Schopenhauer’s Two Metaphysics: Transcendental and Transcendent

Abstract

Schopenhauer positions himself squarely within the tradition of Kant’s transcendental idealism , and his first sense of the metaphysical comprises the synthetic cognition a priori that makes experience possible. This is Schopenhauer’s transcendental metaphysics. As he developed philosophically however, Schopenhauer devised a second sense of the metaphysical. This second sense also depends, albeit negatively, on transcendental idealism because its central claim—that the thing in itself should be identified with will—looks like precisely a species of transcendent metaphysics, a claim that goes beyond the possibility of experience into the cognitively forbidden realm of things in themselves. I shall argue however that this second sense of the metaphysical can be formulated much more independently of transcendental idealism , following a recent similar interpretation of Kant due to Rae Langton, and that this makes for some surprising connections to contemporary metaphysics.