The World as Will and Idea — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer · German
knowing individual as such, and the particular things known by him, are
always in some place, at some time, and are links in the chain of causes
and effects. The pure subject of knowledge and his correlative, the Idea,
have passed out of all these forms of the principle of sufficient reason:
time, place, the individual that knows, and the individual that is known,
have for them no meaning. When an individual knower has raised himself in
the manner described to be pure subject of knowledge, and at the same time
has raised the observed object to the Platonic Idea, the _world as idea_
appears complete and pure, and the full objectification of the will takes
place, for the Platonic Idea alone is its _adequate objectivity_. The Idea
includes object and subject in like manner in itself, for they are its one
form; but in it they are absolutely of equal importance; for as the object
is here, as elsewhere, simply the idea of the subject, the subject, which
passes entirely into the perceived object has thus become this object
itself, for the whole consciousness is nothing but its perfectly distinct
picture. Now this consciousness constitutes the whole _world as idea_, for
one imagines the whole of the Platonic Ideas, or grades of the objectivity
of will, in their series passing through it. The particular things of all
time and space are nothing but Ideas multiplied through the principle of
sufficient reason (the form of the knowledge of the individual as such),
and thus obscured as regards their pure objectivity. When the Platonic
Idea appears, in it subject and object are no longer to be distinguished,
for the Platonic Idea, the adequate objectivity of will, the true world as
idea, arises only when the subject and object reciprocally fill and
penetrate each other completely; and in the same way the knowing and the
known individuals, as things in themselves, are not to be distinguished.
For if we look entirely away from the true _world as idea_, there remains
nothing but the _world as will_. The will is the “in-itself” of the
Platonic Idea, which fully objectifies it; it is also the “in-itself” of
the particular thing and of the individual that knows it, which objectify
it incompletely. As will, outside the idea and all its forms, it is one
and the same in the object contemplated and in the individual, who soars
aloft in this contemplation, and becomes conscious of himself as pure
subject. These two are, therefore, in themselves not different, for in
themselves they are will, which here knows itself; and multiplicity and
difference exist only as the way in which this knowledge comes to the
will, _i.e._, only in the phenomenon, on account of its form, the
principle of sufficient reason.