Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung

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1. dav_OzAug 2025
   For me largley shaped by the westering old Europe creaking and breaking (after 2 WWs) under its heavy load of philosophical/metaphysical inheritance (which at this point in time can be considered effectively americanized).

   It is still fascinating to trace back the divergent developments like american-flavoured christian sects or philosophical schools of "pragmatism", "rationalism" etc. which get super-charged by technological disruptions.

   In my youth I was heavily influenced by the so-called Bildung which can be functionally thought of as a form of ersatz religion and is maybe better exemplified in the literary tradition of the Bildungsroman.

   I've grappled with and wildly fantasized about all sorts of things, experimented mindlessly with all kinds of modes of thinking and consciousness amidst my coming-of-age, in hindsight without this particular frame of Bildung left by myself I would have been left utterly confused and maybe at some point acted out on it. By engaging with books like Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann or Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften by Robert Musil, my apparent madness was calmed down and instead of breaking the dam of a forming social front of myself with the vastness of the unconsciousness, over time I was guided to develop my own way into slowly operating it appropriately without completely blowing myself up into a messiah or finding myself eternally trapped in the futility and hopelessness of existence.

   Borrowing from my background, one effective vaccination which spontaneously came up in my mind against rationalists sects described here, is Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung which can be read as a radical continuation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason which was trying to stress test the ratio itself. [To demonstrate the breadth of Bildung in even something like the physical sciences e.g. Einstein was familiar with Kant's a priori framework of space and time, Heisenberg's autobiographical book Der Teil und das Ganze was motivated by: "I wanted to show that science is done by people, and the most wonderful ideas come from dialog".]

   Schopenhauer arrives at the realization because of the groundwork done by Kant (which he heavily acknowledges): that there can't even exist a rational basis for rationality itself, that it is simply an exquisitely disguised tool in the service of the more fundamental will i.e. by its definition an irrational force.

   Funny little thought experiment but what consequences does this have? Well, if you are declaring the ratio as your ultima ratio you are just fooling yourself in order to be able to rationalize anything you want. Once internalized Schopenhauer's insight gets you overwhelmed by Mitleid for every conscious being, inoculating you against the excesses of your own ratio. It instantly hit me with the same force as MDMA but several years before.

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2. rjbworkJan 2018
   I read his magnum opus in college: The World as Will and Representation (in german, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung). It's quite long and dense, but essentially presents a kind of dualistic philosophy that doesn't necessarily need any kind of supernatural mechanisms.

   I don't necessarily subscribe to his beliefs or world view, but I found them quite interesting. I particularly enjoyed the later stages of the book that discussed pessimism, suicide, why suicide is not the correct answer to pretty much any problem, and other such "dark" themes. Anyone can write the "happy path" of philosophy, so to speak, but Schopenhauer clearly trod a more melancholy path.

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3. ablealMay 2014
   He might say that, but I think "language-game" is not quite the right take.

   Anyways, to shore up my impression I looked up "Schopenhauer eastern philosophy" and hit a few things. The "Schopenhauer and Buddhism" piece by Peter Abelson ( at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/peter2.htm ) seems good:

   "When the tenets of Buddhism became known in Europe during the third and fourth decade of the nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer was delighted with the affinity they showed to his own philosophy. Having completed his main work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung as early as 1818, he considered it an entirely new (and thus pure) expression of the wisdom once taught by the Buddha."

   I would have been gladder if the original article, by a professional philosopher, which I am not, had said something about this.

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