The World as Will and Representation: Introduction (Part 1)

A Reading Guide with Notes and Discussion Questions

A few weeks ago, I began reading the E.F.J Payne translation of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation Vol. 1. So far as I can tell, there seems to be very little lecture material or critical scholarly material available on Schopenhauer generally, and there is even less material available on The World as Will and Representation which has fallen out of academic favor. For that reason, I thought a comprehensive guide might be helpful.

Beginning next week, I will be posting a collection of my reading notes organized by section. I will try to divide the book into manageable chunks that can be read gradually over 6-10 weeks. This is an unambitious reading schedule, but I think difficult philosophical texts are best perused slowly and with the help of a competent guide. I hope not that what’s written here will serve as any kind of definitive interpretation but simply that this outline will inspire others to work through a fairly dense but exceedingly fruitful and rewarding text.

I believe in many ways that one should approach primary sources naively and without any preconceived interpretive framework. For that reason, I’ve tried to do as little creative interpretation as possible. I will provide some relevant discussion questions which occurred to me in the course of reading but essentially what one will find here is a summary.

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Before we begin with Schopenhauer, we have to look back to Kant and Hume. Since Kant has one of the most complex and integrated systems in the history of philosophy, it would be folly for me to attempt to convey the entire system here. But what I will do is provide a sketch of the problem posed by David Hume and a summary of Kant’s solution. We can then see how Schopenhauer responds to Kant in The World as Will and Representation Vol. 1.

N.B.—What you will find below is a condensed version of roughly 100 years of philosophy. Naturally, much has been simplified or omitted for the sake of clarity and brevity.

The Problem Posed by Hume:

Examining the world empirically, Hume reaches two major conclusions.

1. In experience, there are only individual sensory impressions, and there is no necessary way to integrate these into objective entities. What we call “objects” or “entities” or the “self” are merely bundles of sensory impressions we associate with one another by force of habit, but there is no necessary or objective unity to them. There are no identifiable entities, only disintegrated bundles of qualities. What we call a “billiard ball” is just an arbitrary grouping of sensory impressions: hardness, roundness, smoothness that we habitually associate with one another as belonging to one and the same thing.

2. There is no empirical evidence for causation. It cannot be discovered in experience. All we observe is a sequence of events. When a rock is thrown at a window, we see the rock, we see the plane of glass, and a moment later we see the shards, but no matter how close we get, no matter how fine our tools, we will never see causation itself. There is thus no empirical reason to believe that causation exists. If causation does not exist, this means that there is no logical necessity in any succession of events and that we cannot speak of entities as existing in any kind of causal or necessary relation to one another. We cannot say, for instance, that rocks sink in water because of their nature. All we can say is that so far as we have seen, all rocks sink. But it’s entirely possible that rocks might float tomorrow and indeed, Hume would say, there would be nothing logically incoherent about such an occurrence. In the absence of causation, there is no evidence that regular and predictable events in the past must remain so in the future. Everything we observe is a contingency. It happens to be the case but it could be otherwise.

If, contra Hume, we proposed a metaphysics that suggests that there are entities in reality, that those entities have certain properties and act according to their nature, Hume would reject this on the basis that “entities” do not exist. But even if we did perceive entities directly, Hume would say that we cannot speak of entities acting in a certain way according to or because of their nature, as this would presuppose causality for which we have no empirical evidence.

Obviously, the universe Hume describes here is shattered and disintegrated. His metaphysics are really a kind of anti-metaphysics that precludes any stable knowledge or understanding of reality.

Kant’s Starting Point:

Kant inherits from Hume a completely disintegrated world and attempts to put the scattered pieces of the puzzle back together. To do this, he concludes, we need to retrieve necessity from the abyss of Humean skepticism. Kant agrees with Hume that we can’t get necessity from experience alone; we can’t look at what is the case and logically derive what must be the case. We cannot examine a rock and, from this alone, logically conclude that it must sink in water. We can get logical necessity from propositions like “all squares have 4 sides” but this, Kant says, doesn’t tell us any facts about reality. It simply expresses what must be the case based on the definitions of the terms. A square must have 4 sides, or it wouldn’t be a square. The opposite of any such proposition would be a contradiction.

Kant’s problem is thus: “relations of ideas” (all squares have 4 sides) get us necessity but don’t tell us facts about reality; “matters of fact” (rocks sink in water) give us facts about reality but they are always contingent. They could be otherwise (a rock that sinks is not a logical contradiction since one could imagine some possible universe where this is in fact the case). To refute Hume, Kant needs necessary facts about reality that aren’t reliant on experience.

Kant uses a few technical terms to describe this problem: analytic and synthetic; and a priori and a posteriori. Analytic and synthetic map quite well onto what Hume describes as “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact.” Analytic propositions express a tautological proposition, the opposite of which would be a contradiction in terms. They are called analytic because simply by analyzing the definition of the subject term you can derive the entire tautology. “All brothers are male” is a classic example. If you are a brother, you must be male. This is contained in the definition of brother. If you are female, you cannot be someone’s brother. Thus, simply by analyzing the meaning of the subject (brothers) we can derive the predicate (are male) logically. Like Hume’s “relations of ideas,” analytic propositions do not give us any facts about reality. They simply express the definition of the terms and can be established by logic alone. Synthetic propositions tell us “matters of fact,” i.e. facts about reality that cannot be established by logic alone—“rocks sink in water.” The predicate (sink in water) cannot be logically derived from the subject (rocks). Synthetic propositions, says Kant, tell us more than merely the relationship between the terms. Synthetic propositions tell us a specific fact, but they don’t get us necessity. Rocks sinking in water is a brute contingent fact. The opposite case, “rocks float in water” is not a contradiction in terms; a female brother, however, is a contradiction in terms.

A priori refers to knowledge that is independent of experience. A posteriori refers to knowledge contingent on experience. “All brothers are male,” says Kant, can be established a priori. We need experience to form the concepts brother and male but once we have this information, we can establish the truth of the proposition as a matter of pure logic. This is not the case with the sinking rocks which can only be established through experience or a posteriori. If we have the concept of rock and the concept of sinking in water we can’t establish as a matter of pure logic that rocks necessarily sink in water.

Applying this terminology, Kant is trying to derive synthetic a priori propositions. In other words, Kant wants to prove that we can know facts about reality that are necessary. If these facts are necessary, they can only be known independent of experience. Hence, synthetic a priori. This is the goal of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant’s Solution:

Kant concludes that synthetic a priori propositions are possible because inherent structures of the mind perform certain preconscious synthesizing functions. These functions group sensory data and determine prior to experience how these data must appear to creatures like us. Reality provides the matter, the material; the mind imposes form on that material.

Many automatic functions of the mind impose form on experience, says Kant, but the most basic forms imposed by the mind are those of space and time. Space and time are not concepts that we learn and then consciously apply to experience; they are the forms of our intuition—they are the automatic ways that the mind organizes sensory data prior to experience. Space and time are what Kant calls the a priori principles of sensibility.¹ If Kant can validate the claim that such synthesizing structures of the mind exist and determine the necessary forms of experience, then synthetic a priori propositions are possible. If Kant can prove, for instance, as a matter of pure logic, that all experience must occur in time and space, then it is possible to know facts about reality prior to experience, and Kant has solved the problem posed by Hume.

Since, as Hume and Kant have stated, we cannot get necessity from experience, we cannot prove synthetic a priori propositions inductively. Synthetic a priori propositions must be true as a matter of pure logic—they must be deduced. We must examine our experience and determine what is logically necessary, what is logically required for the existence of human experience. In short, we must discover the necessary forms of experience. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just use the example of space again. “Space,” says Kant “is a necessary representation, a priori, that is the ground of all outer intuitions. One can never represent that there is no space, though one can very well think that there are no objects to be encountered in it. It is therefore to be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, not as a determination dependent on them, and is an a priori representation that necessarily grounds outer appearances.”² In other words, one could represent a world without color; one could imagine life in black and white. Similarly, one could imagine a world with no sound, but one could never “represent that there is no space.” All sensory experiences must be somewhere. You could imagine a car with no sound, but you can’t imagine a car that isn’t in space. Even if you imagine the car floating in a black void, the car itself still takes up space and is itself spatial. Kant concludes “We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which, as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. This doctrine I call transcendental idealism.”³ Time and space are thus “empirically real,” meaning they are objective and valid features of our experience, but “transcendentally ideal,” meaning that they are subjective forms of our intuition which would not exist if you were to move outside the standpoint of human consciousness. This established, Kant moves on to the a priori principles of the understanding, but this is beyond our purposes here.

Arguing in this manner, Kant attempts to prove that the mind has certain automatic functions that determine the necessary form of our experience. But because these synthesizing functions act on sensory data prior to experience, we can never perceive reality as it really is, i.e. sensory data as it exists before form is imposed by the mind. Nevertheless, Kant believes that there still must be a reality in itself behind experience “otherwise,” Kant says “the absurd sentence would follow that there would be an appearance without something that appears.”⁴ In other words, there must be some source of the information that is processed and structured by our minds. This source of the information i.e. the world as it is in itself, Kant calls the noumenal world. The world of our experience, the world of appearances, Kant calls the phenomenal world.

The World as Will and Representation:

Schopenhauer, like many in the post-Kantian tradition, inherits most of Kant’s metaphysical and epistemological framework. Schopenhauer employs Kant’s terminology (a priori, a posteriori, transcendental idealism, the thing-in-itself, etc.), and accepts many of Kant’s basic propositions. The World as Will and Representation critiques, supplements, and comments on Kant’s work, but also offers plenty of new and substantive philosophical contributions from Schopenhauer himself. To say that the work is merely another dull attempt to complete the system of German Idealism is to sell it short, for there is so much personality here, there are so many gemlike passages and brilliant metaphors that even the most dense metaphysical passages seem light and airy and imaginative compared to Kant’s slow, heavy, tortuous prose.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a valiant attempt to preserve the possibility of objective knowledge about reality, created several major philosophical problems, many of which concern the nature of the thing-in-itself. In short, Kant’s system concluded that we can know necessary facts about the nature of our experience but we can’t know anything about the world as it really is. As Nicholas Stang remarks, “Kant is committed to both of the following theses: (Existence) There are things in themselves. (Humility) We know nothing about things in themselves. While these are not, strictly speaking, incompatible, they are in tension, for Humility appears to remove any warrant Kant might have for asserting Existence.”⁵ In other words, if we don’t know anything about the thing in itself, how can we know that it exists at all? If we suggest, as Kant seems to, that there must be a causal explanation for our experiences (behind appearances there must be something that appears) and that this logically implies the existence of the thing in itself, we encounter further difficulties. How can things in themselves causally affect us if, as we learn later in the critique, causation is an a priori form of understanding contributed by the mind? If causation is transcendentally ideal and governs only the world of appearances, then we cannot attribute causal explanations to the thing-in-itself since this would imply that causation is transcendentally real and functions both in the world of appearances and in the world as it really is, prior to experience.

As we will see next week, these are some of the difficulties Schopenhauer will try to overcome in his own work, The World as Will and Representation.

Conclusion:

This concludes my summary of the problem Schopenhauer inherits from Kant. If my summary feels insufficient or if you have further questions, you can read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. If you don’t want to read the whole Critique, you can read Bryan Hall’s The Arguments of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which serves as both a critical companion and a competent academic summary. H.J Paton’s two-volume Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience is harder to find but similarly well-regarded. If you prefer an online source, check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on Transcendental Idealism.

If you want a more complete intellectual history of empiricism and a better understanding of the problems Kant hopes to solve, you can read John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), George Berkeley’s A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740). This is a lot to read, so perhaps I will compile some excerpts and post a link. This is not mandatory, however, and should be considered optional background material.

1. First Kant discusses a priori principles of sensibility (space and time) and then a priori principles of understanding (the categories). Understanding is “the way in which we think about the objects that are given to us in intuition” (Hall, 57). Kant describes how we take representations offered to us in sensibility, i.e. in space-time, and classify them under concepts of the understanding.

2. AXXIV/BXXXVIII-BXXXIX

3. A491/B519

4. Critique of Pure Reason, BXXVI

5. Stang, Nicholas F., "Kant’s Transcendental Idealism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy