Nietzsche and Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche differed greatly in their attitudes towards Mitleid as a moral system, and exploring these differences reveals important disagreements Nietzsche had with his great philosophical teacheri. Mitleid was a concept largely integrated with the psychological theory, the moral system and the metaphysical claims of both philosophers, and the significance of Mitleid can only be fully grasped in these terms. We will attempt to show what Schopenhauer and Nietzsche shared on their views of Mitleid in the first section, before examining their differences in the second.

Mitleid as defined by Schopenhauer involves the “immediate participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it”ii, hence “I suffer directly with him, I feel his woe just as I ordinarily feel my own; and likewise, I directly desire his weal in the same way I otherwise desire my own”.iii For Schopenhauer, the moral value of an action resides in the nature of its motivations, and the “absence of all egotistic motivation is...the criterion of an action of moral worth”iv. Since Mitleid for Schopenhauer is the only means by which we truly adopt someone else’s suffering as our own, accordingly, “it is only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have a moral value, and every action resulting from any other motives has none.v

Agreements about Mitleid will be summarized under two headings. First, they agreed that a morality of Mitleid necessarily requires psychologically-embedded egotistical willing as its precondition; egotism is the starting point of the development of all value judgements in the world.vi For Schopenhauer, the ego-perspective is an individualized representation of an essentially desiring Will, and therefore, it embodies a “natural standpoint”vii which wills its “existence and well-being”viii above all other considerations, elevating it to “colossal proportions”ix. In addition, “To be an end or aim means to be willed”x, and ends “exist only in reference to a will”xi, hence “every good is essentially relative; for it has its essential nature only in relation to a desiring will”xii, absolute good being a “contradiction” and an “impossibility”.xiiixiv Nietzsche takes a similar view, where the “origin of morality” and the “oldest moral judgements”xv are founded on self-interested valuations: “whatever injures me is something evil, whatever benefits me is something good”xvi, and our evaluations are adopted “out of fear”.xvii So egotism constitutes the desiring need, and needs are a precondition for value judgements: value judgements necessarily involving a hierarchization of some needs above others, which become incumbent upon agents to fulfil.

Second, that seemingly altruistic acts may stem from egotistic motivations, and are therefore, properly speaking, not morally good. Schopenhauer states that “in themselves, all deeds are merely empty figures, and only the [compassionate] disposition that leads to them gives them moral significance”xviii, but because this disposition “lies in the depth of our inner nature…we can hardly ever pronounce a correct moral judgement on the actions of others, and rarely on our own.”xix Nietzsche develops this view further. He sees motives for acts as “epistemically opaque”xx, and that “in no single instance, has the distance between knowledge and deed ever yet been bridged.”xxi This is because the motives for an act – the “actual clash of motives” when we perform the act, is “something completely invisible to us, of which we are unconscious”, and we “confuse the clash of motives with our [conscious] comparison of the possible consequences of different actions”.xxii Therefore it is impossible to give a conclusive moral judgement on any act. In addition, the egoism of Mitleid manifests itself, through its preoccupation with the mental state of the agent, not the sufferer, and its primary motivation, the “impulse for pleasure – pleasure arises in viewing a contrast to our situation, in the very idea of being able to help if only we so desired, in the thought of praise and gratitude, in the very activity of helping insofar as it is successful, thus allowing the performer to delight in himself”xxiii, and also by “fear's easily stimulated imagination...[and] a quick vanity which is offended when something happens that they could prevent”xxiv, also a pleasure in exercising “superiority” over the “degraded” recipient, that becomes a form of “charitable revenge”xxv, and finally, Mitleid involves “thinking about ourselves, no longer consciously, to be sure, but very powerfully so unconsciously”xxvi. The selflessness of Mitleid is only a pretence; Mitleid is merely part of our effort to recover psychological balance. Therefore, insofar as the motivations to act remain essentially grounded in the natural standpoint of the agent, it is difficult to give a precise account of how an altruistic intent can take root in the human mind at all, and consequently what real altruism, psychologically-speaking, really means; a difficulty which Schopenhauer called “the mystery of ethics”.xxvii

I will now highlight some of the concerns Nietzsche had with Schopenhauer’s morality of Mitleid.

1) It is necessarily based on a metaphysical support
2) It is based on self-deception and dissimulation, becoming a cover for the egoistic drives, thereby privileging one type of egoism above others arbitrarily
3) Mitleid as emotional obstacle to the free spirit's independence from conventional morality, also a distraction to free spirits, draining the human spirit, perturbing quietude
4) It falsely lays claim to being the sole morality
5) It creates a culture of decay
6) It is based on a pessimistic narrative of salvation, opposed to his Dionysian narrative of development
7) It breeds renunciatory ideals


The reliance of the morality of Mitleid on metaphysical support can be conceived in terms of two problems:

1) If the phenomenon of Mitleid requires egotistical willing as its precondition, how is it possible to derive an idea of 'the good', distinct from mere satisfaction of the will, and to locate it within the mutual interactions, in human relationships, of egotistical wills?
2) Second, if we are unable to give a psychological account of how altruistic intents are possible, and given the deceptive nature of consciously-represented motives, why do we suppose that real altruism is possible at all?

Unless we are able to give an account of how real altruism is possible, we are forced into two undesirable options: a) no good exists in the world, or b) the good derives from egoistical motives. Schopenhauer acknowledges these problems by claiming that his morality cannot be explained in psychological terms, and is necessarily founded on his metaphysicsxxviii, which involves a mystical-insight-based interpretation about our abilities to transcend the egoistical standpoint. This act of transcendence constitutes 'the good' because it intuits the truth: it pierces the veil of Maya and sees the oneness of all living things.xxix

Here, Nietzsche raises two problems. First, Schopenhauer's metaphysics features a circularity: he claims that compassion is possible by appealing to his metaphysics, however, his metaphysics depends on the possibility of compassion or pure aesthetic contemplation.xxx It is on these grounds that Nietzsche rejects the Schopenhauerian interpretation – not its entire possibility, but its credibility.xxxi Second, we can no longer rely on metaphysical theories in a post-Kantian world: “One could assert nothing at all of the metaphysical world except that it was a being-other, an inaccessible, incomprehensible being-other; it would be a thing with negative qualities...it is certain that knowledge of it will be the most useless of all knowledge.”xxxii Nietzsche proposes a replacement of Schopenhauerian metaphysics with a naturalistic drive-psychology; and this interpretation leaves open the possibility of truly altruistic acts, but in return, it effectively historicizes the development of the moral mode of evaluation as an adaptive instrument of societyxxxiii, where 'the good' as based on a transcendent principle is abolished, and the basis of morality of Mitleid along with it. Hence for Nietzsche, the morality of Mitleid is as groundless as all other moral ideals that rely on transcendental justification; the litmus test for the adoption of a morality becomes the second-order value to which the morality and its disciplining capabilities are employed; the “value of values”.xxxiv

Secondly, Mitleid is a means of exploiting the suffering of others to gain power over them, hence becoming a cover for an other-dependent egoism that thrives on the suffering of others, while masquerading as altruism. For Nietzsche, psychological probity reveals that the primary human motivation of self-interestxxxv translates into a social psychology whose primary driving force is the acquisition of power.xxxvi Mitleid is “a life-preserving power that makes existence bearable” by “meting out superiority in small doses”xxxvii, and in Dawn 133, Nietzsche contrasts Stoic virtues with Mitleid as “egotism of a type different from the compassionate.”xxxviii The egotism of Mitleid thrives on the suffering of others, allowing us to “gloat over the terror of the misfortunate man” to “walk away feeling satisfied and elevated”xxxix in a voyeurism that eases the experience of our own suffering. Therefore it is both the deceptive nature of Mitleid, and the reactive nature of Mitleidxl, which Nietzsche holds in contempt. Its dependence on the suffering of others means that it is in its long-term interest to promote suffering – it is partly in this sense that Nietzsche writes in Dawn 134: “Compassion...creates suffering.”xlixlii But his real target is not the tainted innocence of Mitleid and its deceptions as such, but our failure to appreciate the dangers of a morality of Mitleid.

Nietzsche turns his polemic aim on the morality of Mitleid as sociological and historical phenomena. He views the ideals of morality at any given historical period as contingent social constructs whose present forms must be traced to the struggle for ideological dominance among different classes, groups or institutions, mediated by factors such as economics, environment, etc.xliii Morality is the means by which to make man a function of society,xliv with society defined as an organizational means to achieve a certain set of ends, collectively defined as ultimate or necessary. So, Nietzsche dissects the value of the morality of Mitleid and the ideals it implies or tends to create, and finds them dangerous, inhibiting, limiting, and conducive to pessimism and cultural decay.

First, Mitleid posits an immediate value judgement on the presence of suffering – pain is 'bad', while comfort is 'good' - a “religion of comfortableness”xlv - thereby elevating the importance of short-term hedonistic affects, experiences, and value judgements above long-term considerations of self-cultivation, or development of the species.xlvi This aligns itself with the tendency of modern “commercial society”xlvii to strengthen, emphasize, and commoditize human needs and experiences; to integrate individuals into a socially cohesive whole; and to posit security as the highest possible social goalxlviii, thereby sacrificing Stoic virtues, genuine individuality, and creative human-species developmentxlix. In doing so, it marshals individuals into a conformity of the affects and the common “fog of opinions” developed by playing to these affectsl, thereby encroaching on the requirements of autonomous, individual self-cultivation.li The morality of Mitleid, embedded within these social trends, becomes another instrument for adapting the individual to fit the needs of the throng – a “herd morality”lii.

Furthermore, it gives the weak, hedonistic, or pessimistic kinds of man leverage over the strong, the creative, and the well-constituted, for its bids the latter to sensitize themselves to their own suffering and to concern themselves with the suffering of others, thereby serving up distractions to arduous creative tasks and conjuring up paralyzing forces to those whose job is to healliii. In addition, suffering is an affect relative to one's sensitiveness to it, and to the purpose and meaning to which one views it as directed towards.liv A morality of suffering breeds oversensitivity towards suffering in general. This results in three dangers: the net increase in felt sufferinglv, the decay of manlvi, and the breeding of renunciatory ideals.

Very briefly, a word on renunciatory ideals. While Nietzsche advocates the Dionysian ideal, through which an affirmation of life is made possiblelvii – the ideal associated with an overabundance of creative energies – Schopenhauer advocates a pessimistic ideal of the denial of the will-to-lifelviii – this will defined as the futile craving after transient, illusory and insatiable goals, which leads to suffering.lix This distinction is couched by Nietzsche in physiological terms: his “Dionystic” philosophy is for the strong and healthy, and Schopenhauer’s “will to nothingness” is for the weak and the sicklx. For Nietzsche, “Life” involves a self-overcoming and mastery of the conditions of one’s existence - conditions which potentially include the limiting effects of moral ideals – while for Schopenhauer, salvation from life requires a regime of renunciation of human needs, to stem the futility of willinglxi. Hence for Schopenhauer the morality of Mitleid is good because it renounces the egotistic standpoint and its accordant willing, but for Nietzsche it breeds pity and nausea, the two dangers that lead to nihilism, the last manlxii, and the extinction of man.

Hence Nietzsche's solution of Mitfreunde and laughter should be read as the counter-prescription to Schopenhauer's Mitleid and renunciation of will-to-life. Human relations ought to be conducive to the project of life-affirmation, and joy, not suffering, should be shared by over-full individuals.lxiii
Laughter, for Nietzsche, is the “epigram on the death of a feeling”lxiv, and (all) humour is the distillation of a process of suffering, of understanding, and transcendence of a tragic situation; divine comedy laughs away the tragedy of being-as-such.lxv Nietzsche therefore sets man a more difficult task: to overcome the horror of existence in a post-teleological, post-metaphysical world – and to learn to laugh.

1 GM, Preface 5, pg. 19
2 BM pg 144
3 Bm pg 143
4 Bm pg 140
5 Bm pg 144
6 For Kant, we are to examine, through a priori concepts, the formal conditions of the possibility of value judgements and any mode of evaluation (Sachs: “Nietzsche’s Daybreak: Towards a Naturalized Theory of Autonomy.” (2008), pg.96), without undue concern for the sphere of what actually happens – the motivating question being, how is the synthetic a priori categorical imperative possible? For Schopenhauer, ethics is approached through the “explanation and interpretation of what actually happens, in order to arrive at a comprehension of it.”(BM/52), the motivating question being, how is the empirically observable phenomenon of the moral act possible? Nietzsche's approach to morality operated largely within the problems raised by the Schopenhauerian framework operating in a naturalistic setting, as opposed to a metaphysical one.
7 WWR I pg 332
8 Bm pg 131
9 Bm pg 133
10 Bm pg 95
11 Bm pg 95
12 WWR I pg 362
13 WWR I pg 362
14 For Schopenhauer, “the meaning of the concept good...denotes the fitness or suitableness of an object to any definite effort of the will, therefore everything agreeable to the will, and fulfilling the will's purpose, is thought of through the concept good...[while] bad, denotes everything that is not agreeable to the striving of the will in each case”. (WWR I, pg. 360)
15 Dawn Note 102, pg 70
16 Dawn Note 102, pg 70
17 Dawn Note 104, pg 71
18 WWR I pg. 369
19 WWR I pg. 369
20 KAP: Notes on Compassion
21 Dawn 116, pg 86
22 Dawn 129. Pg. 96
23 Dawn 133, pg 102
24 Dawn 133, pg 102
25 Dawn 138, pg 106
26 Dawn 133, pg 102
27 Bm 144
28 Bm 144
29 For Schopenhauer, “to be just, noble, and benevolent is nothing but to translate my metaphysics into actions”, and proceeds from the “immediate and intuitive knowledge of the metaphysical identity of all beings”. (WWRII, pg 600-601)
30 More precisely, his claims that compassion is possible are based on an intuitive knowing that the veil of Maya has been transcended, but this interpretation of the experience of the revelatory insight is dependent on a metaphysical account that provides a framework for understanding the experience, and must therefore precede and cannot be given within it. In BGE 188, Nietzsche writes: “we suspect any thinker who wants to prove something – that they always knew in advance that which was supposed to result from the most rigorous cogitation.”
31 See Dawn 103: “I deny morality in the same way I deny alchemy, which is to say, I deny its presuppositions, not however that there were alchemists who did believe in these presuppositions and acted in accordance with them.”
32 HH9, pg 15
33 See WS40: Actions “performed first with a view to common utility have been performed by later generations for other motives”, fear, habit, benevolence and vanity, among others - “such actions, whose basic motive, that of utility, has been forgotten, are then called moral actions, not because they are performed out of these other motives, but because they are not performed from any conscious reason of utility. But this “hatred of utility which becomes visible here” points to the fact that the “hearth of morality...has had to struggle too long and too hard against the self-interest and self-will of the individual not at last to rate any other motive morally higher than utility. Thus it comes to appear that morality has not grown out of utility; while it is originally social utility, which had great difficulty in asserting itself against all individual private utilities and making itself more highly respected.”
34 GM, Preface Section 6, pg 20
35 Or more precisely, the egoism of the drives that constitute the self.
36 See GM Second Essay, Section 12, pg 76: “To speak of just or unjust in itself is quite senseless; in itself, of course, no injury, assault, exploitation, destruction can be “unjust”, since life operates essentially, that is in its basic functions, through injury, assault, exploitation, destruction and simply cannot be thought at all without this character...from the highest biological standpoint, legal conditions can never be other than exceptional conditions, since they constitute a partial restriction of the will of life, which is bent on power and are subordinate to its total goal as a single means: namely, as a means of creating greater units of power.
37 Dawn 136, pg 105
38 Dawn 133, pg 102
39 Dawn 224, pg 165
40 Although not explicitly written, it is clear, in the GM, that the morality of Mitleid could potentially serve the purpose in general of moralities built on ressentiments and the “slave revolt in morality”, which are initiated to establish “the weak” over “the strong”. See GMI Section 10, also Section
41 Dawn 134, pg 103
42 Of course, Nietzsche acknowledges redeeming qualities in compassionate acts, including the possibility of genuine altruism, and I think he would agree with Schopenhauer that Mitleid represents a higher position, in terms of mental discipline, than a narrow egoism defined by a hedonistic calculus, or the basest forms of utilitarianism; also the art and science of living today. It is in this sense that conventional morality has an important role to play, to temper our appetites and to recognize material suffering in the world. But it is here that one has to situate Nietzsche’s antimoral prescriptions within the very different roles he envisages for conventional morality and his form of esoteric morality, in the economy of the drives.
43 See GM, Preface Section 6: “There is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which morality grew, under which they evolved and changed (morality as consequence, as symptom, as mask, as tartufferie, as illness, as misunderstanding; but also morality as cause, as remedy, as stimulant, as restraint, as poison.)”
44 Dawn 132, pg 100
45 GS 338, pg 270
46 For Nietzsche, in GS4 pg. 79: “the strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to preserve humanity, again and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep...and they reawakened again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled men to pit opinion against opinion, model against model.”
47 Dawn 174, pg127
48 Dawn 173, pg126
49 GS4 pg. 79; “What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit – the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is exploited, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.”
50 Dawn 105, pg 72
51 KAP, Notes on Compassion
52 GS 116, pg 174
53 See Dawn 134, pg 104: “but whosever wishes to serve as physician to humanity in any sense whatsoever will have to be very cautious with regard to that sentiment- it lames him in all decisive moments and paralyzes his knowledge and his benevolent delicate hand.
54 GMIII, Section 28, pg 162
56 See GS 338, pg 269: On the happiness of man: “Happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together, or remain small together….but the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell.” On suffering as an accompaniment to growth and self-cultivation: “The whole economy of soul and the balance effected by distress, the way new springs and needs break open, the way in which old wounds are healing, the way whole periods of the past are shed – all such things that may be involved in distress.” On Mitleid’s effect on man, see GMIII Section 14: “The sick are man's greatest danger, not the evil, not the beasts of prey. Those who are failures from the start, downtrodden, crushed – it is they, the weakest, who must undermine life among men, who call into question and poison most dangerously our trust in life, in man, and in ourselves.”
57 See GS370, where the Dionysian is “He that is richest in the fullness of life...an overflowing energy that is pregnant with the future.” See EH, “Birth of Tragedy”, Section 2: “I was the first to see the real opposition: the degenerating instinct that turns against life with subterranean vengefulness (Christianity, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, the philosophy of Plato, and all of idealism as typical forms) versus a formula for the highest affirmation, born of over-fullness, a a Yes-saying without reservation, even to suffering, even to guilt, even to everything that is questionable and strange in existence.” See also EH, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Section 6: “He that has the hardest, most terrible insight into reality, that has thought the “most abysmal idea”, nevertheless do not consider it an objection to existence, not even to its eternal recurrence – but rather one reason more for being himself the eternal Yes to all things, the tremendous, unbounded saying Yes and Amen - “Into all abysses I still carry the blessings of my saying Yes.” - But this is the concept of the Dionysus once again.”
58 WWR I, pg. 380
59 See WWRI, pg. 380: “If we compare life to a circular path of red-hot coals having a few cool places, a path that we have to run over incessantly, then the man entagled in delusion is comforted by the cool place on which he is just now standing , or which he sees near him, and sets out to run over the path.”
60 GS III Section 28, pg. 163
61 WWR I, pg. 393
62 GM III, Section 14, pg. 122
63 GS 338, pg. 271. See also WS350, pg.393.
64 HH. II: AOM.202, pg. 261
65 GS1, pg 74: “To laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh out of the whole truth – to do that even the best so far lacked sufficient sense for the truth, and the most gifted had too little genius for that.”

Dream Notes

So I was in this lecture on psychoanalysis given by Jung and there were 3 Brit Indians sitting on my left. During question time one of them asked if technology in dream content affected the confessionary interpretation. Collins went on with a very long question of his own in his nasal, self-defeating voice which nobody hears or cares to. I was trying to avoid someone; the lecture hall emptied; I remained, thinking, finally some peace to ponder my questions and collect my thoughts.

I was on holiday with my parents in a Malaysian jungle resort. Apparently I must have been out wandering alone on the resort grounds, because when I reached the lobby, I found that I had known all along that I was checking out with my parents, and had my luggage with me. I left something in the room, went to get it, but I had to return to the rooms again after that to take the keys for checkout. Damn. Its a long walk back and forth and I should have done everything in one walk. I was just tired of going back to the chalet, for some reason.

Apparently we were being led in an assembly - or was it the beginning of an exercise? - by a figure in the image of ben tan. During this exercise he made several remarks of which i cannot remember, and asked a question which caused several people to leave. One of them had a distinctive socila awkward guy look: with white headphones cupped over his head and the usual detached absorption, and a white cap that hung with a pointed end over his forehead. He strolled away with the desolate yet seeming confidence of one who no longer cared. Apparently, when a second one left, from the silence of ben tan, we knew that they had been performing mastabatory handjobs on each other, and the remarks and questions were directed as half accusatory, half joking comments on them as an indication that he knew. Apparently I followed them in that weird shift of perspective, and saw one of them disappearing behind the grove around the school gates. I proceeded to the library on the right, full of empty tables and unfinished work, and with disjointed theories.

We were attempting to get something done, like destroying a castle, or saving someone. Apparently I was supposed to go into this room on the right that had a vent on the courtyard corridor to spy on something or to enter into something. It was surprisingly easy, and I just walked in. Then doug came in a super loud way, and I had to remove the bedsheets and quilt covers off the bed I was in to remove any evidence of my being there. Somehow I knew and kept telling myself that they will be here in 5 minutes, they will be here in 5 minutes. Me and doug got that done very quickly, and we were fine.

A vivid dream. In a house with the old family, but apparently we were living by a river with a depth of about 8 metres. Strangely, the house was built such that the ground floor fronted the waters of the river itself in the style of an aquarium - we could see the sealife and the odd fish or two. Well, the dykes upriver opened at a certain fixed time daily. Perhaps that was the reason for a daily rise in the river levels, which we did expect well in advance. Well, I saw an influx of fish at the time, and then a shark swam past the windows. It was in a predatory mood. This was shocking as the river was filled with bathers and rowers, and I thought of the danger that accrued to them by what, by all accounts, must seem like a lemon shark, ie, maneater, in what was largely considered an urban canal. I am now standing at the bridge, watching the bathers and rowers, and half-fearing, half-triumphant at the lurking danger.