The Will
The possession of “the will” is the fundamental foundation upon which Schopenhauer’s entire philosophy is built. “On Psychology” includes this thematic premise which can be easily pursued for content throughout the entire collection: “The will…is the common stuff of all beings, the universal element of things.” Pursuit of what this ultimately means in the larger sense as touched upon in the essays and aphorisms is established even earlier, in the Introduction. When Schopenhauer refers to “the will”—and he will on many occasions—he is actually referring to “the will to live” which supersedes all other motivating desires, including the will to live in others. Here is the source of “universal conflict” which drives society and civilization.
The Pursuit of Truth (Knowledge)
Politically speaking, knowledge is power and the truth is nice if it works in your favor. Philosophically, however, truth is interchangeable with knowledge. This goes not just for Schopenhauer and not just for Schopenhauer in the content of this particular volume of works, but for most philosophers. The very term “philosophy” derives from Greek roots translated roughly as “loving wisdom.” Wisdom that is not also truthful is not wisdom and Schopenhauer throughout reaffirms this basic underlying building blocks of this theme. What holds the greater significance here is not knowledge, but truth: it is only by recognizing and accepting that knowledge must diligently pursued only with the wide open acceptance that apprehension of knowledge transcends into comprehension of its validity.
The Relationship of the Will to Knowledge
Where it all comes together, however, is in the philosopher’s assertion—made repeatedly either explicitly or, more often, obliquely through example—that the will acts independently from knowledge. This is one of those unpleasant realities about knowledge requiring to be true in order to be knowledge. The will is not an entity limited merely to humans; all species of animals on down the food chain from predators to much lesser complex creatures are endowed with the will to live: it is the nature of survival, Darwinian in its simplicity. Since this is true, however, this knowledge also presupposes that the processing of intellect is not organically connected to that will to survive. Apprehension of knowledge informed by the comprehension of it being true does not impact the will: if it did there would be no such thing as war since knowledge of increased unlikelihood of survival would automatically prevent anyone but the most deviant from becoming a soldier.
