ABSTRACT
So we attempt to bring together and analyse the structural and functional resemblance which Schopenhauer’s system bears to a religious system. In so doing, this chapter will consider the context and appeal of Schopenhauer’s system, something which, again, is significantly related to the developments concerning theology in his and our time. Finally, drawing all the foregoing themes together, it will seek to illustrate that Schopenhauer’s system, in many ways because of its affinities to a religious system, initially seeks to hold two key thoughts in tension: the first is the doctrine of the will and its attendant metaphysics, while the second follows from his ethics and is the denial of the will and the mystical doctrine of the thing-in-itself.2 Ultimately, however, this cannot be done and Schopenhauer finally accepts this, settling for a doctrine of salvation which cancels out significant elements of his earlier metaphysics and even epistemology.3 He is left with a doctrine of the thingin-itself which is not the will, which is conducive to what is morally virtuous and yet is something of which one cannot really speak meaningfully. But the mystery and nothingness with which Schopenhauer ends his system can be interpreted as signs that hope is not futile and that salvation is to be striven for. We thus seek to discern whether Schopenhauer consistently follows his ‘humble path’ method or whether the overall coherence of his philosophical system is fundamentally
compromised by the paradoxes contained therein. We will ask whether Schopenhauer could take his place, then, amongst the negative theologians who seek to subvert apodictic theology for the sake of salvation; that is, whether he is indeed, in the final analysis, a thinker on the boundary of theology.
