Reincarnation — the Thoughts of Arthur Schopenhauer
This article is the second in a series about some famous thinkers who have believed in reincarnation. My purpose is to show that, despite the belief of ‘Enlightenment’ thinkers that humanity should have moved on beyond religion, spirituality, and any ideas about the supernatural, there have been many highly intelligent thinkers who reject this viewpoint. The first article was about Immanuel Kant (which also contains details in its footnote 1 about an earlier series which discusses reincarnation). Here I’ll turn my attention to Arthur Schopenhauer.
He is a giant of nineteenth century philosophy. He is sometimes described as an atheist, but this seems strange since he had a great admiration for Buddhism, and said this of the Hindu text the Upanishads: “From every sentence deep, original, sublime thoughts arise… In the whole world there is no study… so beneficial and so elevating… It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death”¹. It hardly needs pointing out that both Buddhism and Hinduism believe in reincarnation.
Here are three statements by Schopenhauer on that subject:
- “The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being — a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently, knowing neither life nor death… When we die, we throw off our individuality like a worn-out garment, and rejoice because we are about to receive a new and better one”². He is referring surely here to an immortal soul.
- “Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life”³.
- “Through this sleep of death it (the individuality) reappears refreshed and fitted out with another intellect, as a new being… Its fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn-out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which this new existence has arisen; they are one being”⁴.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics, and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
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Footnotes:
1. Quoted by Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East, OUP, 1879, I, Plxi
2. Parerga and Paralipomena, II, chapter 15, quoted in Reincarnation: the Phoenix Fire Mystery, Joseph Head and S.L. Cranston (eds.), Crown Publishers, 1977, p296
3. ibid. chapter 16. I haven’t been able to find these two quotes in one online version of the text.
4. from The World as Will and Idea, as footnote 2, p295.
