Arthur Schopenhauer: On the Affirmation of the Will-to-Live

If the will-to-live exhibited itself merely as an impulse to self-preservation, that would be only an affirmation of the individual phenomenon for the span of time of its natural duration. The cares and troubles of such a life would not be great, and consequently existence would prove easy and cheerful. Since, on the contrary, the will wills life absolutely and for all time, it exhibits itself at the same time as sexual impulse which has an endless series of generations in view. This impulse does away with that unconcern, cheerfulness, and innocence that would accompany a merely individual existence, since it brings into consciousness unrest, uneasiness, and melancholy, and into the course of life misfortunes, cares and misery. On the other hand, if it is voluntarily suppressed, as we see in rare exceptions, then this is the turning of the will, which changes its course. It is then absorbed in, and does not go beyond, the individual; but this can happen only through his doing a painful violence to himself. If this has taken place, that unconcern and cheerfulness of the merely individual existence are restored to consciousness, and indeed raised to a higher power. On the other hand, tied up with the satisfaction of that strongest of all impulses and desires is the origin of a new existence, and hence the carrying out of life afresh with all its burdens, cares, wants, and pains, in another individual, it is true; yet if the two, who are different in the phenomenon, were such absolutely and in themselves, where then would eternal justice be found? Life presents itself as a problem, a task to be worked out, and in general therefore as a constant struggle against want and affliction. Accordingly everyone tries to get through with it and come off as well as he can; he disposes of life as he does of a compulsory service that he is in duty bound to carry out. But who has contracted this debt? His begetter, in the enjoyment of sensual pleasure. Therefore, because the one has enjoyed this pleasure, the other must live, suffer, and die. However, we know and look back to the fact that the difference of the homogeneous is conditioned by space and time, which I have called in this sense the principium individuationis; otherwise eternal justice would be irretrievably lost. Paternal love, by virtue of which the father is ready to do, to suffer, and to take a risk more for his child than for himself, and at the same time recognizes this as his obligation, is due to the very fact that the begetter recognizes himself once more in the begotten.

The life of a man, with its endless care, want, and suffering, is to be regarded as the explanation and paraphrase of the act of procreation, of the decided affirmation of the will-to-live. Further, it is also due to this that he owes nature the debt of death, and thinks of this debt with uneasiness. Is not this evidence of the fact that our existence involves guilt? But we certainly always exist on periodical payment of the toll, birth and death, and we enjoy successively all the sorrows and joys of life, so that none can escape us. This is just the fruit of the affirmation of the will-to-live. Thus the fear of death, which holds us firmly to life in spite of all its miseries, is really illusory; but just as illusory is the impulse that has enticed us into it! This enticement itself can be objectively perceived in the reciprocal longing glances of two lovers; they are the purest expression of the will-to-live in its affirmation. How gentle and tender it is here! It wills well-being, and quiet enjoyment, and mild pleasures for itself, for others, for all. This is the theme of Anacreon. Thus by allurement and flattery it works its way into life; but when it is in life, then misery introduces crime, and crime misery; horror and desolation fill the scene. This is the theme of Aeschylus.

But the act by which the will affirms itself and man comes into existence is one of which all in their heart of hearts are ashamed, and which therefore they carefully conceal; in fact, if they are caught in the act, they are as alarmed as if they had been detected in a crime. It is an action of which, on cool reflection, we think often with repugnance, and in an exalted mood with disgust. […] A peculiar sadness and remorse follows close on it; yet these are felt most after the consummation of the act for the first time, and generally they are the more distinct, the nobler the character. Hence, even the pagan Pliny says: “Only man feels remorse after the first copulation; a course characteristic of life, that we feel remorse for our origin.” On the other hand, in Goethe’s Faust what do devil and witches practice and sing on their Sabbath? Lewdness and obscene jokes. In the very same work (in the admirable Paralipomena to Faust) what does Satan incarnate preach before the assembled multitude? Lewdness and obscene talk, nothing more. But the human race continues to exist simply and solely by means of the constant practice of such an act as this. Now if optimism were right, if our existence were to be gratefully acknowledged as the gift of the highest goodness guided by wisdom, and accordingly if it were in itself praiseworthy, commendable, and delightful, then certainly the act that perpetuates it would necessarily bear quite a different complexion. If, on the other hand, this existence is a kind of false step or wrong path, if it is the work of an originally blind will, the luckiest development of which is that it comes to itself in order to abolish itself, then the act perpetuating that existence must appear precisely as in fact it does.

With regard to the first fundamental truth of my teaching, the remark merits a place here that the above-mentioned shame over the business of procreation extends even to the parts that serve it, although, like all the other parts, they are given us by nature. Once again, this is a striking proof of the fact that not merely man’s actions, but even his body, are to be regarded as the phenomenon, the objectification, of his will, and as its work. For he could not be ashamed of a thing that existed without his will.

The act of procreation is further related to the world as the solution is to the riddle. Thus the world is wide in space and old in time, and has an inexhaustible multiplicity of forms. Yet all this is only the phenomenon of the will-to-live; and the concentration, the focus of this will is the act of generation. Hence in this act the inner nature of the world most distinctly expresses itself. In this respect it is even worth noting that the act itself is also positively called “the will” in the very significant German phrase: Er verlangte von ihr, sie sollte ihm zu Willen sein (He expected her to be willing to serve him). Therefore that act, as the most distinct expression of the will, is the kernel, the compendium, the quintessence of the world; it is the solution to the riddle. Accordingly, it is understood by the “tree of knowledge”; for, after acquaintance with it, everyone begins to see life in its true light, as Byron (in Don Juan) also says: “The tree of knowledge has been pluck’d—all’s known.”

No less in keeping with this quality is the fact that it is the great ‘Unspeakable,’ the public secret which must never be distinctly mentioned anywhere, but is always and everywhere understood to be the main thing as a matter of course, and is therefore always present in the minds of all. For this reason, even the slightest allusion to it is instantly understood. The principal role played in the world by this act and by what is connected with it, because everywhere love-intrigues are pursued on the one hand, and assumed on the other, is quite in keeping with the importance of this punctum saliens of the world-egg. What is amusing is to be found only in the constant concealment of the main thing.

But see now how the young, innocent human intellect is startled at the enormity, when that great secret of the world first becomes known to it! The reason for this is that, on the long path that the will, originally without knowledge, had to traverse before it rose to intellect, especially to human, rational intellect, it became such a stranger to itself; and so it no longer knows its origin, that poenitenda origo, and from the standpoint of pure, hence innocent, knowledge is horrified thereat.

The affirmation of the will-to-live, which accordingly has its center in the act of generation, is inevitable and bound to happen in the case of the animal. For the will that is the natura naturans first of all arrives at reflection in man. To arrive at reflection means not merely to know for the momentary need and necessity of the individual will, for its service in the urgent present moment – as is the case with the animal according to its completeness and its needs which go hand in hand – but to have reached a greater breadth of knowledge, by virtue of a distinct recollection of the past, of an approximate anticipation of the future, and, in this way, of a comprehensive survey of the individual life, of one’s own, of another, indeed of existence generally. Actually, the life of every animal species throughout the thousands of years of its existence is to a certain extent like a single moment; for it is mere consciousness of the present without that of the past and of the future, and consequently without that of death. In this sense it is to be regarded as a steady and enduring moment, a nunc stans. Incidentally, we here see most distinctly that in general the form of life, or of the phenomenon of the will with consciousness, is primarily and immediately only the present. Past and future are added only in the case of man, and indeed only in the concept; they are known in abstracto, and are possibly illustrated by pictures of the imagination. Hence, after the will-to-live, i.e., the inner being of nature, has run through the whole series of animals in restless striving towards complete objectification and complete enjoyment – and this often happens at various intervals of successive animal series arising anew on the same planet – it ultimately arrives at reflection in the being endowed with the faculty of reason, namely man. Here the matter now begins to be grave and critical for him; the question forces itself on him whence is all this and for what purpose, and principally whether the trouble and misery of his life and effort are really repaid by the profit. ‘Is the game worth the candle?’ Accordingly, here is the point where, in the light of distinct knowledge, he decides for the affirmation or denial of the will-to-live, although he can as a rule bring the latter to consciousness only in a mythical cloak. Consequently, we have no ground for assuming that an even more highly developed objectification of the will is reached anywhere, for it has already reached its turning-point here.