VIII. Reactionary World Conceptions

For Schopenhauer, the essential ground for all world processes is the will. It is an eternal dark urge for existence. It contains no reason because reason comes into existence only in the human brain, which in turn is created by the will. Hegel sees the spirit as the root of the world in self-conscious reason, and in human reason, only as individual realization of the general world reason. Schopenhauer, by contrast, recognizes reason only as a product of the brain, as a mere bubble that comes into being at the end of the process in which will, the unreasoning blind urge, has created everything else first. In Hegel, all things and processes are permeated by reason; in Schopenhauer, everything is without reason, for everything is the product of the will without reason. The personality of Schopenhauer exemplifies unequivocally a statement of Fichte, “The kind of world conception a man chooses depends on the kind of man he is.”