Adam sez: "We all have free will, and can make our own decisions." Can someone post a reliable proof of free will? As it seems to me to be total illusion (I believe in will in the Schopenhauerian sense).
I've never heard one. What do you mean by "will in the Shopenhauferian sense"? I've never read Shopenhaufer.
I'll try to do his complex arguments justice, but a basic summary: He sees will as a property of all living things, including the universe itself, which he sees as having arisen by its own devices. While individuals do not have free will, they are to some degree "free" to interpret the will within them, a force pushing them toward existence and growth and death simultaneously. He was heavily influenced by the Hindu religious text "The Upanishads" and found many of his concepts within. Maybe not the best summary you've ever read Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! but hopefully it will serve.
As I recollect the matter, Arthur Schopenhauer did believe in free will. However, he thought it a curse, a cumbersome and mournful onus, seeing that it engendered only temporal misery. Even so, it was not completely "free" volition. Inasmuch as one might delegate a certain manner of subsistence or routine for oneself, one was still merely choosing to continue living and, thus, succumbing to one's impulse of survival. Ergo, the indivdual is compelled to by an unwholesome yet irrepressible "will to survive." This will is, of course, undesirable, and Schopenhauer exhorted that intellectuals with the patience to do so tolerate their mundane and inhospitable existence simply because no other alternative to this drudgery ever arises. He encouraged the tenets of the Indian Upanishads, which advocated not fastidious, righteous, or ambitious undertakings, but placid, graceful acquiecence to the ultimate forces of the universe.
A fascinating and singular footnote in the history of European philosophy: Fredrick Wilhelm Neitzche, during one of his myriad syphilis induced fits of aflflicted and delerious inspiration, concocted an outrageous idea. He likened himself to the Christ, and postulated that just as the fervent John the Baptist had been the predecessor and harbringer of the Prince of Peace, the pessimistic Schopenhauer was the messenger of his, Neitzche's, own coming.
