E.R. Nasser, D. Litt.

2016 Personalist Conference

Western Carolina State University

Affinities Between Schopenhauer and the Scientific Enterprise

Philosophical Dog Days

Surveying the recent interviews, headlines and publications made by the current crop of

celebrity scientists, there has been an uptick in their long-standing criticisms regarding the

limited value of philosophy. Molding the American attitude toward education, the overall

consensus is that the takeover of philosophical insight by the discoveries of science has been

complete.

Following Nietzsche, in The Grand Design (2010) Stephen Hawking proclaims:

philosophy is dead. A couple of years later Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe From Nothing, with

the bold sub-title Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing, led to an interview in The

Atlantic entitled Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete? On Darwin Day 2014

(February 12) Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist, trolled philosophy on social media. For

failing to anticipate the theory of evolution, Dawkins followed along and rejected the need for

philosophy. His reason: not producing an accurate prediction about the future. Later that same

year in May, Neil DeGrasse Tyson dismissed philosophy on the grounds of distracting from the

real business of science. Earlier this year even the unassuming Bill Nye continued this streak,

claiming philosophy holds up important scientific progress.

Politicians have gotten their blows in recently too. In November 2015 Marco Rubio, who

was then a viable contender for the Republican's nominee for president, claimed that the

American school system needed to produce more welders, not thinkers. Too many philosophers

are busy doing the effective equivalent of nothing, contributing nothing useful to the common

1
good.

To sum up the main crime of philosophy from the scientific mind: this intellectual

discipline has not progressed in over two-thousand years and needs to be tossed aside. Whatever

inherent value philosophy has, it was science that successfully defended against, traditionally the

greatest obstacle to free inquiry. This perceived lack of societal utility in the philosophical

discipline aligns itself with the religious, and just like the new calls to excise the history of

religion, I am afraid calls for a similar treatment to the history of philosophy are not far behind.

Offering an Answer

Accompanying these criticisms is also a particular demand: is there a philosophical

system to assess for scientific accuracy? To the best of my knowledge, nobody has proposed one.

I offer up to them the first volume of Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Wille and

Representation (1818/9). To avoid the problems of scientism, a dogmatic commitment to causal

time, Schopenhauer uses a dual notion of time located in the observer’s consciousness.

Today, there are two distinct approaches concerning the relationship between temporality

and ontology. The divide is over what sense of time should be included in ontological under-

standing. The first is the presentist or tensed view. Time is broken into past, present and future.

The present is given ontological priority since it changes over time. Contrary to this view, the

eternalist side proposes that the metaphysical value of objects does not change, neither can they

be seen. What is needed is a "moving Now" to explain temporal phenomena. I agree with Doley,

this is a narrower definition, restricting the future to the way things are right now.1

1 Yuval Dolev, Time and Realism; Metaphysical and Antimetaphysical Perspectives (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007)
viii, 5-8.

2
 With a sensitivity to these presentist-eternalist parameters, Schopenhauer maintains two

separate notions of time over four hierarchically understood and interconnected books that span

the discipline of philosophy, beginning with epistemology, followed by metaphysics, aesthetics

and ethics. The first is causal, where duration is linked to perception. The second is the Now.

Here the recurring present is linked to feeling the Wille-zum-Leben, extending into the sphere of

non-representation. Schopenhauer is not anti-science but clearly sees the Now underpinning our

causal knowledge. What is overlooked is the needed existence of the observer for any knowledge

whatsoever. Using these notions of temporality, I examine the broad conceptual similarities be-

tween the WWRI and the scientific enterprise regarding the spectrum of visible light, gravity and

location of reality.

This inquiry into the empirical sciences for parallels and diversions is important for

understanding Schopenhauer’s system. His next publication after the WWI was On the Wille in

Nature; A Discussion of the Corroborations from the Empirical Sciences that the Author's

Philosophy Has Received Since Its First Appearance (1836; OWN). According to Cartwright,

Schopenhauer thought “he had applied the fundamental truth of his philosophy to the empirical

knowledge of nature with more accuracy and correctness than anywhere else.”2 Using scientific

discoveries to corroborate his theory, we turn next to an overview of his system, the last

complete one in the Western tradition.

A short review of these categories exposes the problem of the scientific procedure never

breaking from causal time, an inherent dogma that posited both outside and inside the subject. At

the end of this broad but short discussion, I aim to show the value of philosophy is the subject

first approach to constructing knowledge of the phenomenal world. This view is not necessarily

2
OWN, xxi.

3
at odds with science but scientism.

Schopenhauer's Definition of a System

Schopenhauer advises the reader how best to access his system. These steps include: read

VC, the PSR, carry along an adequate understanding of Kant’s a priori in order to tackle the Ap-

pendix; knowledge of Plato’s metaphysics helps too, as does the Vedas, specifically the Upani-

shads. After “the appendix as well as the main part of the work, must be read twice.”3 Im-

portantly, not to be forgotten, he also urges the reader to be extremely patient. Indeed, Schopen-

hauer certainly gives anyone an intellectual run for the money. Among his volumes of work, for

this comparative assessment I have stuck mainly to Schopenhauer's early works before the

WWRI and the essential supplement that followed it:

-On Vision and Colors (1803, VC)

-On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1815; PSR; introduction to WWRI)
-WWRI, Appendix: Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy (1818/9)
Book I-The World as Representation, First Aspect (deductive axiom)
Book II-The World as Wille, First Aspect (deductive axiom)
Book III- The World as Representation, Second Aspect (inference from first two books)
Book IV-The World as Wille, Second Aspect (inferred from entirety of discussion)

Inherent at the very bottom of any theory of everything (TOE) lies a single assumption that can-

not be proven. While the title contains his answer to the riddle of ultimate reality, Schopenhauer

is well-aware that arguments only go so far in convincing other people. Factual claims needed the

backing of evidence, philosophy needs the backing of science. Schopenhauer firmly believed fu-

ture empirical discoveries would support his metaphysical claims behind the observable material

world. To this end, Schopenhauer interpreted empirical discoveries as manifestations of Wille.

3
WWRI, xxi-xxiii. Schopenhauer’s advice differs in 1844 when he issues the WWRII; in the preface to the Second
Edition he states: “For the reader who is not yet acquainted with my philosophy, however, it is generally advisable to
read first of all through the first volume without dragging in the supplements, and to use these only on a second
reading. For otherwise it would be too difficult for him to grasp the system in its continuity, as only in the first it is
presented as such.” (xxxi)

4
 To avoid obfuscation, Schopenhauer clarifies his idea of a system of thought in the intro-

duction of the WWRI: "A system of thought must always have an architectonic connexion or co-

herence, that is to say, a connexion in which on part always supports the other, though not the

latter the former; in which the foundation-stone carries all the parts without being carried by

them; and in which the pinnacle is upheld without upholding."4

Schopenhauer likens Wille and representation to Euclidean axioms.5 While the world is

Wille, it can only be known to one as representation needing empirical backing. For this reason,

his discussion of the WWRI starts with a priori knowledge allowing for a representation in the

mind. This epistemic liability on proof is inherent in any TOE. Unable to be completely proven,

a theory must then be vetted for its truth. Schopenhauer's system contains an epistemic falsifica-

tion principle where new evidence can be introduced in an attempt to falsify. The Wille’s exist-

ence can only be known through empiricism, where concepts or mathematics are both located in

consciousness.

WWRI and Scientism

The unwillingness to even consider the world through the subjective ideal discloses the

divide between the WWRI and scientism. The most famous rejection of philosophical idealism

comes from by Dr. Johnson charging Berkeley with sophistry, Boswell recalls in 1763 Johnson’s

now famous refutation of Berkeley’s idealism, “striking his foot with mighty force against a large

stone, till he rebounded from it, “I refute it thus.””6 This argumentum ad lapidem, or appeal to

the stone, charges lays blame on philosophers for overlooking the real world, Schopenhauer’s

system charges that scientism forgets about one’s consciousness.

4
WWRI, xx.
5
WWRII, 3.
6
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol. 1 (4 vol.), (London: 1820), 218-9.

5
 This willingness to toss aside belief systems other than science, in favor of the empirical

sciences is referred to as scientism. In short, whatever the question, science has the correct

answer one seeks. This belief that only scientific dualism holds the skeleton key to unlocking

nature’s secrets Schopenhauer rejects, what he calls absolute materialism. Both Schopenhauer

and scientism start from positing a causal gap between the subject and object, and also assume

the unending passage of causal time. However, from here the two approaches place metaphysics

in differing spots: Schopenhauer on the side of the subject first (S→O), whereas scientism

resides on the side of object first (S←O).7

The necessity of both the subject and object Schopenhauer calls the correlevitism of his

system. While he firmly places the access to metaphysics inside the subject, nevertheless he does

not fall into the major problems of solipsism. From "neither from the object nor from the subject,

but from the representation, which contains and presupposes them both; for the division into

object and subject is the first, universal, and essential form of the representation."8 The subject

possessing knowledge inhabits an empirical body, an "immediate object," with a special inner

access.9 Knowledge of our body begins in the brain: “only in the brain does our own body first

present itself as an extended, articulate, organic thing.”10 This necessity of both resides at the

center of the WWRI, important because at the center of any TOE, not only can no claims to

know anything be rightfully stated without the existence of an observer, but an empirical object

must exist to have knowledge about.11

7
See the epistemic chain chart located at the end of the essay for further clarification.
8
WWRI, 25; §7.
9
WWRI, 5; §2.
10
WWRI, 20; §6.
11
WWRII, 15. The first chapter is entitled, “On the Fundamental View of Idealism.” Schopenhauer is commenting
specifically on §1-7 of volume I. Moreover, chapters I-IV concern Book I of first edition of the WWR.

6
 After placing reality outside the observer, scientism finds itself retreating back to mathe-

matics. But when pressed, the person is ontologically downgraded in favor of the outside world.

Our basic intuition of the possibility of constructing an infinite series of numbers, all generated

through the temporal aspect.12 He argues that at the heart of mathematics lies the principle of

succession: "this counting is nothing but intuition or perception a priori...pure intuition in time."

This makes the whole content of arithmetic and algebra a method for the abbreviation of

counting.13 Furthermore, he identifies the observation of succession with causal time, as

"succession is the whole essence and nature of time."14 This makes material objects out in the

world, including our bodies, a "ground of being,"15 the movements of which occur in time.

Math cannot be timeless if the material world is not. Next we turn Schopenhauer's influence on

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) modified for use in his theory of relativity.

I. Visible Light, Color and Space-time

Schopenhauer wrote VC. Developing his own color theory by defending and critiquing

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749-1832) Theory of Colors (1810) against Isaac Newton

(1642-1727). He thinks “color contributes to a more profound comprehension of Kant’s doctrine

of equally subjective,” establishing the ideality of our knowledge.16 Perception, then, is

necessarily intellectual.

Schopenhauer uses vision to claim that color originates in our intellect from three-

dimensional space. Color arrives at the eye through a globe, not a two-dimensional wheel. He

claims that Otto Runge’s Color Sphere, (Farbenkugel,1810) substantiates his claim that as light

12
Max Black, The Nature of Mathematics, A Critical Survey (Littlefield, Adams and Co.: Paterson, New Jersey,
1959), 7, 193.
13
WWRI, 75; §15. See also 7-8; §3.
14
WWRI, 8; §4.
15
WWRI, 6-7; §3
16
VC, 38.

7
enters the eye, it is the objective fabric of the retina responsible for the common interpretation of

colors one shares with others. Ahead of the scientific curve, Schopenahuer rejected the luminous

ether theory of light over a lack of evidence.

In an attempt to understand physical motion, this issue of spatio-temorality arises with

respect to observation. Are space and time objectively located outside the observer, as Newton

claims, or inside the intellect, such as Schopenhauer claims? Referred to as the problem of

individuation, the main issue at stake in this inquiry: whether or not spatiotemporal separation is

an objective feature of space-time that can differentiate between physically moving systems.

Eventually this debate reached Schopenhauer, who maintains the principle of

individuation (principium individuationis) demands the unity of space and time. One cannot look

at the world and jettison either one. In the WWRI, his empirical idealism demands that the fourth

dimension is time. Time resides in both inner and outer experience, spanning the subject-object

divide in the PSR. For this reason Wicks calls time the thinnest veil in Schopenhauer's

epistemology, the last diaphanous sheath between us and the thing-in-itself.17

Of the classic philosophers he read, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), was steeped in

Schopenhauer. In his 1920s Berlin study three figures hung on the wall: Michael Faraday, James

Clerk Maxwell and Schopenhauer. Starting from light and perception, Einstein uses

Schopenhauer’s PSR to explain change: "variation occurring according to the causal law, always

concerns a particular part of space and a particular part of time, simultaneously and in union."18

Howard concludes that Einstein's concept of space-time was inspired by the principium

individuationis: "Surprising as it may seem, Schopenhauer may well have been the source for the

idea of spatiotemporal separability. Given how fundamental that idea was to Einstein's

17
Robert Wicks. Schopenhauer (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing), 2008, 77.
18
WWRI, 10; §4.

8
conception of a field theory, this may explain Schopenhauer's rather exalted place next to

Faraday and Maxwell."19 It appears Schopenhauer assisted the efforts of special relativity to

break with classical mechanics on the unity of space and time, and the impossibility of

simultaneity.

Unlike Einstein’s adoption of light as the universal constant (i.e.: c is

approximately186,000 ft/sec) in all frames of reference, Schopenhauer would claim that light is a

manifestation of Wille. Light is the minimum precondition necessary for all visual knowledge.

The sun is simultaneously the source of light and heat, the first condition of all life. Therefore,

what heat is for the Wille, light is for knowledge.20 Through the sun: "impression by means of

reflected light-rays, is here brought before our eyes quite distinctly, clearly, and completely, in

cause and effect, and indeed on a large scale."21

However, Schopenhauer would fault Einstein as he does Newton for overlooking the

physiological manufacturing of white light in the retina that produces our sensation of color.

(VC, 89; see Chapter 10, The Production of White Light from Colors, pp. 79-93) Based on his

and Goethe’s experiments, all colors are really binary compositions of red and green. Red is the

full activity of the retina minus green, and green the full activity minus red. Together they

comprise the effect of white light, the full activity of the retina. Schopenhauer states:

“everywhere only two colors always cover each other, rather than seven or an infinite number.”22

By overlooking the subject, Newton has missed the essential source of color: the eye’s intuitive

ability using this binary color scheme to interpret color changes in refracted of light. Importantly,

19
Don Howard, "A Peek Behind the Veil of Maya, Einstein, Schopenhauer and the Historical Background of the
Conception of Space for the Individunationism of Physical Systems." John Earman & John Norton (eds.), The
Cosmos of Science. University of Pittsburgh Press. 87--152 (1997); 87-88.
20
WWRI, 203; §39.
21
WWRI, 200; §38.
22
VC, 79-81. Quotation on p. 81.

9
Schopenhauer assumes three-dimensional space behind his color theory, something the scientific

endeavor also agrees with and our next topic of short discussion.

II. Gravity and Three-Dimensions

Where space-time lies inside the observer for Schopenhauer, Einstein claims in his

general theory of relativity that gravity is the warping of the fabric of space-time. Gravity,

electromagnetism, and the two nuclear forces, strong and weak are considered the fundamental

forces in nature. Unlike the other interactions which are considered dynamic fields, space-time is

still considered a continuous field in the classical sense. It is fixed outside the observer, but can

now be warped with the assumption of three dimensions.

One reason gravitational fields lack the strength of the other fundamental forces is

because of this objective placement outside the observer. For this reason gravity remains a

continuous classical field comprised of space-time with the classical commitment to two-

dimensions abandoned. Schopenhauer’s stance on gravity, based on the metaphysics of Wille, is

at odds with science. His metaphysics subsume all the forces of nature are manifestations of

Wille, the vital force responsible for everything. Here the reverse has happened: gravity is

defined as a force, not a pull of the Wille. Unlike Kant, who claims our knowledge of gravity is a

priori, Schopenhauer claims gravity can only be known a posteriori.23 General relativity places a

similar empirical requirement on mass to determine the existence of gravity. Gravity is the

warping of the fabric of space-time by the mass of the object, known only after the fact.

Additionally, this bending of space falsifies Euclidean axioms that rely on 2-D space. For

instance, two geodesics on a sphere will intersect more than once.

23
WWRI, 11; §4.

10
 Outside of the WWRI, Schopenhauer gives further details in OWN in the Chapter, Physi-

cal Astronomy (pp. 85-97.) He approvingly quotes Herschel who substantiates his theory of

Wille by associating gravity with the Wille: “They are therefore impelled to this by a force or ef-

fort, the direct or indirect result of a consciousness and a will existing somewhere, though be-

yond our power to trace, which force we term gravity.”24 Today, the scientific consensus is that

Einstein’s conception of space-time is doomed. Insights from the quantum realm have suffi-

ciently piled up that the hunt now is for quantum gravity, where we turn next.

III. Reality: Evil, Ideas and the Infinitely Large and Small

To resolve the ultimate question of where reality exists, Schopenhauer claims knowledge

of the world, and oneself, rests on the subject's existence. Being alive is the necessary condition

for everything else. When the Now of being stops rolling, so does the recurring present behind

our phenomenal knowledge. Knowledge, to be created, flows from the subject who perceives the

object over the causal gap.

When Schopenhauer does turn inward to look for a reality what he finds is the source of

evil in the world: the Wille’s monism. His TOE does not pretend the observational existence of

evil does not exist. While we live inside our heads matter preceded, it always comes first. At

some point, thoughts cannot provide enough to sustain one’s life, something else has to die so

one can remain alive. With Schopenhauer’s monistic assumption, it is the same Wille is

committing violence against itself.

With reality accessible in the subject, Schopenhauer’s escape route lies in the mind.

Using non-causal time transcendence from the world of brute temporality is possible, for a brief

spell anyway. The power of the mind: consciously overcome physical suffering through intense

24
OWN, 85.

11
concentration, focused elevation away from the unchangeable fact that inherent in life is not only

death but evilness.

This idea of accessing a Platonic domain to ward off the strivings of the Wille is found

near the very beginning of Schopenhauer's philosophical career. Indicated by his early

notebooks, Schopenhauer was enamored with the idea of Platonic transcendence in

consciousness since 1813,25 commonly referred to as the better consciousness (besseres

Bewusstsein). It denotes what Janaway calls the elevating aspect of abstract thought in

Schopenhauer's philosophy. “The timeless better consciousness is associated with happiness,

consolation, freedom from pain, and with more explicit religious notions, such as sanctification

(Heiligung) and even…the peace of God.”26 In §54 he includes a footnote on the scholastic usage

of a permanent Now. They taught "eternity is not succession without a beginning and end: "but a

permanent Now;" in other words, we possess the same Now which existed for Adam; that is to

say, that there is no difference between the Now and the Then."27

How does a person access this elevated aspect of consciousness? Schopenhauer is clear

that most people will be able to see the horror because they are too wrapped up in their own

individuality. What is needed is the artistic genius who gets close to the misery of reality, who

then creates a work of art for other to participate in, albeit indirectly.

In this way, art evokes empathy in the viewer using what I will call a Schopenhauerian

Idea. While he clams equivalent usage, Schopenhauer’s version of an Idea if not Platonic. The

key difference: derived from observation they do not exist independently of the viewer. No

metaphysical backing without the subject. Using Aristotle’s natural scale, a SI is biologically

25
Young, 7.
26
Janaway, 27-8.
27
WWRI, 280; §54.

12
known based on the physical body, or the adequate objectification of the Wille into the temporal

realm. The experience of art puts you in a different state of mind.28 Raising your consciousness

over and above the perceived differences to perceive all harm, especially violence, as self-harm.

For Schopenhauer only the artist, to put it in Roycean terms, breaks causal time to see the eternal

source of ethics, the Wille as the Idea.

Observer paradox

As it turns out, modern science has substantiated Schopenhauer’s correlativism as the

solution to the problem of realism. The experimental conclusions of quantum physics have

demonstrated the veracity of his general epistemic starting point to be correct.

In Quantum Enigma, Rosenblum and Kuttner detail the paradox that eventually led to the

wave-particle duality of matter. The quantum enigma is a real experimental event. It cannot be

discarded as pseudo-science. Before an observation, an objective world does not exist. Instead,

there exists a wave. Waves can only be accounted for by probability. To get a concrete answer

(using the PSR), the wave function collapses when it is measured. The fact this paradox exists

more fully at quantum level makes it an across the board challenge to scientific realism. No

observer, no reality.29

In the WWRI Schopenhauer captures the sentiment of the modern day quantum enigma:

"Everything that in any way belongs and can belong to the world is inevitably associated with

this being-conditioned by the subject, and it exists only for the subject,"30 as well as, "in the case

of knowing beings the fact that the individual is the bearer of the knowing subject, and this

28
WWRI, 437; Appendix.
29
Rosenblum and Kuttner, Quantum Enigma; Physics Encounters Consciousness., chapters 7 and 8; 87-114; also 239
30 WWRI, 3; §1.

13
knowing subject is the bearer of the world."31 Furthermore, just as we can choose to view an ob-

ject with the PSR or the Idea, similarly, quantum physics also depends choosing the method of

measurement, as a vibration node or particle. Schopenhauer's dual aspect of the world where

everything is Wille and representation, the choice is ours.

Compared to Einstein, it is fair to say Schopenhauer's influence was more openly

profound in on Max Planck (1858-1947), the founder of modern quantum theory, as well as

Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961). Planck won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics, Schrödinger the

1933 one. The origin of the observer paradox resides with these two men.32Planck's breakthrough

was to follow Schopenhauer's epistemic lead. With the accumulation of shared observational

data, he worked backwards from the evidence to derive what is now called Planck's constant

(h).33

Using h, Planck's constant, it states motion is equal to 1/2 hf, where f is the oscillation

frequency. Each quantum would have an energy, equal to the number h in times the vibration fre-

quency of the electron.34 The smallest sliver of space-time, and therefore duration, h is undetect-

able.35 In other words, h is the smallest causal unit of measurement possible between the subject

and the object. There is only a wave of energy before any observation is made because, as Planck

had discovered, vibration creates matter. More specifically, slowed down vibration. This paral-

lels with Nikola Tesla’s popular remark that everything is light. Schrödinger formulated a hypo-

thetical example attempting that has grabbed imaginations over the years. The colorful example

attempts to tease further understanding from the wave-particle, with the help of a feline friend.

31
WWRI, 332; §61.
32
For more on Planck and Schrödinger, refer to Rosenblum and Kuttner, chapters 5 and 6; 55-85.
33
Rosenblum and Kuttner, 58-59.
34
Rosenblum and Kuttner, 55-59.
35
Rosenblum and Kuttner, 55-59.

14
Imagine: there is a cat in a box and the subject does not know whether the cat inside is dead or

alive. Based on quantum non-locality before opening the box the cat is both dead and alive ac-

cording to quantum law. Furthermore, this superposition of states based on non-locality resolved

and known only by opening the box, creating a backwards reality in the process, life or death

through our observation. Not only does a particle exist in two different places simultaneously,

without any perceived force, but an observation in one place simultaneously influences an obser-

vation somewhere else. For one person to observe the cat creates the reality for everyone else in

the same way at exactly the same time.

Of all the arts, music is the most direct copy of the Wille. The wavelike behavior of all

matter makes Schopenhauer's consideration of music as representative of reality all the more

interesting. The East makes itself heard here through the Hindu concept of OM, the mystical

syllable chanted as a mantra. In the Chandogya Upanishad we find: "Let us meditate on OM the

imperishable, the beginning of prayer...This is the essence of essences, the highest, the eighth

rung, venerated above all that human beings hold holy. OM is the Self of all."36 The vibration of

creation is always everywhere. Schopenahuer agrees: causal measurement collapsing the wave-

function, what is needed is atemporality to get reality into a wave with no center, making the

Now both unknowable and the condition of all that is knowable.37

At this point, hopefully Schopenhauer’s position on the assumption of the BB is some-

what clear. Regarding the human ability to produce a TOE tapping into true reality, Schopen-

hauer does not think it is possible. The origin of the Wille lies way beyond the comprehension of

reason. This view does not diminish the contributions of science. Instead, it is the limitation of

what is theoretically admissible. The BB would not be a permissible assumption because it stops

36
Easwaran, The Upanishads, 125, 140.
37
WWRI, 279-280, 284; §54.

15
causality arbitrarily in its tracks, similar to a position of religious idealism starting from the sin-

gle cause of God.

Schopenhauer's main problem with positing the BB or God as a first cause is that the

question is still open, what caused the BB? What about God? According to the laws of causality,

the dominant way we naturally understand the world, this is a perfectly legitimate question. God

would have to be a causa sui and not possible as Schopenhauer charges: "The law of causality is

therefore not so obliging as to allow itself to be used like a cab which we dismiss after we reach

our destination."38 He acknowledges Christian Wolff (1679-1754) as the first to heed Aristotle's

distinction, the PSR differing from nature's causality. Schopenhauer admires Wolff's exposition

of this separateness: "Nothing is without a ground or reason why it is."39 This is an epistemic

claim that applies equally to the BB. Never think the Wille is force, it is the single source. For

this reason Schopenhauer’s ending epistemic position in the WWRI is agnostic on this question

of the Wille’s origin. He thinks any other position, even in the sciences, disingenuous.

The Value of Philosophy

To wrap up discussion, Schopenhauer is not anti-science but anti-scientism. Of course, he

is committed to proving his own theory with the empirical discoveries. Independent of this angle

that rubs viewers the wrong way, his system in the WWRI nevertheless converges with the

scientific enterprise on the following points: light as the starting point of all observable

knowledge and the importance of the observer. The two belief systems diverge on the general

insight of mathematics, where philosophy relies on concepts not under the purview of causality.

So, while the subject is the immovable piece in any epistemic theory what precedes existence is

38
Fourfold Root, 58.
39
Fourfold Root, 6.

16
always Wille. Eternal time exists before the observer arrives on the scene, never going away and

remaining in the background.

The worth of philosophy has always been its subject first approach to the world.

Importantly, this points to an inability of science to overcome the fact-value gap. Unable to break

free from causal time, scientism has an uphill battle when it comes to finding appropriate ethical

values informing human activity. With his employment of an Eternal Now I see Schopenhauer’s

position on the right path to escape the a priori prison of the mind, what he equates to the

Indiological conception of māyā.

I hope to have offered some evidence to the philosophical skeptics that there indeed does

exist a complete philosophical system, where the merits of the WWRI and the personalist

approach is really unwavering in its alignment with the motto of the Royal Academy of Sciences

founded in 1660: on nobody's word. (nullius in verba)

17
 Appendix Diagram: Epistemic Chains

Below are the two chains of epistemic construction, where shading represents the placement of
reality. Note the inconsistency of the shading within scientism:

WWRI:

Wille → S → O : S ← O

Scientism:

Big Bang (BB) → S ← O and then S → O (i.e.: mathematics), but retreats back to S ← O

→ → → LINEAR TIME → → → → → → MATERIAL CAUSALITY → → →

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