It is noteworthy that element of Alexandria (Strom. III, ch. 15)

characterizes the matter by way of the same image and the same terms:
01 j.i8V 8VVOVX lCrav,e; lavrov; (ho' JrdlJl]; aj.iapn'a;, öux ,riv 389
ßamA8lav TlVV ovpavii5v, j.iW(dplOl o{)roz' efmv, oi' rov XOIJj.iOV
V1]IJ'8Vovm;. (Qui se castrarunt ab omni peccato, propter regnum coe-
lorum, ii sunt beati, a mundo jejunantes)Y
The sex drive is also confirmed as the decisive, strongest affirma-
tion of life by the fact that for man in the state of nature/ü as for
animals, it is the ultimate purpose, the highest goal of his life. Self-
maintenanceiv is his first endeavor, and as soon as he has taken care of
that, he strives only after propagation of the species; as a merely natural
being, he can aspire to no more. Nature itself, whose inner essence is
the very will for life, drives human beings with all of its force, as it
does animals, to propagate. After that, it has achieved its purpose with
the individual and is entirely indifferent to its destruction, since, as the
will for life, it is concemed only with maintenance of the species, the
individual is nothing to it.
Because the inner essence of nature, the will for life, is most
strongly pronounced in the sex drive, the ancient poets and philosophers
- Hesiod and Parmenides - spoke most meaningfully: Eros is the First,
the creator, the principle from which all things proceeded. (See Aristotle,
Metaph. I, 4.) Phereeydes said: EI; tPWTa j.i8Taß8ßlr:fjm9at ,OV Lila,
j.i&AAOVTa Öl]j.i IOVPY8 IV. (Jovem, cum mundum fabricare vellet, in
cupidenem sese transformasse.) Proclus ad Plat. Tim., IIL v - We have
recently received a detailed treatment of this subjeet from G. F.

tDer Triumph der Empfindsamkeit (The Triumph ojSensitivity, IV.]

"["Those who have made themselves eunuchs cut off from all sin for
heaven's sake, they are blessed, they keep themselves pure of the world":
Stromata (Miscellanies) III, eh. 15; cf. Matthew 19:12. Reference and quotation
added in C; Schopenhauer's emphasis.]
iii[dem natürlichen Menschen; in A, dem rein sinnlichen ("purely sensory")
man.]
iv [Selbsterhaltung; as throughout, I avoid "self-preservation" as generally
falling short ofwhat Schopenhauer has in mind.]
T'Zeus transformed himselfinto Eros, when he wanted to create the world":
Pherecydes of Syros as cited in Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Timaeus III.
Phercecydes, none of whose works has survived, was one of the earliest Greek
prose writers and said by some to be the teacher ofPythagoras.]
 386 Fourth Book. The World as Will

Schoemann, De cupidine cosmogonico, 1852. i And the Maya of the

Indians, ofwhich the whole illusory world is the work and fabric, gets
paraphrased as amor.
The genitals, much more than any other external bodily member,
are subject only to will and not at all to cognizance. Indeed, will shows
itself here to be almost as independent of cognition as it is in those parts
that serve vegetative life, reproduction, in response to mere stimuli,
where will is blindly effectual as it is in incognizant nature. For procre-
ation is only reproduction that goes on into a new individual, reproduc-
tion raised to the second power as it were, just as death is only excretion
390 raised to the second power.
lt follows from all this that the genitals are the real jocus ii of the
will and consequently the opposite pole from the brain, the representa-
tive of cognizance, i.e., of the other side of the worId, the worId as
presentation. They are the life-maintaining principle, assuring endless
life to time. In this quality they were honored among the Greeks in the
phallus, among the Hindus in the lingam, which are thus the symbol of
the affirmation of wil1. 56 Cognizance, on the other hand, makes nullifi-
cation of willing possible, redemption through freedom, overcoming
and57 annihilation ofthe world.
We already considered in detail, at the beginning of this fourth
Book, how the will for life in its affirmation has to view its relation to
death, namely, the latter does not disturb it, since it confronts it as
something that is itself already comprised within life and belonging to
it, with respect to which its contrary, procreation, maintains a complete
balance and, despite the death of the individual, assures and guarantees
a life for all times to the will for life; it was to express this that the
Indians gave the death-god Shiva the lingam as an attribute. We also
discussed in the same place how fearlessly death is confronted by one
who stands with complete thoughtful awarenessiii upon the standpoint
of decisive affirmation of life. Therefore, no more of that here. Most
people occupy this standpoint and persistently affirm life without clear
thoughtful awareness. As a mirroT of this affirmation there stands the
world, with countless individuals, in endless time and endless space,
and endless suffering, between procreation and death without end.

tGeorg Friedrich Schoemann, [Dissertation] On Cosmically Creative Desire.

"Pherecydes ... 1852" added in c.]
ii[Brennpunkt: literally, "buming" point.]
iii[ mit vollkommener Besonnenheit]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 387

In this matter, however, no further complaint can be raised from

any side; for will is performing the great tragicomedy at its own
expense, and is also its own spectator. The world is precisely such as it
is because will, whose phenomenon it is, is such as it is, because this is
how it is willing. The justification for sufferings is the fact that, even in
this phenomenon, will is affirming itself; and this affirmation is justified
and balanced out by the fact thai it is bearing the sufferings. In fact,
there opens itself up to us here a glimpse of eternal justice with respect
to the whole; we will take doser and more distinct cognizance of it in 391
detail further on. Yet first we must speak of temporal or human justice. t

§ 61.
[Ibe Egoism Inberent in Every Being]
We recall from the second Book that in the whole of nature, on all
levels of the objectification of will, there was necessarily a constant
batt1e among individuals of all species, and precisely for this reason an
inner self-conflict of will was expressed. On the highest level of objec-
tification, this phenomenon,i like all others, can be depicted with
heightened distinctness and therefore further deciphered. To this purpose,
we would first trace down egoism, as the point of departure for any
batt1e, in its source.
We have called time and space, since only through them and within
them is a multiplicity of homogeneous items possible, the principium
individuationis. Tbeyare the essential forms belonging to natural cogni-
tion, i.e., to cognition arising from will. Therefore, will always makes
its appearance in terms of pluralities of individuals. But tbis plurality
does not concem it, will as thing in itself, but only its phenomena: it is
present whole and undivided in each of them and around itself espies
the innumerably replicated image of its own essence. The latter itself,
however, thus that which is actually real, it fmds immediately only in
its interior. Therefore, everyone wants everything for himself, wants to
possess everything, at least to hold sway over it, and would annihilate
whatever opposes him. 58 To this is added the fact that, with cognizant
beings, the individual is bearer of the cognizant subject and the latter
bearer of the world, i.e., that the whole of nature beyond him, thus also
all other individuals, exist only in presentation to him, he is always
conscious of them only as presentation to him,ii thus merely indirecdy

tOn tbis, see eh. 45 ofthe seeond volume.

i[Phänomen]
ii[nur in seiner Vorstellung ... nur als seiner Vorstellung]
 388 Fourth Book. The World as Will

and as something dependent on his own essence and existence; for with
the loss of his consciousness the world is necessarily lost for hirn as
weil, i.e., their being and non-being become equivalent and indistin-
392 guishable. Every cognizant individual is thus in truth, and finds hirnself
to be, the entire will for life, or the very in-itself of the world, and also
the complementary condition of the world as presentation, consequently
a microcosm to be esteemed on a par with the macrocosm. Always and
everywhere truthful, nature itself provides hirn with simple and imme-
diately certain recognition of this fact, origina11y and independently of
a11 reflection. On the basis of the two necessary features cited, it is then
explicable that every individual, utterly vanishing and diminished to
nothing in the boundless world, nonetheless makes hirnself the center
of the world, has regard for his own existence and well-being before
any other, indeed, in the natural standpoint, is ready to sacrifice a11 else
to it, is ready to annihilate the world, just to maintain its own self,i this
drop in the sea, somewhat longer. This disposition is the egoism that is
essential to every thing in nature. It is precisely from this, however, that
the inner self-conflict of will attains to its most fi"ightening revelation.
For this egoism has its subsistence and essence in the contrast between
microcosm and macrocosm, or in the fact that the objectification ofwill
has the principium individuationis for its form and, by that fact, will
appears to itself in the same manner in countless individuals, and
indeed in each of them wholly and completely in both respects (will
and presentation). Thus while everyone is immediately given to himself
as the whole will and the whole being that is engaged in presentation,it
everything else is initially given only as presentations to him;iii there-
fore, his own essence and its maintenance come before a11 others put
together. Everyone looks upon his own death as if upon the end of the
world, while he perceives that of his acquaintances as a rather indiffer-
lent matter, unless he happens to have some personal share in it. 59 In
that consciousness which has risen to the highest degree, that which is
human, egoism was also bound - as were cognizance, pain, pleasure -
to have reached the highest degree, and the conflict of individuals
conditioned by it to have come most horrifically to the fore. We then
see this indeed everywhere evident, in matters small and great, see it
sometimes from the frightful side, in the life of great tyrants and evil-
393 doers and in wars that ravage the world, sometimes from the humorous

i[sein eigenes Selbst; in A, sein eigenes Individuum.]

ii[das ganze Vorstellende; in A, die ganze Vorstellung.]
iii[als seine Vorstellungen]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 389

side, where it is the theme of comedy and comes quite particularly to

the fore in conceit and vanity, which, like none other, Rochefoucauldi
has captured and depicted in abstracto. We see it in world history and
in our own experience. Sut it comes most distinctly to the fore as soon
as any mass of people is released from all law and order: then there
shows itself at once most distinctly that bellum omnium contra omnes
that Hobbes has excellently depicted in the first chapter of De cive. ii It
is shown not only how everyone seeks to tear from another what he
wants for himself, but even that, to enlarge his well-being by an
insignificant increment, one often destroys another's entire happiness
or life. This is the height ofthe expression of egoism, the phenomena of
which, in this respect, are only surpassed by those oftrue malice, which
seeks the harm and pain of others entirely in the absence of self-
interest, without any advantage to oneself; we will soon speak ofthis. 60
- This exposure of the source of egoism should be compared with the
account ofit in my Prize Essay on the Foundation ofMorality, § 14.
A main source of suffering, which we found above to be essential
and unavoidable in alllife as soon as it actually occurs in some particu-
lar form, is that Eris, that batt1e among all individuals, that expression
of the contradiction with which the will for life is infected in its inner
being and which attains to visibility through the principium individua-
tionis. The staging of animal fights is the cmel way to give it immedi-
ate and glaring illustration. In this state of original division there lies61
an indomitable source of suffering, despite the provisions that one has
undertaken against it and that we will at once more closely consider.

§ 62.
[Selj-AJfirmation Extended to Denial of the Will in Others-
Right as a Purely Negative Conupt - Moral vs. Legal Right and
Wrong - Purpose of the Statt - Justification of Punishment]
It has already been discussed that the primary and simple affirma-
tion of the will for life is just affIrmation of one' s own body, i.e., display
of one's will through acts in time to the extent that one's body, in its
form and purposiveness, displays that same will spatially and nothing 394
further. This affIrmation shows itself as maintenance of the body by

i[Franyois de La Rochefoucauld, Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales

(Reflections, or Moral Aphorisms and Maxims; generally known as Maxims
[1665-1678J.)
ii["war ofall against all"; Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen (1642; English ed.,
1651) I, 12; cf. Leviathan (1651) T, 13).J
 390 Fourth Book. The World as Will

means of employment of its own forees. Satisfaetion of the sex drive is

immediately conneeted with this, is indeed part of it to the extent that
the genitals are part ofthe body. Therefore, renunciation ofthat drive's
satisfaetion, voluntarily and without grounding in any motive at all, is
already a denial ofthe will for life, is the latter's voluntary self-nullifi-
eation in response to the oecurrence of a quieting eognizance;i accord-
ingly, such a denial of one's own body is in fact displayed as a contra-
diction between the will and its own phenomenon. For although the
body indeed objectifies the will for propagation in the genitals, the
latter is nonetheless not willed. Precisely for this reason, namely,
because it is denial or nullification ofthe will for life, such renunciation
is difficuIt and painful self-overcoming; but more ofthis further below.
Insofar, then, as will displays that self-affirmation of one's body
in countless individuals in proximity to one another, it passes most easily
in an individual, by virtue of the egoism characteristic of aU, beyond
this affirmation to denial of the same will as it makes its appearance in
another individual. The will of the one encroaches upon the boundary
of another's affirmation of will in that the individual either destroys or
injures the very body of the other or compels the forces belonging to
the other's body to serve its will instead ofthe will making its appear-
anee in the other's body; thus when one draws off bodily forces from
will as it is makes its appearance as another' s body and thereby in-
creases the force serving one 's own will beyond the force belonging to
one's own body, consequently affirms one's own will beyond one's own
body by means of a denial of will making its appearance in another's
body.
This encroachment upon the boundary of another's affirmation of
will has for ages been distinetly recognized and its coneept designated
by the word wrongY For both parties recognize the issue, although not
as we are doing here with explicit abstraction, but as a feeling, instanta-
neously. The one who is suffering wrong feels the encroachment upon
the sphere of his own body's affirmation, by way of its denial by
395 another individual, as an immediate and spiritual pain that is quite sepa-
rate and distinct from the physical suffering feIt as attending the deed,
or displeasure over the loss. The one who is committing the wrong, on
the other hand, is made cognizant of the fact that he is in himself the
same will that is also making its appearance in that body, and affirms
itself with such vehemence in the one phenomenon that, overstepping

i{als Quietiv wirkende Erkenntnis]

l1[Unrecht; could also be "injustice."]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 391

the bounds of his own body and its forces, it becomes a denial of the
very same will in the other phenomenon, so that, considered as will in
itself, it is in self-conflict by the very fact of its vehemence, is lacerat-
ing itself - he too, I say, is made instantaneously cognizant of this, not
in abstracto, but as an obscure feeling; and this is what one calls the
sting of conscience or, more relevant to this case, the feeling of
wrongdoing.
Wrong, the concept ofwhich we have hereby analyzed in the most
abstract terms, is most completely, truly, and blatantly expressed in
concreto in cannibalism. This is its most explicit, most evident species,
the horrific image of the greatest self-conflict of will on the highest
level of its objectification, the human being. Next to it comes murder,
upon the commission of which the sting of conscience, the significance
of which we have just stated in abstract and dry terms, thus follows
instantaneously with frightful distinctness, and strikes a lifelong unsal-
vablei wound to one's spiritual repose. For our horror at the commission
of murder, just as our recoiling from one to be committed, corresponds
to the boundless attachment to life with which every living thing,
precisely as a phenomenon of the will for life, is pervaded. 62 (In any
case, we williater on more thoroughly analyze the feeling that accom-
panies the commission of wrong and evil, or pangs of conscience, and
raise it to the level of conceptual distinctness.) To be viewed as in
essence the same in kind as murder, and only differing from it in
degree, is intentional mutilation, or mere injury to another's body,
indeed any blow. - Further, wrong is displayed in the subjection of
other individuals, in forcing them into slavery, and in attack upon the
property of others,63 which, so far as the latter is regarded as the fruit of
their labor, is in essentials the same in kind as the former wrong and 396
relates to it in the way mere injury relates to murder.
For property, which cannot without wrong be taken from aperson,
can, according to our explanation of wrong, be only that which has
been worked upon by his forces, by the removal of which one therefore
draws off forces belonging to his body from the will objectified in that
property, in order to let it serve the will objectified in another's body.
For only thus does someone committing a wrong by attack, not upon
another's body, but upon some lifeless thing entirely distinct from the
latter, yet encroach upon the sphere of another's affirmation ofwill, in
that those forces, that labor on the part ofthe other's body, have as it

i[unheilbare1
 392 Fourth Book. The World as Will

were grown together and identitied with the thing. From this it fellows
that all genuine, i.e., moral,64 right to property is originally simply and
solely grounded in labor, as was even before Kant quite generally
assumed, indeed as was distinctly and finely pronounced in the oldest
of all books of law: "Sages who know of the days of yore declare that a
cultivated field is the property of whomever removed the trees, cleared
and plowed it, just as an antelope belongs to the first hunter who
inflicts amortal wound upon it." - (Laws 0/ Menu IX, 44).i
Only as a product of Kanfs senility does his entire doctrine of
right ii seem to me explicable, as astrange interweaving of mutually
implicative errors, and this in turn by the fact that he would ground the
right to property in terms of initial occupancy. For how is the mere
declaration of my will to exclude others trom the use of a thing sup-
posed ofitselfto yield an immediate right to it? Obviously, that is itself
in need of a prior legitimating ground; instead of that, Kant assumes it
to be one. And how is someone supposed to be acting in a way that is
in itself, i.e., moraIly, wrong who does not respect claims to exclusive
possession of a thing that are grounded in nothing other than one' s own
declaration? How is his conscience supposed to cause hirn any unrest
in the matter? For it is so clearly and easily evident that there can be
absolutely no such thing as rightful occupancy, but only rightful appro-
priation, acquisition of a thing, through an original expending of one's
own forces upon it. That is, wherever some thing, through someone
397 e1se's effort, be it ever so minor, is worked upon, improved, protected
trom misfortunes, preserved - and be this effort only the plucking of
some fiuit growing in the wild, or picking it up from the ground - any-
one seizing such a thing obviously removes from the other the upshot
ofthe force expended upon it, thus has the latter's body serving his will
instead of the other's own, affirms his will beyond its phenomenon to

i[Manu: in Hindu mythology, the first man. As noted by Deussen and

Hübscher, Schopenhauer's reference is to the body of law known as the dhar-
masastra, translated by William Jones into English from the Sanskrit Manus-
rnrti in 1796 as Institutes of Hindu Law, 01' the Ordinances of Menu according
to the Gloss of Culluca, and from thence into German in 1797 by Johann
Christian Hüttner as Hindu Gesetzbuch oder Menu 's Verordnungen nach Cul-
lucas Erläuterung.]
itMetaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (Metaphysical First Princi-
pies of the Doctrine of Right lor: Justice J), Part One of Die Metaphysik der
Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals fl797; 2 nd ed. 1798]); Part Two is the
Metaphysische Anfangsgründe derTugendlehre ( .. .ofthe Doctrine of Virtue).)
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 393

the point of denial of the other' s, i.e., does wrong. t

By contrast, mere enjoyment of a thing, without any work upon it
or securing it against destruction, yields just as Httle a right to it as the
declaration of one's will to its exclusive possession. Therefore, even if
a family has hunted alone for a century in some district, yet without
having done anything toward its improvement, they cannot at all, with-
out moral wrong, ward off a newcomer who now wishes to hunt just
there. Thus the so-called right of previous occupancy - according to
which, for merely having had the enjoyment of a thing, one demands
over and above that areward, namely, exclusive right to further enjoy-
ment - is entirely without moral ground. To someone appealing mere1y
to this right, the newcomer could with far better right reply: "Just
because you have already enjoyed it for so long, it is now right that
others enjoy it."As for anything that is absolutely incapable of heing
worked upon, by improving it or securing it from misfortunes, there is
no morally grounded exclusive pos session, unless it be a case of its
voluntary surrender by all others, perhaps as payment for other services.
But that of course presupposes a commonwealth regulated by conven-
tion, the state. - The morally grounded right to property, as it is derived
above, by its very nature provides the possessor with power over a
thing that is just as unlimited as that which he has over his own body;
from this it follows that, through exchange or gift, he can transfer his
property to others, who then possess the thing with the same moral 398
right as he did.
Regarding the commission of wrong in general, this occurs either
by violence or by cunning, which are all the same with respect to the
morally essential element. First of all, it is morally all the same whether
I make use of a dagger or of poison in a murder, and analogously for all
physical injury. The remaining cases ofwrong are all reducible t065 the
fact that, in committing a wrong, I compel the other individual to serve
my will instead ofhis, to act according to my will instead ofhis. On the
path of violence I achieve this through physical causality, but on the
path of cunning by means of motivation, i.e., causality that has passed
through cognition, consequently by foisting pseudo-motives on his will,
by virtue of which, believing hirnself to be following his will, he

tThus for grounding natural right to property one does not need the assump-
tion of two coordinated legitimating grounds, a grounding in physical custody
[Detention] coordinated with a grounding in formation [Formation], but the
latter is everywhere sufficient. But the term formation is not quite appropriate,
since expending effort on a thing does not always need to involve form-giving.
 394 Fourth Book. The World as Will

follows mine. Since the medium for motives is cognizance, I can do

that only by falsification with respect to his cognition, and this is a lie.
lts purpose is always affecting the other person's will, not just his
cognizance for itself and as such, but rather the latier only as a means,
namely, so far as it determines his will. For my very lying, as proceed-
ing from my will, has need of a motive. Such, however, can be only the
other's will, not the other's cognizance in and for itself, since as such it
never has an influence on my will, therefore can never move it, can
never be a motive with respect to its purposes; rather, only the other's
willing and action can be such a thing, and through that, consequently
only indirect1y, the other's cognizance. This applies not only to all lies
that originate from obvious self-interest, but also to those that proceed
from pure malice, which would revel in the painful consequences of the
eITors it occasions in others. Indeed, even sheer windbaggery aims, by
means of thereby heightened esteem or improvement in opinion on the
part of others, at a greater or easier influence on their willing and
action. Mere refusal to tell a truth, i.e., to make any statement at all, is
in itself no wrong, but surely every concoction of a lie. Someone who
399 refuses to show the lost traveler the right path does hirn no wrong, but
surely someone who points hirn to the wrong one. - From what has
been said it follows that every lie, just like every act of violence, is as
such a wrong. For it has, just as such, its purpose in extension of the
rule ofmy will to other individuals, thus affirmation ofmy will through
denial of theirs, just as much as violence does.
The most complete lie, however, is the broken contract, since here
all of the cited features are completely and explicitly united. For in
entering into a contract, the action promised by the other party is imme-
diately and admittedly the motive for mine then to ensue. The promises
are exchanged with care and formality. The truth of the statements that
are made by each party stand therein, pursuant to acceptance, in the
power of each. If the other party breaks the contract, then he has
deceived me and, by insinuating mere pseudo-motives into my cogni-
tion, directed my will according to his intention, extended the rule of
his will over another individual, thus committed a complete wrong. This
is the ground ofthe morallegitimacy and validity of contracts.
Wrong by violence is not as deplorable for the perpetrator as
wrong by cunning, bccause the former bears witness to physical force,
which is respected by the human species under any circumstances,
while the latter by contrast, following a circuitous path, betrays weak-
ness,66 and thus lowers the perpetrator as both a physical and moral67
being; further, because lies and deceit can only succeed through the
perpetrator hirnself at the same time expressing abhorrence and con-
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 395

tempt for them in order to win trust,68 and his victory rests on the fact
that one imputes to hirn an honesty that he does not have. - The deep
abhorrence everywhere excited by deceitfulness, disloyalty, and betrayal
rests on the fact that loyalty and honesty are the bond that externally
reunifies the will that has been splintered into a plurality of individuals,
thereby setting limits to the consequences of the egoism that proceeds
from this splintering. Disloyalty and betrayal shred this final, external
bond, and thereby give boundless room for play to the consequences of
egoism.
In the context of our manner of regarding things, we have located 400
the content of the concept of wrang in that characteristic of an individ-
ual's actions whereby he extends affirmation of the will making its
appearance in his body so far that it becomes denial of the will rnaking
its appearance in another's body. We have also, by quite general exam-
pIes, established the boundary where the domain of wrong begins, at
the same time determining its gradations from the highest to the lower
degrees through a few main concepts. In accordance with this, the
concept of wrong is the original and positive concept; the opposing
concept of right is the derivative and negative one. For we must keep
not to the words but the concepts. In fact there would never be talk
ab out right if there were no wrong. The concept of right, namely,
mere1y contains the negation of wrong, and any action is subsumed
under it that is not an overstepping of the boundary depicted above, i.e.,
not denial of another's will with the aim of stronger affirmation of
one's own. That boundary therefore divides, with respect to a mere1y
and purely moral determination, the entire domain of possible actions
into those that are wrong or right. So long as an action does not, in the
manner discussed above, reach into the sphere of another's affirmation
ofwill, denying the latter, it is not wrong. Thus, for example, refusal of
help in the case of the pressing hardship of others, calm observation of
others' starvation in the face of one's own surplus, is crue1 and fiendish
to be sure, but not wrong. But it may be said with utter assurance that
whoever is capable of pushing uncharitableness and hardness to such a
degree will quite certainly also commit any wrong as soon as his
desires demand it and no compulsion stands in the way.
The concept of right as the negation of wrong, however, has found
its main application, and no doubt also its first origination, in cases
where an attempted wrong is warded off with violence. Such a defense
cannot itself in turn be wrong, consequently is right, although the
violence thereby committed, regarded merely in itself and in isolation,
would be wrong, and is justified in this case only by its motive, Le.,
becomes right. If an individual goes so far in the affirmation ofhis own
 396 Fourth Book. The World as Will

401 will that he intrudes upon the sphere of affirmation of the will essential
to my person as such, and thereby denies it, then my defense against
that intrusion is only the denial ofthat denial, and to that extent nothing
more on my part than affirmation of the will making its appearance
essentially and originally in my body and already expressed implicite in
the mere fact of its appearance, consequently is not wrong, hence right.
This means that I then have a right to deny the other's denial with the
force necessary to eliminate it, which, as is easy to see, can go as far
as killing the other individual, whose injury, as an intruding external
power, can without any wrong, consequently with right, be warded off
with countermeasures to some degree outweighing it. For everything
that happens from my side is in every way within the sphere of
affirmation of the will essential to my person as such and already
expressed by my person (which is the scene of the battle), does not
intrude into the other's sphere, consequently is only negation of
negation, thus affirmation, not itself negation. r can thus withaut wrang
campel the other's will - which is denying my will as it makes its
appearance in my body and, without denying any other's will that
observes the same limits, is expending the latter's forces for its main-
tenance - to desist from that denial. l.e., I have to this extent a right of
coercion.
In all cases where I have a right of coercion, a complete right to
use vialence against others, I can equally weIl without wrongdoing,
according to circumstances, oppose the violence of others with cunning,
and have consequently an actual right to lie precisely to the extent that I
have a right of coercion. Therefore, anyone acts completely in the right
if he assures the highwayman who is searching hirn that he is carrying
nothing else: likewise for someone who lures the noctumally intruding
brigand into the cellar with a lie, there locking hirn in. Someone who is
carried off as a captive by brigands, e.g., by pirates, has the right the
kill them for the sake of his liberation, not only with overt violence, but
also by devious means.
For this reason too, a promise coerced through direct physical
402 violence is in no way binding, because anyone suffering such coercion
can, with complete right, free himse1fby killing, not to mention deceiv-
ing, the perpetrator. Someone who cannot use violence to recover
property stolen from hirn commits no wrong if he procures it by
cunning. And if someone is gambling away money stolen from me, J
have the right to use loaded dice against hirn, since everything that I
win from hirn already belongs to me. Anyone who would deny this
must an the more deny the legitimacy of cunning in war,69 which is in
fact a lie by deeds and a confirmation of the pronouncement by Queen
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 397

Christina of Sweden: "The words of men are to be counted for naught,

given that one can scarcely trust their deeds." So hard, accordingly,
runs the boundary of right upon that of wrong. In any case, I regard it
as superfluous to demonstrate that this is aB in utter agreement with
what was said above regarding the illegitimacy oflies and ofviolence; it
can also serve to clarifY some strange theories regarding necessary lies. t
According to all of the preceding, then, wrong and right are purely
moral determinations, Le., such as are applicable with respect to a con-
sideration of human action as such and with reference to the inner
significance 0/ this action in itself. This announces itself immediately
in consciousness by the fact that, on the one hand, wrongdoing is
accompanied by an inner pain that is the perpetrator's merely feIt
consciousness of the inordinate strength of the affIrmation of will in
him, which extends to the degree of denying the phenomenon of
another's will, and in addition by the fact that, as a phenomenon, he is
of course distinct from the one who is suffering the wrong, but in
himself identical with him. Further discussion of this inner signifIcance
of all pangs of conscience can only come further below. The one who is
suffering the wrong, on the other hand, is painfully conscious of the
denial of his will, as this is already expressed through his body and its
natural needs, for the satisfaction of which nature refers him to the
forces belonging to the body, and at the same time also conscious of 403
that fact that, without doing wrong, he could ward off that denial in any
manner for which the power to do so is not wanting. This purely moral
significance is the only one that right and wrong have for human beings
as human beings, not as citizens. It would consequently remain even in
the state of nature, in the absence of all positive law,i and constitutes
the foundation and content of all that is accordingly called natural
right,ii but would better be called moral right, since its validity extends
not to the suffering, to the actual external reality, but only to the action
and the ensuing self-cognizance that arises in a person with respect to
his individual will; this is called conscience, but in the state of nature
cannot in every case make externally directed claims, upon other
individuals as well, and keep violence from holding sway instead of

t[die Notlüge] Further discussion of the doctrine of right put forth here can
be found in my Prize Essay on the Foundation 0/Morality, § 17, pp. 221-30 of
the first edition (pp. 216-226 of the second edition [pp. 152-162 of Payne
(tr·m·
i[Gesetz]
ii[Naturrecht; could also be "naturallaw."]
 398 Fourth Book. The World as Will

right. In the state of nature, namely, it is merely up to everyone not to

do wrong in any case, but by no means not to suiJer wrong in any case,
which depends on the external power that he happens to have. There-
fore, the concepts of right and wrong are, to be sure, also applicable in
the state of nature and in no way conventional; but they apply there
merely as moral concepts, bearing on self-cognizance with respect to
one's own will in each person. They are, nameIy, a fixed point on the
scale of the most various degrees of strength with which the will for life
affirms itseIf in human individuals, like the freezing point of water on
the thermometer, nameIy, the point where affirmation of one's own will
becomes denial of another's, i.e., througb wrongdoing, declares its
degree of intensity in union witb tbe degree of tbe involvement of
cognizance in tbe principium individuationis (wbich is the form belong-
ing to cognition that stands entireIy in the service of will). But now
whoever would set aside, or reject, a pureIy moral consideration of
human action and consider action merely with respect to external
efficacy and its consequences, can of course" with Hobbes, declare right
and wrong to be conventional, voluntarily adopted determinations, and
therefore not at all existent outside of positive law. And we can never
teach such a person by outer experience what does not belong to outer
404 experience, just as to the same Hobbes - who most remarkably displayed
the character of bis completely empirical mode of thinking through the
fact that, in his book De principiis Geometrarum,i he rejected the
entirety of strictly pure mathematics and stubbornly maintained that a
point has extension and a line breadth - we can never exhibit a point
without extension and a line without breaclth, thus can as litde teach
him the apriority of mathematics as the apriority of right; for he has
once and for aB shut himself off from all non-empirical cognizance.
Pure doctrine of right is thus a chapter of morality and refers
directly only to doing, not to suiJering. For only the former is an
expression of will, and that alone is what morality considers. Suffering
is a mere event, and morality can consider suffering merely indirect1y,
namely, only to demonstrate that what merely happens so that one
suffers no wrong is not wrongdoing. - The content to be worked out in
that chapter of morality would be the exact determination of the bound-
ary up to which an individual can go in affirmation of the will already
objectified in his body, without this becoming denial of the very same
will so far as it makes its appearance in another individual, and then

'[De principiis et ratiocinatione geometrarum (On the Principles and Reason-

ing 0/ Geometers [1666]).]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 399

determination of the actions that overstep this boundary, consequently

are wrongs and can therefore also in turn be warded off without wrong.
Always, then, one's own doing remains the focal point for consideration.
In outer experience, however, the suffering of wrong makes its
appearance as an event, and, as stated, there is manifested in this more
distinctly than anywhere else the phenomenon of the self-conflict of the
will for life that proceeds from the plurality of individuals and from
egoism, both of which are conditioned by the principium individuatio-
nis, which is the form pertaining to the world as presentation with
respect to cognizance on the part of individuals. Wehave also seen
above that a very great part of the suffering essential to human life has
its constantly flowing source in that conflict.
The faculty of reason common to all of these individuals, however
- which allows them not merely to take cognizance, like animals, of
individual cases, but also of the whole in its interconnection in an
abstract way - soon taught them to see the source of that suffering and
brought them to think of the means for diminishing or possibly eliminat- 405
ing it, through a common sacrifice that would, however, be outweighed
by a common consequent advantage. As pleasing, namely, as wrongdo-
ing is to the egoism of the individual in particular cases, it still has a
necessary correlate in the suffering of wrong by another individual, to
whom it is highly painful. And now reason, having emerged from the
one-sided standpoint of the individual to which it belongs and gotten
loose for the moment from its attachment to the latter, surveying the
whole in its thought process, saw the enjoyment of wrongdoing in one
individual as in every case outweighed by a proportionally greater pain
in another' s suffering wrong, and found further that, since all of this is
left to chance, everyone would have to fear that he would much more
seldom get to share in the enjoyment of occasional wrongdoing than in
the pain of suffering wrong. Reason recognized from this the fact that,
both to lessen the sUffering spread among everyone and to distribute it
as uniformly as possible, the best and only means is to spare everyone
the pain of suffering wrong by having everyone renounce the enjoyment
attainable by wrongdoing.
Easily excogitated, then, and gradually perfected hy egoism through
the employment of reason, proceeding methodically and ahandoning its
one-sided standpoint, the means in question is the political contrad or
law. Its origin as I state it here is already depicted by Plato in the
Republic. In fact that origin is in essence the only one and imposed by

i[Staatsvertrag]
 400 Fourth Book. The World as Will

the nature ofthe subject. Nor can the state, in any land, ever have had a
different origin, because preeisely this mode of origination, this purpose,
makes it astate in the first place. In this, however, it is a matter of
indifferenee wh ether the condition preceding it among all partieular
peoples was that of a mass of independent savages (anarehy) or of a
mass of slaves ruled by the arbitrary will of the stronger (despotism). In
both cases there was still no state. This arises only through that common
agreement, and according to whether that agreement is more or less
unmixed with anarchy or despotism, the state will be a more perfect or
406 a less perfeet one. Republics tend toward anarchy, monarehies toward
despotism; the middle road of constitutional monarchy, excogitated as a
result, tends toward domination by factions. To ground aperfeet state,
one has to begin by creating beings whose nature allows them to saeri-
fice their own welfare to that ofthe public in a thoroughgoing way.70
Until then, however, at least something can be achieved through the
existence of one family whose welfare is entirely inseparable from that
of its land, so that, at least in the main affairs, it can never promote the
one without the other. On this rests the force and advantage of heredi-
tary monarchy.
Now ifmorality is exclusively concerned with doingright orwrong
and, for someone who had perhaps decided to do no wrong, could
exactly trace the bounds of his action, political theoryi to the contrary,
legislative doctrine,ii is quite exc1usively concerned with the suffering
of wrong and would never bother about the doing of wrong were it not
for its ever necessary correlate, the suffering of wrong, which, as the
enemy against which it labors, is the foeus of its attention. Indeed, if a
case of wrongdoing were coneeivable that is unconnected with anoth-
er's suffering of wrong, then in consistency the state would in no way
forbid it.
In addition, because in morality the will, one's disposition/i; is the
object of consideration and the only real thing, the firm will to commit
wrong, which only external power restrains and renders ineffective,
counts just the same for it as wrong that is actually committed, and it
condemns anyone engaged in such willing as in the wrongiv before its
tribunal. By contrast, will and disposition merely as such are of alto-
gether no concern to the state, but only the deed (be it merely attempted

i[Staatslehre]
it die Lehre von der Gesetzgebung]
1I1[Gesinnung]
iv[ ungerecht]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 401

or executed), on ac count of its correlate, the suffering of the other party.

For it the deed, the event, is thus the only real thing; disposition, inten-
tion are only examined to the extent that the deed's significance can be
recognized on their basis. Therefore, the state will forbid no one from
constantly harboring murder or poisoning another in his thoughts, just
so long as it knows with certainty that fear of the sword and the wheel
will constantly impede the effects of such willing. Nor does the state
have in any way the foolish plan to eradicate inclinations to wrong- 407
doing, evil dispositions, but merely, with the inevitable punishment, to
couple every possible motive for committing a wrong with an ever
outweighing motive for refraining. Accordingly, the criminal code is
the most complete index of counter-motives to the totality of criminal
acts presumed to be possible - both of them in abstracto, to facilitate
application to eventual cases in concreto.71 Political theory, or legisla-
tion, will then borrow, for the sake of this purpose, that chapter of
morality which is the doctrine of right and which determines, besides
the inner meaning of right and wrong, the exact boundary between the
two - but simply and solely to utilize it in reverse and, for all of the
boundaries that morality says must not be overstepped if one would do
no wrong, to consider them from the other side, as boundaries whose
overstepping by another cannot be tolerated if one would sujJer no
wrong, and from which one thus has a right to drive others back;
therefore, these boundaries can now, from the eventual passive side, be
fortified with laws. The result is that, just as the historian has most
wittily been called a prophet in reverse, the legal theorist is a moralist
in reverse, and therefore legal theori in the strict sense, Le., the
doctrine of the rightsii that one may maintain, is morality in reverse, as
part of the chapter where the latter teaches of rights that may not be
violated. 72 The concept of wrong and its negation, that of right, which
is originally moral, becomes juridical through displacement of the
point of departure from the active to the passive side, thus by reversing
it. This, along with the doctrine of right of Kant, who quite mistakenly
derives the establishment of the state as a morae3 duty from his cate-
gorical imperative, has then also most recently and intermittently occa-
sioned the strange error of supposing that the state is an institution for
the promotion of morality, that it proceeds from a striving for the latter

i[ Rechtslehre; it should be remembered that Recht may often be either "right"

or "law," and also "justice." Thus Rechtslehre is frequently also the "doctrine
of right" or "justice."]
ii[die Lehre der Rechten]
 402 Fourth Book. The World as Will

and is accordingly directed against egoism. As if the inner disposition

to which morality or immorality alone pertain, the etemally free will,
admits of modification from without and alteration through effects
408 upon it! Even more perverse is the proposition that the state is the
condition of freedom in the moral sense and thereby of morality; for
freedom lies rather beyond phenomena, not to mention beyond human
arrangements. The state is, as has been said, so little directed against
egoism in general and as such that it has to the contrary originated
precisely from the egoism of all: thoroughly self-comprehending, pro-
ceeding methodically, abandoning a one-sided for a general standpoint,
and so summing things up to communitarian effect. And it exists to
serve that egoism alone, having been established under the accurate
presupposition that pure morality, i.e., morally grounded rectitude, is
not to be expected; otherwise, the state would indeed be superfluous.
Thus it is in no way against egoism, but only against the detrimental
consequences of egoism, which mutually proceed from one and all of
the plurality of egoistic individuals and disturb their well-being, that the
state is directed with this well-being as its purpose. Thus Aristotle
already says (De Rep., IIl): TSAoe; 115V o6v ffOA&OJe; 'W' &6 (ifv. raum
0' 8(nt'v To' (ijv &VOaLjiovOJC; ;ca; ;ca:lmc;. (Finis civitatis est bene
vivere, hoc autem est beate et pulehre vivere.)i Robbes has also quite
accurately and superbly discussed this origin and purpose of the state.
And it is also characterized in the same terms by the ancient principle
of all political order: salus publica prima lex esto. ii
When the state completely achieves it purpose, it will produce the
same phenomenon as when complete righteousness iii of disposition
holds general sway. The inner essence and origin of the two phenom-
ena, however, will be the contrary of one other. Namely, in the latter
case it would be that nobody willed the doing of wrong, while in the
former that nobody willed to suffer wrong and the appropriate means
had been completely applied to this purpose. Thus the same line can be
described as going in opposite directions, and a camivore with a muz-
zle is as harmless as an herbivore.

t'The end of the state is the good life ... by which we mean a happy and
honourable life"; drawn, as Deussen and Hübscher note, from Polities III, 9,
1280b39 and 1281al-2 (tr. Benjamin Jowett in Barnes [ed.], Complete Works).
Added in B, with the Latin added in Cl
it"The general welfare has to be the first law"; Cicero. De legibus (On Laws)
1Il, 3, 8; this sentence added in B .]
iii[Gereehtigkeit; sometimes also "justice," particularly when speaking of
relationships in the world, as opposed to an individual's moral disposition.]
 AffIrmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 403

Beyemd this point, however, the state cannot bring things; thus it
can display no phenomenon such as would originate in a general condi-
tion of mutual benevolence and love. For just as we found that, by its
nature, it would not forbid a wrongdoing to which there corresponded
no suffering at an by another party, and prevents an wrongdoing mere1y 409
because this is impossible, so conversely, in accord with its orientation
toward the well-being of all, it would most gladly see to it that every-
one experience an sorts of benevolence and works of human love, were
it not that this had an inescapable correlate in the performance of
benevolent deeds and works of love: a matter in which, by contrast,
every citizen of the state would be willing to assume the passive, none
the active role, and there wou1d indeed be no ground for presuming the
latter of one before another. Accordingly, one can only compel the
negative, which is just rights, not that positive thing that one has under-
stood by the terms "duties oflove" or "imperfect duties."
As stated, legislation derives the pure doctrine of right, or doctrine
of the essence and boundaries of right and wrong, from morality, in
order to apply it in reverse for purposes foreign to morality, and in
accordance therewith establish positive legislation and the means for
the latter's support, i.e., the state. Positive legislation is thus purely
moral doctrine of right as applied in reverse. The application can occur
with a regard for the peculiar re1ationships and conditions of a particular
people. But it is only when positive legislation is thoroughly determined
in its essentials under the direction of pure doctrine of right, and for
each of its statutes a ground is demonstrable in pure doctrine of right,
that the resultant legislation is strictly speaking positive right and the
state a lawfuli union, state in the strict sense of the term, a morally
permissible, not an immoral institution. In the contrary case, on the
other hand, positive legislation is the foundation of a positive wrang, is
indeed the compelling of a publicly acknowledged wrong. Such is
every despotism, the constitution of most lslamic kingdoms, here
belong even many parts of a number of constitutions, e.g., indentured
servitude, forced labor, etc.
The pure doctrine of right, or natural right - or better put, moral
right - is just as much the ground of all lawful positive legislation,
although always by reversing it, as pure mathematics is of every branch
of applied mathematics. The most important points of the pure doctrine
of right, so far as philosophy has for that purpose to pass them on to the

trechtlicher]
 404 Fourth Book. The World as Will

legislative process, are the following: I) Explanation of the inner and

410 true meaning and origin of the concepts of wrong and right, and their
application and place in morality. 2) Derivation ofthe right to property.
3) Derivation of the moral validity of contracts, since this is the moral
foundation of the political contract. 4) Explanation of the origin and
purpose of the state, of the relation of this purpose to morality, and of
the extension in reverse, in consequence of this relation, of the moral
doctrine ofright for the purpose oflegislation. 5) Derivation ofthe right
to punish.
The remaining content of the doctrine of right is mere application
of these principles, closer determination of the boundaries between right
and wrong for all possible circumstances of life, wh ich are for this
purpose united and separated according to certain points of view and
rubrics. With respect to the latter, specialized doctrines, textbooks of
pure right, are largely in agreement; but they sound very different in
their principles, since they are always connected with some philosophi-
cal system. Having explained the first four of these rnain points in
accordance with our own system, in abrief and general way, yet
defmitely and distinctly, the right to punish remains to be addressed in
the same terms.
Kant puts forth the fundamenta11y false assertion that there is no
complete right to property outside of the state. i In accordance with our
derivation above, there is also property in the state of nature, with
perfect1y natural, i.e., moral, right that cannot be violated without
wrong, but can be defended to the utmost without wrong. By contrast,
it is certain that there is no right to punish outside of the state. All right
to punish is grounded only by positive law, for which it has determined
a punishment before the offense, the threat of which, as a counter-
motive, is meant to outweigh a11 eventual motives for the offense. This
positive law is to be viewed as sanctioned and acknowledged by a11
citizens of the state. lt is thus grounded in a co11ectiveii contract, to the
fulfi11ment of which - thus to the inflicting of punishment on the one
hand and its endurance on the other - the members of the state are
under all circumstances obligated; therefore, its endurance is by right
enforceable. 1t follows that the immediate purpose ofpunishment in the
411 individual case is fulfillment ofthe law as a contract. The single purpose
of the law, however, is deterrence from encroaching upon another
person's rights. For in order that everyone may be protected from

i[The Metaphysics aiMarals, § 8.]

"coillmon" (gemeinsamen) 1
ii[ or
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 405

suffering wrong, people joined themselves into astate, renounced

wrongdoing, and assumed the burdens of maintaining the state. Thus
the law and its execution, punishment, are in their essence directed to
the future, not to the past. This distinguishes punishment from revenge,
which latter is motivated only by what has been done, thus by the past
as such. All retribution for wrong through the infliction of a pain
without purpose for the future is revenge, and can have no other
purpose than, through the sight of another' s suffering caused by
oneself, consoling oneself for that which one has suffered. This sort of
thing is malice and cruelty, and ethically unjustifiable. Wrong that
somebody inflicts on me in no way entitles me to inflict wrong on hirn.
Repaying evil with evil without further intention is neither morally nor
otherwise justifiable by any rational ground, and to put forth the jus
talionis i as an independent, ultimate principle of penal law is senseless.
Therefore, Kant's doctrine of punishment as mere retribution fOT the
sake of retribution is an utterly groundless and perverse view. And yet
it continues to haunt the writings of many theorists of law, under all
sorts of elegant phrases that amount to empty word-mongering, such as
that through punishment the crime is "atoned for" or "neutralized" or
"nullified,"ii and the like. No person has the entitlement to set hirnself
up as a purely moral judge and recompenser, and to punish another's
misdeeds by inflicting pain on hirn, thus imposing a penance for them.
This would be rather a most bold presumption. Therefore, just as the
Bible says: "Revenge is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay."iii A
person surely has the right, however, to be concemed for the security of
society. But this can only be done by prohibiting all acts that the word
'criminal' designates, so as to avert them by way of counter-motives,
which is what the threat of punishments is; only if it is carried out can
the threat be effective in cases that are nonetheless forthcoming. That
the purpose ofpunishment, or more exactly ofpenallaw, is accordingly 412
deterrence of crime, is a so generally acknowledged, indeed evident,
truth that it is even pronounced in England in the ages-old formula of
indictrnent (Anklagungsjormert of which the advocate for the Crown
still makes use in criminal cases today, concluding with the following

i["right of retaliation"]
ii[gesühnt, neutralisiert, aufgehoben]
111[Romans 12:19. King James version: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay,
saith the Lord."]
iV[In the text, "Anklagnngsformel (indictment)"; also in English, the italicized
passage that folIows, translated into German in a footnote.]
 406 Fourth Book. The World as Will

words: if this be proved, you, the saM N. N., ought to be punished with
pains of law, to deter others from the like crimes, in all time coming. 74
If a prince desires to pardon a rightfully condemned criminal, his
minister will object that this crime would then soon be repeated. -
Future purpose distinguishes punishment from revenge, and punishment
has this only when it is carried out infulfillment ofa law that, announc-
ing it inevitability for every future case precisely by that fact as weH,
maintains the law's deterrent force, in wh ich its purpose precisely
consists.
Now here a Kantian would not fail to object that surely, on this
view, the punished criminal would be used "merely as a means." But
this proposition so tirelessly repeated by all Kantians - that "one should
treat a person always only as an end, never as a means"i - has a signifi-
cant ring to it, to be sure, and is therefore aItogether suited to an those
who would gladly have a formula to relieve them of an further think-
ing. But viewed by the light of day, it is a highly vague, indeterminate
pronouncement, of only indirect relevance to achieving its intention,
which for every case of its application needs first to be given a particu-
lar explanation, determination, and modification, and yet, taken in such
genera) terms, is unsatisfactory, nearly vacuous, and beyond that still
problematic. The murderer who falls subject to the death penalty in
accordance with the law must of course and with fuH right now be used
as a mere means. For public security, the main purpose of the state, is
dismpted by hirn, indeed it is nuHified if the law remains unfulfiHed.
He, his life, his person must now be the means to fulfillment of the law
and thereby to the restoration ofpublic security, and is with every right
made to be such in the interest of carrying out the political contract,
which even he, so far as he was a citizen, had entered, and according to
413 which, to enjoy security for his life, his freedom, and his property, he
had posted his life, his freedom, and his property as also bond for the
security of an; that bond is now forfeit.
The doctrine of punishment here set forth, immediately evident to
sound reason, is of course in the main not a new thought, but only one
that has been nearly suppressed by new errors. A very explicit exposi-
tion of it was to that extent necessary. The same doctrine is, in its
essentials, already contained in what Pufendorf says on the matter in
De officio hominis et civis, Book 2, eh. 13. ii Hobbes is likewise in

tFoundationfor the Metaphysics ofMorals, Ak. 4.429.]

ii[Samuel Freiherr von Pufendorf, On the Duties of Man and the Citizen
according to Natural Law (1673.D).]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will fOT Life 407

agreement: Leviathan, chs. 15 and 28. In our days, Feuerbach is weH

known for defending it.i Indeed, it is already found in the pronounce-
ments of the philosophers of antiquity: Plato explicitly sets it forth it in
the Protagoras (p. 114, ed. Bip.), also in the Gorgias (p. 168), and in
the eleventh Book ofthe Laws (p. 165)Y Seneca gives perfeet voice to
Plato's opinion and to the whole doctrine of punishment in these brief
words: Nemo prudens punit, quia peccatum est; sed ne peccetur (De
Ira I, 16).iii
Wehave thus come to recognize in the state the means by which
rationally equipped egoism seeks to evade its own negative conse-
quences, and everyone now promotes the welfare of all because he sees
his own comprised in it. If the state were to achieve its purpose com-
pletely, then, being able to employ the human forces that are united in it
to render the rest of nature more and more subservient, there could to a
certain extent come to pass in the end, doing away with all sorts of ills,
something akin to an earthly paradise. iv But for one thing, it has
remained ever most distant from this goal. For another, still further
countless ills altogether essential to life - inc1uding in the end, were
they indeed all done away with, boredom - would at once occupy the
spot left behind by the others and maintain life in its suffering as
before; and for another, strife among individuals can in fact never be
utterly eliminated by the state, since it mocks us in matters sma11 where
it is prohibited in the large. Finally, with Eris happily driven out of our
midst, she turns in the end outward: banned by political institutions as a
conflict among individuals, she comes back from without as a war
among peoples, and now wholesale and once and for all, as accumu- 414
lated debt, caUs in the bloody sacrifices that had been taken from her
through wise provision in marters of detaiL 75 Indeed, supposing that
even all of this were fmally overcome and disposed of, with a shrewd-
ness supported by the experience of millennia, the result would in the

tPaul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach, Kritik des natürlichen Rechts (Critique
0/ Natural Law [1796]), Revision der Grundsätze und Grundbegriffe des
positiven peinlichen Rechts (Revision 0/ the Principles and Fundamental Con-
cepts 0/Positive Penal Law [1799]); this sentence added in B.J
itPlato refers here to the Bipont edition (see earlier note): Protagoras 324a-
b, Gorgias 525b (also 473ff).J
iii["No wise man punishes because wrong has been committed, but that
wrong not be committed": De ira (On Anger); as Deussen and Hübscher note,
I, 19, 7.J
iv[ Schlaraffenland]
 408 Fourth Book. The World as Will

end be actual overpopulation of the entire planet, a horrific ill that only
a bold imagination can now envision. t
§ 63.
[Temporal vs. Etemal JusticeJ
We have come to rccognize temporaljustice,i which has its seat in
the state, as retributive or punitive, and have seen that such a thing
b(~comes justice only through its regard for the future; for without such
a regard, all punishment and retribution would remain an iniquity with-
out justification, indeed the mere addition of a second ill to that which
had been done, without sense or significance. It is entirely different
with eternal justice, which was already mentioned earlier, and which
does not hold sway over the state but the world, is not dependent on
human institutions, not subject to chance and deception, not uncertain,
vacillating and erring, but infallible, firm and sure.
The concept of retribution of course includes time. Therefore,
eternal justice cannot be retributive justice, thus cannot, like the latter,
allow of delays and deadlines and, only balancing bad deeds with bad
consequences by means of time, have need of time in order to subsist.
The punishment has in this case to be so bound with the offense that the
two are one.
Lloxdn: ltT]oqv ,aOOnlt.lU" Sl.; 3wu<;
Iltspotcn, xältsn' f.V Lllo<; oehou lt,UXat<;
fpa<pslv nv' alml, Zljva 0' sicroprovta VlV
BvT]tot<; olxal;slv; 0.00' 0 rr<l<; liv oupavo<;,
Lllo<; ypa<povw<; ta<; ßpotrov aJlapt ta<;,
'E~apxecrslsv, 0.00' f.x!:lVO<; liv crXOltrov
Il8Jllt!:IV Exacrtep 1;T]~ltav' an' ~ LllXT]
'EvtUu3a ltOU 'crttV EYYU<;, si ßouAscr3' opqv.
Euripides, apud Stobaeus, Ecl. I, eh. 4.
415 (Volare pennis scelera ad aetherias domus
Putatis, Wie in Jovis tabularia
Scripto referri; turn Jovem lectis super
Sententiam proferre? - sed mortalium
Facinora coeli, quantaquanta est, regia

tOn this, see eh. 47 ofthe seeond volume.

tGerechtigkeit]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 409

Nequit tenere: nec legendis Juppiter

EI puniendis par est. Est tamen ultio,
EI, si intuemur, illa nos habitat prope.) i
That such an etemal justice actually lies in the essence of the world will
soon become completely evident to anyone who has grasped it in terms
of the whole of the thought so far developed.
The phenomenon, the objectivization ofthe one will for life, is the
world in all the plurality of its parts and forms. ii Existence itself and
any mode of existence,iii in the whole as in every part, is only on the
basis ofwill. lt is free, it is omnipotent. In every thing, will makes its
appearance precisely as it determines itself to do, in itself and beyond
time. The world is only the mirror of this willing. And all the finitude,
all the suffering, all the torments it contains belong to the expression of
that which it wills, are as they are because it wills as it does. It is with
the strictest justice,iv accordingly, that every being bears existence in
general, and then the existence of its species and of its own peculiar
individuality, just as it is and in the surroundings as they are, in a world
such as it is, mIed by chance and by error, temporal, transitory, con-
stantly suffering; and in all that befalls it, indeed can ever befall it,
justice is always done to it. For thine is the will;v and as the will is, so is
the world. 76 Responsibility for the existence and the character of this
world, only it itself can bear, none other. For how could it have taken it
over from another?vi
If one would know what human beings are worth, morally regard-

i["Do you believe that crimes fly up to the gods on wings, and that someone
has then to write them on Zeus's tablet, and Zeus looking at them pronounces
judgment on men? Not even the whole of heaven would be great enough to
comprehend the sins of men were Zeus to write them down, nor he to survey
them and to dispense to each his punishment. No! Punishment is right here, if
you would only see it": Euripides as quoted in Stobaeus, Eclogues I; Deussen
and Hübscher correct the reference to I, 3. Quotation added in B, with the Latin
ine.]
ii[Gestalten]
iii[Das Dasein selbst und die Art des Daseins]
iv [Recht]
V[Strictly, "For its" (Denn sein, not Denn dein) ist der Wille. But I take the
liberty in order to retain what I take to be Schopenhauer's humor at this point,
by way ofan allusion to the Lord's Prayer's Denn dein ist das Königreich ("For
thine is the kingdom").]
vi [denn wie hätte er sie aufsieh nehmen mögen?]
 410 Fourth Book. The World as Will

ed, on the whole and in general, consider their fate on the whole and in
general. It is lack, misery, sorrow, torment, and death. Etemal justice
prevails: were they not worthless taken on the whole, then their fate,
taken on the whole, would not be so sad. In this sense we can say: the
world itself is the world court of justice. 77 If one could place all the
416 world's sorrow into one pan ofa scale, and all the world's guilt into the
other, the pointer would surely stand upright.
Of course, having arisen from will for its service, the world is not
displayed to the cognizance of the individual as such in the way it is
finally revealed to the inquirer, as the objectivization of that one and
only will for life that he himself iso Rather, as the Indians say, the veil
of Maya obscures the view of the uncultivated individual: to hirn,
instead of the thing in itself, only the phenomenon is shown, within
time and space, the principium individuationis, and within the other
modes of the Principle of Sufficient Ground; and within this form
belonging to his limited cognition he sees not the essence of things,
which is one, but its phenomena, as separate, distinct, innumerable,
most diverse, indeed in opposition to one another. Here pleasure appears
to hirn as one thing and torment as an entirely different thing, this per-
son as a torturer and murderer, that as suffering and a victim, evil as
one thing and ills as another. He sees one person living in happiness,
surplus, and pleasures, and at the same time another dying before his
door, tormented by want and the cold. Then he asks: where is retribu-
tiün? And he hirns elf, in the intense press of the will that is his origin
and his essence, takes hold of the pleasures and enjoyments of life,
grasps them in tight embrace, and does not know that, just by this act of
his will, he grasps and tightly presses to himself all of those pains and
torments of life before whose vision he shudders. He sees the ills, he
sees the evil in the world. But far removed from cognizance of the fact
that the two are only different sides of the phenomenon of the one will
for life, he takes them to be very different, indeed entirely opposed to
one another, and often seeks to escape the ills, the suffering of his own
individual casei through evil, Le., by causing another's suffering,
caught up in the principium individuationis, deceived by the veil of
Maya.
For just as upon araging sea that, howling, unbounded on all sides,
lifts and lowers mountains of water, there sits a seaman in aboat, trust-
ing in his weak vessel, so in the midst of a world full of torments, there
417 sits at rest the human individual, supported by and trusting in the prin-

tdes eigenen Individuums J

 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 411

cipium individuationis, or the manner in which the individual is cogni-

zant of things as phenomena. The unbounded world, full of suffering
everywhere, in the infinite past, in the infinite future, is foreign to hirn,
indeed is a nightmare to hirn: his vanishing person, his unextended
present, his momentary feeling of comfort, this alone has actual reality
for hirn; and he does everything to maintain it, so long as cognizance of
something better does not open his eyes. Until then, there dwells in the
innermost depths of his consciousness only the wholly obscure presen-
timent that all of that is yet really not so foreign to hirn, but has a
connection with hirn from which the principium individuationis cannot
protect hirn. From this presentiment arises the dread that suddenly
grips one, so ineradicable and common to all human beings (indeed,
perhaps even to the more clever animals), when by some chance occur-
rence they become disoriented with respect to the principium individ-
uationis, when the Principle of Sufficient Ground in any one of its
modes appears to suffer an exception: for example, when it appears as
if some alteration took place without a cause, or a dead person were
here again, or in some other manner the past or future were present, or
distant things were elose. Their tremendous horror over such things is
grounded in their becoming suddenly disoriented with respect to the
cognitive forms pertaining to the phenomenon, which alone hold their
own individual person separate from the rest of the world. But this
separation lies precisely only in the phenomenon and not in the thing in
itself; it is precisely upon this that etemal justice rests.
In fact all temporal happiness stands and all shrewdness moves -
upon ground hollowed out beneath. They protect the person from
mishaps and provide hirn with enjoyments. But the person is mere
phenomenon, and his difference from other individuals and the freedom
from the sufferings they bear rests on the principium individuationis as
the form pertaining to the phenomenon. With respect to the true essence
of things, everyone has to regard all the world's sufferings as his own,
indeed all merely possible sufferings as actual for himself, so long as he
is the firm will for life, i.e., affirms life with all his force. For cogni-
zance that penetrates the principium individuationis, a happy life in
time, granted by chance or won from it through shrewdness amidst the
sufferings of countless others - that is but the dream of a beggar in 418
which he is a king, but from which he must awaken to leam that only a
fleeting deception had separated hirn from his life's sorrows.
Etemal justice withdraws from the view caught up in cognizance
that follows the Principle of Sufficient Ground, in the principium indi-
viduationis; that view misses it entirely, unless perhaps it preserves it
with fictions. lt sees those who are evil, after outrages and cruelties of
 412 Fourth Book. The World as Will

every sort, living in pleasure and departing the world untroubled. It sees
the oppressed drag a life full of suffering up to the end, without the
arrival of an avenger, of a recompenser. But eternal justice will be
comprehended and grasped only by one who rises above cognizance
that advances under the direction of the Principle of Sufficient Ground
and is bound to individual things, one who is cognizant of Ideas,
penetrates the principiurn individuationis, and becomes aware that the
forms pertaining to phenomena do not pertain to the thing in itself.
Only such a person as weIl, by virtue of the same cognizance, can
understand the true essence of virtue, as it will soon be disclosed to us
in the context of our present considerations - although for practice of
that virtue this cognizance is in no way required in abstracto. To
whomever has attained to the cognizance in question, it is thus made
explicit that, because will is the in-itself of all phenomena, the torment
inflicted on others and that experienced by oneself, evils and ills, always
concern only that one and selfsame essence, even if the phenomena in
which the one or the other is displayed stand before us as entirely
distinct individuals and are even separated by distant times and spaces.
He sees that the difference between someone who inflicts suffering and
someone who has to endure it is only a phenomenoni and does not
concern the thing in itself that is the will that lives in both of them,
which, being deceived by cognizance bound to its service, fails to
recognize itself here; seeking increased well-being in one of its
phenomena, it produces great suffering in the other, and so, in its
intense pressing, strikes its teeth into its own flesh, not knowing that it
always only wounds itself, thus revealing through the medium of
419 individuation the self-conflict it bears in its interior. The tormentor and
the tormented are one. The former errs in believing that he does not
share in the torment, the latter in believing that he does not share in the
guilt. Were the eyes of both to open, the one inflicting suffering would
recognize that he lives in everything around the world that is suffering
torment and that, if gifted with reason, is reflecting in vain as to why he
was called into existence for such great suffering, which he does not
se:e he deserves. And the one who is tormented would see that all the
evil that is practiced in the world, or ever was, flows from that will
which also constitutes his essence, also makes its appearance in hirn,
and that through the latter phenomenon and its affirmation he has taken
upon hirnself all the sufferings proceeding from such a will, and rightly

i[Phänomenj
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 413

endures them so long as he is this will. - Full of the presentiment

arising from cognizance of this fact, the poet Calderon speaks in Life is
aDream:
Pues el delito mayor
DeZ hombre es haber nacido.

(For the greatest guilt ofman

Is that he has been born. y
How can it not be guilt, since by eternallaw it is punishable by death?
Calderon has with this verse in fact only pronounced the Christian
dogma of original sin.
Living cognizance of eternal justice, of the beam of the balance
that inseparably connects malum culpae and malum poenae,ii demands
complete elevation above individuality and the principle of its possibil-
ity; it will therefore remain, as will also the related pure and distinct
cognizance of the essence of all virtue, shortly to be discussed, always
inaccessible to the majority of human beings. - Thus the wise patri-
archs of the Indian people in fact pronounced it directly in the Vedas,
available only to the three castes of the reincarnated, or in their esoteric
wisdom, at least so far as it is captured by concepts and language and
permitted by their ever imagistic, even rhapsodic manner of depiction,
but only communicated it mythically in the popular religion, or in their
exoteric doctrine. We find the direct depiction in the Vedas, fmit of
the highest human cognizance and wisdom, the core of which, in the
Upanishads, has finally reached us as the greatest gift of this century,iii 420
expressed in a variety of ways, but particularly where all the beings of
the world, living and lifeless, are led in succession before the gaze of
the disciple and over each of them pronounced the word that, become a
standard formula, was given the tide Mahavakya: iv Tatoumes, or more

tLa vida es sueiio (Life is a Dream [1635]) I, 2; Schopenhauer's German

originally without parentheses, with the Spanish in a footnote.]
"["evil of guilt" (or "fault"), "evil of punishment"; cf. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae, second part ofthe Second Part, Question 19, Artic1e 2. "of
the ...poenae" added in c.]
iii[These texts from the later period of the Vedic literature of Hinduism were
made available in Europe under the title Oupnek'hat in 1801-2 by Abraham-
Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron's Latin translation of a Persian translation of a
number of these.]
iV["dictum": one ofthe four major "dicta" ofthe Upanishads.]
 414 Fourth Book. The World as Will

correctly, tat twarn asi. It means: "This is you. "1

The great truth was translated for the people, however, so far as
they could comprehend it given their limitations, into the manner of
cognizance that follows the Principle of Sufficient Ground, which is to
be sure in its essence altogether unable to assimilate that truth pure and
in itself, even stands in direct contradiction to it, but received a surrogate
for it in the form of myth, which was sufficient as a regulative principle
for action insofar as, in the eternally foreign manner of cognizance
according to the Principle of Sufficient Ground, it yet made its ethical
significance comprehensible through an imagistic depiction; this is the
purpose of all doctrines of faith, in that they are all mythical clothing
for truths inaccessible to uncultivated human understanding. In this
sense/8 that myth could even be called, in Kant' s language, a postulate
of practical reason. i Regarded as such, however, it has the great advan-
tage of containing no other elements at all but such as are evident to us
in the realm of actual reality, and therefore of being able to provide
perceptual confrrmation for all of its concepts. What I mean here is the
myth of reincarnation. It teaches that all the sufferings that one inflicts
on other beings during one's lifetime have to be atoned for in a
subsequent life, in this very world, through exactly the same sufferings
in turn; tbis extends so far that whoever kills even an animal will, at
some point in infinite time, also be born as just such an animal and
suffer the same death. It teaches that an evil way of life entails a future
life, on this earth, in suffering and despised beings, that one is accord-
ingly born again in lower castes, or as a woman, or as an animal, as a
pariah or tschandala,ii as aleper, as a crocodile, etc. All the torments the
421 myth threatens it confirms with illustrationsiii from the actual world, by
way of suffering beings who do not even know how they earned their
torment, and it needs no other hell as an aid. But as areward, on the
other hand, it holds out the promise ofrebirth in better, nobler forms, as
Brahmans, as sages, as saints. The highest reward, which awaits the
noblest needs and utter resignation, which will come even to the
wornan who has voluntarily died seven lifetirnes in a row on her

tOupnek'hat, vol. 1, pp. 60ff.

i[Critique 0/ Practical Reason (1788), Ak. 5.122: "by a postulate of pure
practical reason ... I understand a theoretical but as such not provable propo-
sition, so far as it attaches to a practical law with unconditioned validity a
priori."]
ii["untouchable"]
iitAnschauungen]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will fOT Life 415

husband's funeral pyre, no less than to the man whose pure mouth has
never spoken a single lie - this reward the myth can express only
negatively in the language of this world, with the so often repeated
promise of no longer being rebom at all: non adsumes iterum existen-
tiam apparentem. i Or as Buddhists, who recognize neither the Vedas
nor castes, express it: "Thou shalt attain Nirvana, i.e., astate in which
four things do not exist: birth, old age, sickness, and death."
Never has and never will a myth more closely fit philosophical
truth, accessible to so few, than this ages-old doctrine of the most noble
and most ancient people, among whom, as degenerated as they indeed
now are in many respects, it yet still holds sway as a general popular
belief and has a decisive influence on life, today as much as four
millennia ago. That non plus ultraii of mythical depiction was thus
already received with admiration by Pythagoras and Plato, taken over
from India, or Egypt/9 honored, applied, and, we do not know to what
extent, even believed. - We today, by contrast, send English clergymeniii
and Moravian linen-weavers to the Brahmans, out of compassion, to
teach them a better way and to point out to them that they are made
from nothing and should be thankfully pleased about it. 80 But what we
get is like what one gets who shoots abullet at a rock. In India our
religions never, but never, take root: the primordial wisdom of the
human race will not be suppressed by the events in Galilee. To the
contrary, Indian wisdom streams back to Europe and will bring forth a
fundamental alteration in our knowledge and thought.

§ 64. 422
[Eternal Justice Obscurely FeIt by Everyone]
But from our account, not mythical but philosophical, of etemaJ
justice, we would now proceed to related considerations regarding the
ethical significance of action and of conscience, which is merely feit
cognizance of the former. - Yet I would first call attention at this point
to two peculiarities of human nature that can contribute to an explica-
tion ofhow everyone can be aware, at least as an obscure feeling, ofthe
essence of that etemal justice and of the unity and identity of will in all
its phenomena, on which it rests.
Quite independently of the demonstrated purpose of the state in
punishment, which is the foundation of penallaw, there is afforded,

i["That you may not again take on phenomenal existence."]

'T'beyond which, nothing"]
III[Schopenhauer's English]
 416 Fourth Book. The World as Will

after an evil deed has occurred, not only to the aggrieved, who is mostly
inspired by vengefulness, but also to the entirely impartial spectator,
satisfaction in seeing one who has caused a pain to another suffer
precisely the same measure of pain in turn. Herein seems to me to be
pronounced nothing other than just that consciousness of etemal justice,
which, however, is immediately misunderstood and falsified by unpuri-
fied understandingi in that, caught up in the principium individuationis,
it commits a conceptual amphiboly and demands from the phenomenon
what only pertains to the thing in itself,ii does not see to what extent the
injuring and injured parties are in themselves one, and that the same
being,iii failing to recognize itself in its own phenomenon, is the bearer
of both the torment and the guilt, but rather demands to see the torment
also in the very individual whose guilt it iso
Thus most people would indeed demand that a person who posses-
ses a very high degree of malice, which might yet surely be found in
many, even ifnot coupled with other qualities as in hirn - in particular,
someone who was also far superior to others by his unusual mental
capacity and who as a consequence inflicted unspeakable sufferings on
millions of others, e.g., as a world conqueror - most people would, I
assert, demand that such a one someday and somewhere atone with an
equal measure ofpains for all those sufferings. For they do not see how
423 the tormentor and those tormented are in themselves one, and that the
same will by which the latter exist and live is also just that which is
making its appearance in the former, and precisely through hirn attain-
ing to the most distinct revelation of its essence, and that just as in the
oppressed, so too it suffers in the oppressor, and indeed more in the
latter in proportion as his consciousness has greater clarity and distinct-
ness and his will greater vehemence. - But that a deeper state of cogni-
zance no longer fosters that vindictive disposition, from which a11 virtue
and generosityiv proceed, no longer caught up in the principium indi-
viduationis, is of course attested by Christian ethics, which absolutely
renounces all repaying of evil with evil and has etemal justice holding
sway in the domain ofthe thing in itself, distinct from the phenomenon.
("Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." Romans 12, 19.)

i[ungeläuterten Sinn I
ii[Cr. Critique 0/ Pure Reason, "On the Amphiboly of the Concepts ofReflec-
tion through Confusion of the Empirical and Transcendental Employment of
tbe Understanding" (A260/B316ff).]
iitWesen; could also be "essence."]
iv [Edelmut)
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 417

A much more striking but also much rarer trait in human nature,
giving voice to the demand to draw etemal justice into the domain of
experience, i.e., of individuation - and simultaneously indicating a feIt
consciousness of the fact that, as I 81 expressed it above, the will for life
performs the great tragicomedy at its own expense and the selfsame will
lives in alJ phenomena - such a trait, I assert, is the following. We some-
times see a person so profoundly appalled by some great outrage he has
undergone, perhaps even only experienced as a witness, that he stakes
own life, with reflective consideration and irrevocably, on taking revenge
on the perpetrator ofthe iniquity. We perhaps see him pursue a mighty
oppressor for years on end, fmally murder him, and then himself die on
the scaffold as he had foreseen, indeed had often not at all sought to
avoid, since life still held value for hirn only as a means toward that
revenge.
Such examples are found particularly among the Spanish. t If we
now more exactly consider the spirit of that vindictiveness, we find that 424
it is very different from common revenge, which would mitigate suffer-
ing undergone with the sight of suffering that one causes; indeed, we
fmd that what it aims at deserves to be called not so much revenge as
punishment. For in it really lies the intention of an effect on the future,
by example, and in particular without any self-interested purpose in this
case, either for the individual taking revenge, for he perishes as a result,
nor for a society that creates its own security through laws; for the
punishment is carried out by the individual, not by the state, nor in
fulfillment of a law, but rather always concems a deed that the state
would or could not punish, and of whose punishment it disapproves. It
seems to me that the indignationi that drives such a person so far
beyond the bounds of self-love originates from the deepest conscious-
ness that he is himself the entire will for life that makes its appearance
in all beings throughout alJ times, to which the farthest future therefore
pertains in just the same manner as the present, and to which it cannot
be indifferent. In affirming this will he is demanding, however, that,
in the spectacleii depicting its essence, no such monstrous outrage ever
appear again, and with the example of a revenge against which there

tThe Spanish bishop who, in the last war, poisoned himselftogether with the
Freneh generals at his table, belongs here, as do a number of facts from that
war. One finds examples also in Montaigne [Michel de Montaigne, Essays
(1580-1588)], Book 2, ch. 12.
~[Unwille]
"[Or "show" (Schauspiel)]
 418 Fourth Book. The World as Will

is no wall of defense, since fear of death does not deter the avenger,
he would terrify any future perpetrator of such iniquity. The will for
life, although still affirming itself, no longer has an attachment to a
particular phenomenon, to the individual, but encompasses the Idea of
humanity and would keep its phenomenon pure of such a monstrous,
appalling horror. It is arare, indeed sublime trait of character, full of
significance, by which the individual sacrifices hirnself, striving to
make hirnself an ann of that etemal justice whose true essence he still
fails to recognize.

§ 65.
[Good, Bad, Evil, Malice - Conscience as Feeling]
Through all of the considerations regarding human action so far,
we have prepared the way for the last, and greatly facilitated our task of
elevating the real ethical significance of action - which we designate in
daily life by the words good and evil, and get along perfectly weJl
425 thereby - to the level of abstract and philosophical distinctness, and
demonstrating it as a component of our main thought.
But I would first trace down the real meaning of the concepts good
and evil, which are treated in a most wondrous manner as simple con-
cepts by the ghilosophical writers of our day, thus as unsusceptible to
any analysis; 2 therewith, one will perhaps not remain caught up in the
vague delusion that those concepts contain more than they actually do,
and in and for themselves already say all that needs to be said here.
This I can do because I am myself as little of a mi nd to seek to hide
anything behind the word Good in ethics, as I was earlier to seek such a
thing behind the words Schön and Wahr, so that I could then perhaps
with an appended "-heit" - which is nowadays supposed to have a
particular u&f.1vOrr/C;,i and thereby help out in many cases - and with a
ceremonial air, give out that I had done more in pronouncing three such
words than to signify three very broad and abstract, consequently not at
all contentful, concepts with very different origins and meanings. To
whom in fact, who has made hirns elf familiar with the writings of our
day, have those three words, however excellent the things to which they
originally refer, yet not finally becorne loathsome, having had to see for
a thousand times how anyone least of all capable of thinking believes,
with mouth wide open and the air of an inspired sheep, that he need but
produce those three words to have spoken great wisdom?

tSchönheit, "beauty"; Wahrheit, "truth"; semnotes: "solemnity," gravitas.]

 AffIrmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 419

Clarification of the concept true has already been provided in

the treatise on the Princip1e of Sufficient Ground, ch. 5, §§ 29jJ. The
content of the concept beautiful has found its real clarification for the
first time with the whole of our third Book. Now we would trace down
the meaning of the concept good, which can be done with very Httle
effort. This concept is essentially relative and designates the suitable-
ness 01 an object to some particular endeavor of the will. Thus every-
thing that agrees with the will in any of its expressions, fulfills its
purpose, will be thought through the concept good, however much they
may differ in other respects. Thus we speak of good food, good roads,
good weather, good weapons, a good omen, etc., in brief, call everything 426
good that is precisely as we would just now have it. Therefore, some-
thing can be good to one person that is precisely the opposite of good to
another. The concept of good breaks down into two subspecies, namely,
that of immediately present satisfaction of whatever will is in question
and that of merely indirect satisfaction, relating to the future, i.e., the
pleasant and the usefuL
The opposite concept, so long as the discourse concems incogni-
zant beings, is expressed by the word bad,i more seldomly and more
abstractly by speaking of illS,ii which thus designates everything that
does not agree with whatever ofthe will's strivings are in question. Just
like allother beings that can enter into a relation with the will, one has
then also called those people good, with the same meaning and always
retaining the relativity, who are favorable, supportive, congenial with
respect to directly willed purposes, which shows itself, e.g., in the
expression: "This person is good for me, but not for you." But those for
whom it is part of their character not at all to obstruct the endeavors of
another person's will as such, but rather to further them, who are thus
thoroughly helpful, benevolent, congenial, beneficent, have been called
good people on account of this relation of their manner of acting to the
will of others in general. One designates the opposite concept in
German, and for about the last hundred years also in French, by a
different word for cognizant beings (animals and human beings) than
for those that are incognizant, namely, böse, mechant,iii while in almost
all other languages this distinction is not made and xaxo<;, malus,
cattivo, baefv are used for people just as for non-living things that are

i[schlecht]
i~[ Ohel (but in contexts involving human infliction of suffering, "evils")]
1It["bad," "wicked," "evil"; here throughout, "evil"]
iV["bad": Schopenhauer's English]
 420 Fourth Book. The World as Will

contrary to the purposes of a particular individual will. Thus with a

point of departure altogether with respect to the passive side of the
good, consideration could only afterward pass to the active, and the
manner of action of a person who is called good no longer be examined
with reference to others but to himself, with the particular aim of explain-
ing on the one hand the purely objective esteem that it produced in
others, on the other hand the peculiar self-contentment that it obviously
produced in oneself, given that the cost of such action involved
sacrifices of other sorts as weIl; and Iikewise, in the opposite case,
explaining the inner pain that accompanied an evil disposition, however
427 many extemal advantages it brought to someone who harbors it. From
this, then, there originated ethical systems, both philosophical and those
that rested on doctrines of faith. Both of them always sought to place
happiness i in some sort of connection with virtue, the former either
through the principle of contradiction or even through that of Sufficient
Ground - thus making happiness either into something identical with or
into a consequence of virtue, in either case with sophistical reasoning -
while the latter did it through the proclamation of worlds other than
those that could possibly be known to experience. t By contrast, accord-

i[Or "blessedness" (Glückseligkeit)]

tOn this point it may be noted in passing that what gives every positive
doctrine of faith its great force, the point of connection whereby it takes firm
possession of spirits, is altogether its ethical side. However, it does not do this
in a way that is in itself direct, but by making its appearance as tightly joined
and interwoven with some other mythical dogma peculiar to whatever doctrine
of faith is in question, as something that is explicable only in terms of the
türmer. This is to such an extent the case that, although the ethical significance
of actions is not at all explicable in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient
Ground, while every myth follows this principle, the faithful nonetheless regard
the ethical significance of action and their myth as quite inseparable, indeed as
absolutely one, and then regard every attack upon the myth as an attack upon
right and virtue. This extends so far that among monotheistic peoples atheism,
or godlessness, has become synonymous with the absence of all morality. Such
conceptual confusions are we1come to the priests, and only in consequence
thereof could that frightful monstrosity, fanaticism, arise and hold sway, not
only over perhaps particular exceptionally perverse and evil individuals, but
entire peoples, and in the end - which to humanity's honor confronts us only
once in its history - finds an incarnation here in the West as the Inquisition,
which, according to the most recent finally authentie reports, in Madrid alone
(while in the rest of Spain there were yet many more such pits of spiritual
homicide) in the course of 300 years brought 300,000 people to die in torment
upon the pyre for the sake of matters of faith. Of this every zealot needs to be
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 421

ing to our considerations, the inner essence of virtue will prove to be a

striving in a direction entirely the opposite of that toward happiness,
i.e., well-being and life.
From the above it follows that the good, with respect to its
concept, is MV 7tpo<; tl,i thus every good is essentially relative. For it
has its essence only in its relation to a desiring will. Absolute Good is
accordingly a contradiction. Highest good, summum bonum, means the
same thing, namely, a truly final satisfaction ofthe will after which no
new willing would occur, an ultimate motive whose achievement would 428
yield indestructible satisfaction of the will. In accordance with our
considerations so far in this fourth Book, such a thing is not thinkable.
Will can as little, through any satisfaction, stop always willing anew in
turn, as time can end or begin: there is no lasting fulfillment for it,
completely and forever satisfYing its striving. It is the vessel of the
Danaids: there is no highest good, no absolute good for it, but always
only one for the time being. If one nonetheless wishes to provide an
honorary office to an old expression that, out of habit, one would not
entirely dispense with, as it were as an emeritus, then, metaphorically
and figuratively, complete self-nullification and denial ofthe will, true
will-1essness - which alone forever stills and quiets the press of will,
alone provides that contentment which can never again be disturbed,
alone redeems one from the world,ii and ofwhich we will soon treat at
the conclusion of all of our considerations - may be called the absolute
good, the summum bonum, and be viewed as the single radical means of
salvation from the sickness against which all other goods, that is, all
desires fulfilled and all happiness attained, are only palliatives, only
anodynes. In this sense, the Greek zEA,~,iii as also the finis bonorum,iv
fits the matter even better. 83 - So much for the words good and evil, but
now to the matter at hand.
If as soon as an occasion exists and no external power keeps him
from it, a person is always inclined to do wrong, we call hirn evil.
According to OUT explanation of wrong this means that such a person
not only affirms the will for life as it makes its appearance in his body,

reminded, whenever he would grow loud. ["This extends ... consequence thereof':
in A, "Through this association of concepts alone."]
'[tön pros ti, "something in relation to something else"]
ii[allein welterläsend ist]
iii[telos: "end," "purpose"]
iv ["end (or purpose) of goods," "ultimate good"; cf. Cicero, De finibus bono-
rum et malorem (On the Ends of[or: Ultimate] Goods and Evils).]
 422 Fourth Book. The World as Will

but goes so far in this affinnation that he denies the will as it makes its
appearance in other individuals; this shows itself in the fact that he
claims their forces for the service ofhis will and seeks to eradicate their
existence if they oppose the endeavors of his will. The ultimate source
of this is a high degree of egoism, the essence of which was discussed
above. Two things are at once evident here: first, that in such a person
an altogether more intense will for life is pronounced, going far beyond
affirmation of his own life; and second, that his cognizance, entirely
given over to the Principle of Sufficient Ground and caught up in the
429 principium individuationis, remains finnly attached to the complete
distinction posited by the latter between his own person and all others.
Therefore, he seeks only his own well-being, completely indifferent to
that of all others, whose essence is rather utterly foreign to hirn, sepa-
rated by a wide abyss from his own, indeed, whom he really views only
as masks, without any reality. - And these two properties are the funda-
mental elements of an evil character.
This great intensity of willing, then, is in and for itself and imme-
diately a constant source of suffering. First, because all willing as such
originates from lack, thus from suffering. (That is why, as will be recalled
fi:om the third Book, the momentary silencing of all willing that occurs
whenever, as pure will-Iess subject of cognition [correlate ofthe ldea],i
we are given over to the aesthetic regard, is indeed a major component
of pleasure in the beautiful.) Second, because through the causal inter-
connection of things most desires must remain unfulfilled, and the will
is much more often frustrated than satisfied, and consequently also for
this reason, intense and manifold willing always entails intense and
manifold suffering. For all suffering is altogether nothing other than
unfulfilled and frustrated willing. And even the body's pain when it is
injured or broken is as such only possible by the fact that the body is
nothing other than will itselfbecome object.
For this reason, then, because manifold and intense suffering is
inseparable from manifold and intense willing, the facial expression of
particularly evil people in fact bears the stamp of inner suffering; even
when they have attained every external happiness, they look constantly
lmhappy, unless they are in the grip of some momentary joy, or are
dissimulating. From this inner tonnent, quite immediately essential to
them, eventually proceeds even that pleasure in the suffering of others,
originating not from mere egoism but unselfinterested, which is true

i[Schopenhauer's brackets.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 423

malicei and rises to the level of cruelty.84 For the latter, the suffering of
others is no longer a means to attaimnent ofthe purposes of one's own
will, but a purpose in itself. The following is a more detailed explana-
tion of this phenomenonY Because the human being is a phenomenoniii
of will illuminated by the clearest cognizance, he always measures 430
actual and feit satisfaction of his will against the merely possible
satisfaction that cognizance holds before hirn. From this originates
envy: every sacrifice is infinitely increased by the enjoyments of others,
and eased by knowledge that others also endure the same sacrifice. Ills
that are common to all and inseparable from human life trouble us little,
as likewise those that pertain to one's c1imate, to one's land as a whole.
RecoUection of greater sufferings than our own stills the latter's pain;
sight ofthe sufferings of others alleviates one's own. But if a person is
filled with an exceedingly intense press of the will, would embrace
everything with a burning lust to cool the thirst ofhis egoism, and in so
doing, as is necessary, must leam that all satisfaction is only illusory,
attainment never achieves what desire promised, namely, a final stilling
ofthe fiercepress ofwill, but rather, with fulfillment, desire only changes
form and now torments under a different form, and finally, when they
all are exhausted, the very press of will remains even without any
cognizance of motive and announces itself with unassuageableiv
torment as a feeling of the most horrific desolation and emptiness: if
from all this - which at the usual degrees of willing is only feit to a
lesser measure and only produces the usual degree of a dark mood -
there necessarily grows an inordinate inner torment, etemal unrest,
unsalvable pain in whomever is the phenomenon of will at its point of
exceptional malice, he then seeks indirectly that alleviation ofwhich he
is not directly capable, namely, seeks to mitigate his own pain through
sight of the suffering of others that he at the same time recognizes as
an expression ofhis own power. The suffering of others now becomes
a purpose in itself for hirn, Is a sight in which he revels; and thus arises
that phenomenon of true cruelty, of blood-lust, which history so fre-
quently shows us in its Neros and Domitians, in its African deys, in
Robespierre, etc.
Vengefulness of course has an affinity with malice,85 in repaying

i[Bosheit]
~i[Phänomen]
111[Erscheinung]
iv [heilloser]
VI unheilbar]
 424 Fourth Book. The World as Will

evil with evil not out of regard for the future, which is the character of
punishment, but merely on account of what is done and past as such,
431 thus without self-interest, not as a means but as an end, so as to revel in
torment of the injuring party that has been caused by oneself. What
distinguishes revenge from pure malice and somewhat excuses it is the
semblance of right, namely, so far as the same act that is now revenge -
if it were inflicted legally, i.e., in accordance with a previously deter-
mined and recognized rule and within a union that has sanctioned it -
would be punishment, thus right.
Beyond the suffering described, along with malice sprouting from
the single root of a very intense will and thus inseparable from it, there
is yet another entirely distinct and particular pain associated with it, of
which one is sensible with every evil action, whether the latter be mere
injustice out of egoism or pure malice,86 and that is called, according to
the length of its duration, sting 0/ conscience or pangs 0/ conscience. i -
Now someone to whom the preceding content ofthis fourth Book, but
particularly the truth discussed at its beginning, is recalled and present
to mind - that to the will for life, as its mere image or mirror, life itself
is always certain - and then also the account of etemal justice, will find
that in accordance with those considerations the sting of conscience can
have none other than the following meaning, i.e., its content, abstractly
expressed, is the following; in it, two components are distinguished that
yet in turn entirely coincide and must be thought in Utter union with one
another.
As tightly, namely, as the veil ofMaya envelops the evil person's
understanding,ii i.e., as firmly as he is caught up in the principium indi-
viduationis, in accordance with which he views his person as absolutely
distinct and separated by a wide abyss from every other - to which
manner of cognizance, since it alone accords with his egoism and
supports it, he holds with all his might, cognizance then almost always
being corrupted by will - there nonetheless stirs within his innermost
consciousness the secret presentiment that such an order of things is yet
only a phenomenon, while in themselves matters are quite otherwise;
that, however much time and space in fact separate him from other
individuals and the innumerable torments that they suffer, indeed suffer
through hirn, and display thern as entirely foreign to hirn, nonetheless,
in itself and apart frorn presentation and its forms, it is the one will for
432 life that makes its appearance in them all, that, here failing to recognize

i[ Gewissensbiss, Gewissensangst]
ii[Sinn]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 425

itself, turns its weapons against itself and, seeking greater well-being in
one of its phenomena, by that very fact imposes the greatest of suffer-
ing on others; that he, the evil person, is precisely this whole will,
consequently he is not only the tormentor but just as much the
tormented, from whose suffering he is separated and held free only by a
deceiving dream whose form is space and time; but that the dream
fades away and, when it comes to the truth, he is bound to repay his
pleasure with torment, and any suffering that he recognizes as even
possible actually affects hirn as the will for life, in that only with
respect to cognizance on the part of the individual, only by means of
the principium individuationis, are possibility and actuality, proximity
and distance in time and space, distinct, but not so in themselves. This
is the truth that is mythically expressed in reineamation, i.e., adapted to
the Principle of Sufficient Ground and thereby transposed into the form
pertaining to the phenomenon; it has its purest expression, free of all
admixture, however, in precisely that obscurely felt but inconsolable
torment that one calls pangs of conscience.
Pangs of conscience arise in addition from immediate cognizance
of a second fact, precisely bound up with the first one, namely, of the
strength with which the will for life affirms itself in the evil individual,
which goes far beyond his individual phenomenon to the point of
complete denial of the same will appearing in other individuals. Conse-
quently, the inner horror of the evildoer at his own deed, which he
seeks to conceal from himself, contains besides that presentiment of the
nullity and mere illusoriness of the principium individuationis, and of
the difference posited by the latter between hirnself and others, simulta-
neous cognizance as well of the intensity of his own will, of the violence
with which he has taken hold of life, latched on to it: this very life
whose frightful side he sees before hirn in the torment of those
oppressed by hirn, and with which he has nonetheless so fmnly grown
together that, just by this fact, the most horrific things proceed from
hirnself as a means toward a fuller affirmation of his own will. He is
cognizant of hirnself as a concentrated phenomenon of the will for life,
feels the degree to which he has fallen subject to life and therewith also
to the countless sufferings that are essential to it; for it has infinite time
and infmite space within which to nullify the distinction between possi- 433
bility and actuality, and to transform all the torments of which one is so
far merely cognizant into ones that are feit. Viewed in this way, the
millions of years of constant rebirth indeed exist merely in concepts,
 426 Fourth Book. The WorId as Will

just as the entire past and future exist only in concepts: the present
alone is the fulfillment oftime,i the form pertaining to the phenomenon
of will, and for the individual time is always new; he finds hirnself
constantly risen anew. For life is inseparable from the will for life, and
it8 form is only the Now. Death (one may excuse repetition of the
comparison) is like the setting of the sun, which is only seemingly
devoured by the night, but actually, itself the source of all light, bums
without remission, brings new days to new worlds, always rising and
always setting. Beginning and end concern only the individual, by
means of time, the form pertaining to this phenomenon with respect to
presentation. Beyond time lies only will, Kant's thing in itself: and its
adequate objectivization, Plato's Idea. Therefore suicide provides no
re:scue: what each in his innermost being wills, that must he be; and
what each is, that isjust what he wills.
Thus, besides the merely feit cognizance of the illusoriness and
nullity ofpresentation's forms, which set individuals asunder, it is self-
cognizance of one's own will and its degree that gives conscience its
sting. The course of one's life produces the image of one's empirical
dIaracter, the original of which is the intelligible, and the evil person
takes fright at this image. lt is all the same whether it is produced in
broad strokes, so that the world shares his abhonence, or in those so
small that he alone sees it; for it bears directly only on hirn. The past
would be a matter of indifference, as a mere phenomenon, and could
not cause pangs of conscience, were character not feit to be free of all
time, and unalterable in its course so long as one does not deny oneself.
For this reason, things that have long since happened still always weigh
on one's conscience. The prayer "Lead me not into temptation" means:
"Let me not see who I am."
Proportionally to the violence with which the evil person affirms
life, and that is displayed 10 hirn in the suffering he inflicts on others,
he measures the distance at which surrender and denial of precisely that
434 will lies, the only possible redemption from the world and its torment.
He sees to what extent he belongs to it and how firmly he is bound to it:
cognizance of the suffering of others was unable to move hirn; he is at
the mercy of life and feIt suffering. It remains in question whether the
latter will ever break and overcome the intensity ofbis will.
Ibis discussion of the meaning and inner essence of evil - which
as mere feeling, i.e., not as distinct, abstract cognizance, is the content

i[die erfüllte Zeit: presumably an allusion to the "fulfillment of time" in

Biblical prophecy.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 427

of pangs 0/ conscience - will gain still greater distinctness and com-

pleteness through the likewise just completed consideration of good as
a property of human will, and finally of the complete resignation and
saintliness that proceeds from it once it has reached the highest degree.
For opposites are always mutually illuminating, and day reveals both
itself and the night, as Spinoza has superbly stated.i

§ 66.
[Tnte Virtue not a Mßtter '!f Morality or Dogmas - Grounded in
Intuitive, not Abstract Cognizance - Rigbteousness vs. Tnte Goodness]
A morality without a grounding, thus mere moralizing, can have
no effect; for it does not motivate. But a morality that does motivate
can do so only by affecting one's self-Iove. What originates from this,
however, has no moral worth. From this it follows that morality, and
abstract cognizance in general, cannot bring about genuine virtue. This
must rather originate in that intuitive cognizance which recognizes the
identity of one's own essence in other individuals. 87
For virtue proceeds from cognizance to be sure, but not from that
which is abstract, communicable by words. Were this the case, it could
be taught, and insofar as we are abstractly pronouncing its essence here
and the cognizance grounding it, we would also have brought ethical
improvement to anyone who comprehends it. But that is in no way how
it iso Rather, ethical discourses or sermons can as little bring a virtuous
person into being as all the aesthetics since that of Aristotle have ever
produced a poet. For concepts are unfruitful for the true and inner
essence of virtue, just as they are for art, and can only do utterly subor- 435
dinate duty as instruments in executing and maintaining that which has
been otherwise recognized and resolved. Velle non discitur. ii Abstract
dogmas in fact have no influence on virtue, i.e., on goodness of disposi-
tion: those that are false do not disturb it, and those that are true are
unlikely to promote it. It would also be truly quite a bad thing if the
main issue for human life, its ethical and etemally valid worth, depended
on something whose attainment were as much subject to chance as
dogmas, doctrines of faith, philosophical theses. Dogmas merely have
value for morality, in that a person who has become virtuous on the
basis of a different sort of cognizance, soon to be discussed, is provided
by them with a schema, a formula, in accordance with which his own
faculty of reason can be given an ac count - for the most part a merely
fictional one - of his non-egoistic doings, the essence of which his

i[Ethics II, prop. 43, scholium.]

"["Willing is not leamed."]
 428 Fourth Book. The World as Will

reason, i.e., he himself, does not apprehend conceptually. i He has accus-

tomed his reason to rest content with this.
Of course dogmas can have a strong influence on action, extemal
doings, as also can habit and example (the latter because the ordinary
person does not trust his own judgment, of whose weakness he is con-
scious, but follows only his own or others' experience), but one's
disposition is not thereby changed. t All abstract cognizance provides
only motives; but motives can only, as shown above, change the direc-
tion of the will, not the will itself. All communicable cognizance,
however, can only affect the will as a motive. Thus, however dogmas
may steer aperson, what he really and in general wills has nonetheless
always remained the same; he has merely gotten different ideas about
ways in which to attain it, and imaginary motives direct hirn just like
actual ones. Therefore, for example, it is all the same with respect to his
ethical worth whether he makes great contributions to the helpless
firmly convinced of getting it all back tenfold in a future life, or whether
he spends the same amount improving a country estate, which will to
be sure bear deferred, but all the more sure and more sizeab1e interest.
436 And the true believer who commits heretics to the flarnes is as much a
murderer as the bandit who rnakes a profit frorn his murder. Indeed,
according to the inner circumstances, so is even someone who strangles
Turks in the Prornised Land, namely, if he is really doing it as in the
former case, because he thinks to earn a place in heaven thereby. For
these people would indeed on1y be concemed for themselves, for their
egoism, just like the bandit, from whom they are distinguished only by
the absurdity of their means. - Frorn the outside, as has already been
stated, it is always only through motives that the will can be reached;
but these change merely the way it expresses itself, never it itself. Velle
non discitur.
In the case of good deeds whose practitioner appeals to dogmas,
however, one must always decide whether these dogmas are actually
the motives to them, or whether, as I stated above, they are nothing more
than pseudo-accounts by which he seeks to satisfy his own reason about
a good deed, flowing from an entirely different source, which he
performs because he is good; but he does not know how to explain it in
proper terms because he is no philosopher, and would nonetheless still

tnicht begreift; BegrifJ= "concept"]

tThey are mere opera operata ["works performed"], the Church would say,
that are for naught unless grace confers the faith that leads to rebirth. More on
this further below.
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will fOT Life 429

like to have some thoughts on the matter. 88 It is very hard to discover

the difference, however, since it lies in the interior of one's spirit. i Thus
we can hardly ever make an accurate mora189 judgment of the action of
others, and seldom of our own.
The deeds and manners of action of individuals and of a people
can be considerably modified by dogmas, example, and habit. But in
themselves, all deeds (opera operata) are merely empty images, and
only the disposition leading to them gives them moral significance. But
this can in actuality be entirely the same while there is a great differ-
ence in the external phenomenon. Possessed of the same degree of
malice, one person can die on the wheel, the other resting in the bosom
ofhis family. The same degree ofmalice pronounced in brutish traits in
one people, in murder and cannibalism, can in another by contrast be
subtly and softly pronounced en miniature, in court intrigues, oppress-
sion, and subtle cabals of every sort: the essence remains the same. It
is conceivable that a perfect state, or even a perhaps completely firm
belief in a dogma of rewards and punishments after death, would pre-
vent all crime; politically, much would be won by this, morally nothing 437
at all, but rather only the reflection ofwill in lifeii impeded.
Genuine goodness of disposition, unselfinterested virtue, and pure
generosity thus do not proceed from abstract cognizance, but yet they
proceed from cognizance, namely, from an immediate and intuitive
cognizance, neither from which nor into which we can reason our way,
from a cognizance that, just because it is not abstract, can also not be
communicated, but must arise of itself for everyone, therefore does not
find its true adequate expression in words, but only in deeds, in action,
in the course of a person's life. We who are seeking a doctrine of
virtue, and therefore have also to give abstract expression to the essence
ofthe cognizance in which it IS grounded, will nonetheless be unable to
provide that cognizance itself in the expression, but only the concept
of it; thereby, we always proceed from the action in which alone it
becomes visible and refer to the latter as its sole adequate expression,
which we only interpret and analyze, Le., abstractly pronounce what it
really involves.
Before we now speak of true goodness as opposed to the evil that
has been depicted, it is necessary, as an intermediate step, to touch on the

i[im Inneren des Gemüts]

lI[die Abbildung des Willens durch das Leben; generally, 1 translate Abbild as
"image."]
 430 Fourth Book. The World as Will

mere negation of evil: this is righteousness. i What right and wrong are,
has been adequately discussed above. Therefore, we can say in brief here
that whoever voluntarily acknowledges the purely moral boundary
between wrong and right and puts it into application, even where no
state or other power secures it - consequently, according to our expla-
nation, never goes so far in affirming his own will as to deny that
displayed in another individual - is righteous. He will thus not, to
increase his own well-being,90 inflict suffering on others; i.e., he will
commit no crimes, will respect the rights, respect the property of
everyone.
We see, then, that for such a righteous person the principium
individuationis is no longer as for the evil person an absolute partition,
that he does not, like the latter, affirm only the phenomenon ofhis own
will and deny all others, that others are not for hirn mere masks whose
438 essence is entirely distinct from his OWD. Rather, he indicates through
his manner of action that he recognizesii his own essence, namely, the
will to life as thing in itself, also in the phenomenon of another, given
to hirn as mere presentation, thus up to a certain point finds hirnself yet
again in them, namely, to the point of non-wrongdoing, i.e., of non-
injury.91 To just this degree, then, he penetrates the principium individ-
uationis, the veil ofMaya: to this extent he equates the essence beyond
hirn with his own; he does not injure it.
In such righteousness lies the intention, if one looks to its inner-
most being, not to go so far in the affirmation of one's own will that it
denies the phenomena of others' wills, by compelling them to serve it.
One will therefore want to give as much to others as one enoys from
them. The highest degree of this righteousness of disposition - which is
however always in fact coupled with true goodness, whose character is
no longer merely negative - extends so far that one casts doubt on his
rights to inherited property, would maintain his body only by its own
forces, spiritual iii or corporeal, feels blameworthy with every service by
others, with every luxury, and in the end embraces voluntary poverty.
Thus we see Pascal, when he adopted his ascetic orientation, no longer
willing to suffer being senred even though he had servants enough:
despite his chronic sickliness, he made his OWD bed, got his own meals

i[Gerechtigkeit: frequently also "justice," but here "righteousness" as applied

to that moral disposition whose expression is the practice ofjustice.]
ii[wiedererkennt]
iii[geistige: one may note Schopenhauer's recognition of bodily forces that
are also "spiritual. "]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 431

from the kitchen, etc. (Vie de Pascal par sa soeur, p. 19.Y Quite in
conformity with this it is reported92 that many Hindus, even rajas with
great wealth, expend the latter only in support of their family, their
court, and their servants, and with strict scrupulousness follow the
maxim to eat nothing but what they have sowed and reaped with their
own hands. Yet a certain misunderstanding underlies this. For an indi-
vidual can, precisely because he is rich and powerful, render so
considerable a service to the whole of human society that it counter-
balances the inherited wealth for whose security he owes society. The
inordinate righteousness on the part of such Hindus is in fact really
more than righteousness, namely, actual renunciation, denial ofthe will
for life, asceticism; we will speak of it at the end. Conversely, by con- 439
trast, pure idleness and living by others' forces with the inheritance of
property, without rendering any service, can indeed be viewed as
morally wrong, even if it must remain a right in accordance with posi-
tive laws.
Wehave found that voluntary righteousness has its innermost
origin in penetrating the principium individuationis to a certain degree,
while the unrighteous93 remain altogether caught up in the latter. It can
be penetrated not only to the degree required for righteousness, but also
to the higher degree that drives a ~erson to positive benevolence and
beneficence, to love of humanity; 4 and this can occur no matter how
strong and energeticii in itself the will may be that is making its appear-
ance in such an individual. Cognizance can always keep hirn in balance,
teach hirn to resist the temptation to do wrong, and even produce every
degree of goodness, indeed of resignation. Thus the good person is in
no way at bottom a weaker phenomenon of will than the evil one;
rather, it is cognizanee that masters the blind press of the will within
hirn. There are to be sure individuals who merely seem to be possessed
of a good spirifii because of the weakness of the will making its appear-
anee in them. What they are soon shows itself, however, by the fact that
they are incapable of any considerable self-overcoming for the sake of
performing a righteousiY or good deed.
If, however, as a rare exception, we encounter a person who has a

tAn edition of Pascal's Pensees (1660, published 1670), supplemented by

various materials including La vie de Pascal, ecrite par Madame Perier sa soeur
(1688).]
itenergisch 1
iii[gutmütig]
iY[gerechte; could of course also be "just."]
 432 Fourth Book. The World as Will

considerable income, but uses only little of it for hirnself and gives all
the rest to the needy, while he hirnself sacrifices numerous enjoyments
and comforts, and we seek to explain the action of this person to our-
selves, then quite apart from the dogmas by which be would hirnself
perhaps render bis action comprehensible to his reason, we will find the
simplest general expression and essential character of his manner of
action to be that he distinguishes less than is otherwise the case between
himself and others. If precisely this distinction is so great in the eyes of
many others that the suffering of others is an immediate pleasure for
the malicious,95 a welcome means toward his own weU-being for the
440 unrighteous;96 if the merely righteous individual stops at97 not causing
it; if in general most people know and are familiar with the countless
sufferings of others in their proximity but make no decision to mitigate
them, because they would in that case have to undertake some sacrifice
themselves; if, thus, to each and every one of these a mighty distinction
seems to hold sway between their own I and that of others - to that
noble individual we are imagining, to the contrary, this difference is not
so significant. The principium individuationis, tbe form pertaining to
the phenomenon, no longer has hirn so firmly in its hold, but the
suffering that he sees in others concems hirn almost as c10sely as does
his own. He seeks therefore to establish a balance between the two,
renounces enjoyments, undertakes sacrifices, in order to mitigate the
sufferings of others. He is made aware that the difference between hirn
and others, which is so great an abyss to the evil person, belongs only
to a transitory deceiving phenomenon. He is cognizant, immediately
and without any inferences, that the in-itse1f ofhis own pbenomenon is
also that of others, namely, the will for life that constitutes the essence
of every single thing and lives in all of them, indeed that this extends
even to animals and the whole of nature; therefore he will not even
torment an animal. t

tThe right of human beings to the life and forces of animals rests on the fact
that, since suffering increases proportionally with increase in clarity of con-
sciousness, the pain that an animal suffers through death or work is still not as
great as that which a human being would suffer by mere1y doing without meat,
or without the forces of animaJs. A human being can thus go so far in affmning
his own existence as to deny existence to animals. and the will for life on the
whole thereby bears less suffering then it would the other way around. This at
the same time defines the degree of use that human beings can make of the
forces of animals without wrong, but which is often exceeded, particularly with
beasts ofburden and hunting dogs; against this is therefore particularly directed
the activity of animal protection societies. The right in question also does not
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 433

He is now as litde able to let others starve to death, while he

hirnself has surplus and expendables, as is anyone able to suffer a day
of hunger so as to have more on the next than he can enjoy. For to
someone who practices works of love, the veil of Maya has become 441
transparent, and the deception of the principium individuationis has left
him. He recognizes himself, bis self, his will in every being, conse-
quently also in one who is suffering. Gone from hirn is the perverse
failure of the will for life to recognize itself - enjoying the fleeting
jugglery of pleasuresi here in one individual, and suffering and starving
in exchange there in another, and so inflicting torment and enduring
torment - incognizant of the fact that, like Thyestes, it is greedily con-
suming its own flesh, and then bemoaning its undeserved suffering here
and committing iniquities without fear of Nemesis there, ever and ever
only because it fails to recognize itself in the phenomenon of the other,
and thus does not perceive eternal justice,ii caught up in the principium
individuationis, thus in general in that mode of cognition over which
the Principle of Sufficient Ground holds sway. Salvation from this
delusion and dazzle of Maya,iii and practicing works of love, are one.
The latter, however, is the inevitable symptom ofthat recognition. 98
The opposite of pangs of conscience, the origin and significance of
which have been elucidated above, is good conscience, the satisfaction
that we feel after every unselfinterested deed. It originates from the fact
that such deeds, just as they proceed from immediate recognition of our
own essence in itself in the phenomenon of another, also bear witness
in turn to this recognition, to cognizance of the fact that our true self
exists not mere1y in our own person, in this individual phenomenon,
but in everything that lives. The heart feels itself thereby expanded, just
as it was contracted by egoism. F or just as the latter concentrates our
engagement upon the particular phenomenon that is our own individual
case, where cognizance always confronts one with countless dangers
that constantly threaten this phenomenon - whereby fearfulness and
concern become the keynote of one's mood - so cognizance of the fact
that al1living things are one's own essence in itself, just as much as
one's own person, spreads our engagement to allliving things; through

extend, in my view, to vivisection, especially with the higher animals. By

contrast, insects do not even suffer as much by their death as human beings do
by their sting. - The Hindus do not see this.
ifjlüchtige, gauklerische Wollüste]
ii[ewige Gerechtigkeit]
iii[von diesem Wahn und Blendwerk der Maja geheilt sein]
 434 Fourth Book. The World as Will

this, the heart is expanded. With this sort of diminishing of engagement

in one's own self, anxious concern for the latter is attacked at its root
and limited: thus the restful, confident cheerfulnessi that a virtuous dis-
442 position and good conscience provide, and its more distinct emergence
with every good deed, in that the latter gives confirmation to ourselves
of the ground of that state of mind. The egoist feels himself surrounded
by foreign and ho stile phenomena, and all of his hope rests upon his
own welfare. The good person lives in a world of phenomena that he
has befriended: the welfare of each one of them is his own. If, there-
fore, cognizance of the lot of humanity does not quite make his state of
mind a merry one, the enduring recognition of his own essence in all
living things yet gives hirn a certain equanimity and even cheerfulness
of mood. For engagement spread over countless phenomena cannot
cause as much anxiety as that which is concentrated upon one. The
contingencies that befall the totality of individuals get balanced out,
while those confronting the individual bring fortune or misfortune.
If others, then, have put forth moral principles, which they have
offered as prescriptions for virtue and laws that are necessarily to be
followed, I cannot, as already stated, do the same, in that J have no
Ought or law to hold before the eternally free will. Thus to the contrary,
in the context of my considerations, what to a certain extent corresponds
and is analogous to that undertaking is the purely theoretical truth
whose mere elaboration can indeed be viewed as the whole of my
exposition, namely, that will is the in-itself of every phenomenon, but
itself as such free from the latter's forms and thereby from plurality;
with respect to action, I can find no more worthy expression of this
truth than the already mentioned formula ofthe Veda: "Tat twarn asi!"
("This is you!"). Whoever can with clear cognizance and steady inner
conviction pronounce this for himself, over every being with whom he
comes into contact, such a person is just by that fact certain of every
virtue and blessedness and on the straight path to redemption.
Before I continue, however, and as the final part of my exposition
show how love - whose origin and essence we recognize as a penetra-
tion of the principiurn individuationis - leads to redemption, namely, to
complete surrender of the will for life, i.e., of all willing, and also how
another path leads a person less gently, but with greater frequency, to
443 the same place, a paradoxical proposition must first be pronounced and
elucidated: not because it is paradoxieal, hut because it is true and
belongs to the complete thought that I am setting forth. It is this: "All

i[As throughout, Heiterkeit.]

 Affirmatian and Denial af the Will far Life 435

love (aya7rT/, caritas) is compassion."i

§ 67.
[True Vi1'tue as Pure Love - Its G1'ounding in Compassion -
Crying and Compassion j01' Oneseif.l
We have seen how, just as righteousness proceeded from a lower
degree of penetration of the principium individuationis, there proceeded
from a higher degree that true goodness of disposition which showed
itse1f as pure, i.e., unselfinterested love toward others. Where the latter
is then made complete,ii it regards the fate of other individuals and
one's own as utterly equivalent; further than this it can never go, since
there is no reason at hand for giving preference to other individuals
over oneself. It can certainly be, however, that a greater number of
other individuals whose well-being or life as a whole is in danger can
outweigh consideration of one's own welfare. In such a case, a
character that has attained to the highest goodness and to consummate
generosityiii will offer his welfare and his life entirely in sacrifice to the
welfare of many others: thus died Codros, thus Leonidas, thus Regulus,
thus Decius Mus, thus Arnold von Winkelried, thus anyone who goes
voluntarily and consciously to certain death for his own, for his
fatherland. Also on this level stands anyone who willingly takes on
suffering and death for the assertion of that which touches and
rightfully pertains to the welfare ofhumanity as a whole, i.e., universal,
crucial truths, and for the eradication of great eITors: thus died
Socrates, thus Giordano Bruno, thus many a hero of truth found his
death on the pyre, under the hands ofpriests.99
I have now to recall, however, with respect to the paradoxes
pronounced above, that we earlier found suffering to be essential to life
as a whole and inseparable from it, and that we saw how every desire
proceeds from a need, from a lack, from some suffering, therefore that
every satisfaction is only removal of a pain, not any positive happiness
that has been brought to one, that pleasures lyingly speak to desire, to
be sure, as if they were positive goods, but in truth are only of a nega- 444
tive nature and only the end of an ill. Therefore, whatever goodness,
love, and generosity do for others, it is always only an alleviation of
their sufferings, and consequently what can move them to good deeds
and works of love is always only cognizance of the suffering of others,

tagape; "compassion" = Mitleid]

~~[ vollkommen wird]
lll[zum vollendeten Edelmut]
 436 Fourth Book. The World as Will

intelligible on the basis of one's own and equated with it. 8ut from this
it results that pure love (ardm7, caritas) is by its nature compassion;
the sufferingi that it alleviates may be great or small, which includes all
unsatisfied desires. We will therefore not hesitate, in direct contra-
diction to Kant - who would recognize whatever is truly good and all
virtue as such only if it has proceeded from abstract reflection and in
particular from the concept of duty and the categorical imperative, and
who declares compassion a weakness, in no way a virtueii - in direct
contradiction to Kant to say: mere concepts are as unfruitful for genuine
virtue as for genuine art; all true and pure love is compassion, and all
love that is not compassion is selfish desire. iii Selfish desire is tpevr;;
compassion is drd1i17.iv The two are frequently confused. Even genuine
friendship is always a mixture of selfish des ire and compassion: the
former lies in satisfaction at the presence of friends whose individuality
agrees with our own, and it always makes up the largest portion;
compassion shows itself in sincere participation in their welfare and
woe and in the unselfinterested sacrifices that one brings to the latter.
Even Spinoza says: Benevolentia nihil aliud est, quam cupiditas ex
commiseratione orta (Eth. III, prop. 27, cor. 3, schol.).v As confirmation
01' our paradoxical proposition, one may note that the tone and words of
the language and caresses of pure love entirely coincide with the tone
of compassion; and incidentally that, in Italian, compassion and pure
love are signified by the same word, pieta.
This is also the place to discuss one of the most striking peculiari-
ties of human nature, crying, which like laughter belongs among those
expressions which distinguish the human being from animals. Crying is
in no way a straightforward expression of pain; for one cries at the very
445 slightest pains. In my estimation, one does not in fact cry over the
immediately feit pain, but always only over ilts replication in reflection.
That is, one passes from the pain that is feIt, even when it is corporeal,
to its mere presentation, and then finds his own state so deserving of

i[Leid]
"[In addition to the works referred to above, Kant's views on ''virtue'' can be
found in Part Two ofhis Metaphysics afMarals, "Metaphysical First Principles
ofthe Doctrine ofVirtue": not to be confused with his more wide1y read Foun-
dationfar the Metaphysics afMarals.]
iit
Selbstsucht]
iV[erös, agape]
T'Benevolence is nothing other than desire arising from pity"; the sentence
added inB.]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 437

compassion that he is firmly and sincerely convinced that, were another

person enduring it, he will come to his aid full of compassion and love;
only it is oneselfthat is now the object of one's own sincere compass-
sion. With the most helpful disposition, it is oneself who is in need of
help, who feels that he is enduring more than he could see another
endure, and in this strangely woven mood in which immediately feIt suf-
fering returns to perceptioni only by way of a double detour - presented
as that of another, responded to as such with a feeling of compassion,
and then suddenly again perceivedii as directly one's own - nature pro-
vides itself relief through that strange corporeal spasm.
Crying is accordingly eompassion for oneself, or compassion that
has been thrown back on its own point of departure. It is therefore
conditioned by the capacity for love and compassion and by imagination.
Therefore, neither hardhearted people nor those lacking in imagination
cry easily, and crying is always viewed as the sign of a certain degree
of goodness of character and disarms anger; for one feels that whoever
can cry must necessarily also be capable of love, i.e., compassion for
others, precisely because, in the manner described, the larter passes over
into the state of mind that leads one to cry. - Entirely in accord with the
proposed explanation is the description provided by Petrarch, innocently
and truly giving voice to his feeling, ofthe origin ofhis own tears:
J vo pensando: e nel pensar m 'assale
Una pieta si forte di me stesso,
Che mi eonduee spesso,
Ad alto lagrimar, eh 'i non soleva. iii
What has been said is also confirmed by the fact that children who 446
suffer a pain usually cry only when someone commiserates with them,
thus not over the pain but over its presentation. - When we are moved
to cry not by our own but by another's suffering, this occurs by virtue
of our vividly transporting ourselves in imagination into the position of

tPerception]
ii[ wahrgenommen]
iii["T walk along thinking: and in thinking, I am struck by so strong a compas-
si on for myself that it often leads me to cry out loud, even though this is not my
wont": Francesco Petrarca, from Canzone 264 (in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta
[Fragments in the Vernacular], a collection of poems ranging from 1335 to
Petrarch's death in 1374, known traditionally as 11 Canzoniere, or The Song-
book. The highlighting of the second line is Schopenhauer's; he also added a
footnote with German translation in c.]
 438 Fourth Book. The World as Will

the one suffering, or getting a glimpse in his fate of the lot of humanity
as a whole and consequently above all of our own, and thus by a wide
dt:tour always crying over ourselves after all, feeling compassion for
ourselves. 100 This seems also to be the main reason for the universal,
thus natural, fact of crying in cases of death. It is not over his 10ss that
the bereaved is crying: such egoistic tears would shame hirn, instead of
his sometimes being ashamed not to cry. In the first instance he of
course cries over the lot of the deceased; yet he also cries when, after
long, hard, and unsalvable sufferings, death was a desirable redemption
for the latter. For the most part, then, he is gripped by compassion for
the lot of humanity as a whole, which is subject to that finitude entail-
ing that every life, so full of endeavor, often so rich in deeds, must be
extinguished and come to naught. But in this lot of humanity he gets a
glimpse above all of his own, and all the more in particular the eIoser
the deceased stood to hirn, therefore the most if it was his father. Even
ifwith old age and sickness the latter's life was a torment, and with his
hdplessness a heavy burden for the son, yet he cries hard over the
death of the father: for the reason that has been given. t

§ 68.
[hom Virtue to Asceticism - Denial of the Will for Lift -
The Example of Saintly Individuals - Cbristianity, juJaism,
Hinduism - Two Patbs to Seif-Deniafj
After this digression regarding the identity of pure love with com-
passion, the return of which upon the individual hirnself has the
447 phenomenon ii of crying for its symptom, Iresume the thread of our
interpretation ofthe ethical significance of action, in order now to show
how from the same source from which all goodness, love, virtue, and
gtmerosity originate, there also proceeds in the end that which I have
called denial of the will.
Just as we earlier saw hate and malice conditioned by egoism and
the latter resting on cognizance caught up in the principium individuati-
anis , so we found the origin and essence of righteousness - and then, as
it is goes further, love and generosity up to their highest degrees - to be

tOn this, see eh. 47 of the second volume. It is of course hardly neeessary to
recall that the whole ofthe ethics set forth in outline in §§ 61-67 has received a
more detailed and more complete exposition in my Prize Essay on the Founda-
tion of Morality.
ldas eigene Individuum]
"[Phänomen]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 439

penetration ofthatprincipium individuationis, which alone, insofar as it

nullifies the distinction between one's own and other individuals,i can
renderpossible and explain that complete goodness of disposition which
extends to the point of the most unselfinterested love and most generous
self-sacrifice.
[fthis penetration ofthe principium individuationis, this immediate
cognizance of the identity of will in all its phenomena, is present to the
highest degree of distinctness, it will at onee display an influence on the
will that goes even further. Namely, when that veil of Maya, the prin-
cipium individuationis, is so greatly lifted from the eyes of a person that
he no longer makes the egoistic distinetion between his own person and
others, but participates as much in the suffering of other individuals as
in his own, and is thereby not only helpful to the highest degree but
even ready to sacrifice his own individual whenever a number of others
can thereby be rescued, then it follows of itself that such a person -
who recognizes his innermost and true self in all beings - must also
regard the endless sufferings of all living things as his own, and so
appropriate the entire world's pain. No suffering is any longer foreign
to him. All the torments of others that he sees and is so seldom able to
alleviate, an the torments of wbich he takes indireet notice, indeed that
he recognizes as only possible, affect his spirit as if they were bis own.
lt is no longer the variable welfare and woe of his person that he has his
sight on, as is the case with someone still caught up in egoism; rather,
since he penetrates the principium individuationis, everything lies equally
elose to hirn. He is cognizant of the whole, apprehends its essence, and 448
finds it in the grip of a steady passing, vain striving, inner conflict, and
constant suffering; he sees, wherever he looks, human suffering and
animal suffering, and a vanishing world. But an of this now lies as
elose to hirn as only his own person does for the egoist. How then
could he, with such a cognizance of the world, affirm precisely this life
through constant acts ofwill and precisely thereby tie himself ever more
firmly to it, press it ever more firmly to hirnself? Thus if someone who
is still caught up in the principium individuationis, in egoism, is cogni-
zant only of individual things and their relation to his person, and those
things then become ever renewed motives of his willing, then, by
contrast, the cognizance of the whole just described, of the essence of
things in themselves, beeomes a quieter of an and every willing. The
will now turns away from life; it now shudders before its enjoyments,
in which it is cognizant of its affrrmation. Man attains to the state of

i[zwischen dem eigenen und den fremden Individuen]

 440 Fourth Book. The World as Will

voluntary renunciation, resignation, true composure and complete will-

lessness.
If cognizance of the nullity and bitterness of life at times also
approaches those others of us whom the veil of Maya still envelops, in
the intense feeling of our own suffering or of the vividly recognized
suffering of others, and we would break thc goad of oUf desires with
utter and forever decisive renunciation, bar all suffering from access
to us, purify and make saints of ourselves, then the deception of the
phenomenon yet entangles us soon again, and its motives set the will in
motion anew: we cannot tear ourselves loose. The lures of hope, the
flattery of the present, the sweetness of enjoyments, the well-being
allotted to our person amidst the sorrows of a suffering world under the
rule of chance and error draw us back to it and tighten the bonds anew.
Therefore Jesus says: "lt is easier for an anchor rope to pass through the
eye of a needle than for a rieh man to enter the kingdom of God. "i
If we compare life to a circular track of glowing coals, with a few
449 cool places, which track we had unceasingly 10 run, the cool place where
he is just now standing, or which he sees dose ahead of hirn, gives
consolation to someone caught up in delusion, and he goes on running
the course. But someone who, penetrating the principium individuationis,
is cognizant of the essence of things in themselves, and thereby of the
whole, is no longer receptive to such conso]ation: he sees himself simui-
taneousiy in all places, and steps out of it.
His will turns around, no longer affirms its own essence, mirrored
in the phenomenon, but denies it. The phenomenon ii by which this
armounces itself is the passage from virtue to asceticism. In particular,
it is no longer enough for hirn to love others as hirnself and to do as
much for them as for hirnself, but there arises within hirn an abhorrence
ofthe essence whose expression is the phenümenon that he is,iii the will
für life, the core and essence of that world of whose sorrowful character
he is cognizant. He thus ren ounces precisely this essence that is making
its appearance in hirn and expressing itself through his body, and his
ac:tions belie the phenomenon that he is, enter into manifest contradic-
tion with the latter. In his essence nothing olther than a phenomenon of
will, he ceases to will anything, refrains from attaching his will to

tSchopenhauer's version of Matthew 19:24, reading xdlllAOq (kamilos),

"anchor rope," for XdPT/AOY (kamelon), "camel."]
ii[Phänomen]
Iii[or, "his own phenomenon'" (seine eigene Erscheinung)]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 441

anything, seeks to solidify in himself the greatest indifference toward

all things.
His body, healthy and strong, gives voice to the sex drive through
genitals, but he denies the will and belies his body; he wants noi sexual
satisfaction under any condition. Voluntary, complete chastity is the
first step of asceticism. or denial of the will for life. It thereby denies
affirmation of the will that goes beyond the individual's life and indi-
cates by this that, with the life of this body, the will of which it is the
phenomenon is also nullified. ii Nature, ever true and innocent, expresses
the fact that, were this maxim to be made universal, the human race
would die out. And in accordance with what is said in the second Book
regarding the interconnection of all the phenomena of will, I be1ieve it
may be assumed that, with the highest phenomenon of will, its weaker
reflection, the animal world, would also fall away, just as, along with
fulllight, all the intermediate shades also vanish. With complete nullifi-
cation of cognizance, the rest of the world would then vanish of itself
into nothing; for without subject, no object. I would even refer in this
respect to a passage in the Veda, where it says: "Just as in this world 450
hungry children press about their mother, so all beings wait in longing
for the sacred sacrifice." (Asiatic Researches, vol. 8: Colebrooke, "On
the Vedas," extract from the Sama-Veda; also in Colebrooke's Miscel-
laneous Essays, vol. 1, p. 88.Yii Sacrifice means resignation in general,
and the rest of nature has to await its redemption by man, who is simul-
taneously priest and sacrifice. 101 Indeed, it merits mention as a most
remarkable fact that this thought has also been expressed by the admi-
rable and immeasurably deep Angelus Silesius, in the verse headed
"Man brings all things to God." It reads:
"Man! All things love you; around you they throng in force:
All ofthem run to you, to reach God in their course."iv
But a still greater mystic, Meister Eckhart, whose wonderful writings
have now finally been made available to us by Franz Pfeiffer (1857),

t er will keine]
ii[More literally, "nullifies itself' (sich aufhebt); for relevant issues, see the
introduction. ]
iitHenry Thomas Colebrooke, 1805 in Asiatic Researches, reprinted 1837 in
Miscellaneous Essays. Deussen and Hübscher note that the passage, not trans-
lated literally by Colebrooke, is from the Chändogya-Upanishad V, 24, 5.
Schopenhauer's reference to the Essays added in B.]
iv [Cherubinischer Wandersmann (The Cherubic Wanderer [1674-5]) I, 275.]
 442 Fourth Book. The World as Will

says the same thing, p. 459/ in exactly the sense discussed here: "I
confirm this by Christ, for he says: And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto me (lohn 12, 32).;; Thus must the good
man carry all things to God, up into their first origin. This the teachers
confirm for us, that all creatures are made for the sake of man. This is
proved in all creatures, that one creature makes use of the other: cattle
of the grass, fish of the water, birds of the air, beasts of the wood. Thus
all creatures come to be of use to the good man: one creature in another,
a good man carries them to God." He means: in exchange for redeem-
ing the animals, man makes use of them on his own terms;;; in this
life. 102 - It even seems to me that the difficult passage from the Bible at
Romans 8, 21-24;v is to be interpreted in this sense.
In Buddhism too there is no lack for expressions of this fact. For
example, when Buddha, while still a bodhisatwa, has his horse saddled
for the last time, namely, for flight out of his father's house into the
wildemess, he pronounces this verse to the horse: "You have already
existed a long time in life and in death; but now you are to cease your
carrying and hauling. Just this one more time, 0 Kanthaka, carry me
451 from here, and when I will have attained to the Law (become a Buddha),
I will not forget you." (Foe Koue Ki, tr. Abel Remusat, p. 233)."
Asceticism then shows itself further in voluntary and intentional
poverty, which does not simply arise per accidensv; - one's possessions
given away in order to mitigate the suffering of others - but is here
indeed a purpose in itself, is meant to serve as a constant mortification
of the will, so that the satisfaction of desires, the sweetness of life, no
longer arouses the will before which self-cognizance has formed an
abhorrence. One who has attained to this point, as an animate body, as
a concrete phenomenon of will, still always senses the disposition to
willing of every sort. But he intentionally suppresses it, compelling

i[Franz Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker des Vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (German

Mystics 01 the Fourteenth Century), vol. 2 (Meister Eckhart, 1857 [vol I,
1845]). Deussen and Hübscher identify the reference as to Treatise VI.]
i;[Translation from the King James version .1
iii[ in und mit sich selbst]
iV["Because the creature itself also shall be delivered ... the whole creation
groaneth ... And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of
the Spirit. ,," (from 21-23, King James version).]
V[English translation of 1836 of the Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian's record
of his study of Buddhism in India, also translated as The Travels 01 Fa-Hsien.
This paragraph added in c.]
vi["by happenstance"]
 Affinnation and Denial of the Will for Life 443

hirnself to do nothing of what he would surely want to do, to the

contrary, to do everything that he would not want to do, even when it
has no other purpose than precisely that of serving mortification of the
will. Since he is denying the very will that is making its appearance in
his person, he will not resist when someone else does the same, i.e.,
inflicts wrong upon him. 103 Therefore, every suffering that comes upon
hirn from without, by chance or the malice of others, is welcome to
hirn, every harm, every humiliation, every injury: he joyfully receives
them as the opportunity to give himself the certainty that he no longer
affirms the will, but joyfully takes the side of any enemy of that
phenomenon of will which is his own person. He therefore bears such
humiliation and suffering with inexhaustible patience and meekness,
repays all evil, without ostentation, with good, and allows the fire of
anger as little as that of desire to grow in hirn again.
Just as he mortifies the will itself, so also its visibility, its objecti-
vization, the body: he nourishes it meagerly, so that its lavish flourishing
and thriving do not also newly animate and more strongly arouse the
will, of which it is a mere expression and mirror. Thus he takes to fast-
ing, indeed he takes to castigation of the body and self-torture, in order
more and more, with constant sacrifice and suffering, to break and kill
the will that he recognizes and detests as the source of his own and of
the world's suffering existence.
When death finally arrives, which dissolves this phenomenon of
will whose essence had, through free self-denial, long since died down 452
to that weak remainder making its appearance as this body's animation,
it is most welcome and, as redemption much longed for, received with
joy. With it, here comes to an end not merely the phenomenon, as in the
case of others, but the very essence is eliminatedi that, here in the
phenomenon and through it, had still possessed but a weak existence; t

taufgehoben: the suggestion of course seems to be of something beyond the

sort of "nullification" that was already part of self-renunciation.]
tThis thought is expressed by a beautiful metaphor in the ages-old Sanskrit
philosophical work Sankhya Karika: "Nonetheless the soul remains clothed for
a while with the body, just as the potter's wheel, after the vessel has been
completed. still continues to spin in consequence of the impulse previously
received. Only when the illuminated soul is separated from the body and nature
ceases to exist for it, does there occur its complete salvation." [Stinkhya-Ktirika
(a collection of aphorisms from the Sänkhya school of Hinduism, produced by
lshvara Krishna around the year 200), 67 and 68.] Colebrooke. "On the Philos-
ophy of the Hindus," Miscellaneous Essays, vol. 1, p. 259. The same also in
The Sankhya Carica, by Horace Wilson. § 67, p. 184.
 444 Fourth Book. The World as Will

this last brittle bond now also tears. For one who ends thus, the world
has at the same time ended.
And what I have depicted here with faint eloquencei and only in a
general way is not a philosophical fairy tale that I have perhaps invented
and something quite new. No, it was the enviable life of a great many
saints and beautiful souls among the Christians, and even more among
the Hindus and Buddhists lO4 and members of other faiths as weil.
However much various dogmas were impressed upon their reason, the
inner, immediate, intuitive cognizance from which alone all virtue and
saintliness can proceed was nonetheless pronounced in one and the
same manner through their way of life. For here too shows itse1f the
great difference between intuitive and abstract cognizance, which is so
important in all of our considerations and all-pervasive, but heretofore
given too little notice. Between the two is a wide abyss over wh ich,
with respect to cognizance of the essence of the world, only philosophy
leads. lntuitively, namely, or in concreto, every person is really con-
scious of all philosophical truths; but to bring them into his abstract
knowledge, into reflection, is the business of the philosopher, who
neither should nor can go further.
Perhaps, therefore, here for the first time, abstractly and pure of
anything mythical, the inner essence of saintliness, self-renunciation, the
453 killing of self-will, asceticism, is pronounced as denial of the will for
life occurring after complete cognizance of its own essence has become
a quieter of all its willing. By contrast, all of those saints and ascetics
have immediately recognized and pronounced it through deeds who,
with the same inner cognizance, discoursed in very different languages,
according to dogmas that they had once taken up into their reason, and
in consequence of which an Indian saint, a Christian one, a follower of
the Lama, are all bound to give very diverse ac counts of their own
actions; but this is totally indifferent with respect to the fact of the
matter. A saint can be fuH of the most absurd superstition, or he can to
the contrary be a philosopher: both count for the same thing. His action
alone authenticates hirn as a saint. For in a moral 105 respect, it proceeds
not from abstract but from intuitively apprehended, immediate cogni-
zance of the world and its essence, and is only interpreted by hirn
through some dogma for the satisfaction of his reason. There is therefore
as little need for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to
be a saint, just as there is no need for a perfectly beautiful human being
to be a great sculptor, or for a great sculptor to be a beautiful human

t mit schwacher Zunge]

 AffIrmation and Denial of the Will for Life 445

being. In general, it is a strange demand upon amoralist that he should

recommend no other virtue than what he himself possesses.I06 To repli-
cate the entire essence of the world abstraetly, generally, and distinctly
in concepts, and thus to deposit it as a refleeted image in lasting and
eonstantly available coneepts of reason: this and nothing other is phi-
losophy. I remind the reader of the passage quoted from Bacon of
Verulam in the first Book. i
But likewise only abstract and general is my depietion of denial of
the will for life above, or of the way of life of a beautiful soul, of a
resigned, voluntarily penitent saint. Just as the eognizanee from which
denial of the will proceeds is intuitive and not abstract, so also it finds
its complete expression not in abstract concepts, but only in deeds and
one's way oflife. Therefore, in order more fully to understand what we
express philosophically as denial of the will far life, one has to become
acquainted with examples from experience and from actual reality. Of 454
course, one will not meet with them in everyday experience: nam
omnia praeclara tarn difficilia quam rara sunt, as Spinoza superbly
says it. ii One will therefore - unless made an eyewitness by a
particularly favorable fate - have to content oneself with descriptions
of the lives of such human beings. Indian literature, as we see from
the little we so far know of it through translations, is very rieh in
depictions of the lives of saints, of penitents, called samana,
sannyasis, ete. IO? Even tbe well-known though by no means in every
respect praisewarthy Mythologie des Indous par Mad. De Poliefii
contains many superb examples ofthis sort. (Particularly in the 13 th
ehapter of the second volume.) Among Christians there is also no
lack of relevantly elucidative examples. Just read the usually badly
written biographies of those persons who are sometimes called
holyiV souls, sometimes Pietists, Quietists, pious enthusiasts, ete.
Colleetions of such biographies have been made at various times,
such as Tersteegen's Lives of Holy Souls,v Reiz's History of the

tp. 119, above]

ii["For all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare": Ethics V, prop.
42, scholiurn.]
iii[Published by Marie-Elisabeth Polier in 1809 from manuscript materials of
Antoine-Louis Henri Polier.]
iv [heilig; altematively, "saintly."]
V[Gerhard Tersteegen, Leben heiliger Seelen, in three volumes in three
editions between ! 733 and 1786; a two volume selection published in 1815 and
translated into English as Select Lives 0/ Ho/y Souls.]
 446 Fourth Book. The World as Will

Reborn,i in our days a collection by Kanne,ii which along with much

that is bad still contains many good things, among which I
particularly number the "Life of Beata Sturmin. ,,108 Here quite properly
belongs the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, that true personification of
asceticism and example for all mendicant monks. His life, as described
by his younger contemporary Saint Bonaventure, also famous as a scho-
lastic, has been recently republished - Vita S. Francisci a S. Bonaventura
concinnata (Soest, 1847yii - shortly after a careful, detailed
biography of hirn, utilizing all sourees, had appeared in France: His-
toire de S. Fran90is d'Assise, par Chavin de Mallan (1845).iv - As
an oriental parallel to these monastic writings, we have a hook hy
Spence Hardy well worth reading: Eastern monachism, an account of
the order of mendicants founded by Gotama Budha (1850).' lt shows
us the same matter in different dress. One also sees how indifferent it is
for this whether it proceeds from a theistic or from an atheistic religion.
455 Above all, however, as a special, highly detailed example and
factual elucidation of the concept that I have put forth, I can recommend
the autohiography of Madame de Guyon: i To become acquainted with
this beautiful and great soul, whose memory constantly fills me with
awe, and - with indulgence for the superstition of her reason - to let
justice be done to the superb character of her disposition, is just as much

tJohann Heinrich Reiz, Historie [Schopenhauer: Geschichte] der Wiederge-

borenen (pts, 1-5 published by Reitz 1698-1717, the remaining two parts
anonymously by Johann Samuel Carl (1730) and Johann Conrand Kauz (1745).1
ii[Johann Arnold Kanne, Leben und aus dem Leben merkwürdiger und
erweckter Christen aus der protestantischen Kirche (Lives and from the Lives
of Noteworthy and Awakened Christians of the Protestant Church, 3 vols.
[1816-1824]).]
iii[The Life ofSt. Francis composed by St. Bonaventure (Vita Seraphici Patris
S. Francisci ... concinnata a Sanctus Bonaventura, ed. Heinrich Wichart [1847;
Soest is the place ofthe publication]).]
iV[Fran90is-Emile Chavin de Malan, History of S. Francis of Assisi (l st ed.,
1841).]
V[Robert Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism: An Account of the Origin,
Laws, Discipline, Sacred Writings, Mysterious Rites, Religious Ceremonies,
and Present Circumstances. of the Order of Mendicants Founded by Gotama
Budha ... With Comparative Notices ofthe Usages and Institutions ofthe Western
Ascetics, and a Review ofthe Monastic System (title slightly shortened).]
vi[Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon (1648-1717), Vie de madame de
la Mothe Guyon, ecrite par elle-meme (Life of Madame de la Mothe Guyon,
Written by Herself[published in 1720]).]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 447

bound to be adelight to persons of the better sort as that book has been
bound to stand in constantly ill repute among those who think in
common terms,i i.e., the majority. For anyone and everyone is only able
to prize that which is to some extent like hirnself and toward which he
is at least weakly disposed. This applies as much in ethical matters as
in those intellectual. To a certain extent,109 one could even consider the
well-known French biography of Spinozaii as a relevant example,
namely, if one utilizes as a key to it the splendid opening of his most
unsatisfactory treatise De emendatione intellectus,iii which passage I
can at the same time recommend as the most effective means known to
me for calming the storm of one's passions. Finally, the great Goethe
himself, so much a Greek he is, did not regard it as unworthy of himself
to show us this most beautiful side of humanity in the clarifying mirror
ofthe literary arts, giving us an idealized depiction ofthe life ofFräulein
Klettenberg in the "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,"iv and later, in his
autobiography, also provided an historical report, just as he even also
relates the life of Saint Philip Neri twice for us. v
World history, to be sure, will always and must remainsilent
regarding those persons whose way of life is the best and only adequate
elucidation ofthis important point in our considerations. For the mate-
rial of world history is something entirely different, indeed contrary to
this, namely, not denial and surrender of the will for life, but precisely
its affirmation and appearance in countless individuals in which its
internal division comes to the fore with complete distinctness on the
highest pinnacle of its objectification, and then sets before our eyes
now the superiority of the individual by way of his shrewdness, now
the force of the crowd by way of its mass, now the power of chance
personified as fate, always the vainness and nullity of the whole of that 456

t die Gemeindenkenden ]
"[By lean Maximilian Lucas (1719), tr. by Abraham Wolf in The Oldest
Bio.graphy ofSpinoza (1927).]
lll[Treatise on the lmprovement ofthe lntellect (first published posthumously
in (677).]
iv [Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele, Book Six of Wilhelm Meisters Lehr-
jahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship). Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg
was a elose friend of Goethe's mother and tended to hirn during a long illness.
She introduced him to the religiosity ofthe Pietists.]
V[Italienische Reise (Italian Journey [1829]): letter from Naples of May 26,
1787, and, from the second stay in Rome (lUlle 1787-Apri1 1788), Philipp Neri,
der humoristische Heilige (Phillip Neri, the Humorous Saint); the references to
Goethe and N eri added in B .1
 448 Fourth Book. The World as Will

striving. We, however, who are not here pursuing the thread ofphenorn-
ena in time, but are seeking to examine the ethical significance of
actions as philosophers, and taking the latter as the only measure of
what is significant and important to us, will certainly not be deterred by
diffidence before the ever-enduring majority voice of the common and
banal from confessing that the greatest, most important, and most
significant phenomenon that the world can display is not the world-
conqueror, but the world-overcorner, thus in fact nothing other than the
still and unnoticed way of life of a such person in whom there has risen
that cognizance in consequence of which he abandons and denies the
will that fills all things and is driving and striving in them all, the
freedom of which comes to the fore only here, in hirn alone, whereby
his actions become the exact opposite of the ordinary. Thus in this
respect, those descriptions ofthe lives of saintly, self-renouncing human
beings, however badly they may usually be written, indeed be inter-
mixed in their exposition with superstition and nonsense, are yet for the
philosopher, on account of the significance of the subject, incornpara-
bly more instructive and more important than even Plutarch and Livy.
Toward closer and cornplete acquaintance with that which, in the
abstraction and generality of our mann er of depiction, we are here
expressing as denial of the will for life, a great deal will also be contrib-
uted by consideration of ethical precepts that have been offered in this
sense and by people who are fuH of this spirit, and these will at the
same time show how old our view is, however new may be its purely
philosophical expression. That which lies nearest to hand is Christianity,
whose ethics are entirely in the spirit in question and lead us not only to
the highest degrees of love of humanity,IIO but also to renunciation,
which latter side is indeed already distinctly present in germ in the
writings of the apostles, but only later fully develops and gets explicitly
pronounced. We find prescribed by the apostles: love for one's neigh-
bor as equivalent to self-Iove, benevolent acts, repayment of hate with
love and beneficence, patience, meekness, the bearing of aB possible
457 injuries without resistance, abstaining from nourishment for the sake of
suppressing desire, resisting the sex drive, when one can, entirely. We
already see here the first levels of asceticism, or of real denial of the
will, which larter expression rneans precisely what is in the gospels
called renouncing oneself and taking up the cross (Matthew 16:24, 25;
Mark 8:34, 35; Luke 9:23, 24, 14:26, 27, 33).i This orientation soon

i[Verneinung des Willens ... Verleugnen seiner selbst. "which laUer ... 23, 24"
added in B; "14:26, 27, 33" added in c.]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 449

deve10ped more and more and 1ed to the origination of penitents,

anchorites, and monasticism, which was pure and saintly in itse1f but
precisely for that reason unsuited to the greatest portion of humanity;
thus what was to develop from it could on1y be hypocrisy and an
abomination, for abusus optimi pessimus. i In Christianity as further
developed, we then see the seed of asceticism unfold into fuH blossom
in the writings of Christian saints and mystics. These preach, besides
purest love and utter renunciation, total voluntary poverty, true compo-
sure, complete indifference in the face of all worldly things, dying
away from one's own will and rebirth in God, total forgetting of one's
own person, and becoming immersed in the perception of God. One
finds a comp1ete depiction ofthis in Fene10n's Explication des maximes
des Saints sur la vie interieureY But surely nowhere is this developing
spirit of Christianity as comp1ete1y and powerfully pronounced as in the
writings of the German mystics, thus of Meister Eckhart and in the
rightly famous book The German Theology,iii of which, in the preface
he wrote for it, Luther says that with the exception of the Bib1e and
Augustine he learned no more from any other book of what God, Christ,
and man are - hut we first received its genuine and unfalsified text in
the year 1851, in the Stuttgart edition of Pfeiffer. 111 The precepts and
doctrines contained in it are the most comp1ete articulation, originating
in a deeply interna1 conviction, of that which I have set forth as deniaJ
of the will for life. One has therefore to get to know it there more
closely, before writing it off with Jewish-Protestant confidence. Il2
Written in the same superb spirit, although it is not to be prized as
entirely the equal of that work, is Taufer' s Imitation of Christ 's Life 458
of Poverty, along with his Medulla animae. iv In my estimation, the
doctrines of these genuine Christian mystics relate to those of the New

t"the worst thing is abuse ofthe best"; added in C.]

"[Fran90is de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, Explication of the Sayings of
the Saints regarding the Inner Life (1697).]
iitDeutsche Theologie: anonymous 14th century work edited by Franz
Pfeiffer in 1851, generally referred to as the Theologia deutsch (also Theologia
germanica); made famous by Martin Luther's publication of it, which
attributed it to Johannes Tauler.]
iV[Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300-1361), Nachfolgung des armen Lebens Christi
(also known as Das Buch von der geistigen Armut [The Book of Spiritual
Poverry]); it i8 a matter of question whether Tauler in fact wrote the work
(published in an edition in 1703 also inc1uding Medulla animae (The Heart [the
Pith] ofthe Soul), ofwhich the extent ofTauler's authorship is also a matter of
question.]
 450 Fourth Book. The World as Will

Testament as the spirit in a wine relates to the wine. Or: what is made
visible to us as through veils and fog in the New Testament meets us in
the works of the mystics without cover, in fuH clarity and distinct-
ness. Finally, one could also regard the New Testament as the first, the
mystics as the second consecration - CJ'/.llxpa xai Jlsyala Jlvm:rlpta.i
But now yet further unfolded, more multifaceted in its pro-
nouncement, and more vividly depicted than could have been the case
in the Christian church and occidental world, we find that which we
have called denial of the will for life in ages-old works in the Sanskrit
language. That this important ethical view of life could attain to more
thoroughgoing development and decisive expression here is perhaps
mainly to be ascribed to the fact that it is not limited here by an
element as entirely foreign to it as the doctrine of the Jewish faith
within Christianity, to which the sublime author of the latter necessarily,
partly consciously and perhaps partly even unconsciously, had to
accommodate and adapt hirnself, and by which Christianity was
formed out of two very heterogeneous constituents; of these, I would
prefer to, indeed would exclusively, call the purely ethicaJ one the
Christian and distinguish it from the pre-existing Jewish dogmatism.
If, as it has in fact been often and particularly at the current time
feared, that superb and salutaryii religion could ever fall entirely into a
state of decline, I would seek the reason for this solely in the fact that
it does not consist of one simple but rather of two elements,
heterogeneous in their origin and forming a compound only by means
of the course of the world; its dissolution was in that case bound to
ensue by virtue of decomposition originating from their une qual
affinity with, and reaction against, the advance of the spirit of the
times, after which, however, the purely ethical part must remain still
(~ver undamaged, because it is indestructible.
Now in the ethics of the Hindus, as we even today, however
incomplete our knowledge of their literature may still be, find it most
459 multifariously and forcefully pronounced in the Vedas, Puranas, literary
works, myths, legends of their saints, maxims, and rules for life,t we

tsmikra kai megala musteria ("the minor and major mysteries"): referring to
religious celebrations held by the Athenians in March and Getober, respec-
tively. "In my estimation" to the end ofthe paragraph added in c.]
ii[heilbringend]
tS ee, e.g., Oupnek'hat, ed. Anquetil du Perron, vol. 2, nos. 138, 144, 145,
146 Las noted by Deussen and Hübscher, referenees respeetively to the Jäbäla,
Paramahansa, Äruneya, and Kena Upanishads1 - Mythologie des lndous par
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 451

see prescribed: love of one's neighbor with utter renunciation of an

self-love; love not at anlimited to the human race but encompassing an
living things;l13 benevolent acts to the point of giving away one's hard-
won daily eamings; boundless patience toward an who inflict injury;
repayment of an evil, no matter how wicked, with goodness and love;
voluntary and joyful endurance of every humiliation; abstention from
all consumption of animals; complete chastity and renunciation of all
sensual pleasure for whomever strives after true saintliness; discarding
an property; abandoning one's home, all kin; deep utter isolation, spent
in silent contemplation with voluntary penance and frightful slow self-
torture extending to complete mortification of the will; the latter going
so far in the end as voluntary death by starvation, or by exposing oneself
to crocodiles, by plummeting from the sacred peak in the Himalayas,
by being buried alive,114 or by throwing oneselfunder the wheels ofthe
huge wagon transporting images of the gods to the accompaniment of
the song, jubilation, and dance of the Bahar celebrants. i And these
precepts, whose origin reaches back four millennia, are still today, as
much as that people has in many respects degenerated, still ever
observed by individuals to even the utmost extremes. t What has been
so long maintained in practice among a people encompassing many
millions, while imposing the hardest sacrifices,1I5 cannot be a freely 460
excogitated whim, hut must have its ground in the essence ofhumanity.
But in addition there is the fact that one cannot marvel enough at the
unanimity that one finds in reading of the life of a Christian penitent or

Mad. De Polier [see note above], vol. 2, chs. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 - [Heinrich
Julius] Klaproth, Asiatic Magazine, first volume [1802], "On the Religion ofFo
[Chinese abbreviation for "Buddha"]"; ibid., "Bhaguat-Geeta [Bhagavadgl'tä]"
or "Conversations between Kreeshna and Arjoon [Krishna and Ariuna]";
second volume, "Moha-Mudgava [Moha-mudgara]" - then, Institutes ofHindu-
Law, or the Ordinances of Menu [Manu], from the Sanskrit by Wm. Iones, tr.
into German by [Johann Cristoph] Hüttner (1797) - finally, many passages in
Asiatic Researches (periodical founded by Iones and Charles Wilkins in 1784].
[Added in B:] (In the last forty years Indian literature has grown so much in
Europe that, ifI had now wanted to fill out this note to the first edition, it would
fill several pages.)
i[Participants in the "outer" (bahar) festival of Lord Jagannath: twenty-one
days outside the temple, followed by an "inner" or Bhitar festival.]
tAt the procession of Jaggernaut [or Iagannath: source of the English 'jug-
gemaut'] in June 1840, eleven Hindus threw themselves under the wagon and
immediately perished. (Letter from an East Indian landowner in the Times of 30
December 1840.) [Note added inB.]
 452 Fourth Book. The World as Will

saint and that of an Indian. With such fundamentally diverse dogmas,

customs, and surroundings, the striving and inner life of the two is
entirely the same. So also with the precepts of the two: thus, for exam-
pIe, Tauler speaks of the complete poverty that one should seek and
that consists in utterly giving up and divesting oneself of everything
from which one might draw some consolation or worldly satisfaction,
obviously because all of this provides ever fresh nourishment to the
will, whose dying away is one's whole purpose. And as an Indian
counterpart, we see in the precepts of the Fo urged upon the sannyasi,
who is to live without a dwelling and entirely without property, that he
is finally not even to sit often beneath the same tree, so that he does not
form even a preference or inclination toward that tree. 116 Christian mys-
ties and the teachers of the Vedanta-philosophy also agree in the idea
that whoever has attained to perfeetion regards an external works and
religious practices as superfluous. - So mueh agreement with such
diversity of times and peoples is factual proof that here there is not
pronouneed, as optimistic banality would maintain, a contorted and
demented disposition, but rather an aspect of human nature that is
essential to it and, on account of its excellence, only seldom comes to
the fore.
I have now cited the sources from which, immediately and as
drawn from life, one can become acquainted with the phenomenai in
which denial ofthe will for life is displayed. To a certain extent, this is
the most important point in the entirety of our considerations; nonethe-
less, I have only set it forth in entirely general terms, since it is better to
refer to those who speak from immediate experience than to allow this
book to swell needlessly further with a weaker replication of what they
have said.
461 I would only add a little to the general characterization of their
state. Just as we saw the evil person above, through the intensity of his
willing, suffering constant, consuming, inner tonnent, and in the end,
when all objects of willing are exhausted, cooling the fierce thirst of
self-will at the sight of the torment of others, so to the contrary, one in
whom denial of the will for life has risen - however impoverished, joy-
less, and fuH of sacrifices may be his state when viewed from without -
is full of inner joyfulness and true heavenly repose. It is not that restless
press of life,ii that rejoicing in pleasure which has intense suffering for
its antecedent or consequent condition, such as constitute the way of

tPhänomene]
ii[Lebensdrang]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 453

life of men with a lust for life; it is rather an unshakeable peace, a deep
repose and inner cheerfulness, astate upon which, if it is brought before
our eyes or imagination, we cannot look without the greatest longing,
acknowledging it at once as that which is alone right, infinitely out-
weighing an else, at which our better spirit calls out to us with its great
sapere aude. i We then feel indeed that every fulfillment of our desires
won from the world is only like alms that keep the beggar living for
today, so that tomorrow he may again go hungry. Resignation, to the
contrary, is like an inherited estate: it relieves its owner from all cares
forever.
It may be recalled from the third Book that aesthetic pleasure in
the beautiful consists for the most part in the fact that, entering into the
state of pure contemplation, we are for the moment relieved of all will-
ing, i.e., all desires and eoncerns, as if it had fallen our lot no longer to
be the individual cognizing for the sake of his constant willing, the
correlate of individual things for whom objects are made into motives,
but rather the eternal subject of cognition purified of will, the correlate
of Ideas; and we know that these moments of redemption from the
fierce press of the wilV emerging as it were out of earth's heavy
atmosphere, are the most blessediii of our acquaintance. From this we
can gather how blessed the life of a person must be whose will is not
stilled for moments, as in enjoyment of the beautiful, but forever,
indeed entirely extinguished to the point of the last glimmering spark
that maintains the body and will be extinguished with it. Such a person 462
who, after many bitter battles against his own nature, has finally
completely prevailed,iv now remains only as purely cognizant subject,
as unobscured mirror of the world. Nothing more can make him
anxious, nothing more move him. For he has cut all the thousand
threads of willing that keep us bound to the world and, in the form of
desire, fear, envy, anger, puB us here and there, in astate of constant
pain. He now gazes back in repose and smiling upon this world's
deceptive images,' which were once indeed able to move and torture

t'Dare to know": Horace, Epistles I, 2, 40; also employed by Kant to set the
keynote for his essay An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
(1784), Ak. 8.35.]
ii[Willensdrang]
iii[seligsten]
iV[überwunden: generally, "overcome."]
V[ Gaukelbilder]
 454 Fourth Book. The World as Will

his spirit,; but which now stand before him as indifferently as chess
pieces after the game has ended, or like costumes shed in the moming,
whose figures had mocked and unsettled us on Camival night. Life and
its figures only continue to float before him, like a fleeting apparition,ii
like a faint moming dream to the half-awake sleeper, through which
actual reality is already glimmering and which can no longer deceive;
and just like the dream, they too vanish in the end without any forcible
transition. From these considerations we can come to understand the
sense of what Madame Guyon so often expressed toward the end of the
description of her life: "Everything is indifferent to me: I can will
nothing more. I often do not know whether lexist or not." - May I also,
in order to express how, after the dying away of the will, the death of
the body (which is of course only the phenomenon of the will, with
whose nullification it therefore loses a11 meaning) can now no longer be
a bitter affair, but is rather most welcome, set down the words of that
saintly penitent herself, although they are not elegantly tumed: "Midi
de la gloire; jour ou il n y a plus de nuit; vie que ne crainl plus la morl,
dans la mort meme: parceque la mort a vaincu la mort, et que celui qui
a soufferl la premiere morl, ne goutera plus la seconde morl.,,;;i (Vie de
Mad. de Guyon, vol. 2, p. 13.)
We may nonetheless not suppose that, after the occurrence of
denial of the will by way of cognizance becoming its quieter, it now no
longer wavers, and one can rest upon it as upon acquired property.
Rather, it must be won by constant battle ever anew. For since the body
463 is the will itself, only in the form of objectivization, or as a phenome-
non in the world as presentation, as long as the body lives the entire
will for life still also exists as a potentiality,;v and constantly strives to
e:nter into actual reality and flame anew with the entirety of its glow.
Therefore, in the life of saintly persons, we find the depicted repose and
blessedness only as the blossom that proceeds from constant overcom-
ing of the will, and see the constant battle with the will for life as the
ground from which it sprouts; for lasting repose can be had by no one
on earth. We thus see the histories of the inner life of saints fuH of
battles of the soul, temptations, and abandonment by grace, i.e., by that

tGemüt]
itErscheinung]
lll["Glorious noon, day where there is no longer night, life that no longer
fears death, within death itself; for death has vanquished death, and one who
has suffered the first death will not taste the second death."]
;V[seiner Möglichkeit nach)
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 455

manner of cognizance which, rendering all motives ineffective, brings

calmi as a general quieter of all willing, provides the deepest peace, and
opens the gate to freedom. Thus too, we see those who have once
attained to denial of the will keeping themselves on this path with every
exertion, through self-imposed renunciations of every sort, through a
penitent, hard way of life and the seeking out of that which is unpleasant
for them: all to suppress the will that is constantly striving to rise again.
Thus finally, because they of course know the value of redemption:
their anxious concern for the maintenance of salvation once acquired,
their scrupulous conscience with every innocent enjoyment, or with
every stirring of their vanity, which even here dies last, this the most
indestructible of all a person's inclinations, most active, and most fool-
ish. - With the term asceticism, of course frequently employed by me, I
understand in the narrower sense this purposefol breaking of the will
through renouncing the pleasant and seeking out the unpleasant, the
self-chosen life of penance and self-castigation to the point of perma-
nent mortification of the will.
If, then, we see those who have already attained to denial of the
will make efforts to maintain themselves in that state, then suffering
in general, as it is imposed by fate, is also a second path (&VTepO~
1Z"lLov~) on which to attain to that denial. t Indeed, we can assume that
most people only reach it on tbis path, and that it is suffering feit by
oneself, not merely suffering of which one is cognizant, that most
frequently brings forth utter resignation, often only with the 464
proximity of death. For only in the few is pure cognizance - that
which, in penetrating the principium individuationis, first produces
complete goodness of disposition and general love for humanity, and
finally allows recognition of all the sorrows of the world as their own
- sufficient for bringing forth denial of the will. Even for someone
who is approaching this point, the bearable state of one's own person,
the flattery of the moment, the lure of hope, and the ever repeated
offer of satisfaction of the will, Le., of desire, are almost always a constant
obstac1e to denial of the will and a constant temptation to its renewed

tbeschwichtigt: generally, throughout, "quiets." Here, as throughout, "quiet-

er"= Quietiv.]
tRegarding O&U't!;por; ltAOUr; [deuteros plaus ("seeond-best travel"): said of
sea travel when having to resort to oars rather than sails; cf. Plato, Phaedo,
99d] , see Stobaeus, Floril., vol. 2, p, 374 [eh. 59, no. 9 (Sehopenhauer is
referring to the edition ofThomas Gaisford [1823-1824]); footnote added from
a Zusatz written into Sehopenhauer's eopy of Cl
 456 Fourth Book. The World as Will

affirmation; for this reason, all those lures have been personified as in
this respect devils. Usually, therefore, the will must be broken through
the greatest personal suffering before its self-denial occurs. Then we
see a person, after he has been brought through all the levels of
increasing distress to the edge of desperation, with the most intense
resistance suddenly go into hirnself, take cognizance of hirnself and of
the world, change his entire essence, rise above hirnself and all
suffering, and, as if purified and sanctified by the latter, in
incontestable repose, blessedness, and sublimity, willinglyi renounce all
that he was previously willing with the greatest intensity, and joyfully
receive death. Coming suddenly to the fore out of the purifying flame
of suffering, it is the gleam of silver in the denial of the will for life,
i.e., redemption. We sometimes see even those who were most evil
purified to this degree by the deepest pains: they have become another
and are utterly transformed. Their earlier misdeeds therefore no longer
even cause them pangs of conscience, but yet they gladly atone for
them with death, and willingly see the end of the phenomenon of will
that is now foreign and abhorrent to them. A distinct and visual depic-
tion of the sort of denial of the will that is brought forth by great
misfortune and hopeless despair, like none other known to me in
poetry, has been given to us by the great Goethe in his immortal
masterpiece Faust, in the story of the suffering of Gretchen. This is a
perfect paradigm of the second path, which leads to denial of the will
465 not, like the first, through mere cognizance of the suffering of an entire
world that one voluntarily appropriates, but through one's own person-
ally feIt abundance of pain. To be sure, a great many tragedies conduct
their mightily willing hero to this point of complete resignation in the
end, where the will for life and its phenomenon usually end simultane-
ously; but no other depiction known to me brings before our eyes the
e:ssence of that transformation, so distinctly and free of all accessory, as
that mentioned in Faust.
In actual life, we very frequently see this manner of transformation
in those unfortunates who are made to drink of the greatest measure of
suffering, where, after all hope is entirely taken from them, in full
possession of their mental capacity, they face an ignominious, violent,
often agonizing death on the scaffold. We may not assurne, to be sure,
that the difference is as great as their fate indicates between their
character and that of most people, but must for the most part ascribe
that fate to circumstances; yet they are guilty and to a considerable

twillig]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 457

degree evil. We see many of them, however, after the arrival of utter
hopelessness, transformed in the manner in question. They now display
actual goodness and purityl17 of disposition, true abhorrence against the
commission of any deed the least bit evil or uncharitable. They forgive
their enemies, even if they be ones under whom they have innocently
suffered, not merely with words and in hypocritical fear before the
judges of the underworld, but in fact and with inner seriousness, and
want no revenge whatsoever. Indeed, their suffering and dying are wel-
come in the end, for denial of the will for life has occurred; they often
turn away an offer of rescue, die gladly, at rest, happy. i In inordinate
pain, the ultimate secret of life has revealed itself to them, namely, that
ills and evils, suffering and hate, tormented and tormenter, however
distinct they show themselves to be for cognizance that follows the
Principle of Sufficient Ground, are in themselves one, phenomena of
that will for life which objectifies its self-conflict by means of the prin-
cipium individuationis. They have become acquainted with both sides,
evils and ills, in full measure, and seeing in the end the identity of the
two, now turn them both away simultaneously, deny the will for life. 466
As for the myths and dogmas by which they account to their reason for
this intuitive and immediate cognizance and for their transformation,
that is, as stated, entirely a matter of indifference.
Witness to this sort of change in understandinii has been, without
doubt, Matthias Claudius, in writing the remarkable essay that appears
under the title "History of the Conversion of ***" in the Wandsbeck
Messenger (Pt. 1, p. 115) and that concludes as follows: "The mode of
thinking of a person can pass from a point on the periphery to the oppo-
site, and back again to the previous point, if circumstances delineate the
path to it in advance. And these alterations are not exactly something
grand and interesting in aperson. But that remarkable, catholic, tran-
scendental alteration where the entire circle is irreparably tom apart
and all the laws of psychology become vain and empty, where the coat
of skins is removed, or at least reversed, and it is as if scales have fallen
from a person's eyes, is of such a sort that anyone who is to any extent
conscious of the breath in his nose willleave his father and mother if he
can hear and leam something sure about it."iii

i[Or "blessed" (selig)]

ii[Sinnesänderung]
iii["coat of skins": Genesis 3:21; "scales": Acts 9:18. Claudius published
numerous essays and poems in the newspaper in question, and was its editor
from 1771 to 1775; he published these separately as "Complete Works of the
 458 Fourth Book. The World as Will

The proximity of death and hopelessness are in any case not

absolutc1y necessary for such purification through suffering. Even
without them, through great misfortune and pain, cognizance of the
self-contradiction of the will for life can urge itself forcibly upon us
and the nu11ity of all striving be seen. Thus one often saw people who
had led a most animated life in the press of passions, kings, heroes,
adventurers, suddenly change, take up resignation and penance, become
hermits and monks. Here belong all genuine tales of conversion, e.g.,
even that of Raymond Lu11, 118 who had anticipated fulfillment of a11 of
his desires when, fina11y admitted to her room by a beautiful woman
whom he had long been wooing, uncovcring her breast, she showed
hirn her bosom most horrifically consumed by cancer. From this
moment on, as ifhe had looked into hell, he turned, left the court ofthe
467 King ofMajorca, and went into the wildemess to do penance. t This tale
of conversion is very similar to that of the AhM Rance,i which I have
briefly related in the 48 th chapter of thc second volume. When we
consider how a passage from desire to life' s horrors was the occasion in
both cases, this provides us with some elucidation of the striking fact
that the nation in Europe with the greatest lust for life, the most
cheerful, tbe most sensual and most frivolous/ i tbat is, tbe French, is
that in which the by far most strict of aU monastic orders, that is, the
Trappist, has arisen, been restored after its decline, by Rance, and
dl~spite revolutions, ecclesiastical changes, and the spread of unbelief
maintains itself to the present day in its purity and frightful strictness.
The above-mentioned cognizance of the character of this exis-
tence, however, can also grow distant again along with its occasion,
and the will for life, and with it one's previous character, reappear. Thus
we see the passionate Benvenuto Ce11ini, one time in prison and another
time in the case of a major sickness, transformed in such a manner, but
after the suffering has vanished reverting to his old state. Denial of the
will never at all proceeds from suffering with the necessity of an effect
from its cause, but rather the will remains free. For here is indeed

Wandsbeck Messenger" in eight volumes between 1775 and 1812. (Paragraph

added in C)]
'[[Brocken hist. phi!. [Johann Jakob Brucker, Historia cririca philosophiae
(1742-1744)], tom IV, pars 1, p. 10. [At least the part of the story about the
wildemess appears to be apocrypha!.]
i[Arrnand-Jean Le Bouthillier (also known as Dominique) de Rance, founder
ofthe Trappist order in 1664, reforming and reviving the Cistercian order]
itsinnlichste und leichtsinnigste]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 459

precisely the single point where its freedom enters immediately into the
phenomenon: thus the so strongly expressed astonishment of Asmus
regarding "transcendental alteration."j For any suffering, it is possible
to imagine a will that is superior to it in intensity and unsubdued by
it. Thus Plato teUs in the Phaedo of those who feast, drink, pursue
amorous relations ii up to the moment of their execution, affirming life
up to the point of death. In Cardinal Beaufort,t Shakespeare brings the
frightening end of an unconscionable individual before our eyes; he
dies fu11 of despair, no suffering or death being able to break this will,
intense to the point of utmost malice.
The more intense the will, the more glaring the phenomenon of its 468
conflict; the greater, therefore, the suffering. A world that would be the
phenomenon of an incomparably more intense will for life than the
present one would display sufferings to that extent greater; it would be,
therefore, a hell.
Because a11 suffering, in that it is a form of mortification and a call
to resignation, has a potentially sanctifyingiii force, it can be explained
in these terms that great misfortune, deep pains, just in themselves
instill a certain awe. But the sufferer becomes truly worthy of our awe
only when, surveying the course of his life as a chain of sufferings,
or grieving over some great and unsalvable iv pain, he does not really
look to the concatenation of circurnstances that has plunged precisely
his life into sorrow, and does not dweIl on the individual great
misfortune that has struck hirn - for to that extent his cognizance still
follows the Principle of Sufficient Ground and c1ings to the indivi-
dual phenomenon, he still wills life, only not under the given
circumstances - but rather, the sufferer confronts us as actuaUy wor-
thy of awe only when his gaze has risen from the individual to the
general, when he regards his own suffering only as an example of the
whole of suffering and, becoming in an ethical respect a genius, one
case counts for hirn as equivalent to thousands, from whence his
whole life, apprehended as essentially suffering, then brings hirn to
the point of resignation. This is why it is awe-inspiring when, in

t'Asmus" is the pen-name ofMatthias Claudius. Following the colon: added

in C.]
itAprhodisia geniessen; see Phaedo 116e.]
tHenry VI, part 2, Act 3, Sc. 3.
iitheiligende]
iv[unheilbaren]
 460 Fourth Book. The World as Will

Goethe's Torquato Tasso,i the Princess expatiates upon the way in

which her own life and that of her family has always been sad and
joyless, and her vision is wholly focused on what is of a general
character in it.
We always imagine a very noble character as having a certain
touch of quiet sadness, which is anything but constant annoyance over
daily displeasures (that sort ofthing would be an ignoble trait and allow
for an evil disposition), but rather a consciousness that proceeds from
cognizance of the nullity of all goods and the suffering of all life, not
only one's own. Yet such cognizance can first be awakened by suffer-
469 ing experienced by oneself, particularly by a single great one, just as a
single unfulfillable desire brought Petrarch to that resigned sadness over
the whole of life which speaks to us so touchingly from out of his
works; for the Daphne whom he pursued was bound to disappear in his
hands, leaving hirn behind instead with the immortallaurel.ii When the
will has been to a certain degree broken by so great and irrevocable a
desertion by fate, almost nothing is willed any more and one's charac-
ter shows itself as gentle, sad, noble, resigned. When, finally, the misery
no longer has any particular object, but spreads itself over life as a
whole, then we have something like an introversion, a withdrawal, a
gradual vanishing ofthe will whose visibility, the body, it even quietly
but in its innerrnost being underrnines, whereby a person senses a
certain loosening of his bonds, agende foretaste of death announcing
itself as simultaneous dissolution of the body and will; therefore, a
secret joy accompanies this misery, which is, as I believe, that which
the most melancholy of all peoples has called the joy of griepi But
precisely here lies the reef of sensitivity,iv both in life itself and in its
depiction in literary writing. When, namely, one is always lamenting
and always complaining, without getting hold of oneself and rising to
the level of resignation, one has simultaneously lost earth and heaven
and retained a watery sentimentality. Only insofar as suffering assumes
the form of bare pure cognizance, and then the latter brings forth true
resignation as a quieter of the will, is it the path to redemption and
thereby worthy of awe. In this regard, however, we feel a certain respect

tAct 3, scene 2]
itOaphne represents Petrarch's beloved Laura, changing into a laurel tree
when pursued by Apollo in Greek mythology.]
iii[Schopenhauer's English. See James Macpherson, The Poems oi Ossian
(1773), "Carric-thura"; also lohn Keats in "Fill For me a Brimming Bowl."]
iv[Empfindsamkeit]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 461

at the sight of every very unfortunate person, which is related to that

which virtue and generosity make us feel, and thereby our own fortunate
state simultaneously appears as areproach. We cannot fail to view
every suffering, both felt by ourselves and that of others, as an at least
possible approximation to virtue and saintliness, while enjoyments and
worldly satisfactions are by contrast viewed as distancing us from it.
This extends so far that every person who bears some great corporeal
suffering, or some heavy spiritual one, indeed even everyone who only
does physical1abor requiring the greatest exertion, by the sweat of his
brow and with visible exhaustion - but all of it with patience and with-
out grumbling - this extends so far, I assert, that every such person,
when we regard hirn with sincere attention, seems to us 1ike a kind of 470
invalid who applies a painful remedy, but willingly and even with satis-
faction bears the pain that it causes, knowing that the more he suffers
the more the morbidity is destroyed as well, and thus the present pain is
the measure of bis eure. i
According to everything said so far, denial of the will for life,
which is what one calls complete resignation or saintliness,ii always
proceeds from that quieting of the will which is the cognizance of its
inner conflict and its essential nullity, which are pronounced in the
suffering of all living things. The difference that we have depicted as
two paths is whether merely and purely cognized suffering, through the
larter' s free appropriation, by means of a penetration of the principium
individuationis, or rather suffering that is immediately feit by oneself,
calls forth that cognizance. True salvation,iii redemption from 1ife and
suffering, is unthinkable without complete denial ofthe will. Up to that
point, everyone is nothing other than this will itself, whose phenomenon
is a vanishing existence, an ever vain, constandy frustrated striving, and
that which has been depicted as the world full of suffering, to which all
things in equal manner irrevocably belong. For we found above that life
is always certain for the will for life, and its single actual form is the
present, from which those things, however birth and death may prevail
within the phenomenon, never escape. The Indian myth expresses this
by saying "They are reborn." The significance of the great ethical
distinction among characters is that the evil person is infinitely far from
attaining to the cognizance from which denial of the will proceeds, and
is therefore in truth, actually, prey to aU the torments that appear as

tHeilung]
ii[Heiligkeit]
iii[Heil]
 462 Fourth Book. The World as Will

possible in life; for even the present, let us suppose happy, state of his
person is only a phenomenon and deception of Maya, mediated by the
principium individuationis, a beggar's happy dream. The sufferings that
he inflicts upon others with the intensity and fury of the press of his
will are the measure of the sufferings whose experience by him cannot
471 break his will and lead hirn to eventual denial. All true and pure love,
by contrast, indeed even all free righteousness, proceeds from penetra-
tion of the principium individuationis, which, when it occurs in fuH
clarity,J19 brings forth complete salvation and redemption, the phenom-
enoni of which is the state of resignation depicted above, the unshake-
able peace that accompanies it, and the greatest j oyfulness in death. t

§ 69.
[Suicide]
From the now (given the limits of our manner of consideration)
adequately depicted denial of the will for life, which is the single act of
freedom coming to the fore in the ghenomenon and therefore, as Asmus
calls it, transcendental alteration, I 0 nothing is more different than vol-
untary elimination 121 of its individual phenomenon: suicide. Far removed
ii
from being denial of the will, the latter is a phenomenon of powerful
affirmation ofthe will. For that denial has its essence not in the fact that
one abhors the sufferings, but rather the enjoyments of life. l22 The
person who commits suicide wills life and is merely dissatisfied with
the conditions under which it has come to be for him. Therefore, he in
no way gives up the will for life, but merely life, by destroying the
individual phenomenon. He wills life, wills the unobstructed existence
and affirmation of his body; but the web of circumstances does not
permit this, and great suffering arises for him. The very will for life
finds itself so considerably impeded in this individual phenomenon
that it cannot unfold its striving. Therefore, it decides according to its
essence in itself, which lies outside the modes of the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, and to which every individual phenomenon is thus a
matter of indifference; for it itself remains untouched by all arising and
passing away and is the inner beingiii of the life of all things. For that
same firm, inner certainty by which we all live without constant fear
of death, the certainty, that is, that will can never fail to have its

i[Phänomen]
tOn this, see eh. 48 ofthe seeond volume.
itPhänomen]
11l[das Innere]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 463

phenomenon/ supports the deed even in suieide. The will for life thus
makes its appearance just as much in this commission of suieide 472
(Shiva) as in the good feelings that belong to self-maintenaneeii (Vish-
nu) and in the pleasure ofproereation (Brahma). This is the inner signi-
ficanceofthe unity ofTrimurti, which every human being is as a whole,
although in the course of time it raises sometimes one, sometimes the
other of its three heads.
As the individual thing relates to Ideas, so suicide relates to denial
of the wi11: 123 the person who commits suicide merely denies the indi-
vidual, not the species. We already found above that, because life is
always certain for the will for life, and suffering is essential to this,
suicide, voluntary destruction of an individual phenomenon - whereby
the thing in itse1f remains undisturbed, stands firm like the rainbow,
however quick may be the exchange of the raindrops that are its
momentary bearers - is an entirely vain and foolish action. But it is
beyond this also the masterpiece of Maya, as the most blatant expression
of the self-contradiction of the will for life. Just as we already recog-
nized this contradiction in the lowest phenomena of will, in the constant
battle for matter and time and spaee among aH expressions of natural
forces and all organic individuals, and as we saw that conflict coming
ever more to the fore, with frightful distinetness, on the rising levels of
objectifieation of will, so on the highest level, which is the Idea of the
human being, it fmaHy reaches this degree where not only individuals
displaying the same Idea engage in mutual extermination, but even the
same individual declares war on itself, and the intensity with which it
wills life and opposes impediments to it (suffering) brings it to the
point of destroying itself, so that by an act of will the individual will
eliminates the body, which is just its own form of visibility, rather than
allowing suffering to break the will. Precisely because the person who
commits suicide cannot cease willing, he ceases to live, and the will
affirms itself here precisely through elimination of its phenomenon,
because it can no longer affirm itself otherwise. But beeause the suffer-
ing from which he escapes in this way was precisely what, as mortifica-
tion of the will, could have led hirn to self-denial and to redemption, the
person who commits suicide is in tbis respect like a siek person who,
after it is begun, does not allow completion of a painful operation that
might thoroughly eure hirn, but prefers to retain the sickness. Suffering 473

tdem Willem seine Erscheinung nie fehlen kann]

ii [im
Wohlbehagen der Selbsterhaltung; ean also be "self-preservation."]
 464 Fourth Book. The World as Will

approaches, and opens up as such the possibility of denial of the will;

but he turns it away, destroying the phenomenon of the will, the body,
so that the will may remain unbroken.
This is the reason why almost all ethics, both philosophical and
religious, condemn suicide, although they themselves can eite none
other than strange sophistical reasons for it. But should ever a person
have been held back from suicide by a purely moral impulse, the inner-
most sense of this self-overcoming (in whatever concepts his reason
may have clothed it) was this: "I do not wish to es cape suffering, so
that the latter might contribute to nullifying that will for life whose
phenomenon is so full of sorrows, strengthening the cognizance of the
real essence of the world already rising within me, that it may finally
become a quieter ofmy will and forever redeem me.,,124
It is weH known that from time to time there are recurrences of
cases where suicide gets extended to children: the father kills the chil-
dren, whom he greatly loves, and then hirns elf. If we consider that
conscience, religion, and all traditional notions lead hirn to recognize
murder as the worst of crimes, while he nonetheless commits the latter
in the hour of his own death, and indeed when he could have had no
egoistic motive for doing so, then the deed can only be explained by the
fact that the will of the individual immediately recognizes itself here in
the children, but yet caught up in a delusion that takes the phenomen
for the essence in itself, and being here deeply in the grip of cognizance
of the sorrowful state of alllife, he now means to eliminate the essence
itself with the phenomenon, and would thus rescue himself and the
children, in whom he immediately sees hirnself as in turn living, from
existence and its sorrow.
It would be an entirely analogous aberration to fancy that one
could achieve the equivalent of voluntary chastity by frustrating the
purposes of nature in insemination, or if one were to facilitate the death
of the newborn in consideration of the inevitable sufferings of life,
instead of rather doing everything in order to secure life for anything
474 that is pressing for life. i For if a will for life exists, then, as that which
is alone the metaphysical or the thing in itself, no force can break it, but
it can merely destroy its phenomenon in this place at this time. It can
itself be nullified ii by nothing other than cognizance. Therefore, the
single path to salvation is that the will make its appearance unhindered,
in order to be able, in this appearance, to recognize its own essence.

i [welches sich ins Leben drängt]

ii [aufgehoben. In the previous sentence, "destroy" is zerstören.]
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 465

Only in consequence of this recognition can the will nullify itself and
thereby also end the suffering that is inseparable from its phenomenon;
but this is not possible by physical force such as destruction of the seed,
or killing of the newbom, or suicide. It is precisely nature that leads the
will to the light, because it can only fmd its redemption in the light.
Therefore, the purposes of nature are to be in every way promoted, once
the will for life that is its inner essence has decided.
There seems to be a particular sort of suicide entirely distinct from
the ordinary, which has perhaps, however, not been sufficiently verified.
It is voluntarily elected starvation arising from the highest degree of
asceticism, the phenomenon of which, however, has always been
accompanied by much religious enthusiasm and even superstition, and
thereby obscured. It seems, however, that complete denial of the will can
reach the degree where even the will that is needed for maintenance of
the body's vegetative life/ through the intake of nourishment, falls
away. Far from this sort of suicide arising from the will for life, such an
utterly resigned ascetic merely ceases to live because he has altogether
ceased to will. Any other way of dying than by starvation is indeed in
this respect unthinkable (except where proceeding from some particular
superstition); for the intention 10 foreshorten one's torment would already
actually be a degree of affirmation of the will. The dogmas that fi11
such a penitent's reason delude hirn with the fancy that a higher sort of
being has enjoined hirn to that fasting to which his inner disposition
drives him. One can find older examples of this in the Breslau Collection
ofChronicles ofNature and Medicine, September 1719, pp. 363ffiii in
Bayle's Nouvelles de la republique des lettres, February 1685, pp. 475
189ffiiii in Zimmerman, On Solitude, vol. 1, p. 182;iv in the Histoire de
l'academie des sciences of 1764, areport by Houttuyn; the same
reprinted in the Collectionfor Practical Doctors, vol. 1, p. 69. v One
finds later reports in Hufeland's Journal for Practical Medicine, vol.

tVegetation des Leibes]

ii[Sammlung von Natur- und Medicin- wie auch hierzu gehörigen Kunst- und
Literatur-Geschichten, ed. Johann Kanold (1717ff); reference identified by
Hübscher as to areport for Summer 1719, published in 1721.]
iii[News o/the Republic 0/ Letters, ed. Pierre Bayle 1684-1687.]
lV[Johann Georg Zimmermann, Betrachtungen über die Einsamkeit (1756;
nd
2 ed. Von der Einsamkeit, 1773); published in English in 1791 (based on a
French translation) as Solitude considered with respect to its influence upon the
mind and heart, 2 vols.).]
V[Martin Houttuyn, in Sammlung für praktische ["practical" or "general"]
AOrzteo]
 466 Fourth Book. The World as Will

10, p. 181, and vol. 48, p. 95;i also in Nasse's Journalfor Psychiatrie
Doctors, 1819, no. 3, p. 460;ii in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal, 1809, vol. 5, p. 319. In 1833 all of the newspapers reported
that the Eng1ish historian Dr. Lingard died in January in Dover of
vo1untary starvation; according to later reports, it was not he but a
relative. 125 However, the individuals are usually depicted as insane in
these reports, and it is no longer possible to figure out the extent to
which this may have been the case. But ] would here set down arecent
report of this sort, even if it were on1y for the sure preservation of one
of the rare examp1es of the striking and extraordinary phenomenoniii
that has been touched upon, which at least in appearance belongs where
I fefer it, and apart from that would be difficult to explain. The recent
report in question appears in the Nürnberg Correspondent for July 29,
1831, in the following words:
"It is reported from Bem that in a thick forest near Thumen, a
small hut was discovered and in it a male corpse that had already been
1ying in astate of decomposition for about a month, in c10thes that were
able to provide little insight into the standing of their possessor. Two
very fine shirts iay nearby. The most important item was a Bible inter-
leaved with blank pages that had been partly written on by the
deceased. He reports in them the day of his departure from home (but
the place of his home is not named), then says that he has been driven
by the spirit of God into a wildemess to pray and to fast. He had
already fasted for seven days on his joumey to this pi ace; then he ate
again. Having settled in, he thereupon again began to fast, and in
particular for so many days. Then every day is marked with a stroke,
and there are five of them, after the course of which the pilgrim
476 presurnably died. There was also found a letter to a pastor regarding a
sermon that the deceased had heard from him; but here too the address
was missing." - Between this SOrt of voluntary death out of the extreme
01' asceticism and the usual out of desperation, there may be all sorts of
intervening levels and combinations that are indeed difficult to explain;

i[Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland. Starting in 1795, Hufeland published the

Journal der praktischen Arzneikunde und Wundarzneikunst (Journal o! Practical
Pharmacology and Surgery), and in 1799 the Bibliothek der praktischen Heil-
kunde (Library o! Practical Medicine); Schopenhauer cites: Journal für prak-
tische Heilkunde.]
ii[Zeitschriji fiir psychische A'rzte, ed. Christoph Friedrich Nasse (1818ff).]
iii[Phänomen]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 467

but the human spirif has depths, darknesses, and convolutions whose
illumination and explication is ofthe utmost difficulty.

§ 70.
[Denial oj Will the Only Real Freedom in the Phenoftumon -
Will anJ Phenomenon in ContraJiction - Cognition in ContraJiction
with Will- Christian Symbolism]
One might perhaps regard the entirety of our now concluded depic-
tion of that which I call denial of the will as incompatible with the
earlier discussion of the necessity that pertains just as much to motiva-
tion as to any other mode of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, and
from which it follows that motives, like all causes, are only occasioning
causes; here with motives, one's character unfolds its essence and
reveals it with the necessity of a natural law, which is why we there
absolutely denied freedom as liberum arbitrium indifJerentiae. ii But far
from nullifying that denial here, J recall it. In truth, real freedom, i.e.,
independence of the Principle of Sufficient Ground, pertains only to will
as thing in itself, not to its phenomenon, whose essential form is every-
where the Principle of Sufficient Ground, the element of necessity. But
the single case where that freedom can indeed be immediately visible in
the phenomenon is where it puts an end to that which is making its
appearance, and because with this the mere phenomenon, so far as it is
a link in the chain of causes, the animate body, nonetheless continues in
time, which contains only phenomena, it follows that the will that
manifests itself through this phenomenon then stands in contradiction
with it, denying that which the latter pronounces. In such a case, for
example, the genitals, as the visibility of the sex drive, exist and are
sound, but nonetheless, even in one's innermost being, no sexual satis-
faction is willed; and the entire body is only the visible expression of
the will for life, and nonetheless, the motives corresponding to this will
are no longer effectual. lndeed, the dissolution of the body, the end of 477
the individual, and thereby maximal impeding of the will in nature,iii is
we1come and desired. This real contradiction, then, proceeding from
immediate intrusion into the necessity of its phenomenon by the free-
dom of the will in itself, which knows no necessity, has only been
replicated in philosophical retlection as the contradiction between our

i[Gemüt]
t'free choice of indifference," Le., choice which could indifferently go
either way.]
iii[des natürlichen Willens]
 468 Fourth Book. The World as Will

claims regarding the necessity ofthe will's determination by motives in

aecordance with one's character, on the one hand, and the possibility of
complete nullification of the will whereby motives become powerless,
on the other. The key to reconciling these contradictions, however, lies
in the fact that the state in which one's character is removed from the
power of motives does not proceed immediately from the will, but from
an alteration in one's manner of cognizance. As long, namely, as cogni-
zance is none other than that which is caught up in the principium
individuationis, simply following the Principle of Sufficient Ground,
the power of motives is indeed irresistible; but when the principium
individuationis is penetrated, with immediate cognizance taken of Ideas,
indeed of the essence of things in themselves as the same will in a11 of
them, and from this cognizance there proceeds a general quieting of
wi11ing, then individual motives become ineffective, because the manner
of cognizance corresponding to them, having been obscured by an
entirely different one, has withdrawn. Therefore character can, to be
sure, never change in part, but must rather, with the consistency of a
natural law, carry out the will of which it is as a whole the phenom-
enon; but precisely this whole, one's character itself, can be utterly nul-
lified by the alteration of cognizance indicated above. This nullification
is what Asmus, as cited above, described as the "catholic, transcenden-
tal alteration" and viewed with astonishment; it is also 126 precisely that
which is called in the Christian church, most fittingly, rebirth, and the
cognizance from which it proceeds, ejJicacious grace. i - Precisely
because we are not talking about a change, but about a complete nullifi-
cation, of one's character, it follows that, however diverse characters
may have been before meeting with that nullification, they nonetheless
478 afterwards displaya great similarity in their manner of acting, although
everyone, in accordance with his concepts and dogmas, talks very dif-
ferently.
In this sense, therefore, the old constantly disputed and constantly
maintained philosophical thesis of freedom of the will is not groundless,
nor is the church's dogma of efficacious grace and rebirth without
sense and significance. But we now unexpectedly see the two of them
co11apse into one, and can now understand the sense in which the superb
Malebranche could say "La liberte est un mystere," and be rightY For

1Gnadenwirkung]
"["Freedom is a mystery": as Deussen and Hübscher note, not to be found in
exactly these words in Malebranche, but apparently stemming from a recollec-
tion of Claude Helvetius's discussion of Malebranche in De l'Esprit (1758),
 Affirmation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 469

precisely that which the Christian mystics call efficacious grace and
rebirth is for us the single immediate expression of freedom of the will.
It first occurs when the will, having attained to cognizance of its essence
in itself, obtains from this a quieting and is precisely thereby removed
from being affected by motives, which lie within the domain of a differ-
ent manner of cognizance whose objects are only phenomena.
The possibility of freedom thus expressing itself is the human
being's greatest advantage, which is etemally absent in animals, because
a condition of it is thoughtful awareness on the part of reason,i which,
independently of present impressions, allows for a survey of one's life
as a whole. Animals lack all possibility of freedom, just as they indeed
lack all possibility of true, thus thoughtfully aware, decision-making
following upon a thoroughgoingii antecedent conflict among motives,
which would have to be abstract presentations in that case. With just
the same necessity, therefore, with which the stone falls to the earth, the
hungry wolf sinks its teeth into the flesh of its prey, without possibility
of cognizance of the fact that it is the one that is tom apart as weIl the
one that is doing the tearing. Necessity is the realm of nature; freedom
is the realm ofgrace.
Because, then, as we have seen, this selfnullification of the will
proceeds from cognizance, but aB cognizance and insight as such are
independent of choice, it indeed foBows that this denial of willing, this
occurrence of freedom, cannot be intentionally forced, but rather pro-
ceeds from the innermost relationship of cognition to willing in aperson,
therefore comes suddenly and as if arrived on wing from without. lt is
just for this reason that the church called it efjicacious grace. Just as it 479
still had the latter depend on the reception of grace, however, so too the
effect of the quieting is in the end an act of freedom on the part of the
will. 127 And because in consequence of such efficacious grace the entire
essence of a person is fundamentally changed and reversed, so that he
no longer wills anything of what he had so far willed with intensity,
thus something like a new man actually steps into the place of the old,
it called this consequence of efficacious grace rebirth. 128 For what it
calls the natural man, to whom it denies all capacity for goodness, is
just the will for life, which must be denied if redemption is to be
attained from an existence such as OUTS. Behind OUT existence, namely,

p. 38 (as more precisely identified by Hübscher).]

'[die Besonnenheit der Vernunft]
itvollkommenem; added in B.]
 470 Fourth Book. The World as Will

something else is hidden, which only becomes accessible to us by our

shaking off the world.
It is not with respect to individuals, according to the Principle of
Sufficient Ground, but with respect to the ldea ofhumanity in its unity,
that the Christian doctrine of faith symbolizes nature, affirmation of the
will for life, in Adam, whose sin as bequeathed to us, i.e., our unity with
hirn in the Idea whose temporal 129 display is the bond of procreation,
makes all of us participants in suffering and etemal death. Conversely,
it symbolizes grace, denial of the will, redemption in God become man,
who, as free from all sinfulness, i.e., from all will for life, can indeed
not, like us, have proceeded from the most decisive 130 affirmation of
the will for life, nor like us have a body, which is through and through
only concrete will, phenomenon of will, but rather, born of the pure
Virgin, indeed only has the semblance of a body.i Ihis latter, namely,
according to the Docetes, i.e.,131 certain fathers of the church who were
most consistent in this respect. Ihis was particularly taught by Apelles,
againstwhom and against whose followers Tertullian objected. But even
Augustine hirnself comments on Romans 8, 3 ("Deus filium suum misit
in similitudinem carnis peccati,,):ii "Non enim caro peccati erat,
quae non de carnali delectatione nata erat: sed tarnen inerat ei simil-
itudo carnis peccati, quia mortalis caro eraf' (Liber 83 quaestiones,
qu. 66).iii He also teaches in the work called opus imperJectum iv I, 47,
480 that original sin is simultaneously sin and punishrnent. lt is already
present in newbom children, but first shows itself when they have
grown. Nonetheless, the origin of this sin is not to be derived from the
will of the sinner. Ihis sinner was Adam, hut we had aB existed in
Adam: misfortune befeU Adam, and in hirn misfortune has befallen us
all.
Ihe doctrine of original sin (affirmation of the will) and redemp-
tion (denial of the will) is actually the great truth that constitutes the
core of Christianity, while the rest is mostly just clothing and covering,
132
01' accessories. Accordingly, one should always take Jesus Christ in
general terms, as the symbol, or personification, of denial of the will
for life, but not in individual terms, whether it be according to his

t Scheinleib ]
t'God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh."]
iit"lt was indeed not sinful flesh, not being born of carnal desire; but none-
theless there was the likeness of flesh in it, because it was mortal flesh"; Book
oI83 Questions, Question 66.]
iV[Known as the Unjinished Work against Julian.]
 Affinnation and Denial ofthe Will for Life 471

mythical his tory in the gospels or according to the presumably true

his tory in which it is grounded. For neither the one nor the other is
likely to satisfy us entirely. It is merely the vehicle for its initial
reception, for the people, who always demand something factual. -
That in recent times Christianity has forgotten its true meaning and
degenerated into banal optimism, is of no concern to us here.
It is, further, an original and evangelical doctrine of Christianity
that Augustine defended with the approval of the heads of the church
against the banalities of the Pelagians,i and that Luther made it the rnain
goal of his endeavors to purify of errors and reemphasize, as he
expressly declares in his book De servo arbitrio ii - namely, the doctrine
that the will is not free, but in its very origin subservient to our disposi-
tion toward evil, therefore its works are always sinful and deficient and
can never be enough for righteousness; that therefore, finally, these
works in no way make us blessed, Ibut faith alone; this faith itself arises,
however, not from intention and free will, but through efficaäous grace
without our adding anything to it, comes to us as if from outside.
Not only the previously mentioned but also this latter, genuinely
evangelical, dogma belongs with those that a crude and banal viewpoint
nowadays rejects as absurd, or covers over, with an attachment in spite
of Augustine and Luther to that Pelagian housekeeper mentalityiii which
is precisely the rationalism of today,133 treating as antiquated exactly 481
these profound dogmas peculiar and essential to Christianity in the
narrowest sense, while by contrast adhering and granting primary
importance to dogma that has been derived and retained from ludaism
alone, connected only on the path ofhistory with Christianity.t

i[Pelagius (c. 355-c. 425) rejected the doctrine of original sin and taught that
human beings have a natural ability to reject evil. He was attacked by
Augustine, and his views were condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 43l.
"that Augustine ... Pelagians, and" added in B.]
ii[On the Enslaved Will, or On the Bondage ofthe Will (1525).]
iitHausmannsverstande]
t[Added in Band (below) C:] The extent to which this is the case can be
seen from the fact that all of the eontradietions and incomprehensibilities
contained in the Christian dogmatics consistently systematized by Augustine,
which have led precisely to the opposing Pelagian banality, vanish as soon as
one abstracts from the fundamental Jewish dogma and recognizes that a human
being is not the work ofanother, but ofhis own will. Then everything is at onee
dear and right. Then there is no need for a freedom in Operari ["operating" or
"works"]; for il lies in Esse ["being"], and preeisely there also lies sin, as
 472 Fourth Book. The World as Will

482 We, however, recognize, in the above-mentioned doctrine, truth

that is utterly in agreement with the result of our considerations. We
see, namely, that genuine virtue and saintliness of disposition have their
first origin not in reflectively considered choice i (works), but in cogni-
zance (faith): exactly as we also developed that result on the basis of
our main thought. If it were works originating from motives and reflec-

original sin [Erbsünde]. [The remainder of the note added in C] But the
efficacious graee is our own.
Given today's rationalistic viewpoint, by contrast, many of the doctrines
contained in the Augustinian dogmatics grounded in the New Testament appear
altogether untenable, indeed outrageous, e.g., predestination. Accordingly, one
then rejects the truly Christian part and reverts to erude Judaism. But the mistake
in calculation, or the original sin [or "original depravity," "depravity of origin":
Urgebrechen], in Christian dogmatics lies where one never seeks it, namely,
precisely in that which, as agreed upon and eertain, is removed from all
examination. Once this has been subtracted, the dogmatics are completely
rational [rationell]; for that dogma is the ruin, as of all other sciences, so also of
theology. Namely, if one studies the Augustinian theology in the books of De
civitate Dei [The City ofGod] (especially in Book 14), one experiences some-
thing analogous to a person who would upright a stone whose center of gravity
falls outside of it: however one may turn or position it, it keeps on toppling
over. Thus here too, namely, despite all of Augustine's efforts and sophisms,
the guilt of the world and its misery always fall back upon the God who made
All, and All in All, and besides knew how things would go. That Augustine
hirnself became aware of the difficulty and was most perplexed by it, r have
already demonstrated in my Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will (ch. 4, pp.
66-68 of the first and second editions [same pagination in Hübscher, vol. 4, and
in the margins ofPayne (tr.), ed. Zöller]).
Likewise, the contradiction between the goodness of God and the misery of
the world, as also between freedom ofthe will and God's foreknowledge, is the
inexhaustible theme of an almost hundred-year controversy among the Carte-
sians, Malebranche, Leibniz, Baylc, Clarke, Amauld, et al., in which the single
dogma firmly upheld by the disputants is the existencc of God, along with His
qualities, and they all revolve incessantly in a circ1e trying to harmonize those
things, i.e., trying to solve a calculation that fails to resolve without remainder,
but whose remainder reappears now here, now there, after having been covered
up elsewhere. But that the source of the embarrassment is to be sought in their
fundamental presupposition: precisely this oecurs to none ofthem, although it is
blatantly obtrusive. Only Bayle lets us notice that he notices it. [See articles
"Manicheans" and "Paulicians" in Bayle's Dictionnaire historique el critique
(Historical and Critical Dictionmy [1697; 2nd ed. 1702]); Leibniz's "Theodicy"
was largely a response to Bayle on the "problem of evil."]
tin der überlegten Willkür]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 473

tively considered intentions that led to blessedness, then virtue would

always be a matter of shrewd, methodical, farseeing egoism, however
one would twist it.
But the faith for which the Christian church promises blessedness
is this: that just as by the Fall of the Hrst man we all share in that sin
andhave fallen subject to death and ruination, so too we are all redeemed
only through grace and the acceptance of our tremendous guilt, through
the divine mediator, and this in particular entirely without our (the
person'sY merit. For that which can proceed from the person's inten-
tional action (determined by motives), wodes, can never justify us - not
at all, and by its very nature - precisely because it is intentional action,
brought forth by motives, opus operatum. In this faith thus lies, Hrst
of all, the fact that our state is originally and essentially a wretched
one,ii from which we need to be redeemed; then, that we ourselves
essentially participate in evil and are so tightly bound to it that our
works in accordance with law and precepts, i.e., in accordance with
motives, are never at all enough for righteousness, nor can they redeem
USo Rather, redemption can be won only through faith, Le., through an
alteration in one's manner of cognizance, and this faith itself can only
come through grace, and so as if from outside. This means that salva-
tioniii is something entirely foreign to our person, and points to a denial
and abandonment of precisely this person as necessary for salvation.
Works, following the law as such, can never justify, because they are
always a case of action on the basis of motives. Luther insists (in his
book De libertate ChristianaYv that, once faith has appeared, good
works proceed from it entire1y of themselves, as symptoms of it, as its
fruits, but altogether not as laying claim to merit in themselves,
justiHcation, or reward, but rather in a completely voluntary way and 483
without recompense. - So too for us, only free righteousness proceeds
at Hrst from one's ever more greatly clarified penetration ofthe prin-
cipium individuationis, with love then extending to the point of the
utter eliminationV of egoism, and in the end resignation, or denial ofthe
will.
I have brought in these dogmas of the doctrine of Christian faith,
which are in themselves foreign to philosophy, only in order to show

i[unser (der Person) Verdienst]

ii[heilloser]
iii[das Heil]
iV[On Christian Freedom (1519)]
V[Aujheben 1
 474 Fourth Book. The World as Will

that the ethics proceeding from the whole of our consideration, and
exactly agreeing and cohering with all of its parts, even if it were in its
expression new and unheard of, is in its essence in no way so, but
rather utterly agrees with wholly authentie Christian dogmas, and was
in its essentials in fact contained and at hand in them, just as it equally
agrees with the doctrines and ethieal preeepts expounded in yet again
entirely different forms in the sacred books of India. At the same time,
recollection of the dogmas of the Christian church served to clarifY and
elueidate the seeming contradiction between the necessity of all expres-
sions of one's eharacter when eonfronted with motives (the realm of
nature), on the one hand, and the freedom of the will in itse1f to deny
itself and to nullifyi one's eharaeter, together with all neeessity of
motives that are grounded in it (the realm of grace) on the other.

§ 71.
[Nothingness]
Here conc1uding our treatment of the distinguishing features of
ethics, and with it the entire development of that one thought whose
eommunieation was my purpose, I would in no way conceal an
objection bearing on this final part of the account, but rather show
that it lies in the essence of the matter and that it is absolutely
impossible to remove it. lt is that, once our considerations have
finally arrived at the point where, in complete saintliness, what we
have before our eyes is denial and abandonment of all willing, and
preeisely thereby redemption from a world whose entire existence
has shown itself to be suffering, precisely this appears to us now as a
passage into empty nothingness. ii
484 Regarding this point, I must first note that the concept of nothing
is in its essence relative and always refers to a particular something that
it negates. One has (namely, Kant) ascribed this property only to the
nihil privativum, which is what is designated by "-" as opposed to "+,"
which "-" could be made into "+" by reversing one's point ofview, and
has contrasted this nihil privativum with the nihil negativum,iii which

tauftuheben. That this should not indeed be assumed to involve actual

"elimination": see introduction.]
ii[Nichts; in this seetion, sometimes "nothing," sometimes "nothingness."]
iit"privative nothing," "negative nothing." Cf. Versuch den Begriff der nega-
tiven Grössen in die Weltweisheit einzujUhren (Attempt to Introduce the Con-
cept ojNegative Quantities infO Philosophy [1763]), Ak. 2.171-172; Critique 0/
Pure Reason A291-2/B347-8.]
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 475

would be in every respect nothing; for the latter, one employs as an

example logical, self-nullifying contradictions. But more closely consid-
ered, no absolute nothing, no wholly genuine nihil negativum, is so
much as thinkable, but rather anything of this sort, when considered
from a higher standpoint, or subsumed under a broader concept, is
always in turn a nihil privativum. Every nothing is such only in relation
to something else, and presupposes this relation, thus also that some-
thing else. Even a logical contradiction is only a relative nothing. It is
not a case of rational thought, but it is not therefore an absolute noth-
ing. For it is a verbal composition, it is an example of something unthink-
able of which one necessarily makes use in logic in order to demon-
strate the laws of thought; therefore, when one appeals for this purpose
to such an example, one will keep focus on nonsense as the positive
thing, which is just at the moment what one is seeking, pass over sense
as something negative. So therefore, every nihil negativum, or absolute
nothing, when subordinated to some higher concept, will make its
appearance as a mere nihil privativum, or relative nothing, which can
always exchange its sign with that which it negates to allow the latter to
be conceived as a negation, but it itself as something positive. i Also in
agreement with this is the result of the difficult dialectical investigation
regarding nothingness that Plato undertakes in the Sophist (pp. 277-
287, Bip.): Triv 'LOU hepoll rpvazv cltro&zqavT8; o.Jadv T8, xai
xamxex8pj1aTZaj1&vT/v bd 7rdvm Ta ovm 1Ipd~ äJ"A:r]AU, TO 7rPO; TO
(Jv 8xaaTOV popwv aDTif; aVTlTl.95p8VOY, bOAprfaapev el7r8IV, w;
aVTO TOVTO 8aTlV OVTmc; TO 1111 OV. (Cur emm
" - I , " " " . ostenderemus, aI '
tenus
ipsius naturam esse, perque entia divisam atque dispersam in vicem;
tune partem ejus oppositam ei, quod eujusque ens est, esse ipsum revera
non ens assueruimusl
That which is generally assumed as positive - what we call that 485
whieh is and whose negation the concept nothing in its most general
meaning expresses - is precisely the world of presentation, which I have
demonstrated to be the objectivization ofwill, its mirror. We ourselves

i[eine Position]
ii["We have shown that the nature of the different has existence and is
parce1ed out over the whole field of existent things with reference to one
another, and of every pari of it that is set in contrast to 'that which is' we have
dared to say that precisely that is really 'that which is not''': Sophist 258d-e, tr.
F. M. Comford in Hamilton and Caims (eds.), Collected Dialogues (Schopen-
hauer's emphases). Schopenhauer's reference is to the Bipont edition ofPlato's
works; reference to Plato added in B, Latin translation added in C.]
 476 Fourth Book. The World as Will

are also precisely this will and this world, and presentation in general
belongs to it as one of its sides. The fonn belonging to this presentation
is space and time, therefore everything that exists with respect to this
standpoint has to be somewhere and at some time. 134 To presentation
then also belong concepts, the material of philosophy, and words, the
signs for concepts. Denial, nullification, turning around of the will is
alsonullification and vanishing ofthe world, its mirror. No longer espy-
ing the will in this mirror, we ask in vain whither it has turned, and then
lament, since it no longer has any where or when,135 that it has gone
lost into nothingness.
Areversal of standpoint, if it were possible for us, would allow
the signs to be switched, and display that which has being for us as
nothing and the former nothing as that which has being. But so long as
we ourselves are the will for life, the latter can only be cognized and
designated by us negatively; for the old principle of Empedocles, 136 that
like is cognized only by like, deprives us precisely here of all cogni-
zance, just as to the contrary an of our actual cognizance rests precisely
on that principle in the end, i.e., on the world as presentation, or the
objectivization ofwill. For the world is will's self-cognizance. 137
If one would nonethe1ess ins ist on somehow attaining to a positive
cognizance of that which philosophy can express only negatively, as
denial of the will, then nothing remains for us but to point to the state
that all have experienced who have attained to complete denial of the
will, and that is designated by the terms ecstasy, rapture, illumination,
union with God, etc.; but this state should not really be called cog-
nizance, because it no longer has thc form of subject and object, and
is in any case available only to one's own, not further communicable,
experience.
We, however, who remain altogether in the standpoint of philoso-
486 phy, must rest satisfied here with cognizance of the negative sort,
content to have arrived at the last border marker of that which is
positive. Having thus recognized the essence in itself of the world as
will, and only its objectivization in all of its phenomena, and having
pursued the latter from the incognizant press of obscure natural forces
up to the most fully conscious actions of human beings, we then shrink
in no way from the conclusion that, with free denial, with abandonment
of the will, all of those phenomena are nul1ified, that constant pressing
and driving without goal and without rest, on all the levels of objec-
tivization in which and through which the world subsists: the multiplic-
ity of fonns in its step-wise succession nullified; along with the will its
entire phenomenon nullified, and finally its general forms space and
 Affirmation and Denial of the Will for Life 477

time, and even the ultimate fundamental fonn of the latter, subject and
object. No will: no presentation, no world.
Before us remains indeed only nothingness. But that which resists
this dissolution into nothingness, our nature, is precisely only the will
for life, which we ourselves are, just as it is our world. That we have
such a great abhorrence of nothingness is nothing more than another
expression of the fact that we willlife so much, and are nothing but this
will, and know nothing but just that.
But if we turn our gaze from our own neediness and involvement
toward those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having
attained to full self-cognizance, recognizes itself in all things and then
freely denies itself, and which then only awaits sight of the vanishing of
its last trace, along with the body that it animates, then instead of
unresting press and drive, instead of constant passage from desire to
fear and from joy to sorrow, instead of the never satisfied and never
perishing hope in which the dreaming life i of the willing human being
consists, we are shown that peace which is higher than aB reason, that
complete stillness of the sea of the spirit,ii that deep repose, unshakea-
ble confidence, and cheerfulness whose mere reflection in a counte-
nance, such as Raphael and Correggio have depicted it, is an entire and
sure gospel: only cognizance has remained, the will has vanished. But
we then look with deep and painful longing at this state, alongside of
which the sorrowful and wretchediii character of our own appears, by 487
contrast, in full light. Nonetheless, this consideration is the only one
that can give us lasting consolation, when we have, on the one hand,
recognized unsalvable iv suffering and endless sorrow as essential to the
phenomenon of will, to the world, and, on the other hand, with nullifi-
cation ofthe will, see the world dissolve and retain only empty nothing-
ness before uso And so in this manner, through a consideration of the
life and ways of saints,V to encounter which in our own experience is of
course seldom granted us, but which their written history and - attested
with the stamp of inner truth - art brings before our eyes, we have to
chase off the dark impression of that nothingness, which hovers as the
ultimate goal behind aB virtue and saintliness and which we fear as
children do the dark, instead of avoiding it, like the Indians, through

tLebenstraum]
:TMeeresstilie des Gemüts]
"THeillose]
iV[ unheilbares]
V[Heiligen]
478 Fourth Book. The World as Will

myths and meaningless words such as reabsorption in Brahman, or in

the Nirvana of the BuddhistS. 138 Rather, we freely confess it: what
remains over after complete nullification of the will, for all those who
are still full of will, is indeed nothingness. But also conversely, for
those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this our so very
real world with all its suns and galaxies - is nothing. t

t[Note added to subsequent editions from a Zusatz in Schopenhauer's copy

01' C:] This is also precisely the Pradschna-Paramita of the Buddhists, the
"Beyond all Cognizance," i.e., the point where subject and object no longer
exist. (See L J. Schmidt, "On Mahajana and Pradschna-Paramita.") [lsaak
Jakob Schmidt, Über das Mahajana und Pradschna-Paramita der Bauddhen,
th
Memoires de I 'Academie Imperiale des Sciences de SI. Petersbourg, 6 Series,
pt. 2 (Sciences Politiques, Histoire et Philologie), IV (1837); published as a
separate volume by the academy in 1840).]