It is well known that the philosophy of Schopenhauer had a profound impact on Nietzsche. Walter Kaufman, a well known translator of Nietzsche into English, has commented, “it was in Leipzig that Nietzsche accidentally picked up a copy of Schopenhaur’s Die Felt als Wille und Vorstellung [The World as Will and Representation] in a second-hand bookstore-not to lay it down until he had finished it.” Given Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for his predecessor, an examination of Schopenhauer’s influence can only stand to provide us with further insight into Nietzsche, who is often thought of as an enigmatic, if not often misunderstood, thinker. What I wish to look at presently is the metaphysical concept of the will in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I will examine the emergence of the concept of the will in Schopenhauer, and then show how the understanding of this concept is completely inverted in Nietzsche’s discussion of the ascetic ideal in the work On the Genealogy of Morals. The debate that emerges from this discussion is interesting in several respects. First, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s views on the will show how two important philosophers can agree on certain fundamental premises, yet come to diametrically opposed conclusions as to what those premises entail. Second, I believe Nietzsche’s response to Schopenhauer's formulation of the will can significantly inform our understanding of postmodern thinkers in the continental tradition such as Derrida and Foucault. Although it is not something I will specifically address in this paper, the Derridean notions of “transcendental signified,” the “dangerous supplement,” and the endless “deferral” of meaning, all have their origins, in Nietzsche’s attack on Schopenhauerian metaphysics.

On the Genealogy of Morals serves as an excellent starting point for anyone interested in Nietzsche, especially philosophers, as it is one of the few works of Nietzsche not written in the unfamiliar and perhaps, anti-philosophical, aphoristic style of many of his other works. But more importantly, the Genealogy contains the kernel of a great deal of Nietzsche’s thought. A case in point is the following passage on “meaning” and purpose:”

…whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it; all events in the organic world are a subduing, a becoming master, and all subduing and becoming master involves a fresh interpretation, and adaptation through which any previous “meaning” and “purpose” are necessarily obscured or even obliterated . . . But purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function; and the entire history of a “thing,” and organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one another but, on the contrary, in some cases, succeed and alternate with one another in a purely chance fashion.

This passage expresses what “genealogy” really meant for Nietzsche. To understand any concept, or custom or “thing,” is to thoroughly understand all the permutations the concept has been subjected to throughout its existence. But when looking at the history of any concept, what emerges for Nietzsche is not necessarily a linear progression towards an appointed end, but a complex, dynamic system, serving different purposes at different times, often contrary to what we might consider its own “nature.” Perhaps the best example of how the method Nietzsche articulates here can be put into actual practice is the writings of Michel Focault, who analyzed the concepts of punishment, medical practice, and sexuality using a “genealogical” approach very similar to the on described here by Nietzsche.

In the field of Philosophy, the discipline of metaphysics attempts to answer the question of what exists. One may respond by thinking that should this not really be the domain of natural science-I mean we have galaxies, and planets and particles, dark matter, and maybe strings, what might philosophy have to say about this? One of the major debates in philosophy is, in fact, what is there left for philosophy to do in the area of metaphysics, or other areas for that matter-I hope to maybe write about this debate in the future but not now. Suffice it to say that philosophers have had a lot to say about the nature of what exists throughout history.

Schopenhauer, following the work of the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, accepted a dualistic metaphysics which divided reality, or what exists, into the realms of the phenomenal and noumenal. The phenomenal corresponds to reality as it appears to human beings, whereas the noumenal refers to reality as it is in itself-its so-called true nature. Kant, and Schopenhauer as well, often uses the term "things-in-themselves," or singularly, the "thing-in-itself" when talking about the noumenal realm. One might wonder why it is even important to make such a distinction-is it not the case that the world that appears to us really is the real world. Well, according to Kant, no. One of Kant’s major innovations in philosophy, the transcendental method, takes into account the fact that the human mind and sensory organs are constructed in a particular way. For something to be an object of experience, which is really to say an object of scientific knowledge, it must obey certain properties which may simply be the result of our idiosyncratic mechanisms for being able to experience the world. Whether objects as they are in-themselves actually exist in the manner in which we must experience them is another question. Kant argued that it is possible for human beings to have scientific knowledge of the world, as it appears to us, but not necessarily of the world as it really is in itself. For Schopenhauer, as for Kant, the phenomenal world is characterized by the strict adherence of objects (representations to a subject) in space and time to the principle of sufficient reason. In other words, every change in the phenomenal world is preceded by, or can at least be explained by its ground, or that which precedes it in space and time. According to Schopenhauer, this gives objects, as seen from the perspective of the phenomenal, a purely relative existence. Whatever we seek to understand, we can only do so in relation to something else.

In addition to being governed by the principle of sufficient reason, basically, the laws of nature, the phenomenal world is representation, merely a picture or expression of what it really is in itself. In contrast to representation and the phenomenal world, is the thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant, who argued that there are strict epistemological limits on human beings ever being able to really know a things in-themselves, Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that the thing-in-itself, or ultimate reality, is the will. For Schopenhauer, the will is characterized by ceaseless striving, constant potentiality, at best only attaining momentary actuality and satisfaction. Schopenhauer sees this cycle as the source of suffering. The third book of The World as Will and Representation is opened with a quotation from Plato’s Timaeus, which asks, “What is that which eternally is, which has no origin? And what is that which arises and passes away, but in truth never is?” The Jowett translation of this same passage in the Timeaeus renders it as “what is that which always is, and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming, but never is?” The problem of becoming, which Plato brings to our attention here, will play a crucial role in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, as well as Nietzsche’s response.

Schopenhauer basically adopts the traditional, and according to Nietzsche, “philosophical” solution to the problem of becoming. The Schopenhauer/Plato solution to the problem of becoming centers around the theory of Ideas. The natural world, and all of its objects, to Schopenhauer, the forms of the will become objectified, are always in a state of becoming, often times taking on contradictory characters as they change from one state of being to another. Hence, as the argument goes, these phenomenal objects cannot truly be said to exist, as we can only know the attributes of any one object as it appears to us in relation to something else, another object, or perhaps, ourselves:

All relation has itself only a relative existence; for example, all being in time is also non-being, for time is just that by which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing. Therefore, every phenomenon in time again is not, for what separates its beginning from its end is simply time, essentially an evanescent unstable, and relative thing, here called duration.

In contrast to the relativity and transitory nature of objects in the phenomenal world, the world as representation, there is the realm of absolute and immutable Ideas. Schopenhauer expresses this with an analogy of the phenomenal world as being an “endless line running horizontally,” while the Idea is a “vertical line cutting the horizontal at any point.” It is through the apprehension of the Ideas that one is released from the will, which like the objects appearing to a subject as representation, is in a constant state of becoming.

Thus the next question this discussion raises is how is one to apprehend the Ideas-the world outside of the relativity of space and time according to Schopenhauer? The answer is to somehow abolish the distinction between subject and object, which perpetuates a kind of perception in which one is always something other than what is perceived. Stated in another way, drawing again on Schopenhauer’s analogy, we must perceive in such a way so as to find the point where the vertical line intersects the horizontal and thereby step outside of time and forms of the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer calls this a state of “pure perception” and says that it is the true sign of genius:

. . . genius is the capacity to remain in a state of pure perception, to lose oneself in perception, to remove from the service of the will the knowledge which originally existed only for this service. In other words, genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world . . .

One interesting application of this theory is Schopenhauer’s aesthetics. Art, in Schopenhauer’s view, is an attempt to transcend the phenomenal world and present only the Ideas. Schopenhauer even goes to great lengths to explain that the reason artists typically suffer in the areas of science and mathematics is because of their inability to think in terms of space, time, and causality, the characteristics of the phenomenal world, and the subject matter of those disciplines.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, was wholly opposed to this kind of formulation. On numerous occasions, Nietzsche attacked the whole doctrine of a pure, will-less, state of contemplation. In the third essay in the Genealogy, “On the Ascetic Ideal,” a commentary perhaps devoted to what, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is called “immaculate perception,” Nietzsche argues that the postulate of a “pure contemplation” is the result of the philosopher’s attempt to banish the central contradiction of the physical world: how things can be said to be and not be as they undergo alteration through time.

Nietzsche’s “philosophy” is thus an attempt to undermine the metaphysical foundation of the Schopenhauerian theory, which posits a “pure contemplation” as a means of escape from the ceaseless striving of a never satiated will. One of Nietzsche’s most penetrating attacks on Schopenhauer’s ascetic ideal is the following:

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject;” let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge-in-itself:” these always demand that we should think of an eye that is unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing” . . . to eliminate the will altogether… supposing we were capable of this-what would that mean but to castrate the intellect.

The mystical state of pure contemplation that Schopenhauer, and on Nietzsche's view, much of the philosophical tradition aspired to, is an impossibility, as “pure perception” is not perception at all-it is not a perception of a something. Thus rather than seeing existence as some kind of pure knowing, apart from the will and its changing manifestations, Nietzsche wants to argue, as we saw before, that existence is more properly characterized as perpetual becoming or “reinterpretations” and “adaptations.” Rather than trying to free himself from the seeming contradictoriness of becoming in time, Nietzsche embraces it as something positive. What this becoming allows for is a complex process of sublimation. Many writers have commented on Nietzsche’s doctrine of sublimation. Walter Kaufman makes significant use of this concept in his work Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. The concept is particularly useful in explaining Nietzsche’s view of art as well as the notion of the “overman.”

Nietzsche opposed the doctrine that it is the artist’s concern to convey Ideas independently of the will. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that in order for Shakespeare to have created a character like Hamlet he must have suffered a great deal. For Schopenhauer, all suffering springs from the will. Thus art, on Nietzsche’s view, rather than being an attempt to escape from the will, is in fact the greatest affirmation of the will. Nietzschean aesthetics does not see art as a desire to end all desire--the idea is not to extinguish the passions of the will, but to harness them and impose on them the function of creative energy.

In Nietzsche, when we make use of this energy in the sublimation process just described, we create something beyond ourselves. It is here where we come into contact with the “overman”, who Zarathustra says is “that which must always overcome itself.” The will then, understood in the context of the “overman,” is the affirmation of life; it corresponds to the ability to change and, in a sense, shed a skin that has become outworn through a process of successive transformations, or a sublimation.

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are in agreement that it is the nature of the will to be in a constant state of becoming, and that the will constitutes the thing-in-itself, the ultimate metaphysical reality. The primary point of contention between them is that while Schopenhauer stressed the importance of “pure actuality,” Nietzsche wished to emphasize the promise implicit in potentiality. Interestingly, by affirming becoming, Nietzsche removed himself from Schopenhauer, but found consolation in Heraclitus, whom he praises in Twilight of the Idols:

With the highest respect I accept the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosophic folk rejected the testimony of the senses because they showed multiplicity and change, he rejected their testimony because they showed things as if they had permanence and unity. Heraclitus did the senses an injustice. They lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed, nor as he believed--they do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces the lies; for example, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence.

Nietzsche’s admiration of Heraclitus, and especially the latter part of this passage, where he writes about the “lie” of things or substances, sheds light on what initially appears as a contradiction in Nietzsche’s philosophy: his wanting to say that substance is a lie, while at the same time, asserting that the will to power is the ultimate underlying substance as Schopenhauer had done. However, there is really no discrepancy here. Remember that, according to Nietzsche, “purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function.” The will to power in Nietzsche is the basic “thing,” but it does not represent permanence. It is a thing, or substance, in the same sense as Heraclitus’s flame--connoting incessant movement-not stasis. As Charles Kahn, a noted Heraclitus scholar has asserted, “[Heraclitus’s flame] seems to remain the same, the flame seems to be what we call a ‘thing.’ And yet the substance of it is continually changing. It is always passing away in smoke, and its place is always being taken by fresh matter from the fuel that feeds it.” Like Heraclitus’s flame, the will to power is a process in which everything is in a state of flux, being constantly destroyed and then reemerging. It is hoped that what reemerges is something higher than what preceded it. Therefore, since perpetual coming into and going out of being is the fundamental “metaphysical” reality, it is impossible to have any kind of “advance” or drive towards being, without destruction. When Nietzsche talks about writing in blood, this is perhaps what he is referring to; all the truths or insights which any philosopher or writer may impart in his or her works have been paid for, by some form or other, of dying and passing away.

So far we have seen how both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer responded to the question posed in the Timaeus about the nature of becoming. Both philosophers agreed that the will constitutes the fundamental metaphysical reality and that it is always in a state of becoming. It now remains for us to examine more closely the divergent paths taken by these thinkers as they come to terms with the implications of this doctrine. Schopenhauer states what he sees as one of the implications in these terms:

If we compare life to a circular path of red-hot coals having a few cool places, a path that we have to run over incessantly, then the man entangled in delusion is comforted by the cool place on which he is just now standing, or which he sees near him, and sets out to run over the path. But the man who sees through the principium individuationis, and recognizes the true nature of things-in-themselves, and thus the whole, is no longer susceptible of such consolation . . .his will turns about; it no longer affirms its own inner nature mirrored in the phenomenon, but denies it. The phenomenon by which this becomes manifest is the transition to asceticism.

The ascetic ideal that Schopenhauer speaks of here is the final embodiment of the denial of the will to live. We are thus not surprised to find that one of its characteristics is the repression of the sexual impulse. “Voluntary and complete chastity,” Schopenhauer writes, “is the first step in asceticism or the denial of the will to live.”

In contrast, Nietzsche views the will to power as the “unexhausted procreative [my emphasis] will of life.” Nietzsche’s goal in the third essay of the Genealogy, is to expose the ascetic ideal for what it is while affirming Zarathustra’s procreative will. Nietzsche states that the ascetic ideal is “the basic fact of the human will, its horror vacui, it needs a goal--and it will rather will nothingness than not will.” Schopenhauer expresses the need for a goal in his aesthetic postulate of a pure, will-less, state of contemplation, in which some kind of actuality is attained, and one is removed from the world of becoming. Furthermore, Schopenhauer saw this as the only way to overcome the contradictions implicit in the transitory nature of the phenomenal world. To Nietzsche, however, this ascetic ideal is a contradiction in itself, for it constitutes “the attempt to employ all force to block up the well of force.” For Nietzsche, the procreative will is what gives life and provides for the continuance of life.

The two poles occupied by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on the ascetic ideal represents a crucial aspect of both of their philosophies. In evaluating their respective positions, we can also see how important Schopenhauer is for the study of Nietzsche. In fact, Nietzsche’s thought could be seen as really the continuation of Schopenhauer with a few minor adjustments. Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer recognized transitoriness and becoming as an underlying reality. One came to the conclusion that the will can never be satiated and thus sought refuge in ascetic contemplation, while the other saw the transformations of the will as an invigorating life force providing for potentiality and the opportunity for genuine advancement.