[Buddha-l] Yet again: Nietzsche and Buddhism

[Dan Lusthaus]

As a Nietzschian Buddhist (among other things), I guess I could venture an
opinion on this.

Nietzsche is a complicated character, and his thinking deepened and
progressed over time, so some of his ideas are moving targets. Katsafanas'
take on will to power (if that is a fair summary of his position) is true
but simplistic. Nietzsche, we might remember, was the source of the axiom
"Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger" which Victor Frankl tells us
was the mantra that helped those who survived Auschwitz survive.

The relation of Buddhism to Nietzsche is also complex, since one has to take
several different perspectives into account.

1. There is what Nietzsche himself says about Buddhism. That, of course, is
shaped by what was available to him in 19th c Europe. Buddhism was only
starting to be understood during his lifetime.

1a. Nietz. largely says negative things about Buddhism early in his
writings, since he understood Buddhism at that time primarily through
Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's theory of Will influenced Nietz. greatly, and
part of his own oedipal coming of age, was overcoming within himself the
Schopenhauerian influence. He then considers Sch. primarily a pessimist, and
starts to define his own phillosophy and project as affirmational -- 
"Ja-sagender" (Yes! sayer). Buddhism at this stage is still treated as
pessimistic (life-denying, etc.) by Nietz. If one reads his early and middle
period critiques of Buddhism, one will probably conclude he is not
criticizing Buddhism at all, but a very inaccurate, skewered version of
Buddhism. If one reads his contemporaries, one will find that version of
Buddhism was not Niet's invention, but rather the state-of-the-art at the
time.

1b. Information on Buddhism, newer translations, etc., kept appearing during
his lifetime, and he was a voractious reader (in many languages), so his
understanding of Buddhism evolved. In his last major work, The Antichrist
(or the German title could also be translated Antichristian), one finds his
treatment of Buddhism has changed -- if one tracks what he had written in
his earlier works up to this one. He is both admiring and critical -- the
underlying theme of Antichrist is aporia, "undecidables," which he locates
at various crucial junctions in world history. The power that he tracks in
this work is "reversibility," i.e., preceding thought had decided one way on
an aporia, and someone comes along who reverses it, takes the opposite side
convincingly. Those reversals have exceptional, influential power on
subsequent developments (he treats Jesus by that same sort of observation in
this book). Since these "decisions" are always grounded in an aporia,
everything is still susceptible to further reversals. His critique of
Buddhism has now become much more sophisticated, so that an open-minded
reader prone to defend Buddhism would probably react to it (as defenders of
any sacred cow Niet. criticizes) in stages: At first, shocked, horrified,
screaming -- Hey, that's not Buddhism, that's not fair, etc. Then, after
some dispassionate vipassana, one will realize that Niet has put his finger
on something real and problematic within Buddhism, something Buddhists would
rather not gaze at directly.

2. On a completely different track, given the imperfect state of European
knowledge of Buddhism in the 19th c., one can read Niet. not for what he
explicitly says about Buddhism, but in terms of what he himself is about on
all fronts, and compare that with how an "ideal" Buddhist would look at such
things. On this level, one could, without too much effort, make a case that
Niet., unbeknownst to himself, was basically Buddhist. From this
perspective, even his critique (a la 1b above) becomes a Buddhist critique
of Buddhism.

3. Niet.'s own thinking can provide insights into deep-level Buddhist
issues. I find him one of the most insightful commentators on Dignaga, for
instance (though Niet. never heard of Dignaga). His revaluation of all
values is very Buddhistic. His will to power (keeping in mind, that because
of his "overcoming" of Schopenhauer he argues there is no such thing as
"will" -- in much the same way that Buddhists argue there is no "self" -- 
and Niet. also argues there is no self) is a drive to improvement, increase,
the Surangama approach to marga.

Dan