The World as Will and Representation (WWR;
German: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,
WWV) is the central work of the German philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was
published in 1818/1819, the second expanded
edition in 1844, and the third expanded edition
in 1859. In 1948, an abridged version was
edited by Thomas Mann.
== English translations ==
In the English language, this work is known
under three different titles. Although English
publications about Schopenhauer played a role
in the recognition of his fame as a philosopher
in later life (1851 until his death in 1860)
and a three volume translation by R. B. Haldane
and J. Kemp, titled The World as Will and
Idea, appeared already in 1883–1886, the
first English translation of the expanded
edition of this work under this title The
World as Will and Representation appeared
by E. F. J. Payne (who also translated several
other works of Schopenhauer) as late as in
1958 (paperback editions in 1966 and 1969).
A later English translation by Richard E.
Aquila in collaboration with David Carus is
titled The World as Will and Presentation
(2008).Present-day translator Richard Aquila
argues that the reader will not grasp the
details of the philosophy of Schopenhauer
properly without this new title: "The World
as Will and Presentation". According to him,
"Idea", "Representation", and "Presentation"
are all acceptable renderings of the word
Vorstellung, but it is the notion of a performance
or a theatrical presentation that is key in
his interpretation. The world that we perceive
is a "presentation" of objects in the theatre
of our own mind; the observers, the "subject",
each craft the show with their own stage managers,
stagehands, sets, lighting, code of dress,
pay scale, etc. The other aspect of the world,
the Will, or "thing in itself", which is not
perceivable as a presentation, exists outside
time, space, and causality. Aquila claims
to make these distinctions as linguistically
precise as possible.
== Relationship to earlier philosophical work
==
The main body of the work states at the beginning
that it assumes prior knowledge of Immanuel
Kant's theories, and Schopenhauer is regarded
by some as remaining more faithful to Kant's
metaphysical system of transcendental idealism
than any of the other later German Idealists.
However, the book contains an appendix entitled
"Critique of the Kantian philosophy," in which
Schopenhauer rejects most of Kant's ethics
and significant parts of his epistemology
and aesthetics. Schopenhauer demands that
the introduction be read before the book itself,
although it is not fully contained in this
book but appeared earlier under the title
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason. He also states in his introduction
that the reader will be at his best prepared
to understand his theories if he has lingered
in the school of Plato or he is already familiar
with Indian philosophy.
Schopenhauer believed that Kant had ignored
inner experience, as intuited through the
will, which was the most important form of
experience. Schopenhauer saw the human will
as our one window to the world behind the
representation; the Kantian thing-in-itself.
He believed, therefore, that we could gain
knowledge about the thing-in-itself, something
Kant said was impossible, since the rest of
the relationship between representation and
thing-in-itself could be understood by analogy
to the relationship between human will and
human body. According to Schopenhauer, the
entire world is the representation of a single
Will, of which our individual wills are phenomena.
In this way, Schopenhauer's metaphysics go
beyond the limits that Kant had set, but do
not go so far as the rationalist system-builders
who preceded Kant. Other important differences
are Schopenhauer's rejection of eleven of
Kant's twelve categories, arguing that only
causality was important. Matter and causality
were both seen as a union of time and space
and thus being equal to each other.
Schopenhauer frequently acknowledges drawing
on Plato in the development of his theories
and, particularly in the context of aesthetics,
speaks of the Platonic forms as existing on
an intermediate ontological level between
the representation and the Will.
== Development of the work ==
The development of Schopenhauer's ideas took
place very early in his career (1814–1818)
and culminated in the publication of the first
volume of Will and Representation in 1819.
This first volume consisted of four books
– covering his epistemology, ontology, aesthetics
and ethics, in order. Much later in his life,
in 1844, Schopenhauer published a second edition
in two volumes, the first a virtual reprint
of the original, and the second a new work
consisting of clarifications to and additional
reflections on the first. His views had not
changed substantially.
His belated fame after 1851 stimulated renewed
interest in his seminal work, and led to a
third and final edition with 136 more pages
in 1859, one year before his death. In the
preface to the latter, Schopenhauer noted:
"If I also have at last arrived, and have
the satisfaction at the end of my life of
seeing the beginning of my influence, it is
with the hope that, according to an old rule,
it will last longer in proportion to the lateness
of its beginning."
== Will ==
Schopenhauer used the word will as a human's
most familiar designation for the concept
that can also be signified by other words
such as desire, striving, wanting, effort,
and urging. Schopenhauer's philosophy holds
that all nature, including man, is the expression
of an insatiable will to life.
It is through the will that mankind finds
all their suffering. Desire for more is what
causes this suffering. He argues that only
aesthetic pleasure creates momentary escape
from the Will. The concept of desire has strong
parallels in Buddhist thought. Buddhism identifies
the individual's pervasive sense of dissatisfaction
as driving craving, roughly similar to what
Schopenhauer would call the will to life.
Both assert that remedies for this condition
include contemplative activities.
=== Epistemology (Book 1) ===
As mentioned above, Schopenhauer's notion
of the will comes from the Kantian thing-in-itself,
which Kant believed to be the fundamental
reality behind the representation that provided
the matter of perception, but lacked form.
Kant believed that space, time, causation,
and many other similar phenomena belonged
properly to the form imposed on the world
by the human mind in order to create the representation,
and these factors were absent from the thing-in-itself.
Schopenhauer pointed out that anything outside
of time and space could not be differentiated,
so the thing-in-itself must be one and all
things that exist, including human beings,
must be part of this fundamental unity. Our
inner-experience must be a manifestation of
the noumenal realm and the will is the inner
kernel of every being. All knowledge gained
of objects is seen as self-referential, as
we recognize the same will in other things
as is inside us.
=== Ontology (Book 2) ===
In Book 2, electricity and gravity are described
as fundamental forces of the will. Knowledge
is something that was invented to serve the
will and is present in both human and non-human
animals. It is subordinate to the demands
of the will for all animals and most humans.
The fundamental nature of the universe and
everything in it is seen as this will. Schopenhauer
presents a pessimistic picture on which unfulfilled
desires are painful, and pleasure is merely
the sensation experienced at the instant one
such pain is removed. However, most desires
are never fulfilled, and those that are fulfilled
are instantly replaced by more unfulfilled
ones.
=== Aesthetics (Book 3) ===
Like many other aesthetic theories, Schopenhauer's
centers on the concept of genius. Genius,
according to Schopenhauer, is possessed by
all people in varying degrees and consists
of the capacity for aesthetic experience.
An aesthetic experience occurs when an individual
perceives an object and understands by it
not the individual object itself, but the
Platonic form of the object. The individual
is then able to lose himself in the object
of contemplation and, for a brief moment,
escape the cycle of unfulfilled desire by
becoming "the pure subject of will-less knowing".
Those who have a high degree of genius can
be taught to communicate these aesthetic experiences
to others, and objects that communicate these
experiences are works of art. Based on this
theory, Schopenhauer viewed Dutch still-life
as the best type of painting, because it was
able to help viewers see beauty in ordinary,
everyday objects. However, he sharply criticized
depictions of nude women and prepared food,
as these stimulate desire and thus hinder
the viewer from the aesthetic experience and
becoming "the pure subject of will-less knowing".
Music also occupies a privileged place in
Schopenhauer's aesthetics, as he believed
it to have a special relationship to the will.
Where other forms of art are imitations of
things perceived in the world, music is a
direct expression and articulation of the
will.
=== Ethics (Book 4) ===
Schopenhauer claims in this book to set forth
a purely descriptive account of human ethical
behavior, in which he identifies two types
of behavior: the affirmation and denial of
the will.
According to Schopenhauer, the Will (the great
Will that is the thing-in-itself, not the
individual wills of humans and animals, which
are phenomena of the Will) conflicts with
itself through the egoism that every human
and animal is endowed with. Compassion arises
from a transcendence of this egoism (the penetration
of the illusory perception of individuality,
so that one can empathise with the suffering
of another) and can serve as a clue to the
possibility of going beyond desire and the
will. Schopenhauer categorically denies the
existence of the "freedom of the will" in
the conventional sense, and only adumbrates
how the will can be "released" or negated,
but is not subject to change, and serves as
the root of the chain of causal determinism.
His praise for asceticism led him to think
highly of Buddhism and Vedanta Hinduism, as
well as some monastic orders and ascetic practices
found in Catholicism. He expressed contempt
for Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam, which
he saw as optimistic, devoid of metaphysics
and cruel to non-human animals. According
to Schopenhauer, the deep truth of the matter
is that in cases of the over-affirmation of
the will – that is, cases where one individual
exerts his will not only for its own fulfillment
but for the improper domination of others
– he is unaware that he is really identical
with the person he is harming, so that the
Will in fact constantly harms itself, and
justice is done in the moment in which the
crime is committed, since the same metaphysical
individual is both the perpetrator and the
victim.
Schopenhauer discusses suicide at length,
noting that it does not actually destroy the
Will or any part of it in any substantial
way, since death is merely the end of one
particular phenomenon of the Will, which is
subsequently rearranged. By asceticism, the
ultimate denial of the will, one can slowly
weaken the individual will in a way that is
far more significant than violent suicide,
which is, in fact, in some sense an affirmation
of the will.
According to Schopenhauer, denial of the will
to live is the way to salvation from suffering.
"Schopenhauer tells us that when the will
is denied, the sage becomes nothing, without
actually dying." When willing disappears,
both the willer and the world become nothing.
"...[T]o one who has achieved the will-less
state, it is the world of the willer that
has been disclosed as 'nothing'. Its hold
over us, its seeming reality, has been 'abolished'
so that it now stands before us as nothing
but a bad dream from which we are, thankfully,
awaking." As Schopenhauer wrote: "...to those
in whom the will has turned and denied itself,
this very real world of ours, with all its
Suns and Milky Ways, is – nothing."
=== 
Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy (Appendix)
===
At the end of Book 4, Schopenhauer appended
a thorough discussion of the merits and faults
of Kant's philosophy. Schopenhauer's critique
of the Kantian philosophy asserted that Kant's
greatest error was the failure to distinguish
between perceptual, intuitive knowledge, or
insight and conceptual, discursive knowledge,
or investigative thinking. One of Kant's greatest
contributions, according to Schopenhauer,
was the distinction of the phenomenon from
the thing-in-itself.
== Volume 2 ==
The second volume consisted of several essays
expanding topics covered in the first. Most
important are his reflections on death and
his theory on sexuality, which saw it as a
manifestation of the whole will making sure
that it will live on and depriving humans
of their reason and sanity in their longing
for their loved ones. Less successful is his
theory of genetics: he argued that humans
inherit their will, and thus their character,
from their fathers, but their intellect from
their mothers and he provides examples from
biographies of great figures to illustrate
this theory. The second volume also contains
attacks on contemporary philosophers such
as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
The contents of Volume II are as follows.
== Influence ==
The first decades after its publication The
World as Will and Representation was met with
near silence. Exceptions were Goethe and Jean
Paul. Goethe immediately started to read the
magnum opus of Schopenhauer when it arrived
and "read it with an eagerness as she [Ottilie
von Goethe] had never before seen in him.".
Goethe told his daughter-in-law that he had
now pleasure for an entire year, because he
would read it completely, contrary to his
custom of sampling pages to his liking. The
influence of Schopenhauer can be read in Gespräche
mit Goethe and Urworte. Orphisch.
In the years where the work was largely ignored,
Jean Paul praised it as “a work of philosophical
genius, bold, universal, full of penetration
and profoundness — but of a depth often
hopeless and bottomless, akin to that melancholy
lake in Norway, in whose deep water, beneath
the steep rock-walls, one never sees the sun,
but only stars reflected.”, on which Schopenhauer
commented: “In my opinion the praise of
one man of genius fully makes good the neglect
of a thoughtless multitude.”This neglect
came to an end in the last years of his life.
Schopenhauer would become the most influentual
philosopher in Germany until World War I.
Especially artists were attracted to the work.
No philosopher had given so much importance
to art: one fourth of The World as Will and
Representation is concerned with aesthetics.
To be mentioned are Wagner (Influence of Schopenhauer
on Tristan und Isolde), Schönberg, Mahler,
who cites The World as Will and Representation
as “the most profound writing on music he
had ever encountered”, Thomas Mann, Hermann
Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, Tolstoy, D. H. Lawrence
and Samuel Beckett.
The philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Philipp
Mainländer both described the discovery of
The World as Will and Representation as a
revelation. Nietzsche commented, “I belong
to those readers of Schopenhauer who know
perfectly well, after they have turned the
first page, that they will read all the others,
and listen to every word that he has spoken.”
Charles Darwin quoted The World as Will and
Representation in The Descent of Man. Some
read ideas in it that can be found in the
theory of evolution, for example, that sexual
instinct is a tool of nature to ensure the
quality of the offspring and that intellect
is a mere means to preserve life. Schopenhauer
argued in favor of transformism by pointing
to one of the most important and familiar
evidences of the truth of the theory of descent,
the homologies in the inner structure of all
the vertebrates.Schopenhauer's ideas on the
unconscious can be found in psychoanalysis
and the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
Whereas Jung acknowledged Schopenhauer's influence,
Freud denied to have read Schopenhauer until
late in life, a claim which is considered
to be doubtful.Schopenhauer's discussions
of language and ethics were a major influence
on Ludwig Wittgenstein.Schopenhauer's views
on the independence of spatially separated
systems, the principium individuationis, influenced
Einstein, who called him a genius. Schrödinger
put the Schopenhauerian label on a folder
of papers in his files “Collection of Thoughts
on the physical Principium individuationis
