Kant and Schopenhauer 95desire to earn fame, but most of his early attempts to publish were
rebuked, and even his most important work, The World as Will
and Idea, published in 1819, was received coldly by the critics.
In 1820, he began lecturing at the University of Berlin, but
there, too, he encountered rejection. At the time, Hegel was one
of the University’s most popular teachers, and it is said that
Schopenhauer purposely scheduled his classes opposite Hegel’s.
In this competition for students, Schopenhauer lost badly. He
wrote several more works, with the same result, until he pub
lished Essays from the Parerga and Paralipomena. This collec
tion of essays began a period of gradual acceptance of his ideas,
and led eventually to the fame he yearned to achieve.
Plato and Kant greatly influenced his thought. Kant’s con
cepts of phenomenon and noumenon were crucial to his theory
of knowledge. Kant believed that that there is a real distinction
between the appearance of a thing to the perceiving mind
(phenomenon) and the thing itself (noumenon), which exists
outside of experience and therefore is unknow able.
Schopenhauer’s philosophy turns on the concept of reality and
how it is known. His approach to the concept of “will” and “idea”
becomes the basis for his ethical philosophy.
It is ironic that his philosophy, called Pessimism, became
exceptionally popular after his death, while during most of his
life his pessimism was validated by his experience. Throughout
his life his desire for popularity was always thwarted.
Schopenhauer begins his most famous work with the state
ment, “The world is my idea.” What he is in fact saying is that
he believes that we know only by way of our sensations and
ideas. The world is object for subject; its reality consists in being
perceived by a subject. Presentations can be intuitive or ab
stract— intuitive ideas are possessed by both men and animals,
while abstract presentations can only be possessed by man. If we
are to know, he says, we must know from within ourselves. The
material world can only be identified and described with words.
To know it is to perceive it in our own mind and then, through our
mind, know it.
This is not to say that the intellect is the force which leads man
to understanding. To the contrary, Schopenhauer claims that the
underlying force in the universe is the Will. The Will (later
referred to as the Will to Live) is an all encompassing force