Arthur Schopenhauer

“ The ground of being, in the form of the law of sequence, is here very simple owing to the circumstance that time has only one dimension. On the nexus of the position of the parts of space depends the entire science of geometry. Ground of knowledge produces conviction only, as distinguished from insight into the ground of being. ”

“ That is to say, we must carefully distinguish the species which are united under a genus, and the lower kinds which in their turn are united under these species; taking care not to make a leap, and subsume the lower kinds and individuals under the concept of the genus, since this is always capable of division, but never descends to the object of pure perception. Plato and Kant agree that these laws are transcendental, and that they presuppose that things are in harmony with them. ”

“ Man possesses reason, that is to say, he has a class of ideas of which the brutes are not capable, abstract ideas as distinguished from those ideas of perception from which the former kind are yet derived. ”

“ No doubt the actions of men follow of necessity from their causes, not less than is the case with the brutes, but the kind of sequence through thought which renders choice, i.e., the conscious conflict of motives, possible is different. Our abstract ideas, being incapable of being objects of perception, would be outside consciousness, and the operations of thought would be impossible, were it not that they are fixed for sense by arbitrary signs called words, which therefore always indicate general conceptions. ”

“ His proof of the existence of God that the immensity of His nature is a cause or reason beyond which no cause is needed for His existence, simply illustrates the gross confusion between cause and ground of knowledge which underlies every form of this ontological proof. “That a miserable fellow like Hegel, whose entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof, should dare to defend this proof against Kant's criticism of it is an alliance of which the ontological proof itself, little as it knows of shame, might well feel ashamed. ”

“ This relation is peculiar, and is intelligible to us neither through understanding nor through reason, but solely through pure intuition or perception a priori. And the law according to which the parts of space and time thus determine one another is called the law of sufficient reason of being. In space every position is determined with reference to every other position, so that the first stands to the second in the relation of a consequence to its ground. In time every moment is conditioned by that which precedes it. ”

“ This class of ideas, in which time and space appear as pure intuitions, is distinguished from that other class in which they are objects of perception by the presence of matter which has been shown to be the perceptibility of time and space in one aspect, and causality which has become objective, in another. Space and time have this property, that all their parts stand to one another in a relation in which each is determined and conditioned by another. ”

“ All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation, and this is the sole function of understanding, and not the complicated working of the twelve Kantian Categories, the theory of which is a mistaken one. ”

“ It is not to be expected I should speak respectfully of people who have brought philosophy into disrespect.” Spinoza made the same confusion when he laid it down that the cause of existence was either contained in the nature and definition of the thing as it existed, or was to be found outside that thing. ”

“ In nature causation assumes three different forms; that of cause in the narrow sense, of stimulus, and of motive, on which differences depend the true distinctions between inorganic bodies, plants, and animals. ”

“ And this task the understanding accomplishes only through its proper form, the law of causality, and accomplishes it directly without the aid of reflection, that is, of abstract knowledge through concepts and words, which are the material of secondary knowledge, of thought, thus of the Reason.” “What understanding knows aright is reality; what reason knows aright is truth, i.e., a judgment which has a ground ”