On Death and The Fear of Death in the Philosophy of Schopenhauer

The title of Schopenhauer’s major work, The World As Will and Represantation, aptly summarizes his metaphysical system. The title reflects his dual theory that the world is both idea and will. The central concept of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is that of will. Will is the ultimate driving force and essence of the whole material world, including ourselves. The world inevitably appears to us, as idea; but in its essence, as we learn through intuition, it is will. Will is the thing-in-itself, the essence of the world. Life, the visible world, the phenomenon, is only the mirror of the will. In the same way that the world is the Will, the human body is an induvidual will and expresses itself within humanity as the will-to-life. It is exceedingly difficult to explain the relationship between the Will and the will-to-life. Perhaps the simplest way to understand it is that the will-to-life is the force that expresses the Will at the level of the individual, i.e. it is an individual aspect of the greater Will. We see the individual come into being and pass away. Birth and death belong merely to the phenomenon of will, this to life. In this article Schopenhauer’s ideas on death and the fear of death are evaluate