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Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - The power of nature
Identifier
002758
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The World as Will and Idea – Arthur Schopenhauer
Nature shaken by a storm; half light through threatening black thunder clouds; huge bare, overhanging crags which, jutting out this way and that, hem us in; rushing, foaming torrents; absolute barrenness; the wail of the wind sweeping through gullies. Our dependence, our strife with hostile nature, our will broken in the conflict, is not plain for us to see. Yet as long as our personal plight does not predominate, but we continue in aesthetic contemplation, the pure subject of knowing, unshaken and unconcerned, looks beyond that strife in nature, beyond that image of the broken will, and quietly comprehends the Ideas even in those very objects which are threatening and terrible to the will. It is in this contrast that the sense of the sublime lies.
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