The Classical concept of Freedom aims to bring together the antinomic notions of the Will and of

Reason. In turn, both the Will and Reason can have antithetical meanings when
considered in their autonomous decisional or heteronomous instrumental aspects: the
Will can have a decisional aspect as conscious Volition (voluntas, velle, arbitrium) and an
operational one as blind insatiable Appetite (appetitus); similarly, reason can have a
substantive meaning as a faculty (Reason, Vernunft) allowing for the human
comprehension of Being (esse) which then makes possible the scientific determination of
human goals (inter esse, human interests) by the autonomous Will, and an instrumental
one as a tool for consistent measurable action or calculation (intellect, understanding,
Verstand).
The inconsistency between Will and Reason arises from the fact that in Western philosophy the
Will has always been regarded as free (as liberum arbitrium). And, to be free, the Will
must be able to restrain its appetite by being reasonable in its substantive sense as
volition because, quite obviously, the will can be neither free nor reasonable in its aspect
as appetite. And yet, if it is to be free even as volition, the will cannot be subordinate to
Reason on pain of making their compatibility tautologous, or even to reason in the
limited instrumental sense as the intellect, because this would turn the Will from an
autonomous substantive entity into a heteronomous instrumental one, similar to mere
appetite, of which freedom cannot be predicated. Similarly and conversely, Reason
cannot be free if it is to be consistent with appetite, whilst freedom cannot be predicated
of reason as intellect. The word arbitrium itself gives the sense of the antithetical ambivalence of the notion of Will: the human faculty of arbitrium makes the decision-maker an
arbiter in the sense that the Will is free to decide; and yet this arbitrage cannot be
arbitrary but reasonable, that is, subject to the rules of Reason or at least of reason
whence the phrase liberum arbitrium to emphasize the fact that the Will can be both free
or unfettered and reasonable.
The first meaning of freedom in Classical philosophical and political theory combines the
instrumental aspects of freedom and sets its boundaries heteronomously, that is to say,
through an external limit to the Will as appetite: this is the negative meaning of
freedom also known as liberty according to which freedom is whatever the appetite is
allowed to do by other appetites either through sheer force (Hobbes) or by convention
based on labour or utility (Lockes notion of labour, Mills utilitarianism, Schopenhauers
sym-pathy, Constants market-based liberalism). This is the heteronomous meaning of
freedom in that it is determined by external factors appetite and means to its
satisfaction are rationally regulated through limited provision of whatever individuals
seek to obtain imposed by external forces such as other appetites or the State. The limit of
this conception is that if appetites are to be externally, heteronomously kept in check so as
not to lead to mutual annihilation, then they must be governed by Reason in its
substantive sense, which is incompatible with appetite.
This conclusion impacts directly on the second definition of freedom as a range of conduct
autonomously adopted by the Will in conjunction with other wills. In other words, even
the substantive sense of the Will as volition cannot be consistent with Reason because its
autonomy must be limited and measured by (be commensurate with) Reason because

otherwise it degenerates into either insatiable appetite or self-annihilating abnegation,

which means that it can reduce itself to naught (Isaiah Berlin). To the extent that human
beings may decide autonomously to restrict their freedom in the sense of their appetites
or self-interests to a minimum, this restriction must be reasonable if it is not to void
freedom of its meaning! These difficulties arise because, as Cacciari notes (DeCdP, c.p.60),
freedom at least in the decisional sense has always been predicated of the Will, and has
also always been construed in the volitional sense.

Freedom is inconsistent with Reason because the notion of Volition as well as that of Appetite are
incompatible with the restrictions that Reason must impose on Freedom by virtue of its
supposed internal consistency both logico-mathematical and also practico-moral. Thus,
to the extent that the concept of Will must include that of Reason, Freedom must be
inconsistent with Reason, unless the two are defined tautologously that is, only
reasonable decisions by the Will can be said to be free.
(In pursuit of his genial definition of freedom as rationality, Weber mistakenly argues that only
rational decisions are free, without noticing that rationality here must also mean
reasonableness otherwise there could be irrational decisions in the sense of
substantive Reason [Wert-rationalitat] that could still be said to be free if they were
carried out in an instrumentally rational manner [Zweck-rationalitat]! Evidently, Weber did
not intend freedom in its substantive sense as Freedom, that is, as the union of Volition
and Reason, but only in its instrumental sense as free-dom, the union of appetite and
calculation, as in the scientific link between Want and Provision in neoclassical economic
theory. In effect, this free-dom becomes a form of co-ercion necessity in a political sense,
not necessity in a scientific sense given that Weber agreed that there are indefinite
scientific ways or means to attain stated goals or ends.)
This inconsistency cannot be overcome by positing a natural or scientific necessity because what
may be impossible for the Will to achieve with one set of means may be possible with
another, what is impossible today may become possible tomorrow (flying to another
galaxy, for instance) depending on the means available, and in any case, any restriction on
an individuals aim, however unreasonable, is a restriction on its free-dom - which leads
us back to Webers definition. Freedom therefore may only be opposed to coercion if we
adopt a definition of necessity that allows of all means, however impractical or
impossible. In other words, allowing for the fact that absolutely impossible volitions
cannot be free, then the only obstacle to the Will is co-ercion and not physical-scientific
necessity. Even where human beings demand the impossible are constrained by
necessity -, any attempt to restrain them from attempting it must be co-ercion. (This is
what led Nietzsche to re-define the notion of physical-scientific necessity.)

This inconsistency of the notions of freedom (the volitional aspect of the will and its insatiable
appetite) and reason (as the regulator of the will) poses an insurmountable problem that
affects Hobbess genial political theory of the establishment of civil society from the state
of nature. The Hobbesian commonwealth (contractum unionis) is formed when human

beings decide freely and rationally to curtail their insatiable appetites that lead to the war
of all against all in the state of nature. To overcome this difficulty, Hobbes makes this
political convention depend on a scientific hypothesis, namely, that it is the fear of death at
the hands of one another that provides the dira necessitas for the establishment of civil
society in which human beings relinquish their external freedom to the State. Yet Hobbes
cannot explain how human beings can choose rationally to alienate their freedom in foro
externo to the State when evidently they are perfectly able to make such a
decision.freely! Indeed, Hobbes concedes that in his commonwealth subjects retain their
freedom in foro interno - yet the two fora are not separable or severable. However dire the
necessity that induces human beings to exit the precarious state of nature, it is still
their Reason applied freely that leads them into the contractum subjectionis to the State.
[Cacciari quote from DCP]
Hobbes was always keen to reduce human beings to their blind passions whilst at the same
time reducing their volition to the instrumental exercise of reason: his political theory is
aimed at deriving the foundations of a rational State by reducing human action as much
as possible to the predictability of mathematics and mechanics. Obviously, Hobbes
believed that rationality could be imposed scientifically on the Will.
FROM the principal parts of Nature, Reason and Passion, have proceeded two kinds of learning,
mathematical and dogmatical : the former is free from controversy and dispute,
because it consisteth in comparing figure and motion only; in which things, truth, and
the interest of men, oppose not each other : but in the other there is nothing
indisputable, because it compareth men, and meddleth with their right and profit ; in
which, as oft as reason is against a man, so oft will a man be against reason. And from
hence it cometh, that they who have written of justice and policy in general, do all
invade each other and themselves with contradictions. To reduce this doctrine to the
rules and infallibility of reason, there is no way, but, first, put such principles down for
a foundation, as passion, not mistrusting, may not seek to displace; and afterwards to
build thereon the truth of cases in the law of nature (which hitherto have been built in
the air) by degrees, till the whole have been inexpugnable. (Dedication to De Homine)

Here it is clear that the rules and infallibility of reason Hobbess mathematical learning
whereby truth and the interest of men oppose not each other - are in complete
opposition to irrational Passion or self-interest Hobbess dogmatic learning whereby
right and profit meddleth with men by warping their allegiance to reason not merely
in terms of instrumental infallibility, but above all in terms of truth, by which
Hobbes intends a universal value and not just logico-mathematical consistency. For
Hobbes, it is possible to reduce this doctrine [dogmatical learning - that is, political and
ethical science] to a foundation of Reason based on the truth of cases in the law of
natureby degrees, till the whole is inexpugnable. that passion may not displace it.
In other words, despite their appetite or passion, human beings are still able to follow
the dictates of reason so as to preserve their individual lives by choosing freely to erect a
State that will guarantee social peace. But Hobbess freedom, reason, life and peace are
not purely instrumental categories, for if they were there is no way that human beings
could place them above their egoism or passions. Clearly,these values must be
universal and not purely instrumental they form part of the make-up of the world, of
the constitution of the universe in a way that clearly invokes the transcendental if not
divine nature of human being.

In contrast, Locke conjectured a political theory in which human beings can give themselves a
rational political order a State - based on natural law or natural rights (jusnaturalism)
without first alienating their freedom. Such a freely-entered political order preserves the
natural rights possessed by humans in the state of nature, which amounts therefore to a
pre-political civil state (Bobbio, Da Hobbes a Marx). Like Hobbes, Locke conceives a legal
system erected by the State based on rights that derive almost entirely from Labor and its
pro-ducts Property -, with the difference that for Locke property rights based on Labor
exist in the pre-political or civil state or state of nature they are natural rights -, whereas
for Hobbes there can be no rights in the state of nature but only in the State all rights
must be positive.
In a concession to Hobbes, Locke admits that whilst Hobbess authoritarian state is not necessary,
it would become so were humans not to erect a neutral state to arbitrate their competing
claims to natural rights because, if their pre-statal society or pre-political state were to
descend into civil war into the clutches of Hobbesian passions then, according to
Locke, the ensuing civil war of the state of nature would continue indefinitely. In other
words, the conflictual Hobbesian state of nature is not congenital to humanity, and
therefore the mechanical authoritarian State devised by Hobbes is not inevitable. But if it
is not pre-empted by the erection of a political state, the Hobbesian state of nature may
well eventuate and then - for Locke, contra Hobbes - be impossible to escape. Lockes
theory deals neatly with one of the principal objections to Hobbess political theory,
which is that if humans were originally in a bellicose state of nature, it is impossible to
imagine how they ever escaped it! Which is why the Hobbesian State totters uncertainly
between a state by political institution and one by historical acquisition.
The obvious problem with Lockes theory, however, is of course that it is impossible to identify
the natural rights that he takes for granted in setting out his theory of the liberal state.
Indeed, the same applies to Hobbes, because although his State is a state by conventional
institution and not by historical acquisition, it is impossible to see what role it can play in
its civil state (status civilis) in the evolution of its social life in all its aspects (economic and
ethical) apart from its role in the reception of the status quo, that is, the conditions that
prevailed in the state of nature, at the time of the establishment of the State. In other
words, both for Locke and Hobbes, either the State is an autonomous institution that, by
that very fact, will inevitably intervene in and interfere with its civil state, or else it is an
entirely neutral and mechanical entity that relies on the organicity or innate harmony
of that civil state in which case, again, it is hard to see why a State should be erected at
all, except in the Lockean sense of insuring against the degeneration of the civil
into a Hobbesian state of nature but then, why should it do so, and according to what law or
right can it function other than Lockes questionable natural law?

It is this faith in the ability of reason as intellect to act as and surge to the status of Reason as an
autonomous guide to action (Practical Reason) that Schopenhauer, after Schelling, will
demolish in his radical critique of Kantian ethics and as a corollary also in his critique of
Hobbess authoritarian positivism and of Lockes liberal jusnaturalism.
For Hobbes and Locke, human reason is more than a calculative instrument that facilitates the
reaching of the social contract: for them, freedom and reason and truth are universal
values that can overwhelm passions and egoism to safeguard life and attain social peace.
Reason is a positive quality of the natural order. This connection between the Freedom
of the Will and causality, between Freedom and Reason, is precisely what Schopenhauer
rejects in his critique of Kants idealism, and in his critique of the Hobbesian account of
the origin of the State, even as he accepts the infallibility of logico-mathematics and
scientific causality their necessity but only as instrumentality at the service of the
Will, indeed as an instrument or tool of coercion, not as either a source of universal
human values such as the primacy of preserving ones life or ab-solute necessity (an
obvious pleonasm) as in Hobbess decision by humans to alienate their innate freedom ob
metum mortis (upon fear of mutually-threatened death) a decision that is at once
free and based on life as a supreme value, and yet dictated by the dira necessitas which
the state of nature imposes on individuals or else in Lockes natural rights arising from
Labor as the foundation of society.
Not so for Schopenhauer. As we shall see, although Schopenhauer agrees with Hobbes that
human self-interest is in conflict with instrumental reason if it clashes too violently with
the self-interest of others, he denies that the decision to erect a State or any other human
decision can be a product of Reason in any universal sense, but only in an instrumental
one because it is part of the instrumental use of reason that it calculate also the longterm implications of self-interest. The interaction of self-interest and reason
Schopenhauer calls Egoism (WWR, par.61-2). Thus, Schopenhauers own appeal to
reason as intellect to derive the origins of morality and of the State falls into the same
error in the sense that instrumental or calculative reason plays a function that belongs
properly to substantive or Practical Reason in a Kantian sense.
In Schopenhauer the Hobbesian necessitas is no longer dire because all human actions are
necessary, they are operari because he sees the Will as the qualitas occulta, as the real thing
in itself, and therefore as not free. The Reason of Hobbes is still the onto-theo-teleological reason of the late Renaissance, of Leonardo and Galileo, if not of Cusanus (cf. E.
Cassirer, Individual and Cosmos): it is not just an instrument, but also a guide to universal
truth, a human inter esse, a human Reason albeit one understood as ultima or extrema
ratio. His State is a deus mortalis mortal indeed because it is the by-product of human
appetite, dire necessity (fear of death) and political convention, yet still a god because
of its derivation from the principles of innate reason. Hobbes keeps faith with the notion
that truth must prevail over passion, reason over egoism. This is why human beings only
surrender their freedom only in foro externo, in the political sphere when erecting the
State, and then only ob metum mortis, fear of death, in dire necessity. This decision

requires in Hobbes an ultima ratio that is founded on a human interest or inter esse (it is
not, as in Schmitt, auf Nichts gestellt). Indeed, both in Hobbes and Locke the social
contract is founded on the common human interests of preserving life and protecting and
advancing the acquisition of wealth through Labor.
There is no such universal ordo et connexio rerum et idearum or social synthesis in Schopenhauer.
The validity of the Kantian attempt to subtract Reason from the
instrumental/heteronomous necessity of mathematics so as to preserve human
Freedom of the Will (autonomy) is what Schopenhauer refutes and so will Nietzsche
more consistently later.
The recognition of the profoundly antithetical nature of the Classical notions of freedom and
reason is what sets Schopenhauer apart from Hobbes and opens the way to a
reconsideration of these notions, especially freedom, from a metaphysical viewpoint.
Whereas Hobbes cannot explain how Reason can be consistent with and prevail over
egoism to found the State, Schopenhauer cannot explain how reason can be consistent
with the State without turning into Reason. In fact, Schopenhauer dispenses with Reason
altogether, but then fails to account for the existence of human society and the State in
spite of universal egoism and conflict. By denying the reality of Freedom and Reason,
Schopenhauer is already far advanced on Hobbes in a materialist sense; yet by clinging to
the reality of the Ego and its irreducible self-interest however deterministically
understood as the Will or the obverse of the Kantian thing in itself -, he simply condemns
liberalism to failure as a political theory. (Nietzsche will later dispense with the Ego
altogether.)
In this regard, Schopenhauer is mistaken when criticizing Hobbes for failing to see that rights
in the sense of prevention of wrongs must exist in the state of nature because Hobbes
only intended by rights legally enforceable rights, not merely the perception of
wrong, which in any case boils down first to dis-possession (possession is the only
reality in the state of nature), and then to the immediate threat to life (in the struggle for
possession). Unlike Schopenhauer, Hobbes does not fall into the error of moralizing
possession by appealing to an instrumental, cognitive sense of con-science or compassion or sym-pathy that requires the intervention of substantive reason, which
Schopenhauer has excluded in principle!
It is essential to understand that Schopenhauer does not base himself on natural rights and most
strenuously not as derived from any positive concept of value-creation such as Labor as
the foundation of the State, which is what happens in Locke. For Schopenhauer all
positive rights are based on negative wrongs and the ability of individual Egoism to
utilize reason as cognition of the pain that certain actions can inflict on oneself. The State
is not therefore a positive institution designed or contracted to establish and promote, let
alone defend, positive natural rights arising from a positive human shared quality a
Value like Labor or a summum bonum. Not at all! The aim of the State can only be
negative that of preventing harm or wrong; it arises purely out of the mechanical,
defensive, self-preserving nature of human Egoisms. Again, there is no universal human
interest here, as the preservation of ones Life may be in Hobbes; there is only Egoism.

But in that case the difficulty arises that, given that Egoisms can relinquish their selfinterest or appetite or free-dom only to a limited degree and not absolutely as in
Hobbes, then the determination of the precise limits of the State becomes impossible
except if instrumental reason turns into the ethics of the Mit-Leid turns, that is, into
something more than calculative reason or intellect into a faculty with a moral-ethical
sense (which is what Nietzsche derided in Schopenhauer and why he took Hegels
dialectic of Vergeistigung far more seriously). (Cacciari in PNeR.)

Operari sequitur esse. By reprising this Scholastic formula in his searing critique of Kants ethical
formalism and transcendental idealism (v. The Basis of Morality), Schopenhauer seems
only apparently to uphold the fundamental tenet of Western metaphysics that life and
the world are divided into permanent reality or sub-stance (what stands under
appearances or supports re-ality, thing-iness) and transient ap-pearance (what is a
partial re-presentation [Vorstellung] or view [Anschauung] of reality), between the
supra-sensible and the sensible worlds. For Western metaphysics since at least the preSocratics and Plato, it is Being that determines the actu-ality of the world, its workings
(Wirk-lichkeit) or operation (operari). Being is the causa causans or the first cause of all that
ec-sists: all else are mere appearances (Kants blosse Erscheinungen). Yet in reality
Schopenhauers re-assertion of the principle that actuality follows being constitutes a
radical inversion (Ver-kehrung) of the Platonic chorismos, properly theorised by Descartes
and then by Kant, whereby Being is a fundamentum that brings together the Subject Idea
(Plato), the res cogitans (Descartes) or Reason (Kants Vernunft) - and the Object the res
extensa, the thing-in-itself. It is this bringing together, this fusing of mind and body or better, this com-prehension of body by mind, of Object by Subject - that is the ultimate
aim of Western metaphysics since its origins in ancient Greek natural theology. That is
the ultimate philosophical quest articulated in the Scholastic adaequatio intellectus et rei
(congruence of mind and thing). As we know, this adaequatio has never been achieved in
Western metaphysics and has degenerated either in the adaequatio intellectus ad rem
(materialism), or else in the adaequatio rei ad intellectus (idealism).
Schopenhauers re-affirmation of the Scholastic formula only apparently evokes the Platonic
chorismos of Subject (the Ideas) and Object (the apparent world) because in reality he is
stating that the ultimate impenetrability of the Object, of the thing-in-itself, means that no
Kantian Reason or Platonic Idea or summum bonum will ever be able to reconcile
appearance and reality, operari and esse. All that we know are appearances (Vorstellungen),
because Reality is a qualitas occulta that can neither com-prehend nor be com-prehended
by the totality of appearances. Hegels pretense to be able to reconcile the real with the
rational, actu-ality with poss-ibility, is thereby renounced and denounced by
Schopenhauer as a perversion of the true Kantian recognition of just such impossibility.
Where Kant went wrong for Schopenhauer, however, was in positing the existence of a
Thing-in-itself, an Ob-ject separate from and opposed to (Gegen-stand, standing against) the
Sub-ject that perceives or re-presents it, and then in insisting that despite this antinomic
opposition, it is possible to identify a Pure Reason (reine Vernunft) a Subject or Ego-ity

(Ich-heit) - that can provide the indispensable adaequatio in the guise of an ordo et connexio
rerum et idearum.
For Schopenhauer, once again, and later above all for Nietzsche - no such adaequatio is possible,
and the Kantian Reason is only an astute theology (Nietzsche in Twilight) - sterile in its
very formal purity and therefore incapable of providing the order and connection
between things and ideas. Equally, no separation between mind and body is possible,
not indeed because the two can be reconciled rationally as both Kant and Hegel
pretended to do this is the real meaning of the Freedom (Freiheit) of German Idealism -,
but rather because esse est percipi because to be is to be perceived and therefore all that
we know about life and the world is that they are the unity of Will and Representation,
the individual subject-object. It is the Will, not the Kantian noumenon, that is the qualitas
occulta of the World, and it is the Wills Representations of the World that constitute the
totality of our knowledge. Not, once again, the totality of the Ratio-Ordo so desperately
sought by Western metaphysics, not the totality of the Freedom of the Will with its theological origins in the Soul of pre-Socratic Greece but quite to the contrary an
instrumental totality whereby it is not the Will that is free to act, to decide, but rather it is
the impenetrability of the Will, its unknowability, that constitutes the free-dom, the
contingency, the sheer poss-ibility that envelops it, that con-ditions its operari, the actuality of the World. All that we know and that we can know are the effects of human
action that we can then ascribe and attribute to causes that we can link only
instrumentally to the effects. The belief that beneath or behind or beyond these instrumental
connections there is an underlying reality is quite simply fanciful; as Nietzsche put it,
the real world has become a fable (Twilight of the Idols). (Hannah Arendts nearly total
misreading of Nietzsche in this regard if both the real and the apparent world have
disappeared, she quips, then nihilism is all that is left is due to her inability to
understand that neither Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche are seeking to condemn morally
the world for its lack of Freedom, but rather they deny the existence of this Freedom itself
they certify the death of God!)
It is hard to overestimate the importance of this inversion both of the distinction between
appearance and reality and of the concept of Freedom operated by Schopenhauer: here
for the first time is the full re-elaboration of the concepts of metaphysical reality and of
freedom and therefore of metaphysics and ethics - not as functions of the Will intended
as the free volition of the human Subject ab-solved from all necessity, of human
spontaneity and liberum arbitrium as the quasi-divine faculty of the human spirit or soul.
Instead, the human will and the reality or World that it confronts are now seen as
functions of the sheer contingency of the World, of the sheer instrumentality of Life. (Cf.
on this elaboration so fundamental to the entire negatives Denken, Heideggers seminal
work on Schellings Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom.) For these reasons the
obliteration of the freedom of the Subject and its subordination to instrumental reason
or intellect (Kants Verstand or understanding) -, Schopenhauers thought represents the
essential crossroads of and underlying link between the mechanicism of Machiavelli and
Hobbes, political liberalism from Locke to Mill and Constant, empiricism from Berkeley
to Mach, the utilitarianism of bourgeois socio-economic theory, and relativism from
Nietzsche to Heidegger: it represents, as it were, the interpretative key to the most

important developments in Western philosophical, scientific and political thought

concomitant with the rise of the capitalist bourgeoisie. (In our series on Capitalist
Metaphysics, we have shown how Schopenhauers thought is fundamental to
understanding the most essential categories of bourgeois economic theory from
Neoclassical marginalism to the Austrian School.)
Before Schopenhauer, all of Western thought had presumed the meta-physical (beyond physics)
freedom of the Subject or Spirit as against the necessity of the physical world
because, as Kant postulated, only an independent, autonomous entity an Ego and its
Reason could be able to com-prehend and so ex-plicate the natural world with its
physical laws. By contrast, the most central concept in Schopenhauers philosophy,
which represents the consecration of the negatives Denken from its origins in Hobbes to its
positive elaboration in liberal political philosophy and finally in Nietzsches nihilist
ontology, is the Principle of Sufficient Reason which states, quite simply, that whatever is
has greater reason to be than what is not. Human action, the operari, therefore, is not and
cannot be the pro-duct of an autonomous or free Subject, of an Ego-ity, because no
autonomous cause can ever initiate a heteronomous chain of cause and effect and still
less explain its existence so as to guarantee its scientific validity, its status as Truth! If
every cause must have an effect, the instrumental reason or intellect or understanding
(Verstand) that can trace the causal connections between events can never also explain and
under-stand (Lt., sub-stantia, stand under) them ab-solutely (unconditionally) freely.
Its under-standing of reality can be only instrumental, only a tool conjectured by
humans never ab-solute in a quasi-divine, theo-logical sense. Kants hesitations in this
regard in the Third Critique and in the Opus Postumum are quite sobering; his recourse to
an intuitus originarius (discussed by Heidegger in his Kantbuch and in his commentary on
Leibniz and Schopenhauer in Part Two of The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic) and his
assertion that he had to limit the scope of human knowledge so as to preserve faith is
quite (sit venia verbo!) revealing! (Cf. on this Heideggers treatment of inverted
Platonism in his Nietzsche.)

Mirror to the World: Ethics as Excrescence of Metaphysics

Empirical Basis of Ethics
Simmel catches this Doppelcharakter of the Will (operari): wirZuschauer u. Akteure,
Geschaffene u. Schaffende sind, p31, foreshadowing Nietzsches expression die
geschaffene Menschen (in HATH1 rePoets). There are pantheisticand monistic and
mystic tones (Simmel, p28, p38, p62-3) as well as Freudian ones (the fragmentation of
the Subject/Self [p54], sublimation) and Darwinian/vitalist (adaptation of the will in its
con-ditioned aspect, p57) that lead to insoluble antinomies (undifferentiated unity of
will against its multiple manifestations, self-lessness of will against awareness both of
its being and of its mechanical aspect as Verstand, the volitional unity of will and
polarity of the strife [Kampf] for Life, posed by what obstacle or opposition? pp58
ff; hence, the purpose-lessness of the Will [Zwecklosigkeit p68] which, on the other
hand, supports the Wertlosigkeit of the world and the preponderance of Leid over

Lust because the attainment of pleasure/wish nullifies its object and defeats the
purpose).
This is not to deny the merits of philosophical speculation. But it is as foolish as it is
futile to believe that we can ab-stract or asport ourselves from the materiality of life,
from its immanence, and transcend it so as to com-prehend it: - because the comprehension oozes out of the trans-scension (as Kierkegaard admonished Hegel
existence oozes out through the meshes of his philosophical net). Schopenhauer returns to
the identification of metaphysics and ethics in the introduction to The Basis, and in so
doing he absorbs the latter into the former precisely by taking that neutral standpoint,
by seeking to stand outside morality and therefore outside the corpor-reality of being,
of life. Nietzsche will flagellate him not for this, but for re-smuggling the ethical concepts
back into the immoralist conception of the Will (cf TotI, part on untimely thinker);
because instead of accepting Life, Schop the pessimist, the decadent, the nihilist
recants his nihilism for the comfort of sympathy (Mitleid with-pain or cosuffering), an ethics akin to that of Christianity. What Nietzsche denies is mostly this
renegade, apostatic flight from nihilism, not pursuing it to the end, not so much the
notion of the Will, which returns as Will to Power, which is the acceptance of the
World, the affirmation of Life, not its rejection and Entsagung, renunciation.
Schop. intimates from the outset that ethics must be derived from metaphysics, as
Kant prescribed (Grndl.d.Met.d.Sittens).
His own Basis of Morality
contains a vigorous attack upon the fundamental principles
of Kant's ethical theory. According to him, Kant "founds . . .
his moral principle not on any provable fact of consciousness,
such as an inner natural disposition, nor yet upon any objective
relation of things in the external world, . . . but on pure
Reason, which ... is taken, not as it really and exclusively
is,an intellectual faculty of man,
but as a self-existent hypostatic
essence, yet without the smallest authority."^ The second
Critique inconsistently retains what was declared untenable
in the 'Transcendental Dialectic', by the obvious subterfuge of
raising the speculative reason into a genus, and then deducing
from it a second species, practical reason,a procedure similar
to that accounting for the origin of immaterial substance, and
as inconsistent as it is useless in the solution of the ethical
problem.^ Through the road of knowledge, through understanding
and reason, we can arrive at perception and conception
respectively; but cognition is always restricted to phenomena,
the thing-in-itself is unknowable.
G., Ill, pp. 510, 511; Basis of Morality, tr. by A. B. Bullock, London, 1903.
pp. 44, 45. For a fuller discussion of this problem, cf. the writer's article on
"Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant's Theory of Ethics," The Philosophical
Review, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-5342G.. Ill, pp. SI I ff.; Bullock, pp. 45 ff.
'C/. R. Behm, Vergleichung der kantischen und schopenhauerischen Lehre in
Ansehung der Kausalitdt, Heidelberg, 1892, p. 39.

The Grundprobleme der Ethik opens with the Machiavelli-Hobbesian distinction

between what men ought to do and what they actually (wirklich) do. The inability of
Kant to bridge the gap between the Ding an sich and Pure Reason, indeed the very
formal purity of that Reason that could found its essence only upon the postulate of an
all-encompassing transcendental Freedom at the end of the causal chain immanent to
human intuition and the Verstand subject to rules this very gap or distinction
(Unterschied) that Schop. recognized as Kants greatest contribution to metaphysics can
be bridged only by the force (a fortiori) of human experience - the principle of
sufficient reason, according to which the fact that something exists is the very ground or
reason for its existence.
It is at this point that Schopenhauer makes what he regards
as his own great contribution to philosophical thought; here
it is that Schopenhauer's philosophy joins onto the Kantian,
or rather springs from it as from its parent stem.^ "Upon
the path of the idea one can never get beyond the idea; it is
a rounded-off whole, and has in its own resources no clue leading
to the nature of the thing in itself, which is toto genere different
G., Ill, pp. 510, 511; Basis of Morality, tr. by A. B. Bullock, London, 1903.
pp. 44, 45. For a fuller discussion of this problem, cf. the writer's article on
"Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant's Theory of Ethics," The Philosophical
Review, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-5342G.. Ill, pp. SI I ff.; Bullock, pp. 45 ff.
'C/. R. Behm, Vergleichung der kantischen und schopenhauerischen Lehre in
Ansehung der Kausalitdt, Heidelberg, 1892, p. 39.
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 65
from it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to the
thing in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only the
other side of our own being can disclose to us the other side of
the inner being of things. This path I have followed."^ Kant
is correct in holding that we are unable to arrive at the ultimate
reality of things by the road of knowledge; but he then proceeds
to deny the possibility of all metaphysics, thus ignoring,
in his Critique of Pure Reason, the paramount ontological significance
of non-cognitive experience.
iG., I. p. 638; H.K., II. p. 118. Cf. G., IV, p. lis-

The chain of causality, therefore, cannot be abstracted from a false infinity at the end of
which there must be a transcendental substance or category that can com-prehend it
as its toto genere op-posite (ob-ject or Gegen-stand) the freedom and reason upon
which Kant wishes to erect or found both Pure Reason as the rational entity and Practical
Reason as the ethical moment of Pure Reason whereby the free will is governed by
rational rules that lead to the Categorical Imperative. To indulge in such abstraction is
to posit unjustifiably the very conclusion that we are seeking to prove. Not only is the
Categorical Imperative nowhere to be seen empirically, in reality; but also nowhere is it
written: it is a delusion both empirically in terms of observable human nature and
formally in terms of the internal consistency of its ethical content or Diktats.

Furthermore, Kant presumes to extend the a priori synthetic from the world of physical
events (where also it can be challenged as inapplicable) to that of morality. Schop has easy
play of this argument a simple non sequitur. For there is no causal relation whatsoever
between an action and a rule of action: one cannot be inferred apodictically from the
other except as a tautology devoid of content or as vacuous exhortation (wishful thinking).
Indeed, if the rule of action is defined in pure terms, it then lacks all practical
content whatsoever in other words, pure reason voids practical reason of its raison
detre. Pure ethics is a mirage. (See Basis, p99 to 103.)
We shall therefore with all
the greater interest and curiosity await the solution
of the problem he [Kant] has set himself, namely, how
something is to arise out of nothing, that is,' how
out of purely a priori conceptions, which contain
nothing empirical or material, the laws of material
human action are to grow up. (Basis, p56.)
Now,
had it been wished to use Reason, instead of deifying
it, such assertions as these must long ago have been
met by the simple remark that, if man, by virtue
of a special organ, furnished by his Reason, for
solving the riddle of the world, possessed an innate
metaphysics that only required development ; in that
76 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
case there would have to be just as complete agreement
on metaphysical matters as on the truths
of arithmetic and geometry ; and this would make
it totally impossible that there should exist on the
earth a large number of radically different religions,
and a still larger number of radically different
systems of philosophy.

It is on this ground that Schop attacks the transcendental idealism of Kant (Basis, ch4).
And this is where one can see the similarity with Heideggers notion of transcendental
imagination as a bridge between pure intuition and understanding where the latter
remains, unequivocally, a purely mechanical function that cannot be elevated to Pure
Reason (see my Heideggers Kantbuch). These criticisms had already appeared in the
Essay on Freedom of the Will. Kantian Practical Reason is initially the offspring of the
freedom of the will, but soon under the regulative principle of Pure Reason becomes
subordinated to a Logic that Schop shows is only instrumental and phenomenic that is belongs only to the Verstand/Vernunft as a mechanical application of formal
reasoning (conception) to the world as Vorstellung (perception). (See Basis, ch4, c.
p73, with reference to intuition and causality or sufficient reason.) Thus, pure reason
pretends to arrogate to itself the right to dictate categorical imperatives that rule the
conduct of the will! The dichotomy of lower heteronomous perceptive intuition and
higher autonomous pure reason Schop correctly traces back to Descartess influence
on Kant, a transcendental distinction rejected by Spinoza (see Note at end of Ch4 of
Basis). For Schop., this is the height of imposture, the sublime Ohnmacht of the Ratio-

Ordo the impotent pretence of moral Theology. (Heidegger makes an identical

criticism without even acknowledging Schop! See my Hs Kbuch.)
NOTE.
If we wish to reach the real origin of this hypothesis
of Practical Reason, we must trace its descent a
little further back. We shall find that it is derived
ON THE BASIS OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 77
from a doctrine, which Kant totally confuted, but
which nevertheless, in this connection, lies secretly
(indeed he himself is not aware of it) at the root
of his assumption of a Practical Reason with its
Imperatives and its Autonomya reminiscence of
a former mode of thought. I mean the so-called
Rational Psychology, according to which man is
composed of two entirely heterogeneous substances
the material body, and the immaterial soul. Plato
was the first to formulate this dogma, and he endeavoured
to prove it as an objective truth. But it
was Descartes who, by working it out with scientific
exactness, perfectly developed and completed it.
And this is just what brought its fallacy to light, as
demonstrated by Spinoza, Locke, and Kant successively.
It was demonstrated by Spinoza ; because his
philosophy consists chiefly in the refutation of his
master's twofold dualism, and because he entirely and
expressly denied the two Substances of Descartes,
and took as his main principle the following proposition
: " Substantia cogitans et substantia extensa
una eademque est substantia, quae jam sub hoc, jam
sub illo attributo comprehenditur.''^
^ It was demonstrated
by Locke ; for he combated the theory of
innate ideas, derived all knowledge from the sensuous,
and taught that it is not impossible that Matter
should think. And lastly, it was demonstrated by
* The thinking substance, and substance in extension are
one and the self-same substance, which is contained now
under the latter attribute {i.e., extension), now under the
former {i.e., the attribute of thinking).
Ethica, Part II.,Prop. 7. Corollary.
78 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
Kant, in his Kritik der Rationalen Psychologies as
given in the first edition. Leibnitz and Wolff were
the champions on the bad side ; and this brought
Leibnitz the undeserved honour of being compared
to the great Plato, who was really so unlike him.

Tsanoff at p65:
Nevertheless, Kant's theory of freedom, untenable though
it is in its technical form, serves to indicate his realization of the
inadequate and incomplete character of his epistemology and its

implications. The doctrine of the transcendental freedom of

man's will recognizes implicitly, Schopenhauer maintains, that
in man necessity is phenomenal only, and that in him the thing-initself manifests its inner nature in the form of Will. "What,
then, Kant teaches of the phenomenon of man and his action
my teaching extends to all phenomena in nature, in that it makes
the will as a thing-in-itself their foundation. "^ For man is not
toto genere different from the rest of experience, but differs only
in degree. The World as Idea is, as Kant says, purely phenomenal;
but it does not exhaust reality. "As the world is in one
aspect entirely idea, so in another it is entirely will. A reality
which is neither of these two, but an object in itself (into which
the thing in itself has unfortunately dwindled in the hands of
Kant), is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignis
fatuus in philosophy."^ The path of objective knowledge does
not lead us to the real nature of things, and so far Schopenhauer
is in thorough agreement with Kant. But "the thing in itself can,
as such, only come into consciousness quite directly, in this way,
that it is itself conscious of itself; to wish to know it objectively
is to desire something contradictory."* The thing-in-itself
is unknowable, precisely because it is not a matter of knowledge
but is in its inmost essence Will.
iG., I. p. 638; H.K., II. p. 118. Cf. G., IV, p. 115
2G.. II, pp. 201-202; H.K., II, p. 377.
'G., I, p. 3S; H.K.. I, p. 5
*G., II, p. 227; H.K.. II, p. 405.

It follows quite obviously that when Schop is asking Kant for the e-vidence, the
observability of his Moral Law, he is already placing Kants Ethics fuori giuoco,
off-side, by asking the impossible: the scientific demonstration of a deontological
rule. Kant, for his part, had made the opposite error: the petitio principii of do what is
moral because it is moral, whence Schops objection rifled from the outset: Who tells
you? (ch2, Basis), or where is it inscribed? (P52, ch4, Basis) But from this point
morality can only be understood as praxis, because we too can ask Schop why must
morality be written somewhere or be a physical or natural observable and e-vident
reality? We cannot turn Kants Freedom (the will) into Necessity (the Categorical
Imperative, which is another version of reciprocity or lex commutativa, as Schop
shows on p85): but the will must be applied and there is a judgement we must make
on how to do this whereby we do not turn the freedom of the will (poter volere) into
another necessity (volere potere). An obligation that is absolute is a contradictio in
adjecto (Basis, pp32-3) because it turns heteronomy (obligation, something external
and constraining the will) into autonomy (a free decision of the will), whereby the free
will constrains itself! And so goes the circulus vitiosus.
The ancients, then, equally with the moderns, Plato
being the single exception, agree in making virtue
only a means to an end. Indeed, strictly speaking,
even Kant banished Eudaemonism from Ethics more
in appearance than in reality, for between virtue and
happiness he still leaves a certain mysterious connection;
there is an obscure and difficult passage in

his doctrine of the Highest Good, where they occur

together ; while it is a patent fact that the course of
virtue runs entirely counter to that of happiness.
But, passing over this, we may say that with Kant
the ethical principle appears as something quite independent
of experience and its teaching ; it is transcendental,
or metaphysical. He recognises that human
conduct possesses a significance that oversteps all
possibility of experience, and is therefore actually the
bridge leading to that which he calls the "intelligible
" ^ world, the mundus noumenon^ the world of
Things in themselves.
The fame, which the Kantian Ethics has won, is
due not only to this higher level, which it reached,
Vorstellung, that is, The World as Will and Idea ;
" Idea"
being used much as eibaXov sometimes is (cf. Xen. Sym.,
4, 21), in the sense of "an image in the mind," " a mental
picture."
{Translator.)]
' It seems better to keep this technical word than to
attempt a cumbrous periphrasis. The meaning is perfectly
clear. The sensibilia {phaenomena) are opposed to the intelligibilia
(noumena), which compose the transcendental
world. So the individual, in so far as he is a phaenomenon,
has an empirical character ; in so far as he is a noumenon,
his character is intelligible {intelligibilis). The mundus intelligibilis,
or mundus noumenon is the Kocrfxos noetos of
New Platonism.(Translator.)
PRELIMINAKY REMARKS. 25
but also to the moral purity and loftiness of its
conclusions.
Kant's proton pseudos (first false step) lies in his
conception of Ethics itself, and this is found very
clearly expressed on page 62 (R., p. 54) : " In a
system of practical philosophy we are not concerned
with adducing reasons for that which takes place,
but with formulating laws regarding that which
ought to take place, even if it never does take
place." This is at once a distinct petitio principii.
Who tells you that there are laws to which our
conduct ought to be subject ? Who tells you that
that ought to take place, which in fact never does
take place ? What justification have you for making
this assumption at the outset, and consequently
for forcing upon us, as the only possible one, a
system of Ethics couched in the imperative terms of
legislation ? I say, in contradistinction to Kant, that
the student of Ethics, and no less the philosopher
in general, must content himself with explaining and
interpreting that which is given, in other words,
that which really is, or takes place, so as to obtain

an understanding of it, and I maintain furthermore

that there is plenty to do in this direction, much
more than has hitherto been done, after the lapse
28THE IMPERATIVE FORM OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 29
of thousands of years.
Every obligation derives all sense and meaning
simply and solely from its relation to threatened
punishment or promised reward. Hence, long before
Kant was thought of, Locke says : " For since it
would be utterly in vain, to suppose a rule set to
the free actions of man, without annexing to it some
enforcement of good and evil to determine his will ;
we must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose also
some reward or punishment annexed to that law
{Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. II., ch. 33,
6). What ought to be done is therefore necessarily
conditioned by punishment or reward ; consequently,
to use Kant's language, it is essentially and inevitably
THE IMPERATIVE FORM OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 33
hypothetical, and never, as he maintains, categorical.
If we think away these conditions, the conception
of obligation becomes void of sense ; hence absolute
obligation is most certainly a contradictio in adjecto.
A commanding voice, whether it come from within,
or from without, cannot possibly be imagined except
as threatening or promising. Consequently obedience
to it, which may be wise or foolish according to
circumstances, is yet always actuated by selfishness,
and therefore morally worthless.
The complete unthinkableness and nonsense of
this conception of an unconditioned obligation, which
lies at the root of the Kantian Ethics, appears
later in the system itself, namely in the Kritik der
Praktiscken Vernunft: just as some concealed poison
in an organism cannot remain hid, but sooner or later
must come out and show itself. For this obligation,
said to be so unconditioned, nevertheless postulates
more than one condition in the background ; it assumes
a rewarder, a reward, and the immortality of the
person to be rewarded.
This is of course unavoidable, if one really makes
Duty and Obligation the fundamental conception of
Ethics ; for these ideas are essentially relative, and
depend for their significance on the threatened penalty
or the promised reward. The guerdon which is
assumed to be in store for virtue shows clearly enough
that only in appearance she works for nothing. It
is, however, put forward modestly veiled, under the
name of the Highest Good, which is the union of
Virtue and Happiness. But this is at bottom nothing
else but a morality that derives its origin from
34 THE BASIS OF MORALITY,

Happiness, which means, a morality resting on selfishness.

In other words, it is Eudaemonism, which
Kant had solemnly thrust out of the front door of
his system as an intruder, only to let it creep in
again by the postern under the name of the Highest
Good. This is how the assumption of unconditioned
absolute obligation, concealing as it does a contradiction,
avenges itself. Conditioned obligation, on
the other hand, cannot of course be any first principle
for Ethics, since everything done out of regard for
reward or punishment is necessarily an egoistic
transaction, and as such is without any real moral
value. All this makes it clear that a nobler and
wider view of Ethics is needed, if we are in earnest
about our endeavour to truly account for the significance
of human conducta significance which
extends beyond phaenomena and is eternal.

Metaphysical Foundation of Ethics

Ch7:
Schops discussion of the link between ethics and metaphysics, before he undertakes the
foundations of ethics in Part 3, are described so tersely in Ch7 as to make this possibly
the best summary of his philosophy I have encountered; thus, it is important to sift
through it carefully.
The strict and absolute necessity of the acts of
Will, determined by motives as they arise, was first
shown by Hobbes, then by Spinoza, and Hume, and
also by Dietrich von Holbach in his Systeme de la
Nature ; and lastly by Priestley it was most completely
and precisely demonstrated. This point,
indeed, has been so clearly proved, and placed beyond
' V. Note on " intelligible " in Chapter I. of this Part.
{Translator.)
115
116 THE BASIS OF MORALITY,
all doubt, that it must be reckoned among the
number of perfectly established truths, and only crass
ignorance could continue to speak of a freedom,
of a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae (a free and
indifferent choice) in the individual acts of men. Nor
did Kant, owing to the irrefutable reasoning of his
predecessors, hesitate to consider the Will as fast
bound in the chains of Necessity, the matter admitting,
as he thought, of no further dispute or doubt. This
is proved by all the passages in which he speaks of
freedom only from the theoretical standpoint. Nevertheless,
it is true that our actions are attended with
a consciousness of independence and original initiative,
which makes us recognise them as our own
work, and every one with ineradicable certainty
feels that he is the real author of his conduct, and

morally responsible for it. But since responsibility

implies the possibility of having acted otherwise,
which possibility means freedom in some sort or
manner; therefore in the consciousness of responsibility
is indirectly involved also the consciousness
of freedom. The key to resolve the contradiction,
that thus arises out of the nature of the case, was
at last found by Kant through the distinction he
drew with profound acumen, between phaenomena
and the Thing in itself (das Ding an sich). This
distinction is the very core of his whole philosophy,
and its greatest merit.

Schop sees a contradiction: man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. Again we
find here Hobbess in foro interno and externo distinction the Cartesian inheritance.
But, as we will see, it is Schops trans-mutation of Kants distinction that will enable
him to dis-card the Cartesian ego (oops!). Objectively, human actions can be described
casuistically, either in mechanical manner or else in terms of conditioning. The
operari can be described objectively, behaviouristically or positively (Comte) so that
the principle of sufficient reason applies. The motives behind the operari are knowable,
discernible even manipulable, if so wished. And yet we know that at the source of
this operari must lie an ultimate cause that is impossible to identify, either empirically
or even (contra Kant) a priori. The reason is that this ultimate cause must be toto
genere, toto caelo different from the causal chain of events, the sufficient reason.
This is what lies behind the Scholastic operari sequitur esse in other words, actions
follow being. This is so because the totality of the causal chain cannot be comprehended through yet another link in the chain (an elephant or camel on the back
of which the world rests) or what Heidegger would style as an intra-mundane or intratemporal, therefore spatial, cause. There is an antinomy (here comes Lukacs)
between Freedom and Necessity, which Schop incorrectly calls a contradiction almost
in a Hegelian sense. If everything is determined, what determines the determined?
For Schop, the greatness of Kant, the greatest merit of his entire philosophy [consists in
drawing] the distinction between phaenomena and the Ding an sich. Kant does not,
like Aristotle, nominate a causa causans, because that would be to pose as meta-taphysika an original source (a pleonasm), a primus inter pares of beings, which is a
bad infinite. We need not (!) a Fichtean projectio per hiatus irrationalem, but rather a
veritable force or spring, the esse, of this causal chain a source that is the
causal chain (Heideggers pure now-sequence) but intuited ec-statically, as beingoutside-itself. And this is precisely how that esse is to be under-stood, com-prehended.
The esse is the nature of the operari but it is not another being, it is not another
link. Rather, it is the being of being, the dimension of being, its horizon.
The individual, with his immutable, innate character,
strictly determined in all his modes of expression
by the law of Causality, which, as acting through
the medium of the intellect, is here called by the

THE INTELLIGIBLE AND EMPIRICAL CHARACTER. 117

name of Motivation,the individual so constituted
is only the phaenomenon (Erscheinung). The Thing
in itself which underlies this phaenomenon is outside
of Time and Space, consequently free from all
succession and plurality, one, and changeless. Its
constitution in itself is the intelligible character,
which is equally present in all the acts of the
individual, and stamped on every one of them,
like the impress of a signet on a thousand seals.
The empirical character of the phaenomenonthe
character which manifests itself in time, and in
succession of actsis thus determined by the intelligible
character ; and consequently, the individual,
as phaenomenon, in all his modes of expression,
which are called forth by motives, must show the
invariableness of a natural law. Whence it results
that all his actions are governed by strict necessity.

Not Motivation, then, explains human behaviour, but character, which is as

inscrutable and impenetrable as nay, it is the Thing in itself! Whereas Kant identified
the Ding an sich with the Ob-ject, Schop has turned it into a transcendental Sub-ject
with a special character. Kant had derived the Subject from the need for Freedom to
comprehend Necessity, because Necessity in-vokes Freedom. And this Freedom is
the very Ratio, the Pure Reason that makes possible the a priori synthetic judgements
derived from our pure intuition and are filtered through the understanding. Pure Reason is
the rule-making faculty that is conscious of its ability to make rules, and that is therefore
auto-nomous because subject only to its own rules, to Logic. The Ding an sich
therefore is the Ob-ject that is perceptible only as phenomena that are regulated
ultimately by rules emanating from Pure Reason.
It is here that Schop departs from this antinomic triumvirate, this unholy trinity (all
good things come in threes, he quipped in WWR) the Subject, the Object, and the
Phenomena.
The theory itself, and the whole question regarding
the nature of Freedom, can be better
understood if we view them in connection with a
general truth, which I think, is most concisely
expressed by a formula frequently occurring in the
scholastic writings : Operari sequitur esse. In other
words, everything in the world operates in accordance
with what it is, in accordance with its inherent
nature, in which, consequently, all its modes of
expression are already contained potentially, while
actually they are manifested when elicited by external
causes ; so that external causes are the means
whereby the essential constitution of the thing is
* I.e., What is done is a consequence of that which is.
THE INTELLIGIBLE AND EMPIRICAL CHARACTER. 119
revealed. And the modes of expression so resulting

form the empirical character ; whereas its hidden,

ultimate basis, which is inaccessible to experience,
is the intelligible character, that is, the real nature
'per se of the particular thing in question. Man
forms no exception to the rest of nature ; he too
has a changeless character, which, however, is strictly
individual and different in each case. This character
is of course empirical as far as we can grasp it, and
therefore only phaenomenal ; while the intelligible
character is whatever may be the real nature in
itself of the person. His actions one and all, being,
as regards their external constitution, determined
by motives, can never be shaped otherwise than in
accordance with the unchangeable individual character.
As a man is, so he his bound to act. Hence
for a given person in every single case, there is
absolutely only one way of acting possible : Operari
sequitur esse.

The Kantian Ding an sich, then, is not the Ob-ject. It is the intelligible character of
the empirical objectification, of the operari and of the World, so that now the Ding an
sich is no longer a Thing: it is an entity a force that comes from within ex-perience, that ob-jectifies and extrinsic-ates itself in the world; it is something outside Time
and Space because it originates with them! This would be the equivalent of Kants
transcendental subject were it not for the fact that it is not a Subject, not an entelechy
or an essent or even a faculty: it is a force, a Welt-prinzip; it is Life as a force; it
is the Will.
It follows that there is no hiatus or chasm or lacuna between Subject and Object and that
therefore Phenomena or Representations are not images or aspects of the Object
as perceived by the Subject but are instead objectifications of the Will itself they
are a subject-object unity. No Object or Reality stands behind the phenomena.
Instead, the phenomena are the actuality (Wirklichkeit), the manifestation of the Will.
That is how human activity can be both free and responsible and necessary and
motivated at one and the same time. (Again, no contradiction, in the Kantian conception;
it was merely an antinomy.)
Freedom belongs only to the intelligible
character, not to the empirical. The operari
(conduct) of a given individual is necessarily
determined externally by motives, internally by his
character ; therefore everything that he does necessarily
takes place. But in his esse (i.e., in what
he is), there, we find Freedom. He might have
been something different ; and guilt or merit attaches
to that which he is. All that he does follows
from what he is, as a mere corollary. Through
Kant's doctrine we are freed from the primary error
of connecting Necessity with esse (what one is),
and Freedom with operari (what one does) ; we
' I.e., his acts are a consequence of what he is.

120 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.

become aware that this is a misplacement of terms,
and that exactly the inverse arrangement is the
true one. Hence it is clear that the moral responsibility
of a man, while it first of all, and obviously,
of course, touches what he does, yet at bottom
touches what he is ; because, what he is being the
original datum, his conduct, as motives arise, could
never take any other course than that which it
actually does take.

To the extent that the awareness of the autonomy of esse is recognized, the Kantian
perspective applies: whereas before it was in the realm of action, in the operari, that
freedom was located, whilst the nature or character or essence (esse, Wesen) was
interpreted as necessity, as determinant, now instead it is the former that is
necessary or conditioned and the latter that is free or unconditioned, not even
regulated a priori.
So that it is the esse (what one is) which in reality is accused by
conscience, while the operari (what one does) supplies
the incriminating evidence. Since we are only
conscious of Freedom through the sense of responsibility;
therefore where the latter lies the former must
THEORY OF FREEDOM. 121
also be ; in the esse (in one's being). It is the
operari (what one does) that is subject to necessity.
But we can only get to know ourselves, as well as
others empirically ; we have no a priori knowledge
of our character.

But this is where the analogy with Kant ends because Kant never distinguishes between
the transcendental subject and mechanical action: the one is the subject of the
other. In Schop, on the contrary, there is no Subject to take this responsibility: there
is only a sense of responsibility, but no actual identification of an authorial entity that
assumes it. So when Schop claims that it is through Kants doctrine that we reach this
inversion, he is really saying that Kants doctrine (the distinction between Ding an sich
and phenomenon) has allowed him to reach this inversion but only by radically redirecting Kants distinction inwards toward the sentient organs, past pure intuition
and into the Will!
In a Note on The Theory of Freedom, Schop elucidates the scope of his inversion
and, in the process, gives us an insight in his thinking process and a delightful link with
Heidegger:
He who is capable of recognising the essential
part of a thought, though clothed in a dress very
different from what he is familiar with, will see,
as I do, that this Kantian doctrine of the intelligible
and empirical character is a piece of insight already
possessed by Plato. The difference is, that with Kant
it is sublimated to an abstract clearness ; with Plato

it is treated mythically, and connected with metempsychosis

[in that the soul chooses which body to inhabit],
because, as he did not perceive the ideality
of Time, he could only represent it under a temporal
form.

This is extremely interesting: for we can see how Heidegger had simply to stand
outside this temporal form and hypostatize time as the horizon of the Will or the
Platonic soul, so that now these are transmuted into Da-sein, that is, pure intuition in
the horizon of time, being understood not as temporal form intra-temporally
but as outside itself, as ec-static being, as ec-sistence, being there. But by confining himself strictly to this horizon of time, Heidegger avoids all the problems that
entangle Schop immediately. First and foremost, how can the Will objectify itself?
Second, what differentiates the Will in its worldly objectifications? Third, how can
the Will lack identity or agency and still be active? Fourth, is the Will then not yet
another qualitas occulta?
Egoism as manifestation of the Will
If indeed the empirical or observable side of human action can form the basis
[Grundwerke] of morality, if the Will is unobservable yet knowable intuitively as the
qualitas occulta, the life-force or impetus behind its objectification as the world, it
follows that our theory of ethics cannot start from quod homines facere debeant, but
rather from quod facere solent. The Kantian Sollen and the Moral Theology to which
it gives rise disappear from view we are led back to the perspective of Machiavelli and
Hobbes.
The objection will perhaps be raised that Ethics
is not concerned with what men actually do, but
that it is the science which treats of what their
conduct ought to be. Now this is exactly the position
148 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
which I deny. In the critical part of the present
treatise I have sufficiently demonstrated that the conception
of ought, in other words, the imperative form of
Ethics, is valid only in theological morals, outside of
which it loses all sense and meaning. The end which
I place before Ethical Science is to point out all the
varied moral lines of human conduct ; to explain
them ; and to trace them to their ultimate source.
Consequently there remains no way of discovering
the basis of Ethics except the empirical.

Now, the objective historical observation of human beings leads us to the conclusion that
what keeps human beings from harming one another is the overwhelming force of the
State: take away the State and all the moral rules and ethical standards quickly fall
apart, revealing a desolate landscape of aggression, the Hobbesian bellum omnium contra
omnes:

In describing Egoism as the overriding motivation empirically observable as inducing

human action, Schop offers us at the same time the most dramatic description of the
operari of the Will:
The chief and fundamental incentive in man, as in
animals, is Egoism, that is, the urgent impulse to
exist, and exist under the best circumstances.

Now
this Egoism is, both in animals and men, connected
in the closest way with their very essence and being ;
indeed, it is one and the same thing. For this reason
all human actions, as a rule, have their origin in
Egoism, and to it, accordingly, we must always first
turn, when we try to find the explanation of any
given line of conduct ; just as, when the endeavour
is made to guide a man in any direction, the means
to this end are universally calculated with reference
to the same all-powerful motive. Egoism is, from
its nature, limitless. The individual is filled with
the unqualified desire of preserving his life, and of
keeping it free from all pain, under which is included
all want and privation. He wishes to have the
greatest possible amount of pleasurable existence,
and every gratification that he is capable of appreciating
; indeed, he attempts, if possible, to evolve fresh
capacities for enjoyment. Everything that opposes
the strivings of his Egoism awakens his dislike, his
anger, his hate : this is the mortal enemy, which
he tries to annihilate.

It appears from this that Schop is no longer basing himself on empirical observation, but
rather is extrapolating from his original metaphysical intuition of the Ding an sich as the
Will to live. It is the introspectivity of this intuition and its temporal form that makes
it solipsistic. Because the Will is inscrutable and unobservable, only intelligible, it
follows that its objectification is boundless, unlimited that its lan can be checked
only by other Wills to live manifesting themselves as the world. It follows that the
only limit to the objectification of the Will is posed by contrary Wills.
...
The ultimate reason of this lies in the fact that
every one is directly conscious of himself, but of
others only indirectly, through his mind's eye ; and
the direct impression asserts its right. In other
words, it is in consequence of the subjectivity which
is essential to our consciousness that each person
is himself the whole world ; for all that is objective
exists only indirectly, as simply the mental
picture of the subject ; whence it comes about that
everything is invariably expressed in terms of self-consciousness.

There is a certain looseness in Schops terminology. We must distinguish between the

mental or intellectual ability of individuals as a manifestation of the Will and the Will
itself. They are two different things in that the Will is a force, an impetus, an lan it
must not be confused with a subject or an ego or with self-consciousness. These
objectifications may induce in the body a sense of identity, but in fact this identity
is only a by-product of the objectification, of the phenomenality of the Will in the
world constituted by other Wills which pose a limit to its objectification.
The only world which the individual
really grasps, and of which he has certain knowledge,
he carries in himself, as a mirrored image fashioned
by his brain ; and he is, therefore, its centre. Consequently
he is all in all to himself ; and since he
ANTIMORAL INCENTIVES. 153
feels that he contains within his ego all that is real,
nothing can be of greater importance to him than his
own self.^ Moreover this supremely important self, this
microcosm, to which the macrocosm stands in relation
as its mere modification or accident,this, which is
the individual's whole world, he knows perfectly well
must be destroyed by death ; which is therefore for
him equivalent to the destruction of all things.
Such, then, are the elements out of which, on the
basis of the Will to live, Egoism grows up, and like a
broad trench it forms a perennial separation between
man and man.

The necessary outcome is that each individual (body) must be restrained by an external
force from the threat of mutual annihilation:
Now, unless
154 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
external force (under which must be included every
source of fear whether of human or superhuman
powers), or else the real moral incentive is in
effective operation, it is certain that Egoism always
pursues its purposes with unqualified directness ;
hence without these checks, considering the countless
number of egoistic individuals, the bellum omnium
contra omnes ^ would be the order of the day, and
prove the ruin of all. Thus is explained the early
construction by reflecting reason of state government,
which, arising, as it does, from a mutual fear of
reciprocal violence, obviates the disastrous consequences
of the general Egoism, as far as it is
possible to do by negative procedure.

Of course, Schop fails to explain how this reflecting reason can manage the early
construction of state government. In this we see the inferiority of Schops theoretical
construct to Hobbess, superior for its theorization of the alienation of individual
freedom, its subtler empiricist theory of the self, and more scientific mechanicism, and

the historical antecedent of civil war in the status naturae prior to the status civilis.
Schops negative procedure (part of the negatives Denken) still serves to highlight the
hypothetical status of the bellum civium and the conventional early construction of
the State. But whereas his construction is exclusively conventional, Hobbes manages to
present his Commonwealth as a historical state by acquisition precisely by
combining the Necessity of self-interest with the forum internum of reason in the
willful alienation of Freedom in the ultima ratio of self-preservation. This is
something Schops Will and his critique of Freedom cannot do (cf Cacciari, DCP,
p64).
Now, the early construction involves two elements: reflecting reason, which
represents Egoism guided into self-interest, and the assumption of possession into
this early construction of state government, which is the status civilis.
The term Eigennutz (self-interest) denotes Egoism, so far as
the latter is guided by reason, which enables it, by
means of reflection, to prosecute its purposes system150ANTIMORAL INCENTIVES. 151
atically; so that animals may be called egoistic,
but not self-interested (eigennutzig). I shall therefore
retain the word Egoism for the general idea.

Schop next tackles the question of property rights, and he seems to follow Hobbes once
again:
In point of fact, the general correctness of conduct which is
adopted in human intercourse, and insisted on as
a rule no less immovable than the hills, depends
principally on two external necessities ; first, on legal
ordinance, by virtue of which the rights of every
man are protected by public authority ; and secondly,
on the recognised need of possessing civil honour,
-in other words, a good name, in order to advance
in the world.
Such are the two custodians that keep guard on
the correct conduct of people, without which, to
speak frankly, we should be in a sad case, especially
with reference to property, this central point in human
life, around which the chief part of its energy and
138 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
activity revolves. For the purely ethical motives to
integrity, assuming that they exist, cannot as a rule
be applied, except very indirectly, to the question of
ownership as guaranteed by the state. These motives,
in fact, have a direct and essential bearing only on
natural right ; with positive right their connection is
merely indirect, in so far as the latter is based on the
former. Natural right, however, attaches to no other
property than that which has been gained by one's own
exertion ; because, when this is seized, the owner is
at the same time robbed of all the efforts he expended

in acquiring it. The theory of preoccupancy I reject

absolutely, but cannot here set forth its refutation.^
Now of course all estate based on positive right ought
ultimately and in the last instance (it matters not
how many intermediate links are involved) to rest
on the natural right of possession. But what a
distance there is, in most cases, between the title deeds,
that belong to our civil life, and this natural
righttheir original source !

But then, how can altruistic or compassionate behaviour be explained? For this also is
observable:
But, for this
to be possible, I must in some way or other be
identified with him ; that is, the difference between
myself and him, which is the precise raison d'etre
of my Egoism, must be removed, at least to a certain
170 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
extent. Now, since I do not live in his skin, there
remains only the knowledge, that is, the mental
picture, I have of him, as the possible means whereby
I can so far identify myself with him, that
my action declares the difference to be practically
effaced. The process here analysed is not a dream,
a fancy floating in the air ; it is perfectly real, and
by no means infrequent. It is, what we see every
day,the phaenomenon of Compassion ; in other words,
the direct participation, independent of all ulterior
considerations, in the sufferings of another, leading to
sympathetic assistance in the effort to prevent or remove
them ; whereon in the last resort all satisfaction and all
well-being and happiness depend. It is this Compassion
alone which is the real basis of all voluntary justice
and all genuine loving-kindness. Only so far as an
action springs therefrom, has it moral value ; and all
conduct that proceeds from any other motive whatever
has none.

So the question now turns on how this difference or wall between persons that is
constituted by Egoism can be removed.
No doubt this operation is astonishing, indeed hardly
comprehensible. It is, in fact, the great mystery of
Ethics, its original phaenomenon, and the boundary
stone, past which only transcendental speculation may
dare to take a step. Herein we see the wall of
partition, which, according to the light of nature (as
reason is called by old theologians), entirely separates
being from being, broken down, and the non-ego to
THE ONLY TRUE MORAL INCENTIVE. 171
a certain extent identified with the ego. I wish for

the moment to leave the metaphysical explanation

of this enigma untouched, and first to inquire
whether all acts of voluntary justice and true loving kindness
really arise from it. If so, our problem
will be solved, for we shall have found the ultimate
basis of morality, and shown that it lies in human
nature itself. This foundation, however, in its turn
cannot form a problem of Ethics, but rather, like
every other ultimate fact as such, of Metaphysics.
Only the solution, that the latter offers of the
primary ethical phaenomenon, lies outside the limits
of the question put by the Danish Royal Society,
which is concerned solely with the basis ; so that
the transcendental explanation can be given merely
as a voluntary and unessential appendix.

Thus, the breaching of the wall of partition separating ego from non-ego is possible:
but the possibility can be accounted for only by metaphysics, not by ethics. The scope of
ethics starts from its basis, and the basis lies in human nature. All that matters for
ethics is that the source of certain ethical behaviour can be established empirically. But
the foundation of that source is to be found in metaphysics.
Negatives Denken to Political Economy
173
Whereas the nature of satisfaction, of enjoyment, of
happiness, and the like, consists solely in the fact
that a hardship is done away with, a pain lulled :
whence their effect is negative. We thus see why
need or desire is the condition of every pleasure.

This is the core of the negatives Denken. If the Weltprinzip is indeed the Will, the WeltSchmerz, and the ultimate and limitless force behind human operari is represented by its
esse, the Will, then it follows that the objectification or manifestation of this Will, its
operari can only be a manifestation of Egoism. Therefore, the wall of partition
separating ego from non-ego must entail the non-creativeness of the operari, its
inability to serve as a dialectic of human need leading to the trans-formation of the
world in a constructive ethical and pro-ductive sense. Not only is the Summum Bonum,
the Good, the Kantian Practical Reason why, even the Divinity, God! not only are
these impossible, but also the very positive content of Value is negated in that
Value, the Arbeit, becomes pure Negative, sheer Egoism that at best can be equaled
consciously with the identification or sympathy of the ego with the non-ego through
the common (Mit) feeling of Pain (Leid) namely, through Compassion (Mit-Leid).
This is the true meaning of negatives Denken. All Values become negative because
they must start from the Egoistic satisfaction of individual needs and desires that
cannot in any way give rise to comm-union, to com-unitas, to species-conscious
being or to dialectical self-consciousness that extrinsicates the Idea (Reason) in the
world. Foolish to insist on the Subject. Senseless to invoke the Ratio and Logic except as
instrumental reason. Ir-rational Irr-tum, Error to insist on a Ratio-Ordo for the world

 a telos, a conatus, a humanity that goes beyond the mere feeling of Co-Pain (play on
Fr. co-pain, friend) intended as Mit-Leid, Com-passion (Lt. patire, suffer).
The biggest victim of this over-turning of the traditional Ethics and Metaphysics of the
philosophia perennis from prima philosophia to Scholastic theology has to be their
historical institutional expression Christianity. Nietzsches invective begins here.
(We will see that Schop ultimately falls back on this Idea as a Platonic notion in the
Entsagung of the Will and its sublimation in Nirvana which evoked Nietzsches
derision of decadent pessimism. But the force of Schops inversion and upsetting and
bouleversement, sconvolgimento of all hitherto known philosophia perennis is as
devastatingly thoroughgoing as it is thoroughly dis-concerting.)
The operari of the Will is the mechanical, empirical and therefore necessary
objectification of a force, an impetus that cannot be quelled or extinguished.
Consequently, its activity or actuality, its Wirk-lichkeit, its objectification as operari,
its actus is end-less in that its every attain-ment is necessarily only momentary and by
no means final: it is merely negative because it is inexhaustible. In its pure unalloyed
and undifferentiated Egoism, the Will has neither a purpose nor a finality its only
aim it to satisfy its being or nature as desire. But this force or impetus is the Will as
Ding an sich, as the other side, the beyond of consciousness and the Self: therefore it
is the qualitas occulta that is unknowable though detectable, unquenchable though
intelligible. Its every act then is the out-come of an unfathomable drive: and as a result
it must be experienced by consciousness as privation, as negation, as need, as
suffering, as pain (Leid).
Every operari, the Arbeit, is not the creation of positive wealth therefore, but rather the
negation, the extinction of a need, of a desire, of a drive. The Arbeit, because it is an
operari, is not in the realm of Freedom but in that of Necessity, its Motivation is
dictated by its character. What is positive is not the operari, but the world that it
works, that it utilizes, that it annihilates, that it consumes. The Arbeit does not
pro-duce, because it utilizes the world as it finds it. Instead, it merely transforms so
as to satisfy a desire, a need. Therefore, the Arbeit is a consumption of existing values:
it is folly to believe that it creates or pro-duces value. Value is in the thing that
Arbeit uses, that it ad-operates (ad-operari), and in the out-come or pro-duct of this
consumption or use or ad-operation, not in the operari itself, not in the Arbeit! It is the
thing, the tools and the matter that the Will works to quench its desire and quell its
need it is these that have utility.
Labour does not have utility but it is an operari that consumes matter: in return, it is
rewarded with the utility of the pro-duct. The exchange is between the utility of the
materials that labour consumes and the marginal product that results from this
consumption paid as wages to compensate for the dis-utility of labour. Those who
possess utility can exchange it with labour so as to satisfy their Will; those who do
not possess utility need to apply, to ex-ercise, to ad-operate the Arbeit so as to obtain the
utility of its marginal product to satisfy their desires or their needs. It follows that labour

has dis-utility, it is the negative of utility, just as utility is the positive gratification
of negative need, desire objectified in the body by the Will.
Capital represents the deferral of gratification; it is a saving of utility as deferred
consumption; it is a sacrifice, a renunciation. Its marginal product repays its owner with
interest, that is, the utility that equals the deferred consumption of the utility of
capital. Labour, the operari, is by contrast the immediate gratification of need. It is absurd
to speak of the marginal utility of labour: at most one could speak of the marginal
product of labour! What is meant instead is the utility of the marginal product of the
capital consumed by labour (otherwise known as wages) that rewards and extinguishes
its dis-utility, its effort, its Leid. Where utility and need meet, where they equate
each other, there is an extinguishment of both: the two nullify each other. That point is
Nirvana, the extinguishment of need, the satisfaction of all needs (Robbins) - in other
words, equi-librium.
From the foregoing considerations we see that in
the single acts of the just man Compassion works
only indirectly through his formulated principles, and
not so much actu as potentia ; much in the same way
as in statics the greater length of one of the scale beams,
owing to its greater power of motion, balances
the smaller weight attached to it with the larger on
the other side, and works, while at rest, only potentia,
not actu ; yet with the same efficiency.

It is the potentia that belongs to the sphere of freedom, and the actus that stands in
that of necessity: just as capital or saving is the potential the utility that will then
be acted upon, operated and worked by the (needy) Arbeit that is the Leid or
pain or need to be satisfied by consuming capital! Continuing the analogy, it is in
Nirvana or at equi-librium that the potentia is at its full and the actus is therefore
imperceptible there is no movement, no Dynamik, merely Statik, and therefore
stagnation. (On stagnation in Schump and Keynes, see one of the essays in MarxKeynes-Schump collection.)
It will now be seen that injustice or wrong always
consists in working harm on another. Therefore
the conception of wrong is positive, and antecedent
to the conception of right, which is negative, and
simply denotes the actions performable without injury
to others ; in other words, without wrong being done.
That to this class belongs also whatever is effected
with no other object than that of warding off from
oneself meditated mischief is an easy inference. For
no participation in another's interests, and no sympathy
for him, can require me to let myself be
harmed by him, that is, to undergo wrong.(P183)
The theory that right is negative, in contradistinction
to wrong as positive, we find supported by Hugo
Grotius, the father of philosophical jurisprudence.
The definition of justice which he gives at the beginning

of his work, De Jure Belli et Pads (Bk. I.,

chap. 1., 3), runs as follows :

Jus hie nihil aliud^

quam quod justum est, significat, idque negante magis
sensu, quam aiente, utjus sit, quod injustum non est}
The negative character of justice is also established,
little as it may appear, even by the familiar formula :
"Give to each one his own." Now, there is no need
to give a man his own, if he has it. The real
meaning is therefore : " Take from none his own."
Since the requirements of justice are only negative,
they may be effected by coercion ; for the Neminem
' Justice here denotes nothing else than that which is just,
and this, rather in a negative than in a positive sense ; so that
what is not unjust is to be regarded as justice.
184 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
laede can be practised by all alike. The coercive
apparatus is the state, whose sole raison d'etre is to
protect its subjects, individually from each other, and
collectively from external foes. It is true that a fewGerman would-be philosophers of this venal age
wish to distort the state into an institution for the
spread of morality, education, and edifying instruction.
But such a view contains, lurking in the background,
the Jesuitical aim of doing away with personal freedom
and individual development, and of making men
mere wheels in a huge Chinese governmental and
religious machine. And this is the road that once
led to Inquisitions, to Autos-da-fe, and religious wars.
Frederick the Great showed that he at least never
wished to tread it, when he said : " In my land every
one shall care for his own salvation, as he himself
thinks best." Nevertheless, we still see everywhere
(with the more apparent than real exception of North
America) that the state undertakes to provide for
the metaphysical needs of its members.

In the passage above we can virtually encapsulate the entirety of liberal thought. This
is indeed the summit of Political Economy, the balance of the Political (the liberal
State of Law) and the Economic, the equilibrium of demand and supply in the selfregulating market governed by the private egoistic self-interest of personal freedom and
individual development! Here is the civil society, the burgerliche Gesellschaft, that
reconciles the positive rights of citizens with the protection of the negative do-no-harm
sphere of bourgeois self-interest.
We have seen that " wrong " and " right " are
convertible synonyms of " to do harm " and " to
' There is no more efficient instrument in ruling the masses
than superstition. Without this they have no self-control;
they are brutish ; they are changeable ; but once they are
caught by some vain form of religion, they lend a more willing

ear to its soothsayers than to their own leaders.

THE VIRTUE OF JUSTICE. 185
refrain from doing it," and that under " right " is
included the warding off of injury from oneself.
It will be obvious that these conceptions are independent
of, and antecedent to, all positive legislation.
There is, therefore, a pure ethical right, or natural
right, and a pure doctrine of right, detached from
all positive statutes. The first principles of this
doctrine have no doubt an empirical origin, so far
as they arise from the idea of harm done, but per se
they rest on the pure understanding, which a priori
furnishes ready to hand the axiom : causa causae
est causa effectus. (The cause of a cause is the cause
of the effect.) Taken in this connection the words
mean : if any one desires to injure me, it is not I,
but he, that is the cause of whatever I am obliged
to do in self-defence ; and I can consequently oppose
all encroachments on his part, without wronging him.
The Doctrine of Right is a branch of Ethics,
whose function is to determine those actions which
may not be performed, unless one wishes to injure
others, that is, to be guilty of wrong-doing ; and
here the active part played is kept in view. But
legislation applies this chapter of moral science
conversely, that is, with reference to the passive side
of the question, and declares that the same actions
need not be endured, since no one ought to have
wrong inflicted on him. To frustrate such conduct
the state constructs the complete edifice of
the law, as positive Right. Its intention is that
no one shall suffer wrong ; the intention of the
Doctrine of Moral Right is that no one shall do
wrong.^(P186)

The empirical, observable basis of Ethics is therefore self-defence or self-preservation.

Whereas Kant teaches do what is moral because it is moral, and Hegel teaches do what
is moral because it reconciles (Versohnung) conflicting interests, Schop teaches do
whatever preserves your self-interest. But the question arises, how do I determine
where my self-interest ends and those of others begins? How can the State, by positive
law, mediate individual self-interest? Obviously, the task is impossible unless we can
impose a limit to egoisms by means of reflective reason: Schop requires an almost selfevident approach to the de-finition of self-interest or enlightened egoism, which only
Political Economy can give and on which the State of positive law can be erected.
It is asserted that beasts have
no rights ; the illusion is harboured that our conduct,
so far as they are concerned, has no moral significance,
or, as it is put in the language of these codes, that
" there are no duties to be fulfilled towards animals."
Such a view is one of revolting coarseness, a barbarism

of the West, whose source is Judaism. In philosophy,

however, it rests on the assumption, despite all
evidence to the contrary, of the radical difference
between man and beast, a doctrine which, as is well
known, was proclaimed with more trenchant emphasis
by Descartes than by any one else : it was indeed the
necessary consequence of his mistakes. When Leibnitz
and Wolff, following out the Cartesian view, built up
out of abstract ideas their Rational Psychology, and
constructed a deathless anima rationalis (rational
soul) ; then the natural claims of the animal kingdom
visibly rose up against this exclusive privilege, this
human patent of immortality, and Nature, as always
in such circumstances, entered her silent protest.(P218)
Those persons must indeed be totally blind, or
else completely chloroformed by the foetor Judaicus
(Jewish stench), who do not discern that the truly
essential and fundamental part in man and beast is
identically the same thing. That which distinguishes
the one from the other does not lie in the primary
and original principle, in the inner nature, in the
kernel of the two phaenomena (this kernel being
in both alike the Will of the individual) ; it is found
in what is secondary, in the intellect, in the degree of
perceptive capacity. It is true that the latter is incomparably
higher in man, by reason of his added faculty
of abstract knowledge, called Reason ; nevertheless
this superiority is traceable solely to a greater cerebral
development, in other words, to the corporeal difference,
which is quantitative, not qualitative, of a single
part, the brain. In all other respects the similarity
between men and animals, both psychical and bodily,
is sufficiently striking. So that we must remind
our judaised friends in the West, who despise animals,
and idolise Reason, that if they were suckled by their
mothers, so also was the dog by Ms. Even Kant fell
222 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
into this common mistake of his age, and of his
country, and I have already administered the censure ^
which it is impossible to withhold. The fact that
Christian morality takes no thought for beasts is a
defect in the system which is better admitted than
perpetuated.
(8) It is perhaps not impossible to investigate and
explain metaphysically the ultimate cause of that
Compassion in which alone all non-egoistic conduct
can have its source ; but let us for the moment
put aside such inquiries, and consider the phaenomenon
in question, from the empirical point of view,
simply as a natural arrangement.

But it was Kant who first completely cleared up

this important point through his profound doctrine
of the empirical and intelligible ^ character. He
' Are we to believe it true that we can only be thoroughly
good by virtue of a certain occult, natural, and universal
faculty, without law, without reason, without precedent?
^ The good man out of the good treasure of his heart
bringeth forth that which is good ; and the evil man out of
the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is
evil.
' V. Note on "intelligible," Part. II, Chapter I
{Translator.)
ON THE ETHICAL DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER. 241
showed that the empirical character, which manifests
itself in time and in multiplicity of action, is a
phaenomenon ; while the reality behind it is the
intelligible character, which, being the essential
constitution of the Thing in itself underlying the
phaenomenon, is independent of time, space, plurality,
and change. In this way alone can be explained what
is so astonishing, and yet so well known to all who
have learnt life's lessons,the fixed unchangeableness
of human character.
Du bist am EndeWAS du bist.
Setz' dir Perrucken auf von Millionen Locken,
Setz' deinen Fuss auf ellenhohe Socken:
DU BLEIBST DOCH IMMER WAS DU BIST}

But the reader, I am sure, has long been wishing to

put the question : Where, then, does blame and merit
come in ? The answer is fully contained in Part II.,
(Chapter VIII., to which I therefore beg to call
particular attention. It is there that the explanation,
which otherwise would now follow, found a natural
place ; because the matter is closely connected with
Kant's doctrine of the co-existence of Freedom and
Necessity. Our investigation led to the conclusion
that, once the motives are brought into play, the
Operari (what is done) is a thing of absolute
necessity ; consequently, Freedom, the existence of
which is betokened solely by the sense of responsibility,
cannot but belong to the Esse (what one is).
No doubt the reproaches of conscience have to do,
' In spite of all, thou art stillwhat thou art.
Though "wigs with countless curls thy head-gear be,
Though shoes an ell in height adorn thy feet:
Unchanged thou eer remainest what thou art.
V. Goethe's Faust, Part I., Studirzimmer.
(Translator.)
ON THE ETHICAL DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER. 249
in the first place, and ostensibly, with our acts, but
through these they, in reality, reach down to what

we are; for what we do is the only indisputable

index of what we are, and reflects our character just
as faithfully as symptoms betray the malady. Hence
it is to this Esse, to what we are, that blame and
merit must ultimately be attributed.

TRANSITION TO NEO-CLASSICS and Phenomenology

Critique of Kant with Hegel in mind (essays rejected because of invective). Schop. does
not conceive of the Will as self-consciousness. This Hegelian notion would at once
remove Kants greatest discovery, the distinction of Dinge an sich and Vorstellungen,
because the dialectic of self-consciousness removes the Will as Ding-an-sich, and the unity
of Subject-Object that Schop is postulating. No dialectic is possible between
consciousness, its awareness of its being-in-the-world and therefore self-consciousness
through the positing of the Other (its self-alienation as the Other), and the operari through
the annihilation of the world that leads to its independence from the Other as well as the
extrinsication of the Idea in the world. In Hegel it is the interaction of the I with the world
as negation, not as Object, that posits the emancipation of Self from the Other. The I and
the Thou are mediated by labour; the interaction of Herr (wealth) and Knecht (servitude)
is through labour and leads to the supersession of the relationship.
The Will is sheer mechanical use of the world, of its objectification. Its operari is not
mediation but a simple instrumental manifestation of subjectivity (Cacciari, PNeR, p31).
No value can be created through the objectification of the Will: rather, it is the world
itself that satisfies the Will. Schopenhauer still remains within the classical confines of
the Puritanical and Protestant ascetic Entsagung of consumption. This is not so with
Bohm-Bawerk and the neo-classics who unabashedly and shamelessly posit and assert it as
Life (hence, the positive theory of capital a title that has perplexed many Cacciari,
p30).
Kantian formalism rejected. Separation of noumena and phenomena already destroys the
basis for formalist ethics. Benthamite utilitarianism also because it reconciles individual
wills so that labour is seen as source of synthesis-osmosis-value through constructive
character. Competition has only a distributive role in the market mechanism.
The Will is an operari, striving in the world of other manifestations of will, adapting to this
world and therefore evolving. Labour therefore cannot amount to creation of utility but to
its use: labour/operari (Arbeit) consumes the world in search of satisfaction. The
evanescence of the world means that the drive (Trieb) of the Will toward satisfaction defeats
itself. That is the source of pain (Leid) countering the search for Pleasure (Lust). This leads
straight to Gossen, also in the re-ordering of the Gesellschaft away from the post-Hegelian
emanationism of Historismus and toward its scientific, research- and result-oriented
relativism in Dilthey (Gadamer, TaM, p223) and Schmoller that beyond the superficial
Methodenstreit powerfully asserts the Individualitat of the market society and its competitive
equilibrium. (Again, Cacciari, pp30ff.)

Entsagung is the intellectual awareness of the Verstand/Vernunft to refrain and restrain the
Will from seeking Lust, the utility of the world. Hence dualism, or inter-face, the
Janus-bifrons of satisfaction/Nirvana. For Robbins, Nirvana is satisfaction of all needs,
which is identical with equilibrium, the extinction of all needs. Thus final satis-faction
of a need is its extinction is its ful-fillment, or Vollendung, that is, com-pletion in its
double sense of ful-fillment (com-pletion, full-ness) and extinction (completion, finish).
It is of vital importance that Entsagung is the culmination of an intellectual effort to
master the will. In this role, the intellect is a mechane a means for directing the
otherwise blind drive of the will it is the equivalent both of the Kantian concepts
emanating from Pure Reason even in its Practical moment, and of the Freudian
superego or ego where the Will is the Es/Id (cf Freud, C&ID, ch7 re super-ego).
[Note that for Freud there is no oceanic feeling (first page of CID Romain Rolland)
similar to Schops sympathy; and that he equates this feeling more with religion. Note
also the Arbeit as search for self-preservation, as Arbeit/operari which Freud does not
sublimate because of his analytical stance which (like Nietzsche) sur-passes Schop in
seeing the necessity of this (its non-transcendence a la Schop) but (unlike Nietzsche)
he does not exalt as Wille zur Macht but treats as indistinguishable from Thanatos. Like
Nietzsche, Freud wonders aloud in ch7 whether humans might not be better without the
strictures of the super-ego (guilt, and Kultur as well!) and places conscience as fear of
loss of the love of others (Nietzsche speaks of protection but so does Freud) ahead of
instinctual repression until conscience is learned or interiorized (a garrison within a
conquered citadel [p71] is his metaphor for the super-ego the citadel is the ego)
through social institutions and the roles are reversed. He then briefly touches on
communism and social equality, repeating verbatim Nietzsches position on equality
is unjust. Again, as with Nietzsche, Freud takes an ontogenetic approach to
psychoanalysis in that even the Arbeit is seen as an external constraint, as toil, as
annihilation of the world in Hegelian fashion. This elision of Arbeit/operari from the
sphere of freedom of the will is something Nietzsche will eschew with his
immanentistic opposition to the hidden transcendentalism of the nihilists. Similarly,
Nietzsche will sub-tract art from the cultural repression of the instincts. Note that on
pp86-87 Freud confronts the problem of distinguishing between individual and
civilization in what is a crucial discussion to understand his perspective. But note the
reference to immortal enemies on p92 with reference to Eros and Thanatos.]
Phenomenology instead (from Dilthey to Husserl cf Gadamer in TaM) sought to return
to Cartesian transcendence by decreeing apodictic rules of thought determined a priori.
(And the Neo-Kantians sought to circumvent Kantian agnosticism through the autonomy
and universality of logic and judgements, including ethical maxims.) In this attempt, they
overlooked Kants desperation in the Ubergang his inability to extend logic and
mathematics to causality in the physical world (PNeR, p61). Gadamer notes Husserls
attempt to defend himself against charges of atavistic Kantian objectivism from
Heidegger [p236] whose first major work was devoted to this critique. (Cf Palmer on
KPM.) Both were attempts to rescue philosophy from the sciences, and the sciences form

their Krisis. But the need to replace subjectivity as substance with experience or
intentionality and, finally, with the Lebenswelt shows how deep-seated was the influence
of Schopenhauer on Husserl in particular, whose Log.Unter. exercised in turn decisive
influence on Dilthey (Gadamer, p236).
In each of these cases the Ding-an-sich (much the same way in which it becomes
qualitas occulta in Schop and therefore beyond our ken) replaces as Lebenswelt what
were once appearances or phenomena (Vorstellungen) behind which once stood the
inscrutable Object. Phenomenology seeks to transcend the universal equivalence of the
Will to rescue the Sinn-gebende of the Ratio-Ordo, by categorizing experience
(Erlebnis) as a horizon or historical consciousness (cf Gadamer, pp238-9 on Lebenswelt
and, more explicitly Husserl on Hume, pp239-40. Note also historicist stress on research
dating from Ranke). Gadamer is quite wrong, then, to seek to reconcile this
Lebensphilosophie or even (Heidegger) Welt-anschauung with Hegels dialectic of
Selbstbewusstsein because this last contains a radically different notion of the world
from what is clearly the Schopenhauerian Kant-critical and Cartesian transcendental
idealist genealogy of Diltheyan hermeneutics and Husserlian phenomenology.
(On all this, cf Nietzsche, TotI, Reason in Philosophy, par1 re body. Par3:
Logic as symbolic convention. In the same part, see refs. to language and
will. Also, How the true world and Konigsbergers things; Schop in par5 and
The Four Errors, esp. par8 which owes much to Schop on whom see also
Skirmishes of an untimely man. Cf. Lowith on Heideggers interpretation of
Nietzsche on value, pp111ff, and political economy, p113; ref to Schop on p117
and p118 on Vollendung. The suit discusses also the notion of appearance, ref to
Plato, which is almost inspired by Schop-Mach.)

Machism and the neo-classics pivot instead on the equivalence of wills as the
rationalization of the rules of the game that, if adhered to or enforced by its participants,
would be effective in ensuring the equilibrium of the wills in a liberal order understood as
natural/spontaneous or logical constituting in fact, like Political Economy, the
practical political survival/reproduction of capitalist social relations. The Ordoliberals are
the best expression of the practical implementation of these ideas in the German Soziale
Marktwirtschaft.
These are readings of Schopenhauer that remain within the ambit of Nirvana as the
culmination of Askesis, of the Entsagung as the renunciation of the operari. But Nirvana is
Janus-faced (Janus bifrons): like equilibrium, it exits as it enters; once reached, the operari
and the world, even in its mirrored form, return and become embodied, so that the
Sollen of the Arbeit, its inter-esse, its inter-action or even the correlation of the I-Thou
in the Husserlian Lebens-welt of Erlebnisse (Gadamer) all this returns as Freiheit, as
Ohn-macht.
As Cacciari shows, the Nietzschean supersession of Schopenhauer as Educator will lead
far away from these toward Weber, toward Schumpeter and Heidegger. But Cacciari ably
distinguishes between the initial phase of transformation of economic theory, from Gossen

through Jevons and Bohm-Bawerk, when the inversion of value theory into the positive
theory of capital takes place, when the will to power of the new theory is in full
vehemence against the demands of the emerging working class, from the later equilibrium
theory that constitutes both a socialist dream of a balanced economy (Walras) or of a
consumerist heaven (Hayek/Mises/Robbins) that accomplishes the goals of Political
Economy. Here the socialist utopia of the Law of Value meets the neoclassical liberal
Nirvana of equilibrium in the foundation of anti-monopolistic free competition.
(Cacciari, PNeR, pp29ff. But see W.Sombarts Socialism discussed in PhiloAnte
ofSoE.)
Cacciaris own account of the Ubergang from Schopenhauer to the later negatives
Denken suffers from the fact that he hides the full significance of das Wille that replaces
the Kantian Subjekt and Hegels Geist. Schopenhauer takes up fully Kants dichotomy and
antinomy of Dinge an sich, or the Object, and the Vorstellungen or Erscheinungen the
experience of which he tries to re-compose in a transcendental Subject. And this is
dictated by the iron necessity and certainty of scientific laws, of hypothesis and
deduction. Despite the doubts and perplexities of the Opus Postumum, Schopenhauer
removes these certainties and laws from the sphere of rational reflection to that of
pragmatic experience (Erlebnis) by invoking the principle of sufficient reason. (Dilthey
does too in the Intro. to Geisteswissenschaften, without referring to Schop.) But as
Tsanoff shows in the passage below, several aspects of the critique appear unfounded and
capricious. They fail to respond to the quite apparent ability of human beings to lend
meaning and order to the world, if only for practical purposes. Under cover of exploding
the bourgeois allegiance to the Ratio-Ordo, Cacciari is engaging in a specious
mystification of that historical process that can with all the reservations and provisos and
distinguo and caveats admissible be placed under the rubric of progress.
Returning to Schopenhauer, it is hardly too much to say that
his whole argument is specious. The fact that in Kant's admittedly
confused way of treating perception and conception he sees
nothing but a solemn warning against undue adherence to an
ideal of 'architectonic symmetry,' shows how hopelessly he
misconceives both the aim and the fundamental trend of Kant's
'Critical' method.^ Kant's 'confusion' of the perceptual and
^Kr. d. r. V., p. 311; M., p. 253. Cf. the introductory sections of the 'Transcendental
Dialectic' especially Kr. d. r. V., pp. 299 fif., 305 ff., 310 ff., 322 ff.;
M., pp. 242 ff., 247 ff., 252 ff., 261 ff.
2 Kant regards speculative reason, however, as incapable of attaining knowledge
of ultimate reality, and therefore he introduces the notion of practical reason.
But this problem will more naturally come up for discussion in the sequel.
3 Mere textual criticism of Kant's Critiques is sure to lead one astray, unless
the fundamental spirit of his philosophy is kept constantly in mind. As Richter

NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 21

the conceptual in experience is to be regarded, not as the failure
to discriminate ultimate differences, but rather as the imperfect
realization and the inadequate expression of the underlying
essential unity of concrete experience, which cannot be reduced
to merely perceptual or conceptual terms. Kant's confusion
is the confusion of depths not yet clarified; Schopenhauer's

lucidity manifests epistemological shallowness. Later idealism,

of course, brought to light much that escaped Kant himself;
but Kant was far more nearly right than Schopenhauer when he
said: "Thoughts without contents are empty, intuitions without
concepts are blind. . . . The understanding cannot see, the
senses cannot think. By their union only can knowledge be
produced."^
The fundamental defect of Schopenhauer's epistemology
is to be found in his constant endeavor to explain one abstract
phase of experience in terms of another, supposedly prior, phase,
really the vice of the older rationalism,instead of reading
both into the organic unity which embraces both and derives
its own meaning precisely from such systematization of aspects
meaningless in abstract isolation. The relation between the
organizing principles of experience is for Kant, not one of formal
subsumption, but of organic interdependence. Experience involves
both perception and conception, the one as much as the
other; its progressive organization consists in the gradual
evolution of the two, which unifies them in one concrete process.
The perceptual content is essentially meaningful, and the
application of the categories brings out what is implicit in it.
Schopenhauer's universals are the universals of the old scholastic
logic, abstractions which do not exist outside of its text-books
and are alien to concrete experience. Conception, in the true
Kantian sense, is no mere attenuated perception, but the significant
aspect of experience. Conceptions, or, perhaps better,
puts it: "Es ist wirklich nicht so schwer, wenn man sich nur an den wortlichen
Text der Kritiken halt, Rationalismus und Empirismus, Dogmatismus (im weitesten
Sinne) und Scepticismus, Idealismus und Realismus aus ihnen herauszulesen"
{op. cit., pp. 91-92). And again, with special reference to Schopenhauer's procedure:
"Kantische Elemente hat Schopenhauer aufgenommen, Kantisch fortgebildet
hat er sie nicht" {op. cit., p. 77).
iKr. d. r. V., p. 51; M., p. 41.

22 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT.

meanings, are involved in experience from the very beginning;
they are not merely its abstract terminus ad quem, as Schopenhauer
would have it.^ Universality means, not erasure of
details and differences, but their gradual organization from a
point of view ever growing in catholicity. The progress of
knowledge is not from perception to conception, but from less
concrete to more concrete organization of both.
iG.. II. p. 55; H.K., II. p. 213.

Valiantly made, Tsanoffs objection is impeccable. What purpose does it serve to replace
Kants critique with Schopenhauers? Is the latter not rather, by exasperating the formers
categories (the Hegelian where is it written?), exasperating his own critique and by
reflection adopting the Scholastic categories denounced by Tsanoff and of which
Schopenhauers entire oeuvre is always redolent?
Phenomenalistic idealism
and voluntaristic materialism, aesthetic quietism and ethical
nihilism, are advocated one after another; and, while the criticism

of Kant's principles often lays bare the concealed inconsistencies

of the Critical system, the solutions offered are as often inadequate.
Is not the real explanation of the situation to be found
in the fact that Schopenhauer is not the true successor of Kant
at all? Instead of being a neo-rationalist, as Kant, on the whole,
remained, he is fundamentally an irrationalist, so far as his
attitude towards ultimate reality is concerned. He is keen in
perceiving and criticising Kant's confusion of various aspects
and elements of experience; but, instead of tracing their immanent
organic unity, which Kant imperfectly realizes and formulates,
he goes so far, in almost every case, as to assert their actual
separation. This was seen to be true of his treatment of perception
and conception, understanding and reason. Instead of
recognizing their unity in the concrete process of knowledge,
Schopenhauer dogmatically separates them in a scholastic manner,
thus substituting a lucidly wrong theory for Kant's confusedly
right one. (P.75)

True enough, there is no Zerstorung der Vernunft in Heidegger or Schopenhauer or

Nietzsche because the validity of scientific reason is left intact as the Vollendung of
metaphysics -; but that is only because Lukacs has overdone and hypostatised the
Vernunft, as did Adorno and Horkheimer! Schopenhauers Wille and its Nietzschean
version are the forerunners of proto-fascist vitalism, of irrationalism, of Entwicklung as
a law of nature. Simmel saw it first, but Arendt framed it politically. Cacciari has
replaced one form of absolutism, the transcendental ragionevole ideologia that goes
from Descartes to Hegels Geist, with another far more insidious form of no, not
Historismus or historial being but rather facticity, rank and rampant late-Romantic
(Lukacsian, hence the link with Schopenhauer [K, p67]) reification of Technik and
hypostatization of Rationalisierung, itself a bleak but mirror-image version of the Ratio.
All that part of PNeR (from p69) is nothing less than a paean to the repressive use of
technologies (not Technology) disguised and glorified in its historicised guise as an
ineluctable destiny Technik! -, as the reification of Vorhandenheit and all the other
bestialities spawned by Heideggers warped mind!
Not surprising then, that Cacciari does not linger on the meaning of the Will, as did
Simmel. Not surprising that he prefers to de-struct the philosophia perennis and the
Lebensphilosophie and Weltanschauungen of the bourgeois interpretation of history the
pillars of historical consciousness which, nevertheless (!) lead straight into the
historial hermeneutics of Heidegger (Gadamer, TaM). But in what sense has
Heidegger rocked these pillars, except with a vacuous and ambivalent assault on
Technik and das man, vague appeals for the authenticity of Dasein and on the praxis
of Sorge? What are these if not empty and reified notions that throw us back
inevitably to the primordial physis, the hardness of being against the softness of spirit
denounced long ago by Leo Strauss? Cacciari, K, p59:
The nihilistic critique does not re-found, does not reformulate these problems. Its skepsis is radical: either
there is no sense or else the forms of reason discover a new logic, a new relationship with reality
forms and reality that are now found to be without substance. Either the nihilist situation is invertible only
ideologically, as in Schopenhauer or else that very misery of the formalism of reason, in which the crisis

of the Kantian a priori seemed to terminate, needs to be founded founded on the necessity, precisely, of
this formalism, of this loss of substantive nexus, of this definitive retreat of truth.

It is by analyzing the nature and purport of the Will that we can reflect on the practical
implications of Schopenhauers truly radical inversion which will lead all the way to
Heidegger. This is the operation Nietzsche effected, so ably traced by Cacciari (Logic of
Wille zur Macht, in K, from p56). It is true that Schopenhauers inversion of Kantian
formalism is, from a nihilist situation, merely ideological, and we will examine why
below. But the question here is whether Cacciari is justified in seeing as founded by the
settling of accounts with Western metaphysics in Nietzsche and Heidegger, this very
necessity of this formalism, of this definitive retreat of truth. Because it could well
be that even if we grant the necessity of the (empty) formalism and of the retreat of
truth, even if we accepted the Nietzschean confutation of the philosophisch notion of
truth still it is unwarranted if not impossible, or indeed unfounded, to conclude
thereby that human praxis (that very Freiheit that Cacciari declares impossible in
PNeR) is reduced to the destiny of Rationalisierung. The Ratio, maybe. But why also
the concept of freedom understood in a more restrained sense (Augustinian, not
Kantian) as initium actionis? And why does the acceptance of an ill-definable or
indefinite Ratio or the constraint of Rationalisierung entail necessarily the
impossibility of action? If it does not, then what and where is the problem except,
perhaps, in the distancing of Utopia?
Tale e la stessa tragedia del soggetto. Per potere effettualmente, esso deve non solo disincantarsi
sulle proprie forme a priori, sulla verita e bonta del mondo, sullo schematismo tra forme e
mondo - ma deve altresi liquidare l estremo Valore, quello che anche il nichilismo piu radicale
aveva conservato, anzi: di cui era stato il piu accanito difensore, l autonomia della soggettivita, la
via interiore schopenhaueriana. Potere e integrarsi nel sistema, (K, p66).

So let us look at the via interiore by means of which Schop arrives at Nirvana.
Here it is that Schopenhauer attempts to improve upon Kant,
by asserting the possibility of an immanent metaphysics, a metaphysics
of experience. Philosophy, he says, begins where science
leaves off, it takes things up and "treats them after its own
method, which is quite distinct from the method of science. "^
This essential difference in method Schopenhauer indicates in no
vague terms. Science is concerned with the systematic connection
of differences. But in the conative consciousness the differences
of the World as Idea vanish into one immediate unity,
and scientific knowledge is transmuted into a consciousness of
will, which demands no explanation, starts from nothing, points
to nothing, but is itself an unending immediate striving. Schopenhauer,
therefore, denies, on the basis of Kant's own epistemological
results, the possibility of metaphysics, if by metaphysics
is meant the scientific explanation of the inmost nature of the
thing-in-itself as such, considered apart from its manifestation
in consciousness. But he emphatically affirms the possibility of
a metaphysics of experience, in terms of its completest and most
immediate, i. e., most real manifestation. Will.
In this sense, then, Schopenhauer asserts that his own metaphysics
of Will is the key to the world-riddle. His test of the

metaphysical ' realness ' of any phase of experience is in terms of

a unity which absorbs multiplicity. This unity, however, is not
the result of the abstracting process of conception, but, in contrast
to the mediate character of all thought, is concrete, i. e., immediately
present in consciousness. Schopenhauer seeks his ultimate
reality in some specific aspect of experience, or rather in
^La philosophie de Schopenhauer, Paris, 1890, p. 35.
2G.. I, p. 128; H.K., I, p. 107.
72 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT.
some one sort of experience, in which, as in the apex of the cone,
all the various radii may somehow vanish and be lost in one undifferentiated
unity. The ' real ' is conceived by him as opposed
to and contradistinguished from the rest of experience, which is
thereby declared illusory. The ultimate unity is possible, on
Schopenhauer's basis, only by means of the erasure of the
organized multiplicity of phenomena. Reality is not truly revealed
by its phenomenal appearance; rather it is the World as Idea
the fleeting shadow of the Real, its veil of Maya. All the organization
and coherence implied in the Principle of Sufficient Reason
avail us nothing in the solution of the ultimate problems of
experience. To learn metaphysics, we must unlearn science:
this is the spirit of Schopenhauer's theory of reality.
The result of such a conception of metaphysics for the interpretation
of the reality now recognized as Will, is not difficult to
foresee. We know ourselves as willing in our separate acts of
striving. But it is precisely this our knowledge of the conative
that introduces the element of multiplicity and makes impossible
the complete metaphysical unity. Our consciousness of willing
is metaphysically 'real,' not by virtue of its being conscious, but
in spite of it,by virtue of its being Will. The Will-Reality [Wirklichkeit]
as such, the metaphysical kernel of the universe, is not in time,
because it absorbs all multiplicity in itself. Consciousness, inevitably
temporal in character, is itself a mere accident of the
metaphysical Real. The ultimate thing-in-itself is non-temporal,
unconscious, irrational, free. "The will in itself is without consciousness,
and remains so in the greater part of its phenomena.
The secondary world of idea must be added, in order that it
may become conscious of itself."^ Will is the prius, the Weltprincip;
nous is secondary, intellect is the posterius, a derivation
and a mere appearance of the thing-in-itself. To urge the
primacy of the intellect over the will, is therefore an "enormous
proton pseudon and fundamental esteron proteron.''^
"It is the unconscious will," Schopenhauer insists, "which
constitutes the reality of things, and its development must have
G., II, pp. 323-324; H.K., III, p. 12.
2G., II, p. 230; H.K., II, p. 409.
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 71
advanced very far before it finally attains, in the animal consciousness,
to the idea and intelligence; so that, according to me,
thought appears at the very last."^
II, pp. 314-315; H.K., III. p. 2.

It may be true that the Will itself is timeless for Schop. this would correspond with
Freuds Es, the Unconscious -; but it is evident that our only mode of perception, our
consciousness or intuition [Anschauung] of the Will, must have time as its essential

dimension or horizon that is, intuition is essentially being-in-time as a unity of both

concepts revealed by the ex-per-iri, going through time, of experience! The Will
is timeless only because it is the Ding an sich, the qualitas occulta, not because it lies
outside the sphere of intuition or experience! This is how Schop puts it,
"When in any phenomenon a knowing consciousness is added to that inner being
which lies at the foundation of all phenomena, a consciousness
which when directed inwardly becomes self-consciousness, then
that inner being presents itself to this self-consciousness as that
which is so familiar and so mysterious, and is denoted by the [67] word will.
P68 Tsanoff:
The world of perception is directly apprehended
by the knowing subject, through the faculty of the understanding
and its one category of cause-effect, resulting from the union
of space and time. Its cognitive directness is in marked contrast
to the abstract character of conception, with its multitude of
artificial abstractions and formal laws, lacking all application to
direct experience. But perception and conception alike, Schopenhauer
holds, lack the immediacy of the conative experience.
In the willing consciousness the entire intellectual web of the
World as Idea is swept aside; the multiplicity of things in space
and time, which hides the metaphysical oneness of all reality
from the knowing subject, is no more; the one ultimate condition
of the possibility of consciousness alone remains,time. This
the consciousness of man cannot efface without effacing itself.
"The will, as that which is metaphysical, is everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation,
beyond which it cannot go. "2 No "systematically connected insight"^ into this metaphysical unity of Will
is possible; the inevitably temporal character of our consciousness makes us unable to grasp the thing
in- itself once for all in its inmost nature.
'G., II. pp. 373-374; H.K.. Ill, pp. 65-66.
2G., II, p. 421; H.K., III, p. 116.
3G.. II, p. 379; H.K.. III. p. 71.

Continuing from p71 above, Tsanoff comments,

This position leads Schopenhauer
to materialistic excesses. The whole world of perception
and conception, of body and matter, which he formerly regarded
as intellectual in character, he now describes in terms of the bodily
organism.^ The intellect is reduced to a tertiary position, being
the instrument necessitated by a complete organism, which is
secondary and is itself the embodiment of the one and only
Prius, the blind unconscious Will. The intellect is accordingly
a function of the brain, which, again, is the will-to-perceive-and-think
objectified, just as the stomach is the embodiment of the
will-to-digest, the hand, of the will-to-grasp, the generative
organs, of the will-to-beget, and so on. "The whole nervous
system constitutes, as it were, the antennae of the will, which it
stretches towards within and without."^
The relation in which the development of knowledge stands
to the gradual objectification of the Will is conceived by Schopenhauer
with curious inconsistency. In this respect, there are

some apparent differences in point of view between certain passages

in Schopenhauer's earlier and later works; but there seems
to be no sufficient ground for maintaining any fundamental
change of attitude on Schopenhauer's part. Schopenhauer might
seem to hold two fundamentally opposite positions. On the
one hand, he says: "The organ of intelligence, the cerebral system,
together with all the organs of sense, keep pace with the
increasing wants and the complication of the organism."* This
conclusion follows logically from Schopenhauer's theory of the
absolute bondage of intelligence; but it does not account for the
obvious facts of consciousness. Is the highest development of
intelligence always accompanied by a corresponding intensity of
'will,' in Schopenhauer's sense of that term? How is the 'disinterestedness'
of thought at all possible on such a basis? Scho
II, pp. 314-315; H.K., III. p. 2.
2 Schopenhauer's 'physiological-psychological' method, which here manifests
itself in terms so extreme, is nevertheless implied in his very starting-point, . e.,
in his distinction between perception and conception. Cf. Richter, op. cil., pp. 139 f.
3G., II, p. 299; H.K., II, p. 482.
*G., II, p. 237; H.K., II, p. 416.
74 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT.
penhauer, evidently realizing the difficulty of the situation,
seems to shift his position. The gradual objectification of the
Will, he says, is accompanied by a gradual 'loosening' of the
intellect from its will-ground. In the course of its development,
the intelligence gradually obtains freedom from the brute will impulse,
and evolves an ideal world of its own, a world of knowledge,
subject to universal laws of nature. This is the World as
Idea, which Schopenhauer regards as at once the manifestation
and the very antithesis of the World as Will. But the intellect
"may, in particular exceptionally favoured individuals, go so far
that, at the moment of its highest ascendancy, the secondary or
knowing part of consciousness detaches itself altogether from the
willing part, and passes into free activity for itself."^ Thus, in
the man of genius, "knowledge can deliver itself from this
bondage, throw off its yoke, and, free from all the aims of will,
exist purely for itself, simply as a clear mirror of the world. "^
This is the aesthetic knowledge of the Platonic Ideas, a unique
consciousness of unity, different alike from the metaphysical
unity of the Will and from the abstract unity of conception.
No discussion of the problems raised by Schopenhauer's
Theory of Art seems to be called for here, inasmuch as it has
no direct bearing upon his criticism of Kant. It should be
noted, however, that Schopenhauer finds himself obliged to
reassert the autonomy of the intellect, which his metaphysic
has put under the bondage of the ultimate Will. This autonomy
of the intellect, in the passionless contemplation of works of art,
is, nevertheless, only a passing phase. The real solution of the
world-riddle is stated by Schopenhauer, not in aesthetic, but in
ethical terms. The liberation of intelligence from the tyrant
Will becomes complete and final only when the will is denied in
the supreme act of self-renunciation. This denial of the will,
to be sure, involves the cessation of consciousness, the total
effacement of all phenomenal multiplicity, and the sinking into
the nothingness of Nirvana. Enlightened by intelligence, the
will of man may be led to realize the brute-like character of its

iG.. II, p. 238; H.K., II. p. 417'G., I, p. 214; H.K., I, p. 199EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 75
nature, and, directing itself against itself, achieve its own self-annihilation.
The denial of the will is really the denial of its
striving towards multiplicity; it is the denial of that impulse
in it which leads to its objectification in phenomena,the denial
of the will-to-self-perpetuation, of the will-to-become-manifest,
of the will-to-live. This is what Schopenhauer means when he
says, at the end of The World as Will and Idea: "We freely acknowledge
that what remains after the entire abolition of will
is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but,
conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied
itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky
waysis nothing."^
iG..
I. p. 527; H.K., I, p. 532.

CHAPTER IV. from Tsanoff.

Experience and Reality: The Will as the Thing-in-Itself.
The Critical epistemology leads inevitably to the conclusion that all possible experience is phenomenal, i.
e., that it has no meaning except in terms of knowledge and in reference to the knowing subject. This
realization of the fundamentally subjective character of the phenonemal 'object,' Schopenhauer
regards as "the theme of the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' "^
The organization of this subject-object world of possible experience is formulated by Kant in terms
of the mechanical categories, to the exclusion of the teleological. This is the formal result of the
'Dialectic'.
The rejection of the rationalistic solution of the teleological problem does not, however, do away with
the problem itself. The 'practical' can have no real application in an experience conceived in purely
mechanical terms; nevertheless, Kant is deeply impressed with the undeniable significance of the
moral and aesthetic phases of experience, and with the inadequacy of the mechanical categories to
explain these. His vindication of the real significance of the teleological categories is intimately
connected with his justification of the notion of the thing-in-itself.
A change of philosophical method is to be observed at this stage of Kant's exposition, which Schopenhauer
interprets as follows. Kant does not affirm, clearly and distinctly, the absolute mutual dependence of subject
and object in all possible experience.
"He does not say, as truth required, simply and absolutely that the object is conditioned by the
subject, and conversely, but only that the manner of appearance of the object is conditioned by the
forms of knowledge of the subject, which^therefore, come a priori to consciousness. But that now
which in opposition to this is only known a posteriori is for him the immediate effect of the thing in
itself, which becomes phenom
iG., II, p. 205; H.K., II, p. 381.
62
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 63
enon only in its passage through these forms which are given a priori/'^ And Kant fails to realize that
"objectivity in general belongs to the forms of the phenomenon, and is just as much conditioned by
subjectivity in general as the mode of appearing of the object is conditioned by the forms of
knowledge of the subject; that thus if a thing in itself must be assumed, it absolutely cannot be an
object, which however he always assumes it to be, but such a thing in itself must necessarily lie in a
sphere toto genere different from the idea (from knowing and being known). "2
Schopenhauer criticises Kant's conception of the thing-in-itself in the same manner in which he had
criticised his theory of the a priori character of the causal law.
Both doctrines are true, but their proof is false. "^ Kant argues that "the phenomenon, thus the
visible world, must have a reason, an intelligible cause, which is not a phenomenon, and therefore

belongs to no possible experience."^ But this is perverting entirely the meaning of the law of
causality, which applies exclusively to relations between phenomenal changes, and can therefore in no
way account for the phenomenal world as a hypostatized entity.

It is here that Schopenhauer effects his inversion. The sphere toto genere different from
the idea (from knowing and being known) is a sphere that lies beyond (not behind)
the sphere of the known-Object and the knowing-Subject. It is a sphere that generates
the entire possibility of experience as its innermost being. It is the Lichtung, the
self-understanding of being, it is the very being that interrogates being, the being in
the world, which at once unifies known and knowing, subject and object in a
subject-object because "the thing in itself can, as such, only come into consciousness
quite directly, in this way, that it is itself conscious of itself; to wish to know it
objectively is to desire something contradictory."*
To posit the Object independently of the Subject, as a thing, is to objectify the Subject.
Conversely, to know [the subject] objectively is to desire something contradictory.
It is at this point that Schopenhauer makes what he regards
as his own great contribution to philosophical thought; here
it is that Schopenhauer's philosophy joins onto the Kantian,
or rather springs from it as from its parent stem.^ "Upon
the path of the idea one can never get beyond the idea; it is
a rounded-off whole, and has in its own resources no clue leading
to the nature of the thing in itself, which is toto genere different
G., Ill, pp. 510, 511; Basis of Morality, tr. by A. B. Bullock, London, 1903.
pp. 44, 45. For a fuller discussion of this problem, cf. the writer's article on
"Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant's Theory of Ethics," The Philosophical
Review, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-5342G.. Ill, pp. SI I ff.; Bullock, pp. 45 ff.
'C/. R. Behm, Vergleichung der kantischen und schopenhauerischen Lehre in
Ansehung der Kausalitdt, Heidelberg, 1892, p. 39.
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 65
from it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to the
thing in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only the
other side of our own being can disclose to us the other side of
the inner being of things. This path I have followed."^ Kant
is correct in holding that we are unable to arrive at the ultimate
reality of things by the road of knowledge; but he then proceeds
to deny the possibility of all metaphysics, thus ignoring,
in his Critique of Pure Reason, the paramount ontological significance
of non-cognitive experience.

Thus, only the other side of our own being, that is, being perceived as thrown-ness,
as Dasein, can disclose to us the other side of the inner being of things which leads us
to the paramount ontological significance of non-cognitive experience and therefore
not just to Da-Sein but also to the being of beings. This is the true precursor of
Nietzsche and Heidegger: the fundamental distinction between being of being and

knowledge of being the forgetfulness Heidegger uncovers, right from his early
critique of Kant!
The doctrine of the transcendental freedom of
man's will recognizes implicitly, Schopenhauer maintains, that
in man necessity is phenomenal only, and that in him the thing-initself manifests its inner nature in the form of Will. "What,
then, Kant teaches of the phenomenon of man and his action
my teaching extends to all phenomena in nature, in that it makes
the will as a thing-in-itself their foundation. "^ For man is not
toto genere different from the rest of experience, but differs only
in degree. The World as Idea is, as Kant says, purely phenomenal;
but it does not exhaust reality. "As the world is in one
aspect entirely idea, so in another it is entirely will. A reality
which is neither of these two, but an object in itself (into which
the thing in itself has unfortunately dwindled in the hands of
Kant), is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignis
fatuus in philosophy."^ The path of objective knowledge does
not lead us to the real nature of things, and so far Schopenhauer
is in thorough agreement with Kant. But "the thing in itself can,
as such, only come into consciousness quite directly, in this way,
that it is itself conscious of itself; to wish to know it objectively
is to desire something contradictory."* The thing-in-itself
is unknowable, precisely because it is not a matter of knowledge
but is in its inmost essence Will.