Compassion in Schopenhauer and Śāntideva

Although it is well known that Schopenhauer claimed that Buddhism closely reflected his own philosophy, this claim was largely ignored until the mid-late Twentieth century. Most commentators on Schopenhauer (with some recent exceptions) since then have mentioned his Buddhist affinities but have been quite broad and general in their treatment. I feel that any general comparison of Schopenhauer’s philosophy with “general” Buddhism would most likely lead to general conclusions. In this article I have attempted to offer a more specific comparison of what is central to Schopenhauer’s philosophy with what is central to Mahāyāna Buddhism, and that is the concept of compassion. 1 University of Glasgow. Email: [email protected]. 2 More recently there have been detailed comparisons with Chinese Buddhism; see App. 3 Conze thinks Schopenhauer does not realize that meditation is important and that he misunderstands the relationship of craving to nirvāṇa. I am not so sure that Conze is right about a lack of meditation in Schopenhauer (for example, see WWR1 §39, especialHutton, Compassion in Schopenhauer and Śāntideva 800 In this article I focus on compassion as presented by its strongest advocate, the Madhyamaka philosopher-monk Śāntideva, and cover four main areas: (1) previous general comparisons between Schopenhauer and Buddhism; (2) the specific relevant ethics of Śāntideva; (3) the specific relevant ethics of Schopenhauer; and (4) comparisons between Schopenhauer’s and Śāntideva’s moral philosophy. This will lead to my conclusion that, in a detailed treatment of ethics, the two are not compatible.