Schopenhauer and Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism (original) (raw)
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Schopenhauer and Contemporary Metaethics
Metaethics, the investigation of the ultimate nature of morality, is one of the most historically-oriented areas of contemporary philosophy. Plato, Hume, and Kant all make regular appearances in the literature, and continue to provide inspiration for metaethicists. Schopenhauer, however, is almost completely absent from recent metaethics, even though much of his work was devoted to examining the foundations of morality. My aim in this chapter is to show that Schopenhauer deserves much more attention, even by metaethicists who do not care about the history of philosophy for its own sake. His views provide important challenges to several widely-held assumptions about metaethics, and there are grounds for thinking that some modified version of his views could be plausible even by contemporary lights. I proceed as follows. In §1, I describe five tenets of contemporary metaethics – tenets which few recent philosophers have even thought of questioning. In §2, I describe Schopenhauer's core metaethical views, along with his (less central) views on moral judgment. In §3, I argue that Schopenhauer's views pose important challenges for each of the five tenets. Finally, in §4, I explore the prospects for neo-Schopenhauerian views, which retain Schopenhauer's distinctive attitude towards compassion without appealing to his radical metaphysical monism.
Willingly disinterested: altruism in Schopenhauer’s ethics
In Kant’s ethics, disinterest is derived from the concept of the categorical imperative and is taken to be the condition of the possibility of all moral actions. Schopenhauer, by contrast, treats disinterest as a necessary but insufficient condition for morality, and severs it from its ties to the categorical imperative. Disinterest, for Schopenhauer, leads to the concept of compassion, which he praises as the sole ground of all morality. But compassion seems fundamentally opposed to disinterest, since it involves taking an active interest in someone else’s plight: a consideration not really treated in Kant. In this paper, I tackle the problem of reconciling compassion, in Schopenhauer, with the criterion of disinterest that he inherits from Kant. I also take up the challenge of explaining compassion’s altruistic tendency to act for another’s well-being if we take Schopenhauer’s determinism at face value, and acknowledge that human actions are fundamentally egoistic.
Schopenhauer's Five-Dimensional Normative Ethics
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In this chapter, we argue that Schopenhauer's normative ethics is significantly richer than previous commentators have claimed, including five distinct dimensions along which actions can be evaluated. We also discuss the role of moral principles in his moral psychology, and suggest that his ethics involves a problematic level of moral complacency.
I will start by presenting Schopenhauer’s account of compassion by putting it briefly in the context of the role it plays in his philosophical system. Then I will discuss some of the most notable objections to it, which focus on the metaphysics Schopenhauer uses to understand compassion. I follow a common strategy for dealing with these problems: rejecting this metaphysical baggage as part of an attempt to ‘naturalize’ Schopenhauer (Cartwright 2008). I follow this strategy, paying particular attention to the differences between Schopenhauer’s discussion of compassion in his 1819 World as Will and Representation, and his mature and much more extended discussion in the 1839 ‘prize’ essay On the Basis of Morality. The differences suggest a way giving compassion some relative autonomy in relation to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. Finally I will show the extent to which the new formulation can be understood, in the context of contemporary theories of empathy, as offering the opportunity for a reconsideration of the value of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical speculations.
Schopenhauer on the Content of Compassion
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On the traditional reading, Schopenhauer claims that compassion is the recognition of deep metaphysical unity. In this paper, I defend and develop the traditional reading. I begin by addressing three recent criticisms of the reading from Sandra Shapshay: that it fails to accommodate Schopenhauer's restriction to sentient beings, that it cannot explain his moral ranking of egoism over malice, and that Schopenhauer requires some level of distinction to remain in compassion. Against Shapshay, I argue that Schopenhauer does not restrict compassion to sentient beings and that a more metaphysically refined version of the traditional reading can accommodate both Schopenhauer's moral ranking of characters and allow for some level of distinction in compassion. I then turn to four further questions for the traditional reading: what the relation is between the feeling of compassionate pain and the recognition of metaphysical unity, how cognitions mediate compassion, whether compassion is limited to the present, and how the feeling of compassion relates to Schopenhauer's fundamental moral principle. I conclude by explaining how, in a reductive vein, the traditional reading can also allow for compassion to have normative content.
Cognitivist Presumptions of Moral Realism in Justification of Moral Truths
Beytulhikme International Journal Philolosopy, 2024
This study critically examines the foundational principles of impartial- ity and value independence advocated by moral realist epistemologies in the pur- suit of objectivity. Central to moral realists is the cognitivist presupposition ne- cessitating a clear distinction between cognitive and emotional components in- herent in moral judgments. The investigation focuses on the cognitive-emo- tional dichotomy underlying the moral realist perspectives of David Enoch and Thomas Nagel. The research findings unveil that the interplay between cogni- tion and emotion, as evidenced by experimental data, poses a formidable chal- lenge to the traditional understanding of impartiality and value independence. The article's initial section delves into the ontological nature of moral judgments, followed by an exploration of the cognitive assumptions shaping Nagel and Enoch's conceptualizations of objectivity. The final section elucidates the cog- nitive-emotional interdependence that disrupts the conditions of impartiality and value independence, conventionally posited as prerequisites for objectivity.
Moral Cognitivism and Character
It may seem to follow from Peter Winch's claim in ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgements’ that a certain class of first-person moral judgments are not universalizable that such judgments cannot be given a cognitivist interpretation. But Winch's argument does not involve the denial of moral cognitivism and in this paper I show how such judgements may be cognitively determined yet not universalizable. Drawing on an example from James Joyce's The Dead, I suggest that in the kind of situation Winch envisages where we properly return a different moral judgement to another agent it may be that we accept their judgement is right for them because we recognise that it is determined by values that, simply because of the particular people we are, we could never know or understand in just the same way.
Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy, 2021
In §19 of On the Basis of Morals, Schopenhauer offers a “decisive experiment” (invoking a character named “Titus”) for his view that compassion is the only genuinely moral incentive, and so the core of moral virtue. He takes this experiment to thereby reveal the falsity of the views of Kant, Fichte, Wollaston, Hutcheson, Smith, Wolff, and Spinoza. Unlike some of Schopenhauer's other arguments for his ethical views, this brief argument does not rest on his controversial moral psychology or his monist metaphysics, and so promises to be of interest to contemporary ethicists. My aim in this paper is to clarify and defend the Titus argument, which I claim is centrally concerned with the proper objects of moral attention. In so doing, I offer a response to Sandra Shapshay's recent claim that Schopenhauer's explicit conclusion in the argument conflicts with his own view of moral principles.
Inquiry, 2019
The aim of this paper is to elucidate Schopenhauer's moral philosophy in terms of an ethics of virtue, and to consider its plausibility relative to competing traditions. The paper consists of three sections. In the first section of the paper I outline three major objections Schopenhauer raises to Kant's moral philosophy, and argue that these plausible criticisms are in essence the same concerns that gave rise to the revival of 'virtue ethics' as a proposed distinctive school of ethical thought in the twentieth century. In section two I extract from these criticisms a sketch of Schopenhauer's own position, distinguishing a brand of virtue ethics from competing versions within the tradition, in which compassion is emphasised as the root of all virtue. I then consider the strengths of such a view. In the third and final section I consider and respond to one possible shortcoming of the ethical theory discussed, and adjudicate between competing solutions in the secondary literature. I conclude that refined forms of Schopenhauer's ethical views offer rich and plausible insights into both virtue and vice which have received less attention than they deserve. Hence, Schopenhauer warrants more serious concern in contemporary discussions of virtue ethics alongside the likes of Aristotle, Hume and Nietzsche.