The Metaphysics of Mercy: Arthur Schopenhauer’s Transposition of Will, Law, and Grace as the Ontological Floor for Modern Theology and Science

Abstract

This article argues that Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation provides a definitive "metaphysical translation" of the Christian narrative, identifying the Will as the "Original Sin" of existence and the Law as the principium individuationis—the spatiotemporal net of causality that traps the individual. Within this framework, Grace is reinterpreted as the spontaneous, unearned Denial of the Will. The article traces how Heidegger's early concept of "facticity" is rooted in Luther's theologia crucis, yet a Schopenhauerian reading exposes Heideggerian "thrownness" (Geworfenheit) as remaining wholly within the World as Representation—a description of bondage, not liberation. By further exposing "Being-towards-death" as a sophisticated affirmation of the Will—a "Will to Will"—the article positions Kierkegaard's "leap" and Barth's "revelation" as necessary ontological ruptures. The study engages Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, showing how his genealogy of Western disenchantment both corroborates and complicates Schopenhauer's framework: where Taylor reads Luther's sanctification of ordinary life as the seed of secular modernity, Schopenhauer reveals its metaphysical cost. Schopenhauer's identification of the Will as a blind universal force also prefigures convergences with modern science—from thermodynamic energy conservation to evolutionary drives—suggesting that his metaphysics bridges philosophy, spirituality, and empirical inquiry. The article culminates in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who uses Schopenhauer's honest pessimism to ground his "Costly Grace," moving from solitary "Nothingness" to communal, worldly responsibility in the Sanctorum Communio.