쇼펜하우어의 개인의지는 흥미로우면서도 이해하기 어려운 개념입니다. 예전에 냈던 주간과제에 제가 이해한 바를 써서 냈었는데, 평도 좋았고 더 작업할 것 같지도 않아서 올려요.
How Are Individual Wills Differentiated?
In his World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer says that “time and space are … the principium individuationis” (WWR I §23, pg. 137), meaning that things are individuated through time and space. But this claim generates a puzzle: individual wills, for Schopenhauer, are neither spatial nor temporal, but there are multiple individual wills. But if individual wills are not spatiotemporal, how can there be multiple wills at all? To address this puzzle, we first need to see what individual wills are.
A good starting place is following: “The body is given in two entirely different ways to the subject of cognition…: in the first place it is given as a representation in intuition by the understanding, as an object among objects and liable to the same laws; but at the same time the body is also given in an entirely different way… something designated by the word will” (WWR I §18, pg. 124). My body, as Schopenhauer sees it, can be known as this physical object that is extended spatially, but it is also given as an individual will. By “it is also given as an individual will,” I mean that I also am aware of my body as moving out of my will. I have my own desires and strivings, and I am aware of them as I move my body. As Jacquette puts it, individual will is that “to which we have access through inner perception in reflecting on volitional acts of body movement” (Jacquette 81).
However, as we have seen above, Schopenhauer implies that individual wills, although manifested spatiotemporally, are not themselves spatio-temporal. To understand this, I think an analogy will be helpful. Consider what it is to be an acorn. If something is an acorn, it must become an oak tree. But to become an oak tree, it must occupy some space and also has to grow throughout time. If it were not spatio-temporal, it cannot be an acorn. But that it is to be instantiated spatio-temporally doesn’t mean that the notion of acorn itself is spatio-temporal. Instead, the notion of acorn itself is a notion, which is abstract. Now, for Schopenhauer, individual wills will not be like the notions. For Schopenhauer, notions are abstract conceptual apparatus, while wills are phenomenal. But I think we can apply this analogy to the case of individual will. My individual will, just like how a notion of acorn has the process of becoming an oak tree built in it, will probably have desires and strivings that I will go through throughout my life. So, if I were to act out of my will, my will will be manifested in space and time. But just like how the notion of acorn need not be spatio-temporal, my individual will need not be spatio-temporal. So, it makes sense how individual wills are not spatio-temporal. But if individual wills are not spatio-temporal, how are they differentiated?
To see how, recall how spatio-temporal objects could be differentiated in terms of space and time. Although Schopenhauer doesn’t explicitly mention how, I take Schopenhauer to be applying some sort of Leibniz’s Law, where two objects are identical iff they have the same set of properties. So, if objects have different spatial extensions, then they can be differentiated. Individual wills can fit into this version of Leibniz’s Law for two reasons. First, Schopenhauer takes individual wills to be Platonic Ideas (MR 1, pg. 241; WWR I §28, pg. 180), where Platonic Ideas are objects: “the Platonic Idea is necessarily an object” (WWR I §32, pg. 197). This means that, if individual wills have different sets of properties, they can be differentiated. But recall that my individual will is an object that is manifested as me going through specific desires and strivings. And presumably, someone else’s individual will will be manifested as a different person going through their specific desires and strivings. Then, my individual will and their individual will will have different sets of properties, which allows us to differentiate non-spatio-temporal objects, that is, individual wills.
Works Cited
Jacquette, D. 2007. “Schopenhauer’s Proof That Thing-in-itself is Will.” Kantian Review 12 (2): 76-108.