“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” For Schopenhauer, the answer is no. And he takes the reasoning even further, before there were conscious beings, the universe did not exist. While such an argument sounds paradoxical, if not ridiculous – if the universe did not exist, how were conscious beings formed? – Schopenhauer finds a grounding for his idealist intuitions in his idea of the will, writes Christopher Ryan. According to Schopenhauer, “everyone is conscious of all philosophical truths on an intuitive level or in concrete fashion: but to bring these truths to abstract knowledge, to reflection, is the business of philosophers, who should do, and can do, nothing else.” (WWRI, 410)Included within this set of truths cognised by everyone at the intuitive level is transcendental idealism, or the philosophical position that the objects of ordinary experience – tables, dogs, numbers, molecules, and indeed all …

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