We offer here a detailed analysis and critique of Sandra Shapshay's book Reconstructing Schopenhauer's Ethics: Hope, Compassion and Animal Welfare. Key features of Shapshay's book include i) arguing for a fundamental inner tension of contradiction between a pessimist Schopenhauer (the Knight of Despair) and a more optimistic one (the Knight of Hope) ii) that such a tension is particularly visible in the doctrine of asceticism and the denial of the will iii) that Schopenhauer's ethics is of great contemporary interest in its own right and is much closer to Kant's than generally acknowledged, in particular practical reason plays a non-negligeable role alongside compassion.
Our novel contribution will consists in the following two parts.
1. Studying two markedly different and incompatible concepts of asceticism (those found in Pali buddhism and Christian mysticism respectively). We show that the concept of asceticism and sainthood founded on Pali buddhism is compatible and complementary with the more positive and optimistic reconstruction of Schopenhauer's ethics (and avoids the inner contradictions and paradoxes pointed out by Shapshay) unlike the case for the concept founded on Christian mysticism. Schopenhauer's concept of asceticism and sainthood was predominantly influenced by Christian mysticism (he mentions Madame Guyon approvingly) which lead to him having a distorted view of Buddhism and other systems of spiritual development in ancient India. The key point here involves the attitude towards suffering. For the Christian mystic suffering per se is an essential and beneficial part of the path while for Pali buddhism it can function at most as a wake up call to launch one onto the path - but it never has spiritual-moral value in itself, rather putting end to suffering is seen as the supreme goal as well as an important condition for spiritual progress. The buddhist path is permeated by energy, confidence, joy and bliss. There is no contradiction between buddhist asceticism and the duty of compassion and the alleviation of the suffering others. Compassionate consideration of the suffering of others should also ideally be a more than sufficient wake up call. Compassion is the whole point of the teaching of buddhism. We also study the similiarity between stages of the path and Schopenhauer's description of super-individual contemplation in Book III of WWRI. Another important contrast is that in Pali buddhism active individual effort is very important - there is no place for passivity and dependence on the power of some exterior other-worldly agent.
2. If Shapshay has studied the affinity and compatibility between Schopenhauer's and Kant's ethics we study the radical incompatibility between the Schopenhauer's and Hegel's ethics (as found in the Phenomenology of Spirit). In particular we attempt to find some new philosophically interesting reasons for Schopenhauer's well-known animosity with regards to Hegel. The key point is that whereas Schopenhauer's Kantian-based ethics is universalist, Hegel's evolutionary ethics appear to be essentially relativistic and dependent on socio-historical-cultural context. For instance compare the stance that slavery is unconditionally wrong, a using of a human being as means and not an ends, a violation of human rights (hence in any time, place or situation) vs. the stance in the Phenomenology of Spirit that slavery played a necessary and positive role - for its time - as part of the developmental process of (western) humanity: that is, slavery is bad now but it was not bad for ancient Rome (cf. the famous master-slave dialectic). This recalls some 18th century thought which held that slavery was actually helping or educating 'savage' people in order to eventually be able to gain their rational autonomy and hence freedom. It also seems to provide a convenient justification for fascism and totalitarianism.
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