In his masterwork, The World as Will and Representation (1818), which is heavily influenced by Kant, Plato, and the Vedas, Schopenhauer begins by drawing a distinction between the world of appearances, or ‘representation’, and the world as it actually is.

The world as representation
The world of appearances is the world that we perceive through our senses, and it is governed by certain structures, notably, space, time, and causality. It is our experiencing selves that impose these structures onto the world of appearances, and it is through these structures that we apprehend the individual material things that make up the world as we know it. Thus, the world as it appears to us is a product of the kind of organism that we are. Moreover, individual material things depend on us for their order and existence; without us, they simply would not exist as such. Although our bodies are objects in the world of appearances, we ourselves are somehow outside this world and so beyond knowledge. The experiencing subject, says Schopenhauer, knows all things and yet is known by none. It is like the eye that sees everything but cannot see itself.

The world as will
Beneath or beyond the world of representation is the world as it actually is. Now here things get much more interesting. The world-in-itself is the world of will, a fundamentally blind process of striving for survival and reproduction. The whole world is a manifestation of will, including the human body: the genitals are objectified sexual impulse, the mouth and digestive tract are objectified hunger, and so on. Everything about us, including even our higher, cognitive faculties, have evolved for no other purpose than to help us meet the demands of will. Although able to perceive, judge, and reason, our intellect is not designed to pierce through the veil of mâyâ (or illusion) and apprehend the true nature of reality. Instead, it and we are driven by blind will into a life of inevitable frustration, strife, and pain.

Awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, the will finds itself an individual, in an endless and boundless world, among innumerable individuals, all striving, suffering, erring; and as if through a troubled dream it hurries back to its old unconsciousness. Yet till then its desires are limitless, its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied desire gives rise to a new one. No possible satisfaction in the world could suffice to still its longings, set a goal to its infinite cravings, and fill the bottomless abyss of its heart. Then let one consider what as a rule are the satisfactions of any kind that a man obtains. For the most part nothing more than the bare maintenance of this existence itself, extorted day by day with unceasing trouble and constant care in the conflict with want, and with death in prospect…

The unconscious
Our intellect is like a lame man who can see, riding on the shoulders of a blind giant. Schopenhauer anticipates Freud by effectively equating the blind giant of will to our unconscious drives and fears, of which our conscious intellect may not be entirely or even mostly cognizant. For instance, the most powerful manifestation of will is the impulse for sex. Schopenhauer says that it is the will-to-life of the yet unconceived offspring that draws man and woman together in a delusion of lust and love. But with the task accomplished, their shared delusion fades away and they return to their ‘original narrowness and neediness’. Despite what we may tell ourselves, it is blind will that takes charge of our destiny, while our intellect remains largely ignorant of its workings, and is only employed, if at all, to help us justify and come to terms with its dictates.

We often don’t know what we desire or fear. For years we can have a desire without admitting it to ourselves or even letting it come to clear consciousness, because the intellect is not to know anything about it, since the good opinion we have of ourselves would inevitably suffer thereby. But if the wish is fulfilled, we get to know from our joy, not without a feeling of shame, that this is what we desired.

Aesthetic contemplation and genius
So long as we are enthralled to the will, we can know no peace or happiness. One way of disengaging the will is through aesthetic contemplation, when we adopt a disinterested attitude that enables us to consider things free from their or our relation to the will. Through aesthetic contemplation, we can glimpse at the timeless reality of things, not as the individual material things that they are but as the universals or essences that they represent. Genius is nothing but the ability of the perceiver to disengage from the will and, as it were, merge with what he perceives (I say ‘he’ because, according to Schopenhauer, a woman cannot be a genius). Unlike people of mere talent, the genius lives outside the strictures of time and place, and marries insight with imagination to create works of art that in some sense embody and reveal his higher knowledge. Thus, aesthetic contemplation serves both to release us from the tyranny of the will and to enable us to acquire and enjoy a higher knowledge. Schopenhauer speaks highly in particular of tragedy, which, through the enacting of suffering and resignation, brings out both the problem of life and its solution. Music, he says, is ‘a copy of the will itself’, with the progression of musical notes—especially the melody on top—mirroring the progress of our own inner strivings. Music replicates the structures of emotions without however furnishing their contents, enabling us to feel the emotions without feeling or fearing the pain that they are normally associated with.

Compassion
While we have the freedom to do what we will, we do not have the freedom to will what we will, and so, in effect, our actions are determined. Yet we somehow feel responsible for our actions, indicating that there is an aspect of us that lies beyond the world as representation and that escapes deterministic causal necessity. Our character is inborn and constant, and manifested through our actions over time. Three fundamental forces drive our actions: compassion, malice, and egoism, with egoism most commonly in the driving seat. Yet, some people are brimming with compassion, the existence of which, Schopenhauer tells us, is ‘a mystery’. Compassionate people not only make the world more bearable for others, but also exist in a higher plane. This is because they tend to see other people less as other objects in the world and more as other selves, and so are closer to apprehending the unity and indivisibility of reality—piercing through the veil of mâyâ to the Vedantic principle that tat tvam asi (‘that art thou’).

Pessimism and renunciation
The will is the cause of constant suffering, creating deficiencies for us to satisfy. On this account, satisfaction or happiness is not a positive state but merely the removal of striving and suffering. Once a deficiency is satisfied, another inevitably arises, and, with it, more striving and suffering; even if satisfaction can be sustained for a short while, this only leads to boredom. All considered, says Schopenhauer, it would have been better for us and the world never to have existed. The only way out of this predicament is to reach the realization that our individuality and the world of appearances are illusions, renounce those illusions, and welcome the eventual release of death—which, since reality is outside of time, is itself an illusion. A man who has found this nirvana (‘blown out’, as in a candle) is either a saint or has suffered so intensely or for so long that his will has been broken. Freed from willing, he is left as a pure knowing being, ‘the undimmed mirror of the world’, and marked out from other men by his calm confidence, his insight, and his compassion. And this, for Schopenhauer, is as good as it’s ever going to get.

Socrates: Congratulations, Phaedrus, on your recent graduation.
Phaedrus: Please don’t mention it, Socrates.
Socrates: Now that you are a physician, what are you going to do?
Phaedrus: I am applying for a research post.
Socrates: In what specialty?
Phaedrus: Psychiatry, the healing of the soul—of course! I have my job interview tomorrow. Will you help me prepare for it?
Socrates: Very well, my good friend. I shall interview you as though I were an eminent professor of psychiatry. Are you ready?
Phaedrus: I am!

Socrates: Our university has a large and highly rated department of psychiatry. How many people do you think it employs?
Phaedrus: You mean the research department and not the hospital?
Socrates: Yes, just the research department. Forget about the clinical services.
Phaedrus: I’d guess about 50.
Socrates: Are you counting just principal investigators? Or are you also including senior researchers, junior researchers, course organizers, personal assistants, receptionists, cleaners, and so on?
Phaedrus: OK, well maybe about 200 then.

Socrates: Let’s go with 200. What’s their average annual salary?
Phaedrus: Before or after tax?
Socrates: Before tax.
Phaedrus: Well, I suppose an eminent professor could make perhaps $500,000 per year…
Socrates: Don’t include payments from pharmaceutical companies.
Phaedrus: Then maybe $250,000. At the other extreme, some staff may be paid no more than $20,000. So maybe, what, $50,000 on average?
Socrates: Yes, that sounds reasonable. Let’s stick with that. So, in total, how much is spent on salaries every year?
Phaedrus: 200 staff multiplied by an average salary of $50,000. Give me just a moment… $10,000,000.

Socrates: $10,000,000, just on salaries. How much do you suppose is spent on the actual research? More or less?
Phaedrus: I would assume that most of the money in a typical research grant is spent on research rather than on salaries.
Socrates: How much more do you think?
Phaedrus: Maybe twice as much.
Socrates: So twice $10,000,000, or $20,000,000, on research projects. Do you agree?
Phaedrus: Yes, that seems fair.
Socrates: So how much is spent in total, on both salaries and research projects?
Phaedrus: $10,000,000 plus $20,000,000: $30,000,000.

Socrates: So, according to you, our department spends $30,000,000 a year. Assuming that our budget has remained constant over the years, how much have we spent since 1960?
Phaedrus: Do you mean in today’s dollars.
Socrates: Yes.
Phaedrus: Well, 53 years multiplied by $30,000,000, which is, what, about $1,600,000,000?
Socrates: Yes, $1.59 billion to be exact.
Phaedrus: Amazing.

Socrates: Right. Now tell me: what was our most significant discovery in these past fifty-three years?
Phaedrus: Let me think.
Socrates: Or any one of our more significant discoveries.
Phaedrus: I’m ashamed to say that I cannot name any.
Socrates: Why are you applying for a position in our department when you cannot even name any of our breakthroughs?
Phaedrus: I wish I could!
Socrates: Fret not, it’s not your fault.
Phaedrus: How do you mean?
Socrates: I mean, there have been no breakthroughs to speak of.
Phaedrus: Oh dear!

Socrates: If, since 1960, we have spent $1.6 billion in one single psychiatry research department, how much do you think we have spent in every psychiatry research department in the country?
Phaedrus: It must be several times that, maybe $50 billion.
Socrates: Yes, or more than that. And how much have we spent in every psychiatry research department in the world?
Phaedrus: Several hundred billion, no doubt.
Socrates: Does that include the research budgets of pharmaceutical companies?
Phaedrus: No, not at all.

Socrates: Now, can you name me one important breakthrough in psychiatry since 1960?
Phaedrus: SSRI antidepressants.
Socrates: Many intelligent people, including within psychiatry, argue that SSRIs are no more effective than a placebo.
Phaedrus: Yes, and they seem to have the figures to prove it.
Socrates: What’s more, SSRIs have disturbing side effects, whereas placebos do not.
Phaedrus: What about second-generation antipsychotics? They have fewer disturbing side effects than first-generation antipsychotics. Surely they must count as an important breakthrough.
Socrates: Some people argue that the only difference between the one and the other is that second-generation antipsychotics are administered at considerably lower doses—which explains why they have fewer disturbing side effects.
Phaedrus: Yes, and, in any case, they remain very dirty drugs. I heard someone argue that they only work because they knock you out.

Socrates: Phaedrus, are you saying that, despite having spent hundreds of billions on research, there has not been a single breakthrough in psychiatry in these past fifty or sixty years?
Phaedrus: You have given me no choice but to say it.
Socrates: And yet, you wish to pursue a career in psychiatric research. Perhaps you fancy that you, of all people, will be the one to make the breakthrough?
Phaedrus: In the cold light of what has just been said, my chances do indeed seem very slim. But perhaps medical science is more about making small steps than giant leaps.
Socrates: Small steps forwards or small steps backwards?
Phaedrus: How do you mean!

Socrates: When do researchers make small steps backwards rather than small steps forwards?
Phaedrus: When they publish research that misleads. There is a saying, is there not, that to do the wrong thing is worse than to do nothing at all.
Socrates: Do they put out misleading research because they are lacking in intelligence?
Phaedrus: No, it’s more that they are under a silent pressure to publish.
Socrates: In what way?
Phaedrus: Researchers need to publish results to appear successful and advance their careers, and, more subtly, to justify themselves to themselves. Positive results are more likely to be published than negative results, and so there may be a tendency, however subconscious, to arrive at results that are slightly positive.
Socrates: If only positive results are ever published, then negative results are hidden from view, deceiving us into thinking that a particular phenomenon is present when it is not, or that a particular treatment or intervention is effective when it is not.
Phaedrus: And that gives rise to false theories, false constructs, and false paradigms: blind alleys in which other researchers lose themselves.
Socrates: Not just other researchers, Phaedrus, but also physicians, science writers, journalists, and so on.
Phaedrus: Not to forget the patients themselves.

Socrates: That’s absolutely right. How else might we be misled?
Phaedrus: Commercial interests.
Socrates: How do you mean?
Phaedrus: Well, for example, there are pharmaceutical companies that have been known to selectively publish research with positive findings, while spinning, doctoring, or suppressing any research with negative findings. This creates the impression that their products are more effective than they are.
Socrates: Or that their products are effective when they are not.
Phaedrus: Yes, it misleads the research community, who create or adjust explanatory models to fit the “findings”.
Socrates: Which creates even more confusion.
Phaedrus: On top of all this, pharmaceutical companies spend large sums of money promoting their products to physicians and end consumers.
Socrates: How do they promote their products to physicians?
Phaedrus: By meeting with them and “educating” them about a particular product or range of products, sponsoring their conferences, contracting them as speakers or consultants, and such like. They target the most influential physicians, so-called ‘key opinion leaders’.
Socrates: So the physicians they target are those in leadership positions.
Phaedrus: Yes, just those who are driving the research!

Socrates: Well then, Phaedrus, if, after all this, you still wish to pursue a career in psychiatric research, you must take great care to avoid all these pitfalls and make small steps forwards rather than small steps backwards. Otherwise, you will have thrown away your education. You will have wasted your life. And you will leave this world, to which you owe so much, having done it more harm than good.