Schopenhauer and Human Nature

Post Reply New Topic

I wonder if anyone might wish to express a view on Schopenhauer's view on the motivations for action, in relation to views expressed on this board in relation to human nature (generally (or at least as far as I am interested) experienced in threads relating to communism vs. the current social order and it's naive idealism or otherwise.

Many seem to be of the opinion that human nature is by default greedy and selfish. Schopenhauer identified a number of motivators for carrying out acts:

1/ Compassion - This, Schopenhauer believed, inspires acts that are moral in nature (and note that such acts preclude feelings of duty, obligation, self interest or personal gain as motivators)

2/ Malice - He believed that malice inspires acts that are calculated to cause harm to others (and this again precludes self interest or personal gain as motivators)

3/ Egoism - These are the acts that he believed are driven by motivators such as personal gain, desire for happiness, self interest etc.)

While Schopenhauer - to simplify things a bit for the sake of the argument - seemed to consider motivator 3/ above as the most common motivating force behind human action - which would seem on the surface to support the human nature argument - the fact that some actions are driven purely by compassion would appear to go against this.

To complicate matters, he did appear to be of a belief that there is an essential nature to existence, and also believed in heredity of such things as temperament and intelligence.

I've not read a huge amount of his work, and am in the midst of trying to get my head round his thought, but I'm just wondering how people on here view the above aspects of it specifically.

I'm hugely interested in his notion that pain/suffering/badness is positive and happiness/pleasure are negative experiences (from an experiential point of view) but I'm not sure how this would tie in with the above.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Pretty sure Schopenhauer believed in Buddhism and Nietzsche called it "the great oriental nothing." None the less, Nietzsche obsessed on Schopenhauer and treated him like an absentee spiritual buddy.