A resignação como processo libertador da vontade na filosofia de Arthur Schopenhauer

Abstract

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) is known by his accentuated pessimism. The world is not the best of the possible worlds and his no existence is preferable his existence. The world carries in it existence a guilt character. Schopenhauer's pessimism is not due to the sum of sad and painful events or of the verification of the absence of happy events. It is found on his metaphysics. Schopenhauer identifies the intimate essence of the world – the Will – as a root of every pain and suffering. The Will is the source of pains because it is to want. The want of the Will is thrown to the infinite. Schopenhauer proposes the escape of these sufferings through the suitable liberation by the better knowledge. It is this surplus of knowledge that qualifies the recognition that the whole nature shares of the same essence. It is this knowledge that originates the compassion for the same suffered essence and that qualifies the freedom. The human being no more wants. He deliberately - sharing with the Will of the attribute of freedom - denies in himself that the Will wants. He is resigned. In this resignation, he looks for the asceticism of chastity, the voluntary poverty and of minimum conditions of existence. It is by the resignation that he reaches the blessed peace of anything.