Schopenhauer and his Will (philosophy)

[immortal]

Arthur Schopenhauer in his treatise The World as Will and Representation says that there exists something in humans apart from the appearances to observers which he calls it as the Will and says that humans are in a true sense free Will. See - On the Freedom of the Will. One wonders what is there in humans apart from the phenomenal appearances that humans see, what Schopenhauer is implying is that it is the observer itself which is the Will, which is the thing in itself of Kant.

 

Daniel Dennet writes "That of which I am conscious is that to which I have access, or (to put the emphasis where it belongs), that to which I have access" (Dennet, 1978).

 

Psychologists tend to treat this as the domain of access of the Self and call this as the Observer. Schopenhauer uses the term inner being and that might have been a mysterious term in the 19th century but with the advancements in neurophysiology of fMRI and PET scans we can very well explain the areas of inner speech and the way we use words for thinking and problem solving silently in our heads. So if we lose our inner speech do we lose our sense of self? No, in children who are suffering from autism they don't use inner speech and instead they say out words loudly for thinking or use visual images to do problem solving. We think in some way or the other as Rene Descartes puts it "I think therefore I am" and this sense of Self or observer always exists with us.

 

Schopenhauer argues that humans have no free will and that a human appears to be free if he sees himself as the observer or the Will, thing-in-itself.

 

[L]et us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: "It is six o'clock in the evening, the work day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see the sun set; I can go to the theater; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife."

 

— Chapter III

 

 

 

Schopenhauer claimed that the necessity of our actions can coexist with the feeling of freedom and responsibility in a way that was explained byKant. In his Critique of Pure Reason (A533-558) and Critique of Practical Reason (Ch. III), Kant explained this coexistence. When a person has a mental picture of himself as a phenomenonexisting in the experienced world, his acts appear to be strictly determined by motives that affect his character. This is empirical necessity. But when that person feels his inner being as a thing-in-itself, not phenomenon, he feels free. According to Schopenhauer, this is because the inner being or thing-in-itself is called will. This word "will" designates the closest analogy to that which is felt as the inner being and essence of a person. When we feel our freedom, we are feeling our inner essence and being, which is a transcendentally free will. The will is free, but only in itself and other than as its appearance in an observer's mind. When it appears in an observer's mind, as the experienced world, the will does not appear free. But because of this transcendental freedom, as opposed to empirical necessity, every act and deed is a person's own responsibility. We have responsibility for our acts because what we are is a result of our inner essence and being, which is a transcendentally free will. We are what our own transcendental will has made us.

 

The observer doesn't have complete access to the thing-in-itself, he appears as free only when he thinks himself as the thing-in-itself. There is something which is denying access to the thing-in-itself for the observer and hence humans absolutely have no free will as long as they are subjected to the constraints of the phenomenal world.