Schopenhauer on Empirical and Aesthetic Perception and Cognition
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Ghent University Academic Bibliography Schopenhauer on Empirical and Aesthetic Perception and Cognition Bart Vandenabeele In Schopenhauer’s view, the whole organic and inorganic world is ultimately governed by an insatiable, blind will. Life as a whole is purposeless: there is no ultimate goal or meaning, for the metaphysical will is only interested in manifesting itself in (or as) a myriad of phenomena which we call the “world” or “life”. Human life too is nothing but an insignificant product or “objectivation” of the blind, unsconsious will and because our life is determined by willing (i.e. by needs, affects, urges and desires), and since willing is characterised by lack, our life is essentially full of misery and suffering. We are constantly searching for objects that can satisfy our needs and desires and once we have finally found a way to satisfy one desire, another one crops up and we become restless willing subjects once again, and so on in an endless whirlpool of willing, suffering, momentary satisfaction, boredom, willing again, etc. Life is not a good thing. The only way, Schopenhauer argues, to escape from these torments of willing is by “seeing the world aright”, as Wittgenstein would have it, i.e. by acknowledging the pointlessness and insignificance of our own willing existence, and ultimately by giving up willing as such – which in fact really means abandoning our own individuality, our own willing selves – which is momentarily possible in aesthetic experiences of beauty and sublimity, and permanently achievable only in the exceptional ethical practices of detachment, mysticism and asceticism, in which the will to life is eventually denied and sheer nothingness is embraced – either through harsh suffering or through sainthood.
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