Schopenhauer's Hidden Soul

The scientific approach is considered to be the gold standard for discovering truth, and not without good reason: science is a rigorous, systematic method for teasing out the details of how the universe works. But some of the most important questions for our well-being are not amenable to science, such as how should we interact with one another, how can we reach fulfillment in life, and what does fulfillment even mean. These questions fall under the purview of moral philosophy and the existence of libraries filled with books that wrestle with the nature of our moral essence testify to its importance.

Like a hand dealt in a game of cards, the state of our physical being is merely the starting point for the journey through life. In order to stay in the game we have no choice but to play a card when our turn comes around because the rules are as inescapable as the force of gravity. Objective success, as measured by wealth and social position, depends upon cunning analytical card play, whereas subjective success, being happiness and fulfillment, depends upon our moral choices and is the more important of the two.

Schopenhauer called the force that compels us to play a card, or to act in life, “will,” which some have likened to Freud's id, and he further believed that an omnipresent will permeates the universe as the essence of all things. In his formulation, the manifested universe is inaccessible to us except as representations in the mind that he referred to as, “idea” and would include the realm of Freud's ego – the putative ruler of our waking conscious state (click here, here, and here).

Schopenhauer did not believe in the existence of the soul and was influenced by Buddhism, as can be seen from the following quote,

“Schopenhauer viewed nature as an arena where living beings compete to survive and procreate, where species adapt to environmental conditions, and, most emphasized by Schopenhauer, where sentient beings suffer as virtual slaves to their will to life.”

“Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and philosophy of nature led him to the doctrine of pessimism: the view that sentient beings, with few exceptions, are bound to strive and suffer greatly, all without any ultimate purpose or justification and thus life is not really worth living. This is a view that has seldom been defended in the history of Western thought and became a potent philosophical problem for Nietzsche and atheist existentialists.”

A Rational Brain Sees A Mechanical Universe

The central philosophical presumption upon which the entire edifice of science rests is that reality can be completely described mechanistically, but there is no proof for this. What we do know is that the brain evolved in response to the need to survive and the ability to create rational models of the world serves this need – more on this in a later section. Furthermore mechanical models are the epitome of rationality.

The brain can thus be understood as the primordial scientific organ and every subsequent scientific theory and instrument is as much a consequence of its rational nature as it is a reflection of the universe – we see only what the brain is capable of showing us. This also means that our conscious minds may be inefficient at dealing with the irrational because that has limited or no survival value, and this has left us at least partially blind to reality.

Scientific hypotheses exclude questions of a non-mechanistic nature, which ensures that the resulting theories are bound to represent the universe as a soulless machine. With this circular reasoning firmly established, God and the soul have been pronounced dead in some quarters because they are not found in the scientific models from which they were excluded a priori. This denial of God is taken seriously because the status of science has risen to such a degree that pronouncements from its practitioners are considered to be of the highest authority despite the many errors and revisions of “settled” science throughout history, and despite the uncertainty and confusion thrown into the mix by the emergence of quantum theory.

A word of clarification before I proceed. In this essay I am in no way suggesting that our rational intellect should be disregarded nor that its importance be minimized. On the contrary. The following statements about the enlightenment published in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reflect my sentiments on this matter:

“Kant identifies enlightenment with the process of undertaking to think for oneself, to employ and rely on one’s own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act.”

“The faith of the Enlightenment – if one may call it that – is that the process of enlightenment, of becoming progressively self-directed in thought and action through the awakening of one’s intellectual powers, leads ultimately to a better, more fulfilled human existence.”

This series of essays represents part of my own journey in the tradition of the Enlightenment, which has led me to conclude that we need to question the ability of science to accurately represent the fullness of reality

The theory of will and representation

Schopenhauer was a determinist, with behavior being the result of will acting upon representation. Will is presented as a blind, disembodied force of the universe and he makes no room for an observer or decision-maker. This is compatible with the idea of the universe as a machine and the idea that free will is an illusion, yet he developed a moral philosophy based on imputed responsibility for the shape of one's own character. This seems to be the weak point of his philosophy and it has a direct bearing on your subjective success in life – happiness and fulfillment – which is dependent upon your moral choices.

How can one be responsible for one's moral character if the universe permits no free will? Schopenhauer tries to make it all happen within the confines of the hermetically-sealed intellect. But I'm not convinced and I will offer a slightly modified perspective on the role of the intellect with respect to morality in the final section of this essay.

The conundrum of free will can be resolved by the existence of an observer-decider that carries Schopenhauer's force of will in the manner that other particles carry forces in standard physics and recent research has uncovered evidence for just such a being.

Consciousness researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine, whose ideas I discussed in some detail in my essay, “God, where's the evidence?” have recently provided objective evidence for the existence of an unconscious active agent, and it is not Freud's ego. This agent exists in the nothingness of the unconscious,

“We don’t perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them.”

The authors go on to explain that our waking consciousness is just a convincing hallucination of reality that serves as a memory system and creates the illusion that our ego, which is our internal representation of self, is in control. At first glance, this is in agreement with Schopenhauer: the blind (unconscious) will is a force within that acts upon representations held in the conscious mind and this process leads to new or modified representations in the form of memories.

But the very idea of a disembodied force is anathema to physics. All of the known forces of the universe are carried by a corresponding particle – even representations are carried by the physical brain and thus are not disembodied entities – whereas Schopenhauer's will is carried by nothing, it is simply left afloat in the “ether.” We are either to accept that will is utterly unique in the universe in this way, or we must posit that it is carried by something, like all of the other known forces. The latter seems far more likely to me, and the existence of such a carrier could explain free will, thus forming a foundation for morality.

Let's call the unconscious observer-decider, implied by the Boston researchers above, the (cosmic) soul, and let's further deem it to be the carrier of the force that Schopenhauer identified as will.

Suffering, Joy and the Soul

In my essay, “Is the universe meaningless?” I argued in agreement with Aristotle, that the purpose and meaning of life is to experience joy. Schopenhauer, however, was a pessimist and viewed a person's existence as inevitable pointless suffering, so he argued for a Buddhist-like ascetic denial of the will as a way to relieve the suffering.

“He identifies three main ways in which the intellect breaks free to some degree from the servitude to the will and its attendant egoism: (1) in aesthetic experience and artistic production, (2) in compassionate attitudes and actions, and (3) in ascetic resignation from embodied existence.”

Schopenhauer also objected to the idea that humans have an immortal soul while animals do not, and I agree with him. But this is only a refutation of the representation of the soul within Christianity, so the basis for his complete denial of its existence is unclear. Perhaps he just didn't see it as necessary in order to explain existence but, as I indicated above, I beg to differ.

Schopenhauer's argument against specific aspects of Christianity do not form sufficient basis for the categorical rejection of all models of God and the soul. The following quote from the philosophy paper, “Non-personal immortality” by Sebastian Gäb of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, shows that Schopenhauer's own philosophy leaves plenty of room for both,

“Schopenhauer is probably the one philosopher who has developed the most elaborate concept of non-personal immortality – although he didn’t really intend to. Schopenhauer had no particular interest in defending immortality. On the contrary, he believed that death and the awareness of our own mortality are the driving forces behind religion and philosophy, and explicitly rejected the Christian idea of individual immortality through resurrection. He also rejected the materialist claim that death is equal to absolute annihilation, though. Instead, he maintained that death is the end of our individual existence, but not the end of our essential being.”

“Schopenhauer’s concept of non-personal immortality follows naturally from his general metaphysical framework.”

Death of the body almost certainly means the end of the ego and personal memory¹, but how can we cease to exist if death is not the end of our essential being? “Essential being” and “soul” are interchangeable here, and if it doesn't cease to exist then it is immortal. It seems clear that, though he may have wanted to scrub it from his philosophy, the idea of an immortal soul is embedded in Schopenhauer's thinking.

It is worth noting that whether the soul is cosmic or personal would be impossible to tell from the perspective of the ego. A personal soul would appear every bit as much as “other” to the ego as would an immortal cosmic soul, and conversely the cosmic soul would feel every bit as intimate as a personal soul, so one would not be able to discern whether the soul was personal or cosmic in nature. Furthermore, the existence of a personal immortal soul would raise a problem of infinite complexity because we would either have to infer that all manifestation carries a personal soul or determine which manifestations do not – a problem not unlike Thomas Aquinas' question, “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” So in this case I will apply the philosophy of Occam's Razor and favor the simplest explanation:

A cosmic soul exists throughout the universe and may be experienced either as personal or as other when encountered within, depending upon the subjective perception of the beholder.

The Universe Is Personal

The idea that the universe is impersonal is irrational and betrays a philosophical blind spot that represents an act of self-denial, as I argued in a previous essay,

“What is the universe if not personal? Is there anything more personal than being formed of its material, subject to its forces without respite, bound to experience both suffering and joy on its behalf, and ultimately having to give it all back in that most intimate of all experiences: death.”

The intellect creates impersonal, self-consistent models of reality which are projected onto the universe. This leads us to assume that the universe itself is impersonal when in fact the impersonal nature of the models is a characteristic inherited from the intellect that creates them. Our intellectual models are impersonal, but the universe is deeply personal.

Nothing about you exists or has any meaning except within the context of the universe, as Thomas Berry pointed out in his essay, “The Meadow Across the Creek,”

“Yet in recent times we begin to recognize that the universe itself is, in the phenomenal order, the only self-referent mode of being. All other modes of being, including the human, in their existence and in their functioning are universe-referent. This fact has been recognized through the centuries in the rituals of the various traditions.”

To deny this in favor of any smaller frame of reference can only lead to self-referential isolation and the denial of reality. In an organization this is called group denialism, a term coined by Michael Specter and described as, "when an entire segment of society [...] turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie." This denialism is epidemic in the West.

Both science and fundamentalist religion are guilty of leading their followers away from reality in this manner. In the case of science our intimacy with the universe, and hence our sense of intimacy with ourselves, is entirely denied by the insistence that the universe is a soulless machine. In the case of fundamentalist religion, this intimacy is replaced with an imagined other worldly figure that is not truly present and whose image is controlled by those in authority here on Earth, often to their own benefit. It is not much comfort that religion acknowledges the soul only to hide it behind representations, such as an other-worldly God in an other-worldly heaven, that place it out of reach and dependent upon the intercession of church authorities. This is psychological abuse.

In any case, science and religion are both wrong to distract us from the immediacy of ourselves as integrated and intimately immersed in the larger universe. This error creates existential suffering to the extent that it causes one to believe that one is separate from a universe that is in fact so close and so personal that the boundary is unclear – a boundary which is itself but a representation in the mind. We are left in a kind of no man's land: there is either no place for the soul in the mechanical scientific worldview, or in the case of religion you are to believe that part of your self resides outside of the universe and is thus out of your own reach. These are two forms of purgatory that create a fracture in the psyche that can only be repaired by the eradication of both of the aforementioned falsities:

Scientific falsity: The universe is a soulless machine

Religious falsity: Part of you is not of this universe

God Being Born

Things that cannot be placed in our universe don't hold much interest to me because there is nothing to be gained and a lifetime to be lost in their hopeless pursuit. Extradimensional things can certainly be discussed theoretically but our universe is already endlessly mysterious and has the advantage of being present here and now, so I am happy to leave things-not-of-this-universe to those who inhabit that space. That is to say, this discussion is exclusively restricted to the nature of the immanent dimension of God because I believe that the transcendent dimension, by which I mean external to the universe, is entirely unknowable.²

In a previous essay I suggested that the universe is best understood as God being born rather than God's finished product as presented in Christianity. A universe with soul, will, and manifestation can only be described as a being and understood as God in relation to us — a God within whom we reside, and who resides within us.

As human beings, we are manifestations of the universe that carry the representations referred to by Schopenhauer, and to the best of our knowledge our universe is in its adolescence. One version of a “mature” universe proposed by Roger Penrose resides eons into the future and exists as an inconceivably complex ball of pulsating electromagnetic radiation. Since light does not experience time this would literally be the age of the eternal now. Any light from today, including the Cosmic Microwave Background, that survives until that end time experiences the entirety of time as but the same moment. In those golden years, after the cosmic soul has experienced the consequences of every conceivable manifestation and representation, the universe could be described as an eternal being of infinite wisdom. Does any word other than “God” seem appropriate to describe this?

The idea of the universe as God being born is congruent with the recent claim by an international group of scientists that, “Consciousness came before life.” Consciousness, in this case, is referring to the same force postulated as will by Schopenhauer, not to the waking-consciousness of popular discourse that is associated with the ego and the intellect. The scientists further claim that this consciousness called life into existence.

Our model now has a cosmic soul within the manifest universe that willed life into existence. This life later evolved the ability to carry representations of itself, the manifest universe, in its brain. When combined with the Big Bang Theory this forms the basis of a creation myth where the universe becomes immanent God being born.

For a modern creation story to have credibility it must not conflict with our present scientific understanding of the universe. And in order for it to be useful it must help us understand our relationship to other living things and to the universe itself – it must provide the foundation upon which to build a moral philosophy. The model presented here satisfies these two conditions: not only is this story congruent with our scientific models of reality, but the existence of a cosmic soul that carries the will means that the will is not blind, and this paves the way for a defensible theory of morality.

A Basis For Morality

According to the previously mentioned Boston University researchers,

“Consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language” (click here).

Intellect and the representations relied upon by Schopenhauer to build his moral philosophy reside within the memory system of the brain, whereas observation and decision-making happen in the unconscious – the realm of the soul. The intellect is thus a hermetically-sealed processor that performs its magic upon representations contained within that selfsame organ. It cannot be relied upon to judge the value of its own conclusions because, being self-referential in nature, it will always judge itself to be correct. The scientific method improves and extends the intellect's ability to discern fact from fiction with respect to mechanistic questions, but even the most meticulously conducted science is frequently wrong, and not very useful with respect to questions of morality.

Although moral questions don't submit to the scientific method, they do submit to intellectual analysis. And though the intellect is not qualified to judge the value of its own moral reasoning, the soul is supremely qualified for this task. It is the essential being within everything. But how do we sense its judgment? The short answer is:

When the soul sees something right, you feel good and you “know it in your bones.” The intellect is in beautiful harmony with the soul.

This sentiment is found throughout science, even in mathematics as expressed by Karola Mészáros and quoted in the article “Shapes of Mathematical Elegance,” published by Cornell University,

“In mathematics, somehow the truth often appears beautiful. It’s nice to have something where beauty and the truth usually coincide.”

And other authors have made this same observation. Ian Glynn's book, “Elegance in Science: The beauty of simplicity” contemplates the occurrence of beauty alongside of truth within science, and Ian Stewart published an essay in Scientific American titled “Why beauty is truth: a history of symmetry.”

Beauty and truth may not be interchangeable as Keats suggested when he wrote, “beauty is truth, truth beauty” but they are related. Truth is a rational power, whereas beauty is an irrational power. Together they are formidable, which may explain love.

Truth, beauty and love often seem to come as a package – a kind of trinity.

In the above proposed formulation of a foundation for morality, the intellect works with ideas but the soul judges their value. The soul is gnostic but cannot generate ideas, whereas the intellect imagines but never truly knows anything other than “I Am,” as René Descartes famously demonstrated. It makes sense that the soul would be gnostic because it is ancient and omnipresent. It has had plenty of time to develop the silent patience and wisdom characteristic of an elder watching her ninth grandchild learn to walk.

In this formulation, free will emerges as a result of the interaction between intellect and soul. The freedom of the intellect is in its ability to generate ideas, whereas the freedom of the soul is in knowing the good from the bad. The soul recoils from the bad but fills one with a sense of beauty and harmony when presented with good ideas. We gravitate towards the feeling of joy thus we are nudged in the direction of the trinity of truth, beauty and love. This process is constructive when soul and intellect are in harmony – the intellect goes back to the drawing board in response to the souls negative verdict – and destructive when the intellect acts upon that which the soul knows deep down is wrong.

But I'd like to be a little more specific if you will bear with me.

Some will see the following statement as sacrilege while others will see it as a platitude, but it must be said: there is nothing in the universe that is outside of God because “God,” “universe” and “reality” all refer to the same thing: everything that is. And the soul is its gnostic dimension.

There are many popular movements that tempt us to vilify one another: fundamentalists reject non-believers; prudes hate hedonists; Muslims reject infidels; feminists hate men; atheists reject their own soul; Antifa hates the West; BLM hates white people; environmentalists hate those who want modern luxuries; Marxists hate the wealthy; the wealthy hate the poor, and on it goes. But every person whose intellect is possessed by one of these ideological movements becomes alienated from the cosmic soul.

Denial of the divine nature of any other person or group is experienced by the cosmic soul within as self-hatred because the soul in you is the same soul that is in your enemy. When you vilify others, the soul within sees you as the aggressor no matter how the conflict began or what it is about. Hatred of any part of the universe is self-hatred from the perspective of the cosmic soul and it will withdraw from anyone who nurtures such an animus, for self-preservation if for no other reason. This is the mark of the infinitely deep wisdom of the cosmic soul.

God does not reject anyone; we reject God when we vilify those who are equally born to house his soul. This is also why good ultimately defeats evil: when the soul retreats, the intellect is left sealed-off from reality with only the trinity of fear, anger and pain as its companion, and it will self-destruct. But not before causing a lot of carnage, which is why it is incumbent upon us to understand the nature of evil and develop strategies to contain it while it self-destructs.

The solution for those living with the pain of anger and fear is simple, if not easy: let go. Let go of everything that you think that you know and look anew at the world around you, keeping only “I Am” as your rock of certainty. Then recreate your self – the representations that you carry – using faith and love as your guide. This will invariably lead you to joy, which is the meaning and purpose of life.

1. We can imagine a mechanism in which ideas are preserved and transmitted after death without the need for physical media. The noosphere offers the basis for such a possibility and I have started work on an essay to explore this theme.

2. The cosmic soul of the universe may be experienced as other and this may also be described as transcendental, but in this case I am referring specifically and only to transcendental God as not in this universe.