Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

by Iris Murdoch

  This ingenious account deserves reflection as an analysis of what we may at times be tempted to think and believe. (Well, that’s what I’m like! At least I know myself! etc.) As a ‘rational reduction’ of the extreme complexity of the moral life it is confused and unrealistic. Schopenhauer, professing to adopt and expound Kant’s doctrine of the coexistence of freedom and necessity, misconstrues it. This is partly a result, an aspect, of Schopenhauer’s rejection of the concept of duty by which Kant joins the phenomenal to the noumenal world. The freedom of Kant’s individual rests in his being continually ‘touched’ by a higher power which enables him to overcome, or shows him the possibility of overcoming, the (apparent) necessity (determinism) of his phenomenal being. Schopenhauer on the contrary shows himself to be, as we too may sometimes be, rather in love with determinism, with amor fati, with the stoical, or relaxing, idea that ‘it must be so’. Here necessity (supported in Schopenhauer’s picture by natural science) rules, and freedom is simply the recognition of necessity (a ‘profound’ idea to be found elsewhere, for instance in Marxism). Here also we may see compassion, appearing sometimes as virtue, as really a mere human instinct among others. Schopenhauer, in this mood or mode which is not always dominant, parts company with common-sense and demeans or diminishes the human individual, who is so emboldened and illumined in Kant’s account. One might compare Schopenhauer’s relentless damaging all-powerful Will with Derrida’s concept of archi-écriture: another mystifying postulation, effecting the removal of the individual. Schopenhauer, often in his manifold pages the empiricist, the aspiring mystic, the advocate of common-sense, the friend of animals, the generous lively polymath, interested in everything, can also be, and at his most metaphysical, the cynic or stoic. He rejects Kant’s rational ‘duty’ and also any idea of unselfish love, or the freedom to achieve moral progress. Only our instinctive reaction (if we have it) to our awareness of the suffering of others influences us to ‘good deeds’. ‘All true and pure love is sympathy, and all love that is not sympathy is selfishness. Eros is selfishness, agape is sympathy.’

  Sexual attraction is to be seen as the Will to Live ensuring the continuation of the species. ‘Love is rooted in the sex impulse alone.’ (WWI, Supplement to Book IV, ch. xliv, ‘The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes’.) The Will manifests itself as sexual desire in general, and when this desire is directed to an individual, ‘although in itself a subjective need, it knows how to assume very skilfully the mask of an objective admiration, and thus to deceive our consciousness, for nature requires this stratagem to attain its ends’. As egoistic Will is the main driving force of human activity, nature ‘implants an illusion in the individual’ so that what is good for the species appears as good for the self. So, ‘every lover, after the consummation of the great work, finds himself cheated, for the illusion has vanished by means of which the individual was here the dupe of the species’. Schopenhauer bids us look at the world of non-human animals, to see how the ingenuity and ‘altruism’ of individuals is framed to benefit the species. Those who object to the ‘gross realism’ of this account should, the philosopher suggests, reflect that ‘the determination of the individualities of the next generation is a much higher and more worthy end than all their exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles’. Well, science often and in various ways urges us rational animals to consider how we are also subject to laws which govern non-rational animals. Schopenhauer, celebrating the ruthlessness of the Will, tells us that ‘the species, as that in which the root of our being lies, has a closer and earlier right to us than the individual’, and thus Cupid was traditionally pictured as ‘a malevolent cruel and ill-reputed god, in spite of his childish appearance, a capricious despotic demon, yet lord of gods and men’. Schopenhauer congratulates himself for being the first philosopher to make a serious study of sexual love, which now ‘lies before us as raw material’. He surprisingly goes on: ‘The one who has most concerned himself with it is Plato, especially in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. Yet what he says on the subject is confined to the sphere of myths, fables and jokes, and for the most part concerns only the Greek love of youths.’ Freud, who also congratulated Schopenhauer on his interest in sex, referred to Plato, less impolitely, but still with dubious grace.

  ‘It is some time since Arthur Schopenhauer showed mankind the extent to which their activities are determined by sexual impulses, in the ordinary sense of the word. It should surely have been impossible for a whole world of readers to banish such a startling piece of information so completely from their minds. And as for the “stretching” of the concept of sexuality which has been necessitated by the analysis of children and what are called perverts, anyone who looks down with contempt upon psycho-analysis from a superior vantage point should remember how closely the enlarged sexuality of psycho-analysis coincides with the Eros of the divine Plato.’

  (Preface to the fourth edition of Three Essays on Sexuality.)

  Schopenhauer returns at the end of The World as Will and Idea to the Buddhist concept of Nirvana. He admits that we lack concepts with which to express or describe this state. It is a point ‘which remains forever unattainable to human knowledge’. In the almost final chapter (‘Denial of the Will to Live’) he makes a final attempt to clarify his version of how freedom coexists with determinism. Christianity (really) agrees with Buddhism and Hinduism that our guilt or sin is our existence itself. Christianity, it is true, places original sin after some postulated free existence, but this is merely a myth. We are guilty not of what we do but of what we are. There is no salvation by works. Schopenhauer regards any emphasis on works as a Protestant aberration. What we require is a (by implication almost impossible) complete transformation of our mind and nature. He refers to Luke 24. 4, ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins’, metanoia, a (total) change of mind. The moral virtues (as previously defined by him) are not the end, but a step upon the way, a light upon the path between subjection to the Will (unredeemed egoism) and the denial of the Will, ‘or mythically from original sin to salvation through faith in the mediation of the incarnate God (Avatar)’. The word ‘mythical’ distances any literal or traditional understanding, and the word ‘Avatar’ embraces the non-Christian religions. Any ‘release’ must be thought of in terms of mysticism. ‘Theism, calculated with reference to the capacity of the multitude, places the source of existence within us as an object’; whereas mysticism ‘draws it gradually back within us as the subject, and the adept recognises at last with wonder and delight that he is it himself’. Schopenhauer then quotes from ‘Meister Eckhart, the father of German mysticism’ the ‘precept for the perfect ascetic, “that he seek not God outside himself” ’. As suitable reading for those who wish to become acquainted with quietism he recommends Eckhart and, among various others, John Bunyan. The great fundamental truth (about denial of the Will) is admittedly ‘entirely opposed to the natural tendency of the human race’, and only to be understood, if at all, by the majority, when contained in a ‘mythical vehicle’. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5. 40, 6. 25, etc.) expresses the great truth in terms echoed by Buddha: ‘throw everything away and become beggars’. (The command uttered by Tagore, which Wittgenstein put into practice.) Just before this great conclusion Schopenhauer, with his incurable empirical eye for detail, devotes several pages to ‘the highly remarkable sect of the Shakers in North America’, which, ‘even in the very lap of Protestantism’, expresses the essentially ascetic spirit of Christianity. His spirited account of the rites and general mode of life of these people (‘avoid all unnecessary noise, such as shouting and slamming doors’) illustrates Schopenhauer’s particular generous joie de vivre which survives in spite of his evident inability to achieve, for himself, the wished-for denial. Mystics differ in style and doctrinal context, yet seem to have much in common. Here one is inclined to say (I am inclined to say) that the fundamental nature of religion is mystical. This is a, or the, feature of it which has ensured, and (I hope) will ensure its continuity. Eckhart�
�s ‘do not seek for God outside your own soul’ (the sort of pronouncement which got him into serious trouble) may be read by beginners as an important warning against idolatry. On the other hand, the withdrawal into self, which (much) mysticism evidently involves, may be an ultimate deification of egoism. So must all ‘genuine’ mystics return to the world, serve others, exhibit virtues? Not necessarily. Yet forgetting the world may be more spiritually dangerous than returning to it. The three religions with which Schopenhauer is with sincere and touching piety concerned seem to envisage both paths. Schopenhauer, when solving en passant ‘the profoundest mystery of Christianity’ (the Trinity), suggests that the Holy Spirit is the denial of the Will to Live, and that Christ is the incarnate assertion of the Will, which together with the Father produces the phenomenal world: assertion and denial are opposite acts of the same Will whose capability for both is the only true freedom. So is this myth an admission by Schopenhauer that the mystic (or some enlightened person) might also enjoy this dual capacity (a view which would contradict Schopenhauer’s general ‘teaching’)? Lest we should be encouraged by this possibility he hastens to add: ‘However, this is to be regarded as a mere lusus ingenii.’

  Schopenhauer’s irrepressible empiricist gaiety is in tension with his nihilistic hatred of the ordinary world (the fallen scene, everywhere visible) and his cosmic sense of nature as destructive (we are nothing). But he is also tenderly aware of the animals (and the plants) and loves and venerates nature. Through this veneration of all-things we may be, perhaps, in a sense, saved. Not the long path of the selfless mystic; but a kind of on-the-way mysticism. In the Supplement to Book IV, ch. xli, ‘On Death’, Schopenhauer says:

  ‘Certainly we know no higher game of chance than that for death and life. Every decision about this we watch with the utmost excitement, interest and fear, for in our eyes all in all is at stake. On the other hand, nature, which never lies, but is always straightforward and open, speaks quite differently upon this theme, speaks like Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita. What it says is: The death or life of the individual is of no significance. It expresses this by the fact that it exposes the life of every beast, and even of man, to the most insignificant accidents without coming to the rescue. Consider the insect on your path: a slight unconscious turning of your step is decisive as to its life or death. Look at the wood-snail, without any means of flight, of defence, of deception, of concealment, already prey for all. Look at the fish carelessly playing in the still open net; the frog restrained by its laziness from the flight which might save it; the bird that does not know of the falcon which soars above it; the sheep which the wolf eyes and examines from the thicket. All these, provided with little foresight, go about guilelessly among the dangers which threaten their existence every moment. Since now nature exposes its organisms, constructed with such inimitable skill, not only to the predatory instincts of the stronger, but also to the blindest chance ... it declares that the annihilation of these individuals is indifferent to it ... It says this very distinctly and does not lie ... If now the all-mother sends forth her children without protection to a thousand threatening dangers this can only be because she knows that, if they fall, they fall back into her womb where they are safe; therefore their fall is a mere jest.’

  So, it is all a game and a jest? We live with the sense of hopeless, ruthless contingency, we are victims of chance. The examples of the little animals, the insect which we thoughtlessly tread upon, strike a different note from that of Simone Weil. Schopenhauer follows Kant in showing us a fallen phenomenal realm in which we are imprisoned. Kant however does not picture us as sharing this fate with the animals (whom he regards as senseless sub-beings) or with the vegetable world, let alone with the whole cosmos down to its last atom. Schopenhauer, taught by the east, constantly has this cosmic connection in mind. Kant’s fallen state is dark and banal, but visited by the light of Reason, and his picture can appeal to our common-sense. Schopenhauer’s account is more dramatic, even tragic. He speaks of a game, and a jest, in a way which would never occur to Kant, or to Simone Weil. One may be reminded here of Heraclitus’s imagery of war (Fr. 53) or fire (Fr. 30) and his (Fr. 52), ‘Aeon is a child playing draughts, the kingship is the child’s.’ (Aeon probably means time.) Heidegger, who was fascinated by this fragment, came to picture Being (as fate or time) as also playing a game. Further on along this road we find Derrida’s jeu des signifiants. (I am also reminded here of the inscription, in Greek, over the door of T. E. Lawrence’s little house in the woods: ou phrontis, roughly to be translated as ‘What the hell!’, or more literally ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Herodotus VI 129.) However, in these and other cases the image of the dangerous game is energising rather than edifying. Contingency may be harmlessly thought of as a game, provided this is seen as merely a striking image. In truth, nothing and no one plays this game. On the other hand: Schopenhauer’s mysticism is to be approached and imagined through reflection upon his love, not of humans, but of the rest of created beings. In this we see his true Buddhism. He speaks of our being, when we fall back into the womb of Nature, safe. Can we not at least accept our mortality? There is nothing cynical here in the term ‘jest’. His identification with the snail, the frog, the fish, is a significant part of the picture. The idea of the ‘game’ is sinister in the work of Heidegger, frivolous in that of Derrida. Schopenhauer (we may say to ‘save’ him) has two pictures in mind. One is that we may, through our reverent sympathy with the rest of creation, at least, whatever we may do with the insight, realise that we are just contingent short-lived mortals. The other is that of our doing something with the insight by disposing of our ego. The end of Book IV again portrays the ineffable state:

  ‘We must banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark; we must not even evade it like the Indians through myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of the will is for those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but conversely to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways − is nothing.’

  It may not seem easy to read Schopenhauer’s book as ‘religious teaching’, though the author, in many of his moods, must have wished us to. It is a philosophical book. Yet it is also a religious book. Why should we not be repeatedly told that we are ruthless egoists and that the world which we take as all-important and real is a valueless and unreal world? Does not Plato teach this, does not Christianity teach it? Schopenhauer might well say to us (as his disciple Wittgenstein said about the Tractatus) that the book’s point is an ethical one. Is not this indeed obvious? What distracts us is of course partly Schopenhauer’s attachment to determinism, his promotion of the all-powerful Will which condemns us to endless fruitless strife. We are cheered to learn that we are all endowed with instincts of compassion, but dashed to be told that we cannot change our imprinted character. Liberation through art (Ideas) is mentioned but not explored. Rejection of Kant’s ‘duty’ removes the hope of continuous access to the higher. Complete denial of the Will is something indescribable and in any case so difficult as to be almost impossible for us humans. On the other hand, Schopenhauer’s omnivorous interest in the world, his innocent love of the world, is an endless source of the ‘value’ which is so formally excluded. Love and hope do manage to break in. He speaks often of mysticism as something remote and arcane. The Oxford Dictionary describes the mystical as ‘having a certain spiritual character or import by virtue of a connection or union with God transcending human comprehension’. All right. I would say (persuasive definition) that a mystic is a good person whose knowledge of the divine and practice of the selfless life has transcended the level of idols and images. (Plato’s noesis. Eckhart.) This may or may not accompany belief in a personal deity. Julian of Norwich’s showings are for all h
umanity. The condition of course remains exceedingly remote from that of ordinary sinners. (Needless to say, the word ‘mystical’ is often, in a degraded sense, applied to Gnostic beliefs and power-seeking magic.) It is true that we may at times, in various situations, experience loss of self, or intuitions of a beyond. Such experiences may ‘do us good’. We are also continuously aware of standards of good conduct which we continuously ignore. But, someone may say, what can we do now that there is no God? This does not affect what is mystical. The loss of prayer, through the loss of belief in God, is a great loss. However, a general answer is a practice of meditation: a withdrawal, through some disciplined quietness, into the great chamber of the soul. Just sitting quiet will help. Teach it to children.