This essay focuses on Schopenhauer’s aesthetics and philosophy of art, areas of his philosophy which have attracted the most philosophical attention in recent years. After discussing the subjective and objective aspects of aesthetic experience on his account, I shall offer interpretations of Schopenhauer’s theory of the sublime and solution to the problem of tragedy. In addition, I shall touch upon the liveliest interpretive debates concerning his aesthetic theory: the intelligibility of the “Platonic Ideas” as the objects of aesthetic experience and (...) the very possibility of aesthetic experience within Schopenhauer’s system. Another aim of this essay is to suggest how some of Schopenhauer’s aesthetic doctrines may be interpreted in a less metaphysically extravagant way. When understood in this manner, contemporary aestheticians might be inclined to take a closer look at Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory and philosophy of art, for it is distinctive in the tradition of Western philosophical aesthetics in its attempt to highlight and balance the hedonic and cognitive importance of aesthetic experiences; in its sensitivity both to the aesthetic experience of nature as well as of art; in the high value placed on the experience of music ; and in the innovative solution to the problem of tragedy it offers. (shrink)

This thesis is primarily an attempt at solving some issues in Schopenhauer’s theory of salvation. My aim is to provide ways in which Schopenhauer’s soteriology could work. It is a partially reconstructive project in that I will be bringing to the forefront some of Schopenhauer’s assertions at the expense of others. My aim is to show that we are able to provide a much more cohesive and satisfying reading of Schopenhauer’s philosophical project if we let go of some of the (...) more orthodox assumptions in the Schopenhauer scholarship – chief amoung these being that Schopenhauer is committed to the view that the will constitutes ultimate reality. While this reading is a departure from the vast majority of the traditional readings of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, I believe it has the twin advantages of both aligning Schopenhauer’s thought much closer with the eastern traditions he believes his work is in sympathy with, and ultimately, providing a new platform from which to assess the ‘traditional’ reading of Schopenhauer’s thought as ‘hopelessly pessimistic’. It is my contention that while it remains true that Schopenhauer is very much a pessimist about the world as manifested will, it is the perceived difficulties of his philosophy of salvation that have provided the most significant road block preventing critics from seeing that there are dimensions to Schopenhauer’s thought that cannot so easily be labelled as either pessimistic or optimistic. This thesis is an attempt to shed light on possible new readings of Schopenhauer’s project in light of attempts to resolve issues in his soteriology. I begin with the question – why do we need saving? I attempt to answer this through an analysis of the terms ‘will’, ‘will-to-life’ and ‘affirmation and negation of the will-to-life’. Next, I attempt to argue that the will should not be seen as ultimate reality in Schopenhauer’s system and that this is both closer to the account which Schopenhauer himself was inclining towards later in his writings as well asa necessary sacrifice in order to save Schopenhauer from more problematic inconsistencies. I next attempt to solve inconsistencies in Schopenhauer’s account of personal identity. I argue that there can only be a denial of the will-to-life if there is more to our identity than willing. I will also examine the possibility of a denial of the will-to-life at all. I will be engaging with recent scholarship from Christopher 3 Janaway on the possibility of negating the will-to-life and the implications of this for Schopenhauer’s account of willing. I will then attempt to resolve the on-going debate in the secondary literature concerning Schopenhauer’s ethical pronouncements and his theory of the negation of the will-to-life. I will argue, contrary to Sandra Shapshay and Tristan Ferrell, that it is possible to be one in whom the will has denied itself while remaining one who wills ethically and that this can be the case if we focus our attention on what Schopenhauer may truly mean by a compassionate will to help others. Next, I will be asking why exactly it is good to be one in whom the will has denied itselfand what this means for our understanding of value for the will-less subject. Finally, I will be focusing on Schopenhauer’s pessimism and how a new reading of Schopenhauer’s soteriology means that we can introduce new ways of assessing both the world as well as the place of Schopenhauer’s philosophical system within it. Ultimately, I will conclude that any interpretation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy presents the scholar with a choice and that we are subsequently only able to make new evaluative assessments on Schopenhauer’s philosophy, as well push back against the charge that it is wholly pessimistic, if we choose to accept major revisions to his metaphysics of the will. However, because Schopenhauer himself seemed to be moving towards such revisions, we should not be afraid of doing so either. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss how Nietzsche’s critique of nihilism concerns the complicity between Christian morality and modern atheism. I unpack in what sense Schopenhauer’s ascetic denial of the will signifies a return to nothingness, what he calls the nihil negativum. I argue that Nietzsche’s formulation of nihilism specifically targets Schopenhauer’s pessimism as the culmination of the Western metaphysical tradition, the crucial stage of its intellectual history in which the scientific pursuit of truth finally unveils the ascetic will to nothingness (...) that motivates it. I contend that Nietzsche’s critique of Schopenhauer anticipates current scholarly debates around the significance of the nihil negativum and offers a compelling objection against contemporary proponents of philosophical nihilism such as Eugene Thacker and Ray Brassier. (shrink)

I argue against a prevailing interpretation of Schopenhauer’s account of inner awareness and world-understanding. Because scholars have typically taken on board the assumption that inner awareness is non-representational, they have concerned themselves in the main with how to transfer this immediate cognition of will in ourselves and apply it to our understanding of the world–as–representation. Some scholars propose that the relation of the world-as-will to the world-as-representation is to be understood in figurative or metaphorical terms. I disagree because, for Schopenhauer, (...) inner awareness reveals a genuine philosophical truth. Some scholars also suggest that it is only via analogical transference that one can interpret the world as having the same inner nature as oneself. I disagree and point out the downside of this suggestion. I use both textual evidence and general philosophical considerations to demonstrate that inner awareness, for Schopenhauer, has a representational dimension. Overlooking this point has led scholars to misconstrue how inner awareness relates to world-understanding. I provide an alternative interpretation against figurative and analogical readings. I propose that, for Schopenhauer, we cognize partially a priori that all things are merely different expressions of the same activity that we are acquainted with in inner awareness. (shrink)

The paper analyses Schelling and Schopenhauer’s conflicting views on intuition within the context of German classical philosophy and provides an interpretation of their differences. Moreover, the paper intends to fill a gap in the literature, by explaining how Schopenhauer grounded intuition in aesthetics and ethics on feelings and mysticism. After the Introduction, Section 2 summarizes Kant’s epistemology and its role in the subsequent discussions on intuition, and Sections 3 and 4 focus on Schelling’s intellectual intuition and Schopenhauer’s account of different (...) kinds of intuition. Sections 5 and 6 analyse how Schopenhauer argued that feelings and mysticism explain metaphysical insights in aesthetics and ethics. Section 7 sums up the main contributions of this paper through a comparative overview of Schelling and Schopenhauer’s respective accounts of intuition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCommentators have generally seen the compassionate person as a second-rate character vis-à-vis the ascetic ‘saint’ who denies the will-to-life and resigns from willing altogether in Schopen...

In a bold series of pronouncements, Arthur Schopenhauer maintains that the Kantian thing-in-itself is Will. The division between the world as Will and representation, with its impressive array of implications, is Schopenhauer's most important and distinctive contribution to metaphysics. To understand what Schopenhauer means by ‘Will’ as opposed to the empirical ‘will’, and his reasons for identifying thing-in-itself with Will, we must look in detail at two related arguments by which Schopenhauer proposes to link these concepts. The arguments appear in (...) the first and second editions of Schopenhauer's masterwork, The World as Will and Representation. The differences between the two versions appear to represent a change in his thinking about the most persuasive way to demonstrate the nature of thing-in-itself. The arguments are reconstructed for the sake of comparison, and critically evaluated in light of a variety of objections. While Schopenhauer's first, analogical, argument is inconclusive, his second argument offers a highly defensible inference identifying thing-in-itself as Will. (shrink)

The ‘Platonic Ideas’ in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics are appearances. On the other hand, as the immediate objecthood of the will, they are the essences of species and the only object of true aesthetic cognition, which leads beyond mere appearance. To explain this apparent incongruence, I offer an analysis of Schopenhauer’s early metaphysics, and its transformation into the metaphysics of will, fleshing out the several and divergent concepts of ‘idea’. Specifically, first, as part of his religious and neo-Platonic early philosophy; second, in (...) the context of his ‘true criticism’ in the spirit of Kantian transcendental philosophy; third, as identical to the thing in itself as part of the metaphysics of will, heavily influenced by Kant’s notion of ideas from CR and CJ. Explaining Schopenhauer’s mature notion of Platonic Ideas genetically as a set of homonymic notions helps us better explain its divergent meanings in WWR. (shrink)

(2003). The World as Representation: Schopenhauer's Arguments for Transcendental Idealism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 57-87.

This paper seeks to illuminate Schopenhauer’s notion of the negation or denial of the will by investigating the figure of the saint within his philosophy. We argue that various discussions in Schop...

What could Arthur Schopenhauer, the German pessimist and speculative metaphysician of the irrational will, possibly have in common with Thomas Reid, the staid and pious apostle of common sense? Unlike their contemporaries, both philosophers distinguished carefully between sensation and perception. In this essay I examine their respective formulations of the sensation / perception distinction, and I attempt to explain where they agree and where they diverge. Such an examination seems long overdue, for no-one – to the best of my knowledge (...) – has bothered to compare their views on this subject. (shrink)