Schopenhauer

by Margrieta Beer

An instinctive character belongs also to the highest functions of human life, as in art and virtue. Wisdom proper, says Schopenhauer, is something intuitive, and not something pertaining to the intellect. It does not consist in principles and thoughts, which are carried about ready in the mind, as the result of research, but it is the whole manner in which the world presents itself intuitively to the mind. In real life the scholar is far surpassed by the man of the world, for the strength of the latter consists in perfect intuitive knowledge. The true view of life proceeds from the way in which the world is known and understood, not from abstract knowledge. The heart of all knowledge is intuition. Upon this depends the infinite superiority of genius to learning and scholarship. They stand to each other as the text of a classic to its commentary. It was this emphasis, which Schopenhauer laid on the instinctive and impulsive side in man, rather than on the conscious and deliberate, which led him to the view that man is a creature controlled and dominated by his instincts, and therefore a mere puppet in the hands of nature.

This aspect of Schopenhauer's system acquires a special importance, when compared with much of the most modern philosophy. There are interesting points of contact with the views of M. Bergson, who maintains that in the intuition of life we see reality as it is.

The intellect is merely a tool in the service of the will. Since philosophy must express the real nature of life, we are driven to seek reality through that which is felt. Since the time of Socrates, Schopenhauer maintained, philosophy has made a systematic misuse of general conceptions. We have an immediate experience of the will, and therefore we may be said to have an immediate knowledge of the nature of reality. One of the most valuable contributions which Schopenhauer made to the history of thought, was his insistence on the view that philosophy must be brought back to the recognition of the richness of an immediate and direct knowledge of reality. It must learn that the meaning of things is to be realised more by living than by thinking. The philosopher, therefore, must be before all things "a real man," a guide to fine living. Schopenhauer brought philosophy into relation with life, he drew it down from the icy heights, where abstract conceptions alone can flourish, to the sunny plains below, where art, with "a spark of the divine fire," warms and lightens the ways of man. The intuitive insight of the genius, which divines the truth through art, is a far higher form of knowledge than that of the abstract thinker.

It is suggestive to compare with this the view of Pater, that "philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic contrasts of life."

There is much significance in Schopenhauer's exaltation of intuition over reason. Philosophy has always tended to make too much of reason. And in spite of many crudities in his psychology, Schopenhauer's treatment of the subject contains much of the greatest value. In emphasising the part played in the mental life by instinct, habit, and impulse, he anticipated much that has since been confirmed in the modern science of psychology.

Kant maintained that the only absolutely good thing in the world is the good will, and Schopenhauer practically accepts this dictum. Right action springs from the will, and not from the intellect, for the true nature of man lies in his will. The problem of ethics for Schopenhauer is how the will is to be made good. His treatment of the problem leads him beyond a system of ethics to a philosophy of religion.

Virtue to Socrates was a knowledge of the good; but no amount of mere knowledge of the good can make the will good, and therefore Schopenhauer maintained that Socrates had done next to nothing in ethics. The real solution of the problem of moral obligation lies in sympathy. It is through sympathy that man is able to attain virtue. Goodness of disposition shows itself as pure disinterested love towards others. And when such love becomes perfect it places the fate of other individuals on a level with itself and its own fate. The character which has thus attained the highest goodness and nobility will sacrifice its own interests, and even its life, for the well-being of others. Great heroes in all ages have laid down their lives for their country or their friends. Others have submitted voluntarily to death or torture for the sake of truths or principles which they held dear. Socrates and Giordano Bruno, and many another hero, have suffered death rather than deny what they held to be true. Such heights are reached only by rare natures among men. But all the intermediate stages of goodness spring from the same root of sympathy. Pure love is in its nature sympathy.

Schopenhauer is here in direct contradiction to Kant, who recognised goodness and virtue only when they spring from abstract reflection, from the conception of duty, and who explained sympathy as weakness. On the contrary, says Schopenhauer, the mere concept is as unfruitful for virtue as it is for art. All true and pure love is sympathy, and all love which is not sympathy is selfishness. Many of our sentiments are a combination of the two. Friendship is always, he says, a mixture of selfishness and sympathy. The selfishness lies in the pleasure which we experience in the presence of a friend, the sympathy in the participation in his joy or grief, and the sacrifices we make for his sake.

Genuine virtue springs from the knowledge, which we have through intuition, that other individuals are of the same nature as ourselves. The source of morality is this inward principle of solidarity between individual and individual. This sense of brotherhood, which pervades the whole of humanity, is the real and vital fact which makes the whole world kin. Transcending the spirit of egoism, which is fostered by the actual conditions of life, there springs the spirit of altruism, which strives to subordinate the good of the individual to the good of the whole community, and prompts the individual to self-denial and unselfishness.

In dealing with men, we should never, he says, take into consideration their interested motives, their limited intellectual capacity, nor their wrong-headedness, but we should think only of their sufferings, their needs, their anxieties and their misery. Only in this way can we feel ourselves akin, and so enter into sympathy with others, that we experience a fellow-feeling and a desire to help them in their need. The two fundamental attitudes of mind, in which the virtues and vices of men are rooted, are envy and sympathy. Each man bears within himself these two diametrically opposite characteristics. One or the other quality becomes the fundamental attitude of mind and the basis of action according to the character of the individual. Envy builds up a strong, impregnable wall between each man and his neighbour, isolating the individual in his crust of misanthropy, which grows daily harder and denser. Sympathy, on the other hand, breaks down the barriers between man and man. The sense of division grows thin and transparent, until the individual feels himself a part of an organic whole, deriving his sole usefulness and justification only in so far as he subordinates his own personal ends to the common good.