The problem of intelect-brain relation in Schopenhauer’s work with special emphasis on the “Zeller’s paradox”

Abstract

This paper has as main goal to investigate and circumscribe the problematic relation between intellect and brain in Arthur Schopenhauer’s work, under the consideration of the well known Eduard Zeller’s formulation of the problem. In this way, the concepts of intellect and brain might be considered according to the major explanation of the metaphysics of nature, having as main idea the distinction between the two ways of considering the world presented simultaneously in The world as will and representation and improved and developed in the author’s posterior works. If, on the one hand, the world is object of investigation through subjectivity and its forms of existence, on the other hand it is considered through the objective way which, firstly, admit the object as existing by itself, independently of any subject. Without an independent existence, in so far each object depend on subjectivity, both modes must contribute to the complete understanding of the world as a whole as complementary parts: the intellect must be understood from the objective point of view and the brain according to the subjective analysis of the world that leads to the metaphysical conclusions of Schopenhauer’s work, whose aim include putting it in the general explanation of nature.