Introducing Nietzsche: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides Book 0)

by Laurence Gane

For Schopenhauer, like his great predecessor Immanuel Kant, there is a fundamental distinction between the world as it appears (phenomena) and the world as it truly is (noumena). All appearances are mere physical manifestations of an underlying reality, which for Schopenhauer is the WILL.

Will is seen as the source of all suffering, since willing never brings contentment, but only further desire! (An echo of the teaching of Gautama Buddha.) Thus we are condemned to the endless pursuit of impossible desires: “We blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although we well know that it will burst.”

Indeed, “All great periods of culture have been periods of political decline.” The energy required for politics on a large scale, or in economy, or in universal commerce, or in parliamentarism, or in military interest, usually reduces the level of culture of a people.