ABSTRACT
Schopenhauer represents a turning-point in the relation between Western and Eastern thought. Hitherto, the representatives of the former did not for a moment doubt the superiority of their heritage or their right to judge the rest of the world by their standards. That Schopenhauer was able to learn so much from a hotchpotch of this kind is amazing. He could scarcely have done so without the guidance of scholars such as Jones and Colebrooke. The attraction of Indian thought for Schopenhauer was that it provided a sanction for the metaphysic he derived from Plato and Kant. He could cite a more venerable authority than either Greece or Germany. For, like Plato and Kant, Schopenhauer reduces the world of everyday experience to the status of mere appearance. Granted a metaphysic, the ethic to be deduced from it is clear. Egoism is evil, altruism good.
