Teilprojekt Religionswissenschaften (1.3): „Konstellationen religiöser Positionierung in der Dynamik europäisch-asiatischer Kulturkontakte im 17./18. Jahrhundert“ (Prof. Dr. Wenzel, Mitarbeiter*innen Dr. Karsten Schmidt, Ulrike Kollodzeiski)

„Religious Positioning in the Tibetan Writings of the Jesuit Missionary
Ippolito Desideri (1684-1733).“

Unlike any European before the Italian Jesuit Missionary Ippolito  
Desideri (1684-1733) managed to master the Tibetan language and engage  
in an interreligious Dialog during his stay in central Tibet from 1715  
to 1721. In his missionary endeavor he was faced with the task of  
transferring information in two directions: presenting Buddhism to a  
European audience and Christianity to his Tibetan interlocutors.
In regard to Buddhism he considered a sufficient understanding to be  
the precondition for arguing against concepts like “emptiness” – that  
posed obstacles for the Tibetans to adopt Christianity. Being a  
missionary he strongly criticized those concepts and presented  
counterarguments from a Christian background.
The concurrence of taking a critical position and simultaneously  
applying a non-reductionistic approach in understanding “the other”  
can serve as inspiration for a concept of transferring knowledge  
avoiding problems concerning normative relativism, incommensurability  
and epistemological foundationalism within interreligious discourse.

Details folgen in Kürze.