>>24555799 What Schopenhauer actually believed:
1. Yes, he was racist by modern standards — like many 19th-century thinkers, Schopenhauer held Eurocentric and orientalist views, and he expressed strong (often offensive) opinions about various peoples in his writings.
2. However, the quote you're referring to — often misquoted — is from his writing on aesthetics, where he suggests that physical beauty can correlate with intelligence or spiritual depth, but he ties this to classical ideals of proportion, not race.
For example, in The World as Will and Representation, he discusses how beauty (especially in faces) reflects a harmony of inner nature — but he does not reduce this to race in the way the statement you quoted does.
3. Schopenhauer respected Indian philosophy, especially Vedanta and Buddhism. He often cited the Upanishads as some of the greatest philosophical texts. He was not dismissive of Indian intellectual traditions — in fact, he saw them as superior to much of Western religion.
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Summary:
Schopenhauer was flawed and bigoted in some ways, yes — like many of his time — but the quote you gave is a false, inflammatory distortion.
He did not write that "n****rs and Indians are retarded."
He admired Indian philosophy, and his view of intelligence and beauty was metaphysical and idealist — not rooted in modern racial categories.
