The Metaphysics of Kindness by Walden Asher;

Author:Walden, Asher;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1987848
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

Schopenhauer thus explicitly takes himself simply to be repeating and clarifying Plato’s doctrine, but the differences are significant. Plato understood the Ideas as the basic ontological truths, existing independently of and previous to their physical manifestations. However, Schopenhauer’s Ideas do not seem to match up. They cannot be independent, since the Ideas are grades of objectivity of the Will, and the Will as the thing-in-itself is not independent from the perceived object. The phenomenal object is the Will itself, insofar as it is perceived and therefore manifested by way of the principle of sufficient reason in the phenomenal world.Moreover, an object that is not perceived is a contradiction in terms, according to the principle that there is no object without a subject. If Ideas are defined to be grades of the objectification of the Will, then they are not independent of perceived objects. The Ideas are not parts or aspects of the noumenon, but of the Will’s manifestation in and as the phenomenal world.

The ideas seem to occupy a funny transitional place in between the Will and the perceived objects of the world. Schopenhauer does sometimes seem to treat the Ideas as if they are intermediary between the Will and the world as representation. That is, he makes itsound as if the Will first appears, then differentiates itself into the Ideas, and the ideas manifest themselves in particular things, in a kind of Plotinian overflowing of the One into the Many. But this could not be what he has in mind: there is absolutely no causal or temporal relation between the will and representation, since time, space, and causality are all features of our representation, and so have no meaning beyond that context. This is precisely the reason that the Ideas do not come into being or disappear: they are eternal in the same way that the Will is single: simply because the alternative is unthinkable, or rather, nonsensical. Thus the Ideas certainly could not play an intermediary role in such a picture. So in some respects, the Ideas are really just a part or aspect of the world as representation, but in other respects, it sounds as if they are ‘part’ of the world as Will.

This same ambiguity is present at the epistemological level as well. Consider Schopenhauer’s distinction between a concept and an Idea.A concept, he says, is built up more or less formally and inductively out of abstracted traits. But the traits themselves must have been traits of things we actually experienced, at some point, otherwise the concept is merely a kind of house of cards. But those concepts are dependent upon the Ideas in two ways. Firstly, the way the concept is developed and defined in the course of scientific investigation is as a result of someone first intuiting that certain traits and relations are the important ones, and so preserving them in the abstract formulation while allowing the other incidental or adventitious traits to be (at least temporarily) ignored and forgotten. According to Schopenhauer, being

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.