Chapter 66 Book IV The World as Will Revisited §66

A moral doctrine without reason, that is, mere moral teaching, cannot work because it does not serve as a motive.But a motivated moral precept works only because it works on [man's] self-love.What springs from self-love has little moral value.From this we can see that moral precepts and any abstract cognition cannot lead to any virtue at all, and virtue must be produced from intuitive cognition, which [only] sees the same essence in others and in one's own individual. It turns out that although virtue is produced from knowledge, it is not produced from abstract knowledge that can be expressed in words.If it is the latter, then virtue can be taught well; then, when we abstract the essence of virtue here, when we speak of the "knowledge" that lays the foundation of virtue, we will take every understanding of this People who say this way have been reformed ethically.But this is not the case.The fact is that one cannot make a virtuous man by ethical discourse or preaching, any more than all aesthetics, from Aristotle onwards, have ever made a poet.It turns out that notions are sterile for the true inner nature of virtue, and no more for art.Concepts are entirely secondary, and serve only as instruments for the realization or preservation of what is known elsewhere as final. "Desires cannot be taught." Abstract dogmas, in fact, have no influence on virtue, that is, on goodness of mind.False dogmas do no harm to virtue, and true ones are hardly promoted.It would really be too bad if the first thing in life, its ethical, eternally meaningful value, really depended on dogma, religious dogma, philosophical theory, etc., acquired by such accidents .Dogmas have only such value for morality that a man who already has virtue from other sources, the knowledge [we] are about to discuss, can derive from them a formula, a formula, according to which He can surrender to his reason a reason, mostly invented for passing, for his disinterested action; [in fact] this reason, that is, the man himself, does not understand the nature of the action, [but] he has already To accustom one's reason to be satisfied with such an explanation.

Dogma and custom, like the model (the latter is so because the common man does not trust his own judgment, but is aware of its weakness, and follows only his own experience or the experience of others), have the same effect on conduct, on outward action, though It has a great influence, but having this influence does not mean changing [people's] intentions.All abstract knowledge only provides motives, and motives, as mentioned above, only change the direction of the will, never change the will itself.But all knowledge that can be conveyed acts on the will only as a motive.So no matter how those dogmas direct the will, what a person really desires, basically desires, he always still desires the same thing.He just got some other ideas on how to get it.And fanciful motives can guide him as well as real ones.Therefore, for example, if a person bestows great kindness on a poor person and firmly believes that in the next life he can recover ten times the total amount given; Later, it will be more reliable and more respectable; there is no difference between these [two actions] in terms of ethical value. —As with the bandit who kills for money, the man who burns the heathen in his faith, and the Turk who strangles the Turk in the holy place, if these two parted for a place in the kingdom of heaven If they do that, then they are also murderers.It turned out that these people were just planning for themselves and their selfish interests, and they were no different from the gangsters; they were different from the gangsters only in their absurd methods. —As I said before, there are only motives to influence the will from without, and motives only change the way the will expresses itself, never the will itself. "Intention cannot be taught."

Some good deeds [always] invoke dogma as the basis for their execution, and here one must always distinguish whether the dogma is really the motive, or whether it is only a superficial pretext, as we said before, and nothing else.The man was trying to placate his own reason with this account for a good thing from another source.This good thing was done by him, because he was a good man: but he did not know how to explain it properly, because he was not a philosopher but wanted to think of some [reason] for this thing, so he quoted the dogma as Based on].But this distinction is difficult to find, because it is hidden deep within the mood.Morally, therefore, we are almost never right in judging the actions of others, and seldom are we right in judging our own. —The actions and manners of an individual or of a nation may well be modified by dogma, example, and custom, but in themselves all actions (“appearances”) are but empty images, and only deriving behavior It is the intention that gives moral meaning to behavior.Between very different external phenomena, the moral meaning can really be exactly the same. [Between two people] the degree of evil is equal, but it can be that one dies under the torture of the wheel, and the other dies peacefully in the arms of relatives.The same degree of evil, in one nation, can be manifested broadly in brutal acts of murder and cannibalism, and in another nation, it can be quietly, finely, small and delicately manifested in palace intrigues, oppression, and all kinds of elaborate tricks. , but the essence is one.It is conceivable that a perfect state, or even just a belief in the reward and punishment of death, would prevent crimes of any kind; this would be a great gain politically, but nothing morally. It is "false and real", which only makes the portrayal of the will be hindered by life.

Therefore, pure goodness of heart, selfless virtue, and pure generosity do not start from abstract cognition, but they still start from cognition, and start from a direct intuitive cognition.Just because this kind of knowledge is not abstract, it cannot be conveyed, and must be realized by each person; its true and proper expression cannot be found in words, but can only be found in human deeds, actions and life deeds. among.We are looking here for a theory of virtue, and thus have to express abstractly the nature of the knowledge on which virtue is based, but we cannot present this knowledge itself in this exposition, but only its conception.Then we always start from action, and only in action can we see this knowledge, and we always refer to action as the only proper expression of this knowledge. We only illustrate and explain this expression, that is, Just talking abstractly about what's going on here.Before we come to the real good in contrast to the evil already described, we shall now deal, as an intermediate stage, with [problems] which merely end with the negation of evil.This is justice.What is righteousness and what is injustice has been fully analyzed above; therefore, we can say here without any trouble: If a person voluntarily recognizes the purely moral boundary between righteousness and injustice, there is no state or other authority to enforce it. The validity of this boundary is also recognized when safeguarding; according to our interpretation, that is, a person who affirms his own will never goes to deny the will manifested in another individual-then this person is just.This means that this person will not inflict pain on others in order to increase his own happiness; that is, he will not commit crimes, and he will respect everyone's rights and everyone's property. ——Thus we see that the principle of individuation in such a just man is different from that of a wicked man, it is no longer an absolute barrier; He affirms the phenomenon of his own will and denies the phenomenon of all other people's will; he sees that others are no longer just fake faces to him--the essence of a fake face is completely different from his essence--but that he has become The way he behaves shows that he recognizes his own essence, that is, the will to life as a thing-in-itself, in the phenomena of others, which are only appearances to him; Righteousness, to the extent that it does not harm others, and finds itself in the phenomena of others.It is also to this extent that he sees through the principle of individuation, through the veil of Maya; to the extent that he equates the essence outside himself with his own: he does not harm this essence.

If you see through the inner depths of this kind of justice, then there is already a certain tendency in justice, don't go too far when affirming your own will, lest the affirmation of your own will force the will of others to serve it Sometimes the phenomenon of denying the will of others.Therefore, as much as people enjoy from others, they must serve others as much as possible.Justice in its highest degree often rivals goodness which is no longer merely passive.At this time, people even doubt their own rights to the inherited property, and only use their own spiritual or physical strength to maintain their bodies; they even feel that any service from others and any luxury they have is a sin This reproach leads in the end to voluntary poverty.We see Pascal like that.When he had turned to ascetic [ism], although he had sufficient servants, he was not allowed to be attended to; although he was often sick, he had to make his own bed, go to the kitchen to get his own food, and so on. (The Biography of Pascal, written by his sister, p. 19) An exact analogy to this is reported that some Indians, even princes, possessed great fortunes which were only used to maintain their relatives, their palaces, etc. court and servants; they themselves observe the highest rules of conduct with strict formality, eating nothing but what they sow and reap with their own hands.They do this based on a misunderstanding: it turns out that individual people are likely to make considerable contributions to human society as a whole just because they are rich and powerful, so that these contributions and what they inherit, The property secured by the [force] of society is equal in pairs.To be honest, the excessive justice of this kind of Indian has surpassed justice, and it is already true asceticism, the negation of the will to life, and abstinence.These are the things we will talk about at the end [in this article].On the contrary, to do nothing but to live by others, to contribute nothing by means of inherited property, is morally unrighteous, although it must be legal under existing laws.

We have seen that voluntary justice has its real source in seeing to a certain extent the principle of individuation; the unjust man is entirely confined to this principle.Seeing through the principle of individuation [this thing], not only to the extent required by justice, but also to a higher degree, to the extent that positive benevolence, beneficence, and fraternity are promoted; and, regardless of How mighty the will itself manifested in this one may appear. [While the will is strong,] knowledge always keeps for the individual [knowledge and will] in balance, teaches him to resist the temptation to do injustice, and even teaches him to develop any degree of goodness; yea, even any degree of purity of heart. Asceticism.Therefore, a good man must not be regarded as a phenomenon of a weaker will than a bad man, but [really] only a recognition of the blind impulse of the will that dominates the good man.There are, however, such persons, who appear to be good-natured only because the will that is manifest in them is weak; action will understand.

If we now meet a man who, as a rare exception, possesses a considerable income, but uses only a small part of it for himself, and gives all the rest to the needy, he lacks this and that, lacks much enjoyment and comfort, and we want to explain the man's conduct; then, quite apart from those dogmas which the man himself may use to make his reason understand his conduct, we It will be found that his more than usual indifference is the simplest and most common expression, the most basic characteristic of his manner.If in the eyes of others, the distinction between man and self is so great, [for example] wicked people always take other people's pain as their own pleasure, and unrighteous people also like to use other people's pain as a means to improve their own welfare; Even the merely just man does not stop at causing pain to others; that is to say, the vast majority of people at all know and are familiar with the innumerable sufferings of others in their neighborhood, but have no resolution to relieve them; because they If you want to do this, you must reduce some enjoyment.If for any one of these men it seemed as though a great difference lay between his own self and another's self, it was the reverse for this sublime man of our imagination, for whom man The distinction between me is less important, the principle of individuation, the form of phenomena no longer confines him so closely, but the pain he sees in others distresses him almost as much as his own.Therefore, he wants to establish a balanced balance of power between people and me. He gives up his own enjoyment and bears what he lacks to ease the pain of others.He realizes that the difference between himself and others - a difference that is a chasm to the wicked - is only of impermanence.The phenomenon of phantasmagoria [something].Without logical inferences he recognizes immediately that the substance of his own phenomena is also that of others, and that this substance is the essence that constitutes all things, the will-to-live that exists in all things.True, he knew this even to animals and to nature as a whole, and therefore he did not torture a single animal.

He is now no more likely to let others go hungry when he has a surplus of [things] which he can lack, any more than a man will go hungry one day in order to have more than he can enjoy tomorrow.This is because the "veil of Maya" has become transparent to those who love and do good, and the deception of the principle of individuation has also come to an end.What he sees in any living being, and thus in the suffering being, is himself, himself, his will.What has been withdrawn from him is this absurd error by which the will-to-live always misidentifies itself, and now enjoys erratic and false pleasures here in one individual, now there in another. And starving for it in the body, that is, making pain and enduring pain and not being able to be himself, eating his own flesh as greedily as Dueste; groaning, [sometimes] there to act with impunity in the face of Nemesis [god of vengeance]; always unrecognized in the appearance of others, and thus unaware of eternal justice, only conditioned In the principle of individuation, it is fundamentally limited to the method of cognition governed by the law of sufficient reason.To cure this kind of delusion and get rid of the deception of mana is the same thing as doing good deeds.But the latter is an indispensable mark of that kind of knowledge [that sees through the principle of individuation].

The source and significance of the pangs of conscience have been explained above.The opposite of pangs of conscience is peace of mind, the satisfaction we feel after each selfless act.The reason for the peace of mind is that selfless behavior is not only produced by our direct recognition of our own essence in other phenomena, but also proves this understanding for us: that is, we realize that our true self is not only in ourselves not only in this particular phenomenon, but in all living things.Thus [people] feel enlarged, as [people] feel narrow-minded when they are selfish.This is because selfishness [mind] concentrates our concern on the individual phenomenon of our own individuality. At this time, knowledge often points out to us the countless dangers that constantly threaten this phenomenon, so that fear and anxiety become our emotions. The tone is off.Then [on the contrary] the realization that all living beings, like ourselves, are our own essence extends our concern to all sentient beings, thus enlarging our mind.Because our concern for ourselves has shrunk, the fearful calculation for ourselves has been weakened and limited at the root: so there is a peaceful and contented joy, which is good intentions and guilt-free. brought about by conscience.So after [more] one good deed, the appearance of this mood is more obvious, because this good deed gives us a testament to the reason on which the mood is based. [Where] the egoist [feels] he is surrounded by strange and hostile phenomena, and all his hopes are set in his own well-being.A good man lives in a world where phenomena are friendly to each other, and the happiness of each phenomenon is his own happiness.So, even if his awareness of the whole of human destiny did not bring joy to his emotions, yet the constant awareness of his own essence in all beings provided him with an emotional A certain stability, and even an air of conviviality.This is because concern spread over countless phenomena cannot be as frightening as a focus on one phenomenon.The accidents encountered by individual people are fortunate and unfortunate, and for the sum of individuals, accidental accidents [fortunate luck] cancel each other out and equalize.

If, therefore, other men have established principles of morality, and regard them as maxims and maxims to be obeyed in the exercise of virtue, I, as has been said, cannot do so; for I have no oughts, no maxims Ask to the ever free will.Contrary to them, in so far as my considerations are concerned, what is in a certain respect equal and similar to their approach is that of purely theoretical truth.The whole [gist] of my discourse may be taken simply to assert this truth, that the will is the substance of any phenomenon, but as substance it is not in those forms of the phenomenon, and therefore has no multiplicity. sex.As far as this relation of truth to action is concerned, I do not know of any more solemn expression than by the aforementioned formula of the Vedas: "This is you!" If he says this formula to himself, pointing to everything he comes into contact with, then he is indeed endowed with all the virtues and blessings, and is already on the road to liberation.

But I shall go on, to show, as the last part of my discourse, how benevolence—the source and essence of benevolence we think of as seeing through the principle of individuation—leads to liberation, to the renunciation of the will to live, that is, to the renunciation of all desires. Before giving up, and also before pointing out how a less moderate but more frequently adopted path leads to the above-mentioned state, a seemingly contradictory statement must first be said here and explained.The reason for doing this is not because it is such a sentence, but because this sentence is true, and it also belongs to the integrity of the thought I want to explain.This sentence is: "All benevolence (fraternity, benevolence) is sympathy."