叔本華，1788年2月22日生。被稱為“悲觀主義哲學傢”。他是黑格爾絕對唯心主義的反對者、新的“生命”哲學的先驅者。對人間的苦難甚為敏感，因而他的人生觀帶有強烈的悲觀主義傾嚮。緻力於哲學傢柏拉圖和康德著作的研究、衊視費希特、謝林和黑格爾。他的一生並不得誌，在去世前幾年獲得聲譽以前，一直過著隱居生活。

叔本華，1819年發錶重要著作《意誌和錶象的世界》，分為四冊，其中包括：認識論、自然哲學、美學和倫理學。這部書標誌瞭叔本華思想發展的頂點。盡管他因受到同代人的冷遇而感到失望，但他堅信真理的最後勝利。他認為，“真理是可以等到的，因為它長久存在”。經過瞭19年的“無聲的憤慨”之後，他在1836年發錶瞭短篇論文《論自然界中的意誌》。叔本華這篇文章靈巧地運用瞭迅速發展的自然科學中的疑問和發現來維護他關於意誌的學說。在前言中他公開地對“騙子”黑格爾及其幫派予以沉重的抨擊。然而直到1853年之後，叔本華的哲學纔為世界所重視。

1860年9月21日病逝。

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 48 ) CHAPTER XXIV. ON MATTER. Matter has already been spoken of in the fourth chapter of the supplements to the first book, when we were considering the part of our knowledge of which we are conscious a priori. But it could only be considered there from a one-sided point of view, because we were then concerned merely with its relation to the forms of our intellect, and not to the thing in itself, and therefore we investigated it only from the subjective side, i.e., so far as it is an idea, and not from the objective side, i.e., with regard to what it may be in itself. In the first respect, our conclusion was that it is objective activity in general, yet conceived without fuller determination; therefore it takes the place of causality in the table of our a priori knowledge which is given there. For what is material is that which acts (the actual) in general, and regarded apart from the specific nature of its action. Hence also matter, merely as such, is not an object of perception, but only of thought, and thus is really au abstraction. It only comes into perception in connection with form and quality, as a body, i.e., as a fully determined kind of activity. It is only by abstracting from this fuller determination that we think of matter as such, i.e., separated from form and quality; consequently under matter we think of acting absolutely and in general, thus of activity in the abstract. The more fully determined acting we then conceive as the accident of matter; but only by means of this does matter become preceptible, i.e., present itself as a body and an object of experience. Pure matter, on the other hand, which, as I have shown in the Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy, alone constitutes the true and admissible content of the conception of substance, is causality...