Sunday, March 31, 2013

Will and Courage

Conspicuously absent in Schopenhauer's doctrine is any explicit attention to what for at least two of his most prominent predecessor Moralists, Aristotle and Spinoza, is a cardinal Virtue--Courage.  Underlying that neglect is the unclarity in his system of the relation between 'Will' qua 'I will', and 'Will' qua universal noumenon.  For, though that contrast seems on the face of it to constitute a sharp enough distinction, his equation of 'self-denial' and 'denial of the Will-to-Live', implies, to the contrary, that 'I will' and universal Will are identical.  Now, that identity precludes the possibility of a synthetic combination of an individual Self-Denial and an affirmation of the universal Will-to-Live.  But, Courage is one such combination.  Thus, cases, e. g. Bruno, that he entertains in #67 of WWR, that are usually classified as 'Courage' in other doctrines, he can only reduce to "sympathy or compassion", thereby trivializing the risk to individual well-being involved in those examples.  Nor is there at his disposal the simple remedy of accepting the distinction between individual Will and universal Will, for the former entails a violation of his restriction of the Principle of Individuation to the world of Representation.  Thus, it can be argued that his system's lack of capacity to accommodate an uncontroversially preeminent concept such as Courage suffices to warrant lifting that restriction, if not jettisoning entirely his noumenon-phenomenon distinction.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Beyond Character

Schopenhauer's argument for the possibility of, in principle, resistance to the Will-to-Live, entails an argument for the possibility of, in principle, resistance to any specification of the Will-to-Live.  So, if, as it is in his system, Will-to-Live is the universal noumenon, then any Character-type is a specification of the Will-to-Live.  Thus, even though he does not seem to recognize the implication, it follows from his own premises that no Character is immutable.  Now, Kant's thesis that Virtue entails endless progress, i. e. that it can never be permanently attained, implies that he agrees that no Character is immutable.  Thus, Schopenhauer's repeated invoking of Kant's concept of Character as part of his defense of his own concept of fixed Character, seems counterproductive.  

Friday, March 29, 2013

Character and Laziness

In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche briefly proposes that the source of conformist behavior is "laziness", without further examination of the latter.  Now, Laziness is lack of Effort, and, as has been previously analyzed here, Effort, is spontaneous, nascent motility that exceeds any of its antecedents.  Thus, for example, Effort initiates novelty with respect to preceding repetitious behavior, and, hence, to social conformism, and to personal habit, alike.  But Character is Habit.  So, at this stage of his career, Nietzsche does not seem to recognize that presumed 'innate fixed' individual Character can be, as much as Conformism on his diagnosis is, an instance of Laziness.  In particular, he misses that Schopenhauer, probably unwittingly, implicitly agrees with that diagnosis, when arguing that the one unequivocal fixed, intelligible Character of his system, i. e. the Will-to-Live, can, with effort, be undone.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Character, Responsibility, Ressentiment

In the traditional 'Free Will vs. Determinism' debate, a standard defense of the former position is that if it were incorrect, the ascription of Responsibility would be impossible, i. e. because the ultimate cause of an action would always lie elsewhere.  In contrast, in ch. III of On the Freedom of Will, Schopenhauer idiosyncratically marshals that rationale in support of his seemingly diametrically opposed concept of fixed innate Character:  "Thus, when the freedom of will is assumed, we see that the origin of the difference in behavior, and therewith of virtue or vice, together with responsibility, floats adrift and nowhere finds a place to take root."  So, regardless of the relative merits of the two arguments, they share an appeal to an accepted validity of the concept of Responsibility as the decisive factor.  Now, Nietzsche traces the traditional concept of Responsibility to Ressentiment, i. e. diagnosis it as Blame as a vicarious weapon of the weak.  Furthermore, Schopenhauer does not seem to explicitly consider that another premise that leaves the concept of personal Responsibility rootless is the thesis that universal Will is the sole noumenon, and, hence, is the source of all behavior, including 'vice'.  Accordingly, he is vulnerable to the suspicion that his seemingly incoherent classification of individual Character as 'innate', and, hence, as 'noumenal', is an expression of conventional Ressentiment.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Character: Weakness and Strength

What earlier in his career Nietzsche interprets as Schopenhauerian anti-conformist strength of character, he later diagnoses as an expression of nihilistic Ressentiment.  One of the signs of his misplaced youthful appreciation is in the title of the Untimely Meditation that accompanies 'Schopenhauer as Educator'--'On the Use and Abuse of History for Life'.  For, the latter stands in stark contrast to not only Schopenhauer's detachment from the Will-to-Live, but, as is expressed in #54 of WWR, his denial of the reality of the Past.  Accordingly, part of the effectiveness as an antidote to Ressentiment that Nietzsche attributes to the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence, is a healthy incorporation of the Past in the Present, as a prelude to Future creativity.  In other words, the result of that incorporation is neither a Schopenhauerian withdrawal from society, nor the petty tyrannies of Fascism, Straussism, Randism, etc., but a constructive exercise of power.  Common to those various strands of self-styled recent 'Nietzscheanism' is nostalgia: for a more barbaric era (Fascists), for a pre-Modern Oligarchy (Leo Strauss), and for a pre-Bolshevik Capitalism (Ayn Rand).  Each is a wish to undo a Past, that is, like Schopenhauer's detachment from his, an expression of Ressentiment, i. e. of weakness of character masquerading as strength, according to Nietzsche's formula.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Character, Innateness, Individuality

In 'Schopenhauer as Educator', Nietzsche praises his predecessor's concept of innate individual Character as a possible corrective to conformist behavior.  However, his enthusiasm seems misdirected.  For, it attributes to Schopenhauer's system something that it lacks--a principle of Intelligible Individuation.  With such a principle, the intelligible Individual can be contrasted with the empirical Individual, e. g. intrinsic self-hood with socially defined role-playing, with the former functioning as a corrective to the latter.  However, without such a principle, Schopenhauer's system has no concept of innate Individuality, in which case, the object of Nietzsche's praise is actually a concept of Character that he himself is introducing in the process.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Soul, Will, Character

Since 'Soul' is traditionally defined as 'animating principle', 'Will' is Schopenhauer's version of Soul. Thus, his unsettled question as to whether or not individual intelligible Character is differentiated a priori, is a repeat of the Medieval debate over whether individual Soul is an instance of the universal Soul, or is an a priori specification of it.  In contrast, Plato, at least in The Republic, avoids the apparent inconsistency, by presenting the individual as innately a member of a political class, which entails that the individual Soul is an instance of an a priori differentiation of the general Soul.  However, that resolution is of no use to Schopenhauer, since in his system, the divisions of the Soul are only 'objectifications' of Will.  Thus, his concept of Character is therein exposed as more closely aligned with the Medieval concept of Soul, which, likewise, rejects the Platonist intra-psychic differentiation, despite his professed allegiance to Plato in some passages.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Character and Democracy

According to Kant, the evaluation of a speculative proposition concerns not whether it is 'true' or 'false', but its fruitfulness when adopted as a heuristic hypothesis.  Thus, the evaluation of Schopenhauer's thesis, that Character is innate and fixed, must take into consideration its serving as the basis of anti-egalitarian, e. g. anti-Democracy, political doctrines, i. e. because it entails a populace constituted by immutably different members, differences that are easily construed as hierarchical, e. g. by Plato, in The Republic.  So, more precisely, the evaluation must include an examination of how 'beneficial' actualizations of such doctrines have been, an examination that likely entails a comparison with the alternatives, e. g. an examination of how 'beneficial' Democracies have been.  Even if Schopenhauer does not explicitly recognize the full scope of his thesis, someone familiar with Plato should not be surprised that Character is systematically related to political organization.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Character and Constancy

Schopenhauer's defense of his thesis that 'Character is constant' is that any apparent evidence to the contrary, e. g. a deviation from a previously posited behavior pattern, is only a counter-example to a provisional empirical generalization, and, hence, is perhaps an occasion for the formulation of an improved empirical generalization, not for the jettisoning of the thesis.  However, that defense exposes its own weakness.  For, by arguing that the thesis is unfalsifiable by empirical evidence, it exposes it as a purely speculative proposition, in which case it is just as unverifiable by such evidence as well.  Instead, as any Kantian should know, the appropriate defense of a speculative proposition treats it as a heuristic hypothesis, the criterion of the value of which is its fruitfulness, or more precisely, its fruitfulness in comparison with competing heuristic hypotheses.  Hence, its not even entertaining alternative possibilities, e. g. that the 'Will-to-Evolve' is the intelligible character of a human being; that rigidity of Character bespeaks stagnation; that interpreting a deviation from a  perceived behavior can be a stimulant to analytical innovation; etc. exposes his presented argument as inappropriate for its own ambition.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Character, Eternal Recurrence, Nihilism

Nietzsche's offering at #70, in ch. IV of Beyond Good and Evil, "If a man has character, he still has his typical experience which always repeats itself", personalizes Eternal Recurrence, i. e. by conceiving it as an expression of Constancy of Character.  Accordingly, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is self-affirmation, and, likewise, the denial of it is self-denial.  However, in this context, the latter means, not 'self-constraint', but 'self-hatred'.  Thus, the aphorism can be interpreted as part of Nietzsche's diagnosis of Schopenhauer's Asceticism as rooted in self-hatred, i. e. in Nihilism.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Will and Character

In ch. III of On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer describes "character" as "individual", "empirical", and "inborn", and in ch. V as the "appearance of the intelligible character".  However, the relation between the empirical character and the intelligible character is unclear.  For, in #55 of WWR, the latter is inconsistently both "the will in itself", and "his", i. e. is both universal, and a specified type of character that is individuated, each possibility of which is, furthermore, problematic for his system.  On the one hand, if specification and individuation are only empirical, then the inborn constancy of Character is difficult to explain.  On the other, that they are intelligible conflicts with the cardinal thesis of his system, that differentiation is only phenomenal.  Now, especially given that they are, in principle, unverifiable, jettisoning the attributions of Innateness and Constancy to Character seems to be the resolution of this incoherence that is least damaging to the integrity of the system.  Still, it would not explain his examples of Asceticism, in which, as constituted by Will-lessness, Character exists, but Will does not.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Action and Freedom

Purportedly following Kant, Schopenhauer presents two alternative, but compossible, models of human behavior.  In one, a specific act is a response to an empirical motive, while in the other, it is an individuating appearance of the intelligible character of the agent.  So, despite their profound differences, the models agree that an act is always predetermined, and, hence, is never 'free'.  However, neither model recognizes the fundamental behavioral discontinuity that, as has been previously discussed here, constitutes the transition from a mental datum, e. g. a decision, to any motility, even to mere effort.  The radical heterogeneity of that transition is not eliminated by either theories that ignore it, interpretations that gloss over it, or habit-formations that minimize it.  In other words, classifying an act as a 'response', 'individuation', or 'phenomenon' is inadequate to its excession beyond any of its preconditions.  Indeed, it is this 'freedom' from any antecedent, empirical, or intelligible, that distinguishes self-denial from mere inaction.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Abyss Between Inner and Outer

On p. 18 of On the Freedom of Will, Schopenhauer asserts that "the decisions . . . of our will . . . will always enter the perceptible world at once."  Given that the arrival at a decision always precedes its execution, this 'at once' glosses over a transition from thought to motility that is discontinuous, because heterogeneous, regardless of how 'quickly' it occurs.  It is this transition that is the fundamental "abyss" between the "inner" and the "outer" "worlds".  However, an 'abyss', with the 'outer world' lying in wait on the opposite side from the 'inner world', is not given as such at the moment of the settling of decision.  Rather, as has been examined in great detail previously here, it is the leap into motility that first creates discontinuity, and motility only first becomes 'inner' upon its incorporation into proprioceptive imaging.  In other words, Schopenhauer uncritically assumes Kant's 'Inner'-'Outer' distinction as given, thus overlooking how each, and  the abyss that separates them, is the product of more fundamental processes that can be termed 'Internalization' and 'Externalization', respectively.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Inner, Outer, Effort

As itself an inner self-awareness, Proprioception does not fill what Schopenhauer calls the "abyss" between 'inner' and 'outer', but it helps locate it more precisely.  For, in the integrative imaging of physiological processes, that Proprioception effects, its manifold content is given as already spatially differentiated, e. g. an extending of a toe is at a distance from an ocular rolling.  This differentiation accordingly indicates that these processes are already 'outer'.  Indeed, further examination reveals an abyss that precedes these motions--the discontinuity between a decision to act and the subsequent initial effort.  This discontinuity is the abyss, i. e. the space, that Schopenhauer obscures when he, as has been previously discussed, reduces 'I can try to do' to 'I can do'.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Proprioception, Doing, Noumenon

As has been previously discussed, the awareness 'I can do' is, more accurately, 'I can try to do'.  So, by reducing the latter to the former, Schopenhauer obscures the implicated awareness of 'I do', an awareness that is neither his 'representation', nor his 'self-consciousness', the two kinds of self-awareness that he entertains.  Rather, it is Proprioception, which, as has been previously detailed here, is the internal imaging of the motile processes of an organism, the fundamental function of which is homeostatic, i. e. the maintaining of the integrity of the organism.  Accordingly, what he calls 'representation' is primarily a proprioceptive awareness of a localized encounter with some external influence, while his 'will' is the initial exertion of Doing, abstracted from the subsequent phases of the process as their 'cause'.  Without a recognition of Proprioception, the 'I do' remains, for Schopenhauer, a noumenal abyss between 'I can do' and 'done', i. e. between Will and Representation.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Can Do and Can Try

As has been previously discussed, in On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer asserts that 'I can do X' links 'I will X' to 'I do X'.  However, closer examination discerns a crucial lacuna over which his analysis glosses.  For, 'I can do X' means, more precisely, 'On the basis of my past experience, I feel confident that if I attempt to do X, then the attempt will be successful.'  In other words, while it might always be in one's power to attempt some action, its success is never guaranteed.  So the referent of  'I can do what I will', contrary to Schopenhauer's thesis, does not suffice to connect a volition with the actualization.of its object.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Will, Representation, Power

In his earlier works, e. g. WWR and Fourfold Root, Schopenhauer presents two kinds of self-awareness: inner, or "self-consciousness", the object of which is one's Will, and, outer, i. e. the Representation of one's external body.  However, in his later On the Freedom of the Will, in the second chapter, he introduces a third kind, the object of which is "the feeling, 'I can do what I will'".  As he proceeds to characterize it, "This consciousness forms a bridge between the inner and the outer worlds, which otherwise remain separated by a bottomless abyss.  Without this bridge, the outer world would contain mere perceptions independent of us in every sense, and the inner world nothing but ineffective and merely felt volitions."  He might have added that without that consciousness, the World as Will and Representation, which combines both worlds, would be impossible.  Thus, the fundamental principle of his system, its Archimedean point, is 'I can do', or, in other words, Power.  The potential significance to Nietzsche of recognizing that principle is obvious.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Representation and Causality

Though Schopenhauer, in WWR, introduces Representation as given, he elsewhere subscribes to a Causal theory of Perception, in terms of which Representation is a derived experience.  He explicitly advocates that theory in Fourfold Root, e. g. in #22, and implicitly does so in WWR, with the thesis that all experiences are resultants of Will interacting with Will.  Now, if Representation consists in a subject being affected by an outer Object, as the theory entails, then it constitutes a modification of the Subject, and, hence, of its Will.  Accordingly, a Platonic Idea is no more than the object of a representation of a subjective modification, i. e. is an abstraction from the latter.  In other words, Schopenhauer is mistaken in attributing to Contemplation a detachment from Will, i. e. the feeling of 'absorption in the object' is, rather, an internal overpowering, by an external cause, which is one's Will being affected in a certain way

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Facet, Appearance, Surface

A proponent of a Causal theory of Perception, such as Schopenhauer, could argue against the previously proposed distinction between Facet and Appearance, on the grounds that a Facet is the resultant of the causal interaction between percipient and perceived, and, hence, is not independent of being perceived, i. e. is an Appearance.  However, insofar as a Facet is a section of a Surface, that argument is more to difficult to make.  For, is only rare cases when the object of perception is an entire surface, e. g. when a hand totally encompasses some small item.  Hence, a Surface cannot, in general, be reduced to an Appearance, and, likewise for any of its sections.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Facet and Appearance

A 'facet' can be defined as an 'external surface'.  So, insofar as 'in itself' means 'independent of another entity', a thing in itself can possess a surface.  Now, a Facet qua perceived can be classified as an 'Appearance'.  Thus, the 'object' of an empirical perception is, in one sense, a Facet, while in another, an Appearance.  So, insofar as a Facet is an object of an empirical perception, it is not a mere 'object of thought'. as Kant classifies it.  Likewise, a 'thing in itself' is not necessarily an intellectual operation, as Kant later asserts.

Monday, March 11, 2013

In Itself

At first, 'in itself' means for Kant 'independent of other entities', while later, it means 'internal'.  As he systematizes the two usages, there is no equivocation involved, since the former is a 'negative' correlate to the latter, which is 'positive', e. g. 'independent of being perceived' to 'rational process'.  However, the correlation is not exact, for, the first does not exclude external surfaces, while the second does.  That is, the shift from the first usage to the second effects a severing of outer from inner, which means that, on the basis of the second meaning, an entity 'in itself' can possess no instinct to emerge from privacy to appear to others.  In other words, on the second meaning, which is the prevalent one for both Kant and Schopenhauer, a human being does not possess an inherent instinct to socialize.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Will-to-Emerge and Will-to-Appear

The arriving of a butterfly from within its cocoon is an example of what can be called the 'Will-to-Emerge',  Now a special case of the Will-to-Emerge is when it occurs as a presentation to a perceiver, in which case it can be called the 'Will-to-Appear'.  Thus, Emerging, not Appearing, is, more precisely, the opposite of the In-Itself.  Furthermore, because the instinct to socialize, at least among humans, entails a Will-to-Appear, i. e. to appear to others, out of one's privacy, Schopenhauer's opposition of Will and Appearance bespeaks an anti-social attitude raised to a philosophical principle.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Two Noumenal Wills

At first glance, the "painful yearning" for peace, that Schopenhauer, in #71 of World as Will and Representation, attributes to Will-lessness, seems, to the contrary, only another expression of Will.  However, closer analysis suggests that the characterization is a perhaps unwitting moment in the untangling of a conflation that hitherto significantly besets his system.  For, to identify Will-to-Live with a "striving" that "springs from want or deficiency", as Schopenhauer does in #56, is to imply that only Need motivates Will.  However, an instinct to procreate that is indifferent to the possibility of over-population can hardly be characterized as one that 'springs from want or deficiency', and, yet, can only be an expression of Will.  In other words, in some cases, there is a conatus to continue vital processes, while in others, there is a nisus towards a cessation of them--two distinct noumenal Wills, mutually independent.  It is these two that he conflates under the rubric 'Will-to-Live', until he begins to extract from it the latter will, i. e. the 'yearning for peace'.  Accordingly, his system is exposed in #71 as entailing two noumenal Wills, with his moral doctrine consisting of the privileging of one of them.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Will-to-Live and Will-to-Peace

Following the denial of the Will-to-Live, there is "left only nothing", according to Schopenhauer, towards the end of #71 of World as Will and Representation.  However, as he continues, it is not a simple 'nothing', but a "peace that is higher than all reason", a "calmness of the spirit", and a "deep tranquility", in which "only the knowledge remains; the will has vanished."  Nevertheless, as he continues, "we look with deep and painful yearning" upon that state, without his explaining how yearning and painfulness constitutes an escape from the "suffering and endless misery" of willing.  So, what Schopenhauer's own words express is not an arrival at Nothingness, but, rather, a discovery of a principle that can be called the 'Will-to-Peace'.  The recognition of that discovery would have necessitated a revamping of his system, beginning with a determination of the relation between Will-to-Live and this Will-to-Peace.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Will, Theory, Practice

In #53 of World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer asserts that "all philosophy is always theoretical", and that it ought to "abandon" any effort to become practical.  Now, granting him a Theory-Practice contrast that he seems to presuppose, and overlooking the arbitrariness of his choosing the former over the latter, it can be accepted that the following are in the purview of Theory:  his proposed distinction between Representation and Will; the propositions that the Will-to-Live can be affirmed, and can be denied; and, the arguments in support of the affirmation, and in support of the denial, of the Will-to-Live.  However, to affirm, and to deny, are, themselves, each practical acts, not theoretical propositions.  Thus, Schopenhauer's affirmation of a doctrine of the denial of the Will-to-Live, even granting that its internal incoherence--i. e. it both affirms and denies--is 'paradoxical', not 'contradictory', is outside the purview of Philosophy, on his own definition of it.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Will-to-Live and Eternal Recurrence

Starting at #52 of World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer presents a comparison of the affirmation of the Will-to-Live, with the denial of the Will-to-Live, that leads to his endorsement of the latter.  At one point, he suggests that the former might even entail an affirmation of the "constant recurrence" (p. 284 of the Dover edition) of Life, thereby implying that he would deny it.  Now, it is difficult to believe that among those who have been oblivious to these passages is the philosopher who, for half his career, is an explicitly devoted follower of Schopenhauer.  In other words, any interpretation of Nietzsche's treatment of Eternal Recurrence must begin by conceiving it as a response to Schopenhauer, as part of a diagnosis of the Nihilism that he finds in the latter's doctrine.  On that basis, for example, the depressing 'Soothsayer' that appears in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a reference to Schopenhauer, while the 'dwarf' who joins Zarathustra in the section 'The Vision and the Riddle' is a reference to anyone who reduces Eternal Recurrence to a mere 'theory of Time'.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Idea, Sufficient Reason, Individuation

According to Schopenhauer, a Platonic Idea is independent of both the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Principle of Individuation.  Now, in #30 of World as Will and Representation, he characterizes the relation between an Idea and any of its instantiations as that of archetype to copy.  However, he does not explain how the archetype-copy relation is not a species of the ground-consequence relation that, according to the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, defines that Principle.  Furthermore, according to one prominent traditional interpretation, a Platonic Idea is the cause of its instantiations, which means that not only is it the ground of which they are the consequences, but that it functions as their Principle of Individuation, as well.  Yet, he does not even entertain the possibility of that interpretation.  So, the independence of the Platonic Ideas from either of those Principles is not a thesis that Schopenhauer adequately defends, to the detriment of his system.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Art, Mimesis, Individualty

In #52 of World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer asserts that "music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself."  In #30 he characterizes a Platonic Idea as an "archetype . . . to its copies."  In #36, he attributes to artistic genius an "ability for . . . contemplation" that enables one "to repeat by deliberate art what has been apprehended."  Quite plainly, Mimesis is fundamental to his concept of the Representation of Art, as it is to Aristotle's seminal Aesthetic theory, a well-established legacy that Schopenhauer tries to circumvent in #36.  Thus, the Mimetic analysis of Representation, previously proposed here, is applicable to Schopenhauer's Aesthetic theory, which means, that, so, too, is the entailed demonstration that Aesthetic experience does not effect a detachment from individuality, despite his ambitions for it.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Contemplation, Pleasure, Mimesis

Schopenhauer's concept of Contemplation, as effecting a detachment from individuality, puts his Aesthetic theory at a disadvantage to Kant's in two respects.  First, he sacrifices the possibility of explaining Aesthetic pleasure, because pleasure is private, subjective, individual, phenomenal, and even illusory, according to his system.  Second, the structural simplicity of Contemplation, according to his concept of it, leaves him no room to accommodate any interplay of Understanding and Imagination that might constitute it, according to Kant's.  In contrast, a Mimetic theory of Representation, as previously proposed here, in which the Contemplation of an art object involves an imitation of its internal structural interplay, as well as an interplay of similarity and dissimilarity between subject and object, does accommodate pleasurable play.  It does so by maintaining what is inimical to not only Schopenhauer's concept of Contemplation, but to his entire doctrine--a difference of subject of representation from object of representation, even as they appear to coincide.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Representation and Mimesis

Schopenhauer conceives Representation as entailing a unity of subject and object, with respect to which rival theories are generally one-sided, i. e. they privilege either one or the other, with supporting argumentation thereby basically idle.  However, perhaps because in his system the primary function of that concept is as a stage of detachment from individuality, he does not pursue alternate explanations of that apparent unity.  For example, a clue to one such alternative is in the experience of Music that is other than the one that he privileges, i. e. in dancing, as opposed to his Contemplation.  For, dancing is a fundamentally mimetic response to Music, from which it can be inferred that so, too, is Contemplation mimetic, and, hence, that Representation, in general, is mimetic.  That is, Mimesis entails both subject-object similarity, and subject-object dissimilarity, the systematization of which is the basis of every theory of Representation, including Schopenhauer's, which is Mimesis that privileges subject-object similarity.  However, Schopenhauer must reject such a theory, not on its own merits, but because it undermines the possibility, in Contemplation, of detachment from individuality that is central to his program.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Art, Morality, Play

Schopenhauer's criticism of and alternative to Kantian Morality is based on the premise that Contemplation, not totalizing Reason, is the basis of impersonal experience.  Likewise, his Aesthetic Theory diverges from Kant's in its replacement of universal Communicability with Selflessness.  In other words, regardless of its insights, his Aesthetic Theory, like Kant's, consists in the moralization of an individual's engagement with a certain class of objects.  In contrast, a theory of Art that is free from such prejudices could begin, as Kant does, with the analysis that Aesthetic experience is fundamentally constituted by the exercise of cognitive faculties, with its philosophical systematization proceeding next with an examination of other types of Play, e. g. puzzles and games.