Schindler’in Listesi ve Schopenhauer’in Özgür İnsanı
Schindler’s List and Schopenhauer’s Free Man

Summary/Abstract: According to Schopenhauer, human beings have both knowing and willing aspects. The type of the relation between knowing and willing aspects determines the difference among human beings. These relations bring out two different human types. One is the type who is not free, who lives in causal relations and whose knowledge is controlled by his will. His actions are determined by his inclinations. He is the slave of his will. The other is the type who is free, who sees the play of the will in a shaky moment of experience and who can negate his will. Having this experience, saying no to his will, he erases his character which determines his doings with necessity. This person sees above causal relations and wills what is not willed yet. In this article, it is argued that we can observe those two types of human beings in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. In the movie, the commander of Plaszow camp, Amon Goeth, represents the type of human being who is not free. He is the slave of his own will, so he ignores the will of others. In order to ease his sufferings, he makes other people suffer and has pleasure from it. As opposed to him, Oscar Schindler, represents the type of human being who is free. In a shaky moment of vision, exceeding his character, he conceives the structure of the will, saying no to his own will he denies being enslaved by it. Thus, he erases his character which has determined his actions until that moment. He is a free human being who relates to others without considering his own will and utility, and who can move beyond causal relations.

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