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Schopenhauer argues that the empirical world exists only as a representation: ‘every object, whatever its origin, is, as object, already conditioned by the subject, and thus is essentially only the subject’s representation.’ A representation is a subjective state that has been ordered according to space, time and causality – the primary forms of sensibility and understanding. So long as we turn our thoughts towards the natural world, and search for the thing-in-itself behind the representation is futile. Every argument and every experience leads only to the same end: the system of representations, standing like a veil between the subject and the thing-in-itself. No scientific investigation can penetrate the veil; and yet it is only a veil, Schopenhauer affirms, a tissue of illusions which we can, if we choose, penetrate by other means. The way to penetrate the veil was stumbled upon by Kant. (en) |
