Continental Philosophy

Schopenhauer's Transcendental Idealism

Primary Sources:

Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation I (WWR I), book 1
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation II (WWR II), chapters 1, 2, 4
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, "The Transcendental Aesthetic", A19/B33 - A49/B73
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 15

Secondary Sources:

B. Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, chapters 4 and 5
Mandelbaum, "The Physiological Orientation of Schopenhauer's Epistemology," in M. Fox, Schopenhauer
D.W. Hamlyn, Schopenhauer, chapter 4
D. Snow and J. Snow, "Was Schopenhauer an Idealist?" in Journal of Philosophy, 29, 1991, pp. 633 - 655
F. Copleston, Schopenhauer, chapter 3
P. Gardiner, Schopenhauer, chapter 2

Questions:

Is Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism defensible? In what sense is Schopenhauer an idealist (is he one)? In what sense is our body an "immediate object" for us (cf. WWR I 6)? Quine says "From impacts on our sensory surfaces, we in our collective and cumulative creativity down the generations have projected our systematic theory of the external world" (The Pursuit of Truth, p. 1) Does it follow that he should be a transcendental idealist? Is Schopenhauer's use of physiological facts defensible, helpful, or misleading? If the brain as an organ is an appearance and the world as representation is an appearance because it is a brain function, is the world as representation appearing to an appearance (cf. Nietzsche)?

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