Schopenhauer’s discovery that the underlying “essence” of life is will is not a happy one. For, as the second of the Buddha’s “Four Noble Truths” tells us, to will is to suffer. What follows, as the first of the “Truths” tells us, is that life is suffering, from which Schopenhauer concludes that “it would be better for us not to exist”. He offers two main arguments in support of the claim that to will is (mostly) to suffer, the first of which I shall call the “competition argument” and the second the “stress-or-boredom argument”.
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The world in which the will – first and foremost the “will to life” – must seek to satisfy itself, the competition argument observes, is a world of struggle, of “war, all against all” in which only the victor survives. On pain of extinction, the hawk must feed on the sparrow and the sparrow on the worm. The will to life in one individual has no option but to destroy the will to life in another. Fifty years before Darwin, Schopenhauer observes that nature’s economy is conserved through overpopulation: it produces enough antelopes to perpetuate the species but also a surplus to feed the lions. It follows that fear, pain and death are not isolated malfunctions of a generally benevolent order, but are inseparable from the means by which the natural ecosystem preserves itself.
////////////////////As the Romans knew, homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man: “the chief source of the most serious evils affecting man is man”.
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With his “stress-or-boredom” argument, Schopenhauer turns from social life to individual psychology. To live, we know, is to will. Now either one’s will is satisfied or it is not. If it is unsatisfied one suffers. If the will to eat is unsatisfied one suffers the pain of hunger; if the libidinal will is unsatisfied one suffers the pain of sexual frustration. If, on the other hand, the will is satisfied then – after, at best, a moment of fleeting pleasure or joy – we are overcome by a “fearful emptiness and boredom”. This is particularly visible in the case of sex: as the Romans again knew, post coitum omne animalium triste est: everyone suffers from post-coital tristesse. Hence, life “swings like a pendulum” between two forms of suffering, lack and boredom.
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Life is suffering. Everyday human consciousness is permeated by both present suffering and anxiety about future suffering. But in aesthetic consciousness we are, as we indeed say, “taken out of ourselves”. Captivated by the play of moonlight on gently rippling waves or by a great piece of music, we forget our ordinary will-full selves and hence the pain and anxiety inseparable from ordinary consciousness. For a moment we achieve that “bliss and peace of mind always sought but always escaping us on the path of willing”. Briefly, we inhabit the “painless state prized by Epicurus as the highest good and the state of the gods”. And from this experience we can infer “how blessed must the life of a man in whom the will is silenced, not for a brief moment, as in enjoyment of the beautiful, but for ever”.
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But of course, since to live is to will, the will can never be entirely silenced in the “life of a man”. While the ascetic and the thinker may have some success in transferring themselves from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa, as long as one is alive one can never entirely escape the will. Only in death can the will be silenced “for ever”. And so, Book Four tells us, only in death can we achieve final release, “salvation”.
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But why should we regard death as salvation? Is it not absolute extinction, an abyss of nothingness to which one might well prefer, for all its pain, life as a human being? One antidote to fear of death is transcendental idealism. Death is something that happens to the self that exists within the “dream” of natural life. But since the dreamer of a dream must be outside the dream, idealism assures us of the “indestructibility of our inner nature by death”. Depending on circumstances, however, indestructibility could turn out to be a curse rather than a blessing. Why should we regard it as the latter?
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Schopenhauer was, I believe, the first European Buddhist (the first translations of the Hindu and Buddhist texts began to appear as he was writing the main work). To live, he tells us, is to will, and to will is to participate in the anxious, exhausting and endless Darwinian struggle that only the fittest survive. The pleasures of achieving a goal are either fleeting or non-existent. And once achieved, we must rush on to the next goal in order to escape the ever-present threat of boredom. Life is a treadmill; the “wheel of Ixion” never stands still. But this, Schopenhauer tells us, is a game we do not have to play. We can withdraw from the life of willing into a life of contemplation – “mindfulness”, in current jargon – a withdrawal which, for the enlightened, will complete itself in easeful death. At its deepest level, says Schopenhauer, his philosophy, like Socrates’, is a “preparation for death”.
//////////////////
The world in which the will – first and foremost the “will to life” – must seek to satisfy itself, the competition argument observes, is a world of struggle, of “war, all against all” in which only the victor survives. On pain of extinction, the hawk must feed on the sparrow and the sparrow on the worm. The will to life in one individual has no option but to destroy the will to life in another. Fifty years before Darwin, Schopenhauer observes that nature’s economy is conserved through overpopulation: it produces enough antelopes to perpetuate the species but also a surplus to feed the lions. It follows that fear, pain and death are not isolated malfunctions of a generally benevolent order, but are inseparable from the means by which the natural ecosystem preserves itself.
////////////////////As the Romans knew, homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man: “the chief source of the most serious evils affecting man is man”.
////////////////////
With his “stress-or-boredom” argument, Schopenhauer turns from social life to individual psychology. To live, we know, is to will. Now either one’s will is satisfied or it is not. If it is unsatisfied one suffers. If the will to eat is unsatisfied one suffers the pain of hunger; if the libidinal will is unsatisfied one suffers the pain of sexual frustration. If, on the other hand, the will is satisfied then – after, at best, a moment of fleeting pleasure or joy – we are overcome by a “fearful emptiness and boredom”. This is particularly visible in the case of sex: as the Romans again knew, post coitum omne animalium triste est: everyone suffers from post-coital tristesse. Hence, life “swings like a pendulum” between two forms of suffering, lack and boredom.
/////////////////////
Life is suffering. Everyday human consciousness is permeated by both present suffering and anxiety about future suffering. But in aesthetic consciousness we are, as we indeed say, “taken out of ourselves”. Captivated by the play of moonlight on gently rippling waves or by a great piece of music, we forget our ordinary will-full selves and hence the pain and anxiety inseparable from ordinary consciousness. For a moment we achieve that “bliss and peace of mind always sought but always escaping us on the path of willing”. Briefly, we inhabit the “painless state prized by Epicurus as the highest good and the state of the gods”. And from this experience we can infer “how blessed must the life of a man in whom the will is silenced, not for a brief moment, as in enjoyment of the beautiful, but for ever”.
////////////////////////
But of course, since to live is to will, the will can never be entirely silenced in the “life of a man”. While the ascetic and the thinker may have some success in transferring themselves from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa, as long as one is alive one can never entirely escape the will. Only in death can the will be silenced “for ever”. And so, Book Four tells us, only in death can we achieve final release, “salvation”.
//////////////////////////
But why should we regard death as salvation? Is it not absolute extinction, an abyss of nothingness to which one might well prefer, for all its pain, life as a human being? One antidote to fear of death is transcendental idealism. Death is something that happens to the self that exists within the “dream” of natural life. But since the dreamer of a dream must be outside the dream, idealism assures us of the “indestructibility of our inner nature by death”. Depending on circumstances, however, indestructibility could turn out to be a curse rather than a blessing. Why should we regard it as the latter?
//////////////////////////
Schopenhauer was, I believe, the first European Buddhist (the first translations of the Hindu and Buddhist texts began to appear as he was writing the main work). To live, he tells us, is to will, and to will is to participate in the anxious, exhausting and endless Darwinian struggle that only the fittest survive. The pleasures of achieving a goal are either fleeting or non-existent. And once achieved, we must rush on to the next goal in order to escape the ever-present threat of boredom. Life is a treadmill; the “wheel of Ixion” never stands still. But this, Schopenhauer tells us, is a game we do not have to play. We can withdraw from the life of willing into a life of contemplation – “mindfulness”, in current jargon – a withdrawal which, for the enlightened, will complete itself in easeful death. At its deepest level, says Schopenhauer, his philosophy, like Socrates’, is a “preparation for death”.
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