Introduction to Schopenhauer’s Life and Primary Works on Morality

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig in 1788 to a merchant family of Dutch heritage. While his father desired to see the young Schopenhauer become an 1 international businessman, Schopenhauer absorbed himself in philosophy at the University of Göttingen starting in 1809 and then at the University of Berlin starting in 1811. In 1813, he wrote The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason for which he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy by the University of Jena. Between 1814 and 1818, he wrote his most famous work, The World as Will and Representation, and in 1820, he began lecturing in philosophy at the University of Berlin. Apparently out of disdain for G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), who also lectured at the University of Berlin at the time, Schopenhauer scheduled his lectures to conflict with those of Hegel. Unfortunately for Schopenhauer, Hegel’s lectures were far more popular than his own, and Schopenhauer left teaching to travel for a few years starting in 1822. While he tried unsuccessfully to teach again in 1825, he eventually ended up moving to Frankfurt in 1833, where he remained for the rest of his life. Over the course of his twenty-seven years in Frankfurt, he wrote On the Will in Nature (1836), On the Freedom Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Arthur Schopenhauer”; available from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/; Internet; accessed 4 May 2007. 6 of Human Will (1839), On the Basis of Morality (1840), and Parerga and Paralipomena (1851). While two of these works—On the Will in Nature and Parerga and Paralipomena —addressed a variety of topics, the two others—On the Freedom of Human Will and On the Basis of Morality—focused on issues of morality in particular and consequently were consolidated into a book entitled The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841). Schopenhauer finally began receiving recognition for his work in 1853 but died soon afterward in 1860.

Out of the two works that formed The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, the later work entitled On the Basis of Morality presents Schopenhauer’s theory of morality most thoroughly. Schopenhauer wrote this work in response to an essay contest held by the Royal Danish Society of Scientific Studies in 1837 (BM, ix). The society posed the following question: Are the source and foundation of morals to be looked for in an idea of morality lying immediately in consciousness (or conscience) and in the analysis of the other fundamental moral concepts springing from that idea, or are they to be looked for in a different ground of knowledge? (BM, ix) While Schopenhauer was the lone entrant in the contest, he was (much to his chagrin) not awarded the contest’s prize. The Society rejected his entry for several reasons. In its judgment, Schopenhauer misunderstood the question posed by the contest, relegated the most pertinent part of his essay (his treatment of metaphysics) to an “appendix,” failed to support adequately his assertion “that compassion is the foundation of morality,” and spoke of “several distinguished philosophers of recent times…in a manner so unseemly 7 as to cause just and grave offense” (BM, 216). In response to the Society’s offensive criticism, Schopenhauer railed against the Society in both prefaces that later introduced the published version of his essay. Despite the Society’s harsh opinion, David E. Cartwright has claimed that On the Basis of Morality may very well have been as influential as other important nineteenth- century works on ethics such as Hegel’s Natural Law and Political Science in Outline: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, John Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) Utilitarianism, and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals (BM, xi). Cartwright points out that, while

Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer were all critics of Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) landmark theory of morality, Schopenhauer was perhaps the most astute critic of Kant’s theory. He also provided an alternative theory to Kant’s that differed radically from those of Hegel, Mill, and Nietzsche. While Nietzsche’s theory of morality was indeed radically different from Schopenhauer’s, we will see in later chapters that his theory retained several important elements of Schopenhauer’s, even if Nietzsche did not accept the fundamental principles of morality presented by Schopenhauer. In On the Basis of Morality, Schopenhauer presents his theory of morality in three main parts. Recognizing that his theory is largely a response to Kant’s theory, Schopenhauer spends almost the entire first half of the essay refuting Kant’s view of morality. He then spends most of the second half explaining how morality is based on the feeling of compassion (Mitleid) and not pure reason (Reinen Vernunft), as Kant had argued. In the final pages of the essay, Schopenhauer speculates on the metaphysical basis for compassion, which he suggests lies in the universality of the will. Thus, by the 8 end of the essay Schopenhauer has tied his theory of morality to the centerpiece of his philosophy as a whole, the idea that the thing-in-itself, or the noumenon, is pure will.