Interpretation of will

A comment on an old meme on Facebook prompted the above titled discussion. I have attached the meme as a picture with captioned text above. A question which emerged at this scene to me, which I addressed as a comment beneath this assemblage was "How different is the omnipotence of will from the interpretation of reality offered by German idealism?" You may imagine where I am getting at this from. Facebook's philosophy groups, particularly the more humorous ones are replete with digs at the animosity between Schopenhauer and Hegel. Existential comics, a beautiful series periodically releases a reminder of the angst that the former felt towards the latter; yet I, limited by my own neglect of these two bodies of literature (Hegel & Schopenhauer) - have sensed this tension primarily through memes, and some other literature produced by them, though never in direct reference to the other.

My question however still stands of interest on grounds which I shall state briefly below. German idealism, or rather idealism of many kinds, are often accused of a humanist bias. A tendency which manifests itself in a strong personification of events, a practice which may be conceived as an error in other branches of thought, political economy and its critique for instance, where the vulgar existential Marxist's question, as to 'who is a capitalist?' all to easily begins to resemble the rhetoric of a fascist position, or even a populist one - who frames it instead as 'who is the enemy?' In fact, the former question if left uncritically examined devolves into the later.

Here, I think it is necessary to understand the antagonism from the point of view that led to such an inquiry; or from the perspective of the exploited. Yet, a discipline - especially a sustained one such as the critique that Marx levels against political economy, would only be a mere accusation if all it posits is that a capitalist is one who employs labor power on wages, to sell commodities at a profit. Labor power supplied by the worker. An examination of the system of exchange entrenched in a society, built upon and between, while simultaneously constructing the relations and mode of production, is necessary to see that a capitalist, within the coordinates of capitalism - is anyone, and everyone.

Blasphemy? Sadly populist discourse can lead naive minds to such a consideration, yet this is not a post about that. My question is "How different is the omnipotence of will (as conceived by Schopenhauer) from the interpretation of reality offered by German idealism? (of whom I read Hegel to be representative). The background to this inquiry is the screen of humanism, here - read in its banal sense, of the sheer fact that our understanding of the world is limited by our faculty as humans, an implicit reference to the Kantian thing in itself... and this shall be our point of entry.

The interpretation of will, if considered as a description of the Kantian thing in itself (a suggestion by a fellow commenter who dared an answer - Goran Katic), would pay attention to the meaning of an utterance (or text) not merely as it is, but also as it is used. The appearance of this is a peculiar paradox for the mind to grasp. On the one hand we have the form that is presented, or that which an agent may explicitly say, about themselves (its content), others, the world, it doesn't matter. Yet if such a phrase were repeated for ends which are not entirely translucent then we cannot but shift our gaze from what is said explicitly, to the registering of a kind of demand, which in itself may not be completely transparent to the speaker.

It may be simple, and indeed rewarding to think such a scenario from within a psychoanalytic frame, but to my mind, equally useful would be to think it in terms of that which it seeks to express, however imperfectly, via repetition or by other means. Those who have studied narratives, particularly first person narratives of those who have experienced trauma of some kind or the other, may note that often the contents of the account, in such cases, cannot help but be contaminated by the circumstances of the experience. What is put in parentheses here is the ability of the subject to clearly represent themselves, which may be manifested in an imperfect demand, presented in the form of repetitions. The appearance of this to a mind, may be one way of describing the apprehension of an idea, in however weakened a sense, for we are dealing with an apprehension which in itself is unsure of its expression. Yet in reading the last sentence while revising I think I may have been overtly democratic in calling such a notion an idea, whose realisation usually brings with it pleasure or hope of some kind, wheras this traumatic, and episodic presentation punctuated by stops and tentativeness is perhaps closer to the expression of trauma, a kernel which isn't properly unwrapped etc.

In returning to the thread where I draw from, Katic notes that "(the)... difference between Kant's and Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism is that Kant believed thing in itself is not one, that every representation has its own thing in itself. For Schopenhauer thing in itself (Will) is one, indivisible, indestructible... etc."

When he says that for Kant, the thing in itself is not one - here, I believe he is referring to the apriori conditions pointed out by Kant necessary for any apprehension of a thing ie. time and space - it's coordinates as it were. This is the only way to adequately interpret the following line "every representation has its own thing in itself", for it permits us not to leave the question of essence in some inorganic and base term such as matter, while also permitting that we may use the same representation(s) to refer to different things in themselves, this I believe to be a turn from which the French post-structuralists made an exemplary though occasionally obscure discourse out of. I do note however, that this second position seemingly ignores the most accepted understanding of the Kantian thing in itself as simply that aspect of phenomena that is outside human perception, or in other words 'noumena' - the world as it is, and not as it appears to us.

In returning to my consideration; I would like to cite examples, the expression of envy, of fear, malice, aggression; perhaps leaning on the negative connotations associated with such emotions, are inhibited from clear expression - censured as it were. Yet, were we to address a subject (if there is one) then the contextualising of such tendencies, their cues, and aims would require to be traced.

In returning to the inquiry at hand, a little more may be gleaned from an earlier comment made by Katic "...for Will time and space do not apply, that it is indestructible, indivisible, that it is not conscious, it is just a blind force that has only one purpose and that is to objectify itself as a perceptible world. Every aspect of the universe is just Will objectified on a different level/stage." Here, I do read a similarity, or rather a homology between the representation of Will, as a 'blind force that has only one purpose and that is to objectify itself as a perceptible world', and the Freudian conception of drive. You may see how this ties in, or rather emerges from our discussion of opaque or rather unformed expressions and repetition, for these do indeed present themselves in the manner Goran Katic characterises Schapenhauerian Will, though I sense that Schopenhauer may not have been dealing with it as a kind of property. Also, we may note a clear difference which does emerge between a Kantian conception of the world, with apriori categories enabling the locatability of discrete happenings in a spatio-temporal dimension, and the Will Schopenhauer apparently speaks of... irrational, obscure, self-objectifying etc.

In returning to my question, this parallel between will and drive, particularly in their aspects of repetition, often in the attempt to grasp an object (even if only as idea or expression) - is a notion I presented to Katic, and received a fairly substantive response - "everything in our perceptible world, every single thing, is emanation, manifestation, objectification of the Will. Sexual drive is one of them, aspirations, wishes, vanities, art, philosophy, literature in general, our bodies, nature, both living and non living, planets, universe... Will is "out there" in a realm where no temporal or physical rules apply, Will knows no time or space. It becomes spacious and temporal not by itself but through objectification, i.e. through building physical world.

This is important: Will is not sentient, it is just a blind drive that has only one purpose - to objectify itself, to become an object and those objects are: 1. powers like magnetism, electricity, gravitation 2. then non living nature - rocks, mountains, streams, rivers and oceans, air... etc. 3. then plants 4. animals 5. and in humanity Will reaches the perfect objectification and reaches self awareness.

Will, in my interpretation, is a sort of deity that has no reason, it has no ability to think, it is a irrational blind drive that is reflected in the whole, above mentioned, world and has only one purpose - to become an object of this or that kind (ideas, anger, thinking, falling in love... are also objects - all of the world and universe are)."

We appear to be dealing here with a universalism without consciousness, one warped in, if not the very embodiment of forces - for that seems to be the only thread linking the gamut of categories presented. Does this force morph however, as it does in Hegel, from perception, consciousness, self-consciousness etc. ? This would be how I may sustain my inquiry, yet have not pursued Schopenhauer this far.

My response to Katic's elaboration was "This seems to be an interesting take on objectification for me, which is too easily reduced in referent to merely a way of portraying a commodity or advertising. I appreciate the manner in which you conceptualise the will - though I do find it interesting to note that this plane of dialogue we share, be it merely a comment section on a facebook wall, still enables us to speak of destinies, emotions, conflicts and a host of other things irreducible to a mechanism in the marketplace. I think consciousness of this deserves a name, and let us say that it is not the Will, as thought by Schopenhauer, whom I admit I have read very little of - can we give a name for the place where he realises his conception of Will?"

Here, no doubt - I was stating this with the concept of the Lacanian symbolic order in mind; the place of the symbolic as it were, whose investigation via analyses reveals the non-being of the master and the incompleteness of the symbolic order. A travesty for a psychoanalytic adventurer to be sure, and I hope you go through the texts to get to your own pass.

And Goran ended on a similar note, emphasising that there is no market in Schopenhauer, nothing is being sold. And that to truly get my head around it, I would have to read at least the second part of 'The World As Will And Representation", a book whose title, and I must say the authors sideburns as well, have attracted me for quite a while.