Translators have wrestled to find good English equivalents for these two key elements. The title of the book has been rendered various as The World as Will and Representation, The World as Will and Idea, and The World as Will and Presentation.
Schopenhauer’s concept is of an active self - a self which wills, and which (re)presents or ideates.
The form which this representation assumes, as a prerequisite, as a necessary precondition, he writes, is the relation between subject and object. What might Schopenhauer intend by telling us that representation is relative? Perhaps he intends to deny an absoluteness to representation. To what is representation relative? He seems to be saying that the form of representation is subject and object; in his understanding of this form, each is relative to the other: there is no object without subject, and no subject without object.
This, then, might be one formulation of Schopenhauer’s idealism: that a subject cannot be a subject without an object, and likewise an object cannot be an object without a subject. This leaves no room for an absolute object, a Ding-an-sich which exists independently of any observing subject. It also leaves no room for an absolute subject, a solipsistic knowing consciousness independent of any object.
If this is an accurate assessment of Schopenhauer, then it is a simultaneous swipe at both Descartes and Hume. Schopenhauer would deny the independent existence of the Cartesian mind reflecting on its existence prior to any experience; he would also deny the Humean attempt to posit a bundle of experiences existing with an ego to be the knowing subject for which they are the object.
This form of subject and object gives rise to a number of “subordinate” forms. This form and subforms “express” the principle of sufficient reason. This principle, which states that everything has a cause, is the activity of the human mind. In seeing the human mind as projecting causation onto the raw data of the senses, Schopenhauer parallels Kant, at least to some extent. The principle of sufficient reason is thus similar to time and space, both of which are Kantian projections of the mind onto sensations.
If we remove form from the object, what is left? In answering this question, Schopenhauer parts ways with Kant. The raw material of the object, Schopenhauer writes, is neither sense-data nor a Ding-an-sich. If we extract form from the object, then what remains is the will. If the will is the self, or part of the self, then I am the object which I perceive.
The will, or the self, is the true Ding-an-sich:
Ich beschließe hier den zweiten Haupttheil meiner Darstellung, in der Hoffnung, daß, soweit es bei der allerersten Mitheilung eines noch nie dagewesenen Gedankens, der daher von den Spuren der Individualität, in welcher zuerst er sich erzeugte, nicht ganz frei seyn kann, – möglich ist, es mir gelungen sei, die deutliche Gewißheit mitzutheilen, daß diese Welt, in der wir leben und sind, ihrem ganzen Wesen nach, durch und durch Wille und zugleich durch und durch Vorstellung ist; daß diese Vorstellung schon als solche eine Form voraussetzt, nämlich Objekt und Subjekt, mithin relativ ist; und wenn wir fragen, was nach Aufhebung dieser Form und aller ihr untergeordneten, die der Satz vom Grund ausdrückt, noch übrig bleibt; dieses als ein von der Vorstellung toto genere Verschiedenes, nichts Anderes seyn kann, als Wille, der sonach das eigentliche Ding an sich ist.
The self is therefore the knower and the known, the subject and the object. Consciousness is the necessary supporter of the world. It is necessary to parse Schopenhauer carefully here: the phrase “its necessary supporter” in English is ambiguous when we ask what “it” is. In German, however, the pronoun requires a feminine noun as an antecedent. The only two feminine nouns available as antecedents are Welt and Vorstellung. This parsing allows us to determine what is supporting and what is supported:
Jeder findet sich selbst als diesen Willen, in welchem das innere Wesen der Welt besteht, so wie er sich auch als das erkennende Subjekt findet, dessen Vorstellung die ganze Welt ist, welche insofern nur in Bezug auf sein Bewußtseyn, als ihren nothwendigen Träger, ein Daseyn hat.
What is true of the individual - that he is a coin with two sides, that he is simultaneously object and subject - is true of the universe as a whole. Does Schopenhauer mean to say that the cosmos as a whole is a knowing subject?
Jeder ist also in diesem doppelten Betracht die ganze Welt selbst, der Mikrokosmos, findet beide Seiten derselben ganz und vollständig in sich selbst.
Although Schopenhauer does not say that the universe is a knowing subject, he does say that it is composed of will. The “will” here is singular. The cosmos is not an amalgamation of many wills. It is a will. In some places, Schopenhauer refines this to “my will” instead of simply “will.” What might be effected by this change in formulation is not clear; either term can be construed as leading to paradoxes. If the universe is “my will,” we run the danger of solipsism; if the universe is merely “will,” then I may be a projection of the universe lacking my own will, instead of the other way around.
Und was er so als sein eigenes Wesen erkennt, das Selbe erschöpft auch das Wesen der ganzen Welt, des Makrokosmos: auch sie also ist, wie er selbst, durch und durch Wille, und durch und durch Vorstellung, und nichts bleibt weiter übrig.
Having introduced the words ‘macrocosm’ and ‘microcosm’ into this passage, Schopenhauer then goes on to correlate them to the historical figures Thales and Socrates. This correlation deserves some attention.
While Kant and some German Idealists like Hegel make broad, arm-waving references to historical figures like Plato or Aristotle - references which are not meant to indicate specific texts - , Schopenhauer here seems to mean something precise about Thales and Socrates.
Schopenhauer sets Thales and Socrates against each other, which is easy enough to do: Socrates was concerned with ethical, moral, social, and political philosophy. Thales engaged in metaphysics, ontology, and cosmology.
Interestingly, Schopenhauer pairs Socrates with the “microcosm,” and assigns Thales to the “macrocosm.” His plan is clear enough: to show that the micro and the macro are somehow the same.
What is not clear is why he correlates the two philosophers as he does. What is it about the metaphysics of Thales which makes it, for Schopenhauer, the macrocosm? When we think of cosmology, images of galaxies might pop into our minds: certainly, thinking about billions of stars scattered across billions of miles would seem to qualify as thinking about the macrocosm.
Thales, however, is interested in cosmology in the sense of thinking about the essential nature of matter. Shall we assume that Schopenhauer was aware that the most provocative aspect of Thales was his thesis that everything arises somehow from water? Certainly, Thales did spend some time thinking about earthquakes, about whether the earth was a sphere or a disk, and about how to measure the diameters of the sun and the moon. Those are certainly “macro” topics. But Thales is most famous because of his water hypothesis, and it must be something related to this hypothesis which makes Schopenhauer choose him as a representative of the “macro.”
If we think of matter, we might think of atoms or subatomic particles. Whether or not Thales was an atomist, he might have considered very small objects in his consideration of matter: insects, seeds, etc. This would hardly seem to be “macro.”
We ask also why Schopenhauer chose Socrates to be a representative of the “micro.” The city of Athens at the time of Socrates had, by crude estimates, between 45,000 and 400,000 inhabitants. Choosing even the smaller of these numbers meant that Socrates, formulating social or political philosophy, was dealing with a large body of people. That would seem more macro than micro.
It is true that Socrates sometimes considers the case of an individual, as when he speaks with the Rhapsode Ion about poetic inspiration, but Socrates usually immediately generalizes from the individual’s case to the population at large, emphasizing the macro.
It is not directly obvious what Schopenhauer intends by his pairing of Thales and Socrates with the macro and the micro.
So sehn wir hier die Philosophie des Thales, die den Makrokosmos, und die des Sokrates, die den Mikrokosmos betrachtete, zusammenfallen, indem das Objekt beider sich als das Selbe aufweist. – Größere Vollständigkeit aber und dadurch auch größere Sicherheit wird die gesammte in den zwei ersten Büchern mitgetheilte Erkenntniß gewinnen, durch die noch folgenden zwei Bücher, in denen hoffentlich auch manche Frage, welche bei unserer bisherigen Betrachtung deutlich oder undeutlich sich aufgeworfen haben mag, ihre genügende Antwort finden wird.
Perhaps Schopenhauer sees Socrates as dealing with the microcosm insofar as Socrates deals only with questions which are human. Humans, and topics which relate exclusively to humanity, are a subset of the universe. Thales, by contrast, contemplated matter and its origin, a topic which applies to humans, because they are made at least in part of matter, but which applies also to many things which are not human. Thales devoted thought to the physical structure of the sun and moon: certainly non-human topics.
If Schopenhauer sees Thales as considering universal topics - all matter, everywhere - , then that might be why Schopenhauer uses him as a symbol for the macrocosm. If Schopenhauer sees Socrates as excluding large segments of the universe from his area of interest - excluding everything which is not human - , then perhaps it was for this reason that Schopenhauer chose Socrates as representative for the microcosm.
Socrates focusing on a single moral decision; Thales considerating the universal nature of matter: is this how Schopenhauer categorizes them?
We make here only a few tentative observations and hypotheses. This passage requires more research.
