The World as Will and Idea — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea
Schopenhauer · German
§ 11. In this regard the direct opposite of _rational knowledge_ is
feeling, and therefore we must insert the explanation of feeling here. The
concept which the word feeling denotes has merely a negative content,
which is this, that something which is present in consciousness, _is not a
concept_, _is not abstract rational knowledge_. Except this, whatever it
may be, it comes under the concept of _feeling_. Thus the immeasurably
wide sphere of the concept of feeling includes the most different kinds of
objects, and no one can ever understand how they come together until he
has recognised that they all agree in this negative respect, that they are
not _abstract concepts_. For the most diverse and even antagonistic
elements lie quietly side by side in this concept; for example, religious
feeling, feeling of sensual pleasure, moral feeling, bodily feeling, as
touch, pain, sense of colour, of sounds and their harmonies and discords,
feeling of hate, of disgust, of self-satisfaction, of honour, of disgrace,
of right, of wrong, sense of truth, æsthetic feeling, feeling of power,
weakness, health, friendship, love, &c. &c. There is absolutely nothing in
common among them except the negative quality that they are not abstract
rational knowledge. But this diversity becomes more striking when the
apprehension of space relations presented _a priori_ in perception, and
also the knowledge of the pure understanding is brought under this
concept, and when we say of all knowledge and all truth, of which we are
first conscious only intuitively, and have not yet formulated in abstract
concepts, we _feel_ it. I should like, for the sake of illustration, to
give some examples of this taken from recent books, as they are striking
proofs of my theory. I remember reading in the introduction to a German
translation of Euclid, that we ought to make beginners in geometry draw
the figures before proceeding to demonstrate, for in this way they would
already feel geometrical truth before the demonstration brought them
complete knowledge. In the same way Schleiermacher speaks in his “Critique
of Ethics” of logical and mathematical feeling (p. 339), and also of the
feeling of the sameness or difference of two formulas (p. 342). Again
Tennemann in his “History of Philosophy” (vol. I., p. 361) says, “One
_felt_ that the fallacies were not right, but could not point out the
mistakes.” Now, so long as we do not regard this concept “_feeling_” from
the right point of view, and do not recognise that one negative
characteristic which alone is essential to it, it must constantly give
occasion for misunderstanding and controversy, on account of the excessive
wideness of its sphere, and its entirely negative and very limited content
which is determined in a purely one-sided manner. Since then we have in
German the nearly synonymous word _empfindung_ (sensation), it would be
convenient to make use of it for bodily feeling, as a sub-species. This