Desire and dissatisfaction › A world known through representation

Book I begins with the claim that the world is my representation (§1). Here representation translates the German Vorstellung. The historical Haldane and Kemp translation linked below uses “idea,” which can be misleading if it suggests only a private thought. The term concerns objects as present to a knowing subject, including perceptual experience.

Schopenhauer's starting point is the relationship between subject and object. Whatever is known is an object for a subject. Space, time, and causality belong to the conditions under which objects are experienced and explained. Calling the experienced world representation does not imply that it is a voluntary fantasy: the distinction between an orderly perception and an imagined event still operates within experience.

Kant is an explicit point of departure for this project, but Schopenhauer develops his own account. We should distinguish the world as known under these conditions from what it might be independently of them. The difficulty is finding a legitimate route beyond an account of appearances. Scientific explanation can trace a cause to another cause without thereby identifying the inner nature of everything involved.

The second book attempts that transition through the investigator's own body. Unlike an imagined spectator with no body, the person asking about reality already participates in what they investigate. Schopenhauer argues that this participation supplies an unusually intimate form of access. The claim requires scrutiny because intimacy with an experience is not yet knowledge of the ultimate nature of the universe.