Metaphysics

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

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Arthur Schopenhauer

1813

Schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation, revised throughout his life, analyses the principle that nothing is without a reason or ground into four irreducibly distinct forms: the ground of becoming (causality), the ground of knowing (logical proof), the ground of being (mathematical relations), and the ground of acting (motivation). This fourfold analysis becomes the architectonic foundation for all of his later philosophy.