Editing Arthur Schopenhauer (section)

=== World as representation ===
Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kant's theoretical and epistemological investigations ([[transcendental idealism]]) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the [[Empirical evidence|empirical]] world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our [[mental representation]]s.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics|last=Kant|first=Immanuel|at=§ 52c|translator-last=Paul Carus}}</ref> Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed and was known empirically, yet he followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always in some sense dependent on ''us''.<ref>See the quotation of Schopenhauer in {{Cite book| publisher = University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-78665-0| last = Storm| first = Jason Josephson| title = Metamodernism: The Future of Theory| location = Chicago| date = 2021|pages=36–37| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=pEQ6EAAAQBAJ}}</ref> For Schopenhauer in particular, the spatiotemporal form and causal structure of the external world are contributed to our experiences of it by the mind as it renders perceptions.<ref name="On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)">{{cite web |last1=Schopenhauer |first1=Arthur |title=On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition) |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50966/pg50966-images.html#Pg031 |website=gutenberg.org |publisher=Project Gutenberg |ref=p.65 |access-date=27 September 2024 |archive-date=3 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241203105520/https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50966/pg50966-images.html#Pg031 |url-status=live }}</ref> Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (''Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung'')". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of ''The World as Will and Representation'', Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.

Kant had previously argued that we perceive reality as something spatial and temporal not because reality is inherently spatial and temporal, but because that is how our minds operate in perceiving an object. Therefore, understanding objects in space and time represents our 'contribution' to an experience. For Schopenhauer, Kant's 'greatest service' lay in the 'differentiation between [[phenomena]] and the thing-in-itself ([[noumena]]), based on the proof that between everything and us there is always a perceiving mind.' In other words, Kant's primary achievement is to demonstrate that instead of being a blank slate where reality merely reveals its character, the mind, with sensory support, actively participates in constructing reality. Thus, Schopenhauer believed that Kant had shown that the everyday world of experience, and indeed the entire material world related to space and time, is merely 'appearance' or 'phenomena,' entirely distinct from the thing-in-itself.'<ref>{{Cite book|last=Young|first=Julian|date=2005|url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134328833|title=Schopenhauer|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-32883-3|edition=1|pages=4–25|language=en|doi=10.4324/9780203022108}}</ref>