Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Song re Shopenhauer's The World as Will - I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen


"If you want a lover, I'll do anything you ask me to. And if you want another kind of love, I'll wear a mask for you. If you want a partner, take my hand. Or if you want to strike me down in anger, Here I stand. I'm your man. If you want a boxer, I will step into the ring for you. And if you want a doctor, I'll examine every inch of you. If you want a driver, climb inside. Or if you want to take me for a ride, You know you can. I'm your man."

This song is about a lover's absolute will to be whatever his partner desires. Therefore, his character, appearance, body, reflects this will at any given moment

“Therefore this body itself must be phenomenon of the will, and must be related to my will as a whole, that is to say, to my intelligible character, the phenomenon of which in time is my empirical character, in the same way as the particular action of the body is to the particular act of the will. Therefore the whole body must be nothing by my will become visible, must be my will itself…” (The World as Will 74).


“This whole animal life, thus developing itself, is phenomenon of the will” (75).

Schopenhauer lays forth how everything is merely a reflection of that thing's will; and in the continued piece of "Knowledge of the Idea" it is the person's encounter with those reflections that constitutes their knowledge of it. So my knowledge of this lover would only go so far as which reflection of his will I was in contact with, i.e. the boxer, doctor, lover, etc., but seeing past those reflections as merely representations of his will, to the Idea behind it, e.g, his love and desire to be whatever his lover needs, would reveal to me true knowledge. 

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