he is saying that there can be no part/whole relationship within a single entity? a find that strange, and do not see logic violated.

However is this far, and what "logic is being suspended". If we are parts of a whole, why can't Schopenhauer view be "logical"? — KantDane21

I have not read 'the knot of the world', so I can only go on what you describe here and what I otherwise know from Schopenhauer and his relationship to German Idealism / Kant. I guess Schopenhauer would not be convinced that knowing subject and willing subject are part of a whole. It is the knowing subject that knows itself as willing subject as well, but there is no transcendental subject that perceives itself as willing subject and as knowing subject, as aspects of itself. That transcendental subject is equal to the knowing subject for Schopenhauer, because such knowing is what the knowing subject does.

If knowing subject and willing subject are not parts of a whole than their identity becomes inexplicable. Like you, I am not so convinced they are not parts of a whole, but I guess we need to get more out of Schopenhauer to know why he thinks this is not convincing.

An individual is the pure knowing subject.- that is, a disembodied subject, not an object in the world, but perceives the world ‘from outside’; the world of spatio‐temporal objects that are totally distinct from itself.
BUT
An individual is also a willing subject.- an embodied subject, subject that wills (desires, needs, wants, etc.)

Schopenhauer thinks that willing subject and knowing subject are identical. The identity of the willing and knowing subject, Schopenhauer claims in this work, is “the knot of the world” and therefore “inexplicable”. — KantDane21

You've described what an individual is as being both a knowing and willing subject. If the individual is an object in the world then the knowing subject is also in the world and not outside it. How do you know that the knowing subject is perceiving the willing subject and not the individual itself?

Scholar Julian Young states that Schopenhauer thinks (1) willing subject is known by being an object for the knowing subject, and (2) nothing which is an object for the knowing subject can
be identical with it, the willing subject cannot, according to Schopenhauer, be identical with
knowing subject.

In his above quote Schopenhauer, Young states, is suggesting that essentially "logic can be suspended, and two distinct things can be identical."

However is this far, and what "logic is being suspended". If we are parts of a whole, why can't Schopenhauer view be "logical"? — KantDane21

Logic does not have to be suspended if you think of it as a causal feedback loop, where cause and effect create a loop of causation and cause and effect loose their identity as individuals because the effect becomes the cause and the cause becomes the effect.

It get's quite tricky with him, because he does appear to imply that in having experience, we are acquainted with nature of the world itself, through our bodies. As I understand him when I read him, and my interpretation has been heavily influenced by Magee, it's analogous to the idea that, say, in moving my arm, or breathing, and noticing this, would be like to feel what nature as a whole feels as will.

To put it less obscurely, if I stone could feel, it would not be unlike the knowledge we have of ourselves when we move our arms or walk: it says little, but then at bottom, the will is a simple striving.

What makes it complicated is this, he says:

"Meanwhile it is to be carefully noted, and I have always kept it in mind, that even the inward observation we have of our own will still does not by any means furnish an exhaustive and adequate knowledge of the thing-in-itself… In the first place, such knowledge is tied to the form of the representation; it is perception or observation, and as such falls apart into subject and object… Hence even in inner knowledge there still occurs a difference between the being-in-itself of its object and the observation or perception of this object in the knowing subject."

WWR Vol.2 pp. 196-197


So we are are a step removed from the thing-in-itself, our experience of will is the closest we can get to the nature of the whole, but between our experience of the will and nature itself, there could be a difference larger than Schopenhauer assumes.

I think Philip Mainlander discusses this topic quite well. It might be that we have to speak of wills in the plural, and if this is the case, then the knowing subject and willing are whole only to themselves, and not to nature at large.

But as you say, there is no logical contradiction is what Schopenhauer is saying, that I can see.

willing subject and not the individual itself? — Harry Hindu

by "individual itself" do you mean the object of perception? How would you distinguish that from the willing subject?

a step removed from the thing-in-itself, — Manuel

this is the problem, and the passage you cited. If thing-in-itself is totally demarcated from human experience (in the way Kant says-- and Schopenhauer repeatedly stated will is Kant's thing-in-itself, how can we get nearer to the thing-in-itself? is it not an all-or-nothing type existent?

by "individual itself" do you mean the object of perception? How would you distinguish that from the willing subject? — KantDane21

I'm asking you what you meant by "individual" in your OP. You described an individual as being both the willing and knowing subjects. In what way does the subject know the individual as it is?

Another thing that gets me is this philosophical assertion of this unhinged skepticism of knowing how things are, while at the same time declaring how things are - like how we are somehow limited in our knowledge of how things are. In either case, you are always stating how things are. At some moments you are certain while in other moments you are uncertain. In those moments you are uncertain, are you not certain that you are uncertain. In other words, you are always certain of something.

You described the individual as being both something embodied and disembodied, both in the world and outside of it. This is nothing but world salad that creates a contradiction and isn't useful.

this is the problem, and the passage you cited. If thing-in-itself is totally demarcated from human experience (in the way Kant says-- and Schopenhauer repeatedly stated will is Kant's thing-in-itself, how can we get nearer to the thing-in-itself? is it not an all-or-nothing type existent? — KantDane21

Think of writing a type of function in a program called a loop where you start with some input (an observation) that is processed (observation integrated with stored responses) in the loop and the output (the outcome of some behavior) then becomes the input for the next iteration of the loop. Now think of another function that monitors the process and interjects before some behavior is executed to prevent an error or mistake.

In a sense, I have described your willing subject (the loop) and your knowing subject (the monitoring process). Now we have to explain how we know that we know. This could be explained by turning the monitoring function into a loop itself, where it is monitored by its own process, where the knowing subject turns itself back on itself. It's just a causal loop where you think of something, then you think about what your were thinking about. You must first think of something to then know you're thinking of something and to then think about thinking.

Lovely!

We can't. It's part of being the creatures we are. For Kant, roughly, the thing in itself is an object of thought. For Schopenhauer it was something which we are acquainted with by being creatures with experience and understanding.

It's a very difficult topic.