Schopenhauer S Moral Philosophy

This volume brings together internationally recognised Schopenhauer scholars to develop new perspectives on his moral philosophy. Despite anticipating and engaging with many of the arguments now recognisable in Anglophone moral philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer has often been overlooked as a potential contributor to contemporary discourse within this domain. Not only was he one of the most important 19th-century critics of Kantian deontology, Schopenhauer also developed a plausible moral system of his own grounded in compassion. While interesting parallels can be drawn between his system and the sentimentalist tradition familiar from the likes of Hume and Hutcheson, Schopenhauer’s idiosyncratic metaphysics provide a unique approach to standard questions in moral psychology, the philosophy of action, axiology, and moral epistemology. The chapters in this book draw out the relevance and influence of Schopenhauer’s ethical program, attempting to demonstrate the as yet untapped wealth of conceptual resources for pressing moral problems. They address a wide range of topics, including: the moral status of animals; the moral permissibility of suicide; the possibility of altruistic action; the nature of virtue and asceticism; how Schopenhauer integrated Western influences with various Indian traditions of moral thinking, and more. Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Schopenhauer, 19th-century philosophy, and the history of ethics.

"This volume brings together internationally recognized Schopenhauer scholars to develop new perspectives on his moral philosophy. Despite anticipating and engaging with many of the arguments now recognisable in Anglophone moral philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer has often been overlooked as a potential contributor to contemporary discourse within this domain. Not only was he one of the most important 19th-century critics of Kantian deontology, Schopenhauer also developed a plausible moral system of his own grounded in compassion. While interesting parallels can be drawn between his system and the sentimentalist tradition familiar from the likes of Hume and Hutcheson, Schopenhauer's idiosyncratic metaphysics provide a unique approach to standard questions in moral psychology, the philosophy of action, axiology, and moral epistemology. The chapters in this book draw out the relevance and influence of Schopenhauer's ethical program, attempting to demonstrate the as yet untapped wealth of conceptual resources for pressing moral problems. They address a wide range of topics, including: the moral status of animals; the moral permissibility of suicide; the possibility of altruistic action; the nature of virtue and asceticism; how Schopenhauer integrated Western influences with various Indian traditions of moral thinking, and more. Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Schopenhauer, 19th-century philosophy, and the history of ethics"--

This edition originally published by Berghahn Books. Schopenhauer's treatise on ethics is presented here in E. F. J. Payne’s definitive translation, based on the Hubscher edition (Wiesbaden, 1946-1950). This edition includes an Introduction by David Cartwright, a translator’s preface, biographical note, selected bibliography, and an index. For convenient reference to passages in Kant's work discussed by Schopenhauer, Academy edition numbers have been added.

"On the Basis of Morality" (from 1840) is one of Arthur Schopenhauer's significant works in ethics. In this treatise, he argues that morality stems from compassion. He starts his work with criticism of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which Schopenhauer considered the clearest explanation of Kant's foundation of ethics. He continues with a positive construction of his own ethical theory and concludes the book with a brief description of the metaphysical foundations of ethics.

These two important essays show Schopenhauer at his most accessible, offering two self-contained and clearly argued contributions to ethical theory, published here in a new translation that preserves Schopenhauer's style in a lucid and engaging way. This is also the only paperback edition to publish both essays together. Schopenhauer argues, in uniquely powerful prose, that self-consciousness gives the illusion of freedom and that human actions are determined, but that we rightly feel guilt because our actions issue from our essential individual character. He locates moral value in the virtues of loving kindness and voluntary justice that spring from the fundamental incentive of compassion. Morality's basis is ultimately metaphysical, resting on an intuitive identification of the self with all other striving and suffering beings. The Introduction by leading Schopenhauer scholar Christopher Janaway gives a clear summary of the argument of the essays in the context of Schopenhauer's life and works and the history of ethics in the modern period. The volume includes helpful notes, up-to-date bibliography, and a full index. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

"Why do philosophers differ so widely as to the first principles of Morals, but agree respecting the conclusions and duties which they deduce from those principles?" This is the question which was set as subject for a prize essay by the Royal Society of Holland at Harlem, 1810, and solved by J. C. F. Meister; and in comparison with the task before us, the inquiry presented no extraordinary difficulty. For:— (1) The present question of the Royal Society has to do with nothing less important than the objectively true basis of morals, and consequently of morality. It is an Academy, be it observed, which invites this inquiry; and hence, from its position, it has no practical purpose in view; it asks for no discourse inculcating the exercise of uprightness and virtue, with arguments based on evidence, of which the plausibility is dwelt on, and the sophistry evaded, as is done in popular manuals. Rather, as its aim is not practical, but only theoretical, it desires nothing but the purely philosophical, that is, the objective, undisguised, and naked exposition of the ultimate basis of all good moral conduct, independent of every positive law, of every improved assumption, and hence free from all groundwork, whether metaphysical or mythical. This, however, is a problem whose bristling difficulties are attested by the circumstance that all philosophers in every age and land have blunted their wits on it, and still more by the fact that all gods, oriental and occidental, actually derive their existence therefrom. Should therefore this opportunity serve to solve it, assuredly the Royal Society will not have expended its money amiss.

"This book articulates and defends an interpretation of Schopenhauer's ethics as an original and credible contribution to the history of ethics. It presents Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion as in direct tension with his resignationism and aims to show surprising continuities with Kant's ethics"--

This work challenges the textbook assessment of Schopenhauer as militant atheist and absolute pessimist. In examining Schopenhauer's grappling with religion, theology and Kant's moral philosophy, Mannion suggests we can actually discern a 'religious' humility in method in Schopenhauer's work, seen most clearly in his ethics of compassion and his doctrine of salvation. Given Schopenhauer’s opinion of religion as the ’metaphysics of the people’, his utilisation of and affinity with many religious ideas and doctrines, and the culmination of his philosophy in a doctrine of salvation that ends in the ’mystical’, Mannion suggests that Schopenhauer’s philosophy is an explanatory hypothesis which functionally resembles religious belief systems in many ways. Mannion further argues that Schopenhauer cannot claim to have gone any further than such religious systems in discerning the 'true' nature of ultimate reality, for he admits that they also end in the ’mystical’, beyond which we must remain silent. Indeed, Schopenhauer offers an interpretation, as opposed to outright rejection of religion and his system gains the coherence that it does through being parasitic upon religious thought itself. Given current debates between theologians and philosophers in relation to 'postmodernity' and 'postmodern thought', this book illustrates that Schopenhauer should be a key figure in such debates.