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Philosophy, video essays. New videos every week.

1h ago

Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Religion - Buddhism and Hinduism (pt. 3)

WATCH:Pt. 1: https://youtu.be/f9EVlUJyrQgPt. 2: https://youtu.be/XAXj06hZe5IIt is pretty well-known that Schopenhauer greatly admired both Buddhism and Hinduism. It’s said he read the Upanishads every night before bed, and at the end of his life he even taught himself Sanskrit. Let’s take a closer look at his thought on these Eastern religions. Recall how in the previous parts we saw how Schopenhauer calls religions pessimistic or optimistic depending on how they interpret the nature of the material world. According to this classification, Judaism was optimistic while Christianity was pessimistic. Buddhism and Hinduism of course, are both pessimistic with regards to the material world. The Buddhistic acknowledgement that life is suffering, that earthly happiness cannot be found, the strict ascetic lifestyle of Buddhists and Brahmans, these factors are, in Schopenhauer’s lexicon, signs of a pessimistic religion: a religion that regards with contempt the material world and seeks to turn away from it through fasting, meditation, and abstinence. The question is, where does this pessimism come from? Ultimately, the pessimistic outlook must stem from an epistemic scepticism regarding the material world. What this means is that there must be a conviction that the material world is not the world of supreme importance, that something exists beyond mere matter, that the material world is an illusion. We see how Buddhism and Brahmanism (or Hinduism) are in fundamental agreement (even if there are some particular differences) with Schopenhauer’s metaphysical as well as moral teachings. While New Testament Christianity is certainly in agreement with Schopenhauer’s moral teachings, it is lacking on the metaphysical front. Buddhism and Hinduism, on the other hand, score well on both fronts. For this reason, Schopenhauer ranks the Eastern religions as the most perfect expressions of truth to be found in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
2h ago

Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Religion - Why Religion Must PRETEND to Be Literally True (pt. 1)

You may not realize it, but hidden in his collection of essays, Arthur Schopenhauer has worked out a more or less systematic philosophy of religion. This is the first part in a series of videos that will cover Schopenhauer’s unique outlook on religion. If you want to be notified when the other parts come out, please consider subscribing and clicking the bell button.Schopenhauer’s main gripe with religion is with the distinction they make between meaning in sensu proprio versus in sensu allegorico. “Sensu proprio” is the Latin term he uses which basically means “in a literal sense.” Sensu allegorico, of course, means “in an allegorical sense.” What happens with religion, is they present some kind of dogma, which might be true in an allegorical sense, but they have to pretend to mean it in a literal sense. Religion cannot pretend its main tenets are merely allegorical because doing so would mean to undermine their own credibility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
3h ago

This Painting Almost Made Dostoevsky Atheist

Support us on Patreon, get access to exclusive videos:▶ https://www.patreon.com/WeltgeistYT▶ Follow us on X for updates: https://x.com/WeltgeistYTOUR ANALYSES: ▶ Beyond Good and Evil: https://youtu.be/WIHXZUltfqk▶ The Antichrist: https://youtu.be/qej1Z8Qzq_c▶ Genealogy of Morals: https://youtu.be/6PUx4cOfFcI▶ Twilight of the Idols: https://youtu.be/YpVr_NEvWYA▶ The Will to Power: https://youtu.be/He6ZC7ZFBt8▶ Daybreak: https://youtu.be/cOL2z7nuXdA▶ The Joyful Science: https://youtu.be/U0fTBOJ-C_IWhen Dostoevsky was on the run from creditors, he and his wife arrived in the Swiss city of Basel. There they visited the local art museum and saw one of Hans Holbein's most famous masterpieces: The Dead Body of Christ in the Tomb. According to Anna, Dostoevsky's wife, her husband was completely transfixed upon viewing this painting. He stared at it for hours, even going so far as finding chairs in the museum to sit in front of it. The painting would play a role in Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, where the titular character pronounces that a painting like this might cause a man to lose his faith.This video explores why that is. Dostoevsky grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church, and iconographically, this Church prefers to show Christ as a judge and ruler of mankind, the so-called Christos Pantokrator motif. Christ in his capacity as judge, sometimes literally during the Last Judgment, or other times sitting next to God the Father. Even though Christian dogma holds that Christ was both fully human and fully divine, it's a curious feature of the human psyche that we find Christ-as-God more palatable to our sensibilities than Christ-as-man, because to fully think through this dogma leads us to some uncomfortable ideas. Such as: the fact that Christ, in his capacity as man, was tortured and died a brutal death.Most Christian artworks featuring the death and torture of Christ try to beautify him. Think for example of the quiet grandeur of Zurbaran or Velazquez, or the epic character of a Rubens. But Holbein chose such strict realism that an urban legend arose he literally fished up a dead body from the Rhine river to more accurately depict a body in an advanced state of decomposition. This is Death, purely and honestly, without any artistic flourish. Just a confrontation with how the disciples must've seen Jesus too. Beaten and bruised. Dostoevsky says the painting is so powerful in its honesty that you really start to question the core Christian idea: could a body that looked like this, ever beat death? In The Idiot, the same questions pops up, but from the perspective of the disciples. They must've faced this same question. They didn't know that Christ would rise, how would they have felt, confronted with death like this, from their beloved master?This is where Nietzsche pops in: Nietzsche argues that the disciples invented and inverted modern Christianity because they had this crisis of faith, spurred on by watching their leader be beaten and humiliated, and invented the Christian story of the resurrection in order to take revenge on the enemies of Jesus. Dostoevsky, of course, disagrees. He tackled his crisis of faith in another way: by radically affirming Christ, even if truth itself is against him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4h ago

SCHOPENHAUER Explained: Ethics of Compassion (pt. 2)

In the second instalment in our series on German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, we discuss his ethics. In the first video we saw how Schopenhauer thinks of the world, but the question now arises: what do we DO with that knowledge? This video explores Schopenhauer's ethics and focuses on two recommendations: compassion and asceticism. We also introduce the concept of "agape", or divine love. Schopenhauer's intense focus on the individual, could be seen in some ways as a precursor to the existentialism movement later in philosophy. The next part in this series will deal with the most famous aspect of Schopenhauer's philosophy: his aesthetics. If you don't want to miss, kindly subscribe to the channel. P.S.: It's highly recommended you check out the first video in this series in order to understand this one.Watch: SCHOPENHAUER Explained: Metaphysics of the Will: https://youtu.be/i87hX_uznEQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5h ago

So you want to read Kant

In this video we go over an often-asked question. You want to read Kant, but you don't know where to start. We offer a some guidelines. We don't think it's wise to jump into the Critique of Pure Reason without either a broad background in philosophy in general, and without some knowledge of Kant in particular. Which is why we recommend Kant's introductory work to his metaphysics: the Prolegomena. If you can master the Critique of Pure Reason: congratulations! Then the Critique of Practical Reason as well as the Critique of Judgment shouldn't be any problem.Recommended reading and timestamps:Philosophy textbook (general introduction): https://amzn.to/2N6f9SSProlegomena: https://amzn.to/37nGfMmCritique of Pure Reason: https://amzn.to/3dnsWPFAll Three Critiques (Pure Reason, Practical Reason, Judgment): https://amzn.to/3aujWGNTimestamps:00:00 Introduction00:32 Step 1: Read a college textbook on philosophy01:51 Step 2: Read the Prolegomena02:40 Step 3: Read the Critique of Pure Reason Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
6h ago

Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics by Bernardo Kastrup (Book Review)

BUY THE BOOK: https://amzn.to/2Pqa092WATCH Schopenhauer Explained: https://youtu.be/f-djIdl8WO4Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch philosopher who counts among the few contemporary philosophers who subscribe to a kind of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a PhD in philosophy as well as a PhD in computer engineering.In his book, Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics Decoded, he attempts to make a case for Schopenhauer’s metaphysical system. As he explains in the introduction, Schopenhauer’s legacy and influence has mostly been felt in the fields of ethics and aesthetics, and not so much in the field of metaphysics. He calls this “tragic”, and I tend to agree. This book, then, is meant as an appreciation as well as an elucidation of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. At 141 pages it’s a quick read. And it may be too quick of a read for people who aren’t familiar with Schopenhauer at all, and think this book serves as a good introduction. On the other hand, this book is very readable once you have a basic understanding of Schopenhauer’s system. It’s not like you need to plough through the 1000+ pages of the World as Will and Representation first. (Although of course, it would help.) If you are a long-time viewer of the channel, and you have watched our series on The World as Will and Representation, you’re good to go. The book is cheap and short and insightful, and I recommend you pick it up.BUY THE BOOK: https://amzn.to/2Pqa092Voice visualizer made with www.vizzy.io(Affiliate disclosure: If you choose to buy the book via the above link, at no cost to you, I get a small commission. It's a great way to support the channel while also getting a high quality work of philosophy.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
7h ago

4 Books You MUST Read According to Schopenhauer

Deep within an essay On the Art of Thinking for Oneself, Schopenhauer has four novels to recommend his readers. Of course, they are each in a different language... He also gives us objective, measurable standards to judge the artistic merit of a novel. Schopenhauer looks at how much a novel deals with the inner life -- the more it deals with the inner life of the protagonist, the more artistic a novel becomes because it's the inner world that excites our interest - not the outer world of representation.Schopenhauer's recommended reading list:1) Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (https://amzn.to/3toq2zW)2) Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (https://amzn.to/36EeKxK)3) Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (https://amzn.to/3pPkGvw)4) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (https://amzn.to/3aBNKQO) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
8h ago

Why Nietzsche Loved the Odyssey

Try Brilliant's tutor for free: https://brilliant.org/Weltgeist/ . You’ll also get 20% off an annual Premium subscription.Support us on Patreon, get access to exclusive videos:▶ https://www.patreon.com/WeltgeistYT▶ Follow us on X for updates: https://x.com/WeltgeistYTTIMESTAMPS:00:00 Introduction02:19 The Underworld17:11 The Surface34:15 The HeightsOUR ANALYSES: ▶ Beyond Good and Evil: https://youtu.be/WIHXZUltfqk▶ The Antichrist: https://youtu.be/qej1Z8Qzq_c▶ Genealogy of Morals: https://youtu.be/6PUx4cOfFcI▶ Twilight of the Idols: https://youtu.be/YpVr_NEvWYA▶ The Will to Power: https://youtu.be/He6ZC7ZFBt8▶ Daybreak: https://youtu.be/cOL2z7nuXdA▶ The Joyful Science: https://youtu.be/U0fTBOJ-C_INietzsche was a professor of Greek and intimately familiar with both Homer’s Odyssey and the Iliad. He admired the Greeks for their way of life, their culture, and specifically how they justified life as an aesthetic phenomenon, through art.In particular he was fond of using Odysseus as an exemplar of this Greek ideal. Wily, cunning Odysseus, throughout the Odyssey, brushes with darkness but is never consumed by it. He escapes from the cave of the Cyclops, he visits the Underworld but never quite enters it (he takes what needs from Tiresias, converses with Achilles, and leaves), he manages to hear the Siren’s Song without being bewitched by it, he enjoys his time with Circe and Calypso but never loses sight of his ultimate goal: Ithaca. Odysseus sticks bravely to the surface, he doesn’t fall into the trap of the “introspective present”; he always pushes onwards.For Nietzsche, Odysseus represented the best of mankind. A joyful affirmation of life in spite of its sufferings, which are many. In particular Nietzsche singles out his conversation with Achilles in Hades, where Achilles says he’d rather live as a poor farmer than “reign over the endless dead.” For Nietzsche, this was not Achilles showing regret, nor Odysseus flattering his audience of pacifists (the Phaeacians) but rather a Homeric song of praise for life. The Greeks were such staunch affirmers of life that even the lowest life possible is preferable to being dead. The Greeks, in this way, loved life in a way that is alien to us: they took the totality of existence, and in dreaming up their world of gods and myths, managed to say yes to it so much that even a miserable existence would make them happy.This video was sponsored by Brilliant. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philosophy, video essays. New videos every week.

Creator

Weltgeist
Years Active

2026
Episodes

70
Rating

Clean