This dissertation argues that Schopenhauer's conception of the will lays the foundation for a radical critique of the rationalist model of action advanced by Kant and the German Idealists. I provide an interpretation of Schopenhauer's conception of the will and demonstrate its significance by suggesting that current theories of action are implicitly committed to the same assumptions as the rationalist approach that Schopenhauer attacks. ;The dissertation takes on two principal tasks. First, it a…
Read moreThis dissertation argues that Schopenhauer's conception of the will lays the foundation for a radical critique of the rationalist model of action advanced by Kant and the German Idealists. I provide an interpretation of Schopenhauer's conception of the will and demonstrate its significance by suggesting that current theories of action are implicitly committed to the same assumptions as the rationalist approach that Schopenhauer attacks. ;The dissertation takes on two principal tasks. First, it attempts to elucidate the structure of subjectivity that underlies actions. I show that the assumption that governs traditional accounts of the nature of human action is that the will is grounded in rational reflection. Schopenhauer argues that rational reflection provides the will merely with possible motives. These motives become actual, that is, acquire the capacity to move the subject to action, only against the background of the subject's fundamental involvement in the world which itself cannot be explained as the result of rational reflection. ;Second, the dissertation examines the manner in which actions are apprehended as expressions of subjectivity. I argue that the rationalist model is grounded in an epistemological attitude of reflective detachment that views actions primarily as physical events which are identified as actions by their mode of causation, namely, motivation by reasons. As I endeavor to show, while Schopenhauer does not deny that actions are motivated by reasons, he argues that such a causal explanation becomes possible only against the background of our immediate experience of ourselves as willing beings, and the immediate apprehension of the actions of others as manifestations of will. I contend that Schopenhauer's critique of the epistemological stance constitutes a new mode of philosophical inquiry which I call "critical metaphysics.".