{"id":162,"date":"2009-08-06T07:56:20","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T02:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=162"},"modified":"2021-12-22T08:49:04","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T13:49:04","slug":"schopenhauer-on-the-origins-of-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=162","title":{"rendered":"Schopenhauer on Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\nThe myth of the Fall of man is the only thing in the Old Testament to which I can concede a metaphysical, although only allegorical, truth: indeed it is this alone that reconciles me to the Old Testament. Thus our existence resembles nothing but the consequence of a false step and a guilty desire. New Testament Christianity, the ethical spirit of which is that of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and which is therefore very foreign to the otherwise optimistic spirit of the Old Testament, has also, extremely wisely, started from that very myth &hellip;<\/p>\n<p>The innermost kernel and spirit of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism.<\/p>\n<p>The spirit and ethical tendency, however, are the essentials of a religion, not the myths in which it clothes them.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, I do not abandon the belief that the teachings of Christianity are to be derived in some way from those first and original religions [i.e., Brahmanism and Buddhism]. &hellip; But in virtue of this origin, Christianity belongs to the ancient, true, and sublime faith of mankind. This faith stands in contrast to the false, shallow, and pernicious optimism that manifests itself in Greek paganism, Judaism, and Islam.<\/p>\n<p>~ <strong>Arthur Schopenhauer<\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Schopenhauer was a student of the <i>Upanishads<\/i>, since he found those works &mdash; along with those of Buddhism &mdash; to be compatible with his philosophical outlook. What may be less well known, is that he put Christian mysticism, at least that based on a Neoplatonic outlook which was very influential in the early church, in the same class. Unlike the many <i>cultured despisers of religion<\/i>, Schopenhauer looked past the dogmas, and instead focused on the mental and spiritual attitudes engendered by a religious system.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>[youtube &#8220;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kLyRoKzUCaA&#8221;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The innermost kernel and spirit of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism. <span class=\"continue-reading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=162\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,23,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catholicism","category-christianity","category-schopenhauer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15450,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/15450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}