This essay blew my mind - SO insightful, instructive, revealing, and wise. I've read much about Schopenhauer and also know Urs App's work on the influence of Asian philosophical systems on western philosophers (see App's 2010 "The Birth of Orientalism"). I also learned about Schopenhauer's influence on Wagner and later on Nietzsche through Brian Magee's book "The Tristan Chord."
Having been an ESL teacher for 38 years working mainly with East Asian college students from Japan, Korea, and China, Ding's insights into their compressed modernity malaise and emptiness wasn't surprising - I could see this going on 20 years ago. But it's clearly been greatly amplified with the intensification of modernity.
I'm also a lifelong student of Buddhism and have amassed hundreds of volumes on Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese forms of Buddhism. Knowing as I do the richness, depth, and sophistication of the Buddhist tradition in these countries makes me sad to think that these young people look to a western philosopher, Schopenhauer, to teach them about their OWN TRADITIONS when they should be immersed in centuries of their own Buddhist wisdom that Schopenhauer, frankly, didn't represent very well, or at least only very thinly.
No doubt Asian youth have been soured on their own wisdom traditions in the same way westerners have been soured on western religious traditions which is super sad because philosophical Buddhism is a thousand times richer than anything Schopenhauer ever produced. Traditions in Japan, Korea, and China are unbelievably diverse, refined, nuanced, argued, developed with thousands of volumes of wisdom texts to be discovered. It's a shame the great works of their own traditions are still lost to them... Chan/Zen tradition, Tiantai and Huayan Buddhism of China, Chinese Daoist tradition, Chinese Neo-Confucianism... fantastically rich, centuries of literature, hundreds of philosophers, sages, poets...
Thanks again to Iza Ding for one of the best essays on East Asian culture I've ever read.
Follow up to my post: Professor Ding must know of her colleague formerly at Northwestern, now at U. of Chicago, Dr. Brook Ziporyn, whose works on Chinese philosophy, Chinese Tiantai Buddhism, and Daoism interpret and present the vast span of Chinese philosophical wisdom in English. I can highly recommend his "Emptiness and Omnipresence" and "Being and Ambiguity," - books for the philosophically inclined. See my (Blaine Snow) reviews of these books on Goodreads.com or on Academia.edu.
This essay blew my mind - SO insightful, instructive, revealing, and wise. I've read much about Schopenhauer and also know Urs App's work on the influence of Asian philosophical systems on western philosophers (see App's 2010 "The Birth of Orientalism"). I also learned about Schopenhauer's influence on Wagner and later on Nietzsche through Brian Magee's book "The Tristan Chord."
Having been an ESL teacher for 38 years working mainly with East Asian college students from Japan, Korea, and China, Ding's insights into their compressed modernity malaise and emptiness wasn't surprising - I could see this going on 20 years ago. But it's clearly been greatly amplified with the intensification of modernity.
I'm also a lifelong student of Buddhism and have amassed hundreds of volumes on Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese forms of Buddhism. Knowing as I do the richness, depth, and sophistication of the Buddhist tradition in these countries makes me sad to think that these young people look to a western philosopher, Schopenhauer, to teach them about their OWN TRADITIONS when they should be immersed in centuries of their own Buddhist wisdom that Schopenhauer, frankly, didn't represent very well, or at least only very thinly.
No doubt Asian youth have been soured on their own wisdom traditions in the same way westerners have been soured on western religious traditions which is super sad because philosophical Buddhism is a thousand times richer than anything Schopenhauer ever produced. Traditions in Japan, Korea, and China are unbelievably diverse, refined, nuanced, argued, developed with thousands of volumes of wisdom texts to be discovered. It's a shame the great works of their own traditions are still lost to them... Chan/Zen tradition, Tiantai and Huayan Buddhism of China, Chinese Daoist tradition, Chinese Neo-Confucianism... fantastically rich, centuries of literature, hundreds of philosophers, sages, poets...
Thanks again to Iza Ding for one of the best essays on East Asian culture I've ever read.
Follow up to my post: Professor Ding must know of her colleague formerly at Northwestern, now at U. of Chicago, Dr. Brook Ziporyn, whose works on Chinese philosophy, Chinese Tiantai Buddhism, and Daoism interpret and present the vast span of Chinese philosophical wisdom in English. I can highly recommend his "Emptiness and Omnipresence" and "Being and Ambiguity," - books for the philosophically inclined. See my (Blaine Snow) reviews of these books on Goodreads.com or on Academia.edu.