Abstract
“To preach morals is easy; to ground morals is difficult” (“Moral predigen ist leicht, Moral begründen schwer”), Schopenhauer says in the epigraph to his treatise on the two basic problems of ethics (thus quoting himself from On Will in Nature). But if this was meant as a sly dig against Kant, it was beside the point. Kant wished no more than Schopenhauer to ‘preach’ some new ethics; like Schopenhauer (though in a different way, to be sure) he sought a solid foundation for any moral philosophy. Now it is of course true that the subject matter of this department of philosophy makes an aloof, ‘objective’ treatment somewhat difficult. Even Kant (of all people) managed to become lyrical about (of all things) such a sober and prosaic thing as ‘duty’.*367 And how about Schopenhauer in this regard? After all, he prided himself on his strictly empirical method, with the core of his argument against Kant residing in the claim that his own moral philosophy is more scientific than Kant’s in that the latter proceeds from “aprioristic sand castles” whereas he himself remains firmly on empirical ground by offering an analysis of actual human conduct. Still, moral passion, indignation about cruelty (especially against animals!), and eloquent scorn for false prophets is what drips from every page. Indeed, if Schopenhauer wished to play the role of an impartial observer of human conduct, he played it badly. And how could it be otherwise? A man like Hegel, who was able to discern the “cunning of reason” behind all apparent misery, can afford, in speaking about ethics, to be purely ‘descriptive’ rather than ‘prescriptive’. Someone like Schopenhauer cannot.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Here, of course, we have in mind the famous passage in the Critique of Practical Reason: “Duty! thou sublime and great name, that contains nothing popular and charming, but demands subjection; but that neither threatens with anything naturally repulsive and abhorrent to the mind in order to «move the will; but that only formulates a law which of itself finds access into the mind and yet involuntarily gains worship (though not always obedience), and before which all inclinations fall silent (though they secretly work against it) — what is the origin, worthy of you, and where does one find the root of thy noble descent which proudly declines any kinship with inclinations and the descent from which is the indispensable condition of that value that human beings can only themselves bestow upon themselves?” “Pflicht! du erhabener großer Name, der du nichts Beliebtes, was Einschmeichelung bei sich führt, in dir fassest, sondern Unterwerfung verlangst, doch auch nichts drohest, was natürliche Abneigung im Gemüthe erregte und schreckte, um den Willen zu bewegen, sondern bloß ein Gesetz aufstellst, welches von selbst im Gemüthe Eingang findet, und doch sich selbst wider Willen Verehrung (wenn gleich nicht immer Befolgung) erwirbt, vor dem alle Neigungen verstummen, wenn sie gleich in Geheim ihm entgegen wirken, welches ist der deiner würdige Ursprung, und wo findet man die Wurzel deiner edlen Abkunft, welche alle Verwandtschaft mit Neigungen stolz ausschlägt, und von welcher Wurzel abzustammen, die unnachlaßliche Bedingung desjenigen Werths ist, den sich Menschen allein selbst geben können?”). The answer, as is to be expected, is that this origin lies in human personality, i.e., in the freedom and independence from the mechanisms of nature that distinguishes man insofar as he belongs to the intelligible world.
He compares moral conduct with Goethe’s Urphänomen which stands at the end of any scientific investigation while leaving open the question of its ultimate foundation.
“Der erste Grad der Wirkung des Mitleids ist also, daß es den von mir selbst, in Folge der mir einwohnenden antimoralischen Potenzen, Andern zu verursachenden Leiden, hemmend entgegentritt, mir “Halt!” zuruft und sich als eine Schutzwehr vor den Andern stellt, die ihn vor der Verletzung bewahrt, zu welcher außerdem mein Egoismus, oder Bosheit, mich treiben würde.”
This is a recurrent topic in the work of a contemporary thinker like Lévinas who (to quote one instance), in speaking about the “countenance” (le visage), calls it “inviolable”, and continues thus: “these absolutely unprotected eyes, the most naked part of the human body, nevertheless offer an absolute resistance to possession, an absolute resistance, to which corresponds the temptation of an absolute negation. The Other is the one being that one may be tempted to kill. This temptation to murder and this impossibility of murdering constitute together the very aspect of the countenance. To see a countenance means already to hear: ‘thou shalt not kill’.” (“ces yeux absolument sans protection, partie la plus nue du corps humain, offrent cependant une résistance absolue à la possession, résistance absolue où s’inscrit la tentation d’une négation absolue. Autrui est le seul être qu’on peut être tenté de tuer. Cette tentation du meurtre et cette impossibilité du meurtre constituent la vision même du visage. Voir un visage, c’est déjà entendre: Tu ne tueras point’”). This is a moral, not a real impossibility, to be sure, for in reality murder is of course possible, since we are not concerned here with the experience of an obstacle which is too great for our power; but it is possible only when you have not looked the other in the face. Schopenhauer could not have objected to this statement, which indeed is very much like his own. Still, he would surely not have failed (probably muttering something about foetor judaicus) to object to a commandment from the Mosaic Decalogue being introduced into moral philosophy (especially when Lévinas adds: “And all that I can learn from God and understand about God, who is invisible, must have come to me by the same, unique voice.” (“Et tout ce que je peux entendre de Dieu, et à Dieu, qui est invisible, doit m’être venu par la même voix, unique.”)), and to add indignantly that a dog has a countenance and eyes, too...
cf. Chapter VI, footnote on p. 143.
Cf. Chapter VI, p. 152. Let it be granted: human nature is always able to surprise one by the contradictions that can be found in one and the same specimen of the genus. Even “that man” might therefore exist after all (though until further notice we persist in our lack of belief). And there are examples of the opposite case, as we know now. Living in the backward 19th century Schopenhauer was mercifully spared the acquaintance with the type, exemplified by a man like Himmler who (probably rightly) claimed to be not cruel-hearted or blood-thirsty by nature at all, but to be firmly dedicated to fulfilling the hard and bitter duty of exterminating the eternal foe of Aryan culture. Evidently, such a sense of ‘duty’ has nothing whatever to do with the Categorical Imperative (though Himmler may have imagined it did).
We have seen him doing so before in Chapter IV, p. 111.
“I venture to say, therefore, that my ethics is wholly orthodox with regard to the Upanishads of the holy Veda’s and to Buddha’s world religion, nay more, that it does not contradict old, genuine Christianity.” (“Ich getröste mich demnach, daß meine Ethik, in Beziehung auf den Upanischad der heiligen Veden, wie auch auf die Weltreligion Buddhas, völlig orthodox ist, ja, selbst mit dem alten, ächten Christenthum nicht im Widerspruch steht.”) This must have been reassuring to Schopenhauer, says Thomas Mann, going on with lovely irony to quote Gretchen: “ungefähr sagt das der Pfarrer auch, nur mit ein bißchen andern Worten.” (“that is by and large what the priest also says, only in somewhat different words”).
As is to be expected, and in spite of “love of truth being his principal, perhaps his only, virtue” (“Wahrheitsliebe ist seine größte, vielleicht seine einzige Tugend”, as Johanna once said — and who would be a better judge?), Schopenhauer, too, held that lying is under certain circumstances rightly allowed by any normal man, even though, generally speaking, it is of course reprehensible. However, this reprehensibility is made to follow by him, not so much from its undermining effect on any legal system, as Kant thought, but rather from its connection with violence, since lying is an instrument of cunning, i.e., of coercion by means of motivation. In order to protect myself from violence I am therefore allowed under certain circumstances to lie. Similarly, to protect my privacy (‘ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies’). Constant went still further — he held against Kant that under certain circumstances (for example, when someone with the intention of killing a person who happens to be in my house asks me about the whereabouts of his intended victim) to lie is not only allowed but even obligatory. Constant’s argument was countered by Kant by means of what in our opinion comes down to a miserable sophism quite unworthy of its author.
That for Kant lying is the principal sin has, of course, everything to do with the rational foundation of his ethics, which Schopenhauer rejected; and indeed the truth commandment can be seen as the link between ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ reason, as we argued in Chapter VI, footnote on p. 138. But the difference is in our opinion that in the first case it is the virtue, whereas in the second case it remains a virtue, of course, yet one that must be weighed against other virtues (e.g., ‘mercy’, as in the case of Gregers Werle). Kant’s pathos of truth calls to mind Chesterton’s acute remark: “the modern world is not evil: in some ways the modern world is far too good... The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.” And already Pascal confessed that an excessive degree of one virtue is for him admirable only when it is accompanied by a no less excessive degree of the opposite virtue (“Je n’admire point l’excès d’une vertu comme de la valeur si je ne vois en même temps l’excès de la vertu opposée.”).
According to Weber, the Gesinnungsethiker, out of the absolutism of his demands, cannot bear the ethical irrationality of the world; his brand of humaneness is therefore called by Weber “a-cosmistic”. This kind of ethics (of which the Sermon on the Mount may be regarded as the classic example) is becoming to a saint, not a politician. For, whereas from a-cosmistic love-ethics it follows that you should not resist evil, the politician is obliged to resist evil since otherwise he is responsible for its expansion. Moreover, the attainment of an ethically good end is often dependent on the use of ethically doubtful or dangerous means; therefore, although logically the Gesinnungsethiker has no other possibility than to reject any action which makes use of ethically dangerous means, in reality we see again and again that the Gesinnungsethiker suddenly turns into a chiliastic prophet, who, after having first preached ‘love against violence’, summons in the next moment to violence — namely, to the ultimate violence that will bring about the destruction of all violence. Indeed, the experience of the 20th century has amply confirmed this observation by Weber.
Women, according to Schopenhauer, are less rational than men, i.e., they are to a lesser extent gifted with the faculty of distinguishing general principles; therefore, in the virtue of justice they generally rate below men. But they exceed men in the virtue of human sympathy — here the motive is as a rule more directly tangible so that it exerts a more straightforward appeal to compassion, to which women are certainly more susceptible. “The idea of seeing women holding the office of judge provokes laughter; but the sisters of charity exceed even the brothers of charity.” (“Der Gedanke, Weiber das Richteramt verwalten zu sehen, erregt Lachen; aber die barmherzigen Schwestern übertreffen sogar die barmherzigen Brüder.”) Mirabile dictu our old misogynist is here to a large extent in agreement with a present-day feminist author, namely, Carol Gilligan, in her book In a different voice.
Kant actually offers several variations, but for all practical purposes we may confine ourselves to the distinction between the ‘formai’ and the ‘material’ version.
“Diese feinfühlende englische Nation sehen wir, vor allen andern, durch ein hervorstechendes Mitleid mit Thieren ausgezeichnet welches sich bei jeder Gelegenheit kund giebt und die Macht gehabt hat, dieselbe dem sie übrigens degradirenden ‘kalten Aberglauben’ zum Trotz, dahin zu bewegen, daß sie die in der Moral von der Religion gelassene Lücke durch die Gesetzgebung ausfüllte.”
One might object that this goes for children, too; but Ferry would no doubt retort that children, although for the moment still lacking the ability to be a partner in a freely entered contract, as human beings in principle do have it.
This seems at odds with our own opinion on animal representations as given in Chapter IV, p 107. Indeed we believe that in the case of the beaver (Kant’s example) one cannot strictly speak of ‘representations’ since its activity is wholly programmed by its instinct. It is otherwise with the behaviour of some apes who seem to be able to act with discretion; anyhow, in the case of the beaver, too, we are not concerned with a ‘machine’ in the sense of Descartes! For indeed, as the utilitarianists rightly stressed, it is the animal’s capacity to suffer (a capacity oddly denied it by Descartes) which makes it analogous to man, even though they failed to see the link between this capacity and the freedom rightly stressed by Kant.
He quotes Aristotle: “What a terrible nature is it to which we belong.”(“Was für eine entsetzliche Natur ist dies die wir angehören.”).
We would add that, on the other hand, when people talk about nature, unconsciously they often have parks and gardens in mind, that is to say, places in which, thanks to human cultivation, beautiful and rare species are enabled to survive which in real nature might have been selected out in the struggle for life.
Certainly Schopenhauer who, although a metaphysician, was a decided atheist, would vehemently have rejected Ivan Karamasov’s claim that, if there is no God, anything is permitted. And we, for our part, do not in the least intend to join those who think either a ‘theist’ or ‘atheist’ (like Buddhism) metaphysical foundation a priori necessary for genuinely moral conduct. But we do think it a posteriori necessary, so to speak, since as reasonable beings we cannot be content with the simple assertion that either our biological instinct or the historically determined norms of our particular civilization happen to incite us to moral conduct. Cf. for this also the final section of Chapter VIII.
“Metaphysik ist Wissenschaft von Demjenigen, was jenseits der Möglichkeit aller Erfahrung liegt.” “Ein solches kann nimmermehr gefunden werden nach Grundsätzen, die selbst erst aus der Erfahrung geschöpft sind, sondern nur Das, was wir vor, also unabhängig von aller Erfahrung wissen, kann weiter reichen als mögliche Erfahrung.”
“... im Tisch, daran Sie schreiben, im Stuhl unter Ihrem Werthesten...”
It is not therefore by chance that Kant’s ‘positive’ period opens with the ‘Metaphysics of Morals’ (Metaphysik der Sitten), consisting of a ‘Metaphysik der Tugendlehre’ and a ‘Metaphysik der Rechtslehre’ (see above), as Raymund Schmidt has rightly pointed out.
We come back to this in Chapter IX, p. 240.
It is in fact not otherwise with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, as is to be expected from their common Greek background. Hence, in spite of all the differences between them as political thinkers, for both men a good society is a society where everything is in its right place: ‘justice’, e.g., is therefore quite compatible with slavery. It would of course be wholly unhistorical to reproach them for this; but it would be no less unhistorical to forget that it is a far cry from there to Kant’s doctrine that every human being should be treated as an end in itself. Although he does not refer to Plato’s “Idea of the Good”, Kant in the Groundwork rejects “the ontological concept of perfection” as a foundation for morality. His reason is that, although it is to be preferred to the theological concept of a divine will on the one hand and to the empirical concept of happiness on the other, it has in common with these that it turns heteronomy of the will into the primary foundation of morality.
‘Being’, mark you, to be understood here not as empirical being but precisely as the true Being of the Ideas); the Idea of the Good is therefore of a fundamentally different nature from the other Ideas.
We come back to this in the final section of Chapter VIII.
“L’idée-athée par excellence est l’idée de progrès, qui est la negation de la preuve ontologique expérimentale, car elle implique que le médiocre peut de lui-même produire le meilleur.”
“Je n’ai pas en moi de principe d’ascension. Je ne puis grimper dans l’air jusqu’au ciel. C’est seulement en orientant ma pensée vers quelque chose de meilleur que moi, que ce quelque chose me tire vers le haut. Si je suis réellement tiré, ce quelque chose est réel. Aucune perfection imaginaire ne peut me tirer en haut, même d’un millimêtre. Car une perfection imaginaire se trouve automatiquement au niveau de moi qui l’imagine, ni plus haut ni plus bas.”
Curiously, a similar statement is made by Sartre: “The absence of God is no longer the closing but rather the opening of the Infinite. The absence of God is greater and more divine than God.” (“L’absence de Dieu n’est plus la fermeture; c’est l’ouverture de l’Infini. L’absence de Dieu est plus grande, elle est plus divin que Dieu.”).
“La réligion en tant que source de consolation est un obstacle à la véritable foi: en ce sens l’athéisme est une purification.”
Lévinas has called Judaism “une religion d’adultes”.
“Here it should be noticed that this moral necessity is subjective, i.e., a need, and not objective, i.e., a duty itself; for there can be no duty whatever to accept the existence of a thing (since this regards only the theoretical uses of reason). Nor is meant by it that the acceptance of God’s existence as a foundation of any possible engagement is necessary. For the latter, as has been sufficiently demonstrated, is based solely on the autonomy of reason itself.” (“Hier ist nun wohl zu merken, daß diese moralische Notwendigkeit subjektiv, d.i. Bedürfhiß, und nicht objektiv, d.i. selbst Pflicht sei; denn es kann gar keine Pflicht geben, die Existenz eines Dinges anzunehmen (weil dies bloß den theoretischen Gebrauch der Vernunft angeht). Auch wird hierunter nicht verstanden, daß die Annehmung des Daseins Gottes, als eines Grundes aller Verbindlichkeit überhaupt, notwendig sei. Denn dieser beruht, wie hinreichend bewiesen worden, lediglich auf der Autonomie der Vernunft selbst”) (Critique of Practical Reason, Part I, Book II, Chapter II, section ‘Das Dasein Gottes als ein Postulat der reinen praktischen Vernunft’).
He did so in the third chapter of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’.
Note that the Protestant Kant is actually postulating here something rather like Buddhist reincarnation or, at the very least, like Roman Catholic purgatory!
Cf. Chapter VI, p. 136, on Kant’s warning in the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason.
One may of course deny that such a thing as ‘disinterestedness’ exists. Sophisticated people who see through everything will certainly sneer at such naivete (to please them, we might replace talk about ‘disinterested’ actions with the less unctuous term ‘nonfunctional’ actions). Schopenhauer for his part would certainly remind us, as he reminded Kant, that there can never be any action without a motive and thus (pace Gide, cf. our next footnote) neither a crime without a motive. Even so, we are concerned here at the very least with a category of motives that is different from those of natural egoism. And that is at the same time the answer to an objection Schopenhauer raised to the thesis of Kant’s third antinomy. The example Kant had given of rising from one’s chair may not have been very fortunate as a demonstration of an unconditioned beginning, and Schopenhauer is of course right when he says that it is as impossible for Kant to rise without a motive as it is for a ball to roll without a cause. For even if Kant only wished to demonstrate by his rising that it is possible to act without a motive, this very wish would be the motive here. But the point is that man can act from motives that are not dictated by natural necessity, and is as such ‘free’.
As to Nietzsche, we recall here (and we return to it in our next chapter) that in the preceding section we already put the question as to why (speaking consistently) Nietzsche’s maxim: “Become what you are!” (“Werde was Du bist!”) might not be regarded as an adequate formulation of a law given to himself by an autonomous being? As to Gide (who was strongly influenced by Nietzsche), we think here, e.g., of Lafcadio, from Les caves du Vatican, who lives from spontaneous impulse to spontaneous impulse, thus at one moment risking his life by saving children from a burning house, and at another moment pushing an elderly man from a train, just to get the kick of committing a ‘crime without a motive’.
Cf. Chapter VI, p. 154.
“On the radically evil in human nature” (‘Über das radikale Böse in der menschlichen Natur’) is the subtitle of the first part (‘On the living together of the evil principle and the good one’: ‘Von der Einwohnung des bösen Prinzips neben dem guten’) of Kant’s book ‘Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone’ (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft), first published in 1793 (the publication caused him problems with the Prussian censorship because it was judged to undermine biblical and ecclesiastical faith).
cf. Chapter VI, footnote on p. 150.
In Kantian terms it is a regulative Idea’, just like ‘eternal peace’. Cf. also our exposition in Chapter V, p. 131.
Indeed, one of his commentators (Günther Patzig) remarks in this context that one wonders how for Kant the morally bad man can have reality at all, in view of his teaching that man as a ‘natural being’ is in fact only how man as a ‘rational being’ appears to himself.
Cf. footnote about Lévinas on p. 167.
That is, insofar as sentiment in general is banned by Kant from the domain of ethics. But of course this does not imply, as Schopenhauer suggests, that Kant’s ethics is at bottom an egoist one, for, according to Kant, altruist actions may certainly be obligatory on rational grounds. In the ‘Metaphysik der Tugendlehre’ he phrases this as follows: “Love is not understood as sentiment, i.e., not as love from pleasure (for there can be no duty of having sentiments), but should be thought of as ‘practical’, i.e., as a maxim of benevolence resulting in doing well.” (“Liebe wird nicht als Gefühl, d.i. nicht als Liebe des Wohlgefallens verstanden (denn Gefühle zu haben, dazu kann es keine Verpflichtung geben), sondern muß als Maxime des Wohlwollens (als praktisch) gedacht werden, welche das Wohltun zur Folge hat.”).
Günther Patzig rightly says that not egoism but rather the incapacity of men to restrain their irrational strivings and impulses is what produces the greater part of man-made calamity in the world, and that much that was originally done also out of— enlightened — self-love deserves nonetheless to be highly appreciated from a moral point of view (he mentions the Marshall-plan as a good example).
We come back to this in Chapter IX, p. 244.
“Nämlich es genügt ihm nicht mehr, Andere sich selbst gleich zu lieben und für sie soviel zu thun, wie fur sich selbst; sondern es entsteht in ihm ein Abscheu vor dem Wesen dessen Ausdruck seine eigene Erscheinung ist, dem Willen zum Leben, dem Kern und Wesen jener als jammervoll erkannten Welt.”
’Correlation’ instead of ‘identity’ once again! We have already met this fundamental difference in Chapter II, p. 44, and Chapter IV, p. 93. Would it be an all too crude simplification to say that the heart of the problem presented by Schopenhauer’s philosophy consists of his failure to stick firmly to the ‘correlation’ between subject and object (which he recognized as such), lapsing instead into subjective idealism of Berkeley’s kind in his epistemology, and into a mystical philosophy of identity in his ethics? (cf. our remarks on what we consider to be Schopenhauer’s (math) (prôton pseudos; ‘primal fallacy‘) in the final section of our Chapter 8).
The combination of mutual love (Wechselliebe) and respect (Achtung) is held by Kant to be normative for the relations between reasonable beings in general; but in friendship these two elements are “linked together in the most intimate way” (“am innigsten verbunden”).
“Die Natur... ergiebt sich nicht einem Jeden. Sie erweist sich vielmehr gegen Viele wie ein neckisches junges Mädchen, das uns durch tausend Reize anlockt, aber in dem Augen blick, wo wir es zu fassen und zu besitzen glauben, unsern Armen entschlüpft.”
“Schopenhauer hat zwar Kants Lehre vom intelligibelen Charakter in seiner Lehre vom Willen aufgenommen, aber ihren Wert, und zwar in entgegengesetzter Richtung wie die großen Idealisten, entwertet. Indem er den Willen zum Wesen der Welt machte, ließ er zwar nicht den Willen in die Welt, aber die Welt in den Willen aufgehen und vernichtete so die in ihm selbst lebendige Unterscheidung zwischen dem Sein des Menschen und dem Sein der Welt.”
One may doubt whether ‘future’ as such is more ‘ethical’ than ‘past’; at least the condition should be made that the future remains open, as quite enough atrocities have been committed in the name of a future, into the secrets of which the perpetrators believed themselves initiated. In any case, we agree with Cassirer if he meant to say that in an ethical interpretation the intelligible essence appears, not as gegeben, but as aufgegeben. Yet, as we shall see later on (Chapter IX, p. 258), we believe that respect for the ‘given’ is also an essential element of true ethics.
Kant’s ‘loveless’ metaphysics of respect for the law, i.e., for the abstract universal reason which is the same in all men rather than for concrete man in his endless variety, and Schopenhauer’s ‘lawless’ metaphysics of universal love which tends towards an ecstatic absorption of the ‘Self into the ‘Other’ seem thus, paradoxically. to suffer from the same weakness. And this coincidence may well point to a fundamental tendency in human psychology. Without wishing in the least to connect our two thinkers with 20th-century totalitarianism (which would in their case be still more unjust as well as unhistorical than in the cases of Rousseau and Hegel), one may well ask whether the secret of the totalitarian temptation does not lie in its harsh and severe policy of repression clothed in the idyllic vision of universal comradeship? And this in its turn gives rise to the question whether (unlike the customary, superficial mode of rejecting totalitarianism, which stresses the mendacious discrepancy between its reality and its ideal) one should not rather dispute the beauty of the ideal itself? We think here of how Milan Kundera made his libertine painter Sabina comment upon Soviet propaganda films: “The conventional interpretation of these films is that they showed the communist ideal, whereas communist reality was worse. Sabina always rebelled against this interpretation. Whenever she imagined the world of Soviet kitsch becoming a reality, she felt a shiver run down her spine. She would unhesitatingly prefer life in a real communist regime with all its persecution and meat queues. Life in the real communist world is still liveable. In the world of the communist ideal made real, in that world of grinning idiots, she would have nothing to say, she would die of horror within a week.”
The Augustinian doctrine (reappearing in Luther’s De servo arbitrio) that will is not free but subject to the inclination towards evil is considered by Schopenhauer as the original and truly evangelical Christian doctrine, whereas modern rationalism is nothing but a new edition of the ‘vulgarities of Pelagianism’. The contradictions within this Augustinian theology (e.g., a God who created the world, yet is not judged responsible for the state of things in it, God’s goodness and the misery of the world, freedom of will and God’s fore knowledge), which have provoked the Pelagian reaction, are, according to him, due to the Jewish fundamental dogma that man is the product of another’s instead of his own will; remove this dogma and all becomes clear. But alas modern rationalism in Schopenhauer’s opinion clings precisely to this Jewish legacy and rejects instead those profound dogmas which are characteristic and essential for Christianity (which was interpreted by Schopenhauer as akin to Indian thought).
“Kant qui a les mains pures mais qui n’a pas de mains...”
It appears for the first time in notes of the young student in Berlin of the year 1812 and from then on often reappears in his notes.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lauxtermann, P.F.H. (2000). Ethics and Metaphysics. In: Schopenhauer’s Broken World-View. Science and Philosophy, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9369-4_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9369-4_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5566-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9369-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive