Some words on...

On the subject of human will: "The human will, in its practical, empirical form, is ruled by motives. These motives are one group of many other causes." Unless we are mistaken completely, this is to be understood as a hailing to the fact of the determinism of the mind. "It would be nonsense to say that our mind can ever be free from motives", and it is past events that conditions us to react in certain ways with regard to these motives. Schopenhauer might have been slightly superficial in his thoughts on this matter, but still he seems to reach the correct conclusion. Because he is basically stating the objective fact that our perception of freedom is a subjective illusion.

In the subject of morality: "Moral actions means that we ourselves are responsible for what we do, and responsibility craves some degree of freedom." If all our actions are caused by deterministic sequences of events in our lives, Schopenhauer states that our freedom must lie at a "deeper plane". At this point, Schopenhauer is using a terminoligy that makes it hard to know whether or not he is correct or not. If he, by saying a "deeper plane", is pointing out that our freedom is a subjective illusion, or an intellectual variable, (i.e. a social scientific concept/law), then he would be correct. While he is making a great fallacy if he actually means to say that there is any sort of real freedom attached to the mind.

Schopenhauer continues on the subject: "Our actions, and motives, are derived from our "character", of our personality as a whole. We have been, and we are, free to decide for ourselves the most important ways in which the personality is formed, in the sense that we can judge our actions by moral standards." Of course, this is true from a subjective point of view. The existence of morality relies on the illusion of freedom, and we use this morality in order to be able to tell wrong from right and form peace and harmony in society. This is, at least, what the social science guys would indicate, and it is also probably exactly what Schopenhauer is stating. However, from an objective point of view, this is all a fallacy. The question is whether or not Schopenhauer himself understood this certain fact.

Schopenhauer was a smart man, even though he made some quite fundamental errors in his reasoning at times. These errors are mostly to be blamed on the time in which he lived, it can simply not be expected from a man who lived hundreds of years ago (in a civilization of monkeys) to understand things to the point we do today. For example, Schopenhauer was a thousand times closer to reality than his rivals Geothe and Hegel (two men who were, despite all their hails, morons). Apart from all this, Schopenhauer was an extremist when it comes to sarcasm, which is why he has been given a special page on this TSA site.

On Existensialism: "... the existence - where everything takes place by causative order, and the essense - where our innner mind experiences a troublesome freedom, the freedom to form our existence as we ourselves chooce." Now, replace existence with objective and essense with subjective, and their you've got the facts of life in a more modern terminology. We can only wonder why Schopenhauer did not use better words himself, however, this might just be caused by the translation of his works from German into English. In either case, it now seems as though Schopenhauer was correct in his conclusion about the mind and morality.

But on the other hand, Schopenhauer repeats that we can be held morally responsible, and if he means this in an objective manner he is still completely wrong. Also, it is very strange that he states that the personality is "done" from birth and cannot be changed. This statement is a sort of half-truth, as we indeed are born with all our energies (i.e. the Id), but Schopenhauer is completely leaving out the relevance of the Ego and the Superego. The fact that he leaves out the importance of the Superego is contradictive, since he has just finnished his reasoning around morality. In other words, Schopenhauer is wrong here.

Concerning egoism: "Egoism is complete in every life-form." This is one of the occations when Schopenhauer is completely objective and equally correct. Then he makes the controversial statement that even Kantian morals are founded in egoism, which of course also is true, and thus Schopenhauer uncovers one of the two basic fallacies that Kant made in his otherwise brilliant reasoning. The second fallacy being that Kant did not seem to understand that depth of his own statement "God is an idea".

Moral actions induced by fear, cannot be called moral. These states occur in irrational authority systems, such as the political system and the religious (dogmatic) system. Here the moral actions are obviously steared by egoism (i.e. survival instinct). The moral of the cultural system is rational, but this hailing of rationality is of course also induced by egoism. In other words, if we are ever to find true morality, we must forever face the fact that no such thing will ever exist without being induced by egoism. This leaves us with two choices, 1, state the fact that no true morality can ever exist, and 2, allow morality to have a certain degree of egoism.

Acting according to the Kantian categorical imperatives is just as much an act of egoism as acting under the threat of eternal torture in Hell. Egoism is derived from the life-instinct, this is an empirical fact. So, however morally we think we are acting, we would never do so unless we are conditioned to view this as the most practical/important motive. Organisms always act for gratification, subjective or material, and this is the key note which must not be forgotten. There are never any exceptions to this law of nature, if there was it would cease to be a natural law. Having come this far, everything is in order when it comes to Schopenhauer's reasoning, but then he wonders off again and contradicts himself. He suddenly states that love and compassion are exceptions to the otherwise dominant state of egoism. By stating this, Schopenhauer attempts to make these two states moral ones. This is of course a fallacy. If you are in love, it will of course gratify you to make your partner happy, and thus you are still playing on the exact same egoistic notes as when you try not to kill people because you do not want to be killed yourself. When hurting others derive gratification, we know that we are in a state generally called hatred. "Ever so-called emotion and motive we have is, in the end, determined by our never ceasing struggle for unconditional gratification." This is correct, but here Schopenhauer seems to be in error, as he manages to contradict himself as though he was forgetting what he was actually saying. Because he continues to say that: "... the purely moral action is derived from a state of being where there is no difference between our own feelings and other's feelings." But then, how can the action be said not to be egoistic? If your pain equals my pain, of course I will do all I can to gratify you.

The problem which constantly seem to make Schopenhauer do wrong turns in his reasoning, is the same as for many other otherwise brilliant men and women throughout history. He constantly forgets to define whether or not he is dealing with subjective variables (i.e. perceptions) or objective invariables (i.e. facts). This fundamental fallacy can cause people to be completely wrong even though they are stating the exact truth. For example, someone might be stating something which is completely true about our subjective perception, while thinking that he is talking in terms of objectivity, and thus make his entire argument risible. Well, letäs finnish all this with a certain beautiful, sarcastic remark Schopenhauer made concerning those who were more stupid than he was. This would firstly be idealists like Hegel, or religious people in general.

"Truth is not a whore that throws herself around the neck of the first man who asks for her,
she is a sublime beauty that might not give herself completely even though one sarcifices everything for her."


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