The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)Schopenhauer, Arthur
Philosophy
The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Idea (Philosophy); Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy; Will
In all the cases given, and indeed in all conceivable cases, the
distinction between rational and irrational action runs back to the
question whether the motives are abstract conceptions or ideas of
perception. Therefore the explanation which I have given of reason agrees
exactly with the use of language at all times and among all peoples—a
circumstance which will not be regarded as merely accidental or arbitrary,
but will be seen to arise from the distinction of which every man is
conscious, of the different faculties of the mind, in accordance with
which consciousness he speaks, though certainly he does not raise it to
the distinctness of an abstract definition. Our ancestors did not make the
words without attaching to them a definite meaning, in order, perhaps,
that they might lie ready for philosophers who might possibly come
centuries after and determine what ought to be thought in connection with
them; but they denoted by them quite definite conceptions. Thus the words
are no longer unclaimed, and to attribute to them an entirely different
sense from that which they have hitherto had means to misuse them, means
to introduce a licence in accordance with which every one might use any
word in any sense he chose, and thus endless confusion would necessarily
arise. Locke has already shown at length that most disagreements in
philosophy arise from a false use of words. For the sake of illustration
just glance for a moment at the shameful misuse which philosophers
destitute of thoughts make at the present day of the words substance,
consciousness, truth, and many others. Moreover, the utterances and
explanations concerning reason of all philosophers of all ages, with the
exception of the most modern, agree no less with my explanation of it than
the conceptions which prevail among all nations of that prerogative of
man. Observe what Plato, in the fourth book of the Republic, and in
innumerable scattered passages, calls the λογιμον, or λογιστικον της
ψυχης, what Cicero says (_De Nat. Deor._, iii. 26-31), what Leibnitz and
Locke say upon this in the passages already quoted in the first book.
There would be no end to the quotations here if one sought to show how all
philosophers before Kant have spoken of reason in general in my sense,
although they did not know how to explain its nature with complete
definiteness and distinctness by reducing it to one point. What was
understood by reason shortly before Kant’s appearance is shown in general
by two essays of Sulzer in the first volume of his miscellaneous
philosophical writings, the one entitled “Analysis of the Conception of
Reason,” the other, “On the Reciprocal Influence of Reason and Language.”
If, on the other hand, we read how reason is spoken about in the most
recent times, through the influence of the Kantian error, which after him
increased like an avalanche, we are obliged to assume that the whole of
the wise men of antiquity, and also all philosophers before Kant, had
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