Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian Thought: Representation and Will and Their Indian Parallels

Chapter Sixteen: The Hidden Compass: Schopenhauer and the Limits of Philosophy

Chapter sixteen TheHiddenCompass: SchopenhauerandtheLimitsofPhilosophy It may appear surprising that Schopenhauer chose not to take his analysis of consciousness further, but he himself makes the reason plain. It is that philosophy should not trespass upon the territory of mysticism. The two have different starting points and different outcomes. Mysticism is private in nature and for this reason unable to convince others, but philosophy takes as its ground what all men have in common and in consequence possesses the power to convince.1 It will not have escaped notice that many of the expressions that Schopenhauer employs in the Manuscript Remains when speaking of the better consciousness bear a markedly religious or even mystical flavor. We have seen that the better consciousness is “light, repose, joy,” “the source of all sure consolation,” “light, virtue, the holy spirit,” and “the peace of God,” and that Kant is “blasphemous” when he attributes morality to reasonratherthantobetterconsciousness .HadSchopenhauercontinuedtouse positive expressions to speak of the better consciousness, this could hardly have been avoided. And yet he was aware that anything he could write along these lines would be derived from theoretical knowledge only and not from direct knowledge, and in consequence could not match the words of those who had written from their own experience. In short, it is for the mystic to describe his experience, not the philosopher. After referring to the mystics of the Christian and Vedānta traditions, Schopenhauer writes: “I have now mentioned the sources from which we can obtain a direct knowledge, drawn from life, of the phenomena in which the denial of the will-to-live exhibits itself. To a certain extent, this is the most important point of our whole discussion; yet I have explained it only quite generally, for it is better to refer to those who speak from direct experience, than to increase the size of this book unnecessarily by repeating more feebly what they say.”2 208 schopenhauer’s encounter with indian thought Schopenhauer, of course, makes no pretence of being a mystic and in his personal life was far from that denial of the will that he recognized as the indispensable prerequisite for insight of this nature. But throughout his writing the validity and value of their vision, the essential truth of their understanding (despite its varied conditioning by religious forms), is present in the background like a continuous ground-note. He tells us that he considers the agreement of his own philosophy with quietism and asceticism to be a proof of its accuracy,3 and it is with good reason that Bryan Magee observes that the mystical side of Schopenhauer “is basic to the whole thrust and tenor of his philosophy. His affinity with Hinduism and Buddhism, and with the mystical tradition in all religions, rests on it.”4 “Rationalism” and “Illuminism” In his published work Schopenhauer, wishing to avoid the transcendental metaphysics condemned by Kant, was careful not to trespass on the ground of the mystics: “I have guarded against setting even one foot thereon,” he writes,5 which of course implies that he was tempted to do so. Nevertheless, he read the mystics,6 recognized the reality of the experiences they record, and himself yearned for an escape such as they describe from the domination of the will, as his words at the end of the first volume of his principal work make evident: “We then look with deep and painful yearning at that state, beside which the miserable and desperate nature of our own appears. . . .”7 He identified the core of mystical insight that, in his view, lies at the heart of the experience of beauty and the sublime; and, as we have seen, he eagerly pursued the information provided by the progressive discovery of Indian philosophical and religious ideas. In consequence, even in his published works, Schopenhauer’s thought often spills over the narrow limits within which he seeks to confine philosophy . The questions of the nature of ultimate reality and of the meaning and purpose of life are only half-excluded; they hover just out of sight and every now and then break through the barriers he has erected. It is a consistent theme throughout his writings that beyond all that we can grasp conceptually there lies something else, something of ultimate value, available not to The Hidden Compass: Schopenhauer and the Limits of Philosophy 209 the philosopher but only to the experience of the mystic. But this...