A paper I wrote for last term.
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The Gheist Verses the Will:
Hegel and Schopenhauer on Kant
Samuel Weisse
March 5, 2010
Thesis: Hegel and Schopenhauer differed in how one can know noumenal reality. Hegel thought that by understanding how the Gheist -- Spirit of Freedom – works in noumenal reality one can understand the truth of the noumenal. Schopenhauer believed that humans can transcend both realities because they have Will, which is transcendent. If one can understand how the Will objectifies itself in the noumenal world then one has truth about the noumenal. Each of these methods gets at truth in the noumenal realm, but in different ways.
Questions about reality and what humans can truly know about truth have haunted the halls of Western thought since they were first asked. Over the centuries many minds have grappled with the questions, from Aristotle to Descartes, from Descartes to Hume and from Hume to Kant. Kant believed that he had completed the project by finishing Hume's answer to the question of what we can know. He believed that there was a split between the phenomenal impressions within our minds and the noumenal world. All we can know is what is impressed upon us by our sense perceptions. Hegel and Schopenhauer both disagreed with Kant. They both believed that one could go beyond the phenomenal world of abstract ideas in the mind and know the truth of the noumenal world.
Hegel and Schopenhauer differed in how one can know noumenal reality. Hegel thought that by understanding how the Gheist -- Spirit of Freedom –- works in noumenal reality one can understand the truth of the noumenal. Schopenhauer believed that humans can transcend both realities because they have Will, which is transcendent. If one can understand how the Will objectifies itself in the noumenal world then one has truth about the noumenal. Each of these methods gets at truth in the noumenal realm, but in different ways.
Hegel saw noumenal reality as the working of the Gheist into self consciousness through a process of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. This system explains all of history and the interaction between all ideas. An idea in history creates a thesis to which an antithesis is made, these two are taken and the truth of both is then placed into a metaphysical synthesis which is some greater truth of reality. For,
Philosophy shows that the Idea advances to an infinite antithesis, that between the Idea in its free, universal form … and the contrasted form of abstract introversion, reflection on itself. … To comprehend the absolute connection of this antithesis is the profound task of metaphysics. (Hegel 560)
Hegel believed that by immersing oneself in the mind –- center of the Gheist and phenomenal reality -- and contemplating the history of the Gheist it is possible to understand how it is coming to consciousness. Through this contemplation it is possible to truly understand the truth about the world outside the mind.
Schopenhauer disagreed with Hegel and believed that all noumenal reality is the objectification of the Will. Starting with
The lowest grades of the objectification of the will [which] are to be found in those most universal forces of nature which partly appear in all matter without exception, as gravity and impenetrability, and partly have shared the given matter among them, so that certain of them reign in one species of matter and others in another species, constituting its specific difference, as rigidity, fluidity, elasticity, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties and qualities of every kind. They are in themselves immediate manifestations of will, just as much as human action. (Schopenhauer 674)
There are many levels or grades of Will, human interactions being the higher grade and things of nature being the lower.
Noumenal reality is Will manifested with many small wills struggling against each other and characterizing the whole, from gravity to people. The mind is only able to rationally understand how wills are struggling in the noumenal world because of the experience of will which results because of the connection between mind and body. The noumenal world is the stage on which the will is manifested. It is where the evidence of how the will works is. All is struggle; it is by understanding that struggle that we can come to any understanding about the world around us. We must understand how each will strives against the others around it. The mind’s understanding of the Will is the truth of the noumenal that can be gained.
While Gheist and Will are both driving mechanisms for the noumenal world, Hegel and Schopenhauer differ on their opinions of where they originate and how they drive our understanding. Hegel believes that the immersion of one’s mind in contemplating the events that form the unfolding of the consciousness of the Gheist brings enlightenment because the Gheist is the manifestation of the mind and thus the manifestation of phenomenal reality.
Schopenhauer would contend that noumenal reality is Will and to gain understanding of the truth of reality one must have experiences of the. Each individual example can be examined and understood and it is not just historical events; but scientific principles also, such as gravity or the food chain. When we examine reality we realize that all is simply struggle for survival and for dominating other wills.
Hegel and Schopenhauer both saw themselves as fixing Kant's project. Each believed that they had solved the problem of noumenal truth. Their solutions were very different. Hegel emphasized the mind and the phenomenal, because he saw the noumenal as the self realization of mind. But for Schopenhauer what was important was the Will. The Will is the source for all things in the noumenal and therefore, but also has a part in the phenomenal, it is this ability to transcend both realities that allows us to understand anything about noumenal reality. Just as the yin and yang stand for opposites, Hegel and Schopenhauer created completely different philosophies different from each other in many ways.
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Bibliography:
Hegel, G.W.F. "Introduction to the Philosophy of History." The European Philosophers From Descartes to Nietzsche. Ed. Monroe C. Beardsley. New York: Modern Library, 1988. 534-608. Print.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. "The World as Will and Idea." The European Philosophers From Descartes to Nietzsche. Ed. Monroe C. Beardsley. New York: Modern Library, 1988. 646-728. Print.
