Metaphysics

On the Will in Nature

♡+

Arthur Schopenhauer

1836

A compact but important work in which Schopenhauer marshals evidence from the natural sciences — physiology, comparative anatomy, plant physiology, animal magnetism, and physical astronomy — to confirm empirically what his metaphysics established a priori: that the inner nature of all natural phenomena, from gravity to plant growth to animal instinct, is identical with the will we know immediately in ourselves. Science, he argues, converges on his philosophy without knowing it.