Denial of the will, Schopenhauer says, must be the objective of every philosophizing and all thinking.
Philosophy and thinking assume their force only when they deliver us into a site where denying our wills, renouncing our lives, and abandoning our constant desiring become genuine possibilities.
Denial of the Will, Renunciation of Life, and the Possibility of Salvation
According to Schopenhauer, “if salvation is to be attained from an existence like ours”, the will must be denied and life must be renounced.
Salvation, as the name indicates, is first and foremost a religious attempt, that is, a religious notion. This is something that Schopenhauer confirms by showing how his thinking-philosophizing agrees with, comes close to, and even emerges from Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Christianity regarding how our constant striving and continuous desiring must be renounced and denied.
For Schopenhauer, if any value is ever to be found in “an existence like ours”, we must renounce our nature as human beings, since we are shaped and formed by our constant striving; that is, we must deny the will forming and determining our own selves.
True, genuine, and final salvation occurs only when there is complete self-renunciation or self-denial, when the will is denied, and when life is renounced.
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer says that “nothing else can be stated as the aim of our existence except the knowledge that it would be better for us not to exist”.
Paths Leading to Denial of the Will and Salvation
Schopenhauer lists two paths in which the will can be denied and life can be renounced; two paths leading and delivering oneself into salvation: the saintly path and the path of suffering and pain.
The Saintly Path
Denying the will and renouncing life occur when the will is actively, consciously, and repeatedly resisted, opposed, refused, and challenged.
One denies the will by resisting and opposing one’s own body and one’s own individuality. Schopenhauer says that opposing the body and refusing individuality allow oneself to transcend the limitedness pertaining to self-interest and egoism. Opposing the body and refusing individuality allow one to leave behind one’s egoistic turning toward the world and toward oneself.
Renouncing one’s own life and refusing one’s own body and individuality deliver oneself into a place where pleasure, suffering, and pain seem unimportant.
We can infer how blessed must be the life of a man whose will is silenced not for a few moments, as in the enjoyment of the beautiful, but forever, indeed completely extinguished, except for the last glimmering spark that maintains the body and is extinguished with it. Such a man who, after many bitter struggles with his own nature, has at last completely conquered, is then left only as pure knowing being, as the undimmed mirror of the world. Nothing can distress or alarm him anymore; nothing can any longer move him; for he has cut all the thousand threads of willing which hold us bound to the world, and which as craving, fear, envy, and anger drag us here and there in constant pain.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
According to Schopenhauer, to renounce life and to deny the will is to be delivered into a locale where there is blessedness, calmness, tranquility, serenity, and confidence.
Then, instead of the restless pressure and effort; instead of the constant transition from desire to apprehension and from joy to sorrow; instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope that constitutes the life-dream of the man who wills, we see that peace that is higher than all reason, that ocean-like calmness of the spirit, that deep tranquillity, that unshakable confidence and serenity, whose mere reflection in the countenance, as depicted by Raphael and Correggio, is a complete and certain gospel. Only knowledge remains; the will has vanished.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Life can be easily renounced and the will can be completely denied, Schopenhauer says, when we realize how the phenomenal world, in its entirety, is nothing but a delusion.
One’s egoism and one’s continuous attempts at confirming one’s own individuality and uniqueness fade away and completely disappear when one realizes how all the things permeating the world and rendering existence crowded are indistinguishable and uniform at the level of the “in itself”.
This realization allows one, for the first time, to see all the suffering permeating the world and pervading human existence as one’s own.
This realization turns the will against itself by distancing it from its constant egoistic attempts at self-affirmation, by rendering apparent and visible the meaninglessness of every willing and the insignificance of all desiring.
The Path of Suffering and Pain
Another path delivering into the same state of denial and renunciation is suffering itself, according to Schopenhauer.
Schopenhauer says that unbearable suffering, continuous pain, and incessant frustrations break the will to live, every will, and all desiring.
Salvation offers itself to those whose suffering is constant and to those whose pain is great as a “gleam of silver that suddenly appears from the purifying flame of suffering.”
At this moment, those whose suffering is unbearable, those whose pain exceeds everything that the world can offer them, renounce their lives, deny their will, transcend themselves, and rise above their suffering and pain. At this moment, they experience “inviolable peace, bliss and sublimity.”
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