page_title: Critique of the Schopenhauerian philosophy
section_title: Causality
hierarchical_section_title: Critique of the Schopenhauerian philosophy / Epistemology / Causality
caption_attribution_description: English: Causality according to Mainländer's epistemology
context_page_description: Critique of the Schopenhaurian philosophy is a criticism of Mainländer appended to Die Philosophie der Erlösung. Mainländer saw the purification of Schopenhauer's philosophy as the task of his life. The criticism had an important impact on Nietzsche's philosophical development.
context_section_description: It was therefore up to those who were loyal to Kant’s project to secure the validity of causality. As Hume’s skepticism is based on the assumption that causality is a concept drawn from successive external representations, Schopenhauer started to investigate how we actually come to know external representations. After all, all that is given to me are subjective sensations, sense data that go not beyond my skin. So how is it possible to perceive something beyond my skin, outside of me? Mainländer praises this as an exceptional sign of prudence.
  The senses merely deliver the data, which is processed by the brain into the objective world by means of the understanding, which conceives every change in a sense organ as the effect of an external cause, and seeks the cause in space. Hereby, for the first time it is shown how the visible world arises from sense data. Schopenhauer called this comprehension of a change in the sense organ having a 
  cause in space, the causal law (German: Kausalitätsgesetz).
  Schopenhauer deemed that he had thereby disproven Hume’s skepticism, since representations presuppose the causal law. Causality is consequently not a concept drawn from successive representations, but representations presuppose knowledge of causality.
  This reasoning is too hastily made (a subreption). Schopenhauer has indeed shown that the causal law is needed for objective perception and consequently lies a priori in us, but not that causality in general must lie a priori in us. The causal law merely says: every change in my sense organ is the effect of a cause. It is a one-sided relation (the outer world affects me) of the subject that says nothing about objects affecting each other. The causal law does not cover causality in general. 
  In order to do anything else than searching the cause of an effect, we need another mental faculty. Reason reflects and recognizes that I am not a privileged subject but an object amongst objects, so with help of experience it subjects all appearances to the general law: wherever in nature a change takes place, it is the effect of a cause, which preceded it in time. Causality is therefore given a posteriori and not a priori, though it has an aprioristic ground.
caption: The causal law does not cover causality in general.
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