Great Books: The World as Will and Representation

you I welcome to this edition of great books a lively discussion of a selection from the canon of exceptional literature here's your host Jack Hatfield welcome thanks for joining us for the great book show I'm Jack Hatfield our panel meets monthly to discuss great works of classic and modern literature today we're discussing the indestructibility of our inner nature by Schopenhauer Jake will introduce the work Jake Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig Germany today's advanced Poland in 1788 he died in 1869 as the shadows of Civil War lengthened over the United States when he was a teenager his father a successful businessman died apparently a suicide his relations with his mother seemed always to have been strained and finally eventuated in a total estrangement Chopin hours early education was a somewhat unconventional mix of homeschooling tutoring and travel after his father's death Schopenhauer entered the University of göttingen as a med student studying among other things physics chemistry and botany however his reading of Plato and Kat soon captured him for philosophy he transferred to the University of Berlin and eventually to Jena where he completed his doctorate in 1813 Schopenhauer then began lecturing at the University of Berlin but he was largely overshadowed by the more popular and less pessimistic Hegel whose philosophy he strongly opposed nonetheless while there he managed to complete his major work the world as will and idea sometimes translated the world as will and representation it was published in 1919 and was pretty much ignored in the last decade of his life he began to receive recognition in European universities and in England the USA and Russia after his death his influence extended to foreign Ichi and others Schopenhauer espouses a naturalistic empirically based philosophy strongly influenced by Eastern ideas he believed that death was the inspiring genius of philosophy further he believed that nature provides a remedy for every evil including fear of death accordingly he thought that the proper approach to the subject lay not in untenable Western doctrines of annihilation or resurrection but rather in a higher standpoint grounded in the indestructibility of our inner nature our discussion on this subject is drawn from volume two vfj pains translation of the world as will and representation was heavily and a Buddhist understanding of the underlying nature of reality to elaborate on his view or the liberating meaning of deaths for the individual consciousness my first question has to do with death that seems to be very important to Schopenhauer he says in his first sentence he says death is the real inspiring and genius of philosophy why do you think he says that besides being a very negative person well he starts talking about animals and says that animals don't know death but men once they got reason they understood that they were facing death and how do you live a life when you face death you have to come up with some reason to make sense of things and that's what philosophy does ok anybody else well I I said I think he said not only philosophy religion and philosophy are created because of that if we were immortal we wouldn't ask the big questions what what is life after death is one of the big question men is asking himself why are we here what's our perp all those big questions I he doesn't assert it but I think he's saying if death didn't exist we wouldn't be asking those questions I'm going to agree with ya yeah I think he still has some of those questions like what's our purpose why are we here how should we live but definitely a big one is how do we deal with death and what's life here is there a life Hereafter and that's another big that's what not for him he said no not for him we switch here the title is the indestructibility of our inner nature what argument does he put forth to prove that I think he's saying the will Khalil is so strong that it's not knowledge that gives us that or in more with that with that feeling till the will to live how does that tie into indestructibility of our inner nature you asked hard questions he says that the will to live is the innermost essence of man and then he goes on to explain if an outsider was looking at the world they would see creatures being born and creatures dying and creatures being born and living their lives and dying but it would just be like waves on this unchanging landscape where species don't change and the universe just goes on forever and therefore what is an individual it's not really important what's important is the species and where does the species come from well we're part of it but it exists after we die and so therefore there's part of us that lives on and it's this will to live and will to create progeny and future generations what I think he believes the will is the basic underlying reality that holds everything together that's the structure it's one that's why he likes to eat so much you know will is the energy at the heart of things and it represents everything that we see matter I mean an individual is a representation you know we and so you got two realities where you got phenomenon which is our experience then you've got will down there at the bottom which we sort of get to know but never really really know we just know it's there and he says this being that goes throughout the universe and is well the words pressed in us by that will to live but well the will to live forces everything that every matter every organism is an idea or a representation of the will and individual is a representation of the will the things that we experience our representations of the phenomena all around us you know phenomenon our representations of the will and they go on and on and on and recycle one of his comments here is the fear of death is in fact independent of all knowledge for the animal hazard although it does not know death everything that is born already brings his fear into the world such fear of death however is a priori only the reverse side of the will to live which indeed we all are and that's the only argument he gives for the will being the underlying reality but he makes the yeah the the point he's making and I don't understand it he's taking that we all have an essence that's common it's kind of a there's a universal consciousness didn't use that term but I think that's what he's given no and there's no Universal conscious well there is in a way that's where the structure of phenomena comes from we all have ideas and they more or less coincide because we all got the same mental structure I think he's saying more than that I think he's saying there's something in us that we share with absolutely every living thing yeah will the intention of the underlying will yeah on the first page he talks about Brahmanism and Buddhism which teach man to regard himself as Brahman as the original being himself right so I I think he did mention that being but then he drops that and just talks about this will to live he also talks about mother nature as if well not mother nature but nature as if nature has an existence okay organism as a representation of the will and nature is a name for all of this all the representations of the will that we perceive in our consciousness and consciousness itself is just something that the will uses to gratify its impulses or you know make its choices and do you know I read it he doesn't believe in any life after death but on page 11 he says do not consider death the cessation of life right isn't but he doesn't bother you that he's saying that this this I don't like the word will for to it but II that's what he uses yeah it's fun whatever you want to cause will did that exist forever that does not die you know just our and our physical being is what Donnie said another place he says the world goes away but your ego stays hey I am I'm not sure I'm calling natural record fusing to wait when dividuals of phenomenon individual passes away he talks about your nothing before nothing else but the will that you know for a while you know will you is still there and that part is one part that does a will is still there after yeah existence is gone sure that's permanent it never changing it comes I mean it it's the forms and and the states and everything that's the process the quote he's having difficulty with is the terrors of defeat 18 the bottom paragraph near the terrors of death rest for the most part on the false illusion that then the I or ego vanishes and the world remains but rather is the opposite truth right namely that the world vanishes on the other hand the innermost kernel of the ego endure yeah I read that several times yes to you know be it and then I think he goes on to talk about the world as represented in our brain disappears because our intelligence disappears but that then there are individual world they're a part of ourselves goes on that there's another world that remains in somebody else's head but the world that we had in our head doesn't exist anymore because our consciousness is gone all right all that's left of us is that well yeah so he also says on page 10 for consciousness has always shown itself to me not as the cause but as a product and a result of organic life since it was exact and consequences thereof at different periods of what that's right so consciousness we don't have consciousness dealing with the organ itself the organ has created the consciousness hmm what did you think of this concept when he said we fear we fear death because once we live we have existence but there's non-existence but if we fear that what how come we don't fear non-existence before we report remember that one yes says it's irrational I'm up to it it doesn't hit the point that we had existence before non-existent but when when we weren't born we didn't have existence before that we lose life we don't lose life before we had existed am i confusing he made a point he was living in a world remember the science of his time because he studied physics and chemistry and it's but the science of his time was that the universe always existed the way it existed and all that the species existed and the world existed and it was unchanging you know they hadn't found the first dinosaur moment to find out that species were extinct they didn't know about the Big Bang he said that there was an infinity of time before you were born and there's gonna be an affinity of time after your death right and if you feel sorry that you're not going to be alive in the future why aren't you sorry that you weren't in the past exactly he also made fun he made a little joke of people actually believed that things had a beginning and now we find out most scientists think that the universe did have a beginning from this small thing maybe that well that's our idea because he made fun of beginnings he said oh you suck people's life beginning of species beginning of things yeah but the will was always there and it goes in circles but he's also talking about the judeo-christian view of the West yeah he disagrees that yeah that's why he brings if you read anything in Buddhism or Hinduism they have that same thought that that's reincarnation you existed before you live in the moment now and you exist afterwards so that concept is not native to Western thought that's a different thought process and that's what he's bringing into this and he's talking about our end of it and I think it's true that people are very afraid of nothing exists when they die I mean that leaks and annihilation there's trade of that and he's saying well there was nothing before you born why aren't you afraid of that but he also makes a point if you get old you gradually withdraw into life you know you've experienced things you don't have big emotions and eventually you just just delay Tibet you return to the womb of nature's expression part of the hindu process when you become seven stages of life what did that just people do that right yeah I had two grandmothers that's what they did they wanted to die you and I are doing but we don't want to die yet what what one thing that that I'm looking for the for the exact quote here but you know he's very pessimistic if and he says something like you know everyone feel this life is is so bad and they're looking for a better life afterwards if somebody wasn't pessimistic if someone really enjoyed their life does this whole philosophy fall apart but he says it's impossible for you so here life is what I'm talking about fast life is a bad job and then I think he also says now it's just knowledge teaches us that life is worthless well could be a dream yeah well it just goes as lights worthlessness so we're saying that if if you say life can be wonderful and you don't want to leave it after you die and his old philosophy how do you I don't know anything more precious and sacred than life okay but yeah but he does a date okay life is a rippln well it is my bottom line question was if we take the stance that you just said that what life is wonderful and big cetera et cetera does his whole philosophy fall apart does it does he posits that that your life is pessimistic if we take away and change that that assumption does everything else fall apart then I hope are not afraid to go to sleep at night young children are afraid to go to sleep at night well there's things under the bed right so he's doing this to the floor that when you go to sleep every night you're basically dying to the world on the basis that you think you're gonna wake up the next morning so in the process of sleeping you're not conscious of what's going on around you yeah and he talks about death as the species yeah what was going to sleep cuz it really well not reincarnates what recurs in their cycle yeah so they come back well yeah but he's talking about the species yeah Nature doesn't care about the individual that's is like a quality of the will but look let me kind of continue what I was trying to get out there is that he's so pessimistic and he seems to be pretend looking for the quote that he prefers non existence over existence yes why not suicide why not I think in the paragraph that he alluded to suicide he says we'll talk about that later so I don't think he ever addressed it well I think I think not yeah the world to live won't let you go till it's your time yeah basically what he means I think the will to live is always there it just manifests itself in new forms which are pretty much the same after you finish the cycle for suicide if the will to live is there because I don't know it's an aberration from the North suicide they lose the world to live right it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem you said it was a choice that everyone has when life is overwhelming and there's lots of pain and illness in it or grief in it that it's always an out that you can choose and he also says that people who face death without fighting it are considered courageous courageous and they night they're happier I think he said because they approach welcome death death is like waking up from a nightmare and people after they die they usually look happy yeah well he also gets Freudian on page 19 he says ego is a really consistent man's restricting all reality to his own person that's right and that he imagines he lives in this alone and not in others death teaches him something better since it abolish as his person so that man's true nature that is his will will henceforth live only on and other individually so its density pinnacle Eastern philosophy the extinguishing of the ego especially included that you that's how you free yourself is through control or loss of the ego you see look at on the next page he says dying is the mole 20 is the moment of that liberation from the one-sidedness of an individuality which is not constitute the innermost kernel of our true being but it's rather to be thought of it's a kind of aberration now I'm not quite sure how that ever gets introduced I wondered how what's the original sin that caused that to happen but anyway true original freedom again interest at this moment which in a sense stated can be regarded as there was restitute EO in integrin boys my latin bad but i know what that means individuality is an aberration yes once yes one-sidedness it's a phenomenon phenomena all phenomena are less than full reality and I think it's the viewpoint that's the aberration of that is that if we view ourselves just as individuals as opposed to you know the the lifetimes that came before us yeah that's the aberration is that he's talked about a turning aboard that was that was the collection of humanity combination of people and machines so that was the collective that's what he's referred to you here's one very interesting thing I thought it was very funny he's talking about death as being without pains that moment of death yeah this is all who have lost consciousness and water through charcoal fumes or through a hang also state as is well known that it happened without pain so he's saying that someone with his hanged reported the part of it with his father having committed suicide baby he feels comfort he like what a page 19a I know the first paragraph was under age 19 and at the end of the paragraph he says everything is full of him and there is no place where he should not be no being in whom he would not live for existence does not support him but he's existence talking about God look at the first sentence he said this strange and even ludicrous spectacle of the Lord but that's meant to be comforting to you because that will never dies it's always there and you start out in that will when you return to it he calls it the womb of me I can't talk you used to phrase his philosophy other than the fact that we have this drive to live the same children well how would you describe his philosophy other than he's very pessimistic about life well he's saying that that louisia okay that we have this will to live that we also have knowledge and they and if we have enough knowledge it can override the will to live and if we sees things in perspective that that we overcome our fear of death if we see ourselves as just you know something like time and in millions of lifetime's then we don't fear it anymore but he comes beyond fear of death as to say it shouldn't make any difference to us whether we have existence or non-existence well yes but it is nature's remedy that that's why that's what he's projecting as nature's for every nature gives us this consolation yeah the other thing is the subconscious determines all this stuff you know your consciousness is very minor and that's but what are you talking about fear again we know that people face that and sacrifice themselves to the point of death for purposes for you know there are people who want to go to Mars even if they die up in Mars right sure sure for their country for dimension say it mentions them what does he say about it well you again he said that knowledge this sucks other things can override this fear of this lay out the options and then well on page five talks about all this knowledge but I don't I don't forget a clear explanation of what knowledge is on page five talks about all this at the end it's understanding causation is what knowledge is for him in our place in the universe space time space and cause he's a he's a Kantian I'm spacing sensation existence at all or even snow existence as good he doesn't even say exist that's my question right look what does he know add a moment page to cycle the cycles okay a bunch of vibrations if we if you got a far enough for you okay this running out of time he will he gives up the he will and he gives up the app and the existence that we know what comes to him instead of it is it in our eyes nothing because our assistance is reference to one that is nothing the Buddhist faith calls the existence not nirvana yeah there that is to say extinction if you give up the will to live that's the biggest thing you can do and now you're in a state under state of something you're given up your ego it's what you give it up you've been giving up a one-sided will isn't that the essence of what he's saying in this old well that's it some of yes one of the things I do see in this is I see some Baruch Spinoza pantheism our pantheism fu yeah i wonder hmm that's stretching up an IV well Freud sure got his subconscious out of this because really the the will he says it's blind and accidental and irrational and boy all this Freud really took off was that and the same thing with Nietzsche coming up with his morality based on him you know no ego emphasis I I think kind of the wait I know we given our opinion I think that and says that knowledge can overcome our will to live I think knowledge and what he's talking about just not worth anything we just said work we can all say we are there's all these lives and you know millions of people live live before us and in the future and all that and it doesn't really make a difference of course there's a turning point somewhere if you see things from a higher standpoint in here and that somehow you see the causation of being bound by the in the will yeah you get free from us yeah but how it happens God knows thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the show join us next time when we discuss another great selection as Aristotle said the best way to learn is to get together in small groups and discuss great ideas you

Channel: nctv17

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Keywords: Great Books, The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer, NCTV17, Naperville

Id: HRcjm2-UK6s

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2016