free.” Schopenhauer justifies the claim that the intelligible character is chosen through the fact that we feel responsible for our deeds. Because our empirical character is incapable of acting freely, we must feel responsible for another reason. Schopenhauer says a person feels responsible because he knows if he were a different person, he could have acted otherwise. He writes, …in existing circumstances and hence under the motives that have determined him, an entirely different action, in fact the very opposite of his, was quite possible and could have happened, if only he had been another person. Because he is this person and not another; because he has such and such a character, naturally no other action was possible for him; in itself, however, and thus objectively, it is possible. Therefore the responsibility of which he is conscious concerns the deed only in the first instance and ostensibly, but at bottom it concerns his character; it is for the latter that he feels himself responsible (all Schopenhauer’s italics). A different person in the same situation could have performed a different action; however, because the particular person has chosen to be this person and not a different one, there was only one possible action that he could perform. He still feels responsible for his action although he could not have done otherwise, because he knows he is accountable for being the person he is. He has, in Schopenhauer’s view, created himself through choice. Having elucidated the free chosenness of the intelligible character, I will move to the second key characteristic. Schopenhauer asserts that the intelligible character serves as the uniting thread that holds together the other conscious features of a human being. Kleist’s description of the intelligible character as a teleological unity of conscious states and actions is accurate. Kleist points out that Schopenhauer uses the intelligible character to account for the unity of human’s conscious states. Schopenhauer says there must be an extent to which our consciousness is not subject to pure incoherence and disarray. Therefore there must be a guiding thread to consciousness that arranges representations and ideas; otherwise we would be only a mixture of different fragments of thoughts. Schopenhauer rejects memory as a possibility for
unfortunately a mystery at the heart of Schopenhauer’s theory that makes his account slightly weaker. Contrary to Schopenhauer’s assertion that existence must possess essence, Sartre’s philosophy rests on the claim that existence precedes essence, and it is not necessary for the choice of fundamental project to take place outside of time external to the empirical world. It is worth pointing out, however, that the idea of someone existing without an essence contains an element of mystery itself. Schopenhauer points out that …the freedom of the will means an existentia without essentia; this is equivalent to saying that something is and yet at the same time is nothing, which again means that it is not and thus is a contradiction. So both accounts suffer from an element of mystery or paradox in their position with regard to the original choice of character or project. Schopenhauer’s position is mysterious because it is impossible to conceive of a choice taking place outside of time, and for Sartre, a person must both exist and yet have no essence, which Schopenhauer points out is to say that a person both exists and yet is nothing, which suggests a contradiction. The position of the two authors with respect to existence and essence also accounts for the differences in their views with respect to the alterability of the character or project. Since for Schopenhauer a person’s essence is determined before she is born, her essence must be constant through her entire life, for it is not possible to make another choice of essence outside of time. Because Sartre asserts that a person’s essence is not determined until after she has been born and that one chooses a project within the empirical world, it is possible to change her essence and her project. This difference can be summed up in a quote from each author: “…in what we do, we recognize what we are…” “…one is also what one does.”