The World as Will and Idea — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer · German
united in the judgment, the principle of sufficient reason appears in such
a way that each of these has its worth, its validity, and its whole
existence, here called _truth_, simply and solely through the relation of
the judgment to something outside of it, its ground of knowledge, to which
there must consequently always be a return. Among real objects, ideas of
perception, on the other hand, the principle of sufficient reason appears
not as the principle of the ground of _knowing_, but of _being_, as the
law of causality: every real object has paid its debt to it, inasmuch as
it has come to be, _i.e._, has appeared as the effect of a cause. The
demand for a ground of knowing has therefore here no application and no
meaning, but belongs to quite another class of things. Thus the world of
perception raises in the observer no question or doubt so long as he
remains in contact with it: there is here neither error nor truth, for
these are confined to the province of the abstract—the province of
reflection. But here the world lies open for sense and understanding;
presents itself with naive truth as that which it really is—ideas of
perception which develop themselves according to the law of causality.
So far as we have considered the question of the reality of the outer
world, it arises from a confusion which amounts even to a misunderstanding
of reason itself, and therefore thus far, the question could be answered
only by explaining its meaning. After examination of the whole nature of
the principle of sufficient reason, of the relation of subject and object,
and the special conditions of sense perception, the question itself
disappeared because it had no longer any meaning. There is, however, one
other possible origin of this question, quite different from the purely
speculative one which we have considered, a specially empirical origin,
though the question is always raised from a speculative point of view, and
in this form it has a much more comprehensible meaning than it had in the
first. We have dreams; may not our whole life be a dream? or more exactly:
is there a sure criterion of the distinction between dreams and reality?
between phantasms and real objects? The assertion that what is dreamt is
less vivid and distinct than what we actually perceive is not to the
point, because no one has ever been able to make a fair comparison of the
two; for we can only compare the recollection of a dream with the present
reality. Kant answers the question thus: “The connection of ideas among
themselves, according to the law of causality, constitutes the difference
between real life and dreams.” But in dreams, as well as in real life,
everything is connected individually at any rate, in accordance with the
principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and this connection is
broken only between life and dreams, or between one dream and another.
Kant’s answer therefore could only run thus:—the _long_ dream (life) has