La compasión y la experiencia estética como resistencias al capitalismo desde Schopenhauer

Abstract

This paper examines the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, emphasizing his pessimistic conception of the world as a realm governed by an irrational the Will and by the suffering inherent to existence. In response to this horizon, the German thinker proposes two paths that allow for a distancing from capitalist logic: aesthetic experience and compassion, both understood as ways of temporarily suspending the will and transcending the principle of individuation that confines the subject within their own particularity. This reading establishes a critical dialogue with the neoliberal system (here referred to as capitalism, to avoid conceptual ambiguities), which structures contemporary reality through the constant production of desire, self-exploitation, and competition. Within this framework, art and compassion emerge as ethical and aesthetic forms of resistance, capable of creating spaces unbound by the logic of utility or market exchange, thereby opening the possibility of a different mode of existence.