Self-knowledge and reflection in Schopenhauer’s view of agency

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the roles that self-knowledge and reflection play in Schopenhauer’s view of agency. Focusing in particular on the discussion of the acquired character, his cognitive theory of motivation, and the idea of intellectual freedom, I argue that we find two conceptions of rational agency in Schopenhauer. The ‘minimal’ conception sees rational agency primarily as a kind of reflective motivation, whereas the ‘maximal’ or ‘robust’ conception sees rational agency as involving a kind of reflective self-organization. Furthermore, I argue that rational self-organization and acquired character go hand-in-hand: it is only in virtue of achieving the latter that one achieves the former. Although some worry that the discussion of acquired character does not sit well with Schopenhauer’s broader determinist theory of action, the reading offered here aims to demonstrate that the two are reconcilable.KEYWORDS: Schopenhaueragencyactioncharacterself-knowledge‌reflection AcknowledgementsThank you to three anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank Sandra Shapshay, Allen Wood, and Ivan Verano for commenting on an even earlier draft of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Bratman Citation2007, 21.2 Worries along these lines have been around awhile and are discussed in: Patrick Gardiner Citation1963; Julian Young Citation1987; John E. Atwell Citation1990; David E. Cooper Citation1998; Bernard Reginster Citation2006; and Christopher Janaway Citation2012.3 Cooper Citation1998, 209.4 For recent work suggesting that Schopenhauer can make room for genuine reflective agency, but which also wishes to reject reading him as a ‘hard determinist’, opting instead for a ‘Kantian compatibilism’, see Shapshay Citation2017 and Citation2019. For another interesting discussion of Schopenhauer’s view of freedom see Zöller Citation2017.5 I wish to be noncommittal about whether this is best read as a psychological, metaphysical, or ontological thesis.6 Although he does believe that ‘higher animals’ exhibit a ‘semblance’ of individuality (W 1, 156). Here, we might think Schopenhauer has in mind, for examples, animals like elephants, about whom he often speaks highly, or his cherished poodles.7 This point holds regardless of the fact that Schopenhauer will of course grant that we do not always act rationally, and, indeed, that it is partially a good thing that we do not.8 According to Atwell, who makes a similar set of points, if we are to be identified with our individual character, then talk of creating or choosing our character suggests we would exist either characterless before this creation happened (but then we’d be effectively nothing) or we’d have to exist as someone else (odd). See Atwell Citation1990, 47. Shapshay also discusses this particular move with respect to Schopenhauer’s idea that character is inborn. See Shapshay Citation2017, 85.9 As we’ll see shortly, it could be expressing my species character, rather than my individual character. Still, Schopenhauer seems committed to needing some character facts in all explanations of things that happen in the empirical world.10 They need not always take this form, however. Schopenhauer grants that human motives can be perceptual/intuitive as well as rational/abstract. For example, in his discussion of the compassionate person, he states that for them to be moved to alleviate another’s suffering ‘no abstract cognition was required, but only intuitive cognition, the simple grasp of the concrete case, to which compassion responds at once without further mediation of thought’ (E, 232). Considering, however, the way Schopenhauer sometimes seems to want to divorce reason and virtue, we might wonder whether we should call compassionate motivation human motivation at all, given that it seems to draw less on our rational nature and more on our animal-volitional nature (see e.g. W 1, 312).11 I discuss and defend Schopenhauer's intellectualist handling of motivation in my 2022.12 For a careful treatment of the many dimensions of Schopenhauer’s concept of motivation see e.g. Janaway Citation1989 and Murphy Citation2022.13 For a discussion of Schopenhauer’s ‘expressivism’ about action see Schroeder Citation202014 Young Citation1987, 61. As I said, Young is optimistic about the prospects of giving an account of Schopenhauer’s view of agency that allows space for the acquired character without rendering it full of inconsistencies. I use Young’s statement of the worry, however, because I think it speaks to an intuitive understanding of the tension, though not the right one. For other sympathetic takes on the acquired character see Wicks Citation2008; Koßler Citation2016; and Shapshay Citation2019.15 See e.g. Young Citation1987, 57-8.16 The kind of self-knowledge at issue here is not merely the kind of immediate knowledge we might expect rational agents to have of the contents of their mental states. Instead, what Schopenhauer has in mind is what some today call ‘Socratic self-knowledge.’ To echo Ursula Renz, this is self-knowledge thought of as a ‘personal achievement’; it is not the simple self-knowledge that comes about as a matter of simple reflective success, which is something that most agents enjoy, and therefore hardly constitutes an achievement. See Renz Citation2017. It is a further interesting question how the valuable kind of self-knowledge discussed here relates to that other kind of valuable self-knowledge in Schopenhauer, namely the sort had by the agent who is on her way to self-resignation. For a discussion of self-knowledge in this context, see Bernard Reginster Citation2017.17 Young Citation1987, 57.18 Janaway Citation2002, 67.19 Cooper Citation1998, 214; my emphasis.20 Ibid.21 The implication here being that Atwell does not find responsible agency to be incompatible with practical essentialism. For Atwell’s careful argument to this effect, see Atwell Citation1990, 43-39.22 Atwell Citation1990, 134.23 Ibid, 135.24 It strikes me that Schopenhauer is more interested in wavering agency than he is in a wavering character, but at this point this difference isn’t important.25 It is central to Schopenhauer’s discussion of acquired character that part of the reason why it is good for us to get to know ourselves, and then act accordingly, is so that we may avoid feelings of self-dissatisfaction (W 1, 333). I’ll say more about this later.26 Atwell Citation1990, 64.27 A possible way to avoid the issue is to appeal to the discussion of the intelligible character in hopes of grounding something like empirical freedom in this world. Shapshay makes a move like this. For Shapshay, commentators move too quickly when they identify the intelligible character with the will as thing in itself; rather, she says it ‘is something metaphysically intermediate between the world of representation and the thing in itself: It is a special Idea, which is itself an objectivation of a particular act of the metaphysical will’ (Shapshay Citation2017, 94). If the intelligible character mediates between these two ‘worlds’, then it becomes possible to explain empirical agency on its basis.28 Translation amended.29 Dale Jacquette takes the artificiality, or what he calls the ‘superficiality’ of acquired character to indicate that it cannot be central to Schopenhauer’s accounts of character and agency. See Jacquette Citation2005, 201.30 Bratman Citation2007, 195-196.31 Bratman Citation2007, 91.32 To be sure, he also speaks about ‘contaminations of cognition by individuality’ (P 2, 62). Thus, it’s not just that cognition contaminates individuality, as we see in the passage from the main work quoted here. The contamination is mutual.33 Now this doesn’t mean that I can do everything a human being can do; at least, it doesn’t mean that I can do it successfully. Each of us is just one human being, just one member of the human species. It also doesn’t mean that I should want to do whatever a human being can do.34 This is an idea we find in Atwell Citation1990.35 Again, we know this to be an exaggeration, give that compassionate actions are motivated by intuitive, rather than abstract cognitions.36 Interestingly, what Norman et. al. translate as ‘self-restraint’ is the German word Selbstüberwindung, which might also be translated as ‘self-overcoming’. Needless to say, this makes it worth exploring in more detail the extent to which Schopenhauer’s discussion of acquired character, no matter how disguised, lies behind Nietzsche’s view of mature agency.37 There is an interesting parallel to draw here between the form of agency Schopenhauer says is constitutive of acquired character and what Bratman’s planning theory, although a full working out of the connections, and the degree to which Schopenhauer might be read as a planning theorist is beyond the scope of this paper.38 See W 1, 322.39 Schopenhauer says that our capacity for reflective decision is what ‘conditions the possibility of expression of the individual character’ (W 1, 327). He also notes that desires only express our species character, not our individual character, meaning: our individuality rests not just on our wants, but on how we think about them, and the form of expression we give to them (W 1, 326).40 ‘But given the groundlessness of the will itself, people have at the same time overlooked the necessity that governs it wherever it appears, and declared deeds to be free when they were not, since every individual action follows with strict necessity from the effect of a motive on the character’ (W 1, 138; my emphasis).41 To make the language of motives ‘reaching’ character through cognition less murky, consider an example. If I am generally courageous, yet I don’t know that the child before me in the lake is drowning, but instead think they’re waving their arms and having fun, then I am not likely to jump in. And part of the explanation why will be because I misrecognized (mis-cognized) the situation, which caused the true motives before me not to reach my character. At the same time, I could recognize the situation aright and not be a courageous person: I could be a coward. In that case, the motives also won’t reach my character, but not because of a problem of cognition. But in both cases, we see that in many cases (but not all), motives need to reach character (via cognition) for them to get a grip on the agent.42 Furthermore, while Schopenhauer does limit his discussion of obstacles to intellectual freedom to cases of pathology, there doesn’t seem to be any special reason why it cannot be extended to less pathological cases as well. For example, simple instances of self-deception and self-ignorance.43 See several of the essays in Bratman Citation2007 for a working out of the details of this theory.44 Motives cause actions: so, if I am acting out of character, then that typically will mean I’m also being moved in a way that is not in keeping with my character45 Atwell Citation1990, 63.46 There’s no problem with this, since for Schopenhauer we are each of us a mix of the three fundamental incentives to action: egoism, compassion, and malice. See E, 238.47 Thanks to an anonymous referee for helping me to be clearer on this point.48 It is probably right to say that we should opt for a set of neutral or middle-ground epistemic states of self-relation as well; for example, states like ‘having a defeasible idea about my individual character’. Indeed, given the challenges of acquiring accurate self-knowledge, Schopenhauer is likely to say that this is the way most of us epistemically relate to ourselves.49 Recall the concluding element of the long passage quoted earlier: ‘Consequently to expect that a human being in the presence of the same occasion would act one way at one time but quite differently another time, would be as if one expected the same tree that bore cherries this summer to bear pears in the next (E, 76-7)’.