ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Schopenhauer's soteriology, which revolves around two so-called ‘ways to salvation’. Many scholars have noted that this part of his thought contradicts various key arguments on which Schopenhauer's philosophy rests as a whole, for example because it suggests that the subject can will not to will, or that the metaphysical kernel of all that exists – the Will – can be denied. The chapter argues that, to make sense of these contradictions, we need to postulate two ‘forms of willing’: individual willing on the one hand, and a desire to eradicate this willing on the other, the latter born in the will's essential freedom beyond the world-as-representation. This argument is rooted in the idea that an important aspect of Schopenhauer's thought – his concern with human beings as embodied selves – provides us with several insightful arguments regarding the coming about of these two levels. This latter observation is linked to the chapter's more general aim to foreground the unique elements of Schopenhauer's analysis of corporeality.
