A Schopenhauerian Reading of Lovecraft’s Fiction: The Will, the Intellect, and Never-Ending Struggle of Life in Cosmic Horror

Abstract

This essay aims to explore how Lovecraft applies Schopenhauer’s theory of the will. Lovecraft’s works reflect Schopenhauerian Will, wherein Schopenhauer underscores the service of the intellect to the will. Yet Lovecraft develops his cosmic horror by reiterating the vanishing of humanism into an unknown amorphous form of life due to the influence of a monstrous force within the will. The first section of the essay involves the explication of the will in Schopenhauerian ideas: the will itself is immanent, undifferentiated, and indifferent to the existence of an individual while it maintains the existence of the species. The second section provides a discussion of Lovecraft’s worldview. The significant notion in Lovecraft’s view of the world as something sad parallels Schopenhauer’s theory regarding the will and immeasurable sufferings in the world of phenomenon. However, the horror presented in Lovecraft’s fiction might be more frightening than the blind force of the will in Schopenhauer’s ideas: Lovecraft’s creatures regress to amorphous beings manipulated by the monstrous force of the will. Finally, the essay focuses on Lovecraft’s fiction, including The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness, tracing the extraterrestrial beings as representations of an indefatigable and despotic will.