The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3) — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)
Schopenhauer · en
different from it, but primarily exhibits only the mode or manner of this
function itself, which can always receive only a very subordinate
modification through that which exists completely independently of it, and
sets it in motion as a stimulus. As, then, Locke claimed for the organs of
sense all that comes into our apprehension by means of the sensation, in
order to deny that it belongs to things in themselves, so Kant, with the
same intention, and pursuing the same path further, has proved all that
makes _perception_ proper possible, thus space, time, and causality, to be
functions of the brain; although he has refrained from using this
physiological expression, to which, however, our present method of
investigation, coming from the opposite side, the side of the real,
necessarily leads us. Kant arrived upon his analytical path at the result
that what we know are mere _phenomena_. What this mysterious expression
really means becomes clear from our objective and genetic investigation of
the intellect. The phenomena are the motives for the aims of individual
will as they exhibit themselves in the intellect which the will has
produced for this purpose (which itself appears as a phenomenon
objectively, as the brain), and which, when comprehended, as far as one
can follow their concatenation, afford us in their connection the world
which extends itself objectively in time and space, and which I call the
world as idea. Moreover, from our point of view, the objectionable element
vanishes which in the Kantian doctrine arises from the fact that, because
the intellect knows merely phenomena instead of things as they are in
themselves, nay, in consequence of this is led astray into paralogisms and
unfounded hypostases by means of “sophistications, not of men but of the
reason itself, from which even the wisest does not free himself, and if,
perhaps indeed after much trouble, he avoids error, can yet never get quit
of the illusion which unceasingly torments and mocks him”—because of all
this, I say, the appearance arises that our intellect is intentionally
designed to lead us into errors. For the objective view of the intellect
given here, which contains a genesis of it, makes it conceivable that,
being exclusively intended for practical ends, it is merely the _medium of
motives_, and therefore fulfils its end by an accurate presentation of
these, and that if we undertake to discover the nature of things in
themselves, from the manifold phenomena which here exhibit themselves
objectively to us, and their laws, we do this at our own peril and on our
own responsibility. We have recognised that the original inner force of
nature, without knowledge and working in the dark, which, if it has worked
its way up to self‐consciousness, reveals itself to this as _will_,
attains to this grade only by the production of an animal brain and of
knowledge, as its function, whereupon the phenomenon of the world of
perception arises in this brain.