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Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859), Ch. 19 : On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciousness
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The will, as the thing-in-itself, constitutes the inner, true, and indestructible nature of man; yet in itself it is without consciousness. For consciousness is conditioned by the intellect, and the intellect is a mere accident of our being, for it is a function of the brain. The brain, together with the nerves and spinal cord attached to it, is a mere fruit, a product, in fact a parasite, of the rest of the organism, in so far as it is not directly geared to the organism's inner working, but serves the purpose of self-preservation by regulating its relations with the external world. On the other hand, the organism itself is the visibility, the objectivity, of the individual will, its image, as this image presents itself in that very brain (which in the first book we learned to recognize as the condition of the objective world in general).

— Arthur Schopenhauer on Spinal cord

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The will, as the thing-in-itself, constitutes the inner, true, and indestructible nature of man; yet in itself it is without consciousness. For consciousness is conditioned by the intellect, and the intellect is a mere accident of our being, for it is a function of the brain. The brain, together with the nerves and spinal cord attached to it, is a mere fruit, a product, in fact a parasite, of the rest of the organism, in so far as it is not directly geared to the organism's inner working, but serves the purpose of self-preservation by regulating its relations with the external world. On the other hand, the organism itself is the visibility, the objectivity, of the individual will, its image, as this image presents itself in that very brain (which in the first book we learned to recognize as the condition of the objective world in general)." in the context of "Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859), Ch. 19 : On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciousness" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Spinal cord" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 26, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Arthur Schopenhauer

About Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher, most famous for his work The World as Will and Representation (1819).

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