Arthur Schopenhauer

……. Moods like depression and exhilaration, if they have any object at all, seem to be about existence itself. Heidegger maintained that at the deepest level this is true of all emotions.

What sort of emotion is appropriate when the object of that emotion is the world as a whole?

This question divides people into two categories: those who smile on existence, and those who frown on it. For notable frowner, consider Authur Schopenhauer, whose philosophical pessimism influenced such later thinkers as Tolstoy, Wittgenstein, and Freud. If we are astonished at the existence of the world, Schopenhauer declared, out astonishment is one of dismay and distress. That is why “philosophy, like the overture to Don Juan, starts with a minor chord.” We live not in the best of all worlds, he went on, but in the worst. Nonexistence “is not only conceivable, but even preferable to itsexistence.” Why? Well, in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the entire universe is a great manifestation of striving, one vast will. All of us, with our seemingly individual wills, are merely little bits of this cosmic will. Even inanimate nature – the attractive force of gravity, the impenetrability of matter – partakes in it. And will, for Schopenhauer, is essentially suffering: there is no end that, if achieved, would bring contentment; that will is either frustrated and miserable, or sated and bored. Schopenhauer was the first thinker to import this Buddhist strain into Western thought. The only way out of suffering, he taught, is to extinguish the will and thereby enter a state of nirvana – which is as close to nonexistence as we can get: “No will: no idea, no world. Before us there is certainly only nothingness.” ...............

In the last century, Schopenhauerian frowners have predominated, at least in the literary world. An especially heavy concentration of them could be found on the boulevards of Paris. Take E. M. Cioran, the Romanian writer who came to Paris and reinvented himself as an existential ‘flaneur.’ Not even the charms of his adopted city could ease his nihilistic despair. “When you have understood that nothing is,” Samuel Beckett, wanted to know, is the cosmos indifferent to us? Why are we such an insignificant part of it? Why is there world at all? ~ Page 31

When someone ‘wills’ something they have an aim in mind; they’re trying to do something. But that is not at all what Schopenhauer means when he declares reality at the level of the World as Will. The Will is aimless, or, as he sometimes puts it, ‘blind’ It isn’t attempting to bring about any particular result. It doesn’t have any point or goal. It is just this great surge of energy that is in every natural phenomenon as well as in our conscious acts of willing things. For Schopenhauer there is no God to give it direction. Nor is the Will itself God. The human situation is that we, like all reality are part of this meaningless force. ~ Page 135 "A Little History of Philosophy" Author: Nigel Warburton

....... when the last and greatest of post-Kantian idealist Arthur Schopenhauer, published his extraordinary magnum opus, 'The World as Will and Idea' in 1819, it was born out of time. Having studied medicine with Blumenbach, Schopenhauer put forth a biologically rooted philosophy of perception, inner drive, and mind that was no longer in fashion. His epiphany -- that Kant's thing-in-itself was an inner, natural drive called the will -- would have to wait, as would his psychological model of subjectivity based on an unconscious need. When this brilliant summation of post-Kantian thought appeared, to Schopenhauer's dismay, it was ignored. In Berlin, when he boldly came to challenge the Hegelians, five students signed up for his class, while Hegel's auditorium overflowed. His work would be forgotten until the end of 19th century, when it was rediscovered. ~ Page 487 (Excerpt " Soul Machine" ~ George Makari

Schopenhauer's concept of 'Will' should not be understood in the common sense as simply wanting something for oneself, but is much more than that. It is essence of what it means to be human. Previous to Schopenhauer, much of the philosophical tradition places mankind as the thinking animal, as a rational, conscious being, but Schopenhauer saw consciousness as the mere surface of our minds. Under the conscious intellect is the unconscious will which is a striving, persistent force. .... ~ Page 18 (Except: Nitsche -- Essential understanding - Author Roy Jackson)