  Schopenhauer characterizes the subject who has aesthetic experience as the “pure subject of cognition.” It is “pure” in the sense that the subject’s intellect is not operating in the service of the will to life during aesthetic experience, though this subject is still embodied—for without embodiment, without the senses, a subject would not perceive at all (WWR I, 198). Thus, while the pure subject of cognition is free temporarily from the service of the individual will, it is nonetheless still identical with the embodied subject of willing. The freedom of the intellect from the service to the individual will constitutes a sort of acting ‘out of character’. Exactly how the intellect can cease to serve the individual will remains murky, however. (More on this at 4.5; for a detailed account of role of freedom in Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory, see Neill and Shapshay 2012.)