masterThesis
A tese de Shopenhauer acerca da vontade como essência humana e seus desdobramentos práticos e morais
Fecha
2020-05-27Registro en:
SILVA, Jéssica Barros. A tese de Shopenhauer acerca da vontade como essência humana e seus desdobramentos práticos e morais. 2020. 91f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Filosofia) - Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2020.
Autor
Silva, Jéssica Barros
Resumen
According to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860), the essence of
every existing being in Nature is Will. Human being is one of the various appearances of the
Will as it appears in its mirror, which is the world as representation. This work focuses the
Schopenhauerian vision of the world as Will, choosing as an object of study the peculiarities
assumed by the will when it objetifies itself as the human essence and moves towards the
practical and moral developments that can be found in Schopenhauer’s thought for an
understanding concerning human essence. Thus, this work begins by explaining
Schopenhauer’s fundamental thesis that the Will constitutes the metaphysical essence and the
core of man, starting from the analysis of its primacy in our self-consciousness regarding the
intellect. The practical developments of this thesis can be found in the way the will
determines individual’s way of life. Depending on his prevailing inclinations, one person will
lead a life devoted to the pursuit for a certain type of pleasure, which can be in the order of
sensations, in the order of vanity, of pure knowledge, of aesthetic pleasure, of engaging in
creative activities etc. The scope of morality opens up in Schopenhauerian thought from the
analysis of the nature of the motivation behind the actions – or “acts of will”. Schopenhauer
establishes three basic motivations for acting: egoism, malice and compassion. Each of them
is associated with a specific degree of vehemence of the will, which, in turn, determines how
attached to the principle of individuation – a principle that gathers the a priori forms of space
and time in the apprehension of the multiple appearances of the Will. For Schopenhauer,
moral conduct is only possible when the principle of individuation does not dominate the
subject’s way of knowing, allowing him to recognize that his essence is identical to that of the
other. It is from this recognition that the feeling of compassion is born, and justice and
kindness that are motivated by this feeling. Thus, our work concludes with an attempt to
explain the intricate way Schopenhauer ties his analysis of the motivation of an individual’s
actions to the analysis of how deeply this subject recognizes his essential connection with
other beings of nature, once that all that exists is a manifestation of the same Will.