Deleuze and Schopenhauer 1

Perspectives on Deleuze: Unity

German Idealism

Schopenhauer was adamantly opposed to Hegel’s philosophy (and other German Idealists, Fichte and Schelling), arguing instead for the more moderate idealism of Kant.

Schopenhauer by and large agreed with Kant’s Transcendental Idealism insofar as it identifies the phenomenal, appearances, and the noumenal, the thing-in-itself. And Schopenhauer was largely in agreement with Kant that our understanding of the phenomenal world is based on representation, our conditioned form of cognition.

Where he sharply differed with Kant is in the latter’s assertion that we cannot know anything of the thing-in-itself.

The Undifferentiated Will

Schopenhauer proposes that there is an inner nature to phenomena that eludes understanding via representation, but is nonetheless knowable.

This inner nature or the thing-in-itself does not consist of things in the plural, since differentiation implies phenomena located space and time. Schopenhauer asserts that this being outside of space and time must be one and undifferentiated.

The name Schopenhauer provides for his vision for the noumenal realm is “Will.”

Will is an impersonal force in the universe beyond human consciousness and causality.

It is undifferentiated energy beyond space and time, but informing all there is in the phenomenal world. It is drive, and quite the opposite of Hegel, it is not a concept nor based in reason.

Will is pure irrational force, a blind, unconscious, directionless, illogical, undifferentiated striving that serves as a monistic, unified reality underlying the plurality of the world as representation.

Our Bodies

Schopenhauer asserts that we cannot know this Will via representation and cognition based on the categories, but we can experience this Will in one specific manner: via our bodies.

While our bodies can be known to us via objective external representation, we also experience internally what it is like to inhabit our own bodies. In this latter sense:

Our bodies are manifestations of the noumenal realm, of Will itself.

We experience our bodies in space and time, but also have a felt awareness of our bodies that goes beyond space and time. And since we can have insight or experience as to the inner nature of our bodies, the reality of Will inside our own bodies, we can extend this experience so as to be capable of understanding the Will underlying everything in the universe.

Since we can know our bodies as differentiated and objectified in space and time, but can also experience our bodies as a unified force beyond space and time, we can understand the diversity and experience the unity of the universe.

Reality

Reality is one and the same: the differentiated world known to us via representation is also the monistic world of Will.

Representation is the objectification of the Will.

The world as representation is the world of appearances. The world as Will is the same world, but understood subjectively as unity.

The objectification of the world via representation is conscious and based in reason. It is only reason-based consciousness that has the ability to impose on unity the diversity of the phenomenal world.

The undifferentiated Will as blind and irrational, with no goal or purpose, but instead just pure striving that can never be satisfied, is an unsettling vision.

Suffering

But the Will objectified and fragmented via representation leads to a much more terrifying result:

The fragmentation of the world leads to a constant striving amongst and against all discrete things in the world.

We, as human beings anguished by reason and representation, create a violent world in which everything is at war with everything else.

And as long as our consciousness remains at the level of representation, we are condemned to a life of continual fighting and conflict, an insatiable striving in which we continually want more than we can ever have. Reason cannot relieve us from suffering:

Reason intensifies our suffering.

Alleviating Suffering

What to do in a world without any apparent meaning or purpose, in which our representations amount to nothing more than an illusion?

Schopenhauer offers three suggestions: two temporary means of alleviating suffering, and one more permanent.

First, we can obtain momentary release from our imprisonment via the arts. Through all forms of art, but especially music, we are able to free ourselves from the torment of the insatiable Will and experience the world beyond suffering:

The transcendent tranquility of aesthetic perception.

Secondly, we can transcend suffering by contemplating our commonality with all others via the unified Will that we all share.

We can act with compassion to share and alleviate the suffering of others.

Compassion as the foundation of ethics (and not reason as per Kant) allows us to see that tormentor and tormented are one; that at a metaphysical level we are universally the same, and united as one.

Asceticism

But neither the suspended state of aesthetic appreciation, nor the joy or satisfaction found in acting compassionately, can permanently relieve the unrelenting march of the Will.

The only way to more permanently reduce the Will’s claim on our existence is via an ascetic attitude of renunciation and resignation. Only by detaching from our desires can we reduce frustration and suffering.

Only by turning away from the world and all desire in life, only by transcending human nature itself, can we be free from misery.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!

Tomas

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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2021 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.