Schopenhauer’s Principle and Foundation of Ethics

At one point during his critique of Kant’s theory of morality, Schopenhauer usefully distinguishes between the principle and foundation of ethics. He proposes that the principle “is the shortest and concisest expression for the line of conduct prescribed by [morality]” whereas the foundation is “the ground or reason” for that principle (BM, 68). In other words, the principle answers the question, “What does morality entail?”, while the foundation, only after the principle has been identified, answers the question, “Why does it entail that?” As we will see in later chapters, Nietzsche sought to determine both the principle and the foundation of morality. He also questioned whether there was only one possible principle and one possible foundation and whether the principle and foundation were permanent. Schopenhauer, however, believed that there was only one principle and one foundation and that these inextricably defined the very idea of morality. Furthermore, he believed that the principle was quite obvious whereas the foundation was much more difficult to ascertain. Thus, he claimed that “concerning [the principle’s] purport all teachers of ethics are really in agreement” while the “establishment [of that principle] is the constant endeavor of all teachers of morals” (BM, 69).

Schopenhauer believed that the principle of morality could be expressed best by the following proposition: “Injure no one; on the contrary, help everyone as much as you can” (BM, 69). This principle, considered in light of his claim that “intention alone decides the moral worth or worthlessness of a deed,” suggests that morally good behavior is that which is intended to help someone else (BM, 66-67). Conversely, morally bad behavior is that which is intended to hurt someone else. Less clear from the outset is whether behavior that is intended neither to help nor hurt someone else is morally good, bad, or neutral. The principle’s insistence that you “help everyone as much as you can” seems to suggest that one’s actions are good if intended to promote the well-being of others as effectively as possible and bad if they are not intended to do so. However, as we 16 will see, Schopenhauer interprets this principle differently by claiming that actions intended to neither help nor hurt others are neither good nor bad.

Despite his insistence that the principle of morality is obvious and widely acknowledged, Schopenhauer spends much of On the Basis of Morality elaborating upon the preconditions of that principle, specifically the various motives that determine human behavior. He contends that “there are generally only three fundamental incentives of human actions, and all possible motives operate solely through their stimulation” (BM, 145). The first is egoism (Egoismus), which “desires one’s own weal,” or well-being; the second is malice (Bosheit), which “desires another’s woe,” or misery; and the third is compassion (Mitleid), which “desires another’s weal” (BM, 145). Cartwright points out that Schopenhauer was keenly aware of a fourth fundamental incentive that desired one’s own woe and could be called “asceticism.” However, Schopenhauer claimed in a letter [^3] to have omitted this incentive from the discussion in On the Basis of Morality because that essay “was written in the spirit of the ethics prevailing in Protestant Europe.” 4 Out of these three incentives, Schopenhauer claims that egoism is by far the most powerful and “most intimately connected with [man’s] innermost core and essence” (BM, 131). He describes the overbearing nature of egoism at length, claiming that “egoism is boundless; man has the unqualified desire to preserve his existence, to keep it absolutely free from pain and suffering, which includes all want and privation” (BM, 131). He asserts, furthermore, that man “desires to have the greatest possible amount of well-being David E. Cartwright, “Nietzsche’s Use and Abuse of Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy for Life,” in 3 Willing and Nothingness, ed. Christopher Janaway (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 125. Ibid.4 17 and every pleasure of which he is capable” (BM, 131). Schopenhauer calls egoism the “antimoral force” because under the influence of egoism man acts according to the motto “everything for me and nothing for the others” (BM, 133, 132). Thus, while egoism provides the incentive for actions that “from a moral point of view, are…neither good nor bad,” it relentlessly motivates men to act in accordance with only their own well-being and therefore forms “the first and principal, although not the only force with which the moral incentive has to contend” (BM, 145, 134). Compassion, while not nearly as powerful as egoism, is the drive most central to Schopenhauer’s theory of morality. Indeed, for Schopenhauer compassion is the moral incentive itself and the key concept in his foundation of morality. He claims that “the absence of all egoistic motivation is…the criterion of an action of moral worth” (BM, 140). While “actions of pure malice and cruelty” are strictly speaking not egoistic, Schopenhauer disqualifies them for supposedly obvious reasons and asserts that actions of compassion are the only ones that are can be considered morally good (BM, 140). Compassion, he says, is the ability of one person to identify with “the weal and woe of another,” or in other words, “the immediate participation…primarily in the suffering of another” (BM, 143). This identification process, which Schopenhauer admits is “certainly astonishing, indeed, mysterious,” motivates men to act in ways that promote only the well-being of others, even if they must sacrifice their own well-being in the process (BM, 143, 144). This selfless promotion of the well-being of others can take either a negative or a positive form. The negative form, which he calls justice, occurs when “compassion 18 prevents [a man] from causing suffering to another and hence from becoming…the cause of another’s pain” (BM, 148). The positive form, which he calls philanthropy or loving- kindness, occurs when compassion “incites [a man] to active help” (BM, 148). The idea of justice corresponds to the principle’s proposition to “injure no one” whereas the idea of philanthropy corresponds to the principle’s proposition to “help everyone as much as you can” (BM, 149, 147). The difference between these two “cardinal virtues” is, according to Schopenhauer, simply a matter of the degree of compassion felt by the actor in any given situation and consequently the extent to which the actor attempts to promote the well- being of another (BM, 148).

After establishing that all morally good actions are motivated by compassion, Schopenhauer provides a metaphysical explanation for the existence of that compassion. In what he considers a supplement to the essay, Schopenhauer “leave[s] the firm ground of experience…in order to look for final theoretical satisfaction in a realm that cannot possibly be reached by any experience” (BM, 203). He finds theoretical satisfaction in the idea that compassion is the feeling one gets when one somehow realizes, if only temporarily, that “plurality and separateness belong only to the phenomenon [and] it is one and the same essence that manifests itself in all living things” (BM, 209). Schopenhauer’s metaphysical philosophy, which relies heavily on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic and is developed most thoroughly in The World as Will and Representation, presents the idea that the world as it really is (the thing-in-itself) is pure, undivided will. The thing-in-itself, however, is ordinarily not accessible to us directly but is rather obscured by the world as it appears to us (the phenomenon). The phenomenon, which is 19 shaped fundamentally by the concepts of space and time, presents things as individuated even though the thing-in-itself is not actually divided into separate entities at all. This principium individuationis (principle of individuation) leads men to consider other men, among other things, as entirely separate entities from each other. However, because at base all things are actually one and the same, this perception is merely illusory. Compassion is felt when a man realizes that he shares the same essence—or more specifically, the same will—with other men. That man is then motivated by compassion to promote the well-being of other men because he “recognizes and loves his own inner nature and self in all others” (BM, 213).

Schopenhauer defends his metaphysics of morals by claiming that the doctrine of the universally shared essence “existed long before Kant [and] might be said to have existed from time immemorial” (BM, 207). He claims that the writers of the ancient Hindu Upanishads, Pythagoras, the Neoplatonists, Scotus Erigena, Spinoza, and Kant all presented the doctrine in one form or another (BM, 208). However, despite this impressive list of thinkers who supposedly accepted the doctrine, Schopenhauer’s metaphysical basis for compassion remains perhaps the hardest notion for readers to accept in his entire theory of morality since the idea of a will underlying everything can only be affirmed with a stretch of the imagination. As we will see, Rée and Nietzsche both found the idea that morality could have such grounding entirely unacceptable.

Before going on to discuss Rée’s theory of morality, which was largely formulated in response to Schopenhauer, it will be useful to mention a final important feature of Schopenhauer’s theory. Schopenhauer believed wholeheartedly in the proposition operari 20 sequitur esse (“what we do follows from what we are”). This proposition holds that man’s character is essentially unalterable, particularly through learning. Consequently, man cannot be made to be more compassionate through moral instruction. Schopenhauer contends that “as something original, character is unchangeable, and therefore impervious to all improvement by means of a rectification of knowledge” (BM, 190). He asserts, furthermore, that “the difference of characters is innate and ineradicable. The wicked man is born with his wickedness as much as the serpent is with its poisonous fangs and glands; and he is as little able to change his character as the serpent its fangs” (BM, 187). When a man appears to change over the course of his lifetime, his character is only “stand[ing] out more clearly and distinctly” (BM, 191). For these reasons, and out of a concern for “personal freedom and individual development,” Schopenhauer warns against “distort[ing] the State into an institution for spreading morality and edifying instruction” (BM, 153). The proposition operari sequitur esse also has implications for the idea of bad conscience. Schopenhauer claims that because we cannot change who we are, we cannot feel guilty about particular actions that we have performed. Rather, he claims we can only feel guilty about our inborn character. He recalls “Kant’s doctrine of the coexistence of freedom with necessity” (which he actually considers “Kant’s greatest and most brilliant merit in the service of ethics”) to support the idea that guilt reflects our judgment about who we essentially are (BM, 109, 195). According to this doctrine, a man has no freedom with regard to his actions, and consequently a man’s “actions could never [have taken] a different course from the one they did”; in other words, the world is entirely deterministic 21 (BM, 112). The doctrine holds that man does, however, somehow have freedom with regard to initially choosing his esse (what he is). It seems that man must exercise this freedom before he is actually born, as his character is unchangeable from the very start of his life. Accordingly, such an exercise of freedom requires that man must exist supernaturally before entering the physical world. Schopenhauer fails to clarify how men are free to choose their characters in such a way and merely cites the tenth book of Plato’s The Republic as a mythical illustration of this idea. Nevertheless, he sustains a belief in freedom with regard to one’s esse so as to assert that when a man feels guilty, he laments the fact that he chose a character that would lead him to perform regrettable actions, not that he chose to perform those actions.