Out Of Paradise Lost

Schopenhauer says that he wants to convey one mere thought in the introduction of his primary work The World as Will and Representation. What is it? It is to solve this problem that how the will is disenthralled and whether human saves himself and how to do this. The Schopenhauerian view can go as follows:the World is will as well as Representation. Firstly, the World is subject or my representation. The subject is the precondition that all representations or objects must take and the supporter of the world as a whole. Secondly, all representations or objects are in the correlation with one another, their beings being rested upon some reasons, that is, the principle of sufficient reason.The world is not only representation, but also will, the will being essence and the crucial aspect. Schopenhauer claims the will as thing-in-itself. The will as thing-in-itself or world's essence is impulse or vigor that goes forever, inexhaustiblely and blindfoldly. It has no ends, no reason, and no consciousness. It lies beyond any principle of sufficient reason. In his view, plurality and variability are determined by time and space. And thus he calls them "the principium individuationis". Beyond time and space, the Will can but be pure one and changeless.How can we know that the World is the will because the World is representation? Here, Schopenhauer attaches importance to human and his body. Only human has self-consciousness and knows directly thing-in-itself as his own and all things' essence. His body is instinctly different from any other objects:he can know it or its action innately and directly. So he can, as knowing subject, probe into the thing-in-itself as essence of anything including himself.The will necessarily comes out. Everything in the world is self-representation, objectification of the will in time and space.He introduces Plato's Idea between will and representation as medial tache. Therefore, Idea is direct objectification of the will and the grade of the will's objectification; representation is indirect objectification of the will. The grade of the will's objectification is various and lies beyond time and space and the causal laws.Now that will or life will constitutes the essence of everything, they can but live in endless pains. Human have the most desires, so they are extremely suffered, they shoulder very much deadweight.Then how do we throw away this endless pain? How does the will break away? How is it possible that we save ourselves? Apparently, there is only one way out, that is, not to fulfill the endless desires of the will, not to affirm the life will but to negate it, momentarily or forever overriding the will. Two ways Schopenhauer puts forward: one is art, the other being asceticism.In his view, the reason that art can rescue ourselves is that the way we know things by art casts off serving for the will (desire) and thus produces a pure aesthetic disposition that surpasses utility and desire and gets rid of earthly pains and bother. Art takes luster into our lives.However, art can not make human rescued really since art pulls human out from pains and just brings a rest to us for the moment. So we can say that art gives consolation rather than salvation. To save ourselves really, we should go on the way of asceticism, obviating our life consciousness and getting Nirvana state:no desires, no self.This sort of state is not that we put away pains but that we assume them consciously. How do we get it? He says that we must know the will is roots of all pains and evils and further that the phenomena formulated through the will's objectification is delusive and meaningless. Hope, glee, enjoyment and happiness are all mirages and befooling veil of Maya, which Schopenhauer calls seeing through the principium individuationis. Just when we know this can we suppress our life will, discard the will's coming into being, and go on the way of asceticism.Schopenhauer lays great and far-reaching influence on the modern western philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, etc. Schopenhauer influences them all-sidedly.