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SCHOPENHAUER'S BASIS OF MORALITY: Compassion, Ethics & the Human Will — Arthur Schopenhauer · SECRETS OF SUCCESS & WEALTH: Hidden Laws of Money, Power & Success

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  The Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer nineteen o three. The question the question
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  advanced by the Royal Society, together with the considerations leading up to it,
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  is as follows. The original idea of morality, or the leading conception of
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  the supreme moral law, occurs by a necessity which seems peculiar to the subject,
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  but which is by no means a logical one, both in that science,
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  whose object it is to set forth the knowledge of what is moral,
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  and also in real life, where it shows itself partly in the judgment passed
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  by conscience on our own actions, partly in our moral estimation of the actions
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  of others. Moreover, most of the chief conceptions in ethics, springing as
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  they do, out of that idea and inseparable from it, as for instance,
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  the conception of duty and the ascription of praise or blame, assert themselves
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  with the same necessity and under the same conditions. In view of these facts,
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  and because it appears highly desirable, considering the trend of philosophic investigation in
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  our time, to submit this matter to further scrutiny, the Society desires that
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  the following question be carefully considered and discussed. Is the fountain and basis of
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  morals to be sought for in an idea of morality which lies directly in the
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  consciousness or conscience, and in the analysis of the other leading ethical conceptions which
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  arise from it, Or is it to be found in some other source of
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  knowledge? Part one Introduction, Chapter one. The problem why do philosophers differ
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  so widely as to the first principles of morals but agree respecting the conclusions and
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  duties which they deduce from those principles. This is the question which was set
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  as subject for a prize essay by the Royal Society of Holland at Harlem eighteen
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  ten and solved by J. C. F. Meister, And in comparison
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  with the task before us, the inquiry presented no extraordinary difficulty. Four one.
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  The present question of the Royal Society has to do with nothing less important
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  than the objectively true basis of morals and consequently of morality. It is an
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  academy, be it observed, which invites this inquiry, and hence from its
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  position, it has no practical purpose in view, it asks for no discourse
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  in culcating the exercise of uprightness and virtue with arguments based on evidence of which
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  the plausibility is dwelt on and the sophistry evated, as is done in popular
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  manuals. Rather as its aim is not practical but only theoretical, it desires
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  nothing but the purely philosophical, that is, the objective undisguised and naked exposition
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  of the ultimate basis of all good moral conduct, independent of every positive law,
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  of every improved assumption, and hence free from all groundwork, whether metaphysical
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  or mythical. This, however, is a problem whose bristling difficulties are attested
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  by the circumstance that all philosophers in every age of land have blunted their wits
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  on it, and still more by the fact that all gods, oriental and
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  occidental actually derive their existence therefrom should, therefore, this opportunity serve to solve
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  it, assuredly, the Royal Society will not have expended its money amiss.
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  Two. Apart from this, a peculiar disadvantage will be found to attach to
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  any theoretical examination of the basis of morals, because such an investigation is suspiciously
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  like an attempt to undermine and occasion the collapse of the structure itself. The
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  fact is that in this matter we are apt to so closely associate practical aims
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  with theory, that the well meant zeal of the former is with difficulty restrained
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  from ill timed intervention. Nor is it within the power of every one to
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  clearly dissociate the purely theoretical search for objective truth, purged of all interest,
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  even of that of morality, as practiced, from a shameless attack on the
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  heart's sacred convictions. Therefore, he who here puts his hand to the plow
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  must for his encouragement. Ever, bear in mind that from the doings and
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  affairs of the populace, from the turmoil and bustle of the market place,
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  nothing is further removed than the quiet retreat and sanctuary of the academy, where
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  no noise of the world may enter, and where the only god, raised
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  on a pedestal, is truth in solitary, naked sublimity. The conclusion from
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  these two premises is that I must be allowed complete freedom of speech, as
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  well as the right of questioning everything, And furthermore, that if I succeed
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  in really contributing something, however small, to this subject, then that contribution
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  will be of no little importance. But there are still other difficulties obstructing my
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  path. The Royal Society asks for a short monograph setting forth the basis of
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  ethics entirely by itself, which means to say, independent of its connection with
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  the general system i e. The actual metaphysics of any philosophy. Such a
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  demand must not only render the accomplishment of the task more difficult, but necessarily
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  make it imperfect. Long ago, Christian Wolf, in his Philosophia Practica,
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  observed darkness in practical philosophy is only dispersed when the light of metaphysics shines on
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  it, and Cant in a preface to his Grundlegung Zoo Metaphysictor sitt In,
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  remarks, metaphysics must precede and is in every case indispensable to moral philosophy.
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  For just as every religion on earth, so far as it prescribes morality,
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  does not leave the latter to rest on itself, but backs it by a
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  body of dogmas, the chief end of which is precisely to be the prop
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  of the moral sense. So with philosophy, the ethical basis, whatever it
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  be, must itself attached to and find its support in one system of metaphysics
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  or another, that is to say, in a presupposed explanation of the world
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  and of existence in general. This is so because the ultimate and true conclusion
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  concerning the essential nature of the universe must necessarily be closely connected with that touching
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  the ethical significance of human action, and because, in any case, that
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  which is presented as the foundation of morality, if it is not to be
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  merely an abstract formula floating in the clouds and out of contact with the real
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  world, must be some fact or other discoverable either in the objective cosmos or
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  else in man's consciousness. But as such it can itself be only a phenomenon,
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  and consequently, like all other phenomena, it requires a further explanation,
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  and this explanation is supplied by metaphysics. Philosophy. Indeed, is such a
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  connected whole that it is impossible to exhaustively discuss any one part without all the
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  others being involved. Thus, Plato says, quite correctly, do you think
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  that it is possible to understand it all adequately the nature of the soul,
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  without at the same time understanding the nature of the whole? I? E.
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  The totality of things, the metaphysics of nature, the metaphysics of morals,
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  and the metaphysics of the beautiful mutually presuppose each other, and only when
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  taken as connected together do they complete the explanation of things as they really are,
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  and of existence in general. So that whoever should exactly trace one of
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  these three to its ultimate origin would be found to have necessarily brought the others
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  into his solution of the problem, just as an absolutely clear and exhaustive understanding
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  of any single thing in the world would imply a perfect comprehension of everything else.
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  Now, if we were to start from a given system of metaphysics,
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  which is assumed to be true, we should reach synthetically a basis of morals,
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  and this basis, being so to say, built up from below,
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  would provide the resulting ethical structure with a sure foundation. But in the present
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  case, since the terms of the question enforced the separation of ethics from all
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  metaphysics, there remains nothing but the analytic method, which proceeds from facts,
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  either of external experience or of consciousness. It is true that thus the ultimate
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  origin of the latter may be traced back to the human spirit. A source,
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  which then, however, must be taken as a fundamental fact, a
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  primary phenomenon underivable from anything else, with the result that the whole explanation remains
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  simply a psychological one at best. Its connection with any general metaphysical standpoint can
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  only be described as accessory. On the other hand, the fundamental datum,
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  the primary phenomenon of ethics, so found in man's nature, could itself,
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  in its turn, be accounted for and explained if we might first treat of
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  metaphysics, and then, by the synthetic method, deduce ethics from it.
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  This would mean, however, nothing less than the construction of a complete system
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  of philosophy, whereby the limits of the given question would be far exceeded.
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  I am therefore compelled to answer it within the lines which its own isolated narrowness
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  has laid down. And lastly, there is the following consideration. The basis
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  on which it is here intended to place ethics will prove to be a very
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  small one, and the consequence is that of the many lawful, approval and
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  praise worthy actions of mankind, only the minority will be found to spring from
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  purely moral motives, while the majority will have to be attributed to other sources.
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  This gives less satisfaction. Has not such a specious glitter, as let
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  us say, a categorical imperative which always stands ready for commands, only that
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  itself, in its turn, may command what ought to be done and what
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  ought to be left undone not to mention other foundations that are entirely material.
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  I can only therefore remind the reader of the saying in Ecclesiastes four six.
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  Better is a handful with quietness than both the hands full with travail and vexation
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  of spirit. In all knowledge, the genuine proof resisting indestructible coefficient is never
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  large, just as in the Earth's metallic straita, a hundredweight of stone hides
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  but a few ounces of gold. But whether others will prefer, as I
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  do, the assured to the bulky possession the small quantity of gold which remains
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  in the crucible to them a big lump of matter that was brought along with
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  it, or whether I shall rather be charged with having removed from ethics its
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  basis instead of providing one, in so far as I prove that the lawful
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  and commendable actions of mankind often do not contain a particle of pure moral worth,
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  and in most cases only a very little resting, as they do otherwise
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  on motives, the sufficiency of which must ultimately be referred to the egoism of
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  the doer. All this I must leave undecided, and I do so not
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  without anxiety, nay, rather with resignation, because I have long since been
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  of the same mind as Johann George Vaughan Zimmermann when he said, rest assured
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  until your dying day, that nothing in the world is so rare as a
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  good judge. You ber die. I'm sankite for all true and voluntary righteousness,
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  for all loving kindness, for all nobleness, wherever these qualities may be
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  found. My theory can only point to a very small foundation, whereas my
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  opponents confidently construct broad basis for morals which are made strong enough for every possible
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  burden, and are at the same time thrust upon every doubter's conscience, accompanied
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  with a threatening side glance at his own morality. As contrasted with these,
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  my own position is indeed in sore and sorry plight. It is like that
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  of Cordelia before King Leir, with her weakly worded assurance of dutiful affection compared
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  with the effusive protestations of her more eloquent sisters, so that there seems to
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  be need of a cordial that may be furnished by some maxim taken from intellectual
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  hunting grounds, such as magna est vis veritatis e privlebit. Great is the
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  strength of truth, and it will prevail. But to a man who has
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  lived and labored, even this fails to give much encouragement. Meanwhile, I
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  will for once make the venture with truth on my side, and what opposes
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  me will at the same time oppose truth. Chapter two General retrospect for the
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  people. Morality comes through and is founded on theology as the express will of
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  God. On the other hand, we see philosophers, with few exceptions,
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  taking special pains to entirely exclude this kind of foundation. Indeed, so they
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  may but avoid it. They prefer even to find a refuge in sophistry.
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  Whence comes this antithesis. Assuredly, no more efficient basis for ethics can be
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  imagined, and the theological for who would be so bold as to oppose the
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  will of the almighty and the omniscient, Unquestionably no one. If only this
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  will be proclaimed in an authentic official manner, if one may say so,
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  whereby no possible room for doubt could be left. This, however, is
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  precisely the condition which does not admit of being realized. It is rather the
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  inverse process which is attempted. The law declared to be the will of God,
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  men try to accredit as such by demonstrating its agreement with our own,
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  independent and hence natural moral views, and an appeal is consequently made to these
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  as being more direct and certain. But this is not all. We perceive
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  that an action performed solely through threat of punishment and promise of reward would be
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  moral much more in appearance than in reality, since after all, it would
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  have its root in egoism, and in the last resort the scale would be
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  turned by the greater or less amount of credulity evinced in each case. Now
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  it was none other than Kant who destroyed the foundations of speculative theology, which
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  up to his time were accounted unshakable. Speculative theology had hitherto sustained ethics,
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  and in order to procure for the former and existence of some sort, if
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  only an imaginary one, his wish was to proceed inversely and make ethics sustain
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  speculative theology, so that it is now more than ever impossible to think of
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  basing ethics on theology, for no one knows any longer which of the two
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  is to be the supporter, and which the supported. And the consequence is
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  a circulus viciosis. It is precisely through the use the influence of Kant's philosophy,
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  through the contemporaneous effect of the unparalleled progress made in all the natural sciences,
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  with regard to which every past age, in comparison with our own,
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  appears childish. And lastly, through the knowledge of Sanskrit literature and of those
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  most ancient and widest spread faiths, Brahminism and Buddhism, which as far as
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  time and space go, are the most important religion systems of mankind. And
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  as a matter of fact, are there original native religions of our own race,
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  now well known to be of Asiatic descent, our race to which in
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  its new strange home, they once more send a message across the centuries.
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  It is because of all this I say that the fundamental philosophical convictions of learned
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  Europe have, in the course of the last fifty years, undergone a revolution
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  which perhaps many only reluctantly admit, but which cannot be denied. The result
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  of this change is that the old supports of ethics have been shown to be
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  rotten, while the assurance remains that ethics itself can never collapse. Whence the
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  conveyiction arises that for it there must exist a groundwork different from any hitherto provided
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  and adaptable to the advanced views of the age. The need of such as
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  making itself felt more and more, and in it we undoubtedly find the reason
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  that has induced the Royal Society to make the present important question the subject of
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  a prize essay. In every age, much good morality has been preached,
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  but the explanation of its rais on dietry has always been encompassed with difficulties.
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  On the whole. We discern and endeavor to get at some objective truth from
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  which the ethical injunctions could be logically deduced. And it has been sought for
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  both in the nature of things and in the nature of man. But in
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  vain the result was always the same. The will of each human unit was
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  found to gravitate solely towards its own individual welfare, the idea of which in
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  its entirety is designated by the term blissfulness, and this striving after self satisfaction
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  leads mankind by a path vary different to the one morality would Fain point out.
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  The endeavor was next made now to identify blissfulness with virtue, now to
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  represent it as virtue's consequence and effect. Both attempts have always failed, and
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  this for no want of sophistry. Then recourse was had to artificial formulas,
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  purely objective and abstract, as well a posteriority as a priori, from which
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  correct ethical conduct undoubtedly admitted of being deduced. But there was nothing found in
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  man's nature to afford these a footing, whereby they might have availed to guide
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  the strivings of his volition in face of its egoistic tendency. It appears to
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  me superfluous to verify all this by describing and criticizing every hitherto existing foundation of
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  morality, not only because I share Augustine's opinion none as pro magno habandon quid
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  hominy censorant said quay sit ray veritas. It is the truth about a thing,
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  not men's opinions thereon, that is of importance, but also because it
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  would be like carrying coals to Newcastle. For previous attempts to give a foundation
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  to ethics are sufficiently well known to the Royal Society, and the very question
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  proposed shows that it is also convinced of their inadequateness. Any reader less well
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  informed will find it careful, if not complete, presentment of the attempts hitherto
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  made in Garve's ubersikter vornumston principient der sidinlere, and again in Stadlin's Gestic de
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  moral Philosophy. It is of course very disheartening to reflect that ethics, which
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  so directly concerns life, has met with the same unhappy fate as the abstruse
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  science of metaphysics, and that its first principle, though perpetually sought for ever
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  since the time of Socrates, has still to be found. Moreover, we
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  must remember that in ethics, much more than in any other science, what
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  is essential is contained in its fundamental propositions. The deductions are so simple that
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  they come of themselves. For all are capable of drawing a conclusion, but
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  few of judging. And this is exactly the reason why lengthy textbooks and dissertations
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  on morals are as superfluous as they are tedious. Meantime, if I may
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  postulate an acquaintance with all the former foundations of ethics, my task will be
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  lightened. Whoever observes how ancient as well as modern philosophers, the Church creed
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  sufficed, for the Middle Ages have had recourse to the most diverse and extraordinary
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  arguments in order to provide for the generally recognized requirements of morality a basis capable
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  of proof, And how notwithstanding they admittedly failed. He will be able to
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  measure the difficulty of the problem and estimate my contribution accordingly. And he who
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  has learned to know that none of the roads hitherto struck on lead to the
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  goal, will be the more willing to tread with me a very different path
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  from these, a path which up to now either has not been noticed or
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  else has been passed over with contempt, perhaps because it was the most natural
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  one. As a matter of fact, my solution of the question will remind
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  many of Columbus Egg. It is solely to the latest attempt at giving a
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  basis to ethic, I mean the Kantian that a critical examination will be devoted.
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  I shall make it all the more exhaustive, partly because the great ethical
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  reform of Kank gave to this science a foundation having a real superiority to previous
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  ones, and partly because it still remains the last important pronouncement in this domain,
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  for which reason it has obtained general acceptance up to the present day,
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  and is universally taught, although differently garnished by certain changes in the demonstration and
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  in the terminology. It is the ethical system of the last sixty years which
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  must be removed. Ere we enter on another path. Furthermore, my criticism
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  of the Kantian basis will give me occasion to examine and discuss most of the
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  fundamental conceptions of ethics, and the outcome of this investigation I shall later on
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  be able to postulate. Besides, inasmuch as opposites illustrate each other, it
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  is exactly this course which will be the best preparation and guide, indeed the
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  direct way to my own position, which in its essential points is diametric opposed
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  to Kant's. It would therefore be a very perverse beginning to skip the following
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  criticism and turn at once to the positive part of my exposition, which then
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  would remain only half intelligible. In any case, the time has assuredly arrived
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  for once to cite ethics before the bar of a searching scrutiny. During more
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  than half a century it has been lying comfortably on the RESTful cushion which Kant
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  arranged for it, the cushion of the categorical imperative of practical reason. In
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  our day, this imperative is mostly introduced to us under a name which,
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  being smoother and less ostentatious, has obtained more currency. It is called the
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  moral law, and thus entitled with a passing bow to reason and experience.
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  It slips through unobserved into the house. Once inside, there is no end
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  to its orders and commands, nor can it ever afterwards be brought to account.
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  It was proper, indeed inevitable, that Kant, as the inventor of
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  the thing, should remain satisfied with his creation, particularly as he shelved by
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  its means errors still more glaring. But to be obliged to look on and
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  see asses disporting themselves on the comfortable cushion which he prepared, and which since
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  his time has been more and more trampled on and flattened out, This truly
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  is hard. I allude to the daily hackney compilers, who, with the
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  ready confidence born of stupidity, imagine that they have given a foundation to ethics
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  if they do but appeal to that moral law which is alleged to be inherent
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  in our reason. And then they complacently weave upon this such a confused and
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  wide reaching tissue of phrases that they succeed in rendering unintelligible the clearest and simplest
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  relations of life, and all this without ever one seriously asking themselves whether,
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  in point of fact, there really does exist such a moral law, as
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  a convenient code of morality graven in our heads or hearts. Hence, I
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  admit the especial pleasure I feel in proceeding to remove from ethics its broad cushion
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  of repose. And I unreservedly declare my intention of proving that Kant's practical reason
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  and categorical imperative are completely unwarrantable, baseless and fabricated assumptions. And I shall
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  further show that Kant's whole system, like those of his predecessors, is in
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  want of a solid foundation. Consequently, ethics will again be consigned to its
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  former, entirely helpless condition there to remain until I come to demonstrate the true
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  moral principle of human nature, a principle which is incontestably efficient and has its
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  root in our very being. The latter, however, has no such broad
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  basis to offer as the above mentioned cushion, so that doubtless those who are
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  accustomed to take things easily will not abandon their comfortable old seat before they are
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  thoroughly aware how deeply the ground on which it stands is undermined. I cannot
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  tell what mischiefs lye, or rather what fatality leads man to credit more the
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  lie than truth in naked purity Casti