Humanities & Social Sciences 9 (2016 9) 2131-2138 ~ ~ ~ УДК 172.12 + 177.9 Schopenhauer and Habermas on Negative Understanding of Justice: Interdisciplinary Approach Alexey I. Trotsak* The Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University 14 Nevskogo, Kaliningrad, 236041, Russia Received 26.12.2015, received in revised form 26.02.2016, accepted 04.07.2016 The purpose of this paper is to raise a question on building a just society through the interdisciplinary analysis of A. Schopenhauer and J. Habermas’s systems. <...> In order to understand the connection between these two systems (Schopenhauer’s and Habermas’s) and modern issues of building a just society, it is touched upon the institutional theory and the status of justice within this theory, thereby showing how difficult the understanding of justice can be for both kinds of interdisciplinary knowledge – philosophy and economy – if initial synthesis is not taken into account. <...> Secondly, he rethought Kant’s moral philosophy in order to apply it to the theory of communication and law (Habermas, 1995, 105). <...> However, we are mostly interested not in the historical continuity between the schools but in the continuity of a particular problem that was acutely posed by Schopenhauer in “The World as Will and Representation” and in the contest essay “On the Basis of Morality”. <...> Schopenhauer and Habermas on Negative Understanding of Justice: Interdisciplinary Approach of XX century, this problem acquired special urgency because the development of the capitalist society had faced unmanageable obstacles in social and economic aspects. <...> Link between Schopenhauer’s principle ‘neminem laede’ and Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action It was unacceptable for Schopenhauer’s philosophy to search for the source of society existence in happiness or pleasure. <...> The relationships among people are based on the phenomenon of compassion which in its generalized version corresponds to the Vedic formula: ‘Tat tvam asi’. <...> This phenomenon is also called the ‘golden rule’ of morality. <...> Schopenhauer considers compassion as a moral and valuable phenomenon which is rewarded to everyone by nature. <...> Compassion in frames of its system acts as a priori and posteriori form. <...> Therefore, compassion rests on feelings and at the same time corresponds to norms. <...> Thus, Schopenhauer declares the principle of legal justice a sufficient category which underpins the principle of compassion in the ‘neminem laede’ form (‘do harm to no one’): Since the demand for justice <...>