Schopenhauer, “Life,” and the Affects of the Noumenal

In his unique response to Kant, Schopenhauer worked to combine Spinoza’s monism with Kant’s transcendental investigations. Working at the crossroads between nineteenth-century science (physiology, natural history) and German metaphysics, he redefined the thing-in-itself as a generative principle called the “noumenal will.” The latter stood beyond all our possible representations but could be “known” thanks to an affect; namely, in the urging of anxiety in us. As the “sign” of the will to live, angst followed our brief pleasures and flowed into suffering. It was the basic characteristic of living beings. Nevertheless, drawing from the popular wave of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, he argued that the striving of the will in us might be quieted intellectually. Schopenhauer’s thought stands at one endpoint of European philosophy, arising when it runs out of metaphoric energy and looks abroad.