"The Poison in the Snake's Fang": Schopenhauer on Malice

Schopenhauer is one of the few philosophers in the history of Western ethics to dedicate sustained critical attention to the nature, extent, and phenomenology of malice. This paper seeks to elucidate the nuances of Schopenhauer's account of malice. It is argued that part of its significance lies in how Schopenhauer's idiosyncratic conceptual framework allows him to philosophically capture many widespread beliefs about malicious persons—particularly the view that malice is best explained in terms of the agent's own inner suffering. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer's views about malice raise a number of interpretive puzzles, which the paper subsequently aims to elucidate and solve.