[Buddha-l] Nietzsche was a bachelor (was: Batchelor)

[Richard Hayes]

On May 19, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Gary Gach wrote:

> Nietzche's will-to-power often translates as what he calls the overcoming of
> the self ...
> unclear whether his idealized super-person is arhat or bodhisattva

I have always understood the will to power (and the term Nietzsche used earlier, the desire for power, Machgelüst) as the desire to overcome others, to dominate them, to master them and subdue them and to liberate oneself by overpowering everything that stands in the way of one's desires. Nietzsche even associates the desire for power with the pleasure that comes of cruelty towards others. The will to power, Nietzsche says, is the principal driving force of life itself. His utter contempt for systems of thought and practice that foster weakness in the form of meekness, gentleness and kindness is apparent in many of his writings from The Gay Science on through Beyond Good and Evil. The arhant and the bodhisattva would be the antithesis of Nietzsche's Übermensch. The arhant hates life, fears life, seeks to escape life; he cannot face the prospect of an eternal return. (One finds a similar appraisal of Buddhism in some of the writings of William James, especially in his last lecture on Pragmatism.) An exemplar of Nietzsche's Übermensch might be the Biblical Joshua, who kicks Canaanite butt and takes no prisoners as he grabs a land away from its peaceful former inhabitants and destroys all remnants of their religion; Joshua's namesake, Jesus, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that: a pathetic loser who dies a pitiful death nailed to a tree by cruel Roman conquistadors who delight in tormenting him. As his life oozes out of his pain-wracked body Jesus asks God why God has forsaken him, and in the last moment Jesus forgives his executioners. What a wimp! Hardly a Nietzschean Superman. Bodhisattvas would be even worse!

Although it is well known that Nietzsche knew little about Buddhism, I think if he had known about Buddhism what scholars today know of it, he would have hated it even more than the wimpy, life-fearing Buddhism he imagined on the basis of the scanty evidence available to Europeans of his day.

Richard