Arthur Schopenhauer and Free Will - Philosophy

Arthur Schopenhauer and Free Will - Philosophy Arthur Schopenhauer's concept of free will is built on Georg Hegel's concept of the "thing in itself." For Schopenhauer, the will is noumena, the part of the world that exists regardless of whether or not it is perceived by humans. In fact, Schopenhauer believes that the will is not "at all affected by life and death." An individual person's life is phenomenal, perceived by the senses. All life exists as the mirror of the will, the way a shadow exists for a body.

Everything an individual does or thinks, all a person's experiences, are but a corporeal manifestation of this Will. Schopenhauer posits that the will is the human form assumed by an inner nature universal to all beings in space and time. More than an individual representation, Schopenhauer thus believes that the Will is an inner reality common to all individuals. The ultimate reality is one universal will. Since the will exists independently of human action, Schopenhauer presents a deterministic view of free will, one that is rather pessimistic.

He writes that since the Will is a thing-in-itself and is not determined by reason, it "knows no necessity" and is therefore free. Humans, who are phenomena of free will, are not free themselves. The nature of the Will pushes people towards material goals, all of which provide nothing more than transitory satisfaction. For example, Schopenhauer believes that striving for material wealth results in both inner conflict and conflict between people, leading to a cycle of pain, suffering and death.

The only way to break the cycle is to resign oneself to suffering and in doing so, overcoming the nature of the Will. Paradoxically, the only way to be free is for a human being to negate his or her role as a mere channel of the Will. 2. Schopenhauer's Intellectual, Phenomenal and Acquired Character Schopenhauer writes that "Every action of a human being is the product of two factors: his character along with a motive." He believes that character is individual, different for each person.

Furthermore, character is also empirical or knowable through the senses, through experience or knowable by virtue of being inherent in birth. Schopenhauer distinguishes between three types of character. The first, most basic form is intelligible character, an essence individual to each person. It determines a person's specific, basic and unchanging desires. An intelligible character is fundamental, a core nature which a human has no choice in changing. For example, a person who is born heterosexual will always be interested in the opposite sex.

He or she has no choice in this matter and cannot choose to be uninterested. Second, he posits an empirical character, an intermediate layer that is an empirical or knowable manifestation of an individual's intelligible character. While the intelligible character influences a person's internal thoughts, convictions and desires, the empirical character is the physical manifestations or actions of these internal drives. Thus, a man who is heterosexual (determined by his intelligible character) can manifest his empirical character by asking a woman out.

However, unlike intelligible character, the empirical character changes according to time and the situation. For example, a man will remain heterosexual after marriage since his intelligible character is unchanged. However, in keeping with changes in his empirical character, a married man would most likely stop asking other women out for dates. Finally, Schopenhauer believes in an acquired character, an individual's comprehension and acceptance of his or her intelligible character as it has been manifested as empirical character over the person's lifetime.

Thus, unlike intelligible character, the acquired character is also in a constant state of change and becoming. 4....pick one where you feel you have learned something new Though I do not subscribe to Schopenhauer's pessimistic and overly deterministic view of life, I find several of his ideas on the continuity of life provocative. Unlike his many Western counterparts, Schopenhauer believes in an immortal nature of life, one that is bigger than the life of any single individual.

Schopenhauer is among the first Western philosophers who studied Eastern philosophy, as evidenced in his formulations on the continuity and connectedness of all life. As a result, his writings are surprisingly modern and have strong resonance hundreds of years later. I am particularly struck by this passage: "Birth and death both really belong to life, and that they take part in that constant mutation of matter which is consistent with the permanence of the species, notwithstanding.