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Seeking Schopenhauer: where there’s a will there’s a way
Bernardo Kastrup’s new book redresses a tragic misunderstanding of the metaphysics of the influential German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
The work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), best known for his 1818 work, The World as Will and Representation (expanded 1844), is seen as a classic case of philosophical pessimism.
In a nutshell, Schopenhauer is typically described as seeing no special worth in human beings; that people need to be liberated from an everyday life full of struggle, frustrated desire and suffering — the worst of all possible worlds — and that, really, despite some positive values being attainable by some people, non-existence would be better.
But that could all be about to change with publication of the philosopher-scientist Bernardo Kastrup’s new book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics: the key to understanding how it solves the hard problem of consciousness and the paradoxes of quantum mechanics (Iff Books, UK £9.99 / US $14.95, July 2020), a fascinating and stimulating reappraisal of a much-maligned thinker, as well as a remarkable story of philosophical serendipity.
It is Kastrup’s opinion that the true significance of an invaluable treasure of the Western philosophical canon has eluded us until now because Schopenhauer — whom he has called ‘the West’s non-dual sage’ for his echoing of Eastern non-duality — has been consistently misread and misrepresented, even by presumed experts.
Schopenhauer divided the world into two categories called ‘Will’ and ‘Representation’, the latter being the outward appearance of things, and the former being the world’s inner essence, what it is in itself, independent of our observation.
Now Schopenhauer is known for his psychology, aesthetics, ethics and prose style but when it comes to his metaphysics there’s a problem. For example, philosophy professor Christopher Janaway, with whom Kastrup takes serious issue, states that Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is ‘obviously flawed’, and is ‘not credible as a system’ (Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2002).
