SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT'S THEORY OF ETHICS.
ONE may well doubt the fatal result of Schopenhauer's apparently crushing attack upon Kant's ethical method, and the permanent significance of his own restatement of the moral problem; but the insistent originality of his procedure leaves a lasting impression upon the reader, and the penetrating keenness of his criticism compels serious attention. Schopenhauer is dogmatic in his assertions, intolerant, unfair, and rarely consistent; but he is never trite. Of the many and varied criticisms called forth by Kant's theory of ethics, not one represents a method of attack as startlingly heterodox, from the Critical point of view, or as likely to arouse original thought, as the second of Schopenhauer's two prize-essays, entitled Die Grundlage der Moral.[1] Whether his conclusions are accepted or rejected, it must in any case surely be admitted that a proper understanding of his criticisms of Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten and second Kritik is indispensable to any student who would appreciate the real implications of the Critical method.
By both Kant and Schopenhauer the significance of epistemology and metaphysics alike is estimated with a view to the analysis and solution of the problem of morals, which for both of them is the problem par excellence of all philosophy. As Oscar Damm well puts it, the center of gravity of Schopenhauer's entire system
- ↑ Published in Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 1840. The page-references to Schopenhauer's works in this article follow E. Grisebach's complete edition (Leipzig, Reclam, 6 volumes). Haldane and Kemp's translation of The World as Will and Idea (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., third edition, 1896, 3 volumes) and A. B. Bullock's translation of The Basis of Morality (London, S. Sonnenschein & Co., 1903) have been used for the quotations. In quoting from Kant's ethical works, the writer has availed himself of T. K. Abbott's translation (Kant's Theory of Ethics, London, Longmans, Green, &Co., second edition, 1883), which also contains, in brackets, the pagination of Rosenkranz and Schubert's edition. For the sake of convenience Grisebach's edition has been referred to as G; Haldane and Kemp's translation, as HK.; Bullock's translation, as B.; Abbott's translation, as A. Other references are self-explanatory.
