In the thinking-philosophizing of Schopenhauer, there is a relation linking together religion, philosophy, and salvation, yet this relation is neither simple nor straightforward.
The “Thing-in-Itself” and Philosophy
In the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer discusses “the possibility of knowing the thing in itself” and says that “the thing in itself” can never be known, approached, or thought. If this knowing of the thing in itself happens, the thing ceases to be in itself and hence contradicts itself.
“That . . . which manifests itself in the world and as the world is ultimately and absolutely in itself, in other words, what it is, quite apart from the fact that it manifests itself as will, or in general appears, that is to say, is known in general . . . can never be answered, because . . . being-known of itself contradicts being in itself, and everything that is known is as such only appearance”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
What is meant here is that philosophy cannot transfer us into the thing in itself; it cannot deliver us into knowing that which forms the thing in itself. That is, the thing in itself hides itself, and is forever hidden, from philosophy.
Philosophy cannot reach and reveal the “whatness of reality”; it cannot think beyond the Kantian thing in itself, it acknowledges and confirms it. This acknowledging of the Kantian thing in itself and this confirming of the failure of philosophy to think into the “whatness of reality” mean that ignorance, error, and the impossibility of knowing belong to philosophy itself.
There is in Schopenhauer’s philosophy a demand for this acknowledging, and this confirming, of the limitedness lying at the heart of philosophy. Yet this limitedness opens up new paths.
Religion and Philosophy
In the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer thinks the relation linking together religion and philosophy. In “On Man’s Need for Metaphysics”, he says that religions “are necessary for the people, and are an inestimable benefit to them” because they have all the answers to the “unfathomable and ever disquieting riddle” of the world, of existence.
This riddle, of which Schopenhauer speaks, is “unfathomable” and “disquieting” because it arises from out of the questions: Why does the force that created the world not reduce the amount of suffering in the world? Are we abandoned? Why are we abandoned? Should not this force, whose powerfulness brought the world itself into existence, reduce the amount of our suffering in this world?
According to Schopenhauer, “man’s need for metaphysics” is satisfied by religions because religions offer answers to such questions, to this riddle. To religions belongs an argument or a “reasoning” that is able to answer such questions.
Religions say that suffering is, and belongs to, this world, and hence that there is another world in which there will be no suffering. This means that religions link together the estranged believer with existence by reuniting them again in a certain harmony. For Schopenhauer, this harmonizing satisfies “man’s needs for metaphysics”.
But religions, according to Schopenhauer, are crumbling, collapsing, and disintegrating; they are contradictory and full of paradoxes. They are simple and naive compared to the complexity of that which has come after them. They are discredited, disbelieved, and distrusted. In The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Schopenhauer says that “faith has been lost”:
“A long predicted epoch has set in; the Church is tottering, indeed so badly, that it is doubtful whether it will recover its center of gravity; for faith has been lost. It is with the light of revelation as with other lights; some darkness is the condition. The number of those rendered unfit for belief by a certain degree and extent of knowledge has become considerable. This is testified by the general dissemination of that shallow rationalism which is showing ever more openly its bulldog face.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
“Faith has been lost” anticipates and awaits Nietzsche’s “God is dead”. Both events acknowledge a certain turning away from religion, and hence a turning toward philosophy. Both events say that it is not religion, but philosophy that should carry out this linking together with existence, this harmonizing, this reconciling.
To philosophy thus belongs the endeavor to link together humanity and existence, to philosophy belongs the attempt at the carrying out of this harmonizing despite the suffering and evil pertaining to existence. Philosophy thus makes available consolation and support; that is, philosophy makes available a “better consciousness”. This means that philosophy has a task and an objective: Salvation.
Salvation
According to Schopenhauer, salvation is an event of awakening, an awakening from existence and its temporality, from what links them both together. This event of awakening belongs to Schopenhauer’s view that the world in its entirety is a dream, a miserable dream. Salvation is the awakening from this dream.
Yet that to which this awakening occurs is nothingness and nothing; nothing intelligible to philosophy and nothing understandable by rationality, reason, and their systems and systemizing thinking. Only the practices and insights of mysticism can catch sight of this nothingness, which shows itself only in and through salvation. This awakening closes itself off, and distances itself from, rationality and reason.
For more articles on Schopenhauer’s philosophy, visit this webpage.