Chapter 71 Book IV The World as Will Revisited §71

As I conclude here [my] fundamental thesis of ethics, and at the same time the whole exposition of this thought which it is my object to convey, I do not wish to conceal that there is one charge which I have made against this last part of the exposition, On the contrary, I want to point out that this criticism is fundamentally unavoidable in the nature of qing.This accusation says: After our investigation has finally reached this point, that is to say, what we see in the perfect holiness is the negation and annulment of all desires, that is, the liberation of a world whose whole existence is for us. The world of pain is now; that, then, seems to us to be heading towards nothingness.

The first thing I want to explain about this point is: the concept of nothing is basically relative, and it always refers to what it negates and cancels.One (i.e., Kant) ascribes this property only to the empty nothing.This is marked with [minus sign] one, which is opposite to that marked with [positive sign]+, and this [minus sign]- can become [positive sign]+ when the viewpoint is reversed.Symmetrically with the nothingness of emptiness, a negative nothingness is proposed, which should be nothingness in every respect, and people use logically self-cancelling contradictions as examples of this nothingness.On closer inspection, there is no absolute nothing, no truly negated nothing, and even imagining this nothing is impossible.Any nothing of this kind, viewed from a higher standpoint or summed up under a broader concept, is always just an empty nothing. Everything conceived in relation to anything else presupposes this relation and therefore also something else.Even if it is a logical contradiction, it is only a relative "nothing".Logical contradiction [is] not a thought that reason [could have], but it is not therefore an absolute nothing.It turns out that the contradiction is [only] a combination of words, an example of the inconceivable [something]; it is what one needs logically in order to demonstrate the laws of thought.So, when one falls for such examples for this purpose, one insists on the [paradoxical] nonsense as the positive they are seeking, and the [natural] meaning as the negative, then skips [Do not ask].Therefore every negative nothing or absolute nothing, if placed under a higher concept, appears as a mere empty nothing or relative nothing which can always be dissolved with what it eliminates. The positive and negative signs are interchanged, so that what is canceled is recognized as negative and the relative nothing is recognized as positive.Plato made a difficult and dialectical study of nothing in "The Sophists" (Chi Huai Bu Lu Bao [Shuangqiao] Edition, pp. 277-287).The result of this investigation is also consistent with what is said here. He said: "Since we have pointed out that there is another quality of existence, and it is dispersed and distributed over all existences in their mutual relations, then, We can then say with certainty that the being that is opposed to the particular being is in fact that which does not exist.”

What is generally affirmed as positive is what we call being; the notion of nothing, in its most general sense, signifies the negation of this being.What is positive is this world of appearances, which I have pointed out to be the objectivity of the will, the mirror that reflects it.This will and this world are ourselves.The whole appearance belongs to this world, it is an aspect of this world.The forms of this representation are space and time, and therefore everything that exists from this standpoint must exist somewhere and sometime.The negation, annulment, turning of the will is the annulment and disappearance of the world, the mirror of the will.If we no longer see the will in this mirror, it is in vain for us to ask where the will has gone; and we complain that since the will no longer has a time and a place for it, it must disappear into nothingness. Among them.

An inverted foothold, if this is possible for us, will make the positive and negative signs interchanged, so that what we think exists becomes "nothing", and this "nothing" becomes existent.But if we are still the will to live itself, that nothing can only be known to us in a negative way, and can only be called in a negative way; Known by the same kind" just deprives us of the knowledge of nothingness.On the contrary, all our real possibilities of knowledge, the world as representation, or the objectivity of the will, are ultimately based on this old saying.For the world is the self-knowledge of the will.

If we insist on some way of knowing positively what philosophy can only express negatively as the negation of the will, we have no other choice but to point out the experience of all those who have achieved the complete negation of the will. The realm, that is, what people call the realm of self-destruction, transcendence, universal illumination, unity with God and so on.But this kind of state can really be called cognition, because there is no longer the form of subject and object, and it is only known by their own, incommunicable experience. But we, who stand completely from a philosophical point of view, have to be self-sufficient with negative negative understanding on this issue, and we are satisfied with a boundary marker in front of the positive and positive understanding.Since we think that the essence of the world itself is will, and since we see only the objectivity of will in all the phenomena of the world, we have questioned from the unknowing impulses of various ignorant natural forces to the most conscious actions of human beings. objectivity, then we do not avoid the consequences that, with the negation of the voluntary, the renunciation of the will, all those phenomena, aimlessly and endlessly at all levels of objectivity, from which the world emerges The incessant hustle and bustle that existed and existed in it is abolished, the multiplicity of forms step by step is abolished, and with the abolition of the will, the whole phenomenon of will; and finally, the general form of these phenomena Time and space, the last basic form of subject and object are also cancelled.There is no will, no appearance, no world.

So what remains before us, no matter what, is nothing but nothing.But it is only our nature that opposes nothingness, yes, this will to live: it is both ourselves and the world.The reason why we hate this nothingness so much is nothing more than another manifestation, showing that we are so greedy for life, and it shows that we are the will of greed for life and nothing else, and we only know this will and do not know anything else. —If we turn our eyes from our own poverty and limitation to those who are out of this world, [see] their will, having attained full self-knowledge, recognizes itself in all things, then [see also until] it freely denies itself until the last embers which it animates the body die with it; what we see, then, is not an endless drive and pursuit, a continual flow from desire to The transition to fear, the transition from joy to pain, is not the unsatisfied, never-satisfied hope that constitutes the great dream of a greedy man's life; It is the deep peace, the unshakable complacency and joy.The mere reflection of this joy in the [man's] face.As Raphael and Gonecchio have described [human appearance], it is already a complete and reliable gospel. [In people beyond the world,] the will has disappeared, and only the knowledge remains.But we look at this state with deep and painful admiration, and our own troubled and unhappy condition stands alongside it.Because of the comparison of the two, it is obvious.However, in this investigation, when we have already recognized incurable pain and endless troubles as phenomena of the will, which the world essentially has, on the other hand, we see the world disappear after the will is cancelled, and only the world remains. The empty Nothing is, after all, the only investigation that can often comfort us when it is before us.In this way, then, that is, by examining the lives and actions of the saints-it is indeed rare to encounter a saint in one's own experience, but their written history and The art of inner truth which the pictograph guarantees makes them so vividly present—[we shall know] that nothing is the last goal that hangs behind all virtue and sanctity, and we [should not] be afraid It is like a child afraid of the dark; instead of avoiding it, we should dispel our gloomy impression of nothingness, with myths and empty phrases like the Hindus, as for Brahma, or for Nirvana as the Buddhists do. to avoid it.But we frankly admit that what is left after the complete abolition of the will is, of course, nothing for those whose whole body is the will.But on the other hand, to those whose will has turned against itself and denied itself, our world, so very real, including all the stars and galaxies, is—nothing.