Schopenhauer's will and the nature of human agency

Much of the criticism of Schopenhauer's philosophy stems from his apparent inability to reconcile his metaphysical theory of the `World as Will' with his epistemological views. Schopenhauer's theory of representation involves the claim that knowledge is conditioned by the a priori forms which the knowing subject imposes on experience, implying that proper knowledge can be only of representations. In his metaphysical writings, Schopenhauer asserts that a direct awareness of ourselves experienced in self-consciousness enables us to discern the nature of the thing-in-itself, and identify it with will. The claim that `the thing-in-itself is will' breaches the unknowability thesis concerning things as they are in themselves. In this paper I suggest that the noumenal designation that Schopenhauer envisages for his concept of the will is inappropriate, and that an alternative characterisation of Schopenhauer's concept of the will better expresses his philosophical purpose. The crucial contention is that Schopenhauer misappropriates the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself and that he employs it in a manner distinctly different from Kant. Schopenhauer does not consider the thing-in-itself to be the causal ground of phenomena, and there are good grounds to suggest that, instead, he considers it to be 'the essence of all that is'. I' maintain that the main advantage of the view that Schopenhauer's concept of the will entails an 'essentialist' rather than noumenal designation, is its capacity to reconcile some aspects: of Schopenhauer's metaphysics with the demands of his theory of representation - and I utilise Young's characterisation of the Schopenhauerian 'will' as a metaphysical, yet non-noumenal essence of the phenomenal world, to demonstrate this claim. Thereafter I examine the significance of this interpretation of Schopenhauer's concept of the will to other parts of his philosophy: specifically, its influence on Schopenhauer's account of the self, his determinism and his conception of human agency. Finally, I present a standard criticism which can be raised against Schopenhauer's account of human agency, and submit a revised version of his account, which, I contend is capable of withstanding the standard criticism, whilst preserving most of Schopenhauer's important insights in this area