I feel philosophical mood this morning, the rotten weather outside reminds me of the harsh contingencies of existence!

So after Kant, we take Schopenhauer, which is quite logical since the most important concept of Schopenhauer, namely the concept of Will (with a big V) as a thing in itself (which exists "independently of the perception by one of our senses, "a Kantian concept) opposes Kant's view that the same thing in itself (Ding an sich, it saps more in German) escapes human knowledge whereas Schopenhauer supports that we can know both the thing in itself and its nature (the world as will and as representation 1817).

However, Schopenhauer takes care to note that the inner knowledge that one has of one's will as something in itself (as acts of the will) does not provide a complete knowledge of the thing in itself. We are well advanced.

Schopenhauer is no more so because he will become the "philosopher of the absurd" (see the book of Clement Rosset on this subject) by accepting the concept of thing in itself -a opposite of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who deny it - while modifying it by establishing that the Will is not the cause of the phenomenon: "in itself the Will knows neither cause nor effect" but, for there is a but, establishing also that if the Will defined as "the substantial marrow of the universe" can not be unrelated to the phenomena subject to the forms of our representation, but it can not be grasped according to the other forms of the principle of reason.

It is a philosophical Ni-Ni (Sarko did not invent anything) The absurd is defined by the coexistence of incompatible elements, the world of Schopenhauer appears from the start as absurd since, like Will, it is subtracted from principle of reason while as representation, it is entirely subordinated to it ...