Animality and apostasy of the will: Nietzsche looking at Schopenhauer

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to clarify how the Janus face of Schopenhauer´s philosophy guided the relation between Nietzsche and the author of The World as Will and Representation. This aspect has been neglected by the Nietzsche research, perhaps judging this relation as a topic exhausted in pairings such as “adherence and rupture”, “enchantment and estrangement”, “pessimism and life affirmation”. That said, at a first preliminary moment we will analyze the dual face of Schopenhauer`s philosophy, with his gaze simultaneously towards past and future. At a second preliminary moment, we will approach Schopenhauer´s daring attitude of converting philosopher´s failed ambitions (thinking, of course, on the thing-in-itself) on the unconscious principle of the will. From them on, we are going to tackle Nietzsche´s grasp of Schopenhauer as a philosopher who, vulnerable to his second nature, a German nature, avoid featuring the very tragic philosophy that he reaches to touch, in the favor of a metaphysical treatment of his audacious discovery – the unconscious in human species.