Concerning Schopenhauer's Critique of Kant's Doctrine of Law

Abstract

In this article I intend to demonstrate why Schopenhauer is a staunch critic of Kant's doctrine of law, and for such an undertaking, in addition to investigations in the Metaphysics of morals, a capital work where the contents on Kant's doctrine of law are found, I restrict my explanations in relation to Schopenhauer's texts mainly in On the foundation of morals (in this case, to expose the critique of ethics in the legislative-imperative form) and to § 62 of the first volume of The world as will and representation, as well as to the Appendix of this same book, entitled Critique of Kantian Philosophy, (in this case exposing Schopenhauer's concession to understand the law as positive in view of the law of coercion), and finally, also in On the freedom of the will, to expose the concepts of physical and moral freedom, essential to understand Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian doctrine of law.