A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Second Edition (28 page)

The philosophy of will begins from the well-known paradox of the thing-in-itself. Transcendental idealism, Schopenhauer argues, implies that the empirical world exists only as representation: ‘every
object,
whatever its origin, is, as
object,
already conditioned by the subject, and thus is essentially only the subject’s
representation
.’ A representation is a subjective state that has been ordered according to space, time and causality—the primary forms of sensibility and understanding. So long as we turn our thoughts towards the natural world, the search for the thing-in-itself behind the representation is futile. Every argument and every experience leads only to the same end: the system of representations, standing like a veil between the subject and the thing-in-itself. No scientific investigation can penetrate the veil; and yet it
is
only a veil, Schopenhauer affirms, a tissue of illusions which we can, if we choose, penetrate by another means. He lavishly praises the Hindu writers for perceiving this.

The way to penetrate the veil, according to Schopenhauer, was stumbled upon by Kant, though he did not see the significance of his own arguments. In self-knowledge I am confronted precisely with that which cannot be known as appearance, since it is the source of all appearances: the transcendental subject. To know this subject as object is precisely not to know it, but to confront once again the veil of representation. But I can know it
as subject
through the immediate and non-conceptual awareness that I have of the will—in short, through practical reason. This leads Schopenhauer to the following conclusion:

on the path of
objective knowledge,
thus starting from the
representation,
we shall never get beyond the representation, i.e. the phenomenon. We shall therefore remain at the outside of things; we shall never be able to penetrate into their inner nature, and investigate what they are in themselves. So far I agree with Kant. But now, as the counterpoise to this truth, I have stressed the other truth that we are not merely the
knowing subject,
but that we
ourselves
are also among those entities we require to know, that
we ourselves are the thing-in-itself.
Consequently, a way from
within
stands open to us to that real inner nature of things to which we cannot penetrate
from without.
It is, so to speak, a subterranean passage, a secret alliance, which, as if by treachery, places us all at once in the fortress that could not be taken from outside.

My essence is will (Kant’s ‘practical reason’), and my immediate and non-conceptual awareness of myself is awareness of will. But I can know the will, even in my own case, only as phenomenon, since all my knowledge, including inner awareness, is subject to the form of time. At the same time (Schopenhauer does not really explain how) the true nature of will as thing-in-itself is revealed to me. I know that will is one and immutable, embodied in the transient will to live of individual creatures, but in itself boundless and eternal.

What then is the relation of the will to the individual subject? Schopenhauer’s answer is framed in terms taken from Leibniz. I am an individual, and identified as such by means of a
principium individuationis
(a principle of individuation). It is only in the world of representation that such a principle can be found: things can be individuated only in space and time, and only when understood in terms of the web of causal connection. The thing-in-itself, which has neither spatial nor temporal nor causal relations, is therefore without a principle of identity. In no sense, therefore, am I
identical
with the will. All we can say is that will is
manifest
in me, trapped, as it were, into a condition of individual existence by its restless desire to embody itself in the world of representation. The will in itself is timeless and imperishable. It is the universal substratum from which every individual arises into the world of appearances, only to sink again after a brief and futile struggle for existence.

Will manifests itself among phenomena in two ways: as individual striving and as Idea. An Idea is something like a complete conception of the will, in so far as this can be grasped in the world of representation— it corresponds to the universal, not the particular, and it is therefore only in the species that the Idea is truly present to our perception. In the natural world, therefore, the species is favoured over the individual, since in the species the will to live finds a durable embodiment, while the individual, judged in himself, is a passing and dispensable aberration. Schopenhauer expresses the point in one of his many beautiful images:

Just as the spraying drops of the waterfall change with lightning rapidity, while the rainbow which they sustain remains immovably at rest, quite untouched by that restless change, so every Idea, i.e. every
species
of living beings remains entirely untouched by the constant changes of its individuals. But it is the
Idea
or the species in which the will-to-live is really rooted and manifests itself; therefore the will is really concerned only in the continuation of the species.

From this premise Schopenhauer derives a masterly portrait of nature’s indifference to the individual, in terms that anticipate evolutionary biology. His pessimism, which keenly inserts itself into every niche where people seek comfort and consolation, stems in part from his sociobiology. And it is in sociobiological terms that he spells out one of the most impressive theories of sexual love in the philosophical literature. However, Schopenhauer’s pessimism has other and more metaphysical roots. According to Schopenhauer individual existence is really a kind of mistake, yet one into which the will to live is constantly tempted by its need to show itself to itself as Idea. The will
falls
into individuality and exists for a while trapped in the world of representation, sundered from the calm ocean of eternity that is its home. Its life as an individual (my life) is really an expiation of original sin, ‘the crime of existence itself’.

Although intellect is in most things the slave of the will, helplessly commenting on processes that it cannot control, it has one gift within its power—the gift of renunciation. The intellect can overcome the will’s resistance to death, by showing that we have nothing to fear from death, which cannot extinguish the will, but only the veil that covers it. And though the thing which survives death is not an individual but the universal, this should not worry us, since it was the mistake of existing as an individual which caused all our suffering in the first place. In such a way Schopenhauer justifies suicide, a step that he himself showed no inclination to take.

The will infects all our thoughts and actions. Nevertheless, we can stand back from it, hold it in abeyance and see things objectively, independently of our transient goals. Then and only then can we be content with the world, having freed ourselves from the restless desire to change it. This detachment from the will comes through art and aesthetic experience. These must therefore be accorded the highest place in man’s self-understanding. Indeed, it is through one art in particular, that of music, that we comprehend what is otherwise permanently hidden from us, namely, the objective presentation of the will itself (as opposed to its subjective presentation in me). In music I hear not
my
will or
your
will, but the will detached from all individual striving, from all objects of desire and fear, and rendered objective and intelligible. Melodies and modulations present us with a movement that is purely
ideal,
and through which we glimpse the ocean of eternity. That is why, even in the stormiest symphony of Beethoven, we hear only the resolution of contending forces and the achievement of sublime consolation. In music the will plays with itself, like the waves above the ocean’s calm.

Schopenhauer’s many applications of his philosophy are worked out with imagination and panache, and in his essays he shows a remarkable ability to conjure from his system new, surprising, but always apt and penetrating observations of the human lot. His system was for daily use: not the abstract jargon of Fichte, but a weapon against the ‘unscrupulous optimism’ by which he saw himself surrounded. He enjoyed his pessimistic conclusions too much to convince the reader that he really believed in them; and his sardonic assaults on popular prejudice reveal a far greater attachment to life than to the renunciation that he officially favoured. He was certainly arrogant and overbearing in his manner, with a morose streak that led him always to keep a loaded pistol beside him when he slept. But his character was gregarious: he loved wine, women and song and lived the normal life of a selfish academic. He was bitterly distressed by the favourable reception accorded to Hegel. Yet his own philosophy too had far-ranging influence. Not only did Schopenhauer present the Kantian system in easily digestible form; he made it coincide with the prevailing mood of nineteenth-century Germany, which was one of baffled hope and romantic resignation. By his philosophy of will and renunciation he gave new forms of life (or at any rate new forms of death) to Christian culture. Without Schopenhauer there would have been neither Wagner nor Nietzsche as we know them, and it was Nietzsche’s final choice of will against renunciation that brought German romantic philosophy to an end.

It might be thought that, having located the essence of reality in the will, and having conceived this will on the model of the thing-in-itself of Kant, Schopenhauer would have found himself with a ready answer to the problem of freedom. On the contrary, however. He recognised that men are praised and blamed only for their actions, and that these actions belong to the world of representation. Hence human action cannot be vindicated by the freedom (which is in any case no more than a universal waywardness) of the underlying and unknowable will. A person’s phenomenal character is the origin of all his acts, and is also determined in every particular. Hence there is freedom only in the qualified, commonsense form: a person can do things, and is not always constrained or obstructed in his immediate aims. The ‘transcendental’ subject of Schopenhauer’s philosophy therefore drops out of consideration even in the discussion of that problem which Kant had introduced it to solve. It is to be wondered whether or not any further philosophical reasoning can be found in favour of this thing which, while represented as the single ultimate reality, remains none the less (to borrow a phrase of Wittgenstein’s) a ‘something about which nothing can be said’.

Schopenhauer was not the only one of Hegel’s opponents to rest his faith in the unsayable. S0ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), in his attack on the prevailing Hegelian rationalism, sought to undermine the claim that ‘the real is the rational and the rational the real’, and so to reaffirm the value of that which, while real, lies beyond the reach of reason. But, lacking Schopenhauer’s gift of argument, and being indeed more literary than philosophical in his inclination, he did not set up any elaborate system of ideas whereby to postpone the recognition of his ultimate refuge. There is, in Kierkegaard, no attempt to address the traditional philosophical problems and present a partial answer to them, no attempt to explore the observable (if transient) world, in order to renounce it more confidently for the realm of the unknowable. On the contrary, the whole order of post-Kantian philosophical argument was dismissed, and while the result was a species of irrationalism which, by its very nature, defies philosophical defence, there is no doubt that, in retrospect, Kierkegaard must be seen as a significant thinker, if only because he grasped the fact that the philosophical systems of his day could not be established by argument, and therefore contained no authority that he was constrained by reason to accept.

Kierkegaard wrote much. His style was humorous, vivacious and often highly poetical, although marred by the acute self-consciousness which led him also constantly to hide behind pseudonyms, and to write long and tedious polemics (often against himself). His principal interest was the vindication of the Christian faith, and he wrote always directly or indirectly towards this end, inventing in the process the name, if not the philosophy, of ‘existentialism’, for which achievement he is now chiefly known. His philosophy is a clear example of a reaction against idealism which is not also a form either of empiricism or scepticism. In the course of this reaction, it is once again the
subject
that is reaffirmed, as the ground of all philosophical thought. The first-person case comes to acquire just the same over-bearing significance that it had for Descartes and Hume. The main difference is that Kierkegaard’s interest lies not in the properties of the individual, nor in the knowledge of the world that might be derived from them, but in the sheer
fact
of individual existence, conceived independently of all our attempts to bring it under concepts.

Kierkegaard’s first and principal target was Hegel. He attacked the idea of ‘universal’ spirit, and the associated Hegelian attempt to describe the nature and development of spirit
in abstracto,
without reference to the individual. It is in the individual, according to Kierkegaard, that the true essence of spirit—its essence as ‘subjectivity’—is revealed. He was particularly hostile to the Hegelian philosophy of history, which he rightly saw as inviting both the deification of history and the loss of the sense of individual responsibility towards events. This sense he sometimes describes as ‘subjectivity’, sometimes as ‘existential pathos’, and sometimes as ‘anxiety’; without it, all freedom, all ethical life, and all hope of religious salvation are cancelled.

Many of the Young Hegelians—such as Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) and David Strauss (1808-1874)—were already in the process of developing a theology of history that, in paving the way for Marxist materialism, made possible the realisation of Kierkegaard’s fears concerning the transference of religious faith from God to the world. This transference Kierkegaard saw as irremediably evil. Yet for him it was the inevitable outcome of the renunciation of individual existence as the premise of philosophy. Kierkegaard criticised the Hegelian logic as a tissue of illusion, arguing in
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
(1846), his principal philosophical text, that the ‘introduction of movement into logic is a sheer confusion of logical science’. The ‘logical system’ of Hegel, in attempting to regiment the world and its history within the conceptions of a universal science (
Wissenschaft
), must inevitably be self-defeating. Logic, as the science of inference, cannot provide its own premises. These must therefore be obtained from some other source. Moreover, the Hegelian ‘universal subject’ is nothing but the absence of a subject. The only legitimate subject is concrete, individual and in some deep sense inaccessible to the laws of thought. Logic is timeless, empty of content, whereas the individual finds his essence in time, and enacts in time the drama which uniquely defines him. The movement that Hegel wished to see in logic lies in the individual alone.