Observations placeholder
Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - Personality
Identifier
015778
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The World as Will and Idea – Arthur Schopenhauer
According to the latter view he would need only consider how he would like best to be, and so he would be…… for it consists really in this, that a person is his own product produced in the light of knowledge.
I, on the contrary, say that he is his own product prior to all knowledge, and knowledge comes later merely to shed light on it. Therefore he cannot resolve to be like this or like that, nor can he become other than he is; but he is once for all, and he comes to know in the course of experience what he is.
Thus a person’s behaviour may be visibly changed without entitling us to conclude that his character has been changed