Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer believes the world is as appearance, but he also posits a thing-in-itself. So the animals actually exist when you are not looking at them, unlike Berkeley, and they are as they appear. Thus, all of those beetles and insects really exist when you are not looking at them and they exist in a very grotesque form. What Schopenhauer is attempting to do is cut out any attempt by the sciences to elucidate a prettier picture of the animals. Back in the 1800s, it was looking like the sciences were potentially about to give a positive description of the nature on the animals and they are not really as bad as they seem. Perhaps the sciences would reveal, for example, that the animals do not cognate the same way as humans. However, Schopenhauer is maintaining that they are as they appear. What ended up happening was the sciences ended up going in a similar direction as Schopenhauer took it with survival of the fittest. Schopenhauer learned about Darwin’s origin of species on his death bed and he probably knew exactly what was happening. The sciences ended up giving a similar description of the animals as Schopenhauer’s theory. However, these theories are still slightly different. While Darwin is giving a specific description of the animals, Schopenhauer is simply maintaining that they are as they appear and that is grotesque. You can see the impact of Schopenhauer and Darwin on the national geographic channel.

Further Considerations

Is Schopenhauer determine how animals look? In which case, metaphysical speculation would be very powerful, indeed. You determine how animals look through metaphysical speculation. However, Schopenhauer is not determining how animals appear, he is simply saying that they are as they appear. Thus this is really a weaker claim. That’s all transcendental metaphysics is- something to subscribe to that may or may not be a correct description of reality. It may be a correct description of reality or it may reduce entirely to cognition, but either way it works.

German Idealism

Schopenhauer and Berkeley

Schopenhauer is an idealist. That is he believes the world is in a sense as it appears to the observer. However, Schopenhauer is not a Berkelean or a subjective idealist; he posits a thing-in-itself. For Berkeley, the world is contained in the mind and space is relative to the perceiver. This makes the stars in the sky specks in the sky. That is, they exist as they appear to the observer. If you can get closer pictures of the stars, they are simply big specks in the sky. This is further solidified by Berkeley’s instrumentalism, which says the abstraction of the sciences only has value as far as it wields practically results. That is, it is a fake abstraction that happens to work.

The nature of planets

However, Schopenhauer posits a thing-in-itself. Thus, the world in a sense exists independent of the perceiver. There is a world out there independent of the mind but it simply exists as a compactification point, i.e. something that exists as a unity without diversity. Thus, the planets really exist for Schopenhauer and you could theoretically travel to them. However, Schopenhauer still accepts the phenomenal world as appearance. This in essence cuts out anything that would potentially lead to alien life. You can go to the moon but the microbes on the planet don’t constitute life since you don’t see them under ordinary circumstances. When you look at them under the microscope they are simply specks in your vision. Organic compound doesn’t necessarily produce life and things are that way simply because they are that way on earth. Thus, the planets are simply balls of mass that exist in a spacial void. Another place where Schopenhauer deviates from materialism is that cosmologically earth is at the center of the universe. Humans are no more than animals but are distinct from animals as they are the highest grades of the wills manifestation.

German Idealism