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Arthur Schopenhauer

1788 Feb 22 - 1860 Sep 21

1819 [1818] | Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will and Idea [1st ed. 1 vol., 1819; 2nd ed. 2 vols., 1844; 3rd rev. ed., 1859;], trans. by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp London, 1886; Online at Google Books).

The World as Will and Idea

Vol. 1, 1st Book: The Idea Subordinated to the Principle of Sufficient Reason: The Object of Experience and Science

All animals, even the least developed, have understanding, for they all know objects, and this knowledge determines their movements as motive. Understanding is the same in all animals and in men.

Vol. 1, 4th Book: Assertion and Denial of the Will to Live

In my opinion, that right [of the use man may make of the powers of a brute without a wrong] does not extend to vivisection, particularly of the higher animals.

What is here referred to is the myth of the transmigration of souls. It teaches that all sufferings which in life one inflicts upon other beings must be expiated in a subsequent life in this world, through precisely the same sufferings; some time in endless time, be born as the same kind of brute and suffer the same death. … As a reward, on the other hand, it promises re-birth in better, noble forms, as Brahmans, wise men, or saints. The highest reward, which awaits the noblest deeds…that they shall never be born again…or, as the Buddhists express it…"Thou shalt attain to Nirvana.…Never has a myth entered, and never will one enter, more closely into the philosophical truth which is attainable to so few than this primitive doctrine of the noblest and most ancient nation.…Therefore Pythagoras and Plato have seized with admiration on that ne plus ultra of mythical representation, received it from India or Egypt, honoured it, made use of it, and, we know not how far, even believed it. We, on the contrary, now send the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers to set them right out of sympathy, and to show them that they are created out of nothing, and ought thankfully to rejoice in the fact. But it is just the same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff. In India our religions will never take root. The ancient wisdom of the human race will not be displaced by what happened in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian philosophy streams back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

The suffering which he sees in others touches him almost as closely as his own. He therefore tries to strike a balance between them, denies himself pleasures, practices renunciation, in order to mitigate the suffering of others. He sees that the distinction between himself and others, which to the bad man is so great a gulf, only belongs to a fleeting and illusive phenomenon. He recognizes directly and without reasoning that the in-itself of his own manifestation is also that of others, the will to live, which constitutes the inner nature of everything and lives in all; indeed, that this applies also to the brutes and the whole of nature, and therefore he will not cause suffering even to a brute.

Vol. 2, Supplements to the 2nd Book, XX. On the Essential Imperfections of the Intellect

Human Intellect in only a higher graduation of the intellect of the brutes; and as this is entirely confined to the present, our intellect also bears strong traces of this limitation.

Vol. 2, Supplements to the 2nd Book, XX. Objectifications of the Will in the Animal Organism

Those truths, however, which are of the greatest importance cannot be brought out by experiments, but only by reflection and penetration. Now Bichat by his reflection and penetration has here brought a truth to light which is of the number of those unattainable by the experimental efforts of M. Flourens, even if, as a true and consistent Cartesian, [Flourens] tortures a hundred more animals to death.

Vol.3, 4th Book, XLI. On Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our True Nature

If I kill a living creature, whether a dog, a bird, a frog, or even only an insect, it is really inconceivable that this being, or rather the original force by virtue of which such a marvellous phenomenon exhibited itself just the moment before, in its full energy and love of life, should have been annihilated by my wicked or thoughtless act.

The assumption that the birth of an animal is an arising out of nothing, and accordingly that its death is its absolute annihilation, and this with the further addition that man, who has originated out of nothing, has yet an individual, endless existence and indeed a conscious existence, while the dog, the ape, the elephant, are annihilated by death, is really something against which the healthy mind revolves and which it must regard as absurd.

We will have false conceptions of the indestructibility of our true nature by death, so long as we do not make up our minds to study it primarily in the brutes, but claim for ourselves alone a class apart from them, under the boastful name of immorality. But it is this pretension alone, and the narrowness of view from which it proceeds, on account of which most men struggle so obstinately against the recognition of the obvious truth that we are essentially, and in the chief respect, the same as brutes; nay, that they recoil at every hint of our relationship with them. But it is this denial of the truth which more than anything else closed against them the path to real knowledge of the indestructibility of our nature.

Vol.3, 4th Book, XLVII. On the Doctrine of the Denial of the Will to Live

It is worth noticing that the transition of St. Francis from prosperity to the mendicant life is similar to the still greater step of Bussha Sakya Muni from prince to beggar, and that, corresponding to this, the life of St. Francis, and also the order he founded, was just a kind of Sannyasiism. Indeed it deserves to be mentioned that his relationship with the Indian spirit appears also in his great love for the brutes and frequent intercourse with the, when he always calls them his sisters and brothers.

Vol.3, 4th Book, L. Epiphilosophy

My ethical teaching agrees with that of Christianity, completely and in its highest tendencies, and not less with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism. [Spinoza's] contempt for brute, which, as mere things for our use, he also declares without rights—at the same time absurd and detestable.

1840 | Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality (1840), trans. by Arthur Bullock (New York, 1915; Online at Google Books).

On the Basis of Morality

II. Critique of Kant's Basis of Ethics, On the Derived From of the Leading Principle of the Kantian Ethics

True morality is outraged by the statement [of Kant] that irrational beings (that is, animals) are things, and should therefore be treated simply as means, which are not at the same time ends. In harmony with this, it is expressly declared [Kant's] [Metaphysic Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue S. 16: "A man can have not duties towards any being, except towards his fellow men; and then, S. 17, we read: "To treat animals cruelly runs counter to the duty of man towards himself; because it deadens the feeling of sympathy for them in their sufferings, and thus weakens a natural tendency which is very serviceable to morality in relation to other men." So one is only to have compassion on animals for the sake of practice, and they are as it were the pathological phantom on which to train one's sympathy with men! Because Christian morals leave animals out of consideration; therefore in philosophical morals they are of course at once outlawed; they are merely "things," simply means to ends of any sort; and so they are good for vivisection, for deer-stalking, bull-fights, horse-races, etc., and they may be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy quarry cats. Shame on a morality…which fails to recognise the Eternal Reality immanent in everything that has life, and shinning forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun !

III. Founding of Ethics, VIII. The Proof Know Given Confirmed by Experience

There is another proof that the moral incentive disclosed by me is the true one. I mean the fact that animals also are included under its protecting aegis. In the other European systems of Ethics no place is found for them,—strange and inexcusable as this may appear. It is asserted that beasts have no rights; the illusion is harboured that our conduct, so far as they are concerned, has no moral significance, or, as it is put in the language of these codes, that "there are no duties to be fulfilled towards animals." Such a view is one of revolting coarseness, a barbarism of the West, whose source is Judaism. In philosophy, however, it rests on the assumption, despite all evidence to the contrary, of the radical difference between man and beast,—a doctrine which, as is well know, was proclaimed with more trenchant emphasis by Descartes than by any one else: it was indeed the necessary consequence of his mistakes. When Leibnitz and Wolff, following out the Cartesian view, built up out of abstract ideas their Rational Psychology, and constructed a deathless animal rationalis (ration soul); then the natural claims of the animal kingdom visibly rose up against this exclusive privilege, this human patent of immortality, and Nature, as always in such circumstances, entered her silent protest. Our philosophers, owing to the qualms of their intellectual conscience, were soon forced to seek aid for their Rational Psychology from the empirical method; they accordingly tried to reveal the existence of a vast chasm, an immeasurable gulf between animals and men, in order to represent them, in the teeth of opposing testimony, as existences essentially different. These efforts did not escape the ridicule of Boileau; for we find him saying "Have beasts, forsooth, their universities, / Endowed, like ours, with all four faculties?"…Corresponding to these philosophical fallacies we notice a peculiar sophism in the speech of many peoples, especially the Germans. For the commonest matters connected with the processes of life,—for food, drink, conception, the bringing forth of young; for death, and the dead body; such languages have special words applicable only to animals, not to men. In this way the necessity of using the same terms for both is avoided, and the perfect identify of the thing concealed under verbal differences. Now since ancient tongues show no trace of such a dual mode of expression, but frankly dente the same things by the same words; it follows that this miserable artifice is beyond all doubt the work of European priestcraft, which, in its profanity, knows no limit to its disavowal of, and blasphemy against, the Eternal Reality that lives in every animal. Thus was laid the foundation of that harshness and cruelty towards the beasts which is customary in Europe, and on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror. In the English this infamous invention is not to be found; assuredly because the Saxons, when they conquered England, were not yet Christians. Nevertheless the English language shows something analogous in the strange fact that it makes all animals of the neuter gender, the pronoun "it" being employed for them, just as if they were lifeless things. This idiom has a very objectionable sound, especially in the case of dogs, monkeys, and other Primates, and is unmistakably a priestly trick, designed to reduce beasts to the level of inanimate objects.

It is true that the [intellect] is comparably higher in man, by reason of his added faculty of abstract knowledge, called Reason; nevertheless this superiority is traceable solely to a greater cerebral development, in other words, to the corporeal difference, which is quantitative, not qualitative, of a single part, the brain. In all other respects the similarity between men and animals, both psychical and bodily, is sufficiently striking. So that we must remind our judaised friends in the West, who despise animal, and idolize Reason, that if they were suckled by their mothers, so also was the dog by his. Even Kant fell into this common mistake of his age, and of his country, and I have already administered the censure which it is impossible to withhold.

The fact that Christian morality takes no thought for the beasts is a defect in the system which is better admitted than perpetuated.&8230;An apt symbol of the insensibility of Christian Ethics to animals, while in other points its similarity to the Indian is so great, may be found in circumstance that John the Baptist comes before us in all respects like a Hindu Sannyasin, except that he is clothed in skins: a thing which would e, as is well known, an abomination in the eyes of every follower of Brahmanism of Buddhism. The Royal Society of Calcutta only receive their copy of the Vedas on their distinctly promising that they would not have it bound in leather, after European fashion.

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men.

Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is gradually being overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of mankind.

To the honour, then, of the English, may it be said that they are the first people who have, in downright earnest, extended the protecting arm of the law to animals: in England the miscreant, that commits an outrage on beasts, has to pay for it, equally whether they are his own or not. Nor is this all. There exists in London the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a corporate body voluntarily formed, which, without state assistance, and at great cost, is of no small service in lessening the tale of tortures inflicted on animals. Its emissaries are ubiquitous, and keep secret watch in order to inform against the tormentors of dumb, sensitive creatures; and such persons have therefore good reason to stand in fear of them. At all the steep bridges in London this Society stations a pair of horses, which, without any charge is attached to heavy freight-wagons Is not this admirable: Does it not elicit our approval, as unfailingly as any beneficent action towards men?

1851 | Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, A Collection of Philosophical Essays, trans. T. Bailey Saunders (1st published in German, 1851; This edition originally published in 1893; Reprint Cosmo: New York, 2007; Online Preview at Google Books).

Parerga and Paralipomena

Psychological Observations

The conspicuousness of the will [to live] in lower order of animals explains the delight we take in dogs, apes, cats, et.; it is the entirely naive way in which they express themselves that give us so much pleasure. The sight of any free animal going about its business undisturbed, seeking its food, or looking after its young, or mixing in the company of its kind, all the time being exactly what it ought to be and can be—what a strange pleasure it gives us! Even if it is only a bird, I can watch it for a long time with delight; or a water rat or a hedgehog; or better still, a weasel, a deer or a stag. the main reasons why we take so much pleasure in looking at animals is that we like to see our own nature in such simplified form. There is only one mendacious being in the world, and that is man. Every other is true and sincere, and makes no attempt to conceal what it is, expressing its feelings just as they are.

The Christian System

I may mention here another fundamental error of Christianity, an error which cannot be explained away, and the mischievous consequences of which are obvious every day: I mean the unnatural distinction Christianity makes between man and the animal world to which he really belongs. It sets up man as all-important, and looks upon animals as merely things. Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other hand, true to the facts, recognise in a positive way that man is related generally to the whole of nature, and specially and principally to animal nature; and in their systems man is always represented, by the theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely connected with the animal world. The important part played by animals all through Buddhism and Brahmanism, compared with the total disregard of them in Judaism and Christianity, puts an end to any question as to which system is nearer perfection, however much we in Europe may have become accustomed to the absurdity of the claim. Christianity contains, if fact, a great and essential imperfection in limiting its precepts to man, and in refusing rights to the entire animal world. As religion fails to protect animals against the rough, unfeeling and often more than bestial multitude, the duty falls to the police; and as the police are unequal to the task, societies for the protection of animals are now formed all over Europe and America. In the whole of uncircumcised Asia, such a procedure would be the most superfluous thing in the world, because animals are there sufficiently protected by religion, which even makes them objects of charity. How such charitable feelings bear fruit may be seen, to take an example, in the great hospital for animals at Surat, whither Christians, Mohammedans and Jews can sent their sick beasts, which, if cured, are very rightly not restored to their owners. In the same way, when a Brahman or Buddhist has a slice of good luck, a happy issue in any affair, instead of mumbling a Te Deum, he goes to the market-place and buys birds and opens their cages at the city gate; a thing which may be frequently seen in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion meet together; and so on in a hundred similar ways. On the other hand, look at the revolting ruffianism with which our Christian public treats its animals; killing them for no object at all, and laughing over it, or mutilating or torturing them; even is horses, who form its most direct means of livelihood, are strained to the utmost in their old age, and the last strength worked out of their poor bones until they succumb at last under the whip. One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of the earth, and the animals the souls they torment. But what can you expect from the masses, when there are men of education, zoologists even, who, instead of admitting what is so familiar to them, the essential identity of man and animal, are bigoted and stupid enough to offer a zealous opposition to their honest ad rational colleagues, when they class man under the proper head as an animal, or demonstrate the resemblance between him and the chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is a revolting thing that a writer who is so pious and Christian in his sentiments as Jung Stilling should use a simple like this, in his Scenen aud dem Geisterreich. (Bk. II. sc. i., p. 15.) "Suddenly the skeleton shrivelled up into an indescribably hideous and dwarflike form, just as when you bring a large spider into the focus of a burning glass, and watch the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat." This man of God then was guilty of such infamy ! or looked on quietly when another was committing it ! in either case it comes to the same thing here. So little harm did he think of that he tells us of it in passing, and without a trace of emotion. Such are the effects of the first chapter of Genesis, and fact, of the whole of the Jewish conception of nature. The standard recognized by the Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya (the great word),—"tat-twam-asi," (this is thyself), which may always be spoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity of his inmost being with ours. Perfection of morality, indeed! Non-sense.

On the Sufferings of the World

It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard. But man, that selfish and heartless creature, misuses this quality of the brute to be more content than we are with mere existence, and often works if to such and extent that he allows the brute absolutely nothing more than mere, bare life. The bird which was made so that it might rove over half the world, he shuts up into the space of a cubic foot, there to die a slow death in longing and crying for freedom; for in a cage it does not sing for the pleasure of it. And when I see how man misuses the do, his best friend; how he ties up this intelligent animal with a chain, I feel the deepest sympathy with the brute and burning indignation against its master.

On Noise

A fellow who rides through the narrow alleys of a populous town with unemployed post-horses or cart-horses, and keeps on cracking a whip several yards long with all his might, deserves there and then to stand down and receive five really good blows with a stick. All the philanthropists in the world, and all the legislators, meeting to advocate and decree the total abolition of corporal punishment, will never persuade me to the contrary!

On Human Nature

All animals are instinctively afraid of the sight, or even the track of man, that animal mechant pear excellence! nor does their instinct play them false; for it is man alone who hunts the game for which he has not use and which does him no harm.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Arthur Schopenhauer"