Was Schopenhauer an Idealist?

Abstract

Was Schopenhauer an Idealist? DALE E. SNOW and JAMES J. SNOW ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUERENDORSESIDEALISMin the opening lines of his major work, The World as Will and Representation: "The world is my representation: this is a truth valid with reference to every living and knowing being..." (WR 1: 3)- However, Schopenhauer is quick to point out that idealism is true if and only if the world is viewed from one of two possible angles or perspectives; if viewed from the other side, the world is will. "This will alone constitutes the other aspect of the world, for this world is, on the one side, entirely representation , just as on the other, it is entirely will" (ibid.). The implicit suggestion is that there is a world that can be viewed, as it were, in two ways: either as will, or as representation; viewed from the latter perspective, idealism is true. However, as we hope to show, given Schopenhauer's elaborate metaphysics of the will and the role played by der Wille and der WiUe zum Leben in his philosophy, there are good reasons to ask (and attempt to answer) the question: Is Schopenhauer an idealist? We wish to take issue with the views espoused by Schopenhauer's most recent English-language commentators concerning his idealism. It will be our contention in this paper that while Schopenhauer's central questions and initial assumptions are closely tied to the controversies which culminated in the birth of post-Kantian idealism in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the answers arrived at in the metaphysics of the will take him far beyond the conceptual framework of idealism. We will also show, We would like to thank ProfessorJohn Atwell,not only for his commentson earlier drafts of this paper, but more importantly for both engendering and continuing to encourage our interest in Schopenhauer. We would also like to thank the editor as wellas two anomymous referees for thisjournal, who provided severalvaluablesuggestions. We have used English translations wherever possible;all other translationsfrom the German are our own. Frequently cited worksare abbreviated in the followingmanner, withthe citationsin the body of the text: WR I and WR ~ = Vols. 1and 2 of The Worldas Will and Representation, 2 vols., trans. E. F.J. Payne (NewYork: Dover, 1969). Nachlass= Arthur Schopenhauer:Manuscript Remainsin 4 volumes,ed. Arthur Hiibscher, tr. E. F.J. Payne(Oxford: St. Martin'sPress 1985-89). WN = On the FourfoldRoot of the Principleof SufficientReasonand On the Will in Nature, tr. Mme. Karl Hillebrand (London: George Belland Sons, 1897). [633] 634 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:4 OCTOBER 1991 albeit secondarily, that whereas Schopenhauer saw himself as the direct philosophical heir of Kant and the only true disciple of the Kantian philosophy (indeed, he was a more assiduous and sensitive student of Kant than Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel), it is nevertheless the case that he saw Kant through the clouded spectacles of his time. 1. Schopenhauer considered his most important philosophical discovery to have been that the essence, inner essence, core, or kernel of the world is the thing in itself and that the thing in itself is will. Although Schopenhauer claimed that this discovery is made through inner experience, he thought that its truth is independently confirmed by the fact that such a view has explanatory force superior to any alternative philosophical explanation. For "philosophy is nothing but the correct and universal understanding of experience itself" (WR 2: 183), so the physical world presents in a veiled form the truths of metaphysics. Indeed, Schopenhauer goes to considerable length to show that der WiUe zum Leben pervades the entire natural world. "Every glance at the world,'~Schopen hauer tells us, confirms and establishes that der WiUe zum Leben, far from being an arbitrary hypostasis or even an empty expression, is the only true description of the world's innermost nature .... In animal nature, it then becomes obvious that Wille zum Leben is the keynote of its being, its only unchangeable and unconditioned quality. Let us consider this universal craving for life, and see the infinite eagerness, ease, and exuberance with which der Wille zum Leben presses impetuously into existence under millions of forms everywhere and at every moment...