Will or representation?
Fenella Vorpel
This book owes its provocation to Schopenhauer, who declared the world to be “will and representation.” I have taken the liberty of adjusting his phrase, for I live in an age less concerned with will than with whim, and where representation has been supplanted by its cheaper cousin, misrepresentation. One need not read deeply to find the evidence: politics that thrive on contradiction, schools that teach children to mistake slogans for thought, lovers who rehearse sincerity as though it were theatre.
I am not persuaded that people lie to each other more than they ever did; I suspect only that they lie more efficiently to themselves. The great achievement of our time is not invention but inversion: we call ignorance knowledge, coercion freedom, and self-deception authenticity. I intend no consolation here—only a ledger of these inversions, traced as coolly as a coroner’s report.
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