In Kojeve's vision of Hegel, the philosopher is in a state of deprivation and therefore keeps changing or falling forward into his un-thought complement. The wise man, on the other hand, is stable. He has chained together all theses in a satisfying circle. If he begins at any link of the chain, he follows it all the way around and finds no gap or contradiction. He has assimilated and harmonized all partial viewpoints. He is everyone and no one.

This too is a sort of existential myth, but it's what come to mind when I to think of an individuated being that is unitary. Otherness is overcome in time through dialectical assimilation.

In Schopenhauer's conception, the world is a unitary force (aka Will) that manifests as individuated objects in the phenomenal world of space and time. According to him, we are always striving because there is always a deprivation or lack of something — schopenhauer1

According to Quine, the answer to the fundamental question of ontology, "what exists?", is this: "everything." Everything exists.

Maybe you can explain this to me, but if the world is one (as Schopenhauer argued for, a monism), how can something be lacking? Where are these "other pieces" coming from? Are they just being rearranged endlessly as the Will changes form or whatever?

This would seem to lead to the idea that the end-goal, or "telos" if you will, of the Will (if there is one) is that of perpetual motionlessness, or changelessness. Nothing is altered, the pieces all fit together and the puzzle is complete. In more scientific terms, this means the inevitable evaporation of usable energy, i.e. the entropic heat death of the universe.

In order for there to be a world in the first place, there has to be Other, and if there is no Other than there does not seem to be any room for existence of anything. — schopenhauer1

Can you explain why you think this way?

Perhaps in the early morning, all alone in the frozen north and when you've gotten the fire started in the wood stove, which is now cranking out its radiant heat comfortably taking off the chill in the house, and warming your body. Just before you put on the coffee. You sit and stare into the fire, as our ancestors surly must have, in a simple hypnotic reverie, watching the flames dance with their blue and yellow jets licking the wood, now all aglow, singing a warm serenade at you, and you're become completely enwrapping in this primal unitary experience, forgetting time and place and the coffee.

Maybe you can explain this to me, but if the world is one (as Schopenhauer argued for, a monism), how can something be lacking? Where are these "other pieces" coming from? Are they just being rearranged endlessly as the Will changes form or whatever? — darthbarracuda

Well, that is where I think Schop's metaphysics may break down and why I brought up the idea of "illusion" a while ago. Illusion, in the previous thread, was about trying to account for how consciousness can sometimes be said to not exist but be an "illusion". I claimed that even the illusion must be accounted for, and that by re-labeling the phenomena, it does not really explain it but move the goal post for yet another necessary explanation. The same can be said of this- if the world of the phenomena/representation does not "really" exist, but is an illusion, then this relabeled reality must also be accounted for as how the "illusion" exists, despite its apparent "distortion" of what is truly supposed to be going on. Going on to say that the Will is objectifying itself in space and time, really does not make sense, because now we are adding that the oneness is "doing" something, which would mean that there are various parts doing. How can a single entity "do" anything if all is one? Time and space are conjured here by fiat, and so are the objects which are individuated by it. It is like existence is supposed to come about through some slow churning of stardust into planets but at some metaphysical level.

Can you explain why you think this way? — Ovaloid

If everything is unitary existence, presumably, there would be no individuated beings that are "becoming" (always changing, always lacking something), because everything would presumably already be whole. In order to have becoming, there as to be something to become or change into, and if everything is everything, there would be no need or logical possibility for change.

If one were to be charitable to Schop's idea, perhaps we might say that Schop meant that there was a unitary principle behind all phenomena and that if one were to distill out the true "logos" behind all of reality- we would find the principle of Will and thus it is that reality is simply the principle of Will in its most abstracted state. This then, would bring up the idea of how it is a logos or principle can "be" in any real way. Perhaps then it is like Platonic Realism. This principle would be a real universal of all other universals (like the Good in Plato's conception). Will seems not just an abstracted idea then, but some sort of force here. What the nature of the metaphysical force of Will is, I do not know, but clearly something that strives without reason. A principle is simply an idea though, and so obviously giving a principle attributes like striving, does not make sense. The Good is the most complete of entities and is "real" in Plato's universe, but it is real, not just an abstraction. A similar conception could possibly be what Schop is getting at.

I'm right there with you...
8-)

The difference is that for Schopenhauer the ontological principal and principle is a blind, mindless, purposeless striving. The notion of logos is quite different; it is the idea of a visionary, mindful, purposeful prompting, closer to his reconceptualization of Plato's 'eidos'.

I'm surprised, to be honest, that Schopenhauer's monism is what worries you about his metaphysics. In my opinion, that is minor challenge to his view; if necessary, we could always postulate the existence of some sort of dualism, or a cosmic metaphysical principle (the Will) that would govern the actions of the two (Being and Nothing, for example, or the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu).

The problem with going about this route (in order to maintain the Will component), is the main problem that I see with Schopenhauer's metaphysics: he's trying to explain a rather isolated and unique aspect of the world by reifying the human condition into a cosmic condition. Schopenhauer explicitly argues that we are able to come to know the Will via introspection; his metaphysics is simultaneously pessimistically absurd and yet anthropomorphic.

In reality there is likely a naturalistic explanation for why we are the way we are, without need to appeal to an anthropomorphic "something" outside space and time or poetic hypotheses of cosmic exile, and Darwin already helped dispose of the latter (under a naturalistic framework, of course). I've personally tried to explain this by my own naturalistic metaphysical idea, that of scarcity and fatigue, in which the psychological phenomenon of willing would fit snugly. Humans are a curious yet tragic accident, not so dissimilar to a random bug you find in software, where the strange and un-normal persist only because of conditional circumstances. The naturalistic view looks at the context in which a phenomenon happens and try to understand it holistically, whereas the romantic view looks at an isolated phenomenon and attempts to explain everything else by this one phenomenon.

Schopenhauer's Will becomes not so different from the traditional conception of God, albeit without any explicit benevolence. It's a higher-power force; while theists see God as purely rational and omniscient, Schopenhauer saw the Will as purely irrational and blind; while theists see God as ultimately caring, Schopenhauer saw the Will as ultimately uncaring. They are two sides of the extreme and both involve appeals to a unitary, transcendental force behind reality.

In reality there is likely a naturalistic explanation for why we are the way we are, without need to appeal to an anthropomorphic "something" outside space and time or poetic hypotheses of cosmic exile, and Darwin already helped dispose of the latter (under a naturalistic framework, of course). — darthbarracuda

I think his use of Platonic Ideas is problematic in the way he was using it which seemed to be to differentiate individual characters, species, and objects. It seemed oddly cobbled in the formula. However, the idea of a monism, is not out-of-hand wrong per se, it is simply disprovable by experimental means of testing (which is to say disprovable by any modern notion of what is accepted as a "hard" verifiable truth-claim about the world).

My questioning was meant to understand how everything can be said to be a unity. If everything is everything, then this seems to be saying the same as everything is nothing as there is no room for individuation.

The naturalistic view looks at the context in which a phenomenon happens and try to understand it holistically, whereas the romantic view looks at an isolated phenomenon and attempts to explain everything else by this one phenomenon. — darthbarracuda

True, his ideas came about through Kant's division of noumenal/phenomenal and thus Schop might claim that you are actually not looking at the bigger picture because you are taking the phenomenal for all that there "is". Of course, you can just shoot back "show me the proof", whereby he will simply use arguments of introspection and analogy as you said, which to the modern mind, is weak tea. However, the modern conceptions of what "consciousness" (and can be used as a stand-in, for his Will with its internal view), can be said to be weak tea too. For example, if WillowofDarkness represents modern realist conceptions of mind, then apparently, claiming that "mind is a brute fact of the world that comes about via emergence from non-mind states" is really claiming very little if anything at all.

Schopenhauer's Will becomes not so different from the traditional conception of God, albeit without any explicit benevolence. It's a higher-power force; while theists see God as purely rational and omniscient, Schopenhauer saw the Will as purely irrational and blind; while theists see God as ultimately caring, Schopenhauer saw the Will as ultimately uncaring. They are two sides of the extreme and both involve appeals to a unitary, transcendental force behind reality. — darthbarracuda

I by and large agree with this, but again, do not see anything out-of-hand wrong with grounding reality in a monism. As you mentioned with Darwinism, Schopenhauer has to make up his mind on how he is going to treat reality before the first mind appeared on the scene. I brought the idea that there has to be an ever-present organism in his conception as time could not exist before the first organism perceived it, and yet time started with the first organism. However, since the Will persists as atemporal, there could not be a time before time, and thus makes this a conundrum, as time- being the "flip-side" of Will also could not start at any prior time before time.

My questioning was meant to understand how everything can be said to be a unity. If everything is everything, then this seems to be saying the same as everything is nothing as there is no room for individuation. — schopenhauer1

If I recall correctly it is that the Neo-Platonists believed that complexity cannot be explained by complexity (only simplicity can). Whether this leads to monism is another story but I think it certainly can be used to support a monism.

I brought the idea that there has to be an ever-present organism in his conception as time could not exist before the first organism perceived it, and yet time started with the first organism. — schopenhauer1

By and far Kantian correlationism. Yup.

However, since the Will persists as atemporal, there could not be a time before time, and thus makes this a conundrum, as time- being the "flip-side" of Will also could not start at any prior time before time. — schopenhauer1

I don't see how persistence makes any sense outside of any relationship to time. Maybe the Will is a transcendental space-time worm or something, where it exists at all places and at all times. But if it's outside of time and space, then action cannot occur, and intelligibility doesn't seem to be able to exist, let alone be seen as a metaphysical specificity.

But if it's outside of time and space, then action cannot occur, and intelligibility doesn't seem to be able to exist, let alone be seen as a metaphysical specificity. — darthbarracuda

This is my point. How can anything exist with any specificity (what I called individuation)? Action and temporal relation would be non-existent. However, trying to be charitable again- perhaps we are treating Will too concretely. Schop needs to use concepts by analogy to make ideas more concrete where it may be hard to so otherwise. Words like "striving" make us think of motion or action, where in fact, the common idea of striving could be something that is only a rough association by analogy with the metaphysical version that he is trying to convey. The metaphysical version may be very different.

According to Schopenhauer, we are always striving because there is always a deprivation or lack of something. — Schopenhauer1

Curiously, there is a contemporary Buddhist academic, by the name of David Loy, who says that Buddhism recognises this sense of 'lack' as the source of unease or 'dukkha' which lies at the bottom of our consciousness. Loy says that much in Western culture tries to overcome or ameliorate that sense of lack through consumerism or the pursuit of power, pleasure or wealth. But all these attempts are ultimately futile, because they can't address the real source of the feeling of lack, which is that the self has no real basis in reality, so our lives are spent trying to stablise or reify something inherently unstable and fleeting.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the solution to this lack is not escaping into a separate or other realm, but overcoming the 'illusion of otherness' which arises because of the constant sense of separation and the anxiety which that engenders. So it is not immersion in some undifferentiated wholeness wherein all distinctions are effaced, but in seeing through the sense of otherness that one's natural self-centerdness gives rise to.

To answer to OP, then, I would argue that a unitary existence, if it is at all coherent, would at the very least need to be:

• Self-sufficient (such as a being of pure actuality in Aristotelian metaphysics)
• As simple as is metaphysically possible (which I think is the biggie here: can a simple being have parts, and if it has no parts, how can it do anything?)
• Transcendent
• Metaphysically omnipotent (as everything derives its existence from the One, or is a part of the One)

Oddly enough these match up rather well with traditional conceptions of God, minus the omnibenevolence that is somehow benevolent outside of our petty little human moral schemes, and perhaps omniscience, as would apply to a dormant God, or a intellectually-inert being such as the Will or the Hindu Brahma.

But I think asking what a unitary existence is like might be a category error. Experience might not even be compatible with unitary existence.

'Experience of the transcendent', union with the divine, theosis, samadhi.

"Oh no, he did it! He said the D word!" But, don't forget that Schopenhauer declared himself atheist, whilst also praising religious asceticism as the only way to disentangle oneself from the will.

Experience might not even be compatible with unitary existence. — darthbarracuda

Well, asking what existence is like if there was no individuation is pretty hard to understand, so it is not something one can simply picture.

Curiously, there is a contemporary Buddhist academic, by the name of David Loy, who says that Buddhism recognises this sense of 'lack' as the source of unease or 'dukkha' which lies at the bottom of our consciousness. Loy says that much in Western culture tries to overcome or ameliorate that sense of lack through consumerism or the pursuit of power, pleasure or wealth. But all these attempts are ultimately futile, because they can't address the real source of the feeling of lack, which is that the self has no real basis in reality, so our lives are spent trying to stablise or reify something inherently unstable and fleeting. — Wayfarer

Yeah that is essentially Schopenhauer's take on it too.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the solution to this lack is not escaping into a separate or other realm, but overcoming the 'illusion of otherness' which arises because of the constant sense of separation and the anxiety which that engenders. So it is not immersion in some undifferentiated wholeness wherein all distinctions are effaced, but in seeing through the sense of otherness that one's natural self-centerdness gives rise to. — Wayfarer

So this seems to be more metaphorical.

However, to experience this [i.e. the Tao] while being an individuated being seems suspect and thus a nice little existential-hero story rather than a true phenomena that has or even could happen. — Schopenhauer1

That is what Ch'an and Zen Buddhism are based on. Why not have a read of some of Alan Watts' books, his Way of Zen is a good book in my opinion, and philosophically insightful. It's been published for decades, probably out there as a PDF.

That is what Ch'an and Zen Buddhism are based on. Why not have a read of some of Alan Watts' books, his Way of Zen is a good book in my opinion, and philosophically insightful. It's been published for decades, probably out there as a PDF. — Wayfarer

None of this addresses the issue of instrumentality. After the high of meditation, the happiness of reading a book on Zen, one must exist to exist to exist. One bears the burden of existence. The idea was brought up earlier about compassion. If taken to the extreme, we do acts of compassion to do act of compassion to do act of compassion. We do science to do science to do science. We entertain ourselves to entertain ourselves to entertain ourselves. We go to sleep, we wake up and fill the void with whatever keeps our attentions on the surface. A superstructure of laws, physical environs, and social ties already in place from 100s and thousands of years of civilization- all to keep us going for no reason.

I don't see how persistence makes any sense outside of any relationship to time. Maybe the Will is a transcendental space-time worm or something, where it exists at all places and at all times. But if it's outside of time and space, then action cannot occur, and intelligibility doesn't seem to be able to exist, let alone be seen as a metaphysical specificity. — "darthbarracuda

I'm not sure if Schopenhauer's will is any different from the TS, but the transcendental subject doesn't exist outside of space-and-time, or as a thing at all. This was the point of Kantian philosophy: to rid ourselves of such substantial philosophy when it came to regarding the subject; otherwise he wouldn't have made an argument against an immaterial soul that existed outside of space-and-time in philosophers such as Aquinas. The transcendental subject can never be said to be any of the conditions which he sets out to provide as the "conditions of possibilities." It's not that he's non-temporal, non-physical, etc; it's that that these are simply the conditions of possibility themselves provided by the TS. The conditions of possibility are definitely not casually instantiated.

In Schopenhauer's conception, the world is a unitary force (aka Will) that manifests as individuated objects in the phenomenal world of space and time. According to him, we are always striving because there is always a deprivation or lack of something . . . My question is, what would a world that is an absolute unitary existence being be like? — schopenhauer1

I can't recall this, but did Schopenhauer claim that some aspect of the world is not a "unitary force that manifests as individuated objects in the phenomenal world of space and time"? The way you're stating it, it sounds like he wasn't claiming that (that some aspect was not a unitary force). And it sounds like per him, one of the characteristics of the world as a unitary force is striving because of a deprivation or lack of someting. In other words, that doesn't sound like a departure from the world as a unitary force. (After all, if it were a departure, then "the world is a unitary force . . ." wouldn't be quite true after all. The world would be a unitary force AND something else.)

If that's the case, then there would be no difference between that and "absolute unitary existence."

(Now, whether a claim like "the world is a unitary force (aka will)" actually makes any sense is another issue; but I'm just dealing with the logic of the concepts as presented.)

After the high of meditation, the happiness of reading a book on Zen, one must exist to exist to exist. One bears the burden of existence. — Schopenhauer1

You write as if none of those old Eastern sages were aware of this, but I'm sure they were. Your posts are not informed on this matter, you're essentially philosophizing on the basis of your own emotional disposition, from what I can discern.

In other words - you're asking a legitimate question, but I think you're too quick to answer it, on the basis of what you think you know already.

One of the principles of the spiritual path is 'you can't get there from here'. What that means is, that we look at everything with a certain kind of mind or disposition, which is actually part of the problem. Part of what needs to be learned is a shift in perspective along the lines of a gestalt shift, in fact it was just in regard to this kind of question that gestalt was developed. Maybe the reason 'the superstructure' keeps you going is because you let it - and you're sensing this, hence the question in the OP, but are also not willing to really consider the alternative.

That is my take.

Loy says that much in Western culture tries to overcome or ameliorate that sense of lack through consumerism or the pursuit of power, pleasure or wealth. But all these attempts are ultimately futile, because they can't address the real source of the feeling of lack, which is that the self has no real basis in reality, so our lives are spent trying to stablise or reify something inherently unstable and fleeting. — Wayfarer

I like this. It's a hell of lot like Sartre's "man is a futile passion." It functions as a maxim that makes us wary of the quest for "closure" or immortality that may just be a mask of the desire to die. Norman O. Brown liked to put life-death (as a unity) on one side and immortality on the other. The desire to "substantiate" the self is perhaps the desire to die. In Gilgamesh, the gods drown humanity in a flood for disturbing their sleep, not because humanity is wicked. The gods are undead.

None of this addresses the issue of instrumentality. After the high of meditation, the happiness of reading a book on Zen, one must exist to exist to exist. One bears the burden of existence. The idea was brought up earlier about compassion. If taken to the extreme, we do acts of compassion to do act of compassion to do act of compassion. We do science to do science to do science. We entertain ourselves to entertain ourselves to entertain ourselves. We go to sleep, we wake up and fill the void with whatever keeps our attentions on the surface. A superstructure of laws, physical environs, and social ties already in place from 100s and thousands of years of civilization- all to keep us going for no reason. — schopenhauer1

Hi, Schop. I'm a big fan of the orginal Schop, so maybe I can jump in here. I think we do "pleasure" just to do pleasure. Full stop. But that's almost a definition of pleasure. On the other hand, the "spiritual urge" (in my view) does fixate on a project as its object. We complete that project, experience narcissistic pleasure, and the project evolves. I definitely see the restlessness of the human spirit. But if the cycle of desire-satisfaction-boredom is mostly pleasant, I don't see a problem. Unless we fixate on the "spiritual urge" on an "infinite" project like a Reason beyond these finite, temporary reasons that do in fact take up much of our time. So what's the problem with instrumentality? In the name of what absolute can we judge the absence of an absolute? And does the reject of instrumentality itself function as an instrument? I see "reason" as the tool of irrational desire, more or less, so I'm always looking for desire's object. Without accusing it (which would be a role I could play), I see role-play and hero myth at the heart of metaphysics, which is like a genre of poetry in its way.

It's a hell of lot like Sartre's "man is a futile passion." — Hoo

There are resemblances, but the background is very different. Sartre was very much grounded in the 'death of God' whereas the Buddhist attitude is grounded in the reality of 'awakening' - for which there really isn't any direct analogue in Sartre. But it might be timely to recall that anecdote about the time when Heidegger was found reading D T Suzuki (who lectured in the USA during the 50's and 60's) and reportedly said 'if I understand this man correctly, this is what I've been trying to say in all my writings'.

Transcendental unity might be the same as the being in/of us, now at this moment. That being does appear to be undifferentiated, if one considers it absent the trappings of the incarnation we find ourselves in.

From my perspective unitary existence is both here and there (by there I mean in that unified existence), both something as what we experience in this moment and something consummately unified, without any difference between the two, or the experience thereof.

Or in other words if one were to experience it, nothing would have changed, other perhaps from the mirage before our eyes.

Curiously, there is a contemporary Buddhist academic, by the name of David Loy, who says that Buddhism recognises this sense of 'lack' as the source of unease or 'dukkha' which lies at the bottom of our consciousness. — Wayfarer

Clearly if there is a sense of lack it can be resolved only by fulfilling that lack. Any other solution (for example getting rid of the person/self who lacks) is just like claiming that suicide solves the problem of life, or that burning the village solves its flood problems. That's merely an escape from the problem, not a solution, and there's a big difference there.

But all these attempts are ultimately futile, because they can't address the real source of the feeling of lack, which is that the self has no real basis in reality, so our lives are spent trying to stablise or reify something inherently unstable and fleeting. — Wayfarer

I think the self (not the ego, very important) has a very strong basis in reality. There is nothing bad about desiring your own good - provided you understand what this really means. The moment when you understand that your good is intertwined with the good of others - that you are not an island, and your happiness depends on the happiness and fulfilment of others - that your sense of self is given by, and sustained by your community, then you will love your neighbor as yourself - because you will understand that when your neighbour suffers, you suffer. Once you understand this, then you will thirst for order - as order is the only thing which can ensure the limited fulfilment achievable on earth to you and to others. Both order in your own soul (not being overcome by greed, lust, and all the other vices - but moreover being full of the virtues - ie love, kindness, faithfulness, loyalty, chastity, etc.) and order of society (morality/tradition/religion/culture).

So this talk of some happiness independent of the world, independent of your community is absurd to me (as it was to Aristotle). You cannot but be attached to your self in its full meaning - which is both you and your community. There is no line in the sand which if you cross you will achieve enlightenment - there is no single experience, no matter how intense, that will guarantee you happiness and fulfilment for the rest of your life. There is no such thing as enlightened human beings - just more or less spiritually developed. And personal order in your soul will not guarantee you happiness either - it will guarantee you the possibility of happiness, but to really achieve happiness, the stars need to align - your community must also be ordered. But personal order is nevertheless the only thing fully in your power, and gives you the best chance, as illustrated by Socrates.