Abstract
Theodor Schultze (1824– 98) and Paul Dahlke (1865– 1928), Buddhist acolytes at the fin- de- siècle— the former a lifelong Prussian civil servant and the latter a successful physician— address in the epigraphs the perceived clash between a scientific/materialistic worldview and a more spiritually oriented one from different but related angles. Dahlke posits that modern science, which treats consciousness— Dahlke’s term for human spirituality— as an iso lated domain, can generate only material results. Almost three decades earlier, Schultze, in the introduction to his translation of the Dhammapada, bemoans the repercussions for living in that world later described by Dahlke— its unremitting tarnish on any sense of earthly happiness and the transience of knowledge that is produced by material science. 3 Yet Schultze, in a slightly different twist, also laments the compulsive articulation of material desire— a life bound by the pursuit of worldly goods. From his viewpoint, a worldview that focuses on the mundane objects of earthly existence remains devoid of meaning and carries no enduring value (in Staub zerbröckeln). Drawing the analogy further, Schultze thus implies that a meaningful life should subordinate material needs to spiritual ones and thus prepare the human individual for eternal salvation.
Science separates consciousness from life—makes the former an accident of the latter, which explores and discerns only through a materialist trajectory.
Paul Dahlke, Buddhismus als Weltanschauung (1912)1
No happiness is without blemish, nothing has constancy, and in the short span of time that elapses in the rush of the moment, it would be foolhardy and ncomprehensible to cling to the goods of the world that disintegrate like dust in our hands, instead of preparing the spirit for salvation where the spirit, without any fear of new change, rests in the equilibrium of harmonious fulfillment.
Theodor Schultze, Das Dhammapada (1885)2
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Notes
Paul Dahlke, Buddhismus als Weltanschauung (Breslau: Walter Markgraf, 1912): 196.
Schultze, Das Dhammapada: Eine Verssammlung, welche zu den kanonischen Büchern der Buddhisten gehört (Leipzig: Otto Schulze, 1885): xi.
Weber’s famous phrase comes from his well-known 1917 speech, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” later published in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Siebeck], 1988): 594. Weber’s term “Enzauberung” is usually translated as disenchantment, but this term fails to adequately call attention to the “sacral” loss in the modern subject that Weber’s work underscores.
Franz Hartmann, The Life of Philippus Theophrastus, Bombast of Hohenheim: Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of His Teachings Concerning Cosmology, Anthropology, Pneumatology, Magic and Sorcery, Medicine, Alchemy and Astrology, Philosophy and Theosophy (London: George Redway, 1887): x.
This rarely translated into social action, but there were exceptions. The most pervasive manifestation of social action was the theosophical movement in India, especially under the leadership of Besant, who actively promoted and sought social reform for India under British rule and played a role in the free India movement. On Besant, see Mark Bevir; also Anne Taylor’s biography of Besant; and Gauri Viswanathan’s chapter on Besant and theosophy in Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
J. Websky, “Der Protestantismus als das Christentum der Innerlichkeit und der Freiheit,” Protestantischer Flugblätter 42.5 (1907): 42 (larger font in original).
Kaspar von Greyerz, Religion und Kultur: Europa (1500–1800) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000): 334.
Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, bd. 2 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994): 623.
Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 2010): 683–88. For a more detailed elaboration of the Bildungsbürgertum’s identity construct, see the introductory chapters to my The Double-Edged Sword; M. Rainer Lepsius, “Das Bildungsbürgertum als ständische Vergesellschaftung,” in Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert: Teil 3: Lebensführung und ständische Vergesellschaftung, M. Rainer Lepsius (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1992): 9–18; also Max Scheler, Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (Bern: Francke, 1960).
See Weber, “protestantische Ethik,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I. The debate over Weber’s thought-provoking thesis has been immense and long lasting, and reaches far beyond the scope of my work here. One might begin with Greyerz, Religion und Kultur, especially 331–41.
For a short history of Buddhism in Germany, see Hellmuth Hecker, Buddhismus in Deutschland: Eine Chronik (Hamburg: Deutsche Buddhistische Union, 1973). Much work on German theosophy and other fringe movements is still to be done. Corinna Treitel’s The Science of the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) has initiated this work, which devotes a chapter to theosophy in Germany; also Maria Carlson’s “No Religion Higher Than Truth”: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), which has an excellent outline of theosophical doctrine in chapter 5. There has been significant scholarly work on theosophy outside of Germany, especially Blavatsky, Olcott, and Besant. These works focus on England, the United States, and India, but less on continental Europe. See Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); also in the British context, but highly relevant for a deeper understanding of these European religious and cultural movements, see Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004); further, see Peter Staudenmaier’s “Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900–1945” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2010) and his various essays on anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner.
Examples of Buddhist journals during the era are Der Buddhist, Buddhistische Welt, and Buddhistische Warte, all edited by Karl Seidenstücker during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and Neue buddhistische Hefte (1918), edited by Dahlke. Theosophist journals came on the scene earlier. Examples from the late 1880s and after are Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden’s Sphinx, which was later published as Metaphysische Rundschau, and then Neue metaphysische Rundschau, among others. Another important publisher of esoteric material was Eugen Diederichs Verlag. See Justus H. Ulbricht and Meike G. Werner, Romantik, Revolution und Reform: Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag im Epochenkontext 1900–1949 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999).
Franz Hartmann expresses his good wishes to Hübbe-Schleiden’s initiative in “Kurzer Abriss der Geschichte der Theosophischen Gesellschaft” in Lotusblüthen 1 (1893): 85, but later founded his own theosophical society in Leipzig.
Pfungst, Ein deutscher Buddhist, 5. For further background on Schultze, see Hecker, Lebensbilder deutscher Buddhisten, vol. 1 (Konstanz: Universität Konstanz, Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Fachgruppe Soziologie, 1996): 216–18.
Schultze, Das Christentum Christi und die Religion der Liebe. Ein Votum in Sachen der Zukunftsreligion. (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Friedrich, 1891): 4–5. This volume was later combined with the companion work, Das rollende Rad and published in 1893 as Vedanta und Buddhismus als Fermente für eine künftige Regeneration des religiösen Bewußtseins innerhalb des europäischen Kulturkreises.
Ibid., 77.
The literary work of Gerhart Hauptmann, especially his play The Weavers (1892), and other naturalist artists of the era frequently depict the hardships of demographic and economic transformation that were part and parcel to Germany’s industrialization. For historical background, see Wolfgang Mommsen, Der autoritäre nationalstaat: Verfassung, Gesellschaft und Kultur im deutschen Kaiserreich (Frankfurt: Fischer,1990), especially 234–56.
Neumann, Die innere Verwandtschaft buddhistischer und christlicher Lehren: Zwei buddhistische Sutta und ein Traktat Meister Eckharts (Leipzig: Spohr, 1891): 9. See Horst Thomé’s introductory essay, “Modernität und Bewußtseinswandel in der Zeit des Naturalismus und des Fin de siècle,” in Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, ed., York-Gothart Mix, bd. 7, Naturalismus, Fin de siècle, Expressionismus, 1890–1918 (München: Hanser, 2000): 15–27.
Ibid., viii.
Schultze, Der Buddhismus als Religion der Zukunft: Das rollende Rad des Lebens und der feste Ruhestand (Frankfurt: Neuer Frankfurter Verlag, 1901).
Dahlke, Die Bedeutung des Buddhismus für unsere Zeit (Breslau: Walter Markgraf, 1912): 4.
Subhara Bhikschu (formerly Friedrich Zimmermann), Buddhistischer Katechismus zur Einführung in die Lehre des Buddha Gotamo (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 1902): v.
Ibid., 39.
Subjective idealism during the early nineteenth century derived from Enlightenment thought and can be simply defined as the idea that reality is primarily dependent on the human mind (cognition). For a more in-depth elaboration, see Herbert Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany 1831–1933, trans. Eric Matthews (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Schultze “Buddhismus und Christentum, was sie gemein haben, und was sie unterscheidet (zwei öffentliche Vorträge von Dr. L. von Schroeder). Kritische Bemerkungen von Th. Schultze,” in Die Gesellschaft: Monatschrift für Literatur, Kunst und Sozialpolitik Jg. 10 (February 1894): 230. Von Schroeder’s work from the 1890s and thereafter will receive our attention in the following chapters.
Olcott was president of the theosophical society from its founding in 1875 until his death in 1907. For background on Olcott, see Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Bloomington: University of Indian Press, 1996).
Franz Hartmann, “Theosophie und Okkultismus,” in Einbeck “Zum Gedächtnis an Franz Hartmann (1838–1912).” Hartmann’s essay originally appeared in Neue Lotusblüten 3 (1910).
Franz Hartmann, “Die weisse und schwarze Magie oder: Das Gesetz des Geistes in der Natur,” Lotusblüthen 1 (1893): 51. Hartmann composed this text originally in English as “Magic, White, and Black.”
Franz Hartmann, “Licht vom Osten: Eine Untersuchung der Grundlage, des Wesens und der Geheimnisse der echten Freimaurerei,” Lotusblüthen 1 (1893): 22.
See Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions; and Kippenberg’s Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age, trans. Barbara Harshay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) on the definition of world religions.
Hartmann, “Die geistig Toten,” Lotusblüthen 1 (1894):127–28.
Hartmann, “Die Weisheit der Brahminen,” Lotusblüthen 1 (1894): 314.
Richard Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-Stopper,” in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999): 168–74.
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© 2013 Perry Myers
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Myers, P. (2013). Responding to Science and Materialism. In: German Visions of India, 1871–1918. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316929_4
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