MATERIALISM.) Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is the philosopher of "volun tarism" and "pessimism." Just as Hegel, his senior contemporary, had identified ultimate reality with reason, so Schopenhauer, on the contrary, identified it with will, and irrational will to boot. He too, claimed to be developing the philosophy of Kant. For Kant, like Descartes and others before him, had maintained the primacy of the will, on which the whole moral philosophy (includ ing the moral postulates) was based. Will, then, according to Schopenhauer, is the sole reality. Moreover, it is universal, or "will in general" (analogous to the "consciousness in general" of Kant and the German Idealists). There are really no individual things or wills. For individuality is bound up with differences of time and place, which had been shown by Kant to be not real constituents of things-in-themselves, but merely forms of their appearance. Individuality is thus mere illusion. Again, Schopen
hauer, like Kant, agreed with the Christian view that the will is essentially evil. It is a will to live at any cost, and knowledge or reason is merely an instrument which it has invented to serve its own evil ends. But there is no satisfying the will to live. All the pains taken to satisfy any desire do not really avail. For the satisfaction of any one desire is only the beginning of an other, and the quest is infinite. So life is a welter of painful strivings and unsatisfied cravings which vastly exceed its moments of satisfaction or happiness. The remedy is a kind of Buddhist self-renunciation. By realizing the illusoriness of the individual self and the vanity of its quest for self-satisfaction, man may see through the vanity of life with all its values and pursuits. (See