Work #1543 · Late period
The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics
Schopenhauer's 1841 prize-essay-collection 'Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik' — on free will and on the basis of morality
Arthur Schopenhauer
· 1841
· German
· Two-essay book (prize essays)
Tradition: Post-Kantian ethics / Schopenhauerian metaphysics / philosophy of free will
Schopenhauer's 1841 'Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics' — the freedom of the will and the basis of morality
Published in 1841 as 'Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik' (Frankfurt: Johann Christian Hermann), the volume collects Schopenhauer's two prize essays. The first — 'On the Freedom of the Will' (1839) — was submitted to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and won the prize. Schopenhauer argues that empirical freedom is illusory (every act of will is causally determined by character plus motive), but a transcendental freedom of intelligible character is consistent with Kant's noumenal-phenomenal solution and is in fact the metaphysical truth: the agent is unfree at the level of the phenomenal act, free at the level of intelligible-noumenal character. The second — 'On the Basis of Morality' (1840) — was submitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and was not awarded the prize despite being the only entry (the Academy objected to its disrespectful treatment of recent philosophers, especially Hegel — whom Schopenhauer called a 'flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan'). Schopenhauer argues that compassion (Mitleid) — the immediate participation in another's suffering, breaking through the principium individuationis — is the empirical-psychological basis of all genuine moral action. Egoism is the natural condition; malice is its corruption; compassion alone is moral. The Latin motto of the second essay — 'Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva' (Injure no one; on the contrary, help all as much as you can) — compresses Schopenhauer's mature ethics. Together the two essays establish Schopenhauer's mature moral philosophy: empirical determinism plus transcendental freedom; compassion as the empirical basis of morality.
Author
Editions cited
- Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (Frankfurt am Main, Johann Christian Hermann, 1841; 2nd ed. Brockhaus, 1860)
- Sämtliche Werke, ed. A. Hübscher (Brockhaus, 1937-41, 7 vols), vol. 4
- English trans. E. F. J. Payne, On the Basis of Morality (Bobbs-Merrill, 1965); On the Freedom of the Will (Blackwell, 1985)
- Modern Cambridge translation: David E. Cartwright, Edward E. Erdmann, and Christopher Janaway, The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Cambridge, 2009)
School Embodiments
Virtue Ethics
22%
Major nineteenth-century ethical treatise.
"Compassion is the basis of all genuine morality." (On the Basis of Morality, §16)
Idealism
18%
Post-Kantian metaphysical framework for ethics.
"The intelligible character is free; the empirical character is determined." (On the Freedom of the Will, ch. IV)
Existentialism
14%
Solution-by-Kantian-distinction to the freedom problem.
"Empirical determinism is consistent with transcendental freedom." (On the Freedom of the Will)
Naturalism
12%
Naturalistic-psychological methodology for ethics.
"The empirical-psychological basis of morality." (On the Basis of Morality, preface)
Pessimist-Schopenhauerian background.
"The metaphysics of the Will underlies the ethics of compassion." (On the Basis of Morality, last section)
Internal Tensions
Schopenhauer's most influential ethical work; the canonical defence of compassion as the basis of morality. The compassion-thesis has been continuously productive in moral philosophy: through Nietzsche's reactive critique (he reads Schopenhauer's compassion as a covert form of self-pity), through Max Scheler's phenomenology of sympathy, through Iris Murdoch's reading of unselfing, through contemporary effective-altruism debates.
⧖
I. Time
1841 publication. The freedom essay was submitted to the Norwegian Society in 1839; the morality essay to the Danish Academy in 1840.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Direction: Uni-directional
Dimensionality: One
✦
II. Space
Frankfurt — Schopenhauer's residence from 1833 until his 1860 death. The geographical-intellectual space is post-Hegelian Germany, in which Schopenhauer was a marginal figure until his late-1840s rediscovery.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◉
III. Matter
Two-essay book. The two essays were composed separately for two different prize competitions but published together as Schopenhauer's mature moral-philosophical position.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◎
IV. Observer
Late Schopenhauer (the second great period after the publication of WWR in 1818-19). The observer is the philosopher who has integrated Kantian transcendental freedom with empirical determinism, and post-Kantian compassion-ethics with Brahmanical-Buddhist non-egoism.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Knowledge Extent: Immediate
Knowledge Retainment: Total
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Passive
Number: Singular
Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering
⚡
V. Energy
Late-ethical energies. Schopenhauer's compassion-ethics is the moral counterpart of his metaphysics of Will; only compassion breaks through the principium individuationis.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉
VI. Information
Single volume of two prize essays. The volume's two-part structure (freedom essay, then morality essay) reflects Schopenhauer's strategic mapping of empirical-transcendental and metaphysical-ethical questions.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Emergent
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 32 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/202)
Do you really choose?
If the brain is a physical system and physical systems are governed by laws, then every choice is also a chain of causes — which raises the question of what was really left to choose.
Choice is structural illusion — every event is fixed by the prior state.
On this view, the future is fixed by the present, and the observer is a recipient of causes rather than an originator of them. The sense of choosing is real — but what is being chosen is itself a consequence of brain states that were …
Roads not taken
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. (69%) ·
Choice is real within a determined order — agency and determinism aren’t opposites. (9%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, you are not the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/202)
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
Addiction looks from one angle like the textbook case of agency failing — a person doing what they don't, in any meaningful sense, want to do. From another angle it looks like agency at work in hard conditions. Which it is depends on what agency is.
The addict's behaviour is the outcome of causes; 'responsibility' is a useful fiction, not a metaphysical fact.
On this view, the addict's brain state, history, genetics, and circumstances jointly produce the behaviour, and there is nothing inside the person that could have produced anything else. Calling the addict responsible is at best a social tool — useful for the deterrent and rehabilitative …
Roads not taken
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. (69%) ·
The addict is genuinely responsible within a determined order. (9%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, the addict isn't the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/202)
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
When an autonomous AI takes an action that harms someone, the question of who or what is responsible — the developer, the operator, the model itself — turns on whether the model is the kind of thing that can be a responsible agent.
An AI's behaviour is fully determined by training and input; 'responsibility' applies if at all to its makers.
On this view, the AI's output is a function of its training data, its architecture, and the input it received. There is no extra fact about the AI that could ground its responsibility, because there is no extra fact about the AI that could have …
Roads not taken
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. (69%) ·
The AI can be a genuine agent within determined conditions — and therefore genuinely responsible. (9%) ·
Neither AIs nor anyone else are the locus of free agency; the question is the wrong one. (6%)
6 mainstream positions
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing.
47%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time.
47%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide.
47%
How much weight do future people deserve?
Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet.
32%
Is regret rational?
The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer.
32%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Past species no longer exist; what we owe is to the present and the future.
32%
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(32/202)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it.
On this view, money is exactly what societies do that performs the monetary functions. There is no fact about whether something is 'really' money beyond whether it is used as money. A community that decides shell beads or carbon credits or proof-of-work hashes count as …
Roads not taken
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (54%) ·
Money is the ledger of obligations among real people. (15%) ·
“Money” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal. (8%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(32/202)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery.
On this view, nations are made: by treaties, by wars, by deliberate institution-building, by the slow work of collective practice. There is nothing intrinsic about a national kind; what exists is the practice. What we owe the nation is what we owe any institution we …
Roads not taken
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (54%) ·
A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people. (15%) ·
“Nation” names a family of practices imaginatively held together. (8%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(32/202)
What makes someone male or female?
Whether sex is a real biological kind, a constructed social category, a relational identity, a label applied to varied phenomena, or a conventional distinction within a deeper unity is the ontological question the contemporary dispute about gender is mostly about.
Gender is constructed; what counts as male or female reflects practice.
On this view, while biological features exist, what they socially mean — what counts as a man or a woman, what roles attach, how the categories are policed and revised — is the work of social practice. The categories are real but constructed; revising them …
Roads not taken
Sex is a real biological kind with given content. (54%) ·
Sex and gender are constituted by relations of recognition. (15%) ·
“Male” and “female” are family-resemblance terms — no single essence. (8%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(32/202)
Should we edit the human germline?
Whether human nature is a given biological kind, a constructed category, a relational achievement, a family-resemblance cluster, or a conventional distinction within deeper unity is the ontological question the policy debate over heritable gene editing is mostly about.
The categories we count as 'human' are emergent from practice; germline editing is a practice-revision like any other.
On this view, biological facts about the genome exist, but what we count as 'human nature' is downstream of practice. The germline is one more thing humans now have technical access to; the question is not whether the practice transgresses an essence but whether the …
Roads not taken
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. (54%) ·
Personhood is constituted by relations of descent and kinship; germline editing reshapes the relational fabric. (15%) ·
'Human nature' is a cluster term without a single essence; the editing question is empirical, not metaphysical. (8%)
Distinctive · only 23% of schools agree
(47/202)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing.
On this view, matter is genuinely there, but it isn't the floor of reality. It depends on something more fundamental — dependent origination, mind, divine sustaining act, computational substrate, or the structure of conditions — and is conserved only at its own level of description. …
Roads not taken
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (55%) ·
Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance. (16%) ·
Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal. (4%)
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(16/202)
What happens to "you" when you die?
Whether anything of you persists — and in what sense — depends on what you take a person to be.
Individuality dissolves into the One.
What we called "you" was an appearance — a wave shaped briefly out of a single deeper reality. Death is that wave settling. Nothing of importance is lost because the substrate was never the wave.
Roads not taken
A soul continues into another mode of being. (37%) ·
Death is genuinely the end. (30%) ·
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates. (18%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/202)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Humans and nature share an underlying unity — the separation was the mistake.
On non-dual views, the apparent distinction between human and non-human is itself a perspectival distinction within a single underlying reality. The work isn't to find our right relationship to a separate nature; it is to recognize that we were never separate. Climate harm, on this …
Roads not taken
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (48%) ·
Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) ·
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world. (15%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/202)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
From the standpoint of the One, expansion across substrate is just movement within the same.
On non-dual views, the difference between Earth and elsewhere is conventional — particular locations within a single underlying reality. Space colonisation as escape is therefore incoherent; nothing is escaped because nothing was elsewhere to escape from.
Roads not taken
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (48%) ·
The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) ·
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking. (15%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/202)
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Editing the genomes of the plants and animals we eat is either the natural continuation of breeding — careful improvement of what is given — or a category error that treats biology as raw material rather than as living kind.
All forms participate in the same underlying reality; modification doesn't cross categories.
On non-dual views, the appearance of distinct natural kinds is itself a perspectival distinction within a single underlying reality. Genetic modification shifts forms within the One; it does not cross a line that the One did not previously cross when differentiating into the apparent kinds …
Roads not taken
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. (48%) ·
What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. (15%) ·
Editing the genome cuts into the relational fabric; we should be very slow. (15%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/202)
What makes someone the same person over time?
When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.
All apparent selves are aspects of one — particular identity is conventional.
On non-dual views, the apparent distinctness of selves — and the apparent boundary between this-moment-you and next-moment-you — is itself a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. The question of whether the uploaded copy is you is malformed at the same level the question of …
Roads not taken
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity. (36%) ·
You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect. (29%) ·
There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. (14%)
26 mainstream positions
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
The apparent change is conventional; the deeper reality is unchanged.
8%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The distinction between scanner-you and destination-you is conventional all the way down.
8%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
There are no truly separate minds; prayer is one part of one talking to another.
8%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Coincidence is the One showing through the appearance of plurality.
8%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Harm anywhere is harm to the One; the boundary that would have insulated you was never real.
8%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
From the standpoint of the One, the categories of permanence and loss are conventional.
8%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
From the One's vantage, civilizational categories are themselves conventional.
8%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
From the One's vantage, the second law is itself a feature of the conventional, not the ultimate.
8%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional.
8%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
Distinction of the One and observed time is itself conventional; the question dissolves.
8%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
The 'timeless' is the standpoint of the One that was always present; meditation removes obstacles to seeing it.
8%
Does prayer change God's mind?
Prayer to a separate God presupposes a separation the non-dual view denies; the practice is remembrance and attunement.
8%
Could causation work backwards?
From the One's vantage, causation itself is a conventional category.
8%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
From the One's vantage, memory and anticipation are themselves conventional.
8%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
From the One's vantage, the arrow of time itself is a conventional feature.
8%
When does a person begin?
A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop.
16%
What is marriage?
Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it.
16%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure.
44%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness.
44%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed.
44%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Animal minds are real because biology is the substrate of mind.
32%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Brain tissue can in principle do what brains do; the question is integration.
32%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust expertise whose conclusions a competent mind can in principle reproduce.
32%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is evaluable by reason — and not above it.
32%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM can produce correct outputs but not reason to them; useful, not knowing.
32%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — mind is what a biological brain does, and an LLM has no brain.
30%
6 unaligned
Does history have a direction or meaning?
Schools split: 37% / 23% / 19%
—
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Schools split: 25% / 17% / 13%
—
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
Schools split: 15% / 14% / 4%
—
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Schools split: 65% / 16% / 10%
—
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
Schools split: 44% / 16% / 14%
—
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
Schools split: 40% / 28% / 14%
—
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
51%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
51%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
51%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
51%