The World As Will And Idea
By
Arthur Schopenhauer
Translated From The German By
R. B. Haldane, M.A.
And
J. Kemp, M.A.
Vol. I.
Containing Four Books.
“Ob nicht Natur zuletzt sich doch ergünde?”—GOETHE
Seventh Edition
London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
1909
CONTENTS
Translators’ Preface.
Preface To The First Edition.
Preface To The Second Edition.
First Book. The World As Idea.
First Aspect. The Idea Subordinated To The Principle Of Sufficient
Reason: The Object Of Experience And Science.
Second Book. The World As Will.
First Aspect. The Objectification Of The Will.
Third Book. The World As Idea.
Second Aspect. The Idea Independent Of The Principle Of Sufficient
Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object Of Art.
Fourth Book. The World As Will.
Second Aspect. The Assertion And Denial Of The Will To Live, When
Self-Consciousness Has Been Attained.
Footnotes
TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE.
The style of “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung” is sometimes loose and
involved, as is so often the case in German philosophical treatises. The
translation of the book has consequently been a matter of no little
difficulty. It was found that extensive alteration of the long and
occasionally involved sentences, however likely to prove conducive to a
satisfactory English style, tended not only to obliterate the form of the
original but even to imperil the meaning. Where a choice has had to be
made, the alternative of a somewhat slavish adherence to Schopenhauer’s
_ipsissima verba_ has accordingly been preferred to that of inaccuracy.
The result is a piece of work which leaves much to be desired, but which
has yet consistently sought to reproduce faithfully the spirit as well as
the letter of the original.
As regards the rendering of the technical terms about which there has been
so much controversy, the equivalents used have only been adopted after
careful consideration of their meaning in the theory of knowledge. For
example, “Vorstellung” has been rendered by “idea,” in preference to
“representation,” which is neither accurate, intelligible, nor elegant.
“Idee,” is translated by the same word, but spelled with a
capital,—“Idea.” Again, “Anschauung” has been rendered according to the
context, either by “perception” simply, or by “intuition or perception.”
Notwithstanding statements to the contrary in the text, the book is
probably quite intelligible in itself, apart from the treatise “On the
Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.” It has, however,
been considered desirable to add an abstract of the latter work in an
appendix to the third volume of this translation.
R. B. H.
J. K.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
I propose to point out here how this book must be read in order to be
thoroughly understood. By means of it I only intend to impart a single
thought. Yet, notwithstanding all my endeavours, I could find no shorter
way of imparting it than this whole book. I hold this thought to be that
which has very long been sought for under the name of philosophy, and the
discovery of which is therefore regarded by those who are familiar with
history as quite as impossible as the discovery of the philosopher’s
stone, although it was already said by Pliny: _Quam multa fieri non posse,
priusquam sint facta, judicantur?_ (Hist. nat. 7, 1.)
According as we consider the different aspects of this one thought which I
am about to impart, it exhibits itself as that which we call metaphysics,
that which we call ethics, and that which we call æsthetics; and certainly
it must be all this if it is what I have already acknowledged I take it to
be.
A _system of thought_ must always have an architectonic connection or
coherence, that is, a connection in which one part always supports the
other, though the latter does not support the former, in which ultimately
the foundation supports all the rest without being supported by it, and
the apex is supported without supporting. On the other hand, a _single
thought_, however comprehensive it may be, must preserve the most perfect
unity. If it admits of being broken up into parts to facilitate its
communication, the connection of these parts must yet be organic, _i.e._,
it must be a connection in which every part supports the whole just as
much as it is supported by it, a connection in which there is no first and
no last, in which the whole thought gains distinctness through every part,
and even the smallest part cannot be completely understood unless the
whole has already been grasped. A book, however, must always have a first
and a last line, and in this respect will always remain very unlike an
organism, however like one its content may be: thus form and matter are
here in contradiction.
It is self-evident that under these circumstances no other advice can be
given as to how one may enter into the thought explained in this work than
_to read the book twice_, and the first time with great patience, a
patience which is only to be derived from the belief, voluntarily
accorded, that the beginning presupposes the end almost as much as the end
presupposes the beginning, and that all the earlier parts presuppose the
later almost as much as the later presuppose the earlier. I say “almost;”
for this is by no means absolutely the case, and I have honestly and
conscientiously done all that was possible to give priority to that which
stands least in need of explanation from what follows, as indeed generally
to everything that can help to make the thought as easy to comprehend and
as distinct as possible. This might indeed to a certain extent be achieved
if it were not that the reader, as is very natural, thinks, as he reads,
not merely of what is actually said, but also of its possible
consequences, and thus besides the many contradictions actually given of
the opinions of the time, and presumably of the reader, there may be added
as many more which are anticipated and imaginary. That, then, which is
really only misunderstanding, must take the form of active disapproval,
and it is all the more difficult to recognise that it is misunderstanding,
because although the laboriously-attained clearness of the explanation and
distinctness of the expression never leaves the immediate sense of what is
said doubtful, it cannot at the same time express its relations to all
that remains to be said. Therefore, as we have said, the first perusal
demands patience, founded on confidence that on a second perusal much, or
all, will appear in an entirely different light. Further, the earnest
endeavour to be more completely and even more easily comprehended in the
case of a very difficult subject, must justify occasional repetition.
Indeed the structure of the whole, which is organic, not a mere chain,
makes it necessary sometimes to touch on the same point twice. Moreover
this construction, and the very close connection of all the parts, has not
left open to me the division into chapters and paragraphs which I should
otherwise have regarded as very important, but has obliged me to rest
satisfied with four principal divisions, as it were four aspects of one
thought. In each of these four books it is especially important to guard
against losing sight, in the details which must necessarily be discussed,
of the principal thought to which they belong, and the progress of the
whole exposition. I have thus expressed the first, and like those which
follow, unavoidable demand upon the reader, who holds the philosopher in
small favour just because he himself is a philosopher.
The second demand is this, that the introduction be read before the book
itself, although it is not contained in the book, but appeared five years
earlier under the title, “_Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom
zureichenden Grunde: eine philosophische Abhandlung_” (On the fourfold
root of the principle of sufficient reason: a philosophical essay).
Without an acquaintance with this introduction and propadeutic it is
absolutely impossible to understand the present work properly, and the
content of that essay will always be presupposed in this work just as if
it were given with it. Besides, even if it had not preceded this book by
several years, it would not properly have been placed before it as an
introduction, but would have been incorporated in the first book. As it
is, the first book does not contain what was said in the earlier essay,
and it therefore exhibits a certain incompleteness on account of these
deficiencies, which must always be supplied by reference to it. However,
my disinclination was so great either to quote myself or laboriously to
state again in other words what I had already said once in an adequate
manner, that I preferred this course, notwithstanding the fact that I
might now be able to give the content of that essay a somewhat better
expression, chiefly by freeing it from several conceptions which resulted
from the excessive influence which the Kantian philosophy had over me at
the time, such as—categories, outer and inner sense, and the like. But
even there these conceptions only occur because as yet I had never really
entered deeply into them, therefore only by the way and quite out of
connection with the principal matter. The correction of such passages in
that essay will consequently take place of its own accord in the mind of
the reader through his acquaintance with the present work. But only if we
have fully recognised by means of that essay what the principle of
sufficient reason is and signifies, what its validity extends to, and what
it does not extend to, and that that principle is not before all things,
and the whole world merely in consequence of it, and in conformity to it,
a corollary, as it were, of it; but rather that it is merely the form in
which the object, of whatever kind it may be, which is always conditioned
by the subject, is invariably known so far as the subject is a knowing
individual: only then will it be possible to enter into the method of
philosophy which is here attempted for the first time, and which is
completely different from all previous methods.
But the same disinclination to repeat myself word for word, or to say the
same thing a second time in other and worse words, after I have deprived
myself of the better, has occasioned another defect in the first book of
this work. For I have omitted all that is said in the first chapter of my
essay “On Sight and Colour,” which would otherwise have found its place
here, word for word. Therefore the knowledge of this short, earlier work
is also presupposed.
Finally, the third demand I have to make on the reader might indeed be
tacitly assumed, for it is nothing but an acquaintance with the most
important phenomenon that has appeared in philosophy for two thousand
years, and that lies so near us: I mean the principal writings of Kant. It
seems to me, in fact, as indeed has already been said by others, that the
effect these writings produce in the mind to which they truly speak is
very like that of the operation for cataract on a blind man: and if we
wish to pursue the simile further, the aim of my own work may be described
by saying that I have sought to put into the hands of those upon whom that
operation has been successfully performed a pair of spectacles suitable to
eyes that have recovered their sight—spectacles of whose use that
operation is the absolutely necessary condition. Starting then, as I do to
a large extent, from what has been accomplished by the great Kant, I have
yet been enabled, just on account of my earnest study of his writings, to
discover important errors in them. These I have been obliged to separate
from the rest and prove to be false, in order that I might be able to
presuppose and apply what is true and excellent in his doctrine, pure and
freed from error. But not to interrupt and complicate my own exposition by
a constant polemic against Kant, I have relegated this to a special
appendix. It follows then, from what has been said, that my work
presupposes a knowledge of this appendix just as much as it presupposes a
knowledge of the philosophy of Kant; and in this respect it would
therefore be advisable to read the appendix first, all the more as its
content is specially related to the first book of the present work. On the
other hand, it could not be avoided, from the nature of the case, that
here and there the appendix also should refer to the text of the work; and
the only result of this is, that the appendix, as well as the principal
part of the work, must be read twice.
The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough
acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if,
besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato,
he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what
I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit
conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the
Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young
century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of
the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the
revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the
reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive
Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say
to him. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and
even hostile tongue; for, if it does not sound too vain, I might express
the opinion that each one of the individual and disconnected aphorisms
which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a consequence from the
thought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to
be found in the Upanishads, is by no means the case.
But most readers have already grown angry with impatience, and burst into
reproaches with difficulty kept back so long. How can I venture to present
a book to the public under conditions and demands the first two of which
are presumptuous and altogether immodest, and this at a time when there is
such a general wealth of special ideas, that in Germany alone they are
made common property through the press, in three thousand valuable,
original, and absolutely indispensable works every year, besides
innumerable periodicals, and even daily papers; at a time when especially
there is not the least deficiency of entirely original and profound
philosophers, but in Germany alone there are more of them alive at the
same time, than several centuries could formerly boast of in succession to
each other? How is one ever to come to the end, asks the indignant reader,
if one must set to work upon a book in such a fashion?
As I have absolutely nothing to advance against these reproaches, I only
hope for some small thanks from such readers for having warned them in
time, so that they may not lose an hour over a book which it would be
useless to read without complying with the demands that have been made,
and which should therefore be left alone, particularly as apart from this
we might wager a great deal that it can say nothing to them, but rather
that it will always be only _pancorum hominum_, and must therefore quietly
and modestly wait for the few whose unusual mode of thought may find it
enjoyable. For apart from the difficulties and the effort which it
requires from the reader, what cultured man of this age, whose knowledge
has almost reached the august point at which the paradoxical and the false
are all one to it, could bear to meet thoughts almost on every page that
directly contradict that which he has yet himself established once for all
as true and undeniable? And then, how disagreeably disappointed will many
a one be if he finds no mention here of what he believes it is precisely
here he ought to look for, because his method of speculation agrees with
that of a great living philosopher,(1) who has certainly written pathetic
books, and who only has the trifling weakness that he takes all he learned
and approved before his fifteenth year for inborn ideas of the human mind.
Who could stand all this? Therefore my advice is simply to lay down the
book.
But I fear I shall not escape even thus. The reader who has got as far as
the preface and been stopped by it, has bought the book for cash, and asks
how he is to be indemnified. My last refuge is now to remind him that he
knows how to make use of a book in several ways, without exactly reading
it. It may fill a gap in his library as well as many another, where,
neatly bound, it will certainly look well. Or he can lay it on the
toilet-table or the tea-table of some learned lady friend. Or, finally,
what certainly is best of all, and I specially advise it, he can review
it.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
And now that I have allowed myself the jest to which in this two-sided
life hardly any page can be too serious to grant a place, I part with the
book with deep seriousness, in the sure hope that sooner or later it will
reach those to whom alone it can be addressed; and for the rest, patiently
resigned that the same fate should, in full measure, befall it, that in
all ages has, to some extent, befallen all knowledge, and especially the
weightiest knowledge of the truth, to which only a brief triumph is
allotted between the two long periods in which it is condemned as
paradoxical or disparaged as trivial. The former fate is also wont to
befall its author. But life is short, and truth works far and lives long:
let us speak the truth.
_Written at Dresden in August 1818._
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Not to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots—to mankind I commit my now
completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for
them, even if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot of
what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing generation,
engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my mind, almost against my
will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work through the course of a long
life. And while the lapse of time has not been able to make me doubt the
worth of my work, neither has the lack of sympathy; for I constantly saw
the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and senseless,(2) stand in
universal admiration and honour, and I bethought myself that if it were
not the case those who are capable of recognising the genuine and right
are so rare that we may look for them in vain for some twenty years, then
those who are capable of producing it could not be so few that their works
afterwards form an exception to the perishableness of earthly things; and
thus would be lost the reviving prospect of posterity which every one who
sets before himself a high aim requires to strengthen him.
Whoever seriously takes up and pursues an object that does not lead to
material advantages, must not count on the sympathy of his contemporaries.
For the most part he will see, however, that in the meantime the
superficial aspect of that object becomes current in the world, and enjoys
its day; and this is as it should be. The object itself must be pursued
for its own sake, otherwise it cannot be attained; for any design or
intention is always dangerous to insight. Accordingly, as the whole
history of literature proves, everything of real value required a long
time to gain acceptance, especially if it belonged to the class of
instructive, not entertaining, works; and meanwhile the false flourished.
For to combine the object with its superficial appearance is difficult,
when it is not impossible. Indeed that is just the curse of this world of
want and need, that everything must serve and slave for these; and
therefore it is not so constituted that any noble and sublime effort, like
the endeavour after light and truth, can prosper unhindered and exist for
its own sake. But even if such an endeavour has once succeeded in
asserting itself, and the conception of it has thus been introduced,
material interests and personal aims will immediately take possession of
it, in order to make it their tool or their mask. Accordingly, when Kant
brought philosophy again into repute, it had soon to become the tool of
political aims from above, and personal aims from below; although,
strictly speaking, not philosophy itself, but its ghost, that passes for
it. This should not really astonish us; for the incredibly large majority
of men are by nature quite incapable of any but material aims, indeed they
can conceive no others. Thus the pursuit of truth alone is far too lofty
and eccentric an endeavour for us to expect all or many, or indeed even a
few, faithfully to take part in. If yet we see, as for example at present
in Germany, a remarkable activity, a general moving, writing, and talking
with reference to philosophical subjects, we may confidently assume that,
in spite of solemn looks and assurances, only real, not ideal aims, are
the actual _primum mobile_, the concealed motive of such a movement; that
it is personal, official, ecclesiastical, political, in short, material
ends that are really kept in view, and consequently that mere party ends
set the pens of so many pretended philosophers in such rapid motion. Thus
some design or intention, not the desire of insight, is the guiding star
of these disturbers of the peace, and truth is certainly the last thing
that is thought of in the matter. It finds no partisans; rather, it may
pursue its way as silently and unheeded through such a philosophical riot
as through the winter night of the darkest century bound in the rigid
faith of the church, when it was communicated only to a few alchemists as
esoteric learning, or entrusted it may be only to the parchment. Indeed I
might say that no time can be more unfavourable to philosophy than that in
which it is shamefully misused, on the one hand to further political
objects, on the other as a means of livelihood. Or is it believed that
somehow, with such effort and such a turmoil, the truth, at which it by no
means aims, will also be brought to light? Truth is no prostitute, that
throws herself away upon those who do not desire her; she is rather so coy
a beauty that he who sacrifices everything to her cannot even then be sure
of her favour.
If Governments make philosophy a means of furthering political ends,
learned men see in philosophical professorships a trade that nourishes the
outer man just like any other; therefore they crowd after them in the
assurance of their good intentions, that is, the purpose of subserving
these ends. And they keep their word: not truth, not clearness, not Plato,
not Aristotle, but the ends they were appointed to serve are their guiding
star, and become at once the criterion of what is true, valuable, and to
be respected, and of the opposites of these. Whatever, therefore, does not
answer these ends, even if it were the most important and extraordinary
things in their department, is either condemned, or, when this seems
hazardous, suppressed by being unanimously ignored. Look only at their
zeal against pantheism; will any simpleton believe that it proceeds from
conviction? And, in general, how is it possible that philosophy, degraded
to the position of a means of making one’s bread, can fail to degenerate
into sophistry? Just because this is infallibly the case, and the rule, “I
sing the song of him whose bread I eat,” has always held good, the making
of money by philosophy was regarded by the ancients as the characteristic
of the sophists. But we have still to add this, that since throughout this
world nothing is to be expected, can be demanded, or is to be had for gold
but mediocrity, we must be contented with it here also. Consequently we
see in all the German universities the cherished mediocrity striving to
produce the philosophy which as yet is not there to produce, at its own
expense and indeed in accordance with a predetermined standard and aim, a
spectacle at which it would be almost cruel to mock.
While thus philosophy has long been obliged to serve entirely as a means
to public ends on the one side and private ends on the other, I have
pursued the course of my thought, undisturbed by them, for more than
thirty years, and simply because I was obliged to do so and could not help
myself, from an instinctive impulse, which was, however, supported by the
confidence that anything true one may have thought, and anything obscure
one may have thrown light upon, will appeal to any thinking mind, no
matter when it comprehends it, and will rejoice and comfort it. To such an
one we speak as those who are like us have spoken to us, and have so
become our comfort in the wilderness of this life. Meanwhile the object is
pursued on its own account and for its own sake. Now it happens curiously
enough with philosophical meditations, that precisely that which one has
thought out and investigated for oneself, is afterwards of benefit to
others; not that, however, which was originally intended for others. The
former is confessedly nearest in character to perfect honesty; for a man
does not seek to deceive himself, nor does he offer himself empty husks;
so that all sophistication and all mere talk is omitted, and consequently
every sentence that is written at once repays the trouble of reading it.
Thus my writings bear the stamp of honesty and openness so distinctly on
the face of them, that by this alone they are a glaring contrast to those
of three celebrated sophists of the post-Kantian period. I am always to be
found at the standpoint of _reflection_, _i.e._, rational deliberation and
honest statement, never at that of _inspiration_, called intellectual
intuition, or absolute thought; though, if it received its proper name, it
would be called empty bombast and charlatanism. Working then in this
spirit, and always seeing the false and bad in universal acceptance, yea,
bombast(3) and charlatanism(4) in the highest honour, I have long
renounced the approbation of my contemporaries. It is impossible that an
age which for twenty years has applauded a Hegel, that intellectual
Caliban, as the greatest of the philosophers, so loudly that it echoes
through the whole of Europe, could make him who has looked on at that
desirous of its approbation. It has no more crowns of honour to bestow;
its applause is prostituted, and its censure has no significance. That I
mean what I say is attested by the fact that if I had in any way sought
the approbation of my contemporaries, I would have had to strike out a
score of passages which entirely contradict all their opinions, and indeed
must in part be offensive to them. But I would count it a crime to
sacrifice a single syllable to that approbation. My guiding star has, in
all seriousness, been truth. Following it, I could first aspire only to my
own approbation, entirely averted from an age deeply degraded as regards
all higher intellectual efforts, and a national literature demoralised
even to the exceptions, a literature in which the art of combining lofty
words with paltry significance has reached its height. I can certainly
never escape from the errors and weaknesses which, in my case as in every
one else’s, necessarily belong to my nature; but I will not increase them
by unworthy accommodations.
As regards this second edition, first of all I am glad to say that after
five and twenty years I find nothing to retract; so that my fundamental
convictions have only been confirmed, as far as concerns myself at least.
The alterations in the first volume therefore, which contains the whole
text of the first edition, nowhere touch what is essential. Sometimes they
concern things of merely secondary importance, and more often consist of
very short explanatory additions inserted here and there. Only the
criticism of the Kantian philosophy has received important corrections and
large additions, for these could not be put into a supplementary book,
such as those which are given in the second volume, and which correspond
to each of the four books that contain the exposition of my own doctrine.
In the case of the latter, I have chosen this form of enlarging and
improving them, because the five and twenty years that have passed since
they were composed have produced so marked a change in my method of
exposition and in my style, that it would not have done to combine the
content of the second volume with that of the first, as both must have
suffered by the fusion. I therefore give both works separately, and in the
earlier exposition, even in many places where I would now express myself
quite differently, I have changed nothing, because I desired to guard
against spoiling the work of my earlier years through the carping
criticism of age. What in this regard might need correction will correct
itself in the mind of the reader with the help of the second volume. Both
volumes have, in the full sense of the word, a supplementary relation to
each other, so far as this rests on the fact that one age of human life
is, intellectually, the supplement of another. It will therefore be found,
not only that each volume contains what the other lacks, but that the
merits of the one consist peculiarly in that which is wanting in the
other. Thus, if the first half of my work surpasses the second in what can
only be supplied by the fire of youth and the energy of first conceptions,
the second will surpass the first by the ripeness and complete elaboration
of the thought which can only belong to the fruit of the labour of a long
life. For when I had the strength originally to grasp the fundamental
thought of my system, to follow it at once into its four branches, to
return from them to the unity of their origin, and then to explain the
whole distinctly, I could not yet be in a position to work out all the
branches of the system with the fulness, thoroughness, and elaborateness
which is only reached by the meditation of many years—meditation which is
required to test and illustrate the system by innumerable facts, to
support it by the most different kinds of proof, to throw light on it from
all sides, and then to place the different points of view boldly in
contrast, to separate thoroughly the multifarious materials, and present
them in a well-arranged whole. Therefore, although it would, no doubt,
have been more agreeable to the reader to have my whole work in one piece,
instead of consisting, as it now does, of two halves, which must be
combined in using them, he must reflect that this would have demanded that
I should accomplish at one period of life what it is only possible to
accomplish in two, for I would have had to possess the qualities at one
period of life that nature has divided between two quite different ones.
Hence the necessity of presenting my work in two halves supplementary to
each other may be compared to the necessity in consequence of which a
chromatic object-glass, which cannot be made out of one piece, is produced
by joining together a convex lens of flint glass and a concave lens of
crown glass, the combined effect of which is what was sought. Yet, on the
other hand, the reader will find some compensation for the inconvenience
of using two volumes at once, in the variety and the relief which is
afforded by the handling of the same subject, by the same mind, in the
same spirit, but in very different years. However, it is very advisable
that those who are not yet acquainted with my philosophy should first of
all read the first volume without using the supplementary books, and
should make use of these only on a second perusal; otherwise it would be
too difficult for them to grasp the system in its connection. For it is
only thus explained in the first volume, while the second is devoted to a
more detailed investigation and a complete development of the individual
doctrines. Even those who should not make up their minds to a second
reading of the first volume had better not read the second volume till
after the first, and then for itself, in the ordinary sequence of its
chapters, which, at any rate, stand in some kind of connection, though a
somewhat looser one, the gaps of which they will fully supply by the
recollection of the first volume, if they have thoroughly comprehended it.
Besides, they will find everywhere the reference to the corresponding
passages of the first volume, the paragraphs of which I have numbered in
the second edition for this purpose, though in the first edition they were
only divided by lines.
I have already explained in the preface to the first edition, that my
philosophy is founded on that of Kant, and therefore presupposes a
thorough knowledge of it. I repeat this here. For Kant’s teaching produces
in the mind of every one who has comprehended it a fundamental change
which is so great that it may be regarded as an intellectual new-birth. It
alone is able really to remove the inborn realism which proceeds from the
original character of the intellect, which neither Berkeley nor
Malebranche succeed in doing, for they remain too much in the universal,
while Kant goes into the particular, and indeed in a way that is quite
unexampled both before and after him, and which has quite a peculiar, and,
we might say, immediate effect upon the mind in consequence of which it
undergoes a complete undeception, and forthwith looks at all things in
another light. Only in this way can any one become susceptible to the more
positive expositions which I have to give. On the other hand, he who has
not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he may have studied,
is, as it were, in a state of innocence; that is to say, he remains in the
grasp of that natural and childish realism in which we are all born, and
which fits us for everything possible, with the single exception of
philosophy. Such a man then stands to the man who knows the Kantian
philosophy as a minor to a man of full age. That this truth should
nowadays sound paradoxical, which would not have been the case in the
first thirty years after the appearance of the Critique of Reason, is due
to the fact that a generation has grown up that does not know Kant
properly, because it has never heard more of him than a hasty, impatient
lecture, or an account at second-hand; and this again is due to the fact
that in consequence of bad guidance, this generation has wasted its time
with the philosophemes of vulgar, uncalled men, or even of bombastic
sophists, which are unwarrantably commended to it. Hence the confusion of
fundamental conceptions, and in general the unspeakable crudeness and
awkwardness that appears from under the covering of affectation and
pretentiousness in the philosophical attempts of the generation thus
brought up. But whoever thinks he can learn Kant’s philosophy from the
exposition of others makes a terrible mistake. Nay, rather I must
earnestly warn against such accounts, especially the more recent ones; and
indeed in the years just past I have met with expositions of the Kantian
philosophy in the writings of the Hegelians which actually reach the
incredible. How should the minds that in the freshness of youth have been
strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism, be still capable of
following Kant’s profound investigations? They are early accustomed to
take the hollowest jingle of words for philosophical thoughts, the most
miserable sophisms for acuteness, and silly conceits for dialectic, and
their minds are disorganised through the admission of mad combinations of
words to which the mind torments and exhausts itself in vain to attach
some thought. No Critique of Reason can avail them, no philosophy, they
need a _medicina mentis_, first as a sort of purgative, _un petit cours de
senscommunologie_, and then one must further see whether, in their case,
there can even be any talk of philosophy. The Kantian doctrine then will
be sought for in vain anywhere else but in Kant’s own works; but these are
throughout instructive, even where he errs, even where he fails. In
consequence of his originality, it holds good of him in the highest
degree, as indeed of all true philosophers, that one can only come to know
them from their own works, not from the accounts of others. For the
thoughts of any extraordinary intellect cannot stand being filtered
through the vulgar mind. Born behind the broad, high, finely-arched brow,
from under which shine beaming eyes, they lose all power and life, and
appear no longer like themselves, when removed to the narrow lodging and
low roofing of the confined, contracted, thick-walled skull from which
dull glances steal directed to personal ends. Indeed we may say that minds
of this kind act like an uneven glass, in which everything is twisted and
distorted, loses the regularity of its beauty, and becomes a caricature.
Only from their authors themselves can we receive philosophical thoughts;
therefore whoever feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out
its immortal teachers in the still sanctuary of their works. The principal
chapters of any one of these true philosophers will afford a thousand
times more insight into their doctrines than the heavy and distorted
accounts of them that everyday men produce, who are still for the most
part deeply entangled in the fashionable philosophy of the time, or in the
sentiments of their own minds. But it is astonishing how decidedly the
public seizes by preference on these expositions at second-hand. It seems
really as if elective affinities were at work here, by virtue of which the
common nature is drawn to its like, and therefore will rather hear what a
great man has said from one of its own kind. Perhaps this rests on the
same principle as that of mutual instruction, according to which children
learn best from children.
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One word more for the professors of philosophy. I have always been
compelled to admire not merely the sagacity, the true and fine tact with
which, immediately on its appearance, they recognised my philosophy as
something altogether different from and indeed dangerous to their own
attempts, or, in popular language, something that would not suit their
turn; but also the sure and astute policy by virtue of which they at once
discovered the proper procedure with regard to it, the complete harmony
with which they applied it, and the persistency with which they have
remained faithful to it. This procedure, which further commended itself by
the great ease of carrying it out, consists, as is well known, in
altogether ignoring and thus in secreting—according to Goethe’s malicious
phrase, which just means the appropriating of what is of weight and
significance. The efficiency of this quiet means is increased by the
Corybantic shouts with which those who are at one reciprocally greet the
birth of their own spiritual children—shouts which compel the public to
look and note the air of importance with which they congratulate
themselves on the event. Who can mistake the object of such proceedings?
Is there then nothing to oppose to the maxim, _primum vivere, deinde
philosophari_? These gentlemen desire to live, and indeed to live by
philosophy. To philosophy they are assigned with their wives and children,
and in spite of Petrarch’s _povera e nuda vai filosofia_, they have staked
everything upon it. Now my philosophy is by no means so constituted that
any one can live by it. It lacks the first indispensable requisite of a
well-paid professional philosophy, a speculative theology, which—in spite
of the troublesome Kant with his Critique of Reason—should and must, it is
supposed, be the chief theme of all philosophy, even if it thus takes on
itself the task of talking straight on of that of which it can know
absolutely nothing. Indeed my philosophy does not permit to the professors
the fiction they have so cunningly devised, and which has become so
indispensable to them, of a reason that knows, perceives, or apprehends
immediately and absolutely. This is a doctrine which it is only necessary
to impose upon the reader at starting, in order to pass in the most
comfortable manner in the world, as it were in a chariot and four, into
that region beyond the possibility of all experience, which Kant has
wholly and for ever shut out from our knowledge, and in which are found
immediately revealed and most beautifully arranged the fundamental dogmas
of modern, Judaising, optimistic Christianity. Now what in the world has
my subtle philosophy, deficient as it is in these essential requisites,
with no intentional aim, and unable to afford a means of subsistence,
whose pole star is truth alone the naked, unrewarded, unbefriended, often
persecuted truth, and which steers straight for it without looking to the
right hand or the left,—what, I say, has this to do with that _alma
mater_, the good, well-to-do university philosophy which, burdened with a
hundred aims and a thousand motives, comes on its course cautiously
tacking, while it keeps before its eyes at all times the fear of the Lord,
the will of the ministry, the laws of the established church, the wishes
of the publisher, the attendance of the students, the goodwill of
colleagues, the course of current politics, the momentary tendency of the
public, and Heaven knows what besides? Or what has my quiet, earnest
search for truth in common with the noisy scholastic disputations of the
chair and the benches, the inmost motives of which are always personal
aims. The two kinds of philosophy are, indeed, radically different. Thus
it is that with me there is no compromise and no fellowship, that no one
reaps any benefit from my works but the man who seeks the truth alone, and
therefore none of the philosophical parties of the day; for they all
follow their own aims, while I have only insight into truth to offer,
which suits none of these aims, because it is not modelled after any of
them. If my philosophy is to become susceptible of professorial
exposition, the times must entirely change. What a pretty thing it would
be if a philosophy by which nobody could live were to gain for itself
light and air, not to speak of the general ear! This must be guarded
against, and all must oppose it as one man. But it is not just such an
easy game to controvert and refute; and, moreover, these are mistaken
means to employ, because they just direct the attention of the public to
the matter, and its taste for the lucubrations of the professors of
philosophy might be destroyed by the perusal of my writings. For whoever
has tasted of earnest will not relish jest, especially when it is
tiresome. Therefore the silent system, so unanimously adopted, is the only
right one, and I can only advise them to stick to it and go on with it as
long as it will answer, that is, until to ignore is taken to imply
ignorance; then there will just be time to turn back. Meanwhile it remains
open to every one to pluck out a small feather here and there for his own
use, for the superfluity of thoughts at home should not be very
oppressive. Thus the ignoring and silent system may hold out a good while,
at least the span of time I may have yet to live, whereby much is already
won. And if, in the meantime, here and there an indiscreet voice has let
itself be heard, it is soon drowned by the loud talking of the professors,
who, with important airs, know how to entertain the public with very
different things. I advise, however, that the unanimity of procedure
should be somewhat more strictly observed, and especially that the young
men should be looked after, for they are sometimes so fearfully
indiscreet. For even so I cannot guarantee that the commended procedure
will last for ever, and cannot answer for the final issue. It is a nice
question as to the steering of the public, which, on the whole, is good
and tractable. Although we nearly at all times see the Gorgiases and the
Hippiases uppermost, although the absurd, as a rule, predominates, and it
seems impossible that the voice of the individual can ever penetrate
through the chorus of the befooling and the befooled, there yet remains to
the genuine works of every age a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and
powerful influence; and, as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out
of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere
of this globe into purer regions, where, having once arrived, it remains
at rest, and no one can draw it down again.
_Written at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in February 1844._
FIRST BOOK. THE WORLD AS IDEA.
First Aspect. The Idea Subordinated To The Principle Of Sufficient Reason:
The Object Of Experience And Science.
Sors de l’enfance, ami réveille toi!
—_Jean Jacques Rousseau._
§ 1. “The world is my idea:”—this is a truth which holds good for
everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into
reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has
attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him
that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a
sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is
there only as idea, _i.e._, only in relation to something else, the
consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted _a priori_,
it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all
possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time,
or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it; and each of these,
which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient
reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the
antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes,
is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be,
abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable. No
truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less
in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and
therefore this whole world, is only object in relation to subject,
perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea. This is obviously true of the
past and the future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off,
as of what is near; for it is true of time and space themselves, in which
alone these distinctions arise. All that in any way belongs or can belong
to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and
exists only for the subject. The world is idea.
This truth is by no means new. It was implicitly involved in the sceptical
reflections from which Descartes started. Berkeley, however, was the first
who distinctly enunciated it, and by this he has rendered a permanent
service to philosophy, even though the rest of his teaching should not
endure. Kant’s primary mistake was the neglect of this principle, as is
shown in the appendix. How early again this truth was recognised by the
wise men of India, appearing indeed as the fundamental tenet of the
Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is pointed out by Sir William Jones
in the last of his essays: “On the philosophy of the Asiatics” (Asiatic
Researches, vol. iv. p. 164), where he says, “The fundamental tenet of the
Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is,
of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be
lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending
that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence
and perceptibility are convertible terms.” These words adequately express
the compatibility of empirical reality and transcendental ideality.
In this first book, then, we consider the world only from this side, only
so far as it is idea. The inward reluctance with which any one accepts the
world as merely his idea, warns him that this view of it, however true it
may be, is nevertheless one-sided, adopted in consequence of some
arbitrary abstraction. And yet it is a conception from which he can never
free himself. The defectiveness of this view will be corrected in the next
book by means of a truth which is not so immediately certain as that from
which we start here; a truth at which we can arrive only by deeper
research and more severe abstraction, by the separation of what is
different and the union of what is identical. This truth, which must be
very serious and impressive if not awful to every one, is that a man can
also say and must say, “the world is my will.”