OPERARI SEQUITUR ESSE

Schopenhauer’s critique of the notion of free will

Abstract

Schopenhauer considers the world as representation,  submitted to the faculty of apprehension of the individual, and as will, impulse for self-assertion, which constitutes reality itself. The will objectified in representation is determined because the phenomenoses are subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason, according to which nothing exists without a reason for which it exists. The will not submitted to the status of phenomenon can be considered free and spontaneous. The human being is endowed with a volitive essence, the character, immutable and timeless, which unfolds in an empirical character. Taking into account the ideality of the individual essence, one understands how the individual is determined in his actions with the same necessity that all beings that exist are determined. Their seemingly arbitrary decisions are the result of the competition of the external circumstance (the motives) and of the individual character, an undivided and extratemporal act of the will.