Aug 13 2009
∞
“ We may believe that our lives have value and meaning; but the truth is that we exist simply as the helpless instruments of the Will’s blind, futile self-reproduction. In order to achieve this, however, the Will must fool us into supposing that our lives indeed have meaning; and it does so by evolving in us a clumsy mechanism of self-deception known as consciousness, which permits us the illusion of having ends and values of our own. It dupes us into believing that its own appetites are ours too. In this sense, all consciousness in Schopenhauer’s eyes is false consciousness. Just as it was once said of language that it exists so that we can conceal our thoughts from others, so consciousness exists to conceal from us the utter futility of our existence.
— Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, pp. 83-85
