Implementation of Heidegger’s Angst into Buddhist Problem of Suffering: On How Buddhist Discourse Engenders and Epistemological Problem and How to Approach to it with Western Ontology

Abstract

Early Buddhist discourse recognizes the problem of dukkha (suffering) and argues that the cause of dukkha can be removed. This paper attempts to demonstrate how Buddhist claim that dukkha can be removed fails as it creates epistemological complications within the Buddhist discourse, and attempts to show how substituting Heidegger’s concept of Angst for Buddhist concept of dukkha could solve this problem. It is argued that the solution proposed by the four noble truths of early Buddhist tradition contradicts with the ontological and epistemological properties and implications of the concept of dukkha, and, accordingly, these properties of dukkha ought to be revised. As a solution to this problem, it is proposed that Angst addresses the problem of suffering more efficiently by not engendering such epistemological complications while also retaining the philosophy and worldview created by the Buddhist discourse as it accurately facilitates the Buddhist perspective.

Keywords

• problem of suffering
• four noble truths
• Buddhism
• early Buddhism
• dukkha
• Heidegger
• angst
• anguish