) to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. ( shrink)īernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. Drawing upon Schopenhauer’s admiration for ‘ascetic’ suicide, I then propose an alternative expressive route for Schopenhauer: that suicide is usually mistaken because it fails to manifest integrity in light of the unfortunate truth about the human condition. Under any of several plausible interpretations of Schopenhauer’s argument that suicide is a futile exercise, his reasoning is unconvincing. Second, I consider Schopenhauer’s attempt to show that suicide is a mistaken response to human suffering. ) circumstances than we ordinarily expect, Schopenhauer largely sets aside questions of both interpersonal morality and prudence to argue that suicide is self-contradictory or futile because it does not undermine the metaphysical facts concerning the place of will in human life, facts ultimately responsible for our unfortunate condition. For whereas Benatar concludes that suicide is sometimes a moral wrong to others but is prudentially rational in a wider array of (. Here my concerns are twofold: First, I investigate why, despite these similarities, Schopenhauer and Benatar arrive at divergent positions regarding suicide. Both maintain that human existence is a misfortune, such that each of us would have been better off having never existed at all.
Among contemporary philosophers, David Benatar espouses a form of pessimism most closely aligned with Schopenhauer’s.
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