Études thématiques 22

Images of Tibet
in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Volume I

Edited by Monica Esposito

Paris EFEO
2008
Images of Tibet in 19th and 20th Centuries. Textes réunis et présentés par Monica Esposito,
Paris : École française d’Extrême-Orient, collection « Études théma­tiques », 22, vol. I,
2008. 427 + xxiv p. ; 27,5 ╳ 18,5 cm.
Notes en bas de page. Illustrations. Résumés en anglais et en français

ISBN : 9782855396736
ISSN : 1269-8067

Mots-clés : Reception of Buddhism, Tibet, Japan, China, West, Sino-Tibetan relations,

Orientalism, Tibetology, Esoteric Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhist Art, Anthropology of
Religion, History of Ideas

Réalisation : KOBAYASHI Tsuneyoshi

© 2008, École française d’Extrême-Orient.

22, avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France
http://www.efeo.fr/
 volume i

contents

x List of illustrations
xiii Introduction by Monica Esposito
xxi Conventions
xxii Map of Tibet

west

5-60 Urs App

The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer

63-96 Isrun Engelhardt

The Nazis of Tibet: A Twentieth Century Myth

99-111 Elena De Rossi Filibeck

Tibet: The “Ancient Island” of Giuseppe Tucci

113-147 Lionel Obadia

Esprit(s) du Tibet – Le bouddhisme tibétain en France :
topographies paradoxales, territorialisation et économie
de l’imaginaire tibétophile

149-176 Hartmut Walravens

Some Notes on Early Tibetan Studies in Europe

179-198 Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Tibetology in the United States of America: A Brief History

japan

203-222 Okuyama Naoji

The Tibet Fever among Japanese Buddhists of the Meiji Era
translated by Rolf Giebel
 225-242 Onoda ShunzØ
The Meiji Suppression of Buddhism and Its Impact on the Spirit
of Exploration and Academism of Buddhist Monks
translated by Monica Esposito

245-262 Fukuda YØichi

The Philosophical Reception of Tibetan Buddhism in Japan
translated by Rolf Giebel

china – Part 1

267-300 Shen Weirong & Wang Liping

Background Books and a Book’s Background:
Images of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism in Chinese Literature

303-327 Gray Tuttle

Tibet as the Source of Messianic Teachings to Save
Republican China

329-356 Ester Bianchi

Protecting Beijing: The Tibetan Image of Yamåntaka-
Vajrabhairava in Late Imperial and Republican China

359-385 Françoise Wang-Toutain

Comment Asa∫ga rencontra Maitreya :
contact entre bouddhisme chinois et tibétain au xxe siècle

387-427 Chen Bing

The Tantric Revival and Its Reception in Modern China
translated by Monica Esposito
 volume ii

contents

china – Part 2

433-471 Luo Tongbing

The Reformist Monk Taixu and the Controversy
about Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism

473-548 Monica Esposito

rDzogs Chen in China: From Chan to “Tibetan Tantrism”
in Fahai Lama’s (1920-1991) Footsteps

551-577 Henry C. H. Shiu

Tibetan Buddhism in Hong Kong: The Polarity in the Two
Trends of Practicing

579-609 Yao Lixiang

The Development and Evolution of Tibetan Buddhism
in Taiwan
translated by Liu Jingguo

611-681 Chen Qingying and Wang Xiangyun

Tibetology in China: A Survey

tibet

687-704 Erberto Lo Bue

Tibetan Aesthetics versus Western Aesthetics
in the Appreciation of Religious Art

707-724 Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz

Uncivilized Nomads and Buddhist Clerics: Tibetan Images of
the Mongols in the 19th and 20th Centuries
 727-745 Patricia Berger
Reincarnation in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction:
The Career of the Narthang Panchen Lama Portraits

747-779 Antonio Terrone

Tibetan Buddhism beyond the Monastery: Revelation and
Identity in rNying ma Communities of Present-day Kham

781-796 Sabina Ragaini

Life and Teachings of Tashi Dorje: A Dzogchen Tulku
in 20th Century Kham

799-815 Matthew T. Kapstein

“Tibetan Tibetology”? Sketches of an Emerging Discipline

819-856 Index of Proper Names

858-859 List of Contributors

 illustrations

xxii Map of Tibet (CHGIS version 2, China in Time and Space, August 2003, dem)

west
19 Pallas: Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten vol. 1 (1771): Plate 10
44 Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten vol. 2 (1801): Plate 14
59 Schopenhauer’s Buddha statue. (Schopenhauer Archiv, Frankfurt am Main)
101 Giuseppe Tucci with a local dignitary. (Negative stored [Istituto Italiano per
l’Africa e l’Oriente, Rome] 6027/21)

japan
204 Kawaguchi Ekai 河口慧海 (1866-1945)
204 The departure of Kawaguchi Ekai from Lhasa for India. (Scroll of Kawaguchi
Ekai, no. 24: courtesy of Miyata Emi 宮田恵美)

china – Part 1
304 The ninth Panchen Lama. (Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art)
316 Ritual implements used by the Ninth Panchen Lama in Hangzhou, China 1930s.
(Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art)
319 Peace Mandala of Shambhala on floor of Temple, Oct. 1932. (Jacques Marchais
Museum of Tibetan Art)
320 Kyil Khor of Shambhala, Oct. 1932, Back of inside Throne. (Jacques Marchais
Museum of Tibetan Art)
327 The Living God of Asia, 1934. (Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art)
327 The Panchen Lama during the retreat, 1934. (Jacques Marchais Museum of Ti-
betan Art)
330 Sign in front of Shanyindian, Beihai. (Photo by E. Bianchi)
332 Mandala on the vault of Shanyin­dian, Beihai. (Photo by E. Bianchi)
332 Statue of Vajrabhairava in Shanyin­­dian, Beihai. (Photo by E. Bianchi)
334 Nine niches on the ceiling of the Taihedian, Forbidden City. (Photo by E.
Bianchi)
341 Detail of Shanyindian, in front of the Baita, Beihai. (Photo by E. Bianchi)

x
343 Statue of Vajrabhairava in Mizongdian, Yonghe­gong. (Photo by E. Bianchi)
343 Statue of Vajrabhairava in Dongpeidian, Yonghe­gong. (Photo by E. Bianchi)
343 Statue of Vajrabhairava in Yamandagalou, Yonghe­gong. (Photo by E. Bianchi)
367 Asa∫ga. (Collection of M. Donald Rubin)

china – Part 2
433 Venerable Master Taixu. (Source: Yin­shun Cultural and Educational Foun­dation,
Xinzhu County, Taiwan)
475 Fahai Lama at Qianfo chansi. (Gift of Fahai Lama)
477 Miaokong, the young Fahai Lama. (Gift of Fahai Lama)
477 Gangs dkar rin po che. (Source: Yangdui 仰兌, Hong Kong/Tai­bei: Tantrayana
Publications, 1981-1985, vol. 3)
478 Gangs dkar monastery, Mi nyag region [Khams]. (Photo by M. Esposito)
480 Qianfo chansi 千佛禪寺, the Thousand Buddhas Monastery. (Photo by M. Espo-
sito)
481 Taijidong 太極洞, the Great Ultimate cave. (Photo by M. Esposito)
481 Fahai Lama and his disciples in front of Taijidong. (Source: Mianhuai Fahai
shangshi 緬懷法海上師, Hong Kong, 1995)
483 Nuns practicing koutou 叩頭 at Qianfo chansi. (Photo by M. Esposito)
484 Rev. Folian 佛蓮 practicing the sixfold yoga of Nåropa at Qianfo chansi. (Photo
by M. Esposito)
485 Fahai Lama’s teaching session at Qianfo chansi. (Photo by M. Esposito)
495 Dayuanman guanding yiji quanji Fahai lama 大圓滿灌頂講錄全集 [Complete col-
lection of the explicative commentaries on Great Perfection initiations]. (Photo
by M. Esposito)
513 The Lamp of the Pure Space. (Source: Dayuanman guanding 大圓滿灌頂, Fahai
Lama's manuscript)
517 Adamantine strands. (Source: Da­yuanman guanding 大圓滿灌頂, Fahai Lama's
manuscript)
517 Adamantine strands like a string of pearls. (Source: The Collected Redis­­covered
Teachings [gter ma] of Gter-chen Mchog-gyur-gli∫-pa)

xi
517 Adamantine strands like knots tied into a horse’s tail. (Source: The Collected Redis-
covered Teach­ings [gter ma] of Gter-chen Mchog-gyur-gli∫-pa)
518 The manifestation of forms of deities. (Source: The Collected Rediscovered Teachings
[gter ma] of Gter-chen Mchog-gyur-gli∫-pa)
525 Guanyin. (Gift of Rev. Folian)
525 Vajrayogin¥. (Gift of Rev. Folian)

tibet
729 Gyaltsen Norbu in the Sunlight Hall, Tashilhunpo Monastery. (Source: Fomen
sheng­shi: The Confirmation and Enthronement of the 11th Bainqen Erdeni, 1996, 103)
729 Sakya Paˆ∂ita, sixth portrait in the Narthang Panchen Lama series. (Theos
Bernard Col­lection, Gift of G. Eleanor Murray)
730 Sakya Paˆ∂ita, sixth portrait in the silk textile series of the Panchen Lamas. (Source:
Xizang tangka, pl. 60)
733 The 4th Panchen Lama, eleventh in the Narthang Panchen Lama series. (Theos
Bernard Col­lection, Gift of G. Eleanor Murray)
733 The 6th Panchen Lama, thirteenth in the Narthang Panchen Lama series. (Theos
Ber­nard Collection, Gift of G. Eleanor Murray)
735 The 4th Panchen Lama, eleventh in the series sent to the Qing court by the 6th
Panchen Lama. (Palace Museum, Beijing)
738 Órya Lokeßvara, sent by Polhanay in 1745 to the Yonghe­gong, Beijing. (Source:
Precious Deposits, vol. 4, no. 13)
741 The 9th Panchen Lama, silk textile portrait made in Hangzhou. (Source: Xizang
tangka, pl. 81)
753 The Buddhist teacher and Treasure revealer Grub dbang lung rtogs rgyal mtshan.
(Photo by A. Terrone)
757 Monks outside the main assembly hall of Bla rung sgar in gSer rta (Sichuan). (Photo
by A. Terrone)
762 A view of the Buddhist center Thub bstan chos ’khor gling in mGo log (Qinghai).
(Photo by A. Terrone)
775 A group of Chinese lay Buddhist devotees enjoy sacred dances at Ya chen sgar.
(Photo by A. Terrone)

xii
west
The Tibet of Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer
The manifold discussions in the wake of Edward Said's 1978 book on “Orientalism” and
pioneer attempts to portray the history of the Western discovery of Buddhism showed that there
is a dire need for case studies that throw light on the views of specific persons about specific
Asian phenomena at specific points in time. Here, the views of three well-read philosophers from
Germany, a nation without any colonial interest in Tibet or neighboring regions, are explored. The
views of all three men are well documented through their own writings or through lecture notes
by students. What kind of information were they gathering, and from what sources? What did
they focus on, and what did they come up with? What motivated them to read about Tibet, and to
what extent did their world view, their religion, their philosophy, and particular interests shape
their ideas of the mysterious country in the Himalayas?
The views expressed by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) from the 1750s to the turn of the century
reflect a rapidly changing breakdown of the biblical view of history and the philosopher's
pronounced interest in the history of the earth and of humanity. To Kant Tibet appeared as the
first country to emerge from the latest great flood. He ignored the Bible in viewing Tibet as the
cradle of humanity and the seat of mankind's most ancient culture and religion. G.W.F. Hegel
(1770-1831) also adopted an Asian origin of history and a gradual progress from a primitive state
to perfection, but in contrast to Kant he still clung to a strictly biblical timeframe. Unlike Hegel,
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) showed a pronounced philosophical interest in Asia. He is the
first European philosopher to be influenced by Asian philosophy and religion at an early stage in
his career. He became convinced that the Kangyur was the oldest and most complete repository
of Buddhist texts and admired early translations of some of its texts. In 1850s the philosopher
became the first Westerner to refer to himself as a Buddhist.

Le Tibet des philosophes: Kant, Hegel et Schopenhauer

Les discussions après la publication du livre “Orientalisme” d’Edward Said, ainsi qu’un nombre
d’esquisses pionnières de l’histoire de la découverte du bouddhisme par les occidentaux ont
montré la nécessité d’étudier des cas particuliers mettant en lumière les points de vue de personnes
distinctes concernant des phénomènes orientaux spécifiques dans un cadre historique défini.
Cette contribution présente les opinions de trois philosophes érudits originaires d’Allemagne,
un pays sans intérêts coloniaux au Tibet ou dans les régions voisines. Ces points de vue sont
relativement bien documentés tant par les écrits de ces trois philosophes que par les notes de
leurs étudiants. Quelle sorte d’information ont-ils cherché et quelles étaient leurs sources ? Quels
phénomènes ont attiré leur attention et quel était le résultat de leurs recherches ? Quels motifs
animaient leur lecture sur le Tibet et comment leur vision du monde, leur religion, leur philosophie
et leurs intérêts particuliers ont déterminé leurs idées sur ce pays mystérieux de l’Himalaya ? Telles
sont les questions posées.
Le point de vue exprimé par Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804) entre 1750 et la fin du siècle reflète
l’affaiblisssement progressif de la conception biblique de l’histoire, ainsi que l’intérêt prononcé
du philosophe pour l’histoire de la terre et de l’homme. Pour Kant, le Tibet est le premier pays
à émerger des océans du déluge. Abandonnant l’approche biblique, Kant voit le Tibet comme le
berceau de l’humanité et par conséquent de toutes culture et religion. G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) situe,
lui aussi, l’origine de l’histoire de l’homme en Asie. À ses yeux, cette histoire se présente comme
un progrès graduel vers la perfection à partir d’un état primitif mais, à la différence de Kant, il ne
parvient pas à abandonner le cadre chronologique de l’histoire biblique. Contrairement à Hegel,
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) montre un intérêt prononcé pour les religions et les philosophies
de l’Asie. Il est le premier philosophe européen à s’être laissé autant influencer par elles au cours de
sa période formative. Il était persuadé que le Kangyur représentait la collection la plus ancienne et
complète des textes bouddhiques et était un ardent admirateur des premières traductions de certains
de ses textes. Dans les années 1850 ce philosophe fut le premier occidental à se dire « bouddhiste ».
 the tibet of the philosophers

kant, hegel, and schopenhauer

Urs A pp

K ant

T
he 1757 announcement of Kant’s pioneering course on “physical geo­
graphy”—by far his most popular lecture series which ended only in
1796— signals his interest in theories of our earth’s formation. For
example, the presence of sea shells and maritime fossils on high mountains indicated
that “all firm land once formed the bottom of the sea”;1 but how did animals and
plants of the tropics end up petrified or frozen in faraway lands? Had there been a
drastic climate change due to a changing inclination of the earth’s axis?2 Kant had
little sympathy for the likes of Woodward3 and Whiston4 who, in the wake of Father
Athanasius Kircher, had ended up using science to prop up the Old Testament nar­
rative. Already in his General Theory of Nature and Theory of the Heavens of 1755 Kant
had outlined an earth formation process in which an initial liquid state was followed
by the gradual formation of a crust. Subsequently, the familiar features of the earth
gradually took form primarily through erosion by the receding sea and by mighty
rivers which carried water from higher plains to lower regions.5 At this early stage

1 Immanuel Kant, Kants Werke (Akademie-Textausgabe; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,

1968): vol. 2 (Vorkritische Schriften II), 8. Note: All translations from non-English materials
in this contri­­bution are by the author.
2 Kant, Werke, vol. 2, 8. Louville D’Allonville had proposed in 1714 that over the
unheard-of period of 200,000 years a drastic climate change had occurred. See Manfred
Petri, Die Urvolkhypothese – ein Beitrag zum Geschichtsdenken der Spätaufklärung und des
deutschen Idealismus (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1990): 31.
3 John Woodward, An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth: and Terrestrial Bodies,
especially Minerals: As also of the Sea, Rivers, and Springs. With an Account of the Universal
Deluge: and of the Effects that it had upon the Earth (London: R. Wilkin, 1695).
4 William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth from its Original to the Consummation
of All Things. Wherein The Creation of the World in Six Days, The Universal Deluge, And the
General Conflagration, As laid down in the Holy Scriptures, Are shown to be perfectly agreeable to
Reason and Philosophy (London: Tooke, 1696).
5 Kant, Werke, vol. 1, 199.

Images of Tibet in the 19 th and 20 th Centuries

Paris, EFEO, coll. « Études thématiques » (22.1), 2008, p. 5-60
6 Urs App

in his career Kant still used the biblical number of around 6,000 years for the age of
the earth6 but guessed that it “may have existed a thousand or more years before it
was in a condition to support humans, animals, and plants.”7 He soon agreed with
the naturalist Buffon that it was wiser to separate the history of the earth altogether
from that of humanity. Buffon was convinced that Asia had been the first part of
the earth to get dry; it therefore had to be substantially older than Europe, Africa,
and of course also the region that was home to the Old Testament.8 Kant also con­
cluded that “humans first inhabited the most elevated regions of the globe; only at
a late stage did they descend to the plains.”9 The cradle of humanity was thus likely
to be located in the high plains of Asia rather than the alluvial lowlands around the
Eastern Mediterranean. This new birthplace of the human race is just one symptom
of the profound change of world view that took place between Kant’s first writ­
ings in the 1750s and Schopenhauer’s death in 1860 (a year after the publication of
Darwin’s Origin of Species). Just as the earth and entire galaxies had, in Kant’s eyes,
become mere specks of dust floating in an immense universe,10 so the “crown of
creation,” the human being, appeared to him like a louse on someone’s head which
harbors the delusion of being the center and goal of everything.11 Such insight
by the young Kant already points in the direction of his immortal philosophical
achievement: the demonstration that our perception determines our reality rather
than the other way around. Naturally, this fundamental change in Europe’s view
of the world’s and mankind’s origin and history is also reflected in the prism of the
European image of Tibet and its religion; here, too, the reigning world views had a
way of determining reality.
Most of Kant’s views on Tibet were aired in his Physical Geography lectures,
but he only published the short announcement of these lectures mentioned above.
The bulk of information is found in a complex set of materials comprising Kant’s
own lecture blueprint (the so-called “Diktattext” redacted before 1760); several
printed compilations by other authors based on these notes as well as student notes;
and finally heaps of lecture notes by Kant’s students which for the most part were
redacted, revised and combined with other student notes or with the “Diktattext”
at some later point.12 Quite a number of important manuscripts disappeared at some
point or were des­troyed during World War II, but luckily Helmuth von Glasenapp
had before the war studied some of them and proceeded to cite or summarize
relevant bits and pieces in his book Kant and the Religions of the East. A thorough

6 Kant, Werke, vol. 1, 204.

7 Kant, Werke, vol. 1, 352-353.
8 Erich Adickes, Kants Ansichten über Geschichte und Bau der Erde (Tübingen: J. C. B.
Mohr, 1911): 37.
9 Kant, Werke, vol. 1, 200.
10 Kant, Werke, vol. 1, 352.
11 Kant, Werke, vol. 1, 353.
12 See Erich Adickes’s detailed source studies in Untersuchungen zu Kants physischer Geo­
graphie (Tübingen: J. B. Mohr, 1911); Helmuth von Glasenapp, Kant und die Religionen des
Ostens (Kitzingen am Main: Holzner, 1954); and the web pages by Werner Starke on Kant’s
physical geography and its forthcoming critical edition.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 7

study would obviously necessitate a comprehensive review of all extant manuscript

sources. However, the currently available printed materials permit gaining an idea
of the development and content of Kant’s view of Tibet and its religion.
Tibet first appears in a part of the “Diktattext” which can be reliably dated to
before 1760.13 Kant began his discussion of Chinese religion as follows:

Here [in China], the religion is treated rather indifferently. Many do not
believe in a God; others who adhere to a religion do not bother much about
[God]. The sect of Fo is most numerous. They conceive this Fo as an incar­
nated deity which in particular inhabits today the great Lama in Barantola14
in Tibet. It is venerated in him, but after his death it goes into another Lama.
The Tartar priests are called Lamas, the Chinese ones Bonzes.15

In preparation for his lectures Kant had read La Croze’s essay on the idolatry of the
Indies16 which gives the lie to modern assertions to the effect that the European dis­
covery of Buddhism began “by the mid-1830s” when “ ‘Buddhism’ came to define
the religious beliefs and practices of most of Asia,”17 or that the “joint birth of the
word and the object” began effectively around 1820.”18 Along this line, Almond
boldly states:

Throughout the preceding discussion, I have tried carefully to avoid giv­

ing the impression that Buddhism existed prior to the end of the eighteenth
century: that it was waiting in the wings, so to say, to be discovered; that it
was floating in some ethereal Oriental limbo expecting its objective embodi­
ment. On the contrary, what we are witnessing in the period from the later
part of the eighteen­th century to the beginning of the Victorian period in
the latter half of the 1830s is the creation of Buddhism.19

But La Croze’s 1724 discussion of the religion of the “Samanéens” whose founder
is “Budda”—a religion of Indian origin which after its disappearance from India
survived in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan and prob­
ably also in Tibet—shows just how baseless such assertions are. Using information
from a wide variety of sources La Croze came to the conclusion that this religion

13 Adickes, Untersuchungen, 7-44.

14 According to Kircher Barantola was the Saracen name for Lhasa. Athanasius Kircher,
China Illustrata with Sacred and Secular Monuments, Various Spectacles of Nature and Art and
Other Memorabilia, trans. Charles van Tuyl (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University,
1987): 46. Sometimes it is also used for the Potala palace.
15 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 381 (Physical Geography).
16 Mathurin Veyssière de la Croze, Histoire du Christianisme des Indes (The Hague:
Vaillant & N. Prevost, 1724).
17 Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­
sity Press, 1988): 11.
18 Roger-Pol Droit, Le culte du néant. Les philosophes et le Bouddha (Paris: Seuil, 1997): 36;
similarly also Bernard Faure, Bouddhismes, philosophies et religions (Paris: Flammarion, 1998): 17;
Frédéric Lenoir, La ­rencontre du Bouddhisme et de l’occident (Paris: Fayard, 1999): 90; and others.
19 Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism, 12.
8 Urs App

had been opposed to the Indian caste system20 and to the cults of Vishnu and Shiva,
did not recognize a God,21 and had a founder called “Boudda” who was identical
with the Chinese Xe-kia, the Sino-Japanese Xaca, the Siamese Sommona-codom,
etc.: “Boudda, Sommona-Codom, & Xaca refer to the same person. This is all
the more probable as the inhabitants of the kingdom of Laos, where the Siamese
Talapoins study, use all these names interchan­geably to denominate their idol of
which the cult has been established in China and Japan under the name of Xaca.”22
According to La Croze, “Boudda” had lived “several centuries before the Christian
era” and likely came “from a kingdom in central India”23 or from Ceylon.24 Since
the Ceylonese monks wear the same yellow robes, follow similar customs, and have
the same sacred language “Bali” as the Siamese, La Croze also concluded that the
“Budu” of the Ceylonese must refer to the same founder. Thus “one may surmise
that this Boudan, who apparently is in no way different from the Boutta of Clement
of Alexandria and the Boudda of St. Jerome, is none other than the Sommona-
Codom of the Siamese who also call him Pouti-Sat, and consequently the Xaca of
the Indians.”25 To La Croze this meant that the religion in question “which, apart
from China and Japan, has infected the kingdoms of Siam, Cambodia, Laos, Cochin
China, Tonkin, and several other countries to the North and South of India, “is
much larger than Islam”26 —the religion which for some time had been regarded as
the world’s largest.
While the world’s religious geography, one step behind its physical cousin,
showed its approximate outlines in the 16th and 17th centuries, these proportions
only really sunk in during the 18th century with its profusion of travel accounts and
syn­theses of the world’s customs and religions. By far the most important collection
for Kant was Astley’s New General Collection of Voyages and Travels.27 The relevant

20 La Croze, Histoire, 498. This is the earliest printed assertion I have so far found in
the West of Buddhist opposition to the Indian caste system. La Croze drew this informa­
tion from his careful study of the fifth chapter of the Halle manuscript of Bartholomäus
Ziegenbalg’s Genealogie der malabarischen Götter (manuscript of 1713) which was only pub­
lished in 1867 by Wilhelm Germann with many alterations; cf. Daniel Jeyaraj, Bartholomäus
Ziegenbalgs ‘Genealogie der malabarischen Götter’ (Halle: Francke, 2003): 14.
21 La Croze, Histoire, 498. La Croze bases much of his atheism argument on Simon de la
Loubère, Du Royaume de Siam (Amsterdam: Abraham Wolfgang, 1691).
22 La Croze, Histoire, 502. La Croze uses various spellings for the name of the founder
of Buddhism.
23 La Croze, Histoire, 502.
24 La Croze, Histoire, 505.
25 La Croze, Histoire, 513. Earlier identifications of the common referent of such diverse
names which were not yet published in 1724 include Fernåo de Queyroz’s detailed com­
parison of Chinese and Ceylonese biographical data about the Buddha in the The Temporal
and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon (Colombo: A. C. Richards, 1930): 118-141; and Engelbert
Kaempfer’s chapter on “Budsdo” (Buddhism) in The History of Japan (London: Thomas
Woodward, 1727): vol. 1, 241-243.
26 La Croze, Histoire, 504-505.
27 Thomas Astley, A new general collection of voyages and travels: consisting of the most
esteemed relations, which have been hitherto published in any language, comprehending every thing
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 9

portions of the German translation which Kant relied upon had been published
just a few years before he launched his geography lecture series.28 It was an exceed­
ingly rich source of information consisting both of original sources and critical
surveys and expositions. For example, Kant’s major source about Tibet, volume 7 of
Schwabe’s German version of Astley, contained not only comprehensive descriptions
of Tartary and Tibet but also many major travel accounts about these regions, from
the 13th century reports of Carpini, Ruysbroek and Marco Polo to materials from
17th and 18th century travelers and missionaries such as Johannes Grueber, Ippolito
Desideri, and Francesco Orazio della Penna.
Thus Kant was familiar with the view of Tibetan religion as a kind of degener­
ated Christianity communicated or implied by Andrade, Desideri and other mis­
sionaries featured in Astley/Schwabe’s collection:

The catholic missionaries describe the doctrines regarding Fo in such a way

that they appear as nothing other than Christianity degenerated into great
heathendom. Reportedly they [of the doctrine of Fo] posit three persons in
the Godhead, the second of which had furnished the law and had shed his
blood for humankind. The great Lama is also said to administer a kind of
sacrament using bread and wine.29

Since Kant offered this description in his treatment of Chinese religion and imme­
diately afterwards went on to describe other living religions of China (such as the
venera­t ion of Confucius), it is clear that for him the dominant religion of China,
the “sect of Fo” which we today call Chinese Buddhism, formed the essence of the
religion of Tibet: Fo (Buddha) is the divinity incarnated in the great Lama. Unlike
Hegel who, more than 60 years later, was still wondering whether Lamaism was
connected with the religion of Fo, Kant had, thanks to his study of La Croze and
Astley/Schwabe, grasped this connection from the outset. Furthermore, Joseph de
Guignes (1721-1800), another important source of Kant, had also identified a very
widespread religion with an Indian founder that reigned in many Asian countries
including China, Japan, Siam, Tartary, and Tibet.30 In his works de Guignes por­
trayed this pan-Asian religion as a mixture of Egyptian idolatry (in Indian guise
and propagated by a mighty impostor called Buddha) and early Christian teachings,
with Christian heresies and Manichean doctrines thrown into the mix. We will see
below that this potent brew inspired the fertile imagination of one of Kant’s later
sources, Father Agostino Giorgi, and formed a root of the two-Buddha theory that
confused Hegel.

remarkable in its kind, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with respect to the several Empires,
Kingdoms, and Provinces (London: Thomas Astley, 1745-1747).
28 Johann Joachim Schwabe (ed.), Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser oder zu Lande;
oder Sammlung aller Reisebeschreibungen, 21 vols. (Leipzig: Arkstee & Merkus, 1747-1774). For
information on China and Tibet Kant mainly relied on vols. 6 and 7 (both published in 1750).
29 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 381-382 (Physical Geography).
30 Joseph de Guignes, Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols, et des autres tar­
tares occidentaux, & c. avant Jésus-Christ jusqu’à présent, 5 vols. (Paris: Desaint & Saillant,
1756-1758): vol. 2, 234.
10 Urs App

The impression that Asian religions with monks, rosaries, statuary, etc. (reli­
gions that we today identify as forms of Buddhism) resemble Catholicism had
already been reported for centuries; but such reports gained in exposure when 18th
century protestants such as La Croze, Astley, and Schwabe were thrilled to fill
pages with parallels between “heathen” customs and those of the Roman Catholic
“papists.”31 After Tartary and Japan etc. it was now Tibet’s turn to exemplify that
the degeneration of Christianity had not stopped in Rome. In the words of the prot­
estant Kant:

This Lama does not die, his soul soon inhabits a body that totally resembles
the former one. Some subordinate priests also pretend to be animated
[beseelt] by this divinity, and the Chinese call such a person a living Fo.
What was said above [about similarities to catholic Christianity] and the fact
that the great Lama, whom they also call Father, is in effect the pope of the
heathens and could be said to have the patrimony of Peter in Barantola: this all
confirms the guess mentioned above [that it seems to be a degenerated form
of Catholicism].32

Regarding the doctrine of this “sect” Kant also reproduced the dominant opinion of
the time, namely, that it focuses on metempsychosis and karmic retribution and can
be divided into an inner and an outer teaching. De Guignes had explained that the
outer teaching varied depending­ on time and place, which explained the “consider­
able dif­ferences between the heathens­ of India and those of Tibet and Tartary.”33
This was a very handy way of gathering the whole herd of Asian paganisms under a
common roof, but it also meant that “transmigration” and the “secret teaching” had
to provide a measure of unity to the “sect.” Thus Kant wrote:

The sect of Fo believes in the transmigration of souls. There is a notion

among them that nothingness is the origin and end of all things, wherefore
an insensibility [Fühllosigkeit] and a temporary renunciation of all work are
godly thoughts [gottselige Gedanken].34

Kant thus boiled the teaching of Fo down to three main features: 1. transmigration;
2. nothing­­ness as the origin and end of everything; and 3. torpor and inactivity.
These were the teachings of the Chinese “sect of the false contemplators [Secte der
falschen Betrachter]” about which Kant had read in volume 6 of his trusty collection
of travel accounts. This sect reportedly aims at “ceasing to be and being engulfed
by nothingness” and “becoming like a rock or a stick.” Its contemplators want to
attain a state of happiness consisting in a “total insensibility and motionlessness,
the ceasing of all desires […] and annihilation of all forces of the soul, and in a total

31 Schwabe’s Allgemeine Historie devotes an entire section to such parallels (vol. 7,

212-215).
32 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 404-405 (Physical Geography).
33 De Guignes, Histoire, vol. 2, 225.
34 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 382 (Physical Geography).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 11

quietude of thoughts.”35 Like many other 18th-century intellectuals Kant was an avid
reader of Pierre Bayle’s dictionary, and this is exactly how Bayle, in his article on
Spinoza, had portrayed “quietism”:

The sectarians of Fo teach quietism since they say that all those who seek for
genuine beatitude must let themselves be absorbed in profound meditations
to such a degree that they make no use whatsoever of their intellect and, in
consummate insensibility, plunge into the quietude and inaction of the First
Principle; this they hold to be the true method of resembling it perfectly and
to participate in happiness.36

The association of Chinese quietism, pantheism, and Spinozism with Tibet was still
evoked by Kant a decade before his death in The End of All Things of 1794:

From this [mysticism] arises the monstrous system of Laokiun [Laozi] of the
highest good which is supposed to consist in nothingness: i.e., in the conscious­
ness of feeling oneself engulfed in the abyss of the divinity through conflu­
ence with it and thus through annihilation of one’s personality. Chinese phi­
losophers, in order to anticipate such a state, strive in dark rooms with closed
eyes to think and feel this nothingness of theirs. Hence the pantheism­ (of the
Tibetans and other Eastern peoples); and the Spinozism which subsequently
arose through metaphysical sublimation of the same. Both are closely related
to the extremely old system of emanation of all human souls from the divinity
(and its eventual resorption in the same).37

While Kant believed that it was Fo who was repeatedly incarnated in the Tibetan
lamas, he apparently was not yet able to link the lamas to other pieces of the mosaic
such as the Siamese and Burmese Talapoins who venerate an erstwhile Talapoin
called Sommona Cadam,38 Ceylonese monks who visit the footprint of their “God
Budda,”39 and so on. But he was fascinated by the religion of the Siberian Kalmyks
and Mongols and its center in “Barantola”40:

In Barantola, or as others call it, in the Potala resides the great supreme
priest of the Mongol Tartars, the very image of the pope. The priests of this
religion, who have spread from this region of Tartary to the Chinese sea,
are called Lamas; this religion seems to be catholic Christianity degenerated
into the blindest heathendom. They maintain that God has a son who came
into the world as a man and lived as a beggar but was solely preoccupied with
making people blissful [selig]. In the end he reportedly was raised to heaven.

35 Schwabe (ed.), Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande; oder Sammlung
aller Reisebeschreibungen (Leipzig: Arkstee & Merkus, 1750): vol. 6, 368-369.
36 Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Rotterdam: R. Leers, 1702): 2769, s.v.
“Spinoza.”
37 Kant, Werke, vol. 8, 335 (Das Ende aller Dinge, first published 1794).
38 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 385-386 (Physical Geography).
39 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 394 (Physical Geography).
40 See note 14 above.
12 Urs App

Gmelin41 himself heard this from a Lama. They also have a mother of this
savior and make likenesses of her. They also have the rosary. The missionar­
ies also report that they posit a threefoldness in the divine essence and that
the Dalai Lama administers a certain sacrament with bread and wine enjoyed
only by him.42

Though Kant reported some of this in a skeptical tone and thought that “what some
travelers report, namely that the adherents of this creed carry the excrements of the
Lama on them as a fine powder in boxes which they spread on their food” was prob­
ably no more than “simple slander,”43 there is not much evidence of a personal opin­
ion at this point. But it must be emphasized that the “Diktattext” simply represents
a basis of notes for Kant’s lectures. In the lectures themselves he often introduced
more recent information and contrasting viewpoints. Herder’s notes from Kant’s
1763-1764 lectures44 are a case in point; they show that near the beginning of his
career Kant already had a less confused picture of the religious geography of Asia
than Hegel in the early 1820s:

The [Chinese] national religion is that of the Fo or the Lamas; Xaca in

Japan; Fo in Tartary; Brama in Ceylon; Sommonacodom in Siam probably
is a man who had formerly lived and still animates the Lamma in Tartary,
and as Sommonacadom in Siam a Talepoin. The supreme priest in Tibet
(Daleylamma) is a living Fo, sits in the dark like God, underneath lamps; the
Lammas are subordinated to him as the eternal father; they have a rite with
bread and wine; also incarnation, or more properly enthusiasm [Begeis­terung]
of the Lamma. They believe in transmigration of souls [Seelen­wanderung];
(so also Fo) = sect which approaches nothingness [Sekte, die sich dem Nichts
nähert].45

Herder’s hasty notes are not without ambiguity, but Kant’s overall view was clearly
influenced by La Croze, Astley/Schwabe, and de Guignes:46

A Talepoin (Sommonacodom) seems to be one with many others: the Fo of

China; Xaca of Japan; Budda of Ceylon; and the Daleylamma is a living Fo.47

41 Kant refers to Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755), the German botanist and explorer
of Siberia.
42 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 404 (Physical Geography).
43 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 405 (Physical Geography).
44 These notes form part of Herder’s manuscript remains at the Staatsbibliothek Preus­
sischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin (Kapsel XXV, no. 44): Notes from Kant’s lectures on physi­cal
geography. See Hans Dietrich Irmscher & Emil Adler, Der handschriftliche Nachlass Johann
Gottfried Herders: Katalog (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1979): 195.
45 Herder, Kant lecture notes, Kapsel XXV, no. 44: 5v. Thanks to Werner Starke for
sharing his German draft transcription from the microfilms on which this translation is
based. Abbreviations and punctuation were adapted to increase legibility.
46 In the Herder notes (Kapsel XXV, no. 44: 5r) Kant also mentioned de Guignes’s book
on the Egyptian origin of the Chinese: Mémoire dans lequel on prouve, que les Chinois sont une
colonie égyptienne (Paris: Desaint & Saillant, 1760).
47 Herder, Kant lecture notes, Kapsel XXV, no. 44: 6r.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 13

Tibet as Mankind’s Ark

Reports that Tibet was the destination of pilgrims from various surrounding
coun­tries were numerous; Andrade, for example, had written in 1626 that he accom­
panied Indians on their pilgrimage toward Tibet.48 For Kant this was an important
confir­mation of Tibet’s antiquity.

It is the most elevated land, was also probably inhabited earlier than any
other, and could even be the original seat [Stammsitz] of all culture and sci­
ence. The learning of the Indians, in particular, stems with great likelihood
from Tibet, as on the other hand all our arts seem to have come from India,
for example agriculture, numbers, the game of chess, etc. It is believed that
Abraham hailed from the frontiers of Hindustan.49

Already in the 16th century Guillaume Postel had suggested that Abraham was the
ancestor of the Brahmins or Abrahamins and that some Indian books were older
than the deluge;50 but like Martino Martini a century later51 and the Jesuit figurists
in his wake,52 Postel did not want to undermine the validity of the Old Testament
but rather defend it. Though such defense became increasingly costly, the basic
course of history from a golden age (paradise) via degeneration (the fall, etc.) to
regeneration remained unchanged, and the geographical center of the whole enter­
prise was naturally Israel. But during the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries,
in the run-up to Kant’s trailblazing lectures on physical geography, the situation
took an ominous turn.53 This change of outlook was not only due to travelers who
were exploring the customs and religions of foreign lands but also to scientists like
Buffon who gave increasing importance to the “book of nature.” Furthermore, in
Kant’s time the traditional view was frontally attacked by Hume’s Natural History
of Religion (1757) and its persuasive argument that religion had not begun with pure
monotheism and god-given wisdom somewhere near Jerusalem but rather with
primitive cults everywhere that were mainly driven by fear of accidents and natural

48 Hugues Didier, Les portugais au Tibet. Les premières relations jésuites (1624-1635) (Paris:
Chandeigne, 1996): 42.
49 Kant, Werke, vol. 9, 228. For sources on Abraham and India see Glasenapp, Kant,
73 and Adickes, Untersuchungen, 189. The Indian origin of chess was first argued by Fréret
in 1719; see the references in Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe (New Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1990): 472 note 25.
50 Guillaume Postel, De Originibus seu de varia et potissimum orbi Latino ad hanc diem
incognita, aut inconsyderata historia, quum totius Orientis, tum maxime Tartarorum, Persarum,
Turcarum, & omnium Abrahami & Noachi alumnorum origines, & mysteria Brachmanum rete­
gente: Quod ad gentium, literarumque quib. utuntur, rationes attinet (Basel: J. Oporin, 1553): 70.
See also Daniel Georg Morhof, Polyhistor, literarius, philosophicus et practicus (Lübeck: Peter
Boeckmann, 1708): vol. 1, 50-51.
51 Martino Martini, Sinicae historia decas prima (Munich: Lucas Straub, 1658).
52 See for example Claudia von Collani, Die Figuristen in der Chinamission (Frankfurt a. M./
Bern: Lang, 1981).
53 See my forthcoming monograph on Europe’s 18th-century discovery of Asian religions.
14 Urs App

disasters. Instead of a golden age followed by degeneration and marked by decadent

plagiarism, a model of gradual progress from primitive beginnings gained adher­
ents—a model, incidentally, that had prominent forerunners in pagan Greece and
Rome. Kant, the avid reader of Hamann’s trans­lation of Hume’s treatise, was among
them;54 and Tibet as the nursery of mankind was about to take on some of the
vibrant hues of Eden.
With the shift of the world’s center of historical gravity from the Mediterranean
region to the mountains of Asia, Hebrew also gradually lost its status of being
mankind’s original language.55 If all of the arts and even Abraham had come from the
mountains north of India, why not also language? For Kant this was only logical:
China, Persia and India received their inhabitants from there. Here and
nowhere else one ought to look for the trunk-roots of all primal languages
[Ursprachen] of Asia and Europe. … Abraham probably lived in the environs
of India, and his parentage with Brahma might not just be one of name.56

Of course Sanskrit offered itself as an attractive candidate; long before William Jones,
the Italian Sassetti,57 the German Benjamin Schulze58 and Father Cœurdoux from
France59 had detected a relationship between Sanskrit and European languages, and
Kant had read in de la Loubère’s travel account that Sanskrit could be the mother
of all living Indian languages.60 Thus it is hardly surprising that Kant thought that
“Sanskrit has a quite definite quality and seems to be related to all languages.”61
Another facet of this momentous shift concerned the traditional view of the
origin of human races. How was it possible that in just a few thousand years the
descendants of three sons of Noah could have acquired such diverse features and
multiplied so much? Characteristically, Kant’s 1775 treatise About the different Races
of Mankind starts out with Buffon and seems to ignore the biblical narrative com­
pletely. However, underneath the scientific and speculative surface the remnants of
the traditional worldview still show through: mankind’s monogenetic origin­(Kant’s
“original species” [Stammgattung]); a region warm enough for the naked first couple;
and a catas­trophic universal flood.62

54 Kant, Werke, vol. 18, 428.

55 See the brief overview of this process in Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise
(New York: Other Press, 1992): 1-11.
56 Cited in Glasenapp, Kant, 73 from Vollmer’s 1816 edition of Kant’s physical geogra­
phy lectures (see Adickes, Untersuchungen, 11-12). See note 50 for the source of this idea.
57 Theodor Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und der orientalischen Philologie in
Deutsch­land (Munich: Cotta, 1861): 222-223 and 333. Sassetti had been in India from 1583 to
1588.
58 Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 261 and 336-338. In 1741 Schulze published
the first Hindi grammar in Madras.
59 Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 341. Cœurdoux’s treatise comparing Sanskrit
with Latin and Greek was read before the French Academy in 1768.
60 Glasenapp, Kant, 29-30.
61 Ms. 2599: 327 (Adickes Ms. Q); cited after Glasenapp, Kant, 29.
62 Kant, Werke, vol. 2, 440 (Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen). Kant here situated
this region between the 31st and 52nd degree of latitude.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 15

The native of Hindustan can be seen as originating from one of the oldest
human races. His land, which to the north borders on a high mountain range
… (and to which I add to the north Tibet, possibly the general shelter of the
human race during the last great revolution affecting our earth, and its nurs­
ery thereafter) features, in a temperate region, the most perfect watershed
(drainage to two seas) … . In the remotest antiquity it thus could be dry and
habitable … . So it was here that over long periods of time a solid human race
could be formed.63

Kant’s speculations were soon boosted by those of Jean-Sylvain Bailly, a re­­nowned

historian of science who later became mayor of Paris. Published in the same year as
Kant’s treatise on human races, Bailly’s multi-volume History of Ancient Astronomy64
created quite a stir through its claim that the cradle of humankind was situated
around the 49th degree of latitude in Siberia. Though he seemed to have thrown the
Old Testament overboard, Bailly’s edifice rested on the old idea of a period of great
wisdom at a very early time in human history; traces of this wisdom, he claimed,
had survived in the form of the surprisingly advanced astronomical knowledge of
antiquity. Bailly’s enterprise shows some similarity to 20th-century fantasies about
extraterrestrials,65 which hold that mankind’s supposedly very advanced ancient
knowledge can only be explained by the influence of a “teacher” group. In Bailly’s
case these teachers were not extraterrestrials but rather the divinely inspired orig­
inal human race hailing from Siberia. Like his modern successors, Bailly found
“proofs” of his hypothesis just about everywhere; but in his case the data did not
point to outer space but rather to North Asia whose celestial phenomena appeared
to match ancient observations. According to Buffon’s theory the earth’s poles had
cooled first and could provide shelter to our naked ancestors. Bailly held that in
mankind’s Siberian cradle surprisingly advanced observational knowledge had accu­
mulated and that later this knowledge had taken refuge in Tibet, where it survived
the great flood and subsequently made its way to India and China—a scenario sup­
ported by the pilgrimages by Indians and Chinese to Tibet.66 Tibet thus became, to
put it provocatively, the enlightened European’s Ark of Noah. Bailly’s stunning the­
ories seemed to confirm Kant’s view of this region’s “white-skinned yet brunette
inhabitants”67 as the remnants of the original human species from which all known
pure and mixed races stem.68

63 Kant, Werke, vol. 2, 439.

64 Jean Sylvain Bailly, Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne (Paris: Debure, 1775).
65 See for example Erich von Däniken, In Search of the Gods (New York: Avenel Books,
1989).
66 Preface by translator C. E. Wünsch to Jean Sylvain Bailly, Des Herrn Bailly Aufsehers
über den königlichen Bildersaal wie auch der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Paris und
des Instituts zu Bologne Mitgliedes Geschichte der Sternkunde des Alterthums bis auf die Errichtung
der Schule zu Alexandrien (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1777); see Glasenapp, Kant, 27-28.
67 Kant, Werke, vol. 2, 441.
68 Kant, Werke, vol. 2, 432-434 and 440-441. For changes in Kant’s view of races see
Adickes, Untersuchungen, 194-197.
16 Urs App

Bible-based chronology had long been under discussion and sometimes attack,
but Chinese historical records—which, according to some Jesuit experts, predated
the deluge—had shocked many 17th-century Europeans. It is in this context that
astronomical information gained in importance as a tool for nailing down dates
in the dawn of time. This is why Bailly’s well-documented claims regarding the
character and accuracy of ancient astronomical data attracted much attention in
Kant’s time and beyond.69 When Kant lent his copy of Bailly’s History of Astronomy
to a friend in the sum­mer of 1777 he urged him to take note of the North-Asian
origin of science­ and to return the book expeditiously.70 His interest is understand­
able since Bailly’s History of Astronomy appeared to confirm Kant’s long-held view
that the human race had survived the latest global catastrophe in the highest plains
of Asia, which thus had to be the homeland not only of the Chinese, Persians, and
Indians but of all humankind:

Nowhere else than here ought one to locate the genetic roots of all original
languages of Asia and Europe. It is from here that the Indian [religion] and all
our religions came, learning, agriculture, numbers, chess, etc. … Pilgrimages
are always made to the place of origin of a religion. The Europeans make pil­
grimages to Jerusalem, the muslims to Mecca, the old Egyptians formerly to
Abessinia … and the Indians to Tibet, to the temple­ in the center of the city
of Lhassa.71

Instead of India, which Voltaire in 1761 had famously declared to be the home of
the most ancient and purest religion and the cradle of all civilizations,72 Kant in
the 1780s came to regard Tibet as the mother of all homelands since it had given
birth to the “pure basis and fundamental conception” of the Brahmanic religion.73
Spurious texts like the Ezourvedam74 and Holwell’s Chartah Bhade of Brahma75 were

69 Bailly followed up his History with his Lettres sur l’origine des sciences, et sur celle des
peuples de l’Asie (Paris: Debure, 1777) and the Lettres sur l’Atlantide de Platon et sur l’ancienne
histoire de l’Asie (London: E. Elmesly, 1779). In the latter the whole edifice is linked to Plato’s
Atlantis legend.
70 Kant, Werke, vol. 10, 209; letter to A. J. Penzel of August 12, 1777.
71 This passage is from Vollmer’s 1816 edition of Kant’s physical geography lectures
which in general is a source of little value (see Adickes, Untersuchungen, 11-12). However, this
line of argument is supported by various other sources; see Glasenapp, Kant, 72-77. In 1773,
Voltaire expressed a similar opinion about the Indian origin of numbers, chess, the first prin­
ciples of geometry, etc.; see Halbfass, India and Europe, 59.
72 Halbfass, India and Europe, 57-58.
73 Ms. 1296: 314 (Adickes Ms. O); cited after Glasenapp, Kant, 38.
74 Guillaume Emmanuel Sainte-Croix (ed.), L’Ezour-Vedam ou Ancien Commentaire du
Vedam, contenant l’exposition des opinions religieuses & philosophiques des Indiens (Yverdon: De
Felice, 1778).
75 John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting historical events, relative to the provinces of Bengal,
and the empire of Indostan (London: Becket & De Hondt, 1767, part 2). A German translation
appeared in 1778: Holwells merkwürdige und historische Nachrichten von Hindostan und Bengalen,
nebst einer Beschreibung der Religionslehren, der Mythologie, etc. (Leipzig: Weygandsche
Buchhandlung, 1778).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 17

earnestly discussed by men like Voltaire, Bailly, Raynal, and Herder as expressions
of ancient monotheism; but what had happened to this creed? And what relation did
it have to the present religion of the Lamas in Tibet which, according to La Croze,
was “a veritable paganism so similar in many respects to that of the Indies that there
are authors who do not distinguish them at all”?76
In Kant’s view, the pure ancient religion of Tibet had made its way to India
where it had become “mixed with many superstitious things several hundred years
before Christ’s birth, things which were in part supposed to be symbolic but ended
up being objects of devotion.”77 The instigator of this mix-up was none other than
“Buda” who 300 years before Christ brought about in India a change of religion
which almost immediately propagated itself back to Tibet.78 As a close reader of
La Croze and de Guignes, Kant knew well that this “Buda” was identical with
the Gotama of Burma, Samana Gotama of Siam, Butso and Shaka of Japan, Fo of
China, and the Burchan of Tibet and Tartary.79 But how did Tibetan religion end
up as the strange pseudo-Christian mishmash of which Kant got the latest news
in the travel accounts of Pallas and Bogle?80 Had there been, after the Buddhist
conquest of Tibet in pre-Christian times, a second religious invasion of mankind’s
originally pure cradle—this time by Catholics or by Christian heretics? At this
stage, “the Lamaist religion” seemed to Kant “one of the strangest phenomena on
this globe” and a showcase “that with regard to religion man has tried out just about
any absurdity one could think of.”81
Although few details of such “absurdities” are mentioned it is clear that Kant was
actually rather well informed about religious practices of the Tibetans which were
not mentioned in the usual travel accounts. What was his source of information?
In student notes as well as Kant’s own writings the name of the German scientist
Peter Simon Pallas occasionally pops up. Pallas (1741-1811) was famous for his 1777
study on the formation of mountains in which he wrote that the granite peaks of the
Himalayas had never been touched by any flood and that the southern slopes of the
Himalayas were likely to be “the first homeland of the human race and of the white

76 La Croze, Histoire du christianisme des Indes, 518.

77 Ms. 2599: 237 (Adickes Ms. Q); approx. from 1781. Cited after Glasenapp, Kant, 33.
78 Ms. 1296: 310 (Adickes Ms. O); after Glasenapp, Kant, 58.
79 Ms. 1729: 156 (Adickes Ms. S); Ms. 2599: 310, 329 (Adickes Q); see Glasenapp, Kant,
59. Regarding Burchan see also Ms 2599: 309 (Adickes Q); Glasenapp, Kant, 75.
80 Peter Simon Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten über die mongolischen
Völkerschaften (St. Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1776): vol. 1. For
Bogle-related sources see Adickes, Untersuchungen, 121. In such reports Kant learned about
the three head Lamas (Dalai, Taisha, and Bogdo Lama), etc. See Ms. 2582a: 63b and Ms.
Dohna: 216 cited in Glasenapp, Kant, 76.
81 Ms. 2599: 309 (Adickes Ms. Q); approx. from 1781. Cited after Glasenapp, Kant, 75.
Kant might have been thinking of the Tibetan prayer wheels which he described as similar
to Christian pilgrimages to Loretto or Jerusalem. Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb
der Grenzen der blo´en Vernunft (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974): 228-229. The original edition was
published in 1793.
18 Urs App

humans.”82 But he was also the author of a three-volume illustrated travel­account of

his explorations of the Russian East83 and a two-volume study of the history and cul­
ture of Mongolia which contains some of the earliest accurate depictions of Tibetan
Buddhist statuary (see pl. 10).84 Kant certainly read the former, which confirmed
that pea-sized black “holy pills (Schalirr)” were imported from Tibet and given by
Lamaist clergy to the rich and noble suffering from very grave illnesses.85 This
information formed part of Pallas’s pioneering 33-page survey of Tibetan Buddhism
as practiced by the Kalmyks which included not only accounts of Tibetan cosmog­
ony, apocalypse, and doctrine (as relayed by a Christian Kalmyk) but also a wealth
of first-hand observations by Pallas and his collaborators on clergy, rituals, and reli­
gious customs.86

Tibet at the Crossroads

Toward the end of his lecturing years Kant came across a worthy successor to
Kircher’s China Illustrata: Father Antonio Giorgi’s Alphabetum Tibetanum.87 This
is not just a book about Tibetan letters but rather an ABC of all things Tibetan,
a very rich source of information, disinformation and speculation that exerted a
great influence on the Tibet image of the aging philosopher. In particular, Giorgi
addressed the mystery of Tibetan religion, which to Kant appeared so exceedingly
strange. Struggling with the discrepancy between Asian sources (which held that
Shakyamuni Buddha lived six or even ten centuries before Christ’s birth) and the
views of de Guignes (which regarded even the reputedly most fundamental text of
Buddhism, the Forty-Two-Chapter Sutra, as a concoction of early Christian times),88
Giorgi came up with an ingenious theory powerful enough to confuse some of the

82 Pallas, Über die Beschaffenheit der Gebirge und die Veränderungen der Weltkugel (Leipzig:
Geest & Portig, 1986): 32.
83 Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs in den Jahren 1768-74
(St. Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1771-1776). Reprint Graz:
Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1967.
84 Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten über die mongolischen Völker­schaften (St.
Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1776 and 1801). Reprint Graz:
Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1980.
85 Pallas, Reise, vol. 1, 358; Kant Ms. Ub 9: 187a (Adickes Ms. T); summer of 1793. Cited
after Glasenapp, Kant, 75. Kircher had reported that Tibetans wear pellets of the excre­
ment of the Dalai Lama as talismans around their necks and mix his urine with their food.
Kircher, China Illustrata, 67.
86 Pallas, Reise, vol. 1, 333-364.
87 Augustinus Antonius Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum missionum apostolicarum commodo
editum: praemissa est disquisitio qua de vario litterarum ac regionis nomine, gentis origine mori­
bus, superstitione, ac Manichaeismo fuse disseritur: Beausobrii calumniae in sanctum Augustinum,
aliosque ecclesiae patres refutantur (Rome: Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, 1762). Latin
reprint edition by Rudolf Kaschewsky (Cologne: Editiones Una Voce, 1987) and German
translation by Peter Lindegger (Rikon: Tibet-Institut, 2001).
88 De Guignes, Histoire générale des Huns, vol. 2, 233-234.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 19

Fig. 1: Pallas: Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten vol. 1 (1771): Plate 10

brightest minds of the age: the two-Buddha theory. Faced with the danger that
malevolent Europeans or Asians could portray Christianity as a plagiarism of the far
older Buddhist religion,89 Father Giorgi decided that he needed “to conclusively pul­
verize and eradicate” this “heresy which has extended widely across the lands of the
Scythians, India, Tartary and Tibet, from the riverbeds of the Indus to the Chinese
and Japanese at the extremity of world.”90 It is with this ambitious purpose in mind
that Giorgi established the thesis that “there are two Buttas or Xacas and that the
Tibetans mixed up the first with the second.”91
Giorgi’s thesis, proposed in 1762, was a courageous attempt to shore up once
more the centrality of the Eastern Mediterranean: the “old” Buddha is linked,
most­ly by hilarious etymo­logical contortions, to the Egyptian Osiris, whereas the
“younger” Buddha is none other than a distorted image of Jesus Christ.92 While
the “old” Buddha was an amalgam of the worst paganism­ Egypt and Greece had to
offer, including the ridiculous idea of transmigration, the “younger” Buddha was a
parody of the Son of God from Israel. Word of him had reached India and China
“around 60 A.D.,” and without delay “his name and fame came to the ear of the
Tibetans” who “soon afterwards received images brought to Lhasa from both India

89 See for example Simon de la Loubère, Du Royaume de Siam, vol. 1, 413; and Astley,
Collection, vol. 4, 220-221.
90 Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum, xx (Lindegger trans., xxv).
91 Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum, xx (Lindegger trans., xxvi). As mentioned above, de
Guignes inspired this theory; but a different two-Buddha scheme was already proposed by
Kaempfer (The History of Japan, 37).
92 Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum, xxii (Lindegger trans., xxvii-xxviii).
20 Urs App

and China.”93 But why was the Asian image of Jesus so distorted? For Giorgi the
blame lay squarely with some early Christian gnostics and especially with Mani,
the founder of Mani­chaeism. The Tibetans, in effect, had embraced a “patchwork
of superstition [superstitionum farrago], Christianity corrupted and besmirched by
the Manichaeans.”94 Tibetan religion thus appeared as a truly diabolical concoction
based on a confusion of the two Buddhas, a mix-up that had been facilitated by the
old Egyptian belief in transmigration.95
Giorgi thus offered answers to some of Kant’s most pressing questions; in par­
ticular, the two-Buddha theory (in combination with the influence of Mani and
Christian gnostics and heretics) seemed to explain the strange mixture of pagan,
pseudo-Christian, Gnostic, Buddhist, and Manichean doctrines and practices that
the Tibetans appeared to have embraced. The extent to which Kant believed in
Giorgi’s theories remains unclear; but in the last decade of his life he referred several
times approvingly to the Alphabetum Tibetanum. In the Kant-related materials sur­
veyed no mention of Giorgi’s two-Buddha theory was found; but Kant was obviously­
interested in the pseudo-Christian components of the Tibetan religion and took
up Giorgi’s lead regarding the Manichaean role. In his Religion Within the Limits of
Mere Reason of 1793 Kant portrayed Tibetan religion as follows:

The Mongols call Tibet (according to Georgii Alphab. Tibet. pag. 11) Tan­
gut-Chazar, i.e., the land of house-dwellers, in order to distinguish these
[Tibetans] from themselves, nomads living in tents in the deserts. This is the
origin of the name of the Chazars and from it that of the Ketzer (heretics)
because they adhered to the Tibetan faith (of the Lamas) which corresponds
to that of the Manichaeans and possibly also originated from it.96

While Kant occasionally succumbed to etymologitis, though never on a Giorgian

scale, one notes his constant interest in historical contacts between Europe and Tibet.
Of course—given his ideas about Tibet as the cradle of mankind—Kant was most
interested in examples of Tibetan influence on Europe rather than vice-versa. In his
late essay On Eternal Peace Kant presented Tibet as a pivot between Asia and Europe:

From this [etymology of the word China] one sees that the Romans’ land of
the Seres was China, that silk was transported via Greater Tibet (probably
through Lesser Tibet and Bucharia to Persia and so on) to Europe. This
leads to various considerations about the age of this amazing state as com­
pared to that of Hindustan.97

93 Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum, xxiv (Lindegger trans., xxxi).

94 Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum, xxvii (Lindegger trans., xxxiv).
95 The origin and fate of the two-Buddha theory is a topic that goes well beyond the
scope of this article. We will see that Carl Ritter’s adaptation influenced Hegel; but even
famous Orientalists of Kant’s time like William Jones were not immune, as his “On the
Chronology of the Hindus” (in Asiatick Researches 2, 1790: 123-127) shows.
96 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blo´en Vernunft. Kant, Werke, vol. 6, 109; see also
Ms. 1729: 156 (Adickes Ms. S), Glasenapp, Kant, 59.
97 Kant, Werke, vol. 8, 359 (Zum ewigen Frieden, first published 1795).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 21

Unfortunately, Father Giorgi’s interests ran exactly in the opposite direction.

But Kant noted a tantalizing passage in Giorgi’s Alphabetum which pointed to a link
from ancient Tibet to ancient Greece. The constantly repeated “O◊ maˆi padme
h¨◊” of the Tibetans had already provoked various European hallucinations,98
not the least of which was Giorgi’s identification of “maˆi” with the founder of
Manichaeism. In this passage, however, Giorgi addressed the first word of the man­
tra, “o◊,” in his ini­mi­table way. In his On Eternal Peace of 1795 Kant digested this
idea as follows:

Maybe the very old but never quite known communication between Europe
and Tibet can be explained by what Hesychius has safeguarded of it, namely,
the appellation Konx Ompax of the hierophant in the Eleusynian Mysteries. …
According to the Alphab. Tibet. by Georgi the word Concioa—which is strik­
ingly similar to Konx, Pah-cio (ib. p. 520) that the Greeks could easily pro­
nounce as pax—signifies God, promulgator legis, the divinity which pervades
all of nature (also called Cenresi, p. 177).—Om, on the other hand, which
La Croze translates as benedictus, blessed, can when applied to the divinity,
mean nothing other than the beatified [Seliggepriesener], p. 507. When every
so often Father Franciscus Horatius questioned the Tibetan Lamas about
the meaning of God (Concioa) he was always told: “It is the community of all
saints”—i.e., the blessed souls who through lamaic rebirth after many trans­
migrations in different bodies finally return into the divinity, [and become]
Burchans, which are adorable beings, p. 223—then that mysterious word Konx
Ompax probably means the holy (Konx), blissful (Om), and wise (Pax) highest
being (personified nature) which pervades the world. As used in the Greek
mysteries it probably pointed to the Monotheism of the Epoptes (chosen) as
opposed to the Polytheism of the people, even though Father Horatius detected
a whiff of atheism in this.—But how this mysterious word made its way from
Tibet to the Greeks can be explained as above, and conversely it also makes
the early traffic by Europe via Tibet with China probable.99

Toward the end of his life Kant thus continued to seek confirmation of his early
hypothesis of Tibet as mankind’s Ark. Just like the Ark of Noah, it had saved
humanity’s common ancestors together with their original language and unique
conception of a highest being. Rather than as a simplistic outgrowth of “oriental­
ism” or “colonialism,” Kant’s vision of Tibet must be seen in the broad context of a
changing European world view and a deeply related multi-faceted quest for origins.
In this quest the Old Testament’s answers had lost much of their persuasive power
and alternative narratives gradually gained the upper hand. Indeed, in his essay On
the Probable Beginning of Human History100 Kant made use of the Old Testament’s

98 See Donald S. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-la. Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998): 114-134.
99 Kant, Werke, vol. 8, 360 (Zum ewigen Frieden, first published 1795). The page numbers
in Kant’s text refer to Giorgi’s Alphabetum Tibetanum and show how intensively Kant studied
this text.
100 Kant, Werke, vol. 4, 339 ff. (published in 1786).
22 Urs App

Genesis only to show (among others to his erstwhile pupil Herder) that one could just
as well do without it; and his Religion Within the Limits of Mere Reason presents a view
of religion which, in Kant’s pointed phrase, “makes use of everything including the
Bible … or also some other book if there is a better one of the kind.”101 The word of
God had become one source among others and could, just like other sacred texts, be
dispensed with. Religion had become “reified,” an object of detached study; thus dif­
ferent religions could be studied just like different languages.102 One outcome of this
comparative perspective was that Christian customs could appear just as strange as
Tibetan ones:

Whether the bigot performs his statutory visit to the church or goes on
pilgrimage to the sanctuaries of Loretto or Palestine; whether he offers his
prayer formulas to the heavenly authorities with his lips or, like the Tibetan
(who believes that these wishes do their job just as well in written form if
they are written on something and moved, for example on flags by the wind
or enclosed in a box by hand as a whirling machine) with a prayer wheel:
whatever the surrogate of moral service to God it may be, it all comes to the
same and has the same value.103

Humankind’s Tibetan cradle, it would seem, was no more than a step away from
Jerusalem and Loretto.

Hegel

In the 1820s when G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) prepared his courses on the phi­
losophy of world history and the philosophy of religion (student notes of which con­
stitute our main sources for his view of Tibet and its religion) the search for origins
was still in full swing. Hegel’s friend Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1858), for example,
conti­nued tracing the roots of Greek mythology to some ancient monotheism of
Indian origin,104 and the geographer Carl Ritter processed massive amounts of
source mate­rial to support his related thesis that a prehistoric monotheism whose
God was called “Buddha” had spread from India to other parts of Asia and even to
Europe.105 Ritter’s ideas were inspired by Giorgi’s two-Buddha theory, but under
the geographer’s pen Giorgi’s idolatrous old Buddha of Egyptian origin106 had mor­

101 Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974):
12-13 (first published 1793).
102 Kant, Die Religion, 163.
103 Kant, Die Religion, 228-229.
104 Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der
Griechen, 4 vols. (Leipzig & Darmstadt: Heyer & Leske, 1810-1812). Hegel was using the
revised and substantially enlarged edition of 1819-1825.
105 Carl Ritter, Die Vorhalle europäischer Völkergeschichten vor Herodotus, um den Kaukasus
und an den Gestaden des Pontus [Ante-chamber of the histories of European peoples before
Herodotus, around the Caucasus and on the shores of the Pontus] (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1820).
106 Giorgi, Alphabetum Tibetanum, xxii (Lindegger trans., xxviii).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 23

phed into God Himself, the creator and protagonist of the world’s original mono­
theism. This monotheistic “old Buddha-teaching,” so Ritter proposed, formed the
root of all ancient religions. It thus constituted the first of Ritter’s three periods of
Buddha: “the Central Asian teaching of the One God, the Old Buddha.” Reaching
“back to the oldest prehistoric times” it was “preserved or mentioned in the dogmas
of the oldest legal and religious documents of the Indians, Persians, and Hebrews,
partly in accord and partly in contrast with each other, as for example regarding the
dogma of the great deluge.”107
While few monuments apart from stupas, myths (the deluge etc.), and words
(Buddha = Bod = Sur = Koros, etc.) remained of the monotheistic Buddha cult of
this first period, Ritter’s second stage is amply documented in Greek texts which
already mention two kinds of adherents, Samanaeans and Brachmans. This sec­
ond phase was characterized by a growing cult of idols and a gradual decline of
original monotheism triggered by the “flowering of Brahminical and Zoroastrian
wisdom.”108 Ritter’s third period of Buddhism took place in the “centuries around
the birth of Christ when Manichaeans, Arrians, and Greek philosophical sects
mingled with it and put a new cloak on the old.”109 This periodization attempted to
overcome some of the problems posed by the various datings of Buddha, different
branches of his religion, and their relation to India’s living religions. In Ritter’s eyes
the original monotheistic cult of Buddha had thus undergone profound changes;
and the (in his view) more recent Brahmanism was a major reason for its degen­
eration. Nevertheless, elements of original monotheistic Buddhism had survived
in Indian folk beliefs. But rather than in India itself, primeval monotheism “was
preserved purer and longer in certain mountainous asylums on the continent or
on islands.”110 For Ritter, Tibet and Ceylon were thus also a kind of Ark—but the
God of this Ark was, interestingly enough, a monotheistic version of Giorgi’s “old
Buddha.” As it happened, Ritter’s wild associations of names111 and the resulting
“Buddhisms” became a major factor in Hegel’s classification troubles during the
early 1820s.
Under the influence of his precocious friend Schelling, Hegel had at the begin­
ning of the 19th century developed a blueprint for his philosophical system. Spurred
on by his friend’s system enthusiasm, and inspired by Kant and Fichte, he wanted to
trace the unfolding of the absolute which he called “spirit.” From the outset Hegel’s
narrative was a fundamentally optimistic tale of progress from primitive beginnings
to a lofty goal, a tale which combined Greek optimism, the Humean perspective on

107 Ritter, Vorhalle, 26-27. On the background of monotheistic interpretation of Buddhism

see my forthcoming monograph on the 18th-century discovery of Asian religions.
108 Ritter, Vorhalle, 27.
109 Ritter, Vorhalle, 27.
110 Ritter, Vorhalle, 84-85.
111 Hegel was well aware of the dangers of this method; see G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen.
Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 12: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Welt­
geschichte (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1996): 222 where Hegel praises Ritter’s Vorhalle while
acknowledging that “this is a very shaky field, very treacherous, little attested, since often
kinships are established solely on the basis of sounds.”
24 Urs App

primitive religion, and an outlook on history that acknowledged God’s incarnation

in Bethlehem as the pivotal event. All of this was cast in the terminology of German
idealism. In his Phenomenology Hegel showed “the route that consciousness needs to
travel in order to rise from the lowest level to the highest,” a journey which appears
like a “complete passage from the ABC of sensory certainty to the wisdom of abso­
lute knowledge” in which “all way stations, classes, and lessons” are neatly lined
up.112 The lessons of sensory perception engendered discernment (Verstand); dis­
cernment led to self-conscious­ness and to reason (Vernunft); this opened up the rich
life of “spirit” (Geist) that blossomed in art and religion; and finally the para­dise of
“absolute knowledge” (absolutes Wissen) is reached: the lofty aim of the journey both
of individual humans and the universe as a whole.113
Already in Hegel’s Phenomenology such stages of consciousness had a tendency to
suddenly incarnate themselves as concrete patterns of world history; self-conscious­
ness, for example, made an appearance as oriental despotism. Other works by Hegel
such as his Logic show the same kind of linkage:114 somehow the events of world his­
tory find a way to form neat patterns that fit Hegel’s philosophical constructs like
a glove. As the examination of Hegel’s views of Buddhism will show, this tendency
of adjusting world history and religions or philosophies to fit the changing needs
of his system became even more dominant in the professor’s last decade. In the
1820s, when he held his Berlin lectures on the philosophy of world history and the
philosophy of religion, the history of our planet and of its religions formed a neat
series of way stations and lessons on the Spirit’s trajectory. While their sequence
could be rearranged if the need arose, the general geographical direction of this
journey pointed, as with most romantics, from East to West, though Hegel’s com­
pass was firmly locked onto Prussia and its “perfect religion.” But even the most
accomplished adult had once been a messy child and was likely to remember some
of the lessons that needed to be digested on the way to maturity and wisdom. For
Hegel, Asia and its religions were such early stations on the highway to perfection:
snapshots of mankind’s childhood and monuments of the Spirit’s dialectic progress.
Asia was, so to speak, the grade school of humanity, and Hegel set out to present
its curriculum to his students. While preparing for the lectures—which kept him
busy during much of the last decade of his life—he worked through great amounts
of material in order to understand the lessons of Asia, condense them into a series
of “principles,” and thus define the Oriental way stations of the Spirit.115 With
regard to Tibet and Buddhism Hegel relied on the collections of missionary and
travel accounts116 which Kant had so much used; but he also studied Abbé Grosier’s

112 Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit (Berlin: R. Gaertner, 1857): 236.
113 Haym, Hegel, 236.
114 Haym, Hegel, 321-322.
115 See the bibliographies of Hegel’s sources on Asia in Michel Hulin, Hegel et l’Orient
(Paris: Vrin, 1979): 218-221; Reinhard Leuze, Die au´erchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975): 247-249; Ignatius Viyagappa, G. W. F. Hegel’s
concept of Indian Philosophy (Rome: Università Gregoriana, 1980): 266-274; and the editions of
student notes of Hegel’s lectures cited below.
116 Schwabe, Allgemeine Historie, vols. 6 & 7.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 25

General Description of China,117 collections of recent news from China missionaries,118

and more recent articles and reviews from the Asiatick Researches, the Journal des
Savants, and the Journal Asiatique.
So: Where in mankind’s education did Tibet and its religion fit in, what were the
lessons, and how did Hegel’s view of them evolve? These questions will be addressed
based on student notes from Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of world history and
the philosophy of religion given between 1822 and 1831.119

The Religion of Fo, “Buddhismus,” and Lamaism

Though Hegel had earlier expressed scattered opinions about Asia and its reli­
gions, it is in his lectures on the philosophy of world history of 1822/23 that a first
image of Tibet emerges. He began the cycle by proclaiming “general world his­
tory, not reflections about it” (3)120 as the object of his lectures. But it immediately
became clear that the professor’s world view and system needs were determining
history rather than the other way around. Thus the Christians were from the outset
assigned a very special role in Hegel’s enterprise:

The Christians are thus initiated into the mysteries of God; since the essence
[Wesen] of God is revealed by the Christian religion, the key to world history
is also given to us because it is the unfolding of his nature into a particular ele­
ment. (23)

The “final goal of history” (24) was thus fixed from the beginning, and it comes as
no surprise that the starting shot of Hegel’s world history rang out when the planks
of Noah’s Ark creaked on Mount Ararat as the waters receded just a few thousand
years ago (123-4). From China to Egypt all ancient cultures had to dance to the tra­
ditional timetable: China’s history began in 2201 bce, Egypt’s in 2207, Assyria’s in
2221, India’s in 2204 … (129). Though the philosopher informed his audience that
“as one looks at history and the world, so history looks back at one,” (21) he appears
not to have grasped the deep implications of this insight for his own enterprise.
Looking at world history as the course of a day, its birth appeared in the East where

117 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Grosier, Description générale de la Chine, 2 vols. (Paris: Moutard,
1787).
118 Charles Batteux & Louis George Bréquigny (eds.), Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les
sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages ... des Chinois (Paris: Nyon aîné, 1776-1791).
119 Though some sets of student notes from Hegel’s last decade have recently been criti­
cally compiled and published, much work remains to be done. In particular, the detailed
study of Hegel’s developing view of Buddhism would necessitate research on many unpub­
lished note manuscripts, for example those used by Lassen for the compilation of Hegel’s
remarks about the “Mongolian Principle” (see below).
120 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen. Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 12: Vor­
lesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, eds. Karl Heinz Ilting, Karl Brehmer & Hoo
Nam Seelmann (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1996). Page numbers in parentheses in the text of
this section refer to this book.
26 Urs App

the sun rises (“The dawn of Spirit is in the East” [121]) and its goal in Berlin where
the sun sets. When looking at history as a human lifespan, history revealed its baby­
hood in East Asia, its childhood in Central Asia, its youth in Greece, its manhood in
Rome, and its ripe old age—where else?—in the German Reich (114-117).
Fashioning such a custom-made world history and fitting it into an almost medi­
eval time frame required intensive reading about Asia, an area which Hegel had
hitherto neglected as he had focused on phenomena closer to history’s “final pur­
pose” (24). On December 22 of 1822 he wrote in a letter to a friend in Hamburg:

My lectures about philosophy cause much work for me. In quarto and octavo
volumes, I am still dealing with the Indian and Chinese character. But it is
for me an interesting and pleasurable business to let the peoples of this world
parade before me; but I do not yet quite know how to manage to treat them
all up to the present age until Easter.121

Although Hegel’s history began with Asia, he paid less attention to mountains and
high plains than had Kant and Bailly:

It is possible that on the slopes of mountains leading to the valley plains one
could historically show an earlier existence of peoples; but only moral exis­
tence [das sittliche Dasein] is historical, and thus only a moral people first elicits
our interest. Such a one is first found in the valleys and river plains. (121)

Hegel’s “parade of peoples” was tightly bound to his concept of history heading
toward a final purpose (“what God wanted with this world” [24]) and stages with
particular meanings. What he had in mind was not a random sequence of events but
rather, to put it in a modern term, “intelligent design”: an ascending line of actu­
alizations of Spirit in which “each world-historic people is apportioned a necessary
principle. These principles have a necessary temporal sequence and also a concrete
spatial definition, a geographical position” (91). In Hegel’s “geography of world his­
tory” (91), each country with its people and religion represents such a “necessary
principle”: a well-defined step on a staircase to the near-perfect actualization of
Spirit in Christianity and Prussia. Primitive mountain people without an organized
state were of course excluded from this scheme: for Hegel, moral existence was inex­
tricably bound to statehood. No wonder that he chose China and Confucianism as
the first step of history: it was the country where “the rise of self-consciousness as a
state” (101), the “childhood of history” (114), had taken place shortly after the land­
ing of Noah’s ark.

First we go to the Chinese river valleys, and from there to India, to the twin
streams of the Ganges and Indus. To [India] we link information about the
Tibetans and Mongols. The third is the mid-eastern life in the river valley of
the Tigris and Euphrates. (121)

121 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, ed. Georg Lasson
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1988): vii.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 27

Tibet was thus not in a position to play the “culture cradle” role. Bailly’s theories
and the romantics’ dreams of a cultured golden age in the dawn of time were incom­
patible with Hegel’s neat dialectical progress from primitivity to perfection, and his
view of history made speculation about times predating Noah’s flood a vain exercise.
Hegel needed a nation state to begin with, which is why in 1822 he spent so much
of his time explaining the Chinese state religion. By contrast, the “sect of Lao-Tse”
which marks “the beginning of man’s elevation to the divine” was mentioned only in
passing, as was the religion of Fo, which we today would call Chinese Buddhism:

The private religion of the emperor is the lamaic one, that a living man is
regarded as if the divinity were presently existing in him. This is connected
with the religion of the Buddha. The religion of the Fo is very famous; [but]
whether it [is] identical with that of the Buddha is still doubtful. (163-164)

One must be careful not to read such statements with a modern mindset. It has been
stated that “until about 1820 the absence of the word [Buddhism] corresponds to the
absence of the object.”122 This suggests that in the 1820s “the word” and “the object”
of Buddhism appeared at the flip of a switch. We have seen how little truth there is to
this; already in the 17th and 18th centuries some authors, including Kant, had realized
that the religion of Fo, Lamaism, and the dominant religion of Southeast Asia were
all forms of a single religion founded by Gautama = Shakya = Fo = Buddha. For some
this religion was very ancient; for others it encompassed not only our Buddhism but
also what we today call Hinduism; and for others again it coagulated around similar
monasticisms, doctrines, imagery, practices, or founder’s legends. The emergence
of the object was thus gradual and its boundaries unclear and fluctuating. The fate of
the word Buddhism, however, was rather different. Hegel is a particularly interest­
ing case study for this because his fame incited many students to take careful lec­
ture notes and safeguard them. Their examination shows how during the 1820s he
came to gradually perceive the object which we identify as Buddhism while Hegel’s
word “Buddhismus” maintained throughout the limited sense of “religion of Ceylon,
Burma, and Southeast Asia.” To understand Hegel’s view of Tibet and its religion we
must now examine the development of his religious geography of Asia and in particu­
lar the domains which we today associate with the term Buddhism.

The Chinese Thesis

Having gained a fair amount of information about the “very famous” religion of
Fo, especially in Grosier’s synthesis of missionary reports,123 Hegel’s doubts about
the relation between “the religion of the Buddha,” “Lamaism,” and “the religion

122 Droit, Le culte du néant, 26. See similar arguments by several modern authors critical
of overly text-based, orientalist “constructions” of Buddhism in the West who paradoxically
cling to the view that Buddhism could only be “discovered” once Europeans learned to read
Sanskrit texts; for example Almond in The British Discovery of Buddhism, 12.
123 Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Grosier, Description générale de la Chine (Paris: Moutard,
1787): vol. 2, 147-246.
28 Urs App

of Fo” (which Kant had already recognized as forms of a single religion) are some­
what puzzling. Abbé Grosier (1743-1823), Hegel’s main source in these matters, left
no doubt that Fo is simply the Chinese appellation of Buddha whose teachings had
been brought from India to all parts of Asia.124 Just as “Gotama,” “Fo,” or “Shaka”
all designate the single Indian founder of the religion, different names are in use for
its clergy depending on the country, as Grosier explains:

These priests attached to the cult of Fo are called Talapoins by the Siamese,
Lamas by the Tartars, Ho-chang in China, and Bonzes in Japan: it is by this
last name that the Europeans designate them.125

Other sources, for example the collection of travel accounts used by both Kant and
Hegel, also stated unambiguously that Lamaism and the religion of Fo “are identi­
cal and differ only in a few superstitious customs.”126 If the relationship between
Lamaism and the religion of Fo was unclear in Hegel’s mind, there was at least the
fixed date of 65 ce for the introduction of Foism to China, a date noted through­
out missionary and secular literature.127 Apart from Foism’s journey from India to
China at the time of the first apostles there was another ubiquitous story which not
only clearly showed that the founder was human rather than divine but also pro­
vided a handy classification scheme for manifold doctrines and practices. Hegel had
encountered a concise version of this story at the end of Grosier’s biography of Fo:

When he had attained the age of 79 years he felt by the weakening of his
forces that his borrowed divinity would not prevent his having to pay trib­
ute to nature like other men. He did not want to leave his disciples with­
out revealing the secret to them along with all hidden profundities of his
doctrine. Having gather­ed them he declared that until this moment he
had always believed that he should use only parables in his discourses; that
for forty years he had hidden the truth under figurative and metaphorical
expressions; and that on the verge of disappearing from their gaze he wanted
to finally manifest his real feelings and reveal to them the mystery of his
wisdom. You must realize, he said to them, that there is no other principle of all
things than emptiness [le vuide] and nothingness [le néant]; it is from nothingness
that everything arose, and it is to nothingness that everything must return; this is
where all our hopes end up.128

Variations of this story had for centuries been the mainstay of doctrinal descriptions
of religions which we today put under the umbrella of Buddhism. This is one reason
why it is hardly appropriate to portray Hegel, who for the most part just repeated to

124 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 204.

125 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 204.
126 Schwabe, Allgemeine Historie, vol. 6, 381.
127 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 202-203 presents the legend in its usual form
with an 18-member embassy to India and its return to China with images “of the God Fo or
Boudha” and the Forty-Two-Chapter Sutra on a white horse. The preface of this Chinese text
is the original source for the date 65 CE.
128 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 205-206. “Le vuide” is Grosier’s spelling.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 29

students what he had read about this, as the instigator of a “cult of nothingness.”129 In
Grosier’s account the dramatic story of the Buddha’s deathbed confession forms the
basis of a fundamental classification of the religion’s adherents and teachings:

These last words of the dying Fo were the source of much trouble and divi­
sions among his disciples. Some continued to adhere to his first doctrine
while others, who embraced the second, formed a sect of atheists. A third
party wanted to reconcile the two and brought forth the famous distinction
of exterior doctrine and interior doctrine, the first of which had naturally to
precede the second and prepare the minds for receiving it.130

In addition to this fundamental distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrine

Grosier mentioned the dogma of metempsychosis as a central teaching of which
Fo = Buddha “appears to be the inventor.”131 Before the 18th century it was often
Pythagoras who had supposedly learned this doctrine in Egypt and passed it on to
India where an Indian impostor named Buda used it to infect large parts of Asia;
but in the course of the 18th century’s gravity shift toward Asia, the direction of
transmigration’s transmission became reversed. Egypt’s rotten contributions to his­
tory—transmigration, idolatry, animal worship—were now the fruits of the Indian
founder of the cult of Fo and helped explain a whole variety of Asian cults:

Since he [Fo] lived five hundred years before Pythagoras, and as it is known
that the Greek philosopher had traveled through Egypt and several parts of
India, one can hardly doubt that he had borrowed this dogma from some dis­
ciples of the Indian philosopher. This doctrine of the transmigration of souls
forms the origin of this multitude of idols which are revered wherever the cult
of Fo was established. Quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and the most vile animals
had temples and became objects of public veneration because the God, in his
rebirths and metamorphoses, could inhabit individuals of all these species.132

But such “outer” beliefs as transmigration were also intimately linked with the core
of “inner” teachings, i.e., “nothingness” viewed as a kind of materia prima:

Nothingness [le néant] is the principle and end of all that exists; it is from
nothing­ness that our first parents took their origin, and to nothingness did
they return after their death. All beings differ from each other only by their
shapes and qualities. One can from the same metal fashion a man, a lion, or
any other animal: if one then melts all these different pieces they forthwith
lose their shapes and respective qualities and form a single and identical
substance. The same holds true for all animate or inanimate beings: though

129 Droit, Le culte du néant, now also in English: Droit, The Cult of Nothingness: The
Philosophers and the Buddha (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
130 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 207-208. See below for the fate of these atheists in
Hegel’s hands.
131 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 205.
132 Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 205.
30 Urs App

different in shape and qualities, they are all but one single thing which origi­
nates from the same principle which is nothingness.133

Hegel’s sources described this universal principle as very pure and subtle, eter­
nally at rest, and—in the manner of negative theology—as free from virtue, power,
action, intelligence, and desire. As explained by Abbé Grosier and numerous other
authors, the aim of Fo’s “inner” doctrine was to achieve union with this principle:

To be happy one must, by continuous meditations and by frequent victo­

ries over oneself, make an effort to become similar to this principle, and to
achieve this, to get used to doing nothing, wanting nothing, feeling nothing,
and desiring nothing. As soon as one reaches this happy state of insensibility
there is no more question of virtues, punishments and rewards, providence,
and immor­tality of souls. All holiness consists in ceasing to exist in order to
become merged into nothingness [se confondre avec le néant]; the more man
approaches the nature of a stone or a tree trunk, the more he becomes per­
fect, and finally it is in indolence and immobility, in cessation of all desire
and all bodily movement, in the annihilation and the suspension of all facul­
ties of soul and mind [esprit] that virtue and happiness consist.134

This state—which Hegel subsequently linked to the “Buddhist” Nirvana—renders

man perfectly similar to the God Fo: from the moment he achieves this degree of
perfection there is no more transmigration “because he has ceased to be and has
become perfectly similar to the God Fo.”135 In the light of such sources Hegel’s brief
portrayal of the religion of Fo in his 1822/23 lecture has a very familiar ring:

The religion of Fo is very famous; whether it is identical with that of Buddha

is still doubtful. One main idea in the Foist religion is metempsychosis,
i.e., that all shapes [such as] man, stars, etc., are only forms, revelations of
the One, of the Absolute. Furthermore, the adherents of this religion posit
the ultimate in nothingness [das Nichts]; man is thus said to elevate himself
to God when he renounces all notions of particularity [Empfindungen des
Besonderen], turns himself into abstract contemplation [Anschauung] and
reaches a point where good and evil along with all distinctions have vanished
and where he immerses himself totally in emptiness, in the motionless. Thus
the utterly empty must be sought. (164)

The Indian Antithesis

After this brief portrayal of the religion of Fo which nonchalantly equates immer­
sion in nothingness with “elevation to God,” Hegel’s lecture moved straight to India
where he detected two forms of pantheism. The first is a dispersed kind of pantheism
where “everything sensual is […] deified” (170); this corresponds to Hinduism (“Brah­

133
Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 208-209.
134
Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 209-210.
135
Grosier, Description générale, vol. 2, 210.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 31

manism”). In the second, the sensualization of God is concentrated and “reduced

to a center which is immediately present.” This second kind of pantheism reigns
in regions that Hegel closely linked to India: Ceylon and Southeast Asia with its
“Buddhismus,” and of course also Tibet and Tartary with their “Lamaism.”

The general fragmentation belongs to brahmanical India, the second [con­

centrated] form to the Buddhist principle or Lamaism. The people of this
[second] principle are mainly the Tibetans, Mongols, and Kalmyks, further­
more the Ceylonese and those on the eastern peninsula beyond the Ganges
[i.e., the Burmese and Thais]. Of all religions, Lamaism is the most wide­
spread. (170-171)

It is interesting that Hegel made no mention of the “religion of Fo” here. Con­
strained by his geographical framework he contrasted the Chinese principle with
an Indian one. Their relationship remained as hazy as that between the Chinese
“religion of Fo,” Southeast Asian “Buddhismus,” and “Lamaism.” Hegel’s remark
about Lamaism as the world’s largest religion would indicate that he included the
immense population of China among its adherents. Hegel learned that Indian places
are regarded as sacred both in Tibet and in Ceylon (226), and this led him to regard
“the religion of Buddha” as a remnant of ancient Indian religion:

Thus also the Buddhists and the Tibetans point to India. Earlier on, both
[Brahmanism and Buddhism] were united. This simple religion [Buddhism]
may have originated through a reform of Brahmanism. More likely, however,
is the older age of the Buddhistic [religion]. (226)

Such guesswork by Hegel was obviously influenced by Carl Ritter’s theories which
peek through many formulations of the philosopher. But they contradicted most other
sources and left Hegel full of doubts about the historical sequence of Brahmanism
and “Buddhismus” as preserved in Ceylon and Southeast Asia:

There is a great controversy as to which of these two religions is older and

more simple. For both [views] there are reasons, but one cannot commit one­
self with assurance. It appears that the Buddhist religion is simpler; as such,
it could either be the oldest [religion] or the result of a reformation of an ear­
lier one. (225)136

As he continued to study in preparation for his lectures Hegel managed to some­

what clarify his ideas with respect to the founder figure. In the spring of 1823 he
spoke of the “Buddha whom one believes to be identical with the Chinese Fo and
who in Ceylon is mostly called Gautama” (225). This founder “is not somehow a
phenomenon of nature, not heaven, not the sun, but he was substantially human”
(227) and his creed “forms the counterpart of Brahma” (225) and Brahmanism:
This religion [of Buddha] is in all respects more human [than Brahmanism].
With regard to its view of God this is so much the case that, on one hand,

136 Cf. Vorlesungen, vol. 12, 225: “Already regarding India it was noted that India proper
can be called brahmanical, to which the buddhistic can be opposed.”
32 Urs App

for them their highest God has been a man, and on the other hand, their
God is still alive as a man, so that they venerate­a living person as God. (227)

The two elements of former humanity and living presence present the framework of
Hegel’s view of the “Buddhist religion” and of Lamaism in a nutshell. Though both
appear to be linked to the same figure (“Gautama is the God of Ceylon but extends
through Tibet up to the ice sea” [227]), the first is characterized by the “portrayal
of God as a former man whose death forms an aspect of their veneration” (227), and
the second by the worship of Lamas, i.e., “humans who are worshiped as the incar­
nated God” (228). In the “Buddhismus” of Ceylon and Southeast Asia “God as a
former man” and the ideal of “Nirvana” (227) are central:

Of his life on earth they have tales as extravagant as we have found with the
other Indians. [He] is an incarnation, the ninth one, and is to be venerated
as God. He has arrived at Nirvana, i.e., at the state of supreme abstraction,
where the spirit [is] immersed in itself and does not hold on to anything,
has become free of everything; in this respect we can call it bliss [Seligkeit].
The attainment of this state comes after death. He who attains Nirvana has
become Buddha. This Gautama therefore is the true God. (227)

Though Gautama had been “essentially human” [wesentlich Mensch] (227), the
Buddhists also “say of him that he is eternal, immortal” and “attribute to him all the
characteristics that we use for the supreme being” (227). In this religion, both the
Buddha who is “imagined as king, as teacher, as God” and his last disciples are ven­
erated (226).

They venerate him as image in temples where he is portrayed sometimes sit­

ting, sometimes standing, and seemingly also together with his disciples. On
the one hand, the Buddhists have temples where [his image] is installed; [on
the other hand] in addition to these temples dedicated to him there are pyra­
midal buildings, for example in Java, which are completely solid and where
relics of him are stored, some of them from his body, although it is said that
his body was cremated after death on a heap of sandalwood. (227)

This “Buddhist religion” of Ceylon and Southeast Asia is thus characterized by a

classic euhemerist elevation of an eminent mortal to the status of God, and nirvana
is a posthumous state. “They portray God as a former man whose death forms an
aspect of their veneration” (227). In Hegel’s “Lamaism,” by contrast, worship entails
the “vene­ration of a living man, the highest lama (priest) in whom God is present
for them” (228).137 While such incarnations are also found in India, this cult is more
prominent in Tibet behind the Himalayas and Tartary (228).
There are three such Lamas. First the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, second the Tashi
Lama in Taschi-Lumpo, and third, beyond the Himalayas and to the south of

137 Hegel drew much of this information from Samuel Turner, Samuel Turner’s, Capitains
in Diensten der ostind. Compagnie, Gesandtschaftsreise an den Hof des Teshoo Lama durch Bootan und
einen Theil von Tibet (Hamburg: B. G. Hoffmann, 1801).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 33

Lake Baikal on the slope of the high plain where Dschingis Khan came from,
the Taranant Lama, also called Buddhista (sic) Lama, in Urga in Karka. (228)

Though Hegel found that “the details here show great confusion” (228) he thought
that the Lamaistic cult which regards “men as the present [gegenwärtige] God” does
“link itself with the Buddhist religion, with the idea that Buddha here has a living
presence” (228). Nevertheless, in 1822/23 Hegel was not yet sure how the veneration
of these Tibetan and Mongol living Gods relates to that of a long-dead Buddha and
other divinities: “However, apart from the Lama there are indeed also many other
Gods, Buddha, or Gautama, etc.” (229).
With regard to the actual state of this religion Hegel was better informed. He
knew that “these Lamas are both worldly and spiritual leaders, but worldly ones only
in Tibet proper” (228-229). “They are venerated by the Mongol people as spiritual
heads, asked for advice in political affairs, and spiritually venerated as God.” Having
read Turner’s account of his meeting with the two-year-old Taschi Lama (Panchen
Lama),138 Hegel was impressed both by the character­ and the government of the
Lamas (229):

One could imagine of such highest Lamas that they are the proudest men
and would in their folly fall into supreme arrogance, but this is not at all the
case [...] The priests choose excellent characters to be Lamas. The former
Lama has been praised as the most noble and humble man. He was learned
and far removed from pride and arrogance, lenient toward his subjects and
aiming at their advantage in every possible way, as the government of the
Lama is one of the most fatherly that is to be found. (229)

However, Lamaism as a religion did not fare so well in his judgment. A Lama as
one “through whom God is present to the peoples so that God may care for them”
constituted for Hegel “a relationship that is very close to pantheism as such” (229).
Rather than being an Indian pan­t he­ism where everything is seen as divine, the
Lamas contract “dissipated [Indian] pantheism into the One” (229). This “contrac­
tion into one” was also reflected in the lives of the Buddhist and Lamaist people;
with the partial exception of Ceylon no caste system is known, and people thus
enjoy “a freer, more courageous, friendlier existence” than the poor Indians (230).
These people are benevolent, openhearted, servile, and “far removed from the
tendency of the Indians to lie, from their cowardice, and their vileness” (231). The
Mongols and Tibetans, “trustworthy and friendly” as they are, “lead a quiet life,”
and “the laypeople go quietly and without worry about their business” because “the
priests are devout” in their stead (231). On the whole, though they also have strange
customs such as polyandry (188), they are peace-loving (231). Apart from their non-
violent lifestyle Hegel saw additional links between Lamaism and the religion of
Buddha of Southeast Asia:

Priests come from among the people; and especially in Tibet and in the
Burmese empire they live together in large monasteries. In Tibet the monks

138
See previous note.
34 Urs App

in one monastery number more than 2,000. The priests do not form a separate
caste but are individuals chosen among the entire people. In Tibet there is a
rule that, of four sons, one must be trained as a priest. In Tibet, these priests
draw an income from land holdings and subsist on gifts. In the Burmese empire
they live predominantly from voluntary gifts; early in the morning, the priests
wander through the streets seeking gifts from the populace. (230)

In contrast to the Indian Brahmans, the priests of Burma (“Rahans”) and Tibet
(“Gylongs”) are humble, learned, and friendly (230-231). The Tibetan priests even
distribute goods to the poor and offer shelter to travelers (231).

There are two sects, one of which marries and the other not. The latter is
the most widespread. They are distinguished by their dress, red or yellow,
and are opposed to each other to the extent of the bloodiest battles. They are
pious, learned, and hold services both in temples and in monasteries. Their
main service consists of chanting which they carry to the loudest shouting.
The ambassadors were living in a monastery and could not stop marveling at
these tremendously strong voices. (231)

In his 1822/23 lecture Hegel had thus in various ways linked Lamaism and Cey­
lonese/ Southeast Asian “Buddhismus” to India. But in spite of his study of the
Asiatick Researches and other sources on Asia139—many of which Kant could not yet
consult—he conveyed little information about the doctrines of this alternative to
Brahmanism. Compared with the lengthy discussions of Indian religion Hegel’s
remarks on Bud­dhism and Lamaism are very brief. But a major objective was never­
theless achieved: Hegel’s “Indian principle” was erected, characterized by a dynamic
juxtaposition of the Indian “diffuse” pantheism and the “focused” pantheism as exem­
plified by the “Bud­dhists” and Tibetans. This had to suffice as a stepping stone to the
more advanced realizations of Spirit further West.

The Mongolian Synthesis

As Hegel read more widely, the confusing influence of Carl Ritter’s theories
gradual­ly waned. The limits of Creuzer’s Symbolics, a major guide for Hegel’s initial
conception of India and for secondary literature about its religions,140 also became

139 See the good survey of Hegel’s sources on India in Viyagappa, G. W. F. Hegel’s Concept
of Indian Philosophy, 11-60. Viyagappa focused too narrowly on sources of Europe’s burgeon­
ing indology (i.e., information which today is considered to be more or less scientific) and
overlooked the importance of German authors of more general scope such as Carl Ritter and
Joseph Görres.
140 In a letter to Creuzer translated by Viyagappa (Hegel’s Concept of Indian Philosophy, 54)
Hegel wrote: “I lived much in your company in the winter of the past year. It is so again this
summer. My lectures on The Philosophy of World History, last year, and the resumption of
the lectures on Aesthetics as well, for this summer, have to depend upon your Symbolics, so
much so that I draw from it the richest inspiration for materials as well as for thought. It is a
reason for me to be much indebted to you.”
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 35

ever more apparent in the light of the erudite articles contained in the Asiatick
Researches, the Journal des Savants, Schlegel’s Indische Bibliothek, and numerous other
recent sources at Hegel’s disposal. When Hegel gave his Philosophy of History lec­
tures for the second time in the winter of 1824/25 he acknowledged the difficulty
of geographical categorization: how was he, for example, to categorize a religion
that “partly belongs to China—where it was only imported later—and partly falls
outside of what is characteristically Chinese” (333)?141 Indeed, the geographical
structure of Hegel’s earlier scheme which somehow linked Ceylon, Burma, Tibet,
Tartary, and China to India was not exactly ideal for a streamlined progress story
based on “principles” bound to nation states. In 1824/25 Hegel thus decided to focus
on doctrine rather than historical origin and fashioned a principle which could serve
as a bridge between China and India: the Mongolian principle. Hegel’s geographi­
cal description is exceedingly vague; for him, “the term Mongols serves in general to
refer to Far Eastern peoples” (hinterasiatische Völker; 332). What is common to them
all is “that they are nomads and recognize the Buddha and the Lama as their God.”
Such initial statements are immediately contradicted by Hegel’s own explanations
which make clear that this “principle” in fact simply encompasses everything which
we today associate with Buddhism. The title “Mongolian Principle,” whether chosen
by Hegel or his editors, should thus not be taken literally.
We have seen that in 1822/23 Hegel was still not sure whether Buddha and Fo
refer to the same person; but two years later he was certain that the “religion of Fo”
in China is simply “another shading” (eine andere Schattierung) of the religion of
“Buddha, Gautama, or Sakjamuni” (333-4). In the first lecture cycle (1822/23) Hegel
had portrayed the “Indian principle” as a juxtaposition of a diffuse brahmanical
pantheism with a more focused pantheism which either worshiped the dead Buddha
(Buddhism) or a living Lama (Lamaism). The religion of Fo was left out of that
first scheme. Now, two years later, Hegel proposed a new configuration, namely, a
“Mongolian principle” in which a negative transcendence (religion of Fo and reli­
gion of Buddha) stands against a positive transcendence (Lamaism). The elements
have not changed (“religion of Buddha” still refers to the religion of Ceylon and
Southeast Asia), but now Hegel had found an umbrella under which to unite the dif­
ferent “shadings” of the religion of “Buddha, Gautama or Sakjamuni.” The facets of
Chinese, Siberian, Tibetan, Ceylonese, and Southeast Asian religion which Hegel
discussed under this label leave no doubt that his “Mongolian principle” corre­
sponds more or less to our “Buddhism.” Hegel’s Lamaism, the religion of Fo, and his
“religion of Buddha” had finally found a home in a greater whole that covered large
parts of Asia; and even though the name was a bit lopsided the object now revealed
its vast contours.

141 Page numbers in this section refer to the Anhang (Appendix) entitled “Das mongol­
ische Prinzip” (The Mongolian Principle) in G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie
der Weltgeschichte, ed. Georg Lasson (no. 171 b-d): 332-342. It is not clear which student notes
were used for this edition, and the dating is therefore doubtful. Hegel read about this prin­
ciple a total of three times (1824/25, 1826/27, and 1828/29), but according to Lasson’s intro­
duction (p. x) he omitted this section in the last lecture cycle (1830/31).
36 Urs App

The coagulation of Buddha, Gautama, Shakyamuni, and Fo “in historical form as

teacher” rather than as God was one of the results of contemporary scholarship, for
example an article by the sinologist Abel-Rémusat on the names of the Buddha which
Hegel had read.142 But Hegel continued to have doubts about this and tended to see
Gautama, Shakyamuni and Buddha as different persons or incarnations. Further­
more, in spite of articles that portrayed Buddhism as unambiguously atheist (a fact
immediately remarked and emphasized by Schopenhauer), Hegel kept bringing God
into play. He obviously knew where history was heading; the question was just how to
have it go there.
As one would expect, Hegel’s Mongolian principle also had two dialectical poles.
Both are characterized by the term “Erhebung” (raising; transcendence) as, in con­
trast to fetishism and magic, both Hegel’s Foism/Buddhism and his Lamaism “rise
beyond” the immediate object. Foism does so negatively, i.e., by striving through
meditation toward the elimination of all desire, will, and feeling, and toward union
with a kind of Spinozan God:

The conception which mainly concerns us here is that nothingness is the

principle and goal, the aim of all things. From nothingness our first par­
ents arose, and into nothingness they returned. All things are different by
virtue of their forms and qualities; they are modifi­cations of substance as in
Spinoza. (334)

Hegel’s “negative transcendence” thus corresponds to the “inner” teaching which

the Buddha had supposedly revealed to his closest disciples on his deathbed, as pre­
sented above in Abbé Grosier’s words. It is deeply linked to transmigration:

They see the connection with metempsychosis as follows: everything is

change of form; it always stays one and the same. … This principle is com­
plete, pure, simple, an eternal quiescence­ wherein God does not appear to
man, without movement: its essence consists in being without activity, intel­
ligence, soul, without will. (334)

Happiness then consists in “uniting oneself with nothingness. The more man
ap­proaches passivity­ and becomes like a rock or tree, the more he approaches per­
fection” (334). Hegel could read such things in numerous sources, but the link of
this “nothingness” to the nirvana of Ceylon and Burma (where Hegel located his
“Buddhism”) was based on his study of a seminal article by Buchanan in the Asiatick
Researches,143 which the Berlin professor summarized for his students as follows:

142 Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, “Note sur quelques épithètes descriptives de Bouddha,”

Journal des Savants (1819): 625-633. Reprinted in Abel-Rémusat, Mélanges asiatiques (Paris:
Dondey-Dupré, 1825): 100-112. Hegel mentions this article in Lasson ed., Vorlesungen (no.
171 b-d): 339.
143 Claudius Buchanan, “On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas,” Asiatick Researches
6 (1799): 163-308. The passage containing “weight, old age, disease, and death” is found on p.
266; it was also crucial for Schopenhauer (see below).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 37

This is approximately what also occurs in Buddhism, in Ceylon and in the

empire of the Burmese; in Ceylon the divine teacher is still called Buddha,
on the Eastern peninsula Gautama, and the described state is called Nirvana.
An Englishman who had many discussions with the Burmese priests, the
Ragunas, cannot praise them too highly; he has noted down many questions
and answers from these talks. A main topic was Nirvana, which is described
as follows: When a man is no longer subjected to the following troubles:
weight, old age, illness, and death, then he has reached Nirvana. Through
meditation, i.e., abstraction of the human spirit in himself, does he reach this
bliss, and the God Gautama is in essence [wesentlich] in Nirvana. (335)

Based on the work of the Italian priest Vincentius Sangermano, Buchanan explained
in the article used by Hegel that Nirvana (Nieban) signifies by no means a state of
annihilation but rather one of “being exempted from all the miseries incident to
humanity.” In contrast to Hegel, Buchanan resolutely rejected the interpretation of
Nirvana as an “absorption into the divine essence”144 and questioned the doctrinal
identity of the inner teaching of Fo and Burmese Buddhism.145 In Hegel’s 1824/25 lec­
tures, however, this “inner teaching”—which two years earlier was only briefly men­
tioned in the context of the Chinese “religion of Fo”—now made a gala appearan­ce
as the uniting link between Chinese “Foism” and Southeast Asian “Buddhism.” The
deep connection of this “negative transcendence” with Indian pantheism and Chinese
Daoism also made it a good candidate for the fundamental characteristic of the “ori­
ental character” in ge­ne­ral146 and of Indian philosophy in particular that Hegel stud­
ied in the mid-1820s.147
But what about the positive transcendence of the Mongolian principle? Whereas
Hegel’s Foists and Buddhists thought that “the absolute is Spirit” yet “imagined
God only as a yonder” (das Jenseitige, 335) to be approached through “annihila­
tion” and “abstraction” (i.e., negative transcendence), the Tibetan and Mongolian
Lamaists by contrast grasped the absolute in its sensual, “immediate” form. This
“affirmative trans­cendence” was necessarily a step closer to Hegel’s perfection
where “absolute Spirit” is “in Christ only through itself” (335).

If we now ask: what is the natural form of Spirit, the immediacy [Unmittel­
barkeit], then it is nothing other than the human form … . Thus we arrive
in the domain of the Dalai Lama where man is revered as God—something
which is completely contrary to abstract reason, also in Christianity.
Certainly, the modification must proceed until it eventually forms the core
of Christian religion. (336)

144 Buchanan, “On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas,” 180.
145 Buchanan, “On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas,” 267 (note on Grosier’s
account of the Chinese religion).
146 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen. Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 6: Vorlesungen
über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Part 1, eds. Pierre Garniron and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1994): 267 (lectures on the history of philosophy of 1825/26).
147 See the detailed study by Ignatius Viyagappa, G.W.F. Hegel’s concept of Indian Phi­losophy,
which can now be revised based on the newly published materials mentioned in the previous
note.
38 Urs App

The affirmative pole of Hegel’s Mongolian Principle thus points toward the goal
of history where Spirit forms a unique Son of God. Though obviously still far from
the ideal incarnation of Christianity, for Hegel the “religion of the Dalai Lama”
now repre­sented a crucial phase of the Spirit’s self-revelation, a phase which was all
the more significant in view of the huge geographical reach:

This is the religion of the Dalai Lama; of all religions it is the most widely
spread. The Mongols, Tibetans, Kalmyks adhere to it. It reaches from all
Mongols subject to the Chinese empire to the Himalayas, Hindukush, across
Central Asia, and also to the Mongols in Siberia under the dominance of the
Russians. The Manchus venerate all of the supreme Lamas; the Mongols also
venerate the Dalai Lama. (336)

If for Kant Tibet had been a crucial sanctuary of humanity during the earth’s last
upheavals and a way-station for trade and cultural exchange between China and
Europe, Hegel zeroed in on Tibet’s religion as a stepping stone to Christianity.
Thanks to his study of recent French and English journals Hegel was now much
better informed than Kant about the history of Tibetan religion, and the wild fanta­
sies of Giorgi had given way to a much more modern perspective:

The worship of Lamas, the cult of the spirit domain and generally of the
spiritual has supplanted the religion of the Shamans, the magicians who
intoxicate and benumb themselves through drink and dance, move, fall
down in exhaustion, utter words, and are regarded as oracles. Buddhism and
Lamaism have taken the place of this religion. (341-2)

But for Hegel such origins were far less interesting than Lamaism’s position as a
springboard from Indian pantheism and Foist/Buddhist abstraction to the more
advanced “incarnation” conceptions in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Far from finding
the figure of the Dalai Lama “paradoxical and revolting,” as has been asserted,148
Hegel actually defended Lama worship as a significant step in the right direction
when compared with Indian pantheism:

The Lama is thus the one through whom God is present to the people in
order to care for them. The relationship is one that is very close to pantheism
proper. But it is not the Indian pantheism where all mountains, all rivers, all
Brahmans are divine so that Brahma [is] immediately present in him. Rather,
the limitlessly encompassing [Indian] pantheism has in Lama worship con­
tracted into the One. These peoples distinguish themselves from the Indians
proper by their higher degree of freedom. They recognize themselves in

148 Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-la, 23. The quote given by Lopez may be based on
the passage in the 1824 appendix on the Mongolian principle translated above in which
Hegel significantly includes Christianity: “We have thus come to the realm of the Dalai
Lama where man is revered as God, which is entirely contrary to abstract reason, also in
Christianity” [was dem abstrakten Verstande ganz zuwider ist, auch am Christentum].
G.W.F. Hegel, Vor­lesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, ed. Georg Lasson, 336.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 39

God by positing him as man, have a friendly view of their God, and have
thus attained a freer God.149

As the lectures on the Philosophy of Religions of 1824 also show, Hegel had now
gained a more distinct picture of the world’s religious geography and Buddhism’s
position therein:

It is the religion of the Chinese, Mongols, Tibetans, furthermore of the

Burmese and Ceylonese. However, what the Chinese call Fo is there called
Buddha; but both mean the same thing, and it is the religion which we know
under the form of the Lamaist religion. The slight difference between the
religion of Fo and Lamaism is only superficial. … It can be stated that this
religion is the most widespread and that which counts most adherents; those
who vene­rate it are more numerous than those of Mohammedanism, which
in turn has more faithful than the Christian religion.150

After many centuries of delusions of grandeur, Christianity had once again become
a minority religion and a relative newcomer on the stage of world history; so much
more reason to portray it, as Eusebius151 and the church fathers had in the old days,
as the promised goal of other religions and philosophies. This tactic turned other
creeds into preludes to Christianity: everything could become a praeparatio evangel­
ica. Hegel’s lectures on the Philosophy of Religions, which will be briefly examined
in the next section, form part of this time-honored tradition of pious hijacking.

Buddha the Baptist

In his 1822/23 lectures on the Philosophy of History Hegel had tried to establish a
streamlined religious geography of Asia by inserting the India-related “Buddhism”
and “Lamaism” between India and Persia. This placed them on the ascending line
leading from the more primitive creeds of China and India toward the Middle East.
But two years later, when “Foism,” “Lamaism” and “Buddhism” were congealing
into Hegel’s “Mongolian Principle,” it was more convenient to place this principle
somewhere between China and India. This meant, however, that the neat East to
West progression was messed up: diffuse Indian pantheism appeared too close to
Jerusalem for comfort, and the historical progression from older to more recent was
quite obviously murky.
A complex multi-national religion such as Buddhism was bound to cause prob­
lems in such simple historical and geographical schemes. Categories such as “magic”

149 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (eds. Ilting, Brehmer and
Seelmann): 229-230. Cf. the similar passage on p. 339 of the Lasson edition.
150 Jaeschke (ed.), G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen. Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte,
vol. 4a: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, part 2: Die bestimmte Religion (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1985): 211.
151 Eusebius of Caesarea, Die Praeparatio Evangelica, ed. Karl Mras (Berlin: Akademie-
Verlag, 1954-1956).
40 Urs App

or “spirituality” which Hegel employed in his Philosophy of Religion lectures seemed

more adequate to his attempt to trace religion as the self-consciousness of absolute
Spirit from childish-concrete forms (“natural” or “determined religion”) to the
adulthood of Christianity, the “perfect” or “accomplished” religion (“die vollendete
Religion”).152 Hegel was shooting for a classification of “religion” that encompasses
all of its forms from the remote past to the present; and, as with his world history,
this classification could be likened to a human lifespan. The magic of primitive
mankind corres­ponded to childhood and was as difficult to intuit:

We can thus certainly understand natural religion [Naturreligion], but we can­

not put ourselves in that position, cannot empathize and feel it inside, just as
we can well understand a dog but are unable to empathize with it. (176)153

Hegel called the religion of magic “the oldest mode of religion, its most savage and
crude form” (177). In contrast to fetishism and other primitive magic where power is
located in some object, Lamaism (which in 1824 still formed part of the “religion of
magic”) appeared slightly more advanced because it locates power in man himself. If
this power does not depend on status or “outer existence” but rather on “inner spiri­
tuality” we have “that which we call Lama” (196).

The religion of the Lama is the form, the aspect of reality, this self-con­
sciousness, a real, living man, but there are several such highest lamas, espe­
cially three—the Lama in Northern Tibet, the Lama in Southern Tibet, and
then back there in Russian Mongolia, in Siberia, there is also such a leader—
all of whom are venerated as Gods. (211)

For Hegel, reincarnation of the Lamaist kind became the key to understanding the
confusing variety of Buddhas such as the thousand-fold incarnations of Fo (216),
the Gautama of the Buddhists who is also the seventh incarnation of Vishnu (217),
and the Lamas of Greater and Lesser Tibet (218). “Here the insignificance of form
extends also to the objective, the eternal, to God. Buddha exists in several shapes,
just like Lama; as soon as a Lama dies, another arises so that both have the same
substance” (213). In Buddhism and Lamaism, death thus only happens “to the acci­
dental exterior form in which the God shows himself” (271); the human form “is
just an imagined form, as with Buddha” (274).
Such Spinozan equations of substance with God indicate the direction in which
Hegel’s views developed when he lectured again on the Philosophy of Religion in
1827. The category of magic had been stretched beyond recognition by Buddhism-
related phenomena and it made more sense to reserve it for Daoism and Chinese

152 Jaeschke, Die Vernunft in der Religion. Studien zur Grundlegung der Religions­philosophie
Hegels (Stuttgart / Bad Cannstatt: Frommann–Holzboog, 1986).
153 Jaeschke (ed.), G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen. Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte,
vol. 4 a: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, part 2: Die bestimmte Religion (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1985). Numbers in parentheses in the text of this section all refer to this book.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 41

state religion with its ghosts, gods, and talismans. Thus Hegel created a new cat­
egory for the phenomena associated with his Mongolian Principle: “Being-within-
self” (Insich­sein). The progression of Spirit in Asia thus presented itself as an ascent
from the “religion of magic” (Daoism and Chinese state religion) to the “religion
of being-within-self” (religion of Fo, Ceylonese and Southeast-Asian Buddhism,
Lamaism) to “Indian religion.” The introspective tendency (Insichgehen) present in
Daoism is intensified in the religion of “Being-within-self” in which “the absolute is
not grasped in the immediacy of self-consciousness but as a substance, as an essence
(Wesen)” (459). The icon of this “most widespread religion on the face of the earth”
(460) is “the image of Buddha in this thinking posture, feet and arms intertwined
so that one toe reaches into the mouth—this withdrawal into oneself, this sucking
on oneself” (461). But in Hegel’s protestant hands the goal of Foist, Buddhist, and
Lamaist meditators soon revealed itself as union with God:

The holiness of man is that by this annihilation he has united with nothing­
ness [Nichts] and so with God, with the absolute. Having reached this holi­
ness, this highest level, a human is indistinguishable from God, eternally
identical with God, and all change ceases; the soul must fear no further
transmigration. (462)

The Nirvana of the Buddhists (defined as in 1824 following Buchanan as the liberation
from “weight, old age, sickness, and death”) was now explained as follows by Hegel:
“One is then identical with God, is regarded as God himself, has become Buddha”
(464). Hegel was aware that this interpretation could raise eyebrows but defended it:

At first glance it must be surprising that humans conceive of God as nothing­

ness [Nichts]; this must appear extremely strange. But considered more closely
this definition means nothing other than that God is nothing determinate
whatsoever, that he is the indeter­minate; that there is no determinacy of any
kind that applies to God; that he is the infinite. For when we say that God is the
infinite we mean that God is the negation of everything particular. (464)

“Being-within-self” is thus a “crucial stage in the progression from immediate

empirical particularity to the determination of essence” which is seen as “a sub­
stance, a substantial power that governs the world, causing everything to come into
being and to be produced according to a rationally coherent design [Zusammenhang]”
(467). In this elegant manner Hegel arrived at an interpretation of Buddhist noth­
ingness that leads to the Christian creator God. He even called for tolerant under­
standing of “the most revolting, shocking and unbelievable tenet” (467) that a man
with all his deficiencies could be regarded as a God. Thus the Buddhist majority was
unexpectedly­defended by the Berlin philosopher:
God is grasped as nothingness [Nichts], as essence overall; this calls for more
explanation, especially also regarding the fact that this essential God is never­
theless known as a parti­cular human being, as Fo, Buddha, Dalai Lama. … We
must learn to understand this view, and in understanding it we justify it. (467)
42 Urs App

Hegel’s call for understanding echoes that of Church fathers portraying Egyptian
religion, Judaism, or Greek philosophy as necessary steps toward Christianity, or by
Jesuit figurists attempting to turn ancient Chinese religion and history into an epi­
sode of their Christian narrative. But Hegel went a step further: he in effect turned
Buddha, the Jesuits’ reviled impostor, into a kind of John the Baptist who prepared
the way for the incarnated God of Christianity.
Hegel’s final conception of Asian religion, as summarized by D. F. Strauss (618)
on the basis of the 1831 lectures, restores the “lamaist-buddhist religion” once more
to its original place after India:

1. Chinese religion. Here the substance is known, but as inwardly determined

foundation, as measure.
2. Indian religion. The substance as abstract unity, akin to spirit; man raises
himself to this abstract unity.
3. Lamaist-Buddhist religion, finds in a particular individual this concretization
of substance to which other human beings also raise themselves, which then
is annihilation. (618)

This final scheme shows Hegel’s “lamaisch-buddhistische Religion” as the peak

of religion in Asia before the Spirit’s momentous move to the Middle East. All three
Oriental religions were described as “pantheist,” but Hegel’s Buddhism (the religion
of Fo, Ceylon, and Southeast Asia) and Lamaism produced “concretized substance”
in the form of particular individuals, i.e. the Buddha and the Lamas. Thus a tradi­
tional core accusation against idolatrous Buddhism, namely, that of mixing up God-
the-creator with man-the-created, turned into an auspicious foreshadowing of per­
fect religion and its divine incarnation. The ancient art of typology had portrayed
Adam as the promise of Jesus and Noah’s Ark as the prototype of the saving church;
but who would have dreamed that, in a curious twist of fate, the impostor Buddha,
the cheating Lamas, and their nihilistic atheism would take on similar prototype
roles in a German philosopher’s mind? At the peak of Hegel’s career, Tibet and its
Lamas had thus become an all-important stepping stone to Christianity, a ray from
the peaks of the Himalayas pointing directly to that humble crib in Bethlehem
where the Spirit’s promise was finally going to be fulfilled.

Schopenhauer
When Schopenhauer was born in 1788 the French, British, and Russian colo­
nialist and scientific enterprises were gradually closing in on Tibet and its religion
from several angles. On the Western front (Persia, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Caucasus)
the likes of Anquetil-Duperron, William Jones, and Herder were approaching the
Himalayas in their search for the cradle of mankind and older testaments than the
Old Testament. On the Southern front the first volume of the Asiatick Researches
with a report on Tibet154 appeared in Calcutta and opened a steady stream of British

154
Samuel Turner, “An Account of a Journey to Tibet,” Asiatick Researches 1 (1788).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 43

information on Asia with sensational impact across Europe. On the Eastern and
Southeastern front news about Chinese and Southeast Asian religions and customs
continued to amaze European readers. But it is the northern front which fur­
nished some of the most interesting early information about Tibet and its religion.
Several Russian expeditions exploring the outer reaches of Siberia had stopped
with the Kalmyks among whom they were confronted with an old tradition of
Tibetan Buddhism. Much of this research was done by Germans employed by the
Czar and published in German, which may be one reason why it has been almost
totally ignored by 20th-century historians of the Western discovery of Buddhism.
At the time, however, the detailed reports of Pallas155 (who also relied on data
from Gerhard F. Müller [1705-1783] and others) were much read. Already in 1771
Pallas had, as mentioned above, furnished a rather detailed description of the reli­
gion of the Kalmyks with its cosmogony, rituals, customs, and doctrine “which
is the so-called lamaic one that for the most part they share with their broth­
ers, the Mongols.”156 He had also included some of the earliest accurate drawings
of Buddhist images (“Götzenbilder”), for example statues of the founder “Dshak-
Dshimuni,” “Abida,” “Maidarin,”157 and the Dalai Lama.
By the year 1803, when fifteen-year-old Schopenhauer (1788-1860) stood fasci­
nated in front of a Buddha statue in an Amsterdam shop, Pallas had also published a
book which I regard as the first Western book-length study on Buddhism.158 On 440
pages with many excellent illustrations the “Tibetan fable doctrine,” its origin, its
cosmogony and myths, its major divinities, doctrines, rituals, precepts, clergy, altars
and much else is presented in great detail and for the most part based on direct
observation and interviews with Buddhists conducted with the help of Pallas’ inter­
preter Jährig. The following illustration from this 1801 volume (pl. 14) may suffice
to indicate once more how wrong it is to state categorically that Buddhism was “cre­
ated” or “invented” by Westerners after the 1820s and that this happened primarily
on the basis of texts rather than the observation of actual practices.
Given the international fame of Pallas it was hardly surprising that his results very
soon found their way into other publications, for example the General Mytho­logical
Lexicon of 1803 by Friedrich Majer who ten years later was to become Schopenhauer’s

155 See above, p. 17.

156 Pallas, Reise, vol. 1, 332-364, here 332-333.
157 Pallas, Reise, vol. 1, Fig. 1, 2, and 3. Maidarin is Maitreya. See the reproduction above
on p. 19.
158 Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten über die mongolischen Völker­schaften, vol. 2
(St. Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1801). Pallas’s title at the begin­
ning of the text reflects more accurately the content of this book: “Samlungen (sic) über den
Götzendienst, die Geistlichkeit, Tempel und abergläubische Gebräuche der mongolischen Völkerschaften;
hauptsächlich die aus dem Tybet abstammende Fabellehre und damit verknüpfte Hierarchie”
[Collection about the idol worship, the clergy, temples, and superstitious customs of the
Mongol peoples; mainly the fable doctrine of Tibetan origin and the hierarchy connected
therewith]. An earlier publication, though of only 54 pages length, also deals with Tibetan
Buddhism: Karl Dietrich Hüllmann, Historisch-kritische Abhandlung über die Lamaische Religion
(Berlin: Carl Ludwig Hartmann, 1795).
44 Urs App

India mentor.159 Pallas was, of course, also studied by Benjamin Bergmann and Isaak
Jakob Schmidt who lived among the Kalmyks between 1802-3 and 1804-6 respec­
tively and continued the tradition of Germano-Russian research there. From the
1820s onward Schmidt was to become Schopenhauer’s most trusted source on Tibet
and on Buddhism.

Fig. 2: Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten vol. 2 (1801): Plate 14

Early Tibet-Related Notes

Peter Simon Pallas and Benjamin Bergmann were adduced as the best sources
on the Kalmyks and Mongols in Schopenhauer’s earliest Central Asia-related notes
from the year 1811,160 i.e., just around the time when the 23-year-old Göttingen
University student took his first courses in philosophy.161 These notes stem from the
ethnography lectures of Professor Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (1761-1842),

159 Friedrich Majer, Allgemeines Mythologisches Lexicon (Weimar: Landes-Industrie-

Comtoir, 1803). For an appraisal of Majer’s role in the birth of Schopenhauer’s interest in
India see Urs App, “Schopenhauer’s Initial Encounter with Indian Thought” Schopenhauer-
Jahrbuch 87 (2006): 35-76, here 40-44 and 52-59.
160 See the German transcription of these notes discovered in 1996 in App, “Notizen
Schopenhauers zu Ost-, Nord- und Südostasien vom Sommersemester 1811,” Schopenhauer-
Jahrbuch 84 (2003): 13-39, here 35. Heeren referred to Pallas’ Sammlungen historischer
Nachrichten and to Benjamin Bergmann, Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken in den
Jahren 1802 und 1803 (Riga, 1804-5).
161 Schopenhauer took his first philosophy course in the winter of 1810-11 (Seminar on
metaphysics by Prof. Gottlob Ernst Schulze [1761-1833]).
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 45

a man of very broad interests who was extraordinarily well informed about Asia.
Because mistaken ideas about the timing of Schopenhauer’s acquaintance with Asia
and with Buddhism persist I here include my English translation of the student’s
1811 Tibet notes in their entirety.162

Tibet.
It is among the least well known countries, though missionaries had made
their way there. The southern part is called Butan, has its own regent; the
northern [part] or Tibet proper is under Chinese dominion.163
Tibet is identified as the most elevated mountain country and can be com­
pared to Switzerland. Many mountains rise beyond the snow line even
though Tibet is next to the northern tropic. Due to the elevation winter is
thus very cold, and products and animals of hot countries are no more pres­
ent; but in exchange [there are] many native ones, for example the Yak (Bos
grunniens of Linn[aeus]) whose white tails are a trade product; the angora
goat; the musk ox, etc. There is much gold and silver which is why they are
of low value. Tibet is well irrigated. The mountains are said to be consider­
ably higher than the Alps, which is doubtful. Tibet has much trade as the
low price of precious metals attracts many, from China, Kashmir, India, etc.
There are also many lamaic pilgrims who make their way there.
The ruler of Bhutan belongs to the clergy. The residence of the Dalai Lama
is in Northern Tibet or Tibet proper.164
The Tibetans are tall and strong, gentle, and the nobles have knowledge and
education. Their religion is said to be a branch of the Indian one, they them­
selves say that the Brahmins had been their teachers. On his death the soul of
the Dalai Lama enters a child. He inhabits a monastery whose entire council
of monks forms the government. The order lives in chastity, with prayers
and spiritual exercises. The novices enter at age 10, receive instruction, are
called Tuppas until age 15 when they are named Tobahs, and at age 24 they
become Gülon monks and can take over monastic and state functions. Those
in such positions are called Lamas; the first is the Dalai, the second the
Teschu-Lama. There is dispute among them; they are divided into Geluppas
with yellow hats and Lamas with red hats.
In Tibet there is polyandry: The wife of the elder brother is simultaneously that
of the younger. The Tibetans not only eat cooked but also raw meat.
Tibet has long been dependent on China and remains that way because of
the Chinese protection. The Nepalese once invaded, and on the Lamas’
request the Chinese drove them out. Since then they keep the country under

162 For the author’s transcription of German text as well as Schopenhauer’s notes related
to adjacent regions see App, “Notizen.”
163 Next to these notes Schopenhauer wrote in the margin: “Georgi Alphabetum Tibeta­
num, contains information about Tibet, also about its language and religion; is written very
confusedly and fuzzily.”
164 Here Schopenhauer wrote in the margin: “The letters of the missionary Gruber of
1661 in the collection of voyages.” This refers to Schwabe’s Allgemeine Historie, vol. 7, 554-
561.
46 Urs App

occupation: among the Nepalese some claimed to have seen Englishmen.

Therefore Macartney was received coldly in China.

Like Hegel a decade later, Professor Heeren was confused about the identity and
origin of the “religion of Budda”; according to Schopenhauer’s notes he felt that “the
religion of Budda is a branch of that of Brama,”165 and while he correctly mentioned its
presence in Mongolia, Burma, and Japan166 it is not quite clear how this relates to the
Chinese religion of Fo and to Lamaism. About Chinese religion Schopenhauer noted:

The present religion of the empire is the lamaic one because this is the reli­
gion of the Manchu Tatars. The Dalai Lama came to Peking almost at the
same time that Pope Pius VI visited Joseph II; he died there of small-pox.
The Chinese themselves have the religion of Fo: their cult is said to be simi­
lar to that of the catholics; it is thus the most widespread.167

Schopenhauer’s good attendance record at Heeren’s ethnography course and his

careful notes indicate a certain interest in such exotic matters but not much more;
there is no sign of independent reflection, reading, or reaction in 1811. Almost fifty
years later, when Schopenhauer died on his couch in 1860, a “Tibetan” Buddha
figure, which the philosopher had ordered from Paris and gilded in Frankfurt, was
gleaming on a special console in his study, and a handwritten note in his major work
equated the goal of his philosophy with prajñå påramitå as explained in Isaak Jakob
Schmidt’s translation of the Diamond Sutra from Tibetan. What had happened in
these five decades?

Empirical and Better Consciousness

While Kant’s interest in Tibet focused on its role in the history of mankind and
Hegel was trying to fit its strange religion into his grand theology of the Spirit’s
uni­versal march to perfection, the roots of Schopenhauer’s interest were more
existential and stretch deep into his youth. In one of his philosophical notebooks
Schopenhauer reminisced:

In my 17th year, without any learned school training, I was so gripped by the
misery of life, like the Buddha in his youth when he saw illness, old age, pain,
and death […] and for me the result was that this world could not be the
work of an all-good being but rather that of a devil who brought creatures
into existence in order to enjoy their agony: the data pointed to this, and the
belief that this was so gained the upper hand.168

It is this experience of life’s misery and the early loss of faith in God which lie at
the bottom of Schopenhauer’s “pessimism” which stands opposed to theistic “opti­

165 App, “Notizen,” 22 and 33.

166 App, “Notizen,” 22 (Burma); Mongolia and Kalmyks (35); Japan (39).
167 App, “Notizen,” 31.
168 Arthur Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, ed. Arthur Hübscher (Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985): vol. 4/I, 96.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 47

mism” marked by faith in an all-good creator God as well as polytheism and panthe­
ism.169 In view of his later pronouncements on Buddhism and his own philosophy
it is important not to misunderstand Schopenhauer’s “pessimism” as some kind of
depressive world view or dark mood: for him it is a philosophical term and forms an
antithesis to religious or philosophical optimism, for example the optimism of “and
God saw that it was good” of Genesis 1 or of Leibniz’s Theodicy.170 Schopenhauer’s
decision to study philosophy was driven by the same experience. When old Wieland
advised him against pursuing this plan the young man reportedly explained: “Life
is a miserable affair, and I have set myself as aim to spend it thinking about this.”171
Such thinking of course involved contemplating ways to alleviate or eliminate suf­
fering, and Rudolf Malter was right to regard the whole trend of Schopenhauer’s
philosophy as soteriological:

He who suffers from the world and wants to flee its misery has to know what
the world is and how he can escape it. The soteriology—as which Schopen­
hauer’s thinking sees itself right from the outset—is in need of a metaphys­
ics which furnishes an answer to its question about ‘what’ [the world is]; and
metaphysics in turn presupposes the self-reflection of cognition [Erkennen]
which seeks that essence. A philosophy whose aim it is to elucidate the origin
and cessation of existence-as-suffering [Leidensexistenz] thus requires a com­
plicated and lengthy exposition.172

Already around the time of Schopenhauer’s 1811 notes about Tibet he compares
life with a “long dream that often turns into a oppressing nightmare”173 (no. 23)
and associates everything issuing from selfhood with “illusion and night” (no. 28).
Religion is said to show “the connection between the world of illusion and the real
world” (no. 32). These two worlds form the matrix of Schopenhauer’s entire philoso­

169 In his 1836 Essay on “Sinology” Schopenhauer praised Buddhism for being nei­
ther monotheistic nor polytheistic or pantheistic “because Buddha did not regard a world
immersed in sin and suffering, whose creatures are all destined to die and who subsist for a
short while by eating one another, as a theophany.” Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel
des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. Über den Willen in der Natur (Zurich: Diogenes Verlag,
1977): 328.
170 In his monograph on Schopenhauer’s use of the word pessimism Andreas Dör­
pinghaus rightly states: “Schopenhauer uses the concept of pessimism exclusively in a philo­
sophical sense; it is related to cognition [Erkenntnis] and forms the antithesis to the concept
of ‘optimism’ as coined by Leibniz. The rarity of his use of the word ‘pessimism’ is striking;
even in later years he often circumscribes pessimism as the antithesis to optimism.” Mundus
pessimus. Unter­suchungen zum philosophischen Pessimismus Arthur Schopenhauers (Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 1997): 44.
171 Arthur Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer: Gespräche (Stuttgart: Friedrich From­
mann Verlag, 1971): 23.
172 Rudolf Malter, Der eine Gedanke. Hinführung zur Philosophie Arthur Schopenhauers
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988): 2.
173 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 1, no. 23. Translations are based on the
German original version; the English translation by E.F. J. Payne (Schopenhauer, Manuscript
Remains, Oxford/New York: Berg, 1988) is unreliable. In the following section numbers are
inserted into the text.
48 Urs App

phy, and from 1812 onward they gradually gain profile in the young philosopher’s
mind. Schopenhauer soon associates the “real world” with “better consciousness”:
it is “beyond all experience and thus all reason” (no. 35). The world of illusion, on
the other hand, “our world,” is the domain of “our empirical, sensual, rational con­
sciousness in space and time” from which we can only be liberated “by virtue and
asceticism” (no. 79).

Virtue is the affirmation of the extra-temporal existence [Au´erzeitlichen

Seyns], indeed it is the unmediated expression of the consciousness of such
[an existence]: pure affirmation.—However, with asceticism an intentional
negation is added, the formal negation and rejection of all that is temporal as
such (no. 72).

God does not form part of this fundamental matrix unless one understands him
as a symbol of better consciousness:

But I say: in this temporal, sensual, rational world there certainly is personal­
ity and causality; they are even necessary.—But the better consciousness in
me elevates me to a world where there is neither personality and causality nor
subject and object. My hope and my belief is that this better (suprasensuous
extratemporal) consciousness can become my only one: which is why I hope
that it is no God.—But if one wishes to employ the concept God in a sym­
bolic manner for that better consciousness itself, or for sundry things one is
unable to distinguish or name: so be it; yet not among philosophers, I should
think (no. 81).

Schopenhauer’s dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

(1813) was a philosophical analysis of the world of reason: the world of subject and
object in space, time, and causality. But in his philosophical journal Schopenhauer
kept thinking about that “better consciousness­ which lies far above all reason, expresses
itself in conduct as holiness, and is the true salvation of the world” (no. 85). In this
realm, “when we become conscious of ourselves as not in time and space,—then we
rightly call that which is [in time and space] nothing” (no. 35). This passage, writ­
ten in 1812 when Schopenhauer’s system existed only as a bud and before any of his
readings on Buddhism, prefigures the gloss he added before his death to the con­
cluding word “nothing” at the end of his magnum opus:

Just this is also the Pratschna-Paramita of the Buddhists, the “Yonder of

all cognition” [das Jenseit aller Erkenntni´], i.e., the point where subject and
object are no more. (See J. J. Schmidt, Ueber das Mahajana und Pradschna-
Paramita.)174

174 Compare Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (vol. 1), trans. E. F.
J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1969): 412. See App, “Nichts. Das letzte Wort
in Schopenhauer’s Hauptwerk” in Das Tier, das du jetzt tötest, bist du selbst ... .” Arthur
Schopenhauer und Indien, ed. Jochen Stollberg (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006):
51-60.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 49

This quick sketch indicates that even before Schopenhauer’s Asia-related read­
ings began (and thus before he came to identify his two worlds with måyå/samsara
and with nirvana) there was a basic affinity of outlook which may help explain
Schopenhauer’s curiosity and growing interest in Indian philosophy and Buddhism
whose first traces go back to the winter of 1813/14.175

First Readings
Schopenhauer’s first reading on Buddhism was an article in Klaproth’s Asiatisches
Magazin entitled “About the Fo-Religion in China” which reflected the 18th cen­
tury views of de Guignes about the “religion of the Samanéens,” “one of the most
widespread of the world since all people from Mustag to the East coast of Japan
adopted it with more or less modifications.”176 Of Kashmirian origin and almost
extinct in India it was preserved most purely in Siam. Further north however, in
Tibet and Tartary where Fo is called “Lah,” his servants “Lahma,” and their chief
resident in Lhasa “Dalai-Lahma,” this religion was “extremely disfigured and
changed.”177 Two years after reading such opinions, Schopenhauer’s careful study
of the first nine volumes of the Asiatick Researches in 1815-1816 resulted in numer­
ous notes and excerpts178 which for the most part concern Indian philosophy and
hardly touch Tibet. But it is in these notes and excerpts that we can catch a glimpse
of Schopenhauer’s incipient interest in Buddhism, which a decade later was to focus
increasingly on Tibet. In contrast to Hegel, the former student of theology­eighteen
years his senior, Schopenhauer’s interest was from the outset philosophical; it is
clear that he was the first European philosopher to take Asian philosophy seriously
and to acknowledge this influence as central to his system.179 Schopenhauer’s notes
relating to volume 6 of the Asiatick Researches180 already show some of the themes

175 Schopenhauer’s first documented reading on Indian philosophy was a German

tran-s­lation of the Bhagavadg¥tå (see App, “Schopenhauer’s Initial Encounter with Indian
Philosophy”); on Buddhism it was the article “Ueber die Fo-Religion in China,” Asiatisches
Magazin 1.3 (1802): 149-169. It contained a German re-translation of the Forty-Two-Chapter
Sutra. See App, “Schopenhauers Begegnung mit dem Buddhismus,” Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 79
(1998): 42-45.
176 H. Julius Klaproth (plagiarizing Joseph de Guignes), “Ueber die Fo-Religion in
China,” 149-169, here 169.
177 Klaproth (de Guignes), “Ueber die Fo-Religion in China,” 166. For more infor­
mation on Schopenhauer’s early readings on Buddhism and a general timeline see App,
“Schopenhauers Begegnung,” 35-58.
178 These notes are transcribed (and when necessary translated into English) in App,
“Notes and Excerpts by Schopenhauer Related to Volumes 1-9 of the Asiatick Researches,”
Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 79 (1998): 11-33.
179 The latter cannot be said of Buddhism, as Schopenhauer rightly noted; he named the
Latin Upanishads, Kant, and Plato as his most important influences. See App, “Schopenhauers
Begegnung mit dem Buddhismus,” 39-42 and App, “Schopenhauer’s Initial Encounter with
Indian Thought.”
180 App, “Notes,” 20-21. These notes and excerpts date from the first half of April of
1816.
50 Urs App

that were to dominate his views regarding Buddhism and Tibet: transmigration
and karma; the absence of a creator God; a strictly atheistic religion with highly
developed morality; the ideal of humans who reach supreme happiness through
their virtue; life as an affliction marked by aging, illness, and death; nirvana as free­
dom from such suffering; and the existence of numerous valuable books containing
Buddhist doctrine.
In the first edition of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation (1818) he
addressed several of these themes and particularly stressed the ideas of nirvana181
and transmigration, the “non plus ultra of all myths.”182 But it is clear that, in con­
trast to the Bhagavadg¥tå183 and especially­Anquetil-Duperron’s Latin Upanishads,184
Bud­dhism played only a minor role in the formation of Schopenhauer’s philosophi­
cal system. In fact, he expressed his surprise at discovering, years after publication of
his major work, how closely they matched:

Were I to take the results of my philosophy as the measure of truth, I would

have to prefer Buddhism to all other [religions]. At any rate, I cannot but be
pleased to see such great agreement between my teaching and the majority
religion on earth, the religion that has more adherents than any other. This
harmony must be all the more pleasing to me as in my philosophizing I have
certainly not been under its influence. Until 1818, when my work appeared,
only very few, highly imperfect and poor reports about Buddhism were to
be found in Europe; they were almost entirely limited to a few papers in the
early volumes of the Asiatick Researches and dealt mainly with the Buddhism
of the Burmese. Since then more knowledge about this religion has gradually
reached us, mainly in form of the well-founded and instructive treatises of
the meritorious academician of St. Petersburg, I. J. Schmidt, in the memoirs
of his academy, and in addition through several English and French scholars.
So I was able to furnish, under the heading “Sinology” of my book On the
Will in Nature, a rather long list of the best publications about this religion.185

Whether Schopenhauer’s claim of “great agreement” was criticized186 or con­f irm­

ed,187 the reference­ point was always a Buddhism which Schopenhauer did not yet
know, namely, Buddhism as it came to be known at the end of the 19th and in the 20th

181 Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 443 (§ 63).
182 Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 443 (§ 63).
183 See App, “Schopenhauer’s Initial Encounter with Indian Thought.”
184 Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, Oupnek’hat (id est, secretum tegendum)
(Argen­to­r ati: Levrault, 1801). See my forthcoming monograph on the discovery of the
Upanishads.
185 Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. 2, 197 (§ 17).
186 See for example Droit, “Schopenhauer et le bouddhisme: une ‘admirable concor­
dance’?” in Schopenhauer, New Essays in Honor of his 200th Birthday, ed. Eric von der Luft
(Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988): 123-138.
187 See for example Glasenapp, Das Indienbild deutscher Denker (Stuttgart: Koehler, 1960):
100 where the well-known indologist states: “No need to explain further that what was pre­
sented here as the core of Buddhism is in complete harmony with the core of Schopenhauer’s
teaching.”
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 51

century. But Schopenhauer did not claim agreement with Hermann Oldenberg, D. T.
Suzuki, or Walpola Rahula, as some modern critics seem to assume. So it may be time
to examine what kind of Buddhism he was actually familiar with and primarily refer­
ring to.
Roughly ten years after his first encounter with the Chinese Forty-Two-Chapter
Sutra and the Nieban of Burmese monks, Schopenhauer from the mid-1820s began
to discover Mahayana teachings through his study of the first volumes of the Journal
Asiatique188 and Abel-Rémusat’s Mélanges asiatiques. Deshauterayes’s translation of a
Chinese biography of the Buddha had a particularly deep impact on him and may well
have whetted Schopenhauer’s appetite for Mahayana doctrine, as the following pas­
sage from Deshauterayes’s translation which he copied in his notebook indicates:

With my eyes of Fo I consider all sentient beings of the three worlds; nature
is in me, yet by itself disengaged and free of all bonds; I look for something
real in all the worlds but cannot find anything; and as I have put my root in
nothing also the trunk, the branches and the leaves are completely annihi­
lated; so when someone is liberated or freed from ignorance he is at once lib­
erated from old age and death.189

Schopenhauer mused that one could classify all religions into two types: 1) an opti­
mist, theist, and realist type that is exemplified by Persian, Judaic, and Mohammedan
religion; and 2) a pessimist, atheist, and idealist type exemplified by ideal Chris­
tianity and actual Buddhism:

The other world-religion is that of the Vedas or the Samanaeism from which
Buddhism (the teaching of Fo, Gotama, Shigemuni) and Christianity of the
New Testament in the narrowest sense stem: it has the Avatar and is charac­
terized by recognition of the world as mere appearance [Erscheinung], of exis­
tence as an evil, of liberation from it as goal, of total resignation as way, and
of Avatar as master of the way.190

The Mecca of Buddhism

Inspired by Deshauterayes and Abel-Rémusat, Schopenhauer began to seek

and read publications on Buddhism systematically. The doubts that had been
raised about the genuineness and reliability of his most revered Asian scrip­
ture, Anquetil-Duperron’s Latin rendering of a Persian translation of the Sanskrit
Upanishads, strengthened his determination to get information about Buddhism

188 Of particular importance was Michel-Ange-André Leroux Deshauterayes, “Re­­

cherches sur la religion de Fo, professée par les bonzes Ho-chang de la Chine,” Journal
Asiatique 7 (1825): 150-173.
189 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 3, no. 161 (1826): 305. Schopenhauer
omit­ted an explanatory comment in the French original and underlined the words as in this
translation.
190 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 3, no. 162 (1826): 308.
52 Urs App

only from trustworthy sources, i.e., European researchers who had proved their
skill in handling Oriental sources in their original languages by publishing gram­
mars, dictionaries, or scientific studies of those languages. Hegel—who during the
1820s lived in the same city of Berlin as Schopenhauer and read the same journals—
was still to a considerable extent relying on information from missionaries and travel
report compilations. By contrast, Schopenhauer wanted to seek his information, as
Abel-Rémusat suggested, “in the writings of the Buddhists themselves whose testi­
mony, needless to say, is vastly superior to that of European specialists.”191 Having
no command of Asian languages he could at least inform himself about the major
original sources. In 1827 he jotted in his notebook:

The Chinese translation of the extract of the main source [Haupt-Urkunde]

of the Buddhaic religion is called San-tsang fa sou and is attributed to the
Buddha himself. A copy of this is in the Bibliothèque de l’arsenal in Paris. Abel
Rémusat, Mélanges asiatiques Vol. 1, p. 103.192

Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, Europe’s famous first professor of Sinology who at

that point still enjoyed Schopenhauer’s trust,193 claimed in the article cited by
Schopenhauer that the sacred scriptures of the Buddhists, which they attribute to
the founder of their religion, were composed close to the lifetime of the Buddha in
Sanskrit, exist “as originals” in the countries where the religion is dominant, and
were “conserved with scrupulous care,” so much so that the versions made in more
recent times in Chinese, Mongolian or Tibetan “were redacted with that almost
servile fidelity which characterizes the Orientals and represents the texts so exactly
that, even apart from Sanskrit words which were retained, one recognizes in them
the Indian genius down to the old-style phraseology.”194 In addition, inspired by a
genealogy of Zen patriarchs going back to the Buddha that he found in the Sino-
Japanese encyclopedia Wakan sansai zue 倭漢三才圖會, Abel-Rémusat had cooked up
a theory of transmission of Buddhism’s original teaching which had, similar to Zen
lore, the Indian monk Bodhidharma introduce the genuine teaching from India
to China in the fifth century. In China, according to Abel-Rémusat, this original
teaching had survived for eight centuries only to be transmitted once more, during
Genghis Khan’s reign in the thirteenth century, to Tibet where it was preserved in a
continuous transmission of Lamas ever since.195

191 Abel-Rémusat, “Sur quelques épithètes descriptives de Bouddha, qui font voir que
Bouddha n’appartenait pas à la race nègre,” Mélanges asiatiques vol. 1 (Paris: Dondey-Dupré,
1825): 100-112, here 102.
192 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 3, no. 209 (1827): 339. See Abel-
Rémusat, “Sur quelques épithètes,” note on page 103. Sanzang 三藏 refers to the Chinese
Buddhist canon (Tripi†aka).
193 His Mélanges asiatiques figure in the first version of Schopenhauer’s list of recom­
mended readings on Buddhism (see below) but were eliminated in the second version of 1854.
194 Abel-Rémusat, “Sur quelques épithètes,” 103.
195 Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, “Sur la succession des trente-trois premiers patriarches,”
Mélanges Asiatiques, vol. 1 (Paris: Dondey-Dupré, 1825): 113-128.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 53

Such good news seemed to be backed up in an informative article by Eugène

Burnouf (“On the literature of Tibet”) which summarized some of Hodgson’s and
Csoma de KŒrös’s dis­coveries in Nepal and Tibet. Apart from confirming the
ancient presence of Sanskrit original texts in Tibet and the older age of Sanskrit
compared to Pali, Burnouf related Csoma de KŒrös’s information about “two very
extensive compilations named Kah-gyur and Stan-gyur” which, though proba­
bly compiled rather recently, “are in effect translations from Sanskrit originals.”196
Schopenhauer’s notes from the year 1829 about The History and Doctrine of Buddhism
by Upham197 show that such information about “the teaching of Buddha proper” and
about the best source that ought to be consulted in such matters had an effect:

This book contains only a little of the teaching of Buddha proper, neither the
life nor the doctrine of Buddha, does not mention the Gandschur; instead
it tells mainly about the popular mythology connected with Buddhism in
Ceylon […] Of Buddhism it furnishes the scaffolding and body rather than
the spirit and is furthermore not well written but rather confused: the author
exhibits little insight and esprit.198

It is clear that around 1830 Schopenhauer already thought that Tibet was the land
where original Buddhism had survived and was thriving, and it is at this junc­
ture that he encountered the writings of the man who was to become, even more
than Csoma de KŒrös, his hero and most trusted source on Buddhism: Isaac Jakob
Schmidt.199 Schmidt’s History of the East Mongols is a translation of an original
Mongolian source thoroughly annotated by the knowledgeable translator. From its
notes Schopenhauer immediately picked up bits and pieces that interested him and
wrote, for example, in his notebook:

The Gandschur is really called bkâ-aGjur. p. 411. The Dalai-Lama is an ema­

nation of Awalokita-Iswara, or Arja Palo, or Chongschim Bodisatwa; p. 412: he
is not Buddha because [Buddha] has become Nirwana while that [Awalokita-
Iswara] is an enduring incarnation of one of the Buddha’s first disciples.
p. 424: The beginning of the history of the Mongols translated by Schmidt
tells about the origin of the world from elements, without any Deus creator;
then the origin of mankind through sinful degeneration of higher spirits;
and the origin of animals through metempsychosis of sinful humans.200

196 Eugène Burnouf, “Sur la littérature du Tibet, extrait du no. VII du Quarterly Orien­
tal Magazine, Calcutta 1826,” Journal Asiatique 10 (1827): 129-146, here 138-139. This article
appeared in the same year and journal as Deshauterayes’s biography of the Buddha that
Schopenhauer so highly recommended.
197 Edward Upham, The History and Doctrine of Budhism [sic], Popularly Illustrated (London:
R. Ackermann, 1829).
198 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 3, no. 242 (1829): 622.
199 Isaac Jakob Schmidt first appears in Schopenhauer’s notes in 1830: Der handschriftliche
Nachla´, vol. 4/I, no. 60 (1830): 33. Schopenhauer made notes about Schmidt, Geschichte der
Ost-Mongolen und ihres Fürstenhauses verfa´t von Ssanang Ssetsen Chungtaidschi der Ordurs (St.
Petersburg/Leipzig: N. Gretsch/Carl Cnobloch, 1829). On Schmidt see also the contribution
by Walravens in this volume.
200 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 4/I, no. 60 (1830): 34.
54 Urs App

Schopenhauer’s enthusiasm found its first printed expression in On Will in

Nature of 1836 where he included a substantial section on Buddhism in his essay on
“Sinology” that included a list of recommended readings “for the general study of
the life and teaching of the Buddha.” Schopenhauer excluded most of what he had
read on this subject in the past decade, and this first edition of his list consisted of
only three recommendations:

For general knowledge about his [the Buddha’s] life and teaching I espe­
cially recommend the beautiful biography of him, as it were the gospel of
the Buddhists, by Deshauterayes in French in vol. 7 of the Journal Asiatique
Par[is] 1825.—Likewise one finds much valuable information about Bud­
dhaism in the Mélanges Asiatiques by Abel-Rémusat Vol. 1 1825—as well
as in J. J. Schmidt’s History of the East Mongols 1829.—And now that the
Asiatic Society of Paris finally has taken possession of the Gandschur or
Kaghiour we can with joyful expectation look forward to a presentation of
Buddhaism on the basis of these canonical books themselves.201

Such presentation was to take considerably longer; but in the meantime Schopen­
hauer eagerly read about Buddhism in whatever publications he could lay his hands
on. He placed orders for valuable foreign books such as Burnouf’s Introduction à
l’histoire du Buddhisme Indien202 and part 2 of volume 20 of the Asiatic Researches with
Csoma de KŒrös’s groundbreaking research on Tibetan Buddhist literature.203 The
second edition of On Will in Nature from 1854 contains a much longer list of rec­
ommended readings which reflects the explosion of Buddhism-related publications
from the 1830s.204 Ten of twenty-six sources are about South and Southeast Asian
Buddhism (Burmese Buddhism, Ceylonese Buddhism, etc.); three about Chinese
Buddhism; two about Indian Buddhism and Buddhist history in general (Burnouf,
Koeppen); and the entire rest of eleven publications plus several additional papers
about Tibet. Notably, the first seven entries on Schopenhauer’s list of recommenda­
tions are all about Tibet and begin with Schmidt’s most famous translation:

For the benefit of those who would like to acquire a more detailed knowl­
edge of Buddhism I will here list out of the literature about it in European
languages those which, since I own them and am familiar with them, I can
really recommend; some others, for example by Hodgson and A. Rémusat, I
leave out on purpose. 1) Dsanglun, or the Wise [Man] and the Fool, Tibetan
and German, by I. J. Schmidt, Petersburg 1843, 2 vols., 4., contains in the
preface to the first, Tibetan volume from p. xxxi to xxxviii a very short but

201 Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Arthur Hübscher (Mannheim: Brockhaus, 1988):
vol. 7, 125.
202 Schopenhauer acquired this volume in November of 1845, barely one year after its
publication, in the auction of August Wilhelm Schlegel’s library; see Arthur Hübscher (ed.),
Arthur Schopenhauer: Gesammelte Briefe (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987): 224 (no. 208).
203 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 5, 320.
204 The printed edition of 1854 contains 23 carefully chosen titles; see also Schopen­
hauer, Kleinere Schriften (Zurich: Haffmans, 1988): 307. Modern printed editions usually add
three more titles based on Schopenhauer’s handwritten notes.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 55

excellent summary of the whole teaching, very well suited for a first acquain­
tance with it; and the whole book, as part of the Kandschur (canonical scrip­
tures), is to be recommended.

It is significant that Schopenhauer’s first recommendation concerns one of the

earliest integral translations of a Kangyur Buddhist text into a Western language.
Schopen­hauer continues:

2) By the same excellent author the respective volumes of the Academy’s

Memoirs contain several German papers about Buddhism read from 1829-1832
and later. Since they are exceedingly valuable for knowledge about this reli­
gion it would be most desirable to have them published together in Germany.
– 3) By the same: Researches about the Tibetans and Mongols, Petersburg
1824. – 4) By the same: On the parentage of gnostic-theosophic doctrines and
Buddhism. – 5) By the same: History of the East Mongols, Petersburg, 1829.
4° (is very instructive, especially in the notes and the appendix which contain
long extracts from the religious scriptures, many passages of which clearly pres­
ent the profound meaning of Buddhism and breathe the genuine spirit thereof.)
– 6) Two papers by Schiefner, German, in the Mélanges Asiatiques tirés du Bulletin
historico-philologique de l’académie de St. Pétersbourg vol. 1. 1851. – 7) Samuel
Turner’s voyage to the court of the Teshoo Lama, from the English, 1801.

In addition, Schopenhauer proposed the following Tibet-related publications:

11) Rgya Tsher Rolpa, transl. from the Tibetan by Foucaux. 1848, 4. This is
the Lalita­v istara, i.e., the life of Buddha, the gospel of the Buddhists. […]
– 13) Déscription du Tubet, trans. from the Chinese to Russian by Bitchourin, and
from Russian into French by Klaproth. 1831. […] – 18) Asiatic researches, […]
Vol. 20, Calcutta 1839, part 2, contains three very important papers by Csoma
Körosi which contain analyses of the books of the Kandschur.

For Schopenhauer Tibet clearly was the Mecca of Buddhism where his trinity (athe­
ism, pessimism, and idealism) appeared to be fully realized and where Buddhism’s
authentic scriptures and original teachings were best safeguarded. The enthusi­
asm which he expressed both orally and in writing led to accusations of his being a
Buddhist,205 and in this respect too Schopenhauer was ahead of his time. In his eyes
Europeans had trouble understanding this religion because of their upbringing:

There, by contrast, existence itself is seen as an evil and the world as a scene
of misery in which one would rather not be; furthermore [Europeans have
difficulty understanding] because of the unmistakable idealism essential to
Hinduism and Buddhism—a view which in Europe is only known as a paradox
of certain abnormal philosophers that can hardly be taken seriously, whereas in
Asia it forms even part of popular belief. In India it is generally accepted as the
teaching of Maja, and in Tibet, the main seat of the Buddhist church, it is even
presented in very popular ways: on the occasion of a great festival a religious
comedy is performed that shows the Dalai Lama in dispute with the chief

205
Arthur Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer: Gesammelte Briefe, 390 (no. 388).
56 Urs App

devil, the former defending the position of idealism and the latter that of real­
ism. Among other things he [the devil] says: ‘What can be perceived through
the five sources of all cognition (the senses) is not an illusion, and what you
teach is not true.’ After a long dispute the case is decided by throwing dice: the
realist, i.e., the devil, loses and is chased away to the sneers of the public.206

Prajñå-Påramitå
Thus Buddhism became for Schopenhauer the best of all possible religions and
Tibet the Ark of its original content. While Schopenhauer continued purchasing
and reading the latest publications such as Spence-Hardy’s works207 and Koeppen’s
synthesis208 he remained convinced that Schmidt’s portrayal of Buddhist philosophy
and its confirmation in his translations from Kangyur texts were the best expression
of genuine Buddhist teaching. Schmidt stressed that the teaching of Prajñå-påramitå
“must be regarded as the peak of the whole edifice of Buddhism”209 and summarized
the content of its exposition in the Diamond sutra as follows:

It thus becomes clear … that Mahåyåna … aims at the recognition that

everything in nature, each single being or entity thereof, everything that
has a form or a name—in one word, everything that represents the idea of
an I-ness [Ichheit]—must be regarded as empty, and that only the encompass­
ing unity beyond all limits of nature, that into which every I disappears, the
Beyond-any-cognition, is genuine and true being.210

The highest wisdom (prajñå-påramitå) of Mahayana Buddhism is therefore, accord­

ing to Schmidt, the “beyond” of any representation or thinking:

Here, in this Beyond, nothing is mirrored, and there is nothing to cognize;

there is no relation to any object, and thus there is also no I, no subject. Here
is the true unchanging being, as opposed to the illusory being of forms and
shapes in the world of appearances.211

Schmidt’s preface to The Wise and the Fool—which Schopenhauer found “very apt as
a first introduction” to Buddhism212—describes prajñå-påramitå or “Being in Non-

206 Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. Über den
Willen in der Natur (Zurich: Diogenes Verlag, 1977): 329-330.
207 Robert Spence Hardy’s Eastern Monachism (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1850) and
A Manual of Budhism [sic] in its modern development; translated from Singhalese mss. (London:
Partridge and Oakey, 1853) were both lauded by Schopenhauer as useful for getting insight
into Buddhist dogma. Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel, 327.
208 Carl Friedrich Koeppen, Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung (Berlin: Schneider,
1857-9). Koeppen’s second volume attempted to gather all information about “the lamaic
hierar­chy and church.”
209 Schmidt, “Über das Mahåjåna and Pradschnå-Påramita der Bauddhen,” 125.
210 Schmidt, “Über das Mahåjåna and Pradschnå-Påramita der Bauddhen,” 212-214.
211 Schmidt, “Über das Mahåjåna and Pradschnå-Påramita der Bauddhen,” 220.
212 Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. Über den
Willen in der Natur, 327.
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 57

Being [Seyn im Nichtseyn]” and contrasts it with “seeming, false Being” which strik­
ingly resembles young Schopenhauer’s “empirical consciousness”:

… all that which impacts both the senses and reason and also concerns one’s
own self [das eigene Ich] in its character as cognizing and judgmental subject
[wahrnehmendes und urtheilendes Subject] by virtue of which it enters into
relation and contact with objects outside of itself. As this is all subject to
incessant change of being [Wechsel des Daseyns] and form it is recognized as
thorough­ly void [nichtig] and as not belonging to the realization [Erkenntniss]
of the true and unchanging.213

In a manner unequalled by other researchers of his time, Schmidt then goes on to

explain the non-duality of nirvana and samsara:

Since in this ‘yonder’ [Jenseits] all that has name is regarded as void and non-
being [nichtig und nichtseyend], it follows that all concepts and relations bound
to name are equally void, without signification,214 and empty [nichtig, bedeu­
tungslos und leer]. This extends to all objects and concepts, be they high or
low and noble or base, simply because they have a name. Thus, for example,
because Buddha is named Buddha he is not Buddha; because virtue is called
virtue it is not virtue, and vice for the same reason is not vice; yes even
Sansåra—i.e., the entire world as it appears to our cognition and perception
in its ceaseless change and infinite variety of physical, organic, physiological,
and moral characteristics—and Nirwåna, i.e. the egress and complete release
from this boundless and endless change and from these ceaseless transfigu­
rations, are not-two [unverschieden] since they have names and therewith rela­
tionships.215

For Schopenhauer this typical Mahayana teaching was in a sense a dream come true:
his youthful dream of a better consciousness. Unlike Hegel and Schelling he had
always recognized the limits of philosophy: though it could better analyze the world
of subject and object—samsåra—than any religion, it should and could never tran­
scend its rational limits. Though common mortals could get a taste of the “beyond,”
for example through ecstasy in art, 216 it was permanently realised only by mys­
tics, saints, and buddhas able to cross the ultimate frontier and to see the world

213 I. J. Schmidt, Dsanglun, oder der Weise und der Thor (St. Petersburg/Leipzig: W. Gräffs
Erben/Leopold Vo´, 1843): xxxiv.
214 This is exactly the (very positive) meaning of the same word “bedeutungsleer” in
Schopenhauer’s final passage of The World as Will and Representation which is usually com­
pletely misunderstood as a critique of nirvana and Buddhism: “[…] like the Indians through
myths and words that are empty of signification [bedeutungsleere Worte] such as absorp­
tion into Brahm or the Nirwana of the Buddhists.” Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung, vol. 1, 508. An example of such misunderstanding is the essay by Moira Nicholls,
“The Influences of Eastern Thought on Schopenhauer’s Doctrine of the Thing-in-Itself,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed. Christopher Janaway (Cambridge/New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999): 171-212.
215 Schmidt, Dsanglun, xxxiv.
216 This is the subject of book 3 of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation.
58 Urs App

as the “nothing” which shines at the end of the last book of The World as Will and
Representation. It is this goal that Schopenhauer, shortly before his death, identified in
a handwritten note with the Buddhist perfection of wisdom (prajñå-påramitå).217
Toward the end of his life Schopenhauer’s admiration for Buddhism and Tibet
found expression not only in a steadily increasing stream of notes and remarks but
also in references to himself as “Buddhist.” Whether this was meant as a provocation
or not, he was to my knowledge the first Westerner to call himself by that name.218 In
1826 he had already noted the “marvelous match” (“wundervolle Übereinstimmung”)
of the Buddha’s teaching with his own philosophy,219 but three decades later he urged
Eduard Crüger to purchase for him a genuine Buddha statue in Paris. Afraid of get­
ting a fat Chinese Buddha, the philosopher was elated to find a slim bronze figure
in Crüger’s parcel. He quickly had the black coating of the statue removed and was
so pleased with what he saw that he forgot his famous parsimony and had it plated
in gold to grace his study.220 At the time little was known about Buddhist art but
Schopenhauer’s idea of Tibetan orthodoxy made him conclude:

It is totally genuine and presented entirely in the orthodox manner: I guess

that it comes from the great foundry in Tibet; but it is already old. It will
grace a console in the corner of my living room, and visitors—who at any
rate enter the room with holy shivers and considerably dressed up—will
immediately know where they are, in these hallowed halls. If only Reverend
Kalb from Sachsenhausen showed up, he who panted from the pulpit ‘that
even Bud­dhism gets introduced in Christian lands’!221

Some weeks later it was already “probable” that the statue “stems from the great
foundry in Tibet” and Schopenhauer remarked with satisfaction that it “fulfilled
a long-held desire”: “it has all the canonical characteristics, and there it sits: ready
for private worship.”222 It took another month for Schopenhauer to reach certainty
about the statue’s origin:
My Buddha is now galvanically gold-plated and will gleam splendidly on his
console in the corner. The Burmese, according to the Times, have recently
gold-plated an entire pagoda: there I must not be trumped. Another Buddha
is here [in Frankfurt], the property of a rich Englishman. Though of life-
size, it is not made of bronze like mine but of papier mâché, a cast probably
from China, entirely gold-plated and similar to mine to a T. I prefer mine: it
is genuine, Tibetan!223

217 Most editions feature this handwritten note as part of the printed text or as a footnote
to the concluding word “nothing.”
218
App, “Schopenhauers Begegnung,” 53-56.
219
Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachla´, vol. 3: 305; App, “Schopenhauers Be­­
gegnung,” 46.
220
Schopenhauer, Gespräche, 197; App, “Schopenhauers Begegnung,” 54.
221
Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe, 390.
222
Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe, 391.
223
Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Briefe, 394. For additional information about this statue and
The Tibet of the Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 59

Fig. 3: Schopenhauer’s Buddha statue. (Schopenhauer Archiv, Frankfurt am Main)

Shortly before Schopenhauer’s death in 1860 the first Buddha statues thus made
their way into central European cities. The philosopher’s ignorance about their
origin was to be expected. More surprising is that of modern researchers who still
repeat the philosopher’s enthusiastic guess and identify the statue as “Tibetan”224 in
spite Schopenhauer’s descriptions and a photograph in the Schopenhauer Archive
which indicate that the philosopher’s beloved figure was probably of Thai origin.

.,

Rather than an overall “disenchantment” with Asia225 and an orientalist “cre­

ation” of Buddhism driven primarily by national egoism and colonial rapacity,226

the photo in Fig. 3 see Stollberg, “Arthur Schopenhauer über seinen Buddha in Gesprächen
und Briefen,” in Das Tier, das du jetzt tötest, bist du selbst. Arthur Schopenhauer und Indien, ed. J.
Stollberg (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006): 163-172.
224
See for example Droit, “Une statue tibétaine sur la cheminée,” in Présences de Scho-
penhauer, ed. Droit (Paris: Grasset, 1989): 201; and Hugo Busch, Das Testament Arthur
Schopenhauers (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1950): 134.
225 Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Entzauberung Asiens. Europa und die asiatischen Reiche im
18. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998). This interesting study largely ignores the reli­
gious sphere.
226 Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism.
60 Urs App

our three case studies show a gradually increasing interest in Asian philosophy and
religion fueled by a variety of different motives, from Kant’s interest in the ori­
gins of humani­t y to Hegel’s desire to maintain Christianity as the goal of history
and Schopenhauer’s youthful intuition of samsara and nirvana. Instead of a clean
break between “pre-nineteenth-century commentators” whose ideas had “not been
widely circulated” and a new age of “scientific Buddhist studies” beginning with
Colebrooke, Hodgson, Csoma de KŒrös and Burnouf,227 we have seen that the transi­
tion was very gradual and that the supposedly forgotten earlier commentators were
in fact widely published in travel accounts and letter collections and exerted a domi­
nating influence well into the 19th century.228 Instead of the purported sudden revela­
tion of Buddhism by virtue of the colonialist mindset and the study of Sanskrit texts,
our case studies show the gradual emergence of a religion over a number of centuries,
an emergence which took place in the context of the slow breakdown of the medieval
world view, the rise of the scientific study of our earth and its inhabitants, the search
for origins and the explosion of the length of history, coupled with an ever-growing
awareness of the history, limits, and relativity of Christianity and its sacred scrip­
tures. It is this change of awareness that helped open the door to a reified vision of
religion permitting less biased examination and comparison of various creeds.
To Kant, as we have seen, Noah and the deluge revealed themselves as myths
and were replaced by an almost secular narrative of origin in which Tibet played
a pivotal role. Hegel, by contrast, held on to the time-honored deluge and biblical
chronology while trying to turn secular history into a universal march to salva­
tion in which the Tibetan lamas were accorded a privileged place as prototypes of
(and springboards to) the Christian savior. In Schopenhauer’s writings Noah and
the deluge are notably absent: sacred and secular history dwindled to insignifi­
cance together­ with man, revealing themselves as mere chance products of a blind
universal force that the philosopher called “will.” Annihilating what the German
mystics had called “Eigenwille” [own-will] or “the realm of ‘I’ and ‘mine’,” and ban­
ishing once and for all the mirage of samsara—this was Schopenhauer’s ideal since
his youth, an ideal whose realization he perceived in faraway Tibet as the peak of
Buddhist doctrine: prajñå-påramitå.

227 Guy R. Welbon, The Buddhist Nirvåˆa and Its Western Interpreters (Chicago: Uni­
versity of Chicago Press, 1968): 23; numerous more recent studies basically make the same
argument.
228 We have seen that Hegel’s views on the content of Buddhist doctrine were still mainly
based on the “esoteric” teaching detected by the missionaries. Indeed, Pope John Paul II’s
opinions on Buddhism demonstrate that despite two centuries of so-called scientific study
of Buddhism such influence is alive and well. See Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of
Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995): 84-90.