The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3)

Third Book. The World As Idea.
Second Aspect. The Idea Independent Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object Of Art

Τί τὸ ὄν μὲν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον; καὶ τί τό γιγνόμενον μὲν καὶ ἀπολλύμενον, ὄντως δε οὐδέποτε ὄν. – ΠΛΑΤΩΝ.

§ 30. In the First Book the world was explained as mere idea, object for a subject. In the Second Book we considered it from its other side, and found that in this aspect it is will, which proved to be simply that which this world is besides being idea. In accordance with this knowledge we called the world as idea, both as a whole and in its parts, the objectification of will, which therefore means the will become object, i. e., idea. Further, we remember that this objectification of will was found to have many definite grades, in which, with gradually increasing distinctness and completeness, the nature of will appears in the idea, that is to say, presents itself as object. In these grades we already recognised the Platonic Ideas, for the grades are just the determined species, or the original unchanging forms and qualities of all natural bodies, both organised and unorganised, and also the general forces which reveal themselves according to natural laws. These Ideas, then, as a whole express themselves in innumerable individuals and particulars, and are related to these as archetypes to their copies. The multiplicity of such individuals is only conceivable through time and space, their appearing and passing away through causality, and in all these forms we recognise merely the different modes of the principle of sufficient reason, which is the ultimate principle of all that is finite, of all individual existence, and the universal form of the idea as it appears in the knowledge of the individual as such. The Platonic Idea, on the other hand, does not come under this principle, and has therefore neither multiplicity nor change. While the individuals in which it expresses itself are innumerable, and unceasingly come into being and pass away, it remains unchanged as one and the same, and the principle of sufficient reason has for it no meaning. As, however, this is the form under which all knowledge of the subject comes, so far as the subject knows as an individual, the Ideas lie quite outside the sphere of its knowledge. If, therefore, the Ideas are to become objects of knowledge, this can only happen by transcending the individuality of the knowing subject. The more exact and detailed explanation of this is what will now occupy our attention.

§ 31. First, however, the following very essential remark. I hope that in the preceding book I have succeeded in producing the conviction that what is called in the Kantian philosophy the thing-in-itself, and appears there as so significant, and yet so obscure and paradoxical a doctrine, and especially on account of the manner in which Kant introduced it as an inference from the caused to the cause, was considered a stumbling-stone, and, in fact, the weak side of his philosophy, – that this, I say, if it is reached by the entirely different way by which we have arrived at it, is nothing but the will when the sphere of that conception is extended and defined in the way I have shown. I hope, further, that after what has been said there will be no hesitation in recognising the definite grades of the objectification of the will, which is the inner reality of the world, to be what Plato called the eternal Ideas or unchangeable forms (ειδῆ); a doctrine which is regarded as the principal, but at the same time the most obscure and paradoxical dogma of his system, and has been the subject of reflection and controversy of ridicule and of reverence to so many and such differently endowed minds in the course of many centuries.

If now the will is for us the thing-in-itself, and the Idea is the immediate objectivity of that will at a definite grade, we find that Kant's thing-in-itself, and Plato's Idea, which to him is the only οντως ον, these two great obscure paradoxes of the two greatest philosophers of the West are not indeed identical, but yet very closely related, and only distinguished by a single circumstance. The purport of these two great paradoxes, with all inner harmony and relationship, is yet so very different on account of the remarkable diversity of the individuality of their authors, that they are the best commentary on each other, for they are like two entirely different roads that conduct us to the same goal. This is easily made clear. What Kant says is in substance this: – “Time, space, and causality are not determinations of the thing-in-itself, but belong only to its phenomenal existence, for they are nothing but the forms of our knowledge. Since, however, all multiplicity, and all coming into being and passing away, are only possible through time, space, and causality, it follows that they also belong only to the phenomenon, not to the thing-in-itself. But as our knowledge is conditioned by these forms, the whole of experience is only knowledge of the phenomenon, not of the thing-in-itself; therefore its laws cannot be made valid for the thing-in-itself. This extends even to our own ego, and we know it only as phenomenon, and not according to what it may be in itself.” This is the meaning and content of the doctrine of Kant in the important respect we are considering. What Plato says is this: – “The things of this world which our senses perceive have no true being; they always become, they never are: they have only a relative being; they all exist merely in and through their relations to each other; their whole being may, therefore, quite as well be called a non-being. They are consequently not objects of a true knowledge (επιστημη), for such a knowledge can only be of what exists for itself, and always in the same way; they, on the contrary, are only the objects of an opinion based on sensation (δοξα μετ᾽ αισθησεως αλογου). So long as we are confined to the perception of these, we are like men who sit in a dark cave, bound so fast that they cannot turn their heads, and who see nothing but the shadows of real things which pass between them and a fire burning behind them, the light of which casts the shadows on the wall opposite them; and even of themselves and of each other they see only the shadows on the wall. Their wisdom would thus consist in predicting the order of the shadows learned from experience. The real archetypes, on the other hand, to which these shadows correspond, the eternal Ideas, the original forms of all things, can alone be said to have true being (οντως ον), because they always are, but never become nor pass away. To them belongs no multiplicity; for each of them is according to its nature only one, for it is the archetype itself, of which all particular transitory things of the same kind which are named after it are copies or shadows. They have also no coming into being nor passing away, for they are truly being, never becoming nor vanishing, like their fleeting shadows. (It is necessarily presupposed, however, in these two negative definitions, that time, space, and causality have no significance or validity for these Ideas, and that they do not exist in them.) Of these only can there be true knowledge, for the object of such knowledge can only be that which always and in every respect (thus in-itself) is; not that which is and again is not, according as we look at it.” This is Plato's doctrine. It is clear, and requires no further proof that the inner meaning of both doctrines is entirely the same; that both explain the visible world as a manifestation, which in itself is nothing, and which only has meaning and a borrowed reality through that which expresses itself in it (in the one case the thing-in-itself, in the other the Idea). To this last, which has true being, all the forms of that phenomenal existence, even the most universal and essential, are, according to both doctrines, entirely foreign. In order to disown these forms Kant has directly expressed them even in abstract terms, and distinctly refused time, space, and causality as mere forms of the phenomenon to the thing-in-itself. Plato, on the other hand, did not attain to the fullest expression, and has only distinctly refused these forms to his Ideas in that he denies of the Ideas what is only possible through these forms, multiplicity of similar things, coming into being and passing away. Though it is perhaps superfluous, I should like to illustrate this remarkable and important agreement by an example. There stands before us, let us suppose, an animal in the full activity of life. Plato would say, “This animal has no true existence, but merely an apparent existence, a constant becoming, a relative existence which may just as well be called non-being as being. Only the Idea which expresses itself in that animal is truly ‘being,’ or the animal in-itself (αυτο το θηριον), which is dependent upon nothing, but is in and for itself (καθ᾽ ἑαυτο, αει ὡς αυτως); it has not become, it will not end, but always is in the same way (αει ον, και μηδεποτε ουτε γυγνομενον ουτε απολλυμενον). If now we recognise its Idea in this animal, it is all one and of no importance whether we have this animal now before us or its progenitor of a thousand years ago, whether it is here or in a distant land, whether it presents itself in this or that manner, position, or action; whether, lastly, it is this or any other individual of the same species; all this is nothing, and only concerns the phenomenon; the Idea of the animal alone has true being, and is the object of real knowledge.” So Plato; Kant would say something of this kind, “This animal is a phenomenon in time, space, and causality, which are collectively the conditions a priori of the possibility of experience, lying in our faculty of knowledge, not determinations of the thing-in-itself. Therefore this animal as we perceive it at this definite point of time, in this particular place, as an individual in the connection of experience (i. e., in the chain of causes and effects), which has come into being, and will just as necessarily pass away, is not a thing-in-itself, but a phenomenon which only exists in relation to our knowledge. To know it as what it may be in itself, that is to say, independent of all the determinations which lie in time, space, and causality, would demand another kind of knowledge than that which is possible for us through the senses and the understanding.”

In order to bring Kant's mode of expression nearer the Platonic, we might say: Time, space, and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by virtue of which the one being of each kind which alone really is, manifests itself to us as a multiplicity of similar beings, constantly appearing and disappearing in endless succession. The apprehension of things by means of and in accordance with this arrangement is immanent knowledge; that, on the other hand, which is conscious of the true state of the case, is transcendental knowledge. The latter is obtained in abstracto through the criticism of pure reason, but in exceptional cases it may also appear intuitively. This last is an addition of my own, which I am endeavouring in this Third Book to explain.

If the doctrine of Kant had ever been properly understood and grasped, and since Kant's time that of Plato, if men had truly and earnestly reflected on the inner meaning and content of the teaching of these two great masters, instead of involving themselves in the technicalities of the one and writing parodies of the style of the other, they could not have failed to discern long ago to what an extent these two great philosophers agree, and that the true meaning, the aim of both systems, is the same. Not only would they have refrained from constantly comparing Plato to Leibnitz, on whom his spirit certainly did not rest, or indeed to a well-known gentleman who is still alive,⁴⁴ as if they wanted to mock the manes of the great thinker of the past; but they would have advanced much farther in general, or rather they would not have fallen so disgracefully far behind as they have in the last forty years. They would not have let themselves be led by the nose, to-day by one vain boaster and to-morrow by another, nor would they have opened the nineteenth century, which promised so much in Germany, with the philosophical farces that were performed over the grave of Kant (as the ancients sometimes did at the funeral obsequies of their dead), and which deservedly called forth the derision of other nations, for such things least become the earnest and strait-laced German. But so small is the chosen public of true philosophers, that even students who understand are but scantily brought them by the centuries – Εισι δη ναρθηκοφοροι μεν πολλοι, βακχοι δε γε παυροι (Thyrsigeri quidem multi, Baachi vero pauci). Ἡ ατιμια φιλοσοφιᾳ δια ταυτα προσπεπτωκεν, ὁτι ου κατ αξιαν αυτης ἁπτονται; ου γαρ νοθους εδει ἁπτεσθαι, αλλα γνησιους (Eam ob rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quad non pro dignitate ipsam attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sad a legitimis erat attrectanda). – Plato.

Men followed the words, – such words as “a priori ideas,” “forms of perception and thought existing in consciousness independently of experience,” “fundamental conceptions of the pure understanding,” &c., &c., – and asked whether Plato's Ideas, which were also original conceptions, and besides this were supposed to be reminiscences of a perception before life of the truly real things, were in some way the same as Kant's forms of perception and thought, which lie a priori in our consciousness. On account of some slight resemblance in the expression of these two entirely different doctrines, the Kantian doctrine of the forms which limit the knowledge of the individual to the phenomenon, and the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, the knowledge of which these very forms expressly deny, these so far diametrically opposed doctrines were carefully compared, and men deliberated and disputed as to whether they were identical, found at last that they were not the same, and concluded that Plato's doctrine of Ideas and Kant's “Critique of Reason” had nothing in common. But enough of this.⁴⁵

§ 32. It follows from our consideration of the subject, that, for us, Idea and thing-in-itself are not entirely one and the same, in spite of the inner agreement between Kant and Plato, and the identity of the aim they had before them, or the conception of the world which roused them and led them to philosophise. The Idea is for us rather the direct, and therefore adequate, objectivity of the thing-in-itself, which is, however, itself the will– the will as not yet objectified, not yet become idea. For the thing-in-itself must, even according to Kant, be free from all the forms connected with knowing as such; and it is merely an error on his part (as is shown in the Appendix) that he did not count among these forms, before all others, that of being object for a subject, for it is the first and most universal form of all phenomena, i. e., of all idea; he should therefore have distinctly denied objective existence to his thing-in-itself, which would have saved him from a great inconsistency that was soon discovered. The Platonic Idea, on the other hand, is necessarily object, something known, an idea, and in that respect is different from the thing-in-itself, but in that respect only. It has merely laid aside the subordinate forms of the phenomenon, all of which we include in the principle of sufficient reason, or rather it has not yet assumed them; but it has retained the first and most universal form, that of the idea in general, the form of being object for a subject. It is the forms which are subordinate to this (whose general expression is the principle of sufficient reason) that multiply the Idea in particular transitory individuals, whose number is a matter of complete indifference to the Idea. The principle of sufficient reason is thus again the form into which the Idea enters when it appears in the knowledge of the subject as individual. The particular thing that manifests itself in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason is thus only an indirect objectification of the thing-in-itself (which is the will), for between it and the thing-in-itself stands the Idea as the only direct objectivity of the will, because it has assumed none of the special forms of knowledge as such, except that of the idea in general, i. e., the form of being object for a subject. Therefore it alone is the most adequate objectivity of the will or thing-in-itself which is possible; indeed it is the whole thing-in-itself, only under the form of the idea; and here lies the ground of the great agreement between Plato and Kant, although, in strict accuracy, that of which they speak is not the same. But the particular things are no really adequate objectivity of the will, for in them it is obscured by those forms whose general expression is the principle of sufficient reason, but which are conditions of the knowledge which belongs to the individual as such. If it is allowable to draw conclusions from an impossible presupposition, we would, in fact, no longer know particular things, nor events, nor change, nor multiplicity, but would comprehend only Ideas, – only the grades of the objectification of that one will, of the thing-in-itself, in pure unclouded knowledge. Consequently our world would be a nunc stans, if it were not that, as knowing subjects, we are also individuals, i. e., our perceptions come to us through the medium of a body, from the affections of which they proceed, and which is itself only concrete willing, objectivity of the will, and thus is an object among objects, and as such comes into the knowing consciousness in the only way in which an object can, through the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and consequently already presupposes, and therefore brings in, time, and all other forms which that principle expresses. Time is only the broken and piecemeal view which the individual being has of the Ideas, which are outside time, and consequently eternal. Therefore Plato says time is the moving picture of eternity: αιωνος εικων κινητη ὁ χρονος.⁴⁶

§ 33. Since now, as individuals, we have no other knowledge than that which is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, and this form of knowledge excludes the Ideas, it is certain that if it is possible for us to raise ourselves from the knowledge of particular things to that of the Ideas, this can only happen by an alteration taking place in the subject which is analogous and corresponds to the great change of the whole nature of the object, and by virtue of which the subject, so far as it knows an Idea, is no more individual.

It will be remembered from the preceding book that knowledge in general belongs to the objectification of will at its higher grades, and sensibility, nerves, and brain, just like the other parts of the organised being, are the expression of the will at this stage of its objectivity, and therefore the idea which appears through them is also in the same way bound to the service of will as a means (μηχανη) for the attainment of its now complicated (πολυτελεστερα) aims for sustaining a being of manifold requirements. Thus originally and according to its nature, knowledge is completely subject to the will, and, like the immediate object, which, by means of the application of the law of causality, is its starting-point, all knowledge which proceeds in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason remains in a closer or more distant relation to the will. For the individual finds his body as an object among objects, to all of which it is related and connected according to the principle of sufficient reason. Thus all investigations of these relations and connections lead back to his body, and consequently to his will. Since it is the principle of sufficient reason which places the objects in this relation to the body, and, through it, to the will, the one endeavour of the knowledge which is subject to this principle will be to find out the relations in which objects are placed to each other through this principle, and thus to trace their innumerable connections in space, time, and causality. For only through these is the object interesting to the individual, i. e., related to the will. Therefore the knowledge which is subject to the will knows nothing further of objects than their relations, knows the objects only so far as they exist at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, from these causes, and with these effects – in a word, as particular things; and if all these relations were to be taken away, the objects would also have disappeared for it, because it knew nothing more about them. We must not disguise the fact that what the sciences consider in things is also in reality nothing more than this; their relations, the connections of time and space, the causes of natural changes, the resemblance of forms, the motives of actions, – thus merely relations. What distinguishes science from ordinary knowledge is merely its systematic form, the facilitating of knowledge by the comprehension of all particulars in the universal, by means of the subordination of concepts, and the completeness of knowledge which is thereby attained. All relation has itself only a relative existence; for example, all being in time is also non-being; for time is only that by means of which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing; therefore every phenomenon which is in time again is not, for what separates its beginning from its end is only time, which is essentially a fleeting, inconstant, and relative thing, here called duration. But time is the most universal form of all objects of the knowledge which is subject to the will, and the prototype of its other forms.

Knowledge now, as a rule, remains always subordinate to the service of the will, as indeed it originated for this service, and grew, so to speak, to the will, as the head to the body. In the case of the brutes this subjection of knowledge to the will can never be abolished. In the case of men it can be abolished only in exceptional cases, which we shall presently consider more closely. This distinction between man and brute is outwardly expressed by the difference of the relation of the head to the body. In the case of the lower brutes both are deformed: in all brutes the head is directed towards the earth, where the objects of its will lie; even in the higher species the head and the body are still far more one than in the case of man, whose head seems freely set upon his body, as if only carried by and not serving it. This human excellence is exhibited in the highest degree by the Apollo of Belvedere; the head of the god of the Muses, with eyes fixed on the far distance, stands so freely on his shoulders that it seems wholly delivered from the body, and no more subject to its cares.

§ 34. The transition which we have referred to as possible, but yet to be regarded as only exceptional, from the common knowledge of particular things to the knowledge of the Idea, takes place suddenly; for knowledge breaks free from the service of the will, by the subject ceasing to be merely individual, and thus becoming the pure will-less subject of knowledge, which no longer traces relations in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, but rests in fixed contemplation of the object presented to it, out of its connection with all others, and rises into it.

A full explanation is necessary to make this clear, and the reader must suspend his surprise for a while, till he has grasped the whole thought expressed in this work, and then it will vanish of itself.

If, raised by the power of the mind, a man relinquishes the common way of looking at things, gives up tracing, under the guidance of the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, their relations to each other, the final goal of which is always a relation to his own will; if he thus ceases to consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither of things, and looks simply and solely at the what; if, further, he does not allow abstract thought, the concepts of the reason, to take possession of his consciousness, but, instead of all this, gives the whole power of his mind to perception, sinks himself entirely in this, and lets his whole consciousness be filled with the quiet contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether a landscape, a tree, a mountain, a building, or whatever it may be; inasmuch as he loses himself in this object (to use a pregnant German idiom), i. e., forgets even his individuality, his will, and only continues to exist as the pure subject, the clear mirror of the object, so that it is as if the object alone were there, without any one to perceive it, and he can no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but both have become one, because the whole consciousness is filled and occupied with one single sensuous picture; if thus the object has to such an extent passed out of all relation to something outside it, and the subject out of all relation to the will, then that which is so known is no longer the particular thing as such; but it is the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will at this grade; and, therefore, he who is sunk in this perception is no longer individual, for in such perception the individual has lost himself; but he is pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge. This, which in itself is so remarkable (which I well know confirms the saying that originated with Thomas Paine, Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas), will by degrees become clearer and less surprising from what follows. It was this that was running in Spinoza's mind when he wrote: Meus æterna est, quatenus res sub æternitatis specie concipit (Eth. V. pr. 31, Schol.)⁴⁷ In such contemplation the particular thing becomes at once the Idea of its species, and the perceiving individual becomes pure subject of knowledge. The individual, as such, knows only particular things; the pure subject of knowledge knows only Ideas. For the individual is the subject of knowledge in its relation to a definite particular manifestation of will, and in subjection to this. This particular manifestation of will is, as such, subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms; therefore, all knowledge which relates itself to it also follows the principle of sufficient reason, and no other kind of knowledge is fitted to be of use to the will but this, which always consists merely of relations to the object. The knowing individual as such, and the particular things known by him, are always in some place, at some time, and are links in the chain of causes and effects. The pure subject of knowledge and his correlative, the Idea, have passed out of all these forms of the principle of sufficient reason: time, place, the individual that knows, and the individual that is known, have for them no meaning. When an individual knower has raised himself in the manner described to be pure subject of knowledge, and at the same time has raised the observed object to the Platonic Idea, the world as idea appears complete and pure, and the full objectification of the will takes place, for the Platonic Idea alone is its adequate objectivity. The Idea includes object and subject in like manner in itself, for they are its one form; but in it they are absolutely of equal importance; for as the object is here, as elsewhere, simply the idea of the subject, the subject, which passes entirely into the perceived object has thus become this object itself, for the whole consciousness is nothing but its perfectly distinct picture. Now this consciousness constitutes the whole world as idea, for one imagines the whole of the Platonic Ideas, or grades of the objectivity of will, in their series passing through it. The particular things of all time and space are nothing but Ideas multiplied through the principle of sufficient reason (the form of the knowledge of the individual as such), and thus obscured as regards their pure objectivity. When the Platonic Idea appears, in it subject and object are no longer to be distinguished, for the Platonic Idea, the adequate objectivity of will, the true world as idea, arises only when the subject and object reciprocally fill and penetrate each other completely; and in the same way the knowing and the known individuals, as things in themselves, are not to be distinguished. For if we look entirely away from the true world as idea, there remains nothing but the world as will. The will is the “in-itself” of the Platonic Idea, which fully objectifies it; it is also the “in-itself” of the particular thing and of the individual that knows it, which objectify it incompletely. As will, outside the idea and all its forms, it is one and the same in the object contemplated and in the individual, who soars aloft in this contemplation, and becomes conscious of himself as pure subject. These two are, therefore, in themselves not different, for in themselves they are will, which here knows itself; and multiplicity and difference exist only as the way in which this knowledge comes to the will, i. e., only in the phenomenon, on account of its form, the principle of sufficient reason.

Now the known thing, without me as the subject of knowledge, is just as little an object, and not mere will, blind effort, as without the object, without the idea, I am a knowing subject and not mere blind will. This will is in itself, i. e., outside the idea, one and the same with mine: only in the world as idea, whose form is always at least that of subject and object, we are separated as the known and the knowing individual. As soon as knowledge, the world as idea, is abolished, there remains nothing but mere will, blind effort. That it should receive objectivity, become idea, supposes at once both subject and object; but that this should be pure, complete, and adequate objectivity of the will, supposes the object as Platonic Idea, free from the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and the subject as the pure subject of knowledge, free from individuality and subjection to the will.