  A second way in which aesthetic experience has ethical importance for Schopenhauer is as an experience of negative freedom—freedom from the servitude to the will to life. In the case of the beautiful, one gains an experiential insight into a will-less state, one in which the subject perceives the world in a non-egoistic manner.  Schopenhauer’s ethics is based on taking a compassionate stance on and acting for the benefit of others. So the experience of aesthetic will-lessness affords some felt recognition of a necessary first step on that path to compassion, namely, a non-egoistic attitude.