In Search of Schopenhauer's Cat: Arthur Schopenhauer's Quantum-Mystical Theory of Justice

4. Schopenhauer’s Own Claim to Fame

Chapter 4 Schopenhauer’s Own Claim to Fame Schopenhauer was not being picky in arguing the existence of this flaw in Kant’s theory. The flaw, if indeed it is one, exists at a very important point in the web of Kant’s reasoning, the point at which subject touches object and object touches subject. If indeed it is a flaw, and more importantly, if Schopenhauer’s own theory rectifies the flaw and fills the gap, then Schopenhauer’s claim to greatness has undoubted merit. There is a difficulty in explaining how it is that Schopenhauer tries to fill the gap between subject and object, between perceiver and outside world. He doesn’t use any one, single principle, and the filling agents that he does use are, to some extent, outside the Western view of things. First of all, there is no doubt that Schopenhauer saw the issue clearly: “[I]t is ultimately the reality or ideality of matter which is the point in question.l.l.l. Among the moderns only Locke has asserted positively and straightforwardly the reality of matter.l.l.l. Berkeley alone has denied matter positively and without modifications.”1 From his posing of the issue in this manner, one 27 1. WWR-2, 12. might expect Schopenhauer to claim some sort of middle ground, but instead (and surprisingly to our Western minds), he claims what might be fairly called an “all-ground,” or perhaps a transcendent ground: The fundamental mistake of all systems is the failure to recognize this truth, namely that the intellect and matter are correlatives , in other words, the one exists only for the other; both stand and fall together; the one is only the other’s reflex. They are in fact really one and the same thing, considered from two opposite points of view; and this one thing .l.l. is the phenomenon of the will or of the thing-in-itself.2 This is a difficult statement for our Western minds. Western minds like to classify and categorize. One tendency that some might have on reading the above statement would be to conclude that Schopenhauer was a pure subjective idealist: Matter is intellect. Another tendency that others might have would be to conclude, with equal vigor, that Schopenhauer was a materialist: Intellect is matter. Still others, perhaps, might conclude that Schopenhauer was unjustifiably adopting both inconsistent views. To the Eastern mind, however, Schopenhauer’s position would probably seem somewhat clearer and certainly more defensible. The Eastern mind is well familiar with the concept of “polarity” and the notion that apparent opposites can often be reconciled at some deeper level of understanding.3 It was, therefore, Schopenhauer’s claim that intellect and matter 28 2. WWR-2, 15–16 (emphasis in original). 3. The philosophy sections of today’s bookstores abound in popularizations of this viewpoint. Common examples in past years have been the works of Alan Watts, esp. Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (New York: Pantheon, 1958); The Supreme Identity: An Essay on Oriental Metaphysic and the Christian Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 1972); and The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity (New York: Collier Books, 1963). are one and the same thing, and can be seen as such at some transcendent , or deeper, level, namely, the level of the “will” or the “thing-in-itself”—the level of true reality unencumbered by time, space, causality, and the other impositions of the structure of the perceiving mind. Schopenhauer himself directed his readers to this Eastern mode of thought, quoting from Sir William Jones’s Asiatic Researches : On the Philosophy of the Asiatics, vol. 4, p. 164: “The fundamental tenet of the Vedanta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability , and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms.” These words adequately express the compatibility of empirical reality with transcendental ideality.4 Another step in Schopenhauer’s filling of the gap between subject and object lies in his assertion that plurality (or, from a different vantage point, individuation) is, like time, space, and causality, an imposition of the structure of the perceiving mind and not an aspect of reality or “thing-in-itself.” “Will” is...