Chapter 60 Book IV The World as Will Revisited §60

Having completed the two analyzes which must be inserted, namely, the freedom of the will itself and the necessity of the phenomenon of the will, we have then analyzed the fate of the will in the world which reflects its essence, and after knowing this world has to affirm or deny itself; we can now, then, bring to a higher degree of certainty the affirmation itself which we have said and explained above only in general, since we are now dealing with the affirmation of the will. and negation are the only modes of behavior that can be expressed, and are examined in terms of their inner meaning.

The affirmation of the will is not disturbed by any cognition, the permanent desire itself, and it is this desire that generally pervades human life.Since the human body is already the objectification of the will, as the will manifests itself on this level, in this body, then the desire of the will, developed in time, is equal to [is and] the [parallel] of this body. Interpretation is to explain the meaning of the whole body and its parts. It is another way of expressing the same thing in itself, and the body is the phenomenon of this thing in itself. Therefore, we can also say that the affirmation of the body replaces the affirmation of the will.The basic task of all complex volitional activities is always to meet the needs, and the needs are inseparable from the survival of the body in terms of health. They have already been expressed in the survival of the body and can be reduced to individual preservation and race reproduction. .But the various motives thus indirectly acquire the power to affect the will and produce those complex acts of the will.Every such activity is at all but a sample, a specimen, of the will that manifests here.What kind of such a quality is, and what form the motive has and gives to it, is not important; but it is only a matter of wanting at all, and with what intensity of desire. .The will can be seen only in motives, as the eye expresses the power of seeing only in light [lines].Motivation stands before the will as if it were a transfigured Protos: always promising complete satisfaction, promising to quench the will's thirst; form, and in this form the will is moved anew, and always according to the intensity of the will and its relation to cognition [both], which in turn appear to be the "Perceptual character".

Man finds himself desiring from the moment his consciousness [starts], and his knowledge and his will are generally in a stable relationship.What man seeks to know thoroughly are first the objects of his desire and then the means of attaining them.If he now knows what to do, he as a rule does not seek to know anything else.He acts and works: the consciousness of always working toward the goal he desires makes him straighten his back, he keeps doing it; [at this time] his thinking involves [only] the choice of methods.The life of almost all people is such that they want something and know what they want; its consequences.From this comes a certain joy, or at least a sense of equanimity.Being poor or rich can't really make a difference in these [emotions], because neither the poor nor the rich are enjoying what they have, because, as said above, it just works negatively, but enjoyment [something] that they hope to gain by their endeavors.Seriously, yes, solemnly, they went on: that's how kids do their stuff. —It is always an exception if such a process of life is disturbed; it is because knowledge is independent of the service of the will, and is concerned with the essence of the world at all.From this realization arises either the requirement of aesthetic appreciation, or the requirement of ethical restraint [self].Most people are driven through life by a sleepiness that denies them the opportunity to think deeply.Not only can't think deeply, but the will is often hot to the extent that it far surpasses the affirmation of the human body. This can be seen in the violent lust and strong passion.When the individual's will is so hot, he not only affirms his own existence, but also negates or cancels the existence of others when the existence of others hinders him.If the maintenance of the body is due to its own power, the will is so slightly affirmed that, if the will would, we may assume that the will manifested in the human body dies with the death of the body.But the satisfaction of sexual desire has exceeded the affirmation of personal life.The time of my life is so short, but the satisfaction of sexual desire affirms life until after the death of the individual, to an indefinite time.Nature, always true and conserved, here even frankly, puts before us the inner meaning of the act of reproduction in full openness.My own consciousness and the intensity of the impulse also tell us that what is shown in this behavior is the affirmation of the most resolute will to life, pure and without other side effects (such as without negating other individuals); so as this behavior What appears in the sequence of time and causality, that is, in nature, as a consequence of the human being, is a new life.The begotten comes before the begotten, which is different from the latter in appearance, but is the same in noumenon or concept.It is this act, therefore, by which the line of living beings is united individually into a whole, and perpetuates as such a whole.As far as the begotten is concerned, reproduction is only the expression or sign of his resolute affirmation of the will to life; as far as the begotten is concerned, reproduction is not some ground for the will that manifests itself in him, because the will itself knows neither ground nor What conclusion; but procreation, like all causes, is only an accidental cause of the manifestation of the will here and now.As a thing-in-itself, there is no difference between the will of the living and the will of the lived, since only phenomena, not things-in-itself, are subject to the principle of individuation.With the affirmation beyond one's own body, until the formation of a new body, pain and death attached to the phenomena of life are affirmed anew; and the possibility of liberation brought about by the most perfect cognitive faculties is here affirmed. declared void.Here, [people's] shyness about reproductive behavior has deep roots. —This view is expressed in mythology in Christian doctrine, that we all had a share in Adam's infliction (which was apparently only sexual gratification); Suffering and death.Religious teaching here goes beyond consideration according to the principle of reason to recognize the idea of ​​man; the unity of the idea is recovered from its division into countless individuals by this reproductive tether that unites all.According to this, the doctrine regards each individual as on the one hand equal to Adam, the representative of this affirmation of life; .On the other hand, the knowledge of the Idea points out to the doctrine that each individual is equal to the Saviour, and the representative of this negation of life. It is by the Saviour's merits that all are freed from sin and death, that is, from the bondage of this world (Letter to the Romans 5, 12-21).

Our view of sexual satisfaction as an affirmation of the will to live beyond individual life, as the view that it finally falls into the palm of individual life because of sexual satisfaction, is tantamount to the view of rewriting the deed to life , there is also a mythical expression, that is the Greek myth about Proserpina.As long as Proserpina had not eaten the fruit of the underworld, she might have returned from the underworld; but since she had enjoyed a pomegranate, she was completely sunk in the underworld.The meaning of this myth can be clearly seen in Goethe's incomparable pen; what is particularly outstanding is that just after [Proserpina] ate the pomegranate, suddenly the goddess of command, Barrjan, sang in a chorus out of sight:

"You are one of us! You have to wake up and come back; Tasted a pomegranate, Made you ours! " It is worth noting that Clemens Alexander ("Miscellaneous Poetry", Book III, Chapter 15) points out this problem in the same image and the same language: "Those who forsake all their sins for the kingdom of heaven, they Happy, sober and untainted by the world." Another proof of the sexual drive as the resolute and strongest affirmation of life is that in both natural man and animal it is the last end and highest goal of life.Self-preservation is their first endeavor.Once this step has been properly arranged, they seek only the reproduction of the race; everything else is beyond their ability as natural beings.The nature with the will to life itself as the inner essence is also urging humans and animals to reproduce with all its power.After reproduction, what nature has desired in the individual, having attained her end, is quite indifferent to the death of the individual; for in it, as in the will to life, it is concerned only with the preservation of the race, to which the individual is counted. Nothing. —Because the inner essence of nature, that is, the will to live, expresses itself most strongly in the sexual impulse; so the ancient poets and philosophers—Hesiod and Parmenides—significantly say that love God is the first, the Creator, and the principle from which all things emerge (see Aristotle: Ⅰ, 4.).Finergudes once said: "Zeus turned himself into [Eros] Eros when he wanted to create the world." We find this question discussed at length in G.F. Sherman's Cosmological Eros (1852 edition).Mana of the Indians is also translated as "love", and her spinning and weaving products are the whole world of illusion.

More than any other visible organ of the body, the genitals are subject only to the will and not at all to cognition.The will is here almost as it is in those parts of the body which serve only stimuli for vegetative life, for reproduction - in which the will operates only blindly - and with it in ignorance The natural world is the same independent of cognition.It turns out that reproduction is only the regeneration function of transitioning to a new individual, which is equal to the regeneration function of the second power, and death is only the excretion of the second power. —On the premise of all this, the sex organ is, so to speak, the true focus of the will, and thus the brain, the representative of cognition, that is, the opposite pole to the other side of the world, the world as representation.The sex organ is the principle that sustains life and guarantees endless life in time. Because it has such attributes, the Greeks worship it in "Falus", and the Indians worship it in Linga, so these things are all will symbol of affirmation.Knowledge, on the other hand, offers the possibility of annihilation of desire, of liberation through freedom, of detachment and annihilation of the world.

At the beginning of this fourth book, we have considered in detail how the will to life should regard its relation to death in its affirmation, that is, in this way: death does not offend it, because death itself is contained in life. , and exists as something attached to life; and the opposite of death, life, is completely in balance with death, and despite the death of the individual, it still always defends the will to life and guarantees life.In order to express this meaning, the Indians used Ling Ying to add to the death god Xi Hua as a symbol.In the same place we have shown how a fully conscious man who stands on a firm affirmation of life looks death face to face without fear.So don't talk about it here.Most people do not have clear thinking on this standpoint, they [just] keep affirming life.As the mirror of this affirmation there is the world, with its innumerable individuals, with its infinite suffering in infinite time and infinite space, between life and death, without end. —But there is nothing to complain about this, because the will plays out this great tragedy and comedy at its own expense, and the will is its own audience.The world is precisely such a world, because the will - whose appearance is the world - is such a will, and because it is just for the will to suffer in this way, because the will is in this appearance. You have to affirm yourself; and this affirmation is just and reasonable because the will endures the pain, so the two are even.Here we have a glimpse of eternal justice as a whole; we shall see it in more detail and clearly in individual cases later on.But first we must talk about temporal or human justice.