The common Western understanding of Buddhism today envisions this
major world religion as one of compassion and tolerance. But as
Roger-Pol Droit reveals, this view bears little resemblance to one
broadly held in the nineteenth-century European philosophical
imagination that saw Buddhism as a religion of annihilation calling
for the destruction of the self.
Originally published in France in 1997, this book traces the
history of the Western discovery of Buddhism. Droit shows that such
major philosophers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, Cousin, and
Renan imagined Buddhism as a religion that was, as Nietzsche put
it, a "negation of the world." In fact, says Droit, such portrayals
were more a reflection of what was happening in Europe at the
time--when the collapse of traditional European hierarchies and
values, the specter of atheism, and the rise of racism and social
revolts were shaking European societies--than an accurate
description of Buddhist thought. Droit also reflects on how this
history continues to echo in contemporary Western understandings of
Buddhism. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography of books
on Buddhism published in the West between 1638 and 1890.
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