Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation: Volume 2

Description

The purpose of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer is to offer translations of the best modern German editions of Schopenhauer's work in a uniform format for Schopenhauer scholars, together with philosophical introductions and full editorial apparatus. The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion. This second volume was added to the work in 1844, and revised in 1859. Its chapters are officially 'supplements' to the first volume, but are indispensable for a proper appreciation of Schopenhauer's thought. Here we have his most mature reflections on many topics, including sex, death, conscious and unconscious desires, and the doctrines of salvation and liberation in Christian and Indian thought. Schopenhauer clarifies the nature of his metaphysics of the will, and synthesizes insights from a broad range of literary, scientific and scholarly sources. This new translation reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose, and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names, bibliography, and succinct editorial notes.

Judith Norman is Professor of Philosophy at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She publishes on nineteenth-century German philosophy, and particularly on German Romanticism. Alistair Welchman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas, working on nineteenth-century German and contemporary French philosophy. Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. He is general editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer, and has published widely on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

'Most of Schopenhauer's works will be translated in this Cambridge series, and this reviewer suspects this will open the floodgates to further scholarship on Schopenhauer - especially in newer avenues that bring contemporary science to his idealism and address his unique synthesis of Kant's thought with both the Upanishads and Buddhist thought. Volume 2 is an essential and more mature elaboration of volume 1 (2010), and the two volumes are best approached as one unit. If the other volumes in the Cambridge series have the same rigor and synthetic introduction as this one, it may be another 50 years before the next translation is necessary. This two-volume set is a masterpiece.' Choice