So economic arrangements determine thought.
Why the focus on economic arrangements? Because the essential feature of human beings is that they produce their own means of subsistence, and thereby produce their own material life.28 Human beings are distinguished from other animals “as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life” (M, 150). So what we are depends on (or is constituted by) how we produce:
the mode of production…is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production. (M, 150)
As Marx summarizes his theory: “This sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as ‘substance’ and ‘essence of man’…” (M, 165).
At this historical stage, the material forces have shaped us in a damaging manner: capitalist economic forms alienate us from the products of our labor, from the labor itself, from our communal or “species” life, and from other individuals (M, 70–4).29 The paradigm is the factory worker, who labors to produce products he does not own, whose labor is tightly regimented and controlled by his superiors, whose interaction with other human beings consists merely in the exhausting drudgery necessary for survival. Yet Marx—like the other materialists just mentioned—adopts an optimistic view of social progress: these problems are about to be resolved. In particular, Marx argues that we are on the verge of a communist revolution that will make possible authentic, non-alienated, free activity for all. The capitalist model is breaking down:
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells… (M, 478)
Marx claims that this can be seen in the periodic economic crises that plague capitalism—which, he predicts, will become increasingly severe. With the collapse of capitalism will enter communism, which is “the only society in which the genuine and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase” (M, 207). In communism, the individual achieves self-realization by working freely for the good of all.
Although these materialists are a diverse group, we can see that in all of them, materialism reduces ethics to a derivative field: values are either a mere set of psychological or physiological dispositions, or an emanation of culture and history. With Marx, in particular, the Kantian enterprise of assessing the intentions of individual agents comes to seem misguided; the real work lies elsewhere, in the analysis of social and cultural institutions.
24.6 SCHOPENHAUER AND THE DEMAND FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY
The materialists were ready to upend our thoughts about the relationship between the spiritual and the material, seeing the material as constraining or determining the spiritual. Their conceptions of the material grow increasingly complex, as we can see by contrasting Moleschott’s claim that our culture is determined by our diet with Marx’s claim that it is determined by economic forces. But, given the materialists’ focus on the causal connections between material and spiritual factors, another topic received less attention in their thought: the attempt to offer an accurate description of the spiritual, and in particular the nature of the self. This brings us to Schopenhauer.
Although Schopenhauer published the first volume of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation) in 1819, and the second in 1844, it was his fate to be ignored until 1851.30 In that year, he published a collection of essays with the unpromising title Parerga und Paralipomena (Additions and Omissions). Astonishingly, his popularity exploded. Following a favorable discussion in the Westminster Review (“Iconoclasm in German Philosophy,” April 1853), Schopenhauer quickly progressed from an unread figure to perhaps the most famous living philosopher: by 1857, lectures were being given on his work at dozens of universities throughout Europe. Thus, although his philosophical thought emerged prior to that of the materialists already discussed, it makes sense to treat him as occupying a later position.
Schopenhauer criticizes the “stupefying influence of Hegel’s sham wisdom” (WWR I, 223), accusing him of “the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as have been heard previously only in madhouses” (WWR I, 429)—charges that resonate with the materialists. However, rather than relying exclusively on the natural sciences, Schopenhauer urges a return to the “great Kant” (WWR I, xv). There is much that is “true and excellent” in Kant’s work, but Schopenhauer also detects some “grave errors” (WWR I, xv). In particular, Schopenhauer thinks Kant has badly misunderstood the nature of the self, and consequently has gone astray on the basis of morality.
Schopenhauer contends that whereas Kant and other philosophers treated the intellect as primary, they were mistaken: the will is primary. “The will, as the thing-in-itself, constitutes the inner, true, and indestructible nature of man; yet in itself it is without consciousness” (WWR II, 201). Thus, “the intellect is a mere accidens of our being…” (WWR II, 201). Schopenhauer claims that “the most striking figure” for the relationship of will and intellect is “that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders” (WWR II, 209).
Schopenhauer argues that the Kantian attempt to extract normative demands from a notion of autonomy is doomed to fail. Indeed, the entire quest for ethical principles is misguided: “in this ethical book no precepts, no doctrine of duty are to be expected; still less will there be set forth a universal moral principle…Generally, we shall not speak of ‘ought’ at all, for we speak in this way to children and to peoples still in their infancy…” (WWR I, 272). After all, “it is a palpable contradiction to call the will free and yet to prescribe for it laws by which it is to will” (WWR I, 272).31
So Schopenhauer pursues a different methodology: his strategy will be, as he puts it, “immanent”—he will try to “interpret and explain man’s action, and the very different and even opposite maxims of which it is the living expression” (WWR I, 272). By uncovering our deepest motives, we will reach ethical conclusion.
This proceeds in two stages. First, Schopenhauer offers a characterization of what actually motivates ethical action. Rather than springing from a sense of duty, ethical action results from “intuitive knowledge” that recognizes “in another’s individuality the same inner nature as in one’s own” (WWR I, 368). Here we come to one of Schopenhauer’s most evocative and difficult claims: that all is one.
Schopenhauer encountered the Upanishads in 1814. Their effect was profound: he described them as “the most rewarding and sublime reading…that is possible in this world; it has been the consolation of my life and will be that of my death.”32 He is said to have studied them every evening. From them, he takes up two ideas. First, he adopts the concept of Maya, arguing that the world as we ordinarily experience it is illusory and of no genuine value. Second, he argues for the identity of each individual with the entire world: when we set aside ordinary consciousness, we see that the “principle of individuation” is part of the “veil of Maya.” In plainer language, individuality is illusory. Schopenhauer’s argument for this claim is quite simple: he argues that the “principle of individuation” is Space and Time. That is, we individuate objects in terms of their spatial and temporal locations. But Schopenhauer, following Kant, argues that space and time are aspects of phenomena rather than the noumenon. So the principle of individuation i
s not applicable to the noumenon. Schopenhauer takes this to entail that all apparently individual wills are manifestations of one will.
Schopenhauer’s moral theory is based on this metaphysical picture. Recognizing that other individuals are not distinct from me, my motivation to alleviate my own suffering is directed upon the sufferings of others. At an unreflective level, this occurs as the emotion of compassion: this is a pre-reflective apprehension that the suffering of others is also my own suffering. At a more reflective level, this occurs when we see through the “principium individuationis”: discovering the identity of ourselves with others, I see that the suffering of others is mine. Thus, “he perceives that the distinction between himself and others, which to the wicked man is so great a gulf, belongs only to a fleeting, deceptive phenomenon” (WWR I, 372).
Thus, Schopenhauer’s ethic is based upon a desire to alleviate suffering. Initially, it seems that this will lead to familiar ethical injunctions: be compassionate, help others, avoid inflicting suffering. But this kind of knowledge still hasn’t penetrated to the heart of things. For, looking more closely at the nature of the will and the roots of suffering, we discover something surprising: suffering is not an accident, not something that we could eliminate, but something that arises due to the nature of life.
Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule. (P II, 148)33
Suffering is universal, happiness fleeting. Schopenhauer illustrates this with a number of powerful examples drawn from literature, world history, and natural science. One of his simplest and most memorable is this:
The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other. (P II, 149)
For Schopenhauer, the ubiquity of suffering is no accident, nothing that might be corrected or set right; suffering springs of necessity from the nature of willing. The true nature of the will is blind, ceaseless striving. Schopenhauer calls it the will to live: it aims at nothing other than its own continued manifestation. It is not responsive to judgments of value. We don’t recognize that life is objectively valuable and therefore cling to it; rather, we have a pre-rational attachment to life.34 So “the will, considered purely in itself, is devoid of knowledge, and is only a blind, irresistible urge…” (WWR I, 275).
What does insight into the nature of the will bring us? Schopenhauer defines goodness in terms of willing: he tells us that the concept good “is essentially relative, and denotes the fitness or suitableness of an object to any definite effort of the will” (WWR I, 360). In other words, X is good if X is an object of the will. Consequently, the “highest good, summum bonum, signifies…a final satisfaction of the will, after which no fresh willing would occur; a last motive, the attainment of which would give the will an imperishable satisfaction” (WWR I, 362). The highest good would be that which completely satisfies the will.
Unfortunately, such a thing does not—indeed, cannot—exist. For Schopenhauer argues that the will cannot be satisfied. His argument is encapsulated in the following remark: “Life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents” (WWR I, 312). Briefly, his point is that there are only two lasting possibilities for the will. First, the will might desire certain ends, in which case the agent will experience suffering until the ends are achieved (for “the basis of all willing…is need, lack, and hence pain” [WWR I, 312]). Second, the agent might lack desires for determinate ends, in which case he will experience boredom.35 Meanwhile, pleasure is nothing but the inflection point of the pendulum, persisting for the briefest moment before extinction:
All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive. It is not a gratification which comes to us originally and of itself, but it must always be the satisfaction of a wish. For desire, that is to say, want, is the precedent condition of every pleasure; but with the satisfaction, the desire and therefore the pleasure cease; and so the satisfaction or gratification can never be more than deliverance from a pain, a want (WWR I, 319)
So the will’s possibilities are painful desiring or painful lack of desiring; and happiness is the fleeting intermediary.
Schopenhauer considers this to be an a priori proof of the impossibility of happiness. He also offers an a posteriori proof, giving a series of examples designed to show that life “is essentially suffering in many forms and a tragic state in every way” (WWR I, 323).
Given the impossibility of a highest good, a final satisfaction of the will, there is a second-best: the abnegation of willing. As Schopenhauer puts it, we could call the highest good “the complete self-effacement and denial of the will, true will-lessness, which alone stills and silences forever the craving of the will; which alone gives the contentment that cannot be disturbed…” (WWR I, 362). When the will sees that the world’s inner nature is constant suffering, it “freely abolishes itself” (WWR I, 285). Perceiving the futility of life and the inescapability of suffering, the will withers away.
Crucially, this is non-voluntary:
we have seen that self-suppression of the will comes from knowledge, but knowledge and insight as such are independent of free choice, that denial of willing, that entrance into freedom, is not to be forcibly arrived at by intention or design, but comes from the innermost relation of knowing and willing in man; hence it comes suddenly, as if flying in from without. (WWR I, 404)
The will does not actively destroy itself through suicide; this, Schopenhauer argues, would be an affirmation of life, for one would value life so much that one would rather end life than live a life one perceives as defective (WWR I, 398–401). The non-voluntary extinguishing of the will is different: one becomes utterly indifferent to the conditions of life.
Thus the best we can hope for is a non-voluntary extinguishing of the will to live. That is the true deliverance from suffering. To be sure, “what remains after the complete abolition is…assuredly nothing” (WWR I, 412). Yet, “when, on the one hand, we have recognized incurable suffering and endless misery as essential to the phenomenon of the will, to the world, and on the other see the world melt away with the abolished will, and retain before us only empty nothingness,” then “we then look with deep and painful yearning at that state [of abnegation of the will], beside which the miserable and desperate nature of our own appears in the clearest light by the contrast” (WWR I, 411).
24.7 NIETZSCHE AND THE INESCAPABLE AIMS OF LIFE
Schopenhauer’s gloomy words bring us to the last part of our story. In the 1860s and 1870s, there is a reaction against materialism. A series of neo-Kantians, some inspired by Schopenhauer, begin attacking materialism. Many of these thinkers critique the epistemological and metaphysical commitments of the materialists; F. A. Lange’s History of Materialism (1866), for example, argues that materialism, properly understood, leads to a revised form of Kantianism. But the ethical thought is also an object of central concern. Though thinkers such as Lange still persist in rather halfhearted attempts to justify traditional ethical claims, many philosophers are drawn to Schopenhauer’s more pessimistic conclusions. Eduard von Hartmann, for example, argues that materialism cannot explain teleology; he rejects mechanism and urges a return to Hegel and Schopenhauer. His Philosophie des Unbewußten (Philosophy of the Unconscious, 1869) is enormously influential. This work defends the startling and undeniably bizarre claim that world history is an immense error, born of a diremption of representation
and will; consciousness’ task is to set right this mistake by an act of self-abolition. This claim seizes the imagination; by 1890, the book has gone through ten editions.
So what we have seen, by the 1870s, is a web of interacting concerns: freedom as the source of or criterion for normative demands; the aspiration for a unified, non-alienated self; an insistence on taking account of the concrete social and historical circumstances of human beings; a demand for incorporating the successes of the natural sciences into the study of the self and ethics; and finally, with Schopenhauer, the demand for an accurate and morally unprejudiced philosophical psychology, which is ready to set at naught our moral intuitions. And, gradually growing over this time is the sense that something tremendous, something unprecedented is happening: the relatively complacent ethical views of Kant and Hegel, which with only a touch of exaggeration can be said to present the evaluative beliefs of bourgeois nineteenth-century Prussia as the height of ethical sophistication, give way to the radicalism of figures such as Schopenhauer, Marx, and Hartmann, who argue that contemporary ethical life will be upended, destroyed; that, in Schopenhauer and Hartmann, existence itself is some kind of tragic mistake.
It is into this heady atmosphere that our last thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche, emerges.36 Nietzsche is best known for his critiques of traditional ethical views. He seems skeptical of each of the purported grounds for morality we have surveyed. He agrees with Hegel that there is no hope of deriving ethical norms from a formal idea of freedom: “‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive,” he tells us (GM, II: 2).37 With respect to selfhood, Nietzsche argues that an adequate conception of the self shows that the importance of conscious choice has been greatly overestimated; our conscious thoughts are manifestations of something deeper, and our deliberations are often driven by goals of which we are ignorant. We are, in Nietzsche’s evocative phrase, “strangers to ourselves” (GM, Preface: 1). Contra Hegel and Marx, attention to social and historical processes does not justify ethical demands or show a grand march toward some utopia: rather, it reveals our valuations to be thoroughly contingent, and to lead us toward diminution and ruin (see especially GM and Der Antichrist). And the German materialists fare no better: although Nietzsche presents empirical investigations as potentially illuminating the nature of the self and morality, he disparages the “clumsy naturalists who can hardly touch on ‘the soul’ without immediately losing it”; he calls for a more nuanced and sophisticated naturalism.38
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Page 90