Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

How do Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s ideas tie in with the themes of essence and narrative? The use of the term ‘thing-in-itself’ by the two philosophers is more or less another way of describing essence, so it could be said that essence is very much at the heart of their philosophy. They also introduce an element of mystery to the universe and suggest that truth can never be fully known. But Schopenhauer suggests that truth may somehow be within us, so might be known by introspection rather than perception. Schopenhauer’s focus on knowing that hidden knowledge within ourselves is especially alluring to the modern mind. There is also a little of the noumenon made manifest to us through art, as Schopenhauer was keen to point out, and this idea was taken up by, amongst others, Johann Cristoph Friedrich Schiller. This is an attractive narrative, and although modern philosophers mostly reject it, its appeal permeates contemporary culture. There are even echoes of Schopenhauer in contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel’s

famous essay, What Is It Like To Be A Bat?

One further type of dualism, which we’ve touched on already in this and in previous chapters, is the dualism of mind and matter that began more or less with Descartes, although dates back a lot further. We observed above that this is now defined as a form of substance dualism, with consciousness regarded as a separate substance from matter. This split, it could safely be said, is even more radical than the ones delivered by universals and by the ideas of Plato, Kant and Schopenhauer. It is to this other major form of dualism that we now turn.

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