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Insight Into Irrationality: Schopenhauerian Tragic Compassion
Abstract
This project investigates the nature of existential disvalue, arguing that a profound insight into its structure is mediated through two distinct yet correlated channels: the formal philosophical doctrine of Schopenhauerian pessimism and a specific affective-cognitive orientation I term “tragic compassion.” This paper addresses the problem of how a metaphysics of fundamental irrationality and universal suffering translates into a practical, ethical way of being for the human subject. Arthur Schopenhauer, Julius Bahnsen, Philipp Mainländer, and Eduard von Hartmann all endorse a type of insight through affect—I offer tragic compassion to synthesize these views as they relate to ethics. I foreground an under-explored dimension of Schopenhauerian thought concerning the epistemic status of affect and offer an original account of tragic compassion.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/kw.2026.41.75-95
Date of publication: 2026-09-07 23:36:01
Date of submission: 2026-01-15 12:21:03
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