ABSTRACT
At the conclusion of my exposition, some considerations regarding my philosophy itself may be in order. – This, as already stated, does not presume to explain the existence of the world in terms of its ultimate grounds: rather, it sticks to the facts of outer and inner experience in the manner in which they are accessible to everyone, and shows their true and deepest interconnection, yet without really going beyond them to any otherworldly things and their relations to the world. Accordingly, it makes no inferences to that which exists beyond all possible experience, but provides merely an interpretation of what is given in the external world and self-consciousness, hence contents itself with comprehending the essence of the world with respect to its internal interconnectedness. Consequently, it is immanent in the Kantian sense of the word.117 But for precisely this reason, it still leaves many questions unanswered, namely, why what has been shown to be factual is thus and not otherwise, etc. But all such questions, or rather the answers to them, are really transcendent, i.e., they cannot be thought by means of the forms and functions belonging to our intellect, do not enter into them; it is therefore related to them as our sensibility is to possible properties of bodies for which we have no senses. It can still be asked, e.g., after all my arguments: from whence has this will originated that is free to affirm itself, of which the world is the phenomenon, or to deny itself, of which we do not know the phenomenon? what fatality, lying beyond all experience, has put it into the supremely futile position of the alternative between making its appearance as a world in which suffering and death hold sway, or else of denying its very own essence? or too, what might have moved it to abandon the infinitely preferable repose of blessed nothingness? An individual will, it may be added, can be led to its own destruction only through error in the choice, hence through the fault of cognizance. But how could will in itself, prior to all phenomena, consequently still without cognizance, have gone wrong
source of that great dissonance which permeates this world? Further, it might be asked, how deep into the being in itself of the world do the roots of individuality go? To which one might at least answer: they go as deep as affirmation of the will for life; where denial occurs they cease, for they originated with affirmation. But one could of course pose the question: “What would I be, if I were not will for life?” And more of the like.
