Shopenhaur

Body as direct access to the thing-in-itself, an irrational force often referred to as will, somewhat like the platonic essence that underlies all appearances. We, through our bodies, have direct access to this will, each through our own private experience. Through both being a body and having a body, the will is the common ground, the primordial stew, that we all manifest in action, agency, in representation. Shopenhauer proposes the thing in itself, as a blind striving force, a repository of drives, conflicting. Despite the irrationality, there is nonetheless an ethics, grounded in the common grounds which binds us all in an understanding of both pain and pleasure. When the ego is quiet, it is possible to empathize, understanding that another's pain () is also our own.

Excerpts: The brain and spine as parasitic, manifestations of the intellect, a tool of the will/primordial stew which S considers secondary. Demonstrated in instances when the intellect is absent for example (horse, clock) when blind striving force is no longer governed. Nietzsche promoted such states for example in Dionysion self-experimentation by inducing debauchery and inebriation, giving priority to the unconscious, the primordial.

Can the will deny itself? Would taking one's life be also an act of the thing in itself?
Both S and N suggest the positive, that the will begets life. Maintaining that the will is blind, yet assuming that the will strives to propagate.

() is a signature of Ann Hamilton, who inserts ellipses in her text to indicate a pause (rather than the traditional ommitence.