On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in N
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 725 passages
Cite this work
- APAArthur Schopenhauer. (n.d.). On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in N. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/schopenhauer/on-the-fourfold-root-of-the-principle-of-sufficient-reason-and-on-the-will-in-n
- MLAArthur Schopenhauer. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in N. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/schopenhauer/on-the-fourfold-root-of-the-principle-of-sufficient-reason-and-on-the-will-in-n.
- ChicagoArthur Schopenhauer. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in N. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/schopenhauer/on-the-fourfold-root-of-the-principle-of-sufficient-reason-and-on-the-will-in-n.
Reference to the reproduced edition. SigPhi is the digital reproduction, not the publisher. Year, publisher and translator are included when recorded; “n.d.” means the year is unknown. Responsibility for an introduction or note depends on the passage cited.
What it is about
Schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation, of 1813, which he himself regarded as the obligatory door to understanding him, paired here with his later essay on the will in nature.
Context and history
The dissertation argues that the principle of sufficient reason — everything has a why — is not one thing but four distinct things that philosophy has run together: the cause of a physical event, the ground of a logical conclusion, the why of a mathematical truth, and the motive of an action. Confusing them produces most of the misunderstandings of metaphysics. Schopenhauer always insisted that anyone reading 'The World as Will and Representation' without having read this first would not understand it. 'On the Will in Nature', of 1836, is a much later book on a different subject: there he looks in the sciences of his day for confirmations of his metaphysics. It is worth knowing that these are two separate works, far apart in date.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
consistent starting from the Subject. As Materialism overlooked the fact, that with the simplest Object it forthwith posited the Subject also; so Fichte not only overlooked the fact, that with the Subject (whatever name he might choose to give it) he had already posited the Object also, because no Subject can be thought without it; he likewise overlooked the fact, that all derivation _à priori_, nay, all demonstration whatsoever, rests upon a necessity, and that all necessity itself rests entirely and exclusively on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, because to be necessary, and to result from a given reason, are convertible terms; that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is still nothing but the common form of the Object as such: therefore that it always presupposes the Object and does not, as valid before and independently of it, first introduce it, and cannot make the Object arise in conformity with its own legislation. Thus this starting from the Object and the above-mentioned starting from the Subject have in common, that both presuppose what they pretend to derive: _i.e._, the necessary correlate of their starting-point." This last assertion "that the Principle of Sufficient Reason _already presupposes the Object_, but does not, as valid before and independently of it, first introduce it, and cannot make the Object arise in conformity with its own legislation," seemed to me so far to clash with the proof given by Schopenhauer in § 21 of the "Fourfold Root," as, according to the latter, it is _the function of the Subject's understanding_ which primarily creates the _objective_ world out of the subjective feelings of the sensuous organs by the application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason; so that all that is Object, as such, after all comes into being only in conformity with the Principle of Sufficient Reason, consequently that this principle cannot, as Schopenhauer asserted in his polemic against Fichte, already presuppose the…