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
very insufficient, remains so far below the dignity of the subject, that
it can never occur to us to accept it as objective truth. Therefore I
consider myself relieved from the necessity of refuting it; and here also
I refer to the positive part of my work.
With regard to the form of his whole book, it is to be observed that it
originated in the idea of finding in the teleological conception the key
to the problem of the beautiful. This inspiration is deduced, which is
always a matter of no difficulty, as we have learnt from Kant’s
successors. Thus there now arises the strange combination of the knowledge
of the beautiful with that of the teleology of natural bodies in _one_
faculty of knowledge called _judgment_, and the treatment of these two
heterogeneous subjects in one book. With these three powers of knowledge,
reason, judgment, and understanding, a variety of
symmetrical-architectonic amusements are afterwards undertaken, the
general inclination to which shows itself in many ways in this book; for
example, in the forcible adaptation of the whole of it to the pattern of
the “Critique of Pure Reason,” and very specially in the antinomy of the
æsthetical judgment, which is dragged in by the hair. One might also
extract a charge of great inconsistency from the fact that after it has
been incessantly repeated in the “Critique of Pure Reason” that the
understanding is the faculty of judgment, and after the forms of its
judgment have been made the foundation-stone of all philosophy, a quite
special faculty of judgment now appears, which is completely different
from the former. For the rest, what I call the faculty of judgment, the
capacity for translating knowledge of perception into abstract knowledge,
and again of applying the latter correctly to the former, is explained in
the positive part of my work.
By far the best part of the “Critique of Æsthetical Judgment” is the
theory of the sublime. It is incomparably more successful than that of the
beautiful, and does not only give, as that does, the general method of
investigation, but also a part of the right way to it—so much so that even
though it does not give the real solution of the problem, it yet touches
very closely upon it.
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