is to be found in his ethics.[1] The illusionism to which his theory of knowledge inevitably leads; his voluntaristic metaphysics, which is the philosophical explanation of his pessimistic view of experience; the æsthetic quietism bound up with his doctrine of the Platonic Ideas—are all as it were prolegomena to the solution of the problem of human conduct and the philosophical explanation of the true basis of morality.
Moral predigen ist leicht, Moral begründen, schwer—this motto of Schopehnauer's prize-essay suggests at the very start his method of attack. Between the fundamental principle, the ὅ, τι and the basis, the διότι of ethics, there is a radical distinction.[2] Schopenhauer finds the defect of all previous ethics in its failure to recognize this radical distinction, and its consequent neglect of the second problem. Among men at large there has been at no time any real quarrel as to what actions are to be considered 'good,' and what 'bad.' Schopenhauer finds Kant's Categorical Imperative itself to be only a paraphrase of the Golden Rule, of which his own maxim, Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva, is but the more adequately formulated statement.[3] The disputes between moralists about their fundamental principles, Schopenhauer thinks, can all be traced to neglect of, or disagreement concerning, the problem of the basis of ethics. A science of ethics can never stop with the 'what,' with describing the sort of actions called moral; it must go further, and, by psychological investigation of the motives actuating human conduct, determine the 'why' of the epithet 'moral.' Schopenhauer's prize-essay undertakes to answer the question set by the Danish Royal Society of Science: "Is the fountain and basis of Morals to be sought for in an idea of morality which lies directly in the consciousness (or conscience), and in the analysis of the other leading ethical conceptions which arise from it? Or is it to be found in some other source of knowledge?"[4] The metaphysical
- ↑ Schopenhauers Ethik im Verhälnis zu seiner Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik. Annaberg, 1898, p. 39. Cf. G., III, p. 642; B., p. 258: "For if life ... have a meaning, then the supreme goal to which it points is undoubtedly ethical."
- ↑ Cf. G., III, p 517; B., p. 53.
- ↑ G., III, p. 539; B., p. 87.
- ↑ G., III, p. 486; B., p. 2
