The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; On Human Nature — Key Ideas to Explore

Innate Character and the Illusion of Freedom

Schopenhauer insists that a man’s character comes from his father and is unalterable. He dismisses as “narrow-minded and ridiculous” any attempt to ignore a person’s parentage. In the essay on free will and fatalism, he argues that freedom exists only outside nature; in the physical world, every action is necessitated. He writes that “the whole course of a man’s life, in all its incidents great and small, is as necessarily predetermined as the course of a clock.”

This determinism does not, for Schopenhauer, erase moral responsibility. Instead, he claims that “by what we do we know what we are, and by what we suffer we know what we deserve.” The will itself, being outside time, never changes. He supports his view by citing Plato’s notion of a free act preceding birth, the Brahmin doctrine of Brahma engraving fate on the skull, and the Christian dogma of predestination.

Moral Instinct vs. Reasoned Ethics

Schopenhauer posits a “moral instinct” that operates independently of rational calculation. He contrasts this innate sense with systems of ethics that derive morality from reason or utility. For him, true moral behavior springs from compassion, which he elsewhere calls the foundation of ethics. In these essays, he repeatedly emphasizes that character is not shaped by education or circumstance but is given from the start.

The translator’s preface notes that the essays are drawn from Schopenhauer’s Parerga and posthumous writings, and that the title “On Human Nature” was invented to express their real scope. The content is not systematic ethics or politics, but an exploration of human nature in various aspects. Schopenhauer’s tone is combative: he dismisses opposing views as perverse or narrow-minded, and he presents his own conclusions as self-evident to any thoughtful person.

Government, Law, and the Limits of Political Action

The section on government applies Schopenhauer’s deterministic view of human nature to politics. He argues that laws and institutions cannot change what people fundamentally are; they can only constrain outward behavior. The state, in his view, is a necessary evil that restrains the harmful effects of innate selfishness, but it cannot produce genuine morality.

Schopenhauer’s political thought is pessimistic: he sees little hope for progress through legislation or reform. His essays on ethics and politics, as the translator notes, are really about human nature itself. The reader will find no blueprint for a just society, but rather a relentless insistence that the root of all human action lies in an unchanging will. This perspective leads him to treat political questions as secondary to metaphysical ones.

These essays reward readers who engage with Schopenhauer’s uncompromising claims about determinism and innate character. The translator has divided the original chapters into named sections, but the arguments are best followed as a continuous polemic. Pay attention to how Schopenhauer uses examples from science, tragedy, and everyday conduct to support his central distinction between physical and moral significance. The result is a bracing, often unsettling view of human nature that challenges any easy faith in reason or reform.

That grey afternoon, Schopenhauer’s insistence that our character is fixed settled over me like the rain itself—heavy, but strangely soothing. I kept circling the idea that will precedes thought, until I reached for the older book where he first unpacked it. The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) — Story, Setting & Ideas felt like finding the root of that stubborn tree. The essays were a echo; this was the source.