The World as Will and Idea

by Arthur Schopenhauer

Overview

I propose to point out here how this book must be read in order to be thoroughly understood. By means of it I only intend to impart a single thought. Yet, notwithstanding all my endeavours, I could find no shorter way of imparting it than this whole book. I hold this thought to be that which has very long been sought for under the name of philosophy, and the discovery of which is therefore regarded by those who are familiar with history as quite as impossible as the discovery of the philosopher's stone, although it was already said by Pliny: Quam multa fieri non posse, priusquam sint facta, judicantur? (Hist. nat. 7, 1.)
According as we consider the different aspects of this one thought which I am about to impart, it exhibits itself as that which we call metaphysics, that which we call ethics, and that which we call æsthetics; and certainly it must be all this if it is what I have already acknowledged I take it to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788892585263
Publisher:	Simone Vannini
Publication date:	03/29/2016
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

Read an Excerpt

48 ) CHAPTER XXIV. ON MATTER. Matter has already been spoken of in the fourth chapter of the supplements to the first book, when we were considering the part of our knowledge of which we are conscious a priori. But it could only be considered there from a one-sided point of view, because we were then concerned merely with its relation to the forms of our intellect, and not to the thing in itself, and therefore we investigated it only from the subjective side, i.e., so far as it is an idea, and not from the objective side, i.e., with regard to what it may be in itself. In the first respect, our conclusion was that it is objective activity in general, yet conceived without fuller determination; therefore it takes the place of causality in the table of our a priori knowledge which is given there. For what is material is that which acts (the actual) in general, and regarded apart from the specific nature of its action. Hence also matter, merely as such, is not an object of perception, but only of thought, and thus is really au abstraction. It only comes into perception in connection with form and quality, as a body, i.e., as a fully determined kind of activity. It is only by abstracting from this fuller determination that we think of matter as such, i.e., separated from form and quality; consequently under matter we think of acting absolutely and in general, thus of activity in the abstract. The more fully determined acting we then conceive as the accident of matter; but only by means of this does matter become preceptible, i.e., present itself as a body and an object of experience. Pure matter, on the other hand, which, as I have shown in the Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy, aloneconstitutes the true and admissible content of the conception of substance, is causality...