The Philosophy of Ghosts

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
04:18 The 19th century & the paranormal
12:34 Schopenhauer's supernatural experiences
16:43 Schopenhauer's philosophy and the paranormal
37:06 Dreams and ghosts
58:38 Ghosts and dreams
01:02:29 Magic and the end of philosophy

Schopenhauer was always fascinated with the paranormal. He had over 100 books on ghosts, magic, hypnotism, sleepwalking, dreams, etc. in his personal library.

This fascination he wisely kept out of his main work of philosophy, The World as Will and Representation, but in his collection of essays, we find a veritable philosophy of "spirit apparitions."

Schopenhauer is characteristically modest in this essay and offers a first step towards a more complete philosophy of the paranormal. Because he is convinced that belief in ghosts is innate in humans, and therefore, if a philosophy claims to explain the whole world and every possible experience, these human, all-too-human experiences must find a place in it also.

He makes a connection with dreams, and posits that ghosts could potentially have an ideal existence (ideal as in, from transcendental idealism) as opposed to a materialist or spiritualist existence.

How does that work? Through an organ in the brain that he calls the dream organ... Because dreams prove that the brain is capable of generating images without any external stimuli. In going to sleep, the brain switches between modes: it goes from dealing with the external world, to dealing with the internal world.

There is an in-between moment though, when this switch happens. And there is were ghost apparitions come in. You make the room dark and quiet, the brain directs energy away from the processes that take care of the external world, and it focuses on the internal world... Sometimes it can create visions, but imperfect ones: they have a dreamlike gauze, they disappear if you focus your eye on them, they have a translucent, ethereal sheen to them... Ghosts.

The subjective experience of seeing a ghosts is then mirrored in his philosophy because the subjective experience must have an objective counterpart in the Will. A ghost apparition then, requires two rare phenomena to occur together: two persons with strong connections to the world as Will who meet in the strange in-between zone of subjective and objective reality. How all of this works exactly, Schopenhauer isn't sure. But he is hopeful scientists of the future will figure it out...