Sobre o Fundamento da Moral

by Arthur Schopenhauer

Persuasive & humane, this classic offers Schopenhauer's fullest examination of ethical themes. A defiance of Kant's ethics of duty, it proclaims compassion as the basis of morality & outlines a perspective on ethics in which passion & desire correspond to different moral characters, behaviors & worldviews.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, German Literature, Classics, Psychology, Essays

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1840

About the author

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in the city of Danzig (then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; present day Gdańsk, Poland) and was a German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer attempted to make his career as an academic by correcting and expanding Immanuel Kant's philosophy concerning the way in which we experience the world.

He was the son of author Johanna Schopenhauer and the older brother of Adele Schopenhauer.

Reviews

[Peiman E iran · Rating 5 out of 5]

‎درود بر «آرتور شوپنهاور» بزرگ و یادش همیشه گرامی باد
‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، زنده یاد «شوپنهاور» در فلسفهٔ اخلاقِ خود، سه انگیزهٔ اصلی که انسانها را به سویِ انجامِ رفتارِ اخلاقی میکشاند را شناسایی نموده است که آن سه عامل عبارتند از : خودپرستی - بدخواهی - دلسوزی و مهرورزی
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‎شوپنهاور در موردِ "خودپرستی" میگوید: خودپرستی انسان را به انجام کارهایی وادار میکند که بر اساسِ سود و منفعتِ شخصی میباشد و او را به جستجویِ لذت و شادی فرا میخواند... «شوپنهاور» معتقد است که بخشِ عمدهٔ کارهای انسانها ریشه در "خودپرستی" دارد
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‎شوپنهاور در موردِ "بدخواهی" میگوید: تفاوتِ زیادی میان بدخواهی و خودپرستی وجود دارد. بدخواهی فقط و فقط در جهتِ آسیب رساندن به دیگران انجام میشود
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‎شوپنهاور در موردِ "دلسوزی و ترحم" میگوید: تنها انگیزهٔ اصلی که میتواند انسان را به انجامِ کارهای اخلاقی وادار کند، همان احساسِ "دلسوزی" است، چراکه احساسِ خوبِ نیکی برخواسته از کارِ انجام شده، انسان را خرسند ساخته و این امر تنها به دلیلِ وجودِ حسِ انجامِ وظیفه یا نفعِ شخصی میتواند به وجود آید
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‎البته «شوپنهاور» عاملی را بیرون از گود در نظر گرفته است به نامِ "عشق" که آنرا حالتی ناآگاهانه قلمداد میکند که مایهٔ تقویتِ ارادهٔ زندگی بوده و نیرویی است که سببِ تمایلِ انسان به زیادشدن و لذا تداوم بقا میشود
‎عزیزانم، زنده یاد «شوپنهاور» برای تکمیل فلسفهٔ اخلاق خویش، از فلسفهٔ اخلاقِ نیاکان ایرانی ما و همچنین فلسفهٔ هند و بودیسم، بهرهٔ فراوان برده است
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‎امیدوارم این ریویو برای شما اخلاق گرایان و خردگرایانِ گرامی، مفید بوده باشه
‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»

[Miguel Cisneros Saucedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am pleased to talk about the influence and contributions of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in psychology. Schopenhauer was one of the most influential philosophers of his time, and his writings have had a significant impact on philosophy, literature, and psychology.

Schopenhauer's theory centers on the idea that the world is uncertain, painful, and meaningless. He believes that the human experience is marked by suffering and that life is a constant struggle for the satisfaction of desires and the escape from pain. This idea is also known as the Will, which is a central concept in Schopenhauer's philosophy.

Schopenhauer's writing has had a great impact on modern psychology, especially positive psychology and existential psychology. His notion that life is painful and that happiness seems elusive has been central to understanding the psychology of human suffering.

In his work, Schopenhauer talks about how our perceptions and thoughts are influenced by the Will. He holds that all our actions are motivated by the Will, a subconscious driving force that propels us toward achieving our goals and escaping pain.

Modern psychology has used the concept of the Will in the understanding of human motivation. The self-regulation theory of motivation, for example, is based on the idea that individuals are motivated by the need to satisfy their wants and needs in order to achieve happiness. Existentialist psychology has also drawn on Schopenhauer's philosophy to explore the idea that people often search for meaning and purpose in life to find a way to deal with human suffering.

Schopenhauer also had a major influence on understanding the psychology of love and human interaction. He believed that love was one of the most important components of a person's life, but that the very nature of love was marked by pain and suffering.

Moreover, Existentialist psychology has used the notion of suffering in love and in human interaction to understand how people seek relationships and how these relationships can affect their sense of self-actualization and individuation. In addition, this theory has been the inspiration for studies on obsessive love, which have shown that pain is a very strong component in affective relationships, and that suffering often occurs due to obsession with another.

Another important contribution of Schopenhauer to psychology has been his analysis of consciousness and the subjective experience of reality. In his work, Schopenhauer talks about how our perceptions of the world are influenced by our emotions and desires, which means that many times our subjective experiences do not exactly match the reality of the external world.

Contemporary psychology has used this idea in understanding how individuals perceive and experience the world through their own subjective lens. Studies in cognitive and psychological processes have shown how people process and remember information according to their own emotions and previous experiences.

In conclusion, Arthur Schopenhauer's theory has had an important influence on modern psychology. His understanding of human nature, the Will, and human interaction have been foundational to modern understanding of human motivation, the psychology of suffering, and subjective consciousness. Schopenhauer has been a key figure in the development of positive psychology and existential psychology, and his writings and theories continue to have a significant impact on the understanding of modern psychology.

[Michael David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been fond of Kant ever since I first encountered him in university. Simply put, I admired the way he established ethics as a duty to treat every other man as an end in himself, and not merely as a means. I also admired the way he stated a universal command, known as the categorical imperative, or the moral law. It is a difficult ethics to follow, but I essentially understood his way of thinking.

I did have one qualm about him, however. Even our philosophy professor noted that his ethics was difficult to live by and live with: it was almost inhuman. Actions of moral worth are extremely difficult to come by, because they are done only in the sense of duty, and not outside it. A miser acts only with moral worth if he gives to other people without gaining anything from it: it is against his sensibilities, but he does it out of duty to his fellow man.

It's quite a difficult ethics to realize.

Schopenhauer, however, on the other hand, disagrees with Kant. The moral law, or categorical imperative, he argues, isn't unconditional after all. Even Kant's example, 'Thou ought not to kill,' has theological basis. What does man obtain from following the moral ought?

He obtains a reward, which is eternity. There is a giver of that reward, and a receiver. These are conditions. The unconditional ought is thus, a contradictio ad adjecto. What then, represents an action with moral worth?

Schopenhauer has a simpler reasoning than the complex theories of Kant: ethics can never be divorced from humanity, or experience. Ethics cannot be removed from being human. He then continues to state that man's actions are triggered by self-love, or egoism. We seek to promote our well-being, be it physical or mental, and we seek our own pleasures. It is thus our selfishness that triggers us to act.

Being egoistic is normal in human beings. There are, however, certain exceptions to pursuing our own ends and happiness. One is wishing and pursuing evil for others, and this is known as malice. The other reason, he explicates, is the only thoroughfare of any action to have moral worth: this is known as compassion.

By allowing the non-ego (other people) to cross into our own, we understand their plight and for a short while, pursue not our own ends but others'. Most of the time there is no immediate, or even distant reward to be had, but people nevertheless act for the good of others simply because they understand the others' condition. Schopenhauer argues that this is the only action that has any moral worth.

After reading this treatise, I was stunned with the simplicity Schopenhauer offered an alternative view of ethics. To me, it was simpler because it was more human and more humane, and I understood it because I felt and feel it. For doing that, I admire the author's capability despite the acerbic nature he has towards some great philosophers. It is a recommended antipode to Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and is a great expression of ethics as well.

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Consistently, Schopenhauer is uncannily prescient and insightful. He is the most underrated philosopher in the western canon that I can think of. His views in The World as Will and Representation and this essay both demonstrate this. In this essay, Schopenhauer presents a number of arguments against Kant's ethics. Many of them are gems, and I wish Schopenhauer would elaborate on them in greater detail. These gems could make for entire research projects or books each, it seems. In this sense, reading this reminded me a bit of the experience of reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations; many startling and tantalizing points are raised without giving systematic treatment on the implications of these points, and without presenting a positive account in place of the parts of traditional views that these philosophers destroy.

Here are some of the gems that especially stood out. Schopenhauer rightly points out that Kant's conception of morality is that it is based in prescriptive laws, and that Kant's conception of laws is derived from the human institutions of governmental laws or natural/scientific laws. Schopenhauer argues that Kant does not examine or justify the assumption that morality is based on this kind of law. I think this is totally right; at best, talking about morality as consisting in laws is a nice model, but metaphysically speaking, there is no evidence (or at least Kant does not provide evidence) that there are actual laws that govern morality. Claiming the existence of such laws even seems inconsistent with Kant's philosophy in the First Critique; Kant there argues that a bunch of things that seem to be mind-independent in fact are mind-dependent. The conception of a law seems to be one of them. Schopenhauer hypothesizes that Kant's mistake here is influenced by his ties to Christianity, on which God stipulates moral laws for humankind.

Related to this point, Schopenhauer criticizes Kant's claim that reward and punishment are merely hypothetical or empirical phenomena, which depend on or are made possible by the categorical or transcendental condition of the categorical imperative, this moral law grounded in innate reason. Kant has not defended the categorical status of the categorical imperative. If that imperative does not have a metaphysical law-like status, then reward and punishment do not evidently derive their normative force from the categorical imperative. This raises the interesting question of the source of this normative force. Schopenhauer doesn't directly address that. It leaves open the possibility that social institutions, pressures, and norms that underlie particular actions of reward or punishment are the only grounds; depending on whether these social forces are grounded in anything more substantial, this might make moral relativity possible. (I am partial to the view that there are biological conditions that ground certain aspects of these social forces which would make certain moral norms universal, like that causing pain intentionally is bad. But this implies that morality is nonetheless a contingent phenomenon throughout, and it's just that certain conditions upon which it is contingent are very stable!).

Another stellar point Schopenhauer makes concerns a seeming paradox about freedom to which Kant is committed. Kant makes morality a matter of obeying an inner law of reason. He also argues that this is the basis of freedom; when we obey this reason, we are freed from the contingencies of emotions and impulse, and we also avoid purely arbitrary or random behavior. Schopenhauer points out, however, that the idea of absolutely obeying a laws seems antithetical to freedom. I wish he elaborated on this point more! This totally anticipates Nietzsche and existentialist philosophy. Freedom requires discipline and commitment, but also the possibility of overturning the norms to which one is committed; obeying a static law throughout one's life really is against freedom.

Schopenhauer wants morality to be based in love. He doesn't elaborate on what this looks like or means. He does connect it with his criticism of Kant taking intentions as totally irrelevant to ethical conduct; all that matters is that one's action does conform to the categorical imperative. I think it is right that morality needs to be based in first-personal intentionality, in the thoughts, perceptions, and emotions we have. It is artificial to separate action from this intentional sphere; action is constituted by intentionality. It might seem that a single action could have identical effects on everything it impacts in the world, regardless of whether it is motivated by the agent's obeying the categorical imperative vs. some intentional state about love. But this is wrong; at the minimum, the action would have different effects on the agent's psychology, on the habits she forms and the person she becomes; and these latter, in turn, will systematically impact the future actions she can make, and the ways she impacts others and the world. Schopenhauer nicely anticipates Wittgenstein and Anscombe on the relation between intentionality and action here.

A final point: Schopenhauer points out that Kant's ethics is based on Plato's mistakened dualism. On that dualism, the mind is tied to the Forms or Ideas, which exist in an ontologically separate, heavenly realm; whereas the body (and its emotions, impulses, etc.) is tied to sensible matter, this concrete world with which we interact. Only on this view does it seem that letting emotions direct our actions is identical to the loss of freedom. The Platonic heaven is metaphysically fundamental; the Forms determine sensible objects, and the lack of identity between the two is due to the imperfections and messiness of the latter. But this view is plain wrong! Or at least it is unjustified and Kant is oblivious to that. Schopenhauer argues that this dualist metaphysics is ungrounded. He proposes, insead, a highly naturalistic and modern view; it is incredible that he came up with this at his time. He argues when we should allow the mind and body to exist on the same ontological plane; and it follows that emotion and reason are not cleanly distinguishable, and freedom is not a matter of obeying one over the other. This leaves open the question of what freedom really is, a question which Schopenhauer does not address, but so wonderfully paves the way for.

I would say, as a whole, this book is valuable for readers who are interested in (1) the history of modern philosophizing about ethics, (2) specific ways to attack or undermine Kantian ethics, or (3) philosophers who preceded or anticipated existentialist thinking, and a naturalized ethics. If you're looking for a systematic view on ethics, you will not find that here. But you will certainly find crucial points that can inspire thinking about ethics.

[Metatron · Rating 4 out of 5]

My relationship with Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy has always been a little difficult. Imagine a long line with three circles. A circle on the left end of the line, a circle in the middle of the line and another circle in the right end of the line. Both circles on the ends of the line represent an extreme, one I respect and agree with and another one I disagree with and hardly respect, but nonetheless are circles with views I have actual opinions on, or rebuttals for Schopenhauer's acumen. The middle circle, on the other hand, does not represent extremes but simple views I am neutral on. Most of his philosophy abodes in that middle circle--homosexuality, his critiques of Kant and Hegel and his purview of metaphysics and epistemology. But what about the extremes?

The circle on the left end of the line is the extreme I do not agree with. That circle contains his views on women. The circle on the right end of the line is the extreme I agree with. That circle contains his views on animal rights. So let me broaden:

His views on women were limited to considering women solely child-bearers who were unable to work. This is not something stern to me provided the epoch he lived in, but it is a somewhat disappointing purview given how he was a philosopher--supposedly philosophers think outside the box. But still, I don't think it's an entirely unforgivable thought. What I consider unforgivable is his remark of women being childish, foolish and short-sighted. He is not specifying, he is not speaking of a type of woman nor a specific woman. He is speaking about women. So that's a view I can't respect, because Schopenhauer was a philosopher and philosophers think outside the box; his view was entirely short-sighted and arrogant, trite and equal to what the common denominator of men thought back then. It's a poisonous thought.

So I pondered: what could someone who believes a group of people are a bunch of awful adjectives, simply because of the genitalia they were born with, offer me? Nothing, I thought, naturally. But I still chose to give this book a chance and liked it. His views on animals were completely endearing, compassionate and humane, he makes a good case for compassion and is unlike other philosophers who believe the human being is truly selfish by nature. He explains and burgeons the prospect of compassion being the sole emotion in which a person is being genuinely selfless. Moreover, I thoroughly enjoyed how he claimed that a person who has no compassion for animals and is cruel to them cannot have true compassion for humans, and is therefore not a good person, for good treatment towards animals is a sign of goodness in character. This is a man that protested against the use of "it" for animals, because that assumed they were inanimate beings. He actually protested, seriously.

So maybe he had sorta poisonous thoughts about women. But he respected life--all life. And that's something I can't take away from him, it's just something I respect too much, for I agree with him.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10.

Schopenhauer describes the motives of man, from the most common egoism, to malice, to the rarely found compassion for others. He shows how these differently motivate human actions and how they make up an individual character. Schopenhauer founds ethics on compassion, found in two forms: (1) justice, the desire to not harm someone, and (2) loving-kindness, the desire to actively help others without self-interest. In the process of describing such ethical behaviors, he obliterates Kantian ethics and shows how it could be only suited for a robot. He is a masterful writer and quite humorous.

[Moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cet essai a été rejeté par la Société Royale Danoise, parce qu'il constituait une offense sérieuse à plusieurs philosophes, moi par contre j'ai eu beaucoup de plaisir a voir Schopenhauer faire l'attaque frontale à Hegel et à l'impératif catégorique de Kant et ça fâcheuse loi morale, je trouve que son raisonnement est logique, la compassion comme base de la morale, la pitié, l'égoïsme, c'est très réaliste tout ça, loin des moralistes théologiens qui se cachent derrière la philosophie pour prêcher le dogme, il a dit les choses de manière directe sans se voilé la face et c'est pour cela qu'on le déteste tellement, mais moi je l'aime bien et je le note 4,5/5!

[Faith]

A good work to read right after Kant's Groundwork.
Worth reading just for Schopenhauer's random and unnecessary tirades against his far more popular contemporary Hegel: ". . . ultimately we have another who is quite unworthy even of these two, who as a man of talent is far inferior to them, namely, the clumsy and senseless charlatan Hegel"

[Xander · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1837, the Danish Royal Society of Scientific Studies came up with a contest. Philosophers had to write essays to answer the important question: wherein lies the basis of morality? There was only one contender, his name was Arthur Schopenhauer, and he lost the contest. Well, how is that possible?

The Basis of Morality (published in 1840) is Arthur Schopenhauer's attempt to answer the above mentioned question. Schopenhauer accomplished mainly three goals: (1) offering an intensive critique of Kant's system of morals (or Practical Reason, as Kant would say); (2) scolding and cussing at the then-current Hegelians, who - according to Schopenhauer - disfigured Kant's philosophy and turned it into obscure egoism (i.e. idealism, according to which everything exists as my idea, namely I, personally, constitute the world - something Kant never claimed); and (3) writing a little appendix in which he answered the question - well, sort of, since he basically refers to his own metaphysical system and that's that.

In their answer, the Danish Society had only two things to say: he didn't actually answer the question in his essay, but delegated a partial answer to the appendix (which is true), and he used offensive language to slander Hegel and his followers (which is also true). Therefore, the only contender for the prize essay, didn't win.

This is typical for Schopenhauer, and one can only love such a person. Truly amazing (I mean it). In your attempt to answer a question for a prize, only offending and criticizing opponents, scribbling some lame answer in an appendix, and still thinking yourself so important and original that you'll win anyway.

But let's not get too mixed up in the context of this book. Is this book worth reading? Well, it depends. There are mainly three considerations to make, and - summed up - these three considerations are a good approximate review.

First, one has to be familiar with Kant's system of knowledge, especially his ethics (i.e. Practical Reason). The first part of The Basis of Morality is a critique, in which Schopenhauer deals with every tiny facet of Kant's ethics, so reading this book without knowledge of Kant is senseless.

Second, one has to be familiar with Schopenhauer's system of philosophy, as exposed in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818), which is his magnum opus that spans two volumes and 1200 pages. Schopenhauer's ethics is easy to sum up: compassion. To understand this 'ethics being compassion', one has to know where Schopenhauer comes from.

Basically Schopenhauer means the following. We, as knowing subjects, are also objects in the world. Every object in this world, is the Will objectifying itself in different degrees and forms. Because the Will strives endlessly and feeds on itself, life (and being in general) is suffering. When we realize we are objectified Will, and since we know the whole world is objectified Will, we perceive ourselves as one with all of nature. We thereby realize that every other human being and animal -
Schopenhauer was fond of animals, not so fond of women - is the same Will, objectified in something else. This will lead us to feel compassion for all of our suffering fellow human beings and animals. So in a nutshell, ethics is compassion.

He doesn't explain the above in The Basis of Morality, and one has to be familiar with Schopenhauer's main work to fully grasp this little book.

Third, Schopenhauer uses almost the whole book to criticize Kant (see the first point, above) and to cuss at his contemporay philosophers. To understand this, one has to know the background: how Fichte distorted Kant's philosophy into a Romantic egoism, in which we as subjects constitute the whole world; how Hegel;s reaction to Fichte led to a new form of Absolute Idealism; etc. Basically one has to know something about German Idealism to understand Schopenhauer's fury against it.

So overall, one has to know quite a lot to understand this book. If we set aside the critique on Kant and the tirades against charlatans like Hegel, one is left with a tiny slither of Schopenhauer's ethics. But this tiny slither cannot be grasped fully without having knowledge of Schopenhauer's main work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Ironically, this book (2 volumes, 1200 pages) contains his whole ethical system (it covers about 23%-33% of the total work). So we end up with the boring fact that The Basis of Morality isn't really helpful or interesting; its only worth lies in the fact that is the objectification of Schopenhauer's obstinate Will (pun intended).

Read it as an extra piece of material, don't expect it to offer new insights. And read his main work if you're looking for his ethics.

[Gas Bou · Rating 4 out of 5]

On passera le passage sur les femmes...

[Yann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dans cet ouvrage, Schopenhauer répond à une question académique relative au fondement de la morale. Il s’agit toujours de traquer un principe unique au moyen puisse être caractérisé les mœurs pour échapper à l’embarras dans lequel nous jette la multiplicité des avis sur la question. La question avait été explorée par Kant dans un ouvrage précèdent, et la piste métaphysique semble inspirer nos philosophes allemands, car l’auteur lui rend un hommage appuyé pour lui avoir en quelque sorte ouvert la voie. Mais Schopenhauer a une attitude assez ambivalente à l’égard de son prédécesseur, tour à tour le moquant, pour faire de la place à ses thèses, puis le louant, pour affermir les principes qu’il lui emprunte. Il lui reproche sans ambages les conclusions auxquelles les spéculations métaphysiques l’avaient mené : l’impératif catégorique. Tout ceci est bien trop abstrait et compliqué pour établir de manière convaincante la morale. Il n’a de cesse de crier contre la prêtraille, le monothéisme, les juifs, l’impératif catégorique, et tout ce qui ressemble à une loi qu’il faudrait suivre, car rien ne lui semble plus éloigné des vrais principes moraux que le fait de suivre une règle. Il ne s’agit donc pas de la placer au côté des lois mathématiques, mais de la remettre dans le cœur de l’homme : c’est dans l’empathie, la gentillesse, la capacité à rendre plus que ce qu’on reçoit, qu’il nous montre le principe cherché, et non dans le calcul mesquin, le ratio, la froide raison. Et j’aime bien sa façon de le montrer, en invoquant avec abondance et érudition les poètes et les anciens, pour témoigner de cette vérité, qui me parait nettement plus convaincante, et surtout utilisable à la fois pour comprendre le monde, mais aussi pour agir bien. Par contre, pour sortir de ce ravissement, on pourrait objecter qu’en faisant ce choix, on retombe dans l’hétéronomie dont on voulait justement se défaire. Où est passée notre règle immuable ? Comment l’auteur va-t-il se défaire de cette objection ?

C’est sans doute là que je sens la faiblesse de n’avoir pas lu son ouvrage principal, le monde comme volonté et représentation : il me manque le cœur de sa doctrine, et je n’ai que les résultats à me mettre sous la dent. Pour l’auteur, qui reprend l’idée de Kant d’une prétendue antinomie entre la liberté et responsabilité, la solution à ce soi-disant problème repose dans le modèle suivant : notre volonté est hors de notre contrôle, et s’impose à nous. Cependant, nous sommes pour autant responsable non pas par nos actes, mais par notre être, qui est supposé immuable et éternel, et dans lequel serait inscrit nos principes moraux. Ainsi, pour l’auteur, chacun est par nature bon ou mauvais, et ne changera jamais, ses penchants étant éternellement inscrit en lui, tandis que la volonté le manipule comme un pantin et ne fait que ressortir le fond véritable, à l’aune duquel il faudrait nous juger. Mais comment diantre peut-on être responsable de ce qu’on est, et non de ce que l’on fait ? Facile avec la métaphysique : de par la métempsychose, nous choisissons avant notre naissance ce que sera notre existence déterminée, donc nous en sommes comptable. Ça vous épate hein ? Ainsi, il renverse la position métaphysique de Kant sur la volonté. Pas étonnant qu’avec un système pareil, il crie contre tout ce qui ressemble à une règle à suivre : cela devient parfaitement ubuesque et inutile. Puisque tout est écrit, il n’y a pas à s’embarrasser avec des règles, des punitions et des récompenses. Et pour enfin retomber sur un principe unique de la morale, il doit reprendre une idée métaphysique, et cette fois, c’est dans l’unité de l’être, qui explique l’empathie. C’est donc parce que je me reconnais moi-même dans l’autre que j’évite de lui causer du tort, et même que je lui fais du bien. Très joli, mais que faut-il en penser de tout ça ?

Car enfin, pour être honnête, tout ceci parait parfaitement à la fois fort charmant et parfaitement extravagant. Quoi ? Nous sommes des pantins qui ne possèdent aucune capacité à nous réformer ? Quoi ? Il faut jeter au feu toute idée d’éducation et s’en remettre au hasard de la nature ? Quoi ? Nous devons marcher d’un pas résigné vers un destin fatal, marqué au fer rouge par une essence hypothétique, et remettre dans une vie future le choix d’une nouvelle existence ? C’est d’autant plus décevant que les critiques que Schopenhauer adressaient à Kant étaient bien pesées, et qu’il développe des idées qui me plaisent, comme la dénonciation de l’esclavage, ou la dénonciation de la cruauté envers les animaux, mais il aboutit également dans son système à des vues si abstraites et si noires que je reste quand même sur ma faim. En effet, on pourrait lui renvoyer les mêmes quolibets dont il accablait son prédécesseur, car il prend parfois des appuis gratuits ou discutables. Ainsi, pour donner de l’importance à sa thèse, il se place dans une continuité qu’il fait remonter à la plus haute antiquité, et va chercher chez les indiens, la source de sa philosophie. Mais qu’ont en commun l’âge et la vérité ? Qu’importe de remonter à l’aube des temps, ou de surfer sur la dernière vague à la mode, aujourd’hui les indiens, demain les sumériens, après-demain les esquimaux ou les pygmées ?

Car enfin, je veux que l’on me montre des raisons solides, et non être ébloui ou effrayé, pour finalement me contenter de constructions bizarres, au lieu d’avouer benoitement mon ignorance. D’un côté, Kant essaie de m’intimider avec sa rigueur outrée et ses craintes infondées, de l’autre Schopenhauer essaie de m’étourdir avec son érudition plaisante et sa faconde imagée. Mais la vérité a-t-elle besoin de ces ruses ? N’est-ce pas plutôt une de ces femmes sans apprêts, qui par leur aspect et leurs manières simple et communes ne retiennent d’abord pas notre attention, mais qui sitôt qu’on les écoute nous charment infiniment par leur bon sens et leur humanité, si bien que nous comptons bientôt plus pour rien tous les simagrées et les affèteries des courtisanes qui se pressent vainement pour l’offusquer ? N’a-t-elle pas plutôt l’air tranquille et débonnaire d’un Socrate ? À l’origine de tout cet échafaudage branlant, c’est cette idée bizarre de volonté libre : Lucien n’en faisait qu’une fable amusante, une simple plaisanterie pour embarrasser Minos à la fin de ses dialogues des morts, mais c’est devenu un sujet de dispute dans les écoles. John Locke, qui avait montré les limites de la raison humaine sans s’empresser de les transgresser immédiatement après, avait déjà montré nettement le caractère insensé et absurde de ce prétendu problème. Mais c’est vainement que l’on chercherait à abattre toutes ces spéculations, car la métaphysique reste hors de toute atteinte, ce qui ouvre une grande carrière à quiconque souhaite bâtir les systèmes les plus fantasques : il suffit d’affirmer que l’on voit clair là où personne ne voit rien, et de donner de la vraisemblance à ses rêves par des sophismes.

Pour autant, je pense qu’on lira avec plaisir et profit ce petit ouvrage. D’abord, c’est un petit trésor de rhétorique et d’érudition, et que la joie féroce de Schopenhauer est communicative : elle soutient aisément l’intérêt du lecteur, lequel pourrait fort bien fléchir face à l’aridité et à la sècheresse de l’abstraction. Mais surtout, c’est un système de pensée assez original, et dans lequel il est intéressant de renter, afin de mieux connaître la diversité des systèmes que les hommes ont imaginé pour résoudre les questions fondamentales qui les taraudent. En effet, ce n’est pas le plus petit mérite de la philosophie que de nous mettre devant les yeux la diversité des opinions, car leur étude nous les rend insensiblement plus aimables, et nous rend par-là plus familiers ceux qui les adoptent, ce qui nous permet d’être plus commode et mieux disposés à l’égard des autres, pensent-ils différemment de nous. Et enfin, je m’inscris en faux contre la réaction indignée de l’académie, laquelle n’avait pas été convaincue par la réponse de l’auteur, face aux invectives de ce dernier contre les philosophies à la mode : au contraire, ce sont elles qui donnent à l’ouvrage tout son sel, et tout son prix.

[Behzad · Rating 3 out of 5]

«انسان های وحشی یکدیگر را می خورند و انسان های متمدن ، یکدیگر را فریب میدهند.

[이 지호 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schopenhauer considered "will to live(ambitionless and irrational)" as Kant's thing in itself. Everything, even inanimate has instinct of will to live. It is the drive of self-preservation and preservation of the species through reproduction. That's why we crave pleasure. But no one can completely fulfill their desire. So life is painful.
People often think that they are the only ones who has will to live. Therefore, focusing solely on one's own desires makes it easy to ignore others. Schopenhauer suggests compassion as the foundation of morality. Understanding compassion, that is, recognizing the 'suffering from the will' of others as well as oneself, can be seen as understanding the world's truth that everything has a will and suffers from it. I believe our society could create a better world if we emphasized empathy and compassion more, especially in education.

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schopenhauer thinks that all human actions can be classified as either based on egoism (a desire to satisfy the self), malice ( a desire to work mischief on another) or , what is to him laudable and the only type of action that is truly moral, actions whose origin is the desire to do help others with no care for egoistic satisfaction. Based on this premise, I think Schopenhauer's system of morality is far more humane than is the Categorical Imperative of Kant or even an utilitarian system of morality preached by Hume or Mill.

[Klowey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schopenhauer takes on Kant's deontological ethical theory, arguing that morality should not be based on egoism or rational calculation. He concludes that compassion and loving kindness form the basis of morality.

This essay was the only entry in a contest of the Royal Danish Society in 1839, however the judges were so offended by Schopenhauer's criticism of Hegel (and perhaps Kant) that they refused to award him the prize.

Great ideas presented with (imo) rather tedious early 19th c. writing. But I'm a fan.

[Quan Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My boy is the saltiest man on earth and dedicates entire passages to (1) hating Hegelians (2) praising the English and hating Germans (3) hating on Fichte (4) condemning slavery and colonialism (but still loving the English) (5) defending animals as moral subjects and (6) giving backhanded compliments to Kant

No wonder the Danes hated this

[Marcel]

toxicity and good vibes only ✌

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Basis of Morality, Arthur Schopenhauer radicalizes a trend in German ethics toward a conception of morality that is entirely divorced from self-interest. This trend dates back at least to Martin Luther, for whom works of love flow spontaneously from the Christian justified by faith and, because faith alone justifies, such works in no way merit salvation. Consequently, the Christian performs works of love for the sake of the other, and only for her sake. In a very different and less explicitly Christian context, Immanuel Kant picks up on the same idea. For Kant, there can be no moral worth in an action performed in accordance with a material practical principle—i.e. for some desired object to be attained that determines the will to action. In another idiom, when one acts from a hypothetical imperative that presupposes a desired object, like happiness, one does not act morally. Only action performed in accordance with an unconditioned imperative—or, out of respect for the moral law—is truly moral, even if I can never really know whether I, or anyone else, has acted morally. For both Luther and Kant, human conduct motivated by self-interest is antithetical to morality, and while Schopenhauer, too, affirms this basic idea, he intensifies and clarifies the criteria for true moral action. More specifically, Schopenhauer criticizes Kantian ethics as a veiled form of divine-command ethics whose moral law is a cover for selfishness. He then redefines the methods and ends of ethics and insists on compassion as the only appropriate motivation for moral conduct.

The Basis of Morality has two basic tasks, one critical and the other constructive. The first part of the treatise is a systematic critique of Kantian ethics focused on the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and the second part presents Schopenhauer’s account of morality, its supreme principle, and its basis. Schopenhauer is a brilliant polemicist and his demolition of duty-based Kantian ethics is both conceptually nuanced and rhetorically acerbic. On the one hand, he offers substantial praise for (the first edition of) Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and, in its basic elements, accepts transcendental idealism (37). He affirms the ideality of space and time, that reason has historically claimed to know transcendent entities it cannot possibly know, and that we know the law of causality a priori and not from experience (since experience is only possible by this law). Similarly, he affirms and appropriates Kant’s compatibilism in a modified form (60) and applauds Kant’s insistence that humans are never to be used as mere means but only also as ends (50).

On the other hand, Schopenhauer finds Kantian ethics mostly incoherent. First, he claims that Kantian ethics necessarily presupposes divine-command ethics, since the “only one source to which is traceable the importation into Ethics of the conception Law, Precept, Obligation” is the Mosaic Law, and specifically the Ten Commandments (15). When Kant presents his Moraltheologie at the end of the Critique of Practical Reason, he indicates that the postulates of God and the immortality of the soul are consequent to the demands of the moral law, when, Schopenhauer insists, these ideas are merely presuppositions for the entire system of Kantian ethics. Second, Schopenhauer claims that Kant hypostasizes reason—i.e. he takes what is an exclusive attribute of human persons and posits it as a self-existent hypostatic essence in which, perhaps, other species participate as well as humans. But we “have not the smallest right to suppose that Reason exists externally to [humankind],” Schopenhauer objects, “and then proceed to set up a genus called ‘Rational Beings,’ differing from its single known species ‘Man’; still less are we warranted in laying down laws for such imaginary rational beings in the abstract” (22). Schopenhauer wants to direct attention away from reason as the primary essence of humans and focus on the centrality of will: “It is the Will in man which is his very self, the only part of him which is metaphysical, and therefore indestructible” (23). He thinks that Kantian ethics, with its emphasis on pure, practical reason, which authorizes only formal and not material motives as the basis for moral action, perpetuates an erroneous mind-body dualism with roots in Platonic idealism and Cartesian substance metaphysics. “Kant was still under the influence of the after-effect of that old-time doctrine, when he propounded his Practical Reason with its Imperatives,” Schopenhauer writes (41).

Lastly, and most importantly, Schopenhauer claims that an unconditioned duty, like the categorical imperative, is a contradiction in terms. He explains:

What ought to be done is therefore necessarily conditioned by punishment or reward; consequently . . . it is essentially and inevitably hypothetical, and never, as [Kant] maintains, categorical. . . . A commanding voice, whether it come from within, or from without, cannot possibly be imagined except as threatening or promising. Consequently obedience to it . . . [is] always actuated by selfishness, and therefore morally worthless (16).

In short, the concept of duty, because it can never be unconditioned and must always be conditioned by the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, is by nature selfish and hence morally bankrupt. In fact, Schopenhauer asserts, the second Critique testifies to the idea that a supposedly unconditioned duty necessarily presupposes conditions of reward and punishment: “For this obligation, said to be so unconditioned, nevertheless postulates more than one condition in the background; it assumes a rewarder, a reward, and the immortality of the person to be rewarded” (16).

Moreover, the way in which Kant explains the categorical imperative in the Groundwork also testifies to the impossibility of an unconditioned duty. For Kant, one cannot act in accordance with a maxim that cannot be willed as a universal law because, if it were, it would lead to a contradiction in one’s will. However, on Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Kant, such contradictions only arise insofar as non-universalizable maxims, were they universally adopted, would not benefit me, and this is why they cannot be willed as universal. For example, if I were to will as a universal law that one need not help others in need, my will would contradict itself, since if I were in need, I would want others to help me, and hence I would not want this to be their maxim. “Here, then, it is declared . . . that moral obligation rests solely and entirely on presupposed reciprocity; consequently it is utterly selfish, and only admits of being interpreted by egoism,” Schopenhauer writes. If the categorical imperative, the supreme principle of morality, presupposes reciprocity, then it is not at all categorical, but in truth a hypothetical imperative, because “it tacitly presupposes the condition that the law to be established for what I do—inasmuch as I make it universal—shall also be a law for what is done to me” (43-4). And if the supreme principle of morality is a hypothetical imperative, it cannot be a moral principle, since hypothetical imperatives have as their basis self-interest, and morality must, on both Schopenhauer’s and Kant’s own terms, be entirely disinterested.

With this deconstruction of Kantian ethics in hand, Schopenhauer pivots to present his own conception of ethics. While Schopenhauer affirms Kantian transcendental idealism in the ways noted earlier, he takes an empirical approach to the study of morality based on his rejection of ethics as a normative discipline. That is, he denies that ethics is concerned with what humans should do: “I have sufficiently demonstrated that the conception of the ought, in other words, the imperative form of Ethics, is valid only in theological morals,” he claims. Ethics is therefore more appropriately a descriptive discipline that aims to “point out all the varied moral lines of human conduct; to explain them; and to trace them to their ultimate source” (74-5).

Schopenhauer uses this empirical approach to discern what kinds of human action have true moral worth, and concludes that only acts motivated by compassion can be considered moral. Most human actions, he observes, are motivated by egoism, “the chief and fundamental incentive in man [sic.],” where egoism denotes “the urgent impulse to exist, and exist under the best circumstances” (75). For Schopenhauer, it is not so much that egoism is bad, or that egoism necessarily leads to blameworthy action, but that action motivated by egoism is not properly moral. He contrasts egoism, which “desires the weal of the self, and is limitless,” with malice, which “desires the woe of others, and may develop to the utmost cruelty,” on account of which malicious actions are decidedly blameworthy. Finally, there is compassion, which “desires the weal of others,” and which is therefore the only moral motive (86). That is, because only actions motivated by an exclusive concern for the welfare of another have moral worth, and because compassion consists in “the direct participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, in the sufferings of another, leading to sympathetic assistance in the effort to prevent or remove them,” compassion is the sole moral motive, and only acts that proceed from compassion have moral worth. Importantly, compassion for Schopenhauer is a kind of empathy: to be moved by compassion is to identify with the other, such that the “difference between myself and him, which is the precise raison d'être of my Egoism, must be removed, at least to a certain extent.” By means of this identification, “I suffer with him, and feel his woe, exactly as in most cases I feel only mine, and therefore desire his weal as immediately as at other times I desire only my own” (85).

Schopenhauer claims that compassion is the basis for the two cardinal virtues of ethics: justice and loving-kindness. Justice is the negative iteration of compassion: it “calls out to me: ‘Stop!’ and encircles the other as with a fence, so as to protect him from the injury which otherwise my egoism or malice would lead me to inflict on him.” Hence its principle is “do harm to no one” (89). Loving-kindness is the positive iteration of compassion: it “impels me to help” the other, and hence its principle is “help all people, as far as lies in your power” (101). Combined, the principles of justice and loving-kindness form the supreme principle of morality: “Do harm to no one; but rather help all people, as far as lies in your power” (27, 88). Insofar as this principle is rooted in compassion, compassion is the basis for morality.

From here, Schopenhauer explores why there exists such considerable differences in moral behavior and concludes that these are attributable to differences in character, which “is innate, and ineradicable” (121). Herein lies the foremost issue with Schopenhauer’s ethics: he posits a deflationary view of human freedom that, in essence, is no freedom of all. First, he claims to affirm Kant’s distinction between the sensible and intelligible realms, per which behind every phenomenon is a noumenon—i.e. a posited object that does not appear under the forms of space and time (which condition our perception of reality) and, hence, cannot be known. For Kant, insofar as humans appear in phenomenal reality (i.e. the sensible realm), their actions are entirely determined by the laws of nature; however, insofar as humans must also exist in noumenal reality (i.e. the intelligible realm), they can exercise free will—at least when they act for the sake of the moral law, in which case their will is a cause unto itself, and hence totally free. Schopenhauer appropriates this distinction and interprets it to mean that freedom is connected to what one is, i.e. one’s character as it exists in itself, in the noumenal realm; one “might have been something different; and guilt or merit attaches to that which [one] is.” Conversely, necessity is connected to what one does, i.e. one’s actions as these appear in the phenomenal realm; what one is determines what one does, and “hence for a given person in every single case, there is absolutely only one way of acting possible” (60). For Schopenhauer, while our actions in the sensible realm are entirely determined, we are still responsible for them, since what we are determines what we do, and we are free in relation to what we are. Admittedly, this is a very peculiar form of freedom, since it merely denotes that we could have been different, and if we had been, we would have acted differently (61).

In fact, this freedom is no freedom at all, since, as we have seen, Schopenhauer also maintains that character is “an original datum, immutable, and incapable of any amelioration through correction by the intellect” (123). Insofar as our character—what we are—is entirely determined and permanently fixed, we have no voluntary control over it at any point in our lives; indeed, the best we can do in terms of a moral education is to learn more about what we are in the hopes that our actions more consistently reflect our inborn character (127). Still, Schopenhauer inexplicably seems to think that we can nevertheless be held responsible for our actions on account of the paltry observation that we could have had a different character, even if we never freely chose to have the character we do have in the first place. If we did, truly, have freedom in relation to what we are, then Schopenhauer’s position would be more defensible (one would still want to question his assumption that what one does is entirely the product of what one is). Yet Schopenhauer denies this more robust form of freedom in relation to character and substitutes for it a poor simulacrum that hardly deserves the name. Whatever freedom he claims we have in the noumenal realm of what we are cannot support the conceptual burden of moral responsibility.

Clearly, Schopenhauer interprets freedom in the noumenal realm far differently than Kant, even if the latter’s transcendental idealism is the basic presupposition behind the former’s position. In the final chapter of the treatise, Schopenhauer performs a similar maneuver with specific respect to the Kantian idea of the noumenon. His aim in this chapter is to articulate in broad strokes the metaphysical foundation for compassion as the basis for ethics, and he believes that Kant’s transcendental idealism can help him make his case. Schopenhauer posits that space and time, as forms of our sensible intuition, account for all plurality and all numerical diversity in existence, since “the concept ‘many’ inevitably connotes the idea either of succession (time), or of relative position (space)” (136). Space and time therefore constitute the joint principle of individuation—i.e. reality (as we know it) is composed of individuals because of them. Now, as forms of our sensible intuition, space and time are not intrinsic to objects that appear in sensible intuition, but rather to our own minds; consequently, they in no way pertain to objects as they are in themselves, in the noumenal realm. Yet if this is true, then we have no reason to believe that there is multiplicity or numerical diversity in the noumenal realm, since space and time are the conditions for individuation. “Consequently,” Schopenhauer concludes, “that which is objectivated in the countless phaenomena [sic.] of this world of the senses cannot but be a unity, a single indivisible entity, manifested in each and all of them” (137). And if this is the case, i.e. if individuation is only a phenomenal veil that hides selfsame noumenal unity, then compassion, which erases “the distinction between the ego and the non-ego,” unveils this reality and translates it into “definite [i.e. sensible and empirical] expression” (139). In other words, compassion discloses the truth of the matter—that I, an ostensible individual, am in fact identical with you, an ostensibly different individual, and this explains my identification with your suffering. “My true inmost being subsists in every living thing,” Schopenhauer writes, “just as really, as directly as in my own consciousness it is evidenced only to myself” (140).

There is one major problem with Schopenhauer’s momentous conclusion, at least from a Kantian perspective: we cannot know what lies behind appearances in sensible intuition, and this is the whole point of transcendental idealism, which puts strict limits on our epistemic capacities. While we must posit the existence of the noumenon, its reality entirely exceeds the bounds of what we can know, since we can only know objects that appear in sensible intuition under the forms of space and time. Therefore, Schopenhauer’s speculations about one identical entity behind every phenomena are utterly baseless, akin to pre-critical speculations about the nature of God—at least, if one accepts transcendental idealism, which Schopenhauer claims to affirm. Schopenhauer’s metaphysical foundation for ethics is a nice hypothesis, but, in the end, only that.

[the_deepest_black]

W takim stanie rzeczy nie od rzeczy będzie powtórzyć słowa mędrca:

"Prawdziwą moralność obraża zdanie, że istoty bezrozumne (a więc zwierzęta) są rzeczami i wskutek tego mogą być traktowane jako środki, które nie są zarazem celami" (58).

Doskonały i najbardziej wartościowy ustęp o prawach zwierząt można przeczytać od 129 do 135 strony.

"Bez wątpienia zniechęcająco działa myśl, że los etyki, nauki tak bezpośrednio dotyczącej naszego życia, jest równie nieszczęśliwy jak los nieociekłej metafizyki, i że od chwili zapoczątkowania jej przez Sokratesa, po tylu nieustannych wysiłkach, jest ona ciągle jeszcze zmuszona poszukiwać swej pierwszej zasady" (15).

"Według [psychologii racjonalnej] człowiek składa się z dwóch całkowicie różnych substancji: z materialnego ciała i niematerialnej duszy. Platon jako pierwszy z filozofów postawił ten dogmat w sposób formalny i starał się go dowieść jako prawdę przedmiotową" (50).

"Przy czym o ile mnie się zdaje, różnica między natura a przeznaczeniem [u Platona w Menonie] odpowiada mniej więcej różnicy między fizycznym a metafizycznym" (139).

###

"Dlatego udzielę moralistom paradoksalnej rady: aby zanim zaczną budować etykę, najpierw przyjrzeli się samemu życiu ludzkiemu" (80).

"Trzeba się wczytać w historie kryminalne i w opisy sytuacji anarchii, aby poznać, czym jest właściwie człowiek pod względem moralnym. Te tysiące, które w naszych oczach spokojnie obcują ze sobą, są niczym innym, jak stadem wilków i tygrysów, którym tylko nałożono kaganiec" (87).

Schopenhauer antyoświeceniowy: "Złemu człowiekowi złość jest równie wrodzona jak żmii wydrążone zęby i pęcherzyk z jadem, i podobnie jak żmija nie może się pozbyć swego jadu, tak zły człowiek nie może się pozbyć swej złości" (138).

Zreflektowanie wg. Schopenhauera: "Tymczasem to ja, które w jego subiektywnym wyglądzie dochodzi do takich olbrzymich rozmiarów, w obiektywnym - kurczy się prawie do zera, a mianowicie do jakiejś jednej bilionowej cząsteczki żyjącej ludzkości" (90).

"Plan mój wymagał, abym najpierw wziął pod rozwagę" (93).

"Po dotychczasowych niezbędnych przygotowaniach przechodzę teraz do..." (97).

"ponieważ pojęcia przeciwne oświetlają się nawzajem, przeto..." (16).

"Nazywamy 'nieludzkim' tego, kto wydaje się go [współczucia] pozbawiony] wyrazu zaś 'ludzkość' używamy często jako synonimu litości, współczucia" (105).

"Chociaż na świecie jest bardzo wiele rozmaitych religii, to jednak stopień moralności albo raczej niemoralności, jakie panują w rozmaitych miejscach, nie wykazuje różnic, które odpowiadałyby różnicom wyznań, ale jest mniej więcej wszędzie jeden i ten sam" (124).

"Wpływ religii na moralność był i jest właściwie bardzo nieznaczny" (125).

"Stoicy, Seneka (De clem., II, 5), Spinoza (Eth., IV), Kant (Krytyka praktycznego rozumu), po prostu odrzucają i potępiają samo współczucie" (136).

Difficile est satiram non scriber.

[Isaac Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this essay was clearly fascinating – to ground morality on metaphysics, in a certain fashion and originality that almost Schopenhauer alone can achieve, but with a fascinating premise comes some serious legwork. And as such, the first half of this essay – the exposition, extension and critique of Kantian ethics was very dense and was mostly lost on me (and that's why it took me nearly 2 whole months to read this essay of just about a hundred pages), save for a few intuitive, almost aphoristic concepts, such as the insight that the Categorical Imperative is very Rawlsian {because a universal law presupposes the condition that the law is also a law for what is done to ME [thus I cannot possibly wish for injustice (and here I also entertain the counter-argument that Francis Fukuyama pointed out to me, that this Rawlsian conclusion assumes high risk-aversion. A risk-seeking agent would be willing to risk choosing injustice)] }, Schopenhauer’s main point that Kant tries to ground his ethics on pure reason but actually fails – the groundwork of his ethics being Christian ethics ‘in disguise’ (and I still need to understand why). Schopenhauer also claims that Kant’s system assumes the autonomy of the will, which I can neither affirm nor deny.

Although the arguments behind why Kant’s moral project failed were difficult to follow, Schopenhauer’s conclusion, being pithy as it is, was easy enough to understand and think about, not to mention that it’s a concept well-known to amateur followers of Schopenhauer. As a Christian myself, I naturally have no qualms with learning that one of history’s greatest minds who attempted to ground ethics on a rational-secular basis failed, I nevertheless found it somewhat unsettling. I had always seen Kant as a small source of hope, having outsourced to his enormous intellect the task of escaping the existential emptiness bequeathed to me by Hume’s skeptical problem. Christian as I am, I still found it disturbing to find yet another blow to the hopes of pure reason to establish a rational-secular moral framework, learning, once more, that the basis of our morality might yet again be conferred only by a divine entity, who determines right and wrong. I feel indignant and humiliated that human reason, as triumphant as it may be in its feats, does not have a strong basis of morality … how are we different from the beasts, then? Nevertheless, I leave it to my future self to revisit and re-dissect Schopenhauer’s arguments on Kant’s ethics.

The 2nd half, however, where Schopenhauer proffers the perhaps intuitive argument that compassion is the real basis of morality, I found incredibly deep, both on the metaphysical and practical realms. First of all, needless to mention, as a mildly socially autistic systems-thinker, I found it very neat to tightly link ethics to metaphysics. Once I zoom out far enough, and consider human beings not as supreme, divinely chosen souls but rather as detached bodies in a flux of ever-changing impressions and perceptions, it’s really hard to imagine WHY we should do certain things. Schopenhauer obviously gave me a beautiful answer, that the Will is the noumena, blind and irrational, the fundamental life-source behind all things in the world, and thus we are One, and the ability to see other people (in fact, all living things) as ourselves, and thus to feel (in fact, to ‘understand’!) their weal and woe as our own is the true basis of morality. It cannot be any other way!

How is it possible that a world of self-interested individuals can and do engage in acts of altruism? Other than answering this perennial question, I also appreciated how Schopenhauer adeptly linked and solved the philosophy of Egoism through his basis of morality.

If we really are One (and I’m still thinking this through, including whether I really believe it’s true and whether it is practical to live in accordance with this belief), then, as Schopenhauer made me realise, the individuation (and multiplicity) of our species is also a subset of Kant’s categories! The whole WORLD is one – EVERYTHING in it! And we see it as disparate individuals and objects NECESSARILY as a phenomenon – yet another mental construct within us that organize our sense-data. [And if I accept this theory, does it mean that I have to reject (liberal) individualism? But then Kant himself was liberal (but then, I don’t think he conceived of individuation as a category)]

I found this incredibly deep. Schopenhauer guided me to the ancient Hindu texts (as he was famous for reading) which has now obviously piqued my interest. According to the ancient Hindus, the concept of the individual self is but a deceptive vision, a delusion – what they call Māyā. Clearly, the project of seeing the true metaphysical nature of the world, and not succumbing into Māyā’s powerful deceptions into accepting the phenomenal world’s illusions, is a lifelong one and is not achieved just by reading an essay by Schopenhauer or 2. I’ll have to think about it.

Furthermore, a powerful heuristic that Schopenhauer left me with, is his argument that moral people are those who are more tuned (for whatever reason) into this great principle – the metaphysical unity of life. People who are NOT moral are those who remain strangers to this principle. And the flip side is true as well – if I understand that we are all One being, I not only become more moral, but I also become more willing to ask for help! [A powerful thought to entertain, seeing as I ask for help on a daily basis now, as I become painfully aware of my inexperience and (current!) incompetence in this industry.] Well (pun not intended), even Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for water at the well!

It really is a difficult idea to grasp, and the realities of practical life will obviously challenge my adherence to this concept of metaphysics to its limits, but as Schopenhauer made me realise, I can think of Egoists as ‘soft solipsists’ so to speak – and this is not a deep thought in the slightest. Everyone grasps this intuitively – assholes are those who only think about themselves and fail to consider others.

Finally, I am well aware of and amused by the hilarious philosophy trivia that Schopenhauer was the sole competitor in this essay competition but did not receive the prize, because he missed the essential part of the essay question completely, and furthermore trashed Hegel with zero compunction. A practical, sober warning to keep my mouth shut about others.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

We don't hear much about Schopenhauer anymore (probably never did, now that I think about it) no doubt because he has been so overshadowed by his intellectual descendants, most notably Nietzsche and Marx, but I've been a big fan for years and have read The World as Will and Representation several times.

What struck me about this little gem, besides it's 19th century quirkiness, is the affinity that the current investigation of justice called, loosely, "capability theory", promoted mainly by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen has with Schopenhauers. Equally striking is the fact that neither of them cite Schopenhauer anywhere in their work (that I can find) leading me to believe the affinity is a coincidence.

[macshek · Rating 4 out of 5]

"(...) autor mówi o różnych współczesnych filozofach, którzy należą do największych, w tonie tak nieprzyzwoitym, że można by się o to słusznie i poważnie obrazić."
Smieszna ksiazeczka, troche redukcjonistyczna pod wzgledem podejscia do charakteru czlowieka, ale fajna. Daje do myslenia i obraza ludzi roznych

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Der Kontext: August 1982

Es war ein warmer Sommertag im August 1982. Ich, jung und voller naiver Hoffnung, erwarb Schopenhauers „Preisschrift“. Mein Herz schlug schneller. Ein Wettbewerb! Endlich, dachte ich, bekomme ich das, wofür ich lebe: die ungeschminkte, ehrliche Konkurrenz. Den Triumph des Geistes über die mittelmäßige Masse.
Die Illusion: Der Gladiatorenkampf des Geistes

Ich stellte mir den jungen Arthur im Geiste vor, wie er mit der Feder in der Hand die Konkurrenz niederschreibt, so wie Rousseau es damals bei der Akademie von Dijon vormachte. Der Underdog, der die etablierte Ignoranz der Professoren mit brillanter Logik demaskiert. Ich erwartete Leidenschaft, den Geruch von Tinte und den süßen Geschmack des Sieges.
Was ich bekam, war… Schopenhauer.
Die bittere Realität der Preisschrift
Der erste Versuch (Trondheim):

Zuerst die gute Nachricht – ja, der Mann hat gewonnen. Die Königlich Norwegische Societät der Wissenschaften gab ihm den Preis für „Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens“. Aber war es eine epische Schlacht? Nein. Es war eine staubtrockene Akademie-Veranstaltung. Keine Jury-Dramatik, kein öffentliches Debakel. Nur norwegische Gelehrte, die pflichtbewusst einen Haken machten. Ein seltener Lichtblick im allgemeinen Elend der Existenz, aber gähnend langweilig.
Der zweite Versuch (Kopenhagen):

Der zweite Versuch: Dann die schlechte Nachricht (die bei Schopenhauer die einzig wahre ist). Beim dänischen Wettbewerb mit „Über das Fundament der Moral“ gewann er nicht. (Bibliographische Nörgelei am Rande: Mein Exemplar von 1982 aus der ehrwürdigen Philosophischen Bibliothek bei Meiner heißt „Preisschrift über das Fundament der Moral“ , obwohl Schopenhauer selbst den Text "Preisschrift über die Grundlage der Moral" nannte – aber ob nun „Grundlage“ oder „Fundament“, das Ergebnis war dasselbe: Er gewann nicht.) Und was macht Arthur? Statt den sportlichen Verlierer zu mimen, nutzt er das Buch als Plattform, um sich fast 200 Seiten lang bitterlich darüber zu beschweren, wie dumm die Fragestellung der Akademie war und wie inkompetent Hegel und Fichte doch seien. Es ist eine philosophische Trotzreaktion epischen Ausmaßes. Das ist so Schopenhauer, dass es fast schon wieder weh tut.
Mein Fazit: Es gibt keinen Sieg, nur Leiden

Dieses Buch ist der ultimative Beweis, dass selbst die Vorstellung eines glorreichen, fairen Wettbewerbs eine Illusion ist (der „Schleier der Maya“, wenn man so will).
Ich wollte den strahlenden Sieger sehen. Stattdessen bekam ich den verbitterten Misanthropen, der uns erklärt, dass unser Wille nicht frei ist und dass Mitleid der einzige Grund ist, warum wir uns nicht gegenseitig umbringen.
Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft, um inspiriert zu werden. Ich habe es gelesen und erkannt, dass das Leben ein ständiger, unerträglicher Kampf des Willens gegen die Vernunft ist. Danke für nichts, Arthur.
Empfehlung:

Lesen Sie dieses Buch nur, wenn Sie bestätigt haben möchten, dass Sie am 11. August 1982 eine schlechte Kaufentscheidung getroffen haben. Fünf Sterne für die schonungslose Zerstörung meiner jugendlichen Träume, aber nur einen Stern für den Unterhaltungswert. Die Welt ist schlecht, die Akademien sind korrupt, und selbst ein Preis ist nur eine kurzlebige Täuschung.

Nachtrag: Warum der alte Griesgram doch 5 Sterne verdient (Zähneknirschend)
Beim zweiten Lesen bemerkte ich: Es gibt Gründe, Schopenhauer zu bewundern, auch wenn seine Laune bei mir weiterhin bei 1 Stern liegt. Mein Regal hat mich gerade vorwurfsvoll angestarrt. Wir reden hier schließlich von der Philosophischen Bibliothek, und dort erscheint kein 08/15-Papier, sondern der Goldstandard des Denkens. Also, Asche auf mein Haupt und Ehre, wem Ehre gebührt.
1. Der Mut zum Königsmord (an Kant)

Man muss Arthur eines lassen: Er hat Chuzpe (bodenlose Frechheit). Im frühen 19. Jahrhundert Immanuel Kant zu kritisieren war in etwa so, als würde man heute das Internet abschalten wollen. Kant hatte den Anspruch, die Vernunft komplett leergetrunken und in ein perfektes System gegossen zu haben – Innovation und Vollständigkeit inklusive. Und dann kommt Schopenhauer, dieser wilde Lockenkopf, und sagt sinngemäß:
„Nette Konstruktion, Immanuel, aber dein ‚Kategorischer Imperativ‘ ist blutleerer Unsinn. Wahre Moral kommt aus dem Bauch (Mitleid), nicht aus dem Kopf!“
Das ist kein philosophischer Diskurs mehr, das ist Punk-Rock.
2. Der Anwalt der Pudel

Und dann ist da die Sache mit den Tieren. Zu einer Zeit, als Menschen in weiten Teilen der Welt noch grausamerweise versklavt wurden, drehte Schopenhauer den Spieß um und behandelte Vieh wie Menschen. Er war der erste westliche Philosoph, der Tieren echte Rechte zusprach – nicht, weil sie denken können, sondern weil sie leiden. Sicher, er war kein Vegetarier – Arthur wusste ein gutes Schnitzel zu schätzen –, aber er verabscheute Tierquälerei aus tiefster Seele. Während Descartes Tiere noch als Maschinen sah, erkannte Schopenhauer im Blick seines Pudels (Atman) denselben „Willen zum Leben“ wie in sich selbst. Das macht ihn, bei aller Misanthropie gegenüber den Zweibeinern, zum humansten aller Denker für die Vierbeiner.
Korrektur:

Okay, okay. Für den Mut, Kant ans Schienbein zu treten, und für die Liebe zum Pudel: 5 von 5 Sternen. Aber seine Laune bleibt bei 1 Stern.

[Octa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kant BTFO

[Madhab Dwibedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one hell of a book

[João Vaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1837, the Danish Royal Society announces a prize for a suitable essay on the basis of morals. Schopenhauer submits the only entry and compiles it into a book. The Royal Society claims Schopenhauer did not understand the question and did not award him the prize. Preface to the book? RAAAAAANNNNNNNNT. What a great ensemble of insults. The man is bitter. Delicious.

To the juice of it! Schop (prós amigos) first dedicates an entire section to a devastating critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, according to which man’s motivation for action rests on the existence of moral laws. The Categorical Imperative. The rational principle that we must follow despite any natural tendency we may have otherwise: “act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. For Kant, therefore, it is impossible that morality comes from within us, but rather bestowed upon us in some transcendental way, vulgo, God.

Schop, on the contrary, argues that moral stimuli or motives must be empirical and manifest themselves without waiting for us to reason them. They must come automatically, with such force as to overcome one of the fundamental springs of all actions: egoism. In Kant, the concept of a moral law is intimately related to that of duty - an obligation. But every ought derives meaning in reference to a threatened punishment or a promised reward. These motives are ultimately founded on selfish egoism and are therefore void of moral worth.

Instead, Schop considers that morality is based on the everyday phenomenon of “compassion”, or the state of being motivated by the suffering of another. This is something mysterious that reason can give no direct account of. Yet, it happens every day, and everyone has experienced it within themselves, when, on the spur of the moment, we help someone for the sake of their distress and danger. The underlying idea is that we identify ourselves with others and their pain becomes our own. To Schop, compassion is the sole non-egoistic motive, and therefore the only genuinely moral one.

To convince the reader, and in my favorite part of the book, Schop uses an experimentum crucis to show that this phenomenon is confirmed by experience. He considers two young men: Caius and Titus. Both passionately in love with a different girl and each of them thwarted by a specially favored rival. They decide to get rid of their rivals, secured from all detection and suspicion. When it came down to the wire, and after an inward struggle, they called it off. Schop then asks them to give a sincere and clear account of the reason why they abandoned their decision. For Caius, we are given a menu of explanations, each illustrating an ethical theory from the history of moral philosophy; namely Kant’s, which would have Caius say: “I consider that the maxim for my proceeding in this case would have been calculated to give a universally valid rule for all possible rational beings, since I would have treated my rival as a means and not as an end”. Titus, however, endorses Schop’s moral views, and says: “When it came to making the arrangements, and so for the moment I had to concern myself not with my passion but with that of my rival, I clearly saw for the first time what would really happen to him. But I was seized with compassion and pity; I felt sorry for him; I had not the heart to do it, and could not.” Schop then asks the reader: “Which of the two is the better man? (…) Which has been restrained by the purer motive? Accordingly, where does the foundation of morality lie?” Case in point. Granted, this crucial test may be muddled by how he framed Caius and Titus responses. Nonetheless, awfully compelling.

All in all, and for anyone interested in whether morality comes from within or without, this is an absolute must-read. If not for its content, at least for the glorious satirical tirades. I promise chuckles.

[Josiah Richardson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Schopenhauer's primary work on morality has four parts to it; the first part is the nitty-gritty, answering what the true basis of morality is in light of the current understanding. He secondly critiques Immanuel Kant and his work on Metaphysics. The third section is a working out of Schopenhauer's own ethical system of thought. The final portion is a summary of his thoughts on the metaphysics of morals in his own personal views.

Schopenhauer saw how many religious people based their morality on a rewards system where good deeds were rewarded after death and bad deeds were punished. Further, governmental structures are much in the same way because you will be jailed for your bad behavior or earthly rewards can be attained for good behavior. Even Immanuel Kant believed that a person's morality should align with universal law. But Schopenhauer saw all of these methods as simply an exercise in egoism. They were performing good deeds and avoiding bad ones simply by virtue of the hopes of a personal reward. Instead, Schopenhauer saw morality to be based on a compassionate system wherein acts of morality are those which others, without any other considerations, involve themselves in the lights of others in order to remove the suffering that is afflicting those people or animals. Schopenhauer maintains that compassion is not egoistic because compassionate people are taking on the suffering of others.

Kant, of course, mentioned a similar which in his Metaphysics work, saying that people should not be viewed as a means but instead an end. This is the only primary point of agreement between Schopenhauer and Kant, as Schopenhauer spends an entire section lambasting Kant for his universal law theories. Other philosophers thought Schopenhauer to be on point here, as in the case of Schrödinger who thought that Schopenhauer answered one of the two major questions about morality, namely, "what are the motives that lead to an ethical action?" The other major question, "what is an ethical action?" Or "what is standard of ethical vs. non-ethical?" would have to wait until Cornelius Van Til or Greg Bahnsen answered that.

Of course, there are a lot of issues with this understanding of the basis of morality. For instance, why is compassion never egoistic? Schopenhauer mentions that compassionate people involve themselves in the suffering of others, but so too do masochists. Further why assume that compassion is good in the first place? Why not allow the afflicted person to learn from their plight or mistakes and overcome them? Are there examples of compassion exhibited in animal life? Going back another step, why can't morality be based on those egoistic systems? Why are they immortal because they have punishments/rewards, but to involve oneself in the punishment of others to get a reward (removal of suffering) is a bridge too far? I could go on, but there are clear issues with this line of thought from Schopenhauer.

[Douglas Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nietzsche's hatred of Christianity was heavily influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, who essentially advocated for a metaphysics that more aligned with eastern Buddhism. This essay most clearly illustrates Schopenhauer's view on morality in the universe, which he discards all sense of Kant's duty or Hegel's guiding spirit in place of his own will that exists in everything and everyone, the same will that animates all of existence, an inescapable essence that just is.

In this case, Schopenhauer admits, there is no basis of an ethical system of morality, but he submits the somewhat Buddhist inspired notion of compassion as a moral system that the wisdom of the Vedic teachers of old taught. The essential idea of compassion is that everyone goes through suffering and seeing another person in suffering reminds one of their own experience and brings forth an empathetic response in support. He posits that selfless actions are impossible because every action comes from egoistic desires, and so compassion is a way to use those egoistic desires to help another that one sees as himself or could possibly become one day. Compassion serves as a self love corrective for the evil in the world.

In typical Schopenhauer fashion, this essay was meant for a competition in 1837 by a Danish organization, which was the only entry into the competition, and was also rejected by the council for not following the original query and for insulting a whole host of other philosophers. Oddly enough, the fact that Schopenhauer probably even knew this was a likely outcome and that he went ahead and wrote it anyway kind of makes him endearing to me in a way. Even though I think he was clinically depressed and probably was the source of his dark ideas, I somewhat admire his conviction to follow through on his ideas and beliefs.

Most who've read Schopenhauer's larger works can probably skip this, but for those who want to more study the ideas Nietzsche gravitated towards, it might be interesting given Nietzsche's hyperfocus on the ideas of morality and ethics.

[Brian Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure if this passes ethical philosophical muster, but it was a damn entertaining read, especially for 19th-century German philosophy. The way Schopenhauer totally trashes Kant's ethical edifice, dropping turds on virtually all of Kant's philosophical accomplishments...amazing.

This work was originally written for and submitted to the 1837 Royal Danish Society's essay contest on the metaphysical basis of morality. It was the only submission and it didn't win! Man was Schopenhauer PISSED! The Society claims Schopenhauer didn't actually address the challenge posed by the contest, and it seems like they are correct. Schopenhauer doesn't address any metaphysical basis for morality, because, as he argues in the work, there really can't be one without tons of handwaving, sophistry, and turd-covered mysticism.

Schopenhauer approaches ethics not from a perspective of how people *should* act (as Kant and many others have done), but really how they *do* act. He argues that moral acts derive essentially from compassion: that we should never harm others, and we should help whenever we can. The first part of the maxim Schopenhauer calls the virtue of "justice", the latter the virtue of "philanthropy", but it's really just the Golden Rule repackaged in Continental flare. Schopenhauer spends much time trying to flesh out how man, being fundamentally egoist, can act well towards others (especially if it disadvantages himself); he does sketch a metaphysical argument, mostly I think to appease the old guard, inspired by Eastern ideas that we are manifestations of a single underlying essence, and thus our egos are intertwined. It's a little too Deepak Chopra for my tastes, but it's not central to the thesis.

Short of a grand metaphysical explanation, it seems to me that egoism plus a healthy dose of empathy are all you need to flourish in Schopenhauer's moral world. If you have empathy, then egoism does the rest, as you realize that others desire precisely what you do. In summary, Schopenhauer offers a refreshingly empirical treatment of ethics as practiced by actual human beings, and he convincingly deconstructs much of Kant's academic, formal, and apparently irrelevant musings on morality.

[Zarathustra Goertzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Supremely beautiful, compact book on the basis of morality.

Schopenhauer exhaustively critiques Kant's moral theory for being without a grounded foundation, secretly sneaking in Christian views even. How can one even begin to behave morally via reasoning over "what one could will everyone to follow as law"? And treating everyone as an end in their own right and not merely a means..., what does this mean? Where it is clear, does not the virtue of compassion suffice?

Schopenhauer argues for founding morality in compassion, which is nearly universally acknowledged and universally felt. Thus we (almost) all have a foot in the door to moral understanding.

In the appendix, he suggests that the metaphysical foundation for this is in the unity of all beings, which is a trend continued with Daniel Kolak's Open Individualism etc. I think this is indeed the fruitful approach to pursue if one wishes to find a stronger universal ethics theorem than Gewirth's Principle of Generic consistency (which, imo, is rather weak and still permits predatory capitalism).

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.