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[Koveras]

[Gatsby]

Forget Kant.

You're talking about Schopenhauer now, I assume.

Schopenhauer said the book is summed up in the title: "The World as Will and Representation."

There are two sides to the world: Representation, i.e., perception of objects, and will -- the objective and the subjective.

How do we know will exists? By looking inside subjective experience, our own subjective experience -- it's the only kind. We see the will, we experience the will, will is intrinsic to consciousness.

From that, Schopenhauer makes the logical leap that there is a correspondence between our subjective experience and the external world.

He says that time and space are constructs of the conceptual mind, but do not exist inherently in consciousness. Close your eyes, eliminate sound, and there is no time and space to be found in pure mind.

Now this is very important. Schopenhauer had an enormous influence on the subsequent development of Western ideas, but was rarely credited, perhaps because some of the influence was indirect.

He helped lay the philosophical foundation for Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which, among other things, said there is no inherent distinction between time and space -- they are not absolutes, which had been the view under Newtonian physics and Cartesian geometry.

But the single most interesting idea of Schopenhauer's, from my perspective, is that we can infer the inner nature of objects of sense experience from our own subjective consciousness.

Specifically, Schopenhauer extended what he saw as the will within subjective experience, and inferred that it was inherent in all objects, all nature, the entire universe, in the varied manifestation of the will.

Is it?

Is what one perceives within consciousness the will, as Schopenhauer describes it? he is giving a label to something within, conceptualizing it, categorizing it. Does it possess these characteristics? Can these characteristics be extended beyond subjective experience?

Perhaps there are better ways to describe what is within, and more to be observed and learned. I think Schopenhauer stopped his analysis too soon. We need a more careful examination of the characteristics of consciousness than simply saying it is the expression of the will.

[Omkara]

Gatsby Wrote:

[Gatsby]

Yes, I have Volume I - with me, and Volume II, not with me.

I'm kinda tired, so please excuse me if I don't answer all you queries one by one.

Influence is sometimes hard to trace. What you had around this time were some of the first Hindu and Buddhist texts arriving in the West, being translated, and Western thinkers seeking to understand them and incorporate them into Western ideas. In this sense primarily, Nietszche was the heir to Schopenhauer, rather than a direct continuation of his philosophical system

You had a similar development in America, apparently centered around Boston, most prominently with the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson. This approach is sometimes referred to as Transcendentalism, and not by accident, I believe. They seem to have understood the concept of transcendent consciousness or enlightenment, as presented in Eastern philosophy. You can see explicit discussion of this in several of Emerson's writings, particularly his poem Brahma, and his essay "The Oversoul."

Schopenhauer's view of the will as existing both within the individual and as a transcendent, pantheistic force corresponds closely to the concept of Buddha, as both a person and as a thing that inhabits all. So we see similar ideas, expressed in different ways, arising in America and Germany, though not necessarily due to cross-influence.

On the other hand, this might be a bit of an overstatement with regards to Schopenhauer. His early writings may not have been influenced directly by Eastern thought; it was later in his 20s, after the first volume, I believe, that he became friends with someone who knew Sanskrit, and was translating Eastern texts. Schopenhauer then found the ideas similar to his own, and then was directly influenced, possibly also practicing meditation around this time.

So you see something a coincidence in his early writings, with regards to things like Buddhism, which is rather interesting, in itself. But you should realize that his mother was close friends with Goethe, who was German mysticism incarnate, so to speak. When Schopenhauer was a teenager, Goethe was coming over to the house for salons weekly. Schopenhauer and Goethe did not seem to speak much, but that does not mean Goethe did not influence Schopenhauer.

Now, what was Schopenhauer's legacy, his influence? A lot of thinkers did not seem to be in a hurry to credit him, perhaps because of his heretical views on thinks like reincarnation, which he discussed explicitly. Schopenhauer's central idea, obviously, was the will. We see Nietzsche continuing this by focusing on the will to power as a central psychological principle.

A little later, in America, we see William James, one of the fathers of American psychology, at Harvard, writing an essay on The Will. But James says he never read Schopenhauer; he had heard he was a pessimist, and did not believe in pessimism. Kinda lame excuse. I suspect there was an indirect influence, though.

I see an obvious influence on John Dewey, and his pragmatic philosophy. Dewey talks about how attention, perception is directed by goals, action, in other words, the will. This idea of action is central to the pragmatic approach. It sure sounds to me like Schopenhauer's idea that the will and representation are interconnected. This interaction of will and attention are central to Dewey's ideas on education, which in turn, had a profound influence on American education in the 20th century.

Back in Austria we all know about Sigmund Freud and his brilliant "discovery" of the id and ego. What is the id by the inchoate will, and the ego but the mind and representation seeking the means of achieving the goals of the id? I'm not the first to raise this issue, but reportedly Freud claimed to never have read Schopenhauer. On the other hand, he lied about some of the patient analysis he claimed to have done, so he was obviously very ambitious in his quest for fame. Whether direct or indirect, there seems to be an obvious similarity to Schopenhauer's ideas.

Perhaps a better example is Alfred Adler, one of members of Freud's original circle. We see a clear application of the idea of the will to power in Adler's psychology -- he is the person who coined the phrase "inferiority complex" to refer to the inherent powerlessness we all feel to some extent in relation to the universe, as well as the greater sense of inferiority some of us feel when young. Adler said that the difference in people is how we overcome our individual sense of inferiority, sometimes through overcompensation. I see a clear influence of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Adler, and I assume a person as well educated as he would have known their writings.

We the advent of behaviorism, Western psychology more or less abandons the idea of the will, or at least the subjective, introspective approach to psychology. And yet Schopenhauer anticipated the behaviorist approach, as well, in his first publication, "Essay on the Freedom of the Will." While he asserts that we do have such freedom, he also looks at the factors that limit freedom of action, which is where he anticipates the behaviorist approach. While I doubt many 20th century behaviorists read Schopenhauer, I think he laid the foundation of much of what came later in psychology.

I mentioned in a previous post that I think he also had an influence, direct or indirect, on the development of physics, which is not too much of a stretch given that so many of the key physicists of the early 20th century were German or Austrian and well educated. Some of this influence is probably less due directly to Schopenhauer and more to the general ideas of the times.

Philosophers such as Schopenhauer insisted we don't really know what the inner nature of matter is, and should not make the mistake of assume it has the characteristics of macro-sense perception. Well, this idea is central to the progress of atomic physics. It is now obvious to anyone with a rudimentary acquaintance with ideas such as quantum physics, or the behavior of subatomic particles, which sometimes behave like particles, sometimes like waves of energy.

But curiously enough, this skeptical approach threatened to retard the development of physics in the 19th century. When the atomic theory was proposed to explain chemical bonds and reactions, it was savagely attacked by German scientists as being to concrete, to much like the extrapolation of our macro view being applied to the finer level of matter. They were so busy insisting that the inner nature of substance defied our understanding that they failed to see the utilitarian value of the atomic theory, which was eventually accepted over their objections.

This is discussed in David Bodanis's book: "E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation."

We now know that the inner nature of substance is far more mysterious than we could have imagined two or three centuries before. But by penetrating the mysteries of this microcosm, we may yet be able to understand the macrocosm. My feeling is that consciousness and this inner nature of substance are connected, and that by understanding one we may be able eventually to understand the other.

Yogis, Chan masters, etc., have all discovered entire universes of mind within consciousness. And what some of them have learned to do defies our material view of the universe. Perhaps they are able to move to higher levels of consciousness that transcend the material world as we perceive it, that even transcend our space and time. There has been speculation in Western thought that this might be possible going back to books like Flatland, and H.G. Well's "The Time Machine." There was speculation of the possibilities of other dimensions beyond the three we see around us. Again, we see the groundwork for Einstein, but also of the possibility of using this as an explanation of the mystical experience.

So, to spell it out, what if consciousness is shaped by the multi-dimensional nature of the universe? What if there is a correspondence between some physical theory such as string theory, and what can be perceived, by those who master meditation, in consciousness? If so, we can, as Schopenhauer suggested, understand the nature of external objects, of substance, through the introspective examination of consciousness. Perhaps the shape and structure of consciousness corresponds to the shape and structure of matter.

That is where I feel Schopenhauer stopped short, by focusing so much on the will that he did not take his examination of the will and consciousness as far as he could have. But there are suggestions that his ideas, toward the later part of his life, had turned much more mystical, so who knows what he was thinking, and did not write about?

Does this help?

[Otus]

'We recognize but one function of the 'will': namely, the power to command attention and intense study."

Leibniz

Somewhere in his writings - can't remember exactly where - just remember reading it.

Ernst Mach - the real influence behind Einstein (although not in agreement with him) seemed quite alarmed by Schop. and hoped this influence wouldn't spread.

Emmerson actually said more unpleasant things about him.

If you really want to get to the root of Schop. and apriori Kant - go back to the mysticism of Swedenborg ...

[Omkara]

Gatsby Wrote:

[Mint]

Shall we make a philosophy club?
I'd like to have stimulating conversations now and again past, "What tense is this students?" and what not.
I'll organize it if there is some interest.

[Omkara]

Well, I'm willing to debate questions. Do you mean that we'd organize on line? Or something else?

I've actually organized a group in Busan. We meet weekly. It's a Socrates Cafe. If you want something where you live, look up "Socrates Cafe" on line, and figure how you might organize one in your town. They're a great way to meet people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates_cafe

But let's keep this thread focused on Schopenhauer.