The teleology that manifests itself in individualised love is, in his
view, not related in reality to the interests of the individual life,
but to those of the species. That this is immortal follows from the
eternity of the Idea it unfolds.[4] The end sought is aimed at
unconsciously by the person. Fundamentally, for Schopenhauer, teleology
must of course be unconscious, since the will is blind, and will, not
intelligence, is primordial. Its typical case is the instinct of
animals; but the 'instinctive' character belongs also to the
accomplishment of the highest aims, as in art and virtue. What
characterises individualised love internally is the aim, attributed to
'nature' or 'the species,' at a certain typical beauty or perfection of
the offspring. The lover is therefore deluded in thinking that he is
seeking his own happiness. What looks through the eyes of lovers is the
genius of the race, meditating on the composition of the next
generation. It may, in the complexity of circumstances, be thwarted.
When it reaches its end, often personal happiness is sacrificed.
Marriages dictated by interest tend to be happier than love-matches.
Yet, though the sacrifice of the individual to the race is involuntary
in these, egoism is after all overcome; hence they are quite rightly the
object of a certain admiration and sympathy, while the prudential ones
are looked upon with a tinge of contempt. For here too that element
appears which alone gives nobility to the life either of intellect or of
art or of moral virtue, namely, the rising above a subjective interest
of the individual will.
[4] The disappearance of species in time raises difficulties in more
than one way for his philosophy; but he formally escapes refutation by
the suggestion, already noted, that the Idea need not always be
manifested phenomenally in the same world. This, however, he did not
work out.
No doubt there are touches of pessimism in this statement; but the
general theory does not seem reconcilable finally with pessimism as
Schopenhauer understands it. For it is a definitely stated position of
his that nature keeps up the process of the world by yielding just
enough to prevent discontinuance of the striving for an illusory end.
Yet he admits here in the result something beyond bare continuance of
life; for this is already secured without the particular modification of
feeling described. What the feeling is brought in to secure is a better
realisation of the type in actual individuals; and such realisation is
certainly more than bare subsistence with the least possible expenditure
of nature's resources.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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