system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How did Schopenhauer manage to form a pessimistic philosophy while he was an utmost fan of Vedanta?

The core of Schopenhauer's philosophy was the 'Will', which I think in layman's term can be described as an evil force at the heart of everything. However, he also was an avid fan of Indian religion school Vedanta (the philosophy of the Upanishads). Vedanta, for layman's term, states that the heart of everything is the Self. 'The Self' is pretty much the opposite of Schopenhauer's 'The Will'. The Self is Sat, Chit, Ananda (existence, consciousness, bliss). It is believed that those who are enlightened beings and abide in 'The Self' are in the state of constant bliss.

&#x200B;

So I was wondering if any of you could shed a light on that.
gpt
So, two things here. Schopenhauer doesn't privilege the Upanishads over his other sources in his thought, which include strands as diverse as Kant, Plato and Karl Friedrich Krause. On a very simple understanding, Schopenhauer is simply borrowing monistic concepts from Hinduism and integrating them to his own thought, while also constructing his pessimistic edifice from Kantian and Platonic sources. It's obvious he isn't a mere regurgitator of the Upanishads, despite his profound respect for them. Second, its anachronistic to assume that the Upanishads are exemplified in the thought of Advaita Vedantism, which is a tradition that comes long after the work Schopenhauer was actually acquainted with.

&#x200B;

Schopenhauer's primary engagement with Hindu thought (especially the Upanishads) came through an understanding of these texts as containing doctrines that supported Samkhya-Yoga thought, a tradition described as monist-dualism in the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies' volume on Yoga. If you read through Yoga and Samkhya texts, and relate them to the Upanishads, you see where Schopenhauer's position comes from, especially the distinction between prakriti as dynamic matter that consists of all objectivity and purusa as pure self-consciousness, and meditation and "higher cognition" in order to liberate oneself from bondage to prakriti and become purusa i.e. pure subject. Schopenhauer also relies on multiple Upanishadic sources which talk about the stilling of desire as opposed to positive bliss, a theme that was common in classical Indian philosophy (it was a huge controversy in the Nyaya darsana, though there's no evidence Schopenhauer had any engagement with literature of that school.)

&#x200B;

In fact, Schopenhauer seems to have not had engagement with some Upanishads which parallel his position, for example the Katha Upanishad and its discussion of Naciketas being sent to Yama, the god of Death.

&#x200B;

Furthermore, towards the end of WWR, Schopenhauer describes the state of pure subjectivity where the will is quietened as akin to a bliss that would appear to those still caught in the veil of maya as nothing, but to the liberated subject as everything.