Schopenhauer’s Inheritance On The Moral Philosophy Of Kant, Taking Sympathy As An Example

Schopenhauer is a key to the door of modern philosophy from classical philosophy, because people are confused on the Kant Bridge due to the obscurity of Kant, but fortunately, the other side of the bridge is Schopenhauer philosophy. Schopenhauer has played a major role in inheriting the theory of Kant in the philosophical history. This paper focuses on discussing the inheritance of moral philosophy on Kant by taking the sympathy theory of Schopenhauer as an example. Schopenhauer has strong pursuit for sympathy, he has denounced the innate laws proposed by Kant, demonstrated our moral motivation from the experiential perspective, determined the irrationality of human by taking human themselves as the starting point and the purpose, and created a new area for the development of the Western Ethics.This paper first seeks the ideological origin of the sympathy theory, believing that the ancient Greek philosophy and the modern emotionalism have certain influence on the sympathy theory of Schopenhauer, the moral philosophy of Schopenhauer undergoes the inspiration of religious thought, the perfect integration of Buddhism, the salvation of Christianity and the “Brahma” of Hinduism, which are the concrete manifestation of sympathy theory, because sympathy is exactly the overlapping of self and non-self. And next, the criticism and inheritance of Schopenhauer on the moral philosophy of Kant is demonstrated. The three major moral laws proposed by Kant are criticized mainly based on a clear recognition that the essence of Kant’s moral philosophy is a kind of empty formalism, and then the thought of taking human as the starting point is determined. Next comes to the manifestation of sympathy theory, the human behavior is taken as the manifestation method from the conscience of Chinese philosophy to the sympathy of Western philosophy, and the moral motivation is also explained. The reason for the differences in people’s behaviors lies in the differences in people’s experiential personality and rational personality. And then the sympathy theory, identity of will and constant affirmation of oneself are determined from the perspective of life will based on two philosophical views of Schopenhauer, the existence of sympathy theory is demonstrated through the negation of desire, the generating method of sympathy theory as well as the moral choices within certain range of conditions are demonstrated from the perceptual perspective. At last, considering the impact of sympathy theory on modern people, this paper proposes to maintain sympathy at any time so as to achieve the prosperity of spiritual civilization.Sympathy is something which we have never seen and whose existence we can never deny, the understanding of sympathy is the key to the understanding of the moral philosophy of Schopenhauer, the demonstration of sympathy theory made by Schopenhauer gets rid of the natural development and the absolute legislation of all abstract rationalists, Schopenhauer starts the exploration from experiential and concrete behaviors and rises it to the metaphysical height, he demonstrates with his own will theory and establishes a new system of moral philosophy, which lies in the inheritance on the moral philosophy of Kant in another way.