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Universidade Federal de Santa Maria
Voluntas, Santa Maria, v.12, e15, Ed. Especial: Schopenhauer e o pensamento universal, 2021
DOI: 10.5902/2179378667751
ISSN 2179-3786
Submissão: 31/08/2021 • Aprovação: 27/09/2021 • Publicação: 28/12/2021
2 MYTHS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON
4 THE OTHER IN ETERNAL JUSTICE
Schopenhauer e o pensamento universal
Religion and Ethics in Schopenhauer [1]
Takao Ito I
I Soka University, Faculty of Letters, Tokyo, Japan
ABSTRACT
Schopenhauer’s theory of religion is mainly discussed in his ethics. Therefore, conventional studies often argue that Schopenhauer made an attempt to make a rational justification of religion through the process of recognising the reason for religion’s existence in its ethical values. However, his theory of religion contains other aspects which cannot be discussed soley in terms of the above view, for he not only observed subtle differences between religion and ethics but even considered that religion could go against ethics at times. For this reason, we cannot simply say that Schopenhauer used ethics as a means to make a rational justification of religion. Rather, he viewed ethics as a standard for criticising religions, though he did not deny religion. He neither affirmed nor denied religion. Based on his ethics, he simply engaged in a philosophical analysis of a human activity called religion as he considered such an approach to be the appropriate one for a philosopher. On that account, what is important here is where in religion Schopenhauer saw the conditions for ethical values. From that point of view, this paper reinterprets his thought through descriptions in his major work, The World as Will and Representation, with an intention to offer a new reading of Schopenhauer’s theory of religion.
Keywords: Myth; Principle of sufficient reason; Dogma; Virtue; The other; Eternal justice
Scholars of Schopenhauer have often discussed the way in which his religious discourse merges with his ethical interpretation of religion. The kind of argument that we often come across is that the atheist Schopenhauer made an attempt to make a rational justification of religion through the process of recognising the reason for religion’s existence in its ethical values. For instance, while possibly keeping in mind these words of Schopenhauer: ‘Myth was a sufficient guide to action, since it illuminates the ethical meaning of action, albeit through pictorial representation … This is the purpose of religious doctrines,’ (W I, p. 382) Édouard Sans, a French scholar of the history of thought, makes the following observation.
In fact, in Schopenhauer’s view … what is important is the moral tendency that constitutes the essence of religion, rather than the myths that dress religion. In short, the real content of religion lies in its ethical order. (SANS, 1990, p. 90, tentatively translated into English from French).
For the part Sans emphasises in italics, in order to support his own argument, he provides a note (SANS, 1990, p. 90, tentatively translated into English from French) in which he quotes Max Horkheimer, who says of Schopenhauer’s philosophy that it is ‘the last great philosophical attempt to save the essence of Christianity’ (HORKHEIMER, 1985, p. 191, tentatively translated into English from Germa). Sans’ stance is a typical example of the attempt to find within Schopenhauer an Enlightenment line of thought. Kanji Nishio, a Japanese scholar of German literature, considers such a perspective in light of Schopenhauer’s reception of Oriental thought. He writes:
We should take note of the fact that Schopenhauer emphasises that Christian sages and Indian sages, though different in doctrine, are the same in terms of their conduct and inner transformation … This is a humanistic interpretation of religion. His attempt to find a common ground for all religions meets the rationalist demand for religion since the Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century. In the way that corresponded to the current of the times, Schopenhauer also falls into the rationalist trend of trying to save religion (NISHIO, 1980, p. 79, tentatively translated into English from Japanese).
A similar view was expressed by one of Horkheimer's successors, Alfred Schmidt, a philosopher of the second generation of the Frankfurt School. He made the following remark:
Schopenhauer's main endeavour was to philosophically save Christianity by relating it to the Eastern teachings of wisdom. ... Horkheimer sees that, in a way which goes against its theistic justification, Christian morality is held up and justified in Schopenhauer's thought that nothingness would be better than anything that exists (SCHMIDT, 1986, p. 167-168, tentatively translated into English from German).
Furthermore, the Irish theologian Gerard Mannion points out that Schopenhauer's doctrine of salvation 'offers a salvific/liberative account of the possibility of human transformation which would qualify as a religious way of transformation according to John Hick's interpretation of religion’ (MANNION, 2016, p. 287).[2] Mannion says:
... Schopenhauer's thought gradually became something of a postmodern 'surrogate religion' for those of his era who had lost faith in old dogmatic theological belief systems, but who nonetheless were dissatisfied with the claims that science and reason could explain all that there is to be explained. Schopenhauer's philosophy spoke to the disillusioned people who rejected the overt optimism and pretentions of humanity in the second half of the nineteenth century, but who nonetheless wished to cling to the belief that there was some meaning and significance to existence, especially those who intuited that this was somehow bound up with the moral (MANNION, 2016, p. 287-288).
The views of the interpreters above consider Schopenhauer’s theory of religion as a rational justification of religion (i.e. considering Schopenhauer as a defender of religion rather than a believer). Those views are persuasive with good grounds and I do not attempt to raise an objection. In this paper however, I would like to evaluate Schopenhauer’s theory of religion in a new light by illuminating an area which preceding studies have not paid much attention to, i.e. Schopenhauer’s perceptive insight into a tension between religion and ethics, rather than his attention to ethical values in religion.
Schopenhauer not only observed subtle differences between religion and ethics but even thought that religion could go against ethics at times. For this reason, we cannot simply say that Schopenhauer used ethics as a means to make a rational justification of religion. Rather, he viewed ethics as a standard for criticising religion, though he did not deny religion. He neither affirmed nor denied religion. Based on his ethics, he simply engaged in a philosophical analysis of a human activity called religion as he considered such an approach to be the appropriate one for a philosopher. What is important here is where in religion Schopenhauer saw the conditions for ethical values.
With the above in mind, referring mainly to the relevant parts from The World as Will and Representation, one of his early works first published in 1819 and regarded as his central work (hereafter referred to as ‘major work’), this paper intends to offer a new reading of Schopenhauer’s theory of religion, reinterpret his thought on religion and ethics.
2 Myths and the principle of sufficient reason
Schopenhauer’s theory of religion is principally expounded in the fourth book of his major work, where ethics is the subject matter. The arguments of scholars such as Sans and Nishio, who consider Schopenhauer to be a rationalistic defender of religion, are most likely based on Schopenhauer’s theory of myths in section 63. In this section, Schopenhauer writes that myths are stories narrated in order to make it easier for people to understand philosophical and ethical truth. (The philosophical and ethical truth here indicates the proposition found in the Upanishads ‘Tatoumes / tat tvam asi’ [Sanskrit: ‘thou art that’ or ‘you are that’] (W I, p. 382) and Schopenhauer sees the importance of compassion in this proposition.) Schopenhauer states:
This great piece of wisdom [Tatoumes / tat tvam asi] is translated for the people (to the extent that they can grasp it, given their limitations) into the sort of cognition that complies with the principle of sufficient reason. Of course this piece of wisdom, purely and in itself, is completely foreign – even contradictory – to the nature of such cognition; such cognition cannot accommodate this wisdom, it could only accept a surrogate in the form of myth. Myth was a sufficient guide to action, since it illuminates the ethical meaning of action, albeit through pictorial representation in the manner of cognition that is eternally foreign to this meaning (i.e. according to the principle of sufficient reason). This is the purpose of religious doctrines, which are all mythological cloaks for truths that are inaccessible to the untutored human senses (W I, p. 382, italics mine).
The message of the above quotation is that myths and doctrines have ethical practicality as ‘a guide to action’ and in that sense, we could say that Schopenhauer’s view is that ‘the real truth of religion lies in its ethical order’[3] as Sans observes. However, when we read the same quotation carefully and pay attention to the italicised parts, we see that Schopenhauer is also saying that myths are in conflict with true ethical values. Myths are narrated in ‘the sort of cognition that complies with the principle of sufficient reason’ and ‘such cognition cannot accommodate this wisdom’ (i.e. Tatoumes / tat tvam asi). He also states that ‘the manner of cognition is eternally foreign’ to the ethical meaning of action. Leaving the definition of ‘the ethical meaning of action’ aside for now, the most important point here is that Schopenhauer was attentive to the difference between religion and ethics.
When he says that myths are ‘the sort of cognition that complies with the principle of sufficient reason,’ what does he actually mean? Why does the manner of cognition not agree with ethical meaning itself? In order to interpret Schopenhauer’s view on the relationship between religion and ethics, we must answer those questions.
In his doctoral dissertation titled On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason[4] (hereafter referred to as ‘doctoral dissertation’), following Wolff, Schopenhauer succinctly defines the principle of sufficient reason as follows: ‘Nothing is without a reason why it is rather than not’ (G, p. 4). There are four different kinds of laws in the principle of sufficient reason: physical law (the relation between cause and effect), logical law (the relation between ground and consequence), arithmetic and geometric laws (the relation of chronological momentum and the relation of spatial adjacency), and psychological law (the relation between motive and action) (G, p. 65-66).[5] According to Schopenhauer, every object is under the control of one of these laws. On this account, to put it simply, ‘the sort of cognition that complies with the principle of sufficient reason’ means principled cognition about a mutual relation between objects (an answer to ‘why’). However, the principle of sufficient reason is only applicable to objects and cannot be applied to anything other than objects. With the above assertion in mind, it is worth examining his description of the myth of samsara (the transmigration of the soul) which appears in his major work.
It [the myth of samsara] teaches that you must atone for all the suffering you inflict on other creatures over the course of your life by enduring precisely the same suffering in a following life in this very same world; it goes so far as to say that anyone who kills even an animal will have to be born at some point in the infinity of time as precisely this sort of animal, and suffer the same death. … But, on the other hand, it promises as a reward that you will be reborn in a better, nobler form, as Brahman, as sage, as saint (W I, p. 382-383, italics mine).
From Schopenhauer’s point of view, the myth of samsara which is interpreted as a theory of retributive justice has the following problems. First of all, in this theory, the laws of objects, such as the physical relation between cause and effect, the chronological relation between before and after, and the spatial relation between here and there, are applied to something (i.e. the next lifetime) which cannot be an object for a subject. In this application, it is assumed that the identity of a person who committed an evil or good deed will remain for an infinite time, which is a materialisation of the subject. In fact, in the first book of his major work, where epistemology is the subject matter, Schopenhauer states:
The subject is the seat of all cognition but is itself not cognized by anything. Accordingly it is the support for the world and always presupposed as the general condition of all appearances, of all objects: whatever exist, exists only for the subject (W I, p. 25).
Therefore the subject can never be represented within the forms of cognition such as time and space as it is the subject that gives rise to those forms of cognition. Therefore, the subject is always outside of the realm of the principle of sufficient reason.
Furthermore, from Schopenhauer’s point of view, the myth of samsara may contain the following problem. By expressing the above application of the principle of sufficient reason in the form of the logical ground-consequence relation, this myth intends to have an ethically positive influence on the psychological motive-action relation of an individual. However, this may in fact legitimise egoism. Because refraining from harming others for fear of encountering misfortune in the next life, or striving to save others in order to secure happiness in a future life, are practiced purely for personal benefit, without any concern for the wellbeing of others. It is for this reason, I believe, that Schopenhauer says that the manner of cognition in myths is ‘eternally foreign’ to the ethical meaning of action.
In sections 65 and 66 of his major work, Schopenhauer further discusses the contrast between the manner of cognition in myths and the ethical meaning of action. Here he points out the problems with equating myth with ethical meaning. The greatest problem of all is fanaticism which regards ‘every attack on myth as an attack on justice and virtue,’ (W I, p. 388) epitomised in the Inquisition of the West. According to him, such fanaticism is inseparable from egoism:
Thus, for instance, with respect to his ethical worth, it is all the same whether he gives large presents to people in need, firmly convinced that he will be repaid tenfold in a future life, or if he uses the same sum to improve an estate that will carry interest – later, of course, but all the more securely and substantially. And someone who delivers a heretic to the flames for the sake of orthodoxy is just as much a murderer as a bandit who kills for a reward; and in fact, according to inner circumstances, he is just as much a murderer as someone who massacres Turks in the Promised Land, if he also really does it because he thinks it will earn him a place in heaven. These are people who only care about themselves, about their egoism, just like the bandit, and they differ from the bandit only in the absurdity of their methods (W I, p. 395-396, italics mine).
This passage describes various cases in which myths, used as a means for explaining the ethical meaning of action, are equated with the ethical meaning itself and treated as absolute. In each of these cases, it seems that believers are using the principle of sufficient reason, applied to something which cannot be an object for a subject (i.e. the afterlife), in order to justify themselves. If so, it could be said that fanaticism has its roots in the misapplication of the principle of sufficient reason in mythology. Schopenhauer expounds the argument on the difference between myth and ethical meaning in the form of a contrast between dogma (Dogma) and virtue (Tugend):
…abstract dogmas have no influence on virtue, i.e. on goodness of disposition: false dogmas do not disturb it and true ones do little to promote it. … The only value dogmas have for morality is that they provide a scheme or formula for virtuous people whose cognition is already derived from elsewhere [the manner of cognition other than dogmas or the principle of sufficient reason] (as we will soon discuss); such people can then use this formula to articulate a (mostly fictitious) account of their own non-egoistic deeds for the benefit of their own reason (W I, p. 395).
While dogmas can be conceptually understood as a scheme or formula, virtue is something that even the subject itself, who has the virtue, does not understand conceptually. For this reason, it is not possible to assert that abstract dogmas can have any impact on virtue. To make such an assertion is to confuse the logical ground-consequence relation with the psychological motive-action relation. Moreover, as with the myth of samsara, it also entails a materialisation of the subject, for, according to Schopenhauer, this psychological relation is applicable only to objects and is distinct from the ‘will’ from which virtue arises.
It is worth reviewing here the argument in Schopenhauer’s doctoral dissertation which addresses the relationship between the principle of sufficient reason and the will. A summary of his statement reads as follows:
When we reflect upon the process through which we decide our behaviour (Handeln), the ‘motive’ which causes the decision can be explained by the law of causality. However, the conditions for why we came to have that motive itself in the first place can no longer be explained by the law of causality. Although desires (Wunschs) certainly come prior to decisions, so long as desires themselves are instances of willing, nothing is explained by saying that the stronger desire out of two conflicting desires becomes willing (Wollen). It is therefore either 1) a strong desire occurring without following any rules, or 2) a strong desire occurring as a result of a preceding state of the subject of willing. [FR1, 55 / Diss, 75f.[6]] In the case of 1), the following cannot be explained: Any individual would act in exactly the same way if they are placed in exactly the same circumstances, though may have the liveliest conviction that they would be able to act in a totally different way if only they wanted to. Since this cannot be explained with 1), we cannot but accept 2) above. [FR1, 55 / Diss, 76] However, the state of the subject of willing cannot be apprehended. Why the subject of willing is willing is unknowable in the same way that it is unknowable for the subject of knowing to know the state of knowing (since the states of willing and knowing are outside of time). Schopenhauer calls the state of the subject of willing itself will (Wille), which unconditionally conditions each desire. [FR1, 56 / Diss, 76][7]
In the context of the above explanation in his doctoral dissertation, we can understand why he states in his major work that ‘false dogmas do not disturb it and true ones do little to promote it’. In short, Schopenhauer says that the principle of sufficient reason cannot be applied to the subject of willing, i.e. will. In other words, even if it were possible to have an influence on the psychological motive-action relation by exhausting the logical ground-consequence relation, it would not in any way influence one’s will.
The meaning of the word ‘dogma’ that Schopenhauer describes here is not limited to religious dogma. Anything ‘abstract’ and ‘conceptually understandable’, i.e. anything expressed in the principle of sufficient reason, is a type of dogma. This is applicable to all academic disciplines including ethics, which is no more than a human activity, used to ‘articulate a (mostly fictitious) account of…[one’s] own non-egoistic deeds for the benefit of their own reason,’ just like the religious dogmas described above. Therefore he says: ‘Ethical lectures and sermons are as little capable of producing a virtuous person as aesthetics, from Aristotle’s onward, has ever made a poet’ (W I, p. 395). Ethics cannot go beyond interpreting actions and should not attempt to transform individuals. When ethics loses sight of its original role, it becomes yet another ideology or something even worse as it hides behind the façade of an academic discipline.
4 The other in eternal justice
As discussed above, Schopenhauer explains the difference between dogma and virtue, through the contrast between what is conceptually understandable and what is not, and the contrast between egoism and morality. From his point of view, the morality of religion lies in the ethical meaning of action, rather than in its dogma. If so, then the question ‘what is the ethical meaning of action in the first place?’ must be asked anew.
Strangely enough, there is no clear definition of the term, ‘the ethical meaning of action’ in his major work. However, as far as this work is concerned, two observations can be made. Firstly, the ethical meaning of action is most commonly used in juxtaposition with the legal meaning of action. Secondly, the term is employed specifically to describe justice, compassion, and asceticism which constitute his virtue theory.
In section 63, Schopenhauer considers the first point in terms of what he calls ‘eternal justice.’ Such justice is based on the view that committing a crime is itself, already a punishment, while legal justice (punishment for crime) is based on the cognition of time (e.g. a murderer is sentenced to death after committing murder).
The concept of retribution already entails temporality: which is why eternal justice cannot be retributive, as this would require time; it cannot permit any delays or reprieves, nor can it appeal to time to balance a bad deed with a bad result. Punishment must be tied to the offence to the point where the two become one (W I, p. 377).
According to Schopenhauer, the ethical meaning of action is atemporal and it exists only in the realm where it is invalid to attempt to explain the reasons as to why a certain action is good or bad. However this does not in any way mean that the good or bad of that action is annulled. Rather, it means the criteria for judging the ethical meaning of action are found in the action itself as opposed to within the various systems of the objective world such as laws and social customs. In this sense, it would not be possible to express the ethical meaning of action in words as doing so would inevitably lead to tautological justifications such as, ‘harming (or helping) others is bad (or good) because it harms (or helps) others.’ These expressions are interpretations but not explanations of the ethical worth of certain actions. However, so long as we try to discuss the ethical meaning of action without relying on the language of the principle of sufficient reason, we are bound to fall into the realm in which ethical grounds are inexplicable.[8] It is on this point that we find a distinctive characteristic in Schopenhauer’s ethics.
Consider again the following proposition (Proposition A): ‘Harming others is bad because it harms others.’ Casting aside an analysis of this assertion, the important point to take note of is the presence of ‘others.’ It would be conducive to the understanding of the reader to consider how Schopenhauer would evaluate, as well as Proposition A, the following propositions: ‘Harming others is bad because it harms oneself’ (Proposition B), ‘Harming oneself is bad because it harms oneself’ (Proposition C), or ‘Harming oneself is bad because it harms others’ (Proposition D). All of these come down to egoism. Proposition B is the pattern applicable to the myth of samsara discussed above. For Proposition C, suicide would be an example which, in his major work, is explained as the result of unsatisfied self-love (W I, p. 425). Proposition D could become nothing more than a logic used for justifying self-defense. It is unlikely that the eternal justice that Schopenhauer discusses is based on such egocentric propositions. It is therefore possible to deduce that he places the presence of ‘others’ at the centre of Proposition A.
Moreover, replacing bad deeds which will result in retribution, with good deeds, which will lead to reward, does not change the end result of egoism. In the concept of undergoing happiness or misery in the next lifetime, as indicated in the myth of the samsara, the subject, represented spatially and temporally, becomes materialised and consequently is not directed towards eternal justice. In other words, the path of groundlessly relating to the other is closed. As long as the language in the principle of sufficient reason is used, the ethical meaning of action will always boil down to egoism (as it is indifferent to the presence of the other), as discussed in sections 2 and 3 of this paper. Egoism is, in other words, the tendency whereby one cannot relate to the other without linking oneself with the other based on a certain ground. That being said, any action which does not groundlessly relate to the other can be explained by the principle of sufficient reason.
If the ethical meaning of action is concerned with groundlessly relating to the other, then the conditions of morality in religion would need to be founded on that point too. In this context, we can understand why Schopenhauer opposes any attempt at an ethical justification for actions of vengeance against others. It is because, while in the legal domain the wrongdoer is punished in some place and at some time, in the ethical domain, ‘eternal justice’ manifests as the misfortune which meets the wrongdoer at the very conception of their wrongdoing. Thus, there are never any ethical grounds for a victim to enact their own retribution on the perpetrator as to do so would imply a failure to groundlessly relate to the other. On the denial of retribution, he states as follows in section 64.
Christian ethics bears witness, since this ethics blankly forbids evil to be repaid with evil and leaves eternal justice to the realm of the thing in itself, which is different from the realm of appearance. (‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay,’ Romans 12:19.) (W I, p. 385).
On the denial of reward, referring to Martin Luther’s doctrine that faith does not arise from one’s own efforts, but comes from without by way of divine grace, Schopenhauer states as follows in section 70:
This means that salvation is something entirely alien to our person, and it points to the fact that salvation requires us to negate and abolish precisely this person. Works, the observance of the law as such, could never justify, because they are always actions that take place according to motives (W I, p. 435, italics mine).
For example, loving one’s neighbour simply because a doctrine teaches ‘love thy neighbour’ does not justify one in any way. True love of one’s neighbour must be practised independently of doctrinal prescriptions. In section 67, examples of 'compassion' are given as 'everyone else who freely[9] and consciously goes to a certain death for the sake of family or fatherland' (W I, p. 402, italics mine) and 'everyone who willingly[10] suffers and dies for asserting claims that are in the collective interest of humanity’ (W I, p. 402, italics mine). The qualifying words 'freely' and 'willingly' in these passages confirm the above interpretation.
Conclusion
Based on his work The World as Will and Representation, this paper has made an attempt to reinterpret Schopenhauer’s thought on the relationship between religion and ethics. As his theory of religion has a complex link with ethics, when considered in light of its ethical aspect, it is often construed to be Christian apologetics. However, such a claim ignores the fact that Schopenhauer continuously examined and emphasised the subtle difference between religion and ethics. In his mind, religious forms of discourse such as myth and doctrine are never reconcilable with morality, and he even saw within religious discourse the potential to produce an immoral tendency in believers. Therefore, the important point was where in religion Schopenhauer perceived the conditions for morality, and from this question, ‘the ethics of the other’ found in his theory of religion surfaced. Here the ethical meaning of the actions of religious believers rests on them ‘groundlessly relating to the other.’ As such, morality requires that they refrain from carrying out retribution on the other and abandon the expectation of external reward for treating the other well, as acting to the contrary is to fail to groundlessly relate to the other.
REFERENCES
HORKHEIMER, M. Religion und Philosophie. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 7, hrsg. von Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1985, p. 187-196.
ITO, T. The Kantian Framework of Schopenhauer’s Ethics: Right, Justice, Compassion, and Asceticism. Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch, Vol. 101, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020, p. 173-188.
MANNION, G. Schopenhauer, Religion and Morality: The Humble Path to Ethics. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.
NISHIO, K. Schopenhauer no Shisou to Ningenzou (Schopenhauer’s Thought and Persona). Sekai no Meicho 45 Schopenhauer (Great Books of the World 45 Schopenhauer), Tokyo: Chuokoron-Sha, 1980, p. 5-100.
SANS, É. Schopenhauer. Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 1990.
SCHMIDT, A. Die Wahrheit im Gewande der Lüge: Schopenhauers Religionphilosophie. München: Piper, 1986.
SCHOPENHAUER, A. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Faksimiledruck der ersten Auflage von 1819 [1818]. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1987.
SCHOPENHAUER, A. Schopenhauer’s Early Fourfold Root. Trans. by F. C. White, Aldershot: Avebury, 1997. (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the first version 1813).
SCHOPENHAUER, A. The World as Will and Representations. Vol. 1. Trans. and ed. by J. Norman, A. Welchman and C. Janaway. Cambridge UP, first paperback edition 2014.
SCHOPENHAUER, A. Ueber Die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. Schpenhauer Sämtliche Werke, Bd.7, hrsg. von Arthur Hübscher, Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972, p. 1-94.
Authorship contributions
1 –Takao Ito:
Soka University, Professor
Contribuition: Writing – original draft
How to quote this article
ITO, Takao. Religion and Ethics in Schopenhauer. Voluntas Revista Internacional de Filosofia, Santa Maria, v. 12, e15, 2021. DOI 10.5902/2179378667751. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5902/2179378667751. Accessed on: day month abbreviated. year.
[1] This paper is based on the presentation given at one of the sessions of the 9th Schopenhauer International Colloquium Brazil organised by the Brazilian Section of Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft (14th April 2021). The framework of this paper was first published in Japanese in: ITO, T. Schopenhauer ni okeru Shukyo to Rinrisei no Mondai (The question of religion and ethics in Schopenhauer). Shukyo to Humanism (Religion and humanism), Vol. 2, Tokyo: The Institute of Oriental Philosophy, 2001, pp. 47-57.
[2] As an example of "John Hick's interpretation of religion", Mannion quotes the following passage from Hick's An Interpretation of Religion: [John Hick identifies] “... variations within different conceptual schemes on a single fundamental theme: the sudden or gradual change of the individual from an absorbing self-concern to a new centring in the supposed unity-of-reality-and-value that is thought of as God, Brahman, the Dharma, Sunyata, or the Tao. Thus the generic concept of salvation/liberation, which is that of the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness.” (MANNION, 2016, p. 287).
[3] See footnote 3.
[4] This doctoral dissertation has two editions. The second edition was published in 1847. This paper refers to the first edition published in 1813.
[5] In On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Schopenhauer calls each of those principles ‘principle of sufficient reason of becoming’, ‘principle of sufficient reason of knowing’, ‘principle of sufficient reason of being’, and ‘principle of sufficient reason of acting’.
[6] 'FR1' is the abbreviation for Schopenhauer’s Early Fourfold Root, and 'Diss' is for 'Ueber Die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde', Schpenhauer Sämtliche Werke, Bd.7.
[7] ITO, 2020, p. 175.
[8] However, when the concept of justice rests on the precondition of injustice, it becomes difficult to assert that the concept of eternal justice is completely exempt from the language of the principle of sufficient reason. This may be unavoidable given the nature of the use of language.
[9] In the original German: freiwillig.
[10] In the original German: willig.