SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Schopenhauer: Europe's First Buddhist?

In the last decade before his death in 1860, Schopenhauer ordered a Buddha statue from Paris, had it polished and gilded, placed it on his window sill in a kind of altar, had his house keeper adorn and duly respect it, and began to refer to himself in letters and conversations as a "Buddhist."

Schopenhauer's readers, from Richard Wagner, Nietzsche and Tolstoy to budding Buddhist scholars in far-away Japan, read with amazement Schopenhauer's verdict: Buddhism "is the best of all possible religions."

What did Schopenhauer mean by "Buddhism"? What did he learn about this religion, which of its forms, when, from what sources, why? What drove him, from age 25 to his death at 72, to build a multilingual collection of rare publications about this largest religion of Asia, and to encourage its study through countless quotations and even a long list of "recommended readings about Buddhism"?

Urs App, the renowned buddhologist and historian of the European discovery of Asian religions, author of The Cult of Emptiness (2012) and The Birth of Orientalism (winner of the 2012 book prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), traces Schopenhauer's discovery of Asia's largest religion and explains the connection between Schopenhauer's "Nichts" and Buddhist Nothingness.