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Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Critique of Schopenhauer's Doctrine of the Will
- Philosophy East and West
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 67, Number 4, October 2017
- pp. 1191-1221
- 10.1353/pew.2017.0098
- Article
- Additional Information
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This essay discusses Swami Vivekananda's unduly neglected critical remarks on Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy, which are contained primarily in lectures delivered in America and England between 1895 and 1896. I argue that Vivekananda, one of the first commentators to critique Schopenhauer's doctrine of the will from a Vedāntic standpoint, occupies a unique place in the early reception of Schopenhauer's philosophy. In contrast to Paul Deussen and Max Hecker, Vivekananda argues that Schopenhauer equates the will with the noumenal thing-in-itself. According to Vivekananda, Schopenhauer's conception of the will as the noumenal reality is mistaken for two main reasons: first, the will is at least subject to time and hence cannot be identified with the Kantian thing-in-itself beyond time, space, and causality; second, Schopenhauer's conception of the will as the noumenal thing-in-itself conflicts with the soteriological thesis that the will can be transcended through selfdenial and asceticism.