“Mirror to the World”: Ethics as Excrescence of Metaphysics

Empirical Basis of Ethics

Simmel catches this Doppelcharakter of the Will (operari): “wir…Zuschauer u. Akteure,… Geschaffene u. Schaffende sind”, p31, foreshadowing Nietzsche’s expression “die geschaffene Menschen” (in HATH1 re’Poets’). There are “pantheistic”and “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 “com-prehension” 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 “co-suffering”), 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 Moralitycontains a vigorous attack upon the fundamental principlesof 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 objectiverelation of things in the external world, . . . but on pureReason, which ... is taken, not as it really and exclusivelyis,—an intellectual faculty of man,— but as a self-existent hypostaticessence, yet without the smallest authority."^ The second

Critique inconsistently retains what was declared untenablein the 'Transcendental Dialectic', by the obvious subterfuge ofraising the speculative reason into a genus, and then deducingfrom it a second species, practical reason,—a procedure similarto that accounting for the origin of immaterial substance, andas inconsistent as it is useless in the solution of the ethicalproblem.^ Through the road of knowledge, through understandingand reason, we can arrive at perception and conceptionrespectively; 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 PhilosophicalReview, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-534-2G.. 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 Kant’s “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 regardsas his own great contribution to philosophical thought; hereit is that Schopenhauer's philosophy joins onto the Kantian,or rather springs from it as from its parent stem.^ "Uponthe path of the idea one can never get beyond the idea; it isa rounded-off whole, and has in its own resources no clue leadingto 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 PhilosophicalReview, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-534-2G.. Ill, pp. SI I ff.; Bullock, pp. 45 ff.'C/. R. Behm, Vergleichung der kantischen und schopenhauerischen Lehre inAnsehung der Kausalitdt, Heidelberg, 1892, p. 39.EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 65

from it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to thething in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only theother side of our own being can disclose to us the other side ofthe inner being of things. This path I have followed."^ Kantis correct in holding that we are unable to arrive at the ultimatereality of things by the road of knowledge; but he then proceedsto deny the possibility of all metaphysics, thus ignoring,

in his Critique of Pure Reason, the paramount ontological significanceof 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 d’etre. Pure ethics is a mirage. (See ‘Basis’, p99 to 103.)

We shall therefore with allthe greater interest and curiosity await the solutionof the problem he [Kant] has set himself, namely, howsomething is to arise out of nothing, that is,' howout of purely a priori conceptions, which containnothing 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 deifyingit, such assertions as these must long ago have beenmet by the simple remark that, if man, by virtueof a special organ, furnished by his Reason, forsolving the riddle of the world, possessed an innatemetaphysics that only required development ; in that76 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.case there would have to be just as complete agreementon metaphysical matters as on the truthsof arithmetic and geometry ; and this would makeit totally impossible that there should exist on theearth 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 Heidegger’s 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 ‘Heidegger’s 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 Descartes’s 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 ‘H’s Kbuch’.)

NOTE.If we wish to reach the real origin of this hypothesisof Practical Reason, we must trace its descent alittle further back. We shall find that it is derivedON THE BASIS OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 77from a doctrine, which Kant totally confuted, butwhich nevertheless, in this connection, lies secretly(indeed he himself is not aware of it) at the rootof his assumption of a Practical Reason with itsImperatives and its Autonomy—a reminiscence ofa former mode of thought. I mean the so-calledRational Psychology, according to which man iscomposed of two entirely heterogeneous substances—the material body, and the immaterial soul. Platowas the first to formulate this dogma, and he endeavouredto prove it as an objective truth. But itwas Descartes who, by working it out with scientificexactness, perfectly developed and completed it.And this is just what brought its fallacy to light, asdemonstrated by Spinoza, Locke, and Kant successively.It was demonstrated by Spinoza ; because hisphilosophy consists chiefly in the refutation of hismaster's twofold dualism, and because he entirely andexpressly denied the two Substances of Descartes,and took as his main principle the following proposition: " Substantia cogitans et substantia extensauna eademque est substantia, quae jam sub hoc, jamsub illo attributo comprehenditur.''^^ It was demonstratedby Locke ; for he combated the theory ofinnate ideas, derived all knowledge from the sensuous,

and taught that it is not impossible that Mattershould think. And lastly, it was demonstrated by* The thinking substance, and substance in extension areone and the self-same substance, which is contained nowunder the latter attribute {i.e., extension), now under theformer {i.e., the attribute of thinking).—Ethica, Part II.,Prop. 7. Corollary.78 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.Kant, in his Kritik der Rationalen Psychologies asgiven in the first edition. Leibnitz and Wolff werethe champions on the bad side ; and this broughtLeibnitz 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 thoughit 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 ofman's will recognizes implicitly, Schopenhauer maintains, thatin man necessity is phenomenal only, and that in him the thing-in-itself manifests its inner nature in the form of Will. "What,then, Kant teaches of the phenomenon of man and his actionmy teaching extends to all phenomena in nature, in that it makesthe will as a thing-in-itself their foundation. "^ For man is nottoto genere different from the rest of experience, but differs onlyin degree. The World as Idea is, as Kant says, purely phenomenal;but it does not exhaust reality. "As the world is in oneaspect entirely idea, so in another it is entirely will. A realitywhich is neither of these two, but an object in itself (into whichthe thing in itself has unfortunately dwindled in the hands ofKant), is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignisfatuus in philosophy."^ The path of objective knowledge doesnot lead us to the real nature of things, and so far Schopenhaueris 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 objectivelyis to desire something contradictory."* The thing-in-itselfis 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. 1152G.. 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 Kant’s 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 Schop’s 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 Kant’s 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, Platobeing the single exception, agree in making virtueonly a means to an end. Indeed, strictly speaking,even Kant banished Eudaemonism from Ethics morein appearance than in reality, for between virtue andhappiness he still leaves a certain mysterious connection;—there is an obscure and difficult passage inhis doctrine of the Highest Good, where they occurtogether ; while it is a patent fact that the course ofvirtue runs entirely counter to that of happiness.But, passing over this, we may say that with Kantthe ethical principle appears as something quite independentof experience and its teaching ; it is transcendental,or metaphysical. He recognises that humanconduct possesses a significance that oversteps allpossibility of experience, and is therefore actually thebridge leading to that which he calls the "intelligible" ^ world, the mundus noumenon^ the world ofThings in themselves.The fame, which the Kantian Ethics has won, isdue 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 mentalpicture."—{Translator.)]' It seems better to keep this technical word than toattempt a cumbrous periphrasis. The meaning is perfectlyclear. The sensibilia {phaenomena) are opposed to the intelligibilia(noumena), which compose the transcendentalworld. 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 ofNew Platonism.—(Translator.)PRELIMINAKY REMARKS. 25but also to the moral purity and loftiness of itsconclusions.

Kant's proton pseudos (first false step) lies in hisconception of Ethics itself, and this is found very

clearly expressed on page 62 (R., p. 54) : " In asystem of practical philosophy we are not concernedwith adducing reasons for that which takes place,but with formulating laws regarding that whichought to take place, even if it never does takeplace." This is at once a distinct petitio principii.Who tells you that there are laws to which ourconduct ought to be subject ? Who tells you thatthat ought to take place, which in fact never doestake place ? What justification have you for makingthis assumption at the outset, and consequentlyfor forcing upon us, as the only possible one, asystem of Ethics couched in the imperative terms oflegislation ? I say, in contradistinction to Kant, thatthe student of Ethics, and no less the philosopherin general, must content himself with explaining andinterpreting that which is given, in other words,that which really is, or takes place, so as to obtainan understanding of it, and I maintain furthermorethat there is plenty to do in this direction, muchmore than has hitherto been done, after the lapse28THE IMPERATIVE FORM OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 29of thousands of years.

Every obligation derives all sense and meaningsimply and solely from its relation to threatenedpunishment or promised reward. Hence, long beforeKant was thought of, Locke says : " For since itwould be utterly in vain, to suppose a rule set tothe free actions of man, without annexing to it someenforcement of good and evil to determine his will ;we must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose alsosome reward or punishment annexed to that law{Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. II., ch. 33,§ 6). What ought to be done is therefore necessarilyconditioned by punishment or reward ; consequently,to use Kant's language, it is essentially and inevitablyTHE IMPERATIVE FORM OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 33hypothetical, and never, as he maintains, categorical.If we think away these conditions, the conceptionof obligation becomes void of sense ; hence absoluteobligation is most certainly a contradictio in adjecto.A commanding voice, whether it come from within,or from without, cannot possibly be imagined exceptas threatening or promising. Consequently obedienceto it, which may be wise or foolish according tocircumstances, is yet always actuated by selfishness,and therefore morally worthless.The complete unthinkableness and nonsense ofthis conception of an unconditioned obligation, whichlies at the root of the Kantian Ethics, appearslater in the system itself, namely in the Kritik derPraktiscken Vernunft: just as some concealed poison

in an organism cannot remain hid, but sooner or latermust come out and show itself. For this obligation,said to be so unconditioned, nevertheless postulatesmore than one condition in the background ; it assumesa rewarder, a reward, and the immortality of theperson to be rewarded.This is of course unavoidable, if one really makesDuty and Obligation the fundamental conception ofEthics ; for these ideas are essentially relative, anddepend for their significance on the threatened penaltyor the promised reward. The guerdon which isassumed to be in store for virtue shows clearly enoughthat only in appearance she works for nothing. Itis, however, put forward modestly veiled, under thename of the Highest Good, which is the union ofVirtue and Happiness. But this is at bottom nothingelse but a morality that derives its origin from34 THE BASIS OF MORALITY,Happiness, which means, a morality resting on selfishness.In other words, it is Eudaemonism, whichKant had solemnly thrust out of the front door ofhis system as an intruder, only to let it creep inagain by the postern under the name of the HighestGood. This is how the assumption of unconditionedabsolute obligation, concealing as it does a contradiction,avenges itself. Conditioned obligation, onthe other hand, cannot of course be any first principlefor Ethics, since everything done out of regard forreward or punishment is necessarily an egoistictransaction, and as such is without any real moralvalue. All this makes it clear that a nobler andwider view of Ethics is needed, if we are in earnestabout our endeavour to truly account for the significanceof human conduct—a significance whichextends beyond phaenomena and is eternal.

Metaphysical Foundation of EthicsCh7:Schop’s 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 ofWill, determined by motives as they arise, was firstshown by Hobbes, then by Spinoza, and Hume, andalso by Dietrich von Holbach in his Systeme de laNature ; and lastly by Priestley it was most completelyand precisely demonstrated. This point,indeed, has been so clearly proved, and placed beyond' V. Note on " intelligible " in Chapter I. of this Part.—{Translator.)

115116 THE BASIS OF MORALITY,all doubt, that it must be reckoned among thenumber of perfectly established truths, and only crassignorance could continue to speak of a freedom,of a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae (a free andindifferent choice) in the individual acts of men. Nordid Kant, owing to the irrefutable reasoning of hispredecessors, hesitate to consider the Will as fastbound in the chains of Necessity, the matter admitting,as he thought, of no further dispute or doubt. Thisis proved by all the passages in which he speaks offreedom only from the theoretical standpoint. Nevertheless,it is true that our actions are attended witha consciousness of independence and original initiative,which makes us recognise them as our ownwork, and every one with ineradicable certaintyfeels that he is the real author of his conduct, andmorally responsible for it. But since responsibilityimplies the possibility of having acted otherwise,which possibility means freedom in some sort ormanner; therefore in the consciousness of responsibilityis indirectly involved also the consciousnessof freedom. The key to resolve the contradiction,that thus arises out of the nature of the case, wasat last found by Kant through the distinction hedrew with profound acumen, between phaenomenaand the Thing in itself (das Ding an sich). Thisdistinction 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 Hobbes’s “in foro interno” and “externo” distinction – the Cartesian inheritance. But, as we will see, it is Schop’s “trans-mutation” of Kant’s 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 “com-prehended” 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 “intra-temporal”, 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-ta-physika” 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 (Heidegger’s “pure now-sequence”) but “intuited” ec-statically, as “being-outside-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 expressionby the law of Causality, which, as acting throughthe medium of the intellect, is here called by theTHE INTELLIGIBLE AND EMPIRICAL CHARACTER. 117name of Motivation,—the individual so constitutedis only the phaenomenon (Erscheinung). The Thingin itself which underlies this phaenomenon is outsideof Time and Space, consequently free from allsuccession and plurality, one, and changeless. Itsconstitution in itself is the intelligible character,which is equally present in all the acts of theindividual, and stamped on every one of them,like the impress of a signet on a thousand seals.The empirical character of the phaenomenon—thecharacter which manifests itself in time, and insuccession of acts—is thus determined by the intelligiblecharacter ; and consequently, the individual,as phaenomenon, in all his modes of expression,which are called forth by motives, must show theinvariableness of a natural law. Whence it resultsthat 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 regardingthe nature of Freedom, can be betterunderstood if we view them in connection with ageneral truth, which I think, is most conciselyexpressed by a formula frequently occurring in thescholastic writings : Operari sequitur esse. In otherwords, everything in the world operates in accordancewith what it is, in accordance with its inherentnature, in which, consequently, all its modes ofexpression are already contained potentially, whileactually they are manifested when elicited by externalcauses ; so that external causes are the meanswhereby the essential constitution of the thing is* I.e., What is done is a consequence of that which is.THE INTELLIGIBLE AND EMPIRICAL CHARACTER. 119revealed. And the modes of expression so resultingform 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. Manforms no exception to the rest of nature ; he toohas a changeless character, which, however, is strictlyindividual and different in each case. This characteris of course empirical as far as we can grasp it, andtherefore only phaenomenal ; while the intelligiblecharacter is whatever may be the real nature initself of the person. His actions one and all, being,as regards their external constitution, determinedby motives, can never be shaped otherwise than inaccordance with the unchangeable individual character.As a man is, so he his bound to act. Hencefor a given person in every single case, there isabsolutely only one way of acting possible : Operarisequitur 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-per-ience, 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 Kant’s 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 intelligiblecharacter, not to the empirical. The operari(conduct) of a given individual is necessarilydetermined externally by motives, internally by hischaracter ; therefore everything that he does necessarilytakes place. But in his esse (i.e., in whathe is), there, we find Freedom. He might havebeen something different ; and guilt or merit attachesto that which he is. All that he does followsfrom what he is, as a mere corollary. ThroughKant's doctrine we are freed from the primary errorof 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 thetrue one. Hence it is clear that the moral responsibilityof a man, while it first of all, and obviously,of course, touches what he does, yet at bottomtouches what he is ; because, what he is being theoriginal datum, his conduct, as motives arise, couldnever take any other course than that which itactually 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 byconscience, while the operari (what one does) suppliesthe incriminating evidence. Since we are onlyconscious of Freedom through the sense of responsibility; therefore where the latter lies the former mustTHEORY OF FREEDOM. 121also be ; in the esse (in one's being). It is theoperari (what one does) that is subject to necessity.But we can only get to know ourselves, as well asothers empirically ; we have no a priori knowledgeof 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 Kant’s doctrine” that we reach this inversion, he is really saying that “Kant’s doctrine” (the distinction between Ding an sich and phenomenon) has allowed him to reach this inversion – but only by radically re-directing Kant’s 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 essentialpart of a thought, though clothed in a dress verydifferent from what he is familiar with, will see,as I do, that this Kantian doctrine of the intelligibleand empirical character is a piece of insight alreadypossessed by Plato. The difference is, that with Kantit is sublimated to an abstract clearness ; with Platoit is treated mythically, and connected with metempsychosis[in that the soul chooses which body to inhabit],because, as he did not perceive the idealityof Time, he could only represent it under a temporalform.

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 con-fining 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 stil 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 Ethicsis not concerned with what men actually do, butthat it is the science which treats of what their

conduct ought to be. Now this is exactly the position148 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.which I deny. In the critical part of the presenttreatise I have sufficiently demonstrated that the conceptionof ought, in other words, the imperative form ofEthics, is valid only in theological morals, outside ofwhich it loses all sense and meaning. The end whichI place before Ethical Science is to point out all thevaried moral lines of human conduct ; to explainthem ; and to trace them to their ultimate source.Consequently there remains no way of discoveringthe 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 inanimals, is Egoism, that is, the urgent impulse toexist, and exist under the best circumstances.…Nowthis Egoism is, both in animals and men, connectedin the closest way with their very essence and being ;indeed, it is one and the same thing. For this reasonall human actions, as a rule, have their origin inEgoism, and to it, accordingly, we must always firstturn, when we try to find the explanation of anygiven line of conduct ; just as, when the endeavouris made to guide a man in any direction, the meansto this end are universally calculated with referenceto the same all-powerful motive. Egoism is, fromits nature, limitless. The individual is filled withthe unqualified desire of preserving his life, and ofkeeping it free from all pain, under which is includedall want and privation. He wishes to have thegreatest possible amount of pleasurable existence,and every gratification that he is capable of appreciating; indeed, he attempts, if possible, to evolve freshcapacities for enjoyment. Everything that opposesthe strivings of his Egoism awakens his dislike, hisanger, his hate : this is the mortal enemy, whichhe 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 élan 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 thatevery one is directly conscious of himself, but ofothers only indirectly, through his mind's eye ; andthe direct impression asserts its right. In otherwords, it is in consequence of the subjectivity whichis essential to our consciousness that each personis himself the whole world ; for all that is objectiveexists only indirectly, as simply the mentalpicture of the subject ; whence it comes about thateverything is invariably expressed in terms of self-consciousness.

There is a certain looseness in Schop’s 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 élan – 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 individualreally grasps, and of which he has certain knowledge,he carries in himself, as a mirrored image fashionedby his brain ; and he is, therefore, its centre. Consequentlyhe is all in all to himself ; and since heANTIMORAL INCENTIVES. 153feels that he contains within his ego all that is real,nothing can be of greater importance to him than hisown self.^ Moreover this supremely important self, thismicrocosm, to which the macrocosm stands in relationas its mere modification or accident,—this, which isthe individual's whole world, he knows perfectly wellmust be destroyed by death ; which is therefore forhim equivalent to the destruction of all things.Such, then, are the elements out of which, on thebasis of the Will to live, Egoism grows up, and like abroad trench it forms a perennial separation betweenman and man.

The necessary outcome is that each individual (body) must be restrained by an “external force” from the threat of mutual annihilation:

Now, unless154 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.

external force (under which must be included everysource of fear whether of human or superhumanpowers), or else the real moral incentive is ineffective operation, it is certain that Egoism alwayspursues its purposes with unqualified directness ;hence without these checks, considering the countlessnumber of egoistic individuals, the bellum omniumcontra omnes ^ would be the order of the day, andprove the ruin of all. Thus is explained the earlyconstruction by reflecting reason of state government,which, arising, as it does, from a mutual fear ofreciprocal violence, obviates the disastrous consequencesof the general Egoism, as far as it ispossible 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 Schop’s theoretical construct to Hobbes’s, 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. Schop’s “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 Schop’s 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 asthe latter is guided by reason, which enables it, bymeans of reflection, to prosecute its purposes system-150ANTIMORAL INCENTIVES. 151atically; so that animals may be called egoistic,but not self-interested (eigennutzig). I shall thereforeretain 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 isadopted in human intercourse, and insisted on asa rule no less immovable than the hills, dependsprincipally on two external necessities ; first, on legalordinance, by virtue of which the rights of everyman are protected by public authority ; and secondly,

on the recognised need of possessing civil honour,-in other words, a good name, in order to advancein the world….Such are the two custodians that keep guard onthe correct conduct of people, without which, tospeak frankly, we should be in a sad case, especiallywith reference to property, this central point in humanlife, around which the chief part of its energy and138 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.activity revolves. For the purely ethical motives tointegrity, assuming that they exist, cannot as a rulebe applied, except very indirectly, to the question ofownership as guaranteed by the state. These motives,in fact, have a direct and essential bearing only onnatural right ; with positive right their connection ismerely indirect, in so far as the latter is based on theformer. Natural right, however, attaches to no otherproperty than that which has been gained by one's ownexertion ; because, when this is seized, the owner isat the same time robbed of all the efforts he expendedin acquiring it. The theory of preoccupancy I rejectabsolutely, but cannot here set forth its refutation.^Now of course all estate based on positive right oughtultimately and in the last instance (it matters nothow many intermediate links are involved) to reston the natural right of possession. But what adistance there is, in most cases, between the title deeds,that belong to our civil life, and this naturalright—their original source !

But then, how can altruistic or compassionate behaviour be explained? For this also is observable:

But, for thisto be possible, I must in some way or other beidentified with him ; that is, the difference betweenmyself and him, which is the precise raison d'etreof my Egoism, must be removed, at least to a certain170 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.extent. Now, since I do not live in his skin, thereremains only the knowledge, that is, the mentalpicture, I have of him, as the possible means wherebyI can so far identify myself with him, thatmy action declares the difference to be practicallyeffaced. The process here analysed is not a dream,a fancy floating in the air ; it is perfectly real, andby no means infrequent. It is, what we see everyday,—the phaenomenon of Compassion ; in other words,the direct participation, independent of all ulteriorconsiderations, in the sufferings of another, leading tosympathetic assistance in the effort to prevent or removethem ; whereon in the last resort all satisfaction and allwell-being and happiness depend. It is this Compassion

alone which is the real basis of all voluntary justiceand all genuine loving-kindness. Only so far as anaction springs therefrom, has it moral value ; and allconduct that proceeds from any other motive whateverhas 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 hardlycomprehensible. It is, in fact, the great mystery ofEthics, its original phaenomenon, and the boundarystone, past which only transcendental speculation maydare to take a step. Herein we see the wall ofpartition, which, according to the light of nature (asreason is called by old theologians), entirely separatesbeing from being, broken down, and the non-ego toTHE ONLY TRUE MORAL INCENTIVE. 171a certain extent identified with the ego. I wish forthe moment to leave the metaphysical explanationof this enigma untouched, and first to inquirewhether all acts of voluntary justice and true loving kindnessreally arise from it. If so, our problemwill be solved, for we shall have found the ultimatebasis of morality, and shown that it lies in humannature itself. This foundation, however, in its turncannot form a problem of Ethics, but rather, likeevery other ultimate fact as such, of Metaphysics.Only the solution, that the latter offers of theprimary ethical phaenomenon, lies outside the limitsof the question put by the Danish Royal Society,which is concerned solely with the basis ; so thatthe transcendental explanation can be given merelyas 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 Economy173Whereas the nature of satisfaction, of enjoyment, ofhappiness, and the like, consists solely in the factthat a hardship is done away with, a pain lulled :whence their effect is negative. We thus see whyneed or desire is the condition of every pleasure.

This is the core of the negatives Denken. If the Weltprinzip is indeed the Will, the Welt-Schmerz, 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. Nietzsche’s 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 Nietzsche’s derision of “decadent pessimism”. But the force of Schop’s “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 inthe single acts of the just man Compassion worksonly indirectly through his formulated principles, andnot so much actu as potentia ; much in the same wayas in statics the greater length of one of the scale beams,owing to its greater power of motion, balancesthe smaller weight attached to it with the larger onthe 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 ‘Marx-Keynes-Schump’ collection.)

It will now be seen that injustice or wrong alwaysconsists in working harm on another. Thereforethe conception of wrong is positive, and antecedentto the conception of right, which is negative, andsimply denotes the actions performable without injuryto others ; in other words, without wrong being done.That to this class belongs also whatever is effectedwith no other object than that of warding off fromoneself meditated mischief is an easy inference. Forno participation in another's interests, and no sympathyfor him, can require me to let myself beharmed by him, that is, to undergo wrong.(P183)The theory that right is negative, in contradistinctionto wrong as positive, we find supported by HugoGrotius, the father of philosophical jurisprndence.The definition of justice which he gives at the beginningof 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 magissensu, 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 needto give a man his own, if he has it. The realmeaning 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 thatwhat is not unjust is to be regarded as justice.184 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.laede can be practised by all alike. The coerciveapparatus is the state, whose sole raison d'etre is toprotect its subjects, individually from each other, andcollectively from external foes. It is true that a few-German would-be philosophers of this venal agewish to distort the state into an institution for thespread of morality, education, and edifying instruction.But such a view contains, lurking in the background,the Jesuitical aim of doing away with personal freedomand individual development, and of making menmere wheels in a huge Chinese governmental andreligious machine. And this is the road that onceled to Inquisitions, to Autos-da-fe’, and religious wars.Frederick the Great showed that he at least neverwished to tread it, when he said : " In my land everyone shall care for his own salvation, as he himselfthinks best." Nevertheless, we still see everywhere

(with the more apparent than real exception of NorthAmerica) that the state undertakes to provide forthe 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 self-regulating 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 " areconvertible synonyms of " to do harm " and " to' There is no more efficient instrument in ruling the massesthan superstition. Without this they have no self-control;they are brutish ; they are changeable ; but once they arecaught by some vain form of religion, they lend a more willingear to its soothsayers than to their own leaders.THE VIRTUE OF JUSTICE. 185refrain from doing it," and that under " right " isincluded the warding off of injury from oneself.It will be obvious that these conceptions are independentof, and antecedent to, all positive legislation.There is, therefore, a pure ethical right, or naturalright, and a pure doctrine of right, detached fromall positive statutes. The first principles of thisdoctrine have no doubt an empirical origin, so faras they arise from the idea of harm done, but per sethey rest on the pure understanding, which a priorifurnishes ready to hand the axiom : causa causaeest causa effectus. (The cause of a cause is the causeof the effect.) Taken in this connection the wordsmean : if any one desires to injure me, it is not I,but he, that is the cause of whatever I am obligedto do in self-defence ; and I can consequently opposeall encroachments on his part, without wronging him.

The Doctrine of Right is a branch of Ethics,whose function is to determine those actions whichmay not be performed, unless one wishes to injureothers, that is, to be guilty of wrong-doing ; andhere the active part played is kept in view. Butlegislation applies this chapter of moral scienceconversely, that is, with reference to the passive sideof the question, and declares that the same actionsneed not be endured, since no one ought to havewrong inflicted on him. To frustrate such conductthe state constructs the complete edifice ofthe law, as positive Right. Its intention is thatno one shall suffer wrong ; the intention of theDoctrine 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 self-evident 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 haveno 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 barbarismof the West, whose source is Judaism. In philosophy,however, it rests on the assumption, despite allevidence to the contrary, of the radical differencebetween man and beast,— a doctrine which, as is wellknown, was proclaimed with more trenchant emphasisby Descartes than by any one else : it was indeed thenecessary consequence of his mistakes. When Leibnitzand Wolff, following out the Cartesian view, built upout of abstract ideas their Rational Psychology, andconstructed a deathless anima rationalis (rationalsoul) ; then the natural claims of the animal kingdomvisibly rose up against this exclusive privilege, thishuman patent of immortality, and Nature, as alwaysin such circumstances, entered her silent protest.(P218)

Those persons must indeed be totally blind, orelse completely chloroformed by the foetor Judaicus(Jewish stench), who do not discern that the trulyessential and fundamental part in man and beast isidentically the same thing. That which distinguishesthe one from the other does not lie in the primaryand original principle, in the inner nature, in thekernel of the two phaenomena (this kernel beingin both alike the Will of the individual) ; it is foundin what is secondary, in the intellect, in the degree ofperceptive capacity. It is true that the latter is incomparablyhigher in man, by reason of his added facultyof abstract knowledge, called Reason ; neverthelessthis superiority is traceable solely to a greater cerebraldevelopment, in other words, to the corporeal difference,which is quantitative, not qualitative, of a singlepart, the brain. In all other respects the similaritybetween 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 theirmothers, so also was the dog by Ms. Even Kant fell222 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.into this common mistake of his age, and of hiscountry, and I have already administered the censure ^which it is impossible to withhold. The fact thatChristian morality takes no thought for beasts is adefect in the system which is better admitted thanperpetuated.

(8) It is perhaps not impossible to investigate andexplain metaphysically the ultimate cause of thatCompassion in which alone all non-egoistic conductcan have its source ; but let us for the momentput aside such inquiries, and consider the phaenomenonin question, from the empirical point of view,simply as a natural arrangement.

But it was Kant who first completely cleared upthis important point through his profound doctrineof the empirical and intelligible ^ character. He' Are we to believe it true that we can only be thoroughlygood by virtue of a certain occult, natural, and universalfaculty, without law, without reason, without precedent?^ The good man out of the good treasure of his heartbringeth forth that which is good ; and the evil man out ofthe evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which isevil.' V. Note on "intelligible," Part. II, Chapter I—{Translator.)ON THE ETHICAL DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER. 241showed that the empirical character, which manifestsitself in time and in multiplicity of action, is aphaenomenon ; while the reality behind it is theintelligible character, which, being the essentialconstitution of the Thing in itself underlying thephaenomenon, is independent of time, space, plurality,and change. In this way alone can be explained whatis so astonishing, and yet so well known to all whohave learnt life's lessons,—the fixed unchangeablenessof human character.

Du bist am Ende—WAS 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 toput the question : Where, then, does blame and meritcome in ? The answer is fully contained in Part II.,(Chapter VIII., to which I therefore beg to callparticular attention. It is there that the explanation,which otherwise would now follow, found a natural

place ; because the matter is closely connected withKant's doctrine of the co-existence of Freedom andNecessity. Our investigation led to the conclusionthat, once the motives are brought into play, theOperari (what is done) is a thing of absolutenecessity ; consequently, Freedom, the existence ofwhich 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 still—what thou art.Though "wigs with countless curls thy head-gear be,Though shoes an ell in height adorn thy feet:Unchanged thou e’er remainest what thou art.V. Goethe's Faust, Part I., Studirzimmer.(Translator.)ON THE ETHICAL DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER. 249in the first place, and ostensibly, with our acts, butthrough these they, in reality, reach down to whatwe are; for what we do is the only indisputableindex of what we are, and reflects our character justas faithfully as symptoms betray the malady. Henceit is to this Esse, to what we are, that blame andmerit 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 Kant’s “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 Schop’s “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 Nietzsche’s 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 Kant’s “desperation” in the ‘Ubergang’ – his inability to extend logic and mathematics to causality in the physical world (‘PNeR’, p61). Gadamer notes Husserl’s 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 Hegel’s 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 “Konigsberger’s 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 Heidegger’s 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.Sombart’s ‘Socialism’ discussed in ‘PhiloAnte ofSoE’.)

Cacciari’s 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 Hegel’s Geist. Schopenhauer takes up fully Kant’s 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 thathis whole argument is specious. The fact that in Kant's admittedlyconfused way of treating perception and conception he seesnothing but a solemn warning against undue adherence to an

ideal of 'architectonic symmetry,' shows how hopelessly hemisconceives 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 'TranscendentalDialectic' 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 knowledgeof 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, unlessthe fundamental spirit of his philosophy is kept constantly in mind. As Richter

NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 21the conceptual in experience is to be regarded, not as the failureto discriminate ultimate differences, but rather as the imperfectrealization and the inadequate expression of the underlyingessential unity of concrete experience, which cannot be reducedto merely perceptual or conceptual terms. Kant's confusionis the confusion of depths not yet clarified; Schopenhauer'slucidity 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 hesaid: "Thoughts without contents are empty, intuitions withoutconcepts are blind. . . . The understanding cannot see, thesenses cannot think. By their union only can knowledge beproduced."^The fundamental defect of Schopenhauer's epistemologyis to be found in his constant endeavor to explain one abstractphase of experience in terms of another, supposedly prior, phase,—really the vice of the older rationalism,—instead of readingboth into the organic unity which embraces both and derivesits own meaning precisely from such systematization of aspectsmeaningless in abstract isolation. The relation between theorganizing principles of experience is for Kant, not one of formalsubsumption, but of organic interdependence. Experience involvesboth perception and conception, the one as much as theother; its progressive organization consists in the gradualevolution of the two, which unifies them in one concrete process.The perceptual content is essentially meaningful, and theapplication of the categories brings out what is implicit in it.Schopenhauer's universals are the universals of the old scholasticlogic, abstractions which do not exist outside of its text-booksand are alien to concrete experience. Conception, in the trueKantian sense, is no mere attenuated perception, but the significantaspect of experience. Conceptions, or, perhaps better,

puts it: "Es ist wirklich nicht so schwer, wenn man sich nur an den wortlichenText der Kritiken halt, Rationalismus und Empirismus, Dogmatismus (im weitestenSinne) 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 fortgebildethat 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 Schopenhauerwould have it.^ Universality means, not erasure ofdetails and differences, but their gradual organization from apoint of view ever growing in catholicity. The progress ofknowledge is not from perception to conception, but from lessconcrete to more concrete organization of both.iG.. II. p. 55; H.K., II. p. 213.

Valiantly made, Tsanoff’s objection is impeccable. What purpose does it serve to replace Kant’s critique with Schopenhauer’s? Is the latter not rather, by exasperating the former’s categories (the Hegelian “where is it written?”), exasperating his own critique and by reflection adopting the “Scholastic categories” denounced by Tsanoff and of which Schopenhauer’s entire oeuvre is always redolent?

Phenomenalistic idealismand voluntaristic materialism, aesthetic quietism and ethicalnihilism, are advocated one after another; and, while the criticismof Kant's principles often lays bare the concealed inconsistenciesof the Critical system, the solutions offered are as often inadequate.Is not the real explanation of the situation to be foundin the fact that Schopenhauer is not the true successor of Kantat all? Instead of being a neo-rationalist, as Kant, on the whole,remained, he is fundamentally an irrationalist, so far as hisattitude towards ultimate reality is concerned. He is keen inperceiving and criticising Kant's confusion of various aspectsand elements of experience; but, instead of tracing their immanentorganic unity, which Kant imperfectly realizes and formulates,he goes so far, in almost every case, as to assert their actualseparation. This was seen to be true of his treatment of perceptionand conception, understanding and reason. Instead ofrecognizing 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 confusedlyright 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! Schopenhauer’s 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 Hegel’s 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 Heidegger’s 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 Schopenhauer’s 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 Schopenhauer’s 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 metaphysicsof experience. Philosophy, he says, begins where science

leaves off, it takes things up and "treats them after its ownmethod, which is quite distinct from the method of science. "^This essential difference in method Schopenhauer indicates in novague terms. Science is concerned with the systematic connectionof differences. But in the conative consciousness the differencesof the World as Idea vanish into one immediate unity,and scientific knowledge is transmuted into a consciousness ofwill, which demands no explanation, starts from nothing, pointsto nothing, but is itself an unending immediate striving. Schopenhauer,therefore, denies, on the basis of Kant's own epistemologicalresults, the possibility of metaphysics, if by metaphysicsis meant the scientific explanation of the inmost nature of thething-in-itself as such, considered apart from its manifestationin consciousness. But he emphatically affirms the possibility ofa metaphysics of experience, in terms of its completest and mostimmediate, i. e., most real manifestation. Will.In this sense, then, Schopenhauer asserts that his own metaphysicsof Will is the key to the world-riddle. His test of themetaphysical ' realness ' of any phase of experience is in terms ofa unity which absorbs multiplicity. This unity, however, is notthe result of the abstracting process of conception, but, in contrastto the mediate character of all thought, is concrete, i. e., immediatelypresent in consciousness. Schopenhauer seeks his ultimatereality 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 undifferentiatedunity. The ' real ' is conceived by him as opposedto and contradistinguished from the rest of experience, which isthereby declared illusory. The ultimate unity is possible, onSchopenhauer's basis, only by means of the erasure of theorganized multiplicity of phenomena. Reality is not truly revealedby its phenomenal appearance; rather it is the World as Ideathe fleeting shadow of the Real, its veil of Maya. All the organizationand coherence implied in the Principle of Sufficient Reasonavail us nothing in the solution of the ultimate problems ofexperience. 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 interpretationof the reality now recognized as Will, is not difficult toforesee. We know ourselves as willing in our separate acts ofstriving. But it is precisely this our knowledge of the conativethat introduces the element of multiplicity and makes impossiblethe complete metaphysical unity. Our consciousness of willingis metaphysically 'real,' not by virtue of its being conscious, butin 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, inevitablytemporal in character, is itself a mere accident of themetaphysical 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 itmay become conscious of itself."^ Will is the prius, the Weltprincip;

nous is secondary, intellect is the posterius, a derivationand a mere appearance of the thing-in-itself. To urge theprimacy of the intellect over the will, is therefore an "enormousproton pseudon and fundamental esteron proteron.''^"It is the unconscious will," Schopenhauer insists, "whichconstitutes 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. 71advanced 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 Freud’s ‘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 beingwhich lies at the foundation of all phenomena, a consciousnesswhich when directed inwardly becomes self-consciousness, thenthat inner being presents itself to this self-consciousness as thatwhich is so familiar and so mysterious, and is denoted by the [67] word will.”

P68 – Tsanoff:The world of perception is directly apprehendedby the knowing subject, through the faculty of the understandingand its one category of cause-effect, resulting from the unionof space and time. Its cognitive directness is in marked contrastto the abstract character of conception, with its multitude ofartificial abstractions and formal laws, lacking all application todirect experience. But perception and conception alike, Schopenhauerholds, lack the immediacy of the conative experience.In the willing consciousness the entire intellectual web of theWorld as Idea is swept aside; the multiplicity of things in spaceand time, which hides the metaphysical oneness of all realityfrom the knowing subject, is no more; the one ultimate conditionof the possibility of consciousness alone remains,—time. Thisthe 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 Schopenhauerto materialistic excesses. The whole world of perceptionand conception, of body and matter, which he formerly regardedas intellectual in character, he now describes in terms of the bodilyorganism.^ The intellect is reduced to a tertiary position, beingthe instrument necessitated by a complete organism, which issecondary and is itself the embodiment of the one and onlyPrius, the blind unconscious Will. The intellect is accordinglya function of the brain, which, again, is the will-to-perceive-and-thinkobjectified, just as the stomach is the embodiment of thewill-to-digest, the hand, of the will-to-grasp, the generativeorgans, of the will-to-beget, and so on. "The whole nervoussystem constitutes, as it were, the antennae of the will, which itstretches towards within and without."^The relation in which the development of knowledge standsto the gradual objectification of the Will is conceived by Schopenhauerwith curious inconsistency. In this respect, there aresome apparent differences in point of view between certain passagesin Schopenhauer's earlier and later works; but there seemsto be no sufficient ground for maintaining any fundamentalchange of attitude on Schopenhauer's part. Schopenhauer mightseem to hold two fundamentally opposite positions. On theone hand, he says: "The organ of intelligence, the cerebral system,together with all the organs of sense, keep pace with theincreasing wants and the complication of the organism."* Thisconclusion follows logically from Schopenhauer's theory of theabsolute bondage of intelligence; but it does not account for theobvious facts of consciousness. Is the highest development ofintelligence 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? SchoII, pp. 314-315; H.K., III. p. 2.2 Schopenhauer's 'physiological-psychological' method, which here manifestsitself 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 theWill, he says, is accompanied by a gradual 'loosening' of theintellect 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 asIdea, which Schopenhauer regards as at once the manifestationand the very antithesis of the World as Will. But the intellect"may, in particular exceptionally favoured individuals, go so farthat, at the moment of its highest ascendancy, the secondary orknowing part of consciousness detaches itself altogether from thewilling part, and passes into free activity for itself."^ Thus, inthe man of genius, "knowledge can deliver itself from thisbondage, 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 uniqueconsciousness 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'sTheory of Art seems to be called for here, inasmuch as it hasno direct bearing upon his criticism of Kant. It should benoted, however, that Schopenhauer finds himself obliged toreassert the autonomy of the intellect, which his metaphysichas put under the bondage of the ultimate Will. This autonomyof the intellect, in the passionless contemplation of works of art,is, nevertheless, only a passing phase. The real solution of theworld-riddle is stated by Schopenhauer, not in aesthetic, but inethical terms. The liberation of intelligence from the tyrantWill becomes complete and final only when the will is denied inthe supreme act of self-renunciation. This denial of the will,to be sure, involves the cessation of consciousness, the totaleffacement of all phenomenal multiplicity, and the sinking intothe nothingness of Nirvana. Enlightened by intelligence, thewill of man may be led to realize the brute-like character of itsiG.. II, p. 238; H.K., II. p. 417-'G., I, p. 214; H.K., I, p. 199-EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 75nature, and, directing itself against itself, achieve its own self-annihilation.The denial of the will is really the denial of itsstriving towards multiplicity; it is the denial of that impulsein it which leads to its objectification in phenomena,—the denialof the will-to-self-perpetuation, of the will-to-become-manifest,of the will-to-live. This is what Schopenhauer means when hesays, at the end of The World as Will and Idea: "We freely acknowledgethat what remains after the entire abolition of willis for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but,conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denieditself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milkyways—is 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,' Schopenhauerregards 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 phenomiG., II, p. 205; H.K., II, p. 381.62EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 63enon 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). "2Schopenhauer 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 regardsas his own great contribution to philosophical thought; hereit is that Schopenhauer's philosophy joins onto the Kantian,or rather springs from it as from its parent stem.^ "Uponthe path of the idea one can never get beyond the idea; it isa rounded-off whole, and has in its own resources no clue leadingto 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 PhilosophicalReview, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-534-2G.. Ill, pp. SI I ff.; Bullock, pp. 45 ff.'C/. R. Behm, Vergleichung der kantischen und schopenhauerischen Lehre inAnsehung der Kausalitdt, Heidelberg, 1892, p. 39.

EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 65from it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to thething in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only theother side of our own being can disclose to us the other side ofthe inner being of things. This path I have followed."^ Kantis correct in holding that we are unable to arrive at the ultimatereality of things by the road of knowledge; but he then proceedsto deny the possibility of all metaphysics, thus ignoring,in his Critique of Pure Reason, the paramount ontological significanceof 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 ofman's will recognizes implicitly, Schopenhauer maintains, thatin man necessity is phenomenal only, and that in him the thing-in-itself manifests its inner nature in the form of Will. "What,then, Kant teaches of the phenomenon of man and his actionmy teaching extends to all phenomena in nature, in that it makesthe will as a thing-in-itself their foundation. "^ For man is nottoto genere different from the rest of experience, but differs onlyin degree. The World as Idea is, as Kant says, purely phenomenal;but it does not exhaust reality. "As the world is in oneaspect entirely idea, so in another it is entirely will. A realitywhich is neither of these two, but an object in itself (into whichthe thing in itself has unfortunately dwindled in the hands ofKant), is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignisfatuus in philosophy."^ The path of objective knowledge doesnot lead us to the real nature of things, and so far Schopenhaueris 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 objectivelyis to desire something contradictory."* The thing-in-itselfis unknowable, precisely because it is not a matter of knowledgebut is in its inmost essence Will.