Schopenhauer, Dual-Aspect Monism and the Nondual Perspective
Arthur Schopenhauer, an influential figure among German philosophers in the late 19th century, presented a unique and compelling monistic system. While not explicitly labeled as such by him, strong elements of dual-aspect monism are present. As such, there are parallels with the nondual understanding.
Schopenhauer, like Spinoza before him, rejected the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter as fundamentally separate substances. He argued for a single, underlying reality which he termed the Will. This Will is not rational, personal, or self-reflexive. It is a blind, purposeless, ceaseless striving, a metaphysical force that is the true “thing-in-itself” behind appearances in the world.
Appearances in the world are called the World as Representation. This is how the Will appears when it becomes the object of a knowing subject. Our bodies are a key bridge between these two aspects: we apprehend our body objectively as a physical entity within the Representation, but we also experience it directly and immediately as our subjectivity—willing, striving, resisting and desiring. The body, therefore, serves as the intersection where Will is expressed in both its objective, spatial form and its subjective, self-reflexive form.
It is in this relationship between the Will and the Representation that Schopenhauer's system aligns with dual-aspect monism. The Will is the substance, and the Representation is the appearance, perceived simultaneously through the body as both a physical object in space/time and the subjectivity with which it is known.
From a nondual perspective, however, the ultimate reality is not a blind, striving Will but subjectivity itself, the Absolute, unmanifest potential, infinite fullness lacking nothing. Suffering and striving are experiences arising within subjectivity, but they do not color it. In just the same way, a movie doesn’t really discolor the screen.
But for Schopenhauer, striving is the Will. It is the inherent, inescapable nature of reality itself. The world is a manifestation of this striving, and suffering is its necessary consequence. Peace, then, according to Schopenhauer, can be found through the temporary or ascetic negation of the Will's activity.
Nondualism says that striving arises when consciousness localizes itself or appears to contract into the form of a finite mind. The necessary limitations result in an inner sense of being limited and seemingly separate from the rest of reality. Consciousness seeks to fill the void. The striving that follows, the desires, the careless or ceaseless activity, is, at the deepest level, misguided impulses of consciousness to rediscover its inherent, limitless freedom.
Schopenhauer described activities of experience—striving and suffering—and mistook them for the fundamental nature of reality itself, which is totally free of any ignorance about its true nature.