Schopenhauer's Dynamite
I have recently become aware of this explosive potential that has emerged in philosophy, probably, ever since Schopenhauer, who discovered that there is an animating principle beyond representation that is responsible for representation. This means that Schopenhauer is the first to read desire as the cause of representation, rather than representation as the cause of desire, as in the realist view. So idealism simply is this inverted relationship between the two. For example - it's not that we aren't in control of everything because there is an external world, but rather there is an external world because we aren't in control of all things - the Will projects itself into representation. In scientific terms:
In a certain sense, even Schopenhauer's philosophy is not a neutral monism - but rather it doesn't have a complete metaphysics. For the Will and Representation aren't really separated - Representation IS the Will, but Will isn't everything, there is something outside of it, but those who are still full of Will cannot see it. So Schopenhauer is actually post-metaphysics, in that he establishes the limits of philosophy without ever arriving at metaphysics. The Will is mot à mot the in-itself, the active principle, of the representation.
This is obviously a decoupling of truth (and metaphysics) from reality as we see and feel it, and problematizes how far we can know given that we are fooled by the Will.
In a certain sense, even Schopenhauer's philosophy is not a neutral monism - but rather it doesn't have a complete metaphysics. For the Will and Representation aren't really separated - Representation IS the Will, but Will isn't everything, there is something outside of it, but those who are still full of Will cannot see it. So Schopenhauer is actually post-metaphysics, in that he establishes the limits of philosophy without ever arriving at metaphysics. The Will is mot à mot the in-itself, the active principle, of the representation.
This is obviously a decoupling of truth (and metaphysics) from reality as we see and feel it, and problematizes how far we can know given that we are fooled by the Will.
Comments (62)
No one is being fooled by anything. There is no 'fooler". The moment one starts anthromorphizing nature, everything gets lost in illusion stories. The Mind is unfolding but all is not accessible and it always changing. The more one develops ones own skills to observe, the more one sees. The biggest problem are those who wish to handcuff our ability to evolve.
Good topic. I watched the video and liked it. Not that this was necessarily what he was getting at, but certainly if the we claimed that the truth of the world is its instrumentality (its need to strive forward for no reason without much end in sight), and people are wont to viscerally deny this through whatever means necessary to keep their own organism (and their offspring) moving forward, then indeed fitness for survival will always outcompete truth. Truth would die out in a few generations and explains most people's vigorous defense in this matter. Cultural traditions (for lack of a better term "memes") for defending life itself gets passed down in the culture as it is a survival strategy to keep self-reflective beings (who do have the ability to deny life's goodness) to keep going and embrace life for the next generation.
Schopenhauer's metaphysics is most unique and beautiful. The world is really will- a striving force that has no aim or purpose. The world of appearance makes us think that there is time/space/causality and creates for us a little umwelt where we think that attaining goals will give peace, but are maniacally designed to trick us into continuing the goal-seeking process. At bottom all is aimless striving of will, and thus nothing in the world of appearance will ever truly satisfy. The goal then of the enlightened individual is to turn the will against itself, live an ascetic life where will becomes gradually diminished, until it loses its grip completely thus somehow diminishing the reign of will's supremacy in some fashion.
However, though I admire the philosopher and his descriptive elaborations on the striving nature of man and reality, I have some criticisms of his metaphysics.
1) If it is will that is thing-in-itself, and there is no causitive nature to the thing-in-itself (logically or temporally), then there cannot be a before or after. There cannot be a will and then something else. Thus, representation being secondary to will, cannot come after but be concomitant all the way down. Thus the thing-in-itself must logically be will AND representation and not just will.
2) If representation started with the first organism to represent its world (he used an analogy of the eye of a fish), then this makes the tricky situation of time itself starting with the first representational animal. This gets into problem that this organism then becomes extremely important in his ontology, as if the representation is always the flip side of will, then the organism would have to be a being in time, yet timeless, as if we look at my first argument, there was no before and after prior to representation, thus representation would have to be there from the beginning, or the animal that represents would have to be there from the beginning, which is an odd conclusion.
3) What is the nature of this representation? Even if we were to say that representation is an "illusion", then this has to be explained. Clearly the illusion exists, so can it really be called an illusion? This is the problem that other philosophies suffer that use illusion for the internal experiences of the individual organism. If all is will, then how can this illusion of time/space/causality be its flip side? Where did this time/space/causality come from? Will tricked itself into have these physical structures? Again, if will is not temporal, then these structures were not created as a secondary thing, but were concomitant with will all along. Thus Schopenhauer seems to waiver between this "will is primary, appearance is secondary" notion with a neutral monism of "will and appearance are always together one being the flip side of the other".
No, the claim was more radical than that - we cannot know the truth of the world as such - the truth of the world for us is will.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It does have an aim. That's why it is willing. Willing is the aim.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would disagree with Schopenhauer at this point. In the process of denial of the will I think compassion, rather than renunciation and asceticism, is the driving engine and most important factor. It is love if anything that opens the gate beyond willing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree about the concomitance of representation and will - except that I disagree with the identification between Will and thing-in-itself, and old Schopenhauer would very likely have disagreed too.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't think so, since the Will is atemporal, temporality only exists in the objectification of the Will qua representation. Will projects time.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The representation is the objectification of the Will - the Will projects an external world, in time, etc. for itself. By projecting its own striving, it projects the world, including the structures of representation. For example, by projecting the failure of its striving to attain, it projects an external world in which it is a suffering victim and unable to control what happens to itself.
I think your reading misses precisely the point I'm trying to put my finger on. Schopenhauer never does metaphysics. The illusion isn't representation and Will is truth - rather they are both illusions. The Will is just the truth of the representation, but it is not truth in-itself, except perhaps in some partial and incomplete sense.
Are you attempting inquiry?
Is all this an illusion?
Everything is exactly as we observe it, but it is not all and it is constantly changing - changing because of the Mind (Will is one aspect) is continuously shaping and reshaping it. Why always with illusions? What is it with philosophers and scientists that they enjoy this concept so much. Because of its mystery?
It's not an illusion but we are only grasping it bits at a time. That is the fun of life. It is detective work, it is mysterious, but it is not an illusion. How could it be? What or who is creating the illusions? Chemicals??
I didn't hear much or anything about will in there, but I can have another listen. Indeed, the world for us could be equated with what he said about doing what is fittest not doing what is seeking truth. I'd still say the main gist of what he was saying is truth can be in conflict with fitness and a species that survives does what is fit not what is truthful.
Quoting Agustino
I think you're putting the cart before the horse. The process of aiming (with no avail) is the will process. We do not aim at willing, it is the underlying process that causes one to aim in the first place. I am guessing you are trying to do some unique reading of this, and thus the claim where I am supposedly misguided, but I don't see it when reading Schopenhauer, and logically it seems to be a little word play you're doing that doesn't make sense. Will does what it does. It is the ground of being in his philosophy. Will plays itself out in the world of appearance (i.e. time/space/causality) in its restless nature, but no goal ever achieves satisfaction.
Quoting Agustino
I'm sure you are aware, compassion is part of Schopenhauer's ethical system. Indeed there is a conflict between other-oriented ethics and seemingly self-oriented denial of will. I tend to synthesize both tendencies with antinatalism. Dialogue with others about the conditions of existence (i.e. instrumentality) can include the other, and compassion and consolation of will can be included in one as it becomes discussion in the public forum.
Quoting Agustino
I'm not sure what you mean here. Schopenhauer identified Will with thing-in-itself constantly.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
See this is where I find Schopenhauer in a contradiction. If all is monistic, then Will is all there is. There is no projection. In fact, there is no-thing that even remotely can be an analogue to a predicate (project, objectify, manifest, etc.). Will either "is" alone or it is a multiplicity and really not the ground behind being. Rather, instead of being the "true" ground, it has to be concommitant. In other words, even though time is only in appearance, somehow it has to be atemporal as well because it has always been there as flipside of Will. This is a contradiction there as time cannot be temporal and atemporal.
Quoting Agustino
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. In so far as Will itself is only seen to us through the representation, it is never seen in and of itself, only gleaned at through introspection and logical analysis. However, as a general understanding of what is going on, Schopenhauer obviously believed we can understand this and even do something about it. He was not skeptical of his own insight. If anything, Schopenhauer was pretty confident in his thoughts.
Yes, I am obviously attempting inquiry.
Quoting Rich
That depends on what you mean by illusion. When we say the representation is an illusion, we don't mean that the representation doesn't exist, only that it's not what it appears to be. The world of representation is thus dream-like. So representation is an illusion simply means that, for example, there is something that appears to be an external world, like in a dream, while it's actually all subjectively generated. In this manner, you too - being a Daoist - believe the world is an illusion. What did Zhuangzi say - one time I dreamed I was a butterfly, and then I woke up. I am not sure if it is now that I am a butterfly dreaming that I am a man, or that I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly. This is precisely what it means that representation is illusory.
Quoting Rich
Well, this is either tautologically true (sort of like A = A), or it is a misunderstanding of illusions. What is an illusion? In a sense, an illusion is nothing - it's not an additional substance out there - it's just the wrong conception that something is the case when it isn't. It's a deception of the mind.
Quoting Rich
Nobody argued everything is illusory. As I said, Schopenhauer wasn't doing metaphysics there.
More - a species that survives does not know (leaning towards cannot know) what is true.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, Will is like the serpent that eats its own tail - Will consumes itself, and thus goes on Willing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
He started to shy away from this identification towards the end of his life, when he reverted more to the Kantian understanding of thing-in-itself as an unknown X.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We don't know what is beyond the Will.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would say that the Will is the ground of the phenomenon, and thus there is a logical priority in the Will. The phenomenon is static. Time wouldn't flow for example if there was no Will. The flow of time is the Will. That's what grounds time, its flow, and the whole structure of the representation.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yep, Schopenhauer says exactly this. Time is atemporal since the Will is always there, that's why from within representation time has an infinite past as it were - the Will projects itself in time, and thus time appears as infinite.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think this is the most profound misunderstanding. Quite the contrary, the Will is seen DIRECTLY unlike the representation which is perceived through the principle of sufficient reason. When you will something, you feel it instantaneously, there is no separation, like there is temporal, spatial, etc. separation in the representation. So if anything, it is the representation that is not seen directly, but mediated through the categories.
We only see bits. Saying that individual observations are incomplete is different than saying that an observation is still illusion. I have a tendency to suspect any inquiry into life that leans on illusion.
Observations are past. They are memory. Everything is constantly changing. It doesn't mean it is some sort of an illusion. The nature of life is that each individual mind is participating and doesn't have a complete view. That is why we share experiences. There is only a problem if one seeks Truth/Constancy in a Nature in flux.
An illusion is not a misunderstanding. When I tell someone that there is a misunderstanding I don't tell them they are having illusions. The two words have different flavors. But I am saying something different. I am saying that observations are real but necessarily incomplete. No illusions because illusions lead no where. It is lazy philosophy.
What is an illusion? Can you offer me an example as well please?
An illusion is a word that is inspired by magic. It has a connotation of the mysterious. It is a fun word to use but when I am investigating the nature of nature, I don't use it not do I encourage it. No one is trying to trick us nor are we trying to trick ourselves. We are simply trying to learn the skill to observe more.
I was responding to what you said earlier here:
Quoting Agustino
So I thought you were saying that we cannot know Will in-itself which I was trying to refute. Now, yes Schopenhauer did say that we can feel the immediacy of Will in our very willing movements, but it is still will as mediated by appearance. To allude to something you yourself said earlier:
Quoting Agustino
Thus, Will as thing-in-itself is not fully realized. It is through our mediated Will in the world as appearance dual-aspect going on. Thus, we can use our own introspection to glean at Will but the full picture may be only analyzed as it is rather an unknown being atemporal/aspatial/alogical etc. and fully monistic. We can glean it is a striving principle and that we are part of the striving itself in our own natures.
Ok, so what does it mean exactly? And what is magic?
Yes, but don't forget that the Will appears as "nothing" to those where no Will is present, and inversely, everything else (non-Will) appears as "nothing" to those full of will. So no - Will is not thing-in-itself - at least not the complete thing-in-itself.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't see how it's mediated by appearances at all. The feeling of pain just is pain, there's nothing "mediating" it. There's no separation between experiencing it and itself.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Schopenhauer denied this "one" for neither one nor two.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I would disagree with Schopenhauer that there is one Will. Rather the World is the summation of Wills, which are similar to Leibniz's monads - I think that is a better way to think of it, one that I have only started investigating recently. Or perhaps even better said - the Will is a fragmentary process.
Once you define what this mysterious, magical, or illusory are (since now you're just giving me synonyms right now), I will be able to tell you what I think. If you cannot point me to the meaning of these words, then clearly I can't tell you in a way where we both agree on the meanings.
Well you're not providing a definition or showing me what it is :s - so of course you have no idea why illusions are introduced into philosophy when you don't define them in any clear way :s
If that's the case, skip Leibniz and go right to Whitehead's process philosophy.
Man, you would debate a wall if it got in your way. Can you ever incorporate the other's ideas rather than pure me vs. you dialectic? Doesn't this way of debating wear you out and frustrate? Anyways, pain is pain, but if all were pure will, (or rather X), then there is no pain, no you, no nothing except Will. It is the world of appearance that this pain takes place as a "manifestation" of will. But keep arguing.
I have not studied Whitehead.
Quoting schopenhauer1
>:O - and would it move out of my way then?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's a me vs you dialectic not because you said it, but rather because I really disagree with your ideas on those points. I haven't bothered to comment on things I agree with, obviously.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't take debate personally. I'm not pained if you disagree with me, I'm not here to convince you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But isn't willing a pain, a suffering? When you're hungry, that is willing. The feeling of hunger is an aspect of Will.
Well right, if you define illusion as that which doesn't exist, no wonder then that you struggle to say what an illusion actually is or feel perplexed when representation is called maya or an illusion.
It is a manifestation of willing in the subject/object relationship.. one step down from Will, that mysterious force in-itself.
I think you especially would get a lot out of Whitehead.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/whitehed/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_and_Reality
I know that Schopenhauer would say that, but I'm not quite sure. In hunger, the subject and object are the same it seems to me. That's why I said:
Quoting Agustino
Here, subject and object are identical it seems to me. Am I wrong?
Not struggling with anything. It is a meaningless word that says nothing about nothing. I call it lazy philosophy, or another way to put it, all illusions are illusions.
Well, "illusion" is meaningful to many people, apparently, you don't find it meaningful, that's okay. But it's only because you have defined it in a ubiquitous way, and refuse the common usage and understanding of the term.
Don't I know it. In football they call it a punt.
What are you referring to? What is outside of the will?
That's not relevant for the purposes of this discussion, only that Schopenhauer accepted that there is something other than Will, that seems to be nothing to those who are still full of Will.
Watching that video, I thought it raises rather an uncomfortable question for Hoffman's position. How does the study of evolution give us reason to believe anything if our perceptions do not give us an accurate picture of reality? If Hoffman wants to say the study of evolution, engendering evolutionary theory, gives us no reasons to think that our perceptions deliver an accurate picture of reality, or even stronger; gives us reason to think that they definitely do not deliver an accurate picture of reality. then on the basis of what does he conclude that evolution is/ has been the case in the first place if not on the basis of avowedly unreliable observations? Another question is: if we don't know what an accurate picture of reality looks like then how can we judge whether perception delivers an accurate picture or not? This whole line of thought seems self-defeating...
Interesting OP, though! For Michel Henry (since we have been referring to him recently) the world as intentional externality (Representation) is not Life (Will) but it's manifestation. This is also reminiscent of the way in which natura naturata is natura naturans as manifest. Interestingly Henry's doctoral thesis is on Spinoza, but Henry doesn't mention him much in his later work apparently. I do remember reading somewhere ( I forget where at the moment) that Henry credits Schopenhauer for his insight that that the dynamic principle is something other than anything encountered in the world-as-represented. He does not, however, see the dynamic principle as blind, as Schopenhauer does, but as the origin of consciousness, truth and love.
I'm not sure I would use these terms. The view that desire is the ground of representation would be an ontological claim. If he posited mind as the ground of representation, then he would be an ontological idealist. Instead, his epistemology is idealistic, while his ontology is voluntaristic (and not complete, as you would add and I would agree).
Quoting Agustino
Yes, I would agree with this, as you might have anticipated. His metaphysics are in a sense deliberately incomplete, since he basically claims in his later writings that his system takes one as far as philosophy can go. The end of philosophy is the beginning of religion and mysticism. And yet, I think philosophy may well extend beyond the limits he set for it. From his perspective, he saw the end of philosophy's horizon, but that may not have been its actual end. Perhaps, standing on his shoulders, I might be able to see a little farther, if not that is not too arrogant an aspiration.
As Agustino pointed out, he is ambiguous on this claim. The most sensible reading in my mind is that he maintains two different notions under the heading "thing-in-itself," one legitimate and the other not. The first notion, which is the one I accept, is that the will is the inner aspect of all phenomena. This is his great philosophical discovery, and the proof he gives for it in the second book of the WWP is pretty well conclusive, as far as I'm concerned. The second notion, which I reject, is that the will is identical to Kant's notion of the thing-in-itself. For Kant, the thing-in-itself is in principle unknowable. To the extent Schopenhauer accepts this definition, which it seems he does, then the will is not and cannot be the thing-in-itself.
The question, as I see it, and as Agustino has posed, is whether Schopenhauer's system is a complete metaphysic. If we take the fundamental metaphysical question to be "why is there anything at all?" then neither Kant nor Schopenhauer have adequately answered it. Kant doesn't so much try and fail to answer it as he rejects the question altogether as unanswerable, anticipating the later positivists who would regard it as meaningless. This is once again because the only candidate in his system that could constitute an answer is the thing-in-itself, which unknowable in principle. I should say the only legitimate candidate, for it is true that he recommends believing in God. But his made up faculty of "practical reason" doesn't save this belief from being purely fideistic.
Schopenhauer implies that he has provided an answer to it but in the end appears to admit that it eludes his grasp. The will, if it is not Kant's thing-in-itself, is not the "groundless ground" of phenomena. It is merely a ground. The aforementioned question, in light of Schopenhauer's philosophy is, "why is there will at all?" or "what grounds the will?" One could fall back to the Kantian and/or positivist position and rule out the question as unanswerable given our cognitive limitations or as meaningless. Schopenhauer himself seems to have done the former, once he more fully recognized that there is something other than the will. Or one could reassess the reasons Kant and Schopenhauer give for believing we have said limitations. I myself vaguely drift in the latter direction and toward Platonism as the solution. Schopenhauer himself, of course, incorporates many Platonic elements into his system already, which I think might provide the key to completing his system Platonistically, as it were.
Well, I think there is an inherent contradiction in the ascetic where can somehow achieve Enlightenment (or perhaps die of suicide due to complete starvation and denial of bodily maintenance?). What then is this state of Enlightenment, if all is Will? Hence he does leave the crack for something more than Will, which naturally backs him away from a strong definition of Will as simply striving, as there then must be this other thing going on where one can not be striving. That though can simply be a lack of Will, an absence of Will which is what is going on.. Something close to metaphysical nothingness.
Quoting Thorongil
I personally think the Platonism is shoehorned into Schop's metaphysics. It was a way to make his aesthetics work- like an inverted Plato (art is shadows of thew world now is the world is shadows of the artist's genius vision). I also think that Schop did not have a chance to incorporate Darwin's natural selection into his metaphysics. This may have changed things actually as Schop did try to incorporate some of the latest theories that were going on at his time. Schop died in 1860, Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859- little time, if any to digest the work and its implications. He had Lamarkian evolution to work with, but it was so prone to criticism, that I can see him not really using it too much in his epistemology or metaphysics.
Yes, as I may have said in a PM, I think his doctrine of the denial of the will provides indirect proof of there being something other than the will.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't know that I follow this. This ground of the will seems to have some kind of agency, given its function in Schopenhauer's soteriology. It's not inert or nothing (although it may appear as the latter from a certain perspective).
Quoting schopenhauer1
I disagree. In Schopenhauer's early manuscripts prior to writing the WWP, he takes Plato's Forms to be the Kantian things-in-themselves (plural, as Kant spoke of them) and/or the essences of phenomena, not the will. If you think about what Schopenhauer says of the Ideas in the WWP, you can see why he thought this, for he says of them that they are outside of time, space, and causality, retaining only the form of being-an-object-for-a-subject. This lines up almost exactly with how Kant conceives of things-in-themselves, whereas the will is shackled by two forms of knowledge (one more than the Ideas), time and being-an-object-for-a-subject. If the shedding of these "veils" (time, space, causality, etc) gets us closer to the thing-in-itself, to ultimate reality, then the Ideas get us closer to it than the will. So the reverse of what you suggest is true: if anything, he shoehorned the will as thing-in-itself into his burgeoning philosophy, despite his strong Platonic leanings. I tend to think he may have been onto something with his original idea and that he bit off more than he could chew in switching to the will. The will may still be an inner aspect of all things - that much I think he has conclusively proven - but the essences of things cannot fully be explained by it. This is where Plato comes in.
Either way, even if I'm willing to concede that it is based on a Kantian prior stage, it doesn't change my criticism of it. In fact, he might as well have ditched it with his burgeoning Will philosophy, if your history is correct there. The Forms as he used them in WWR were used in various ways, and one of them were the "essences" of species, which seems like a poor version of what is going on in terms of biological mechanism, especially if the mechanism of evolution via natural selection is taking place. There are no essences, but rather differential populations based on variations that adapt to environmental conditions while others go extinct. If anything, Schop could have brought evolution, entropy, and other (future) scientific concepts into the idea of Will more clearly. Though this would definitely be within the confines of the phenomenal world (time/space/causality) perhaps the Will and its direct flipside world of appearances would be more suitably tied rather than this awkward mediation through the Platonic forms.
For example, Schopenhauer speaks of species going "extinct" in his works. He uses that exact term. And, of course, he proposed the Platonic Ideas. The reason species extinction and the Ideas are compatible is found in the nature of the Idea, which exists outside of time, space, and causality, and so exists irrespective of whether it happens to be instantiated in physical particulars at a particular moment in time. The Idea of a mammoth exists, even though there are presently no particular mammoths physically manifesting that Idea. And what physically appears as speciation, or the change from one species to another, is metaphysically the change in accidents of a particular species, which can eventually lead to the disappearance of one Idea's manifestations in time and the emergence of another's in its place.
To reiterate, the Ideas are not identical with what biology means by species. If they were, then your criticism would follow and follow trivially. But such a criticism would also fundamentally redefine the Ideas into something they never were, namely, changeable entities existing in time. Biological species can change in time without this entailing the non-existence of Platonic Ideas.
Another thing to consider: evolutionary biology is certainly to be provisionally accepted as the best current explanation for how life evolved over time on Earth. But I myself would be hesitant to enshrine it as unfalsifiable or as revealing the complete truth about life. In one tradition of the philosophy of science, unfalsifiability is basically synonymous with being unscientific. So what may be lurking behind your frustration with Schopenhauer's incorporation of the Platonic Ideas is a latent realism with respect to science, which comes out of positivism. Now you may acknowledge this and have reasons for adopting such a position, but I merely wish to point out that I have a different perspective, one that is anti-positivist and anti-realist with respect to scientific claims (which isn't to say that I'm a social constructivist or epistemological relativist, mind you).
Well, maybe the first Westerner.
But that's impressive, that someone in the West was saying that in 1818.
Michael Ossipoff.
I just think this is tenuous. There are thousands of small genetic changes that happen in evolutionary changes- is the essence of genetic or phenotypic change also in the Ideas? When does one idea leave another begin? These seem arbitrary at best.
Quoting Thorongil
I don't really see how, or why it's even necessary to postulate in the first place. Species and animals are contingent. There are patterns in nature, but why would there need to be universal patterns of each species? The animal is accidental all the way down. There is no necessity or determinism to it. In fact,if all is really process, this more substantive picture we have of species (or objects altogether), is much fuzzier. To take what we see in a species to be its Idea, is to reify the human aspect. Forms are forms to us, not beyond our perceptions of them as substantiated in the forms we form in our mind. An even weaker essentialism also may break away as we understand the mutability of genetics, epigentics, and the plasticity of species over a life and over large epochs of time.
Quoting Thorongil
I understand, but if we are strictly talking of the Platonic Ideas and specifically, Platonic Ideas in relation to the species, I don't see the entailment of the two.
I respect your Idealism and understand your stance, especially if it is going to align with Schopenhauer.
If you were going to be an Idealist, at least it's based on Schopenharean metaphysics, which has the essential theme that I've come to call the "aesthetic vision" of willing. Though, I know you may take it a step further to a more theological/spiritual level. Though, we can debate metaphysics to our hearts content and I am more or less game.
As for my take on metaphysics, I really am not much of an Idealist in the strictest sense. I can entertain the notion of a subjective nature to reality, especially as a possible answer to philosophy of mind, but that still doesn't sit well with me. Rather, what I do see is a certain striving principle throughout reality, and especially the animal. This striving does seem to be a principle, but it is hard for me to substantiate in words what this could mean. It is certainly something to me that is immanent in nature- something akin to the principle of entropy. This principle does not "mean" much until evolutionary forces contingently happen to bring about self-reflective creatures such as ourselves. We can understand the restless nature of reality in our own very existence, the instrumentality of being. There is no satisfaction at the end of any goal. There is swinging from goal to goal with a measure of hope. There is trying to Zen our way out with a form of religious experience, there is trying to rake up as much utility as possible from what we see as goods. However, throughout the process we are driven by this restlessness through enculturated survival-strategies, discomfort, and boredom. We are restless beings that are kind of sitting here in limbo, with no completion to our goals. It is goal after goal after goal, as if the goal was really what matters, meanwhile we are contingently suffering from this or that.
And THIS idea most is what I think Schopenhauer wrote so elegantly about- the idea that our goals are moving us "onward and upward" progressing in any way other than more more more do do do, need need need, desire desire desire, deprived deprived, deprived. And in it all is the aesthetic vision of instrumentality- which is this deprivation seen from afar. This absurd striving.
Good point Michael Ossipoff!
No.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The Ideas don't begin or end. Their instantiated particulars do.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I could turn this around and say that I don't really see how an animal is "accidental all the way down" or why there would be a need to posit that. Presumably, the animal is determined by the accidents, so bringing up determinism doesn't seem relevant either. Anyway, there are several ways to answer your question. One way is to say that the Ideas are Kant's things-in-themselves, as Schopenhauer originally maintained prior to writing the WWP. Another is to follow Schopenhauer in identifying them as the grades of the will's objectification. Another is, again with Schopenhauer, to say that they are directly perceived in aesthetic experience. I don't know about you, but I've had experiences in contemplating both art and nature that seem to correspond to what he describes as the contemplation of the Platonic Idea. Finally, one could say with Plato that they are the eternal patterns of individual things. You have acknowledged that patterns exist in nature, but deny that any such patterns are to be found in members of the same species. I see no reason for such a demarcation.
Quoting schopenhauer1
A most courteous comment and abridgment of my leanings.
Quoting schopenhauer1
All of this is conducive to my thinking, save the absence of a certain perspective that places such a world in the category of appearance, not genuine reality.
In order to resolve this contradiction, there are two options available to the follower of Schopenhauer. One option is to reject the statements that imply the will has an end. This negates the possibility of salvation and so tends to impel one toward atheistic materialism, nihilism, and negative utilitarianism (and thus anti-natalism). The other option is to reject his statements that the will does not have an end. This tends to impel one toward religion, Platonism, asceticism, and virtue ethics. I can admit that both are valid reactions to Schopenhauer, but as you noted, I lean toward the latter.
What I mean to say is that the accidents of nature are not determined by pre-determined Ideas that are substantiated in nature. If all is contingent, then there could have been a counterfactual situation where the "Ideas" could have went a different way. There was no set outside of time/space that was a blueprint or template- it came about through contingent scenarios that played out based on circumstances, survival fitness, environmental changes, and happenstance. If anyone of those factors changed, then it could have been different, thus negating some sort of other-worldly Ideas as something atemporal. So the patterns that exist, exist out of purely contingent circumstances of historical courses of events. If you want to say that we have the ability to idealize particular patterns into universals, that is a cognitive feature we do that definitely does not lead straight to "see there are Ideas that we are perceiving as Plato said!"
Quoting Thorongil
While we may get aesthetic pleasure from beautiful works of art, or music, this does not then necessitate that we are "seeing the Ideas more clearly without willing" or something like that. It is a rather inventive and imaginative notion, but certainly our reactions to art may be better explained through other frameworks than this whether they be cognitively, neuroscientifically, pyschoanaltically, culturally, developmentally, etc. etc.
I can agree with this assessment.
Quick comment, I think compassion is more relevant than renunciation in the final analysis.
But the Ideas are not contingent! If by "all" you mean "all particular appearances," then I agree that their existence is contingent, but that doesn't entail the non-existence of Ideas.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This isn't really an argument, though. Again, the disappearance of certain particulars in time says nothing about the existence of the Idea of those particulars, other than that it ceased to be instantiated.
Quoting schopenhauer1
My views on this topic are certainly not the most settled, so they could change. For example, the problem of universals still exists in philosophy, despite the advent of evolution, because it tends to be concerned with abstract concepts and numbers, not biological species. Interestingly, Schopenhauer is a nominalist with respect to abstract concepts (e.g. truth, goodness, beauty, etc), but a realist when it comes to biological species. In other words, for him, there are no Ideas of the former, but there are of the latter. However, it could be that the reverse is true. I still don't know how I would conceive of biological species without Ideas, but it's certainly possible. Or it could be that there are Ideas of both abstract concepts and biological species. I seem to recall passages where Schopenhauer seems to speak of beauty as an Idea.
More relevant to what? Compassion is obviously great, but I think it presupposes some degree of asceticism. One can hardly begin to identify oneself in others so long as one remains committed to satisfying the desires of one's ego. I must empty myself of self in order to allow the other to enter into me.
Yes and no - love your neighbour as yourself. You must love yourself first before you can love your neighbour. Extreme asceticism is indifference to self and to neighbour, and so is not compassionate.
Yes, but I somehow doubt that this means what I just said, to wit, "committed to satisfying the desires of one's ego."
In your own words, what does loving oneself entail?
Committed to benefiting one's self. It is conceivable that one's desires may be against one's good in some cases.
Is one's ego beneficial to one's self?
Why is it difficult to understand? :s
Say the Chinese Emperor laughs at my face. I get angry and shout at him. Next second I'm dead. Has my ego benefited my self?
No wait a minute, it's not about positing a distinction. I'm asking you if there is a distinction.