/lit/ - Literature

>>13026064
"On the Will in Nature" is Schopenhauer's explanation of the Will's "scientific" component, rather than its "artistic," which is its adequate objectification regardless of the matter or organism in which it appears. For instance, that an embryo "simply knows," or rather, doesn't even appear to know how to form itself, even according to the guidance of genes, and yet does anyway, would be an example of the will in nature. "As it is, so it does." Whereas a statuesque, imposing tree covered in mosses, the Grand Canyon, or, to use one of his examples, being on a ship in a powerful thunderstorm, are adequate objectifications of the Will inasmuch as they represent the "Idea" (he compares it to the Platonic) of the Will. They illuminate the eternal, universal, immanent nature of the Will decoupled from causal relations, "in themselves."

>>12832331
Noumena don't exist like empirical objects do, but that's an entirely different thing. When talking about a useful abstraction, like a pure color or number (the "homogeneous unit" of mathematics), the question arises whether these things exist "of themselves," in this case meaning "despite their lack of direct correspondence with physical objects," or whether they do not at all exist. This sort of question recurs in philosophy: nominalism vs. realism, ethical naturalism vs. non-naturalism, transcendence vs. the transcendental dialectic, etc. It looks to me like Wittgenstein and Kant solve the problem in much the same way, but Wittgenstein is clearer and more honest with himself about it. "Red" and "one" name abstractions, to ask whether either exists in itself is like asking whether language exists in itself. The very name of God implies that he exists, by its meaning, in the same way that "red" necessarily applies to all extant red objects: as a naming convention, for the purposes of language. But the statement "God exists" is only a naming convention of God. To a believer, the Ontological argument is almost self evident. To a non-believer, it will never be evident.