On the consistency of Schopenhauer’s compassionate racism

Abstract

The eminent Schopenhauerian scholar Christopher Janaway has observed a particular inconsistency in Schopenhauer’s thinking, namely that although Schopenhauer was vociferously opposed to the slavery of our “innocent black brothers”, he also regarded black people as intellectually inferior and “closer to animals”. The purpose of the present article is twofold. First, it explicates and discusses Schopenhauer’s racial classificatory system, which is hardly, if ever, discussed in the secondary literature on Schopenhauer’s philosophy, highlighting its racist elements by way of a discussion on a pseudo-scientific form of craniology, to which Schopenhauer subscribed. Second, the article argues in response to Janaway’s justified criticism that Schopenhauer’s inconsistency is merely apparent. The distinction between the world as it appears and as it is in-itself allows Schopenhauer to oppose the slavery of black people on the one hand, while simultaneously maintaining a racist attitude towards them, on the other.