When Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) began to question mainstream philosophical ideas, he expected heavy opposition and criticism. In this respect, he was not disappointed. Almost all twentieth-century thinkers have opposed Schopenhauer and his theory of the will.
Hefty opposition was no surprise to Schopenhauer precisely because he had presented his ideas as improvements on those of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), and other philosophers.
Schopenhauer held Kant in high esteem, but despised Hegel profoundly. He considered Hegel a charlatan. When Hegel died due to an epidemic in Berlin, Schopenhauer was jubilant. He only lamented that Hegel had not died earlier, so that the world would have been spared his stupid ideas.
At the start of the epidemic, both Hegel and Schopenhauer had been living in Berlin. While Hegel had remained in Berlin and succumbed to the epidemic, Schopenhauer had relocated to Frankfurt at the first signed of danger.
Schopenhauer compared to Kant and Hegel
As it was typical of him and his philosophy, Schopenhauer had steered away from excessive risks. When he had first read the news about the epidemic, he did not know its true severity, but immediately decided to relocate.
Let the fools risk their lives, if they wish, Schopenhauer had concluded; let people play with fire if they find it amusing, but you should not risk your life or your health in those games.
Schopenhauer had quickly taken the right decision because he was relying on a correct philosophy. Hegel had committed a lethal error because he was relying on wrong ideas.
Whether you adopt Schopenhauer’s theory of knowledge or not can have serious consequences. In critical situations, it is a question of life-or-death to make good choices.
In the face of severe danger, improvisation, wishful thinking and self-delusion may cause severe harm; they can push you in the wrong direction and lead you to quasi-suicidal behaviour.
In his “Critique of pure reason” (1781), Kant had sustained that human understanding is limited. Hegel had then theorized that the cosmos is driven by an absolute spirit. Society and all individuals are driven by this spirit, according to Hegel.
Impact of Schopenhauer’s theory of the will
Schopenhauer predicated the contrary. He said that humans can understand everything and draw correct conclusions on all subjects, provided that they take into account the distortions or delusions created by the will.
According to Schopenhauer’s theory of knowledge, the will (“life force”) can diminish our reasoning ability in three ways. First, it can prompt us to pursue goal after goal, endlessly, with no assessment of the costs involved. Second, the will can make us underrate the difficulty of projects and overrate our chances of success. Third, the will can prompt us to pursue immediate pleasure or fulfil short-term desires at the expense of happiness in the future.
Schopenhauer viewed the will as a constant, chronic source of disruptions in human thinking and action. When it comes to taking decisions, you should be aware of the influence of the will. If you do not remove such influence, your conclusions are bound to be incorrect.
In his works “The phenomenology of the spirit” and “The science of logic,” Hegel had totally overlooked the influence of the will. Hegel’s logic was faulty. Thus, when the epidemic came to Berlin, he took a wrong decision and quickly perished.
Schopenhauer compared to Karl Popper
The opposition against Schopenhauer’s theory of knowledge became strong in the twentieth century, especially in the works of Karl Popper (1902-1994).
Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher, came up with the philosophy of falsifiability. His main books are “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” and “Conjectures and Refutations.”
According to Popper, scientific theories should be subjected to falsification instead of verification. He regarded as scientific theories only specific predictions that can be tested and proven wrong, if the fail to pass the test.
Popper was against verification because he distrusted proofs gathered by experience. Repeated confirmations by experience don’t necessarily mean that a theory is true. Instead, they could mean that a correlation exist, or that the test had been wrongly designed.
Unless a test allows to falsify a theory, we should not regard it as scientifically proven, concluded Popper. Note that Popper is taking for granted that the human mind can ignore the bias created by the will. Popper had rejected the warnings given by Schopenhauer, and in doing so, he took science downhill.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at scientific publications today. They claim to be truthful because they follow Popper’s paradigm, but some of their conclusions seem faulty. I would not be surprised if they have been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the will.
Schopenhauer compared to Ludwig Wittgenstein
Another Austrian-British philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) has also exerted opposition to Schopenhauer. The two principal works by Wittgenstein are his “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and his “Philosophical Investigations.”
I cannot help comparing them to Kant’s “Critique of pure reason” (1781) and “Critique of practical reason” (1788). The books by Wittgenstein reproduce the pattern of those by Kant.
The pattern is the following: After the author (Wittgenstein or Kant) had realized that his first book contained errors, he wrote a second book to amend them, but in doing so, he made even bigger mistakes.
In the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,” Wittgenstein said that language mirrors the world and should thus be limited by verifiable perceptions. Thus, he categorized statements about ethics, religion, culinary or artistic taste as unspeakable, that is, as unworthy of philosophical discussion.
Realizing that his thesis was faulty, Wittgenstein changed course in his “Philosophical Investigations.” This time, he did accept ethics, religion, culinary and artistic matters as worthy of philosophical discussion, but categorized them as “language games” to be assessed in a specific social context.
In his philosophy books, Wittgenstein addressed no real-life issues, and provided no practical advice to readers. He paid no attention to Schopenhauer’s insights and, as a result, suffered the influence of the will. I am convinced that people familiar with Schopenhauer’s wisdom can do better than that.
If you are interested in applying rational principles to your life here and now, I recommend you my book titled “The 10 principles of rational living.”
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