Abstract
This chapter attempts at a reconstruction of Husserl’s encounter with Buddhism. Basing on a short review article written by Husserl in 1925 on the German translation of some Buddhist Scriptures, we will show that the father of phenomenology manifested an initial enthusiasm toward Buddhism rarely seen in his other writings. Husserl praised the Buddhist attitude as a way of overcoming mundane world interests comparable to his own transcendental phenomenological attitude. Thus Husserl had projected the hope on the Buddhist Scriptures as an ethical-religious source of superlative quality for cultural renewal. In a later manuscript, Husserl expressed his further thoughts on Buddhism by comparing the Buddha to Socrates. To Husserl the Buddha advocates a supreme ethical practical ideal—liberation and bliss—by means of ruthless cognition in view of leading an accomplished moral life. This Buddhist attitude is no different from Socrates’ pursuit of a coherent life of virtue guided by the Delphic maxim of “know thyself”. Husserl seems to suggest that the Buddha is on a par with Socrates by introducing a kind of theoretical attitude which serves a supreme ethical telos. But on further analysis, it will be shown that in Husserl’s final judgment on Buddhism, the latter does not satisfy the requirements of a genuine universal philosophy because it does not embrace Husserl’s own idea of a universal science. This betrays once again Husserl’s fundamental cognitivist conception of philosophy. The last part of the chapter will be devoted to an analysis of the influence of Husserl’s brief encounter with Buddhism on the subsequent development of his thought.
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- 1.
The first version of this chapter was presented to the 1st International Conference of P.E.A.CE (Phenomenology for East-Asian CirclE) held May 2004 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and published after revision in Identity and Alterity. Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions, eds. Kwok-Ying Lau, Chan-Fai Cheung and Tze-Wan Kwan (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2010), pp. 221–233. This version is further revised in consideration of the publication of Husserl’s manuscript “Sokrates-Budda” in Husserl Studies (2010), 26, pp. 1–17.
- 2.
E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Husserliana VI, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1st ed. 1954, 2nd ed. 1962) (“Krisis” hereafter), p. 331; English translation: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970) (“Crisis” hereafter), pp. 284–285.
- 3.
E. Husserl, Krisis, pp. 325, 331; Crisis, pp. 280, 285.
- 4.
E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 325; Crisis, pp. 279–280.
- 5.
E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 14; Crisis, p. 16.
- 6.
E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 14; Crisis, p. 16.
- 7.
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I (G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Bd. 18) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), pp. 138–170; English translation: Lectures on The History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, Eng. trans. E. S. Haldane (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1955), pp. 119–147.
- 8.
Retranslated into English from the Chinese translation of Hegel’s Lectures on The History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, by He Lin and Wang Taiqing (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1959), p. 132. This passage is translated from the additions of Hoffmeister’s edition, additions neither included in Hegels Werke in zwanzig Bänden published by Suhrkamp Verlag, nor in Haldane’s English translation, op. cit. German pagination of Hoffmeister’s edition will be provided upon consultation.
- 9.
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I, op. cit., pp. 167–168; Lectures on The History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, op. cit., pp. 144–145.
- 10.
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I, op. cit., p. 169; Lectures on The History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 146.
- 11.
On Husserl’s Eurocentric conception of philosophy in Crisis, cf. Kwok-ying Lau, “Para-deconstruction: Preliminary Considerations for a Phenomenology of Interculturality”, in Phenomenology of Interculturality and Life-world, special issue of Phänomenologische Forschungen, ed. E.W. Orth & C.-F. Cheung (Freiburg/München: Verlag K. Alber, 1998), pp. 233–237, revised edition collected in this book as Chap. 2, supra. For some further reflections on this issue, cf., “Disenchanted World-view and Intercultural Understanding: from Husserl through Kant to Chinese Culture”, infra, Chap. 7.
- 12.
E. Hussserl, “Über die Reden Gotamo Buddhos”, first published in Der Piperbote für Kunst und Literatur, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1925), pp. 18–19; now in E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937), Husserliana XXVII, ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), pp. 125–126.
- 13.
Our translation has benefitted from the English version provided by Karl Schuhmann in his article “Husserl and Indian Thought”, in Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy, ed. D. P. Chattopadhyaya, Lester Embree, and Jitendranath Mohanty (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 25–27.
- 14.
Throughout the review article, Husserl did not state precisely which volumes or which texts among the Newman translations he had read. Yet according to Karl Schuhmann’s estimation, Husserl had probably read translations of the Majjhima-Nikāya, the Therigātā and Theragātā, and perhaps also of the Dhammapada, all originally written in Pali. Cf., K. Schuhmann, “Husserl and Indian Thought”, op. cit., p. 40, n. 29.
- 15.
There are totally five articles in this series. Three of them were published during Husserl’s life-time in Kaizo, namely “Erneuerung. Ihr Problem und ihre Methode”, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1923; “Die Methode der Wesensforschung”, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1924; “Erneuerung als individualethisches Problem”, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1924. These three articles are now collected in E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937), Husserliana XXVII, op. cit., pp. 3–13, 13–20, 20–43. The other two articles which remained unpublished during Husserl’s life-time, entitled respectively “Erneuerung und Wissenschaft” and “Formale Typen der Kultur in der Menschheitsentwicklung”, are now collected in Husserliana XXVII, op. cit., pp. 43–59 and 59-94.
- 16.
Karl Schuhmann is the author of Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1977), as well as the editor of the Husserl letters in ten volumes: Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, ed. by Karl Schuhmann and Elisabeth Schuhmann (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994).
- 17.
On the relationship between Schopenhauer and Indian thought, cf. Jean W. Sedlar, “Schopenhauer and India”, in Asia and The West. Encounters And Exchanges From The Age of Explorations: Essays in Honor of Donald F. Lach, ed. Cyriac K. Pullapilly and Edwin J. Van Kley (Notre Dame, Indiana: Cross Cultural Publications, Inc., 1986), pp. 149–172.
- 18.
Karl Schuhmann, “Husserl and Indian Thought”, op. cit., pp. 28–29.
- 19.
Husserl, MS B I 21/88–94 (21/22 Jan 1926); reported by Karl Schuhmann, “Husserl and Indian Thought”, op. cit., p. 41, n. 52. According to Schuhmann’s investigation, Husserl has discussed Buddhism in a seminar held in the winter semester of 1925–1926. Yet the very sketchy notes left down by Dorion Cairns, the later English translator of the Cartesian Meditations and Formal and Transcendental Logic whose level of German language at that time was limited, do not constitute a sufficiently solid documentary basis for further analysis. Cf. Karl Schuhmann, “Husserl and Indian Thought”, op. cit., pp. 28–29 and p. 41, n.41. This manuscript was discussed and partly translated by Debabrata Sinha in his article “Theory and Practice in Indian Thought: Husserl’s Observations”, Philosophy East and West, vol. 21, 1971, pp. 255–264. The full version of this manuscript is subsequently published in Husserl Studies, Vol. 26, 2010, pp. 1–17, under the title “Sokrates—Buddha. An Unpublished Manuscript from the Archives”, ed. by Sebastian Luft; abbreviated as “Sokrates—Budda” hereafter.
- 20.
Schuhmann translates “Erlösung” by “salvation”, which is a rather Christian term. We prefer the term “liberation”, one of the now common Buddhist vocabularies in English.
- 21.
E. Husserl, “Sokrates—Buddha”, op. cit., p. 5; the author’s English translation.
- 22.
E. Husserl, “Sokrates—Buddha”, op. cit., pp. 7–8.
- 23.
E. Husserl, “Sokrates—Buddha”, op. cit., p. 17.
- 24.
E. Husserl, “Sokrates—Buddha”, op. cit., p. 17.
- 25.
E. Husserl, “Sokrates—Buddha”, op. cit., p. 13.
- 26.
E. Husserl, “Sokrates—Buddha”, op. cit., p. 5.
- 27.
E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 329; Crisis, p. 283.
- 28.
It is interesting to note that the late Husserl, while explaining in the Crisis the sense of the phenomenological attitude and the epoché, has compared it to a religious conversion exercised under an ethical motivation, an approach diametrically opposite to the one adopted here: “Perhaps it will even become manifest that the total phenomenological attitude and the epoché belonging to it are destined in essence to effect, at first, a complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this, bears within itself the significance of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to humankind as such.” E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 140; Crisis, p. 137.
- 29.
E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 332; Crisis, p. 285. For a discussion of Husserl’s view on Greek philosophy, cf. Klaus Held, “Husserl et les grecs”, in Husserl, ed. Eliane Escoubas and Marc Richir (Grenoble: Editions Jérome Millon, 1989), pp. 119–153. Seen from today, Husserl’s conception of Greek philosophy, being modelled on the idea of universal science, may have been the result of the influence of Neo-Kantians such as Natorp who has read Plato from the viewpoint of Kantian transcendental philosophy. In any case such a conception of Greek philosophy is not shared by Heidegger, nor is it shared by some recent specialists of Greek philosophy. For example the famous French scholar Pierre Hadot, a specialist in Greek philosophy whose work has had a decisive influence on the last Foucault, has shown that to the Greeks philosophy is a way of life (“la philosophie comme manière vivre”) and a kind of spiritual exercise (“exercices spirituels”). See Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2002); Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Eng. Trans. Michael Chase (Oxford & New York: Blackwell, 1995); Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique? (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1995); What is Ancient Philosophy, Eng. Trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002).
- 30.
Cf. Gerhard Funke, “The Primacy of Practical Reason in Kant and Husserl”, in Kant and Phenomenology, ed. Thomas M. Seebohm and Joseph J. Kockelmans (Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of America, Washington, D. C., 1984), pp. 1–29.
- 31.
E. Husserl, “Das Unzureichende der positiven Wissenschaften und <die> Erste Philosophie“, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Husserliana VIII, ed. R. Boehm (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1959), p. 230.
- 32.
E. Husserl, Husserliana VIII, op. cit., p. 352.
- 33.
E. Husserl, Husserliana VIII, op. cit., pp. 352–353.
- 34.
E. Husserl, Krisis, pp. 333–334; Crisis, op. cit., p. 287.
- 35.
E. Husserl, Krisis, p. 332; Crisis, op. cit., p. 286.
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Lau, KY. (2016). Husserl, Buddhism and the Crisis of European Sciences. In: Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 87. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44764-3_4
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