# Schopenhauer, And Art As Temporal Gnosis Schopenhauer was the first philosopher whom I wholeheartedly studied. I enjoyed Plato before. But not as much as Schopenhauer. Though there are many things I can't agree with. If you have read only Nietzsche, read Schopenhauer. Nietzsche is cool. But Schopenhauer is great. There are many good things from him. Like the synthesis of Plato, Kant, and Hinduism & Buddhism. Or seperating the conscious world and the unconscious world far before Freud. The latter came from Kant. But I mean in the sense of Freud & Jung. However, I think the best of him is his aesthetics. Also, personally the reason I occasionally go back to Schopenhauer is almost always because of it. Compared to "aesthetic judgement" and "disinterested pleasure" of Kant, or "sensuous expression of free spirit's self-understanding" of Hegel, his aesthetics is far more noble and soulful. And he elevated the status of artists from artisans to priests. To talk about his aesthetics, we have to talk about his "Representation vs Will" first. I will explain it only briefly. If you are interested, just read his book "The World as Will and Representation". The world as Representation is the conscious. Maya. The phenomenal world in Kantian philosophy. It is what we see. The world as Will is the unconscious. The thing-in-itself in Kantian philosophy. It corresponds to Brahman in Hinduism, or Emptiness in Buddhism. The actual underlying reality of the world. So the world itself has its conscious part and unconscious part. Representation and Will. And those are almost the same with the conscious mind and the unconscious mind in Freud & Jung. So you should have the image of Superego vs Id. An important thing is that, Will is an evil while it is the actual reality of the world. The Will is will-to-live. It is the blind irrational impluse which heavily influences the conscious. The animalistic instinct. Hence it is the cause of sufferings in the world. It randomly swings and makes you suffer. > Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain > and boredom. > > Arthur Schopenhauer Note that this is quite similar to Gnosticism although it is inverted. The actual reality causes sufferings, instead of the material world. So how can we be saved from it? There are two options. 1. Asceticism 2. Art Since sufferings come from Will, a salvation should dismiss and remove Will. Suicide is not an option since there is reincarnation. Strict asceticism is the long term and final solution. But it cannot save you NOW. And there is another solution, art. Since Representation is in fact "objectified Will", there are degrees of objectification. The most direct and raw form of Will in the world of Representation is Platonic form. Since it is independent from spacetime and cause-and-effects. Yes. Here is where Kant meets Plato. And since Platonic forms are the most direct, those are on the boundary between Will and Representation. Hence those mediate between Will and Representation. Art is objectifying Will into Platonic forms. By doing that, you can be temporarily a Will-less spectator of "the world as Representation" who is free from sufferings caused by Will. And art gives you fundamental knowledge of the world. Since Will is the actual reality and art shows you its direct manifestations. It is eternal. "Subjective and irrational" Will became "objective and rational" Representation. Though your salvation is temporal. Note that this meets "indifferent pleasure" of Kantian aesthetics. This also meets "making unconscious conscious" of Jungian psychology. And you might remember that Jung wrote about alchemy being an exemplar of it. It is "applying Fire to Mercury". Thus alchemy is the royal art. So in other words, art is temporal Gnosis. The purpose of art is to achieve temporal Nirvana. Artists are in fact Priests. Here is the end of this post. In fact, I want to write much more. Mostly about applications of this aesthetics. But I don't want to increase the length of this post. I might write those in the future.