In Arthur's Nature

By J.T. Frederick

In 1831, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pushed his neighbour down the stairs of their Frankfurt residence. Inspired by this true event and his actual writings, the novel reimagines the life of the fractured thinker as it blurs the boundaries between Arthur's theoretical beliefs and his physical existence.

 

Caroline Marquet, a talented painter, has endured her own dark past, but her future is about to become even darker at the hands of the man across the hall. For although Arthur lectures on kindness, he views the world through a prism of metaphysical Nature where all human desires are the work of a malevolent will. Unleashed from its theoretical constraints, the will burdens the philosopher with an aggressive pessimism, festering an obsessively vengeful relationship with Caroline which results in a missing student, criminal charges, and shattered lives.

 

Arthur's thesis on will, natural law, and morality, which develops through the novel, ultimately determines its outcome. Can the philosopher escape the fate he has written for himself, or must he, and indeed humankind, forever suffer In Arthur's Nature?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theorism Press
• Release date: May 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645180206

Book preview

PROLOGUE

DESPITE BEING HIS FIRST visit to Goethe University, there was no time to tour its scholarly grounds. Minutes before, his Uber driver had dropped him at Grüneburgpark, which was handily located just behind the campus. And now, having successfully navigated those sprawling gardens, the shabby youth emerged to find himself standing on the steps outside the library.

He walked through the automatic doors and was greeted with a blast of warm recycled air. Entering the foyer he checked his watch: 10:03am. Although an early hour for hungover students, a horde was milling loudly around him. Along with piles of books carried under their arms, mobile phones and take away coffee seemed to be their primary instruments of study.

The visitor took out his own phone so as to remain unnoticed. While he was holding the screen beneath his eyes, he was actually looking over towards the library to assess its ingress. He watched as students strode through its doors and past the security station, which hugged the side of the entrance, without raising alarm. Reassuringly, they were not required to show their ID or even slow their pace.

After waiting for the next group of students to approach the entrance, he quickly stepped behind them, hoping to fade from view. He had just walked through the doors at the back of the group when his stride was interrupted by a loud voice. ‘Hey, you!’

Hesitating, he turned to the guard sitting behind a counter to his left. ‘Me?’

‘Yeah, you in the jacket.’

Why pick on him? The other students had entered without incident. Surely security staff couldn’t know of his plans.

‘Over here.’

His heartbeat quickened as he acceded to the request. ‘Is something wrong?’

The guard looked like any other student, except that he was wearing a yellow shirt with the words Stronghold Security written in black letters across his chest. He nudged his head toward a sign over the trespasser’s shoulder. ‘No backpack, no jacket.’

The young man spun his neck to confirm the instruction.

‘Locker downstairs,’ the officer suggested, speaking economically.

‘Oh,’ he uttered in reply while turning back around, relieved that this was nothing more than an administrative obstacle.

The lower-ground level held aisles of automated lockers that stood adjacent to long wooden benches. For a locker room, it was surprisingly bright and fresh-looking, and emitted no offensive odours. Perhaps this was because the room had recently been cleaned, or because at that moment it was mostly empty of students.

He scanned the open lockers, before choosing one near the front of the room to allow for a quick getaway. Fortunately he had come well-prepared, and was wearing sufficiently-pocketed clothing to complete his mission. Confirming there was nobody in sight, he pulled out his tools from the backpack and shoved them in his pants. He took off his beanie and placed it in the locker, along with his bag and jacket. Then, with its door slammed shut, he headed back upstairs.

On his second attempt, the library entrance was breached without incident. He located the staircase just past the entrance, and ascended its metal pathway. At each level he was greeted by doorways garnished with signs inviting guests to inspect the specialty collections inside, but only during opening hours. It seemed for most exhibits it was still too early for visitors, and maybe for staff too. As such, it was eerily quiet compared to the hum of people using the facility just a few floors below.

The faux-student continued his climb to level four, then paused at the top of the stairs. There was only one entrance visible on this floor. The door was shut, but the sign outside indicated the collection held within was open.

As the handle turned, the door swung forward to reveal a small white room. Crossing the threshold, the air-conditioning became noticeably cooler. He surveyed the scene before him with restrained anticipation of the job ahead. Unexpectedly, this was no neatly arranged museum. The walls were confusedly covered with a mix of built-in bookshelves and framed portrait paintings. Glass cabinets and display cases of various sizes were dotted throughout the room, showcasing an odd assembly of curios, one of which had called him here.

He darted swiftly but calmly throughout the collection, stopping briefly before random items to express false interest in them, and thereby quell any misgivings of those who might be watching. It was an excruciating few minutes until, finally, relief. Beneath a portrait of the elderly man, he saw the object sitting on a bookshelf at eyesight level, sealed in a small rectangular case. There was a description behind it which read Partly-smoked cigar found beside the deceased.

Gauging his surroundings, the intruder noticed that two cameras were affixed near the ceiling on opposite corners of the room. He was not overly concerned by these, as long as security did not witness the act in time to interfere with it. No-one here had seen him before today, and no-one would see him afterwards. Of more interest however, was the office adjacent to the collection room. These areas were connected by a large sliding window. He could see two librarians on the other side of the clear divide, but as they were busy at work, he could return his attention to the item in front of him.

He positioned his body with his back to the nearest camera in an attempt to block its view. The glass display case sat on a thin wooden pedestal which, as anticipated, was attached to the shelf by four security screws. The set-up was unsophisticated. There appeared to be no lock or alarm attached to the display. After all, who would steal a 150-year-old half-sucked stogie?

He pulled out a compact cordless screwdriver from his pocket. Holding the tool upside down, he removed a tamperproof bit from within its magnetic handle. He carefully directed the bit onto the screw, but it was too large to grip the recess, and the bulky bit slid off.

Looking at the reflection in the glass, he confirmed he was still alone. But for how much longer?

He discreetly extracted a smaller bit from the handle, and tried again. Fortunately, this one fit, and comfortably took hold of the unusually-shaped rivet. The power tool now worked with quiet reverse efficiency to loosen the two closest screws. Then, with the job done, he placed the screwdriver back in his pocket, and opened the front of the case whilst still blocking it from view with his body.

The glass box acted as a humidor, keeping out moisture to protect the prize within. There the piece of cigar rested atop a sheet of Mylar. This would prevent wood acids from breaking down the structure of its already worn tobacco-leaf casing.

‘Can I help you?’ a lady’s voice asked from behind.

He steadily lowered the case and turned around. ‘Just looking, thank you.’ Luckily, the librarian could not see around his wide frame.

‘If you are interested, I can ask our curator to come down and give you a tour of the collection.’

‘No, that won’t be necessary. I don’t want to be a bother.’

‘It’s no bother, really. He likes to take visitors around. We don’t get many up here.’

But before he could insist, she was already on the phone.

‘He’ll just be a minute,’ she said, and promptly returned to her work.

This was it. He turned back to the case, lifted it slightly with one hand and, wrapping a small plastic bag around the other, grabbed the cigar. He gently rested the case back down on its platform, but there was no time to reaffix the screws. Hastily, he slipped the bag into his pocket, pointed his head toward the floor, and walked towards the exit.

As he opened the door, a lanky conservator wearing an unironed tan suit entered the room.

‘Excuse me,’ the man said apologetically as they brushed arms.

The thief didn’t pause. Once outside, he raced down the stairs. Tool parts were clinking together noisily in his pants. Surely his deed would be noticed very soon, if not already. Even so, he had to slow his gait as he reached the ground floor and moved past the security station. He didn’t turn to look at the guard, instead ignoring their judging gaze as indifferently as any other student with somewhere better to be.

The man who emerged from the locker room was different-looking to the one who had committed the crime. He was wearing his hooded jacket once more, topped with a bright red beanie and a pair of reading glasses.

He left the building at normal speed, and continued to move while consulting his phone. Students whirled past him chaotically, no doubt as hungry for knowledge as the stranger amongst them.

According to Google Maps, he was some distance to his destination. Still, it was close enough to walk from here. He returned the phone to his pocket, where it remained clutched in his hand.

A sudden gust whipped his eyes upwards. The sky was painted a damp grey. His face tightened with anxiety. Rain threatened to defeat his purpose.

He hurried across the asphalt plaza towards the exit, until his path was blocked by a group of students standing around a coffee cart. The strong aroma of caffeine and reheated banana bread filled his nostrils as he rushed around the crowd and across a vacant lawn.

The directions were memorised. Left on Hansaallee, and it was a short walk down a busy road before reaching the intersection with Miquelalle. An even busier intersection then took him across to Adickesallee, which would lead him to his journey’s end – Hauptfriedhof.

He felt a gentle rain moisten the back of his neck as he crossed the tram lines that bordered the cemetery. On his right, a nondescript florist served the needs of mourners keen to pay their respects to the dead with a bundle of coloured foliage. He stepped around the flowerpots decorating the sidewalk, and then slipped through a gap to the side of the front gate that formed the public entrance. He had arrived.

Panning his vision across the vast boneyard that stretched below his feet, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and held it palm up. Relief. The rain, as it was, had ceased.

A maze of paths spread out before him: a roadmap for the living through a neighbourhood of the dead. A green tractor chugged slowly along one of the paths, heading towards the crematorium on the left.

He, though, took the first path to the right. Being close to the entrance, it would contain the oldest remains. The pavement followed parallel to the busy road up which he had just trudged in the opposite direction. From this part of the cemetery, the road was only metres away on the other side of a thinly bricked, beige-painted wall. He could hear the sounds of the vehicles of those still very much alive, speed past. The clash between the living noise on the outside, and the deathly silence on the inside, made it seem almost as if this unassuming wall, held together by modest swathes of mortar, plotted the very boundary between life and death. Or maybe it just acted as a veil for the living, shielding them from the cold, imminent reality of the black eternity that awaited them on the inside.

Except he was on the inside now. His head rolled from grave to grave as he eyed their inscriptions. He was here for one name only. Two young women walked in front of him, one holding a Nikon camera that was strapped around her neck. They turned left at a stony-winged angel, while he turned right once more, moving towards the tombstones resting against the wall.

He finally spotted the grave he sought shaded by a maple tree at the end of the footpath. As he stepped forward to take a closer look, a carpet of fallen late-autumn leaves crackled beneath his sneakers.

The plot was marked by an underwhelming, simple cement slab on the ground. He took off his hat and pondered the dead man’s form in life. What if his atoms, long since scattered throughout the universe, could be reunited all these years later?

Rummaging through his backpack, he removed the plastic bag, put on a pair of white gloves, and withdrew the cigar piece. A lighter was employed to ignite the flaky treasure. It took a few attempts before the tattered brown-stained wrapping leaf kindled successfully, burning the hardened tobacco enclosed within. He lodged the opposite, chewed-up end in his mouth and inhaled the DNA that had been deposited within the spittle of the man who had similarly inhaled its contents many years prior. One deep breath was all that was needed. Then, he scattered the smoking remnants over the grave.

A pall descended on his conscious. His eyes closed so firmly it felt like they had revolved completely in their sockets and were pointing inward. At that moment he envisaged his existence on the metaphysical plane, standing apart from the constraints of time, space and causality. He pictured the totality of the physical universe in all its dimensions – the finite infinity – as if compressed within an image projected onto his inverted retinas. With this perspective, he could view all that ever was and all that ever will be. From here, time was ripe for his manipulation.

His eyes opened. A cluster of brown leaves were suddenly swept up in a gust of wind circling around his shins. He imagined a string of atoms had been similarly swept up, magnetised to the point where they hurtled across the universe to reconnect within the bone-pebbled soil below. And then they congealed to recreate the petrified philosopher.

And the world dissolved.

And it was 1831. Again.

PART I

ATMAN THE SECOND

CHAPTER ONE › Arthur

‘ON THE CHARGE OF RECKLESSLY causing grievous bodily harm, how do you plead?’

‘Guilty,’ Arthur declared unflinchingly. ‘By reason of Nature.’

Ignoring the addendum, the Judge explained that the Court would reconvene in three weeks for the sentencing hearing. ‘In the meantime, Mr Schopenhauer, I suggest you procure some legal representation.’

‘That is Doctor Schopenhauer, Your Honour, and I must also say...’

But before the offender could voice more of a response, he was shackled and dragged away by the bailiff.

His loss of liberty was as unjust as it was unexpected. Despite his vast intellect, Arthur was unable to comprehend the antecedent forces that had stolen his freedom and thrown him face-first onto the cold stone of the caged courthouse basement where he now lay.

The thumping ache of a swollen cheekbone could not mask his bewilderment at the situation. He recalled his statement to the police. His words were lucid and irrefutable. He had clearly accounted for his actions that evening, and demonstrated that the victim alone was responsible for her injuries.

The Marquet woman and her friends were trespassing noisily in my anteroom. I ordered her to leave. She refused. I threatened to throw her out and, as she defied me, this is in fact what happened. Not in the way that I seized her by the throat with both hands, which is not even conceivable, but that I gripped her, as was most purposeful, around the bustle of her dress, and hauled her out, even though she resisted for all she was worth.

Once outside, she screamed that she would have me charged with assault, and also screamed for her things, which I then hurriedly tossed out after her. But it seems that one little piece of her property had been left behind, and this served as a flimsy pretext for her return. And with that, she had the temerity to shove her way back into my anteroom.

Then I threw her out again, although she was objecting most violently and shrieking with all her might, in order if possible to rouse the whole building. As I ejected her from my apartment for the second time, she stepped too far backwards and fell down the stairs, I believe, deliberately. For it is the want of such people that, when they realise active resistance does not get them anywhere, they resort to the passive side, in order to suffer and complain as much as possible. Her earlier clamour that she would have me charged points entirely in that direction.

However, I declare that the allegations that I tore the woman’s bonnet off her head, that she fainted, or indeed that I kicked her, beat her, and plunged her down the stairs, to be totally false and mendacious. Not a word of this is true, and anyone with a slight knowledge of me will realise that such brutality is quite unthinkable given my character, position, and education.

Besides, the act of helping the woman to exit his apartment was a good one, on the face of it. This would later be his claim. His arms, unfolded and extended, thrust and, with some force, eventually defeated the fight offered by the woman’s substantial and rubbery flesh. Indeed, from the perspective of physical fitness, he was satisfied with the workout he received.

Yet he realised the Court did not assess guilt on this basis. No. He was a member of the human society and, tacitly, by his birth-membership, he had agreed to subject himself to its artificial notions of right and wrong. He was at the mercy of the human law and, for that reason, he had pleaded guilty with qualification.

Arthur views his entire existence through a metaphysical prism. His life thus begins outside the scope of his physical birth and his individual identity. At least, that was the story he would later convey to me from his remand cell.

There is no Arthur, nor any individual, in the metaphysical universe. This plane welcomes only the anti-incarnate. Humans cannot know this plane except for the will that resides within.

As Arthur explains, the will is restless, angry and conflicted. Imprisoned on the metaphysical plane, it swells and contracts, writhes and pulsates, bubbles and pokes inward and out, like a destructive yet incorporeal lava flow. It yearns for an outlet upon which to feed, until it finds that outlet within the physical world. The will thus heaves itself endlessly towards this destination with ferocious determination.

The transit link between the metaphysical will and the physical world can be imagined as a cylindrical colander connecting the former with its latter manifestation. The will approaches the wormhole spinning and revolving as water through a funnel. And as it slips through the metaphysical sieve, it is divided and sliced into billions of singularities. Then, as it reaches its physical destination, the reverse side of the universe, the theoretical becomes the physical, the incorporeal the corporeal. The will becomes the thing-in-itself.

Released from the will-amalgam, each fragment becomes independent and free to serve its own ends. Yet its yearning as one is not assuaged as many. Whilst will has the same inexhaustible desires it held in the metaphysical world, it has a new obstacle: every other speck of will that shares those desires. And each speck has a new weapon: the human within which it manifests. The will is now at war with itself.

Arthur’s will arrives precisely at the moment of his conception. From here the will designs its home, namely Arthur’s mind and body, from which to control its host for the duration of his existence. It begins by seeking the nutrition upon which it feeds and grows, until the body is ripe to exit the womb and the will is able to seek out more complex desires to satisfy.

The ego is the most important tool in the will’s armoury to ensure the host faithfully obeys the orders of its master. Egoism is the ingredient that fills each living thing with the pretence of self-importance. Humans believe they exist individually, within, and ultimately for, themselves. They think that the physical world exists for them to experience, and that they live, and they die.

This charade will guarantee that Arthur’s primary objective is himself. He won’t realise it at first, but Arthur will work solely in duty of himself, and therefore, his will.

Arthur opens his eyes.

He is born now, and with his birth, the physical world around him is born also. His consciousness terraforms the nothingness that previously surrounded him with what his will imagines that it sees: time, space, and matter. These things will move more sharply into focus as Arthur’s consciousness grows, but for now, merely minutes old, it is enough that he perceives what is immediately before him.

There is no absolute substance that surrounds Arthur, only his idea of it. Really the physical world is no more than a certain movement or affection of the spongy pulp within his skull. The newborn has the idea of time, space, and matter (as the causal union between time and space) without thought or experience. Yet even fully grown he can never know the substance of the will, he can only know it physically to the extent that it is clothed as an object of his perception. Gradually, this is complemented with the knowledge he gains through life experience.

In the physical world within which Arthur resides, all knowledge is conditional via the causal chain. This chain necessarily binds every physical being, act and thought to the being, act and thought that preceded it. Arthur’s brain has acquired awareness of the chain at the point where he is born, although the links actually stream backward and forward throughout infinity.

The knowledge he gains when his body experiences changes are felt as affects through the senses, and these affects are referred to their link along the causal chain, allowing for perception of the object.

Once his brain develops sufficient capacity, Arthur will employ reason to attain abstract knowledge. This will be sourced from both his own perceptions and original thoughts, combined with those of other individuals through learning. He will also come to realise the shape of his character, and his unique set of inclinations and abilities that feed his motivations through the will.

Friends from the past peel away as time converts Arthur from child to man. And a man such as he with his focus constantly directed inward neither requires nor fosters companionship. This is a mutually beneficial development, allowing him to concentrate on his work, and his friends to concentrate on their socialising. He had once wrapped himself so tightly within a blanket of philosophy that he locked himself in his apartment, sent his housekeeper on holiday, had his meals delivered, and failed to see a single human for two months. Contentment.

And while his life is enveloped in the permanency of literature and thought, those he leaves behind envelop themselves in the dynamism of family and community. The theatre and opera, which he had once attended with fervour, is now just another pointless human pursuit, devoid of the metaphysical meaning for which he yearns. When he requires the pleasure of music, he plays a tune on the flute alone in his apartment, and that is enough.

On occasion though, he surfaces from his studies to take a shallow breath from the physical world. He would hear the laughter of children playing in the laneway below, and ponder the life he had been denied by his academic character. The thought of social loss deposits within his brain the momentary grief of regret, which is paradoxically soothed by returning his attention to his books and thus withdrawing further into his sanctuary of solitude. He is safe there. And he is further comforted by the fact that, regardless of the number of tentacles one grows through their human relationships, in the end, time severs all tentacles, and one is left quite alone.

Arthur knows his best and real life is within his philosophical studies, and everything else is subordinate to this, and is indeed no more than peripheral. He revels in the ecstasy of conception, and the germ of his dual-world thesis demands constant and thorough introspection.

The will forces itself on Arthur’s body, arising from the inside out, rather than the outside in. Therefore, to Arthur, it is only internally through which will, as the thing-in-itself, the thing deep within his being, can be exposed. Externality is a representation of his imagination, but here, inside himself, his bodily functions, and his responses and urges, reveal the reality of the hiding will.

Reason does not inform such desires, yet reason is also a slave to will. Whilst reason attempts to direct action, it can never be more than a suggestion. Within the minute gap between decision and action, will always takes over as the ultimate arbiter. For the execution seals the decision, and execution is an act of will.

The truth is thus illuminated: will is Arthur, and Arthur is will.

After looking inside to find this truth, he can then inverse his gaze outwards towards the entirety of the universe and imprint his knowledge of will upon it. But even this view is inadequate, for it is a tainted view, smeared with the stains of his egoistic will. He needs a truly independent perspective of will to see it absolutely, and for this he needs to rise above life. Only then can he break its bond and have will release its hold on him.

He so resolves that in order to study finite existence, he must escape from it. In pursuing this quest it is important to break the bonds of family and friends, who might otherwise draw him into their orbit of inconsequential wrangling and emotional flourishes, filled with criticisms of his every social failure. This would suck his energy, pinning him down to a life within the dull stodgy concerns of the physical world. He craves liberation. Only alone can he clear the path towards metaphysical enlightenment.

Arthur considers the progression of his existence as a solitary mountain trek. In his youth, at basecamp, he circulates with others and engages in their petty trivialities with normality. His life however becomes increasingly singular and deserted the higher he climbs. In his early adult years, he is still close enough to the earth to witness his contemporaries being tied to it, as they partner and yield offspring, who themselves would surely grow up to have babies of their own. Arthur has been knocked off this life-cycle. But these people are the mass-produced articles. They hold no particular skills and as such are content to be swept along in the daily squabbles of ordinary existence. This is their nature.

Then, as he further ascends the mountain, elevated by his studies, the people vanish, their unevenness smoothed out. Ever the observer, from this height he is completely detached, unmoved, and unloved by those humans swarming below. But he is also remote, undiverted and undistracted. This is Arthur’s nature.

The meditative misanthrope continues his hike upwards, where patches of stale snow dust the ground. The dirty whitewash is both a leftover from winters past, and a bitter reminder of seasons lost. At this point, the change of climate is the only change Arthur experiences, along with the subsequent aging of the body.

Closer to the peak now, and he achieves stillness. The will is quietened by his expanding knowledge of it. His senses are numbed to all that surrounds him, and all empirical experience is dampened. As such, he is anosmic to the sweet smell of edelweiss flowering beneath his feet, and deaf to the screech of hawks circling upon the currents overhead. He is leaving the world as his idea of it.

Finally, with the apex in sight, Arthur imagines that he has risen above physical constraints of time, space, and matter. He steps out of his self completely, and in doing so he also steps out of will. This is his aim. From this vantage point, through the world-eye, he can view the true nature of the universe free from the deceptive lens of self-awareness. The mouldy film of living and knowing beings dissolves to reveal the bare terror that is will in its rawest form: desire, conflict, suffering, futility, and death. It is horrific, but it is also the moment of his greatest satisfaction – to simultaneously experience both introspective and ‘outrospective’ transcendence.

Yet in this state, only transitory peace is his. Freedom from the pressure of that miserable will is fleeting. In reality, he is still far from achieving complete denial of the will and staking his claim at the summit. Even from this height, from this state of enlightenment, he is threatened by the seductive woman. With her beguiling ways she can, in an instant, fling him back down to the grime of the earth with animalistic hunger. There he lands with a thud, and he hates her for it.

Ripped out of his better consciousness, in this state the senses reign, and ego abounds. A moment then to satiate