The belief in immediate certainties such as "I think" is that of harmless self-observers, and Schopenhauer's "I will" is a superstition

The passage

There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are immediate certainties, for example "I think" or, as was Schopenhauer's superstition, "I will": as it were as if here cognition got hold of its object pure and naked, as thing in itself, and no falsification took place either on the side of the subject or on the side of the object.

JGB 16, first sentence: »Es giebt immer noch harmlose Selbst-Beobachter, welche glauben, dass es "unmittelbare Gewissheiten" gebe, zum Beispiel "ich denke", oder, wie es der Aberglaube Schopenhauer's war, "ich will"«. The sentence names Schopenhauer and no passage. The map sets this claim as an attack on c-schopenhauer-will-not-inferred-but-immediately-known, and the identification is the map's: what the sentence denies is immediacy, and the words of the target it denies are »ein durchaus unmittelbar Erkanntes« (WWV I § 22, ZA I 155); it says nothing about the target's other half, that the will is not reached by inference. § 22 speaks of knowing »was Wille sei«, the concept, and Nietzsche's »ich will« is a first-person certainty of a present act; the nearer Schopenhauer sentence for the act is § 18's »jenes Jedem unmittelbar Bekannte, welches das Wort Wille bezeichnet« (p-wwv1-s18-body-given-in-two-ways), and the map cites it beside § 22; since 2026-10-15 the attack is set on that § 18 statement too, whose words »jenes Jedem unmittelbar Bekannte, welches das Wort Wille bezeichnet« assert of the act what this sentence denies of »ich will«, the identification being the map's as above, and the § 18 sentence names no one. The next sentence, c-nietzsche-immediate-certainty-contradictio-in-adjecto, and the analysis of »ich denke« that follows, a-nietzsche-ich-denke-has-no-immediate-certainty, carry the denial out; the aphorism does not run the analysis for »ich will«, and JGB 19 does (c-nietzsche-schopenhauer-took-over-popular-prejudice).