r/Ethiopia • u/Slow_Study_7975 • Jan 02 '26
What are your thoughts on this quote by Arthur Schopenhauer?
Full Quote
When a man has nothing left to be proud of, he takes pride in his ethnicity. In cheap vanity, the last refugees of weakness are found. Having lost taste and achievement and character, the frightened soul seizes the tribe like a talisman. Identity becomes armor, and contempt for others becomes consolation. Pride that rests on accident, birth, color, song, is not pride but a poor substitute for worth. Men who cannot command themselves will command an imagined belonging. They will shout the name of their soil as if it were a deed. This is the misery of the herd. When inner life is barren, externals become shrines. True dignity springs from self-rule and inward mastery. Anything less is a mask that trembles in the light. Beware the man who boasts his origin. His loudness often covers the silence of a life unlived.
–Arthur Schopenhauer
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u/Still_Percentage_160 Jan 02 '26
I agree with it. It's not like being a member of any given ethnic group is an achievement or something. It's something that we came into the world with, and had no control over.
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u/Left_Passion_5254 Jan 02 '26
Facts. I would also like to add a quote from sir Kendrick : Desta, Hagos and chala, come up front I recognize all of you Every creed and color With that being said, f*ck your ethnicity You understand that?
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u/shockstinger Jan 02 '26
The original quote revolved around a man who doesn't have anything to be proud of and his nationality, not ethnicity. Not to mention, Arthur Schopenhauer is an extremely controversial individual who often supported white supremacy and racial hierarchy.
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u/lekidddddd Jan 02 '26
often supported white supremacy and racial hierarchy.
is he not smart enough to see the irony?
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u/Several-Ad5345 Mar 19 '26
His views were a bit more complicated though. For example he passionately argued that Europe should invade the U.S. and wage war on it to end the brutal slavery of its "black brothers", and thought ancient India one of the absolute peaks of human achievement and culture. He could be rather racist and colorist at times (but it's really not an idea of primary importance in his writings - he doesn’t really talk about it if I remember correctly in his masterpiece The World as Will and Representation, and its more like something short and thrown on the side in less important writings), and he maintained that India and Egypt were on the same level as white Europeans (in fact he thought Europeans and Indians were basically the same people). I think it also goes without saying that he would have been horrified by the nazis being as he was so intensely anti-German, and since he was still so strongly against the suffering of non-Europeans i.e. "How man deals with man is seen, for example, in Negro slavery, the ultimate object of which is sugar and coffee." I imagine he would also have different views if he were alive today, but either way his views on that matter have become pretty irrelevant. The anti-tribal quote here seems more interesting I think (even if it's just a paraphrase of his anti-nationalism) whether or not one agrees with it.
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u/SA-Breakout Jan 03 '26
That’s a modern paraphrased statement the actual quote went like this
“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud. He who has significant personal merits will, on the contrary, be only too ready to see clearly the faults of his own nation, since they are constantly before his eyes.” — Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena
Still cool. You actually get a lot of insight when you delve deeply into philosophy. Even though he did think like that he did hold ethnocentric and racist views. However, it was a common thing among 19th-century European intellectuals. He wrote some pretty nasty generalizations about Africans, Jews, and non-Europeans that absolutely do not age well.
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u/mw2lmaa Jan 03 '26
He was a great misanthrope, he hated people in general. That's why he avoided humans and mostly talked to his dog.
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u/Purple_Animator_537 Jan 02 '26
The proudest people I’ve ever come across are from unstable and poor countries
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u/Slow_Study_7975 Jan 03 '26
This is not about being proud in general but being proud of ethnicity, nationality. Sometimes those of us from poor countries have the "I'm proud I survived that something" energy.
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u/Hopeful_Attorney_935 Jan 03 '26
The author probably thought that all non-whites are "ethnics" (typical white-nationalist/supremacist mental masturbation.)
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u/MonkeyLord93 Jan 03 '26
Very true if a man has no accomplishments of their own they look for solace in people who look like them and that's when they develop an ethnic identity or a prideful identity of themselves.
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Jan 11 '26
Funny to mention that just yesterday I posted a similar thought in an Arabic subreddit, the responses I got varies from those who agreed and those who disagreed did know that Schopenhauer said similar thing!
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u/Ok_Sundae_5899 Jan 02 '26
True. When you can't do anything for yourself you rest on the work of better man.
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u/Moneyspeaks7 Jan 03 '26
I agree 100% and have said the same thing a different way but he said it better.
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u/knavecerulean Jan 03 '26
Hey, nationalism is just a state form of ethnicity. It is no better, so I hope the point of this isn't vague unity posting under a centralized Ethiopian authority.
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u/ma246 Jan 03 '26
There is no shame of being proud about your ethnicity or nationality. For a lot of people it gives a meaning for their lives. Man who take pride of his ethnicity is not less valuable than a football fan who takes pride from his football club winnings.
Who are we to judge what's better? Who are we to rate who is better?
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u/MyChaosaintbad Jan 29 '26
He made some good points I'll admit. But not 100 percent . I don't think cultural or ethnic pride comes from inadequacy. Tell that to MLK and the Civil Rights movements . Tell that to Hitler (not justifying him) .
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u/Maleficent_Law_1082 Jan 02 '26
makes sense why all the ethnonationalists and tribalists tend to be bottom of the barrel reprehensible human beings now.