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"To preach morals is easy; to ground morals is difficult" ("Moral predigen ist leicht, Moral begründen schwer"), Schopenhauer says in the epigraph to his treatise on the two basic problems of ethics (thus quoting himself from On Will in Nature). But if this was meant as a sly dig against Kant, it was beside the point. Kant wished no more than Schopenhauer to "preach" some new ethics; like Schopenhauer (though in a different way, to be sure) he sought a solid foundation for any moral philosophy. Now it is of course true that the subject matter of this department of philosophy makes an aloof, "objective" treatment somewhat difficult. Even Kant (of all people) managed to become lyrical about (of all things) such a sober and prosaic thing as "duty".*³⁶⁷ And how about Schopenhauer in this regard? After all, he prided himself on his strictly empirical method, with the core of his argument against Kant residing in the claim that his own moral philosophy is more scientific than Kant's in that the latter proceeds from "aprioristic sand castles' whereas he himself remains firmly on empirical ground by offering an analysis of actual human conduct. Still, moral passion, indignation about cruelty (especially against animals!), and eloquent scorn for false prophets is what drips from every page. Indeed, if Schopenhauer wished to play the role of an impartial observer of human conduct, he played it badly. And how could it be otherwise? A man like Hegel, who was able to discern the "cunning of reason" behind all apparent misery, can afford, in speaking about ethics, to be purely "descriptive" rather than "prescriptive". Someone like Schopenhauer cannot.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9369-4_8

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