ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788 – 1860)
WEST MEETS EAST – A PHILOSOPHY CRITIQUE BY ERASMUS KOAY,
6th JULY 2024. “What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is”
~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte
By chance, I discovered Schopenhauer who got to know Eastern philosophy then unknown in Europe through an orientalist, Friedrich Majer. Through translated works, he was introduced to Hinduism and Buddhism. He was astounded that some of the central doctrines of these religions coincided with conclusions that he and Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) had reached through an entirely different route.
Nevertheless, I believe his discovery had fallen short, as compared to Plato and all other Western philosophy, that Eastern philosophy said of entirely different intellectual context, and in societies completely different from Europe’s with different languages and cultures altogether – sometimes thousands of years apart is not science-based but religion-based. Sure, you read about Hinduism and Buddhism, but then you didn’t come across Sun-Tzu's Art of War, strategists like Zhuge Liang, Xun Yu and Sima Yi, Tao Zhu Gong and other aspects of thinking and literature. These older civilisations had studied celestial objects, and explore time, galaxies, stars and suns – like the Sumerians, Egyptians, Indus Valley, Chinese and Mesopotamians.
The German philosopher – “philosopher of pessimism” emphasised on the role of the will as the irrational force in human nature. He saw that experiences even through 5 senses by nature of independent reality must remain a permanently closed book to us, being unconceptualizably and unimaginably different from anything we could apprehend; that time, space and causally interconnected material objects. His was to consider the nature of explanation and the structure of our experience.
Schopenhauer two concepts:
1. Force (or Power):
Schopenhauer often referred to force or power in the context of the physical world. He saw the universe as governed by a fundamental force or energy that drives all phenomena. This force operates according to deterministic laws, which means that every event, including human actions, is determined by preceding causes. In his metaphysical view, this force is blind and indifferent, operating independently of human desires or intentions.
2. Will:
Schopenhauer’s concept of will goes beyond mere physical force. For him, will is the inner essence or driving force behind all phenomena, encompassing physical actions, desires, emotions, and intentions. Will, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, is a metaphysical, irrational force that underlies and drives all human behaviour and existence.
The embodiment of “force” and “will”, in my personal opinion should be the ones that leadership and management should take into consideration to help balance a person’s determination to succeed at work or in life. I believe there can only be more literary and philosophical examinations by those who came later after Schopenhauer such as Jack Ma, Steve Jobs, Peter Drucker and others, whom I have yet to read about, can and will provide the answer in leading one to a meaningful and purposeful life unlike that of espoused by Mr. Schopenhauer. By his argument, he stated that art (painting, sculpture, poetry, drama and super-art, music etc.) is the only escapism from the world without a reason and not subservient to will.
“… so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears… we never obtain lasting happiness or peace” and as such the world of humans will always be of violence and injustice ending in death. He was the first to be openly and explicitly atheist and regarded the idea of personal God as conceptually muddled. “Motives are causes experienced from within”
The empirical world is nothing and serves no purpose. It is all an illusion. “The world is my representation” and that there is only the ethics of compassion. If I hurt you, I am damaging my own ultimate being. This differed from Kant who he believed mistakenly identified “rationality” as the foundation of ethics. Schopenhauer believed that compassion is the true foundation of ethics and of love.
Three matters as we draw to conclusion:
1. Schopenhauer saw no point in arguing from the beginning all over again as that will be to reinvent the wheel. It is better to have a new starting point. This is important to the conflict resolution Ukraine-Russia (10 years have passed by so fast) and Palestine-Israel (the arguments since the time of formation in 1948 and the unprecedented attack on Israel on 7th October 2023 ). How do we end it? Or is Schopenhauer right to say, it's hopeless and there will be violence-grim death-injustice? Thus your soul transcends to another time and space but not here.
2. The legacy of Schopenhauer and the quality of the influence he had on people who were famous or about to be famous whether in philosophy or outside. Composer Richard Wagner, neurologists Sigmund Freud acknowledged the analysis of repression that is the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory had been spelled out before him by Schopenhauer and Jung, supreme novelists – Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, Proust, Zola, Thomas Mann, Hardy, Conrad, Maupassant, Chekhov, Maugham and Borges, plays by Bernard Shaw, Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, Poets – Rilke and T. S. Eliot, philosophers – Marx, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.
3. The study of metaphysics, sufferings, him being the first great Western philosopher to draw connections between Western and Eastern thought – is incomplete without reading his works and understanding the depths and comparing to later works.
Conclusion:
Which multinational corporation would want to understand Eastern philosophy – which is the key differentiator of SAMARATA vs. other management consulting firms, to explore and research, to upgrade the level of thinking of their employees and their cultures?
I am sure that most employees will have their own system of beliefs or may explore on their own - existence and purpose in life but how does this coincide with the ethics, morality and values of the organisation. Recent audits by Auditor-General in Malaysia exposed irrational results and mismanagement by the supreme organisation, Human Resources Development Corporation (HRD Corp) where professional trainers are trained and the National Council of Professors (MPN) representing esteemed professors, where is justice? It does not matter how many Standard Operating Procedures or International Standards (ISO) an organisation has obtained, it fails when pessimism sets in and is free for all to take. Even an ex-Prime Minister had his fingers in the cookie jar.
“The reason that the business owner must be in a franchised shop is so that the employee will not take the money from the counter. It is a known fact that pilfering happens in business.” according to a business development manager of a company owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated (MOF Inc.) That to me, needs to be solved from the root.
Sources:
The Story of Philosophy, Bryan Magee
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