Solace without Salvation: Schopenhauerian Ethics and Hopelessness

The Anthropocene is both an ecological crisis and a crisis of meaning. As climate change reshapes our planet, it challenges the social structures and meaning-making frameworks that render our existence intelligible. This dual crisis demands both practical interventions and a metaphysical bulwark against despair, neither downplaying suffering nor relying on technological salvation or divine intervention. My proposed paper explores how Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, reframed as a "subtractive religion," provides ethical resources for confronting life in an age of ecological uncertainty.

Although not typically framed as religious, Schopenhauer's philosophical system parallels religious cosmologies that support moral orientations toward ultimate reality. I maintain that his philosophy satisfies the definition of religion articulated by religious ethicists William Schweiker and David A. Clairmont (2020, p. 18). My methodological approach combines close textual analysis of Schopenhauer's works, particularly The World as Will and Representationand On the Basis of Morality, with the multidimensional and hermeneutical method for religious ethics developed by Schweiker and Clairmont. This method examines multiple dimensions of religious traditions, including metaphysical, moral, and epistemological perspectives, and employs interpretive tools to illuminate how these frameworks shape normative commitments.

Schopenhauer's metaphysics is descriptive rather than prescriptive, making the world intelligible without imposing judgments that minimize or resolve suffering. By identifying the Will, a blind and purposeless striving that manifests as endless desire and inevitable disappointment, as the foundation of reality, he explains the pervasiveness of suffering without attempting to justify it. This approach offers an alternative to religious theodicies and secular progress narratives that obscure irrevocable planetary transformation in the Anthropocene. Unlike secular ecomodernists such as Stewart Brand or religious ecotheologians such as Thomas Berry, Schopenhauer neither promises technological salvation nor cosmic rebalancing.

The core ethical dimensions of Schopenhauer's subtractive religion revolve around two forms of subtraction: metaphysical (resignation) and empirical (compassion). Metaphysical subtraction entails negating individual willing, achieved through cognitive insight or intense suffering. This negation parallels religious notions of salvation in its superempirical character and resemblance to divine grace. Yet unlike many religious frameworks, it seeks not transformation into a higher state of being but the cessation of willing itself. For climate ethics, this perspective emphasizes accepting the limits of human agency without surrendering to nihilism or despair. It provides a philosophical basis for addressing the uncontrollable aspects of climate change not as failures requiring technological remedy but as manifestations of the same purposeless striving that constitutes existence itself.

Empirical subtraction, by contrast, manifests as compassion, which is the immediate, unmediated sympathy that motivates individuals to alleviate the suffering of others. For Schopenhauer, compassion arises from the recognition of a shared essence beneath apparent separateness, a piercing of the principium individuationis that reveals our fundamental unity. This dimension of Schopenhauer's ethics is directly applicable to climate ethics, as it directs our attention toward tangible acts of suffering reduction, offering a concrete alternative to despair. Compassion, in this framework, retains its moral force regardless of ultimate outcomes. The alleviation of suffering, however temporary, constitutes a moral good even if the trajectory of climate change renders comprehensive solutions impossible.

What distinguishes Schopenhauer's approach from naïve pessimism or nihilism is its capacity to generate qualified forms of gratitude and hope without relying on compensatory narratives. Gratitude arises from the recognition that pleasure and satisfaction are not necessary elements of existence but contingent reprieves from suffering, making each moment of relief precious precisely because of its fragility. Hope, similarly, derives not from expectations of technological mastery or divine intervention but from the reasonable extrapolation of past contingent goods into future possibilities. This qualified hope provides emotional support without denying the reality of climate catastrophe. Critics might argue that Schopenhauer's pessimism could lead to political quietism, but I demonstrate how his ethics of compassion can motivate engagement rather than withdrawal from climate justice efforts.

In an era when climate impacts may exceed our capacity for mitigation and adaptation, Schopenhauer's subtractive religion offers ethical resources for both action and resilience. By recognizing suffering as intrinsic to existence rather than an aberration to be overcome, his philosophy allows us to find meaning in the alleviation of suffering even without hope for ultimate resolution. This approach responds to Paul Crutzen's early framing of the Anthropocene, acknowledging the dire reality of our situation while still finding grounds for meaningful ethical action—not in the hope for "careful manipulation and restoration of the natural environment," but in the compassionate recognition of our shared essence with all suffering beings.