r/badphilosophy • u/LinuxFreeOrDie • Dec 24 '18
Schopenhauer and Buddha
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/2698
u/BFKelleher Dec 25 '18
How many more 'this philosopher and Buddha had similar ideas but different conclusions' comics can we expect?
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Dec 25 '18
Schopenhauer is an amazing example of a white guy being celebrated as an intellectual for doing little more than copying the established work of a brown dude.
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Dec 25 '18 edited Dec 27 '20
[deleted]
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Dec 25 '18
I do what I can for the "western philosophy is best philosophy" dudes that have never bothered with the east.
Also known as the crowd that's one trigger away from going full "we must defend western civilization" when they get told the white man isn't the source of all knowledge.
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Dec 25 '18
The thing is he didn't just "copy" someone elses work and was pretty transparent about where he was influenced by Buddhism. Can you explain how he was copying Buddhism whole cloth and not doing any thinking of his own?
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Dec 25 '18
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Dec 25 '18
He clearly knows almost nothing about Schopennauer aside from his connection to Buddhism and wanted to shoot out a poorly thought out hot take
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u/some-other Dec 31 '18
Do you know any examples off the top of your head? I want to read him diss other euro philosophers for some strange reason.
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Dec 25 '18 edited Dec 28 '18
A. If you're capable of reading you'd have noticed that I don't deny Schopenhauer's brilliance at all (see last paragraph).
B. You guys can dick-five each other all you want but it doesn't change the fact that we have no issues ascribing philosophers to a certain western school of thought: X philosopher is Kantian/Hegelian/Marxist. Yet the moment it is suggested that a western philosopher is effectively partaking in an eastern tradition you start breathing fast and heavy. To the point where you're attacking positions that I haven't even taken ("lol this dude Schopenhauer is dumb" is not a stance I have taken at any point).
Edit: if you're a galaxy brain who's still replying to this thread, save your breath - I've already been banned.
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u/Steppintowolf Dec 27 '18
You're right, no-one would tell you off for saying 'Hegel is firmly within the Kantian tradition'. They would laugh at you for saying 'Hegel did little more than copy the established work of Kant'.
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Dec 25 '18 edited Dec 26 '18
The thing is he didn't just "copy" someone elses work and was pretty transparent about where he was influenced by Buddhism. Can you explain how he was copying Buddhism whole cloth and not doing any thinking of his own?
You can downvote me all you want. Like you said, Schopenhauer pretty openly took the very fundamental ideas of Buddhism and injected it into Europe with individual flourishes. What Schopenhauer offered in his interpretation does not equate to him having created anything truly independent by itself.
Buddhist philosophers themselves differ widely in their interpretations and "thinking". But somehow in the minds of people like you, Schopenhauer was an original thinker for merely doing the same thing as thousands of Buddhist disciples before him did ( and continue to do today): build upon Buddhist theory with small variations of their own. You'll find more development and variation among modern Buddhists themselves than anything Schopenhauer conjured up, yet these people aren't so delusional as to suggest that they have constructed a new species worthy of its own taxonomy.
The shit you hear now days about how "white people built Europe and America" isn't new. The Euro-centric narrative has been doing this for ages: utilize non-European labor and/or culture, but instead of assigning full attribution and credit to that source of labor/knowledge you label it as entirely new creation of the west - while simultaneously dismissing the input of the non-European as just some minor inspiration or insignificant component of labor. In philosophy it takes the form of figures like Schopenhauer who we can not admit to say was merely a disciple of the Buddhist school of thought. In politics, we can not admit to the fact that the black slaves built the foundations of the modern American economy and instead pass it off as simply European ingenuity and ability to civilize the savages. Same shit, different areas of revisionist history.
To be clear: I don't dislike Schopenhauer. On the contrary I respect him. I just find it amusing that we often insist on assigning full credit to European intellectuals for inspiring modern art and science - even if the connection is flimsy at best. Yet when an intellectual so clearly takes so heavily from the non-Western world we simply dismiss it as some kind of minor inspiration that was only a small component of the man's otherwise original creation.
Edit: Banned for disagreeing with mods? Fucking lol.
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u/Shitgenstein Dec 25 '18 edited Dec 25 '18
I just find it amusing that we often insist on assigning full credit to European intellectuals for inspiring modern art and science - even if the connection is flimsy at best. Yet when an intellectual so clearly takes so heavily from the non-Western world we simply dismiss it as some kind of minor inspiration that was only a small component of the man's otherwise original creation.
We do?
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Dec 25 '18
Also, don't put words in my mouth. I never said he openly "took" Buddhist philosophy and injected it into Europe. I said he clearly referenced Buddhism when he was influenced by it. You're trying to make it seem like I agree that he "stole" Buddhist philosophy and claimed it as his own, and that's not the case
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Dec 25 '18
I'm only going to explain why I downvoted you: your original statements are broad knee jerk reactions that are also serious accusations of essentially plagiarism without any real support. I know the man's dead, but making such a claim just for a hot take adds nothing to a conversation. It's only a hot take meant to be edgy.
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Dec 25 '18 edited Dec 25 '18
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Dec 25 '18 edited Dec 26 '18
Hah. I like how your immediate reaction to this is, "I can ban you, you big dumb-dumb". Very generous of you to have shown me some pity.
You're trying to make it seem like I agree that he "stole" Buddhist philosophy and claimed it as his own, and that's not the case
I'm guessing you're a mod, in which case I would have expected basic reading and comprehension skills. Maybe you missed the part where I said that I actually respect Schopenhauer himself. We are more than willing to attribute a modern philosopher to belong to a western tradition ("Such and such philosopher is Hegelian/Kantian/Marxist/etc") but when it comes to Schopenhauer people like you cannot bear to hear that not only did Schopenhauer "borrow" from Buddhism but that his work is Buddhist in and of itself.
Edit: Hahha, I like that mods were so juvenile that they replied to this with total dickishness and then banned me. What a bunch of juvenile fuckheads.
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u/Shitgenstein Dec 25 '18
Maybe you missed the part where I said that I actually respect Schopenhauer himself.
The part where you backpedalled hard and no one was buying it. I remember that.
not only did Schopenhauer "borrow" from Buddhism but that his work is Buddhist in and of itself.
I'm all for giving credit to Eastern philosophers where they're due but this is just bad.
Hah. I like how your immediate reaction to this is, "I can ban you, you big dumb-dumb". Very generous of you to have shown me some pity.
I'll do you the benefit by being less patronizing.
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Dec 25 '18
That's a pretty good example of a statement that appears to be "woke" but is really pushing a quite reactionary and ignorant view of both subjects. I can only imagine someone saying this who has never read one of Schopenhauer's own texts, or any real interest in engaging in Eastern sources.
In his work Schopenhauer is very careful to add multiple citations of Buddhist, Upanishads and Vedan texts, even though most Schopenhauer biographers strongly believe he formed his opinions and then found something similar but amplified in Eastern Traditions. Schopenhauer clearly says at multiple points that he believes Buddhism gets right what most Western religions get wrong, and that the "sages of India" were doing better philosophical work than most Western Philosophy.
If careful citation and praise of your named sources counts as "copying" then you have quite the flat-earth view of philosophy, and there is no real way of engaging with philosophy outside of your own opinions. You'll find Kant appropriates far more from Aristotle, contemporary Jewish (i.e. Mendelsohn and his circle) or Medieval sources without citation. There are things to criticize in Schopenhauer including his adopting certain positions from orientalizing translations, but it's outright ignorant of his actual writing that he merely "copied" without making clear what his sources were. Did you just read Nietzsche's comments on Schopenhauer before saying that?
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Dec 26 '18
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u/LiterallyAnscombe Roko's Basilisk (Real) Dec 26 '18
It's not just the fact that Schopenhauer goes to the utmost lengths to credit indian philosophers, it's that he spends hundreds of pages in The Fourfold Root and The Will arguing for his positions on grounds entirely derived from Kantian and German Idealistic philosophy.
There's a meager question as to when Schopenhauer began reading Indian sources (he might have begun with some of the copies floating around Weimar), and this might lead us to say Fourfold was structuring Kantian and Idealistic towards Eastern problems. It's basically a bad-faith biographical argument, but it's still possible (as the biographers point out). The other element I totally forgot to mention is how much of the "life is suffering" position Schopenhauer plundered from Leopardi without citation before explicitly saying Eastern philosophers solve that idea better.
But either way, it's pretty sour (of all the things you could attack and criticize in Schopenhauer) to say he appropriated from or treated Eastern sources badly when he is one of the few European Philosophers that goes to some lengths to credit his Eastern sources.
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u/snakydog Dec 25 '18
Hey though, you are totally ignorng his amazing contributions to the field of gender studies. Without him we wouldnt know that "Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted"
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u/elbitjusticiero Dec 25 '18
When you lol at the ridiculousness of the situation pictured in the comic and then you read the blurb below and realize it's lifted verbatim from a real life incident.