The World as Will And Idea, Volume 1 Audiobook By Arthur Schopenhauer cover art

The World as Will And Idea, Volume 1

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The World as Will And Idea, Volume 1

By: Arthur Schopenhauer
Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
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Schopenhauer was just 30 when his magnum opus, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, a work of considerable learning and innovation of thought, first appeared in 1818.

Much to his chagrin and puzzlement (so convinced was he of its merits), it didn't have an immediate effect on European philosophy, views and culture. It was only decades later that it was recognised as one of the major intellectual landmarks of the 19th century. It proved to be a work that was not only to make an indelible impression on leading figures that followed him closely - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud - but also others well into the 20th century, including Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, Karl Popper and Samuel Beckett.

What was the Schopenhauerian proposition that made The World as Will and Idea so important? Absorbing views from Kant and Buddhist ideas filtering almost for the first time through Europe, Schopenhauer, putting the concept of God aside, proposed that man is driven by 'a will to life'; desire, craving, wanting - these are the elements that propel him fiercely along life's path, even though it causes him suffering. It is on that basis that Schopenhauer opens the work with the statement 'the world is my idea'. Man perceives the sun and the earth but can relate to them only through his own consciousness. He makes his own world.

Though stamped as a pessimist, and certainly combative as a personality and a writer, Schopenhauer’s work - and The World as Will and Idea - doesn't read darkly. Instead it is rich and challenging, as he surveys broadly philosophy, history, art, literature, music and culture generally. His opinions are strong and testing, his breadth of knowledge invigorating.

The translation recorded here is the classic rendering by R. B. Haldane. However, the numerous literary and philosophical references - Greek, Latin, German, French, Persian, etc - in both the main text and the relevant footnotes are given here in English. Thus Schopenhauer's major work can be absorbed and enjoyed directly - and especially in this intelligent, clear and committed narration by the actor and German scholar Leighton Pugh. Schopenhauer has had a long and continuing influence extending well into the 21st century, and The World as Will and Idea is one of the great stepping-stones of European thought which needs to be listened to. He added a subsequent volume later in his life, but volume 1 is the major work.

Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd Philosophy Consciousness Classics Nonfiction
Accessible Philosophy • Comprehensive Worldview • Outstanding Narration • Illuminating Explanations • Rewarding Patience
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the most precise and thorough explanation of what is the word we are live , a lot of good references to earlier works of Kant, Plato, Spinoza, Aristotel and other philosophers.
very interesting and monumental work

must read if you interested in philosophy

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It is certainly a long audiobook, and the only 19 century stile of the author does not help. Even though is hard to follow for the most part, they an important or beautiful insight pops up here and there. The book requires patience, but such patience I found rewarding. Definitely worth a second and thorough listen to discover more.

Long and difficult, but rewarding

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Though I freely give this audiobook 5 stars for both overall and performance, I am quite disappointed that Arthur Schopenhauer was devoid of Christianity. In his view, virtually any religion was fine; for all had their own peculiar merits.

Performance wise, Leighton Pugh did an outstanding job reading the text! Additionally, the German translation Ukemi used is excellent.

Great Quality Audiobook

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Good one bro is a thinker, maybe a bit to repetetive but I managed to finish it and it is a blast to experiebce this feeling.

Meaning

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Where does The World as Will And Idea, Volume 1 rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

As a member for more than 10 years , I was always on the look out for it..#1....

What other book might you compare The World as Will And Idea, Volume 1 to and why?

The writings of Kant are in the same vein , but Kant is not as accesssible...

Have you listened to any of Leighton Pugh’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.... but he is D-A-R-N goooood...talk about matching a writer and a performer!!!!

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

How Numina Becomes Phenomena

Any additional comments?

If you do not present ".....principle of sufficient reason" to go with this performance , the listener may encounter difficulty...AND especially !!!! YOU MUST MUST MUST PRESENT THE OTHER VOLUME(S)....quickly?

There is no philosophy without Schopenhauer!!!!!

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Bravo Leighton Pugh! Considering the subject matter, a reading of sophisticated philosophical subject matter is a challenge that could give life to or depress the ideas of the author. Leighton Pugh does nothing short of a magnificent narration. I wish he could read most of the audio-books I have or plan to listen to.

Schopenhauer was an unexpected author that I did not expect to come across on my journey through philosophy. I am not sure why but I think more philosophy enthusiasts should read Schopenhauer earlier on. Having read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason directly before Schopenhauer, I felt like Schopenhauer brought together and illuminated more practically what I struggled to derive from Kant. The author has a very self-assured and at times self-righteous style - not unlike some of his contemporaries. This aside, he lacks no knowledge, insight or ability to add to a spectacularly complex and sometimes confusing, conflicting and incomplete subject matter.

I really enjoyed Schopenhauer, more than I did Kant, and intend reading Volume 2 as well.

very worth while philosophy read

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Schopenhauer is wrong when he says this is a difficult book, that it needs to be read twice, or it's necessary to have had read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" in order to follow his arguments. The author writes such that if you don't understand what he's saying just wait awhile and he'll explain it to you later on in another section of the Volume. When I read books like this, I long for today's writers to be as entertaining, informative, and as challenging to my current beliefs as this book is.

It's rare to find a primary philosophy book that gives a whole world view that's as accessible as this book. It takes a while to understand what the author is attempting to explain within this book, but when you do you start to realize the pure genius that is being explained by the author. The author is really writing four books and ties them together under his one big thought. He'll independently consider 1) knowledge, 2) being, 3) art and 4) ethics. Essentially all of philosophy. There's a sense that I got when he wrote these four 'books' that make up this Volume that he wrote them independently and ties them together in such a way that if you don't understand a concept in one section it will be restated in the next book in the terms of that book so that you will understand the original section upon reflection.

To really appreciate a great philosopher and their over all philosophy, I find it best to accept their premises and see where that leads. In book one Schopenhauer starts to tell the reader how he sees the world (universe). He'll say that Bishop George Berkeley is one of his primary models. Schopenhauer replaces Berkeley's 'all reality is in the mind of God' with the universe as will (to live). (If you don't remember who Berkeley is, I'll jog your memory. He's the guy who said that "if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound" and he would respond, 'of course it does because God hears everything". Also, 'to perceive is to be". As a follow-up to this book, I've started listening to his "Three Dialogs" available at audible).

Schopenhauer really didn't seem to like the Enlightenment thinkers except for Kant. He doesn't like the materialist (or positivist) and ultimately makes 'will' the ground of all being and by 'will' explains it in the terms of the Eleatics (his word, think Parmenides) and the Stoics as contrasted with the Epicureans. A stoic will accept the things he can not change and only be concerned with the things within his control. This is how he ends his first book and sets up the other books from what he means by 'will to live'. All things that exist have this will he speaks of.

He does appeal to Kant and the Kant's thing-in-itself, the thing that exist in itself and for itself that which remains after the categories of intuitions of space, time and cause are removed. That which remains is the will (Kant would call it noumena as opposed to the thing as it appears to us, the phenomenon). Within his second book he will tie Plato's Ideal with Kant's noumena as being basically the same thing and both point to the 'will to live'. He'll say that all forces in the world (e.g. Gravity and EM) are the "immediate objectivization of the will". Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure you can take Schopenhauer to be monist in the vain of Parmenides. Parmenides says there is no becoming as such there is only being and that there is no 'not being'. Schopenhauer seems to follow that kind of thought concerning 'Being' and if anything makes the dichotomy between 'being' with 'ought' because his unfolding of the universe as will is that the universe is meant to be one way due to 'fate' that is inherent within the world because of the world's will, and like Karma he tends take the cause and effect out of the world and for Schopenhauer he's going to replace them with will. At the very end of the Volume, he has one add-on to the story where he explicitly speaks of Grace (God's unearned mercy) in Augustinian terms and contrasts that with what he calls the obviously incorrect Pelagius belief in a person's ability to control their own destiny and he'll even give a special shout out to Martin Luther and the role that Grace must play (he even mentions at the end about the distinction between salvation by works verse by faith). I can say this was add-on because they really don't flow with how he dealt with Christianity anywhere else within the Volume.

He will describe life mostly in terms of our will (wishes, desires, wants) never being satisfied, and even when we get what we want that only leads to more wanting and more struggling. The one who cause suffering causes himself to suffer (he'll say). There is a repressed guilt that is within our unconscious that causes us just as much suffering as we created in others (even if Freud says he wasn't influenced by Schopenhauer a modern reader can see Freud within this text).

I just recently listened to Kierkegaard's "Anxiety" and Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals". There's no doubt that they take some of this book and makes it their own. Kierkegaard takes similar thoughts expressed in this book such as the nature of the "now", the particular to the general of a thing to the whole ("Adam is a man and all men make the race"). Kierkegaard uses the same kind of formation of which Schopenhauer used in book 2 and 4, and the nature of guilt and other items but makes them his own by having a passion for the now (Schopenhauer is definitely not passionate for the now, he puts us into the future in terms of will or even when we consider the past we extrapolate a will from today to our projection of the past, he says). Nietzsche will uses his passion for the now and inverts Schopenhauer's aesthetics and makes it about the artist not the art, and also takes the 'will to live' and changes it to 'will to power' a return to the primal instincts that are within all of us.

A couple of things, he really does a good job at integrating Eastern thought into Western thought. He explains the world in terms of Maya, Shiva and Brahman (creation, destruction and generation). He likes the mystics and saints and thinks they provide the role models for today (he's very positive towards aestheticism). There is definitely a strand of pessimism within his philosophy. Death is a good thing. Life is struggle. Better to have not been born at all. Everything is an illusion and our knowledge can only takes us so far and at the heart of all things is the will that acts as the ground for all being.

This book stands on its own and is definitely one of the easier original philosophy books to follow. I only wish that modern writers would write as well as this writer did and assume that their readers are as interested in learning about the world as Schopenhauer did for his potential readers.







Easy to follow, better than today's fluff

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Leighton Pugh does a phenomenal job reading this wonderful book which earns it 5 stars. There are only two minor drawbacks in this presentation: it is based on an old translation and it is not unabridged, since it leaves out the very important but highly technical appendix "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy" which is one of the reasons why I purchased this audio book. The best and newest translation of "The World as Will and Presentation" is a two volume set by Richard Aquila and David Carus. I hope Audible will have Mr Pugh read the supplemental volume two of this great work with the appendix of volume one included. Nonetheless, this is a very rewarding and highly recommended work. A must listen!

Excellent Audio Book and Performance

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This was an excellent narration of an unfortunately underrated philosopher. The book is quite an undertaking - it's fairly long - but I enjoyed it very much. I've studied philosophy for years but had never given Schopenhauer much attention. I'm sorry for that now because he's quite a delight to read. Among the German Idealists, especially, he is quite easy to follow. He has a very funny line about how "a very handsome man, if he had also taste and the courage to follow it, would go about almost naked" so "one who possesses a beautiful and rich mind will always express himself in the most natural, direct, and simple way". I think Schopenhauer follows his own advice on this point, for the most part. He addresses the big philosophical ideas that concern all the German Idealists in Immanuel Kant's sizable shadow. But he does so with unique humor and spunk. He is most famous for his idea of "Will" which had such an impression on Nietzsche. He views this as what Kant called the "thing-in-itself", the noumenon behind the representation of phenomenon. But what I really found most interesting, and surprising, was his robust Platonism. Especially in his aesthetics. His Platonism is his own and quite distinct, I might say updated, from the classical versions. His view of music as the most direct access to the Platonic forms is quite fascinating. I was late to the Schopenhauer party but I'm glad I finally arrived!

Excellent Narration of an Underrated Philosopher

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Unless you're particularly interested in precisely what Schopenhauer said, rather than simply his ideas when summed up economically, you're not going to be engaged by his writing. His meandering, highly speculative style of pronouncing revealed truths is pretty characteristic of a lot of philosophers prior to the 20th century. And it likewise lacks precision, consistency, and clarity.

Most of what Schopenhauer has to say falls into one of two categories:
1. The obviously truth
2. The unfalsifiable speculation

I have read summaries and analyses of Schopenhauer that I found very interesting. And I'm grateful for these, because it meant somebody waded through the morass of source material to extract something that could be put into a reasonable structure.

Perhaps this is true of lots or even most philosophy. If it is, so much the worse for philosophy, but I don't have to pretend it's a good read.

You'll find nothing to make you think

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