Time and space as objectivation of the will

According to Schopenhauer, the will transcends time and space, which together constitute the principle of sufficient reason of being. Time and space are conditions for manifestations of the will, but the will itself is unconditioned by time or space. The plurality of things in time and space is an objectification of the will.

Schopenhauer explains that the will cannot properly be defined as a necessary cause of its manifestations in the phenomenal world, because it is not governed by the principle of sufficient reason. The relationship between freedom and necessity is also the relationship between the will and its manifestations in time and space.

Schopenhauer also explains that the will cannot properly be defined as an aim or desire to do something, because the will does not have an aim or purpose in its willing. The principle of sufficient reason of acting, which declares that actions must logically follow from some motive, governs only manifestations of the will and not the will itself.

Schopenhauer argues that the will manifests itself in the world of individual things and in the world of individual ideas or concepts. Each individual act of will may require a motive, but the principle of sufficient reason of acting applies only to these acts of will, and not to the will itself. The will is independent of time, space, plurality, causality, reason, or motive.
Schopenhauer also argues that the will cannot properly be described as conscious, because to be conscious is to be conscious of something, and thus consciousness implies a relation between a subject and an object. The will is neither a perceiving subject nor a perceived object.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor



Bookmark this on Delicious

Tragedy and philosophy

Hegel and Nietzsche present two of the most important discussions of tragedy and philosophy since Aristotle.

Nietzsche claims to be the first tragic philosopher, and Hegel boasted that he had read all the Greek tragedies. Tragedy presents a challenge to rational thought because it implies a conflict in reason itself, i.e., that reason contradicts itself.
Tragic conflict is not a conflict of right and wrong, but of right with right.

Hegel’s concept of dialectical reason is a reason that sustains and endures contradiction. At issue is the question whether tragedy excludes reconciliation, or whether there is tragic reconciliation.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Hypertextopia-PHONEREADER Library -- Jean-Philippe Pastor


métabole
hypertexte

American unreason

Some worry that contemporary Americans are too stupid to vote because they can't find the countries that we're at war with on maps, even if those maps are just of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite such arguments -- laid out in books such as Susan Jacoby's "The Age of American Unreason" and movies such as "Idiocracy" and "Wall-E" -- I don't think americans are intellectually lazier than their ancestors. In fact, I suspect that writers who rant about blossoming stupidity in the U.S. are actually insecure about their own intelligence.

So when I heard about Adam Winer's new book, "How Dumb Are You?: The Great American Stupidity Quiz," I asked him to devise a test for me to challenge one of them to a smart-off...

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-

PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Justify induction

The pragmatist hopes to justify induction by appeal to its tendency to be right if any policy will, because induction can factor in the successes of other predictive policies.

However, it has been argued that the fact that an inductive policy of prediction is as successful as, or more successful than any other does not show which particular regularities will persist, and this is what we need if we are to explain our ability to project the right regularities.

Turning from contemporary attempts to justify induction, we can look at Hume's own response to the problem. Hume argued in effect that although Reason cannot explain our ability to make correct inductive inference, natural instinct can. Hume says that "Nature, by an absolute and uncountroulable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel".

Some modern commentators agree with Hume's solution; for example, Oxford Professor John Kenyon, who has argued: "Reason might manage to raise a doubt about the truth of a conclusion of natural inductive inference just for a moment in the study, but the forces of nature will soon overcome that artificial scepticism, and the sheer agreeableness of animal faith will protect us from excessive caution and sterile suspension of belief."

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts