The place of rage and hate

[Surgenator]

That's my basic understanding from reading his works. Schopenhauer envisions Will as Kant's 'Ding an sich,' comparable to the Atman of the Upanishands or the Logos of ancient Greece and Hellenistic Judaism; it is the centripedal force or principle of order in nature made manifest through representation, including our intellectual understanding. In Schopenhauer's view, Will, or nature, is free in the sense that it continually creates and destroys independent of any overarching guidance; such would merely be another, more powerful Will. However, it does so through constraints imposed by the manifest representation (reality, whether material or immaterial), which includes such fundamental concepts as causality, and subsequently, our competing wishes and instincts. This conflict is felt within us, who feel free and are yet constrained, as we are an embodiment of Will revealed through Representation.

I don't buy this argument for 2 main reasons:

1) It assumes that once one will wins, the others are discarded. I remember plenty of experiences where I kept on changing my mind on what to do. In one case, I was deciding on whether or not to take a job or go to school. I changed my mind back and forth for days until I hit the deadline to respond. Only then did was my decision was forced. If no deadline existed, I would of spend a lot longer deciding.

2) "Out of character" decisions exist. I'm not the cases when others would consider the decision out of character, but only when the person that made the decision considers it out of character. In these cases, they seem very contrary to any battle of the wills. It seem like the decision was random, and when asked why they made such a decision the answers range from "I don't know" to "just felt like it."

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A little from column A and a little from column B.