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Schopenhauer on the Upanishads

Atanu Dey 10 months ago

“Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all lands

and in all ages, in splendour and vastness, testify to the
metaphysical need of man, which, strong and
ineradicable, follows close upon his physical need.
Certainly whoever is satirically inclined might add that
this metaphysical need is a modest fellow who is content
with poor fare. It sometimes allows itself to be satisfied
with clumsy fables and insipid tales. If only imprinted
early enough, they are for a man adequate explanations of
his existence and supports of his morality. Consider, for
example, the Koran. This wretched book was sufficient to
found a religion of the world, to satisfy the metaphysical
need of innumerable millions of men for twelve hundred
years, to become the foundation of their morality, and of
no small contempt for death, and also to inspire them to
bloody wars and most extended conquests. We find in it the saddest and the poorest form of
Theism. Much may be lost through translation; but I have not been able to discover one
single valuable thought in it. Such things show that metaphysical capacity does not go hand
in hand with the metaphysical need. Yet it will appear that in the early ages of the present
surface of the earth this was not the case, and that those who stood considerably nearer than
we do to the beginning of the human race and the source of organic nature, had also both
greater energy of the intuitive faculty of knowledge, and a truer disposition of mind, so that
they were capable of a purer, more direct comprehension of the inner being of nature, and
were thus in a position to satisfy the metaphysical need in a more worthy manner. Thus
originated in the primitive ancestors of the Brahmans, the Rishis, the almost superhuman
conceptions which were afterwards set down in the Upanishads of the Vedas.”

The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859), E. Payne, trans., Vol. II, Ch. XVII: On
Man’s Need for Metaphysics.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860). The wiki entry on him reads, in part:

He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation … which
characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable
metaphysical will. … Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical
system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among
the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of
Indian philosophy, …

Schopenhauer had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including

philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics, morality, and psychology
have influenced many thinkers and artists. Those who have cited his influence include
philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Anthony Ludovici,
scientists such as Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein, psychoanalysts such as
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Thomas
Mann, George Bernard Shaw, Machado de Assis, Jorge Luis Borges, John Patric, and
Samuel Beckett, and, notably, the composer Richard Wagner.

In short, Schopenhauer was one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition and he
had profound respect for the Indian philosophical traditions. Nietzsche, Wittgenstein,
Schrödinger, Einstein, Freud, Jung, Tolstoy — the list whom he influenced is long and
distinguished.

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