Abstract

The present study is an attempt to explain and account for the metaphysical foundation of the transcendental elements of Schopenhauer's idealism, according to the suggestions Schopenhauer gives in its philosophical production for the understanding of his own philosophy. According to Schopenhauer these elements are to be found outside The World as Will and Representation, that is, in the treatise On Fourfold Roots of Principle of Sufficient Reason, the work he considers as the necessary premise in order to understand its major work. The relationship with Kant's philosophy is analyzed starting from Schopenhauer's own reception of Kant's philosophy as it is displayed in the Critique of Kantian Philosophy. The study is divided in tree chapters. The first chapter analyzes Schopenhauer's critique of Kant's philosophy in its founding aspects, starting from the main points discussed in the Critique of the Kantian Philosophy. The second chapter starts from the problems pertaining to the a priori judgments in relation to the role played by the transcendental necessity and universality; it then proceeds to analyze the kantian and schopenhauerian solutions with respect to the conditions of possibility of experience by referring to the difference between Kant's discursive conception of understanding and Schopenhauer's intuitive conception of understanding. The second part of chapter Two is devoted to a detailed discussion of Schopenhauer's overall idealistic perspective. The third chapter provides a deep analysis and explanation of the metaphysical-transcendental foundation of Schopenhauer's philosophical system in its essential components. The aim of this study is to verify the possible internal consistency of Schopenhauer's system according to the metaphysical-transcendental ground that the present study defines as transcendental phenomenology