The Northern Review

Here is what Schopenhauer said about compassion:

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Compassion means something like “spiritual consciousness of the personal tragedy of another or others and selfless tenderness directed toward it.”  Hegel does not express compassion unless, in his view, that which is living is willing.  That is a bankrupt evil idea.  It is the reasoning of a Hitler, a Pol Pot, a Stalin.  They, in their worship of the god of power would only grant a willing which was a willing which fit into their willing.

 In determinism it is argued that there is no room for free will.  That there is no responsibility of  human kind for anything which, in the course of cause and effect in the process of all that which is determined.  I tend to disagree.  There is an element of free will but it is a bit sublime.  I think of the last few pages of Schopenhauer’s Essay on the Freedom of the Will. 

More on this as my thoughts find themselves determined.

Arthur Schopenhauer, Essay on the Freedom of the Will, trans. Konstantin Kolenda (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960) iii, Questia, 24 Jan. 2009 .