Arthur Schopenhauer

Critical Thinking It is possible for bad people to make good arguments and for good people to make bad arguments!

Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding “What we immediately know of the world are ideas, either of sensation or reflection. This is important for Schopenhauer, because of its subjective starting point.”

Kant’s Copernican Revolution We can only study the world with the “glasses” provided by our mind. We can know the world well, but we can never know what that world might look like without our glasses.

Motivation “But I, alone, am in a position also to experience this same motivated action inwardly. I do not have to observe my hand to know that I have acted.”

The “Will to Life” “This thesis, that humans are expressions of a blind, ceaseless will to life, is probably Schopenhauer’s principal and most original philosophical contribution.”

The Sense of “Myself” “Thus I feel that I have an inner core, that I am something that cannot be adequately explained by science; and this Schopenhauer argues, is the will to life.”

Schopenhauer’s “Dark View” The will to life is what is essential and this will to life is all about struggle and longing and suffering; it is not about happiness.

Desire Equals Unhappiness “Because the thing in itself is desire, suffering is essential to existence itself. Hence there will always and everywhere be more unhappiness than happiness.”

Nirvana While Nirvana is the end of suffering, it is not the nothingness of nihilism, but the nothingness of potentiality, of that which is not yet.