Deceived by the knowledge bound to its service, the will here fails to recognize itself seeking enhanced well-being in one of its phenomena, it produces great suffering in another. He sees that the difference between the inflicter of suffering and he who must endure it is only phenomenon, and does not concern the thing-in-itself which is the will that lives in both. Therefore, it becomes clear to the man who has reached the knowledge referred to, that, since the will is the in-itself of every phenomenon, the misery inflicted on others and that experienced by himself, the bad and the evil, always concern the one and the same inner being, although the phenomena in which the one and the other exhibit themselves stand out as quite different individuals, and are separated even by wide intervals of time and space. I believe that, at the moment of dying, we become aware that a mere illusion has limited our existence to our person. Death is a refutation of this error and abolishes it. And because in his knowledge every individual succumbs to this obstacle, it is simply individuation that keeps the will-to-live in error as to its own true nature it is the Maya of Brahmanism. From this point of view, however much my individual existence, like that sun, outshines everything for me, at bottom it appears only as an obstacle which stands between me and the knowledge of the true extent of my being. Thus it represents my true inner being-in-itself as existing in others only after my death, whereas the truth is that it already lives in them now, and death abolishes merely the illusion by reason of which I am not aware of this just as the innumerable hosts of stars always shine above our heads, but become visible only when the one sun near the earth has set. The doctrine of metempsychosis, previously touched on, deviates from the truth merely by transferring to the future what is already now. No one matches Schopenhauer's way with words on this topic. This may be a bit of a long read, but trust me it's worth it.
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