Sensory Perception and Aesthetic Contemplation

Abstract

As has been pointed out in the previous chapter, Schopenhauer contends that the whole organic and inorganic world is ultimately governed by an insatiable, blind will. Life as a whole is purposeless: there is no ultimate goal or meaning, for the will is only interested in manifesting itself in (or as) a myriad of phenomena which we call the ‘world’ or ‘life’. Human life too is nothing but an insignificant product or ‘objectivation’ of a blind, unconscious will, and because our life is determined by willing (i.e. by needs, affects, urges, and desires) and willing is characterised by lack, our life is essentially full of misery and suffering. We are constantly yearning for objects that can satisfy our needs and desires and once we have finally found a way to satisfy one desire, another one crops up and we become restless willing subjects once again, and so on in an endless whirlpool of willing, suffering, momentary satisfaction, boredom, willing again, and so on. Life is not a good thing. The only way, Schopenhauer argues, to escape from these torments of willing is by ‘seeing the world aright’, as Wittgenstein would have it, that is to say, by acknowledging the pointlessness and insignificance of our own willing existence, and ultimately by giving up willing as such — which in fact really means abandoning our own individuality, our own willing selves — which is momentarily possible in aesthetic experiences of beauty and sublimity, and permanently achievable only in the exceptional ethical practices of detachment, mysticism, and asceticism, in which the will to life is eventually denied and sheer nothingness is embraced – either through harsh suffering or through sainthood.