Character of species, procreation and death: considerations on the schopenhauerian doctrine of immortality in nature

Abstract

The article will explain the meaning of Schopenhauer's assertion that through the doctrine of immortality in nature, that is, through the variation of the species between birth and death, we arrive at the understanding that there is no harm in death, since true being itself does not end. Based on the analysis of chapter 41 of Volume II of The World as Will and Representation, entitled On death and its relation to the indestructibility of being, the Schopenhauerian understanding of the character of the species will first be elucidated; subsequently, his considerations on sexual impulse, procreation and death and the thesis of the permanence of the species "in the infinitude of time" (W II, Chap. 41 p. 580) will be explained; and finally, the presence of these issues in Machado de Assis' chronicle The Author of Himself and Tolstoy's novel Sonata a Kreuzer will be highlighted.