How Not to Hate Humanity: Schopenhauer's Response to Misanthropy

Abstract

Schopenhauer has a longstanding reputation for misanthropy. The reputation is warranted, but it is also potentially misleading. Privately, Schopenhauer resisted being called misanthropic, possibly because of the false implication that he hated humanity. Recent philosophical studies of misanthropy have helped to forestall this implication by detaching the definition of misanthropy from hatred and associating it instead with a negative critical verdict of humankind that can be expressed in a wider range of responses. On this definition, whether Schopenhauer endorses the misanthropic verdict and how he proposes to respond to it are two separate questions. In this paper, I answer the second question by presenting two of Schopenhauer's proposals for preventing a hateful response. Both proposals confirm that Schopenhauer not only resisted hatred of humanity but also had recommendations for achieving such resistance. However, the two proposals are also markedly different in important respects. The first proposal is still based on a misanthropic evaluation of humankind but recommends a different negative response from hatred, namely contempt. The second proposal, by contrast, is based on an alternative evaluation of humankind and recommends a positive response that supplants both hatred and contempt, namely compassion. In the course of presenting these proposals, I shall give reasons to disfavour the contemptuous proposal and thereby favour the compassionate one.