Desire and dissatisfaction › The Argument: From Striving to Suffering

The discussion proceeds in stages: the first three develop the pessimistic diagnosis, and the fourth introduces ways in which willing may lose its hold.

The first stage is that the Will is insatiable by nature. On Schopenhauer's account, the Will as thing-in-itself has no goal. It simply strives, and particular desires are formed by specific circumstances as they arise, but the underlying drive remains. This means no final satisfaction is possible by the Will's own structure. Fulfilling a want removes that particular want; it does not touch the underlying striving, which simply finds a new object.

The second stage is that satisfaction is negative (§58). On Schopenhauer's account, satisfaction is the cessation of a want, relief rather than an independently positive fulfillment. He treats pain as directly felt and pleasure as the removal of pain. Hunger and its relief supply an intelligible case of this asymmetry. Extending the pattern to every satisfaction is the stronger claim that his argument needs to establish.

One might object that this is a peculiar account of pleasure. Some experiences, a conversation, a piece of music, a moment of recognition, do not seem exhaustively described as the cancellation of a want. The fact that these experiences end does not establish that they consist only in relief. Their duration and their positive content are different questions. A reader can accept that desire often returns while resisting the claim that every pleasure is merely negative.

The third stage is the oscillation. Unsatisfied desire is pain; satisfied desire quickly leads to boredom. Schopenhauer's claim is that human life tends to oscillate between the two, with the interval of contentment brief at best. The structure of desire, not the arrangement of circumstances, produces this restlessness. And because the Will is one, the contest among individuals for satisfaction is the Will in conflict with itself.

The fourth stage concerns ways in which willing loses its hold. Aesthetic contemplation temporarily releases knowing from its service to an individual's purposes. Compassion loosens the priority of one's own suffering over another's. The more radical denial of the will-to-live concerns a transformation in one's orientation toward striving itself. Schopenhauer distinguishes this from suicide, which he interprets as rejecting conditions of life while retaining attachment to willing.