Work · Schopenhauer
The World as Will and Representation
1818 · Four books
Behind every appearance is a single blind striving Will, and the only escape is art and compassion.
1818
Published (vol. II 1844)
4
Books
One thought
From four sides
One thought, told from four sides
Schopenhauer said the book communicates a single thought, approached from four directions. Start with the world as it appears, find the blind Will behind it, glimpse the brief escape art offers, and end at the lasting one: turning the will against itself.
The shape of the argument
Book I — Representation
The world as idea: every object exists only for a subject, in the forms of space, time, and causality (the principle of sufficient reason).
Book II — Will
Through one’s own body, the thing-in-itself is revealed as Will: a single, blind, aimless striving that objectifies itself in everything from gravity to human desire.
Book III — Idea and art
Will-less aesthetic contemplation lifts a person briefly out of striving; the arts are ranked, with music as the direct copy of the Will itself, not of the Ideas.
Book IV — Ethics and denial
Since willing is lack, life is suffering; the way out is compassion (seeing through the illusion of separateness) and finally the ascetic denial of the will.
The cast
Schopenhauer — publishes his whole system at thirty and waits decades for anyone to read it
The Will — the thing-in-itself: one blind, purposeless striving behind every appearance
Music — the one art that copies the Will directly, which is why it moves us so deeply
Kant and the Upanishads — his two acknowledged sources: the appearance/thing-in-itself split, and the Veil of Maya
The famous bits
The world is my ideaBook I, §1
The opening line: the world is only ever given as representation, an object for a subject.
The world as WillBook II
The body is the one window through which the thing-in-itself shows itself, and it shows itself as will.
Music as the copy of the WillBook III, §52
Music is not a copy of the Ideas like the other arts, but a copy of the Will itself.
The pendulum of sufferingBook IV, §57
All willing springs from lack, so life swings between the pain of want and the emptiness of boredom.
Compassion and the denial of the willBook IV
To see through the illusion of separateness is the root of ethics; to turn the will against itself is the only lasting peace.