ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER IDEAS

COMPILED BY: DABO EUCLID AMMEL

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig in 1788. He was a contemporary of Hegel who refused to acknowledge that Hegel was an adequate successor of Kant (Stumpf and Fieser309). Schopenhauer launched a heavy criticism on Hegel such that he asserted no philosophy during the time Hegel. Full of pride, Schopenhauer regarded the philosophy that existed between Kant and himself as “mere University charlatanism.”
Although Schopenhauer gave no premium to the philosophical works of Hegel, his “principle of sufficient reason” relatively connects with Hegel’s dialectic method. The “principle of sufficient reason” sets out to provide answers to the questions “what can I know? And what is the nature of things?” (312).  These which predates the pre-Socratic era intends to present a thorough account of the whole scope of reality. Relatively to Hegel’s teleological principle, Schopenhauer “principle of sufficient reason” states that nothing is without a reason.
THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA
Schopenhauer describes the world to be “my idea.” He ascribed meaning to this through vegetation, heavenly bodies, water bodies and indeed all that constitute the universe. He referred all these as “my idea.” Unlike Berkeley’s “to be is to perceived” which does not acknowledge the object of perception out of sight, Schopenhauer insists that a critical reflection about one’s experience of the world discovers that what one knows is not actually these worldly features-sun, moon, trees, water bodies etc. but all these are just there as “ideas.” This presupposes that these exist for knowledge and this whole world is therefore only “object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, a word, idea” (313).
Schopenhauer notion of the “will” is used as against Kant’s theory of “the thing-in-itself.” Kant earlier postulated that we cannot know things as they are in themselves, that we only know things as they appear to us. By implication, Kant was saying that we are always on the outside layer of things. Thereby can never penetrate their inner nature. Schopenhauer never reason same with Kant. He rather advocates for a major exception to the notion we are forever on the outside of things. That exception is our experience or knowledge, which everyone has to his own will. Schopenhauer noted that the action of the body is nothing but the ‘act of the will’ objectified. He maintains that it is only the reflection that ‘to will and to act’ are different. He asserts, that what we know in our consciousness is that, “we are not merely a knowing object, but we ourselves are part of the same inner nature of the known” (315).

Schopenhauer tries to show that the will is the essence of a person. While we are forever on the outside of everything as shown by Kant, we ourselves belong to the inner nature that can be known. He however does not ascribe to the will only to rational agents, the will is to be found also in everything that is-animals and inanimate things. There is in fact, only one will and each thing is a manifestation of that will.