Who Gets the Best of the Winged Cherub? Reid and Schopenhauer Confront Early Modern Angelism

In The World as Will and Representation , Schopenhauer makes an astute observation. In 1818, he seeks a course correction. Revisiting the development of modern philosophy from Descartes to Berkeley and up to Kant, Schopenhauer identifies, and wants to block, the prevailing idea that the knowing subject is “a winged cherub’s head without a body” (WWR1 118). Schopenhauer, is, I think, correct: angelism is a fair summation of the philosophical doctrine wrought by the introduction of Descartes’s idealism.