Reconstructing Schopenhauer’s Ethics:

Hope, Compassion, and Animal Welfare

Sandra Shapshay
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/reconstructing-schopenhauers-ethics-hope-compassi
on-and-animal-welfare-sandra-shapshay/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Creative Compassion, Literature and Animal Welfare 1st

ed. Edition Michael J. Gilmour

https://ebookmass.com/product/creative-compassion-literature-and-
animal-welfare-1st-ed-edition-michael-j-gilmour/

The Birth of Ethics: Reconstructing the Role and Nature

of Morality Philip Pettit

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-birth-of-ethics-reconstructing-
the-role-and-nature-of-morality-philip-pettit/

The Secret Life of Pigs: Stories of Compassion and the

Animal Save Movement Richard Hoyle

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-secret-life-of-pigs-stories-of-
compassion-and-the-animal-save-movement-richard-hoyle/

The Ethics of Animal Shelters Valéry Giroux (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-ethics-of-animal-shelters-
valery-giroux-editor/
Cow Care In Hindu Animal Ethics Kenneth R. Valpey

https://ebookmass.com/product/cow-care-in-hindu-animal-ethics-
kenneth-r-valpey/

Animal Welfare: Understanding Sentient Minds and Why It

Matters John G. Webster

https://ebookmass.com/product/animal-welfare-understanding-
sentient-minds-and-why-it-matters-john-g-webster/

The Science of Animal Welfare: Understanding What

Animals Want Marian Stamp Dawkins

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-science-of-animal-welfare-
understanding-what-animals-want-marian-stamp-dawkins/

The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics 1st

Edition Andrew Linzey

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-palgrave-handbook-of-practical-
animal-ethics-1st-edition-andrew-linzey/

Reconstructing Empedocles' Thought Chiara Ferella

https://ebookmass.com/product/reconstructing-empedocles-thought-
chiara-ferella/
i

RECONSTRUCTING SCHOPENH AUER’S ETHICS

ii
iii

RECONSTRUCTING
SCHOPENH AUER’S ETHICS

Hope, Compassion, and Animal Welfare

Sandra Shapshay

1
iv

3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​090680–​1

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

v

For Marcia Baron and Allen Wood, mentors and friends

vi
vii

CONTENTS

Preface ix
Citations to Schopenhauer’s Works xiii

Introduction 1
1. A Tale of Two Schopenhauers 11
2. Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Light of
His Evolving System 37
3. Freedom and Morality 97
4. Compassionate Moral Realism 139
5. A Role for Reason in Schopenhauer’s Ethics 193
Conclusion 211

Bibliography 215
Index 221
vii
ix

PREFACE

This reconstruction of Schopenhauer’s ethics has been in the works

for nearly ten years, but my interest in Schopenhauer, and especially
his philosophy of value, dates back to a conversation that I had with
Arthur Danto while I was a graduate student at Columbia University.
We were discussing my interest in writing a dissertation on Kantian
aesthetics, which prompted him to ask: “Do you know who is the
most underrated and underappreciated philosopher in Western phi-
losophy?” I thought about this for a little while and then answered
gamely, “Hmmm . . . I don’t know . . . maybe Heidegger?” To which
he replied, “Schopenhauer!”
His somewhat enigmatic pronouncement sent me on a quest
to find the philosophical treasures locked up in this earlier Arthur’s
works, and my work focused at first on his aesthetic theory. But
I came to realize that it is his ethical thought that is probably the most
underrated part of this underrated philosopher, and the central aim
of this book is to defend an interpretation of his ethics as both an
original and promising contribution to the subject. Careful attention
x

P r e fa c e

to especially Schopenhauer’s value ontology is rewarding not just for

our understanding of the history of ethics in the 19th century but
also for contemporary reflection in metaethics. Hopefully this work
contributes somewhat to making Schopenhauer a less underrated
thinker.
I have received substantial help with this project over the years.
I am grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD)
for a Faculty Research Grant for research at the Schopenhauer-​
Archiv, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in Fall 2009. Their support
also gave me the opportunity to have illuminating conversations
with Professor Matthias Koßler, President of the Schopenhauer-​
Gesellschaft. Thanks are due also to the College Arts and Humanities
Institute (CAHI) at Indiana University–​ Bloomington, which
awarded me a Faculty Fellowship in 2012, providing me a teaching
release to concentrate on early chapters of this book.
Also beneficial was the chance to try out the arguments in these
chapters at several conferences and symposia. Thanks are due to
Alistair Welchman, who organized the Brackenridge Workshop on
the philosophy of Schopenhauer, University of Texas at San Antonio,
2013, and to Judith Norman, Bernard Reginster, and other speakers
and audience members who pressed a number of objections to the
views in Chapter 4 at that event. A symposium on Schopenhauer’s
views on love and compassion at the University of Ghent in 2013,
organized by Bart Vandenabeele, also provided a wonderful oppor-
tunity for Alex Neill and myself to try out some of the arguments
in Chapter 3, and I’m indebted to audience members at that event
for excellent discussion. I am also appreciative of the opportunity
to present drafts of chapters at the North American Division of
the Schopenhauer Society at the APA Central Division meetings
organized by David Cartwright, and at New York University’s an-
nual conference on Modern Philosophy in 2014, organized by Don

x
xi

P r e fa c e

Garrett, Béatrice Longuenesse, and John Richardson. The session

chair, Desmond Hogan, my commentator, Julian Young, and the
lively audience at NYU helped me to refine Chapters 4 and 5. My
colleague Marcia Baron very kindly organized a workshop on Kant
and Schopenhauer’s Aesthetics and Ethics at the University of St.
Andrews in 2014, and I benefitted very much from discussion there
with Kyla Ebels-​Duggan, Kate Moran, Adrian Piper, Martin Sticker,
and Jens Timmerman. Finally, I’d like to thank the organizers of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 49th annual collo-
quium, for a chance to try out the ideas in Chapter 2, and to John
Richardson, whose astute commentary helped me to refine that
chapter enormously.
I am highly indebted to the few scholars who have paid sustained
and careful attention to Schopenhauer’s ethical thought, and espe-
cially to David Cartwright, Christopher Janaway, Julian Young, and
John Richardson, who read and commented extensively on drafts of
several chapters in this book. The interpretation on offer here also
developed in conversation with Alex Neill (with whom I co-​authored
an earlier version of Chapter 3), Matt Altman, Judith Norman,
Elizabeth Millán, Fred Schmitt, Marco Segala, Alistair Welchman,
Dennis Vanden Auweele, Eric von der Luft, and Gudrun von Tevenar,
as well as with wonderful graduate students at Indiana University–​
Bloomington, Sarah Adams, Uri Eran, Tristan Ferrell, Noam Hoffer,
Daniel Lindquist, Sean Murphy, and Levi Tenen.
Thanks are due to my editor at Oxford University Press, Lucy
Randall, who checked in with me at regular intervals for several years,
and who has shepherded this project to completion with the utmost
professionalism. I’d like also to signal my appreciation to my daugh-
ters, Molly and Marlena, who support their “working mom” every
day with their warmth, intelligence and zest for life, and to my hus-
band, Steve, for being a true partner in all things.

xi
xii

P r e fa c e

Finally, this book would likely not have been possible without the
intellectual and moral support of my two philosophical role models,
colleagues, and friends, Marcia Baron and Allen Wood. And even
if the book would have been possible without them, it would have
been a far worse book had they not conversed with me extensively
throughout the entire process.

xii
xii

CITATIONS TO SCHOPENHAUER’S WORKS

Works by Schopenhauer are referenced in the text parenthetically,

using the abbreviations listed below. Where available, I have used the
standard English translations in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Schopenhauer, general editor Christopher Janaway.
EFR Schopenhauer’s Early Fourfold Root: Translation and
Commentary [Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom
zureichenden Grunde] (original dissertation 1813), ed.
and trans. F. C. White (London: Ashgate, 1997).
FR On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
[Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden
Grunde] (1847/​1864), in On the Fourfold Root of
the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Other Writings,
ed. and trans. David Cartwright, Edward Erdmann,
and Christopher Janaway (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), 1–​198.
FW Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will [Über die Freiheit
des Willens] (1839), in The Two Fundamental Problems
of Ethics (1841/​1860), trans. Christopher Janaway
xvi

C i tat i o n s t o S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s W o r k s

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009),

31–​112.
GB Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Arthur Hübscher
(Bonn: Bouvier, 1978).
HN 1-​5 Der handschriftliche Nachlaß, 5 vols., ed. Arthur
Hübscher (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1970).
MR 1-​4 Manuscript Remains, 4 vols, ed. Arthur Hübscher and
trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Berg, 1988). This is a
translation of HN vols. 1–​4.
OBM Prize Essay On the Basis of Morals [Über die Grundlage
der Moral] (1840), in The Two Fundamental Problems
of Ethics (1841/​1860), trans. Christopher Janaway
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009),
113–​258.
PP I Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical
Essays [Parerga und Paralipomena] (1851), ed.
and trans. Christopher Janaway and Sabine Roehr
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
PP II Parerga and Paralipomena [Parerga und Paralipomena]
(1851), ed. and trans. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher
Janaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015).
SW 1–​7 Sämtliche Werke, ed. Arthur Hübscher
(Mannheim: Brockhaus, 1988), vols. 1–​7.
VC On Vision and Colours [Über das Sehn und die Farben]
(1816/​1854), ed. and trans. David Cartwright,
Edward Erdmann, and Christopher Janaway
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015),
199–​302.
WN On Will in Nature [Über den Willen in der Natur]
(1836/​1854), ed. and trans. David Cartwright,
Edward Erdmann, and Christopher Janaway

xiv
xv

C i tat i o n s t o S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s W o r k s

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015),

303–​460.
WWR I The World as Will and Representation [Die Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung], vol. I (1818/​1844/​1859), ed.
and trans. Christopher Janaway, Judith Norman, and
Alistair Welchman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014).
WWR II The World as Will and Representation [Die Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung], vol. II (1844/​1859), trans. E. F.
J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1966).

xv
xvi
xvi

RECONSTRUCTING SCHOPENH AUER’S ETHICS

xvi
1

Introduction

At the apex of his influence, from about 1860 up to the start of World
War I, Arthur Schopenhauer was known first and foremost as a phi-
losopher of pessimism, sparking an entire “pessimism controversy”
in German philosophy in the latter part of the 19th century.1 Still
today, his main reputation is as one of the few philosophers to have
argued that it would have been better never to have been, for “life is a
business which does not cover its costs” (WWR II, chap. 46, 574).
Otherwise put, since most of life is purposeless striving and suffering,
and there is no God to redeem it all in another life, ascetic resignation
from the will-​to-​life is the most justified response. This none-​too-​
cheerful outlook famously captured the attention of Nietzsche, who
spent much of his philosophical energies countering Schopenhauer’s
resignationism, and devising ways authentically to affirm life, in spite
of what he thought was Schopenhauer’s mostly correct diagnosis of
the human condition.2

1. For a detailed account of this controversy see Frederick C. Beiser, Weltschmerz: Pessimism in
German Philosophy 1860–​1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
2. For two excellent accounts of Nietzsche’s grappling with Schopenhauer’s pessimism up
through his late works, see Christopher Janaway, Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s
Genealogy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and João Constâncio, “Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer: On Nihilism and the Ascetic ‘Will to Nothingness,’” in The Palgrave
Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. Sandra Shapshay (London: Palgrave-​ Macmillan, 2017),
425–​446.

1
2

Introduction

This book aims to complicate and challenge the predominant

picture of Schopenhauer’s ethical thought, and argues that while
the resignationist Schopenhauer—​the one I shall call the “Knight
of Despair”—​represents one side of this thinker, there is another
side, the “Knight with Hope,” and this aspect of his ethical thought
is in direct tension with the resignationist one. Although a few
commentators to date have aimed at reconstructing Schopenhauer’s
somewhat hopeful ethics of compassion (most notably, David
Cartwright, Christopher Janaway, John Atwell, and Gudrun von
Tevenar), they have generally held that Schopenhauer sees the com-
passionate person as attaining only a second-​best insight into the na-
ture of the world and a second-​best comportment within it.3 What
I shall call the “One Schopenhauer” view sees a neat hierarchy here,
with the greatest insight and comportment as embodied in saintly
resignation from life altogether. Yet, as I will suggest in what follows,
this traditional view masks several fundamental tensions between
his two ethical ideals. In contrast, I urge a “Two Schopenhauers”
view, for these two ethical ideals are actually mutually incompat-
ible. Accordingly, instead of reading Schopenhauer as having a hier-
archy of (1) resignationism, and (2) the ethics of compassion, one
should rather see these as competing ethical ideals in his thought, or
so I shall argue.
Although I do not believe Schopenhauer himself was aware of this
as a fundamental consistency problem within his ethical thought, he
does provide a separate elaboration of the ethics of compassion in his
On the Basis of Morals [Über die Grundlage der Moral], and this elabo-
ration is not terribly pessimistic and is decidedly non-​resignationist.
Thus, I believe the Knight with Hope view not only constitutes a

3. Gudrun von Tevenar does evince some worries that the ethics of compassion and
resignationism are in tension in her essay, “Schopenhauer and Kant on Menschenliebe,” in The
Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. Sandra Shapshay (London: Palgrave-​Macmillan, 2017).

2
3

Introduction

more defensible philosophical theory as such, but also is an inter-

pretation of Schopenhauer’s ethical thought that is what the thinker
actually did say at least some of the time. It is the main task of this
book to reconstruct the ethical theory that he presents in this work
especially.
Careful reconstruction of his ethics of compassion in On the Basis
of Morality in particular yields a very interesting hybrid theory of a
Kantian moral theory and sentimentalism à la Hutcheson, Smith and
Hume. In brief, my main claim is that Schopenhauer retains more
from Kant’s ethics (construed in a moral realist rather than construc-
tivist fashion) than commentators to date have acknowledged. What
he retained is the notion that human beings have inherent value that
calls for a certain kind of moral treatment. Schopenhauer departs
from Kant’s notion of rational nature as being “an end in itself ” and
having “dignity beyond all price,” however, widening the criterion
for having inherent value from Kant’s criterion, namely, having a ra-
tional nature, to “having a world” or “being a microcosm.” That is to
say, any sentient, conscious being who has a life that the being cares
about has some degree of inherent value for Schopenhauer. Further,
Schopenhauer departs from the notion that inherent value means
“absolute value” that trumps any other concern; rather, I argue, the
theory regards inherent value as coming in degrees and providing pro
tanto rather than absolute grounds for ethical treatment. I also argue
that according to Schopenhauer, we know the inherent value of sen-
tient beings via a feeling, namely, the feeling of compassion.
Thus, this moral realist foundation—​the value ontology—​is
complemented by sentimentalism in two ways. First, the feeling of
compassion plays a key moral-​epistemic function in tracking inherent
value. And second, the ground for any action to have true moral
worth, for Schopenhauer, is that it was done out of the feeling of
compassion. So, in line with sentimentalists, feeling—​especially the
feeling of compassion—​is crucial to our understanding of the nature

3
4

Introduction

of morality. Yet, the ultimate basis for the normativity of the feeling
of compassion is that it actually tracks the inherent value with which
sentient beings are endowed. Despite this sentimentalist aspect,
however, the theory really bottoms out justificationally in a moral re-
alism about inherent value.
This hybrid ethical theory offers a novel synthesis for the con-
temporary ethical-​theoretical landscape and has several prima facie
attractions. First, by widening the scope of beings who count as
having inherent value, Schopenhauer’s ethics is far less anthropocen-
tric than is Kant’s, and enables him to incorporate concern for animal
welfare and rights much more easily into his system. Contemporary
Kantians are liable to tell rather complicated stories about there being
no direct duties to animals, only duties concerning them, or about an-
imals being morally considerable only because cruelty to them affects
the character of human beings in a negative fashion.4 These accounts
sound, ironically, a bit Ptolemaic in contrast to Schopenhauer’s
ethics, in which animals are directly, morally considerable.
Second, Schopenhauer’s value ontology consists of a spectrum or
degrees of inherent value, and thus, he can bring non-​human animals
into the community of morally considerable beings without having
to bring them in as fully as human beings. This is at least prima facie
appealing to those for whom a strong animal rights view, such as
Tom Regan’s, is implausibly strong.5 Schopenhauer’s way of thinking
about inherent value as coming in degrees, then, is more akin to Mary
Anne Warren’s weaker animal rights view, and provides a systematic
justification for such a view.6

4. See, for instance, Barbara Herman, “We Are Not Alone: A Place for Animals in Kant’s
Ethics,” in Kant on Persons and Agency, ed. Eric Watkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2018), 174–​191.
5. See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004).
6. Mary Anne Warren, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

4
5

Introduction

Third, while Schopenhauer extends the realm of morally con-

siderable beings only to sentient beings who “have a world”—​rather
than to all living beings such as plants, or to species and ecosystems as
a whole—​the extension to all sentient beings nonetheless speaks to
many of the concerns of contemporary environmentalism. Insofar as
human beings should be compassionate toward non-​human animals,
this provides prima facie grounds for protecting the habitat of those
animals as well. Further, Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory provides a
separate and complementary ground from which to argue for envi-
ronmental protection on his system.
Notwithstanding these attractions, there are facets of
Schopenhauer’s system that make his ethical theory problematic.
As alluded to above, by the lights of Schopenhauer’s pessimism,
resignationism seems to be normatively preferred, undermining the
value of the ethical ideal of compassion. In Chapter 1, against the
standard “One Schopenhauer” view, which sees a neat hierarchy of
(1) resignationism, (2) the ethics of compassion, [and in the Parerga
and Paralipomena he throws in (3) eudaimonology as well], I urge
the “Two Schopenhauers” view: Far from there being a neat hier-
archy, there are fundamental tensions between resignationism and
the ethics of compassion. Ultimately, I shall argue, these are really
two incompatible ethical ideals.
In Chapter 2, I suggest that choosing between which of these in-
compatible ethical ideals is superior by the lights of Schopenhauer’s
own system depends on the “fulcrum of hope.” Whether we should
embrace the resignationist, pessimist Knight of Despair, the “Dürer
Knight” as Nietzsche called him, or whether we should rather em-
brace the Knight with Hope, as I shall call him, depends upon
whether according to his own system, there are good grounds for
hope. I shall argue that even on Schopenhauerian grounds we should
prefer the ideal of compassion to that of resignationism, and not just
because most of us will never get to salvation. Rather, it is because as

5
6

Introduction

Schopenhauer’s own philosophical thinking evolved, there emerged

good grounds for hope. And where there are good grounds for
hope, resignation would actually constitute a misguided shirking
of one’s responsibility to “help everyone to the extent that you can”
(OBM, 162).
One of the main stumbling blocks to hope that the world can
get substantially better, however, are the static, Platonic Ideas. In
Chapter 2, I shall address the role of the Ideas in his system, and
I shall argue that we should see Schopenhauer’s own philosophy
as dynamic and that in the course of his intellectual development,
as he gets wind of proto-​Darwinian thought, he comes to drop the
Platonic Ideas from his philosophy of nature. Another stumbling
block to hope is that it seems that Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of
will, even without the Ideas, constitutes good grounds for pessimism
and resignationism. Yet, Schopenhauer’s allegiance to transcendental
idealism prevents him from being an older-​style transcendent met-
aphysician, one who could offer the identification of the thing-​in-​
itself as “Will” in a foundationalist way to prove that the sufferings
of the world cannot be significantly diminished. His identification of
the thing-in-itself with “Will,” I shall argue, should be understood as
“metonymic” and his metaphysics of will should be understood as
“hermeneutic” rather than transcendent.
By “metonymic” I mean that Schopenhauer names the whole (the
thing-in-itself) after its best known part, namely, one’s own “will” on
the strength of one’s non-​observational knowledge of one’s own
willing—​that I will—​and the fact that it is the most immediate in-
tuition one has. By “hermeneutic” I mean that the model of meta-
physics that he outlines as the proper one is that of “deciphering”
or “interpretation” of the world. In offering such an interpretation,
the philosopher uses all of the phenomenological resources of inner
and outer experience, and seeks confirmation by the interpretation’s
ability to make sense of phenomena as a whole. Thus, appropriate

6
7

Introduction

metaphysics, on my reading of Schopenhauer’s view, is similar to of-

fering a well-​justified interpretation of a work of art. Like an artistic
interpretation, it should stand or fall on how well it accords with the
evidence in that work (in the case of the world, the empirical evi-
dence), and with how well it makes sense of the work as a whole.
Admittedly, one could offer an interpretation of the world that is
also transcendently metaphysical, and this is the way the standard
view would read Schopenhauer. I suggest, however, that especially
in the second volume of WWR, Schopenhauer offers an always im-
manent metaphysics. Further, I argue that his philosophical meth-
odology is coherentist rather than foundationalist, and this makes
his metaphysics of will far less capable of grounding pessimism than
most commentators have thought. Whether or not the sufferings of
the world can be significantly diminished is ultimately a question
to be addressed by experience, and settled on the basis of empirical
evidence.
In sum, from the first two chapters, I aim to show that we should
prefer the Knight with Hope. Schopenhauer’s thought develops from
1818 to 1859, and this development is one that supports—​whether
Schopenhauer recognized this or not—​the hope and compassion
position, and away from the resignation and renunciation position.
In this book, I am thus consciously emphasizing the strand present in
Schopenhauer’s writings that I find more appealing philosophically
than the one emphasized by the standard reading.
A third problem for seeing Schopenhauer as a bona fide ethicist is
his apparent hard determinism. In Chapter 3, I trace Schopenhauer’s
grappling with the problem of how freedom is possible from his
1813 dissertation and The World as Will and Representation (1818)
to his essay “On the Freedom of the Will” (1839), and I offer an in-
terpretation of Schopenhauer’s compatibilism that shows how it
departs from but is still similar to Kant’s compatibilism. Ultimately,
for Schopenhauer, though we are each born with an innate character

7
8

Introduction

and are shaped largely by our empirical circumstances, still, rational

beings are responsible for their characters, and can shape and even,
albeit rarely, transform them.
In Chapter 4, I turn to the positive business of reconstructing
Schopenhauer’s Kantian/​Sentimentalist hybrid ethics, which I term
“compassionate moral realism.”7 Contrary to those like Reginster and
Janaway, I argue that Schopenhauer holds that all sentient beings
are endowed with inherent value, and that this makes them mor-
ally considerable. The feeling of compassion plays a crucial moral-​
epistemic role here as the means by which such inherent value is
known in Schopenhauer’s system. In other words, the feeling of com-
passion tracks inherent value. Further, I lay out Schopenhauer’s value
ontology, and the ways in which beings can have different degrees of
inherent value, based on the complexity of their sentient nature. In
this chapter, I also address some of the problems for Schopenhauer’s
robust—​perhaps all-​too robust—​claim that the feeling of compas-
sion is both necessary and sufficient for actions to have moral worth.
In his main arguments for compassion as the sole basis of morality,
Schopenhauer does not take into account the role that reason seems
to play in both determining the right action to take, and in motiving
such actions (just actions in particular). Intent on diminishing the
importance of reason in ethics, Schopenhauer all but ignores its role
except that he sees the formulation of the rational, ethical principle
“harm no one; rather help everyone as much as you can” as an im-
portant “reservoir” for compassion, when the feeling is not actually
“flowing.” He also recognizes the need for reason in the political

7. Colin Marshall has a book in press as I write this, titled, “Compassionate Moral Realism,”
where he defends a novel metaethical position that is to some extent Schopenhauer inspired
(though other influences include Wollaston and Locke). Since I believe we independently
discovered this term I shall use it here to label Schopenhauer’s ethical system, noting that
my use should not be taken as synonymous with Marshall’s contemporary metaethical
position.

8
9

Introduction

sphere, where it is required painstakingly to construct the legal ar-

chitecture that will keep the peace and protect rights as well as pos-
sible, and in the personal sphere, Schopenhauer recognizes the need
for and power of rational reflection in developing a more pro-​social
“acquired character.” What Schopenhauer is really keen to defend in
OBM, however, is the notion that the ultimate source or foundation
of morally worthy action is the feeling of compassion. But any recon-
struction of Schopenhauer’s ethics, I argue, should acknowledge that
in the majority of cases where there is some moral perplexity to the
matter, the feeling of compassion is neither necessary nor sufficient
for acting in a morally worthy manner and needs to be supplemented
by rational reflection which channels compassion toward the right
action (known via reflection).
In Chapter 5, I aim to assuage these worries partially by
reconstructing the various roles that reason does seem to play in
Schopenhauer’s ethics and political thought. Then I utilize what he
says in these contexts to modify the picture he gives of the role of
reason in ethics. Finally, in the Conclusion, I highlight the novelties
of my interpretation as well as some of the attractions and lingering
problems in the Schopenhauerian ethical system I have reconstructed,
suggesting future lines of research into the ways that Schopenhauer’s
less anthropocentric ethics can support a moderate animal rights
view as well as a moderate environmentalism.

9
10
1

Chapter 1

A Tale of Two Schopenhauers

I. THE TWO SCHOPENHAUERS VIEW

This book is the tale of two Schopenhauers: the Schopenhauer who is

the “Dürer Knight . . . [who] lacked all hope,” as Nietzsche called him,
and the Schopenhauer as the “Knight with Hope” as I shall call him.1
Nietzsche’s characterization of his “educator” as a “Knight” is
apt, because, perhaps of all of the German philosophers of the 19th
century, Schopenhauer was the most solitary, combative, and single-​
minded figure of the era. Further, despite laboring largely in obscurity
until the decade before his death, Schopenhauer remained steadfastly
committed to elaborating his philosophical system and to the value
of that system. At the height of his despair that his contemporaries
would not recognize the value of his magnum opus, in the preface to
the second edition of that work, he writes poignantly, “[i]‌t is not to
my contemporaries, it is not to my compatriots—​it is to humanity
itself that I entrust my now-​completed work, in the confidence that
humanity will find some value in it, even if this value will only gain
recognition belatedly, this being the inevitable fate of all good things”
(WWR I, 11).

1. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer is akin to the Dürer Knight insofar as he “lacked all hope
but desired truth.” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Vintage Books/​R andom House, 1967), 123, sec. 20; emphasis added.

11
12

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

As depicted in the famous Dürer engraving (see fig. 1.1),

accompanied only by his trusty horse and dog, this grim-​faced, armor-​
clad knight soldiers on through the battlefield of life, surrounded by
a multitude of evils represented chiefly by the satyr-​like figure of the
devil and the hollow-​eyed, snake-​infested figure of death. Nietzsche
sees Schopenhauer as a philosophical knight, one who labors soli-
tarily to explicate the “riddle of the world” as best he can, without the

Fig. 1.1. Albrecht Dürer, Ritter, Tod und Teufel, copper engraving, 1513.

12
13

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

slightest hope that this world full of suffering could be improved or is,
at bottom, even worth the trouble of explicating.
This Schopenhauer does battle with optimism, especially of the
philosophical variety propounded by Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hegel,
the doctrine that “presents life as a desirable state and man’s hap-
piness as its aim and object” (WWR II, 584). The optimism that
Schopenhauer is keen to combat is the doctrine that holds that
(a) life is a generally desirable state, (b) that the arc of history neces-
sarily involves the reduction of suffering and the increase of freedom
for human beings, and (c) that the purpose of human life is to be
happy. Optimism, for him, is not just a false but also a pernicious doc-
trine insofar as it leads people to feel that their largely miserable lives
constitute a bitter disappointment and even an injustice. By contrast,
the Knight of Despair thinks that Brahmanism, Buddhism, and gen-
uine Christianity—​pessimistic religions—​are correct to teach that
one should not expect happiness out of this life, for “everything in
life proclaims that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated, or
recognized as an illusion” and “that all good things are empty and
fleeting” (WWR II, 573). To this Schopenhauer, “life is a business
that does not cover its costs”; the “world on all sides is bankrupt”;
and thus it would have been better never to have existed (WWR
II, 574). The doctrine in these pessimistic religions that the Knight
of Despair espouses is that (a) life is not a generally desirable state,
(b) the arc of history is not one that includes a necessary reduction in
suffering and increase in freedom, and (c) happiness is not the pur-
pose of human life. Given this state of affairs, the Knight of Despair
concludes that the best and most epistemically justified response to
the world is resignation, that is, to renounce the will-​to-​life in oneself.
This pessimistic Schopenhauer is the one whose audacity
captured the attention of Nietzsche and later writers like Thomas
Hardy as well as philosophers like Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp
Mainländer in the late 19th century. Although this “Pessimismus” had

13
14

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

been, by Schopenhauer’s own account, fully developed between

1814 and 1818 (according to a letter to Julius Frauenstädt, 1855, GB
377), it took John Oxenford’s 1853 article “Iconoclasm in German
Philosophy” in the Westminster Review2—​some 35 years after the
publication of Schopenhauer’s main work—​for Schopenhauer to be
really discovered by the cultural elites in Europe as the great pessi-
mist. Even in Germany Schopenhauer was largely discovered by way
of a German translation of Oxenford’s essay in the Vossische Zeitung.
It is worth looking somewhat closely at Oxenford’s long review
essay of Schopenhauer’s major works in order to understand the re-
ception of Schopenhauer’s system in Europe. When one does, one
sees that the predominant means of discovery colors Schopenhauer’s
thought in a decidedly pessimistic hue. Indeed, the reception of
Schopenhauer into the 19th century and up to the present day has
been influenced by Oxenford’s initial emphasis on Schopenhauer as
what I am calling the Knight of Despair.
Oxenford starts with a description of Schopenhauer as a critic
of Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, especially of their obscure academic
style and general optimism. He stresses, however, that Schopenhauer
is not merely a critic, but is also a clear, compelling system-​builder.
While he lauds this system as “genial,” Oxenford stresses that it is also
profoundly depressing:

[Schopenhauer’s] doctrine . . . is the most disheartening, the

most repulsive, the most opposed to the aspirations of the

2. The original English article can be accessed through Project Gutenberg at the following
link: http://​books.google.com/​books?id=ungVAQAAIAAJ&pg=PP11&dq=%22westm
inster+review%22+%2B+%22iconoclasm+in+german+philosophy%22&ie=ISO-​8859-​
1&output=html. For a fascinating account of the role of British women writers, including
George Eliot, in the discovery of Schopenhauer’s work in England and then in Continental
Europe, see S. Pearl Brilmyer, “Schopenhauer and British Literary Feminism” in The Palgrave
Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. Sandra Shapshay (London: Palgrave-​ Macmillan, 2018),
397–​424.

14
15

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

present world, that the most ardent of Job’s comforters could

concoct. All that the liberal mind looks forward to with hope,
if not with confidence—​the extension of political rights, the
spread of education, the brotherhood of nations, the discovery
of new means of subduing stubborn nature—​must be given up
as a vain dream if ever Schopenhauer’s doctrine be accepted. In a
word, he is a professed “Pessimist”; it is his grand result, that this
is the worst of all possible worlds; nay, so utterly unsusceptible of
improvement, that the best thing we can do is to get rid of it alto-
gether, by a process which he very clearly sets forth. (393–​394)

Oxenford thus frames Schopenhauer’s philosophy as first and fore-

most a thoroughgoing “Pessimism.” Later in the essay, he discusses
Schopenhauer’s more hopeful ethics of compassion, in which the
good person strives to relieve the suffering of others, but Oxenford
underscores that it is not the compassionate person who is
Schopenhauer’s ideal; rather, “[a]‌sceticism, that gradual extinction
of all feelings that connect us with the visible world . . . this is the
perfection of Schopenhauer,” and he concludes the essay by calling
Schopenhauer’s system one of “ultra-​pessimism” (407). Oxenford’s
influential introduction of Schopenhauer to European elites certainly
cast Schopenhauer as a foe of modern progress, as “misanthropic”
and an “ultra-​pessimist.”3

3. Christopher Janaway discusses the reception of Schopenhauer’s thought through

Oxenford’s article in his introduction to Parerga and Paralipomena, volume I [ed. and trans.
Sabine Roehr and Christopher Janaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014),
xiv]. Janaway notes that Schopenhauer did not like being called a “misanthrope” and never
describes his own philosophy in print as “Pessimism” but that the spirit of the age by the
1870s was rather pessimistic and so Schopenhauer’s resignationism struck a welcome
chord with many thinkers. See also Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of
Philosophy, trans. Ewald Osers (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), who believes that
the spirit of the age “met Schopenhauer halfway” though not he claims, as many believe,
due to a widespread pessimism—​for the bourgeoisie at the time generally still believed in

15
16

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

Yet, the “ultra-​pessimist” label does not capture Schopenhauer’s

overall orientation; it is one-​sided, a caricature of his system, or so
I shall argue in this book. One clue that the Oxenford picture is a
somewhat distorted one lies in the fact that Schopenhauer himself
disliked being called a “misanthrope” by Oxenford, and though he
does refer to “mein Pessimismus” in letters to friends in the 1850s, he
never refers in print to his own philosophy as a brand of “pessimism.”4
Schopenhauer’s reluctance to accept the “ultra-​pessimist” and “mis-
anthrope” labels points us to another, less famous, less audacious
Schopenhauer, one who, I shall argue in the course of this book, has
much greater contemporary relevance for normative ethical theory,
namely, the Knight with Hope.
The Knight with Hope does not focus on a battle with optimism
in order to prove that life is not worth living; rather, he shines a bright
light on the myriad sources of suffering in the world in order to do
battle with rampant human egoism and malice, for the Knight with
Hope holds that the “chief source of the most serious evils affecting
human beings is the human being himself ” [die Hauptquelle der

progress—​but due to a kind of realism and desire to adhere to the hard facts of experience
(330–​332).
4. See Schopenhauer’s letter to Julius Frauenstädt, 1855 (GB, 377) in which he discusses Kuno
Fischer’s History of Modern Philosophy (Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Band 2) and the
treatment Fischer gives to Schopenhauer within it. In this letter, Schopenhauer does not
object to Fischer’s calling his philosophy a “Pessimismus”; he objects rather to Fischer’s
view that Schopenhauer’s holding of this doctrine was historically determined: “und da
bin ich als Pessimist der nothwendige Gegensatz des Leibnitz als Optimisten: und das
wird daraus abgeleitet, daß Leibnitz in einer hoffnungsreichen, ich aber in einer desperaten
und malörösen Zeit gelebt habe: Ergo, hätte ich 1700 gelebt, so wäre ich so ein geleckter,
optimistischer Leibnitz gewesen, und dieser wäre ich, wenn er jetzt lebte!—​So verrückt
macht die Hegelei. Obendrein aber ist mein Pessimismus von 1814 bis 1818 (da er komplet
erschien) erwachsen; welches die hoffnungsreichste Zeit, nach Deutschlands Befreiung,
war. Das weiß der Gelbschnabel nicht!” (Deussen, Briefwechsel 1799–​1860). In his HN
“Adversaria” 1828 Schopenhauer does refer to his view as “Pessimismus” as well: “pan-
theism is essentially optimism, but my doctrine is pessimism” (HN 3, 506).

16
17

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

ernstlichsten Uebel, die den Menschen treffen, der Mensch selbst] (WWR
II, chap. 46). Accordingly, he laments the attitudes responsible for
the majority of human-​made suffering:

the conduct of men towards one another is characterized as a

rule by injustice, extreme unfairness, hardness and even cru-
elty . . . The necessity for the State and for legislation rests on this
fact . . . How man deals with man is seen, for example, in Negro
slavery, the ultimate object of which is sugar and coffee. However,
we need not go so far; to enter at the age of five a cotton-​spinning
or other factory, and from then on to sit there every day first ten,
then twelve and finally fourteen hours, and perform the same
mechanical work, is to purchase dearly the pleasure of drawing
breath. But this is the fate of millions, and many more millions
have an analogous fate. (WWR II, 578)

The Schopenhauer in this passage almost sounds like an ally of the

budding Social Democratic parties in Germany at the time, for he
identifies economic and social institutions, such as unbridled indus-
trial capitalism and African slavery, as the major culprits for human
suffering, and his tone is one of disgust at those whose egoism bring
them to exploit other human beings.5

5. Schopenhauer’s own politics, were, however, decidedly on the side of monarchical law and
order, largely because of his Hobbesian view of human nature—​better to have a strong state
that keeps the peace rather than revolutionary anarchy in the streets! Notwithstanding, it
seems that he supported reforms to the monarchical order that would diminish suffering
without thereby falling into anarchy. For instance, he lauds the “great-​hearted British” con-
stitutional monarchy for giving up “20 million pounds sterling to buy the negro slaves in
its colonies their freedom” (OBM, 218). For more on his actual political views and polit-
ical philosophy, see David Woods, “Schopenhauer, the State and Morality,” in The Palgrave
Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. Sandra Shapshay (London: Palgrave-​ Macmillan, 2017),
299–​322.

17
18

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

Further, Schopenhauer is outraged by Christian morals and

philosophers who follow in this tradition for enabling the suffering of
non-​human animals at the hands of human beings:

Because . . . Christian morals give no consideration to animals,

they are at once free as birds in philosophical morals too, they
are mere ‘things’, mere means to whatever ends you like, as
for instance vivisection, hunting with hounds, bull-​fighting,
racing, whipping to death in front of an immovable stone-​cart
and the like—​Bah! what a morals of pariahs, chandalas, and
mlechchas—​which fails to recognize the eternal essence that is
present in everything that has life, and that shines out with un-
fathomable significance from all eyes that see the light of the sun.
(OBM, 162)

Inhumane treatment of animals constitutes a paradigm case of vice

for Schopenhauer, such that “[c]‌ompassion for animals goes together
with goodness of character so precisely that we can confidently assert
that anyone who is cruel to animals cannot be a good human being”
(OBM, 229).
In the above-​quoted passages, Schopenhauer expresses a moral
horror at these potent, human-​made sources of suffering to other
living beings. However, these expressions alone do not distinguish
the Knight of Despair from the Knight with Hope. What makes the
latter Schopenhauer truly distinct from the former is that he not only
highlights the myriad sources of suffering in the world, and he not
only evinces moral horror at these, but he also expresses hope that
things can get significantly better.
Even in his main work, WWR I, book IV, Schopenhauer displays
hope that the improvement of human institutions can prevent unjust
actions:

18
19

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

It is conceivable that all crime could be prevented by a perfect

state, or perhaps merely by universal faith in a system of rewards
and punishments after death. (WWR I, 396, sec. 66)

And he displays hope that some measure of actual happiness can be

gained through virtue, conceived of as compassion:

By diminishing our interest in our own self, our anxious self-​

solicitude is attacked at its root and confined: hence the peaceful,
confident cheerfulness that a virtuous disposition and good conscience
brings, a cheerfulness that appears more distinctly with every good
deed, since every good deed is one more confirmation for ourselves
of the reason for our mood. The egoist feels he is surrounded by
alien and hostile appearances, and all his hopes rest on his own
well-​being. The good person lives in a world of friendly appearances: the
well-​being of each of these appearances is his own well-​being. Even if
the recognition of the overall lot of humanity does not make his
mood a happy one, the lasting recognition that his own being is in
all living things lends his mood a certain constancy and even cheer-
fulness. (WWR I, 400–​401, sec. 66; emphasis added)6

Here, the way to attaining a “peaceful, confident cheerfulness” is

through the exercise of virtue, which for Schopenhauer is, first,
recognizing that one’s “own being is in all living things” and, second,

6. For more on the way moral excellence contributes to happiness, see OBM, sec. 22.
Although it should be noted that true joy, for Schopenhauer, seems reserved for those who
have negated life altogether: “the evil person suffers constant, searing, inner misery through
the violence of his will . . . In comparison, if the negation of the will has arisen in someone,
that person is full of inner joy and true heavenly peace, however, poor, joyless and deprived
his situation might look from the outside” (WWR I, 416). With respect to gains in peace and
joy, there seems to be a continuum here, from egoistic to the compassionate, and finally to
the resigned person.

19
20

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

acting with universal compassion toward all sentient beings (those

capable of experiencing pleasure and pain). The peaceful cheerful-
ness is enjoyed because the good person “lives in a world of friendly
appearances” whereas the egoist feels surrounded by “alien and hos-
tile appearances.” What seems to make all of the difference between,
on the one hand, living in a world of friendly appearances, or, on the
other hand, living in a world of alien and hostile appearances, is one’s
attitude toward other living beings. If one has a “lasting recognition”
that one’s own being “is in all living things,” one can achieve a cheerful
and, it seems, pretty happy life.
What is more, by the time Schopenhauer writes On the Basis of
Morals (1839/​40), he recognizes that actual progress can be made
to reduce the sources of human-​made suffering and he even calls
on individuals and governments to follow the path of compas-
sionate reform. For example, he praises the British nation’s spending
“up to 20 million pounds” to buy the freedom of slaves in America
(OBM, 218).
To be sure, the Knight with Hope is still no philosophical opti-
mist along the lines of a Hegel or Marx. However, as shown above,
and as I will elaborate in Chapter 2, Schopenhauer evinces hope that
through compassionate acts, the painstaking reform of law, and the
development of more humane social and political institutions, suf-
fering of humans and animals may be somewhat reduced, and life can
get significantly better for sentient beings. Further, in line with the
previously cited passage on virtue as its own reward, it seems that
things could be improved to such an extent that life could be a good
thing, not just a less bad thing. After all, the life of the virtuous person
is a life he describes as one of “peaceful, confident cheerfulness” lived
in the midst of “friendly appearances”—​this sounds pretty good, not
just less bad!7 Certainly those who suffer tremendously—​even if

7. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.

20
21

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

virtuous—​might not be able to attain a happy life, but Schopenhauer

singles out the egoist’s life as the paradigmatically bad one, for the
egoist experiences the anxious feeling of being “surrounded by alien
and hostile appearances” (WWR I, 400–​401, sec. 66), whereas the
truly virtuous person—​the one who sees his own sort of being in all
other living beings and who aims to reduce or prevent the suffering of
others—​reaps his or her own happiness reward.
The upshot of close attention to Schopenhauer’s pessimistic
and optimistic claims is that one sees that the key fulcrum between
these two Schopenhauers is the question of hope, namely, are there
good grounds—​even in Schopenhauer’s own system—​to hope
that the world may be significantly improved, and that suffering
may be significantly reduced, such that life could be something
positive? How we answer this question should determine which
of the two Schopenhauers we should embrace for philosophical
reasons.
In other words, hope seems to be the key interpretative fulcrum
by which to interpret Schopenhauer’s ethical thought, for it is hope—​
that life can be not only less bad but also something positive (in terms
of pleasure or some other value)—​that pulls us back to desiring and
pursuing things in life:

The temptations of hope, the flatteries of the present, the sweet-

ness of pleasure, the well-​being that falls to our personal lot amid
the distress of a suffering world ruled by chance and error, all this
pulls us back and fastens our bonds once more. (WWR I, 406)

And it is complete hopelessness that leads to resignation and renun-

ciation of the will-​to-​life:

In real life, we see that unfortunate people who have to drink to

the dregs the greatest amount of suffering and face a shameful,

21
2

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

violent and often miserable death on the scaffold, fully lucid

but deprived of all hope, are quite often transformed in this
way . . . after complete hopelessness has set in . . . the negation of
the will to life has emerged. (WWR I, 420; emphasis added)

So one of the key questions of this inquiry is whether, by the lights

of Schopenhauer’s own system, we have better grounds for hope or
hopelessness? If there are good grounds for hope that suffering can
be significantly reduced in the world, and that life can be positively
desirable, then, philosophically, we ought to embrace the Knight
with Hope and mutatis mutandis for the Knight of Despair. This ques-
tion will be the subject of Chapter 2.

II. THE ONE SCHOPENHAUER VIEW

In contrast to my “two Schopenhauers” view, the traditional view is

to see only one Schopenhauer—​the Knight of Despair—​who holds
that the renunciation from the will-​to-​life constitutes the truest, most
ethical response to a world such as ours in which suffering is tremen-
dous, endemic, and unredeemed, and which cannot get significantly
better such that life would be positively desirable. On this view, there
is really no fulcrum on which the choice of which Schopenhauer to
embrace pivots. On the contrary, the One Schopenhauer view takes
it that there are no good grounds for hope within Schopenhauer’s
system, and thus the ethics of compassionate action is really a practi-
cally second-​best and epistemically second-​rate response to the world.
On this view, while compassion is certainly better than egoism, it is
nonetheless epistemically deficient in comparison to resignation be-
cause, while the compassionate person thinks life could be made pos-
itively good (and not just less bad), the resigned person sees through

22
23

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

the “temptations of hope,” recognizing that life can never be non-​bad.

As discussed above, this is the interpretation of Schopenhauer that
Oxenford presented, and that has prevailed to the current day.
On the canonical One Schopenhauer view, then, there aren’t
two distinct and incompatible Schopenhauerian stances on the world
as I have adumbrated above, namely, that of the Knight of Despair
who applauds renouncing the will-​to-​life and that of the Knight with
Hope who applauds compassionate action. Rather, the life of com-
passion is valuable only instrumentally, as a step along the path to
“salvation” from the will-​to-​life in complete renunciation, though
one might think nonetheless that compassion has intrinsic value for
the one whose suffering is eased. Yet, even from the point of view
of the one helped by another’s compassionate action, on the One-​
Schopenhauer, pessimistic view, the compassionate person’s action
to try to diminish another’s suffering only seems beneficial to the
one who is helped, for fundamentally the “help” might only further
chain the “helped” to the will-​to-​life! Those saintly few who can re-
sign themselves from willing—​and ipso facto from compassionate
willing—​thus embody the highest wisdom and take the normatively
preferred course; but for those of us who cannot or will not be saints,
acting out of genuine compassion expresses some degree of wisdom
and is the morally next best course of action, though it remains episte-
mically and ethically deficient.
Christopher Janaway nicely sums up the “merely instrumental
view” of the morality of compassion as follows:

The person who is so morally good that the distinction between

him-​or herself and others begins to fall away, feels all the suf-
fering throughout the world as if it were his or her own. This
leads to resignation, brought about by sedation of the will or
its recoil away from life. One grasps the utter lack of value in
living and willing as an individual at all. Only by undergoing

23
24

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

such an extreme redemptive transformation in consciousness,

an extinction of the personality that consists in the cessation or
self-​negation of willing, can the individual’s existence attain gen-
uine worth; and morality has value ultimately, not in its own right,
but as a step towards this self-​denial of the will. (2009a, xxxviii;
emphasis added)

There is a good deal of textual support for Janaway’s reading of the sec-
ondary, merely instrumental importance of Schopenhauer’s ethics of
compassion within his system, and of the higher epistemic standpoint
embodied in renunciation. In ­chapter 48 of WWR II, for instance,
Schopenhauer describes the moral virtues—​justice [Gerechtigkeit]
and philanthropy [Menschenliebe]—​as a “means of advancing self-​
renunciation, and accordingly of denying the will-​to-​live” (WWR II,
606). He also applauds early Christianity for its recognition that “the
moral virtues are not really the ultimate end, but only a step towards
it” (WWR II, 608). Further, he describes the psychological transi-
tion from compassion to renunciation that he thinks is bound to take
place in a person who truly exercises the moral virtue of justice:

true righteousness, inviolable justice . . . is so heavy a task, that

whoever professes it unconditionally and from the bottom of his
heart has to make sacrifices which soon deprive life of the sweet-
ness required to make it enjoyable . . . and thus lead to resigna-
tion. (WWR II, 606)

Similarly, Schopenhauer holds that the virtue of Menschenliebe when

seriously exercised leads “even more quickly” to resignation because
“a person [who] takes over also the sufferings that originally fall to
the lot of others” takes on a “hard lot,” and consequently “clinging to
life and its pleasures must now soon yield, and make way for a uni-
versal renunciation . . . [and] denial of the will” (WWR II, 606–​607).

24
25

A Ta l e o f Tw o S c h o p e n h a u e r s

Two reasons emerge from these passages for the almost inevi-
table transition from true moral virtue to renunciation. First, the task
of genuine justice and philanthropy will come to seem rather futile—​
a local, minute decrease in an endless ocean of suffering. Second, re-
ally serious exercise of these virtues is such as to divest a person of
the pleasures she takes in her own life, leading to greater detachment
from her own will-​to-​life.
Finally, textual support for the traditional view can be found in
Schopenhauer’s Parerga and Paralipomena. In the introduction to his
“Aphorisms on the wisdom of life [Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit]”—​
where he offers guidance for a happy existence, such that one
would choose such an existence over non-​existence (PP I, 313)—​
Schopenhauer admits that the “eudaimonology” he is offering
“abandons entirely the higher metaphysical ethical standpoint to
which [his] real philosophy leads.” Thus, he writes, “the whole dis-
cussion here to be given rests to a certain extent on a compromise,
in so far as it remains at the ordinary empirical standpoint and firmly
maintains the error thereof ” (PP I, 313).
Yet, while there is clearly a good deal of textual support for the tra-
ditional, merely instrumental view of Schopenhauer’s ethics of com-
passion, some of its entailments create tensions within his thought
approaching the level of paradox, and this gives us systematic and
philosophical reasons to pursue the Two Schopenhauers view.

III. ONE OR T WO SCHOPENHAUERS?

One tension between Schopenhauer’s resignationism and his ethics

of compassion lies in the fact that the latter is still proclaimed as an
ethical ideal in its own right, normatively to be preferred to egoism or
malice. And yet compassion—​unlike egoism and malice—​actually
works in a manner that is antagonistic to the ideal of renunciation.

25
26

R e c o n s t r u c t i n g S c h o p e n h a u e r’ s  E t h i c s

Similarly, the ideal of renunciation works in a manner contrary to the

ideal of compassion, as I shall explain further below. Insofar as there
really is a mutual antagonism between these ethical ideals, however,
this certainly complicates the view of compassion as merely of instru-
mental value for achieving resignation.8
What’s more, I’d like to suggest that there are really two funda-
mental tensions within Schopenhauer’s ethical thought that have
gone largely unnoticed by commentators. The first lies between the
two distinct parts of Schopenhauer’s ethical principle: “Harm no one;
rather help everyone to the extent that you can,” [Neminem laede; imo
omnes, quantum potes, iuva] (OBM, 140), and the second lies within
Schopenhauer’s claim that compassionate action—​understood as
preventing or alleviating the suffering of others—​is actually beneficial
to the recipients of that action. I shall address these tensions in turn.9
On the first tension, namely, the one lying within Schopenhauer’s
ethical principle itself, it should be noted that the principle does not
function within his system as the Categorical Imperative does in
Kant’s. Schopenhauer’s ethical principle is not the source or founda-
tion of morality, but rather is simply a reservoir for that source which
is the feeling of compassion. Nonetheless, the principle encapsulates
the maxim of a morally good person (OBM, 205), and having such a
principle is, for Schopenhauer, “indispensable for a moral life, as the
container . . . in which the disposition that has risen out of the source
of all morality, which does not flow at every moment, is stored so that
it can flow down through supply channels when a case for application

8. The only other scholar to my knowledge who has drawn attention to the real tension be-
tween Schopenhauer’s ethics of compassion and his resignationism is Gudrun von Tevenar
in the final section of her “Schopenhauer and Kant on Menschenliebe,” in The Palgrave
Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. Sandra Shapshay (London: Palgrave-​ Macmillan, 2018),
261–​282.
9. This section draws on a paper I co-​authored with Tristan Ferrell titled “Compassion or
Resignation, that is the Question of Schopenhauer’s Ethical Thought,” Enrahonar (October
2015), accessible at http://​revistes.uab.cat/​enrahonar/​article/​view/​v55-​shapshay-​ferrell.

26
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
maybe come along and jump the claim, and my Pat won’t get her
gold mine. I guess it’s all right. But I didn’t think the Big Director
would do this!”
 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MONTY MEETS PATRICIA
Monty had made up his mind to go on to Los Angeles and see for
himself why Patricia would not answer his telegram, when he
received the word that she was coming from Kansas City. He swore
a good deal over the delay that would hold him inactive in town. To
fill in the time he wrote a long letter to the sheriff in Tonopah, stating
all the facts in the case so far as he knew them. He hoped that the
sheriff was already on his way to Johnnywater, though Monty could
not have told just what he expected the sheriff to accomplish when
he arrived there.
He tried to trace James Blaine Hawkins, but only succeeded in
learning from a garage man that Hawkins had come in off the desert
at least three weeks before, cursed the roads and the country in
general and had left for Los Angeles. Or at least that was the
destination he had named.
Even Monty could find no evidence in that of Hawkins’ guilt. His
restless pacing up and down the three short blocks that comprised
the main business street of the town got on the nerves of the men
who knew him. His concern over Gary Marshall gradually infected
the minds of others; so that news of a murder committed in
Johnnywater Cañon was wired to the city papers, and the Chief of
Police in Los Angeles was advised also by wire to trace James
Blaine Hawkins if possible.
Old cuts of Gary Marshall were hastily dug up in newspaper
offices and his picture run on the first page. A reporter who knew him
well wrote a particularly dramatic special article, which was copied
more or less badly by many of the papers. Cohen got to hear of it,
and his publicity agents played up the story magnificently, not
because Cohen wished to immortalize one of his younger leading
men who was out of the game, but because it made splendid indirect
advertising for Cohen.
 Monty, of course, never dreamed that he had done all this. He
was sincerely grieving over Gary, whose grave he thought he had
discovered by the bushy juniper. The mere fact that James Blaine
Hawkins had appeared in Las Vegas approximately three weeks
before did not convince him that Gary had not been murdered. He
believed that Hawkins had lain in wait for Gary and had killed him on
his return from Kawich. The grave might easily be that old.
Of course there was a weak point in that argument. In fact,
Monty’s state of mind was such that he failed to see the fatally weak
point until the day of Patricia’s arrival. When he did see it he
abandoned the theory in disgust, threw out his hands expressively,
and declared that he didn’t give a damn just how the crime had been
committed, or when. Without a doubt his friend, Gary Marshall, had
been killed, and Monty swore he would never rest until the murderer
had paid the price. The weak point, which was the well-fed comfort
of the pigs and Jazz, he did not attempt to explain away. Perhaps
James Blaine Hawkins had not gone to Los Angeles at all. Perhaps
he was still out there at Johnnywater, and Monty had failed to
discover him.
He was in that frame of mind when he met the six o’clock train
that brought Patricia. Naturally, he had no means of identifying her.
But he followed a tired-looking girl with a small black handbag to one
of the hotels and inspected the register just as she turned away from
the desk. Then he took off his hat, extended his hand and told her
who he was.
Patricia was all for starting for Johnnywater that night. Monty gave
her one long look and told her bluntly that it simply couldn’t be done;
that no one could travel the road at night. His eyes were very blue
and convincing, and his southern drawl branded the lie as truth.
Wherefore, Patricia rested that night in a bed that remained
stationary, and by morning Monty was better satisfied with her
appearance and believed that she would stand the trip all right.
“I reckon maybe yuh-all better find some woman to go on out,
Miss Connolly,” Monty suggested while they breakfasted.
“I can’t see why that should be necessary, Mr. Girard,” Patricia
replied in her primmest office tone. “I am perfectly able to take care
of myself, I should think.”
 “You’ll be the only woman in the country for about sixty-five or
seventy miles,” Monty warned her diffidently. “Uh course there
couldn’t anything happen to yuh-all—but I expect the sheriff and
maybe one or two more will be down from Tonopah when we get
there, and I thought maybe yuh-all might like to have some other
woman along for company.”
He dipped three spoons of sugar into his coffee and looked at
Patricia with a sympathetic look in his eyes.
“I was thinkin’ last night, Miss Connolly, that I dunno as there’s
much use of your going out there at all. Yuh-all couldn’t do a thing,
and it’s liable to be mighty unpleasant. When I sent that wire to yuh-
all, I never thought a word about yuh-all comin’ to Johnnywater.
What I wanted was to get a line on this man, Hawkins. I thought
maybe yuh-all could tell me something about him.”
Patricia glanced unseeingly around the insufferably hot little café.
She was not conscious of the room at all. She was thinking of Gary
and trying to force herself to a calmness that could speak of him
without betraying her feelings.
“I don’t know anything about Mr. Hawkins, other than that I
arranged with him to run the ranch on shares,” she said, and the
effort she was making made her voice sound very cold and
impersonal. “I certainly did not know that Mr. Marshall was at
Johnnywater, or I should not have sent Mr. Hawkins over. I had
asked Mr. Marshall first to take charge of the ranch, and Mr. Marshall
had refused, on the ground that he did not wish to give up his work in
motion pictures. Are you sure that he came over here and was at
Johnnywater when Mr. Hawkins arrived?” Patricia did not know it, but
her voice sounded as coldly accusing as if she were a prosecuting
attorney trying to make a prisoner give damaging testimony against
himself. Her manner bred a slight resentment in Monty, so that he
forgot his diffidence.
“I hauled Gary Marshall out to Johnnywater myself, over six
weeks ago,” he told her bluntly. “He hunted me up and acted like he
wanted to scrap with me because he thought I’d helped to cheat yuh-
all. He was going to sell the place for yuh-all if he could—and I sure
approved of the idea. It ain’t any place for a lady to own. A man
could go there and live like a hermit and make a bare living, but yuh-
all couldn’t divide the profits and break even. I dunno as there’d be
any profits to divide, after a feller’d paid for his grub and clothes.
“Gary saw it right away, and I was to bring him back to town in a
couple of days; but I had an accident to my car so I couldn’t come in.
I reckon Gary meant to write anyway and tell yuh-all where he was.
But he never had a chance to send out a letter.”
Patricia dipped a spoon into her cereal and left it there. “Even so, I
don’t believe Gary disappeared very mysteriously,” she said, her chin
squaring itself. “He probably got tired of staying there and went back
to Los Angeles by way of Tonopah. However, I shall drive out and
see the ranch, now that I’m here. I’m very sorry you have been put to
so much trouble, Mr. Girard. I really think Mr. Marshall should have
left some word for you before he left. But then,” she added with
some bitterness, “he didn’t seem to think it necessary to let me know
he was coming over here. And we have telephones in Los Angeles,
Mr. Girard.”
Monty’s eyes were very blue and steady when he looked at her
across the table. He set down his cup and leaned forward a little.
“If yuh spoke to Gary in that tone of voice, Miss Connolly,” he
drawled, “I reckon he wouldn’t feel much like usin’ the telephone
before he left town. Gary’s as nice a boy as I ever met in my life.”
Patricia bit her under lip, and a tinge of red crept up over her
cheek bones to the dark circles beneath her eyes, that told a tale of
sleepless nights which Patricia herself would have denied.
The remainder of the breakfast was a silent meal, with only such
speech as was necessary and pertained to the trip before them.
Monty advised the taking out of certain supplies and assisted
Patricia in making up a list of common comforts which could be
carried in a touring car.
He left her at the hotel while he attended to the details of getting
under way, and when he returned it was with a Ford and driver, and
many parcels stacked in the tonneau. Patricia’s suit case was
wedged between the front fender and the tucked-up hood of the
motor, and a bundle of new bedding was jammed down upon the
other side in like manner. Patricia herself was wedged into the rear
seat beside the parcels and packages of food. Her black traveling
bag Monty deposited between his feet in front with the driver.
At the last moment, while the driver was cranking the motor,
Monty reached backward with a small package in his hand.
“Put on these sun goggles,” he said. “Your eyes will be a fright if
you ride all day against this wind without any protection.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Girard,” said Patricia with a surprising
meekness—for her. What is more, she put on the hideous amber
glasses; though she hated the jaundiced look they gave to the world.
Patricia had a good deal to think about during that interminable,
jolting ride. She was given ample opportunity for the thinking, since
Monty Girard never spoke to her except to inquire now and then if
she were comfortable.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
GARY ROBS THE PINTO CAT OF HER DINNER
That same morning Gary finished his third candle and tried his
best to make one swallow of water, held long in his parched mouth,
suffice for two hours.
He could no longer lift the single-jack to the height of his shoulder,
much less strike a blow upon the rock. He leaned against the
bowlder and struck a few feeble blows with the head of the longer of
the two drills; but the steel bounced back futilely, and the exertion
tired him so that he was forced to desist after a few minutes of heart-
breaking effort.
He sat down with his back against the wall where the sunlight
could find him and give a little cheer to his prison, and fingered his
fourth candle longingly. He licked his cracked lips and lifted the
canteen, his emaciated fingers fumbling the screw-top thirstily. He
tried to reason sensibly with himself that only a cowardly reluctance
to meet death—which was the inevitable goal of life—held him
fighting there in that narrow dungeon, scheming to add a few more
tortured hours to his life.
He told himself angrily that he was merely holding up the action of
the story, and that the scene should be cut right there. In other
words, there was absolutely no hope of his ever getting out of there,
alive or dead. Steve Carson, he mumbled, had been lucky. He had at
least taken his exit quickly.
“But I ain’t licked yet,” he croaked, with a cracked laugh. “There’s
a lot of fight in me yet. Never had any use for a quitter. Steve Carson
wouldn’t have quit—only he got beaned with the first rock and
couldn’t fight. I’m not hurt—yet. Trained down pretty fine, is all. When
I’m a ghost, maybe I’ll come back and tell fat ladies with Ouija
boards in their laps how to reduce. Great scheme. I’ll do that little
thing. But I ain’t whipped yet—not until I’ve tried out my jackknife on
that damned rock. Have a drink, old son. And then get to work! What
the hell are you loafing for?”
He lifted the lightened canteen, his arms shaking with weakness,
and took another drink of water. Then, carefully screwing on the top
of the canteen, he set it down gently against the wall and reached
wearily into his pocket. The blade of his knife had never been so
hard to open; but he accomplished it and pulled himself laboriously
to his feet. Steadying himself with one hand against the malapi
bowlder that shut him in, he went to the opening—widened now so
that he could thrust forth his arm to the shoulder—and began
carefully chipping at a seam in the rock with the largest blade of his
jackknife.
He really did not expect to free himself by that means; nor by any
other. Since he began to weaken he had come to accept his fate with
such calmness as his pride in playing the game could muster. But he
could not sit idle and wait for death to creep upon him. Nor could he
hurry it, which he held to be a coward’s trick. He still believed that
the “Big Director” should be obeyed. It was too late now to ask for
another part in the picture. He had been cast for this rôle and he
would play it to the final scene.
So he stood hacking and prying with his knife blade, stopping now
and then to stare out into the hot sunshine. He could even see a
wisp of cloud drift across the bit of blue sky revealed to him through
the narrow rock window of his prison. The sight made him grit his
teeth. He was so close to that free, sun-drenched world, and he was
yet so utterly helpless!
He was standing so, resting from his unavailing task, when the
spotted cat hopped upon the bowlder where every day she sat to be
stroked by Gary’s hand. Gary’s eyes narrowed and he licked his lips
avidly. Faith was carrying a wild dove that she had caught and
brought to the bowlder where she might feast in pleasant company.
“Thanks, old girl,” he said grimly; and stretching out his arm,
snatched the bird greedily from Faith’s mouth. “Some service! Now
beat it and go catch a rabbit; a big one. Catch two rabbits!”
He slid down to a sitting position and began plucking the limp
body of the dove, his fingers trembling with eagerness. The “third
hunger” was upon him—that torment of craving which men who have
been entombed in mines speak of with lowered voices—if they live to
tell about it. Gary longed to tear the bird with his teeth, just as it was.
But he would not yield an inch from his idea of the proper way to
play the game. He therefore plucked the dove almost clean of
feathers, and lighting his one precious remaining candle, he turned
the small, plump body over the candle flame, singeing it before he
held the flame to its breast.
The instant that portion was seared and partially broiled, Gary set
his handsome white teeth into it and chewed the morsel slowly while
he broiled another bite. His impulse—rather, the agonized craving of
his whole famished body—was to tear the body asunder with his
teeth and devour it like an animal. But he steeled himself to self-
control; just as he had held himself sternly in hand down in the cabin
when loneliness and that weird, felt presence plucked at his courage.
He would have grudged the melting of even the half-inch of tallow
it required to broil the bird so that he could eat it and retain his self-
respect; but the succulent flesh was too delicious. He could not think
of anything but the ecstasy of eating.
He crunched the bones in his teeth, pulping them slowly,
extracting the last particle of flavor and nourishment. When he had
finished there remained but the head and the feet—and he flung
them through the opening lest he should be tempted to devour them
also. After that he indulged himself in a sip of water, stretched
himself full length upon the rock floor, and descended blissfully into
the oblivion of deep slumber.
 CHAPTER THIRTY
“SOMEBODY HOLLERED UP ON THE BLUFF”
The left front tire of the town Ford persisted in going flat with a
slow valve leak. The driver, a heedless young fellow, had neglected
to bring extra valves; so that the tire needed pumping every ten
miles or such a matter. Then the Ford began heating on the long,
uphill pull between the Pintwater Mountains and the Spotted Range,
and some time was lost during the heat of the day because of the
necessity for cooling the motor. Delays such as these eat away the
hours on a long trip; wherefore it was nearly dusk when Patricia got
her first glimpse of Johnnywater Cañon.
Up in the crosscut, Gary heard the rumbling throb of the motor,
and shouted until he was exhausted. Which did not take long, even
with the nourishment of the broiled dove to refresh his failing
strength.
He consoled himself afterward with the thought that it was James
Blaine Hawkins come sneaking back, and that he would like nothing
better than to find Gary hopelessly caged in the crosscut. Gary was
rather glad that James Blaine Hawkins had failed to hear him shout.
At any rate, the secret of Patricia’s mine was safe from him, and
Gary would be spared the misery of being taunted by Hawkins. It
was a crazy notion, for it was not at all likely that even James Blaine
Hawkins would have let him die so grisly a death. But Gary was
harboring strange notions at times during the last forty-eight hours.
And the body of one wild dove was pitifully inadequate for the needs
of a starving man.
Monty had not meant to be cruel. Now that he was on the spot, he
tried his best to soften the shock of what he knew Patricia must
discover. That morning he had purposely avoided speaking of his
reasons for fearing the worst. Then Patricia’s manner—assumed
merely to hide her real emotion—had chilled Monty to silence on the
whole subject. With the driver present they had not discussed the
matter at all during the trip, so that Patricia was still ignorant of what
Monty believed to be the real, tragic state of affairs.
Monty looked up from lighting a fire in the stove and saw Patricia
go over to Gary’s coat and smooth it caressingly with her hand. Then
and there he forgave Patricia for her tone at breakfast. She took
Gary’s hat from the cupboard and held it in her hands, her eyes
questioning Monty.
“Gary was saving that hat till he went to town again,” Monty
informed her in his gentle drawl. “He was wearing an old hat of
Waddell’s, and some old clothes Waddell left here when he pulled
out. You see now, Miss Connolly, one reason why I don’t believe
Gary went to Tonopah. His suit case is there, too, under the bunk.
But don’t yuh-all worry—we’ll find him.”
He turned back to his fire-building, and Patricia sat down on the
edge of the bunk and stared wide-eyed around the cabin.
So this was why she had failed to hear from Gary in all these
weeks! He had come over here to Johnnywater after all, because
she wished it. She had never dreamed the place would be so lonely.
And Gary had lived here all alone!
“Is this all there is to the house—just this one room?” she asked
Monty abruptly, in her prim, colorless tone.
“Yes, ma’am, this is the size of it,” Monty replied cheerfully. “Folks
don’t generally waste much time on buildin’ fancy houses, out here.
Most generally they’re mighty thankful if the walls keep out the wind
and the roof don’t leak. If it’s dry and warm, they don’t care if it ain’t
stylish.”
“Is this the way Gary left it?” she asked next, glancing down at the
rough board floor that gave evidence of having been lately scrubbed.
“Yes, ma’am, except for the dust on things. Gary Marshall was a
right neat housekeeper, Miss Connolly.”
“Was?” Patricia stood up and came toward him. “Do you think he’s
—what makes you say was?”
Monty hedged. “Well, he ain’t been keepin’ house here for a week,
anyway. It’s a week ago yesterday I rode over here from my camp.
Things are just as they was then.”
 “You have something else on your mind, Mr. Girard. What was it
that made you wire about foul play? I’ll have to know anyway, and I
wish you’d tell me now, before that boy comes in from fussing with
the car.”
Monty was filling the coffeepot. He set it on the hottest part of the
stove and turned toward her commiseratingly.
“I reckon I had better tell yuh-all,” he said gently. “The thing that
scared me was that this man, Hawkins, come here and made his
brags about how he got the best of yuh-all in that agreement. Him
and Gary had some words over it, the way I got it, and they like to
have had a fight—only Hawkins didn’t have the nerve. He beat it out
of here and Gary rode over to my place that same day and was tellin’
me about it.
“I told him then to look out for Hawkins. He sounded to me like a
bad man to have trouble with; or dealin’s of any kind. That was three
weeks ago, Miss Connolly—four weeks now, it is. I was away for
three weeks, and when I got back I rode over here and found the
place deserted. Gary’s hawse was in the corral and the two pigs was
shut up in the pen, so it looked like he ought to be around
somewheres close. Only he wasn’t. I hunts the place over, from one
end to the other. But there wasn’t no sign of him, except——”
“Except what? I want to know all that you know about it, Mr.
Girard.”
Monty hesitated, and when he spoke his reluctance was perfectly
apparent to Patricia.
“Well, there’s something else I didn’t like the looks of. Up the
creek here a piece, there’s a grave that wasn’t there the last time I
was over here. I’m pretty sure about that, because I recollect I led
my hawse down to the creek right about there, to water him. It’s
about straight down from the corral, and I’d have noticed it.”
“I don’t believe a word of it—that it has anything to do with Gary!”
cried Patricia vehemently, and she went over and pressed her face
against Gary’s coat.
Monty took a step toward her but reconsidered and went on with
his preparations for supper. Instinctively he felt that he would do
Patricia the greatest possible service if he made her physically
comfortable and refrained from intruding upon the sacred ground of
her thoughts concerning Gary.
The boy who had driven the car out came in, and Monty sent him
to the creek for a bucket of fresh water. The boy came back with the
water and a look of concern on his face.
“I thought I heard somebody holler, up on the bluff,” he said to
Monty. “Do you think we’d better go see——?”
Monty shook his head at him, checking the sentence. But Patricia
had turned quickly and caught him at it. She came forward anxiously.
“Certainly we ought to go and see!” she said with characteristic
decision. “It’s probably Mr. Marshall. He may be hurt, up there.” She
started for the door, but Monty took one long step and laid a
detaining hand upon her arm.
“That Voice has been hollerin’ off and on for five years,” he told
her gravely. “I’ve heard it myself more than once. Gary used to hear
it—often. Yuh can’t get an Injun past the mouth of the cañon on
account of it. It was that Voice hollerin’ that made Waddell sell out
and quit the country.”
Patricia looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What is it?” she
demanded. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Neither can anybody else understand it—that I ever heard of,”
Monty retorted dryly, and gently urged her toward the one
homemade chair. “Supper’s about ready, Miss Connolly. I guess
you’re pretty hungry, after that long ride.” Then he added in his
convincing drawl—which this time was absolutely sincere—“I love
Gary Marshall like I would my own brother, Miss Connolly. Yuh-all
needn’t think I’d leave a stone unturned to find him. But that Voice—
it ain’t anything human. It—it scares folks, but nobody has ever been
able to locate it. You can’t pay any attention to it. You set up here to
the table and let me pour yuh-all a cup of coffee. And here’s some
bacon and some fresh eggs I fried for yuh-all. And that bread was
warm when I bought it off the baker this morning.”
Patricia’s lips quivered, but she did her best to steady them. And
because she appreciated Monty’s kindness and his chivalrous
attempts to serve her in the best way he knew, she ate as much of
the supper as she could possibly swallow, and discovered that she
was hungry enough to relish the fried eggs and bacon, though she
was not in the habit of eating either.
The boy—Monty called him Joe—gave Patricia the creeps with his
wide-eyed uneasiness; staring from one to the other and suspending
mastication now and then while he listened frankly for the Voice.
Patricia tried not to notice him and was grateful to Monty for his
continuous stream of inconsequential talk on any subject that came
into his mind, except the one subject that filled the minds of both.
The boy, Joe, helped Monty afterward with the dishes, Patricia
having been commanded to rest; a command impossible for her to
obey, though she sat quiet with her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
Too tightly, Monty thought, whenever he looked her way.
Monty was a painstaking young man, and he had learned from
long experience in the wilderness to provide for possible
emergencies as well as present needs. He wiped out the dishpan,
hung it on its nail and spread the dishcloth over it, and then took a
small, round box from his pocket. He opened it and took out a tablet
with his thumb and finger. He dropped the tablet into a jelly glass—
the same which Gary had used to hold his gold dust—and added a
little water. He stood watching it, shaking it gently until the tablet was
dissolved.
“We-all are going to spread our bed out in the grove, Miss
Connolly,” he drawled easily, approaching Patricia with the glass. “I
reckoned likely yuh-all would be mighty tired to-night, and maybe
kinda nervous and upset. So I asked the doctor what I could bring
along that would give yuh-all a night’s rest without doin’ any harm.
He sent this out and said it would quiet your nerves so yuh-all could
sleep. Don’t be afraid of it—I made sure it wasn’t anything harmful.”
Patricia looked at him for a minute, then put out her hand for the
glass and drank the contents to the last dregs.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Girard,” she said simply. “I was
wondering how I’d get through this night.”
 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“GOD WOULDN’T LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO
GARY!”
Having slept well during the night—thanks to Monty’s forethought
in bringing a sedative—Patricia woke while the sun was just gilding
the top of the butte. The cañon and the grove were still in shadow,
and a mocking bird was singing in the top of the piñon beside the
cabin. Patricia dressed hurriedly, and tidied the blankets in the bunk.
She pulled open the door, gazing upon her possessions with none of
that pleasurable thrill she had always pictured as accompanying her
first fair sight of Johnnywater.
She did not believe that harm had befallen Gary. Things couldn’t
happen to Gary Marshall. Not for one moment, she told herself
resolutely, had she believed it. Yet the mystery of his absence
nagged at her like a gadfly.
Fifty feet or so away, partially hidden by a young juniper, Patricia
could discern the white tarp that covered the bed where Monty
Girard and Joe were still asleep. She stepped down off the doorsill
and made her way quietly to the creek, and knelt on a stone and
laved her face and hands in the cool water.
Standing again and gazing up through the fringe of tree tops at
the towering, sun-washed butte, Patricia told herself that now she
knew what people meant when they spoke of air like wine. She could
feel the sparkle, the heady stimulation of this rare atmosphere
untainted by the grime, the noise, the million conflicting vibrations
created by the world of men. After her sleep she simply could not
believe that any misfortune could have befallen her Gary, whose ring
she wore on her third finger, whose kisses were the last that had
touched her lips, whose face, whose voice, whose thousand
endearing little ways she carried deep in her heart.
“The God that made all this wouldn’t let anything happen to Gary!”
she whispered fiercely, and drew fresh courage from the utterance.
 The mottled cat appeared, coming from the bushes across the tiny
stream. It halted and looked at her surprisedly and gave an inquiring
meow. Patricia stooped and held out her hands, calling softly. She
liked cats.
“Come, kitty, kitty—you pretty thing!”
Faith regarded her measuringly, then hopped across the creek on
two stones and rubbed against Patricia’s knees, purring and mewing
amiably by turns. Patricia took the cat in her arms and stroked its
sleek fur caressingly, and Faith radiated friendliness.
Patricia made her way through the grove, glimpsed the corral and
went toward it, her big eyes taking in everything which Gary may
have touched or handled. Standing by the corral, she looked out
toward the creek, seeking the bushy juniper of which Monty had
spoken. Carrying the cat still in her arms she started forward through
the tall weeds and bushes, burrs sticking to her skirt and clinging to
her silken stockings.
Abruptly Faith gave a wriggle and a jump, landed on all four feet
two yards in advance of Patricia, and started off at an angle up the
creek, looking back frequently and giving a sharp, insistent meow.
Patricia hesitated, watching the cat curiously. She had heard often
enough of dogs who led people to a certain spot when some one the
dog loved was in trouble. She had never, so far as she could
remember, heard of a cat doing the same thing; but Patricia owned a
brain that refused to think in grooves fixed by the opinions of others.
“I can’t see any reason why cats can’t lead people the same as
dogs,” she told herself after a moment’s consideration, and forthwith
turned and followed Faith.
Just at first she was inclined to believe that the cat was walking at
random; but later she decided that Monty Girard had been slightly
inaccurate in his statement regarding the exact location of the juniper
beside the creek. The mottled cat led her straight to the grave and
stopped there, sniffing at the dirt and patting it daintily with her paws.
Monty was frying bacon with a great sizzling and sputtering on a
hot stove when Patricia entered the cabin. Her cheeks showed more
color than had been seen in them for weeks. Her eyes were clear
and met Monty’s inquiring look with their old, characteristic
directness.
“Have a good sleep?” he asked with that excessive cheerfulness
which is seldom genuine. Monty himself had not slept until dawn was
breaking.
“Fine, thank you,” Patricia answered more cordially than she had
yet spoken to Monty. “Mr. Girard, this may not be a pleasant subject
before breakfast, but it’s on my mind.” She paused, looking at Monty
inquiringly.
“Shoot,” Monty invited calmly. “My mind’s plumb full of unpleasant
things, and talking about them can’t make it any worse, Miss
Connolly.”
“Well, then, I’ve been up to that grave. And it wasn’t made by any
murderer. I somehow know it wasn’t. A murderer would have been in
a hurry, and I should think he’d try to hide it—and he wouldn’t pick
the prettiest spot he could find. And I know perfectly well, Mr. Girard,
that if I had killed a man, I wouldn’t spat the dirt down over his grave
and make it as nice and even as that grave is up there. And
somebody picked some flowers and laid them at the head, Mr.
Girard. They had wilted—and I don’t suppose you noticed them.
“Besides,” she finished, after an unconscious pause that seemed
to sum up her reasoning and lend weight to the argument, “the cat
knows all about it. She tried as hard as ever she could to tell me. I—
this may sound foolish, but I can’t help believing it—I think the cat
was there looking on, and I’m pretty sure it was some one the cat
knew and liked.”
Monty poured coffee all over Patricia’s plate, his hand shook so.
“Gary kinda made a pal uh that cat,” he blurted, before he realized
what meaning Patricia must read into the sentence.
“The cat was here when Gary arrived, I suppose,” Patricia retorted
sharply, squaring her chin. “I can’t imagine him bringing a cat with
him.”
A look of relief flashed into Monty’s face. “That cat’s been here on
the place for about eight years, as close as I can figure. Steve
Carson got it from a woman in Vegas when it was a kitten, and
packed it out here in a nose bag hung on his burro’s pack. Him and
the cat wasn’t ever more than three feet apart. There’s been
something queer about that cat, ever since Steve came up missing.”
Monty started for the door, having it in his mind to call the boy to
breakfast. But a look in Patricia’s eyes stopped him, and he turned
back and sat down opposite her at the table.
“I’d let that boy sleep—all day if he wants to,” Patricia remarked.
“He’ll do enough talking about us and our affairs, as it is. I wish you’d
tell me about this Steve Carson. I never heard of him before.”
Whereupon Monty related the mysteriously gruesome story to
Patricia, who listened so absorbedly that she neglected a very good
breakfast. Afterward she announced that she would wash the dishes
and keep breakfast warm for Joe, who appeared to be afflicted with
a mild form of sleeping sickness, since Monty yelled at him three
times at a distance of no more than ten feet, and elicited no
response save a grunt and a hitch of the shoulders under the
blankets. Monty left him alone, after that, and started off on another
exhaustive search of the cañon, tactfully leaving Patricia to herself.
Patricia was grateful for the temporary solitude. Never in her life
had she been so full of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Her forced
resentment against Gary had suffered a complete collapse; the
revulsion of feeling was overwhelming. It seemed to Patricia that her
very longing for him should bring him back.
She pulled his suit case from under the bunk, touching lock and
clasps and the smooth leather caressingly with her fingers. Its
substantial elegance spoke intimately to her of Gary’s unfailing good
taste in choosing his personal belongings. The square-blocked
initials, “G. E. M.” (Gary Elbert Marshall, at which Patricia had often
laughed teasingly), brought a lump into her throat. But Patricia
boasted that she was not the weepy type of female. She would not
yield now to tears.
She almost believed it was accident that raised the lid. For a
moment she hesitated, not liking to pry into the little intimacies of
Gary’s possessions. But she saw her picture looking up from under a
silk shirt still folded as it had come from the laundry, and the sight of
her own pictured eyes and smiling lips gave her a reassuring sense
of belonging there.
 It was inevitable that she should find the “Dear Pat:” letters;
unfolded, the pages stacked like a manuscript, and tucked flat on the
bottom under the clothing.
Patricia caught her breath. Here, perhaps, was the key to the
whole mystery. She lifted out the pages with trembling eagerness
and set her lips upon the bold scribbling she knew so well. She
closed the suit case hastily, pushed it out of sight beneath the bunk
and hurried out of the cabin, clasping the letters passionately to her
breast. She wanted to be alone, to read them slowly, gloatingly,
where no human eye could look upon her face.
She went down to the creek, crossed it and climbed a short
distance up the bluff, to where a huge bowlder shaded a smaller one
beside it. There, with the butte staring down inscrutably upon her,
she began to read.
 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“IT’S THE VOICE! IT AIN’T HUMAN!”
Gary had been imprisoned in the crosscut eight days, counting the
time until noon. He had stretched his lunch to the third day; human
endurance could not compass a longer abstinence than that, so long
as the smallest crumb remained. He had drunk perhaps a quart of
water from the canteen he had carried up the bluff the day before the
catastrophe, and had left the canteen there, expecting to use it for
drilling. With a fresh canteen filled that morning at the creek, he had
something over three gallons to begin with. Wherefore the tortures of
thirst had not yet assailed him, though he had from the first hour held
himself rigidly to the smallest ration he thought he could endure and
keep his reason.
Through all the dragging hours, fighting indomitably against
despair when hope seemed but a form of madness, he had never
once yielded to temptation and taken more during any one day than
he had fixed as the amount that must suffice.
He had almost resigned himself to death. And then Faith,
unwittingly playing providence, had roused a fighting demon within
him. The wild dove had won back a little of his failing strength just
when a matter of hours would have pushed him over the edge into
lassitude, that lethargy which is nature’s anesthetic when the end
approaches, and the final coma which eases a soul across the
border.
While Patricia slept exhaustedly in the cabin below, Gary babbled
of many things in the crosscut. He awoke, believing he had dreamed
that an automobile drove into the cañon the evening before.
Nevertheless he decided that, since there was no hope of cutting
away the granite wall with his knife, or of lifting the bowlder, Atlas-
like, on his shoulders and heaving it out of the incline shaft, he might
as well use what strength and breath he had in shouting.