https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/eminent-people-interested-psi

Nietzsche also assailed Schopenhauer’s ability to understand moral phenomena by mentioning that Schopenhauer is “one who still honestly believes in illuminations from above, in magic, in ghostly appearances and in the metaphysical ugliness of the toad!”3 Nietzsche was, perhaps, too naturwissenschaftlich to stomach Schopenhauer’s forays into the weird. More succinctly, Arthur O. Lovejoy simply mentions Schopenhauer’s “queer weakness for occultism.”4

Something more than a “queer weakness” may well be suggested by a glance at the oddest and lengthiest footnote to the oddest and lengthiest chapter in On Will in Nature, “Animal Magnetism and Magic,” in which Schopenhauer recalls his experience of a magician.

In the year 1854, I had the good fortune to see here [Frankfurt] such extraordinary feats of Mr. Regazzoni of Bergamo, in which the immediate, that is, magical, power of his will over others is unmistakable and to the greatest degree astonishing, of the authenticity of which feats none could remain in doubt, except those to whom nature has completely denied all capacity for comprehending pathological conditions; however, there are such subjects, who must be made lawyers, ministers, merchants, or soldiers, but for heaven’s sake not doctors, for the result would be fatal, since in medicine diagnosis is the primary thing.—[Regazzoni] could put his somnambulist, who was under his influence, into complete catalepsy; in fact, merely through his will, without gestures, as she walked forward and he stood behind her, he could make her fall, backwards. He could paralyze her, put her in a state of tetanus [Starrkrampf], with dilated pupils, completely insensible, and the unmistakable signs of a completely cataleptic condition. He had a lady from the audience play the piano, and then, standing five paces behind her, through his will, with gestures, paralyzed her so she could not play. Then he put her against a column and charmed her so that she could not move from the spot despite the greatest effort.—According to my observation almost all of his tricks can be explained from the fact that he isolates the brain from the spinal column, either completely, whereby all sensible and motor nerves are paralyzed and complete catalepsy occurs, or the paralysis affects only the motor nerves, while sensibility remains, so that her head retains consciousness atop a body apparently dead. Strychnine works in just the same way: it paralyzes only the motor nerves to the point of complete tetanus, leading to death by suffocation; yet it leaves the sensible nerves, hence also the consciousness, undisturbed. Regazzoni does the same through the magical influence of his will. (WN, 408n [SW4, 102]).

Schopenhauer’s credulity might make one pause, but in many ways the entire chapter is incredible. Indeed, his fascination with weird phenomena like animal magnetism, black and white magic, clairvoyance, spirit seeing, and telekinesis makes it easy to wish that he had been more incredulous.5

Schopenhauer, however, thought that his beliefs in the paranormal were no wilder than his commitment to idealism, to his thinking that “we carry the world around in our heads,” an idea that “surpasses in incredibility all the fairy tales and fables ever invented,” something that led him to feel “like Arjuna when Krishna appeared to him in his true divine form with his hundred thousand arms, eyes, mouths, etc.” (MR4, 45).6 Nevertheless, Schopenhauer philosophized from experience, especially privileging his own, and he had experienced animal magnetism and ghosts. He also had a sense of being mildly clairvoyant.7 He credited a prophetic dream involving the appearance of a youthful friend, who died when Schopenhauer was ten years old, as a warning to flee Berlin in August of 1831, which he did, thereby avoiding the cholera epidemic that has been said to have taken Hegel in November of that year. Shortly after his arrival in Frankfurt am Main, he experienced what he called a “perfectly clear apparition” involving his living mother and his dead father; which “indicated that I would now outlive my mother who at that time was still alive; my father who was already dead was carrying a light in his hand” (MR4, 62).8

Yet Schopenhauer’s belief in spirit apparitions and magic was not philosophically idiosyncratic. His hero, Kant, came to ambivalent conclusions about the paranormal in the pre-Critical essay “Dreams of a Spirit-seer, Elucidated by the Dreams of Metaphysics” (1766), concerning the spiritualism of his contemporary, the Swedish theologian and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.9 Schopenhauer’s nemeses, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and G. W. F. Hegel also believed in the paranormal.10 Fichte and Hegel accepted animal magnetism, and Schelling and Hegel somnambulism, clairvoyance, and ghosts.11 Schopenhauer, however, would never consider citing the men he called the “three sophists,” even though it was his typical practice to cite whomever he could to back his views. But what more deeply provided Schopenhauer with a sense of the legitimacy of magic and paranormal phenomena was their lengthy multicultural histories: “one will be amazed at the tenacity with which humankind has clung to the idea of magic everywhere and at all times … one will conclude that it has a deep basis at least in the nature of the human being, if not in things generally” (WN, 414/111). Indeed, in his “Essay on Spirit-Seeing and Related Issues” from the first volume of Parerga and Paralipomena, Schopenhauer does not feel compelled to provide accounts of spirit-seeing, assuming that his readers were well familiar with such accounts, and he took such experiences as a fact for which he would provide a theory. Schopenhauer took pride in the fact that he considered such paranormal phenomena, and he told his friend Julius Frauenstädt that “[his] metaphysics had vindicated” these neglected phenomena.12 More importantly, however, Schopenhauer also appealed to these phenomena to corroborate his metaphysics. In what way did these phenomena corroborate his metaphysics? Do they, in some sense, actually corroborate his metaphysics? To answer these questions it is necessary to consider his meta-metaphysics.

10.1 An Immanent Metaphysics: Between Dogmatic Omniscience and the Despair of the Kantian Critique

It is not surprising that Schopenhauer would be silent about the nature of metaphysics in his dissertation, since On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is a work in what he later would call “philosophia prima,” an analysis of the “faculty of cognition [Erkenntnißvermögen],” its forms, laws, validity, and limitations (PP2, 21 [SW6, 19]). Even in its extensively revised second edition, where there is more metaphysical content, he says nothing about the nature of metaphysics, although, to show his allegiance to Kant, he assiduously replaced the term “metaphysical” with “transcendental.” Nor is it unexpected that he would be silent about metaphysics in his second work, On Vision and Colors, given his  task of developing a theory of colors, an undertaking he viewed as primarily scientific. Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that Schopenhauer says little about the nature of metaphysics in the first edition of his main work, The World as Will and Representation, and, when he does describe the task of metaphysics, he does so obliquely in the context of a discussion of the metaphysically expressive power of music. Paraphrasing Leibniz, Schopenhauer describes music as “an unconscious exercise in metaphysics, in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing,” and he says “philosophy is nothing other than a complete and correct repetition and expression of the essence of the world in very general concepts” (WWR1, 292 [SW2, 312]).13 He contends that music produces in tones what metaphysics does through concepts. Thus, in the first edition of his main work, the task of metaphysics appears to be to conceptually express the essence of the world, which he does by denominating this essence “will.” Indeed, such denominating has such a profoundly illuminating cast that there is something magical about it: “But the word will … is supposed to unlock the inner most essence of all things in nature for us like a magic spell” (WWR1, 136 [SW2, 133]). In his fourth book, On Will in Nature, Schopenhauer remarks that after “a seventeen-year silence,” he is publishing again “to provide some of the corroboration that my philosophy has received from unbiased empiricists who, unacquainted with my philosophy, have, at the end point of their method aimed at mere knowledge from experience, discovered just that which my theory has presented as metaphysics by which experience in general is to be explained” (WN, 323 [SW4, 1]). Yet he neither explains nor attempts to justify this novel idea of metaphysics as explaining experience in general.

In the second edition of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer first methodically discusses the idea that metaphysics explains “experience in general.” He addresses his metaphysics first in the Appendix to the first volume, “Critique of the Kantian Philosophy,” and he elaborates on this conception of metaphysics in the important seventeenth chapter of the second volume of his main work, “On the Human Being’s Metaphysical Need.” Later he casts more light on metaphysics in section 21 of “On Philosophy and Its Method,” from the second volume of Parerga and Paralipomena.

In the “Critique of the Kantian Philosophy,” in a lengthy paragraph added in the second edition of his main book (1844), Schopenhauer confronts Kant’s rejection of “dogmatic metaphysics”—the view that we can have knowledge of that which lies beyond the possibility of experience. Schopenhauer understands Kant to be arguing something like the following:

1. Metaphysics is the science that seeks cognition of what is beyond the possibility of experience (things in themselves).

2. Our cognitions of things are either a priori or a posteriori.

3. But what is cognized a priori is found in human reason and applies only to our representations (experiences of things) and does not concern the existence of things beyond our experiences (things in themselves).

4. Therefore, metaphysics can never be based on a priori cognitions. (1, 3)

5. Therefore, metaphysics must be based on a posteriori cognitions. (2, 4)

6. Yet what is beyond the possibility of experience can never be discovered a posteriori, using principles that are derived from inner or outer experience.

7. Therefore metaphysics cannot be based on a posteriori cognitions. (1, 6)

8. Therefore we cannot have cognitions of what is beyond the possibility of experience (things in themselves). (2, 4, 7)

9. Therefore metaphysics is impossible. (1, 8)14

Schopenhauer is willing to accept Kant’s argument as it stands, as long as proposition 1 is the proper task of metaphysics. However, Schopenhauer will reject 1, and by this propositions 7 and 9 while agreeing with 2–6 and 8.

Schopenhauer argues that Kant’s justification for proposition 7 begs the question because he simply presented an “etymological argument from the word ‘metaphysics’ ” for this proposition in the first section of the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by holding that “metaphysics was identical to a priori cognition” (WWR1, 454 [SW2, 506]). This allowed Kant, Schopenhauer continues, to reject experience and a posteriori cognition as the source of metaphysics without any proof. But, Schopenhauer claims, “the world and our existence are necessarily given to us as a riddle” (WWR1, 454 [SW2, 506]), implying that the task of metaphysics is to solve the riddle of existence,15 which entailed for Schopenhauer also the rejection of proposition 7, since “we would need a proof that “the material for solving the riddle of the world could not be possibly be contained in the world itself, but instead could only be looked for from outside of the world … under the guidance of those forms of which we are a priori conscious” (WWR1, 454 [SW2, 507]). Absent such a proof, Schopenhauer contends that the solution to the riddle of the world must result from an understanding of the world itself and that the task of metaphysics is to understand the world “from the ground up,” using the main sources of knowledge, “both outer and inner experience” (WWR1, 455 [SW2, 507]). By connecting outer and inner experience in the right sort of way, he continues, you solve the puzzle of existence without, however, attaining “a complete and self-sufficient explanation of its [the world’s] existence … that does away with all further problems” (WWR1, 455 [SW, 507]).

To help his readers better understand his view of metaphysics, Schopenhauer refers them to the seventeenth chapter of the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, “On the Human Being’s Metaphysical Need” (Über das metaphysische Bedürfniß des Menschen), where he provides his most robust discussion of metaphysics. Here he rejects proposition 1 by radically redefining metaphysics. It is no longer a science that attempts to know that which lies beyond the bounds of all possible experience; rather, metaphysics is “the science of experience in general … the correct explanation of experience as a whole” (WWR2[P], 181 [SW3, 201]).16 Arguing that “the whole of experience is like a cryptograph [Geheimschrift], and philosophy is the deciphering of it [Entzifferung], the correctness of which is confirmed by the connectedness that appears everywhere” (WWR2[P], 182 [SW3, 202]), Schopenhauer holds that experience is deciphered “if only this whole [of experience] is grasped in sufficient depth, and inner experience is connected to outer, then must it be capable of being interpreted [gedeutet], explained [ausgelegt], from itself” (WWR2[P], 182/202).17 The verification that experience has been grasped in sufficient depth is when, Schopenhauer continues, “It [the deciphering] must spread a uniform light over all appearances of the world, and even bring the most heterogeneous into agreement, so that the contradiction is resolved also between those that contrast the most” (WWR2[P], 184 [SW3, 205]).18 This remark about bringing into agreement even appearances that “contrast the most” set the stage for his analysis of the paranormal, for such experiences stand in the greatest contrast with “normal” experiences, those experiences theoretically explicable by the sciences.

Schopenhauer, of course, has to show why proposition 7, “Metaphysics cannot be based on a posteriori cognitions” is false. He mounts a curious argument against proposition 7, using a series of rhetorical questions.

But does it not appear downright backwards that one looks away from experience, ignoring its content [Inhalt], and that one should simply take and use as material [Stoff] empty forms [Formen] of which we are a priori conscious, in order to unriddle [enträthseln] experience, i.e., the world which alone lies before us? Is it not rather appropriate for the subject that the science of experience in general, and as such, would just draw from experience? Its problem is given to it empirically; why should its solution also not be aided by experience? The task is certainly not the observation of particular experiences, but rather the correct explanation of experience as a whole. Therefore its foundation must certainly be of an empirical kind. (WWR2[P], 180f [SW2, 200f])

Schopenhauer appears to reject proposition 7 by simply redefining the nature of metaphysics. If metaphysics is the science of experience in general, then it follows that a posteriori and not simply a priori (nonempirical) cognitions would be the material for metaphysics. Indeed, if metaphysics aims at a comprehensive explanation of experience, it would seem absurd to ignore experience, and it would make sense that there has to be an empirical foundation for metaphysics.19

Schopenhauer then claims that metaphysics “is knowledge [Wissen] drawn from the intuition of the external actual world and from the information about this by the most intimate facts of self-consciousness deposited in direct concepts” (WWR2[P], 183 [SW3, 203]). But if metaphysics has an empirical foundation, it  must draw its materials from what John Locke called “the two fountains of knowledge,” sensation and reflection,20 or from what Schopenhauer called, following Kant, the outer and inner senses.21 Schopenhauer will still retain allegiance to proposition 6 by appealing to Kant: “And although no one can cognize the thing in itself through the veil [Hülle] of the forms of intuition, nonetheless everyone carries this within himself, indeed, it is himself [so trägt anderseits doch Jeder dieses in sich, ja, ist es selbst]; therefore, it must be in some way accessible in self-consciousness, if only in a conditional way. Thus the bridge on which metaphysics goes beyond experience is nothing other than that very separation of experience into appearance and thing in itself, that in which I have placed Kant’s greatest merit” (WWR2[P], 182f [SW3, 203]). By retaining an allegiance to Kant’s transcendental idealism, Schopenhauer accepts that the world of experience, the object of the “outer sense,” is mere appearance and that a priori knowledge is valid only in reference to experience. Now, however, he tweaks Kant.

I added [to Kant] that, precisely as appearance, it [the world] is the manifestation of that which appears; and with him [Kant], I call that which appears the thing in itself. Therefore the thing in itself must express its inner nature and character in the world of experience, and it must be possible to interpret these from it, and indeed from the material, not from the mere form, of experience. Accordingly philosophy is nothing but the correct and universal understanding of experience itself, the true interpretation of its meaning and content. This is the metaphysical, i.e., that which is merely clothed in appearance and veiled [Verhüllte] in its forms, that which is related to appearance as the thought or idea is to the word. (WWR2[P], 183f [SW3, 204])

Employing Kant’s distinction between appearance and thing in itself as permitting his claim that the thing in itself is that which appears in all appearances, Schopenhauer ties will as thing in itself to appearance, such that it is known only in reference to appearances and that it is not to be considered “as an ens extramundanum, but it is always cognized only in its relations [Verhältnissen] and references [Beziehungen] to appearance itself” (WWR2[P], 183 [SW3, 203]).

As is the case with any experience, Schopenhauer contends, the experience of our will is within the most basic epistemic condition, the subject–object correlation, and that as an object of self-consciousness, the will has a “being-in-itself” different from our experience of it as an object. Moreover since the will is an object of self-consciousness (the inner sense), will is cognized through the a priori form of time, and so it is experienced in “successive individual acts, not as a whole in and by itself” (WWR2[P], 197 [SW3, 220]). For these reasons, Schopenhauer concluded that we do not know the thing-in-itself “naked,” but that the will is that in which the thing-in-itself has “to a great extent cast off its veils” (WWR2[P], 197 [SW3, 220]).22 Because will is still “veiled” and our forms of cognition only apply to appearances, no final solution to the riddle of existence is possible since such a solution would entail that we peek behind the veil, something that would be a new form of cognition, something akin to Schelling’s intellectual intuition, which Schopenhauer mocked as the so-called sixth sense of the bat.23 Human cognitive capacity is such that concerning the thing in itself, concerning the “naked” thing in itself, it would be impossible for us to derive any intuition or sense of it, even “if a being of a higher type came and took all the trouble to teach it to us, we would be thoroughly unable to understand his disclosures” (WWR2[P], 185 [SW3, 206]).24 Thus, Schopenhauer’s acceptance of Kant’s propositions 2–4 and 8.

The metaphysical will qualifies as thing-in-itself compared to other appearances because it has only the “veil” of time and it is the content, stuff, kernel, or essence of the more complexly conditioned appearances. As Schopenhauer claimed in On Will in Nature, will is the “in-itself” of all representations: “Everything that is known of things only empirically, only a posteriori, is in itself will; in contrast, as far as things are determinable a priori, they belong solely to representation, to the mere appearance” (WN, 393/86). Hence, will is that which is expressed in appearance. It is that which is “represented” in “representations” (PP1, 22 [SW5, 21]) and it is that which is expressed in all representations that are spatially and temporarily ordered within a causal matrix, like the representation of one’s own body. Yet, since the experience of will as thing in itself is conditioned by human cognition, what the thing in itself is in itself is unknown. In this way, Schopenhauer retains fidelity to proposition 6 in Kant’s argument but rejects 1 and 9. Metaphysics does not seek cognition of the thing in itself, which is an impossible task. His metaphysics does not seek such, but rather it is the science that explains the totality of experiences, something that is possible.25 It is also for this reason that Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, which seeks to explain the totality of experiences, is a theory of almost everything, recognizing the possibility of something eluding theorizing. In this way, he claimed “my path lies between the earlier dogmatic doctrine of omniscience and the despair of Kant’s critique” (WWR1, 455 [SW2, 507]). By not seeking to transcend the bounds of experience, Schopenhauer views his metaphysics as fully immanent, as describing things within the bounds of all possible experience.

10.2 Empirical Corroborations of the Metaphysics of Will

In On Will in Nature, Schopenhauer views the corroborations of his philosophy by the sciences as concerning “the core and principal point of my theory, its metaphysics proper … that with which we are immediately acquainted and precisely intimate, that which we find in our innermost selves as will, [is] the only thing in itself, the only truly real thing, the only original and metaphysical thing in the world where everything else is only appearance, i.e., mere representation.” He continues, in the same passage, “Will gives power to everything, whatever it may be, the power by means of which it can exist and give effect” (WN, 324 [SW4, 2]). Citing a remark from one of Kant’s pre-Critical essays concerning the relationship of metaphysics to science, Schopenhauer claims that his metaphysics of will grounds science by explaining those basic elements at which the sciences end or are presupposed as givens (e.g., as natural forces, vital forces, and formative drives).26 Schopenhauer understands the natural sciences as corroborating his metaphysics, however, by recognizing will at the endpoints of their investigations, “when in particularly fortunate cases especially clear sighted and observant investigators in the realm of the natural sciences succeed at casting a stolen glance beyond the curtain that, as it were, fixes the limits of their science, not just sensing the boundary as such, but also in a way perceiving even its constitution [Beschaffenheit], and in a way even peering into the realm of metaphysics that lies on the other side of the curtain” (WN, 326 [SW4, 4]). Consequently, in the first four chapters of On Will in Nature, Schopenhauer works his way through the natural sciences showing cases in which will was recognized as basic. This strategy is continued in the fifth chapter, “Linguistics,” where he highlights languages that attribute a will to natural processes. The sixth chapter, “Animal Magnetism and Magic,” continues the same method, citing instances in which practitioners of animal magnetism and magic credit a will as the force behind their arts.

Yet there is something deeper at stake for Schopenhauer when he considers paranormal phenomena. In such phenomena as animal magnetism,27 clairvoyance, telepathy, extrasensory perception, ghosts, telekinesis, and magic, Schopenhauer believed that: “we will see will—which I have presented as the thing in itself, as the only real thing in all existence, as the core of nature—achieving through the human individual things not to be explained by causal connection, i.e., by the law of the course of nature, indeed, things that to a certain extent suspend this law and actually exert action at a distance, thus revealing a supernatural, i.e., metaphysical mastery of nature—then I know of no more factual corroboration of my theory that could still be required” (WN, 409 [SW4, 104]).28

Consequently, paranormal phenomena serve as a “factual corroboration” of his metaphysics in ways no other phenomena could because not only do such phenomena elude scientific explanation, but from the point of view of the natural sciences, such phenomena also are regarded as delusions, illusions, tricks, or frauds because they contradict the laws of nature. So when the good Signor Regazzoni, whom Schopenhauer discusses in that oddest and longest footnote, exerted the magical powers of his will on his assistant, making her tumble, paralyzing her, and putting her into a cataleptic state, and when Regazzoni paralyzed the volunteer from the audience, simply through gestures, thereby preventing her from playing the piano, he breached the separation between individuals, broke the bounds between distinct spatial-temporal individuals, defying all causal laws. He defied the physical connections between things, the so-called physical nexus, and he demonstrated that,

[T]there must be still another [connection], proceeding through the essence in itself of all things, a subterranean connection, so to speak, whereby one point of appearance would be able immediately to affect any other by a metaphysical nexus; that therefore it must be possible to affect things from within, instead of from without as is usual, an effect of appearance on appearance, by means of the essence in itself that is one and the same in all appearances; that, just as we act causally as created nature, we would also be capable of acting as creating nature, and for the moment the microcosm would assert itself as macrocosm; that the partitions of individuation and separation, no matter how firm, could still occasionally permit a communication, as it were, behind the curtains, or like a secret game under that table (WN, 415 [SW4, 111])

Will, of course, provides this metaphysical connection.29 Just as will underlies normal intuitive appearances, it also underlies paranormal appearances in ways that are inexplicable.

It is clear why Schopenhauer would find paranormal phenomena significant for his metaphysics. If there were such phenomena, Schopenhauer’s philosophy would appear to have even more explanatory power than the natural sciences since he could claim that his philosophy explains a greater range of experience than the sciences. More profoundly, however, Schopenhauer claims that the confirmation of a correct deciphering of experience is that it “must spread a uniform light over all appearances of the world, and even bring the most heterogeneous into agreement, so that the contradiction may be removed also between those that contrast the most” (WWR2[P], 184 [SW3, 205]). Paranormal phenomena provide a profound contradiction to normal phenomena, and, by having a metaphysics that can account for paranormal phenomena, Schopenhauer finds that his metaphysics explains the totality of experiences. Not simply those phenomena presupposed by science that are scientifically unexplainable, but also actual phenomena the existence of which are viewed by science as impossible.

Yet it is doubtful that paranormal phenomena are as Schopenhauer viewed them, viz., as phenomena that elude scientific explanation. Take our old friend Signor Regazzoni who, through the magical influences of his will, was able to isolate the frustrated pianist’s brain from her spinal column, so that her head retained consciousness atop an apparently dead body. It appears that Schopenhauer is guilty here of employing the concept of causality transcendently since one wonders how the idea of magical influence is not some causal notion, suggesting that the magnetizer has tapped into the metaphysical nexus in such a way as to work his individual will on another. (It seems, however, that the good Signor’s metaphysical connection was tenuous. When two Frankfurt physicians visited him in his apartment a short time after his astonishing performance, they found him incapable of duplicating the feats exhibited in his stage act.30 Of course, there could have been a metaphysical disconnect in his apartment.)

When it came to ghosts, however, Schopenhauer was more guarded. He thought that his metaphysics could ground animal magnetism, clairvoyance, telepathy, and magic, but ghosts troubled him metaphysically. Consequently, he ended his essay on spirit-seeing by claiming that his philosophy only cast “a weak light” (PP1, 272 [SW5, 328]) on the phenomenon—one insufficient to illuminate the phenomenon in a way that would resolve the millennia-long debate between believers and skeptics. He even suggested that a living person might have vivid reminiscences of a person and wrongly interpret these as communications from the dead. In any case, unlike other paranormal phenomena, which were intersubjective and comparable to our intuitions of objects of the outer sense, he concludes his essay by claiming that “spirit-seeing is first and immediately, nothing but a vision in the brain of the spirit seer” (PP1, 272 [SW5, 328]). Although he believed that a living or dying person could affect such a vision, which would be magical, he left it an open question whether a dead person could affect such a vision. He did so with good reason. Whereas his explanation of clairvoyance appealed to a metaphysical connection provided by will, a connection that at some representational level united all existence and was present in everything that was, is, or will be, Schopenhauer was at a loss to use the same explanation for ghosts. Clairvoyants thought through another’s brain as their own brain “slept,” but the problem is that the dead have no intellect and thus no brain—indeed, nothing “physical” to direct will. More deeply, death annihilated anything that would individualize one dead person from another—each and everything at the level of will is just will.31

10.3 Paranormal Problems

Schopenhauer’s positing of a nonspatial and nontemporal nexus provided by will seems as if his metaphysics can explain phenomena that violate the laws of space and time, thereby giving his metaphysics an advantage over the natural sciences. However, Schopenhauer’s claim that the agency of the magician and clairvoyant functions to produce these phenomena is parasitic on some notion of causality functioning through subterranean channels, as it were, channels beyond the domain in which causality applies. Indeed, such an explanation involves the transcendent employment of the principle of sufficient reason of becoming; its use being beyond the bounds of possible experience and outside the scope of an allegedly immanent philosophy.32 Moreover, will as an object for the inner sense is still a temporal object for a subject and as such seems incapable of accounting for things seemingly nontemporal. The idea of some metaphysical connection, some nexus uniting all representations, also appears to involve the idea of space. Consequently, since Schopenhauer attempts to develop a metaphysics that mediates between the omniscience of dogmatic metaphysics and the despair of the Kantian critique by saying something about the thing in itself (will is a veiled thing in itself), but not everything (things in themselves are beyond cognition), he is led to walk a fine line between the immanent and the transcendent, a line he cannot help but cross in his analysis of paranormal phenomena. By claiming it is the cognition of one’s own will that is the clue to connecting inner with outer experiences, Schopenhauer can only claim that will is the essence of appearances. Moreover, Schopenhauer appears to make will the Urphänomen of his philosophy, since will is the basis for explaining all other experiences, and it is inexplicable and irreducible to something more basic. Perhaps that should be philosophically sufficient.

Nevertheless, Schopenhauer could try to defend his position here as he did when confronted with similar problems. For example, when questioned by his friend Johann Becker about how the intelligible character could constitute an extratemporal act of will, and how a person’s empirical character could be its appearance, Schopenhauer replied, “I present this not as an objective truth or as an adequate notion of the relation between the thing in itself and appearance; rather, I present it merely as a metaphor and simile, as a figurative expression of the matter … in order to make the matter comprehensible.”33 If this were to be the case with Schopenhauer’s theory of the paranormal, then again, it is difficult to understand how he would be providing an explanation of the totality of experiences since figurative expressions transcend the principle of sufficient reason, the very principle of all explanation. And if such expressions provide some increase to our cognitive stock, it comes at the cost of the goal of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, viz., a comprehensive explanation of the totality of experience. It also cuts against his “epiphilosophy [Epiphilosophie]” (WWR2[P], 640 [SW3, 736]), which pledges his commitment to a philosophy that stays within the bounds of experience.

10.4 Conclusion

Schopenhauer’s focus on the paranormal provides him with a set of phenomena that contradict the standpoint of the natural sciences, and, by showing how his metaphysics can account for these phenomena, he has more evidence to support his claim that his metaphysics explains the totality of experiences. Whereas he held that his metaphysics grounded science by explaining that which was presupposed but not explainable scientifically, it also had the power to explain phenomena that contradicted the best findings of the natural science. It is for reasons like this that he remarked that “animal magnetism … is an incomparably more important appearance than mineral magnetism” (WWR2[P], 179 [SW3, 198]). The latter is explained by the natural sciences, but not the former, which stood in contradiction to normal phenomena. Thus, he claimed that his metaphysics brought “the most heterogeneous [phenomena] into agreement, so that the contradiction is resolved also between those that contrast the most” (WWR2[P], 184 [SW3, 205]).

One can admire Schopenhauer’s willingness to explore phenomena that have been generally ignored by philosophers, just as one can appreciate his willingness to speak his truths without regard to their reception by his contemporaries. At the same time, however, one must question his willingness to uncritically accept paranormal phenomena at face value. If there was one thing that Schopenhauer was not, he was not a skeptic. This lack of skepticism sometimes serves him well, such as his pragmatic rejection of theoretical egoism (solipsism).34 But with the paranormal, it appears to have failed him.35 Perhaps he should have just left the paranormal as the subject for parapsychologists and ghost hunters, waiting instead for “facts” for which he could then attempt to supply a theory.36 Or he could have hunted for such like the solid British utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick, the first president of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 (London), and the North American pragmatist, William James, the first president of the British Society’s counterpart, the American Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1884 (Boston). Better yet, he should have considered different explanations for why belief in magic and the paranormal is such a persistent feature of the human condition, just as he did for religious beliefs, the truths of which Schopenhauer said were expressed allegorically in a “sensu allegorico” (WWR2[P], 166 [SW3, 183]).

Acknowledgments

I thank my friend and colleague Edward E. Erdmann, who assisted with some of the translations, edited, and read an earlier version of the paper, “The World as Weird: Schopenhauer’s Use of Odd Phenomena to Corroborate His Metaphysics,” at the workshop on the works of Schopenhauer, held at the University of Texas at San Antonio, November 6, 2013.

Notes

1. WWR1, 575 (SW7, 99).

2. Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, [The Gay Science], section 99, “Schopenhauer’s Followers,” Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studenausgabe, Vol. 3, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (München:Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980), 454. The first passage that Nietzsche places in quotation marks, “das Sterben ist eigentlich der Zweck des Daseins,” appears to be a paraphrase of WWR2[P], 637 (SW3, 732), where Schopenhauer writes, “Das Sterben ist allerdings als der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens anzusehen.” The second quoted material is from PP1, 268 (SW5, 324). For the way in which Schopenhauer’s view of compassion can be viewed as a form of clairvoyance, see my “Compassion as Moral Clairvoyance: The Core of the Poodle,” Schopenhauer - Jahrbuch 93 (2012), 19–29.

3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Morgenröte: Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile [Daybreak: Thoughts on Moral Prejudices], section 142, Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 3, 136. In one of his later manuscripts, Schopenhauer observed: “the fearful aversion, which many people have for toads and which must rest not on a physical or an aesthetic, but on a metaphysical basis. In this connection, we have still to reflect that from time immemorial toads have been used for the arts of magic” (MR4, 384).

4. Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Schopenhauer as an Evolutionist,” Mind 21 (1911), 116.

5. With the exception of “magic,” I will follow Heather Wolffram, who describes “animal magnetism” or “Mesmerism” as “a system of therapeutics based on the idea that ill health is a result of imbalances of magnetic fluids within the body, which a mesmerist can redistribute by means of magnetic strokes. In some patients the application of Mesmerism leads to a state of somnambulism.” She defines “somnambulism,” as “a state of sleep, or half-waking trance, spontaneously or artificially induced—i.e., through Mesmerism or hypnosis—in which complex intellectual tasks can be carried out and in which paranormal abilities such as clairvoyance and telepathy are sometimes exhibited”; “clairvoyance” as “the faculty of perceiving events in the future and beyond normal sensory contact”; “telekinesis” as “the ability to move objects at a distance by mental or other non-physical means”; and “telepathy” as “the communication of thoughts and ideas by means other than the known senses”; see her The Stepchildren of Science: Psychical Research and Parapsychology in Germany, c. 1870–1939 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2009), 5–6. Schopenhauer defined something as “ … magical, whereby we denote something which, without being a natural force, and consequently without having the limits of a natural force, nevertheless exercises over nature a power which is therefore inexhaustible, infinite and eternal, that is to say outside of time … .” (MR1, 205). Black magic is practiced for harmful ends, according to Schopenhauer, whereas white magic is practiced for salutary ends.

6. Schopenhauer here is referring to the Bhagavad Gita.

7. See PP1, 268 (SW5, 324) for Schopenhauer’s account of his clairvoyance.

8. Schopenhauer’s posthumous library contained more than a hundred books on paranormal phenomenon; see Randschriften zu Büchern in HN5 (287–318).

9. In “Essay on Spirit-Seeing and Related Themes,” Schopenhauer refers to Kant’s essay, accepting the claim that Kant had demonstrated the failure of spiritualist explanations of spirit apparitions. In a commitment that Schopenhauer saw as faithful to Kant, Schopenhauer calls his explanation “idealistic” (PP1, 200 [SW5, 243]). Schopenhauer viewed “spiritualism” as a form of substance dualism, holding that the subject of cognition is an “immaterial substance,” whereas the object of cognition is a material substance. He contrasted this with materialism, which holds that both subject and object are material substances (see WWR2[P], 13 [SW3, 16]).

10. See Diethard Sawicki’s excellent study, Leben mit den Toten: Geisterglauben und die Entstehung des Spiritismus in Deutschland 1770–1900 (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002).

11. For Fichte and animal magnetism, and Schelling and magnetism, somnambulism, and clairvoyance, see, respectively, Sawicki, Leben mit den Toten, 141 and 146–49; for Hegel, see Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, translated by William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 4–7, 27, 68, 101, 103, and 109; and Stefan Andriopoulos, Ghostly Apparitions: German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media (New York: Zone Books, 2013), 49–71.

12. Arthur Schopenhauer: Gespräche, edited by Arthur Hübscher (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt; Friedrich Frommann Verlag Günther Holzboog, 1971), 127. Schopenhauer was referring specifically to his work on the metaphysics of sexual love and spirit-seeing (Geistersehn), both of which he recognizes as including claims that transcend the bounds of all possible experience. In addition to Sawicki, see, for example, Wolffram, The Stepchildren of Science, 46–48. For a thorough account of Schopenhauer’s work on occult phenomena in the context of the second half of the nineteenth century, see Segala, Marco, I fantasmi, il cervello, l’anima Schopenhauer, l’occulto e la scienza (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1998).

13. It is not uncommon for Schopenhauer to use the terms “philosophy” and “metaphysics” interchangeably. For example, Schopenhauer writes: “It is true that philosophy has as its object experience; however, not like the other sciences this or that specific experience, but rather experience itself, generally and as such, according to its possibility, its scope [Gebiete], its essential content, its inner and outer elements, its form and matter” (PP2, 21 [SW6, 19]).

14. See WWR1, 453–54 (SW2, 505–06).

15. At this point he does not say what this riddle is, assuming that his reader recalls an earlier and somewhat prescient discussion (for our topic) in the second book of The World as Will and Representation, where he raised the question of the meaning (Bedeutung) of representations; that is, whether the world is nothing more than representation and is, therefore, something akin to either an “insubstantial dream or ghostly phantasm” (WWR1, 123 [SW2, 118]). The quote is from §18, where Schopenhauer articulates a new type of truth, the “philosophical truth par excellence,” that the body is identical to the will. In his On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason he recognized four types of truth: logical, empirical, transcendental, and metalogical. He then also claims that “the subject of cognition, appearing as an individual, is given the solution to this riddle: and this solution is will” (WWR1, 124 [SW2,119]). The riddle later assumes a deeply existential tone. It becomes the “ever-disquieting riddle [stets beunruhigende Räthsel]” (WWR2[P], 171 [SW2, 189]), by Schopenhauer’s connecting the human need for metaphysics to a form of philosophical astonishment prompted by the realization of the ubiquity of suffering and death.

16. The translations from WWR2 are my own.

17. At WWR2[P], 201, Schopenhauer refers to the chapter “Physical Astronomy,” from On Will in Nature, where he claims to have used inner experience as the key for connecting inner and outer experiences; see WN, 394–400 (SW4, 84–94).

18. David W. Hamlyn views Schopenhauer as employing an “argument to the best explanation” in favor of his metaphysics (i.e., his metaphysics of will yields the best explanation of experience as a whole). See Hamlyn’s “Why Are There Phenomena?” in Zeit der Ernte: Studien zum Stand der Schopenhauer-Forschung, Festschrit für Arthur Hübscher zum 85. Gerburtstag, edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstadt: Frommann/Holzboog, 1982): 343.

19. By basing his metaphysics on experience, Schopenhauer is well aware that he surrenders any claims regarding certainty; see WWR2[P], 181 (SW3, 202). He also holds that we cannot obtain a complete and exhaustive explanation of existence; see WWR1, 455 (SW2, 507).

20. See John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. 1 (New York: Dover, 1959), 122.

21. Schopenhauer will frequently refer to the objects of the outer sense “consciousness of other things” and the inner sense as “self-consciousness”; see, for example, FW, 40 (SW4, 14) and FW, 50 (SW4, 26).

 In reference to Schopenhauer’s claim that the inner experience of will is an experience of the thing-in-itself “under the lightest of veils,” Sebastian Schmid raised the obvious question: “Was ist überhaupt ein halb verschleiertes Ding an sich? Schwerlich wird man sich hierunter etwas denken können” [Whatever is a partially veiled thing in itself? It will be difficult to be able to think of anything by this concept], see Schmidt’s Schopenhauer’s Willensmetaphysik in ihrem Verhältnis zu neueren Ansichten über den Willen (Leipzig: 1894), 12.

23. Schopenhauer decries the Post-Kantian philosophers Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel for trying to fashion out of Kant’s notion of theoretical reason some oracle with a privileged access to the supersensible; see FR, 116 (SW4, 123) and WWR1, 551 (SW2, 618).

24. For an account of the development of Schopenhauer’s view of will as thing in itself in the second edition of The World as Will and Representation, see Cartwright, “Two Senses of ‘Thing in Itself’ in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy,” Idealistic Studies 31, no. 1 (Winter 2001), 34–37.

25. Later, he writes about “metaphysics in the narrower sense,” as proceeding from appearances to “that which appears, to that which is hidden behind the former, hence ta meta ta physica [τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, that which comes after physic],” (PP2, 21 [SW6, 19]), thereby returning to a somewhat Aristotelian view of metaphysics.; also see the following note.

26. Schopenhauer quotes from one of Kant’s pre-Critical works, his first book, the 1746 Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte [Thoughts on the True Estimation of the Vital Forces], §51: “It is apparent that the original sources of the effects of nature must absolutely be the subject of metaphysics” (WN, 325 [SW4, 5]). This remark was added to the second edition of WN (1854).

27. When visiting patients of a well-known advocate and practitioner of animal magnetism, Karl Wolfart, Schopenhauer claimed to have managed to induce a state of somnambulism in a woman simply by looking at her; see Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 442–43.

28. In a passage that Schopenhauer would drop from the second edition of his main work, he claimed “I would like to apply to this property [of will’s objecthood (Objektität)] an unusual and indeterminate word that is in fact badly regarded, but is fitting for a property in respect of which the will as thing in itself is utterly opposed to all things in nature. I would like to call it the magic of the will, for in this concept we are thinking of something that, despite not being any natural force, and consequently not being subordinated to the laws of nature and restricted by them. … [L]ike a magician, it [will] calls into visibility things that for us are of the greatest reality, but that in respect of the will are merely reflections of its essence. … The use of the word magic is just a thoroughly causal comparison, though, and no more weight should be placed upon it, nor will further use be made of it” (WWR1, 575 [SW7, 99]).

29. In addition, Schopenhauer found a connection between compassion, animal magnetism, and magic, classifying them, along with sexual love, as forms of “Sympathy [Sympathie]”; that is, of forms of “The empirical emerging of the metaphysical identity of will through the physical multiplicity of will’s appearance’’ (WWR2[P], 602 [SW3, 691–92]). In this regard he referred to animal magnetism, magic, and compassion as “practical metaphysics,” as expressions of what (theoretical) metaphysics describes; see WN, 408 (SW4, 102) and BM, 245 (SW4, 260).

30. See William von “Der Frankfurter Skandal um den Magnetiseur Ragazzoni,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 31, 1957, for scandals associated with Ragazzoni’s Frankfurt act. Two Frankfurt physicians interviewed Ragazzoni in his apartment and found him incapable of reproducing the feats of his stage act. Hübscher cites Schröder in Arthur Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe, edited by Arthur Hübscher (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987), 593.

31. Schopenhauer holds that “Individuality is also inherent in will, insofar as the character is individual; however, this [character] is annihilated [aufgehoben] in the denial of will. Thus individuality is inherent in will only in its affirmation and not in its denial” (WWR2[P], 609 [SW2, 700]). Perhaps ghosts are the dead who did not deny will (no wonder that they are troubled!). Ultimately, how deeply the roots of individuality go in the being itself in the world is a question that Schopenhauer holds cannot be answered since it entails an answer that is transcendent; see WWR2[P], 641 (SW3, 736–37). Also see Damir Barbarić, “Der Weg durch das Ding an sich. Schopenhauers Versuch über das Geistersehn,” Schopenhauer- Jahrbuch 93 (2012), 176.

32. One could argue that Schopenhauer is suggesting that space, time, and causality are also features of will. However, it appears that he has ruled out that possibility; see Sandra Shapshay’s “Did Schopenhauer Neglect the ‘Neglected Alternative’ Objection?” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93.3 (2011): 321–48.

33. Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe, 217; Schopenhauer to Becker, September 21, 1844. This sort of reply falls short of calling his analysis of paranormal phenomena a “metaphysical fantasy,” as he called his analysis of the belief in “special providence, or else in the supernatural guidance of events in the course of an individual’s life … and is even found, firmly and unshakably, in thinking minds averse to all superstition” (PP1, 177 [SW5, 213]). Of course the title of this essay from which this quote was taken tells it all: “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual.” Schopenhauer also claimed that some of his work on the metaphysics of sexual love involved transcendent claims (see WWR2[P], 533 [SW3, 609]). Sandra Shapshay claims that Schopenhauer’s designation of the thing in itself as “will” is a metonymical identification (see her “Poetic Intuition and the Bounds of Sense: Metaphor and Metonymy in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy,” in Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Value, edited by Alex Neill and Christopher Janaway [Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009], 58–76, and her Chapter 6 in this volume).

34. See WWR1, 129 (SW2, 125).

35. Gottlieb Florschütz argues that Schopenhauer’s account of extrasensory perception as an emanation from a metaphysical will established a philosophical foundation for modern parapsychology long before parapsychology was established as a “science”; see his “Schopenhauer und die Magie: die praktische Metaphysik?” Schopenhauer- Jahrbuch 93 (2012), 483.

36. Psychologist Terence Hines observes “Many theories have been proposed by parapsychologists to explain how psi [psychic phenomena] takes place. To skeptics, such theory building seems premature, as the phenomena to be explained by the theories have yet to be demonstrated convincingly”; see his Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (New York: Prometheus, 2003), 14.

Further Reading

Andriopoulos, Stefan. Ghostly Apparitions: German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media. New York: Zone Books, 2013.

Barbarić, Damir. “Der Weg durch das Ding an sich. Schopenhauers Versuch über das Geistersehn.” Schopenhauer- Jahrbuch 93 (2012): 175–82.

Cartwright, David E. “Compassion as Moral Clairvoyance: The Core of the Poodle.” Schopenhauer Jahrbuch 93 (2012): 19–29.

Cartwright, David E. Schopenhauer: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Cartwright, David E. “Two Senses of ‘Thing in Itself’ in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy.” Idealistic Studies 31, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 31–53.

Florschütz, Gottlieb. “Schopenhauer und die Magie: die praktische Metaphysik?” Schopenhauer- Jahrbuch 93 (2012): 471–84.

Hamlyn, David W. “Why are there Phenomena?” In Zeit der Ernte: Studien zum Stand der Schopenhauer-Forschung, Festschrit für Arthur Hübscher zum 85. Gerburtstag, edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher. Stuttgart/Bad Cannstadt: Frommann/Holzboog, 1982, 335–43.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Philosophy of Mind, translated by William Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

Hines, Terence. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. New York: Prometheus, 2003.

Kant, Immanuel. Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurteilung der Beweise derer sich Herr von Leibniz und andere Mechaniker in dieser Streitsache bedienet haben, nebst einigen vorhergehenden Betrachtungen welche die Kraft der Körper überhaupt betreffen. Königsberg: Martin Eberhard Dorn, 1746.

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysic, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. Riga: F. J. Hartknoch, 1783.

Kant, Immanuel. Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik. Königsberg: Johann Jakob Kanter, 1766.

Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. 1. New York: Dover, 1959.

Lovejoy, Arthur O. “Schopenhauer as an Evolutionist.” Mind 21 (1911): 195–222.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft. In Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studenausgabe, 3, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980, 320–663.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Morgenröte. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile. In Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studenausgabe, 3, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980, 12–312.

Sawicki, Diethard. Leben mit den Toten: Geisterglauben und die Entstehung des Spiritismus in Deutschland 1770–1900. Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002.

Schmid, Sebastian. Schopenhauers Willensmetaphysik in ihrem Verhältnis zu neueren Ansichten über den Willen. Leipzig: NC, 1894.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Randschriften zu Büchern, Volume 5 of Arthur Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachlaß, edited by Arthur Hübscher. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985.

Segala, Marco. I fantasmi, il cervello, l’anima Schopenhauer, l’occulto e la scienza. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1998.

Shapshay, Sandra. “Did Schopenhauer Neglect the ‘Neglected Alternative’ Objection?” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93, no. 3 (2011): 321–48.

Shapshay, Sandra. “Poetic Intuition and the Bounds of Sense: Metaphor and Metonymy in chopenhauer’s Philosophy.” In Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Value, edited by Alex Neill and Christopher Janaway. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, 58–76.

Wolffram, Heather. The Stepchildren of Science: Psychical Research and Parapsychology in Germany, c. 1870–1939. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2009.