Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics by Schopenhauer Arthur; Cartwright David; Erdmann Edward E. & Edward E. Erdmann

Author:Schopenhauer, Arthur; Cartwright, David; Erdmann, Edward E. & Edward E. Erdmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

Note

If we wanted thoroughly to investigate the assumption of practical reason, we must trace its family tree a little farther back. We will then find that it stems from a doctrine which Kant himself had thoroughly refuted, but of which Kant here is unconscious, a trace of an earlier

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way of thinking, which secretly underlies his assumption of practical reason with its imperatives and its autonomy. It is rational psychology, according to which the human is composed of two completely heterogenous substances, the material body and the immaterial soul. Plato is the first who formally asserted this dogma and had sought to prove it to be an objective truth. Descartes, however, raised it to the pinnacle of perfection, to the point of most precise statement and scientific rigour. But this is just what brought to light its falseness, which was successively demonstrated by Spinoza, Locke, and Kant. It was demonstrated by Spinoza (whose philosophy consists of a refutation of the twofold dualism of his teacher), who made it into his main proposition that precisely and expressly opposes Descartes’s two substances: ‘The thinking substance and the extended substance are one in the same substance, which is now comprehended under the one and now under the other attribute.’1 It was demonstrated by Locke who rejected innate ideas, derived all knowledge from the sensible, and taught that it is not impossible that matter could think. It was demonstrated by Kant through the critique of rational psychology as it stands in the first edition.* In opposition, Leibniz and Wolf[f] championed the inferior party: this provided Leibniz with the undeserved honour of being compared with the great Plato, who is so unlike him. Here is not the place to elaborate on all this. Now according to this rational psychology, the soul was an original and essentially a thinking being, and as a foremost consequence, a willing being. Accordingly, depending on whether it set out in this, its fundamental activity, unalloyed with the body, or in conjunction with the body, it had a higher and lower cognitive faculty and, thus, a similar faculty of will. In its higher faculty, the immaterial soul was active solely by itself and without the cooperation of the body; hence, it was pure intellect2 and was concerned with nothing but purely intellectual representations and similar acts of will that carried nothing with them of the sensible originating in the body.3 Hence it cognized

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nothing but pure abstractions, universals, innate concepts, eternal truths,1 and the like. And accordingly its willing was also only under the influence of such purely intellectual representations. In contrast, the lower cognitive faculty and faculty of will were the effect of a soul which worked in unity with and was closely linked to the body and its organs and, hence, was impaired in its purely intellectual effectiveness. Now to this should belong any intuitive cognition, that which, as a result, would be unclear and confused; in contrast, that which is abstract cognition, originating from abstracted concepts, would be clear! Now

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