The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in the “Philosophical Notebooks” of B. D. Dandaron

This article presents a previously unpublished manuscript of a lecture on Schopenhauer's philosophy from archival materials of the famous Russian Buddhist scholar and Buddhist teacher B.D. Dandaron (1914–1974). It is part of a series of texts containing notes from lectures and books, his own notes as well as translations that are referred to as his “philosophical notebooks.” They date from 1953-1954, the time when B.D. Dandaron was in a Gulag camp in Taishet (Irkutsk region). This text is part of the materials of a philosophical seminar held by prisoners in their free time from work. The active participants of the seminar were B.D. Dandaron and V.E. Sesemann (1884-1963), a historian of philosophy, follower and colleague of L.P. Karsavin in the Eurasian movement. Sesemann was known for his work in Kantian philosophy and aesthetics. The manuscript argues that Schopenhauer's philosophy represents a unique attempt to combine Kant's epistemology with the ethics and metaphysics of Buddhism. The author notes that an attempt to synthesize such disparate principles should have led to significant intentional reinterpretations of these two very different systems of thought. The content of the work is to determine what new elements Schopenhauer (who considered himself a follower of Kant) introduced into Kant’s philosophy, on the one hand; and the fundamental differences between his philosophy and the teachings of Buddhism, on the other. The text will be of interest both to researchers of V.E. Sesemann (as the probable author or co-author of the work) and B.D. Dandaron. It allows us to understand the philosophical background of the religious and philosophical teaching of neo-Buddhism that they created, which had a great influence on the revival of Buddhism in Russia in the second half of the twentieth century.

Buddhism in Russia, Dandaron, Sesemann, neo-Buddhism, history of Buddhism, philosophy of Schopenhauer, German philosophy, transcendental aesthetics, will to live, aesthetic contemplation