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.

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