Arthur Schopenhauer, On The Basis of Morality | Moral Worth & Compassion | Philosophy Core Concepts

This is a video in my new Core Concepts series -- designed to provide students and lifelong learners a brief discussion focused on one main concept from a classic philosophical text and thinker.

This Core Concept video focuses on Arthur Schopenhauer's work On The Basis of Morality. It examines his views on compassion (Mitleid) as the only motivation for human actions that possesses genuine moral worth or value.

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[BannedFromFacebook]

I'm guessing there isn't a simple answer to how he reconciles this seemingly objective morality with the concept of 'will to power' which seems to be very egoistic. Is it as simple as he thought will to power was our lower self and through moral actions we could be our higher selves? I can see how that'd turn into untermensch/ubermensch

[jakemckeown]

He says that moral actions leave behind a satisfaction, “the approbation of consciousness;” later in the video you say that he believes that moral actions are motivated by being bothered by other peoples suffering, though not directly identifying with their suffering. Is this an absurdity in his philosophy, that he thinks moral actions are all about making the wheel and woe of others, yet being motivated by feelings completely within ourselves? This next point is beside the point he’s making, since this is obviously an intention based morality, but I find that compassionate people often cause more woe than selfish people. You seemed to dismiss this ideology in the video, but I’m from California, and the housing+homelessness crisis is insane. I may be wrong about this, but market manipulation and rent control seems to be causing contractors to not want to build here and that’s making things worse. It seems the ideology of Schopenhauer makes people feel better about themselves, and the ideology of Rand makes people make others peoples lives better, which is pretty ironic. Btw, thanks a lot for making these videos accessible for free, I appreciate it a lot.