The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
In the connection of our system we have found that the content of the concept of wrong is that quality of the conduct of an individual in which he extends the assertion of the will appearing in his own bo ly so far that it becomes the denial of the will appearing in the bodies of othera We have also laid down, by means of very general examples, the limits at which the province of wrong begins ; for we have at once defined its gradations, from the highest degree to the lowest, by means of a fewp. 437 leading conceptions. According to this, the concept of wrong is the original and positive, and the concept of right, whiSE is opposed" to it^ is the derivative and negatfve ; for we must keep to the concepts, and not to the words: As •'tact, thgrB'~v^Id" 15e*^~"iCTir^ right if there were no such thing as wrong. The concept right contains m^ely the negation of wrong, and every action is subsumed under it which does not transgress the limit laid down above, i.e., is not a denial of the will of another for the stronger assertion of our own. That limit, therefore, divides, as regards a purely moral definition, the whole province of possible actions into such as are wrong or right. Whenever an action does not encroach, in the way explained above, on the sphere of the assertion of will of another, denying it, it is not wrong. Therefore, for example, the refusal of help to another in great need, the quiet contemplation of the death of another from starvation while we ourselves have more than enough, is certainly cruel and fiendish, but it is not wrong ; only it can be affirmed with certainty that whoever is capable of carrying unkindness and hardness to such a degree will certainly also commit every wrong whenever his wishes demand it and no compulsion prevents it.
But the conception of right as the negation of wrong finds its principal application, and no doubt its origin, in cases in which an attempted wrong by violence is warded off. This warding off cannot itself be wrong, and consequently is right, although the violence it requires, regarded in itself and in isolation, would be wrong, and is here only justilied by the motive, i.e., becomes right. If an individual goes so far in the assertion of his own will that he encroaches upon the assertion of will which is essential to my person as such, and denies it, then my warding off of that encroachment is only the denial of that denial, and thus from my side is nothing more than the assertion of the will which essentially and originally appears in my body, and is already implicitly
p. 438
THE WORLD AS WILL.
BK. IV.
expressed by the mere appearance of this body ; consequently is not wrong, but right That is to say : I have then a right to deny that denial of another with the force necessary to overcome it, and it is easy to see that this may extend to the killing of the other individual, whose encroachment as external violence pressing upon me may be warded off by a somewhat stronger counteraction, entirely without wrong, consequently with right. For all that happens from my side lies always within the sphere of the assertion of will essential to my person as such, and already expressed by it (which is the scene of the conflict), and does not encroach on that of the other, consequently is only negation of the negation, and thus aflflrmation, not itself negation. Thus if the will of another denies my will, as this appears in my body and the use of its powers for its maintenance, without denial of any foreign will which observes a Like limitation, I can without wrong compel it to desist from such denial, i.«., I have so far a right of compulsion.
In all cases in which I have a right of compulsion, a complete right to use violence against another, I may, according to the circumstances, just as well oppose the violence of the other with craft without doing any wrong, and accordingly I have an actual right to lie precisely so far as I have a right of covipulsion. Therefore a man acts with perfect right who assures a highway robber who is searching him thaThe haThdlhiiig more upon him ; or, if a burglar has broken into his house byliight, induces him by^ lie to enter a cellar and then locks him in A man who has been captured and carried^ off by robbers, for example
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