Schopenhauer said that our knowledge of our own weal and woe is direct, while our knowledge of the weal and woe of others is always only representation and thus does not affect us.
No, that is not true. My mother cares about my weal and woe even if it doesn’t affect her, and I care about my daughter’s weal and woe even if it does not affect me.
The problem with many philosophers is that they haven’t been parents. Their deductions do not take into account the experience of parental love. A very smart woman once told me that the problem with people such as Nietzsche and Ayn Rand is that they didn’t love anyone; and that created in them a very non-loving attitude which they have passed down to posterity.
I had a brilliant friend who was against family. When I challenged that view, he cut me off. I think that I was in the right. There are many things that are done wrong in the name of family; but that doesn’t mean that family has to be bad. Family can, and should, be done better; and I as a parent have done none of the things that he found loathsome about family.
He also wrote a lot against society. I have come to the conclusion that the problem is not with society but with wrong ways in which it is done. If your society has high levels of incest and domestic violence, and if your society has extreme conformity pressure and an anti-intellectual attitude, then you will be doing wrong things in the name of society. The solution is not to do away with society; that is impossible. The solution is doing society better.
So we see such claims as that all interest is self-interest. Once again, these people aren’t taking into consideration the experience of parental love. In parental love, you care about the child whether or not it affects you; and their interest becomes your interest, not the other way around.
Many people who haven’t experienced parental love have not experienced disinterested concern for another person’s well-being. So they then claim such things as that all interest is self-interest because they have no experience of anything else. I have changed a lot of my views after I became a parent. I ended up realizing that the problem with family and society is not the value itself but the abuses of the value. Wrong things get done for family and society. That does not mean that either of the above is bad.
I want to wed society and family with intelligence. I want to see intelligence being formative to both of the above. I don’t just think that it is possible. I know that it is possible. And I want to see more effort directed toward that outcome.