Schopenhauer’s The World as Will

Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of phenomenal consciousness holds that ordinary experience is the world as “representation”—objectified under the forms of subject-object cognition, space, time, and causality—while the embodied subject also has immediate inner access to itself as “will,” a blind striving that underlies both affective consciousness and the metaphysical character of nature as a whole (Schopenhauer, 1813/1847, 1818/1844; Janaway, 1989; Wicks, 2021). On Schopenhauer’s view, the world has these two irreducible aspects—it is representation (Vorstellung), the phenomenal world of spatiotemporal objects constituted by the knowing subject's cognitive apparatus, and it is will (Wille), the single, blind, aimless striving that constitutes the inner essence, or thing-in-itself, of everything—and that we know this inner essence directly in only one case: our own body, of which we are aware both externally as a physical object and internally as felt willing; consciousness and intellect are, on this view, secondary biological instruments that the will develops in higher organisms, so that phenomenal experience is the surface under which a non-conscious, universal will is the deeper reality (Schopenhauer, 1818; Janaway, 2002).

Representation and the Primacy of the Subject

Taking over Kant's distinction between appearance and thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer opens The World as Will and Representation with the thesis that "the world is my representation": To be an object is to be object-for-a-subject; every object exists only for a subject, structured by the a priori forms of space, time, and causality (Schopenhauer, 1818; Wicks, 2021). The phenomenal world is thoroughly mind-dependent in its form, a coherent field of individuated objects governed by the principle of sufficient reason.

Thus, phenomenal consciousness is intrinsically correlational, structured by the subject-object distinction. Space, time, and causality organize the world of appearances, while the principle of sufficient reason governs the explanatory relations among objects, concepts, mathematical constructions, and motives (Schopenhauer, 1813/1847; Schopenhauer, 1818/1844). But representation, Schopenhauer insists, never yields the inner nature of things: proceeding only from the outside, along the path of objective knowledge, one never gets beyond the phenomenon.

The Body as the Key: Will as Thing-In-Itself

Schopenhauer's decisive move—and his departure from Kant, who held the thing-in-itself unknowable—is that each of us has one object given in two ways at once. I perceive my body as a representation among others, yet I also know it from within, immediately, as will: my volitions are not causes of my bodily acts but are those acts grasped inwardly (Schopenhauer, 1818; Janaway, 2002). This inner acquaintance is the single window through which reality is known as it is in itself rather than as it appears. Generalizing, Schopenhauer concludes that the inner essence of all phenomena—organic and inorganic alike—is will: not conscious, rational purpose, but a mindless, insatiable striving that space and time (the principles of individuation) fragment into the multiplicity of the phenomenal world, though in itself it is one and undivided.

Intellect as Instrument; Consciousness as Secondary

For Schopenhauer, the will is primary and the intellect derivative. Cognition and consciousness are not the essence of the self but tools that the will produces in certain organisms to serve its striving—the brain being the organ of representation. He vivifies the relation with the image of a blind, powerful giant (the will) carrying a sighted but weak dwarf (the intellect) upon its shoulders. Consciousness, accordingly, arises only at higher grades of the will's objectification and can be extinguished (in sleep, injury, death) while the underlying will persists; ordinary self-transparency is an illusion, for much of what moves us is a will, or “willing,” hidden from the intellect. This subordination of reason to an unconscious drive anticipates later depth-psychological and evolutionary conceptions of mind (Wicks, 2021).

Significance and difficulties

Schopenhauer's central topic is metaphysics (the will as thing-in-itself), and his thesis aims to demote consciousness, not to advance a theory of qualia. His account of consciousness as a secondary biological function is a substantive claim about the place of phenomenal awareness in the hierarchy of nature. Even so, his identification of the reality behind appearance with something known from within (inner experience as the one non-representational access to reality) makes him a pivotal figure in the metaphysics of consciousness. His argument that the intrinsic nature of the physical—opaque to outer, structural knowledge—is disclosed only in inner experience directly anticipates the intrinsic-nature strategy of contemporary Russellian monism and panpsychism (Sprigge, 1983; Goff, Seager, & Allen-Hermanson, 2022), and his claim that a proto-experiential willing underlies all of nature is a recognized forerunner of panpsychist and dual-aspect views. Note, however, that Schopenhauer makes phenomenal consciousness derivative, not fundamental—the will itself is explicitly non-conscious. So, to cut a fine line here, he is only an ancestor of panpsychism, but he is not a panpsychist about consciousness.

Two difficulties are argued. First, since the will is known only in one's own case, the inference that all other phenomena are equally will faces a problem of generalization, and, if resisted, threatens solipsism. Second, scholars dispute whether Schopenhauer consistently identifies the will with the Kantian thing-in-itself or, more cautiously, treats it as the thing-in-itself only as it appears to inner sense—still one level removed from the ultimately unknowable (Janaway, 2002; Wicks, 2021). These tensions notwithstanding, Schopenhauer’s elevation of felt willing to the status of metaphysical key remains a landmark attempt to close the gap between phenomenal experience and the nature of reality.

References

Goff, P., Seager, W., & Allen-Hermanson, S. (2022). Panpsychism. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University.

Janaway, C. (2002). Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Schopenhauer, A. (1818). The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), Vol. 1. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus.

Sprigge, T. L. S. (1983). The Vindication of Absolute Idealism. Edinburgh University Press.

Wicks, R. (2021). Arthur Schopenhauer. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University.