Re-reading the Travels of Ippolito Desideri to Tibet and the Seventeenth Century in the Context of the Recent Claims about the Influence of Tibetan Buddhism on David Hume

Abstract

This article tries to understand the travels of Ippolito Desideri to Tibet in the context of the recent work by Alison Gopnik. The central claim of Alison Gopnik is that the western philosopher David Hume’s works were significantly influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. Gopnik focuses on one aspect: the absence of a creator in Tibetan Buddhism that the Italian friar and traveller to Tibet, Ippolito Desideri, writes about, which she says was picked up by David Hume. Gopnik’s claim is based on the possibility that Desideri’s work was part of a Jesuit library in La Fleche, France. Hume frequented this library, which was part of a Jesuit knowledge network. In this article, some aspects of Desideri’s travels are analysed in the broader context of knowledge transfer from Tibet to Europe. Beginning with a description of the isolated context of Tibet and the larger context of knowledge flows that show some examples of ideas travelling from Asia and Africa to the West, the article then proceeds to examine selected aspects of the travels of Desideri. In his travels, we see that not only has Desideri acquired an intimate knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism but also documented in detail many minute aspects of Tibetan life. Further, his treatment of the religious practices of the Tibetans and their denial of a Creator is sufficient proof of the Tibetan source of this idea. This material has the potential to provide an elaborate base for a paradigm shift in the western world’s understanding of David Hume’s contribution. As Desideri travelled through different regions of the Indian subcontinent, his writings on Tibet remain uninfluenced by these biases. The article concludes by saying that there is a strong possibility that Tibetan ideas could have reached the West through Ippolito Desideri’s works.