themselves on compassion to make the case for our dying child (the Dalai
Lama can make a pretty convincing case), but since Nietzsche himself
acknowledged influences from Schopenhauer, I thought it would be a
stronger case to proceed from this source. I will also note that
Schopenhauer was an atheist.
I will not get into Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will, which is quasisupernatural, despite him being an atheist. Suffice it to say that all human
motivation was derived from human basic desires, which are not good and
need to be controlled by the individual in such a manner so as to reduce
suffering (not by others, but by each person – this is taken almost directly
from the Buddhist idea that life is suffering). According to Schopenhauer,
people are motivated by three compunctions: compassion, egoism and
malice. Now this is beginning to look more like the real world.
Egoistic actions benefit the actor, in terms of delivering pleasure, happiness,
or as an exercise of power, but not Nietzsche’s concept of power, and we are
all familiar with those. Acts of malice are just like they sound, an expression
of ill intent towards another for no reason other than to cause harm. He
acknowledges that people often hurt others even though it does not benefit
them to do so.
On to compassion. Compassion is different from feelings of mercy or pity,
which separate the observer from the observed sufferer. As noted
previously, pity is a form of contempt, and mercy intrinsically includes an
element of superiority on the part of the observer. Compassion for
Schopenhauer, and for Buddhists, is different. It is an equality of suffering
between the afflicted and the observer. As Nietzsche noted, to feel pity is to
cause oneself to suffer. Schopenhauer would agree with that, but would add
that it is not possible for people to choose whether to feel this way or not.
The element of compassion within humans means that they do feel it, and
the only way to alleviate the feeling is to aid the person afflicted as you
would aid yourself, and the distinction here between yourself and the other
person is immaterial.
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