“ The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them. He is projected into them, and, on account of their unlimited nature, he has always a merely relative, never absolute when and where of his existence; for his place and duration are finite parts of what is infinite and boundless. ”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation
| Author | Arthur Schopenhauer |
|---|---|
| Source | The World as Will and Representation |
| Topic | duration existence |
| Date | 1819 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38427/38427-h/38427-h.html |
Context
“Every one will easily recognise that same destiny expressed in various degrees in the life of the brutes, only more weakly, and may also convince himself to his own satisfaction, from the suffering animal world, how essential to all life is suffering.
§ 57. At every grade that is enlightened by knowledge, the will appears as an individual. The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them. He is projected into them, and, on account of their unlimited nature, he has always a merely relative, never absolute when and where of his existence; for his place and duration are finite parts of what is infinite and boundless. His real existence is only in the present, whose unchecked flight into the past is a constant transition into death, a constant dying. For his past life, apart from its possible consequences for the present, and the testimony regarding the will that is expressed in it, is now entirely done with, dead, and no longer anything;”
source
