Book: The world as will and representation

When science has approached that beautiful point where paradox is completely identified with a lie, who would dare to encounter thoughts on almost every page that directly contradict what he once and for all recognized as the ultimate truth?

I am sending my book into the world with deep seriousness - in the hope that sooner or later it will reach those to whom it was solely intended. And I calmly submit to the fact that she will be fully comprehended by the same fate that in every knowledge, and even more so in the most important, has always fallen to the lot of truth: she is destined only for a short triumphant triumph between two long periods of time when she is rejected as a paradox and when it is neglected as triviality.

It is impossible that the modern society which for twenty years proclaimed the greatest of the philosophers of some Hegel, this mental caliban, and proclaimed so loudly that echoes sounded throughout Europe, it is impossible that it tempts with its approval the one who observed it. It no longer has wreaths of honor to distribute, its praise is corrupt, and its censure is worthless.

But in the incorrigible delusion is the one who imagines that it is possible to study Kant's philosophy from someone else's version. On the contrary, I must seriously warn against such statements, especially new ones: it was in the most recent years in the writings of the Hegelians that I came across such retellings of Kant's philosophy, which really pass into the field of fiction.

They do not need philosophy: they need medicina mentis [healing of the mind] and, above all, as a purifying, at least un petit cours de senscommunologie [a small course of sanity], and only then can we see if they can ever talk about philosophy.

Philosophical thoughts can only be taken directly from their creators; therefore, one who feels a vocation for philosophy must visit its immortal teachers in the silent shrine of their true creations. The main chapters of each of these true philosophers will acquaint you with their teachings a hundred times better than the languid and distorted retellings composed by everyday voices, which, moreover, for the most part, are deeply immersed in the currently fashionable philosophy or in their own favorite theories.

Tell me at the mercy of my unsophisticated, devoid of these essential props, unfiltering and inquisitive philosophy, which by its guiding star has chosen only the truth, naked, unrepassed, unflattering, sometimes persecuted truth, and, without looking either to the right or to the left, keeps its way directly at it - what does it matter to that alma mater, the sweetest bread university philosophy, which, burdened with hundreds of views and thousands of considerations, cautiously maneuvers on his way, always having before his eyes the fear of the Lord, the will of the ministry, the statutes of the state church, the desires of the publisher, the approval of students, the friendly relations of colleagues, the political malice of the day, the volatile mood of the public and the unknown what else?

People like opened watch movements, which are, themselves not knowing why; whenever conceived and born a new man again starts the clock of human life to note for note and beat for beat, with insignificant variations, to repeat Sarmanovo the play has already been produced countless times. Every individual, every human face and a way of life - just another fleeting dream of the endless spirit of nature, the eternal will to live, just another fleeting image, which is the spirit of playing, drawing on your infinite scroll of space and time, keeping it intact for a vanishingly small moment, and then receding to give place to the new images. However - and this is the scary side of life - for each of these fleeting images, for each of these ridiculous fads all the will to life, in all its tensions, has to pay numerous, deep suffering, and finally a bitter death, long threatened finally came. That's why the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious.