The Basis of Morality

Two prize essays on ethics bound as one book — one that won its medal, and one refused the prize though no other entry had been submitted.

by Arthur Schopenhauer393 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik
First published: 1841(aged 53)
Original language: German

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Overview

The Royal Danish Society of Sciences asked, in 1837, whether morality could be grounded in human nature, and received exactly one answer. It refused the prize anyway. Schopenhauer's essay had answered the question — compassion, not reason or divine command or self-interest, is the sole genuine moral motive, the immediate participation in another's suffering that makes their weal and woe matter to me as if it were mine — but he had also spent pages abusing Fichte and, above all, Hegel as charlatans, and the Society ruled that he had insulted philosophers of the highest standing. He printed the verdict in his preface as a badge of honour. The book pairs that essay with an earlier one, On the Freedom of the Will, which the Norwegian Society in Trondheim had crowned in 1839 and of which he was fiercely proud; together they appeared in 1841 as The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. The freedom essay argues that our sense of free choice is an illusion resting on a fixed, inborn character, so that a person could not have acted otherwise and is nonetheless rightly held responsible. Both cut against Kant, whose ethics of duty Schopenhauer thought a theology in disguise. Ignored like everything else he wrote until his last years, the essay on compassion is now among the most discussed grounds ever offered for an ethics built on fellow-feeling rather than law.

Key concepts

What are the three springs of human action?

Egoism, which wants one's own weal; malice, which wants another's woe; and compassion, which wants another's weal. Every human motive, Schopenhauer argues, reduces to one of these three. Only the last has genuine moral worth, since only there does another's good, not one's own, move the deed.

What is the metaphysical basis of compassion?

That the barrier between self and other is not ultimate. In compassion the principium individuationis partly falls away and I recognize in another the same inner being I am, so their suffering moves me as directly as my own. Schopenhauer finds this expressed in the Upanishadic formula tat tvam asi — that art thou.

What is freedom of the will in this book?

Not freedom of action but of volition — and Schopenhauer denies we have it. His formula is that a man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills. Given a fixed character meeting given motives, only one act is possible; the felt liberty of choice is an illusion resting on ignorance of our own nature.

What are empirical and intelligible character?

The empirical character is the fixed, observable way a particular person acts, unfolding in time. The intelligible character is that same person's timeless essence outside causality — what they fundamentally are. Freedom belongs not to single deeds, which are determined, but to this underlying being, which is why we still feel answerable for what we are.

Why call Kant's ethics a theology in disguise?

Because its unconditional ought and commanding moral law borrow the form of divine legislation while dropping the God who alone gave it sense. Schopenhauer argues that an imperative binding all rational beings is a theological relic smuggled into philosophy; strip the theology and no bare thou-shalt remains to ground obligation.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Compassion as the Ground of Ethics

Where does the moral in an act come from — from reason, from a divine command, from calculated self-interest, or from somewhere none of these reach?

Against Kant's ethics of duty, which Schopenhauer thought a theology in disguise, the prize essay names one source only: compassion, the immediate participation in another's suffering that makes their weal and woe matter to me as if mine. Not reason, not command, not advantage — fellow-feeling alone confers moral worth. The Danish Society, asked exactly this, refused the medal though no rival essay had been entered; the argument it declined is now among the most discussed grounds ever offered for an ethics of sympathy over law.

ethics
human nature
suffering
character
religion
theology
reason
compassion
egoism

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A Fixed Character, No Free Choice

If a person in given circumstances can do only one thing, in what sense was the choice ever theirs — and how are they still answerable for it?

The companion essay, crowned in Norway, argues that the felt freedom of the will is a standing illusion. Character is inborn and fixed, so a given person meeting given motives could not have acted otherwise. Yet responsibility survives the loss of alternatives, because we answer for what we are, not merely for what we chose. It cuts squarely against Kant again: not a free noumenal will but a determined nature, held accountable exactly as the rest of Schopenhauer's system requires.

will
determinism
character
judgment
human nature
moral psychology
moral motivation
kantian ethics
justice

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Within this work

passages held: 393
distinct concepts: 572
by passages held, corpus-wide: #82

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: intellect with will.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 97 shared passages in all. 83 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
intellect	will	18
character	will	8
metaphysics	religion	7
character	intellect	6
ethics	morality	6
metaphysics	will	6
morality	religion	6
morality	will	6
character	physiognomy	5
character	metaphysics	4
character	morality	4
ethics	metaphysics	4
ethics	religion	4
intellect	physiognomy	4
intellect	metaphysics	3
metaphysics	morality	3
morality	physiognomy	3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1813 On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature (Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde; und, Ueber den Willen in der Natur)
Schopenhauer's 1813 doctoral dissertation, and the book he told readers to finish before opening his masterwork; the 1836 essay bound with it hunts for the same metaphysics in natural science.
DEEN
1841 The Basis of Morality (Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik) you are here DEEN
1851 Essay on Spirit Seeing and Everything Connected Therewith (Über das Geistersehn und was damit zusammenhängt)
An excursion into the paranormal — ghosts, second sight, animal magnetism — explained through his own metaphysics of will; the fifth of the six long essays in the 1851 Parerga.
DE
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims (Parerga und Paralipomena)
Half of Schopenhauer's Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, the companion to The Wisdom of Life; Saunders split the two for English readers. Practical maxims for living, drawn from the 1851 collection.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; On Human Nature
Essays on ethics and politics that Saunders gathered — some from the 1851 Parerga, some from manuscripts unpublished at his death — under a title Schopenhauer never gave them.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc.
A dialogue on whether a useful faith can also be a false one, heading a cluster of essays on religion and art that Saunders drew from the 1851 Parerga.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism
The pessimism most readers know him by, stated without the metaphysics — Saunders' selection of the shortest, bluntest essays from the 1851 Parerga.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; the Art of Controversy (Parerga und Paralipomena / Nachgelassene Schriften)
Not from the Parerga at all: a manual of thirty-eight debating tricks that Schopenhauer drafted around 1830, left unpublished, and that reached print only in 1864, from his posthumous papers.
DEEN
1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Literature
One of the topical selections Saunders carved from the Parerga for English readers, this one on writing, reading, and style; published in 1891.
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1851 The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life (Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit)
His most cheerful book, a guide to happiness that opens the Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life; the pages John Oxenford's 1853 essay singled out when he introduced Schopenhauer to English readers.
DEEN
1851 Über die Weiber
Notorious far beyond its length: a few hostile pages on women from the second volume of the 1851 Parerga, an embarrassment to his admirers and a standing charge against him.
DE
Anmerkungen zu Locke und Kant sowie zu nachkantischen Philosophen (Anmerkungen Zu Locke Und Kant Sowie Zu Nachkantischen Philosophen)
Undated notes from his literary remains, engaging Locke, Kant, and the post-Kantian idealists; manuscript material sorted by his editors after his death, never a book he wrote.
DE
The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt Als Wille Und Vorstellung)
The masterwork, and the whole of his philosophy: one argument he refused to recast, only enlarge, across three editions between 1819 and 1859. Every other title on this shelf leads toward it or away from it.
DE

— or open another of their works