The Schopenhauer Cure(80)
Furthermore, we cannot “see” past our processed version of what’s out there; we have no way of knowing what is “really” there—that is, the entity that exists prior to our perceptual and intellectual processing. That primary entity, which Kant called ding an sich (the thing in itself), will and must remain forever unknowable to us.
Though Schopenhauer agreed that we can never know the “thing in itself,” he believed we can get closer to it than Kant had thought. In his opinion, Kant had overlooked a major source of available information about the perceived (the phenomenal) world: our own bodies! Bodies are material objects. They exist in time and space. And each of us has an extraordinarily rich knowledge of our bodies—knowledge stemming not from our perceptual and conceptual apparatus but direct knowledge from inside, knowledge stemming from feelings.
From our bodies we gain knowledge that we cannot conceptualize and communicate because the greater part of our inner lives is unknown to us. It is repressed and not permitted to break into consciousness, because knowing our deeper natures (our cruelty, fear, envy, sexual lust, aggression, self-seeking) would cause us more disturbance than we could bear.
Sound familiar? Sound like that old Freudian stuff—the unconscious, primitive process, the id, repression, self-deception? Are these not the vital germs, the primordial origins, of the psychoanalytic endeavor? Keep in mind that Arthur’s major work was published forty years before Freud’s birth. When Freud (and Nietzsche as well) were schoolboys in the middle of the nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer was Germany’s most widely read philosopher.
How do we understand these unconscious forces? How do we communicate them to others? Though they cannot be conceptualized, they can be experienced and, in Schopenhauer’s opinion, conveyed directly, without words, through the arts. Hence he was to devote more attention to the arts, and particularly to music, than any other philosopher.
And sex? He left no doubt about his belief that sexual feelings played a crucial role in human behavior. Here, again, he was an intrepid pioneer: no prior philosopher had the insight (or the courage) to write about the seminal importance of sex to our internal life.
And religion? Schopenhauer was the first major philosopher to construct his thought upon an atheistic foundation. He explicitly and vehemently denied the supernatural, arguing instead that we live entirely in space and time and that all nonmaterial entities are false and unnecessary constructs. Though many others, Hobbes, Hume, even Kant, may have had agnostic leanings, none dared to be explicit about their nonbelief. For one thing, they were dependent for their livelihood upon the states and universities employing them and, hence, forbidden to express any antireligious sentiments. Arthur was never employed nor needed to be and was free to write as he wished. For precisely the same reason, Spinoza, a century and a half earlier, refused offers of exalted university positions, remaining instead a grinder of lenses.
And the conclusions that Schopenhauer reached from his inside knowledge of the body? That there is in us, and in all of nature, a relentless, insatiable, primal life force which he termed will. “Every place we look in life,” he wrote, “we see striving that represents the kernel and ‘in-itself’ of everything.” What is suffering? It is “hindrance to this striving by an obstacle placed in the path between the will and its goal.” What is happiness, well-being? It is “attainment of the goal.”
We want, we want, we want, we want. There are ten needs waiting in the wings of the unconscious for every one that reaches awareness. The will drives us relentlessly because, once a need is satisfied, it is soon replaced by another need and another and another throughout our life.
Schopenhauer sometimes invokes the myth of the wheel of Ixion or the myth of Tantalus to describe the dilemma of human existence. Ixion was a king who was disloyal to Zeus and punished by being bound to a fiery wheel which revolved in perpetuity. Tantalus, who dared to defy Zeus, was punished for his hubris by being eternally tempted but never satisfied. Human life, Schopenhauer thought, eternally revolves around an axle of need followed by satiation. Are we contented by the satiation? Alas, only briefly. Almost immediately boredom sets in, and once again we are propelled into motion, this time to escape from the terrors of boredom.
Work, worry, toil and trouble are certainly the lot of almost all throughout their lives. But if all desires were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how then would people occupy their lives and spend their time? Suppose the human race were removed to Utopia where everything grew automatically and pigeons flew about ready-roasted; where everyone at once found his sweetheart and had no difficulty in keeping her; then people would die of boredom or hang themselves; or else they would fight, throttle, and murder one another and so cause themselves more suffering than is now laid upon them by nature.
And what is the most terrible thing about boredom? Why do we rush to dispel it? Because it is a distraction-free state which soon enough reveals underlying unpalatable truths about existence—our insignificance, our meaningless existence, our inexorable progression to deterioration and death.
Hence, what is human life other than an endless cycle of wanting, satisfaction, boredom, and then wanting again? Is that true for all life-forms? Worse for humans, says Schopenhauer, because as intelligence increases, so does the intensity of suffering.
So is anyone ever happy? Can anyone ever be happy? Arthur does not think so.
In the first place a man never is happy but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal and, when he does it is only to be disappointed: he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with masts and riggings gone. And then it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment, always vanishing; and now it is over.