Buddhism, Nothingness, and Pessimism

The present contribution excavates a pivotal shift in the history of European Buddhism. It outlines the conceptual-historical entanglements of “Buddhist nothingness” with nineteenth-century German philosophy from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche. While Buddhism was primarily interpreted as a philosophy and practice of nothingness (as in Hegel) and as ascetic and nihilistic (as in Nietzsche), pessimist interpretations of Buddhist nothingness, negation, nirvāṇa, and the unconscious articulated other possibilities that helped promote a more receptive, at times enthusiastic, attitude toward Buddhist thought and practice. Nietzsche’s critique of “European Buddhism” as nihilism in his late works and fragments occurs in the context of this shift. Nietzsche’s interpretation is not only a continuation of earlier European suspicions concerning Buddhist nothingness. He intentionally deployed a variety of ideas and images drawn from South Asian Buddhist sources to confront and question European modernity as well as Buddhism itself. Works attributed to the Buddha and Nāgārjuna are discussed at points to help contextualize and assess the significance of these discourses.