Is Schopenhauerian pessimism truly passive nihilism?

Question

Nietzsche referred to Schopenhauerian pessimism as passive nihilism. Does the categorization happen to be true or is Nietzsche's analysis somehow flawed?

Answer 1

Anyone who knows Schopenhauer must know that he is a pessimist. But why does he have these pessimistic thoughts? The reason is not due to his life experiences or seeing many unfortunate things, but rather a rigorous and pioneering logical reasoning behind it.

Schopenhauer's philosophy was developed by inheriting and criticizing Kant's philosophy, inheriting Kant's epistemology. It is from this that he derived a set of theories that are significantly different from Kant's philosophy. This theory has two core keywords: appearance and will.

In Kant's view, the reason why humans are able to understand this world is the result of the collaboration between their sensory and intellectual systems. The senses are responsible for receiving phenomena, while the intellect is responsible for organizing them, ultimately forming an orderly experience and knowledge, and the working principles followed by this system are called categories.

Kant believed that the world is unknowable, and our way of understanding it can only rely on the information received by the limited functional sensory system to reproduce the world. This is easy to understand. The physiological structures of humans and the vast majority of animals are very different, so the world we see, hear, and perceive is very different from that of animals. Our brain is responsible for transforming this information into an ordered form that can be stored and retrieved. But in Schopenhauer's view, our brain is not reproducing this world, but simplifying it. This viewpoint is the logical starting point of Schopenhauer's pessimism.

To prove his point, Schopenhauer pointed out that there is a great difference between humans and animals, and there is a great advantage in intelligence. However, if we deduce to the most primitive motivation, humans, like animals or all life forms, are pursuing survival. In order to survive, humans must engage in fierce competition with all other animals, plants, and even other individuals within their own population. In the fierce competition, whoever responds faster has a greater chance of survival, rather than whoever can see the world more clearly and win. Although seeing the world clearly is also an important condition for survival, it is not the most critical condition. Or, to put it another way, seeing this world is just a part of survival skills, and you need to react faster. Otherwise, when you see this world or your opponent clearly, you have already been eliminated by them. So, Schopenhauer proposed that the working mechanism of the brain actually follows economic principles, not precise principles. This is a genius like reasoning.

Starting from Schopenhauer's theory. We can ask a common sense question: "Regardless of vision or hearing, human life is not among the best on Earth, but why can humans ultimately win and reach the top of the food chain?" The reason is that human brains are developed and have superior response modes. Although not the fastest, it greatly compensates for the shortcomings of the human sensory system, and through careful calculation, humans also have more comprehensive means of counterattack and active attack.

That's true. If reproducing the objective world is the greatest advantage, then humans have no chance to stand out. Because the sensory systems of the eyes and ears have existed for hundreds of millions of years, many animals have evolved their vision and hearing to the extreme. Based on this, we can completely say that the reason why some animals have evolved brains is to make up for their deficiencies in vision and hearing. When other animals have more sensitive sensory systems, animals with brains can simplify the phenomenon information received by the sensory system through a complex and fast set of calculations, thereby improving their reaction speed and formulating coping strategies.

Of course, the simplification here is a general statement, which can also be said that the brain has hierarchically and orderly organized these images and sound information, so that we can understand the world more quickly. But the question is, how does the brain work? Whether it is simplification, hierarchy, or orderliness, until we understand its working principle, we can only come to the conclusion that after being reprocessed by the brain, the difference between the world we see and the real world will be greater. It's like when an object is in a three-dimensional state, we can see much less than when it unfolds into a two-dimensional plane. So we can also say that the sensory systems of the eyes and ears, due to their limited functions, are only unable to fully perceive the real world, but the brain further distorts the information received by the sensory system.

In Schopenhauer's view, after our brain simplifies the world, what we can see and perceive is not actually a phenomenon of this world, but can only be called an appearance. This is even more pessimistic than Kant's agnosticism. Kant simply said that our senses, due to their limited functions, cannot truly reproduce this world. Schopenhauer further proposed that not only are we unable to recreate the real world, but our brains also distort the world due to the need for simplification. As another high mountain of voluntarism, Nietzsche claimed that there is no truth in this world, and the so-called truth is actually a distortion of the real world. The theoretical source is Schopenhauer's theory of brain simplification.

In fact, various illogical phenomena in human society can be solved using this theory. One of the important reasons why we are numb to the truth and have a strong sense of exclusivity is to simplify things so that we can quickly make decisions that are beneficial to ourselves.

For example, you tell a religious believer that there is no god in this world, and those are all illusions. He often refutes your statement without hesitation. Although both you and he can find a lot of evidence to prove that there is no God in this world, from his perspective, if he believes in the existence of God, his life will be much simpler, which is also the way he has been living for decades. But is there really no god in this world? Actually, you can't prove it either. Because if God is omnipotent, they can exist in a form that you cannot perceive. The reason you believe that God does not exist is because it makes your life much simpler, and the lifestyle you have followed for decades is also the same. So, just like him, you are actually driven by instinct to choose to distort this world in order to simplify your survival methods.

Perhaps people may sometimes be interested in the truth, but most of their time is spent dealing with the pressure of survival, so simplifying survival methods is a necessity for the vast majority of people.

In Schopenhauer's view, the brain is not actually a phenomenon reducer, but a protective device designed to increase the probability of human survival. And I think the brain is more of a body function optimizer. It's like transforming a bulky landline into a lightweight mobile phone.

But whether the role of the brain is to protect or optimize, it will raise some even more unsettling questions: if our brain is deliberately distorting the world, what is the essence of thinking and rationality? Does this mean that the more developed rationality is, the more distorted our understanding of the world becomes? Or, on the surface, we may seem to be pursuing truth, but the further we go on the path of pursuing truth, the farther we actually go from the truth?

This is the process of Schopenhauer's deduction of rational criticism. In Schopenhauer's view, due to the brain's inability to reproduce the real world and even distort it, so-called rationality is simply unreliable. If we use Schopenhauer's perspective to explore the world with rational thinking, we will only obtain emptiness.

If we humans know nothing about this world, then human civilization will collapse, because knowledge is the cornerstone of civilization. This also means that the so-called human civilization is actually just an illusion built on the void. Just as Descartes, in pursuit of the first principle, infinitely inverted ontology and ultimately derived "I think, therefore I am", laying the first cornerstone for modern philosophy. Schopenhauer is also striving to find a way out for this pessimistic situation of humanity.

Schopenhauer believed that if humans knew nothing about the real world, and it was absolutely unknown. Then we can only go back to ourselves and understand the world with what we can feel. And the only thing we can feel is the existence of will, that is, our will drives our actions, and these actions will inevitably show corresponding results. So, Schopenhauer proposed that human behavior is the manifestation of human will. Furthermore, Schopenhauer proposed that behind this world where we cannot uncover the truth, there is also a unique will (which can be called the cosmic will) that drives the movement of all things in the world. The world we observe (not the real world) is also a manifestation of will.

That's why many people misunderstand Schopenhauer as a subjective idealist, but in fact, Schopenhauer, like Kant, is a typical objective idealist. Many people do not understand Schopenhauer's philosophical logic, and even do not know about this derivation process, so they assume to label Schopenhauer with various labels, which is obviously very childish.

In fact, Schopenhauer did not deny the existence of the objective world, but proved through rigorous argumentation that the real world is unknowable and distorted by our brains. So, what this world presents to us is only the surface of the will of the universe. Of course, Schopenhauer's voluntarism also has its cornerstone, which is the most indestructible philosophical theory in human reason to date: I think, therefore I am. This principle is also very simple. If you cannot trust phenomena, then you can only trust feelings.

The only major flaw in Schopenhauer's reasoning process is the inference from human will to the will of the universe. The will of a person is something we can feel, and it is endorsed by the first principle of "I think, therefore I am.". But this cannot deduce the existence of cosmic will. The only thing that can be said is that everything in the universe is in motion. If human behavior is driven by will, then there must also be a will that drives its motion in the universe. But this obviously falls into the famous Hume paradox.

Schopenhauer said, "I don't know how my brain works, but I know it protects me.". In fact, until now, the brain is still in a black box state for humans. Neither neuroscience, neuroscience, nor biology can fully explain the working principles of the brain. Nevertheless, we can still explore the meaning of the brain through some rigorous reasoning. Schopenhauer's theory, in my opinion, is a nearly perfect logic, although I am not sure if it is correct. Perhaps as Schopenhauer's theory suggests, reason is unreliable, and the more one thinks, the farther away they may be from the truth.