The Social Truth of Schopenhauer's ‘Metaphysics of Pity’: Compassion and Critical Theory

Abstract Taking Horkheimer and Adorno's account of pity in the Dialectic of Enlightenment as my starting point, I show that Schopenhauer's compassion‐based moral theory exemplifies key elements of this account. In particular, this moral theory will be shown to possess a social truth for Horkheimer and Adorno because it is an expression of a wrong relation between the particular and the universal that reflects a social reality which is the cause of suffering to which compassion responds. I then argue, mainly with reference to Adorno's theory of moral impulse, that compassion is a presupposition of the type of critical social theory to which Horkheimer and Adorno are committed. This invites the question of how their position differs from Schopenhauer's.