The Value of Life 197the world than pleasure.The displeasure of a hangover
is always greater than the pleasure of intoxication. Pain
predominates in the world. No human being, not even the
relatively happiest, would, if asked, choose to endure
this miserable life a second time. And yet, since von
Hartmann does not deny the presence of conceptuality
(wisdom) in the world, but rather accords it a validity
equal to blind urge (or will), he can attribute the world’s
creation to his Primordial Being only if he can make the
pain of the world serve a wise world-purpose. The pain
of the world’s creatures, however, is none other than
God’s pain, for the life of the world as a whole is identi-
cal with the life of God. An all-wise being, however, can
only have as its goal liberation from suffering and, since
all existence is suffering, that means liberation from ex-
istence. Thus, the aim of world-creation is to carry being
over into the far better state of non-being. The world pro-
cess is a continual struggle against God’s pain and ends
finally in the annihilation of all existence. Hence human
morality is participation in the annihilation of existence.
God created the world to free Himself through the world
from His infinite pain. According to von Hartmann, that
pain must “be considered in a certain way as an itching
rash on the Absolute.” Through this itching eruption, the
unconscious healing power of the Absolute frees itself
from an inner illness; or else we must think of it “as a
painful poultice that the all-one Being applies to itself, in
order first to draw an inner pain outward and then re-
move it altogether.” Human beings are integral members
of the world. God suffers in them. He created them to