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But I cannot figure where humans fit into the will. The will to truth and beauty and knowledge are not
contained in a will to survival such as plants and animals contain, so this universal will that drives
everything is different in humans than anything less, but I don't understand how it could be different
for one species of living things and not another. Why is our will different and more specialized than
any other will, and is this theory viable?
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I'm not going to answer your question in a way you'd like, but it's the best way I can think of to
address your concerns. You start by saying that you're not in college or in a philosophy class, and
then talk about Schopenhauer. Ok. You're smart, you've done a lot of reading on your own... that's
good. Excellent. The pitfall that you get into with that kind of thing, unfortunately, is that it is very
difficult to get a good balanceof ideas. One tends, in isolation, to stick to one subject or person, and
to try to work everything out in those limited terms. The field of philosophy, however, is extremely old
and extremely varied. Not only that, but if you think in terms of population increase, you can see that
the exponential increase in population has resulted, in the 20th century, in manymore intelligent and
educated people than lived in Schopenhauer's time or earlier. It's just a simple matter of number. So
what I am getting at should be clear, if unpleasant, by now. You are using the term "will" in a very
restricted sense, and asking a very general question employing that sense of the term. It is not
applicable. You can use "will" in Schopenhauer's sense to think about Schopenhauer'sposition on
will, even to compare his to others' use of the term. But you cannot use the term as you do in your
question. For example, when you say, "This seems like a natural will to survive which animals and
plants obviously contain", you are using "will" from one veryrestricted context, that of
Schopenhauer's writings, and generalizing to all conceptual contexts. That is, perhaps it is true that
for Schopenhauer — given his particular conception of will — it is "obvious" that animals and plants
"contain" will. But from no (or very few) other context(s) is this obvious or even true — Aristotle has a
teleology vaguely similar to this, but I don't know of any modern (main-stream philosophical) writers
who talk this way (Teilhard de Chardin, I think, did... but he was a Catholic theologian, and Aquinas
held Aristotle as the supremephilosopher).
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You need to broaden and systematize your knowledge. 1) go back to school; alternatively, 2) contact
a philosopher you admire at a good school and ask for a reading list leading to,then from
Schopenhauer, if you are truly interested in him particularly, including critical readings(but
Schopenhauer is not read much today, actually); or, 3) there used to be a book called "College on
Your Own" which gave such lists; I'm not sure it's still in print, but it was good.
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