The will and enjoyment

This article aims to explore from Schopenhauer's book "The World as Will and Representation" to Zižek's "Surplus Enjoyment", focusing on the concept of "will" and its relation to "desire" and "enjoyment".

Together with other philosophers like Hume,Heidegger,Nietzsche, Lacan, etc. formed the philosophical stream of "Irrationalism"(Perhaps Wittgenstein shall be included too), which emphasizes the irrational aspects of human nature, such as desires, instincts, and unconscious drives, in contrast to the Enlightenment's focus on absolute rationality and reductionism. Accordingly, the definition of something almost always involves the definition of its opposite, e.g., rationality vs. irrationality, absolute vs. relative., scientific vs. unscientific, effective vs. ineffective, etc.

Thus, everything is relative, and absolute rationality is just a reductionist illusion. Although Irrationalism deem rationality as inferior, this article doesn't agree, and adopts a neutral stance, treating rationality and irrationality as two complementary traits. In addition, the attempts in this article to analyze irrational philosophy is assisted by mathematics, a rational approach.

Irrationalism uses dialectics sometimes as its language system, we shall hereby briefly introduce.

Hegel's dialectics is a language for describing dynamical systems, where everything is in constant flux and change. The dialectical process involves the interaction of opposing forces, leading to the emergence of new forms and structures. This process is characterized by contradictions, negations, and syntheses, which drive the evolution of ideas and phenomena.

Dialectics seems to invalidate some most fundamental laws of classical logic, such as:

  • the law of identity: A is A, which assumes that things have fixed and unchanging identities.
  • the law of non-contradiction: A cannot be both A and not A, which assumes that things are binary and mutually exclusive.
  • and some other laws.

On the surface, dialectics may seem to violate basic logical principles. However, it is important to note that dialectics operates at a different level of abstraction than classical logic. Dialectics is concerned with the dynamic and relational aspects of reality, while classical logic is concerned with static aspects. Thus , the arguments between dialectics advocates like Hegel, Marx, Engels, and their critics like Karl Popper,often stem from misunderstandings about the different levels of abstraction involved.

Personally, I disagree with both sides, and shall use mathematical structures instead of specific language system from philosophy. So each side has its own merits on different levels:

  • Logic: static structures, like sets, functions, categories, etc.
  • Dialectics: dynamical systems, terms like fixed points, attractors, etc. shall be used.

The logical deduction chains

It seems that in each book of philosophy, there are always a long chain of logical arguments and deductions. Not only the logical chain is long, but also the definitions of terms and assumptions are vague. However, It's interesting that philosophers can still reach some conclusions that sound reasonable. This suggests that there may be some underlying structure or pattern to their reasoning that allows them to arrive at these conclusions. Thus, we shall focus on the conclusions rather than nailing down the details.

Some basic assumptions shall be listed:

  • a language system restricts possible expressions, while it is providing freedom within the system.
  • any definition involves its opposite, e.g., rationality vs. irrationality, absolute vs relative.

This chapter focus on Schopenhauer's book "The World as Will and Representation".

Here we discuss Zižek's book "Surplus Enjoyment", which mainly draws from Lacan's psychoanalysis.