On the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason, and On the will in nature; two essays

by Arthur Schopenhauer

On the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason, and On the will in nature; two essays. Translated by Mme. Karl Hillebrand

Genres: Philosophy

413 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 19, 2013

About the author

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in the city of Danzig (then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; present day Gdańsk, Poland) and was a German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer attempted to make his career as an academic by correcting and expanding Immanuel Kant's philosophy concerning the way in which we experience the world.

He was the son of author Johanna Schopenhauer and the older brother of Adele Schopenhauer.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have just finished reading both titles in this hideous volume that I bought through Amazon books titled "On the Fourfold Root of he Principle of Sufficient Reason" by Arthur Schopenhauer. I call it hideous because the printing standards are low. The publisher is such a nonentity that they don't have a webpage. The publisher hasn't even taken credit for their work anywhere on the book. It is just listed as Davies Press in the Amazon description. These are odd behaviors for any business wanting more business.

I am convinced that someone owns one of those print on demand machines that some libraries have. They have taken a file in which someone has scanned the book with the settings for 300 DPI and black and white and just printed it without looking at what they had. The letters of the words are often splotchy or missing so that I have had to halt my reading to figure out what many of the words were supposed to be. This happened often enough that it diminished the pleasure of reading the book.

Also, the second title in the volume is not mentioned on the cover or the title page. Nor is it mentioned in the Amazon description. I get the feeling that the publisher had no idea what their product was. Also, as I got into the second title there were places that looked like copies of hand drawn underlinings of words from a library book. I haven't contacted Amazon because I have had the book for a few months. My experience with the product just kept getting worse and worse the further in I got. Yuck.

About the first title "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" by Arthur Schopenhauer, which comprises the first 189 pages of this truly hideous edition. It is the 1855 revised 3rd edition of his Doctoral Thesis from the 1815. I read this book because the author tells us to in the introduction to his principle work "The World as Will and Representation". In the introduction of his principle work he tells the reader not to even bother with reading the book if we are not willing to do the following: 1) Read both volumes of "The World as Will and Representation" twice. 2) Before starting with that the reader is to have already read his "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason". 3) The reader is required to be familiar with the works of Kant and Plato. According to him these are the minimum requisites for the reader to have any hope of understanding his philosophy at all. Of course, there are other things he recommends the reader to have read ahead of time as well, but the above are the minimum requirements. He also wrote that he did not care if any individual reader became confused or frustrated or didn't like his writing because he didn't write for individual readers, instead he wrote for the ages. He was confident his readers would find him throughout the ages.

What a cute little old poop.

I finished reading "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" march 8th. It is a difficult volume. I immediately reread the book because the first reading became more a matter of getting my bearings within the work than an actual reading of the first 80 pages. I completed rereading the entire thing 4 days later on March 12.

I would recommend this book to someone with an interest in New Age philosophy. 1) Schopenhauer's big idea was that all things, both animate and inanimate have a Will. The Will is the primary aspect of existence for any thing. He calls it the 'thing in itself'. The Will of each thing competes to be sensed as a representation in the world at the expense of the Will of other things also desiring to be represented as part of the World.

2) The only difference between the Will of humans and of other animals is that other animals have a lesser experience because they are not capable of abstract thought. They live in an eternal present because they have no concept of time or causality.

3) The book describes the correct beginnings of the ancient philosophers and how subsequent thinkers have gotten some things right but have mostly taken wrong steps in their attempts to understand the world. Schopenhauer describes the four aspects of reality and of mental viewing necessary for knowing a thing in the world.

"On The Will in Nature" begins on p. 190 and runs through to p. 380 of As of today I have read the entire volume. That means I have read "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" Twice in the past few weeks and "On The Will in Nature" once.

The first 15 pages are bluster from the author. Then he discusses what he means by an inanimate or animate thing having a will. He sees the human soul as a secondary entity within humans. The Will is the primary structure of our being. Then the intellect and the soul are at least two parts of a poly-existent entity.

Schopenhauer discusses the nature of the existence of plant life in a chapter of its own. Of great interest is a chapter he calls animal magnetism. In "On the Fourfold Root..." he is quite clear that there is no organ of our bodies that allow us to sense or have a relationship with God. For this reason, he says, his philosophy cannot be the foundation of a theology. Yet, his chapter on animal magnetism describes how the Will of a person can effect the Will of weaker persons, lower animals, or inanimate things, producing the effect we describe as magic.

The following chapter called 'sinology' discusses how his thoughts are described in the Buddhist and Hindu religions, though he was not aware of the beliefs of those religions when he wrote his first book. He sees this and many other scientific studies of the early to mid-1800s as confirmations of his philosophy. I had warmed to Schopenhauer as I reread "On the Fourfold Root...". However, he gave me a bad taste the more he discussed Buddhist and Hindu religions. by the end of "On the Will and Nature" I was back to thinking of him as a maniacal jackass. But he is an interesting enough jackass that I intend to finish reading "The World as Will and Representation". I am currently up to page 300 of volume 1.

The reason I have been looking at Schopenhauer is because I listened to an audio book on "Life After Death" by Dinesh D'Souza last year and he said some intriguing things about Schopenhauer's philosophy. He (Schopenhauer) posed the possibility that our individual identities are an illusion and that in reality we are one person. If that were true then it gives a new meaning to Christ's injunction to love your neighbor as yourself. I found it to be an intriguing enough idea to look at Schopenhauer myself. After all, if D'Souza's interpretation of Schopenhauer is correct then "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" suddenly has a new force to it. It makes sense that we would be created so that our decisions to harm others is actually directly harming oneself, even if we don't realize that that is what is happening. The idea has the bizarre logic to it that I have come to expect from spiritual teachings.

In the end I wanted to see if Schopenhauer wrote what D'Souza said that he wrote. Last Summer I happened upon an inexpensive Dover set of "The World as Will and Representation" at a used bookstore. I snapped at the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. The past few months have been slow reading as I tried to get through "On the Fourfold Root..." the first time. In Dec. my mother-in-law gave me a copy of "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick" as a Christmas present. As it turns out PKD was a Schopenhauer fan. As I complete Schopenhauer's two titles in the hideous volume I can see the influence.

For me reading Schopehauer is worth the time and effort.

[Maika]

okay, so what are you saying really?

[Zephaniah Hardguess · Rating 5 out of 5]

EVENTAL FORMULATIONS: This book sits at the pinnacle of Philosophy for what it does in logical foundations along this sequence of intellectual developments from Cartesian Consciousness, to Leibnizian Freedom, to Humean Associationism, to Kantian Representationalism, to Schopenhauerean Tetrism.

Continental, Pragmaticist, and Analytic traditions afterward are ways to get at and go deeper with Schopenhauerean Tetrism. As such, all prior philosophy looks forward to this book AS A NEXUS and all subsequent philosophy looks back to it.

15**, ᛞ****, ᛒ****
1641, Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
1714, Leibniz, Monadology
1748, Hume, An Enquiry into Human Understanding

1781, Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
1813, SCHOPENHAUER, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
1867, Peirce, {various}

1882, Nietzsche, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft
1927, Nishida, From the Acting to the Seeing
1936, Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
201*, *********, *******

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm just going to go ahead and say this is the beginning of the greatest theory ever written in western civilization. Shopenhauer being the most underrated thinker in history. If you're serious about understanding truth, then quit reading my comment and start reading either this book or the opus of 'The World as Will and Idea'.

[Anne Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading on the Will in Nature: A Literal currently. Previously, I enjoyed on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

[Onyango Makagutu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read