Im Tod gewinnt der Mensch sein Selbst: Das Phanomen des Todes in asiatischer und abendlandischer Religionstradition; Arbeitsdokumentation eines Symposions.

• Author: BOLLE, KEES W.
• Position: Review

Im Tod gewinnt der Mensch sein Selbst: Das Phanomen des Todes in asiatischer und abendlandischer Religionstradition; Arbeitsdokumentation eines Symposions. Edited by GERHARD OBERHAMMER. Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl., Sitzungsberichte, vol. 624; Beitrage zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, no. 14. Vienna: OSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN, 1995. Pp. 356, OS 436, DM 63, FS 63.

The collection of essays before us merits attention. I cannot think of comparable publications in contemporary America, and it seems to me that we are more in need of this type of work than we are of many a polished, meticulously organized work of scholarship, properly policed and produced by a university press or scholarly council. The work by the ten contributors is miscellaneous without being random. It is the outcome of a conference to which Indological philologists, Buddhologists, and specialists in systematic fields of study of the Christian West, philosophers of religion and theologians, each brought his own contribution. The topic, the phenomenon of death as seen from the perspective of specific religious traditions, is a focal point that raises questions in philological, historical, and philosophical directions. None of the contributors deals lightly with the subject. One would have to reach back decades to find endeavors of comparable scope. (One might think of the Eranos Jahrbucher or the extensiv e philosophical and theological discussions published by Aubier, under the editorship of Enrico Castelli, in the Actes du colloque organisd par le Centre international d'etudes humanistes et par l'Institut d'etudes philosophiques de Rome.) Have not scholarly fashions in our day made such a work impossible? A work in which Indologists and Christian theologians collaborate?

The soul of the symposium was its organizer, the Austrian Indologist Gerhard Oberhammer. The symposium was held in 1992 at the University of Vienna; this volume modestly presents itself as its "Arbeitsdokumentation." Oberhammer is the volume's editor, and author of three of the twelve contributions in the work, the first being the opening chapter. In an era of specialization, this volume may seem quite a novelty to those unfamiliar with Oberhammer's intense and wide interests (which are to be found, for example, in the books he edited in 1974, Offenbarung, geistige Realitat des Menschen, or in 1991, in Beitrage zur Hermeneutik indischer und abendlandischer Religionstraditionen--both also modestly called "Arbeitsdokumentationen"). The opening chapter delivers general "Religionshermeneutische Bemerkungen zum Phanomen des Todes." Oberhammer's remarks seem simple, but are of extraordinary significance. Neglect of the general concerns he has the courage to raise renders many a perfect philological treatise, of th e type that has become the rule, opaque. The very first observation offered is that "resurrection" (obviously best known as a Christian notion) and "emancipation" (mukti, nirvana) can be meaningfully understood as contents of faith only within the horizon of death. We are able to speak of death as "meaningfully understandable" (sinnvoll denkbar) vis-a-vis human knowledge concerning human existence, "insofar as this existence is radically called into question by death, its conditioning (pratityasamutpada, etc.), and its suffering" (p. 14). The inquiry into the significance of death for myth constitutes the unifying factor of the book in its dealings with a variety of traditions. Oberhammer's second remark refers to the clarity with which religious documents show death as not merely the absence of life, and not a matter of neutral observation. It is the end of life and comes about through the event of dying. This is obvious, and yet important in its implications. Death and dying occur in human traditions always in a mythicized shape. The underlying issue remains the human future after dying; hence death is always expressed in the mythical form of some "faith,"...