Death, aesthetics and philosophy: the art of philosophizing according to Schopenhauer

Abstract

The present paper proposes to read the problem of the fear of death in Schopenhauer’s philosophy as a mistake based in the transcendental illusion. As a mistake, this fear can be eradicated by arguments, but, as an illusion, Schopenhauer must supply us of a way to correct the intuition. This way, we hold, is the aesthetic intuition. Accordingly, we analyze the artistic faculties of the genius and its relation with the work of the philosopher; particularly, the aesthetic contemplation as the intuittive reception of the platonic Ideas. We will argue that the Ideas work as a hinge between the world as representation and the world as will. The Ideas allow the philosopher to 1) overcome the inner resistance that the subject opposes to the idealistic thesis by providing the thesis with intuitive content, and 2) to break the transcendental illusion by revealing the illusory character of the empirical world and interpret it according to the different levels of objectification of the thing in itself, the will.