On the Basis of Morality

Description

Interest in Schopenhauer has increased noticeably in recent years. Published here is one of his key works, which has been out of print for a long time, in the form of Payne's definitive translation. This work is one of the most significant nineteenth century treatises on ethics. It is also Schopenhauer's most extended discussion of traditional themes in ethics and presents a descriptive ethics radically at odds with rationally based, prescriptive ethical theories. Schopenhauer begins this book with a wide-ranging critique of Kant's ethics, one that anticipates the work of contemporary critics of modern moral philosophy like that of G E M Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Richard Taylor. Schopenhauer argues that compassion is the basis of morality, and in so doing presents a virtue ethics in which passion and desire are viewed as the keys for explaining different moral characters, behaviours, and world views. In the concluding part of his essay, Schopenhauer sketches his metaphysics of morals, using Kant's transcendental idealism as a ground for stressing both the interconnectiveness of being and the affinity of his ethics to Eastern thought.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer's On the Basis of Morality deserves to be a standard text for courses in religious ethics. It doesn't fit into the prevalent genealogies of virtue ethics and utilitarianism, thus reminding us of other genealogies (pessimism, Nietzsche, Buddhism). It poses fundamental questions about the monotheistic background to the dominant ethical systems of the day as virtually no other work does. I have found that reading it after an intensive study of Kant's ethical and religious writings leads to fantastic discussions, which open the floor for great insights into the relation of religion and ethics.--Mark Larrimore, Princeton University