A presentation copy of Schopenhauer’s On the Will in Nature, sent by Schopenhauer to his “apostle” Johann August Becker (1803-1881), as recorded in a letter from Schopenhauer to Becker dated ‘d. 3ten August 1844’, inscribed by Becker to the inside front cover: “Donum auctoris [‘Gift of the author’]. 3. Aug. 1844. - Becker”.
Becker has additionally inscribed the inside front cover in black ink with long quotations from Schiller and Voltaire, along with a few ink annotations to inside rear cover with notes referencing specific page numbers, occasional neat pencilled underlining and marginal highlighting throughout, two pencilled manicules to pp. 40 & 87, and pencilled annotations to pp. 12, 19, 43, 69.
“Johann August Becker was a lawyer in Alzey when he read Schopenhauer’s masterpiece The World as Will and Representation, and the forty-one-year-old was deeply moved by Schopenhauer’s darkly compelling worldview. … On 31 July 1844, the lawyer wrote to the philosopher in a respectful and careful manner, requesting permission to ask about some of the doubts he had with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The philosopher was willing to entertain Becker’s doubts, but before doing so, he requested that Becker carefully read the second volume of essays of his principal work to see whether his “scruples” would disappear. He also sent a copy of On the Will in Nature, telling the younger man that it contained the clearest presentation of the essence of his philosophy … Through a series of letters, each of which drew a careful response by the philosopher, Becker demonstrated a keen understanding of Schopenhauer’s views as well as the deft ability to post challenges and questions that did not alienate the philosopher, because they struck him as good-faith efforts to discern the truth. … Becker’s criticisms, questions, and challenges moved Schopenhauer to write a significant set of letters in reply; letters that helped to clarify his metaphysics and ethics. … Becker and Schopenhauer remained friends for life. And when Becker became a district judge in 1850 at Mainz, Becker would frequently visit the philosopher and the philosopher would visit the lawyer. Quite naturally, and especially after the death of his friend and lawyer, Martin Emden, Becker was his primary source of legal advice” (Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography, p. 511).
On the Will in Nature is a short but important work that initiated the mature period of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, marking the end of “a seventeen-year period of self-imposed philosophical silence” that followed the publication of The World as Will and Representation. The work was conceived as a statement on the relationship between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and the natural sciences, “and like his beloved Kant, he would claim that the sciences required a metaphysical grounding” (Cartwright, p. 170). The text is also important as Schopenhauer’s first direct critique of Hegel.
Given the poor sales of the first edition of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer’s publisher was reluctant to commit to a large print run for On the Will in Nature, and as such the book was printed in a small edition of 500 copies, making it one of the rarer of Schopenhauer’s books in first edition.
See: Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography; Arthur Schopenhauer Gesammelte Briefe, 1978, p. 213.
Grisebach, 10; Hübscher, 32.
