2709187

Buddhism and Nineteenth-Century German PhilosophyAuthor(s): Heinrich DumoulinSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1981), pp. 457-470Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709187 .

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BUDDHISM AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

BY HEINRICH DUMOULIN*

Introduction-Intensive intellectual-cultural exchanges between West and East, Europe and Asia, prefigured in a past stretching over several centuries, are grounded today in a conscious reciprocal ex- change of ideas. In no other modern Asian country has the process of

assimilating new ideas been as dramatic and rapid as in Japan, which during the Meiji period (1868-1913) opened its doors to foreigners and to Western thought. However, Asian ideas and cultural values were slower to gain entry into Europe, depending upon texts and other materials which became available in a variety of ways (especially through colonial and missionary efforts) and then met with an interested reception among Europeans.

The intellectual culture of the Chinese was accepted in the West earlier than the Indian and by a larger circle of people during the eighteenth century. Interest in Chinese culture had been aroused through the letters and reports of Jesuit missionaries who portrayed the traditional Chinese world view and its Confucian ethical teachings in a favorable light. Some imagined that they found in those teachings a religion of reason, of special appeal to the Age of Enlightenment. Influential thinkers like Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Voltaire, and others showed great interest in Chinese culture and gave rise to something like a fad for Chinese things (chinoiserie). However, toward the end of the eighteenth century the enthusiasm for China diminished as people turned instead to India as the wonderland.

India appeared to European intellectuals in a new, appealing light. According to J. G. Herder (1744-1803), "In India, the human mind acquired its first form of wisdom and virtue, with a depth, strength, and sublimity which . . . has no equal in our cold, European, philosophical world." 1 He was the first to translate verses of the sacred Indian song, the Bhagavadg7tai, from Sanskrit into German. The Schlegel brothers also learned Sanskrit: August Wilhelm (1769- 1845) was to occupy the first German chair at Bonn in Sanskrit, while Friedrich (1772-1829) wrote the famous essay "On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians," evidence of his deep understanding even

though it offered little information. At first, ancient Indian literature,

* Translated by Julia Ching. 1 Cited by H. von Glasenapp, Das Indienbild deutscher Denker (Stuttgart, 1960),

14 f.

457



458 HEINRICH DUMOULIN

especially the Upanishads, aroused Western admiration for the "Wisdom of the East." Interest in Buddhism, the most influential of Indian religions, also developed on a wave of enthusiasm which inspired many Western minds. Research on various forms of Buddhism seems especially important because it has continued to display its usefulness in our own age, offering occasion for meaningful dialogue with the adherents of other creeds. A bold survey of the modes of its reception might give us helpful clues to a correct, and possibly profound, understanding of the Buddhist religion. But we shall limit ourselves here to a survey of nineteenth-century German philosophy, and particularly to four of its greatest representatives: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, each of whom, in his own way, has been important in the European assessment of Buddhism.

The European philosophers' encounter with Buddhism differs es- sentially from the efforts of learned Buddhist scholars who moved much more slowly, making available the texts and materials after painstaking labor, thus bringing to light the various forms of Buddhist teaching and practice. Such research could not be expected of the philosophers. But the German philosophers named above did know-though not too clearly-that Buddhism was divided into two principal branches, the Hinayana (or what is still today called Theravada) and the Mahayana, as well as the different names of the founder of the Buddhist religion. The dark and pessimistic world view of the Buddhists profoundly interested them. In spite of their inadequate knowledge of the sources, the German philosophers' perspectives and value judgments exerted an influence still visible today.

Kant-The great master of German philosophy, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) of Konigsberg, said nothing about Indian or East Asian philosophy in his philosophical lectures. The wisdom of the East has as little place in his philosophical thought as the Asian religions. Yet for forty years Kant taught a course on "Physical Geography," the first of its kind at a German university.2 He regarded geography as a "useful and pleasant branch of learning"; concern with distant countries and peoples was for him a hobby and recreation. He found material for his lectures in the very abundant travel literature of the eighteenth century, although he himself refrained from travelling and from learning foreign tongues other than English or French. He could draw so much exciting, informative, and useful material from his extensive readings that his course enjoyed a general popularity, and during his own lifetime some of his lectures, in the form of student

2 See also for the following H. von Glasenapp, Kant und die Religionen des Ostens (Kitzingen, 1954).



BUDDHISM AND 19TH-CENTURY GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 459

notes, were printed, though without his permission. However, an authentic edition of his lectures, taken not from student notes but from several so-called "dictated texts" and from his own notes pre- pared for his lectures, is now available to us. Kant spoke of indi- vidual Asian countries, giving glimpses of "Country and People," bringing out characteristic features of customs and morals, sketching political and social structures, and always including a section on the religion or religions of those countries. He spoke of Buddhism in his lectures on Ceylon, Tibet, Upper India, China, and Japan. He knew a little of the Buddhist Hinayana and Mahayana sects and a number of names for the Buddha used in the different countries of Asia.

His lectures are factual reports in which he seeks to show the more noteworthy aspects of each country studied. He was sympathe- tic to the Buddhist belief in transmigration of souls (which he did not exactly understand) because it presupposes preexistence of the soul and reincarnation in another form after death. The moral character of Buddhist doctrine especially impressed him. He quoted from the book on Japan by the German physician Engelbert Kampfer, who had visited Japan in the service of Holland (1690-91) and whose memoirs remain a valuable source of information on Japan. Kampfer tells of a sermon of a Japanese Buddhist monk "whose application was so moral and good, the kind that we at home can only yearn for."3 This episode confirms what we have since learned from many Japanese sources of the Buddhist practice of the Edo period (1614-68). The Buddhist monks instructed the people in ethics, often according to Confucian principles, the core of which is expressed in the statement, "Inspire good and punish evil." Kant was also convinced of the need to reward good and punish evil.

One piece of travel literature which Kant read in German was the General History of Travels, or the Collection of All Travel Descrip- tions," 4 in 21 volumes (Leipzig, 1747-74); the sixth volume deals with China and contains a section on the "inner or secret teaching of Fo." (Fo is the Chinese word for "Buddha," which in Japanese is read Butsu.) Kant read there "that Nothingness being the origin and end of all things, indifference to, and refusal of, all work at some time is therefore blessed."5 We translate here from Kant's dictated texts; this passage of the "General History" was also to be known to Hegel, and we will return to this subject when we discuss Hegel's explanations of Buddhism.

Kant remarked that the Buddhist conception of God, or what he knew of it, was inadequate. He thought that even the Buddha himself

3 Cited by Glasenapp, Kant . . ., 116. 4 The title reads in German: Allgemeine Historie der Reisen oder Sammlung aller Reisebeschreibungen. a See Glasenapp, Das Indienbild .. ., 10 f.




must have been involved in the process of transmigration, according to his own religion. Although, in his lectures on Oriental geography, Kant could not be personally satisfied with such a view of the Su- preme Being, he did not permit himself to express theological or metaphysical criticisms. On the whole, his sketches were sympathe- tic, offering a warm and human understanding of foreign peoples and customs, and regarding as highly moral all earnestness and sincere striving for immortality, wherever he learned of such spiritual elements of Buddhism.

Hegel-Only in our own days have we found due attention di- rected to the fact that G. F. W. Hegel (1770-1831) gave a great deal of space to non-Christian religions in his work.6 This does not mean that foreign cultures or the wisdom of the East enjoyed his special sym- pathy: "World history moves from East to West, Europe being the end of world history, Asia its beginning." Hegel remained faithful to this basic belief all his life. India received no praise from him, and he made derogatory remarks about China. In his philosophy of religion, he sought to integrate all the world religions into his own grandiose metaphysical system. Unfortunately, we do not know with any cer- tainty what place he assigned to Buddhism. According to the Lasson edition, based on Hegel's manuscripts, the first part of the second step of "Natural Religion" appears before Brahmanism or Hinduism-"the religion of imagination"-but in the so-called Jubilee edition the order is reversed. Hegel was probably not capable of assigning any such order on the basis of the historical material he possessed, yet this is not a merely historical question. Any rank or order given by Hegel would also tell us implicitly his evaluation of the Buddhist religion. In any case, he did allow Buddhism a certain lim- ited value. Indeed, his fundamental conception assigns a value to each religion inside his system. The two subtitles under which Bud- dhism was treated-the generic category of "the religions of substantiality" and the specific name of "the religion of Insichsein"- certainly signify categories of value. This becomes clearer when Hegel distinguishes between Taoism, which he describes as a "religion of magic," in which "consciousness . . . is still located in the immediately human," and Buddhism, with which "the true and objective generality-objective according to content-begins."

Through nearly twenty pages, Hegel describes Buddhism in the terminology of his own system, obviously very different from that of Buddhist thought. To grasp his understanding of Buddhism it is useful to look into the sources which he understood and utilized in his own way. A passage from the General History reports:

6 See R. Leuze, Die ausserchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel (G6ttingen, 1975), on Buddhism, 61-75.




They say that Emptiness or Nothingness is the beginning of all things, that out of this Nothingness and the combination of elements, all things are produced, and that all must go back (to Nothingness), that all things, organic and nonorganic, are different from one another only in form and characteris- tics, but remain one in the perspective of that which is not the fundamental ii or matter of all things.

This Grundstoff, they say, is a wonderful thing. It is extremely pure, entirely free from flux, very delicate, simple and-on account of the simplic- ity of its own being-the perfection of all things. In short, it is very perfect, forever still, without productivity, power, or intelligence. What is even better, its nature consists in having neither intelligence nor motion, nor desire. Should we wish to live happily, we should make efforts, through meditation and frequent acts of self-conquest, to become like this Grundstoff. Hence we should accustom ourselves to do nothing, to desire nothing, to refrain from being sensitive about anything, and to think of nothing. Vices and virtues, reward and punishment, Providence and immortality-none of these belong here.

Holiness consists entirely in ceasing to be, i.e., being submerged in Nothingness. The closer one approaches the ultimate nature of a stone or of a stick, the more perfect he becomes. In brief, virtue and bliss consist in an entire insensitivity and motionlessness, in the cessation of all desires, in a deprivation of all bodily movements, in the annihilation of all the powers of the soul, and in the entire stillness of thought. Should a human being attain this blissful state, all change and transformation would come to an end, and he would have nothing further to fear, since he is, to put it truthfully, nothing any more, or rather, should he still be something, he has become happy, and in one word, as perfect as the God Fo (Buddha).7

This passage portrays, although not entirely accurately, one form of Mahayana Buddhism in China. Obviously, the author of this travel description had an extremely difficult task, one which he coura- geously undertook (to mention only the language barrier) without having been entirely aware of the difficulties. From this text, Hegel derived the two ideas of Nothingness and Grundstoff. Glasenapp prefers the key word 'Emptiness' to 'Nothingness'-and with reason-in the philosophy of Nagarjuna, his "Doctrine of the Middle Way," upon which the metaphysics of the principal schools of Chinese Buddhism is built. It was impossible for Hegel, who probably had access to only the few paragraphs quoted above, to reach an accurate understanding of the Buddhist concept-and particularly of the Mahayana version-of Nothingness. Yet he realized, it would seem, that the "interior and secret teaching of Fo" was not pure Nihilism. He understood that his source saw in Nothingness the Highest and the Ultimate, "the absolute Foundation, the Indetermi- nate, the state of annihilation of all particular beings, and that all

7 The passage is quoted in full by Leuze, 64, and by Glasenapp, Kant ..., 105 f.




particular beings, and that all particular existences and realities are only forms and that only Nothingness is truly self-subsistent, while all other realities are not. .. ."8 He finds it strange and striking "that man should think of God as Nothingness" but recognizes the true meaning of this manner of thinking: "This does not mean that God is nothing, but that He is Indeterminate and that this Indeterminateness is God," 9 or "the Being which is without further determination." He sees in Buddhist teaching neither mysticism nor negative theology but rather, in the context of his own system, "a definite and necessary step of religious representation." 10

Hegel identifies the second concept in the travel report as the concept of Grundstoff. It occurs in a somewhat puzzling passage which refers to the "inner or secret teaching ofFo," but this is quite different from all known teachings of Chinese Buddhism. True, in Chinese Buddhism one frequently finds thoughts and concepts that are influenced by Taoism or by some other school of ancient Chinese philosophy, but the Grundstoff, that "wonderful thing" described by the travel report, can only signify a material substance. In this case Hegel's introductory reflections on this concept of Grundstoff rest simply upon a misunderstanding, so that his classifying Buddhism as a "religion of substantiality" is misleading. When Hegel calls the Grundstoff".. . something operating unconsciously, in so far as it is for itself substantial,"11 he is obviously contradicting his source, which recognizes the Grundstoff as "having neither intelligence nor movement." Conceiving the Grundstoff as a substance misled Hegel.

It is noteworthy that Hegel should treat the Buddhist teaching of Nirvana not in his impressive explanations of Nothingness and Emp- tiness, but in his section on Cult. The external cause for this is that he is here dependent upon another source, namely, Francis Buchanan's On the Religion and Literature of the Burmese, which contains a section on the "Religion of Gautama."12 The author explains the state of Nirvana (Burmese: nieban) as liberation from the suffering of this world of becoming (sasara), which is an application certainly of the fundamental meaning of Nirvana found in early Buddhism. To attain this state, one must-as Hegel understood it- "do ... nothing for oneself. ... The principal aim in this cult is to unite oneself with this Nothingness, and to turn away from all consciousness and all passions." 13

8 Translated from German, Philosophie der Religion, ed. Lasson, I, 2; 124. 9Ibid., 125. 10 Ibid. 1 Ibid., 126 f. 12 "On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas," Asiatic Researches, 6; cf.

Leuze, loc. cit., 65. 13 Philosophie der Religion, I, 2; 134.




We here find a close connection between the attainment of Nir- vana and meditative introspection. Hegel emphasizes the importance of meditation in Buddhism. His brief but instructive reflections in this direction have, of all that he has written on Buddhism, most strongly influenced the Western understanding of Buddhism. He describes and evaluates in a straightforward and clear manner the Buddhist "sinking into the self." Two points are important here: Hegel emphasizes silence, stillness, retreat of the self into pensive solitude, that is, the passive and world-fleeing aspect of the effort of meditation, which leads to Nirvana. "One must . . . make efforts to will

nothing, to wish nothing, to do nothing. One must be without passion, without desires, without actions." 14 Thus will one attain the state of perfect detachment. This description of Eastern spirituality has brought upon Buddhist meditation the reproach of passivity, of lack of feeling, of apathy.

Yet Buddhist meditation-and this is the other point-is important to our philosopher, not as a religious exercise but as the precon- dition and expression of the metaphysically relevant step of inward- ness (Insichsein). Here Hegel is relying upon Buddha's image, which he describes thus: "The image of Buddha is in this thinking posture, arms and legs placed upon each other in such a way that a toe enters into the mouth-this returning into oneself, this sucking on oneself."15 It is not known where Hegel could have seen such an image of the Buddha.16 It obviously occurred to him to characterize the act of profound meditation (Versenktsein) as a return into one's self. Thus meditation is completely assimilated in Hegel's philosophical thinking.

Hegel's understanding of Buddhism confirms the opinions of those obstinate critics of Asian spiritual ways who see in them what they believe to be radically introverted practices of meditation, and a real danger for the Westerner. But lovers of Eastern wisdom seek vainly in Hegel for a sincere effort to understand the Buddha's religion as it is and as it is lived by Orientals. Glasenapp judges that Hegel, "as the prototype of Westerners, saw in Western thought the measure of all universality which embraces the whole world." 17

Schopenhauer-While Hegel sought to press Buddhism into his own philosophical system, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) found the fundamental ideas of his philosophy confirmed in Eastern thought, particularly in the Upanishads and in Buddhism. His first meeting with Oriental wisdom came in the year 1813, in Weimar,

14 Ibid., 133. 15 Ibid., 122. 16 As Glasenapp thinks, Hegel may have mistaken a picture of the child Krishna

for an image of Buddha, see Das Indienbild . . ., 56. 17 Ibid.,59.




through the mediation of the Orientalist Friedrich Maier who gave him a selection of the Upanishads in Latin translation18 and evoked great enthusiasm in the young man. Overwhelmed by his emotion, he wrote, "I confess .. .that I do not believe that my teaching could have arisen before the Upanishads; Plato and Kant were first able to throw light upon a man's mind." 19 Yet Eastern thought did not have any decisive influence upon the fundamental ideas of Schopenhauer's principal work, The World as Will and Idea (Vol. I, written 1814-18, published 1819). We owe his assurance on this subject to a letter he sent to Adam Ludwig van Doss: "The agreement with my own teaching is especially wonderful since I wrote the first volume in 1814-1818, and did not know anything about all that, not having been then able to acquire all that knowledge."20 His enthusiasm for Eastern wisdom continued without diminution, while his knowledge of it increased steadily as he read the new books on Buddhism which came into his hands. He read them in the fixed perspective of his own world view which had taken form earlier, and never grappled with Oriental studies in a philological or historical manner: it was sufficient for him that the wise men of Asia should have given such impressive confirmation of his own work.

That Buddhism should be known in Germany and in Europe as a pessimistic religion is largely to be attributed to its introduction into Western thinking by Schopenhauer, whose own pessimism was rooted in his personality and character. Childhood tragedies, such as the sudden death of his father and a tense relationship with his eccen- tric mother, led him to travel around the world, which gave him occasion to see much suffering and unhappiness everywhere, and thus contributed to his pessimistic world view. Just as Buddha learned in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, suffering and death, so Schopenhauer also learned that human life in this world develops in a "place of lamentation," a "vale of tears" (a Jammer- tal, the ancient German word he liked to recall).21

In his work, The World as Will and Idea, Schopenhauer describes human existence as does early Buddhist literature, as a state of inex- tinguishable suffering. The First of the Four Noble Truths of Bud- dhism, that human life is full of sorrow laden experience, is echoed

18 The collection which appeared with the title Oupnekhat comprises 50 upanishads and is a translation by the French Orientalist A. H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), not from the Sanskrit original but from a Persian translation.

19 Cited by Glasenapp, Das Indienbild . . ., 68. 20 Ibid., 92. 21 See A. Hiibscher, Denker gegen den Strom. Schopenhauer: gestern-

heute-morgen (Bonn, 1973), 11. The term stems from psalm 84 (vallis lacrimarun) and was familiar to the Pietists. The pietistic movement influenced Schopenhauer, as Hiibscher points out in his standard work.




throughout Schopenhauer's writings, but the similarity with Bud- dhism goes even deeper, as when Schopenhauer like Buddha sees in the insatiable covetous will the cause of all suffering. Influenced by Kant, Schopenhauer asserts the primacy of the blind will, thus ap- proaching the religious teaching of the Buddha: craving or desire is the cause of suffering. Suffering and desire are inextricably bound up with each other, for according to Schopenhauer the appearance of the will "is a vanishing existence, an ever decreasing, always frustrating striving, and the world which is given to us is full of suffering." 22

In agreement with pre-Buddhistic Indian mythology, Buddhism believes that desire drives living creatures into a cycle of existences, an idea also to be found in Western thinking, though it came to Schopenhauer probably through his contact with Eastern thought. In the first volume of his work, where he speaks of the myth of transmigration, he refers especially to the Vedas. The sorrowful aspect of this myth is immediately clear to him; he names several of the tor- menting stages of the cycle in order to cast light upon their relationship to human existence. When Schopenhauer first mentioned the myth of transmigration, he knew little of Buddhism, even though he referred to it as a religion. Later, he studied more extensively the Buddhist version of transmigration and rebirth. As in his study of early Buddhism, however, he never grappled satisfactorily with that idea of metempsychosis which found its widest circulation in the popular religion of Asian peoples.

The first three of Buddha's Four Noble Truths-which deal with human suffering, with desire as the cause of suffering, and with the need to destroy this desire-found their echoes in Schopenhauer's own life and in his Weltanschauung. When looked upon with a sober sense of reality, human life is seen to be comprised of suffering and desire, and Schopenhauer derived as a consequence the conviction that the will to life must be destroyed and denied. Here, too, his thought finds confirmation in Eastern religion. What he calls "the denial of the will to life," Buddhism makes its goal and calls Nirvana. But before taking up Schopenhauer's conception of Nirvana, we shall first explain briefly how the philosopher represents the way to the denial of the will. He speaks of two ways, both of which can be found also, at least in part, in Buddhism: the way of "wholesome suffering" and the way of asceticism.

Throughout his life man is subject to "wholesome sufferings." He places himself on the right way to the goal when he diligently prac- tises such daily virtues as friendliness, kindness, and compassion. He comes then to a "turning point of the will and salvation, which is

22 The World as Will and Idea, I, ? 68.




achieved by way of the frequent sufferings of this life." So Schopenhauer says: "For this is the way of sinners, which we all are."23

Higher even than the way of "wholesome suffering" is that of the "ascetics, who choose to lead a life of poverty, hardship, and solitude because they keep in mind their ultimate and true end."24 Regarded philosophically, the path leading from virtue to asceticism culminates at the point where the will of the ascetic negates its own being in the world of appearances: "Basically being nothing else than an appearance of the will, he ceases to desire anything, and does not seek to attach his will to anything, while trying to keep himself in a state of great indifference against attachment to anything."25 Schopenhauer had great respect for the ascetics in whom he saw the realization of a community of minds: "The Indian, Christian, Moslem ascetics are all different, not only in the inner meaning and spirit of their teachings." What is common to them is "the formal denial and abandonment of all transitory things.26 . . . The enviable lives of many holy men and beautiful souls among Christians and even more among Hindus and Buddhists, as also among other religious people," illustrate "the inner nature of holiness, self-denial, mortification of one's own will, an ascesis expressed in the form of a denial of the will. . . " 27

Schopenhauer's particular term, quietiv (quietude), refers to such mental states as abandonment, denial of one's will, renouncing the temporary, indifference-terms which also appear in Buddhist literature-and Schopenhauer has referred correctly to the Eastern spirituality of the Hindus and Buddhists. In the Pali Canon of Bud- dhism, the term upekkha (Sanskrit: Upeksha) is especially conspicu- ous: it refers to the "state of entire indifference" in the fourth stage of Dhyana. Perhaps this meaning of upekkha comes closest to what Schopenhauer calls "quietude." In any case, this word has a rele- vance which is not philosophical but spiritual, religious, and psychological. Schopenhauer also found insights of his philosophy in the writings of his venerated Madame de Guyon. He quotes from the autobiography of this "beautiful and great soul": "Everything has become indifferent to me: I can no longer desire anything. I often don't know whether I am here or not."28 The reception of Buddhism through Schopenhauer has often led in the West to the attribution of a Stoic teaching of apathy to Buddhism. People thought that Buddhists were devoid of emotions and in a state of absolute indifference. Yet this judgment appears in only one kind of Buddhism, and even there has its limits.

23 Ibid., II, ch. 49. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., I, ? 68. 26 Ibid., II, ch. 48. 27 Ibid., I, ? 68. 28 Cited by Hiibscher, 47.




Schopenhauer's way of salvation leads from the knowledge of one's will and of the afflictions of the world to the denial of the will and salvation from the suffering of human existence. In Buddhism, this state of liberation from desire and suffering is called Nirvana. Schopenhauer grappled intensively with the meaning of Nirvana. Ob- viously, he noticed especially the negative import of the term. He saw a direct path leading from his own negative formulations to the Buddhist Nirvana:

The privilege of the resigned person is to die willingly and gladly and joy- ously, since he has given up and denied the will to life. Only he is really willing to die and not just do so in appearance, since he needs and desires no personal survival. This human existence which we know, he gives up willingly. What happens to him instead is nothing in our eyes, because our human existence in its light is nothing. In Buddhist doctrine this is called Nirvana, that is, extinction.29 In his footnote, Schopenhauer explains "extinction, for example, of fire."

However, Schopenhauer does not represent any radical nihilistic view of Nirvana. He understands the relative meaning of the negative term. What is negated is the world of Samsara, the world of becoming: 'If Nirvana is defined as nothingness, this can only mean that the Samsara contains no element which could serve as the definition or construction of Nirvana."30 Schopenhauer makes a distinction between relative and absolute nothingness. What we call nothingness is a relative, not an absolute, nothingness: "For if something is not anything of what we know, it ... does not therefore follow that it is absolutely nothing, that from every possible standpoint it... must be nothing. . "31

The other possible standpoint, only suggested here, is that of mysticism. Schopenhauer has not confused the two standpoints. Mysti- cism was for him important; he highly respected true, inner experi- ences although he distinguished clearly between mystical experience and philosophical knowledge. In the first volume of his principal work he refers to the state "which those who have succeeded in denying their will perfectly have experienced, and which has been given such names as ecstasy, withdrawal, enlightenment, union with God and so on; a state which cannot properly be called knowledge ...," and then goes on to philosophy which "must content itself with negative knowledge."32 Nirvana is in Schopenhauer's understanding "the point at which all human knowledge, as such, always remains without access." 33 If "all religions ... lead up to mysticism and mysteries,"

29 The World as Will and Idea, II, ch. 41. 30 Ibid., II, ch. 48. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., I, ?71. 33 Ibid., II, ch. 44.




then philosophical thought must necessarily take on in the end "a negative character." 34

Schopenhauer decisively influenced the German interpretation of Buddhism although unfortunately not always with balance and accu- racy. On the popular level Buddhism tends to be judged as radically pessimistic, as culminating in the nothingness of Nirvana- extinction, knowing no love except a dull compassion for afflicted creatures, and so on. These judgments are frequently made about Schopenhauer's philosophy which has been often misunderstood and misinterpreted. In our own day, progress in the interpretation of Schopenhauer has not yet made much impact on the understanding of Buddhism. Several points should be taken into account. Schopenhauer's pessimism, or Buddhism's, is not entirely hopeless; there are manifest signs of positivity, for the ultimate end is not absolute nihilism.

Further, while Buddhism in Schopenhauer's account is frequently regarded as an "atheistic religion," it is, according to its own nature, not at all first and foremost atheistic. Schopenhauer distinguishes religions, according to their world views, into optimistic or pessimistic-or realistic-religions. He rejects belief in a personal God as "obscurantism," and there is much in his work which can justify calling him an "atheist." Yet his profound religious sense should not be left unnoticed. The classification of Buddhism among atheistic religions is misleading.

It is difficult to decide how much Schopenhauer owes to mysticism. He took mysticism seriously, for he says of the Theologia Ger- manica: "The agreement with my philosophy is wonderful." He compares the "admirable and incredibly profound Angelus Silesius" with the seers of the Vedas, and he acknowledges, "Buddha, Eckhart, and I, we basically teach the same things." 35 These are not words said in jest. As he accepted as a philosopher the path of nega- tion during his whole life, so in youth and old age he revealed a strong attraction to mysticism.

Nietzsche-In German intellectual history, the line leads from Schopenhauer to Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Another line branches off from Schopenhauer to Richard Wagner who was especially inspired by certain motifs coming from Schopenhauer and from Buddhism. An opera, Die Sieger, which he had planned, was exclusively Buddhistic but remained unfinished.36 Wagner later took up the

34 Ibid., II, ch. 48. 35 See Hiibscher, loc. cit., 46 ff.; cf. The World as Will and Idea, II, ch. 48. 36 Cf. D. Watanabe Dauer, "Richard Wagner and Buddhismus," The Eastern

Buddhist, New Series, IX, 2 (Oct. 1976), 115-28. See also G. R. Welbon, The Bud- dhist Nirvana and its Western Interpreters (Chicago, 1968), 171 ff.




chief motif of this work in his Parzifal though Schopenhauer's influence is already present in Tristan und Isolda.

Two influences coming from Schopenhauer and Wagner had an important impact on Nietzsche's life; from there the poet of Zarathustra freed himself only with difficulty. He owes his understanding of Buddhism entirely to Schopenhauer and to the manner in which he understood Schopenhauer. Yet, for Nietzsche, the denial of the will to life is not the best part of the religion of the Buddha. Even as early as The Birth of Tragedy, he speaks in pejorative terms of the "Buddhist denial of the will," the very will from which the sensitive Hellenes found salvation through art and life.

When Nietzsche wrote this, he was still under the influence of Schopenhauer's philosophy, but he did not follow that admired thinker unreservedly. He especially liked Schopenhauer's metaphysics of music. He also liked his atheism. He thus found in Buddhism by preference the religion of "explicit atheism . . . which forbids ultimately the lie of belief in God."37 He was much impressed that this "decisive point" was reached "five centuries before the European calendar, in the Buddha."38 In Asia, "what Europe must still do .. ." was achieved much earlier, when "the teacher of Self- redemption, the Buddha, appeared... ." 3 In spite of this statement and several more positive expressions of approval of Buddha, Nietzsche's work reveals a preponderantly negative attitude toward Buddhism.

Nietzsche's chief criticism of Buddhism was expressed in his Birth of Tragedy. According to him, the Buddhist religion is, like the Christian, an enemy of life and of the body, and is fundamentally nihilistic: "The longing for a mystical union with God is the longing of the Buddhist for Nothingness and Nirvana-and nothing more."40 This does not mean that Nirvana was conceived as the height of true mysticism. Mystical union and Nirvana are both regarded by Nietzsche as empty formulas; he found the opposite of Nirvana in the eternal recurrence of all things. In his own nihilistic conception he believed he had found "the highest formula worthy of universal approval, which could be achieved anywhere."41

The two philosophers' fundamentally different attitudes toward Buddhism appear in their different evaluations of Nirvana, the Buddhist term for the denial of the will to life. While Schopenhauer highly esteemed and praised Buddhism, Nietzsche saw in it a religion for the weak, those not mature enough for life and its struggles, a "hygiene" for the sick, whose illness was especially "ressentiment,"

37 Genealogy of Morals, III, 26. 38 Ibid. 3 Dawn, I, 96. 40 Genealogy of Morals, I, 6. 41 Ecce Homo, On Zarathustra No. 1.




born out of weakness: "Buddhism is a religion for humans grown kind, gentle, overintellectual races that feel pain too easily. ... 42 The same refrain is echoed in an aphorism of his opus postumum: "Buddhism against the Crucified: among nihilistic religions, one must always distinguish sharply between the Christian religion and the Buddhist. The Buddhist religion portrays a beautiful evening, a perfect sweetness and mildness...."

The ambivalence of Nietzsche's attitude toward Buddhism per- sists in the West through his great influence. The autonomous Buddha, whom Nietzsche saw from afar, impressed himself upon the free and independent minds of many Western intellectuals. The spread in the West of the evaluation of Buddhism as a religion for the weak and the passive has many causes, among them surely Nietzsche's work, but Nietzsche never bothered to learn very much about Buddhism. If he spoke of Buddhism and Christianity as "nihilistic religions," he did not consider it necessary to discuss the matter further. Eastern wisdom did not touch his heart as it did that of Schopenhauer, the philosopher who found inner strength and conso- lation to the end of his life in his favorite text, the Oupekhnat.

So long as Buddhism is considered by many in the West to be a pessimistic or even nihilistic religion, cultural dialogue between East and West will remain difficult. This misunderstanding can be traced back to the nineteenth century, but the fault should not be attributed exclusively to the thinkers and scholars of that period. They saw, as Schopenhauer shows us, many things more clearly than their interpreters. The popularization of scholarly theses and opinions brought strange simplifications. Unfortunately, philosophy and positive sci- ence were more widely pursued, and a religious-spiritual way of seeing things was hardly considered. This neglect leads, even today, to failure in the understanding of Buddhism. If the origins of some of the unhappy misinterpretations and prejudices have been success- fully shown in the present study, new research may yield better understanding.

Sophia University, Tokyo.

42 Antichrist, No. 22.



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