Schopenhauer's great and small ethics: On the mysteriousness, (im)mediacy, and (un)sociability action

Abstract

Schopenhauer bases morality on the concept of compassion, which he assumes to be the "great mystery of ethics". He sees it and as a spontaneous action that can neither be taught or planned. However, some elements of his theory of human action allow us to conceive of an ethical-moral action (the compassionate act) as something less mysterious or immediate, rather a mediated and planned action in its social or sociability dimension, or even as one which is suggested. In this paper I propose what may be called a "valorization of the empirical apparatus" of Schopenhauerian thinking on human action (vfs-a-vis the metaphysical apparatus) by distinguishing between what I call great ethics and small ethics, a differentiation that I believe can be inferred from some of the philosopher's elaborations