In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Western philosophy began to abandon metaphysics and held that the supernatural was unprovable. The origins of the great philosophical and religious systems of the past were now seen in the deep life experience of their founders.
Numerous publications followed trying to highlight these for the big systems, e.g. “The Essence of Christianity” by Adolph Harnack, in which the core of Christianity was presented as an ethical consciousness and hope for divine justice, or “The Essence of Judaism” by Rabbi Leo Baeck in which Judaism was emphasized as an ethics of action as opposed to religious dogmatism and mere belief.
As far as I know, there was no corresponding publication for Buddhism, as the Western reception of Buddha’s teachings was only beginning at this time.
What do you think one might discover as “The Essence of Buddhism” (or EBT), if subjected to the same general idea and analysis?
Greetings,
The publication void is likely due to an understanding of the problematics that would arise in attempting to essentialize a religion with such an extensive deconstruction of the very notion of essence.
best,
~l
Therefore, a strong antimetaphysical stream of philosophy existed already in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Let alone Hume and other sceptics…
But regarding your question: 1) I don’t think that essentialization is helpful. Christianity, for instance, was and has been many and different things for different groups of people.
There actually were similar works – for instance, The Gospel of Buddha
Early Buddhism is many different things for different thinkers, scholars and groups of people. From positivistic science to scepticism, from pure ethics to the map of the supernatural world, from inspiring existential philosophy of spiritual growth to the morbid and pessimistic metaphysical teaching on total dukkha, and so on.
I guess one can only state what Buddhism is for oneself. Otherwise, it would be only extremely subjective generalizations.
