Alistair Welchman argues that Schopenhauer was a direct perceptual realist. This interpretation of Schopenhauer’s epistemology sheds light on two difficulties elsewhere in his thought. The first is in his theory of compassion. Schopenhauer’s official view is that in compassion we see through the veil of maya into our essential identity with all other beings as will. Many commentators find this extravagant and suggest a psychological account instead, in which we imagine ourselves into the situation of the other. However this is contradicted by Schopenhauer’s own account of a similar contemporary theory, in which he appears to suggest that we directly perceive the Other’s emotions. But there is another advantage to this view: Schopenhauer is also a direct realist about perception of meaning, and this has repercussions for his (late) view that his metaphysics is hermeneutic in nature.

Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation is one of the central texts in the history of Western philosophy. It is one of the last monuments to the project of grand synthetic philosophical system building, where a single, unified work could aim to clarify, resolve, and ground all the central questions of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, religion, aesthetics, and science. Poorly received on its initial publication, it soon became a powerful cultural force, inspiring not only philosophers but also artists, writers, and musicians, and attracting a large popular audience of nonscholars. Perhaps equally importantly, Schopenhauer was one of the first European philosophers to take non-Western thought seriously, to treat it as a living tradition rather than as a mere object of study. This volume showcases the enormous variety of contemporary scholarship as well as the enduring relevance of this beautifully written text.

The form of our self-consciousness is not space but only time: this is why our thinking does not, like our intuition, occur in three dimensions, but only in one, and thus in a line without breadth or depth. This gives rise to the greatest of the fundamental imperfections of our intellect. Namely, we can have cognition of things only successively and can be conscious only of one thing at a time, and in fact this one thing only under the condition that we forget everything else in the meantime, that is, have no consciousness of anything else, so that nothing else exists for us during this time. In this respect, our intellect can be compared to a telescope with a very narrow field of vision, because our consciousness is not lasting but transient. The intellect apprehends things only successively and must leave one thing behind in order to grasp another, retaining only ever fainter traces of what is left behind. The thought that engages me keenly now will necessarily have entirely slipped my mind in a little while: and if I get a good night's sleep in between, then I might never find it again unless I have some personal interest in it, i.e. it is connected to my will, which always carries the day.

This imperfection of the intellect is the basis for the rhapsodic and often fragmentary character of our train of thought, which I already mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, and gives rise to the inevitable scattering of our thoughts. Sometimes external sense impressions disturb and interrupt our thinking and keep forcing complete irrelevancies upon it, and sometimes one idea will bring in another through the ties of association and be displaced by it; and finally, sometimes the intellect itself will not be able to sustain one single idea for very long, but be rather like the eyes when, after staring for a long time at a single object, they no longer see it very clearly since the edges run together and become confused and everything finally becomes obscure – similarly, when constantly pondering a single topic for a long period of time, thinking gradually becomes confused and blunted and ends up completely stupefied.

In Chapter 7 I showed that, in the theoretical realm, starting from concepts leads to mediocre achievements, while superior achievements are drawn from intuition itself, as the well-spring of all cognition. But it is the other way around in the practical realm: here being determined by intuition is the way of animals, and this is unworthy of human beings whose actions are guided by concepts and who are thereby emancipated from the power of what lies before them in the intuitive present, the very present that has unconditional control over animals. A human being's actions can be called rational to the extent that he exercises this privilege, and it is only in this sense that we can we speak of practical reason, not in the Kantian sense, the untenability of which I discussed at length in the prize essay On the Basis of Morals.

However, it is not easy to be determined by concepts alone: the external world, as it lies before us with its intuitive reality, will intrude forcefully on even the strongest mind. But the human spirit shows its dignity and greatness precisely in vanquishing this impression, in negating its mocking illusion. So when someone's spirit is unmoved by the charms of pleasure and enjoyment, untouched by the threats and furies of enraged enemies, when his resolve is unshaken by the entreaties of misguided friends or the illusions surrounding him as a result of agreed-upon schemes, when his self-command is not shattered by the spite of fools and the masses so that he misjudges his own value – then he seems to stand under the influence of a spiritual world (it is the spiritual world of concepts) visible to himself alone, and that intuitive present that is open to everyone flees like a phantom before it. – On the other hand, what gives the external world and visible reality its great power over the mind is its proximity and immediacy. We can think of the needle of the compass that maintains its direction throughout the united effect of widely distributed natural forces across the entire earth, and yet can be disturbed and made to sway wildly by a tiny piece of iron that happens to come too close;

If the will to life presented itself merely as a drive for self-preservation, it would be only an affirmation of the individual appearance for the span of its natural duration. The worries and cares of such a life would not be great, and so existence would prove easy and cheerful. On the other hand, because the will wills life absolutely and for all time, it presents itself at the same time as the sex drive, which has an endless series of generations in view. This drive abolishes the carefree attitude, the cheerfulness and innocence that would accompany a merely individual existence by bringing disquiet and melancholy into consciousness, and misfortune, trouble and misery into the course of a life. – If however it is voluntarily repressed, as we see in rare exceptions, then this is the turninga of the will, which reverses itself. It then goes out in the individual, instead of going beyond him. But this can only take place through a painful violence that the individual inflicts on himself. But if it does happen, then the consciousness recoups that carefree cheerfulness of the merely individual existence and, indeed, is raised to a higher power. – On the other hand, when that most vehement of all drives and desires is satisfied, then a new being comes into existence, and thus a continuation of life with all its burdens, cares, needs and pains, admittedly in another individual – but, if the two who are distinct in appearance were distinct absolutely and in themselves, then where would eternal justice be? – Life presents itself as a task, a lesson to be worked out, and thus typically as a constant struggle against need. This is why everyone tries to get through it as well as he can: he gets through life like bonded labour to pay off a debt. But who has contracted this debt? – The one who begot him, in the enjoyment of sensuous pleasure. And so, for the pleasure of the one, the other must live, suffer, and die. We know and should recall in this context that space and time are the condition under which similar things are differentiated, a condition that I have in this sense termed the principle of individuation.

Not only philosophy but also the fine arts work at a fundamental level towards a solution to the problem of existence. In every mind that has ever devoted itself to the pure contemplation of the world there stirs a striving, however hidden and unconscious it may be, to grasp the true essence of things, of life, of existence. For this alone is of interest to the intellect as such, i.e. to the subject of cognition freed from the goals of the will and hence pure; in just the same way, the goals of the will are the only things of interest to the subject that cognizes as a mere individual. – This is why the result of every purely objective, and therefore every artistic grasp of things is one more expression of the essence of life and existence, one more answer to the question: ‘what is life?’ – Every true and successful work of art answers this question in its own way, with complete calm. But the arts speak only in the naïve and childish language of intuition, not in the abstract and serious language of reflection: their answer is therefore a fleeting image: not a lasting, universal cognition. And thus every artwork answers that question for intuition, every painting, every statue, every poem, every scene on stage: even music answers it; and in fact more profoundly than all the others since it expresses the innermost essence of life and existence in a language that is directly comprehensible even though it cannot be translated into the language of reason. All the other arts hold an intuitive image before the questioner and say: ‘look here, this is life!’ – Their answer, as correct as it might be, still only ever grants a temporary, not a total and final, satisfaction. Because they only ever offer a fragment, an example, instead of the rule, not the whole, which can only be given in the universality of the concept. To give a permanent and eternally satisfying answer to that question in the abstract, for the concept, and hence for reflection – this is the task of philosophy.

Now there is a large gap in these supplements because I already dealt with morality in the narrower sense in the two prize essays published under the title The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, and, as I have already mentioned, I am assuming that the reader is familiar with these essays so as to avoid needless repetition. Thus what remains to be presented is simply a small epilogue of isolated remarks that could not be articulated in the earlier essays, where the principal theme of the contents was prescribed by the Academies; least of all was I able to include any remarks that would require any standpoint higher than the one shared by all, and so this is where I was forced to remain. Thus it will not surprise the reader to find these remarks in a very fragmentary arrangement. These in turn are continued in the eighth and ninth chapters of the Second Volume of the Parerga. –

That moral investigations are incomparably more important than physical ones, indeed than all others, follows from the fact they concern the thing in itself almost directly, that is, they concern the appearance in which, immediately touched by the light of cognition, the thing in itself reveals its essence as will. Physical truths on the other hand remain entirely within the purview of representation, i.e. of appearance, and show merely how the lowest appearances of the will present themselves in representation in a lawful manner. – Further, the results gathered from considering the world from the physical side will offer us no solace, however broadly and cheerfully such an investigation is pursued: solace comes from the moral side alone, since here the depths of our own inner being come into consideration.

My philosophy is however the only one that grants morality its full and complete rights: for a human being's deeds really only belong to and are attributable to him if his essence is his own will, which makes him, in the strictest sense, his own work. On the other hand, as soon as he has a different origin or is the work of a being other than himself, all of his guilt falls back onto this origin or author. Because ‘acting follows from being’.

The total purposiveness of organic nature with respect to the continued existence of every being, along with its conformity to the inorganic, cannot be easily accommodated by a philosophical system that does not postulate a will at the foundation of the existence of every natural being, a will that therefore expresses its being and striving not in the first instance only in actions but also in the shape of the organism that appears. In the previous chapter I merely hinted at the account of this topic that grows out of our train of thought, having already demonstrated it in the passage of the First Volume cited below, and with particular clarity and thoroughness in the Will in Nature under the heading ‘Comparative Anatomy’. The following remarks will take up from that point.

The sense of wonder that threatens to overwhelm us when we consider the endless purposiveness of the structure of organic beings is due fundamentally to the natural but false presupposition that this agreement of the parts with each other, with the whole of the organism, and with its goals in the external world, as we apprehend and judge it by means of cognition, and thus along the path of representation, has also been produced in the same way; hence, that as it exists for the intellect, it was also brought about by an intellect. Of course, we can produce something that conforms to rule and law, such as is the case with any crystal for instance, only under the guidance of laws and rules, and likewise we can make something purposive only when guided by a concept of the purpose: but there is no justification for transferring this limitation of ours to nature, which is itself something prior to any intellect and whose workings, as was mentioned in the previous chapter, are utterly different in kind from our own. Nature produces things that look so purposive and so deliberate but does this without deliberation and without a concept of any purpose because it lacks any representation, which has a completely secondary origin. Let us begin by considering things that are merely regular but not yet purposive.