The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1

First Book: The World as Representation First Aspect

§ 1.

The fundamental truth of all philosophy is that the world is my representation: every object exists only in relation to a knowing subject, and this subject-object division is the universal form of all possible experience, prior even to space, time, and causality.

• The world exists only as representation for a knowing subject — there is no object without a subject — and this is the most certain, a priori truth, more universal than time, space, or causality.
  • One does not know a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun and a hand that feels an earth.
  • Berkeley was the first to enunciate this positively, rendering an immortal service to philosophy.
• This idealist truth was already recognized by ancient Indian philosophy (Vedanta), which held that matter has no existence independent of mental perception — existence and perceptibility are convertible terms.
  • “The fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, but in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception.” —William Jones
  • These words express the compatibility of empirical reality with transcendental ideality.
• The world as representation is one-sided; it must be supplemented by the equally valid claim that the world is will — a truth that is serious and even terrible, which the following books will establish.
  • The world is, on the one side, entirely representation, just as, on the other, it is entirely will.
  • A reality that is neither representation nor will, but an object in itself, is the phantom of a dream.

§ 2.

The knowing subject — that which knows all things and is known by none — is the necessary correlative of all objects, is never plural nor singular in the way objects are, and supports the entire world of representation without itself being part of it.

• The subject is the universal condition and supporter of all objects and all experience; it lies outside time and space, which belong only to objects, and thus neither plurality nor unity applies to it.
  • The subject, the knower never the known, does not lie within the forms of space, time, and causality; these are presupposed by the subject itself.
  • A single knowing being with one object completes the world as representation just as fully as do the millions that exist.
• Kant’s discovery that space, time, and causality can be known a priori from the subject alone — without reference to external objects — is one of his greatest merits, and Schopenhauer identifies the principle of sufficient reason as the common expression of all these forms.
  • The essential and universal forms of every object — space, time, and causality — can be found and fully known starting from the subject, even without knowledge of the object itself.

§ 3.

Kant’s achievement in demonstrating that space and time as pure forms of intuition are perceivable a priori and independently of experience underlies all mathematics; at the same time, the whole world of empirical experience has been compared by great thinkers to a dream or illusion (Maya), sharing the same ontological status.

• Kant’s great discovery is that space and time as pure intuition are independent of experience and knowable entirely a priori — this is the foundation of mathematics and its infallibility.
  • The properties of space and time, as known in a priori perception, are valid for all possible experience as laws; experience must always conform to them.
• The world of phenomena is essentially characterized by emptiness and flux — this insight, shared by Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and the Vedas, means all existing things are only relatively real and are aptly compared to a dream or the illusion of Maya.
  • It is Maya, the veil of deception, which covers the eyes of mortals, and causes them to see a world of which one cannot say either that it is or that it is not.
  • “Shakespeare: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’” —Shakespeare

§ 4.

Time, space, and matter are each exhaustively defined by one form of the principle of sufficient reason — succession, position, and causality respectively — and matter especially is shown to be nothing but causality itself, combining space and time and first making possible coexistence, duration, and change.

• Time is wholly constituted by succession (the ground of being in time), space by position, and matter by causality — each is nothing beyond its corresponding form of the principle of sufficient reason.
  • Matter is absolutely nothing but causality — its being is its acting, and without this relation it is inconceivable.
  • The substance of everything material is aptly called in German Wirklichkeit (actuality/effectuality), a word more expressive than Realität.
• Matter first arises from the combination of space and time through causality — neither space nor time alone yields matter or coexistence; only their union, mediated by the law of causality, produces the persistent world of material things.
  • In mere space the world would be rigid and immovable; in mere time everything would be fleeting with no coexistence; only through their combination arises matter and hence persistent duration.

§ 5.

The long debate about the reality of the external world dissolves once we recognize that the causal relation holds only between objects (never between subject and object), that object and representation are identical, and that the perceived world is empirically real but transcendentally ideal.

• The controversy between realism and idealism about the external world rests on a false application of the principle of sufficient reason between subject and object, which are not in a cause-effect relation but are mutually presupposing correlatives.
  • Object and representation are the same thing; the true being of objects consists in their action, and a demand for existence outside representation is a contradiction.
  • The perceived world in space and time, proclaiming itself as nothing but causality, is perfectly real and absolutely what it appears to be — but only as representation.
• The real source of the question about external reality is the deeper perplexity: is the world of perception identical with our own body as will, or merely an alien phantom? This question — not the pseudo-problem of cause and effect between subject and object — is what the second book answers.
  • The clearer explanation of this question and its affirmative answer will be the content of the second book.

§ 6.

Though philosophical method requires abstracting from our own body and treating it as mere representation, this is a necessary one-sidedness, since the body is the immediate object whose felt changes provide the starting-point for all understanding of the external world.

• The body is the immediate object of knowledge — it alone provides the raw data of sensation from which the understanding constructs perception of all other objects — but its deeper nature as will is temporarily set aside in the first book.
  • The body is the starting-point of the subject’s knowledge, since its immediately known changes precede the application of the law of causality and furnish it with first data.
• All animals, even the most imperfect, possess understanding — the faculty of knowing causality — since perceiving an object as such requires passing from effect to cause; understanding is thus not uniquely human but is the condition of all animal life.
  • The understanding is the same in all animals and in all men: knowledge of causality, transition from effect to cause and from cause to effect, and nothing else.
  • The elephant who refused to cross a bridge he deemed too light demonstrates a priori causal reasoning without prior experience of that specific case.

§ 7.

Schopenhauer’s method — starting from representation rather than from either subject or object — distinguishes his philosophy from all previous systems, and the complete relativity of the world as representation points beyond itself to an inner nature that is neither subject nor object.

• Starting from representation (rather than object as materialism does, or subject as Fichte does) is the only coherent approach, since representation already contains the subject-object division as its first essential form.
  • This procedure distinguishes our method of consideration wholly and entirely from every philosophy ever attempted.
  • Materialism overlooks that with the simplest object it has at once posited the subject; Fichte overlooks that with the subject he posited the object.
• Materialism is fundamentally self-refuting because it tries to explain the knowing subject — the precondition of any world — as a product of matter, which is itself already constituted only for and by a knowing subject.
  • Having reached its highest point, materialism finds that its final result, knowledge, was already presupposed as the indispensable condition at the very first starting-point, at mere matter.
  • ‘No object without subject’ is the principle that renders all materialism for ever impossible.

§ 8.

Abstract rational knowledge (concepts) is a derived, second-order reflection of intuitive perception; while it enables communication, planning, and science, it also introduces error and operates on borrowed content — reason gives back only what it has first received from perception.

• Abstract knowledge through concepts is the peculiar endowment of reason in man, giving him dominance over the animal through deliberation, planning, language, and anticipation of future and past — but this same capacity introduces error, care, and remorse that the animal is spared.
  • If in the representation of perception illusion distorts reality for moments, then in the representation of the abstract, error can reign for thousands of years, stifle the noblest impulses, and enchain even the man it cannot deceive.
  • The animal communicates feelings by gesture and sound; man communicates thought and conceals it by language — speech is the first product and necessary instrument of reason.
• Reason has only one function — the formation of concepts — and all the phenomena that distinguish human from animal life (language, science, deliberate action, philosophy, religion) flow from this single capacity.
  • The understanding has one function alone: immediate knowledge of cause and effect. Reason also has one function: the formation of the concept.

§ 9.

Concepts are abstract representations whose entire content derives from intuitive perception; they are related to perception as a reflection to its original, and their logical relations can be represented spatially through overlapping spheres whose combinations generate the whole of logic.

• Concepts are essentially relational — their whole nature consists in the relation to their ground of knowledge, which ultimately must terminate in intuitive perception; the entire edifice of abstract thought rests on the world of perception as its foundation.
  • The whole world of reflection rests on the world of perception as its ground of knowledge.
  • Concepts can appropriately be called representations of representations.
• Logic has no practical use because the laws of thought are already followed naturally by reason in every particular case — logic can only make explicit what reason already does instinctively — and its value is purely philosophical and theoretical.
  • It is easier for an error to occur in abstract knowledge or its application than for reason to act contrary to its own essence and nature.
  • Logic is therefore without practical use; it is merely knowing in the abstract what everyone knows in the concrete.

§ 10.

Science is systematic knowledge that proceeds from the general to the particular by subordinating concepts under wider concept-spheres; its aim is not greater certainty but greater facility of rational knowledge, and all science ultimately rests on undemonstrated truths grounded in perception.

• Science seeks completeness through systematic subordination of all particular knowledge under universal concepts, proceeding from the general to the particular — this systematic form, not greater certainty, is what distinguishes science from ordinary rational knowledge.
  • The path science follows, namely from the general to the particular, distinguishes it from ordinary rational knowledge.
• Every proof ultimately rests on undemonstrated truths grounded in perception or a priori intuition — a directly established truth is more reliable than a demonstrated one, and all truth requires an unproven foundation that cannot itself be proved without circular reasoning.
  • Not the demonstrated judgements or their proofs, but judgements drawn directly from perception and founded thereon, are in science what the sun is to the world.

§ 11.

The concept of feeling (Gefühl) has only a negative content — it encompasses everything in consciousness that is not abstract rational knowledge — which explains why such disparate phenomena as religious feeling, bodily sensation, moral emotion, and aesthetic experience all fall under this single word.

• The word ‘feeling’ (Gefühl) denotes everything present in consciousness that is not abstract concept — its wide, heterogeneous scope follows from the fact that reason, occupying a one-sided standpoint, lumps everything outside its own mode of representation into one negatively defined category.
  • The immeasurably wide sphere of the concept of feeling includes the most heterogeneous things; they agree only in this negative respect of not being abstract concepts.

§ 12.

The value of abstract rational knowledge lies in its communicability and preservability, enabling coordinated action across time; but abstract knowledge is always an approximation of intuitive knowledge and cannot fully replace it — in art, ethics, and practical skill, immediate intuition must guide, while reason plays only a secondary, instrumental role.

• Abstract knowledge is indispensable for coordinated, planned, lasting action across time — billiard-players and craftsmen can operate by intuition alone, but builders, legislators, and scientists must translate knowledge into abstract concepts to communicate and apply it systematically.
  • The causal knowledge of an experienced billiard-player may be more complete and profound than what can be expressed abstractly, but only abstract knowledge enables coordinated action among many persons.
• Reason’s intervention in art, practical skill, or ethics often hinders performance rather than enhancing it, because concepts are to perception as a mosaic is to a painting — they cannot capture fine gradations — and virtue and genius both spring from immediate insight, not from abstract maxims.
  • Concepts are like a mosaic compared to a painting by van der Werft or Denner — the edges of the stones always remain so that no continuous transition is possible.
  • Virtue and holiness result not from reflection but from the inner depth of the will and its relation to knowledge.

§ 13.

Laughter arises universally from the suddenly perceived incongruity between an abstract concept and the real objects subsumed under it; this incongruity takes two species — wit (proceeding from things to concept) and folly (proceeding from concept to things) — and its source is the essential inadequacy of abstract knowledge to fully capture perceptual reality.

• Laughter results precisely from the incongruity between abstract concepts and concrete perceptual reality — the concept fits objects from one standpoint but manifestly fails from another, producing the paradoxical subsumption that triggers the comic response.
  • All laughter therefore is occasioned by a paradoxical, and hence unexpected, subsumption, whether this is expressed in words or in deeds.
  • Wit proceeds from the discrepancy of objects to the identity of the concept; folly proceeds from the concept to subsequently discovered diversity of the objects.

§ 14.

Science is distinguished from ordinary knowledge by its systematic form and by the foundation of all its judgements ultimately in direct perception; the establishment of truth differs from mere proof, and all science — even mathematics — rests on an intuitive base, not on logical demonstration alone.

• The content of all sciences is ultimately the relation of phenomena to one another according to the principle of sufficient reason; explanation always means demonstrating such a relation, and every scientific explanation eventually terminates in an original force or qualitas occulta that can be posited but not further explained.
  • Every science invariably starts from two principal data: the principle of sufficient reason in some form as organon, and its special object as problem.
• The source of error is always an invalid inference from the consequent to the ground — from effect to cause — where this conclusion is drawn without the complete induction necessary to establish it; error is thus exactly analogous to sensory illusion.
  • Every error is a conclusion from the consequent to the ground, which is valid only when the consequent can have that ground and absolutely no other.

§ 15.

Euclid’s method of proving mathematical truths through logical demonstration from axioms is a perverse rejection of mathematics’ own proper evidence — spatial intuition a priori — which is just as certain as any logical proof and far more illuminating, since it shows both that and why a proposition is true.

• Euclid deliberately rejected the evidence of spatial perception in favor of logical proof, separating the knowledge that something is so from the knowledge of why it is so — this deprives students of genuine mathematical insight and reduces learning to mere rote results.
  • A person can study the whole of Euclid without gaining real insight into the laws of spatial relations — he learns by heart only a few of their results, an empirical and unscientific knowledge like that of the doctor who knows disease and remedy but not their connexion.
  • “Aristotle: ‘More accurate and preferable is the knowledge by which we understand both that and why it is so, and not separately the that and the why.’” —Aristotle
• Mathematical truth rests entirely on a priori spatial and temporal intuition, not on logical chains — arithmetic proceeds from pure counting (intuition in time) and geometry should likewise proceed from spatial necessity; wherever this method prevails, the knowledge of that and the knowledge of why are identical.
  • Only after Kant’s teaching, which showed that spatial intuition is a priori and independent of experience, can we see that Euclid’s logical method is a useless precaution, a crutch for sound legs.

§ 16.

Practical reason in the genuine sense is simply the governance of conduct by abstract, rational motives rather than by immediate sensuous impulses — this is the basis of the Stoic ideal of the sage — but such rational governance is entirely independent of ethical worth, which has a different and deeper source.

• Practical reason, properly understood, means conducting life by deliberate, abstract maxims rather than by the immediate impressions of the present — this gives man the ability to survey his whole life and act according to a plan, which is his greatest distinction from the animal.
  • The Stoic ethics is not originally a doctrine of virtue but a guide to the rational life, whose end is happiness through peace of mind.
  • The faculty of reason manifests itself practically wherever action is guided by abstract concepts, not by individual representations of perception.
• The Stoic ideal of the sage as the fully rational person is the highest achievement of purely human reason, but it contains an inner contradiction: the very goal of blessedness is frustrated by the inclusion of suicide as the final resort, revealing that rational eudaemonism cannot be the ultimate ethical truth.
  • The Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life — a costly phial of poison among the ornaments of oriental despots.

Second Book: The World as Will First Aspect

§ 17.

The inner significance of the world of perception — what the world is beyond being mere representation — is not accessible through natural science, mathematics, or philosophy as practiced hitherto; only the investigator’s own body, given in two entirely different ways, provides the key.

• Natural science (morphology and etiology) can describe and connect phenomena but can never reveal the inner nature of any force or quality — it always presupposes original forces as qualitates occultae and explains only relations, never the thing in itself.
  • Etiology tells us completely about the regular conditions under which phenomena appear, but the inner nature of the force that manifests itself remains for it an eternal secret.
  • We are like a man who goes round a castle, looking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the façades. Yet this is the path that all philosophers before me have followed.

§ 18.

The body, uniquely given to the knowing subject both as representation and as will, provides the key to the inner nature of the world: every act of will is simultaneously an action of the body — they are not cause and effect but one and the same thing given in two different ways.

• The body is given to the knowing subject in two entirely different ways: as object in representation, and as will known immediately in consciousness — the act of will and the action of the body are identical, not cause and effect.
  • The action of the body is nothing but the act of will objectified, i.e., translated into perception.
  • Pain and pleasure are not representations but immediate affections of the will in its phenomenon, the body — enforced instances of willing or not-willing of the impression undergone.
• The identity of body and will is the most direct and philosophically fundamental truth — it is not derivable from any other knowledge, constitutes its own species of truth (philosophical truth par excellence), and is the key to understanding the entire world.
  • My body and my will are one; or, my body is the objectivity of my will; or, apart from the fact that my body is my representation, it is still my will.

§ 19.

Using the double knowledge of our own body as will and as representation, we must extend this insight by analogy to all other phenomena, recognizing the same will — different only in degree of objectification — in the actions of animals, the growth of plants, and even the forces of inorganic nature.

• Since the body gives us the only case where we know both sides of a phenomenon, we must judge all other phenomena by analogy — assuming the same will as their inner nature — or abandon any claim to know their inner essence at all.
  • If the material world is to be something more than mere representation, we must say that besides being representation and in its inmost nature, it is what we find immediately in ourselves as will.
• Theoretical egoism — the solipsistic view that only one’s own will is real and all other phenomena are mere phantoms — is logically irrefutable but cannot be a genuine philosophical position; it is mentioned only as a limiting skeptical argument to be acknowledged and passed by.
  • As a serious conviction, theoretical egoism could be found only in a madhouse; as such it would need not so much a refutation as a cure.

§ 20.

Every voluntary bodily movement is the objectification of an individual act of will, and the body as a whole is the objectification of the will in general — but the will itself is groundless (not subject to sufficient reason) while its individual acts have motives only as their occasional causes.

• Motives determine only when and where the will manifests itself in individual acts, not the will’s fundamental nature or its willing in general — the empirical character is the temporal unfolding of the intelligible character which is groundless will itself.
  • The will itself lies outside the province of the law of motivation; only the phenomenon of the will at each point of time is determined by this law.
• The whole body — including teeth, genitals, intestines, hands — is objectified will: each organ corresponds to a particular striving of the will and is the visible expression of that striving, exhibiting the complete suitability of the body to the will that appears in it.
  • Teeth, gullet, and intestinal canal are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual impulse; grasping hands and nimble feet correspond to more indirect strivings of the will.

§ 21.

The knowledge that the world’s inner nature is will — the same will that objectifies itself in one’s own body — becomes the key to all of nature when the investigator transfers it from his own case to all phenomena, recognizing in gravity, magnetism, crystallization, and organic growth the same essence known in himself as will.

• The will is the thing-in-itself — it alone is not representation but what underlies all representation — and it appears at every level of nature from blind gravitational striving to fully conscious human willing, differing only in degree of objectivity, not in inner nature.
  • Only the will is thing-in-itself; as such it is not representation at all, but toto genere different therefrom. It is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole.

§ 22.

The concept of will must be extended far beyond its ordinary meaning (will guided by motives and knowledge) to cover the entire inner essence of all natural forces — using ‘will’ as the genus name for the thing-in-itself — and this extension is not arbitrary because will is the only concept derived from immediate inner experience rather than from external phenomena.

• Naming the thing-in-itself ‘will’ is a denominatio a potiori — naming the genus after its most complete species — and it is uniquely justified because will is the only concept whose origin is not the phenomenal world but our most immediate inner experience.
  • The word will, which like a magic word is to reveal to us the innermost essence of everything in nature, expresses not an unknown quantity reached by inferences, but something known absolutely and immediately.
  • Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will.

§ 23.

Time, space, and causality — the principium individuationis — belong only to the phenomenon of the will, not to the will itself; therefore the will is one, groundless, and free from plurality, while its phenomena are necessarily multiple, determined, and subject to the principle of sufficient reason.

• The will as thing-in-itself is entirely outside time and space (the principium individuationis), and therefore has no plurality — the same will appears in the mote of dust and in man, differing only in the degree and distinctness of its objectification.
  • The will is not one as an object is one (known in contrast to plurality) nor as a concept is one (by abstraction from plurality), but is one as that which lies outside the principium individuationis entirely.
• Human freedom is widely confused with the freedom of individual actions (which are necessarily determined by character and motive), whereas real freedom belongs only to the will as thing-in-itself — the one exception where this freedom appears in the phenomenon is the denial of the will.
  • Everyone considers himself a priori free even in his individual actions, but a posteriori through experience he finds to his astonishment that he is not free but liable to necessity.

§ 24.

Kant’s discovery that time, space, and causality belong only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself, is restated and extended: the forms of the principle of sufficient reason constitute the knowable as such, but the will that appears through them is a groundless residuum — the qualitas occulta — that no scientific explanation can reach.

• All natural science explains only the form of phenomena — the where, when, and how of appearances — but never the inner nature (the what) of the forces that manifest themselves: this inner nature is the will, which is no more explicable in the highest grade (man) than in the lowest (gravity).
  • There yet remains original forces; there will always remain, as an insoluble residuum, a content of the phenomenon which cannot be referred to its form, and which thus cannot be explained from something else in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason.
• Malebranche’s doctrine of occasional causes is entirely correct in the metaphysical sense: every natural cause is only an occasional cause for the manifestation of the one undivided will, determining only the place and time of the appearance but not the inner nature of what appears.
  • In any case Malebranche is right; every natural cause is only an occasional cause. It gives only the opportunity for the phenomenon of that one and indivisible will which is the in-itself of all things.

§ 25.

Since time and space as the principium individuationis belong only to the phenomenon, the will itself is not affected by the plurality of its manifestations — one will appears whole and undivided in every individual, from the single oak to all oaks, and this insight dissolves the false impressiveness of the world’s vastness.

• The will reveals itself just as completely in one oak as in millions of oaks — plurality exists only for the knowing subject and belongs to the principium individuationis, not to the will itself — therefore the infinite extension of the world adds no reality beyond what each individual thing contains.
  • True wisdom is not to be acquired by our measuring the boundless world, but by thoroughly investigating any individual thing, in that we try to know and understand perfectly its true and peculiar nature.
  • “Angelus Silesius: ‘I know God cannot live a moment without me; / If I should come to nought, He too must cease to be.’” —Angelus Silesius
• The grades of the will’s objectification that appear as definite and unchanging natural species are Plato’s Ideas — eternal forms outside time and space — while particular individual things are only the Ideas multiplied through the principium individuationis.
  • By ‘Idea’ I understand every definite and fixed grade of the will’s objectification, in so far as it is thing-in-itself and is therefore foreign to plurality.

§ 26.

The lowest grades of the will’s objectification are the universal forces of nature (gravity, electricity, chemical affinity, etc.), which are groundless original forces manifesting according to natural laws; at higher grades individuality becomes more prominent, reaching its maximum in man.

• Original natural forces are not effects or causes in the causal chain but the groundless presuppositions of all causal explanation — they are direct objectifications of the will — and asking for their cause is as meaningless as asking for the cause of causality itself.
  • It is therefore foolish to ask for a cause of gravity or of electricity; they are original forces whose manifestations certainly take place according to cause and effect, but the force itself is by no means the effect of a cause.
• At higher grades of objectification (animals and especially man), the will objectifies itself through increasingly distinct individual characters rather than uniformly through the species — in man the individual character becomes so significant that each person represents a partially distinct Idea.
  • In man, every individual has to be studied and fathomed by himself due to the possibility of dissimulation that appears first with the faculty of reason.

§ 27.

Etiology’s proper task is to reduce phenomena to original forces and state their laws, never to eliminate those forces by reducing them to a more primitive kind — the attempt to reduce everything to mechanical causation is a fundamental error — and philosophy takes up where science leaves off, investigating the inner nature that science must presuppose.

• Etiology (natural science) must correctly distinguish between phenomena of different original forces and phenomena of the same force in different circumstances — the chronic error is attempting to reduce the content of nature to mere form by deriving all forces from one mechanical type.
  • Crude materialism, denying vital force, tries to explain the phenomena of life by physical and chemical forces, and these in turn by the mechanical operation of matter — it would like to reduce all forces of nature to thrust and counter-thrust as its ’thing-in-itself.’
• A higher Idea (objectification of the will at a higher grade) arises through conflict with and victory over lower Ideas — organic life overcomes and subordinates chemical and physical forces — yet those lower forces continue operating as subordinate factors within the higher organization.
  • Everywhere in nature we see contest, struggle, and the fluctuation of victory, and in this we recognize that variance with itself essential to the will.

§ 28.

The conflict of all will’s phenomena with one another is universal and essential — expressing the will’s inner contradiction with itself — from the struggle of gravity with rigidity in inorganic matter, through the predation of animal kingdoms, up to the war of man against man; yet the will as thing-in-itself remains unmoved in all this.

• The universal conflict in nature — matter wrestling with matter, organism consuming organism, species preying on species — is the will’s inner contradiction with itself made visible through the principium individuationis; it is one will tearing itself to pieces.
  • This will generally feasts on itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as manufactured for its own use.
• Despite the conflict among all phenomena, the will itself — as thing-in-itself — is one and unaffected by the endless arising and perishing of individuals; like the flame of a magic lantern showing many images, it remains the one source while the pictures constantly change.
  • It is only one and the same flame that makes all the phenomena of will visible, and it itself remains unmoved in the midst of this change — it is the thing-in-itself; every object is phenomenon.

§ 29.

Concluding the second book, Schopenhauer summarizes: the world is through and through will and through and through representation; everyone is both the whole will (microcosm equaling macrocosm) and the knowing subject supporting the world; and the inner nature of this life, which the third and fourth books will illuminate, is ceaseless, objectless striving.

• The will’s essential nature is endless striving without final goal — every attained end merely reveals a new desire — and this is visible from the simplest gravitational attraction to human ambition, constituting the fundamental character of all existence.
  • Every attained end is at the same time the beginning of a new course, and so on ad infinitum — absence of all aim, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the will.

Third Book: The World as Representation Second Aspect

§ 30.

The third book investigates the world as representation from the perspective of the Platonic Ideas — the adequate objectivity of the will at definite grades — which are knowable only through a special mode of knowledge freed from the service of the will and from the forms of the principle of sufficient reason.

• Platonic Ideas are the direct and adequate objectification of the will at definite grades — they are eternal, unchanging, outside time and space — and knowing them requires a transformation of the knowing subject from individual to pure knowing subject, freed from all willing.
  • While the individuals in which an Idea expresses itself are innumerable and are incessantly coming into existence and passing away, the Idea remains unchanged as one and the same, and the principle of sufficient reason has no meaning for it.

§ 31.

Kant’s thing-in-itself and Plato’s Ideas, though not identical, point to the same truth from different directions: the phenomenal world is mere appearance whose inner nature is something of an entirely different order — and recognizing this relation between the two greatest paradoxes of Western philosophy illuminates both.

• Kant’s thing-in-itself and Plato’s Idea agree in declaring the visible world to be phenomenon void of ultimate reality, and in pointing to something entirely different as the truly real — but they differ in that the Idea retains the subject-object form and is therefore representation, while the thing-in-itself lies entirely outside that form.
  • The Idea is only the immediate, and therefore adequate, objectivity of the thing-in-itself in so far as it is thing-in-itself and foreign to plurality; the Idea is distinguished from the thing-in-itself only by retaining the form of representation, i.e., of being object for a subject.

§ 32.

The Platonic Idea lies between the thing-in-itself and particular phenomena: it is the adequate objectification of the will that retains only the most universal form of knowledge (subject-object), shedding all subordinate forms (time, space, causality), and is thus the eternal archetype of which particular things are time-bound copies.

• The particular thing is only an indirect objectification of the will, obscured and multiplied by the forms of the principle of sufficient reason; the Idea is the direct objectification — free from those forms but still an object for a subject — and knowledge of Ideas requires abolishing individuality in the knowing subject.
  • Time is merely the spread-out and piecemeal view that an individual being has of the Ideas which are outside time, and consequently eternal. Plato says that time is the moving image of eternity.

§ 33.

Aesthetic knowledge of Ideas is possible only through a transformation of the knowing subject from individual (serving the will) to pure subject of knowing — and this transition from ordinary to aesthetic contemplation corresponds to a change in the object from particular thing to Idea.

• In aesthetic contemplation, subject and object undergo a simultaneous transformation: the knowing individual becomes the pure, will-less subject of knowing while the particular object becomes the Platonic Idea — the two changes are inseparable aspects of one event.
  • When the pure subject of knowing appears, the particular thing at one stroke becomes the Idea of its species — time, place, and causal connexion vanish, and only the essential remains.

§ 34.

Genius is the ability to remain in the state of pure, will-less knowing for sustained periods and to repeat what is apprehended through this knowing in works of art; it requires preeminent objectivity and imagination, and it is accompanied by intense suffering and a certain kinship with madness.

• Genius is distinguished from ordinary talent by the superior degree and continuity of pure knowing — ordinary men can achieve aesthetic contemplation momentarily, but genius can sustain it long enough to reproduce it in art, communicating the Idea to others.
  • The gift of genius is nothing but the most complete objectivity, i.e., the objective tendency of the mind, as opposed to the subjective directed to our own person, i.e., to the will.
• The kinship of genius with madness arises because both involve loosening the connection between the particular and its chain of relations — the genius sees the Idea in the particular while the madman loses the thread of memory and fills the gaps with fictions — though the resemblance is partial and the mechanisms differ.
  • Plato says that without a certain madness there can be no genuine poet; Aristotle: ‘There has been no great mind without an admixture of madness.’

§ 35.

Pure aesthetic contemplation of nature or art elevates the knowing subject above individual willing and suffering into a state of will-less peace — the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing — and in this state the perceiver identifies himself with the pure knowing subject that underlies all worlds.

• Aesthetic pleasure has two inseparable components: objective (apprehension of the Idea) and subjective (deliverance from willing, the peace of pure knowing) — the first predominates with lower Ideas (architecture), the second with higher (drama); together they constitute the character of the beautiful.
  • When we are raised out of the endless stream of willing, knowledge is no longer directed to motives but comprehends things free from their relation to the will, and then all is well with us — we celebrate the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing.

§ 36.

History, science, and art are distinguished by their objects and methods: history follows events in time under the principle of sufficient reason; science follows causes and effects; art alone grasps the eternal Ideas by stopping the wheel of time, making the particular a representative of the universal.

• Art is the work of genius that communicates knowledge of Platonic Ideas — apprehended through pure contemplation freed from the principle of sufficient reason — and it is thus the only knowledge that is always at its goal, since the Idea is everywhere fully present in the particular.
  • Whilst science, following the restless stream of the fourfold forms of reasons or grounds, is with every end again directed farther and can never find an ultimate goal, art is everywhere at its goal.
• History repeats the particular event in time and can never communicate the Idea; the great historians approach genius by grasping the universal in the particular, depicting figures ideally so that the Idea of man appears through the individual — the opposite of mere chronicle.
  • The historian is related to the poet as portrait-painting is to historical painting: the former gives the true in the individual, the latter the true in the universal.

§ 37.

The capacity for aesthetic contemplation exists in all humans in lesser degree — this explains the universal susceptibility to beauty — and what the genius achieves by sustained effort is qualitatively the same as the momentary aesthetic pleasure accessible to all; art communicates this elevated mode of knowing by facilitating the transition from particular to Idea.

• The artist lets us see the world through his eyes, making accessible the kind of knowledge that genius achieves spontaneously; the work of art is a means of facilitating that knowledge, since the artist has separated the Idea from accidental particulars and presents it in concentrated purity.
  • The Idea comes to us more easily from the work of art than from nature because the artist, who knew only the Idea, clearly repeated in his work only the Idea, separated it out from reality and omitted all disturbing contingencies.

§ 38.

All willing springs from want and lack, hence from suffering; aesthetic pleasure consists in the temporary deliverance from willing through pure knowing — the knowing subject ceases to be individual, steps out of the stream of willing, and enjoys the peace that is impossible so long as the will governs.

• Pure aesthetic contemplation produces positive peace by temporarily suppressing all willing — this is the only genuine well-being accessible through knowledge — and it operates alike whether provoked by nature or art, though the capacity varies greatly between individuals.
  • Happiness is only of a negative nature; it is not a gratification which comes to us originally, but always only the satisfaction of a desire — the satisfaction of a wish is merely deliverance from a pain.

§ 39.

The feeling of the sublime arises when the object of contemplation is hostile or threatening to the individual will, yet the contemplator forcibly tears himself from this relation and maintains pure, will-less knowing — the greater the threat to the will and the more freely this is overcome, the more powerful the feeling of the sublime.

• The sublime differs from the beautiful in requiring a conscious effort to maintain the state of pure knowing against something threatening the will — there arise several degrees of the sublime, from a faint trace in winter sunlight to the full dynamically sublime in a tempestuous sea where the individual feels at once annihilated and universal.
  • In the fearful struggle of nature, the unmoved beholder of this scene simultaneously feels himself as feeble phenomenon of will, helpless against powerful nature, and as the eternal serene subject of knowing who is the supporter of this whole world.
• The mathematically sublime arises when spatial or temporal immensity reduces the individual to nothing — but the knowing subject, as the necessary correlative of the world, reasserts itself as the supporter of all these worlds, and this simultaneous annihilation and exaltation constitutes the feeling.
  • The Upanishads express this: ‘Hae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud (ens) non est.’

§ 40.

The opposite of the sublime is the charming or attractive, which draws the beholder from pure contemplation by directly exciting his will; this is inadmissible in fine art, as is its negative counterpart, the disgusting, which repels the will — both destroy aesthetic contemplation by making the will the center of attention.

• In painting, both the depiction of edible objects (which excite appetite) and of sensually arousing nudes (which excite lust) are inadmissible as art because they destroy pure aesthetic contemplation — the only legitimate nude in art is one presented with objective spirit, not with subjective sensuality.
  • The charming draws the beholder down from pure contemplation and stirs his will by objects that directly appeal to it — the beholder no longer remains pure knowing subject but becomes the needy and dependent subject of willing.

§ 41.

The beautiful and the sublime share the same subjective and objective conditions — pure knowing and apprehension of the Idea — differing only in whether pure knowing is achieved without struggle (beautiful) or requires conscious overcoming of a will-threatening relation (sublime).

• In both the beautiful and the sublime, the Idea is the object and the pure subject of knowing is the correlative; the difference lies entirely in the subjective side — whether the pure knowing state arises spontaneously (beautiful) or through deliberate self-elevation above the hostile or threatening (sublime).
  • The feeling of the sublime results from the pleasure of pure will-less knowing combined with the more or less strong awareness of what is overcome — the hostile relation to the will — and thus both together constitute the feeling.

§ 42.

The balance between the subjective and objective sides of aesthetic pleasure shifts with the grade of the Idea contemplated: with lower grades (architecture, landscape) the subjective peace of will-free knowing dominates; with higher grades (man and his actions in drama and historical painting) the objective significance of the revealed Idea dominates.

• As the grade of the will’s objectification rises (from stone through plant, animal, to man), the objective content of aesthetic contemplation becomes richer and more significant — drama and historical painting, dealing with the highest Idea (mankind), are therefore the most complete arts.
  • With the beautiful in inorganic nature, the enjoyment of pure will-less knowing will predominate; when animals and human beings are the object, the enjoyment consists rather in the objective apprehension of the most distinct revelations of the will.

§ 43.

Architecture as fine art gives perceptible expression to the conflict between gravity (the lowest objectification of will as blind striving) and rigidity — its aesthetic purpose is precisely to keep these forces in productive tension so that the nature of each is distinctly revealed.

• Architecture’s sole aesthetic aim is to present clearly the conflict and interaction of gravity and rigidity, the lowest Ideas of inorganic nature — a building is beautiful precisely to the degree that every part visibly supports as much as it can and is supported only where necessary, revealing these forces in their full expression.
  • The whole mass of the building, if left to its original tendency, would exhibit a mere heap bound to the earth; the architect thwarts this by compelling the forces to take roundabout paths, so that their nature unfolds in manifold and distinct ways.

§ 44.

Landscape painting and artistic horticulture assist the vegetable world’s natural tendency to invite aesthetic contemplation, while in animal painting the objective apprehension of the Idea becomes prominent as the animal’s character reveals the will more nakedly than in man.

• In animal painting the character of the species, expressed through posture, action, and physiognomy, is the main aesthetic content — animals reveal the will more nakedly than man because they have no faculty of dissimulation, and their Idea is expressed simply and directly in their form and behavior.
  • In these presentations the objective side of aesthetic pleasure obtains a decided predominance: the animal’s will in its restlessness and impetuosity, without the tempering of thoughtfulness, appears before us and arrests us.

§ 45.

Historical painting and sculpture aim to present the highest Idea — man — through significant characters in significant situations; beauty (the complete expression of the Idea of the species) and character (the expression of the individual aspect of the Idea) must be simultaneously presented without sacrificing either.

• Human beauty is the complete objectification of the will at the highest grade as expressed in spatial form alone — the sculptor must grasp this Idea a priori (since nature rarely produces perfect specimens) and only thus can surpass nature by showing what she always tries but never fully achieves.
  • Only because we ourselves are will — that will whose adequate objectification at the highest grade is here to be judged — do we have an anticipation of what nature endeavors to present. This is the Ideal.
• Grace is the adequate expression of the will through temporal phenomenon (movement and position) — it requires each movement to be the perfectly appropriate expression of its motive — while beauty is the adequate expression through spatial form alone; together they constitute the most complete revelation of the Idea of man.
  • “Winckelmann: ‘Grace is the peculiar relation of the acting person to the action.’” —Winckelmann

§ 46.

The famous group of Laocoön does not cry out because shrieking — whose essence lies entirely in its sound — cannot be expressed in silent marble; the artist was therefore right to replace the open cry with expressions of intense pain through other means, and those who criticized this misunderstood the distinctive province of sculpture.

• Each art has an exclusive province determined by its material: sculpture presents visible form and can express only what belongs to that domain; shrieking belongs to the domain of sound, not visual form, and therefore cannot legitimately be attempted in sculpture — a gaping mouth without sound would be ridiculous.
  • The essence of shrieking and its effect on the onlooker lie entirely in the sound, not in the gaping mouth — to exhibit the violent medium without its end would produce the ridiculous spectacle of a permanent exertion without effect.

§ 47.

Sculpture requires drapery as indirect presentation of the human form — forcing the understanding to infer the cause from the visible effect — just as rhetoric presents things allusively; the clarity of the form through clothing and folds is itself an aesthetic virtue.

• Clarity of expression and simplicity of style in art parallel the well-clothed form in sculpture — both reveal what is essential without concealment or ornamentation — and the analogy holds between verbal style and artistic form: pomposity covers emptiness as barbaric finery covers insignificance.
  • Just as a handsome man who had taste would prefer to walk about almost naked after the manner of the ancients, so will every fine mind rich in ideas express itself always in the most natural, candid, and simple way.

§ 48.

Historical painting’s task is to present the most significant aspects of the Idea of mankind through significant characters in significant situations; what matters for art is the inward significance (depth of human revelation), not the outward significance (historical importance), and this is why Dutch genre painting deserves its reputation.

• Inward significance (the depth with which the Idea of mankind is revealed) and outward significance (historical importance) are entirely independent — events from everyday life can have great inward significance while world-historical events may have little — therefore genre painting is artistically legitimate, even superior to badly chosen historical subjects.
  • The great injustice is done to the Dutch school when only their technical skill is esteemed, and they are looked down on because they depict objects from everyday life while historical subjects are regarded as significant.
• Christian painting at its highest — Raphael and Correggio depicting figures of saints and the Saviour — expresses the ultimate theme: the complete knowledge that becomes a quieter of the will and issues in resignation and salvation; this is the summit of all art.
  • Those eternally praiseworthy masters expressed the highest wisdom perceptibly in their works — the complete knowledge acting as a quieter produces resignation, the giving up not merely of life but of the whole will-to-live.

§ 49.

The Platonic Idea, not the concept and not the particular thing, is the object of all art; concepts are abstract and discursive (barren for art), while Ideas are perceptive, definite, and living — this is why genuine art proceeds from intuitive apprehension, not from rules, and communicates its content only to those whose aesthetic capacity rises to meet it.

• The concept is eternally barren and unproductive in art: imitators and mannerists work from the concept, noting what pleases and imitating it, while the genuine artist works from immediate apprehension of the Idea — this is why great works are timeless while mannered works become dated.
  • Genuine works bearing immortal life arise only from such immediate apprehension — just because the Idea is and remains perceptive, the artist is not conscious in abstracto of the intention and aim of his work.

§ 50.

Allegory in plastic and pictorial art is objectionable because it forces the mind away from the given Idea to an abstract concept — achieving no more than an inscription — while allegory in poetry is admissible and often powerful because poetry’s immediate material is already concepts, from which the concrete and perceptual must be precipitated.

• In painting and sculpture, allegory defeats art’s purpose by turning attention from the perceptible Idea to an abstract thought; in poetry, allegory is effective because it renders abstract concepts perceptual through imagination — making the invisible visible — which is the very movement poetry requires.
  • In plastic art we are led from what is immediately given (perception) to something else (a concept); but a concept can never be the source, and its communication never the aim, of a work of art.

§ 51.

Poetry achieves through words and imagination what painting achieves through visible form — it presents the Ideas of all grades — and its widest and highest subject is man in the connected series of his efforts and actions, which is the domain of epic, dramatic, and lyric poetry.

• In poetry the abstract concept is the immediate material, and the task is to precipitate from it the perceptual, individual, and living — this is why epithets, metaphors, and all figurative language are essential: they narrow abstract spheres until a perceptive representative stands before the imagination.
  • The skill of a master in poetry, as in chemistry, enables one always to obtain the precise precipitate that was intended — concepts are the fluids, the concrete individual image is the precipitate.
• In the lyric proper, the poet is simultaneously the depicter and the depicted — his own state of willing mixed with pure knowing constitutes the poem — and this dual consciousness (the alternation between personal desire and will-free contemplation) is the specific character of the lyrical mood.
  • The nature of melody — constant digression and return to the keynote — corresponds to the alternation of desire and satisfaction; lyric poetry expresses the same alternation between willing and pure knowing.

§ 52.

Music stands entirely apart from all other arts: it is not a copy of the Ideas but a direct copy of the will itself, expressing the innermost essence of the world with a universality and immediacy that the other arts can only approach indirectly through their representations of particular Ideas.

• Music uniquely bypasses the Ideas (the adequate objectification of the will) and copies the will itself directly — it expresses not this or that particular pleasure or pain but their quintessence, pure emotion without matter, which is why its effect is so much more powerful and universal than the other arts.
  • The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
• The structural elements of music correspond systematically to grades of the will’s objectification: the deep bass notes correspond to inorganic nature, the middle voices to plants and animals, and the leading melody to the intellectual life and endeavour of man — history of the innermost willing.
  • The nature of man consists in willing and striving — with satisfaction the wish changes only its form — and melody, with its constant digression from and return to the keynote, expresses all the forms of the will’s striving and satisfaction.
• Music is so intimately related to the inner nature of the world that Schopenhauer, paraphrasing Leibniz, calls it an unconscious exercise in metaphysics: a complete and adequate philosophical account of music would simultaneously be an adequate expression of the world’s inner nature.
  • Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi — music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing.

Fourth Book: The World as Will Second Aspect

§ 53.

The fourth book concerns the ethical significance of human conduct, approached not through prescriptions or duties but through philosophical description of how the one underlying will affirms or denies itself in the light of the complete self-knowledge that arises at the highest grade of its objectification.

• Philosophy in ethics can only interpret and describe what is present — it cannot prescribe or improve character — because the will is free and cannot be altered from outside by concepts; virtue is like genius in being inborn and expressible through works but not teachable by rules.
  • Virtue is as little taught as is genius; and the concept is just as unfruitful for it as it is for art.
  • Not the dead concepts of philosophy decide the question of worth or worthlessness of existence, but the innermost nature of man himself, the daemon which guides him.

§ 54.

The will-to-live is certain to the will because life is its own mirror — present moment is the only reality for the will — and death can no more threaten the will-to-live than the setting sun threatens the source of light; the individual’s death is merely the ending of one phenomenon while the will, and with it life, persists.

• The present moment, not the future or past, is the essential form of the will’s phenomenon — it is the nunc stans — and since the will always exists only in the present, which is inexhaustible, death changes nothing for the will itself, only for the individual phenomenon.
  • Everyone can say: I am once for all lord and master of the present, and through all eternity it will accompany me as my shadow; accordingly, I do not wonder where it comes from, and how it is that it is precisely now.
• The sexual impulse is the strongest affirmation of life — the will’s most vehement claim to continued existence — and this is why it is treated in religion as the origin of sin: procreation affirms the will-to-live beyond the individual’s death and thus perpetuates suffering.
  • The will-to-live, whose phenomenon is the body, ceases with the life of this body only if the will denies itself in chastity; thus voluntary chastity is the first step in the denial of the will-to-live.

§ 55.

Freedom and necessity are reconciled by recognizing that necessity belongs entirely to the phenomenon (where character and motives produce action with the certainty of a natural law) while freedom belongs to the will as thing-in-itself — the only case where this freedom appears in the phenomenon is in the denial of the will.

• Every individual action follows necessarily from the interaction of character (intelligible will) and motive — the empirical character is fixed and unalterable — yet the will as thing-in-itself is free; the appearance of freedom in the phenomenon occurs only at the exceptional point of complete self-denial.
  • Every person invariably has purposes and motives by which he guides his conduct; but if he were asked why he wills generally, he would have no answer, for this is the expression of his intelligible character, which as will is groundless.
• The acquired character — the clear knowledge of one’s own individuality, talents, and limits — is distinct from the empirical and intelligible character; it is the practical wisdom of knowing what one can and cannot do, and enables consistent, effective action by aligning one’s efforts with one’s real nature.
  • The acquired character is the most complete possible knowledge of our own individuality, putting us in a position to carry out deliberately the unalterable role of our own person.

§ 56.

At the summit of the will’s self-knowledge — where the complete mirror of the world has arisen in human consciousness — the will either affirms or denies itself: affirmation continues the willing of life as before, denial leads to resignation and the abolition of all willing.

• Affirmation of the will means the will wills life as it is, with full self-knowledge, continuing the same blind striving that characterized it before knowledge arose; denial means that knowledge becomes a quieter that silences all willing — not through external coercion but through the will’s own free self-abolition.
  • The will-to-live in its affirmation has already been presented; now we must speak of what will really come to the will through life’s affirmation — the inner nature of the world as suffering inseparable from the will-to-live.

§ 57.

Human existence is essentially suffering: from the constant vanishing present, through the inevitable frustration of all striving, to the tedium that fills every interval — the will’s nature as ceaseless striving without final satisfaction means that pain is the positive given and pleasure merely negative (temporary removal of pain).

• All satisfaction is negative — the end of a privation — while suffering is positive and immediately given; every wish fulfilled reveals another, every achievement discloses its insufficiency, and the intervals are filled with boredom which is itself a painful condition.
  • The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain; if it lacks objects of willing, there comes over it a fearful emptiness and boredom.
• Human suffering exceeds animal suffering precisely because man’s faculty of reason extends pain temporally (through worry, anticipation, regret) and makes it more intense — abstract knowledge magnifies pain just as it magnifies joy, but pain is more frequent and is the fundamental note of life.
  • In proportion as knowledge attains to distinctness, consciousness is enhanced, pain also increases, and consequently reaches its highest degree in man — and in the person in whom genius is to be found, it is most of all.

§ 58.

All happiness is essentially negative — the mere removal of a want — and the evidence of this is that we feel satisfied wants only retrospectively, that the ‘best part of life’ (aesthetic pleasure) is precisely will-free contemplation, and that we are always drawn back to striving the moment satisfaction is attained.

• The measure of pain and well-being in each person is largely subjective and relatively constant — external events shift the form of suffering but not its total quantity — and this explains why great misfortunes leave us less disturbed than expected and great gains less happy than anticipated.
  • Every man carries about with him in abstract concepts the certainty of his own death; against the mighty voice of nature, reflection can do little, and everyone lives on as if he were bound to live for ever.

§ 59.

A posteriori confirmation of life’s essential suffering: history and experience show the dominance of wickedness, error, misfortune, and death; the great poets and thinkers have confirmed this verdict; optimism is not merely absurd but wicked — a mockery of the immense human suffering that experience overwhelmingly documents.

• Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Herodotus, and consistent reflection all converge on the conclusion that non-existence is preferable to existence under the conditions life actually provides — yet the will-to-live prevents this conclusion from being acted on by most people.
  • Optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind.

§ 60.

The affirmation of the will encompasses all modes of conduct from self-preservation through egoism to the denial of others’ will in injustice and wickedness; the will’s intensity and its degree of involvement in the principium individuationis determine the ethical character of each individual.

• The affirmation of the will-to-live in each individual typically extends beyond mere self-maintenance — through egoism — to the denial of the same will appearing in others, producing injustice and wickedness that ranges from the mildest wrong to extreme cruelty.
  • If a person is always inclined to do wrong the moment the inducement is there and no external power restrains him, we call him bad — he affirms his will so vehemently that it becomes the denial of the will in others.

§ 61.

Egoism is the inevitable expression of the principium individuationis — every individual is for himself the entire will and the entire knowing subject — and from this source flows the universal conflict of individuals, which is the empirical basis of ethics and jurisprudence.

• The principium individuationis generates egoism necessarily: the individual finds his own inner being immediately as the whole will, while others are given only as representations — this asymmetry between first-person and third-person knowledge is the root of all self-preferring conduct.
  • Everyone wants everything for himself; this is the bellum omnium contra omnes which Hobbes admirably described — not as an arbitrary choice but as the inevitable consequence of the will’s self-manifestation through individuation.

§ 62.

Wrong consists in extending one’s affirmation of will so far as to deny the will appearing in another individual — through violence or cunning — and right is simply the negation of this wrong; property rights derive entirely from one’s having worked on a thing, never from mere occupation or declaration.

• The concept of wrong is original and positive; right is derivative and negative — a wrong is committed when one individual affirms his will so vehemently that it extends to the denial of the will in another individual, whether through violence (taking their powers) or cunning (deceiving their knowledge to control their will).
  • Wrong through violence is less ignominious than wrong through cunning because violence shows physical strength while cunning betrays weakness and degrades the perpetrator as both physical and moral being.
• The State arises from enlightened egoism — individuals recognize that each benefits by all renouncing wrongdoing — and its function is entirely preventive and forward-looking (deterrence), not retributive; the right to punish belongs only to the State under positive law and has no justification as mere revenge.
  • “Nemo prudens punit quia peccatum est, sed ne peccetur — no sensible person punishes because a wrong has been done, but in order that a wrong may not be done.” —Seneca

§ 63.

Eternal justice differs entirely from temporal justice: it is immanent in the world itself and operates through the unity of the will in all phenomena — the tormentor and the tormented are the same will — so that the world is its own tribunal and no event can ultimately escape the balance.

• Eternal justice requires no temporal sequence or external enforcement: since the same will lives in both the inflicter and the sufferer of wrong, every wrong is simultaneously experienced as suffering by the very will that commits it — the world is the tribunal of the world.
  • He who has recognized that in himself he is the whole will-to-live finds that, with the strictest right, every being supports existence as it is in a world such as it is — suffering and guilt, the malum poenae and the malum culpae, are balanced.
• The doctrine of transmigration of souls is the mythological expression of eternal justice: it makes visible what philosophy must state abstractly, namely that the suffering undergone in one life corresponds to the wrong committed, since the same will is present in all phenomena across time.
  • The ancient wisdom of the Hindus expresses this in the Mahavakya ‘Tat tvam asi’ — ‘This art thou’ — said of every creature, meaning the same inner nature is present in all.

§ 64.

Conscience and the consciousness of wrongdoing rest on two obscurely felt recognitions: first, that through the principium individuationis we have falsely separated ourselves from others; second, that our will’s vehemence is immense, and this double knowledge constitutes the specific pain of the pangs of conscience.

• Pangs of conscience contain two inseparable elements: the felt awareness that the principium individuationis is illusion (that tormentor and tormented are one) and the felt awareness of the intensity of one’s own will-affirmation that drove one to deny the will in others.
  • The pangs of conscience are not mere repentance over a changed will — the will cannot change — but pain at the knowledge of oneself, springing from recognition that one’s will is vehement beyond ordinary measure.

§ 65.

Goodness of disposition — virtue in the true sense — springs not from abstract knowledge or maxims but from the immediate, intuitive recognition of the same inner being (will) in others as in oneself; this recognition is the dissolution of the principium individuationis, and it manifests first as justice, then as genuine love.

• The just person already partially sees through the principium individuationis — recognizing his own inner being in others enough to refrain from denying their will — while the truly good person sees through it fully, feeling another’s suffering nearly as his own and voluntarily sacrificing for others.
  • The noble person treats the individuality and fate of others entirely like his own — he takes as much interest in the sufferings of other individuals as in his own, and recognizes in all beings his own true and innermost self.
• All genuine love (agapē, caritas) is compassion — it springs from the recognition of suffering in another and the immediate impulse to relieve it — while selfish affection (eros) is merely the will seeking its own satisfaction through another object.
  • “Benevolentia nihil aliud est quam cupiditas ex commiseratione orta — benevolence is nothing but a desire sprung from compassion.” —Spinoza

§ 66.

From the same source as virtue, there ultimately arises the denial of the will-to-live: when seeing through the principium individuationis reaches full intensity, the will turns against its own phenomenon and seeks to abolish itself — this appears first as complete charity, then as asceticism and voluntary renunciation of all willing.

• The denial of the will is not gradual improvement but a discontinuous transformation: when knowledge of the world’s suffering becomes the quieter that silences all willing, the will freely turns away from life — this is what Christian theology calls new birth, and Indian wisdom calls moksha.
  • The man in whom the denial of the will has dawned, however poor, cheerless, and full of privation his state may be when looked at from outside, is full of inner cheerfulness and true heavenly peace.
• Asceticism — mortification, poverty, chastity, self-torture, fasting — is the practical expression of will-denial in conduct: by deliberately refusing pleasures and seeking hardship, the ascetic keeps the will-affirmation from regenerating itself, maintaining the state of denial against the perpetual reappearance of the will.
  • The denial of the will does not rest on an unshakable foundation but must always be achieved afresh by constant struggle; the life of the saint is filled with spiritual conflicts, temptations, and desertion from grace.

§ 67.

Weeping is sympathy turned back upon the self — it arises when we re-perceive our own suffering as if it were another’s and feel sympathy for ourselves — and this analysis confirms that all love is fundamentally compassion; the paradox of love and compassion sharing the Italian word ‘pietà’ captures their identity.

• We never weep directly over present pain but over its reflection — when we consider our own state with the sympathy we would feel for another — and this explains why we weep more easily at the recollection of suffering than in its midst, and why external condolence provokes tears in children.
  • Weeping is sympathy with ourselves, or sympathy thrown back to its starting-point. It is conditioned by the capacity for affection and sympathy, and by the imagination.

§ 68.

The denial of the will reaches its complete form in asceticism and holiness; suffering personally experienced on the grandest scale — or seeing through the principium individuationis through compassion — are the two paths that lead to this denial, which is the only genuine salvation and the innermost nature of all genuine religion.

• Intense personal suffering — above all the kind that shatters all hope, strips away illusions, and confronts the sufferer with the full futility of existence — can break the will’s affirmation and produce complete resignation; Goethe’s Gretchen in Faust is the supreme poetic example of this second path to will-denial.
  • Suffering personally felt, not suffering merely known, most frequently produces complete resignation, often only at the approach of death — it is the gleam of silver that appears from the purifying flame of suffering, the gleam of the denial of the will-to-live.
• All genuine religion, East and West, expresses the same ethical insight under different dogmatic clothes: the highest good is release from the will-to-live, achieved through renunciation, chastity, poverty, and mortification — what Indian wisdom calls moksha and Christian theology calls salvation.
  • The inner nature of holiness — denial of the will-to-live — is now for the first time expressed in abstract terms free from everything mythical as denial of the will-to-live, although it has always been known directly and expressed in deed by all saints and ascetics.

§ 69.

Suicide is not the denial of the will-to-live but its most vehement affirmation — the suicide wills life and is dissatisfied only with its conditions, and by destroying the body he destroys the phenomenon without touching the will — making suicide the masterpiece of Maya and the opposite of genuine redemption.

• Suicide affirms the will-to-live precisely by preferring annihilation to the suffering that could have mortified and ultimately denied the will — it cuts off the possibility of the very suffering that could have been redemptive.
  • The suicide is like a sick man who, after the beginning of a painful operation that could completely cure him, will not allow it to be completed but prefers to retain his illness.

§ 70.

The apparent contradiction between the necessity of all will-phenomena (the empirical character acts with the certainty of a law of nature) and the freedom that manifests in will-denial is resolved by recognizing that freedom belongs to the will as thing-in-itself, while necessity belongs to the phenomenon — will-denial is a unique case where the thing-in-itself appears in contradiction with its own phenomenon.

• The denial of the will does not proceed from a free resolve in the ordinary sense (such resolutions are also determined by character and motive) but from a change in the form of knowledge: the principium individuationis is seen through, and this new knowledge becomes the quieter of all willing — Kant’s doctrine of intelligible and empirical character explains the coexistence of necessity and freedom.
  • What the Christian Church calls the effect of grace and the new birth is for us the only direct expression of the freedom of the will. It appears only when the will, through arriving at the knowledge of its own inner nature, obtains from this a quieter.

§ 71.

The final section acknowledges the objection that the denial of the will leaves only nothingness, but shows this objection dissolves on analysis: ’nothing’ is always relative to a given standpoint, the world itself is nothing for those in whom the will has turned, and the state beyond the denial transcends conceptual expression — what remains after will-denial is, from the world’s standpoint, nothing, but it may be everything from another standpoint we cannot occupy.

• The concept of nothing is always relative — every nothing is a nothing only in relation to a specific something — and the ’nothingness’ of will-denial is a nihil privativum from the standpoint of the world as will and representation, not an absolute nihil negativum.
  • What is universally assumed as positive, what we call being, is exactly the world as representation, which is the objectivity of the will. If we no longer perceive the will in this mirror, we ask in vain in what direction it has turned — we complain that it is lost in nothingness.
• The work concludes by directing the reader’s gaze to the saints and ascetics in whom the denial has occurred: their inner peace, their serene joy, their freedom from all suffering — reflected most perfectly in the faces painted by Raphael and Correggio — is the only adequate positive expression of what philosophy can describe only negatively as the denial of the will.
  • Instead of the restless pressure and effort, instead of the constant transition from desire to apprehension, we see in those who have overcome the will that peace that is higher than all reason, that ocean-like calmness of the spirit, that deep tranquillity.