Epiphilosophy

My philosophy does not explain the existence of the world in its ultimate grounds.

It rather sticks to the facts of external and internal experience as they are accessible to every one, and shows the true and deepest connection of them without really going beyond them to any extra-mundane things and their relations to the world.

It therefore arrives at no conclusions as to what lies beyond all possible experience, but affords merely an exposition of what is given in the external world and in self-consciousness, thus contents itself with comprehending the nature of the world in its inner connection with itself.

It is consequently immanent, in the Kantian sense of the word. But just on this account it leaves many questions untouched; for example, why what is proved as a fact is as it is and not otherwise, &c.

All such questions, however, or rather the answers to them, are really transcendent, i.e., they cannot be thought by the forms and functions of our intellect, do not enter into these; it is therefore related to them as our sensibility is related to the possible properties of bodies for which we have no senses.

After all my explanations one may still ask, for example, whence has sprung this will that is free to assert itself, the manifestation of which is the world, or to deny itself, the manifestation of which we do not know.

What is the fatality lying beyond all experience which has placed it in the very doubtful dilemma of either appearing as a world in which suffering and death reign, or else denying its very being?—or again, what can have prevailed upon it to forsake the infinitely preferable peace of blessed nothingness?

An individual will, one may add, can only turn to its own destruction through error in the choice, thus through the fault of knowledge; but the will in itself, before all manifestation, consequently still without knowledge, how could it go astray and fall into the ruin of its present condition?

Whence in general is the great discord that permeates this world? It may, further, be asked how deep into the true being of the world the roots of individuality go; to which it may certainly be answered: they go as deep as the assertion of the will to live; where the denial of the will appears they cease, for they have arisen with the assertion.

But one might indeed even put the question, “What would I be if I were not will to live?” and more of the same kind. To all such questions we would first have to reply that the expression of the most universal and general form of our intellect is the principle of sufficient reason; but that just on this account that principle finds application only to the phenomenon, not to the being in itself of things.

Yet all whence and why depend upon that principle alone. As a result of the Kantian philosophy it is no longer an æterna veritas, but merely the form, i.e., the function, of our intellect, which is essentially cerebral, and originally a mere tool in the service of the will, which it therefore presupposes together with all its objectifications. But our whole knowing and conceiving is bound to its forms; accordingly we must conceive everything in time, consequently as a before and after, then as cause and effect, and also as above and below, whole and part, &c., and cannot by any means escape from this sphere in which all possibility of our knowledge lies.

These forms are utterly unsuited to the problems raised here, nor are they fit or able to comprehend their solution even if it were given. Therefore with our intellect, this mere tool of the will, we are everywhere striking upon insoluble problems, as against the walls of our prison.

But, besides this, it may at least be assumed as probable that not only for us is knowl- edge of all that has been asked about impossible, but no such knowledge is possible in general, thus never and in no way; that these relations are not only relatively but absolutely insusceptible of investigation; that not only does no one know them, but that they are in themselves unknowable, because they do not enter into the form of knowledge in general. (This corresponds to what

Scotus Erigena says, de mirabili divina ignorantia, qua Deus non intelligit quid ipse sit. Lib. ii.)

For knowableness in general, with its most essential, and therefore constantly necessary form of subject and object, belongs merely to the phenomenal appearance, not to the being in itself of things. Where knowledge, and consequently idea, is, there is also only phenomenon, and we stand there already in the province of the phenomenal; nay, knowledge in general is known to us only as a phenomenon of brain, and we are not only unjustified in conceiving it otherwise, but also incapable of doing so. What the world is as world may be understood: it is phenomenal manifestation; and we can know that which manifests itself in it, directly from ourselves, by means of a thorough analysis of self-consciousness.

Then, however, by means of this key to the nature of the world, the whole phenomenal manifestation can be deciphered, as I believe I have succeeded in doing. But if we leave the world in order to answer the questions indicated above, we have also left the whole sphere in which, not only connection according to reason and consequent, but even knowledge itself is possible; then all is instabilis tellus, innabilis unda. The nature of things before or beyond the world, and consequently beyond the will, is open to no investigation; because knowledge in general is itself only a phenomenon, and therefore exists only in the world as the world exists only in it. The inner being in itself of things is nothing that knows, no intellect, but an unconscious; knowledge is only [471] added as an accident, a means of assistance to the phenomenon of that inner being, and can therefore apprehend that being itself only in proportion to its own nature, which is designed with reference to quite different ends (those of the individual will), consequently very imperfectly. Here lies the reason why a perfect understanding of the existence, nature, and origin of the world, extending to its ultimate ground and satisfying all demands, is impossible. So much as to the limits of my philosophy, and indeed of all philosophy.

The Ω ∫±π ¿±Ω, i.e., that the inner nature in all things is absolutely one and the same, my age had already grasped and understood, after the Eleatics, Scotus Erigena, Giordano Bruno, and Spinoza had thoroughly taught, and Schelling had revived this doctrine. But what this one is, and how it is able to exhibit itself as the many, is a problem the solution of which is first found in my philosophy. Certainly from the most ancient times man had been called the microcosm. I have reversed the proposition, and shown the world as the macranthropos: because will and idea exhaust its nature as they do that of man. But it is clearly more correct to learn to understand the world from man than man from the world; for one has to explain what is indirectly given, thus external perception from what is directly given, thus self-consciousness—not conversely.

With the Pantheists, then, I have certainly that Ω ∫±π ¿±Ω in common, but not the ¿±Ω ∏μø¬; because I do not go beyond experience (taken in its widest sense), and still less do I put myself in contradiction with the data which lie before me. Scotus Erigena, quite consistently with the spirit of Pantheism, explains every phenomenon as a theophany; but then this conception must also be applied to the most terrible and abominable phenomena. Fine theophanies!

What further distinguishes me from Panthe- ism is principally the following. (1). That their ∏μø¬ is an x, an unknown quantity; the will, on the other hand, is of all[472] possible things the one that is known to us most exactly, the only thing given immediately, and therefore exclusively fitted for the explanation of the rest. For what is unknown must always be explained by what is better known; not conversely. (2). That their ∏μø¬ manifests himself animi causa, to unfold his glory, or, indeed, to let himself be admired. Apart from the vanity here attributed to him, they are placed in the position of being obliged to sophisticate away the colossal evil of the world; but the world remains in glaring and terrible contradiction with that imagined excellence.

With me, on the contrary, the will arrives through its objectification however this may occur, at self-knowledge, whereby its abolition, conversion, salvation becomes possible.

With me alone, ethics has a sure foundation and is completely worked out in agreement with the sublime and profound religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christianity, not merely with Judaism and Mohammedanism.

The metaphysic of the beautiful also is first fully cleared up as a result of my fundamental truth, and no longer requires to take refuge behind empty words.

With me alone is the evil of the world honestly confessed in its whole magnitude: this is rendered possible by the fact that the answer to the question as to its origin coincides with the answer to the question as to the origin of the world.

On the other hand, in all other systems, since they are all optimistic, the question as to the origin of evil is the incurable disease, ever breaking out anew, with which they are affected, and in consequence of which they struggle along with palliatives and quack remedies. (3.) That I start from experience and the natural self-consciousness given to every one, and lead to the will as that which alone is metaphysical; thus I adopt the ascending, analytical method.

The Pantheists, again, adopt the opposite method, the descending or synthetical. They start from their ∏μø¬, which they beg or take by force, although sometimes under the name substantia, or absolute, and this unknown is then supposed to [473] explain everything that is better known. (4.) That with me the world does not fill the whole possibility of all being, but in this there still remains much room for that which we denote only negatively as the denial of the will to live.

Pantheism, on the other hand, is essentially optimism: but if the world is what is best, then the matter may rest there.

5. To the Pantheists, the perceptible world, the world of idea, is just the intentional manifestation of the God indwelling in it, which contains no real explanation of its appearance, but rather requires to be explained itself.

With me, on the other hand, the world as idea appears merely per accidens, because the intellect, with its external perception, is primarily only the medium of motives for the more perfect phenomena of will, which gradually rises to that objectivity of perceptibility, in which the world exists. In this sense its origin, as an object of perception, is really accounted for, and not, as with the Pantheists, by means of untenable fictions.