Author Topic: How the Will turn against Itself(To Senor Raul,Mr.Silenus and Mr.Ibra)  (Read 562 times)

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Holden

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Senor Raul,M.Silenus and Mr.Ibra,

I have been thinking over one statement  of Herr  Kaspar which  he made something back and went  something like  this-when  Schopenhauer  says  that  the intellect can nullify  itself what does he really mean and how does it work out?
I have been reading  Eastern  philosophy of  late and   came across a philosopher by the name of Sankara and  I  think  he  may  help  to show what Schopenhauer might have been saying.

First a couple of points to keep things simple-
Schopenhauer  claims that in a very few people ,intellect, which itself has its basis in Will ,can rebel against the Will  and can deny itself. So, in a way, Will is turning against itself.

Now, the problem, as Herr Kaspar put it ,is that what are we to make of the idea which Schopenhauer puts forth that the Will denies itself.
In light of what I have read of Sankara, I think what Schopenhauer is saying is something like this- in a very few individual the intellect makes the processes and the systems of the world so crystal clear and an individual begins to "see" the "thing-in-self" instead of mere representations.For example,Senor Raul often uses   the words "pretty women" and "some kind of suffering" in the same sentence.

What happens to a handful of people  is that their intellect is helping them to see all the suffering which they shall bring forth ,by eternal laws, if they were to get entangled with a woman,for instance.But there is more.

Such men do  not say that IF they do a particular thing, they will suffer.What they say is that ,no matter what they do,suffering,though perhaps in a modified form,will always be pervasive.

It is not that there is suffering in the world; the fact is that the world itself is made out of suffering and lamentations.

Now,let me come to the main point-it can easily be imagined that  a man has become so certain about the real torture-chamber like nature of the world that he just does not care about anything anymore,such a man does not kill himself(too  much of a bother).He merely gives up having food and water.

The empirical   intellect denies the "empirical will"(body),that is, the manifestation of the Will (with a capital  W).
In the eastern mythology,there is the idea of a god by the name of Vishnu who rests at the bottom of the ocean .The ocean is placid and the god is asleep. I guess it is some kind of a  speculative metaphor as regards   what might happen when the  empirical will has been denied   {due to the that fact   that  it    (intellect) has turned against itself}.

https://ibb.co/XJtTNmf

As to  what  becomes of the    Will(with  a  capital  w.) that   we can  never know.

P.S.:You might have noticed the bubbles emanating from the god who  is asleep,they  might be  the  empirical  manifestations of  the Will and might arise when the Will ,for some unknown reason,becomes agitated.All the bubbles ,finally collapse, and are merged into the sleeping Will.

Regards


La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Holden

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Even if all the seas of the world should turn into ink,I am afraid my tale of sorrows and suffering will remain incomplete.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Silenus

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Thank you Holden, this only serves to be something insightful and agreeable to my mind.

From my layman's scientific reading, of which I have been focused on recently, I can synthesize Schopenhauer's Will with the idea of the Maximum Power Principle: that is that all physical matter, living or not, strives to maximize it's energy input and attempt to stabilize itself. Obviously, since nothing is able to be stabilized and satisfied, per say, we end up ceaselessly consuming and expending energy in a futile game.

In essence (from my rudimentary knowledge), organisms such as humans, in their attempt to blindly establish order and maintenance in the organized system of the physical body, eventually create irreversible disorder by using up the energy potentials that are "given" to them.

So in the sense of the Abrahimic religious traditions, "god" "grants" us the earth for our use. It's a very innocent and obviously naive view of our rapaciousness. For Schopenhauer, it is the Will, the blind force, that expands unto everything, creating strife for satisfaction that will never be reached except temporarily. For this synthesis of thermodynamics and evolutionary biology, it is organisms striving to reach maximum "order," or stability, through energy intake, that then expends energy and is essentially doomed to have to exploit more energy resources, finally culminating in "disorder" (the elimination of energy reserves and eventual extinction of the consumer.)

Hopefully one may see how the unsatisfied, irrational "neither rhyme nor reason" Will can connect with the idea of physical matter spontaneously, accidentally, creating forms for maximum expansion and energy consumption.

We seemingly cannot explain why the cosmos functions towards this futile stability amongst finite potential energy forms, as we cannot explain the blind Will and it's many forms of unceasing dissatisfaction. It is just what it is.

So yes, in sum, denial of Will is one instance of an organism going against the forces of life. It is a self-conscious organism that has become a natural, evolutionary dead-end.

The two concepts can very obviously be understood in relation to one another. Schopenhauer was truly ahead of his time and arena of study, and he had your people to thank for it, Holden. That, and the ability to look at reality without denial and without "feel-good" anthropocentric concepts. :)

I hope I explained this fairly clearly. Please let me know if I've clouded over such a graspable concept with useless jargon, as I worry I may sometimes do.

Take care.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2019, 08:24:01 am by Silenus »

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

Silenus

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I'd like to take a step back now and say that maybe rushing to deny the importance of the Hebrew scripture isn't a fair move. Maybe one can relate the books of Genesis (man is granted earth as his dominion for full exploitation) and Ecclesiastes (no matter how much I accumulate and exploit, it is all for naught and I must seek still more) to the insatiable, striving Will and the unceasing interplay of stability/instability of random physical manifestations. It is something to consider, in my mind.

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

raul

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Holden,

Thank you for your words.I have nothing profound to add to your words. I think and sense that there is a demonic force at play in our human nature and this world. Oceans of blood flow every single minute. But we are prisoners in this giant prison called Earth. Our body is a prison. Layers and layers of prison. Suffering and pain are inescapable. Life is inevitable.

You see, Holden, this capital city has very few public restrooms. Many people, including me, are forced to urinate on the walls or behind trees. It is neither nice nor healthy. Many years ago I had to ssshiit behind some trees and wipe my hole with my shirt and underwear. I took the bus and luckily there were people on the bus but the smell was unbearable.

The “brains” in the Municipality are not able to build restrooms. I sometimes think that we do not like to see those places because they remind us of urine and excreta and vomits. How can there be pure souls if their bodies are impure, so to speak? 

Decades ago when this country had a small population, the death of a man or woman still had impact, at least, in his/her environment. As a teenager I used to see ladies dressed in black, grieving, mourning. Although the newspapers and TV stations and Internet broadcast the news of tragic events every single day everybody does their business as if nothing really happens. It is not very pleasant to know that our end is near. But let us continue to play this macabre comedy.   

You say that you are “just a sad little green tortoise who crawls and crawls.” I think you have the tenacity of a bulldog.

Take care.

Holden

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Mr.Silenus,

I  think  you have updated the  phraseology  and if  Schopenhauer  were  alive  now   he might have  adopted  some of that  too ,he  was after all a life long reader of scientific journals.
I think  the  crux of the matter  is  to  distinguish  between  Will (with capital   W)   and will  (  which  is represented by an individual).Will cannot  be annihilated.It is primal.However,  individual manifestations of the Will  can be.Its is the "will"which causes all suffering.

As  Sartre  says  hell is other  people.Sartre  writes:

Then those blood-smeared walls, these swarms of flies, this reek of
shambles and the stifling heat, these empty streets and yonder god with his gashed face, and all
those creeping, half-human creatures beating their breasts in darkened rooms, and those shrieks,
those hideous, blood-curdling shrieks—can it be that Zeus and his Olympians delight in these?
ZEUS: Young man, do not sit in judgment on the gods. They have their secrets—and their
sorrows.


 I am red as a flayed ox, these loathsome flies are swarming after me, and my heart is  buzzing like an angry hive.
(Flies say) We'll suck the pus and matter from your
hearts.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. We shall be the staring eyes of the houses, The growls of the kenneled
mastiff baring his fangs as you go by, A drone of wings pulsing in high air, Sounds of the forest,
Whistlings, whinings, creakings, hissings, howlings. We shall be the darkness, The clotted
darkness of your souls. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Heiah, heiah, heiahah! Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. We are
the flies, the suckers of pus, We shall have open house with you, We shall gather our food from
your mouths, And our light from the depths of your eyes. All your life we will be with you, Until
we turn you over to the worms.



You write that  you  are working in a hotel .Well, I worked  in one too a long,long  time  ago but the  painful  memories of   that period  are  still  with and  never  grant   me a moment's respite:(
The  flies ,as  promised,are still with me,they are always with me.

Ecce Femina   :(

« Last Edit: March 11, 2019, 08:28:30 pm by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Silenus

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"The point of this short but important chapter is to illustrate (Carlo) Michelstaedter’s key concept of persuasion (persuasione), by which the author means to translate and amplify the Greek word pithenon, in the sense of complete conviction. He begins by claiming that all beings, inanimate as well as animate, are defined by what they lack. A weight, for example, always seeks to fall. If having been let free it comes to rest, it is no longer a weight. “Its life is its want of life.” The general implication is that, as centers of desires, nothing (and in particular nobody) can be entirely satisfied and remain what it actually is. Michelstaedter infers from this that anything that exists is also future-oriented, as he illustrates in the story about climbing to the top of a mountain. Every entity, he claims, indeed every person, is both alone and lonely, for, as long as we remain individuals, by definition we are separate centers of in-satiable desire. When Michelstaedter puts this point by maintaining that “the weight can never be persuaded,” he implicitly defines persuasion as a hypothetical, counterfactual state in which an entity is at one with itself and its environment. Only those beings, we are given to undertand, who will the suspension of their own will can ever approach such a state. The theme is Schopenhauerian. But the sources on which Michelstaedter relies are classical. For Parmenides, the majority of people who live immersed in the Way of Seeming, and who accordingly take what is transitory and contradictory as reliable Being itself, are in a state of self-deception and illusion. They can never be “persuaded,” Parmenides says, for only the Way of Being, which recognizes that there is nothing stable in experience, is 'the path of persuasion (peithos). For it alone attends to truth (aletheia).' It is in this sense that Michelstaedter uses the term persuasion throughout his work."

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

Holden

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Thanks for the post Mr.Silenus.Much appreciated.

Krishna says  "Do not let the fruits of action be your motive". I think thats true because of the law of unintended consequences. Herr Kaspar says  nothing that is so ,is so.

If one is going to doing a certain thing in order to get the "fruits"  then  one had better stop immediately.
In my country kids are dying like  flies because they are told that they are born only to get a good job.

Such  a pity.


La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.