IV. Conclusion and Further Remarks

Compassion, the basis for morality, stands in constant competition with anti-moral dispositions of egoism and malice. To increase a moral agency’s tendency to act more morally is to increase the moral agent’s tendency for compassion. As an existence in the world, the moral agent is subject to the metaphysics of existence, the metaphysics that distinguishes appearance and an interconnected thing-in-itself of the world beyond the reach of human consciousness. Thus, what one moral agent will act in any given circumstance, although not always random, is not completely determined, i.e., not fully known to human consciousness. How the moral agent’s compassion stands against egoism and malice cannot be fully known to the consciousness of either the moral agent or others.

If one is committed to increasing the tendency to act morally, the tendency of his own or that of youth under his education, one should work to improve compassion for all beings, i.e., to acquired learned compassion. Just like planting a seed is no guarantee for the seed to grow into a plant, efforts to improve compassion do not necessarily bear fruit. That is because the metaphysics of existence governing metaphysics of ethics set forth a part that is inaccessible by human consciousness and is beyond the law of determinism. But just like planting a seed increases the probability of it growing into a plant, increased tendency for compassion increases the tendency for a moral agent to act morally. For a moral agent to increase his tendency for compassion through self-knowledge, there are two steps. He should (1) hold the belief that the self is metaphysically connected to all sentient beings and he ought to extend the coverage of “do-no-harm” and “help others” to everyone, and all sentient beings, and (2) hold the desire to perform all obligations that come with the roles he takes on to ensure that his obligations are performed. Not only is the special self-knowledge crucial for the development of compassion, but it is also the key to knowing the content of morality or immorality. Thus, contrary to what Schopenhauer insists about the impossibility of improving one’s morality, we draw a hopeful and optimistic conclusion that there lies a possibility to improve a moral agent’s tendency to act more morally or less immorally.