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Nothingness, Negativity, and Buddhism in Schopenhauer

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The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy

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Abstract

In this chapter, I reexamine how the interpretation of nothingness and negativity in Schopenhauer—within the wider nineteenth-century philosophical context, particularly in reference to his perceived rival Hegel and his heir and critic Nietzsche—informed his encounter with “oriental thought,” his reception of Buddhism as a philosophical and religious system centering on negativity, and trace how he construed the central Buddhist concept of emptiness in the context of Western ideas of nothingness. Nineteenth-century German philosophers are inadequately aware of the changing senses and complex argumentative discourses concerning the Sanskrit expression śūnyatā and the Chinese term kong 空 and the problem of translating Buddhist emptiness as nothing or void. Relying on the same range of historical sources that were then becoming available in the German speaking world, Schopenhauer and other thinkers such as Hegel perceived similar philosophical questions in these sources, while arriving at conflicting diagnoses of their philosophical and practical significance. We consequently can trace how the reception of Buddhist emptiness becomes interculturally entangled with and a source in argumentation concerning the nature of being and nothingness in modern German philosophy.

The RGC Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (HSSPFS #36000021) supported this research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    App (2012), Droit (2003).

  2. 2.

    Hegel states that “oriental philosophy” can only be considered philosophy in a “preliminary” and non-genuine sense (Hegel 1993, 365).

  3. 3.

    Hegel (2010 21, 70).

  4. 4.

    Hegel (2010 21, 84); also compare Hegel (1993, 86–87). On Hegel and Indian philosophy, see Rathore and Mohapatra (2017).

  5. 5.

    Hegel (2010, 21, 325).

  6. 6.

    Schopenhauer (2018, 525), Schopenhauer (1977:4, 596).

  7. 7.

    The Buddha’s awakening to the truth of suffering is described in the Pali text the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta (Discourse on the Noble Quest): “I too am liable to birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, and moral impurity” (Holder 2006, 1–18).

  8. 8.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 263), Schopenhauer (1977:9, 317–318).

  9. 9.

    See, for instance, Abelsen (1993), App (2006), Cross 2013. There is of course an extensive literature on Schopenhauer’s reception and creative appropriation of Buddhist and Indian philosophy, some of which will be mentioned in what follows.

  10. 10.

    On modern and intercultural philosophy, see my account in Nelson (2017).

  11. 11.

    On this dimension of Nietzsche’s thought, see Wirth (2019). Also note my discussion of Wirth’s book that examines a number of these points in Nelson (2021).

  12. 12.

    On pessimism in German philosophy and culture during the nineteenth-century, see Beiser (2016). Beyond nineteenth-century German pessimism, and Buddhism’s roles in the Pessimismusstreit (in Eduard von Hartmann, Philipp Mainländer, and others), the Schopenhauerian paradigm continued to inform and resonate throughout Buddhism’s European and modern Asian reception.

  13. 13.

    Nietzsche (1967:5, 251–252).

  14. 14.

    On Nietzsche and Buddhism, see Mistry (1981), Morrison (1997), Panaioti (2014), Wirth (2019).

  15. 15.

    On this point, compare Mistry (1981), Morrison (1997), Panaioti (2014), and Wirth (2019, 29–32, 109–110). On emptying emptiness, also see Nelson (2017, 201–252).

  16. 16.

    Tanabe (1990, 102–115), Wirth (2019, 62).

  17. 17.

    Wirth (2019, 41–42, 79, 89); also note Nelson (2021).

  18. 18.

    Cartwright (2010, 274), Wirth (2019, 15–21).

  19. 19.

    Schopenhauer (1977:5, 340), Schopenhauer (2012, 445).

  20. 20.

    Schopenhauer (1977:5, 142–143, 326), Schopenhauer (2012, 118–119, 432–433).

  21. 21.

    Schopenhauer (1970:1, 96).

  22. 22.

    On his father’s suspected suicide, see Cartwright (2010, 88–89), Safranski (1987, 89).

  23. 23.

    On Schopenhauer’s early encounters with Indian sources, see App (2006).

  24. 24.

    Schopenhauer (1970:2, 29). The intersection of Eckhart and Buddhism would become a prominent theme in comparative mysticism as well as in the Kyōto school (compare Nishitani, 1983, 61–68).

  25. 25.

    Schopenhauer (2017, 202, 250–251).

  26. 26.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 147), Schopenhauer (1977:9, 178).

  27. 27.

    Schopenhauer (1987, 384).

  28. 28.

    Nietzsche (1967:7, 434).

  29. 29.

    Wirth (2019, 109).

  30. 30.

    Compare the discussion of metanoesis, change of heart, and conversion in Tanabe (1990) and Wirth (2019, 64–65).

  31. 31.

    Schopenhauer (2009, 234), Schopenhauer (1977:6, 288).

  32. 32.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 289), Schopenhauer (1977:9, 349).

  33. 33.

    Wirth (2019, 83).

  34. 34.

    Schopenhauer (2010, 401). On stoic tranquility, see Schopenhauer (2010, 112–113).

  35. 35.

    Compare Schmidt (1986, 130).

  36. 36.

    “Widerstand aber ist die Seele der Schopenhauerschen Philosophie.” See Horkheimer (1985, 53); Adorno (1966, 2012, 364). Horkheimer concluded another 1961 essay with the thesis that Schopenhauer’s philosophy is all the more needed today because its confrontation with hopelessness teaches insights that the teachers of hope cannot (Horkheimer 1974, 83).

  37. 37.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 264), Schopenhauer (1977:9, 318–319).

  38. 38.

    Nietzsche (1967:5, 339).

  39. 39.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 283): Schopenhauer (1977:9, 342).

  40. 40.

    Deleuze (2006); also see Wirth (2019, 24). On nature in Nietzsche, also see Nelson (2013, 213–227). There is a complex relationship between Spinoza’s conatus, Schopenhauer’s will, and Nietzsche’s will to power, which might be more difficult to disentangle than Deleuze suggests given that there is also a thinking of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of forces and instincts in Schopenhauer’s account and that are independent of the suspension of the individuated will and the constitutive subjectivity of classical German philosophy.

  41. 41.

    Schopenhauer (1977:5, 337), Schopenhauer (2012, 442).

  42. 42.

    Schopenhauer had a series of poodles each named ‘Atma’ (Cartwright (2010, 451–452), 518).

  43. 43.

    Nietzsche (1967:5:107): “ein Pessimist, ein Gott- und Welt-Verneiner, der vor der Moral Halt macht,—der zur Moral Ja sagt und Flöte bläst, zur laede-neminem-Moral: wie? ist das eigentlich—ein Pessimist?” Nietzsche is referring here to Schopenhauer’s first ethical principle “neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva” [Harm no one; rather help all to the extent that you can] (Schopenhauer 2009, 140; Schopenhauer 1977:6, 177).

  44. 44.

    Schopenhauer (2009, 117, 182), Schopenhauer (1977:6, 150, 227).

  45. 45.

    Nietzsche (1967:6, 173).

  46. 46.

    Nietzsche (1967:5, 125, 252); Nietzsche (1967:12, 377); compare Nishitani (1990, 180); and Wirth (2019, 25–27).

  47. 47.

    See Nishitani (1982, 64–66); also see Wirth (2019, 55–57).

  48. 48.

    Nishitani (1983, 98).

  49. 49.

    Nishitani (1990, 15).

  50. 50.

    Nishitani (1990, 13–16).

  51. 51.

    Schopenhauer (2010, 436), Schopenhauer (1977:2, 504–505), Schopenhauer (2017, 248).

  52. 52.

    Adorno repeatedly critiqued Hegel’s affirmative transformation of negativity and non-identity (Adorno 1966, 5, 124; Nelson 2020). Carnap argued for the derivative and secondary logical character of negation, and the error of reifying nothingness, in his 1932 polemic against the role of nothingness in Heidegger’s 1929 address “What is Metaphysics?” (Carnap 1932, 219–241; Nelson 2016, 151–156).

  53. 53.

    Schopenhauer (2010, 436), Schopenhauer (1977:2, 505); also see Schopenhauer (2017, 244).

  54. 54.

    Nietzsche (1967:7, 434).

  55. 55.

    Schopenhauer (2017, 192).

  56. 56.

    Schmidt (1986, 61–64).

  57. 57.

    Schopenhauer (2015; 94), Schopenhauer (1977: 9, 114).

  58. 58.

    Schopenhauer (1977:5, 328), Schopenhauer (2012, 434).

  59. 59.

    Du Halde (1736, 5051).

  60. 60.

    Hegel (2010, 21, 70, 87, 325); also compare Hegel (1988, 253).

  61. 61.

    Nietzsche (1967:11, 490); Nietzsche (1967:6, 173).

  62. 62.

    Schopenhauer (2017, 248).

  63. 63.

    Wirth (2019, 19, 109); Schopenhauer (2010, 439).

  64. 64.

    Red Pine 2004, 200.

  65. 65.

    On the principle of sufficient reason, see Schopenhauer (1977:5) and Schopenhauer (2012).

  66. 66.

    Schopenhauer (2010, 438), Schopenhauer (1977:2, 506).

  67. 67.

    Schopenhauer (2010, 302–303); Schopenhauer (2018, 527). On religion as a symbolic depiction of truth in Schopenhauer, see Schmidt (1986).

  68. 68.

    Schopenhauer (2010, 310), Schopenhauer (2018, 339, 490, 691). The Bhagavad-Gītā fascinated contemporary German literati such as Schlegel and Humboldt (who both translated it) and Hegel who wrote an extensive essay on Humboldt’s translation (compare Herling 2006; Rathore and Mohapatra 2017). William James grasped in the Gītā a teaching directed against the isolation of the ego, the ego’s narcissistic melancholy being broken through a conversion in solitude to life (Wirth 2019, 38).

  69. 69.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 358–359), Schopenhauer (1977:9, 439–440).

  70. 70.

    Schopenhauer (2015, 300), Schopenhauer (1977:9, 369). On the atheistic critique and allegorical interpretation of religion in Schopenhauer, see Schmidt (1986).

  71. 71.

    Bloch (1972, 277), Schmidt (1986, 89–90).

  72. 72.

    Schopenhauer (2017, 217–219), Schopenhauer (2018, 629–630), Schopenhauer (1977:4, 716–717).

  73. 73.

    Schopenhauer (1970:1, 252), Schopenhauer (1970:2, 29).

  74. 74.

    Although Schopenhauer’s philosophy is better interpreted as idealism without constitutive subjectivity (Schmidt 1986), Schopenhauer typifies the metaphysical tradition and the modern conception of subjectivity for Heidegger (2002, 41–42, 103). In a 1969 letter to Ernst Jünger, Heidegger remarked that his relationship with Schopenhauer’s thought was negative although he recognized its significance for nineteenth-century thought (Heidegger and Jünger 2016, 46). On Schopenhauer and Heidegger on will, compare Davis (2007, 19–20).

  75. 75.

    Adorno and Levinas have elucidated the ethical and social-political failures of Heidegger’s thinking (Nelson 2020). There are no doubt ways of reconstructing an implicit ethics of formal indication and dwelling in the early and later works of Heidegger.

  76. 76.

    For an overview, compare Beiser (2016), Nishitani (1990).

  77. 77.

    For instance, in the Chinese speaking world, Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Wang Guowei 王國維, and Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 helped introduced Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Initially drawing on Japanese sources, the political thinker and reformer Liang Qichao wrote about them in 1902; the ill-fated literary theorist Wang Guowei published his essay “Schopenhauer and Nietzsche” (“Shubenhua yu Nicai” 叔本華與尼采) in 1904; and the philosopher Liang Shuming drew Yogācāra Buddhism and Schopenhauer together in his 1921 work Eastern and Western Cultures and their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學).

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  1. Philosophy, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, China

    Eric S. Nelson

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Gregory S. Moss

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Nelson, E.S. (2023). Nothingness, Negativity, and Buddhism in Schopenhauer. In: Moss, G.S. (eds) The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13862-1_11

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