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Arthur Schopenhauer vs Friedrich Nietzsche on Virtue

Schopenhauer's ethics centers on compassion — the recognition that another's suffering is, at the deepest metaphysical level, one's own — and on asceticism as the highest practical achievement. Nietzsche came to read Schopenhauerian compassion as the most refined form of the slave morality he wanted to overcome, and his mature account of virtue centers on self-overcoming, life-affirmation, and the cultivated rank-order of types. The contrast is the clearest case in modern philosophy of a thinker turning against his own first teacher.

About this topic

Virtue has been a central category of ethics since the Greeks treated it as the excellence proper to a human being. Plato analyzed the cardinal virtues, Aristotle developed virtue ethics as habituated dispositions of character, and Confucian and Buddhist traditions parallel this concern with cultivated moral excellence. Medieval thinkers added the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity to the classical inheritance. The modern revival of virtue ethics in the twentieth century returned attention to character and practical wisdom as the ground of moral life.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full Arthur Schopenhauer vs Friedrich Nietzsche comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Virtue quotes hub.

Representative quotes on virtue

Arthur Schopenhauer on virtue

  • “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”

    Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehn vermögen... | Vol. II, Ch. III, para. 31 (On Genius), 1844 | As cited in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy: Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers‎ (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 137

  • “We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

    As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624

  • “Compassion is the basis of morality.”

    Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.

  • “It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher . He must be like Sophocles ' Oedipus , who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.”

    Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815) [ citation needed ]

  • “The New Testament … must be in some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian. It is its morality which places it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagonism to the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is the only possible point of connection between the two.”

    quoted in The Circle of Memory_ An Autobiography - Subhash Kak

All 6 Arthur Schopenhauer quotes on virtue →

Friedrich Nietzsche on virtue

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “Become who you are.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”

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