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Ethics

Schopenhauer asserts that the task of ethics is not to prescribe moral actions that ought to be done, but to investigate moral actions. As such, he states that philosophy is always theoretical: its task to explain what is given.

According to Kant's transcendental idealism, space and time are forms of our sensibility in which phenomena appear in multiplicity. Reality in itself is free from multiplicity, not in the sense that an object is one, but that it is outside the possibility of multiplicity. Two individuals, though they appear distinct, are in-themselves not distinct.

Appearances are entirely subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason. The egoistic individual who focuses his aims on his own interests has to deal with empirical laws as well as he can.

What is relevant for ethics are individuals who can act against their own self-interest. If we take a man who suffers when he sees his fellow men living in poverty and consequently uses a significant part of his income to support their needs instead of his own pleasures, then the simplest way to describe this is that he makes less distinction between himself and others than is usually made.

Regarding how things appear to us, the egoist asserts a gap between two individuals, but the altruist experiences the sufferings of others as his own. In the same way a compassionate man cannot hurt animals, though they appear as distinct from himself.

What motivates the altruist is compassion. The suffering of others is for him not a cold matter to which he is indifferent, but he feels connectiveness to all beings. Compassion is thus the basis of morality.