Schopenhauer - Ideas of Death Controlling Everyday Behavior

All religions and philosophical systems are directed principally to this end, and are thus primarily the antidote to the certainty of death which reflecting reason produces from its own resources.  The degree in which they attain this end is, however, very different, and one religion or philosophy will certainly enable man, far more than the others will, to look death calmly in the face.  Brahmanism and Buddhism, which teach man to regard himself as Brahman, as the original being himself, to who all arising and passing away are essentially foreign, will achieve much more in this respect than will those religions that represent man as being made out of nothing and as actually beginning at his birth the existence he has received from another.  In keeping with this we find in India a confidence and a contempt for death of which we in Europe have no conception.  It is indeed a ticklish business to force on man through early impression weak and untenable notions in this important respect, and thus to render him forever incapable of adopting more correct and stable views.  For example, to teach him that he came but recently from nothing, that consequently he has been nothing throughout an eternity, and yet for the future is to be imperishable and immortal, is just like teaching him that, although he is through and through the work of another, he shall nevertheless be responsible to all eternity for his commissions and omissions.  Thus if with a mature mind and with the appearance of reflection the untenable nature of such doctrines forces itself on him, he has nothing better to put in their place in fact, he is no longer capable of understanding anything better, and in this way is deprived of the consolation that nature had provided for him as compensation for the certainty of death.  In consequence of such a development, we now see in England the Socialists among the demoralized and corrupted factory workers, and in Germany the young Hegelians among the demoralized and corrupted students, sink to the absolutely physical viewpoint.  This leads to the result: 'Eat and drink, after death there is no more rejoicing,' and to this extent can be described as bestiality.


-On Death and Rebirth catalog