Ethics

The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics

♡+

Arthur Schopenhauer

1841

This volume collects two prize essays that together constitute Schopenhauer's systematic ethics. The first, "On the Freedom of the Will", argues that the will is empirically unfree — all action follows necessarily from character and motive — while remaining transcendentally free. The second, "On the Basis of Morality", grounds genuine ethical behaviour not in reason or duty but in compassion: the direct recognition of another's suffering as one's own.