Arthur Schopenhauer

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Arthur Schopenhauer : biography

22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860

It is the most satisfying and elevating reading (with the exception of the original text) which is possible in the world; it has been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death.

It is well known that the book Oupnekhat (Upanishad) always lay open on his table, and he invariably studied it before sleeping at night. He called the opening up of Sanskrit literature "the greatest gift of our century", and predicted that the philosophy and knowledge of the Upanishads would become the cherished faith of the West.

Schopenhauer was first introduced to the 1802 Latin Upanishad translation through Friedrich Majer. They met during the winter of 1813-1814 in Weimar at the home of Schopenhauer’s mother according to the biographer Sanfranski. Majer was a follower of Herder, and an early Indologist. Schopenhauer did not begin a serious study of the Indic texts, however, until the summer of 1814. Sansfranski maintains that between 1815 and 1817, Schopenhauer had another important cross-pollination with Indian Thought in Dresden. This was through his neighbor of two years, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. Krause was then a minor and rather unorthodox philosopher who attempted to mix his own ideas with that of ancient Indian wisdom. Krause had also mastered Sanskrit, unlike Schopenhauer, and the two developed a professional relationship. It was from Krause that Schopenhauer learned meditation and received the closest thing to expert advice concerning Indian thought.Christopher McCoy, 3-4

Most noticeable, in the case of Schopenhauer’s work, was the significance of the Chandogya Upanishad, whose Mahavakya, Tat Tvam Asi is mentioned throughout The World as Will and Representation.Christopher McCoy, 54-56

Buddhism

Schopenhauer noted a correspondence between his doctrines and the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.Abelson, Peter (April 1993). . Philosophy East and West Volume 43, Number 2, pp. 255-278. University of Hawaii Press. Retrieved on: 12 April 2008. Similarities centered on the principles that life involves suffering, that suffering is caused by desire (tanha), and that the extinction of desire leads to liberation. Thus three of the four "truths of the Buddha" correspond to Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will.Janaway, Christopher, Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, p. 28 f. In Buddhism, however, while greed and lust are always unskillful, desire is ethically variable – it can be skillful, unskillful, or neutral.David Burton, "Buddhism, Knowledge and Liberation: A Philosophical Study." Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004, page 22.

For Schopenhauer, Will had ontological primacy over the intellect; in other words, desire is understood to be prior to thought. Schopenhauer felt this was similar to notions of purushartha or goals of life in Vedanta Hinduism.

In Schopenhauer’s philosophy, denial of the will is attained by either:

  • personal experience of an extremely great suffering that leads to loss of the will to live; or
  • knowledge of the essential nature of life in the world through observation of the suffering of other people.

However, Buddhist nirvana is not equivalent to the condition that Schopenhauer described as denial of the will. Nirvana is not the extinguishing of the person as some Western scholars have thought, but only the "extinguishing" (the literal meaning of nirvana) of the flames of greed, hatred, and delusion that assail a person’s character.John J. Holder, Early Buddhist Discourses. Hackett Publishing Company, 2006, page xx. Occult historian Joscelyn Godwin (1945- ) stated, "It was Buddhism that inspired the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and, through him, attracted Richard Wagner.Godwin, J: Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, page 38. Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-932813-35-0 This Orientalism reflected the struggle of the German Romantics, in the words of Leon Poliakov, to free themselves from Judeo-Christian fetters".Arktos, p. 38. In contradistinction to Godwin’s claim that Buddhism inspired Schopenhauer, the philosopher himself made the following statement in his discussion of religions: "Schopenhauer is often said to be the first, or indeed the only, modern Western philosopher of any note to attempt any integration of his work with Eastern ways of thinking. That he was the first is surely true, but the claim that he was influenced by Indian thought needs some qualification. There is a remarkable correspondence, at least in broad terms, between some of the central Schopenhauerian doctrines and Buddhism: notably in the views that empirical existence is suffering, that suffering originates in desires, and that salvation can be attained by the extinction of desires. These three ‘truths of the Buddha’ are mirrored closely in the essential structure of the doctrine of the will (On this, see Dorothea W. Dauer, Schopenhauer as Transmitter of Buddhist Ideas. Note also the discussion by Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, pp. 14-15, 316-21). Janaway, Christopher, Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy, p. 28 f.