5.631 There is no thinking, representing subject.

If I wrote a book The World as I Found It then I would also have to report on my body in it and say which parts are subject to my will and which not, etc., [and] this is precisely [nämlich] a means to isolate the subject, or rather to show that in an important sense there is no subject: Of it alone precisely could there not be talk in this book. –

Odd. The first sentence sounds so plainly false that you wonder what is being got at. The rest, I suppose, is the explanation. There would be reference to my body and my will and the things that I think, etc. What would be missing? In an important sense, nothing. But in some other sense, something? This sounds like a Kantian noumenal self, except that it is literally impossible to talk about it. Yet, here we are talking about it. Is the final dash a mark of irony?

Also bear in mind 6.53. And the subject here being denied seems to be the one that is identical with the world, logic, language, etc. In the relevant sense, then, they don’t exist either. So all that solipsistic talk was nonsense?

Cf. Schopenhauer Fourfold Root p. 124: “Insofar as he behaves as a purely knowing being, the movement of his body according to his will is for him merely an empirically perceived fact.” See also WWR on becoming a purely knowing being. This is the goal of the holy genius for Schopenhauer, isn’t it?