Schopenhauer! More good stuff! More staying awake (partially aided by a soy latte)!
He starts out easy-peasey (lemon squeezy): the world is two things - idea and will. And he posits that everything in this world is a perception in a subject ("subject" being that which knows all things, but is known by none). Related ideas are that no one knows a perceiver except for the perceiver him/herself and that the body is an object of perception that the subject can use to its benefit.
Under the umbrella of "idea" falls the concept that we perceive the world as multiple objects because our consciousness breaks up the unity of the world into parts so that our minds can comprehend it. One of Schopenhauer's main concepts is that of the principle of sufficient reason: the reason why everything happens (which is not necessarily causal). There cannot be an object without a subject to realize it, and thus the outside world cannot cause a person to have ideas. This leads to contradictions such as my brain telling me that the world existed before my brain did, but the world can only be understood with my brain, so how can the world have existed before my brain existed and was able to perceive it? Schopenhauer believed that the only things that could be known are within the brain. Thus, when your brain ceases to exist, so does your world. If there were no conscious beings, there would be no world/universe.
Moving on to "will" we are presented with the concept that an act of will and a movement of the body are the same; the action of the body is the will objectified (i.e. there is no difference between the will to drink coffee and actually drinking coffee - if you didn't have the will to drink it, you wouldn't do so). This is extended to concepts such as hunger being equal to our mouths and digestive systems, hearing being equal to ears, and seeing being equal to eyes, etc. Also, every condition that exists now is dependent upon the condition that existed before it. Thus, there is no such thing as free will in Shopenhauer's philosophy.
Will is a blind force in the universe that strives for perpetuation, which leads to the human desire to survive/reproduce. Yet, he believed that existence is a struggle without end or aim and that the only innocent living creatures are plants. Schopenhauer thought that humans are condemned to death from the moment of birth and that we should figure out a way to end the farce of existence. The solution, as he saw it, would be for the human race to stop reproducing itself; the only way to ensure that no more horrible things happened to humanity is for there to no longer be humans in existence. For me, this line of thinking brought to mind Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. The ending of that book addressed this same idea in it's own way, in that the human race evolved into non-existence and that this evolution was a form of "progress." I really enjoy it when I can relate ideas and concepts from this course to other experiences or intellectual pursuits I have had - the flood of satisfaction (the proverbial light-bulb going off) when something clicks like that is a priceless rush!
Week 10 will not be happening for me because I will be enjoying "artisanal cheese chosen by Anne Saxelby of Saxelby Cheese, local beers chosen by Erica and Stephen at Brooklyn Brew Shop, and a photo booth by Jacob Krupnick of Shootbooth" at the GEL day one party. (I won't actually be enjoying the beers, but I'm sure there will be wine!) This means that Marx, Engels, and The Communist Manifesto will not get any coverage here. Can't say I'm too sorry to be missing that class; in fact, the timing couldn't be more perfect. Nietzsche coming up for week 11. . . and I might finally get caught up with the reading.
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