The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3)

Translators’ Preface. Preface To The First Edition. Preface To The Second Edition. First Book. The World As Idea. First Aspect. The Idea Subordinated To The Principle Of Suffici...

While thus philosophy has long been obliged to serve entirely as a means to public ends on the one side and private ends on the other, I have pursued the course of my thought, u...

In this first book, then, we consider the world only from this side, only so far as it is idea. The inward reluctance with which any one accepts the world as merely his idea, wa...

§ 5. It is needful to guard against the grave error of supposing that because perception arises through the knowledge of causality, the relation of subject and object is that of...

It follows from what has been said, that all animals, even the least developed, have understanding; for they all know objects, and this knowledge determines their movements as m...

Every science must start from two principal data. One of these is always the principle of sufficient reason in some form or another, as organon; the other is its special object...

Besides the ideas we have as yet considered, which, according to their construction, could be referred to time, space, and matter, if we consider them with reference to the obje...

With regard to the possible combinations of concepts which we have given, it has only further to be remarked that they may also be combined with each other in many ways. For exa...

§ 12. _Rational knowledge_ (_wissen_) is then all abstract knowledge,—that is, the knowledge which is peculiar to the reason as distinguished from the understanding. Its contrad...

§ 14. By means of these various discussions it is hoped that both the difference and the relation between the process of knowledge that belongs to the reason, rational knowledge...

§ 15. If now with our conviction that perception is the primary source of all evidence, and that only direct or indirect connection with it is absolute truth; and further, that...

After all this we hope there will be no doubt that the evidence of mathematics, which has become the pattern and symbol of all evidence, rests essentially not upon demonstration...

The many-sided view of life as a whole which man, as distinguished from the lower animals, possesses through reason, may be compared to a geometrical, colourless, abstract, redu...

If, however, we surrender ourselves to its teaching, we soon become convinced that etiology cannot afford us the information we chiefly desire, any more than morphology. The lat...

§ 20. As we have said, the will proclaims itself primarily in the voluntary movements of our own body, as the inmost nature of this body, as that which it is besides being objec...

I call a _cause_, in the narrowest sense of the word, that state of matter, which, while it introduces another state with necessity, yet suffers just as great a change itself as...

It is true that at all times an etiology, unmindful of its real aim, has striven to reduce all organised life to chemism or electricity; all chemism, that is to say quality, aga...

In the higher grades of the objectivity of will we see individuality occupy a prominent position, especially in the case of man, where it appears as the great difference of indi...

§ 27. If, from the foregoing consideration of the forces of nature and their phenomena, we have come to see clearly how far an explanation from causes can go, and where it must...

Thus everywhere in nature we see strife, conflict, and alternation of victory, and in it we shall come to recognise more distinctly that variance with itself which is essential...

_Inner teleology_ is connected with the scheme of our work in the following way. If, in accordance with what has been said, all variations of form in nature, and all multiplicit...

In fact, freedom from all aim, from all limits, belongs to the nature of the will, which is an endless striving. This was already touched on above in the reference to centrifuga...

It will be remembered from the preceding book that knowledge in general belongs to the objectification of will at its higher grades, and sensibility, nerves, and brain, just lik...

§ 36. History follows the thread of events; it is pragmatic so far as it deduces them in accordance with the law of motivation, a law that determines the self-manifesting will w...

A clear and complete insight into the nature of madness, a correct and distinct conception of what constitutes the difference between the sane and the insane, has, as far as I k...

We have already remarked above that the transition to the state of pure perception takes place most easily when the objects bend themselves to it, that is, when by their manifol...

Since, on the one hand, every given thing may be observed in a. purely objective manner and apart from all relations; and since, on the other hand, the will manifests itself in...

But a far higher grade is revealed by animal painting and sculpture. Of the latter we have some important antique remains; for example, horses at Venice, on Monte Cavallo, and o...

Before all psychological and physiological inquiries as to whether Laocoon would cry out in his position or not (and I certainly affirm that he would), it must be decided as reg...

It follows from all that has been said, that the concept, useful as it is in life, and serviceable, necessary and productive as it is in science, is yet always barren and unfrui...

The revelation of the Idea, which is the highest grade of the objectivity of will, the representation of man in the connected series of his efforts and actions, is thus the grea...

Tragedy is to be regarded, and is recognised as the summit of poetical art, both on account of the greatness of its effect and the difficulty of its achievement. It is very sign...

But it must never be forgotten, in the investigation of all these analogies I have pointed out, that music has no direct, but merely an indirect relation to them, for it never e...

The given point of view, and the method of treatment announced, are themselves sufficient to indicate that in this ethical book no precepts, no doctrine of duty must be looked f...

Dogmas change and our knowledge is deceptive; but Nature never errs, her procedure is sure, and she never conceals it. Everything is entirely in Nature, and Nature is entire in...

Apart from the fact that the will as the true thing-in-itself is actually original and independent, and that the feeling of its originality and absoluteness must accompany its a...

The distinction we have established between the ways in which the brutes and man are respectively moved by motives exerts a very wide influence upon the nature of both, and has...

§ 56. This freedom, this omnipotence, as the expression of which the whole visible world exists and progressively develops in accordance with the laws which belong to the form o...

Besides, through this view of the inevitableness of pain, of the supplanting of one pain by another, and the introduction of a new pain through the passing away of that which pr...

§ 59. If we have so far convinced ourselves _a priori_, by the most general consideration, by investigation of the primary and elemental features of human life, that in its whol...

We have called time and space the _principium individuationis_, because only through them and in them is multiplicity of the homogeneous possible. They are the essential forms o...

In all cases in which I have a right of compulsion, a complete right to use _violence_ against another, I may, according to the circumstances, just as well oppose the violence o...

Kant makes the fundamentally false assertion that apart from the state there would be no complete right of property. It follows from our deduction, as given above, that even in...

The living knowledge of eternal justice, of the balance that inseparably binds together the _malum culpæ_ with the _malum pœnæ_, demands the complete transcending of individuali...

This great intensity of will is in itself and directly a constant source of suffering. In the first place, because all volition as such arises from want; that is, suffering. (Th...

If, however, as a rare exception, we meet a man who possesses a considerable income, but uses very little of it for himself and gives all the rest to the poor, while he denies h...

In Buddhism also, there is no lack of expressions of this truth. For example, when Buddha, still as Bodisatwa, has his horse saddled for the last time, for his flight into the w...

It will be remembered from the Third Book that the æsthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists in great measure in the fact that in entering the state of pure contemplation we a...

§ 69. Suicide, the actual doing away with the individual manifestation of will, differs most widely from the denial of the will to live, which is the single outstanding act of f...

Not only the dogmas referred to before, but also this last genuine evangelical dogma belongs to those which at the present day an ignorant and dull opinion rejects as absurd or...

59 It is scarcely necessary to say that wherever I speak of poets I refer exclusively to that rare phenomenon the great true poet. I mean no one else; least of all that dull ins...