The World as Will and Representation: §17–24 (Part 4)
A Reading Guide with Notes and Discussion Questions
Hello friends,
This is a reading guide for Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, translated by E.F.J Payne. Most of what you will find here is a summary of the text with interpolated notes and commentary in brackets or parentheses.
If you would like to review the background material for The World as Will and Representation, please see my introduction in Part 1.
§17: Why we cannot understand the true nature of the world through representation alone
Abstract representations have meaning only in reference to representations of perception i.e., concepts have meaning only in relation to percepts. But what is the nature of representations of perception—how are they understood, why do they speak to us so directly and acquire an interest that engrosses our entire nature?
With the exception of sceptics and idealists, most think objects are the basis of perception. The object cannot be other than the representation of a subject since, as we have discussed, subject and object presuppose one another. Representations are seemingly bound to one another and given ordinary, regular form by the principle of sufficient reason i.e. all representations adhere to the same rules; they all abide by the principle of sufficient reason.
Now, if we seek more information about the nature of representations, we can turn to math which tells us the “how-many” and “how-large.” It can tell us about the necessary forms of our experience (space/time) and the relation of one representation to another in space and time, but it cannot tell us much more than this.
But we can also look to science for help. Science looks at two things: morphology (the structure of things) and etiology (the explanation of changes). Science tells us about why things appear the way they do but it doesn’t give us information about the inner nature of phenomena, the so called natural force. This natural force manifests with unalterable constancy in reality and is called the law of nature. Science allows us to predict how stones fall (physics), but the inner force that causes gravitation is still very mysterious. Science, in essence, gives us a record of inexplicable forces interacting. If the world is a block of marble, we know only the veins as they appear on the outside of the block but can’t discern their inward paths. Or similarly, it is as if we are introduced to a group of men who all introduce themselves as related to each other but we know not our relation to the group.
If this world were only representation, it would surely pass by us as an empty dream or ghostly vision. Perhaps it is something else, something in addition to representation. If so, what? This something must be fundamentally different from representation and thus we cannot reach it from or through representation. And we cannot reach it through sciences that merely combine representations or explain them by reference to other representations.
§18: The body and the will
If we were just floating knowledge with no body, we could never reach the answer and determine what the world is in itself, but we do not experience the world as floating knowledge with no body. We are embodied and experience the world in this way. Our body occurs to us as a representation like any other, except that it is distinguished in one way. The movements of man’s own body are not subject merely to the laws of nature; man’s body is subject also to his will. This is the inner mechanism of his being and the natural force beneath the phenomena. The action of the body is nothing but the act of the will objectified. Indeed, the whole body is nothing but the objectified will. The will is knowledge a priori of the body, and the body is knowledge a posteriori of the will; i.e., the will is the necessary condition of the body, which is only the objectification of the will.
Resolutions for the future are not acts of the will but merely deliberations about what will be willed in the future. Until it is acted upon, it exists only in reason, only in the abstract. Every impression on the body is also at once and directly an impression on the will. This impression is called pain when it is contrary to the will and pleasure when in accordance with the will. Pain and pleasure are not representations but “immediate affections of the will in its phenomenon.” Some impressions on the body do not immediately rouse the will—sight, hearing, touch, etc.—and thus can be considered mere representations absent immediate pain or pleasure. (Schopenhauer will discuss this more later, but the basic theory is that taste and smell are inherently pleasant or unpleasant i.e., painful or pleasurable, and thus taste and smell rouse the will in ways that sight, hearing, and touch do not.) Emotions are vehement and excessive movements of the will. These emotions agitate “the body and its inner workings.” The will directly affects the body.
Knowledge of our will cannot be separated from knowledge of the body. We know our will only in its acts; hence, we know it only in space and time. The body is the condition of knowledge of the will.
“My body and my will are one; or, What as representation of perception I call my body, I call my will in so far as I am conscious of it in an entirely different way comparable with no other; or, My body is the objectivity of my will; or, Apart from the fact that my body is my representation, it is still my will, and so on.”
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