I think he was Faelid.
Schopenhauer thought of the genius as a man of "small height" and especially with a short neck, in order to allow the blood to rise from the body to the brain quickly. As he saw himself as the prototypical genius, he must have been quite short even for his time. This assessment has to be kept in mind when we attempt a classification.
Further, he seems to be rather brachykephalic which points to alpinid (in his case rather than baltid, despite of his place of birth, Danzig) influence. I could be fooled by his flamboyant hairstyle, however. His nose seems rather long and narrow, which points towards mediterranid or nordid influence. The latter is also suggested by his apparently blue/grey eyes.
His mother looks atlantomediterranid to atlantid, whereas his father (I faintly remember to have read that Schopenhauer's ancestors from his fathers side were of Dutch origin) shows the subnordid (alpinid/nordid mixture) phenotype IMO:
http://images.google.ch/imgres?imgur...a%3DN%26um%3D1
Schopenhauer was Jewish of course (but personally opposed many of Judaism's dogmas): His sister Adele looks very Jewish on one picture I found, so there might be an armenid/orientalid strain at work here too. However, this alleged influence does in my view not show in Arthur Schopenhauers phenotype.
So, I would tentatively classify Schopenhauer as a mix of Nordid/Atlantomediterranid and Alpinid (probably Northalpinid: Borreby) or, to tell it in one rather simplifying term: Subnordid. His looks have some affinity to Beethoven's who on his side definitely did have Dutch ancestry. However, in Beethoven's physiognomy, the alpine influence is more clearly visible than in Schopenhauer's.
You might want to explain yourself. I never saw a reference to him being Jewish, and going by racial phenotype alone he doesn't seem to look Jewish either.Originally Posted by HamilkarBarkas
Somewhere ( I cannot quote the exact source, however) he says: " In meinem 17. Jahre, ohne alle gelehrte Schulbildung, wurde ich vom Jammer des Lebens so ergriffen, wie Buddha in seiner Jugend, als er Krankheit, Alter, Schmerz und Tod erblickte. Die Wahrheit, welche laut und deutlich aus der Welt sprach, überwand bald die auch mir eingeprägten jüdischen Dogmen[/B] ..." (not bold in the original text, highlighted by HamilkarBarkas). Thus, he speaks of Jewish dogmas inculcated upon him.
This alone allowedly does neither prove that he was of Jewish descent nor that his family did practise Judaism (Schopenhauer himself certainly did not: as a well known fact he was more into Indian philosophy which was an important source for his own philosophical concept),the more so as Christianism as well contains teachings you might call (or Schopenhauer might have called) Jewish dogmas in a wider sense. However, himself talking of these dogmas being imprinted upon him in his youth is a strong sign that he was in fact Jewish by religion.
On the other hand, he attacked the Jews on various occasions in his writings (see "Parerga"), but I don't see this as evidence against the possibility that he was Jewish as he often wrote against his own kin. For instance he was very angry with his mother for being a "good novelist but a very bad mother".
Summa summarum: I cannot prove that he was Jewish. I am looking for further evidence.
In his youth he looks like a Keltic Nordic + Borreby based off of that one picture frame rather in his old age he looks more Borreby-Nordic he looks rather German but could be Dutch as well.
He means Christianity (and the following of Jewish established Dogmas within the German society)!
If you read his Mitleids-Ethik it becomes much clearer, he was not Jewish.
"Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want." (Johann Wolfgang Goethe)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks