On Fri, 28 Jan 2000 00:07:31 -0800 Sam Pawlett <rsp at uniserve.com> writes:
>
>
>Michael Pollak wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone know of a good book that treats the reception of early
>Indian
>> philosophical ideas (early buddhism and the Upanishads) by European
>> thought in the 19th century? I'm especially interested a good
>account of
>> Schopenhauer -- how far he was an innovator in this department, and
>how
>> far simply a leading representative of a broader trend. Any and all
>> suggestions appreciated.
>>
>
>Hi MIchael,
>
>As far as I know Schopenhauer is the only 19th cent. philosopher who
>used Eastern thought in his system and was the first to bring the
>Upanishads to western attention.
The New England Transcendentalists especially Emerson and Thoreau certainly had an interest in Eastern thought as well.
>There are a few contemporaries who
>talk
>about eastern philosophy; Derek Parfitt, Robert Nozick and Arthur
>Danto.
>Nozick is into the Indian stuff.
> There is no substitute for reading Schopenhauer himself, he is one
>of
>the greatest prose stylists (even in translation), a pure delight to
>read, despite his reactionary politics, extreme misogyny and his view
>that "life is a brief interruption of an otherwise blissful
>non-existence".
>The best book on Schopenhauer is the one by Bryan Magee. He discusses
>S's relation to the east. There's also Gardiner and the great Jesuit
>historian Copleston, attracted to Schopenhauer for obvious reasons.
>
>Here's some Schopenhauer:
>
>"We find the direct presentation in the Vedas, the fruit of the
>highest
>human knowledge and wisdom, the kernal of which has finally come to us
>in the UPanishads as the greatest gift of the 19th century."World as
>Will and Representation V1 383
>
>"The tragic side of error and prejudice lies in the practical, the
>comic
>is reserved for the theoretical.For example, if we were firmly to
>persuade only three persons that the sun is not the cause of daylight,
>we might hope to see it soon accepted as general conviction. In
>Germany
>it was possible to proclaim Hegel, a repulsive and dull charlatan and
>unparalled scribbler of nonsense, the greatest philosopher of all
>time.
>For twenty years many thousands have stubbornly and firmly believed
>this,
>and even outside Germany the Danish Academy denounced me in support of
>his fame and wished to accept him as summus philosphus
>These ,then, are the disadvantages involved in the existence of the
>faculty of reason, on account of the power of judgement. To them is
>also
>added the possibility of madness. Animals do not go mad, although
>carnivora are liable to fury, and graminivora to a kind of frenzy."
>Ibid
>v1 70.
>
>Sam Pawlett
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