THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA By ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER VOLUME I CONTAINING FOUR BOOKS Ob nicht Natur zuletzt sich doch ergrunde Goitbi LONDON ROUTLEDGE KEGAN PAUL LIMITED BROADWAY HOUSE, 68 - 74 CARTER LANE, E. C. CONTENTS FIRST BOOK. THE WORLD AS IDEA FIRST ASPECT. THE IDEA SUBOBDI NATF. P TO THE PRINCIPLE or SUFFICIENT REASON THK OBJECT OF EXPERIENCE AND SCIENCE, SECOND BOOK, THE WORLD AS WILL FIRST ASPECT. THE OBJECTIFICATIO OF THE WILL THIRD BOOK. THE WORLD AS IDEA SECOND ASPECT. THE IDEA INDEPEN DENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT RKASON THE PLATONIC IDEA THE OBJECT OF ART . 217 FOURTH BOOK. THE WORLD AS WILL SECOND ASPECT. AFTER THE ATTAIN MENT OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE. ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL TO LIVE 347 TRANSLATORS PREFACE THE style of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is sometimes loose and involved, as is so often the case in German philosophical treatises. The translation of the book has consequently been a matter of no little diffi culty. It was found that extensive alteration of the long and occasionally involved sentences, however likely to prove conducive to a satisfactory English style, tended not only to obliterate the form of the original but even to imperil the meaning. Where a choice has had to be made, the alternative of a somewhat slavish adherence to Schopenhauers ipsissima verba has accordingly been pre ferred to that of inaccuracy. The result is a piece of work which leaves much to be desired, but which has yet consistently sought to reproduce faithfully the spirit as well as the letter of the original. As regards the rendering of the technical terms about which there has been so much controversy, the equiva lents used have only been adopted after careful consideration of their meaning in the theory of knowledge. For example, Vorstellung has been rendered by idea, in preference to representation, which is neither accurate, intelligible, nor elegant. Idee, is translated by the vi TRANSLATORS 9 PREFACE. same word, but spelled with a capital, Idea. Again, Anschauung has been rendered according to the con text, either by perception simply, or by intuition or perception 1 Notwithstanding statements to the contrary in the text, the book is probably quite intelligible in itself, apart from, the treatise On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It has, however, been considered desirable to add an abstract of the latter work in an appendix to the third volume of this translation. R B. H, J. 1C PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION I PROPOSE to point out here how this book must be read in order to be thoroughly understood. By means of it I only intend to impart a single thought. Yet, notwith standing all my endeavours, I could find no shorter way of imparting it than this whole book. I holdjhisjbhought to be that which has very long been sought for under the name of philosophy, and the discovery of which is therefore regarded by those who are familiar with his tory as quite as impossible as the discovery of the philoso phers stone, although it was already said by Pliny Quam multa fieri non posse, priu quam sint facta, judicantur 1 Hist, riat 7, I. According as we consider the different aspects of this one thought which I am about to impart, it exhibits itself as that which we call metaphysics, that which we call ethics and that which we call aesthetics and cer tainly it must be all this if it is whatTTfave already acknowledged I take it to be. Asystem of thought must always have an architectonic connection or coherence, that is, a connection in which one part always supports the other, though the latter does not support the former, in which ultimately the foundation supports all the rest without being supported by it, and the apex is supported without supporting. On the other hand, a single thought, however compre riii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. hensive it may be, must preserve the most perfect unity...

Peripheralizing DeLillo tracks the historical arc of Don DeLillo’s poetics as it recomposes itself across the genres of short fiction, romance, the historical novel, and the philosophical novel of time. Drawing on theories that capital, rather than the bourgeoisie, is the displaced subject of the novel, Thomas Travers investigates DeLillo’s representation of fully commodified social worlds and re-evaluates Marxist accounts of the novel and its philosophy of history. Deploying an innovative re-periodisation, Travers considers the evolution of DeLillo’s aesthetic forms as they register and encode one of the crises of contemporary historicity: the secular dynamics through which a society organised around waged work tends towards conditions of under- and unemployment. Situating DeLillo within global histories of uneven and combined development, Travers explores how DeLillo’s treatment of capital and labour, affect and narration, reconfigures debates around realism and modernism. The DeLillo that emerges from this study is no longer an exemplary postmodern writer, but a composer of capitalist epics, a novelist drawn to peripheral zones of accumulation, zones of social death whose surplus populations his fiction strives to re-historicise, if not re-dialecticise as subjects of history.

The reading of Emerson on the Over-Soul, on the Law of Compensation, on the relationship between man and nature, on first principles and moral courage, self-realization, has had a formative influence on many readers. Often they first encounter his work by chance, but on reading him have gradually become confirmed Emersonians in their outlook. In the quiet of the Old Manse at Concord, Emerson could reflect at leisure and stretch the great wings of his imaginative insight. He gave substance to those things which, though aware of, we find difficult to match with words. Nature was Emerson's first published work and already there is evident Emerson's 'characteristic signature affirmation.' Emerson called his generation back to the primary conditions of man, to the 'insistent now of individual experience.' Emerson would feel a stranger in our world. Yet part dreamer, part realist, he is with us still, 'touching the very well springs of our moral courage' as a reading of The Conduct of Life will show, with its central theme of living with one's limitations