From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since June 2006.

Schopenhauer wrote On the Basis of Morality to prove that an action is moral if it is the result of compassion. In so doing, he devoted the early part of his book to a criticism of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Schopenhauer considered this book by Kant to be the clearest presentation of Kant's thoughts about the reason that an action is moral.

• Kant assumed that there is an authority that commands what ought to occur.
• Kant also assumed that there are laws that express how we ought to act.
• He assumed that pure moral laws exist and also have absolute necessity.
• There is, according to Kant's assumption, an absolutely necessary duty to obey the Moral Law.
• The imperative form of ethics was borrowed by Kant from theological morals, that is, from the Ten Commandments of Moses.
• The assumption was made by Kant that the Moral Law is based on pure, a priori concepts, not on inner or outer experience.
• According to Kant, the Moral Law is a synthetic, a priori proposition that is based on pure reason.
• Pure reason, Kant claimed, is not a human mental ability to draw a conclusion from premises. Instead, it is a fundamental, essential self-existent entity.
• Kant assumed the existence of non-human, rational beings.
• Reason, according to Kant, is the inner, eternal essence of humans that issues a command in the form of the Categorical Imperative.
• Kant thought that there is a similarity between a priori knowledge of the Categorical Imperative, or Moral Law, and a priori knowledge of the laws of space, time, and the Categories.
• When deciding whether an action is moral, Kant completely disregarded the value of good intention.
• Duty was defined by Kant to be the necessity of an action as a result of respect for law. However, actions solely from a sense of duty are not necessary. They may not even be actual.
• Kant did not distinguish between what the moral principle is and the reason why it is what it is. That is, he didn't distinguish between the principle and its basis.
• He asserted that pure, abstract concepts can motivate human actions.
• Also, he claimed that absolutely free ethical choices can be made as a result of the respect for the Moral Law or Categorical Imperative.
• The basis of morality is said, by Kant, to be a combination of abstract concepts.
• Kant's assertion that the Categorical Imperative is not the result of experience contradicts his claim in the Critique of Practical Reason. There he said that the autonomous Categorical Imperative is a fact of consciousness and therefore has an anthropomorphic foundation.
• When Kant presented reason as being able to issue imperative commands, this led to the misunderstanding of reason as having transcendent powers of supersensuous comprehension, intuition, and prophecy.
• He claimed that pure reason is the source of virtue, whereas, in reality, reason can support the worst crimes.
• It would be very unusual for a person who is searching for a law that will control his actions, to look only for a law that can control the actions of each and every possible rational being.
• Kant wrote that we can't wish for a general law that would possibly be of disadvantage to ourselves, because we may be the passive recipient of its effect. Kant's imperative is therefore egoistical and hypothetical, not categorical.
• The Categorical Imperative is an alternate way of expressing the ancient Golden Rule (Do not do to another what you don't want done to you).
• According to Kant, if the opposite of the Categorical Imperative were to be a natural law, it would be contradictory and therefore unthinkable. But, it is not only thinkable, it is the actual way of the world when not restricted by civilization.
• For Kant, the rule of suicide is contradictorily unthinkable only because everyone has a duty towards himself. But, it is common for people to kill themselves when excessive suffering overpowers the instinct for self-preservation. No abstruse, logical imperative can act as a deterrent.
• Every rational being, Kant wrote, exists as an end in itself. Schopenhauer, however, said that every end exists only in relation to a will, whose direct motive it is.
• Kant's concept of "absolute worth" is illogical. Worth is always relative and comparative.
• According to Kant, beings that do not have reason, such as animals, are things that can be treated as mere means to an end. Schopenhauer regarded this as a revolting example of Kant's underlying Old Testament biblical ethics.
• Schopenhauer was offended by Kant's assertion concerning the only reason that people should be compassionate to animals. Kant wrote that having sympathy for animals is moral because it gives humans practice so that they will be more capable of being compassionate to other humans.
• Humans, wrote Kant, should not be treated as mere means. But, with capital punishment, Schopenhauer countered, a human can be executed with good reason. The punishment is carried out in order to deter other people from committing murder in the future.
• Kant assumed that actions of justice and love may be performed without interest or motive. However, Schopenhauer said, all actions require a connection to a will which acts from interest or motive.
• The Kingdom of Ends, according to Kant, is inhabited by rational beings whose wills are in accordance with the Categorical Imperative. Schopenhauer claimed that this is foreign to human nature.
• Kant wrote that humans have dignity or unconditional value. But Schopenhauer asserts that value is always relative and the result of comparison.
• The Categorical Imperative, according to Kant, is not a fact of experience. Schopenhauer said that it therefore can't be proved to exist.

Schopenhauer declared that the true basis of morality is compassion or sympathy. The morality of an action can be judged in accordance with Kant's distinction of treating a person as an end or as a mere means. By drawing the distinction between egoism and unselfishness, Kant correctly described the criterion of morality. For Schopenhauer, this was the only merit of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.

• Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by Jonathan F. Bennett at www.earlymoderntexts.com. Retrieved on February 12, 2007.

• Schopenhauer, Arthur; translation, E.F.J. Payne ; introduction, David E. Cartwright (1995). On the basis of morality. Providence : Berghahn Books. ISBN 1-57181-053-6. 

• Schopenhauer, Arthur; translated with an introduction and notes by A.B. Bullock (2005). The basis of morality. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-44653-0.