Synthesized answer
According to Schopenhauer, the foundation of moral science is to be sought for, implying a need to find where it is located [3]. He emphasizes the necessity of finding a basis for Ethics that appeals not to the intellect, but to intuitive perception [5]. This basis cannot be an artificial formula, but must be something that springs from the heart of things and lies at the root of human nature [5].
Schopenhauer's aim for Ethics is not to dictate what people "ought to do," as the term "ought" is confined to theological morals [1]. Instead, Ethics should identify, explain, and trace the ultimate source of the varied moral lines of human conduct [1]. He contends that Ethics must content itself with explaining and interpreting that which is given, that which really is or takes place, in order to gain an understanding of it [4].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
ness are occasionally performed without the smallest hope of reward, or fear of punishment involved in their omission. The last paragraph of chis chapter is important because it puts in the clearest light what, according to Schopenhauer, is the end of Ethics. Its aim, he says, is =not= to treat of that which people =ought to do= (for "ought" has no place except in theological Morals, whether explicit, or implicit); but "to point out all the varied moral lines of human conduct; to explain them; and to trace them to their ultimate source." This definition, which assigns no educative…
se a footing, whereby they might have availed to guide the strivings of his volition, in face of its egoistic tendency. It appears to me superfluous to verify all this by describing and criticising every hitherto existing foundation of morality; not only because I share Augustine's opinion, _non est pro magno habendum quid homines senserint, sed quae sit rei veritas_ (It is the truth about a thing, not men's opinions thereon, that is of importance); but also because it would be like _γλαύκας εἰς 'Aθήνας κομίζειν_ (_i.e._, carrying coals to Newcastle); for previous attempts to give a…
moralis fons et fundamentum_"--the foundation of moral science--is to be sought for, _i.e._, where it is to be found. Turning to the Judgment we read: "He" (Schopenhauer) "has omitted to deal with the essential part of the question, apparently thinking that he was required to establish some fundamental principle of Ethics": which he was required to do, unless the Society's Latin is borrowed from _Νεϕαλοκοκκυγία._ And then it goes on to declare that he treated as secondary, indeed as an _opus supererogationis,_ the very thing which the Academy intended should occupy the first place,…
our conduct =ought= to be subject? Who tells you that that =ought to take place, which in fact never does take place=? What justification have you for making this assumption at the outset, and consequently for forcing upon us, as the only possible one, a system of Ethics couched in the imperative terms of legislation? I say, in contradistinction to Kant, that the student of Ethics, and no less the philosopher in general, must content himself with explaining and interpreting that which is given, in other words, that which really is, or takes place, so as to obtain an =understanding=…
ute Ought" grown into a fathomless inscrutable _Εἱμαρμένη_, etc. With Part III. we reach the positive part of the work. Schopenhauer begins (Chapter I.) by emphasising the necessity of finding a basis for Ethics that appeals, not to the intellect, but to the intuitive perception. Such (he says) can never be any artificial formula, which surely crumbles to powder beneath the rough touch of real life; rather must it be something springing out of the heart of things, and therefore lying at the root of man's nature. But is there, he asks (Chapter II.), after all, such a thing as natural…