In humanity’s search for meaning and happiness and understanding in life, could there be
that there simply isn’t any and never will be? Could the truth of existence be that human
life is like a cruel joke, filled primarily with suffering and pain, which is all for
nothing? The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed so writing...
“There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain;
if a man escapes these, boredom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil
which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and
mankind pitiable.”
Although many thinkers in his time and today brush Schopenhauer off as simply being too
pessimistic,he saw his work as clarifying how the world truly is. After all, the goal
of his philosophy was “To lay bare the true nature of the world.”
This video will take a concise look at Schopenhauer’s metaphysical thesis ‘the world as will’
to understand why he thought life inescapable suffering, his philosophical pessimism, his
solution to life’s suffering, and my thoughts how relevant his philosophy still is today.
First, Schopenhauer thought he had metaphysical grounds, meaning a theory about what reality
is, that proved human existence entails primarily suffering and boredom which he detailed in
his work The World as Will and Representation.
He believed the universe to be a manifestation of something he called “the Will” or “the
will to live”, a blind impulse or force outside space and time characterized by a
restless striving.
He arrived at this conclusion from studying and building upon Immanuel Kant’s transcendental
idealism, a metaphysical theory in which conscious subjects cognize the objects of experience
not as they are in themselves, but only the way they appear to us under the conditions
of our sensibility.
Kant believed there is a reality beyond sense data that he called the noumena, but unfortunately,
we can never really know it, only how it appears to us in our minds as phenomena.
Like Kant, Schopenhauer believed there was an underlying force that brought rise to the
noumenal. However, unlike Kant, he believed we could come to know it by directing our
attention inward to ourselves. Our body, after all, is the one object in the world which
we experience from within.
When one does this, they discover the will, this unconscious force of relentless striving
that makes up not just our body but also the entire universe. The world as we know it is
simply a representation or ‘objectification’ of the will.
“Everything presses and strives towards existence…Let any one consider this universal
desire for life, let him see the infinite willingness, facility, and exuberance with
which the will to live presses impetuously into existence under a million forms everywhere
and at every moment…In such phenomena, then, it becomes visible that I am right in declaring
that the will to live is that which cannot be further explained, but lies at the foundation
of all explanation…”
When we examine will from looking inward, we see this will relentless pushes us and
other organisms toward nourishment and propagation. The will does this because it must feed off
itself to survive as it’s the only thing in existence.
This realization of The will has profound implications on our lives and how we live,
which Schopenhauer details in philosophical pessimism.
Now, philosophical pessimism isn’t a feeling or attitude toward life, but a philosophical
worldview that directly challenges the notion of progress and illogical ‘faith-based’
claims of optimism.
Because the will has no ultimate goal or purpose, human existence is one of insatiable striving,
he surmised.
It’s insatiable striving because satisfaction of the will is impossible, and as humans,
we are but manifestations of it.
We’re always motivated by feelings like hunger, thirst, propagation, the need to achieve,
and more cravings which he saw as arising from the will. The problem is that when we
don’t satiate a need or fulfill a desire, we become frustrated, which results in suffering.
These needs of the will can and never will be fully satiated. Thus, human existence is
suffering as he wrote
“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”
See, we’re all taught that happiness and meaning await us just around the corner. Especially
if we strive and work hard enough in life. However, this is just an illusion, he thought.
“Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life
as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone
then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually
happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in
fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.”
He noticed that whenever we do satiate a craving or reach a goal, one of two things always
happens.
#1. We just immediatly go back to craving or striving for something else to make us
feel happy or at peace. Or #2. We become bored with life. Once the novelty of achieving our
goal and being free from the craving wears off, we succumb to boredom, eventually giving
way to craving and desire again.
It’s not our fault, or anyone else’s this happens. It’s simply how the world is and
how we fundamentally are as humans. Human reason, being a manifestation of the will,
can’t ever satiate the will. In fact, it appears the revered cognitive capacities of
the human race only serve to help us understand more clearly than other animals just how terrible
and pointless life is.
An example he points to is death, the cherry on top of cruel, terrible existence.
Human beings are the only animal that fully understands we will die no matter what in
the future. Like a twisted joke, we’re all blessed with the opportunity to think about
this inevitable truth from time to time during our day as we live.
Unfortunately, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for the human species to stop
suffering as the will pushes us irrationally to continue to reproduce so it can continue
to exist. “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone,
would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with
the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon
himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
Once one becomes conscious of this unending cycle of craving and suffering, the thought
of suicide eventually arises. Schopenhauer wrote that many philosophers and thinkers
quickly push away the idea of suicide as irrational and wrong. However, he believed this was a
natural thought one might have, and we ought to have a serious conversation about it, one
that many other intellectuals simply didn’t want to consider.
Ultimately though, he concluded suicide was not a great solution since we still are manifestations
of the will even in death.
Perhaps the following quote summarizes his philosophical pessimism and thoughts on existence:
“Life is a constant process of dying.”
Being a deep thinker, Schopenhauer thought about this problem of human existence and
came to a solution on what to do. He thought the answer doesn’t lie in western thought
but in the asceticism, or the practice of self-denial, of the east. Just like monks,
only by reducing and suppressing our craving by living in the moment, can humanity ever
come to know peace. A full detailed explanation of his answer deserves its own video.
So how relevant is Schopenhauer today? Clearly today, we know this idea of the universe as
this underlying force called the will is wrong, leading some philosophers, psychologists,
and thinkers to declare him fully irrelevant today. But, a quick look around social media
sites like Reddit and discussions with friends on their life’s direction and purpose show
that Schopenhauer is more relevant than ever today, whether people know of him or not.
Yes his metaphysics made no sense, but he thought up that solution long before ideas
like the subconscious mind, genetics, hedonic adaptation and even a clear understanding
of Darwin’s theory of evolution was in place.
Perhaps your life is going alright up to this point, but life is a daily struggle for many
people. It could be because they are refugees living a war-torn country or were born with
all the resources in the world but are more depressed and anxious on average due to genetics.
Suicide rates today are increasing, indicating perhaps that the positive existential responses
to Schopenhauer in the 19th and 20th and 21st centuries by philosophers and psychologists
are either not good enough, not readily available, or perhaps not practical enough for many people
out there. However, this is just one often depressed man’s thoughts on life, and I’ll
be examining more responses to his pessimism both western and eastern ideas coming up soon.