ABSTRACT
Schopenhauer's general mode of operation is actually remarkably close to natural science: rather than disregarding experience. Four types of knowing can be discerned in Schopenhauer's philosophy that arise from four specific objects of knowledge in accordance with a specific mode of knowing: mediate representational knowledge, immediate intuitive knowledge of the will through bodily feeling, representational knowledge of the Platonic Ideas and intuitive metaphysical knowledge of principium individuationis. According to him, these different 'types' of knowing form on a twofold axis: mediate/immediate and representational/non-representational. The necessary first step in understanding Schopenhauer's epistemology then will be to decipher what exactly it is that Schopenhauer takes as the necessary presuppositions of 'sound philosophy', and specifically how this involves Kantian Idealism. Schopenhauer notes that modern philosophy has oscillated between realism and idealism, which is really the question of whether the subject or the object is primary in cognition. With regard to his rejection of relativism, Schopenhauer makes a vital suggestion when discussing the realism/idealism-debate.
