What is your will-to-live?

 

summary:

Shopenhauer’s will-to-live and Representation is about what gives people that will or drive to keep going on with their lives. Everyone is different with what their drive is as Shopenhauer states it is the troubles and desires that give people the push they need or want to move on. He also mentiones about purpose and how just like desires and troubles everyone lives differently for something or someone else. I use this example in my paper from the reading Mother Nature’s purpose is to maintain all living organisms, and humans all have a different purpose. Mothers care for their young, as do animals. What separates us from animals is that we as humans have a consciousness, and with this consciousness we have the ability to think, express, feel and where we feel we are aware of the fact some fear things like death. Whether that fear of death is rational or not it is something most experience. Shopenhauer believes it is better to feel the hurt and pain over the happiness and joy because he feels the bad outlasts the good, where the good comes and goes, but the bad tends to stay with us.

paper:Julianne Ferguson

                                                What is your will to live?

     “The World As Will And Representation” by Arthur Shopenhauer is about the will- to- live and what the aim and purpose of that will is, which differs from each individual and living thing. Every living organism has some drive, some point to doing something. In nature the driven force is mother- nature; her purpose is to maintain all living species. The aim or drive for humans isn’t to constantly do the same tasks over and over again, with in some retrospect doesn’t guarantee anything in return, no reward, “here too life by no means presents itself as a gift to be enjoyed, but as a task, a drudgery, to be worked through” (351). Shopenheauer declares we as people go through life doing the same routine over and over again, for what? Nothing, just to redo it all again tom? People need some drive to keep going, to move forward he explains “only apparently are people drawn from in front; in reality they are pushed from behind, it is not life that entices them on, but want and trouble that drive them forward” (pg. 360). No matter what life has in store, it comes down to the wants and troubles, or pain that gives people that ambition to keep going.

     One philosopher from the reading “confirms and establishes that the will-to-live/ everything presses and pushes towards existence” (pg.350). Shopenhauer gives one example in regards to animals in nature, “it then becomes obvious that the will-to-live is the keynote of its being…”(pg.350). Animal existence relies on the ability to not be changed and have endless limits as to what it can be or do such as always evolving and “seizing every opportunity, greedily grasping for itself every material capable of life…”(pg. 350), whereas with individuals whose lives will eventually come to an end, we have a consciousness. With this consciousness we feel pain, wants, desires and some fear the unknown. Some fear death, others nonchalant, while there are few who embrace it. 

     In Plato’s Apology his character Socrates did not fear death as some might, especially if they were in his situation. Socrates was condemned for teaching his young students about the curiosities of the world. Before being sentenced he was given a chance to defend himself in a defense speech. In his speech he did not simply state whether he was guilty or not guilty, instead he proved his innocent until the very end of his life. He was brave and courageous and took death in strive “there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place” (pg.35). Death isn’t to be feared it is but a natural course of events as is life itself, we either become nothing, or our souls have another place to live on, either way it isn’t something to be afraid of.  

     Another reading in comparison to Shopenhauer’s belief death is natural and should not be feared is Marcus Aurelius from Meditations. In the reading in book 2 On The River Gran, Among The Quadi number 11, “if there were anything harmful on the other side of death, they would have made sure that the ability to avoid it was within you” (pg.3-4). Meaning as stated if death were so bad, then the Gods would have provided the people the means/ability to avoid it at all costs, also on part 16. The Human soul degrades itself: number 17. On human life, as we as people learn we must learn to “accept what happens and what it is dealt as coming from the same place it came from”/ “and above all, that it accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed”(pg. 6). As previously mentioned death is but a natural course of events, where there is life there is death.

    Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics agrees with Shopenhauer that all good things come to an end, Aristotle states as followed “For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does  not make a man blessed and happy” (pg. 567). As happiness comes and goes, it does not last forever, and leaves people wanting more. Shopenhauer believes that its better to feel the hurt, sadness, and pain over the happiness and joy because the pain, and the feeling a person receives from that pain, outlasts the feeling a person receives from experiencing happiness. The good comes and goes, but the bad lingers in our mind and hearts for a lifetime. As quoted by Shopenhauer “Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow”(pg. 573). The past is lost, the future unknown, and the present always not meeting our standards the way we hoped or dreamed.

      In agreement with Shopenhauer that yes all good things do come to an end, and yes we as people do crave that longing to wanting longer lasting happiness. It is sadly true that all negativity does tend to weigh heavier than the good because of that feeling we cannot seem to shake when something bad happens. Whether that bad is an accident, or an emotion we feel from something we cannot seem to forget it, but the joys we lose in an instant because they happen somewhat frequently. In disagreement with him, I disagree that it is far better to feel the pain and hurt, than the joy and happiness because though short lived I would far rather experience the happy than the sad any day. A quote that I liked in terms of what we remember

 “A thousand pleasures do not compensate for one pain”- Petrarch (pg. 576).