Abstract
Between 1717 and 1721, the Jesuit Ippolito Desideri was among monks in Tibet. There he came in contact with important works that make up the Madhyamaka Buddhist school, such as the writings of Nagarjuna and his ideas on emptiness or interdependent existence. In order to refute the metaphysical premises of Buddhism and convert the lamas, Desideri produced a series of writings, two of which will be analyzed here: The Origin of Living Beings and All Things and The Historical News of Tibet. The aim is, from these texts and from the renewed philosophical and historiographic view that Desideri’s works have received, to historicize the Western conception of existence as an experience of a singularized consciousness associated with a certain notion of “self”. From the theoretical-conceptual point of view, it is based on the ideas of the anthropologist and historian Ernesto de Martino (1908-1965).
Keywords
Jesuits; Buddhism; Tibet; Nagarjuna; emptiness