Schopenhauer, Morality, and Theism
I like Schopenhauer. He’s one of my favorite thinkers, despite his tendency toward moral reductionism (or perhaps moral eliminativism is a better term for his view of morality, at least with respect to moral obligations). He’s quite astute on the importance of moral sympathy, self-control, the intellectual life, and other values. His essays and aphorisms are a wealth of intelligent reflection.
But Schopenhauer seems to have held that there are no objective categorical moral oughts. For him, the existence of God is necessary for such obligations, and given his atheism, he concluded that there is no categorical moral oughtness.* He might have accepted hypothetical oughts, but he rejected categorical ones.
In short, Schopenhauer’s argument is this:
If there are objective categorical moral obligations, then God exists.
God does not exist.
Thus, there are no objective categorical moral obligations.
I agree with Schopenhauer about (1). The existence of God seems to be a necessary condition for the existence of categorical moral obligations – or at least God appears to be the best explanation for such obligations. But I find (3) manifestly false. For me, moral experience undermines (3). These days, given the boisterous public dialogue about what people morally ought and ought not to do, I suspect that most people who understand (3) would deny it.
Now, one person’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens. Hence I find the following argument more plausible:
A. If there are objective categorical moral obligations, then God exists.
B. There are objective categorical moral obligations.
C. Thus, God exists.
In short, the existence of categorical moral obligations is evidence for God. Schopenhauer and I agree on (1)/(A) but draw different conclusions. He might have accepted (2) on the basis of some version of the problem of evil (PoE). I believe that there are sufficient responses to the PoE, and I find (B) very hard to deny.
* See Schopenhauer, Part III, Chapter II, “Skeptical View,” last paragraph, at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44929/44929-h/44929-h.htm#CHAPTER_IIc