Why You Crave Ramen at Midnight

At the same hour, Hegel's lecture hall was reportedly packed.

Tradition

Two hundred years later, in the first half of 2024, the No. 1 bestseller at Kyobo, a major Korean bookstore chain, was a guide to the philosophy of the man in this sparse lecture hall.

Record ; Kyobo first-half sales ranking

That day, Hegel won. But today—whom are we reading?

At midnight, why do we crave ramen? Two hundred years ago, this man had already written down a clue.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany.

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Hegel was a late bloomer. Tutor, newspaper editor, school headmaster—he became a full professor only at 46.

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Jena, 1806. As he finished his first great work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, Napoleon's army entered the city. Hegel wrote to a friend: "I saw the Emperor—this world-soul."

Record, 1806 letter

His lecturing was said to be dreadful: a heavy accent, stammering, coughing, shuffling his notes. Yet his lecture hall was full.

Tradition, students' recollections

He stumbled over words, but never over thoughts.

But those thoughts were famously hard. A story goes that he once said: "Only one man ever understood me—and even he didn't."

Tradition ; source uncertain

In 1820—the very year of our debate—Hegel wrote:

Record, Preface, Philosophy of Right

Minerva is the goddess of wisdom; her owl stands for wisdom—for philosophy. Meaning: philosophy understands an age only as it draws to a close.

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Scholars see Hegel as the philosopher who read history as one great story: freedom widening from one person, to some, to all.

Interpretation

His ideas later flowed into Marx—and he was also criticized for justifying the Prussian state.

Interpretation, debated

Arthur Schopenhauer. Born in 1788 into a wealthy merchant family in the port city of Danzig. His father wanted him to become a merchant.

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At 17 he lost his father, and his mother Johanna moved to Weimar and became a novelist—hostess of a salon Goethe frequented.

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Mother and son did not get along. When she called his first book something only pharmacists would read, he reportedly replied that his would be read long after hers were forgotten.

Tradition

Two hundred years on, the son won that argument.

At 30 he published his life's work, The World as Will and Representation. Its first sentence:

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But the book barely sold.

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He studied light and color with Goethe, called the Upanishads "the consolation of my life," and played the flute every day.

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In old age he lived with a poodle named Atma—a word from the Indian scriptures that his biographers render as 'world-soul.'

Record, biography

Hegel saw the world-soul in an emperor on horseback; Schopenhauer gave his poodle a name often rendered as 'world-soul.' From the start, they were that different.

Scholars see Schopenhauer as a leading philosopher who put a blind, endlessly wanting force—not reason—at the center of the world.

Interpretation

Nietzsche, Wagner, Tolstoy, Freud, and Einstein read him.

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And he called Hegel a charlatan.

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In 1820, these two men lectured at the same university, at the same hour. Let's seat them face to face.

To follow today's story, you only need three words.

The red of an apple isn't on the apple. Your eyes and brain paint the reflected light as red. The world we see is a picture on a screen in our heads. That's "representation."

Note · Screen in your head = representation

What moves us behind that screen—the force that makes you open a delivery app at 2 a.m., surging like hunger, the drive to live. That's "will."

Note · The force of wanting = will

And what Hegel believed: just as the planets travel fixed paths, the world and history have an inner order. Hegel called this order of the world 'reason.'

Note · The order of the world = reason

Their recorded encounters come down to little more than a brief exchange that day.

Record ; trial lecture, 23 March 1820

So what follows is an imagined debate. Only the setting is invented; the lines put the two men's own writings into plain words. Where a line was written later, the year is shown on screen.

In today's terms: you put it in your cart first, then look up the reviews.

A quick note: this idea is later put to the test in neuroscience labs. We'll show you later.

Hegel called this 'the cunning of reason': each of us chases what we want, yet through those forces history follows reason's course.

Record ; Science of Logic (1816);Lectures on the Philosophy of History

A new phone makes you happy for about a week. And then? You start wondering about the next model.

Here I'd like to add one word to Hegel's "forward": faster. More on that later.

Those lectures didn't last. Schopenhauer kept announcing courses, but they hardly ever took place.

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In 1831, when cholera struck Berlin, Schopenhauer left the city—and Hegel died that year.

Record ; cause of Hegel's death disputed

Schopenhauer found fame 20 years later, at 63, with a book of essays.

Record, 1851

In life, Hegel won; two hundred years later, Schopenhauer is read again. So who really won?

Before I share my view, I'd like to hear yours.

There's no right answer. So far, those were the facts and the scholars' readings. From here on, it's my own view.

Now, my own story—borrowing one idea from each of them.

I believe the world began as writing. Not just letters on paper—every word, record and piece of information that exists, together forming one sheet of paper called the universe.

On this point I'm with Hegel. He, too, put reason at the very beginning of the world.

The Gospel of John begins: "In the beginning was the Word." And in 1989 the physicist John Wheeler wrote that everything comes from information—"it from bit."

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But paper alone makes nothing happen. Even with a score, there's no music until someone plays it.

When a person acts on that paper, something begins—as if an instrument were being played.

As it happens, Schopenhauer just told us that music is the very sound of the will.

What arises from that beginning, we call consciousness.

Note · Consciousness = the awake, feeling, knowing mind

In engineering terms, it's a state that exists only while a program runs. The code is written on paper, but execution exists only in the moment.

So consciousness both clearly exists and, in a sense, never was. When the performance ends the music vanishes—but the fact that it was played remains.

Note · In plain words: the music ends, but the fact that it was played remains

Schopenhauer later wrote that his philosophy resonated with Buddhist teaching.

Record ; later, 1844 Vol. 2 ch. 17

And then consciousness looks at itself: "This is what I wanted." The moment it is observed as my will, will is born.

Schopenhauer said the will comes first. I reverse the order. Will is not the root—it is the fruit.

In 1983, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet found that the brain's readiness signal rose 0.3 to 0.5 seconds before people felt they had decided to move. How to interpret this is still debated.

Record ; interpretation debated

That will moves forward through time—unbroken, continuing, and accelerating.

Hegel said history moves forward. I go one step further: not only forward, but faster.

And that flow we call causality—cause and effect.

Note · Causality = cause and effect

In short: writing makes the world; the playing on it makes consciousness; consciousness, seeing itself, becomes will; and will, accelerating through time, becomes causality.

Starting like Hegel, arriving like Schopenhauer. That's my view.

The world is written, and you are played.

Let's sum up today's three lessons.

History: in Berlin in 1820, students flocked to Hegel, the university's star philosopher; two hundred years later, we are going back to read the once-unknown Schopenhauer.

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Philosophy: Hegel saw the world following reason, its inner order; Schopenhauer held that what moves us first is the will.

Science: the brain's signal moves before we feel we've decided. What that means is still debated.

Record ; interpretation debated

Paraphrase of Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."

Record ; paraphrase, On the Freedom of the Will(1839)

Science has seen something similar. People who went a night without sleep wanted high-calorie foods more, even though they were no hungrier.

Record ; 2013 experiment

Meanwhile, the brain regions that weigh food choices actually went quieter. The force of wanting grew, and the force of weighing weakened.

Record ; 2013 experiment

My answer: so even that midnight ramen may not be something we chose.

I'm not telling you to hold back. Tonight, if you crave ramen, before you eat, just say to yourself once: 'Ah—I'm wanting this right now.'

Then, one last question: is your will something you chose?