Schopenhauer More Modern and Accurate than Existentialists

Reply to schopenhauer1 Well said. I agree. He was too soon eclipsed, dismissed, misunderstood, or ignored by the 1920s as a new breed of obfuscatory philosophers like Heidegger appeared on the continent and overly zealous positivists began to dominate the Anglosphere.

Sartre is, like Schopenhauer, interested in the reason for being more so than states of the world. Human freedom is a measure of how logic cannot define our meaning. No matter what anyone says the world must mean, our experiences or understanding may say otherwise. Since existence, logically, has no essence, we cannot be said to mean anything by our existence, as the various essentialists would say (i.e. "by nature, you must mean...)."

The problem with Sartre's existentialism is it's still, deep down, thinking like an essentialist. Human nature, the "meaning" of what humans are meant it be, is still sought be Sartre. "To be authentic," to reflect to one's nature, is the goal. Existentialism is unsatisfying because Sartre has (correctly) blown away the idea there is any human nature, any "reason" for states of existence, but he then goes on searching for it, as if man essential nature was a container which needed to be filled. He's still trying to define existence through a logical reason, even though he's pointed out this cannot done.

Sartre more or less makes the reverse error of Schopenhauer. Instead of mistaking the infinite for time and space, Sartre mistakes the time and space (humans) for the infinite. The infinite of freedom is considered the essence of human existence, so much is that human existence in time and space fades into irrelevance.

One almost never decides anything. Are you a waiter? Well, only if you choose to be in the moment. Even if you are standing in front of people serving them food in a restaurant, you still lack essence. In that moment, you could be anything else if you wanted. Just make the choice. Sartre appears to be giving us libertarian free will, where we have absolute power over ourselves at anytime, such that we are never really anything at all (this is somewhat uncharitable to Sartre, as he is quite aware of the material restrictions people are under, but it is where we end up if we read human existence as "freedom" ). Obviously, this is just utterly nonsensical to anyone who's interested in describing the material existence of humans or is interested in the meaning of how human life is constrained (as Schop is).

Whether someone thinks Sartre or Schop gets closer to the human condition more or less comes down to whether are more interested in the expression of freedom or the expression of restriction. The former gives freedom as the reason for our horrors (we all chose it... "Hell is other people"), the later supposes the reason for our actions is a restrictive force of inevitability which which we always carry (Will).

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

Whether someone thinks Sartre or Schop gets closer to the human condition more or less comes down to whether are more interested in the expression of freedom or the expression of restriction. The former gives freedom as the reason for our horrors (we all chose it... "Hell is other people"), the later supposes the reason for our actions is a restrictive force of inevitability which which we always carry (Will).

That is a good summation of the two sides. Clearly, I tend to take the side of Schopenhauer, who is more nuanced than simply saying Will is a restrictive force. He does leave room for individual expressions of the Will and even some sort of transcendental and empirical "character" expressions that tend behave in certain ways. Actually, I guess you can say even his idea of individual character traits, are restrictive because we cannot even will to be different than our characters here. He definitely seems to describe a more general restriction of the perpetual "pendulum swing" of human existence. I characterized it myself as impositions of the world (unwanted pains, survival in a cultural context) and impositions of the self (boredom transformed into goal-seeking and pleasure-seeking).

I’m now thinking that both Schopenhauer’s, and Sartre’s, views are needed to give a full picture of the human condition. That is, taking either side without regard for the other ends up lacking.
I’ll use my current situation in life as an example. Software engineering is my profession, and I like philosophy, but don’t spend nearly as much time on it as my full time job. If someone said “define yourself”, “software engineer” seems a more appropriate answer than “philosopher”. Now I could choose to answer “philosopher” anyhow, but that would be contrary to the reality of my situation, which is as it is regardless of how I “define myself”. Actually it would cause dissonance in my mental states, as I’d have to try to ignore the fact that much more of my time is spent engineering software.

From the above, Sartre’s view seems absurd, and Schopenhauer’s seems right on – there is an actual reality to my life, which makes me as I am; any self-definitions I come up with are superfluous.

I could however take action, and quit my job and go back to school to get a degree in philosophy, and do this full time. I can’t whimsically define myself however I want, but I can start with some idea in mind, and take steps to bring that about (which involves time, resources, and constraints). I can will myself to be a philosopher, within limitations. But the fact that I choose to will this would already be based on pre-conditions of myself – a desire to do philosophy, and that desire itself isn’t something I chose to have. So Sartre’s view still looks totally wrong.

I could also ask: is it desirable to have a desire to do philosophy? Suppose I deliberated and found the answer is “no”. Given real constraints, I may not be able to change this desire, but through this I’d realize my desire must be grounded in something (some complex interaction between my makeup and the world) as opposed to being “just there”. My desire isn’t essential to “me”, but rather is held in place by my life’s situation – which given the right conditions, could change such that I no longer desire to do philosophy.

There is a sense of non-definitiveness, of freedom, in considering that everything about “me” is conditioned and in principle changeable (even if, given time and resources, it couldn’t actually change in my lifetime). So this is where an “extreme freedom” view makes sense – but it necessarily includes the aspect of life as conditioned and constrained by the world as it happens to be.

Reply to Thorongil Heidegger made outstanding contributions to our understanding of the human condition. Not sure why he comes in for so much hate on this matter. Even philosophers who understandably despise his politics (e.g. Habermas) acknowledge the monumental achievement of Being and Time. Sure, he had to carve out a new conceptual framework that's extremely frustrating initially, but neologisms like being-in-the-world and are a significant advancement over the previous subject/object framework in which Kant, Schopenhauer and the rest of post-Cartesian philosophy seems to operate, which is laden with highly dubious metaphysical assumptions.

Also, I think the main reason Heidegger didn't hold Schopenhauer in very high regard as a thinker (unjustly IMO) was the latter's apparent belief in a timeless human nature. In this he falls much more on the side of the existentialists, along with that other 'obfuscatory' thinker, Hegel, who do indeed see humans as historically conditioned and devoid of any eternal qualities.

That doesn't mean (pace Sartre) that humans are free to create whatever meaning they choose - H's lifelong meditation was on the relatedness of human existence to Being as it unfolds historically. He situated the understanding of ourselves and our world as manifested through modern philosophy (with its emphasis on subjectivity, objectivity, willing, sense date, etc.) as but one particular instantiation within the history of Being, and not the only or inevitable one. The way we understand ourselves and our world appears to undergo periodic shifts that are not entirely of our own making.

Outside of that important distinction there are interesting parallels, such as the clear appreciation for certain aspects of Eastern thought felt by both H and S. Heidegger's notion of gellasenheit as the highest possibility of human existence seems akin to Schopenhauer's understanding of the quieting of the Will needed to produce or appreciate genuine art. Similar ideas can be traced to Taoism and Buddhism and appear to represent a new way of being, beyond willing and striving, to one characterized by a non-instrumental relationship to people and things. Julian Young has written a book on this matter that I'd like to eventually read.

Anyhow I'm not trying to take anything away from Schopenhauer. Heidegger did not consider himself an existentialist, and was in fact adamant that existentialists like Sartre were superficial. But there are aspects of his philosophy (drawn from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) that inspired later existentialists. The most important issue - and it was never fully decided - was the question of human existence as it pertains to the question of Being. Schopenhauer seems to have had all the 'big questions' figured out, whereas Heidegger was much more cautious and probing. In this too I think share Heidegger's lifelong perplexity over Schopenhauer's dogmatic confidence that he had uncovered the eternal Truth. I feel my own existence, and Being generally, to be an enigma.

Quoting Arik-Alb

There is a sense of non-definitiveness, of freedom, in considering that everything about “me” is conditioned and in principle changeable (even if, given time and resources, it couldn’t actually change in my lifetime). So this is where an “extreme freedom” view makes sense – but it necessarily includes the aspect of life as conditioned and constrained by the world as it happens to be.

It would misrepresent Schopenhauer to view him as strictly deterministic. Motivation is a complicated thing though, and in his views, one of the four justifications of sufficient reason. Anyways, my point in the original post was that Schopenhauer did not stop at reflecting on our ability to define ourselves by our ability to choose. Rather, he probed deeper- into the very fact that we have desires, urges, goals, and unsatisfactory needs in the first place. As stated earlier, we are this pendulum swing of survival and boredom. We can choose to take certain actions based on our personal motivations, but there is always a principle of striving forward in the first place. This striving, according to him, leads to inevitable suffering, and he observed the many ways in which it indeed does (frustrated desires, temporary happiness, the instrumental nature of existence as it moves forward but with no ultimate satiation). We are always in a state of "lack" in which we are trying to remove said feeling, but in vain.

Even more than the existentialists, he knew "angst" though I am pretty sure he did not mention that anywhere in his works. He wrote about it more eloquently, clearly, yet more completely than those who came after who seem like fractured remnants trying to reconstruct bit-by-bit what was already wholly stated.

Quoting Arik-Alb

There is a sense of non-definitiveness, of freedom, in considering that everything about “me” is conditioned and in principle changeable (even if, given time and resources, it couldn’t actually change in my lifetime). So this is where an “extreme freedom” view makes sense – but it necessarily includes the aspect of life as conditioned and constrained by the world as it happens to be.

Wow you just made me think of how Schopenhauer's view of character being inborn can be related to Sartre's authenticity. Perhaps Sartre's radical freedom, or being authentic, is actually just the playing out of what one's character actually wants. It is finding the motivations which actually suit one's character.

Quoting Erik

That doesn't mean (pace Sartre) that humans are free to create whatever meaning they choose - H's lifelong meditation was on the relatedness of human existence to Being as it unfolds historically. He situated the understanding of ourselves and our world as manifested through modern philosophy (with its emphasis on subjectivity, objectivity, willing, sense date, etc.) as but one particular instantiation within the history of Being, and not the only or inevitable one. The way we understand ourselves and our world appears to undergo periodic shifts that are not entirely of our own making.

Can you explain how his ideas of ready-at-hand and present-at-hand are related to his ideas of Being undergoing radical shifts in history? Ready-at-hand and present-at-hand seem to be different modes of being- Ready at hand possibly being more "authentic" of some sort. Also what does this have to do with his idea of gellasenheit and quieting of chatter? His framework seems to be historical-leaning but at the same time his ready-at-hand has some sort of permanence that is not a part of the historical dialectic. In other words, please try to fit the neologisms I have bolded into your interpretation of what Heidegger was trying to say. Tall order... I can go back to his texts, but he is one philosopher that I rather have secondary sources (or quaternary sources of a Heidegger fan on philospohy forums) and being that I am probably not going to be a Heideggarian expert over night, I'll make do with your interpretations as a launching point. I will try to keep up with some basics by reading some secondary and primary sources as well so we can have a somewhat intelligible discussion on him compared with Schopenhauer or just on his own terms.

He may be another case of what I said earlier about other existentialists and how they compare with Schopenhauer: "Quoting schopenhauer1

He wrote about it more eloquently, clearly, yet more completely than those who came after who seem like fractured remnants trying to reconstruct bit-by-bit what was already wholly stated.

That is what I am going to predict I will see once we unpack some Heidegger.

Reply to Erik Citing one incoherent obscurantist's (Habermas) praise of an even worse offender in this regard (Heidegger) does little to persuade me of your position. Nor does making blanket assertions about the supposedly dubious nature of the past several millennia of philosophy, seeing as Descartes's dualism was only a slightly new take on a very old problem, one from which the impenetrable word mountains that Heidegger and others like excavating have not extricated us.

Reply to ThorongilI'm not trying to persuade you of any position, just calling your lazy dismissal of Heidegger unwarranted. I can't speak for others you may have had in mind in your own blanket assertion. But if you are genuinely interested in having a conversation on the matter, you can start by revealing what work(s) of his you have read, and also what specific 'obfuscatory' passages you had in mind.

Anyhow, the idea that we get a deeper understanding of the world by removing ourselves from practical involvement with it in favor of detached gazing has indeed gone on for 2500 years, so Heidegger would agree with your historical take on the matter going way back to the ancients. Once that theoretical standpoint is challenged, many other things come in for questioning. Like the idea of an inner/outer split between subject and object. These, to me, are extremely questionable presuppositions.

Descartes development of course has many precursors, but also represents a significant development which in turn frames the issues and concerns of modern philosophy. For example, the idea that the external world or other minds may not exist was, to my knowledge, not part of the Greek or Medieval Christian experience.

Reply to schopenhauer1 First off, I respect your willingness to look into Heidegger in detail to get a better understanding of him. It amazes me that people will criticize what they have made no attempt to understand, especially on a philosophy forum. This is obviously a rare but admirable trait.

My own opinion - and I'm by no means a professional philosopher or expert on Heidegger - is that I do think the effort to understand him is rewarded in new insight into some of the shortcomings of our Western philosophical tradition. According to H, the concepts handed down to us through the likes of Plato and Descartes ultimately infiltrate the 'common sense' experience and everyday language of society as a whole, so philosophy is far from the harmless and insignificant endeavor people think it is. As our understanding of things has gotten progressively levelled down to their being nothing more than exploitable resources, the task of tracing concepts back to their origin becomes all the more urgent IMO as it frees up other possibilities for thinking.

I do think you're right to see the 'early' Heidegger as trying to find ahistorical structures of human existence. He saw this too and tried to extract himself from the tendency not long after the publication of Being and Time. I made the mistake of not clarifying the difference in my first post. Here's my quick summation:

The ready-to-hand and present-to-hand modes of being can be understood as the difference between the holistic, context-dependent and absorbed way we use tools and materials in our world to achieve our goals vs. the context-free and atomistic way things show themselves when we remove ourselves from practical involvement and just stare at them (they become Ideas, objects, sense-data etc.). So in a certain sense these two basic modes of revealing would appear to be possibilities which cut across historical distinctions. Practical and Theoretical as two modes of Being most societies would at the very least be able to make sense of, regardless of particular historical circumstances. But there's much in H's analysis that I'm leaving out that does make his appropriation of the dichotomy unique and illuminating. Don't recall whether the ready-at-hand is more 'authentic' than present-to-hand in H, but he does refer to it as the more 'primordial' relationship we have with the world, which he generally used as a stand in or code word for authenticity.

Gellasenheit is a concept of the 'later' Heidegger, the one much more immersed in the 'history of Being', and has to do with a particular way we comport (or attune) ourselves to the world. It's characterized by neither practical engagement nor theoretical detachment, but some sort of 'active disengagement' for lack of a better term which is equally far from indifference and aggressive instrumentalism. I seem to recall Heidegger talking about an active 'letting-be' of beings. So beings can reveal themselves in a variety of ways to us, which points to the 'ontological difference' between beings and Being.

Being is nothing, literally no thing. But this no-thing is what allows for our understanding of anything, which is what makes us human in fact, and so lies at the heart of our existence. A frightening thought perhaps. We try to conceal this groundless ground (Heidegger's term) which allows for anything to come to 'be' in the first place. We seek some sort of eternal foundation - 'Ideas', God, Will, Consciousness etc. - to stave off the terror that strikes us upon genuine insight that we are ultimately a sort of emptiness or clearing or lighting (Think Heraclitus' Fire, Lighting) in which things come to presence.

If Schopenhauer has said similar things, especially in a more accessible manner, that would be awesome. I have no special relationship or loyalty to Heidegger. I think the matter of Being and human existence is difficult, and at the very least he tried to get us away from comfortable complacency on this most significant issue in the hopes of reopening it for future thinkers. In this he's a continuation of Nietzsche.

But I'll end my rambling here for now...

Quoting Erik

The ready-to-hand and present-to-hand modes of being can be understood as the difference between the holistic, context-dependent and absorbed way we use tools and materials in our world to achieve our goals vs. the context-free and atomistic way things show themselves when we remove ourselves from practical involvement and just stare at them (they become Ideas, objects, sense-data etc.). So in a certain sense these two basic modes of revealing would appear to be possibilities which cut across historical distinctions. Practical and Theoretical as two modes of Being most societies would at the very least be able to make sense of, regardless of particular historical circumstances. But there's much in H's analysis that I'm leaving out that does make his appropriation of the dichotomy unique and illuminating.

Gellasenheit is a concept of the 'later' Heidegger, the one much more immersed in the 'history of Being', and has to do with a particular way we comport (or attune) ourselves to the world. It's characterized by neither practical engagement nor theoretical detachment, but some sort of 'active disengagement' for lack of a better term which is equally far from indifference and aggressive instrumentalism. I seem to recall Heidegger talking about an active 'letting-be' of beings. So beings can reveal themselves in a variety of ways to us, which points to the 'ontological difference' between beings and Being. Being is nothing, literally no thing. But this no-thing is what allows for our understanding of anything, which is what makes us human in fact, and so lies at the heart of our existence. A frightening thought perhaps. We try to conceal this groundless ground (Heidegger's term) which allows for anything to come to 'be' in the first place. We seek some sort of eternal foundation - 'Ideas', God, Will, Consciousness etc. - to stave off the terror that strikes us upon genuine insight.

I've used some Heidegger before to get at themes that Schopenhauer touches upon. My spin on his idea of ready-to-hand is when we concentrate on a task, we have a certain flow where we kind of lose our sense of time and are immersed in the task. Things seem to be going well here. Then the "broken tool" occurs when we see are no longer concentrating. Schopenhauer describes this as the feeling we get when we reached our goal, or have just experienced something pleasurable. It is a kind of feeling of unease, angst, existential boredom, and similar feelings. To Schopenhauer though, this would be seeing things as they are- this striving Will. We might get caught up in the flow, but when broken tool occurs, and we have not distracted, sublimated, isolated, and anchored our thoughts, we see it for the Will-to-nothing that it is.

As for the no-thing that allows for understanding of anything- I don't see how that is dissimilar to Schopenhauer's atemporal Will which is "no thing" in terms of its empirical emptiness but its "felt" inner sense of being. I don't see why Heidegger thinks he is really inventing anything new with the terms. It might appear to him that they are radically different, but I don't see it as being so. Perhaps he did not give Schop's Will too much attention because he wanted to differentiate himself and to do so, you have to deny the significance of previous philosophers?

Well I think Heidegger would argue that modern philosophy is flawed in that it sees consciousness as something that occurs in my head as opposed to being out in the world. There is no 'inside' for him. If Schopenhauer was able to disentangle this subject/object split in a way that most modern thinkers do not appear to (even existentialists like Sartre, apparently), then I stand corrected and will acknowledge the revolutionary nature of his thought. I have The World as Will and Representation and am inspired to go back and read it - it's been over a decade since I've done so and my memory is admittedly not very good.

But even if he does work within the dualistic framework (Schopenhauer that is) he makes many important contributions to our understanding of human existence. I won't deny that at all. The ideas you've laid out here and in other threads always strike me as insightful, even when I don't entirely agree with them. There's a book on Heidegger's (largely unacknowledged) 'confrontation' with the Will that I've been interested in reading.

The line in German philosophy from Schopenhauer through Nietzsche and onto Heidegger is there, so it wouldn't surprise me if Heidegger was more influenced by Schop (even if indirectly through Nietzsche) than he let on. Many commentators have found the silence odd.

Quoting Erik

sees consciousness as something that occurs in my head as opposed to being out in the world.

I'd have to understand this more thoroughly to comment on this and compare to Schopenhauer because this could be misinterpreted very easily. Can you explain what you think H meant by this?

Quoting Erik

you can start by revealing what work(s) of his you have read, and also what specific 'obfuscatory' passages you had in mind.

Several years ago, I tried his so called magnum opus, Sein und Zeit, and thought it an almost unreadable, ponderous doorstopper of a tome best employed as a step ladder for toddlers than a book worth of study by serious philosophers. Perhaps some of his essays are better, but I wouldn't know yet. I have an anthology of his writings on my reading list which includes some of them, but I won't get to it for some time.

Quoting Erik

Anyhow, the idea that we get a deeper understanding of the world by removing ourselves from practical involvement with it in favor of detached gazing has indeed gone on for 2500 years

Straw man.

Quoting Erik

Like the idea of an inner/outer split between subject and object. These, to me, are extremely questionable presuppositions.

They're also ineradicable due to how language works.

Quoting Erik

For example, the idea that the external world or other minds may not exist was, to my knowledge, not part of the Greek or Medieval Christian experience.

It's okay, ignorance of these matters is widespread.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I'm neither a Heidegger expert nor a fan (I think he worships the idea of human experience and certain traditions associated with it, rather than respecting its existence.*), so others would probably be better at describing it, but Heidegger is worried we have abandoned concern for Being and the experience it enables.

Under substance dualism (which most of Western philosophy of mind uses, even apparent monists such as idealists and reductionists), experience is thought to be separate from the world of bodies in which we take action. Experience is considered to be "over an above" or "just in the head." Consciousness is viewed as a consequence or irrelevant with respect to the world at large, rather than something in the world. Heidegger wants to bring mind back into the world, such that experiences are recognised as event which happen, rather than being pushed aside as something immune to the world (idealism) or irrelevant to the world (reductionism).

Heidegger hates the modern approaches because (it appears -- I think Heidegger gets this gravely wrong.** ) to throw away respect for human experiences. In the face of technology and progress, what human think and feel is swept aside for the worship of the mechanical (and now digital). We split human experience away from our understanding of what is important, and so readily cast it aside in our interactions with the world.








* Heidegger is still desperate for a ground. Erik alluded to this earlier:

Erik:Being is nothing, literally no thing. But this no-thing is what allows for our understanding of anything, which is what makes us human in fact, and so lies at the heart of our existence. A frightening thought perhaps. We try to conceal this groundless ground (Heidegger's term) which allows for anything to come to 'be' in the first place.

A groundless ground? Heidegger is still trying to ground our existence, to conceal the nothingness of Being, by turning the no thing of Being into a thing on which beings depend for existence. He's treating Being as others do God, Ideas, Will, Consciousness, Progress, etc., etc.

Like all those before him which he criticises, he tries to starve off terror by grounded ourselves in the eternal. In the face of the nothingness of Being, Heidegger has turned it into something to avoid the realisation that we are entirely finite and are given by nothing at all.

** It certain traditions, and so the associated human experience, which the modern approach has no respect for. The experiences and traditions which constituted our communities and individual experiences prior to the vast social and economic changes brought by the Industrial Revolution and further technological development.

schopenhauer1:Perhaps Sartre's radical freedom, or being authentic, is actually just the playing out of what one's character actually wants. It is finding the motivations which actually suit one's character.

Pretty much. Sartre's philosophy is a reaction against essentialism. The motivation is to attack the idea people are "naturally" anything, such they are free to be who they are, without having to conform to some standard of who they are "logically" meant to be.

But Sartre's radical freedom also has an interesting relationship to metaphysics, specifically logical possibility. It's basically a statement of radical contingency, the non-necessity of any state of existence, as explored by people like Meillassoux and Brassier.

We might say the world has radical freedom, in that any logical possibility might occur, such that there is no logic which allows us to say what the states of the world must be.

Quoting schopenhauer1

We can choose to take certain actions based on our personal motivations, but there is always a principle of striving forward in the first place. This striving, according to him, leads to inevitable suffering... We are always in a state of "lack" in which we are trying to remove said feeling, but in vain.

Quoting schopenhauer1

…you just made me think of how Schopenhauer's view of character being inborn can be related to Sartre's authenticity. Perhaps Sartre's radical freedom, or being authentic, is actually just the playing out of what one's character actually wants. It is finding the motivations which actually suit one's character.

I’ve found that when I don’t try to will beyond my capabilities, or be something that goes against my natural character (as it’s evolved to be), there is actually less sense of striving. I’m still acting to fulfill my desires, but there is more acceptance of whatever results I get, and less tension. Action has more a sense of exploration, of adventure, and less of “I need to accomplish this”.

For me, a clear example is in a martial art sparring practice I do. It’s a game of trying to push your opponent off balance, while preventing your opponent from doing the same to you. When I’ve approached this with the idea of “winning”, I tense up more and push harder, and get frustrated when I can’t manage to move my opponent. The game becomes like wrestling, and I have a feeling of needing to win in order to feel accomplished.

When I’ve instead approached this game with more of an attitude of exploration – of finding out what I can do, and enjoying the interchanges that go on – I’m more at ease. I’m still playing the game, but I’m not over-exerting in order to win (interestingly, I also perform better during these times). I’m playing in a way that’s being honest to my actual capabilities.

Reply to Thorongil

Several years ago, I tried his so called magnum opus, Sein und Zeit, and thought it an almost unreadable, ponderous doorstopper of a tome best employed as a step ladder for toddlers than a book worth of study by serious philosophers. Perhaps some of his essays are better, but I wouldn't know yet. I have an anthology of his writings on my reading list which includes some of them, but I won't get to it for some time.

Ad hominem.

They're also ineradicable due to how language works.

Disagree.

It's okay, ignorance of these matters is widespread.

Then please disabuse me of my ignorance and point out pre-modern examples.

Look, if you want to have a discussion regarding the shortcomings of Heidegger's philosophy - in my opinion there are many - or any other topic relevant to what's under consideration, then I'm absolutely up for it. I have no desire to exchange further snarky comments with you that contribute nothing to the discussion. If that's your style, have at it, but you'll be doing it alone.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness

A groundless ground? Heidegger is still trying to ground our existence, to conceal the nothingness of Being, by turning the no thing of Being into a thing on which beings depend for existence. He's treating Being as others do God, Ideas, Will, Consciousness, Progress, etc., etc.

Like all those before him which he criticises, he tries to starve off terror by grounded ourselves in the eternal. In the face of the nothingness of Being, Heidegger has turned it into something to avoid the realisation that we are entirely finite and are given by nothing at all.

I agree with you. He seems to move in that direction - writing Being under erasure, be-ing, Beyn, etc. - but cannot entirely extricate himself from the "onto-theological" tendency he criticizes in almost all previous Western philosophy, save for maybe Heraclitus and Parmenides at the inception (according to his idiosyncratic and extremely interesting readings of them) of this tradition.

The paradoxical nature of the endeavor seems somewhat similar to Lao Tzu's meditations on the Tao or, to use a more modern example, Wittgenstein's investigation into the logical form of the world, which shows itself but cannot properly be said. This 'mystical' aspect of his thought is often neglected for the sake of more pragmatic (in the US with Rorty, Dreyfus et al) or existential readings (generally the French), but I'm convinced that Heidegger was a deeply 'spiritual' thinker always searching for some hint of the divine; not in some traditional otherworldly type way, but here and now and often in the most mundane and trivial things like a tree or a jug.

That's my interpretation. At the very least he was a passionate enemy of almost every facet of modern civilization, from its materialism, its consumerism, its fixation on productivity and efficiency, its alienated masses and the like. I can definitely see how many contemporary thinkers would not find him congenial, and his politics (as a romantic reactionary of sorts) were indeed drawn from his philosophy so not at all an aberration. But that's another matter.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I think Willow articulated the basic position much better than I could have.

Quoting Erik

Ad hominem.

No, it isn't.

Quoting Erik

Disagree.

Congratulations.

Quoting Erik

Then please disabuse me of my ignorance and point out pre-modern examples.

Since at least the Pre-Socratics, I would say, the distinction and relation between the real and the ideal has been recognized as a problem. Various forms of idealism (Platonic in origin) and skepticism were extant and known to exist throughout the ancient and medieval world. That ancient and medieval philosophers did not operate under the same level of clarity that modern philosophers have since Descartes concerning this problem I fully concede, but the rudiments of the problem were there nonetheless and wrestled with accordingly.

I agree somewhat that Schopenhauer was more accurate than anyone else. Part of me believes that he just had the guts to say what everyone else was secretly thinking.

At the same time, though, he missed a lot. He missed the human need for movement, action, rebellion, domination, ideas that came most significantly from Nietzsche and Camus. Schopenhauer comes across to myself as someone who rejects the world instead of at least trying to work with it. We need not be masochistic and embrace the world (as some readings of Nietzsche's amor fati may seem to recommend). But neither can we actually fully reject the world.

I've been reading a bit of Levinas recently, and some of what he has to say is really interesting. For example, Levinas thought that our ethical duties were solely to other people and not ourselves (altruism). He also thought that "life is joy" with the story of the condemned telling the hangman "just five more minutes, please" before being hung, remarking that the very act of breathing was joyous. He thought joy came before craving, as without joy there's nothing to crave. It seems that Levinas thought that if you weren't suffering, you were happy. Whereas Schopenhauer thought you were either suffering or dying of boredom, with the brief intermission of contentment.

That's not to say I completely agree with his ideas. They seem a bit too optimistic for my liking - the world largely is a sorry place. But Levinas' ideas are certainly a nice change from the doom-and-gloom of Schopenhauer, whom I believe accused everyone else of rose-tinted glasses while simultaneously wearing shit-tinted ones. More precisely I think that the intermission between boredom and suffering is not nearly as brief or episodic as Schopenhauer thought.

Levinas' idea of joy reminds me of the Buddhist concept of understanding and "inner peace". When suffering is removed, what remains? Peace and understanding. It was always there to begin with - just masked by tanha and other distractions and pains. It's not as if there's just an empty void when suffering is removed. There's always a silver lining underneath.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Briefly, 20th century existentialism mistakes a revolt against a cultural heritage for a perennial human condition: the notion that the world is absurd is only sensical when framed against a background that expects a totalizing sense to be imposed on it, and when this pathos is removed, so is the feeling of absurdity.

Schopenhauer's thought is more timeless and interesting, but I'm not sure it covers or even pretends to cover the same ground. He was the first deconstructor of his own philosophy in Vol. 2 of WWR, though he probably didn't see it that way, and the notion of Will as timeless thing in itself starts to break down there. The kind of lack Schop. talks about has a metaphysical grounding, whereas the existentialist thesis is precisely that it is because of a lack of such a grounding. There is a difference between seeing the essence of man as willing, and seeing man as devoid of essence (prior to existence). In that sense I think there's no substantive agreement between the two views -- Schop. is religious, eternalistic, and salvific, the existentialists are atheistic, temporalistic, and revel in a lack of salvation.

Quoting The Great Whatever

Schop. is religious, eternalistic, and salvific, the existentialists are atheistic, temporalistic, and revel in a lack of salvation.

I agree. Schopenhauer really shouldn't be associated with nihilism. Although he certainly was an atheist.

Yeah, Schop must have had it all figured out, clearly his mind was perpetually being blown.

Reply to Wosret His hair had a "Will" of its own...a-hah!.... >:O

Reply to darthbarracuda

:D