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The thing-in-itself—or noumenon—as introduced by Immanuel Kant, is the true nature of a thing—or object. The thing-in-itself is reality, which is unreachable through perception since perception requires the senses, which would mediate the object. Furthermore, the noumenon rests independent of the mind: it is one without concepts, and the ideas of space, time, and causality that intelligent, conscious creatures utilize to understand the empirical world and introspective spaces. On the other hand, a phenomenon is perceptible and grounded in space, time, and causality.
By use of the term will (with lowercase “w”), Schopenhauer references the inner essence of “bodily expressions and actions” (Schopenhauer 136). It is a force, or character, to be found inside of a thing, and in fact, in all things. Every act of will is at once manifested in the “movement of its body” (137), “its body” meaning the very body referred to by the will, and not any other bodies outside of this relationship. Schopenhauer denotes every action—including involuntary movements—of the body as objectification of its will, and nothing more. However, the movement of the body and the act of will are not contrasting states; they are not causally related—they are actually the same state occurring simultaneously, but considered in juxtaposing manners, in which the act of will is immediate while the movement of the body is mediated by the senses, so the latter becomes an object for perception: a phenomenon.
Schopenhauer later speaks of the Will (with uppercase “W”) that is the thing-in-itself. The Will is different from the will, as the former no longer belongs solely to an individual; in fact, it is supposed to be an objectless and subject-less striving. The Will is present in all and is itself one, “but not as an object is one […] nor either as a concept is one […] but it is rather one as that which lies beyond time and space” (134), one that may be in multiple forms with the “possibility of plurality” (134). The Principle of Sufficient Reason doesn’t apply to the Will, and for this reason, the Will is undirected and without cause.
Though Schopenhauer doesn’t believe that the thing-in-itself can be fully grasped with as much certainty as we have about empirical knowledge (since the thing-in-itself may never be rendered as presentation), he argues that we can possess an intuitive understanding of the noumena. He sets out this task by reflecting on the dichotomy of sensory perception and the immediate experience of the body—two halves that comprise our understanding of ourselves and the world. In other words, there are two types of understandings: inner and outer understanding. While our senses grant us empirical knowledge of objects that are rooted in space, time, and causality, our intuition of the will, which itself is groundless, can provide an intuitive understanding of our true, inner essence—a hint at the noumena. It is therefore not unfathomable, Schopenhauer reasons, to consider that the world is structured in a way such that it may also be understood with a similar juxtaposition. Maybe, the world is also divided into an outer and inner understanding, with the Will capable of transporting us to the latter—to the realm of things-in-themselves. Since perception is mediated by sensations and the objects for perceiving only exists with respect to the principium individuationis (time and space) and the Principle of Sufficient Reason, outer understanding, which is achieved through perception, only reaches the presentations, and is therefore not a solution to gain insight into the noumena. Thus, introspecting the inner force of our body, which Schopenhauer calls the will, remains as the only other option to possibly understand the noumena. When this will is stripped from the object and of the concepts of direction and causation, it takes the form of the Will, which is independent of space, time, and causality, and thereby satisfies the definition of the thing-in-itself (Jacquette 100). It is then that will, in its purified and abstracted form, becomes the Will as thing-in-itself.
Schopenhauer claims that the will is not “an abstract presentation to another presentation” but a “reference of a judgement to the relation that a perceptual presentation” (Schopenhauer 140)—by which he means the body—is associated with. The philosopher elaborates later in page 144, stating that motives represent the phenomena of will, and when motives become unapparent, the act of will still continues. With this line of reasoning, it appears that the will is not a presentation and hence not affected by space, time, and causality—it is groundless. Therefore, will cannot be an abstract presentation, and is beyond the phenomena. However, I remain doubtful that introspective knowledge stemming from will can get to anything beyond face value. The will is not as distinct from the observables as Schopenhauer believes, as the will is yet another phenomenon for an individual’s consciousness. Since the will can be inspected through introspection, it is an object for the subject (the one introspecting), and since the subject is consciously introspecting, the introspection is mediated through the subject’s identity. More specifically, the subject—say, a human being—is the product of her genetic makeup, experiences, and where she was born, and so the subject’s introspection of the will is inevitably affected and thus mediated by her identity. Indeed, Schopenhauer seems to recognize this tenuous position, feeling compelled to write that the will has not “fully entered into the form of presentation in which object and subject stand over against one another, but rather announces itself in an immediate manner in which subject and object are not quite explicitly distinguished” (147-8). The philosopher realizes the need to posit the existence of a metaphysical and epistemological force, a force similar to will in the sense that it may be reached introspectively (or else there wouldn’t be a way for us to understand the thing-in-itself), but dissimilar to will on the basis of it being excluded from all subject-object distinctions. Perhaps, it is for this reason that Schopenhauer finds necessary to introduce the pure Will.
Then, the question becomes: can the Will truly grant us an intuitive understanding of the noumena? It seems that the reality of presentations cannot be proven or disproven, as whether “objects familiar to the individual” are also a “phenomena of a will” (141) cannot be explored further on the grounds of reason. Despite the legitimacy of skepticism, Schopenhauer rams his way through the solipsistic roadblock, assuming that the inner essence of the world as a whole is comparable to a will, and from the latter, he claims, we can ultimately derive the Will. Yet, since the will—as noted in the previous paragraph—is still caught in the subject-object distinction, acting as an object for an individual’s consciousness, we must explore whether it can be purified into its most abstract form: Will. Before we can answer this, however, perhaps we should ask: when a thing is purified into its highest form, is it still conceivable? Does it still retain some identity of the thing it was purified from? Take gold as an example. All gold that is seen or owned contain impurities (though 24-karat gold is considered pure, it is not 100% purity), but we can conceive of the atomic structure of gold and have an intuition of what it is truly like. As we have affirmed the possibility of existence and continuation of a thing to its purified self, the Will shall be viewed as a possible product of will. When a will is disconnected from its motives and object, when it is stripped of the properties that initially allowed it to objectify a movement of the body, it certainly becomes objectless—as this is how we defined it—and seemingly exists—at least conceptually—as a representative of the noumena. However, returning to the example of gold, the atomic level of gold that can be conceived is yet another object in awareness as it is a concept perceived by the mind. Similarly, the Will seems to suffer from the same idea. Though the Will came to be when made objectless, it is merely separated from the objectifications of the will, but not separated from the subject—which is consciousness—whose perceiving of the Will renders the Will an object. In fact, the Will is not just an object for awareness, but in a way also an object for perception (that is, gained from the senses). On page 138, Schopenhauer asserts that “every effect on the body is also at once and immediately an effect on the will; as such it is called pain when it is contrary to the will, a good feeling, pleasure, when it is in accord with it”. This reveals that the will can be intuitively understood through sensory perception; by focusing on tactile experiences, one can grasp an illustrative image of the will. As the Will is understood through a will, the former is potentially acquired through a stage of sensory knowledge. For this reason, the proposition, the Will is the thing-in-itself, may involve a posteriori knowledge and consequently isn’t solely synthetic a priori. Similar to how scientists deduced that light is both a wave and particle through empirical evidence from the double-slit experiment, we may deduce the nature of a will and the Will partially through empirical means. The possibility of this occurring then acts as evidence of the will violating the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and thus invalidates the Will as the thing-in-itself.
I believe in the existence of an immediate intuition that may pave the path to things-in-themselves. Schopenhauer nearly identifies this, but ultimately fails due to a misunderstanding of where the boundaries of consciousness lies and where things are finally rid of the subject-object distinction. What truly identifies the noumena is often called pure awareness/consciousness, or the force that is aware of what is aware. Every conscious creature is by definition necessarily aware, having the ability to sense that something is currently happening. But, when we recognize that we are aware, how is it that we are able to do so? In other words, what is aware of this awareness? This is what is called pure consciousness, which is a state devoid of sense experience, a state of being aware from awareness without labels or thoughts. Only if this state is reached, each subject becomes an object and vice versa. An object holds a member A if and only if the form of its subject holds a member A, and so in set theoretic terms, the object equals the subject. Therefore, pure consciousness completely eliminates all subject-object distinctions; by rendering all object and subject the same, there is only the one that remains. Indeed, a thing that is one cannot have properties; if it does, then the thing must be multiplicity. Pure awareness is also uninfluenced by the principium individuationis and the Principle of Sufficient Reason. With pure consciousness, space is irrelevant, as there is no awareness from a location—there is simply awareness. Since everything becomes one in this state, time—which is used for counting—also is inapplicable. Similarly, as there is only one, causality cannot occur—there is nothing to cause and hence no effect.
In actuality, Schopenhauer experienced and came extremely close to understanding and devising a system to prove the unifying force of pure awareness. Ultimately, his concepts of a will and the Will took the wrong turn before their final destination and could not—despite what he thought—escape the subject-object distinction. Yet, he knew all along the answer to reaching the noumena, as summed up by his description of the will: it is where the “cognizing and cognized coincide” (150).
Works Cited:
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Presentation. Translated by David Carus and Richard E. Aquila, Pearson Education, 2008.
Jacquette, Dale. “Schopenhauers Proof That Thing-in-Itself Is Will.” Kantian Review, vol. 12, no. 2, 2007, pp. 76–108
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