The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
place, and under these circumstances, not that I will in general, or what I will in general, that is, the maxims which characterise my voUtion generally.
Therefore the inner nature of my volition cannot be explained from these motives; but th^ merely determine its manifestation at a given point of time : they are merely the occasion of my will showing itself; Wt the will itself lies outside the province of theTaw of motivation, which determine nothing but its appearance at each point of tima It is only Under tHe presupposition of my empirical character that the motive is a sufficient ground of explanation of my action.
But if I abstract from my character, and then ask, why, in general, I will this and not that, no answer is possible, because it is only the manifestation of the will that is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, and not the will itself, which in this respect is to be called groundless.
At this point I presuppose Kant’s doctrme of the empirical and intelligible character, and also my own treatment of the subject in “ The Fundamental Problems of Ethics,” pp. 48, 58, and 178, et seq., of first edition (p. 174, et seq., of second edition). I shall also have to speak more fully on the question in the Fourth Book.
For the present, I have only to draw attention to this, that the fact of one manifestation being established through another, as here the deed through the motive, does not at all conflict with the fact that its real nature is will, which itself has no ground ; for as the principle of sufficient reason in all its aspects is only the form of knowledge, its validity extends only to the idea, to the phenomena, to the visibility of the will, but not to the will itself, which becomes visible.
If now every action of my body is the manifestation of an act of will in which my will itself in general, and as a whole, thus my character, expresses itself under given motives, manifestation of the will must be the inevitable condition and presupposition of every action. For the fact of its manifestation cannot depend upon something
THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THE WILL.
»39 which does not exist directly and only through it, which consequently is for it merely accidental, and through which its manifestation itself would be merely accidental. Now that condition is just the whole body itself.
Thus the body itself must be manifestation of the will, and it must be related to my will as a whole, that is, to my intelligible character, whose phenomenal appearance in time is my empirical character, as the particular action of the body is related to tlie particular act of the will.
The whole body, then, must be simply my will feecome visible, must be my will itself, so far as fhxsTs object of perceptibii, an idea of th6~ first 6la3a.~' Ifhas already been advanced in confirmation of this that every impression upon my body also affects my will at once and immediately, and in this respect is called pain or [)leasure, or, in its lower degrees, agreeable or disagreeable sensation; and also, conversely, that every violent movement of the will, every emotion or passion, convulses thc^bdy and disturbs the course of its functions, indeed we can also give an etiological account, though a very incomplete one, of the origin of my body, and a somewhat better account of its development and conservation, and this is the substance of physiology.
But physiology merely explains its theme in precisely the same way as motives explain action.
Thus the physiological explanation of the functions of the body detracts just as little from the philosophical truth that the whole existence of this body and the sum total of its functions are merely the objectification of that will wliich appears in its outward actions in accordance with a motive, as the establishment of the individual action through the motive and the necessary sequence of the action from the motive conflicts with the fact that action in general, and according to its nature, is only the manifestation of a will which itself has no ground.
If, however, physiology tries to refer oven these outward actions, the immediate voluntary movements, to causes in the organism, — for example, if it
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