Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860)
The World as Will and Representation (Quotes & Pictures)
The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what no body yet has thought about that which everyone sees. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Introduction: Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer is famous for introducing eastern Mysticism into Western Philosophy, being Pessimistic (Realistic) about the Nature of Man, and critiquing Kant's Metaphysics. As a fine philosopher, Schopenhauer understood the importance of truth (and humanity's generally feeble attempts to understand Truth and Reality!)
But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818)
For the incredibly great majority of men are by their nature absolutely incapable of any but material aims; they cannot even comprehend any others. Accordingly, the pursuit of truth alone is a pursuit far too lofty and eccentric for us to expect that all or many, or indeed even a mere few, will sincerely take part in it. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favours. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
My guiding star in all seriousness has been truth. Following it, I could first aspire only to my own approval, entirely averted from an age that has sunk low as regards all higher intellectual efforts, and from a national literature demoralised but for the exceptions, a literature in which the art of combining lofty words with low sentiments has reached its zenith. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Truth is certainly the guiding star for humanity, for we cannot be wise without knowing the truth. Further, and most importantly, all truth comes from reality. The lack of True Knowledge of Reality causes humanity many profound problems. For without the truth our world has largely been forced to create its own rules for how we live and think, and this has resulted in our current age of Postmodernism - a world without absolute truth where knowledge is relative, evolving, and dependent upon culture. But this has also necessarily led us to being deceived, for without True Knowledge of Reality it was impossible to determine any absolute and eternal truths, and as Plato and Nietzsche observed, this self deception is injurious and dangerous to ourselves.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1890) There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.
(Plato,
Republic) And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the
truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that
by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.
The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world
of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality
which is the object of knowledge.
Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate
it as much as he loves truth. ... And is there anything more closely connected
with wisdom than truth?
What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error
to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true
philosophy.
The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.
(Plato)
Arthur Schopenhauer also wrote on and studied Eastern Mysticism / Vedic Philosophy. The foundation of the Eastern world view is the understanding of the Dynamic Unity of the Universe.
(Fritjof
Capra, The Tao of Physics) The most important characteristic
of the Eastern world view - one could almost say the essence of it -
is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things
and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations
of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable
parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate
reality. ...
The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections
are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves and grows
and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the
universe as such a web of relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognised
that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic aspect of matter arises
in quantum theory as a consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles,
and is even more essential in relativity theory, where the unification
of space and time implies that the being of matter cannot be separated
from its activity. The properties of subatomic particles can therefore
only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction
and transformation. (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics)
Western Physics / Philosophy (with its 'particles' and 'forces' in 'spacetime') has never understood Eastern Mysticism and this Dynamic Unity of Reality. Only recently, with knowledge of the Wave Structure of Matter in Space (from a Metaphysics of Space and Time to a Metaphysics of Space and wave Motion) can we now explain how 'All is One and Interconnected' from a scientific / logical foundation. This then provides us with a true physical foundation from which to determine absolute Truth (see links on side of page).
We hope
you will enjoy reading on the Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) and the
quotations from Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation.
Geoff
Haselhurst
Arthur
Schopenhauer Quotations
The World As Will and Representation
Therefore the system of silence, so unanimously resorted to, is the only
right one, and I can advise them to stick to it, and go on with it as long
as it works - in other words, until ignoring is taken to imply ignorance;
then there will still just be time to come around ..
Thus the system of ignoring and of maintaining silence can last for a good
while, at any rate for the span of time that I may have yet to live; in
this way much is already gained. If in the meantime an indiscrete voice
here and there has allowed itself to be heard, it is soon drowned by the
loud talking of the professors who, with their airs of importance, know
how to entertain the public with quite different things ....
It is a ticklish question, the steering of the public, good and docile as it is on the whole. Although as a rule the absurd culminates, and it seems impossible for the voice of the individual ever to penetrate through the chorus of foolers and fooled, still there is left to the genuine works of all times a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence; and as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions. Having once arrived there, it remains at rest, and no one can any longer draw it down again. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818)
For the incredibly great majority of men are by their nature absolutely incapable of any but material aims; they cannot even comprehend any others. Accordingly, the pursuit of truth alone is a pursuit far too lofty and eccentric for us to expect that all or many, or indeed even a mere few, will sincerely take part in it. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favours. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
My guiding star in all seriousness has been truth. Following it, I could first aspire only to my own approval, entirely averted from an age that has sunk low as regards all higher intellectual efforts, and from a national literature demoralised but for the exceptions, a literature in which the art of combining lofty words with low sentiments has reached its zenith. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
The man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he may have studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every possible thing except philosophy. Consequently, such a man is related to the other as a person under age is to an adult. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
In consequence of his originality, it is true of him in the highest degree, as indeed of all genuine philosophers, that only from their own works does one come to know them, not from the accounts of others. For the thoughts of those extraordinary minds cannot stand filtration through an ordinary head. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
(From Friedrich Nietzsche, 1890, The Greeks)
Just as Heraclitus conceived time, so also for instance did Schopenhauer,
who repeatedly says of it that in it every instant exists only in so far
as it has annihilated the preceding one, its father, in order to be itself
effaced equally quickly; that past and future are as unreal as any dream;
that the present is only the dimensionless and unstable boundary between
the two; that, however, like time, so space and again like the latter,
so also everything that is simultaneously in space and time, has only a
relative existence, only through and for the sake of a something else,
of the same kind as itself, i.e., existing only under the same limitations.
This truth is in the highest degree self-evident, accessible to everyone, and just for that very reason, abstractly and rationally, it is only attained with great difficulty. Whoever has this truth before his eyes must, however, also proceed at once to the next Heraclitean consequence and say that the whole essence of actuality is in fact activity, and that for actuality there is no other kind of existence and reality, as Schopenhauer has likewise expounded (The World as Will and Idea, Vol.1, sect.4):
Only as active does it fill space and time: its action upon the immediate object determines the perception in which alone it exists: Cause and effect thus constitute the whole nature of matter; its true being is its action. The totality of everything material is therefore very appropriately called in German Wirklichkeit [actuality]- a word which is far more expressive then Realitat [reality]. That upon which actuality acts is always matter; actuality's whole 'Being' and essence therefore consist only in the orderly change, which one part of it causes in another, and is therefore wholly relative, according to a relation which is valid only within the boundary of actuality, as in the case of time and space.
The Eternal and exclusive Becoming, the total instability of all reality and actuality, which continually works and becomes and never is, as Heraclitus teaches- is an awful and appalling conception, and its effects most nearly related to that sensation by which during an earthquake one loses confidence in the firmly grounded earth.'
The Things themselves in the permanency of which the limited intellect of man and animal believes do not 'exist' at all; they are as the fierce flashing and fiery sparkling of drawn swords, as the stars of Victory rising with a radiant resplendence in the battle of the opposite qualities.
The arena and the object of this struggle is Matter - which some natural forces alternately endeavour to disintegrate and build up again at the expense of other natural forces - as also Space and Time, the union of which through causality is this very matter.
That which he beheld, the doctrine of the Law in the Becoming, and of the Play in the Necessity, must henceforth be beheld eternally; he has raised the curtain of this greatest stage play. (Nietzsche, 1890, The Greeks)
Links / Arthur Schopenhauer Philosophy
Kant,
Immanuel - Space and Motion (not Time) as Synthetic a
priori Foundations for Human Knowledge and Reason. From
Kantian Idealism to Realism.
Metaphysics:
Problem of One and the Many - Brief History of Metaphysics and Solutions
to the Fundamental Problems of Uniting the; One and the Many, Infinite and
the Finite, Eternal and the Temporal, Absolute and Relative, Continuous and Discrete, Simple and Complex, Matter and Universe.
Time - The
Spherical Standing Wave Motion of Space causes matter's
activity and the phenomena of Time. This confirms Aristotle and Spinoza's connection
of Motion and Time, and most significantly connects these two things back
to one thing Space. Movement, then, is also continuous in the way in which
time is - indeed time is either identical to movement or
is some affection of it. (Aristotle)
Philosophy:
Free Will Vs Determinism - Wave Structure of Matter explains Limited
Free Will in a Necessarily Connected (Logical) Universe.
Nietzsche,
Friedrich - Famous Philosopher Nietzsche on Postmodernism
and Beyond Good and Evil. God is not Dead, God is What
Exists and Causes all things thus God is Space and (Wave) Motion.
Eastern
Philosophy: Buddha: Buddhism Religion: Nirvana - 'All phenomena link
together in a mutually conditioning network.' The Wave Structure of Matter
(WSM) explains Nirvana (Truth) Karma (Interconnection).
Eastern
Philosophy: Hinduism - Hinduism (Hindu Religion) correctly
realised that Reality / Brahman is One and Dynamic. On Space (Akasa)
and Motion (Prana), Illusion (Maya),
Ignorance (Avidya), rebirth / cycles (Samsara).
Information and links on Hinduism, Hindu Religion.
Help Humanity
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
(Mohandas Gandhi)
"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence:
Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. ... Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. ... The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which
the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. ...
The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres
of cultural life. ... We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without
a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm
and the misguided. ...
Humanity is going to need a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive!" (Albert Einstein)
Our world is in great trouble due to human behaviour founded on myths and customs that are causing the destruction of Nature and climate change. We can now deduce the most simple science theory of reality - the wave structure of matter in space. By understanding how we and everything around us are interconnected
in Space we can then deduce solutions to the fundamental problems of human knowledge in physics, philosophy, metaphysics, theology, education, health, evolution and ecology, politics and society.
This is the profound new way of thinking that Einstein
realised, that we exist as spatially extended structures of the universe - the discrete and separate body an illusion. This simply confirms the
intuitions of the ancient philosophers and mystics.
Given the current censorship in physics / philosophy of science journals (based on the standard model of particle physics / big bang cosmology) the internet is the best hope for getting new knowledge
known to the world. But that depends on you, the people who care about science and society, realise the importance of truth and reality.
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A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Max Planck, 1920)
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