#In the name of the book#What did Schopenhauer say? The following is a brief introduction to Schopenhauer's philosophical thought.
"The World as Will and Appearance" is mainly a philosophical system that understands the world as we know it with the will as the essence of the world, and takes nihilism and pessimism as the destination of life.
Schopenhauer's pessimistic ideas had a great influence in the history of philosophy; The famous philosopher Brandt. In his History of Western Philosophy, Russell described Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy as "an antidote to the optimism advocated by most philosophers," and Schopenhauer's philosophical ideas had a powerful influence on subsequent philosophers.
In the apparent world, man as an external embodiment of the will has no freedom. In the apparent world, man constantly satisfies his desires for survival and reproduction. Whether or not a person's desires are satisfied, the result brings pain on the one hand, and although the short-term satisfaction will bring a little happiness, after satisfying the desire, it will soon become bored, and boredom is the beginning of another kind of suffering; On the other hand, not all desires can be satisfied, and those that cannot be satisfied can bring suffering. Since desires that can be satisfied are so small a proportion of all desires, the whole life is painful.
Life is painful, and Schopenhauer discussed how to be free from suffering from both the positive and negative aspects of the will. From the perspective of affirmative will, affirmative will is that although there is pain in life, there are also some, short-lived desire satisfactions and moments of happiness in the painful process, and this momentary happiness also enriches the meaning of the whole life, so that people understand and bear the pain of life, which is the happiness that most people may have. Life is painful, but happiness in it is crucial for most people.
From the point of view of denying the will, the way to obtain happiness by denying the will is to know that there is a calming agent, and under the conditions of knowledge, the will will will automatically withdraw from the dominant position of consciousness, and man, as the highest embodiment of will in the appearance world, will hate the will, actively and voluntarily suppress the will, suppress desire, form abstinence, negate the will to life and the will to reproduce, and thus liberate suffering For this person who knows his own essence, the appearance and will mean that he has returned to nothingness. Although this ascetic is still physically alive, his will is dead. In Schopenhauer's words, it was a "weak survival." If this method of negation is generalized, it is the disappearance of mankind and the extinction of the world, that is, liberation from suffering, and there is no happiness.
Schopenhauer reveals suffering, but does not stop at suffering. His philosophy has no happiness in the overall sense, but in the individual sense, this happiness that has happiness to rely on, although short-lived, enriches our lives, and there is absolute happiness in Schopenhauer, but relative happiness can be achieved, and we can only enjoy relative happiness.
Schopenhauer inherits Kant's "thing-in-itself" and understands it deeply as the "will", which is defined in Schopenhauer's philosophy as an extremely empty needer who dominates us to satisfy it continuously, and as the subject we are either satisfying the will or on the way to satisfying the will; this is how suffering comes to us repeatedly. We have to survive under the domination of the will, unable to resist; Like a marionette, the will is the performer.
The will is mainly divided into the will to live and the will to reproduce (the will to live in the sense of prolonging life), and the will to live generates desire under instinct, which is uncertain. When desire is not satisfied, the will in the apparent world will cause the subject to appear as pain; When desire is temporarily satisfied, the will manifests itself as pleasure or pleasure. But this feeling will soon be replaced by new desires, by new pain. In this way, the will affects us as subjects, so that we cannot get a moment of peace.
The will, it is restless, it is constantly wanting something, it is demand, it is longing, it is greed, it is compulsion, it is the world of the will of pain, it is nothing but a world of suffering. As long as it is recognized that the will is the essence of the world, because of the definite desire and need of the will, the world of the will has only suffering. No matter what we do as subjects, we cannot change the pain that the will brings to us. As Schopenhauer said, "The constant effort to eliminate suffering can do nothing more than change the form of suffering."
Schopenhauer reveals the suffering of the world and shows it to us in a bloody way, mercilessly revealing that the essence of our seemingly happy nature is ultimately pain. Under his pessimistic philosophy, it seems to people that only death by hunger strike is liberation.
Is there happiness in the world where we live? Schopenhauer himself liberated himself from suffering and attained happiness mainly from temporary liberation (e.g., religious, artistic aesthetics) and permanent liberation (suicide by hunger strike), and from the method of liberation in between (abstinence to suppress the satisfaction of the will to eliminate desire).
Schopenhauer cared about life and life with the absurdity, illusion, chaos, and instability of living real life subverting the basic rational principles of the Enlightenment.