Two Basic Questions in Ethics Ping (Translation of Famous Works)

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer (Germany), translated by Ren Li, Meng Qingshi
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Publishing Time: Not available
Features: These two essays are independent and were formed due to external factors, yet they complement each other to form a system of fundamental truths in ethics. It is hoped that readers can see the progress of this discipline, which has stagnated for half a century, within this system. Of course, neither of the two essays can be a prerequisite for the other, nor for my previous works; this is because each essay was written for a different academy, thus adhering to the well-known condition of strict anonymity. In this research, the first step is to clarify the relationship between metaphysics and ethics. However, the author overlooked the main requirement of the topic and believed that the topic demanded the proposal of certain ethical principles. Therefore, he placed the part of the essay discussing the relationship between the ethical principles he proposed and his metaphysics only in the appendix, as an additional section beyond the requirements.
Could the main argument of the call for papers, from which the introduction starts, not have mentioned the relationship between metaphysics and morality either? Because this introduction begins with an empirical explanation, based on moral evaluations and similar things that appear in daily life, and then it asks what this ultimately rests on. Later, this introduction proposes the concept of innate virtues existing in consciousness as an example of a possible explanation. Thus, in the examples it presents, it attempts to regard a purely psychological fact as the answer, which is highly questionable. However, it is clear from this that it requires some fact, whether conscious or external, to prove morality, but does not wish to derive such facts from some metaphysical fantasy; therefore, the Danish Academy had sufficient reason to reject the essay that attempted to solve the problem in such a way. People should keep this in mind.