Individuation, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche

The central problem for Schopenhauer is suffering, his diagnosis of the problem is the individual experiencing of universal Will to Live, e. g. selfishness, and, so, his solution is the overcoming of individuality, either via the contemplation of universal Forms, or via self-abnegating conduct, e. g. compassion. Regardless of the practicability of the solution, his diagnosis has one serious weakness--it avoids explaining the origin of individuality, which he calls the 'principle of individuation'. As the ground of individuation, this principle can only be a mode of the Will to Live, not a product of an illusion within individuated experience. But Will to Live, on his hypothesis, is universal and undifferentiated. Hence, his diagnosis does not reach the root of individuation, which is why his solution may be just as selfishly motivated as the selfishness that it purports to overcome. Nietzsche's inheritance of the structure in Birth of Tragedy, is a little less dogmatic--the God of individuality, Apollo, is distinct from the God of incessant striving, Dionysus, but the former remains a not necessarily welcome interloper through much of Nietzsche's earlier work, e. g. when he reluctantly accepts that humans cannot survive without illusions. That individuation might itself be a fate does not seem to occur to him, at least at these stages. Regardless, it is unclear whether or not he intends it as such, but his later Will to Power entails a principle of individuation, as well as effects a synthesis of the Dionysian and the Apollinian. For, according to the doctrine of Will to Power, all events are resultants of opposing manifestations of Will to Power, and hence, are discrete quanta, i. e. are individuated from other such events. Thus, every event combines Dionysian and Apollinian features, though it is unclear if Nietzsche intends explicitly that Will to Power is the synthesis of the two principles. In any case, because Will to Power provides a genetic account of individuation, Nietzsche begins to treat individuation and 'illusion' as constructive developments.