Reality doesn't exist on its own. Without subjectivity to perceive the objectivity of the world, the way in which space, time, and the universe in general exist would be radically other. For example, can time be said to pass if there is no-one for whom time passes? What is the difference between a universe that began 14 billion years ago and one that started 14 years ago, if there is no one to count the years? Philosopher David Bather Woods here argues, using the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, that the will that makes up our subjectivity also makes up the world. Therefore, denying the will, as is taught in Buddhism and other world religions, can turn the universe into nothing.
There is the way the world appears, and then there is the world as it is in itself. Arthur Schopenhauer’s masterpiece The World as Will and Representation, first published in 1818, fleshes out this distinction with two propositions: “The world is my representation” and “The world is my will.” We are perhaps more familiar with the idea that the world appears as a representation. The world appears to us as an object for a subject; the subject plays a constructive role in organising the experienced world. But what does Schopenhauer mean when he says that the world is my will? What is the will?
The will, it turns out, is many things.
First, the will is the will. That’s right: before expanding the concept of the will to such grand metaphysical proportions, Schopenhauer begins with some observations about our everyday experience of the will. We human beings experience ourselves, on the one hand, as representations like any other. We have a look, a smell, a sound, a taste, and a texture; we are located in space and time; we have personal causal histories; are capable of, and susceptible to, causal effects: in other words, we are our bodies. But, on the other hand, we experience ourselves in a way that is unlike any other representation. We experience what it is to be this representation. We are directly acquainted with its inner animations: its stirrings and passions, wants and desires; its incentives and motives, deliberations and decisions. In other words, we are our wills.
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Human beings are still an embodiment of the same thing as other natural beings, only we are differently equipped.
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Yet the will, to Schopenhauer, is not only the will. The will is also a clue to the nature of metaphysical reality. How so? To begin, the will tells us that there is more to objects than how they appear in representation. We can know this, according to Schopenhauer, because we know there is more to us than our representation. Think of it this way: What would our experience of the world be like if it only consisted of objects as represented by subjects? If, that is, we were only representing subjects, not also willing subjects? Schopenhauer says we would be like Engelskopf: angel-heads floating above the world as representation. We would assume that there is no more to reality than what lies at the level of representation. But this isn’t how we experience the world. On the contrary, the will roots us in the world and gives us direct access to one of its representations—namely, ourselves—in an entirely different aspect. We are given to assume, then, that other objects, too, have a reality beyond representation. And our only clue as to the nature of that reality is, you guessed it, the will.
1st April 2026
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Don Salmon 9 August 2026
I would assume that one of the world's leading scholars, teachers and practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism might know something about the will, which is absolutely not denied in Buddhism. It is, at least in the Dzogchen school, quite similar to the view presented at the end of Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita (which Schopenhauer deeply misunderstood, as he misunderstood the Upanishads, one of the bases of his philosophy).
The Gita tells us as long as we live from our sense mind, driven by desire and compulsion, we are utterly unfree. "Rising" to our intelligent will (correlated to our prefrontal cortex) we appear to be freer but we are still wholly within our conditioning. Only by going "above" and "within" to the Atman, are we free; but then, we are free to the extent we are aligned with the infinitely intelligent will in and beyond the cosmos (not Schopenhauer's "blind will")
Similarly, here is Buddhist teacher Alan Wallace on the nature of the "will" - beyond both indeterminism and determinism - in Tibetan Buddhism:
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A Buddhist View of Free Will: Beyond Determinism and Indeterminism
B. Alan Wallace
Journal of Consciousness Studies
Abstract: While the question of free will does not figure as prominently in Buddhist writings as it does in western theology, philosophy, and psychology, it is a topic that was addressed in the earliest Buddhist writings. According to these accounts, for pragmatic and ethical reasons, the Buddha rejected both determinism and indeterminism as understood at that time. Rather than asking the metaphysical question of whether already humans have free will, Buddhist tradition takes a more pragmatic approach, exploring ways in which we can acquire greater freedom to make wise choices that are truly conducive to our own and others’ genuine well-being. One key to achieving such freedom is the cultivation of attentional skills so that one can deliberately focus one’s attention with continuity and clarity on one’s chosen object. A second theme is the cultivation of insight into the manner in which our own attitudes shape experience, allowing for the possibility of altering not only the way we experience events in the present, but also how we are influenced by our memories of the past. Finally, the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes the realization of the deepest dimension of consciousness — pristine awareness — which transcends the nexus of causality. This is regarded as the ultimate source of freedom and the ultimate nature of human identity."