On the Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer

Author:Arthur Schopenhauer [Shopenhauer, Arthur; Payne, E. F. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: philosophy, History & Surveys, Modern
ISBN: 9781624668494
Google: b_6zDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Published: 2019-08-15T23:38:35.085520+00:00

Thus here too, in the expression “dignity of man,” an extremely welcome word was introduced, which every system of morality that was spun out through all classes of duties and all cases of casuistry found as a broad foundation; and from such a height those systems of morality could go on comfortably preaching.

{102} At the end of his discussion (page 124, R. 97 [Academy 461]) Kant says: “But how can pure reason by itself be practical without other motives that may be taken from somewhere else; that is, how can the mere principle of the universal validity of all its maxims as laws, without any object of the will in which any interest could previously be taken, provide by itself a motive and produce an interest that would be called purely moral; or, in other words, how can pure reason be practical? To explain this, all human reason is inadequate, and all effort and work are spent in vain.” Now we should reflect that if something whose existence is asserted cannot even be conceived as possible, its reality must surely be demonstrated as actual. But the categorical imperative of pure reason is expressly not put forward as a fact of consciousness, nor is it otherwise based on experience. On the contrary, we are cautioned often enough that it is not to be looked for on such an anthropological empirical path (e.g., page vi of the Preface, R. 5; and pages 59, 60, R. 52). Moreover, we are repeatedly assured (e.g., page 48, R. 44) that “it cannot be decided by an example, and consequently empirically, whether there is everywhere an imperative of this kind.” And on page 49, R. 45, we read that “the reality of the categorical imperative is not given in experience.” If we summarize all this, we actually might be led to suspect that Kant is making fun of his readers here. Now although this might well be allowed and seem right vis-à-vis the German philosophical public of today, yet in Kant’s time it was not so much in vogue as it has since become; moreover, ethics was the very theme that was least calculated to form the subject of a joke. We must therefore stick to the conviction that what cannot be either conceived as possible or proved as actual has no credentials for its existence. Now if we try to comprehend it by means of the imagination, and to picture to ourselves a person whose nature was possessed of an absolute ought speaking nothing but categorical imperatives, possessed as it were of a demon which confronted his wishes and inclinations and wanted to be the constant controller of his actions, we see here no correct {103} picture of man’s nature or of the events taking place within us. On the contrary, we recognize an artificial substitute for theological morals, to which it is related as a wooden leg is to a living one.

Our result, therefore, is that the Kantian ethics, like all previous systems, is devoid of any sure foundation.

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