My thanks go to Rudolf Aichner for his tireless critical editing; Silke Ruthenberg for the fine graphics; Lydia Pointvogl, Eva Amberger, Christiane Hüttner, and Dr. Martin Engler for their excellent work as manuscript readers and sub-editors; Prof. Guntram Knapp, who first inspired me with enthusiasm for philosophy; and Angela Schumitz, who handled in the most professional manner, as chief editorial reader, the production of both the German and the English editions of this series of books.
My special thanks go to my translator
Dr Alexander Reynolds.
Himself a philosopher, he not only translated the original German text into English with great care and precision but also, in passages where this was required in order to ensure clear understanding, supplemented this text with certain formulations adapted specifically to the needs of English-language readers.
Bibliographic Information held by the German National Library: The details of the original German edition
of this publication are held by the German National Library as part of the German National Bibliography;
detailed bibliographical data can be found online at www.dnb.de.
© 2021 Dr Walther Ziegler
1st Edition February 2021
Jacket design and graphic design for the whole book: Silke Ruthenberg, making use of illustrations by:
Raphael Bräsecke, Creactive – Studio for Advertising, Comics & Illustrations
© JackF - Fotolia.com (image-frames)
© Valerie Potapova - Fotolia.com (image-frames)
© Svetlana Gryankina - Fotolia.com (speech-balloons)
Publisher and Printing:
BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt
ISBN 9-7837-5345-026-1
Of all the philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) has the reputation of being by far the greatest and most brilliant pessimist. And indeed he did succeed, like no one before him or since, in recognizing, and in describing in gripping, moving language, all the shortcomings, both great and small, of our existences here on earth.
Life on our planet, Schopenhauer argued, has been, since time immemorial, falsely interpreted and portrayed in far too flattering a light. Both philosophers and scientists have assumed, entirely falsely, that Man is homo sapiens: a being guided by mind, an animal rationale. But this, Schopenhauer goes on, is a great error. Because the fact is that we human beings are not at all guided by reason in the way we live our lives. Rather, we tend to act solely under the impulsion of our deep-lying animal drives:
We seriously overestimate our own capacities, Schopenhauer insists, already by believing that we can know the world by use of our reason, let alone use reason to guide and direct it. In the first place, he says, we never know the world as it actually is; we only know the idea that we form of it:
But there is also a second reason and herein lies Schopenhauer’s great discovery. Behind all the ideas of the world that we form for ourselves lies a deeper moving principle upon which we never reflect, a kind of primal force inherent in all plants, animals and human beings. This is what Schopenhauer calls “the blind will” or, as he also describes it, “the will-to-live”:
This is the reason why Schopenhauer gave to the great work that was to make him famous the title The World as Will and Representation, consciously and deliberately giving pride of place to the notion “will”. Because, as he himself says, the core idea of his philosophy can be summed up in a single sentence. Human beings may form for themselves a great mass of different ideas of the world; but in reality the whole world is just the expression of an irrepressible will-to-live which has manifested itself, since the beginning of time, in inanimate matter, in plants, in animals and also in human beings:
The will-to-live is, as Schopenhauer emphasizes here, a “universal craving”, that is to say, it is active everywhere and at all times. It is this will-to-live that prompts plants to turn toward the sun and impels animals and human beings to eat, drink and procreate. It operates in the form of the sexual impulse and all other vital impulses, manifesting itself million-fold, at every moment, in every organism on earth.
How deeply this will-to-live permeates our inmost nature can be judged by how frantically any being will resist if the attempt is made to take his life away from him. Regardless of whether the universal will-to-live is manifested, in any given case, in a wasp, a mouse or a human being, the creature permeated and animated by it will in every case struggle, with the same limitless intensity, against death:
This phenomenon, that all organisms wish at any cost to remain alive and that they exert all their power and strength to do so, is, for Schopenhauer, an initial proof of the truth of his key idea. But evolution as a whole as well, with its enormous range of different substances, plants and animals, its constant adaptation to new environmental conditions, its protracted, passionate struggle for the persistence of certain species, seems to Schopenhauer to be a sure indication of the universal operation of the so-called “blind will” to live:
The will, then, is the only “unchangeable keynote” of our being. The notion, cherished for thousands of years by both theologians and philosophers, that it is Reason, be it human or divine, that is the really determining moment behind all living things is, Schopenhauer insists, in the end a completely untenable notion:
But why does Schopenhauer speak of a blind will? Does this will-to-live not have a goal and a purpose: namely, as he himself admits, the preservation of the species?
Looked at closely, then, the will-to-live is a “blind urge without motive” because, in the end, it pursues no recognizable or even meaningful goal:
The will-to-live, then, is a “fool”, a wish that is merely delusional. It serves no higher purpose. All the eating and being-eaten in the animal kingdom, and all the activities of human societies, are really just a blind commotion. This reaches its peak in procreation through the act of sexual intercourse:
The “intensity of the urge” here leads inevitably to an uncontrolled increase in population, to terrible wars, and eventually to
But the will-to-live is blind above all because, generally speaking, it cannot know or reflect upon itself. This lack of self-knowledge comes to expression when it enters into the different individuals who make up the human race and manifests itself with an equal intensity at the same time in every one of these mutually contending individuals. Schopenhauer explicitly states that the will-to-live “individuates itself” but neither becomes, through this individuation, less intense nor really has to divide itself up. It continues to operate in each individual with the same absolute, indivisible energy. It is just herein that it shows its unreflecting “foolishness”. Because one and the same will-to-live that drives on the hungry wolf to hunt and kill the deer drives on, at the same time, the deer to try to escape the jaws of the wolf. This means that the will
In other words
The “blind” will neither notices that it is, in this way, brutally cannibalizing itself nor would it care if it did so notice. It is a force without morality, self-reflection, or self-control.
Not even the much-vaunted sovereign, majestic placidity and beauty of the lion should delude us as to the fact that he too owes his existence to this blind, brutal urge alone and stands, as it were, atop a mountain of corpses, by whose blood he has bought this existence, which will last only until he himself falls victim to this cannibalistic will. The same stubborn will, indeed, as inheres in the lion inheres also in the humble weeds that, once torn out, immediately begin to grow back again:
The will, then, is that kernel of all reality which is not susceptible of any further explanation. It is also, as Schopenhauer also describes it, “metaphysical”. What does this mean? The word “metaphysical” is formed from two Ancient Greek words meta and physis. To say that the will is “metaphysical” signifies that it extends back behind, or alternatively that it extends beyond, all that is merely physical. What this signifies, then, is that the will-to-live is not a drive that can be perceived by the physical senses, nor any natural phenomenon or natural law that can be measured using the tools of science. Rather, it is that force which underlies all measurements and scientific determinations and which alone makes them possible. Because in contrast to its individual manifestations, running from the amoeba through the dinosaurs right up to all the individual forms of existence today, the will-to-live is an eternal force which remains always absolutely constant and which forms the background and basis for everything:
