Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig (now Gdansk) in 1788, the son of a wealthy businessman and a future famous writer. Already at the age of 17, he recalled, “without any school education, I was as overcome by a feeling of world sorrow as Buddha was in his youth, when he saw illness, old age, suffering, death” (1:6, 222). Reflecting on the misfortunes of the world, Schopenhauer “came to the conclusion that this world could not be the work of some all-good being, but undoubtedly the work of some devil, who called the creature into existence in order to enjoy the contemplation of torment” (1:6, 222). This extremely pessimistic view was soon modified by Schopenhauer in that he began to assert that although various disasters are inextricably linked with the very existence of the world, this world itself is only a necessary means for achieving the “highest good.” The shift in emphasis also changed Schopenhauer’s interpretation of the deep essence of the world. From a devilish beginning, it turned into an irrational beginning, but unconsciously seeking self-knowledge. The sensory world lost its independent reality, appearing as a nightmare, revealing the irrationality of the world’s essence and pushing towards a “better consciousness.”
Over time, these thoughts took on increasingly clear outlines in Schopenhauer. But this does not mean that from his youthful insights, Schopenhauer went straight to the creation of a philosophical system. His path to philosophy was not easy, and he did not immediately understand what his true calling was. Despite his interest in science, under the influence of his father, he decided to go into business, but soon after the tragic death of G. F. Schopenhauer in 1805, he abandoned this path and continued his studies at the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin, where he, in particular, attended courses with G. E. Schulze and J. G. Fichte. After defending his doctoral dissertation and publishing its text under the title “On the Fourfold Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason” in 1813, Schopenhauer began writing the treatise “The World as Will and Representation” (1819). Having completed the work in 1818 and given the manuscript to the publisher, he set off on a journey through Europe, and then in 1820 he was appointed as a privatdozent at the University of Berlin.
Schopenhauer insisted that his lecture course be scheduled at the same time as Hegel’s. Hegel, like Fichte and Schelling, was completely unpopular with him. He considered them “sophists” who had distorted Kant’s great ideas and fooled the public. But it was very difficult to compete with Hegel. Students were not interested in Schopenhauer’s teaching, and in the following years he cancelled his courses due to the small number of potential listeners. After 1831, Schopenhauer finally broke with the university and after some time settled in Frankfurt am Main, where he spent the last decades of his life. He fenced himself off from extraneous studies, concentrating on explaining the main theses of The World as Will and Representation. At first, this did not work out very well, but after the publication of the collection of articles Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851, the situation began to change
[39] . Schopenhauer had students and followers, and he became known as Germany’s premier thinker, the “new Kaiser of German philosophy.” Schopenhauer died in 1860 of paralysis of the lungs. In his last text, a letter written three weeks before his death, he called for the study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and emphasized the insoluble nature of ultimate metaphysical questions.
Schopenhauer was proud of the coherence of his philosophical system, set out in The World as Will and Representation. But he emphasized that he never specifically sought to create a system. He was rather an aphoristic philosopher. Listening to the world, he captured its truths and “cooled” them in conceptual form. The coherence of these truths was revealed, according to Schopenhauer, by itself. At the same time, he was not a visionary, and he firmly learned the critical lessons of Kantian philosophy. In addition to Kant, Schopenhauer was influenced by Plato and ancient Indian thought.
Philosophy, Schopenhauer said, begins with the realization of the mysteriousness of existence and it is aimed at solving the world riddle, trying to answer the question about the essence of the world. Schopenhauer believed that no one had ever managed to come as close to a solution as he did.
The doctrine of the world as a representation. According to Schopenhauer, the world exists in two ways: as a representation and as a thing-in-itself. The world as a representation is the world as it appears to the human subject, who imposes on the essence of the world as a thing-in-itself the a priori forms of sensuality and reason, namely space, time and the rational law of causality. In his interpretation of the world as a representation, Schopenhauer generally follows Kant, accepting the main conclusions of his doctrine of sensuality and reason, although significantly shortening the Kantian table of categories. Only one of the twelve Kantian categories, the category of cause, is actually required for the perception of phenomena. Thanks to the action of the law of causality corresponding to this category, man correlates subjective sensations with the objects in space and time that generate them
[40] . The a priori nature of space and time is proven by the “complete impossibility of eliminating the latter from thought,” although “it is very easy to eliminate from it everything that is represented in them” (1:2, 28).
Space and time illustrate one of the varieties of the principle of sufficient reason, namely the law of the reason of existence, i.e. the existence of their parts relative to each other (for example, the reason for the existence of the present moment in time is the end of the existence of the preceding moment). Changes in space and time occur according to the law of the reason of becoming, i.e. causality, and if these are internal changes, then according to the law of motivation, or the reason for action. Cognition of the relationship of various ideas occurs according to the law of the reason of knowledge, and the ultimate basis for the truth of abstract ideas turns out to be their rootedness in sensory intuitions.
But although contemplations are thus the “first source of all evidence” and even “absolute truth” (1:1, 73), the world given in these contemplations is far from absolute. The law of reason that dominates it, Schopenhauer notes, emphasizes its lack of self-sufficiency. After all, this law demonstrates the conditioned nature of any part of the world that needs something else for its existence, and therefore does not have its own being. And this applies not only to parts of the world. The world of phenomena as a whole is also not independent: it exists only in the representation of the I.
The doctrine of the world as Will. But the world is not only an idea, it is something in itself. The exit to the thing in itself is in man himself. After all, man is known to himself not only from the outside, but also from the inside. From the outside, he appears as a body, a complex biological mechanism with many organs and functions. In other people, we see only this outer shell. But in ourselves, we notice something more. Each of us notices, for example, that the movement of his hands and other parts of the body is usually accompanied by some internal effort. Such states are called acts of will. They cannot be contemplated with the help of external senses, they are not located in space.
Schopenhauer was sure that the awareness of all these circumstances allows us to understand that bodily movements are the so-called “objectifications” of acts of will. The latter are not at all the causes of these movements, as is sometimes mistakenly asserted. They are the same movements, only considered from within, in themselves.
However, Schopenhauer did not claim that acts of will exactly correspond to the level of man as a thing in itself. After all, these acts occur in time, and time is a form of inner feeling, which reveals to us again phenomena, and not things in themselves. And yet, it is precisely the inner feeling that allows us to assume, Schopenhauer believes, how things in themselves are arranged. After all, his objects are closer to them than material objects, separated from things in themselves not only by the curtain of time, but also by space.
In a word, things in themselves, if we can talk about them at all, must be described in terms of will. Each of us finds a direct outlet to the thing in itself only in ourselves. But it is entirely justified to assume that other things, and not just our body, have their own essential being, a volitional nature. Moreover, the harmonious structure of the world allows us to talk about its single essence, which can be characterized as the world Will.
What is the world Will? Will is generally a certain aspiration. In human life, this is usually a striving for some goal. This goal does not actually exist, but is only imagined. A representation is a matter of the intellect. But intellect, Schopenhauer is sure, does not necessarily accompany will. It is associated with a special bodily organization, namely, with the presence of a developed nervous system. In essence, intellect (which includes in humans the ability to visualize, or contemplate, i.e., sensuality, and reason, and the ability to abstract ideas – reason) is one of the varieties of Will, namely the so-called “will to knowledge.”
In other words, the Will as such does not need the intellect. It does without it, being a blind, infinite striving. The essence of the world is thus devoid of a rational principle. It is dark and irrational. It is not surprising that the world it generates is an arena of endless horrors and suffering. One can only marvel at the naivety of some philosophers who considered it the best of all possible worlds. In reality, it is the worst.
Characteristics similar to the one given above are found in abundance in the pages of Schopenhauer’s works. And yet, on closer examination, it turns out that his position is not so unambiguous. Firstly, the world Will is not something completely irrational in any case. After all, reason is one of its creations. Secondly, it is necessary to distinguish the world of phenomena, in which there is a desperate struggle for existence, from the beautiful world of “Platonic ideas”, which are direct objectifications of the one Will.
The doctrine of ideas and natural philosophy. The doctrine of ideas is one of the most important blocks of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. He uses it in aesthetics, as well as in the philosophy of nature. Nature is the lawful existence of spatio-temporal objects. But these objects are far from homogeneous. On the contrary, they amaze us with their diversity. Reflecting on its origins, Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that the main “multiplying” principles are space and time. Indeed, one and the same thing in quality can be reproduced an unlimited number of times in other parts of space and time.
In nature, however, there is also qualitative diversity, the essential components of which are the various types of living organisms, as well as the varieties of inorganic substances. The latter, however, lack individualizing characteristics, being manifestations of fundamental natural forces. Thus, the diversity of natural existence can be, according to Schopenhauer, interpreted as the result of the superposition of space and time as a priori forms of the sensibility of finite subjects on the totality of the original forces of nature, forming a kind of hierarchical structure, at the basis of which are the forces of attraction and repulsion, on which are based chemical potencies, which in turn serve as the foundation of the “vital force”. Vital force as such is an abstraction. Its concrete specifications, which form the basis of biological species, as in the animal world, or even individuals, as in humans, possess reality.
To substantiate this scheme, Schopenhauer had to clarify the ontological status of the above-mentioned natural forces. Here he needed the doctrine of ideas. Each fundamental force of nature corresponds to a certain model, the “Platonic idea”, existing outside of space and time in the imagination of a certain subject, called by Schopenhauer “the eternal eye of the world”.
It is obvious that the “eternal eye of the world” is not identical with the finite subjects representing the world in space and time, although these subjects, as we shall see, can sometimes adopt its point of view. But they also have something in common: the objects they contemplate, whether ideas or spatio-temporal phenomena, do not exist in themselves, but depend on subjects, which, in turn, cannot be considered as genuine substances, i.e., as independent entities, and they can only be recognized as having an existence correlative to objects. All this, according to Schopenhauer, means that the entire present world is nothing more than an illusion, Maya, a long dream. The eternal eye of the world, wrote Schopenhauer, this “single being”, sees a “great dream”, which it dreams in such a way that “all the participants in the dream see it along with it” (1:4, 165).
But if the dream of the “world spirit” presents it with a pacifying picture of ideas as direct objectifications of the Will, where harmony and order reign, then the long dreams of finite subjects, which they call real life, are truly nightmarish. Life, according to Schopenhauer, is a series of sufferings, replacing each other. True, only beings endowed with intelligence suffer. But the ontological causes of suffering permeate all that exists and are rooted in the “principles of individuation” — space and time. Space creates the conditions for the unlimited multiplication of individuals corresponding to one or another eternal idea. But there are many ideas, and in such a situation the problem of a shortage of matter inevitably arises, which is resolved in a battle of all against all. The struggle for existence gives rise to the displacement of primitive forms by higher ones, a whole series of natural revolutions, leading first to the emergence of life, and then to the highest objectification of the world Will (which, due to its direction, can be called the Will to life) – man.
The strength of man is in his intellect. The intellect is generally at the service of volitional aspirations, and the stronger it is, the more successfully the being possessing it can fight for survival. On the other hand, the level of development of the intellect is directly proportional to the degree of sensitivity of the subject to disasters and suffering. It turns out that the most viable of all creatures, man, is most aware of the burdensomeness of his existence.
Schopenhauer does not consider this a paradox, but a natural consequence of the world’s rootedness in an irrational Will. Such a Will cannot but generate suffering, and its essence must be most clearly manifested in its highest creation, man. Of course, Schopenhauer understands that, being a rational being, capable of foreseeing the future, man can try to make his life easier and minimize suffering. One of the means of achieving this goal is the state, as well as material and legal culture. Schopenhauer does not deny that the development of industry and other cultural factors lead to a softening of morals and a decrease in violence. But the very nature of man hinders his general happiness. After all, happiness or pleasure, according to Schopenhauer, are purely negative concepts. Pleasure is always associated with the cessation of suffering. That is, a person can be happy only at the moment of liberation from some kind of burden. And if there are no burdens left in his life at all, then in their place there reigns a deadening boredom, the strongest of all torments. In other words, any effort to make people happy is doomed to failure and only obscures their true calling.
But what does this true calling consist of? In the denial of Will, according to Schopenhauer. Man is the only being who can go against the natural course of events, stop being a plaything of the world Will and direct this Will against itself.
The possibility of man to rebel against the Will is not some kind of accident. Although the manifestations of the Will are lawful, the Will itself is groundless, and therefore free and can in principle deny itself. But before it recoils from itself, it must see its dark essence. Man acts as a kind of mirror of the world Will, and it is through man that the latter’s (partial) self-denial occurs. As the highest objectification of free Will, he is able to break the chains of necessity and manifest freedom in a world where its existence seems almost impossible. The renunciation of will can take various forms. The first and most ephemeral of these is aesthetic contemplation. Man, in a state of such contemplation, temporarily frees the intellect from serving the interests of his will, leaves the spatio-temporal sphere of individualized existence and presents things in their essential form, as ideas.
Aesthetic concept. The transition to an aesthetic, disinterested, but accompanied by special pure pleasures position can occur at any moment, since all things are involved in ideas and can be the subject of aesthetic evaluation. But works of art produced precisely to facilitate aesthetic contemplation are most suitable for this. They are created by geniuses, people who possess an excess of intellectual abilities and therefore not only easily move from contemplation of things to contemplation of ideas, but are also able to reproduce the results of these contemplations in a form that facilitates such contemplation in other people.
Since works of art express certain ideas, and the world of ideas has a complex hierarchical structure, Schopenhauer considers it justified to discuss the relative value of various arts. The basic art is architecture. By and large, it has “only one aspiration: to bring to full clarity some of those ideas that represent the lower stages of the objectivity of the will, namely, gravity, cohesion, inertia, hardness, these general properties of stone, these … general basses of nature, and then, along with them, light” (1:1, 188). A natural complement to architecture is the art of hydraulics, which plays on the fluidity of matter. A higher stage of the objectification of the Will, plant life, corresponds to park art, as well as landscape painting. “An even higher stage is revealed by the pictorial and sculptural depiction of animals” (1:1, 188). But
the main subject of art is man. In his depiction the artist must maintain a balance in the representation of the properties of the species and individual character. Poetry best conveys human nature. This is a diverse art, but the most dynamic and adequate picture of human nature, of course, is given by tragedy. The perfect type of tragedy, according to Schopenhauer, should be recognized as that in which the suffering of people appears not as a result of chance or some exceptional malice of individuals, but as a consequence of inevitable laws, when “no side turns out to be exclusively wrong” (1: 1, 221).
According to Schopenhauer, music occupies a special place among the arts. If other arts primarily reflect individual ideas, then music is “the immediate objectification and imprint of the entire Will, like the world itself, like ideas, the multiple manifestation of which constitutes the world of individual things” (1: 1, 224).
Ethical teaching. According to Schopenhauer, moral consciousness demonstrates an even more radical overcoming of the world of individuation than in the case of aesthetic contemplation. He considers compassion to be the main and, in essence, the only source of morality. Compassion is a state in which a person accepts the suffering of another as his own. Metaphysically, compassion can only be explained by assuming the deep unity of all people in the world Will. Indeed, by accepting the suffering of another as my own, I seem to assume that at an essential level I do not differ from the other, but coincide with him. Awareness of this circumstance destroys the egoism characteristic of the attitude toward the reality of individual differences.
Schopenhauer tries to show that compassion is the foundation of two basic virtues – justice and philanthropy. Philanthropy pushes the subject to actively alleviate the suffering of other people, and justice turns out to be equivalent to the requirement not to cause them suffering, i.e., not to harm them. All other virtues follow from these two.
At first glance, Schopenhauer’s interpretation of moral behavior and his high assessment of the virtuous life do not harmonize well with his reasoning about the need to deny the Will to live. After all, a moral person alleviates the suffering of others, i.e., strives to make them happy, thereby promoting the Will to live, and not at all suppressing its aspirations. Schopenhauer, however, believes that it is the moral person who can fully understand the depth and inevitability of the suffering of rational beings. An egoist can somehow build his own well-being and, forgetting about the horrors of others’ lives, talk about optimism. For a moral person, this opportunity is completely closed. Sooner or later, he must take a position of philosophical pessimism and realize the need for more decisive action to free himself and others from the cycle of life’s disasters.
The essence of this radical path is expressed by the ascetic practice of man, i.e. his struggle with his own individual will by limiting the functioning of its objectification, namely the body and its organs. Schopenhauer calls “voluptuousness in the act of copulation” (1: 6, 152) the purest revelation of the will to live. Therefore, the first step on the path of self-denial of the will is chastity. But although the will to live is focused in the genitals, its objectification is the whole body. Therefore, the struggle with this will must consist in the systematic suppression of bodily impulses. The next step of asceticism after the pacification of the sexual instinct is “voluntary and deliberate poverty” (1: 1, 325). Ideally, the ascetic should starve himself to death. Starvation is the only type of suicide that Schopenhauer is willing to recognize. The question of the legitimacy of suicide naturally arises when considering his views. At first glance, Schopenhauer should welcome other varieties of it. After all, if the body is correlative to the individual will, then the simplest way to deny the will is to immediately cease to exist the body. But Schopenhauer does not share this position. He calls the “classical” suicide “the masterpiece of Maya”, the trick of the world Will. The fact is that the suicide does not renounce the will to live, but only life itself. He loves life, but something in it does not work out, and he decides to settle accounts with it. A true nihilist hates life and therefore is in no hurry to part with it. This seems paradoxical, but the situation can be clarified by Schopenhauer’s teaching on the afterlife.
The topic of posthumous existence seriously occupied Schopenhauer. He resolutely denied the possibility of preserving the so-called “personal identity” after the destruction of the body, i.e. the individual I with all its memories. His categorical position was explained by the fact that Schopenhauer linked the intellectual qualities of the personality to physiological processes in the brain. The destruction of the brain, according to this approach, means the complete destruction of the personality. On the other hand, the “intelligible character” of each person (his unique will as a thing in itself) is not subject to decay. This means that it is preserved after the disintegration of the body, and from an external point of view, everything looks as if it exists for some time without intellect: the will to knowledge, of course, remains, but unrealized. However, over time, this character turns out to be in a new intellectual shell.
From an empirical point of view, the new personality appears to be completely different from the old one. This is partly true – this is an example of how time can be a principle of individuation. And yet the connection between these personalities is undeniable. Schopenhauer, however, refuses to speak of metempsychosis, i.e., “the transition of the entire so-called soul into another body,” preferring to call his theory “palingenesis,” by which he understood “the disintegration and new formation of the individual, whereby only his will remains, which, taking on the form of a new being, receives a new intellect” (1: 5, 214).
Now the question of suicide really becomes clear. The ordinary suicide denies life, but not the will to live. Therefore, his intelligible character soon reveals itself again. The ascetic, on the other hand, methodically suppresses the will to live and falls out of the wheel of rebirth.
But what awaits a person after the denial of the will to live? This is, of course, a most difficult question. It is only clear that although at first glance the ascetic leads a life full of suffering, and even consciously strives for it, it is not exhausted by suffering, for “he in whom the denial of the will to live has arisen … is imbued with inner joy and truly heavenly peace” (1: 1, 331). It can therefore be assumed that the complete extinction of the will to live will kindle a new, incomprehensible light in the intelligible character of man. The state that arises after the denial of the will to live could be described as “ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God” (1: 1, 348). However, these are no longer philosophical characteristics: “Remaining on the point of view of philosophy, we must here be satisfied with negative knowledge” (1: 1, 348). This reservation of Schopenhauer is not accidental: “Although I pointed out the realm of illuminism as an existing fact in the conclusion of my philosophy,” he wrote, “I was careful not to approach it even one step… I only reached those limits that can be reached on an objective, rationalistic path” (1:5, 10). The strictly philosophical answer to the question of the state of the will after its extinction is that it must be thought of as Nothing. Nevertheless, it is precisely philosophy that shows the possibility of interpreting this Nothing not in an absolute but in a relative sense, as well as the use of illuminative experience to characterize it. After all, the world as a thing-in-itself is not entirely identical to the Will to live. If this were so, its negation would yield pure Nothing. In fact, a thing-in-itself is called Will only by its most immediate manifestation. So it may have other properties, and the extinction of the will to live may lead to their discovery. Furthermore, philosophy points out that the discovery of these properties cannot be thought of in subject-object categories. If illuminative experience is possible, then it is an experience in which the distinction between subject and object disappears. Finally, philosophy explains that the self-denial of the individual will as a thing in itself is not identical to the extinction of the world Will as a whole. After all, the individual will as a thing in itself is only one of the differentiated acts of this Will. In other words, a saint brings himself to nirvana, but not the whole world. However, not only saints fall into nirvana. Schopenhauer also awards this fate to heroes, i.e., people who fought for the common good but did not earn human gratitude.
This characterization of heroes seems to have been specially tailored by Schopenhauer to suit himself – he was apparently not a hero in the usual sense, although we must not forget that the widespread opinion about his bad character contains a significant distortion of the truth. But if he was ready to admit that he was a hero, he certainly did not consider himself a saint and generally said that a philosopher is not obliged to be a saint. His job is to discover the truth, and he may not have the strength to follow it.
Religion and theology. The discussions of holiness, nirvana, and unity with God make us think about Schopenhauer’s attitude to religion. He summed up his understanding of religion with the thesis that it is “folk metaphysics” (1: 5, 252). Like Kant, Schopenhauer believed that every person has a need for metaphysics, i.e., for understanding the deep essence of the world, an essence that lies beyond physical existence. Philosophy can provide a more or less adequate satisfaction of this need. But philosophy is a difficult thing, and it is inaccessible to the understanding of the majority. Therefore, it is replaced by a surrogate. This is religion. The surrogacy of religion is manifested in the fact that the highest truths are presented in it in the form of allegories. On the one hand, this makes them easier to assimilate. On the other, it gives rise to a certain internal contradiction. The fact is that religions cannot directly declare their dogmas to be allegories, since this would immediately undermine trust in them. Therefore, they are forced to insist on their literal truth. But this often leads to absurdities. Thus, religion turns out to have “two faces: the face of truth and the face of deception” (1: 5, 261). And Schopenhauer predicts a time when the light of enlightenment will allow humanity to completely abandon religions.
But, although significantly inferior to philosophy in terms of heuristics, religion is in any case parallel to it. However, there is no generally accepted philosophical system. There is no uniformity among religions either. As in philosophy, here we can speak of a greater or lesser degree of approximation to the truth. Schopenhauer considers Buddhism to be the “best” religion. Together with Christianity and Brahmanism, he classifies it as a pessimistic religion. Pessimistic religions view worldly existence as evil and aim to deny the world. They are opposed by optimistic religions, such as Judaism and its offspring, Islam. The pantheistic worldview is also close to them. Pantheism, according to Schopenhauer, is generally absurd, since the identification of God with the world leads to a contradiction: the world is terrible, and God is supposedly wise – how could he choose such a miserable fate for himself? Theism, which separates the world from God, is at least consistent. The origin of theistic ideas is quite obvious. People are afraid of natural phenomena and try to take them under control. This very desire already implies the presence of reason in a person, to some features of the functioning of which the above-mentioned metaphysical need inherent in all people is reduced. People endow unknown forces of nature with anthropomorphic qualities in order to beg various favors from the gods or the one God. For such ideas to be effective, they must be ordered and based on some authority. In turn, religious teachings can cement the state. But their influence on morality, according to Schopenhauer, is highly questionable. Another thing is that they can bring subjective comfort to people.
However, theistic views are still unacceptable. Polytheism is not a true religion at all, not reaching the understanding of the single essence of the world, and monotheism is based on the concept of the creation of the world, and the creator is thought of according to the model of human intellect, as a rational being, an individual. But the essence of the world is not individualized and not rational, it is a blind Will. In addition, the doctrine of creation takes it beyond the world: “Theism in its proper sense is quite similar to the assertion that with a correct geometrical construction the center of the sphere turns out to be outside it” (1: 6, 157). The creationism of theism does not agree well with the doctrine of the eternity of the intelligible characters of people – what has arisen must sooner or later disappear – and is also incompatible with the absolute freedom of the human being, which presupposes his complete autonomy.
The will to life as the world “in itself” cannot be called God in the theistic sense also because it is assumed that such a God must be good, and it gives rise to suffering. Nor can one call the pacified Will God (except perhaps figuratively), for “God would in this case be the one who does not want the world, whereas the concept of “God” contains the idea that he wants the world to exist” (1: 6, 151). It is not surprising that with this approach, the best religion for Schopenhauer turns out to be Buddhism, a religion without God, but with a clear contrast between the world of suffering, samsara, and a state free from desires that give rise to suffering, nirvana. However, since Schopenhauer had a dynamic approach to the relationship between active and calm will, i.e. since he believed that the self-denial of the will presupposes its self-affirmation, that nirvana is not primordial but must be achieved by the will and the condition for its achievement is the generation of a world of individualization and suffering, he could still use quasi-theological terminology and, in particular, seek an alliance with Christianity, which was close to him with its idea of redemption. He even said that his teaching could be called a true Christian philosophy, and made attempts to translate the main theses of his doctrine into the language of Christian dogma. According to his interpretation, the Will to live is God the Father, and the “decisive denial of the will to live” is the Holy Spirit. The identity of the Will to live and its denial is revealed by God the Son, the God-man Christ. Taking into account Schopenhauer’s opinion about the allegorical nature of all religious positions, the given formulas can be interpreted as a statement about the involvement of man in the process of the return of the world essence to itself, in the process of quasi-divine self-knowledge. The analogies of this philosopheme of Schopenhauer with the deep intuitions of Schelling and Hegel are obvious, for whom the Absolute Spirit also needs man for self-knowledge. True, Hegel believed that this self-knowledge is most adequately realized in thought, while Schopenhauer assigns this role to action. Another difference is that the place of the original principle in Hegel is occupied by the Absolute Idea, while in Schopenhauer it is the dark Will. However, it is perhaps not so important, since although this Will is dark, certain super-rational intentions, Providence, leading it to self-liberation, can be seen in it.
A more significant difference in the approaches of Schopenhauer and Hegel to religion in general and Christianity in particular is that the latter was much more careful about dogmatics and tried to provide philosophical support for the rational part of Christian theology, in particular to repel Kant’s dangerous attacks on the proofs of the existence of God. Schopenhauer acted differently. He believed that “nowhere is there such a need to distinguish between the kernel and the shell as in Christianity,” adding that “precisely because I love the kernel, I sometimes break the shell” (1:6, 163). The “shell” of Christianity is primarily elements of Judaism, the optimistic, worldly religion of the Old Testament. Its unification with the New Testament became possible only because the Old Testament still contains elements of pessimism, expressed in the story of the Fall. In addition to eclecticism, Christianity has other shortcomings. It exaggerates the significance of specific historical events and ignores the essential unity of all living beings, encouraging cruelty to animals – this causes particular indignation in Schopenhauer.
As for rational (or “natural”) theology, according to Schopenhauer, it simply does not exist. After all, its foundation should be proofs of the existence of God, but they are all untenable. The ontological argument, which leads from the idea of an all-perfect being to his existence, is simply a sophism, the cosmological proof, which goes from the world as an action to God as the first cause, is erroneous, since the law of causality is applicable only within the world, and the physical-theological proof, which starts from the expediency of the world structure and derives from this the idea of a rational Architect of the universe, is insufficient, since expediency can be explained without invoking the concept of a rational being – from the unity of the world Will. Having compared these arguments with other theses of Schopenhauer, one can, however, note that the transformed physical-theological proof still had to play an important role in his system. The expediency of nature, he declares, is explained by the unity of the Will to life. But how do we know about this unity? After all, Schopenhauer himself said that he did not know how deep the “roots of individuation” go into the thing-in-itself. And the argument in favor of the existence of a higher unity of unique volitional acts could be precisely the indication of the expediency of the world, making probable the assumption of the existence of a certain coordinating center in it.
In general, Schopenhauer’s attitude to religion and theology cannot be called unambiguous. One thing is certain: his philosophy is emancipated from religion. Schopenhauer considered Bruno and Spinoza to be his predecessors in this regard. But only in his case did such an attitude appear in all its purity. In his philosophy there is neither dependence on religion nor rebellion against it. And even if he turns to religions for support, the alliance with them always turns out to be free. Schopenhauer showed how bright philosophy can be, not constrained by religious dogmas. This is the enormous significance of his system, although its influence, of course, was not limited to this.
Already during his lifetime, Schopenhauer had loyal followers, whom he jokingly called “evangelists” and “apostles.” After the death of his teacher, J. Frauenstedt published a collection of his works and published fragments of Schopenhauer’s manuscript legacy. And although these editions were very imperfect from a scientific point of view, the new texts further fueled interest in Schopenhauer’s ideas. Among the general public, “Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom” and “Metaphysics of Sexual Love” (a chapter of the second volume of “The World as Will and Representation”) enjoyed (and still enjoy) success. Professional philosophers were attracted by the basic principles of Schopenhauer’s system. Many, however, believed that they needed modification. For example, E. Hartmann, the author of “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” believed that the origin of existence must be both Will and Idea together. He also revised the concept of denying the Will – it can only be effective in the case of the collective suicide of enlightened humanity.
F. Nietzsche drew completely different conclusions from Schopenhauer’s theories. Just as Feuerbach turned Hegel’s philosophy upside down, Nietzsche radically rethought Schopenhauer’s teaching on the Will to Live. Having rejected the transcendental aspects of this teaching, Nietzsche came to the conclusion that there is no alternative to such a Will, and therefore, the need for its exaltation, rather than illusory denial.
Given his influence on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer can rightfully be considered the forerunner of the “philosophy of life”, an important trend in European thought at the end of the 19th century. No less justified are the attempts to discern in his system elements of “inductive metaphysics”, represented in the 19th century by such names as G. T. Fechner, W. Wundt, and others. In the last century, Schopenhauer’s influence was felt, for example, by Scheler, Wittgenstein, and Horkheimer, although it was not significant. However, the 20th century became the time of the flourishing of historical and philosophical studies devoted to this thinker. Many Russian and Western authors wrote about the deep contradictions of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics – this has become a kind of norm since the time of K. Fischer. It is also good form to draw parallels between the ideas of Schopenhauer and Hegel (as well as Fichte and Schelling) in the context of assertions that, despite all the differences in emphasis, their systems exhibit an undeniable “family resemblance.” Meanwhile, differences in emphasis are sometimes decisive in the history of philosophy. Philosophy always carries not only logical but also emotional content. And the sense of Schopenhauer’s existential tragedy remains, despite all the reservations. The rapprochement of his philosophy with Hegel’s does not pass also because Schopenhauer is concerned above all with the problem of man and philosophizes “in the first person,” while Hegel is much more interested in the Absolute, on whose behalf he seems to narrate. Hegel was not short of epistemological optimism, and for him there were no topics that were beyond the power of speculative reason. Schopenhauer always remembered the limits of knowledge. He deliberately left many “eternal questions” unanswered. This partly explains the feeling of something unsaid or contradictory that arises when one becomes familiar with his system. But it is easier to remove contradictions in words than to resist this temptation. Schopenhauer’s philosophy does not create an ideal world of abstractions, but throws the reader into the real world with its real problems.
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