Schopenhauer's Moral Meaning of the World

For Schopenhauer, every pleasure and satisfaction are de facto absence of pain, and as such are of a negative character, ergo happiness is in general of a negative character. Pain and suffering are of a positive character, and this is what we feel. Since we don't feel the absence of pain, our satisfaction is the elimination of pain (satisfaction of a desire), which last as long as our memory of the eliminated pain. So, if the pain and suffering can be assumed as bad, good can only be their opposite: the negation of the pain and suffering. If the will that transcends itself into many desires and causes pain and suffering can be called bad, the negation of the will emerges as good.

Since the state of permanent fulfilment of all desires is impossible, Schopenhauer concludes that the only moral meaning of the world is to negate suffering and ultimately life itself: “In fact, nothing else can be stated as the aim of our existence except the knowledge that it would be better for us not to exist.” (WWR2, p.605) And that knowledge 'that it would be better for us not to exist' directs us towards our only moral choice, which is a negation of the will or will to live. Therefore, the only option that we are left with is to repudiate suffering by negating life, since the dominant will to live constantly seduces us into more suffering ad infitnitum.

Schopenhauer further speculates that the world has a moral significance by saying: “That the world has a mere physical, but no moral significance is the greatest, most ruinous and fundamental error…” (PP2, p. 293). Janaway thinks that the meaning of the world for Schopenhauer can only be moral. Therefore, he says:

'Existence for Schopenhauer is therefore decidedly not meaningless: there is a way of interpreting it correctly. And it is called a “moral” meaning, I suggest, because in Schopenhauer’s view the correct interpretation of the world does not just discover naturalistic truths; rather it discovers a would-be normative truth: that the world, and our existence in it, is in itself such that we ought not to want it, indeed such that it ought not to exist.' (2017, 7)

But since this view that the world has a moral meaning stipulates that, firstly, a naturalistic truth exists a-priory and secondly, that truth has a normative value, it requires more detailed analysis. If the essence of the world is the will, as Schopenhauer claims, and he defines the will as the 'blind and purposeless striving', then the world as purposeless striving cannot have any normative/moral meaning. Anything normative would have to aim towards some goal, will have to prescribe some norm or value. It is ambiguous that something blind and purposeless can prescribe any kind of the moral norm. If we anticipate a human being as the highest manifestation of the will, it is still not clear how can the objectification of that blind and purposeless will become purposeful and create a moral norm. The dualism of the individual and the will in general (rest of the world) that Schopenhauer has created due to his metaphysical concept, perpetuates the problem with his moral meaning of the world. That problem further permeates in the antagonism of his highest moral quality that he assumes to be compassion and the ascetic ideal of complete denial of the will. I will try to show why compassion, as understood by Schopenhauer, and his ascetic ideal are incompatible with each other, and why both of them still require the presence of the will. My view is that neither compassion nor asceticism are devoid from the will and are actually proof that will, as Schopenhauer formulated it, is undeniable.