Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

Two
Main
Prob¬
lems of
Ethics.
N H A U E R
454 S C H O P E
look for it in the immemorial act of will which is the timeless
origin of living beings. The third essay represents the intellect—
or “the world as idea ”—as having its origin in the narrow partition
which in men and animals is interposed between the stimulation
of a cause and the reaction which supervenes. From this realistic
standpoint intellect seems an interloper in nature, an accident
associated with the fortunes of man, and made victorious in the
genius which can behold the world “in maiden meditation, fancy-
free. ” The fourth essay traces the grades of disproportion between
cause and effect from inorganic to organic nature. Where there
is causality there is will; but for us the more obviously the one
shows itself the less is the other remarked. Another paper seeks
to connect animal magnetism (mesmerism, hypnotism) and magic
with the doctrine that in each of us the whole undivided will re¬
tains its miraculous potency.
In 1837 Schopenhauer sent to the committee entrusted
with the execution of the proposed monument to Goethe
at Frankfort a long and deliberate expression of his views,
in general and particular, on the best mode of carrying
out the design. But his fellow-citizens passed by the
remarks of the mere writer of books. More weight was
naturally attached to the opinion he had advocated in
his early criticism of Kant as to the importance, if not
the superiority, of the first edition of the Kritik; in the col¬
lected issue of Kant’s works by Rosenkranz and Schubert
in 1838 that edition was put as the substantive text, with
supplementary exhibition of the differences of the second.
In 1841 he published under the title Die beiden Grund-
'probleme dev Eihik two essays which he had sent in
1838-39 in competition for prizes offered. The first was
in answer to the question “ Whether man’s free will can
be proved from self-consciousness,” proposed by the Nor¬
wegian Academy of Sciences at Drontheim. His essay
was awarded the prize, and the author elected a member
of the society. But proportionate to his exultation in
this first recognition of his merit was the depth of his
mortification and the height of his indignation at the
result of the second competition. He had sent to the
Danish Academy at Copenhagen in 1839 an essay “On
the Foundations of Morality” in answer to a vaguely
worded subject of discussion to which they had invited
candidates. His essay, though it was the only one in
competition, was refused the prize on the grounds that he
had failed to examine the chief problem whether the
basis of morality was to be sought in an intuitive idea of
right), that his explanation was inadequate, and that he
had been wanting in due respect to the summi philosophi
of the age that was just passing. This last reason, while
probably most effective with the judges, only stirred up
more furiously the fury in Schopenhauer’s breast, and his
preface is one long fulmination against the ineptitudes
and the charlatanry of his bete noire, Hegel.
In the essay on the freedom of the will Schopenhauer shows
that the deliverance of self-consciousness, “ I can do what I will,”
is a mere statement of our physical freedom, or the sequence of
outward act upon inner resolve, in the absence of physical restraint.
“The statement of self-consciousness concerns the will merely a
parte post,, the question of freedom, on the contrary, a parte ante."
Self-consciousness throws no light on the relation of volition to its
antecedents. If, on the other hand, we turn to the objects of the
outer senses, we find that it is part and parcel of their very nature
to be not free but necessitated, governed, in short, by the principle
of causation. But in the ascending scale of causation cause and
effect become more and more heterogeneous, their connexion more
unintelligible. This is seen in motivation, especially where the
motives are not immediate perceptions but general abstract ideas.
It is in the possibility of a conflict of motives that man’s freedom
of choice consists. But, because we can by a feat of abstraction
keep an image of one course of action before us and neglect the
other concrete conditions of behaviour, there grows up an illusion
that the mere initial solicitation or velleity might, if we pleased,
become actual will. Hence the delusion that we are free to will
and not to will. Still the necessitating cause or motive is only
the rule under which the real force or radical will operates. In
this radical will consists our being, and on it action is consequent:
operari sequitur esse. By our original character acting in certain
circumstances of motive our actions are inevitably determined.
But the sense of responsibility for our conduct is not altogether a
delusion. It is really a responsibility for our character, which we
have gradually learned experimentally to know, and which so
known serves as a court of appeal against single actions, or, in
other words, becomes a conscience. That character is the supra-
temporal action of that will which we and all things are. Thus
this question of the freedom of the will, which is “ a touchstone
for distinguishing the profound from the superficial thinker,” is
solved by the Kantian distinction of empirical and transcendental
world. In the words of Malebranche, “ La liberte est un mystere.”
The essay on the foundation of morality is an attempt to present
the fundamental fact of the moral consciousness and to show its
metaphysical bearings. It includes a lengthy criticism of Kant’s
system of ethics as only the old theological morality under a
disguise of logical formulae. Kant, according to his critic, though
he struck a severe blow at eudsemonism, made the mistake of
founding ethics on ideas of obligation and respect, which are
meaningless apart from a positive sanction. His categorical im¬
perative is attributed to reason,—a power which we only know as
human, but which Kant regards as more than human and borrows
from the “rational psychology,” which itself had received it from
theology. The moral spring should be a reality and a fact of
nature, whereas Kant seeks it in the subtilties of general ideas,
forgetting that reasoning is one thing and virtue another. And,
when Kant has to illustrate the application of his rule for discover¬
ing the categorical imperative, he is forced to have recourse to con¬
siderations of self-interest.
After this examination, Schopenhauer preludes his exposition by
the. sceptical survey of so-called virtuous actions as due in the vast
majority of instances to other than moral motives, and by a dis¬
integration of the average conscience into equal parts of fear of
man, superstition, prejudice, vanity, and custom. The mainspring
of human action (as of animal) is egoism, supplemented by the
hatred or the malice which arises through egoistic conflicts. But,
though these are the predominant springs of conduct, there are
cases of unselfish kindness. It is in sympathy, or in our as it were
substituting ourselves for another who is in pain, that we find the
impulse which gives an action a truly moral value. The influence
of sympathy has two degrees : either it keeps me back from doing
wrong to others, and in this sense leads to justice as a moral virtue
(whereas civil justice prevents from suffering wrong); or sympathy
may carry me on to positive kindness, to philanthropy or love of
the human kind. It is on sympathy—the feeling of one identical
nature under all the appearance of multiplicity—that the two car¬
dinal virtues of justice and benevolence are based. Schopenhauer
notes especially that his principle extends to the relation between
man and animals, and that a mistaken conception of human dignity
has been allowed to hide the fundamental community of animal
nature.
In 1844 appeared the second edition of The World as
Will and Idea, in two volumes. The first volume was
a slightly altered reprint of the earlier issue; the second
consisted of a series of chapters forming a commentary
parallel to those into which the original work was now
first divided. The longest of these new chapters deal with
the primacy of the will, with death, and with the meta¬
physics of sexual love. But, though only a small edition
was struck off (500 copies of vol. i. and 750 of vol. ii.),
the report of sales which Brockhaus rendered in 1846
was unfavourable, and the price had afterwards to be
reduced. Yet there were faint indications of coming Dawning
fame, and the eagerness with which each new tribute recpg-
from critic and admirer was welcomed is both touching
and amusing. From 1843 onwards a jurist named F. geiA.
Dorguth had trumpeted abroad Schopenhauer’s name.
In 1844 a letter from a Darmstadt lawyer, Joh. August
Becker, asking for explanation of some difficulties, began
an intimate correspondence which went on for some time
(and which was published by Becker’s son in 1883). But
the chief evangelist (so Schopenhauer styled his literary
followers as distinct from the apostles who published not)
was Frauenstadt, who made his personal acquaintance in
1846. It was Frauenstadt who succeeded in finding a
publisher for the Parerga und Paraligoomena, which
appeared at Berlin in 1851 (2 vols., pp. 465, 531). Yet
for this bulky collection of essays, philosophical and
others, Schopenhauer received as honorarium only ten free
copies of the work. Soon afterwards, Dr E. O. Lindner,
assistant editor of the Vossische Zeitung, began a series of
Schopenhauerite articles. Amongst them may be reckoned