In Greek and Roman mythology, there is the tale of Eos, the beautiful goddess of

the dawn. One day, she fell deeply

in love with a handsome mortal, Tithonus. She had a perfect body and was immortal,
but Tithonus would eventually
age, wither away, and perish. Determined to save her lover from this dismal fate,
she beseeched Zeus, the father of the
gods, to grant Tithonus the gift of immortality so that they could spend eternity
together. Taking pity on these lovers,
he granted Eos her wish.
But Eos, in her haste, forgot to ask for eternal youth for him. So Tithonus became
immortal, but his body aged.
Unable to die, he became more and more decrepit and decayed, living an eternity
with pain and suffering.

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This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from

Cambridge Core
10 - The Tat Tvam Asi Formula and Schopenhauer's “Deductive Leap”
from Part III - Asia Inhabits Germany's Cultural and Intellectual History
Summary
Schopenhauer and the Theoretical Concerns of Cross-Cultural Philosophy

IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY German reception of the East, Arthur Schopenhauer is well

known for his crucial, influential, and thought-provokingly bold use of Indian
thought. Throughout his work he reiterated that Hindu and Buddhist philosophies
offered profound ideas that transcended cultural and temporal boundaries and were
echoed in great European thinkers such as Plato and Kant. His own philosophical
system, he argued, arrived at the same epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical
conclusions that Hindu and Buddhist thought presented in a more religious context
and metaphoric language. Within the “Hindu” corpus he continually referred to the
Vedas, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavadgītā, among which he held particularly the
Upanisads in high philosophical regard and considered them the comfort and solace
of his life and death.

In addition to influencing subsequent thinkers, artists, and writers such as

Nietzsche, Wagner, and Hesse, Schopenhauer's understanding of Hindu and Buddhist
philosophies proves to have tremendous potential to engage scholars of different
disciplines, approaches, and methodologies. His admiration of and affiliation to
Vedānta and Buddhist thought inspire a number of “comparative universalists,” from
Max Hecker to Dorothea Dauer, who are inclined to find fundamental agreements
between Schopenhauer's system and Hindu and Buddhist worldviews. “Comparative
relativists” from J. J. Gestering to Richard White examine Schopenhauer with a more
critical eye, highlighting the incompatibilities between his thought and Hindu-
Buddhist ideas, and exposing his mis-understanding and
misappropriation of them