The Basis of Morality
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~76,200 words · 362 passages
Cite this work
- APAArthur Schopenhauer. (n.d.). The Basis of Morality. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/schopenhauer/the-basis-of-morality
- MLAArthur Schopenhauer. The Basis of Morality. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/schopenhauer/the-basis-of-morality.
- ChicagoArthur Schopenhauer. The Basis of Morality. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/schopenhauer/the-basis-of-morality.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Schopenhauer's answer to the question of what grounds morality: not reason, but compassion.
Context and history
Written for an 1840 prize of the Danish Academy, which withheld the prize although his was the only entry submitted — something he recounted in the preface with relish. It contains the harshest critique of Kant's ethics ever made from the inside. This is an old English translation, in the public domain. The German original is also in the catalogue, and is what should be cited.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
natural sciences, with regard to which every past age in comparison with our own appears childish; and lastly, through the knowledge of Sanskrit literature, and of those most ancient and widest spread faiths, Brahmanism and Buddhism, which, as far as time and space go, are the most important religions systems of mankind, and, as a matter of fact, are the original native religions of our own race, now well known to be of Asiatic descent--our race, to which in its new strange home they once more send a message across the centuries;--it is because of all this, I say, that the fundamental philosophical convictions of learned Europe have in the course of the last fifty years undergone a revolution, which perhaps many only reluctantly admit, but which cannot be denied. The result of this change is that the old supports of Ethics have been shown to be rotten, while the assurance remains that Ethics itself can never collapse; whence the conviction arises that for it there must exist a groundwork different from any hitherto provided, and adaptable to the advanced views of the age. The need of such is making itself felt more and more, and in it we undoubtedly find the reason that has induced the Royal Society to make the present important question the subject of a prize essay. In every age much good morality has been preached; but the explanation of its _raison d'être_ has always been encompassed with difficulties. On the whole we discern an endeavour to get at some objective truth, from which the ethical injunctions could-be logically deduced; and it has been sought for both in the nature of things, and in the nature of man; but in vain. The result was always the same.…