It has been quite some time since this question was put forward by Holden. I have resisted the compulsion to simply agree with Schopenhauer, and I had done some research to discover what my own deep thinking Animal Being REALLY thought.
Look, I am still searching: I found
Schopenhauer's Deconstruction of German Idealism as well as the dissertation,
Schopenhauer and Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
I can list some threads showing this trail. This may even help me "return upon myself," thereby helping me to disentangle myself from the dramatic confusions that have been draining my mental powers.
I, myself, wish to go over several threads before coming to any permanent decisions about my position. You will see that this old (former) student has remained UNDECIDED and is quite content to rest in confusion.
We have the following:
1.
Existential PhenomenologyI think John Wild's work is worth investigating even though he totally ignores Schopenhauer (as though Schopenhauer had never existed). I am sure this is because Wild was opposed to "idealism" and wanted to embark upon what might be called a radically empirical approach to a phenomenology of existence. He seems to have wanted to take a different route than Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology.
What I like about Wild is his animosity toward Analytical Philosophy, the kind which seems to think it is the only game in town in Anglo-American academia. I also think he is worthy of our attention since he saw American and English academic philosophy as being bankrupt because of the focus on analytic philosophy and not enough attention paid to existentialism and incorporating phenomenological methods into the day to day existence of the living in the life-world, or Lebenswelt.
2.
The Nightwatches of Bonaventura 3.
Transcendental Speculation on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual4.
The Books of Nonsense :: Specialists in PerplexityEven though Ligotti has many praises for Schopenhauer, acknowledging that his two-volumed (1819 and 1844) The World as Will and Representation lays out “one of the most absorbingly intricate metaphysical systems ever contrived,” he does seem to warn us that ” … a quasi-mystical elaboration of a ‘Will-to-live’ as the hypostasis of reality, a mindless and uniting master of all being, a directionless force that makes everything do what it does …” proves to be nothing more than another intellectual labyrinth for specialists in perplexity.
Zapffe’s principles, by contrast, are non-technical, shunning theories and focusing more on the brute facts of our LIVED EXPERIENCE. Emile Cioran also rejects the compulsion to systematize thought, choosing, instead, to break thought down to what can be whispered into the ear of a dying man, or spoken loudly to a drunkard.
This is the direction I seem to be moving in: anti-novel, anti-system ---->
Brute FactA brute fact is a fact that has no explanation. More narrowly, brute facts may instead be defined as those facts which cannot be explained (as opposed to simply having no explanation). To reject the existence of brute facts is to think that everything can be explained. ("Everything can be explained" is sometimes called the principle of sufficient reason).
I would be rejecting the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and thereby joining the ranks of those who I criticized for not remaining loyal to the great teacher of mankind from Berlin. I would continue to stand in awe of Schopenhauer's system and its likeness in spirit to the Upanishads, but in my heart of hearts I would disintegrate into pure lived experience, transforming from a student of mathematics into a philosophical madman poet. Maybe rational trigonometry would ground me.
Once Schopenhauer had drafted his mythology that “everything in the universe is energized by a Will-to-live,” he shifted away from brain-twisting perplexity to the far more easily understood variety of pessimism we encounter today, i.e., “Life sucks.”
What is the ultimate aim of all this striving? I’m hungry so I eat, yes, that is why I eat, because I am hungry, but what is the ultimate aim? Existence is a state of demonic mania, with the WILL-TO-LIVE as the POSSESSING SPIRIT of tormented individual creatures. (Ligotti 2011)
5.
horror - Collapse IV: Philosophical R&D (a little off the wall)
6.
The Cave is Empty ::
Philosophy, Madness, and HorrorI think that Schopenhauer himself may have become less systematic, less rigid, with his popular essays, where he sounds like the Grandfather of phenomenology, Great Grandfather of existentialism itself. From
Parerga and Paralipomena:
To have original, extraordinary, perhaps even immortal ideas, one need only isolate oneself from the world for a few minutes so completely that the most commonplace happenings appear to be new and unfamiliar, and in this way reveal their true essence.
In a thread about the possible existence or Idea of a
Creator God, I had stated, "I do not agree that it is unfortunate that this is a tiny forum. Less is more, as far as I'm concerned. Whenever I browse ligotti.net, there is just too much. I lose interest quickly. I am no longer interested in huge philosophical discussions or competitive arguments."
Presently, I might say that I would rather learn rational trigonometry to see if there is a better way to teach high school mathematics than debate about
Schopenhauer's Transcendental Idealism. (I don't like bickering.)
With that said, here we go again!