Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy
Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy
Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy
org/9781107031623
978-1-107-03162-3 Hardback
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on translations, texts, and sources
Abbreviations
x
xii
1
Introduction
part i
page viii
15
17
Nietzsche as Buddha
2 Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
55
part ii
89
suffering
91
132
part iii
171
compassion
5 Overcoming compassion
173
6 Cultivating compassion
193
212
230
240
Bibliography
Index
vii
Acknowledgments
It would not have been possible for me to write this book without the help,
encouragement, and guidance of Eivind Kahrs and Raymond Geuss, my
two doctoral supervisors at the University of Cambridge, and Christine
Tappolet, my postdoctoral supervisor at the Centre de recherche en thique
de lUniversit de Montral. Special thanks, also, to Margaret Cone, who
read Pli with me throughout my four years in the UK and with whom
I engaged in several stimulating debates on Buddhist thought. I also have
Vincenzo Vergiani to thank for giving me the opportunity to teach Sanskrit
and Indian Intellectual History during my nal year in Cambridge and to
hold a seminar on Madhyamaka philosophy over the Lent, Easter, and
Michaelmas terms of 2009. Teaching in the Faculty of Asian and Middle
Eastern Studies helped me clarify many of my ideas on Buddhism, in
particular. I also wish to thank Rupert Gethin and Martin Ruehl, my two
doctoral examiners, for their constructive criticism of my dissertation and
their ongoing support for the project of writing a monograph on the basis of
my doctoral research.
The ideas set forth in this book took shape over a period of ten years.
Countless people played a role in this process, as teachers, students, friends,
adversaries, and family. I can mention but a few. At McGill University,
I would particularly like to thank Alia Al-Saji, Katherine Young, Emily
Carson, Lara Braitstien, Thubten Jinpa, Sanjay Kumar, Philippe Turenne,
and Hasana Sharp. Many thanks, also, to Jonardon Ganeri and Jim Benson,
my MPhil examiners, for their precious feedback on my thesis on
Ngrjunas philosophy. At the Centre de recherche en thique de
lUniversit de Montral, I more recently received invaluable help from
my colleagues, especially Sara Villa, Morgane Paris, Ryoa Chung, and
Nathalie Maillard. I also wish to thank Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge
University Press and my two anonymous external readers for their helpful
feedback on the initial typescript of this work. Over the last decade, I have
also beneted greatly from thought-provoking conversations and debates
viii
Acknowledgments
ix
with a number of close friends, especially Lily Soucy, Oliver Moore, Nikolas
Metaxas, Pierre-Antoine Tibri, Fabrizio Biondi-Morra, Anna Elsner,
Richard Armstrong, Pierre-Luc Dziel, and Soa Bachouchi. Nikolas
Metaxas is in fact responsible for rst provoking me to think about the
issues dealt with in this book. In a sense, the conception of the book took
place on a cold winter night of February 2005 in a Montreal caf where
Nick and I locked horns over the opposition between Nietzschean
life-afrmation and (presumed) Buddhist life-negation.
Ultimately, my family deserves the most thanks. I wish to express my
gratitude to my parents, Hlne Panaoti and Glen Williams, and my
brother, Thomas Williams, for their unswerving support at every step on
my tortuous path. Many thanks, also, to my grandparents, Constantin and
Thrse Panaoti. My grandfather deserves much credit for teaching me
how to reason from the age of ve and forcing me to do so before I even
began studying in earnest (which took a while). My grandmother, with her
insatiable joie de vivre through thick and thin, has likewise been a true
inspiration since childhood. All my love and deepest gratitude, nally, to
my two extraordinary children, Lhassa and Alexandre Panaoti, and to their
beautiful, outstanding mother, Lily Soucy. I owe everything valuable I have
ever accomplished so far to Lily. And without Lhassa and Alexandre, this
book would never have seen the light of day.
All translations from French, German, Sanskrit, and Pli texts in this book
are my own. I have used standard abbreviations, listed below, to refer
to most of the canonical Western and Indian texts cited. In the case of
Indian texts, I have relied on critical editions of texts and/or editions of these
texts that Indologists widely accept as authoritative. All citations from
Schopenhauers works are from the 1988 edition of A. Hbschers critical
edition of his works, Smtliche Werke (Mannheim: F. A. Brockhaus). All
citations from Nietzsches letters are from G. Colli and M. Montinaris 1980
critical edition of his correspondence, Nietzsche Briefwechsel (Berlin: W. de
Gruyter). All citations from Nietzsches works, nally, are from G. Colli
and M. Montinaris 1977 critical edition of his texts, Nietzsche Werke
(Berlin: W. de Gruyter).
Given that I make liberal use of Nietzsches notes and unpublished
fragments, I should make my methodology clear concerning my use of
such sources. The use (and abuse) of the fragments, after all, is something of
a contentious issue in Nietzsche scholarship. My approach to the NL may
be characterized as a type of middle way between Heideggers emphasis on
WM as the seat of Nietzsches true philosophy, on the one hand, and the
complete rejection of Nietzsches unpublished material, on the other, e.g.
J. Youngs condemnation of posthumous Nietzsche, in The Death of God
and the Meaning of Life (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 97106.
Several of Nietzsches fragments were grouped together by Nietzsches
sister, Elisabeth, and published under the title Der Wille zur Macht in 1901.
Heidegger believed Nietzsches published works were really a mere preamble to the work he was preparing and that Nietzsches true contribution
to philosophy can be found in WM alone, his chief philosophical work.
See M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, 4 vols. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), vol. i,
p. 12. Diametrically opposed to this extreme position is the view that
WM, or any collection of Nietzsches unpublished fragments for that
matter, is little more than a trash-bin of thoughts, doodles, day-dreams
x
xi
and (usually failed) thought experiments. See Young, The Death of God,
p. 98; cf. B. Magnus, Nietzsches Existential Imperative (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990) and M. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and
Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1990) for more moderate versions
of this view.
The plain, unexciting truth is that the fragments are neither gold nor
rubbish. Most of them simply provide insights into what it is that Nietzsche
was thinking when he was writing certain texts, and several of them are little
more than prior versions of aphorisms that effectively appeared in his
published works. I see no real risk in giving due consideration to what
can be found in Nietzsches notepads. The simple reason for this (contra
Young) is that there is no bifurcation between Nietzsche qua wild, ranting,
irrationalist note-taker and Nietzsche qua collected, scrupulous published
author. This book makes use of the fragments, then, as a reliable (though by
no means privileged) source for Nietzsches thought.
Abbreviations
A
AK
AKBh
AN
BA
BAP
BU
ChU
DBhS
Dhp
DN
DW
E
EH
FM
FmW
FW
GD
GM
GT
JGB
KrV
KU
M
MA
MM
MMK
MN
MP
Chndogyopanis
.ad
Daabhmikastra
Dhammapad
Dghanikya
Die dionysische Weltanschauung, Friedrich Nietzsche
Ethica, Baruch Spinoza
Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche
ber das Fundament der Moral, Arthur Schopenhauer
ber die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens, Arthur
Schopenhauer
Die frhliche Wissenschaft, Friedrich Nietzsche
Gtzen-Dmmerung, Friedrich Nietzsche
Zur Genealogie der Moral, Friedrich Nietzsche
Die Geburt der Tragdie, Friedrich Nietzsche
Jenseits von Gut und Bse, Friedrich Nietzsche
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Immanuel Kant
Kenopanis.ad
Morgenrthe, Friedrich Nietzsche
Madhyamakvatra, Candrakrti
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Friedrich Nietzsche
Mlamadhyamakakrik, Ngrjuna
Majjhimanikya
Milindapaha
xii
Abbreviations
MSA
MV
NB
NL
NW
Pm
PP
Pp
PtZG
S
SF
SN
Sn
ThGA
THN
TV
UB
V
VP
Vsm
VV
WL
WM
WN
WSG
WWV
YS.K
Mahynastrlamkra, Asan ga
Madhyamakavr.tti, Candrakrti
Nietzsche Briefwechsel
Nachgelassene Fragmente, Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche contra Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche
Paramatthamajus, Dhammapla
Parerga und Parapolimena, Arthur Schopenhauer
Prasannapad, Candrakrti
Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen,
Friedrich Nietzsche
Zu Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche
ber das Sehen und die Farben, Arthur Schopenhauer
Samyuttanikya
Suttanipta
Therthergatht.t.hakath, Dhammapla
Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
Trimikvijapti, Vasubandhu
Unzeitgemsse
Betrachtungen, Friedrich Nietzsche
Vinaya
Die vorplatonischen Philosophen, Friedrich Nietzsche
Visuddhimagga, Buddhaghosa
Vigrahavyvartan, Ngrjuna
ber Wahrheit und Luge im aussermoralischen Sinne,
Friedrich Nietzsche
Der Wille zur Macht, Friedrich Nietzsche
(ed. E. Forster-Nietzsche and P. Gast)
ber den Willen in der Natur, Arthur Schopenhauer
ber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden
Grunde, Arthur Schopenhauer
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Arthur Schopenhauer
Yuktis.as.t.ikkrik, Ngrjuna
xiii
Introduction
2
4
All the names (e.g. Being, God, Truth) and properties (e.g. Permanence, Bliss, Transcendence) of the
wahre Welt (Real/True World) rejected in both Nietzsches thought and Buddhist philosophy will
be capitalized throughout this book. This serves the purpose of underlining the robustly metaphysical
character of such concepts. Cf. Rortys capitalization of Platonic notions such as Truth, Goodness,
Rationality, and Philosophy in R. Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1991).
GD v 1. 3 Ibid. 2.
Cf. J.-P. Sartre, Ltre et le nant: essai dontologie phnomnologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 12.
Introduction
then seems, is real, true, or good. This vacuum Nietzsche calls nihilism. The
crisis of nihilism follows on the heels of the death of God/Being. It is a crisis
in so far as it threatens to undermine all value, meaning, and purpose. Hence
the necessity of responding to the challenge of nihilism by formulating a
genuinely post-theistic ethics. Without such an ethics, the world remains
cloaked in valuelessness, any ground for evaluation is lacking, and all human
beings are deemed equally worthless. No vision guides the way. Mediocrity
and laissez-faire on every plane follow. Cultures decay, societies disintegrate,
and people stagnate. The revival of mindless fanaticism and desperate
religiosity we are witnessing today feeds off the ethical bareness of a culture
(perhaps only temporarily) weaned off the soothing lies of theism. Lest a
great opportunity should be wasted, the challenge of nihilism must therefore
be met, though we have yet to begin really facing up to it, let alone understanding it. This is why Nietzsche remains the most relevant thinker of our
day. He was indeed a posthumous philosopher. His time has now come.
Nietzsches attempt to respond to the challenge of nihilism takes the form
of his ethics of life-afrmation. Stability, Peace, and Bliss are properties of
Being. But Being is a ction. A world of becoming is therefore a world of
ceaseless instability, struggle, and suffering. Accordingly, the ideal of lifeafrmation consists of a stance toward suffering. This stance comports two
fundamental features, namely a distinctive attitude toward ones own suffering (amor fati) and a distinctive attitude toward the suffering of others (the
overcoming of compassion). The end goal envisaged by the ethics of lifeafrmation is a state of great health which involves not only accepting, but
embracing, afrming, and celebrating lifes limitless suffering.
As they are presented in Nietzsches writing, however, both amor fati and
the overcoming of compassion are astonishingly vague ethical concepts.
Nietzsches vision of great health, as a result, remains something of a
mystery. The incisiveness and acuity of Nietzsches negative and critical
views nd no parallel in his positive philosophy. This might very well have
been deliberate. The ethics of life-afrmation Nietzsche began to formulate
in his later years is a sketch, a rough brouillon, a project. Perhaps a preamble?
In developing his response to the challenge of nihilism, Nietzsche modeled himself on the counter-example of the man he regarded as his greatest
predecessor. I could become the Buddha of Europe, he writes in 1883,
though frankly I would be the antipode of the Indian Buddha.5 By the
time he collapsed in 1889, Nietzsche had gone a long way toward becoming
both.
5
NL 18821884, 4(2).
Introduction
of the Buddhist
cultivation of compassion. Already, the story of Nietzsches
attempt to respond to the nihilist crisis becomes richer.6
The heuristic gains in the interpretation of Nietzsches thought secured
through a closer examination of its relation to Buddhism are only the tip of
the iceberg. Buddhist thought has much to offer the Western philosophical
tradition in and of itself.7 Considered in connection with Nietzsches
thought, however, it offers no less than an opportunity to begin overcoming
humanitys debilitating addiction to Being without tumbling into an ethical
void. Nietzsche and the great Buddhist philosophers of Classical India called a
spade a spade: practically all of philosophy and religion East and West has
been built on the two-headed delusion of soul/ego/self and God/Being/
Substance.8 Moreover, in the Buddhist tradition, as in Nietzsches writing,
there is a rm push to psychologize the universe not only of religious, but also
6
The relative scarcity of studies dealing with Nietzsche and Buddhism is entirely out of proportion with
the signicance of Nietzsches engagement with Buddhism in the development of his thought. Such
works exist, but tend to be ignored by the vast majority of Nietzsche scholars, sometimes with good
reason. Be that as it may, failure to take Nietzsches engagement with Buddhism seriously has resulted
in a major blind spot in our understanding of both Nietzsches thought and its broader philosophical
signicance.
Those who need to be convinced of this should turn to two recent volumes which clearly exhibit the
pertinence of Buddhist ideas for both the analytic and continental traditions of contemporary Western
thought, namely M. DAmato, J. Gareld, and T. Tillemans (eds.), Pointing at the Moon (Oxford
University Press, 2009) and M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self? Perspectives
from Analytical, Phenomenological and Indian Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2011).
The juxtaposition of these two triads of concepts is not arbitrary. The soul is the personal, individual
correlate of God his anima, according to some. The I is supposedly what is, but does not
become, i.e. Being, qua ground of subjectivity. The self, nally, is the substance of which mental and
physical events are attributes.
Introduction
Substance metaphysics is what Nietzsche and Buddhist philosophers had trouble with. It is not clear
that they would have regarded so-called process metaphysics as meta-physics. Accordingly, except
when otherwise stated, the terms metaphysics and metaphysical in this book refer to substance
metaphysics.
Introduction
11
12
13
14
In commenting on Nietzsches method, P. Heller, Studies on Nietzsche (Bonn: Bouvier, 1980), and
P. de Man, Nietzsches Theory of Rhetoric, Symposium 28(1), 1974: 3351, emphasize the dynamics
at play between the perspectives in Nietzsches texts: the ways in which they supersede and overcome
one another and thus mirror the mechanisms of the worlds perpetual becoming. In contrast, my
point here concerns the irreducible plurality of these perspectives, whose oppositions and dynamics,
as we will see, are not always dialectical (contra Heller and de Man).
This idea should not be confused with the standard view that there are, so to speak, three Nietzsches,
corresponding to his so-called periods early, middle, and late. See M. Clark, Nietzsche, Friedrich,
in Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 6301. In fact, the
present study pays little attention to the distinction between the three periods, focusing instead on the
plurality of Nietzsches voices, several of which span two or three periods, and some of which make
fundamentally contradictory claims within the same period.
See, for instance, JGB 19.
On this point, see JGB 3, 5, and 6, in particular. (Nietzsche does not use the terms cognitive,
emotive, and conative, but that is irrelevant.)
See, on this point, Nietzsches striking remarks at JGB 3, 4, and 14. It could be argued that this
feature of Nietzsches thought anticipates contemporary developments in evolutionary psychology. It
should be kept in mind, however, that Nietzsche regarded evolutionary theorys emphasis on
adaptation as reective of a reactive and thus unhealthy will (GM ii 12).
Introduction
the gure of the philosopher. In expounding a system or a view, a philosopher is just giving voice to some feature of his will(s). More often than not,
Nietzsche claims, the works of artists and thinkers are the fruit of conicts
among the plural wills within them.15 In Nietzsches own case, various
voices are given the opportunity to expound various perspectives expressive
of various wills. Hence the plurality of Nietzsches voices.
Third, the demise of the metaphysics of Being, and with it of the
apparent/true world divide, implies that there is no determinate Absolute
Truth about any matter that there is no view from nowhere, to use
T. Nagels phrase.16 There is only a plurality of perspectives stemming from
and expressive of a plurality of interests.17 The theory of perspectivism
which emerges from Nietzsches critique of metaphysics and psychology is
in effect put into practice in his use of polyphony.
Such are the theoretical underpinnings of Nietzsches approach to writing philosophy as a Bhaktinian play of masks and voices. This approach
should not be dismissed as immature and narcissistic obscurantism; it is,
though Nietzsche would not like this turn of phrase, the logical implication of his views on the subject, on the human psyche, and on Truth and
knowledge.
The effects of Nietzsches approach are threefold. First, Nietzsche uses
key terms or concepts in apparently contradictory, inconsistent, or at the
very least ambiguous ways e.g. the terms nihilism and nihilistic. A
good way to understand this rather frustrating feature of his writing is
to accept it as an unhappy consequence of his use of distinct voices which
confusingly use the same word in different senses. Second, Nietzsche makes
apparently contradictory statements e.g. Buddhism is beyond good
and evil (A) and the Buddha remains under the delusion of morality
(JGB). Again, such confusing contradictions are the result of the plurality
of Nietzsches voices. Third, some of Nietzsches voices adopt extreme
positions expressed in particularly shocking language positions that
clash with what appears to be the more nuanced thrust of his overall
philosophical project (e.g. his polemical claim that compassion thwarts
natural selection).
It may be objected that a thinker such as Nietzsche cannot have an
overall philosophical project, that his texts are just a mumbo-jumbo of
contradictory views, and that there is no way to adjudicate between his
voices. On this view, Nietzsche is a literary gure, not a true philosopher,
15
16
17
NL 18851887, 7(60).
Introduction
19
This seems to have been Russells position in History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with
Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1945) a position uncritically accepted by almost an entire generation of Anglo-American
early postwar scholars. Of course, Russells assessment of Nietzsche was also (if not mainly) grounded
in a harsh ad hominem assessment of Nietzsches supposedly vile moral character.
J. Richardson, Nietzsches System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Introduction
21
22
Examples of these include naive glorications of violence and cruelty designed, more than anything,
to provoke his bleeding-heart contemporaries the desire to provoke is obviously reactive or his
misogynist views clearly the result of Nietzsches reaction to his unhappy upbringing and his
traumatizing experiences with Lou Andreas-Salom. It may be argued that this lets Nietzsche off
the hook too easily: nay, that I am resuscitating Kaufmanns gentle Nietzsche in his Nietzsche:
Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton University Press, 1974). My response is that I am
simply applying the (Nietzschean) principle of relative health to isolate and downplay particularly
immature, resentful, and reactive voices in Nietzsche. This is required if we are to remain focused on
the ideal of great health without being distracted by the relatively irrelevant squeals of Nietzsches
angrier, more resentful voices.
On philosophers unhappy tendency to turn everything they touch into mummies, see GD iii 1.
Cited in B. Williams, The Sense of the Past (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 300. Contra an
objectivist critic, this approach to Nietzsches texts in no way implies immunity from misinterpretation. Irrespective of its dynamism and creativity, my exegesis of Nietzsches works remains as
falsiable as any other reading.
Introduction
25
These turns of phrase are borrowed from Z (see Z i Zarathustras Vorrede 910, especially).
My sources are the Buddhas discourses as recorded in the Theravda canon and the works of Indian
Buddhist philosophers of the Classical period. When they are not translated, all Buddhist technical
terms will appear in their Sanskrit form, even when I quote from a Pli text; cf. A. K. Warder, Indian
Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970).
M. Siderits, Buddhist Philosophy and Personal Identity: Empty Persons (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003),
p. xiv. Hayes takes offence at the use of the term soteriology in discussions of Buddhism. As he
rightly notes, there is no str (savior) in Buddhism and thus no strion (salvation). As a
consequence, Hayes argues, it is inaccurate to speak of soteriology in the Buddhist context.
R. P. Hayes, Din nga on the Interpretation of Signs (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989),
pp. 345. I am inclined to agree. This is why I speak of Buddhist ethics and Buddhist moral
psychology in this book, not of Buddhist soteriology.
10
Introduction
on.26 As a result, there is nothing wrong with treating Buddhism philosophically, as philosophy.27
The controversial task of isolating an ideal Buddhist philosophy from
Buddhism as religion and ideology involves identifying those features of
Buddhist doctrine which are non-dogmatic, falsiable, and logically independent of dogmatic positions.28 On the level of metaphysics, the Buddhist
philosophy thus arrived at rmly rejects the existence of an abiding ego and
is committed to a radical critique of substance metaphysics. In the ethical
domain, Buddhist philosophy advances a set of claims about what makes
people psychologically unhealthy and thus also about what striving towards
the great health of nirvna involves. When it comes to epistemology, it
espouses a position whichin todays parlance may be described as pragmatic
contextualism. In the philosophy of language, nally, it subscribes to a form
of nominalism. Things are far more complicated in the details, but in
essence this is what the Buddhist philosophy at play in this book comprises.
There are two things about this approach to Buddhism which might
prove particularly irritating for Buddhists and Buddhologists alike. The rst
is that no attention whatsoever will be paid to the scholastic metaphysical
themes to which Buddhist authors throughout the ages have devoted much
attention and which Buddhists have always regarded as central to their belief
system. Principal among these are rebirth, natural moral retribution, and
the status of such a perfected being as the Buddha after death. As important
as these themes were in Classical Indian discussions, the fundamental
philosophical (i.e. non-dogmatic, falsiable) positions that form the core
26
27
28
As Siderits notes, the supposed ideological gulf between Western philosophy and Eastern wisdom is
the heritage of the nineteenth-century Romantic construction of Asian cultures as purely spiritual
in opposition to a crudely positivist and rationalist West (Buddhist Philosophy, p. xiv). On the
Romantic reception of Eastern texts in Europe and its enormous impact on contemporary attitudes
to India and to Indian thought, see the excellent works of R. Schwab, La Renaissance orientale (Paris:
Payot, 1950), R. Grard, LOrient et la pense romantique allemande (Nancy: Thomas, 1963),
R.-P. Droit, Loubli de lInde: une amnsie philosophique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1989), and W. Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (State University of New York
Press, 1988). In reality, reasoning is not so foreign to Asia and Western rationality is not as detached
from more practical and ethical concerns as some might think. As a result, it is not possible to develop
a coherent argument to justify what Halbfass calls the the exclusion of the Orient from the domain
to which the concept of philosophy is applicable (India and Europe, p. 155). For a more detailed
discussion of the Euro-contemporocentrism characteristic of the mainstream Western philosophical attitude to Indian thought, see R. Kings excellent Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Philosophy
(Edinburgh University Press, 1999), especially pp. 141.
Nirvna, the summum bonum of Buddhist ethics, is said to be accompanied by wisdom/insight
Indeed, developing wisdom is essential to attaining nirvna. As such, for all its emphasis on a
(praj).
Introduction
11
30
Contrary to what many scholars of Buddhism seem to believe, (3) does not include all of the schools
that engaged in the Abhidharma taxonomic project. Of those schools whose texts are extant, only the
Vaibhs.ika Sarvstivdin bhidharmikas explicitly regarded the elements (dharma) that make up
the world as substantially existent rather than as eeting processes. As Gethin rightly notes, the
ontological status of the elements was not specied in the early Abhidharma found in Theravda
sources. R. Gethin, He Who Sees Dhamma Sees Dhammas: Dhamma in Early Buddhism, Journal of
Indian Philosophy 32(4), 2004: 51342, at pp. 5412. For a detailed exploration of the transition from
ontologically non-committal taxonomy to realist ontology in Sarvstivdin circles, see C. Cox, From
Category to Ontology: The Changing Role of Dharma in Sarvstivda Abhidharma, Journal of
Indian Philosophy 32(56), 2004: 54397.
It goes without saying, then, that I will disregard the now-defunct transcendentalist strand of
Buddhist scholarship, which claimed that the Buddhist critique of the self really only points to a
super-personal self. E. Conze, Spurious Parallels to Buddhist Philosophy, Philosophy East and West
13(2), 1963: 10515, at p. 114. On this Buddhological current and its grave shortcomings, see S. Collins,
Seless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravda Buddhism (Cambridge University Press), pp. 712.
12
Introduction
Just as this study pays scant attention to the distinction between Nietzsches three periods, it also
underplays the distinction between early Buddhist views and those of thinkers associated to the
later, so-called Mahyna movement in Buddhism (namely, Ngrjuna, Candrakrti, or ntideva).
As with Nietzsches periods, the idea is that there really is far more continuity than discontinuity
between the various periods in the development of Buddhist philosophy and that there is thus no
justication for treating these presumed periods in isolation.
Introduction
13
33
34
35
As Burton writes, a good doctor varies the medicine in relation to the precise nature of the disease,
and a similar exibility is found in most Buddhist traditions. It is believed that the Buddha did not
teach the same thing to all people but adapted his message depending on the specic needs, capacities
and interests of his audience. D. Burton, Curing Diseases of Belief and Desire: Buddhist
Philosophical Therapy, in C. Carlisle and J. Ganeri (eds.), Philosophy as Therapeia, special issue of
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 66: 187217, at p. 203.
On this point, see also the introduction to S. Hamilton, Early Buddhism: A New Approach: The I of
the Beholder (Richmond, CA: Curzon Press, 2000).
This form of fusion of horizons is not the same as that described by Gadamer, who coined the
phrase. H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik
(Tbingen: Mohr, 1972). Rather than fusing the interpreters and the interpreted texts horizons,
my aim is to fuse the horizons of two different types of texts, or philosophies.
In Nietzsches thought, this distinction can also be described in terms of the strong vs. weak type. As I
will explain in Chapter 1, strength/health and sickness/weakness in the context of Nietzsches thought
(and Buddhist philosophy for that matter), are not to be understood literally, as corresponding to
physiological tness/illness in the standard biological sense.
14
Introduction
It should be noted, in this connection, that the infamous gure of the bermensch is conspicuously
absent from the present book. Indeed, it seems to me (and to a growing number of scholars) that
unlike the gure of the healthy type, the gure of the bermensch belongs more to the world of
Zarathustras wisdom than to that of Nietzsches thought. Nietzsches ironic relation to Zarathustras
proclamations has recently been highlighted by Pippin, Introduction, in R. B. Pippin (ed.), Thus
Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. A. Del Caro (Cambridge University Press, 2006),
pp. viiixxxv. More generally, Z is the text I least draw from in my discussion of Nietzsches
philosophy.
part i
chapter 1
Nietzsche as Buddha
NL 18851887, 9(35).
Ibid., 5(71): Belief in aim- and senselessness [i.e., nihilism] is the psychologically necessary affect once the
belief in God . . . is no longer tenable. See also ibid. 18881889, 17(3). Most scholars, even those who
offer sophisticated and careful analyses of nihilism in Nietzsches thought, seem content to work under
this denition of nihilism alone namely, M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, 4 vols. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961),
R. G. Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Nihilism and Ironic Afnities (Oxford University
Press, 1997), B. Williams, Introduction, in B. Williams (ed.), The Gay Science, trans. J. Nauckhoff and
A. del Caro (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. viixxii, and B. Reginster, The Afrmation of Life:
Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
A 20. 4 EH Warum ich so gute Bcher schreibe; GT 2.
17
18
8
9
10
See D. Burton, Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Ngrjunas Philosophy (Richmond CA:
Curzon, 1999); C. Oetke, Remarks on the Interpretation of Ngrjunas Philosophy, Journal of
Indian Philosophy 19(3), 1991: 31523, and Nihilist and Non-Nihilist Interpretations of
Madhyamaka, Acta Orientalia 57(1), 1996: 57103; and T. Wood, Nagarjunian Disputations: A
Philosophical Journey through an Indian Looking-glass (University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
See G. Harman, Ethics and Observation, in S. Darwall, A. Gibbard, and P. Railton (eds.), Moral
Discourse and Practice (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 838, and Explaining Value and Other
Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2000), as well as Mackies error theory in Ethics:
Inventing Right and Wrong, in Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice,
pp. 89100.
Consider, for instance, JGB 108: There are no moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of
phenomena (Cf. GD vii 1). However, on Mackies error theory, meta-ethical nihilism only holds in
so far as one endorses meta-ethical cognitivism, which Nietzsche certainly did not. For Nietzsche
moral propositions are a question of how one feels, not what one knows.
On this point, see Reginster, The Afrmation of Life, pp. 256.
I say principal nihilisms because there are also two other, relatively minor, nihilisms which appear
in Nietzsches unpublished notes, namely active/passive nihilism (NL 18851887, 9(35)). These will be
discussed in Chapter 2.
This distinction is far more fundamental than those previously discussed in commentarial literature
namely Morrison on active/passive nihilism (Nietzsche and Buddhism, pp. 223), Reginster on nihilist
disorientation/despair (The Afrmation of Life, pp. 334), and Heideggers three forms of nihilism
(Nietzsche, vol. ii, pp. 6371).
Nietzsche as Buddha
19
precipitated by the breakdown of systems of valuation based on such metaphysics. I call this the nihilist crisis. Both of these require a detailed discussion.
The nihilist mentality is what stands behind the ction of Being. More
specically, it is what gives birth to what Nietzsche calls the wahre Welt
(True/Real World),11 the principal posit behind practically all religious,
philosophical, and even scientic thinking.12 In short, the nihilist mentality
is responsible for generating the delusion of a realm of Being that is somehow more fundamental, more real, and truer than the world of transient
becoming which is given to us in experience.13
What, one might ask, is nihilist about that? The metaphysics of Being is
nihilist in that it begins with a resounding no. Central to the narrative
through which the ction of Being is devised is a denial of the key properties
of the world we see and experience. In short, the nihilist mentality produces
Being through a negation of becoming. Nietzsche explains how the ction
of the wahre Welt is generated through a specic type of reasoning which
infers the wahre Welts negative properties through a contradiction of the
properties of the actual world:
This world is apparent therefore there is a true world. This world is
conditioned therefore there is an unconditioned world. This world is full
of contradictions therefore there is a world free of contradictions. This world
becomes therefore there is a world which is.14
It is through a reactive procedure that negates and denies validity to the very
real qualities of the world as it is presented to us by our senses that the
ctitious, supra-sensuous domain of the Real is generated. In brief, the
wahre Welt has been constructed out of contradiction to the actual world
(wirkliche Welt).15 The nay-saying at the root of the metaphysics of Being is
what discloses the fundamentally nihilistic character of such metaphysics.
The metaphysics of Being, however, is nihilist not only by virtue of its
source in and through nay-saying, but also of its implications at the level of
11
12
13
14
The term wahre Welt is not translated because the German wahr implies not only that something is
true, but also that it is real. If anything, the wahre Welt is a metaphysical concept more than an
epistemological one (Truth is a property of Being the Real not vice versa). Wahre Welt
metaphysics, indeed, is a metaphysics of Being, to borrow Heideggers phrase.
FW 344. See also GM iii 24.
At GD iii 2, Nietzsche speaks of the wahre Welt as the product of the falsication of the testimony
or our senses. As will soon be clear, however, his critique of the metaphysics of Being is less of a
positivist attack on theism than a harsh verdict on what weak, irritable people invented to provide for
themselves the consoling illusion of stability in a world they found too hostile to engage with at face
value, and, in the same stroke, to take vengeance on life.
NL 18851887, 8(2). 15 GD iii 6.
20
Nietzsche as Buddha
21
nihilist mentality thus delivers the domain of the Good at the price of reducing
the actual world to a moral wasteland.
At the root of the nihilist mentalitys ideology, then, are two twin claims:
no, the world of becoming is not real! and no, the world of becoming is
not good! The result is a realm of Being which is Real and Good, opposed
to a devalued, deated, nihilized realm of becoming which is unreal and
evil. But it is obvious that what nihilists thus arrive at is precisely what
fueled their thinking from the start. The metaphysics of Being begins with a
series of nos concerning the actual world and delivers an actual world
reduced to no-thing no Real thing in this sea of becoming and no
Good thing in this sea of change, struggle, and contradiction.
Such suspicious circularity prompts Nietzsche to enquire as to the
psychological ground of such thinking.21 What does it betray to begin by
saying no? Of what is the nihilists depreciation of life indicative, or
symptomatic? These are the questions Nietzsche wants to answer. And on
this point Nietzsche is unambiguous. The thinking behind the ction of
Being/God has its root in hatred of the natural ( reality! ), it is the
expression of a profound discontent with what is real.22 At the root of the
nihilist mentalitys invention of Being, then, is spite against existence itself.
Unpacking this psychological claim requires an examination of a key
concept of Nietzsches philosophy, namely dcadence. Dcadence is a form of
physical and emotional weakness, which manifests primarily as weariness23
and irritability.24 This irritability is what provides dcadence with its
formula, namely the preponderance of feelings of displeasure over feelings of pleasure.25 Weary and irritable as they are, dcadents are continually
exasperated by life.
The dcadent is the quintessential sick type of Nietzsches philosophy.
And indeed, dcadence is best understood as an illness. Most people are
certainly familiar with the aversion from contact which is experienced when
ones health and vitality are in decline (the literal meaning of dcadence).
21
22
23
24
This psychological turn in Nietzsches enquiry into the origins of the wahre Welt reects his broader
theoretical commitment to the view that the function of metaphysics is to substantiate and justify a
primary moral outlook (JGB 6). According to Nietzsche, the relationship between a metaphysical
system and the morals it delivers is always circular, in so far as all kinds of metaphysics both bolster
and nd their ground in an (often pre-reective) moral/ethical attitude. Accordingly, Nietzsches
account of the genesis of the metaphysics of Being is not supposed to be historical. Its focus, rather, is
on the psychology that underpins it.
A 15. See also EH Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 8.
At EH Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 7, Nietzsche refers to dcadents as the exhausted. See also
NL 18881889, 14(174). The connection between dcadence and existential fatigue recurs throughout
his late texts.
JGB 293 and A 20 and 22. 25 A 15.
22
When I am sick, all but the dimmest lights seem too bright, all but the
softest sounds seem too loud, everything unexpected seems unpleasant,
etc. I nd myself longing for things to be still, quiet, stable, and predictable.
It is this commonly experienced attitude that Nietzsche attributes to
dcadents.
The primary consequence (and thus symptom) of dcadence is what
Nietzsche calls ressentiment.26 Among the affects of ressentiment are
anger, pathological vulnerability . . . and thirst for revenge.27 Again,
Nietzsche seems to be pointing to a psychological state anyone who has
ever been sick, worn out, stressed, or just exceedingly hungry will easily
recognize. The increased sensitivity and vulnerability at both a physical and
an emotional level that I experience when I am sick or very tired makes me
more irritable and less patient (with people and objects as though I felt
targeted by everything that happened to me), harsher in my judgments
(as though looking down on a stranger, say, lifted me up), more prone to
anger, to disappointment, to knee-jerk reactions (of body, speech, and
mind), to passive-aggressive, or just plain aggressive, behavior, etc.
Nietzsches ressentiment refers to this general propensity to exhibit vengeful,
self-defensive aggressiveness which in most of us accompanies states
of sickness and exhaustion. This is why he describes it as the primary
effect of dcadence. In so far as the dcadent is a fundamentally weak type,
moreover, ressentiment is intimately connected to impotence. Dcadents
are too weak to actively engage with the world or enter any form of
genuine struggle. Instead, they seethe with reactive rancor and let their
ressentiment swell.
From the swollen bosom of dcadent ressentiment is eventually born the
wahre Welt. Nietzsches contention is that the thirst for a wahre Welt is the
product of the dcadents deep insecurity vis--vis the world and its endless
instability. The turbulent tumult of becoming is deeply unnerving for
hyper-sensitive dcadents. As a result, they construe life itself as a problem:
hence the hatred of reality that fuels the nihilist mentality and its
metaphysics. But what really does the work of constructing wahre Welt
metaphysics is ressentiment, more precisely ressentiment against reality.28
Nietzsches contention is that the nihilization of the actual world in and
through the fable of a Real World is a gesture of resentful revenge. It is this
desire for revenge that gives the dcadents hatred its potency, its capacity to
26
27
At EH Warum ich so weise bin 6, Nietzsche explains that ressentiment is the sickly dcadents
most natural inclination.
A 15. 28 NL 18851887, 8(2); ibid. 18881889, 15(30).
Nietzsche as Buddha
23
create an ideology which takes its toll on life. The negation of the worlds
value both ontological and ethical is an act of retribution on the part of
the dcadents for the suffering they endure at the hands of unwieldy
becoming. The life-negation at the core of the metaphysics of Being is the
ultimate fruit of their ressentiment. It is through this affect that the dcadents
reactivity becomes creative. Their creation is Being.
The rst step in the cooking up of the wahre Welt, then, is not the
intellectual postulation of a Real World of Being, Truth, Stillness, and Bliss.
It is something pre-cognitive and pre-reective; it is an attitude of distrust
and frustration toward the world which results in a knee-jerk rejection
of the world.29 This attitude, according to Nietzsche, is the primordial
moral(izing) attitude this world of becoming harms me, it is evil!, thinks
the dcadent. The sickness that underlies the ction of Being, then, involves
feeling targeted by life and thus construing existence as morally problematic
and the world as guilty.30 If the nihilist mentalitys end result is a worldview
in which the world as we see and experience it is worthless, valueless,
meaningless, deceptive, and evil, it is because the nihilist has already
decided, in advance, that the world is despicable.
Nevertheless, though the dcadents invention of Being is primarily a
destructive gesture of vengeance, there is also an element of creation in it.
This connects to the last, perhaps most subtle, sense in which wahre Welt
metaphysics is nihilist. With the fable of Being, the dcadents equip themselves with exactly what they most deeply long for, namely a realm of
Permanence, Stillness, and Bliss. Peace and quiet, after all, is the Good
par excellence for the exhausted sick type.31 Cooking up the wahre Welt,
then, is not only an act of revenge, but also of soothing self-consolation
and comforting. Fear not, my brethren, Being, our nal abode, awaits us,
should we only succeed in extricating ourselves from this wretched world,
say the dcadents. Nietzsches claim is that this is nihilism in its purest form.
Being is constructed through a contradiction of everything real becoming,
conditionality, impermanence, irreducible plurality, contradiction, uncertainty, instability, struggle, etc. and, as such, it is the greatest nothing ever
devised by humankind. Nietzsche explains: The criteria which have been
29
30
31
As Nehamas reports, Nietzsche does not simply attack the distinction between appearance and
reality. He also offers . . . a psychological account of its origin. A. Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as
Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 171. See also G. T. Martin,
Deconstruction and Breakthrough in Nietzsche and Ngrjuna, in G. Parkes (ed.), Nietzsche and
Asian Thought (Chicago University Press, 1991), pp. 91111.
As Nietzsche explains at GM iii 15, people who suffer instinctively look for the guilty party
responsible for their suffering.
GM iii 17; NL 18881889, 14(174).
24
Life after the intoxication of theistic and metaphysical lies has worn out
seems worthless, valueless, meaningless, and directionless.36 The nihilism
that ensues is a harrowing reality check which delivers a reality bereft of any
value.
32
34
35
36
Nietzsche as Buddha
25
The nihilist crisis is related to the nihilist mentality in two ways. First, it is
on account of the nihilist mentality that God (the Christian wahre Welt) was
seen as the sole seat of value, moral worth, and meaning in this allegedly
lowly, corrupt world. With Gods death, all we are left with is this devalued,
deprecated life; there is, in Nietzsches words, a rebound from God is
truth to . . . all is false.37 The world had been valued in and through its
relation to a Divine, Transcendent, Supra-Natural Absolute. Once the
intoxicating ction of theism subsides, the symptoms of withdrawal
appear history seems aimless, the universe lacks any unity of purpose or
sense, and truth seems a mirage.38 The nihilist crisis, then, may be best
described as a harsh hangover, which aficts Europe after a long period of
inebriation during which the world was given meaning through a great
intoxicating lie. If the death of God precipitates the nihilist crisis by robbing
the world of its ctional value, it is precisely because the nihilist mentality
held sway over Europe for such a long time.39 Its meta-ethical nihilism
concerning the value of the world of becoming (as opposed to that of Being)
turns into a nal statement of the worlds value, once it is seen that
becoming is all there is.
The second sense in which the nihilist mentality prepares the terrain for the
nihilist crisis relates to a specic nihilistic ction, namely that of Truth.
Nietzsches contention is that the insistence on truthfulness (Wahrhaftigkeit)
that does away with the ction of God is a product of nihilistic morals.
It is modern scientic probity that kills God by prohibit[ing] the lie implicit
in the belief in God, yet such probity is really an outgrowth of Christian
truthfulness.40 As such, it nds its historical and ideological ground in
wahre Welt metaphysics.41 The Truth vs. lie dichotomy, after all, is one of
the foundational oppositions at the root of the dcadent nihilists distinction
between Being and becoming, the Real and the merely apparent. In its
incarnation as scientic probity, however, truthfulness is precisely what
ends up denouncing the wahre Welt itself as a lie. The result is the death of
God.
The demise of the Christian faith through and by its own truthfulness is
an instance of what Nietzsche calls self-overcoming (Selbstuberwindung/
37
39
40
41
26
Selbstaufhebung).42 Christian truthfulness prevails over what originally nurtured it, and destroys it: Christianity as dogma was destroyed by its own
morality.43 The nihilist mentality, in this sense, is responsible for the
debunking of its own foundational myth. The nihilist crisis in Europe is,
in this sense, a result of the nihilist mentalitys self-overcoming.
This discloses the nihilism at work in the nihilist crisis. The selfovercoming of the nihilist mentality operates through a new series of
negations. No, God does not exist. No, Being is in no way attested to.
No, there is no Heaven. No, there is no Good, no ground for Certainty, no
Permanence and Stability, etc. In short, it is now the ctions of the nihilist
mentality and its metaphysics that are negated. There is thus at the heart of
the nihilist crisis a nihilism as activity a project of demolition.44 This
activity of nihilizing the wahre Welt is what delivers nihilism as an ideological state of affairs; its result is the nihilist crisis, in which the worlds
previous (ctional) value and worth have been reduced to nil.
Now that the two principal meanings of nihilism in Nietzsches texts have
been claried, it is possible to begin examining Nietzsches complex relationship to Buddhism in earnest. Most fundamentally, Nietzsche is animated by
the conviction that both he and the Buddha propounded the same nos in the
context of very similar nihilist crises. It is by virtue of this common nihilist
ground that Nietzsche identies himself as the Buddha of Europe.45
Nietzsche regarded himself as standing at a similar juncture in the history
of European ideas as the Buddha did in the history of Indian ideas.46
Perusing Nietzsches notes on Ancient India and the rise of Buddhism,47
42
45
46
47
Ibid. 357. See also GM iii 27. 43 GM iii 27. 44 NL 18851887, 9(35).
Ibid. 18821884, 4(2).
As Morrison writes, Nietzsches interest [in Buddhism] was centered upon what he considered to be
a direct historical parallel between India at the time of the Buddha and the Europe of his own milieu
(Nietzsche and Buddhism, p. 8). Cf. F. Mistry, Nietzsche and Buddhism: Prolegomenon to a
Comparative Study (New York: W. de Gruyter, 1981), p. 35; J. Figl, Nietzsches Encounter with
Buddhism, in B. Bumer and J. R. Dupuche (eds.), Void and Fullness in the Buddhist, Hindu and
Christian Traditions: nya-Prna-Pleroma (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2005), pp. 22537; and
Nietzsche as Buddha
27
48
49
50
51
28
compelled the same conclusion. The decisive point was reached ve centuries before the European calendar, with the Buddha.52 The Buddha, in
short, was the seminal gure of an Indian nihilist crisis precipitated by an
Indian death of God.
Nietzsches claim might not be very compelling from the standpoint of
history. After all, theism certainly survived whatever death of God might
have occurred in India. But from a philosophical standpoint his claim is of
crucial importance. Nietzsche was right to think he and the Buddha were
similar in that both attacked the prevalent ideologies of their time and that
these ideologies were both predicated on the ction of Being. Translated
into Nietzschean jargon, Nietzsche and the Buddha both practiced the
nihilism (as activity) at the heart of nihilist crises. By espousing a very
similar set of negative views, they said no to the same things, for the same
reasons. This is true irrespective of the fact that the two thinkers arose in
markedly different historical and cultural contexts.
Nietzsche echoed the three major nos of his Indian counterpart. The rst
myth he joins the Buddha in exploding is that suffering is an accidental, or
unnecessary, feature of existence. As Nietzsche was well aware, the very starting
point of Buddhist philosophy and practice is the claim that suffering (duh.kha)
is an essential feature of all, even the most comfortable, forms of life.53 The
Upanis.adic Brahmins of Ancient India claimed that, contrary to appearances,
Bliss is of the nature of everything.54 The Buddha rejected this lie; he said no to
this ction. On the contrary, he claimed, suffering is of the nature of everything.55 Indeed, overcoming the delusion that struggle and pain can ever be
escaped through access to a realm of Peace, Serenity, and Permanence is the
necessary condition for embarking on the path of Buddhist ethics.
This emphasis on suffering as a fundamental feature of existence, and on
the lie implicit in any denial of this fact, nds a parallel in Nietzsches
52
53
54
GM iii 27.
This is the fundamental message of what tradition regards as the Buddhas rst teaching, an account
of which can be found at V i.10. Duh.kha (or duh.khat, a more straightforwardly nominal form) is a
technical Buddhist term with no precise equivalent in English. In itself, the word stands for a wide
spectrum of sensations ranging from acute physical pain or psychological torment to mere restlessness.
Of course, the Buddha and his followers admitted of various forms and degrees of duh.kha. The early
discourses speak of three major types of suffering: duh.khaduh.khat, which is what we generally think
of as physical pain and mental anguish; viparinmaduh.khat, or the suffering caused by the fact that
all things change and eventually fall apart; and the enigmatic samskraduh.khat, which refers both to
Nietzsche as Buddha
29
58
59
60
61
62
30
The story is actually more complicated than this. To begin with, though
there is no doubt that the young Nietzsche was very much impressed
with Schopenhauers thought,63 he seems to have had some important
reservations about his philosophical mentors doctrine from the start.64
Moreover, the view that Nietzsche ever rejected pessimism in toto is too
crude. Nietzsches early qualms about and later rejection of Schopenhauers
pessimism concerned not its descriptive element i.e. the view that the
world is full of suffering but its normative element i.e. the view that
the world is so full of suffering that it ought not to exist.65 It is this
normative feature of pessimism that distinguishes what Nietzsche would
later call pessimism of the weak66 (i.e. Schopenhauers) from pessimism
of strength (i.e. the tragic Greeks).67 As a strong pessimist, Nietzsche never
stopped agreeing with the descriptive element of Schopenhauers pessimism.68 He never stopped thinking that life is fundamentally painful
and that theistic optimism (or any optimism for that matter) is naive and
deluded. This commitment to descriptive pessimism is part of what allowed
him to proclaim himself the Buddha of Europe.69
The second area of overlap between Nietzsches thought and the
Buddhas teaching concerns a particular notion common to all traditional
systems built on the ction of Being. The object of negation, in this case, is a
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
Schopenhauers works are one of the reasons Nietzsche moved from classical philology to philosophy.
Nietzsche discovered Schopenhauer as a young man, and even when he turned against his mentor and
ultimately rejected the ideas put forth in WWV, Schopenhauer was in a sense always at the back of
Nietzsches mind. As Berman aptly notes, Schopenhauer remained Nietzsches main philosophical
inuence, even when he turned against him and Wagner . . . Schopenhauer was probably more
important to Nietzsche as a good enemy than as a mentor or ally (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
p. 187). My discussion of Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha in Chapter 2 lends further credence to Bermans
claim.
Breazeale, Introduction, p. xvii. In note 13 of his text (pp. xxxxxxi), Breazeale provides ample
evidence of Nietzsches early uneasiness with Schopenhauers thought. See, in this connection, S,
Nietzsches 1868 unnished critical essay on Schopenhauers system.
See I. Soll, Pessimism and the Tragic View of Life: Reconsiderations of Nietzsches Birth of Tragedy,
in R. C. Solomon and K. M. Higgins (eds.), Reading Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, 1988),
pp. 10433, at pp. 1245.
NL 18871888, 11(294). See also ibid. 18881889, 14(25).
GT Versuch einer Selbstkritik 1. See also NL 18851887 10(21) and ibid. 18881889, 14(25). What
Nietzsche means when he confusingly writes that the Greeks were not pessimists at EH Warum ich
solche gute Bcher schreibe GT 1 is that they were not weak pessimists, or normative pessimists.
Cf. Soll, Pessimism and the Tragic View of Life, p. 125.
Though he does not use the terms descriptive pessimism and normative pessimism, this is a point
that Berman convincingly argues for in his discussion of Nietzsches atheism (Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche, pp. 189f.).
In this sense, Nietzsche follows in Schopenhauers footsteps. After all, Schopenhauer placed a
particular emphasis on the agreement between his thought and Buddhism, in no small part because
of the latters presumed pessimism. See, in this connection WWV ii xvii, p. 186.
Nietzsche as Buddha
31
more local notion of Being, as it were. At stake is what is, but does
not become at the personal, individual level, namely the soul, self, or
ego. In Buddhist philosophy, as in Nietzsches thought, the self is
denounced as a misleading ction. In technical terms, the idea is that
both synchronic personal unity and diachronic personal identity are conceptually constructed, rather than real. This key point requires a detailed
discussion.
The doctrine of lack of self is the bedrock of Buddhist philosophy.70 If
the Buddhas rst teaching concerns the all-pervasive nature of suffering, his
second concerns the inexistence of the self.71 There is a good reason for this.
According to the discourses, what characterizes the Buddhist sage is precisely the absence of the imputation of self or mine in any form to any
physical or mental event.72 Attaining the ethical goal at the heart of
Buddhist philosophy and practice requires the complete overcoming of
the self ction.
Given its direct relation to ethics, it is obvious that the Buddhist critique
of the self cannot be concerned with just any idea or notion of self or soul.
Attaining nirvna is not merely a matter of abandoning the idea of an
some other abstraction of this sort.73 The object of the
immortal soul or
Buddhist critique, rather, corresponds to the common-sense notion of self
that is presupposed in everyday living and thinking.74 The uncontroversial
Buddhist claim is that all normal humans75 share a pre-reective belief in
their own existence as a discrete, unitary, and enduring self.76 It is by virtue
70
71
72
73
74
Cf. D. Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005),
p. 118.
V i.1011. This account of the order of the Buddhas teaching is common to all schools of Buddhism
whose texts are extant.
SN iii.44. This feature of Buddhist moral psychology will receive a detailed discussion in
Chapter 4.
On this point, see M. Alhabari, Nirvana and Ownerless Consciousness, in Siderits, Thompson, and
Zahavi, Self, No Self?, pp. 79113, at pp. 82f.
This is why the fact that there exists a wide range of notions of self in philosophy, both ancient and
contemporary, is not a problem for Buddhist thought. In fact, Buddhist philosophy is quite in line
with Strawsons insistence that any enquiry into the nature of the self be related to the way in which
we effectively think of ourselves:
Metaphysical investigation of the nature of the self is subordinate to phenomenological investigation of the
sense of self. There is a strong phenomenological constraint on any acceptable answer to the metaphysical
question which can be expressed by saying that the factual Is there such a thing as a mental self? is
equivalent to the question Is any (genuine) sense of self an accurate representation of anything that
exists? (D. Strawson, The Self, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(56), 1997: 40528, at p. 409)
75
76
Those suffering from specic pathologies resulting in depersonalization are obviously excluded.
Zahavi calls into doubt whether the self targeted by Buddhist philosophy really does capture our prephilosophical, everyday understanding of who we are. D. Zahavi, The Experiential Self: Objections
32
77
78
79
and Clarications in Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Self, No Self?, pp. 5678, at p. 66. Alhabari
does an excellent job of putting Zahavis worries to rest in Nirvana and Ownerless Consciousness,
pp. 828.
This view, I note in passing, seems to be in perfect agreement with recent work in neuroscience. On
this point, see F. J. Varela, Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition (Stanford University
Press, 1999), p. 36; J. Westerhoff, Ngrjunas Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford
University Press, 2009), pp. 20810; and O. Flanagan, The Bodhisattvas Brain: Buddhism Naturalized
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 95f.
This is the doctrine of the ve constituents, or aggregates. It rst appears in the Buddhas second
teaching (V i.11) and recurs throughout the discourses. MacKenzie provides an excellent summary of
what each of the constituents stands for in M. MacKenzie, Enacting the Self: Buddhist and
Enactivist Approaches to the Emergence of the Self, in Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Self, No
Self?, pp. 23973, at pp. 2423.
This position is widely held to be analogous to the bundle theory of the self propounded by thinkers
such as Locke and Hume in the Western tradition. R. Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about
Individuality, Life, and Death (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 278f. However, Alhabari has
recently called into question whether this is an accurate description of the view expressed by the
Buddha in the discourses (Analytical Buddhism and Nirvana and Ownerless Consciousness). This is
a debate I need not enter. What matters for my immediate purposes is that Buddhist philosophy
denies the existence of an enduring subject. How to qualify, with precision, the account of the person
that emerges from this critique is beyond the scope of the present discussion.
Nietzsche as Buddha
33
80
81
82
D. Part, Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 206. Part himself recognizes the
parallels between his views and the Buddhas (ibid., pp. 273, 280, and 5023). More recently,
Part has attempted to distance himself from what he calls the Buddhist View, by which he
means a form of eliminationism concerning persons. See Experiences, Subjects, and Conceptual
Schemes, Philosophical Topics 26(1/2), 1999): 21770, at p. 260. As is made clear in Ganeris
discussion of the topic (The Concealed Art of the Soul, pp. 161f.), however, the Buddhist position
concerning persons is not as clear-cut as the Buddhist position vis--vis the self. A common position
(Vasubandhu) is that persons are real as conventional designata (prajaptisat), but lack substantial
reality. On the Mdhyamika view, which denies substantial reality to all things, however, the
person is no more of a reality/ction than anything else. Though the issue is endlessly complicated,
then, it can at least be said, contra Part, that Buddhist philosophy is not eliminationist with regard to
persons.
SN i.135. See also MP 278. The chariot analogy is a very popular one throughout Buddhist literature.
On the mereological reductionism allegedly presupposed by such a view, see Siderits, Buddhist
Philosophy, pp. 7680. In Chapter 4, I will explain why, contra Siderits (and many others), not all
early Buddhist schools were reductionist. I will also argue that the Buddha was not strictly speaking a
reductionist.
As Gethin explains, the Buddhist idea is that we should conceive of persons in terms of sequences of
causally connected physical and mental events rather than enduring substances. R. Gethin, The
Foundations of Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 160. The implication, of course, is that
we are all pre-reectively committed to the substance view. In my opinion, this phenomenological
claim is warranted, even though few people, unless trained in philosophy, would use the word
substance to describe their core self.
34
84
86
For further discussion of the three rst arguments those met with in the Theravda canon see
S. Collins, Seless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravda Buddhism (Cambridge University Press,
1982), pp. 97103, and Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, pp. 1368. MacKenzie provides a more
detailed outline of the fourth argument at Enacting the Self, p. 244.
SN iii.667. 85 SN i.125.
He presumably has the charioteer analogy presented at KU 3.34 in mind. On this point, see K. R.
Norman, A Note on Att in the Alagaddpama-sutta, in Collected Papers II (Oxford, Pli Text
Society), pp. 1009.
Nietzsche as Buddha
35
the world of experience can ensure lasting satisfaction, then, nothing can
qualify as the Upanis.ads self, the nature of which is Bliss. The Buddhas
conclusion is that in so far as everything, in one way or another, ultimately
turns out to be a ground for disappointment, frustration, or pain, nothing
counts as self.87
The third argument hinges on the notion of superuity. The initial idea
is that no coherent account can be given of the relation between the self and
ve psycho-physical constituents. The self cannot be the same as these
constituents, because they are impermanent, and the self, by denition,
must be permanent. The self cannot be entirely separated from the constituents either, because they delimit the scope of experience and it is
senseless to speak of anything that is beyond experience. Finally, the self
cannot have or have the attribute of any particular experience, because it
then becomes unclear why we should even distinguish the self from its
experiences to begin with.88 The self, in short, is a superuous concept.
Experience can very well be accounted for without reference to an underlying ego and it is therefore entirely superuous to posit this additional
entity I. The self plays no explanatory role and nothing is lacking in a
description of the world that does without it.89 As a result, there is no reason
to believe it exists.
The fourth argument, nally, is not met with in the discourses but in a
later Buddhist text, namely Vasubandhus fourth-century ce AKBh. Like
many of his Buddhist contemporaries, Vasubandhu admitted of only two
valid means of knowledge, namely perception and inference. His claim is
that neither of these affords knowledge of the self.90 The self is neither
experienced through sight, smell, hearing, taste, or touch, nor is it seen in
introspection.91 There might be a sense of self, then, but there is no
87
88
89
90
91
SN i.125. The connection between the True Self and felicity might seem peculiar to a Western
philosophical audience, but one need only turn to the works of the Ancients (see Sorabji, Self) or,
more recently, to Taylors discussion of the self and morals to see that this is also a common idea in the
Western tradition. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
DN ii.668.
Many thinkers in India and in the West have resisted this thesis. It is argued that subjectivity, agency,
memory, time-consciousness, etc. not to mention moral concepts such as responsibility and rational
self-interest require that there be a robust, unitary, enduring self. Most of these issues are discussed
in Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Self, No Self? This is unfortunately not the place to defend the noself view from its many critics.
AKBh, p. 461.
Cf. Humes search for the self at THN i.4 4. On the afnities between Humes and the Buddhas
views, see A. H. Lesser, Eastern and Western Empiricism and the No-Self Theory, Religious
Studies 15(1), 1979: 5564, but cf. Conze, who, given his (now thought to be misguided) transcendentalist interpretation of Buddhism, dismisses the parallel as spurious (Spurious Parallels
to Buddhist Philosophy, p. 114). It should be noted that Ganeri has presented a controversial
36
92
94
95
96
historiographic case in favor of the view that Humes views were in fact directly inspired by
Buddhist ideas, via Bayles 1702 (second edition) Dictionnaire historique et critique (The Concealed
Art of the Soul, pp. 22831).
Cf. Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, pp. 1456. 93 DN i.202.
I borrow this example from Ngrjuna (MMK ii).
It is important to see how the distinction between ultimate and conventional truth in Buddhist
philosophy is not, as is commonly assumed, an ontological appearance/reality distinction (see, on this
point, Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, p. 59). Rather, it is a hermeneutical device initially
developed to distinguish between the literal statements uttered by the Buddha e.g. there is no
self and statements requiring interpretation e.g. statements that seem to refer to the self. Among
the realist Vaibhs.ika Sarvstivadins, however, the distinction became ontological satya can mean
both truth and reality namely between conventional existence, or appearance, and substantial
existence, or reality. This is a trend Ngrjuna would energetically combat.
NL 18871888, 9(108). See also NL ibid., 40(42). 97 JGB 19; see also ibid. 18851887, 1(87).
Nietzsche as Buddha
37
100
101
104
NL 18871888, 10(19).
JGB 19. Nietzsche, in this connection, describes belief in the self, or soul, as some piece of folk
superstition from time immemorial . . . that still today has not stopped causing trouble as the
superstition of the subject, or I (ibid. Vorrede).
Ibid. 12. Nietzsche is clearly targeting Leibniz here, and in particular the concept of monad Leibniz
puts forth in his 1714 Monadology. See G. F. Leibniz, The Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays,
ed. and trans. P. and A. M. Schrecker (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill).
JGB 1617; GM i 13. 102 JGB 19. 103 Ibid. 17f. See also GD vi 3.
NL 1884 1885, 36(23).
38
clear that there is no it qua agent that rains, but only impersonal raining.105
Similarly, when I say I eat, there is really only eating.
Nietzsches critique of the I as the singular seat of willing and thinking,
however, nds no direct parallel in Buddhist thought. He argues that the
very complexity of willing, in particular, indicates that what is really at stake
is a multiplicity of wills, feelings, and other mental events106 rather than a
unitary self, or soul, which deliberates and decides on a course of action.
Hence the subject as a multiplicity,107 or a social structure of many
souls.108 One should not misinterpret these phrases by inferring that
Nietzsche thought that many discrete selves somehow inhabit each
person. After all, it is clear that he thought the very notion of a discrete
self as a simple enduring thing is nonsensical in and of itself, not only in so
far as individuals have many of them. Though phrased in a peculiar way, his
idea is essentially the same as the Buddhas. There is no singular core self
that holds the reins of the mindbody complex; even those mental and
physical processes which seem to proceed from the activities of a self
namely, willing, deciding, deliberating, remembering, lifting ones arm,
etc. are incredibly complex events which bring into play a multiplicity
of processes and involve no core being who might be regarded as being in
charge. Synchronic personal unity, on Nietzsches view, as in the
Buddhas, is a mental construction.
The third point of overlap between Nietzsches negative thought and
Buddhist philosophy concerns their common rejection of what is now
referred to as substance metaphysics. The central tenet of such metaphysics
is that the world consists of things or entities (substances) which bear
properties, or qualities (attributes). For instance, a substance metaphysician
will hold that there are various types of rocks that bear the property
of hardness to different degrees. The rock, on this type of view, possesses
the property/quality of hardness. From the standpoint of the so-called
attribute, hardness is said to inhere in the rock, which is the substratum
for the property of hardness. This highly intuitive view is rejected in
both Nietzsches thought and Buddhist philosophy on the ground that it
exhibits a commitment to the staticity of Being, i.e. to the enduring
105
106
107
GM i 13. Nietzsche actually uses the example of lightning, but this does not translate well into
contemporary English, which does not contain a verbal form referring to the activity of lightning
see King James Bibles lightneth (Luke 17:24).
I put the term mental events in quotation marks because Nietzsche, unlike the Buddha, made
himself quite clear on the mindbody question by espousing a clear non-dualist view, namely that of
the world as will to power (JGB 36). This topic will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3.
NL 18841885, 36(23). 108 JGB 19.
Nietzsche as Buddha
39
The senses and their objects112 is all that the Buddha admitted in his
description of the world.
In short, the worldview that nds expression in the discourses is one that
leaves no room for the concept of substance, or, more generally of existence.113 Indeed, when looking at a particular thing, the questions the
Buddha asks are not what is it, what are its properties, etc.?, but rather
how does this arise/cease, under what conditions does this arise/cease,
etc.? In other words, he is not interested in what kind of thing x is, but
in what kind(s) of process(es), or event(s), is (are) involved when we speak of
x. The principle of universal impermanence is a direct consequence of this
focus on conditional arising rather than existence. After all, as a disciple of
the Buddha proclaims, everything that arises also ceases.114
109
110
111
112
113
This is by far the majority view among Buddhologists most notably Warder (Indian Buddhism and
Outline of Indian Philosophy), Gethin (The Foundations of Buddhism), and Gombrich (What the
Buddha Thought) though it has recently been called in question by J. Bronkhorst, Greater
Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India, vol. ii (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2007).
However, the evidence adduced by Bronkhorst does not justify abandoning the view that the
Buddhas critique of self and Being targets Upanis.adic doctrines. At any rate, this is certainly how
he was interpreted by both his followers and their Brahmanical opponents in the Classical period.
BU i.4.1f.
SN iv.15. The recurrent vocative bhiks.us refers to the Buddhas public, namely an assembly of
monastic followers (bhiks.us, literally mendicants).
Indeed, in the Indian context, the mind is treated, on a par with the ve senses recognized in the
West, as a sixth sense.
On this point, see Warder, Outline of Indian Philosophy, pp. 5861. 114 V i.181.
40
117
120
Nietzsche as Buddha
41
and of the relations between them lead to the conclusion that our world
must be made up of processes alone, not of property-bearing objects. If
things occur the way they do, he claims, it is precisely because they are
empty of substance.121 Moreover, a world of Substance, or Being, would in
no way resemble the world we live in. There would be no arising, no passing
away, and the universe would be immutable and free from all of the
diversied states that can be witnessed.122 Between a world of immutable
Being and one of constant ux and turbulent becoming, Ngrjuna takes a
position diametrically opposed to Parmenides, Zenos, or Platos Being is
unreal, or ctional, and becoming alone is real.
Indeed, Ngrjuna calls the very notion of Being, or existence, into
question: There is no such thing as existence (satt) when it comes to
entities devoid of own-being.123 With universal conditionality, falls
Substance the world is made up of processes that arise in mutual dependence so that everything lacks substantial, intrinsic existence. With
Substance, in turn, falls existence itself, for only substances could be said
to really exist. Nothing ever is, for Ngrjuna, events just take place, or
occur. Ngrjuna, in short, rejects any metaphysics of Being and, more
generally, any thought system that posits a realm of Ultimate Reality or
Absolute Truth over and above a realm of mere conventions or transactional practices. This is because, on his view, the notion of own-being on
which any metaphysics of this sort relies is little more than a ction.
Universal emptiness of own-being thus constitutes a robust rejection
of the metaphysics of Being in favor of universal becoming.124 Instead
of Being and beings, what we have is a world of interdependence,
interrelatedness, and contingency a world of dynamic processes rather
than discrete entities. Instead of a world of entities (substances) bearing
properties (attributes), what we have is a world of eeting qualities to
121
122
124
This is the conclusion of MMK xxiv, arguably the clearest expression of Madhyamaka philosophy on
offer. At MMK xxiv.15, Ngrjuna declares: Everything makes sense for him who accepts emptiness.
Nothing makes sense for him who does not accept that things are empty. Cf. VV 70: Everything
prevails for him for whom emptiness prevails. Nothing prevails for him for whom emptiness does not
prevail. The auto-commentary to this verse makes it clear that everything stands, among other
things, for all conventions about how the world operates. On this key point, see in particular Arnold,
Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, pp. 140f. and G. Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought (Oxford
University Press, 2002), pp. 266f.
MMK xxiv.38. 123 MMK i.10ab.
This is the interpretation of Ngrjunas philosophy that best ts the texts. Ngrjuna interpretation,
it should be mentioned, is a very controversial subeld in Buddhology. The philosopher has been
presented as a metaphysical nihilist, a monistabsolutist relying on something like Kants transcendental idealism, and, more recently, a metaphysical idealist la Berkeley. Ngrjuna has also
been presented as a radical skeptic, as a proto-Wittgenstein, and as anticipator of Rorty and Derrida.
42
retain the substantialist term in which a thing is nothing more than the
sum of its effects.125
Nietzsche holds the same view.126 In a wealth of passages, Nietzsche
ridicules the ideas of rigid existence (as opposed to arising), of Substance (as
opposed to force), and of Being (as opposed to becoming).127 For Nietzsche,
Parmenides and his Eleatic followers were wrong and Heraclitus was right128
one never steps in the same river twice. The lie of thinghood, the lie of
substance, of permanence, writes Nietzsche, all result from the falsication
of the testimony of the senses.129 As in Buddhist thought, the world as
Nietzsche sees it is composed of evanescent processes and events alone, not of
things. There is no object, or entity, that endures phenomenal change and
bears attributes; there are only dynamic processes.130 In short, Nietzsche
rejects substance metaphysics on grounds very similar to Ngrjunas. For
him, ours is a world of perpetual becoming and impermanence in which there
is no place for the staticity of Being, or substance. This is what Nietzsche has
in mind when he claims that Buddhism has the illusion of God behind it.131
As he rightly saw, Buddhism entirely rejects Substance, which, for Nietzsche,
is a just another form of the wahre Welt ction.
But Nietzsche has more to say on this point. In connection with the
Buddhist critique of metaphysics, he writes: The Buddhist negation of
Reality . . . is perfectly consistent: not only undemonstrability, inaccessibility, absence of categories for a world-in-itself, but also an insight into the
erroneous procedures by means of which this whole concept is arrived at.132
What, one may ask, could Nietzsche have been referring to in this passage?
As Nietzsche had obviously realized, the Buddhist critique of Being, and
with it of substance metaphysics as a whole, is, more than anything, a
psychological critique. This is not to say that Buddhist thought, like
Nietzsches, attributes the nihilistic invention of the wahre Welt to
dcadence and ressentiment. Rather, the Buddhist insight is that to look
125
126
127
128
131
Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 74. This phrase appears in Nehamass discussion of Nietzches critique of
substance metaphysics, but unsurprisingly it is perfectly suited to Buddhist philosophy as well.
Cf. Conze, who rejects the parallel between the doctrine of emptiness and Nietzsches nihilism as a
spurious parellel owing to a fundamental misunderstanding of Buddhist ideas (Spurious Parallel
to Buddhist Philosophy, p. 106). But Conze held the view, which is now considered to be incorrect,
that Buddhism is geared toward the realization of a Transcendental Reality. Combined with Conzes
partial and somewhat uncharitable reading of Nietzsches critique of the wahre Welt, this makes for
quite an unsatisfactory assessment of the parallels between Nietzsches thought and Buddhist
philosophy.
These include a number of passages from his early lectures (VP) and unpublished texts (namely,
PtZG), from his notes, and from published texts such as JGB and GD.
GD iii 2. 129 Ibid. 130 On this key point, see Nehamas, Nietzsche, pp. 74105.
A 20. 132 NL 18871888, 9(62).
Nietzsche as Buddha
43
44
The wahre Welt as Cosmic Self this is the grand delusion the Buddha
and his followers saw through. The Upanis.adic authors, in short, delivered
the Buddha his insight into the erroneous procedures by the means of which
this whole concept [the wahre Welt] is arrived at137 on a platter. Indeed, a
key (and under-appreciated) point of Buddhist philosophy is that there is
nothing coincidental about the Upanis.adic Brahmans case. The self that we
pre-reectively construct as a permanent substance, or enduring substratum, really is the model for Being, Substance, or God. Behind the twin
Buddhist critique of Self and Substance is the view that the I is the
primordial substance, the rst being, the rst thing that is, but does
not become. The Brahmins speculations on the underlying identity of
ones true self and brahman qua World Soul were not a mere accident. In
fact, the Upanis.adic reasoning is particularly revealing. It is arguably one of
the most transparent cases of what Nietzsche, more than two millennia
later, would call wahre Welt metaphysics.138
The fundamental connection between the ction of the self and the
ction of Being is brought out most clearly in the works of Ngrjuna
and his followers. In claiming that all things lack intrinsic existence, or
substance, he is essentially claiming that all things lack a self:139 indeed,
that the principle of the selessness of [all] factors of existence
(dharmanairtmya) is simply an extension of the principle of the selflessness of persons (pudgalanairtmya).140 This extension is founded on
the fundamental insight that what underlies the ction of Being is the
illusion of selfhood itself. Indeed, Ngrjuna and his Mdhyamika followers
located the effects of what the Indian philosophers of the Classical period
called the ego-principle (ahamkra) well beyond the ego itself. The ego responsible for pre-reectively generating
principle is what is originally
the sense of an enduring ego as the owner of the mindbody complex;
137
138
139
140
NL 18871888, 9(62).
In the Western tradition, such transparency can be found in the work of Leibniz. In his Monadology,
pp. 21325, Leibniz posits irreducible soul-like entities as the foundational simple, primary substance
out of which the world is composed. For Nietzsches tongue-in-cheek critique of such atomism, see
JGB 12.
In pointing to the roots of his critique of substance, Ngrjuna specically refers to one of Buddhas
teachings on the twin illusions of a presumed persons existence and non-existence (MMK xv.7). The
text Ngrjuna cites is the Kaccyanasutta (SN ii.1617). In this discourse, the Buddha claims that to
speak of a person as existing or not existing makes no sense because there is no person to begin
with. He presents his doctrine of dependent co-arising as an alternative, or middle way. The upshot is
that talk of being/non-being, or existence/non-existence, should be abandoned in favor of a focus on
becoming, or (impersonal) arising and cessation. Ngrjunas point is that this applies to all and any
talk of being/non-being, not only that which pertains to persons.
On this point, and the ample discussion it received among Ngrjunas followers, see D. S. Lpez Jr.,
Do rvakas Understand Emptiness?, Journal of Indian Philosophy 16(1), 1988: 65105.
Nietzsche as Buddha
45
On this point, see M. Hulin, Le principe dgo dans la pense indienne classique: la notion dahamkra
46
ground outside awed human psychology. Its only ground is our delusional
sense of personal identity.143
It is in adopting this very same view that Nietzsche nds himself in
closest agreement with Buddhist philosophy. Substance metaphysics, the
ction of Being, the lies of unity, thinghood, and permanence, etc. all
these things are secreted out of the ego according to Nietzsche. Discussing
what he calls the metaphysics of language in GD, he writes:
It is this [the metaphysics of language] which sees everywhere deed and doer . . . this
which believes in the I, in the I as being, in the I as substance, and which
projects the belief in the I-substance onto all things only thus does it create the
concept thing . . . Being is everywhere thought in, foisted on . . . it is only out of
the conception I that there follows, as a consequence, the concept of being . . . I
fear we will not get rid of God because we still believe in grammar.144
The primary substance, the prototype for anything that is rather than
becomes, knows permanence, stability, etc., is none other than the self. The
I is the illusory unitary substratum of all our feelings, the illusory unitary
143
144
145
Westerhoff, in this connection, is wrong to claim that the notion of substance in Ngrjunas works
is unlike any Western notion of substance in so far as it involves a cognitive component, which
Western notions of substances universally lack. According to Westerhoff, Ngrjunas notion of
substance is unique, in that it is not just a theoretical concept of ontology but rather a cognitive
default, an addition that the mind unwittingly makes when trying to make sense of the world
(Ngrjunas Madhyamaka, p. 13). But the fact that Ngrjuna regards substance as a conceptual
superimposition (ibid.) does not imply that his concept of substance is in any way different from the
Wests. Rather, what we nd in Ngrjuna is an additional, psychological claim about the roots of
substance metaphysics. The term svabhva has the same overall meaning as substance in Western
metaphysics it is the really existent substratum that underlies contingent accidents and
phenomenal change. What is unique to Ngrjunas philosophy and puts it in a category apart
from any Western discussion of metaphysics (other than Nietzsches) is that it goes beyond the
claim that there is no room for substance in our picture of the world, and adds that the attribution of
own-existence, which characterizes our intuitive take on the world, has deep roots in human
psychology.
GD iii 5. See also ibid. 2. As Nietzsches comments make clear, it is obvious that language
structures the world in terms of substance and attribute. This is something Buddhist philosophers
were also aware of. This is why they regarded language as the domain of conventions (samvr.ti) or
transactional practices (vyvahara), and argued that it should not be taken to capture extra-linguistic
reality (i.e. ux and process) transparently. These issues will be discussed at greater length in
Chapters 3 and 4.
NL 18871888, 10(19).
Nietzsche as Buddha
47
ground of all of our actions. It is that which is supposedly xed and survives
the multiplicity of change. As such, the I is the prototypical substance;
it is the psychological model for and the experiential ground of the
metaphysics of Being.146 As the source of our conception of substance, it
is only natural that our belief in the ego as a substance, as the only reality on
the basis of which we ascribe reality to things in general147 should also be
the basis of all major world religions. The entire religious history of
mankind, Nietzsche concludes, is recognized as the history of the soul
superstition.148 All of metaphysics and religion, in short, is a fruit of the
self-delusion.
It is perhaps in the following fragment that Nietzsche expresses his view
most clearly:
The concept of reality and existence is derived from subject-feeling. The
subject: interpreted from inside ourselves, so that the I appears to be a
substance, as the source of all actions, as the agent. The logical-metaphysical
postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc., have their power of
persuasion through the habit to regard all of our actions as consequences of our
will so that the I, as a substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of change.149
The key terms in this fragment are feeling (subject-feeling) and habit.
Ultimately, that to which Nietzsche attributes the prevalence of substance
metaphysics is not the concept self/ego/subject, but the pre-reective
feeling of being a substantial self and the mental, cognitive, and therefore
also linguistic habits that follow from this. The I that is bloated into
God/Universal Spirit, into Cause, into Substance, into a wahre Welt, etc.,
is not an idea or concept, but something pre-reective and prephilosophical.150
In sum, when it comes to the relation between the I as the product of
pre-reective synthesis, the self/soul as dogma, and the ction of Being, the
story in Nietzsches thought and in Buddhist philosophy is very similar. The
ux of mental and physical events that make up an individual are prereectively synthesized. The product of this synthesis is then reied, which
146
147
150
Nietzsche, in this connection, speaks of belief in the self as the oldest realism (ibid. 18851887,
7(63)).
Ibid. 18871888, 10(19) 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 9(98). See also GM i 13.
Emphasizing the role of the subject-feeling as opposed to the concept of the subject, or ego, makes it
possible to reply to Nehamass important critique of Nietzsches view. Nehamas nds the view that
the prototypical substance is the ego deeply unsatisfactory and seeks to provide evidence to show
that this could not really have been Nietzsches view (Nietzsche, pp. 856). As it turns out, however,
the three arguments he adduces to support this judgment presuppose that Nietzsches view is about
the concepts of ego and substance, when really what it concerns is the sense of substantial, abiding
existence that is rst experienced within, as pertaining to the self, and then projected outward.
48
Nietzsche as Buddha
49
harbinger of nihilism, the Buddha destroyed the value and meaning previously attributed to life through nihilist myths by exploding those myths. It
is by exploding those same myths in their European form (soul, God,
Heaven) that Nietzsche assumes the role of Europes Buddha.
The afnity between Nietzsche and the Buddha goes beyond the critical
elements of their thought. The nihilist crisis is the crisis of valuelessness,
worthlessness, meaninglessness, and purposelessness. But this is only a
transitional stage. The ethical void left by the critiques of thinkers such as
Nietzsche or the Buddha must be lled it cannot but be lled.151 The
challenge of nihilism, as I explained above, is the challenge of developing a
post-nihilist ethics without relapsing into the delusional thinking at the
basis of former modes of valuation. It is important to note, moreover, that
the form of such ethics is the same in both Nietzsches thought and
Buddhist philosophy. Indeed, their ethical visions are visions of great health.
There is a deep relation, in this connection, between Nietzsche as
Buddha and Nietzsche as Antichrist. Other than the fact that Buddhism
is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity in that it is atheistic,
positivistic, phenomenalistic, and anti-metaphysical,152 what radically sets it
apart from the Christian faith is that its ethics is not moralistic, but hygienic.
In EH, Nietzsche writes: [the Buddhas] religion should rather be called a
kind of hygiene, lest it be confused with so pitiable a phenomenon as
Christianity.153 Contrary to Christianity, which claims that suffering is
the result of sin and founds its ethics on a moralizing guilt complex, the
Buddha recognizes that suffering is rooted in human psychology and
physiology and therefore takes hygienic measures against it.154 Good
acts, attitudes, states of mind, etc., are prescribed in so far as they are
healthy, and bad ones are condemned in so far as they are unhealthy, all
in view of Buddhisms fundamental hygienic purpose.155 This is in stark
contrast to Christianity, which adopts a typically nihilistic moral attitude
whereby goodness ows from one source alone God, or Heaven and
everything related to the world here below the body, worldly pleasures,
etc. is regarded as evil and corrupting. In this sense, Nietzsche explains,
Buddhism is profoundly distinguished from Christianity by the fact that
151
152
153
This is because the attribution of value, worth, meaning, and purpose is, according to Nietzsche, a
fundamental activity, which any living creature engages in by necessity, whether consciously or not
(see, in this connection, JGB 9).
A 20. Cf. ibid. 23: Buddhism, to say it again, is a hundred times colder, more veracious, more
objective [than Christianity].
EH Warum ich so weise bin 6. 154 A 20. 155 Ibid.
50
the self-deception of moral concepts lies far behind it. In my terms, it stands
beyond good and evil.156
Of course, the traditional notions of good and evil cannot survive the
demise of the metaphysics of Being, which destroys the very ground of the
Good. Nietzsches idea is that the Buddha had to replace such moral
concepts with ethical concepts of another kind, and that he selected
the concepts of healthy and unhealthy instead. It is obvious from
Nietzsches comments on Buddhism that he was well aware of the medical
discourse in which Buddhist teachings are couched. Buddhists across the
ages have regarded the historical Buddha, Siddhrtha Gautama, as the
supreme physician157 and his teaching as a form of therapeutic practice.158
Accordingly, Buddhist philosophy and practice are geared toward a distinctive ideal of great health, or supreme wellbeing, namely nirvna.159 Those
who have not attained this state are described as sick, deluded,
and/or
160
impaired. Among those things to which the Buddhas teaching acts as
an antidote are the so-called secretions (srava), uid-like toxins that seep
into the subconscious strands of the psycho-physical apparatus, thereby
infecting it with latent psychological proclivities (abhinivea) and biases
(anuaya). His teaching is also described as washing away the delements
(klea) that taint the common persons mind. In short, Buddhist ethics
hinges on a distinctive notion of the healthy type which stands opposed to
the sick type. In replicating this, Nietzsche follows his Indian predecessors example. His ethics also concerns the fundamental opposition between
healthy/strong types and sick/weak types. Standing, like the Buddha,
beyond the nihilist myths of Good and evil, his ethics is one of great health
and his target is also a form of illness, namely dcadence.161
156
157
158
159
160
161
Ibid.
This epithet is widely used in the Pli canon. See, for instance, AN iv.340 and MN i.15660,
ii.25660. It has survived into the present, across the millennia.
This idea is so common in Buddhism that practically any text in Indian Buddhist literature will
include a reference to medical practice or use a medical analogy to illustrate a point. For a useful
survey of the so-called medical analogy in Buddhist texts, see C. W. Gowans, Medical Analogies
in Buddhist and Hellenistic Thought: Tranquility and Anger, in Carlisle and Ganeri, Philosophy as
Therapiea, pp. 1133, at pp. 1619.
In the Pli canon, nirvna is described as health (rogya) at MN i.50811 and Sn 749. Cf. SN iv.371s
and ibid. 511s antika. All these negative constructions literally mean lack
and MN i.173s abhydhi
of illness, but negative terms in Indian languages frequently have a positive meaning. Accordingly,
rogya, abhydhi, and antika all have the sense of wellbeing.
Consider, for instance, Dhp 198: Verily, we live pleasantly, without sickness among the sick. Among
the sick, we dwell without sickness.
Nietzsche only begins to present himself as a physician of mankind in his later works. Though a
growing body of scholarship namely, K. A. Pearson, For Mortal Souls: Philosophy and Therapiea
Nietzsche as Buddha
51
52
health and sickness. This is why ethics becomes a matter of health after the
nihilist crisis.
Morals turn into hygiene, the ethicist becomes physician, and a persons
ethical worth becomes a function of his or her healthiness. The purely
phenomenal, empirical world that survives the death of God/Being reduces
to the body, its senses, various sense objects, and mental events. This
exclusive focus on our natural, all too natural, psycho-physical apparatus
and its interaction with its environment leaves few candidates other than the
categories of health and illness to articulate an ethical ideal.162 In the absence
of a Transcendent wahre Welt, the immanent realm of the sentient body
alone can provide a basis for any discussion of virtue. And health is clearly
what has always had value and meaning down here, as it were. Once there
is no above or beyond, health thus becomes the paradigm for value,
worth, and meaning, i.e. for ethics. Hence the medical discourse that
pervades Buddhist literature and Nietzsches parallel concern with health
and sickness.163
It may be objected that medical metaphors in general and the therapeutic
discourse in particular are in no way limited to the articulation of Buddhist
philosophy and Nietzsches positive thought. For instance, Plato often
compares Socrates to a physician, the philosophers of Antiquity often
described themselves as therapists who cure the illnesses of the soul, and
Christian texts also make use of analogies drawn from the medical discourse,
if they are not directly praising Jesus for the miraculous healings he
performs.164 In the Indian context, Classical Brahmanical schools (foremost
among them the Vednta) also employ the medical paradigm to express
their ethical views in spite of their theism and metaphysical absolutism.165 In
light of this, it seems questionable whether there really is any connection
162
163
164
165
This thesis is somewhat controversial. It could be argued that there are other candidates for goodness after the death of God, such as creativity, beauty, greatness, the sublime, or authenticity. My
basic point, however, is that health/healthy is the most primitive good and illness/ill the most
primitive bad when it comes to evaluating creatures in this world, and in this worlds terms. When
this world is all we are left with, it is only natural that they should become the terms in which ethics is
discussed. If they have not done so in most secular contemporary discussions of ethics, it is because,
consciously or not, secular ethicists are still committed to some form of wahre Welt. I will have more
to say on this point in the conclusion.
A similar development can be observed in some strands of Hellenistic philosophy, particularly
among naturalist Epicureans (see Gowans, Medical Analogies in Buddhist and Hellenistic
Thought, pp. 19f.) and atheist skeptics (see Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, pp. 106f.).
On this point, see F. Bonardels detailed discussion of the distinction between Buddhist and
traditional Western uses of the medical discourse in relation to ethics in Bouddhisme et philosophie:
en qute dune sagesse commune (Paris: Harmattan, 2008), pp. 26f.
On this point, see W. Halbfass, Tradition and Reection: Explorations in Indian Thought (State
University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 24363.
Nietzsche as Buddha
53
between great health ideals and the rejection of the metaphysics of Being.
Metaphors of illness and therapy appear to be commonly used even in
robustly metaphysical systems.
However, it is important to see that such religious and metaphysical
systems make a strictly metaphorical use of the language of health.
References to health in these contexts are entirely gurative. They stand
in for something whose literal description would require a robust metaphysical account such as, say, the soul reaching Heaven, or tman uniting
with brahman. Using Nietzsches terminology, the medical discourse in
such contexts is metaphorical in that it borrows the categories of the
apparent world (health/illness) to express something that supposedly
happens at the level of the True/Real World. But when the wahre Welt
is rejected, the medical discourse in which ethics is couched is no longer
metaphorical or gurative in the same sense. Health does not stand in for
something that would allow of a more accurate, more literal, metaphysical
description. The simile implicit in the metaphor is now absent; goodness is
no longer like health, goodness just is health.
Though the notion of health is to be taken more literally in the context of
Nietzsches thought or Buddhist philosophy, it is nevertheless important to
note that such notions are not supposed to correspond to or imply a state of
physical health as understood in modern medicine. In 1889, Nietzsche was
writing of the great health that he had attained166 in spite of the fact that he
was on the verge of physical and psychic collapse. Similarly, nirvna does
not imply a state of physical tness as conventionally understood. These
notions of great health are new notions of health. Accordingly, this books
discussion of health and illness is not to be taken as referring to physiological
tness. It is not that, according to Nietzsche or the Buddha, I am actually
less virtuous when I catch a cold. The idea, rather, is that the notion of
illness removal, for instance, is particularly elucidating when it comes to
formulating post-theistic, post-metaphysical conceptions of virtue.
There is another important difference between the way health is talked
and thought about in systems that remain committed to metaphysics of
Being and those that reject them. This concerns the ction of the rational
soul. In Christianity or Platonic philosophy, morals (and philosophy in
general) are meant to heal the soul of the sicknesses that afict it through
association with the body, i.e. passions, desires, instincts, etc. What is more,
it is the rational soul that can see the Good and the other Forms, ght the
passions, and aim for the realm of Being. In the ethics of a Buddha or a
166
54
In fact, it may be claimed that a renewed interest in philosophy as therapy is already on the
horizon. See, in this connection, Ganeri and Carlisles recent Philosophy as Therapiea.
chapter 2
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
JGB 56. See also NL 18851887, 2(127). I should make it very clear from the outset that everything
I write about Buddhism in this chapter concerns Nietzsches interpretation of Buddhism. Unlike
Chapter 4, the present chapter is not concerned with Buddhist doctrine as such; it merely reports and
reconstructs Nietzsches views.
Morrison examines some of the reasons why Nietzsche retained the annihilationist interpretation of
the Buddhist goal of nirvna promulgated in early Buddhological works (e.g. Koeppens work, Die
55
56
5
6
7
NL 18851887, 2(127) and 9(35).
A 20.
NL 18871888, 9(35).
Ibid.
9
On this point, see Morrison, Nietzche and Buddhism, pp. 22f.
NL 18871888, 9(60).
Ibid. (35). 11 Ibid. 10(190).
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
57
15
16
17
58
Christianitys, Buddhisms goal is actually attainable: They claim cheerfulness, stillness, absence of desire to be the highest goal, and they attain this
goal. Buddhism is not a religion in which one merely aspires for perfection:
perfection is the normal case.18 What are we to think of such hyperbolic
enthusiasm in light of the distinction between Nietzsche qua pro-Buddhist
anti-Christian polemicist and a soberer Nietzsche concerned with lifenegation in all of its forms?
To begin with, it is important to recognize that Nietzsche did indeed take
the Buddhist ght against ressentiment to be far healthier for dcadents than
the moralizing Christian crusade against sin.19 In the same way as he
genuinely thinks Buddhism, as a soberly anti-metaphysical religion, is a
hundred times colder, more veracious, more objective than Christianity,20
Nietzsche does see great value in Buddhisms condemnation of ressentiment
as an unhealthy affect. At the same time, it is obvious that Nietzsche
can only be telling half the story here. In so far as his ethics is an expression
of life-negation, the Buddha must still be harboring what Nietzsche
calls ressentiment against reality.21 This, after all, is what lies behind
the dcadents moral condemnation of the actual world, i.e. the realm of
becoming. Behind any judgment life is evil, or becoming is no good,
lurks a hidden ressentiment. As a dcadent movement, Buddhism is a religion
of ressentiment against reality and, as a plain nihilist, the Buddhists will
to nothingness exhibits an underlying desire for revenge against life. We
are faced with a second apparent contradiction, then. Though the
accomplished Buddhist is beyond ressentiment, he is also still ensnared
in ressentiment.
How could Nietzsche both praise Buddhism for ghting ressentiment and
condemn it for harboring ressentiment? What is required is a distinction
between two levels, or layers, of ressentiment. Ressentiment1 operates at the
surface level of conscious intention. It is explicitly directed toward certain
persons and manifests itself as envy, hatred, resentment, aversion, vengefulness, etc. Ressentiment2, in contrast, is subconscious and attitudinal. It grows
out of the dcadents general feeling of discontent, discomfort, and dissatisfaction with this painful world of ux, contradiction, and becoming. It is a
pre-reective, unarticulated, and subliminal will to take revenge on life.
18
19
20
A 21.
At EH Warum ich so weise bin 6, Nietzsche makes it clear that he himself applied the Buddhas
method in periods of deep agony. He is not entirely insincere, then, when he writes that the Buddha is
a profound physiologist (ibid.).
A 23. 21 NL 18851887, 2(127).
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
59
The nihilist dcadents invention of the wahre Welt indeed, their very
metaphysical need is fueled by this more insidious ressentiment.22
Now, the example of Buddhism shows that ressentiment2 can survive the
destruction of the metaphysical ctions that initially grew out of it. What is
more, the example of the Buddhist type shows that ressentiment against
reality, or ressentiment2, can remain even when ressentiment1 the affect
responsible for hating specic people and situations, seeking active revenge,
etc. is fought against and even removed. The contradiction in Nietzsches
view thus fades away. The accomplished, serene Buddhist is both beyond
ressentiment1 and still animated by ressentiment2.
This distinction also makes it possible to gain a better understanding of
what happens to passive nihilists in the midst of the nihilist crisis. Their
inability to imagine a summum bonum other than non-existence after the
death of God, or brahman their inability to see any worth in becoming
once the myth of Being has been debunked is not due to a simple lack of
imagination. Nor is it just a matter of laziness (as dcadents, after all,
exhaustion and weariness is their distinguishing feature). No, what lies
behind the Buddhist worship of non-being qua ethical goal is exactly
what lies behind the nihilist mentalitys worship of God qua gloried
nihil.23 Ressentiment2 remains the psychological ground of the passive nihilists ideology. Buddhist ethics begins with a reaction; it begins with a
vengeful, resentful no in the face of life. In fact, Buddhisms quest for
extinction in non-being is really a laying bare of the life-negation that has
always stood behind the nihilist mentality. It is life-negation in its purest,
most honest form. Nothingness is no longer cloaked with a metaphysical
garb and called God, Heaven, brahman, or the Ding an sich; instead,
nothingness is explicitly and transparently aimed for.24 As with all such
life-negation, this longing for nothingness is a consequence of the weariness
and irritability of dcadence. And in spreading the doctrine of a good life
geared toward non-existence, or death, the Buddha shows he is committed
to the dcadent program of revenge against life. Ressentiment2 is what
animates him.
22
23
24
Of course the revaluation of the so-called master morals, which in the Judeo-Christian context
accompanied this metaphysical development, also brought the more conscious, intentional ressentiment1 into play (see, on this point, GM i), but this should not prevent us from distinguishing
ressentiment1 from ressentiment2.
As I explained in Chapter 1, the wahre Welt is arrived at through a pure and simple contradiction of
the actual world. As such, it is a grand nothing.
Discussing the dcadents perennial desire for unio mystica, Nietzsche explains that it has really always
been the desire of the Buddhist for nothingness, nirvna and nothing more! (GM i 6).
60
Nietzsche knew that the starting point for the good life in Buddhism is
the realization that suffering is intrinsic to life. And, as I explain in
Chapter 1, on this point he agrees with the Buddha. Living without suffering is a contradiction in terms, and to realize this is an essential step in any
coherent response to the challenge of nihilism. As a post-theistic ethics,
Buddhist ethics focuses on the very real phenomenon of suffering, on the
psychology that underpins it, on appropriate responses to it, and so on. And
while Nietzsche believes that Buddhisms focus on suffering, in and of itself,
was quite apropos (not to mention refreshingly realistic and sober, in
comparison to Christian morals), he nevertheless feels that Buddhisms
attitude toward suffering is fundamentally unhealthy. As such, the great
health envisioned by the Buddha is actually a state of great illness.
On Nietzsches diagnosis, Buddhist ethics comports two fundamental
features, both of which exhibit an unhealthy, typically dcadent stance
toward suffering. The Buddhist ideal of nirvna concerns ones own
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
61
(and only if) desire is brought to cessation; (4) a prescription outlining what
must be done in order to heal, i.e. to bring desire to an end, and with it
suffering itself. It follows from (2) and (3) that the state of nirvna, which (in
absence of
psychological rather than cosmological terms) involves the total
suffering, can only be brought about through the destruction of desire. If
step (1) relates closely to dcadent life-negation, then, steps (2) to (4) relate to
its practical corollary, namely self-negation.
Concerning step (1), it is important to see that the Buddhist desire to
end suffering is already an expression of the Buddhist types fundamental
dcadence. As an irritable dcadent, the Buddhist suffers from an excessive
susceptibility to suffering.28 His weariness is such that he cannot
but experience resistance not to say contact in general as painful.
Nietzsche, in this connection, speaks of the dcadents instinctive hatred
of reality, which is a consequence of an extreme capacity for suffering and
excitement which no longer wants any contact because it feels every contact
too deeply.29 The consequence is the fundamental hedonism implicit in
any form of dcadent ight from suffering30 and made explicit in Buddhism
which, with its ethics, elevates the hedonism of the weary into the
highest measure of value.31 It is as a dcadent hedonist, then, that the
Buddhist construes suffering as a problem to begin with and seeks to attain
a state of painlessness. Nietzsche explains: The only pleasure which anyone
will still feel in the condition of exhaustion [i.e. dcadence] is falling
asleep . . . The exhausted want rest, relaxation, peace, calm this is the
happiness of the nihilistic religions and philosophies.32 In this sense, the
Buddhist quest for the painlessness of nirvna remains, like practically all
28
32
30
33
62
the Russian fatalist34 who lies down in the snow and allows his instinct to
freeze, as it were, so as to expend as little of the scarce energy he has left. The
ght against desires, passions, and instincts found in Buddhism is a natural,
not to say instinctive, response typical of dcadence.35 The dcadents suffer
continually because of their extreme weariness; their energy levels are so
low, so to speak, that any form of contact, any encountering of resistance, is
experienced as painful. It follows that terminating suffering involves removing the very conditions for entering into conictory (and thus by denition
painful) contact with people, things, and situations. Rid of desire, will,
ambition, determination, vision, aspiration, hope, etc., Buddhists lie
down in the snow and allow themselves to go numb. Without desire,
there is no struggle, no resisting and resistance, no disappointment. In
short, there is no suffering. Free of desire, the dcadent Buddhists put up
no resistance. Frozen in the snow of passionlessness, they enter the deepest
sleep36 of nirvna.
This ideal of destroying desire in order to bring suffering to cessation
falls squarely within the framework of what Nietzsche calls unselving morals
(Entselbstungsmoral). Unselving is the essence of life-negating ethics.37 The
ethics of unselving involves a battle against ones passions, instincts, and
desires against ones very will, in short.38 As such, unselving is life-negation
in its most concrete articulation, i.e. as self-negation. Will, desire, passion, the
instincts of growth and expansion, etc. these are what are most fundamental to the human being. Living implies willing.39 Consequently, ghting ones will is tantamount to ghting ones own vitality. It is life-negation
through self-negation. In the Buddhists case, it is thus the praxis of
unselving that delivers the stated goal of ending suffering. Through selfnegation the destruction of desire Buddhists attain their fundamentally
life-negating goal the cessation of suffering. Of course, in applying the
method of unselving to numb dcadents in this way, the Buddha is, once
more, elevating the idiosyncrasy of the dcadents into an imperative.40 He
is delivering to the weary their happiness, i.e. painlessness, by encouraging
34
35
36
38
39
40
See EH Warum ich so weise bin 6 for Nietzsches rapprochement between Russian fatalism and
the Buddhas medicine.
See, in this connection, GD ii 11: To have to ght the instincts that is the formula of
dcadence.
GM iii 17. 37 EH Warum ich so weise bin 6.
Ibid. Warum ich solche gute Bcher schreibe M 2; ibid. Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 7; and
GD v 1.
JGB 259. See also ibid. 13. Nietzsches views on the primacy of willing in human psychology and on
the will to power more generally will receive a detailed discussion in Chapter 3.
EH Warum ich so weise bin 6.
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
63
them to put their instincts and passions to sleep, to become numb and offer
no resistance in short, to unselve themselves. Thus is reached the great
sleep, the nothingness, the anti-life, of nirvna.
See, in this connection, EH Warum ich solche gute Bcher schreibe M 2 and ibid. Warum ich ein
Schicksal bin 8.
A 20. 43 Ibid.
64
wearier.
The dcadence at the heart of Buddhism is also disclosed in the second
major feature of its ethics. When it comes to the suffering of others,
Buddhism prescribes the cultivation of compassion. Nietzsche had
not failed to notice how important compassion, equanimity, and altruism
are to the Buddhist path. He sees a profound connection between
Buddhism and compassion in particular.44 And indeed, if Buddhists
espouse the quintessentially unhealthy attitude to their own suffering
i.e. the desire to end it it makes perfect sense that they should also adopt
the quintessentially unhealthy attitude to the others suffering i.e.
compassion.
Why does Nietzsche think compassion is so unhealthy? At the most
supercial level of analysis, we nd Nietzsches simple claim that the
glorication of compassion found in Buddhism exhibits a deadly
hatred for all suffering in general.45 The Buddhist dreads suffering. This
dread extends beyond self-concern into a refusal to accept the others
suffering as well. Of course, since suffering is of the essence of life so
that a hatred of suffering is really tantamount to a hatred of life
Buddhists cultivation of compassion is really just an extension of their
underlying life-negation.46
44
45
46
Nietzsche makes frequent reference to the preeminence of compassion in European moral discourse
as a Buddhistic pre-movement. NL 18871888, 9(126). See also ibid. 18851887, 9(126), GM
Vorrede 5, and JGB 202. Nietzsches views on compassion will be discussed in detail in
Chapter 5. In the present context, my concern is with his views on compassion as they relate to his
views on Buddhist ethics.
JGB 202.
See, in this connection, NL 18881889, 15(13), where compassion is described as a form of lifenegation.
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
65
But there is also a close connection between compassion and selfnegation. Nietzsche, in this connection, claims that compassion involves
self-hatred,47 even mortication of self.48 Behind such hyperboles lies the
soberer view that compassion is part of the program of unselving. Fighting
self-concerned instincts and passions and destroying desire, as the Buddhists
do, is what turns a person into a meek, discreet, unassuming, and compassionate pushover. Devoid of desire, Buddhist types put up no resistance and
avoid all possibilities of conict; full of compassion, they look out for others,
are forever sensitive to the ways in which they may harm them or be in
their way, share their worries and their concerns, and so on. It is through the
self-negation of unselving that they cultivate compassion.
This ethical program follows from the very same sources which also
produce suffering as a problem and its elimination as a desideratum.
Commenting on the physiology of dcadence, Nietzsche explains:
The instinctive exclusion of any antipathy, any hostility, any boundaries or divisions in
mans feelings: the consequence of an extreme capacity for suffering and excitement
which experiences any resistance, even any compulsion to resist, as unendurable
displeasure . . . and nds blessedness (pleasure) only in no longer offering any
resistance to anybody, neither to evil nor to him who is evil . . . The fear of pain,
even of innitely minute pain that can end in no other way than in a religion of
love.49
It turns out, then, that the rise of compassion, which is a key virtue in any
religion of love,50 is not just an unavoidable outcome of unselving. It is
instrumental to the dcadents goal of reducing the risk of interpersonal
conict to nil. As such, the Buddhist injunction to cultivate compassion is,
once more, a mere expression of the idiosyncrasy of dcadents.51
In a similar vein, Nietzsche also attributes to dcadents a spontaneous
propensity to suffer in the face of the others suffering. This results from
their inability to resist stimuli.52 As a result, placing compassion on a
pedestal, as the Buddhists do, is little more than parading [ones weakness]
as ones virtue a true masquerade, in Nietzsches opinion.53 The idea
here is that compassion is actually a very common sentiment, which reects
little more than the irritable dcadents inability not to suffer in the face of
another persons suffering.
47
50
51
52
66
Part of Nietzsches idea, in this connection, is that compassion is intrinsically enfeebling. Compassion implies being hurt, damaged, or injured by
the others suffering. Nietzsche explains:
Compassion stands in opposition to the tonic emotions which enhance the energy
of the feeling of life: it has a depressive effect. One loses force when one pities . . .
Compassion is the practice of nihilism . . . Compassion persuades to nothingness!54
A 7.
As Purushottama writes, Nietzsches evaluation of Buddhism as nihilistic and spiritually enervating grew in proportion to his rejection of Schopenhauers pessimism (Nietzsche as Europes
Buddha, p. 361).
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
67
Buddhism. As a result, it had a considerable impact on the way he positioned himself vis--vis his Indian counterpart. Throwing light on
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha thus requires a close examination of
Schopenhauers thought.
To Nietzsches eyes, Schopenhauers thinking is a clear and unmistakable
case of history repeating itself. In Schopenhauers thought, the European
nihilist crisis delivers a laying bare of the life-negation at the heart of the
nihilist mentality and of the metaphysics it had spawned over the course of
Europes history since Roman times. The result, as in India more than two
millennia earlier, is an ethics at the heart of which lies an undisguised will to
nothingness. Schopenhauer, in short, is to Europe what the Buddha had
been to India. His ethics is the result of a passive nihilism which cannot but
aim for non-being once Being is revealed to be a ction.56
But is Schopenhauers Will (essentially a spiced-up version of Kants thingin-itself) not a version of the myth of Being? Is it not a form of wahre Welt
standing opposed to the merely apparent world of representations
(Vorstellung)? If so, then Schopenhauer, unlike the Buddha, has not moved
beyond the nihilist mentalitys most potent myth. How, then, can his ethics
be the result of passive nihilism? Is it not the case that passive nihilism can only
take hold once the inebriating ctions of the nihilist mentality have begun
subsiding, leading to a value withdrawal of sorts? How could this withdrawal
have affected Schopenhauer, if his Will is a version of the ction of Being?
More generally, it seems surprising to see Nietzsche establishing a parallel
between the Buddha who had, as he knew quite well, rejected metaphysical
thinking and Schopenhauer a metaphysician if ever there was one.
Nietzsches view, however, concerns Schopenhauers system as an event
in the history of ideas, not just as a set of ideas. If his focus and interest
were on Schopenhauers ideas in and of themselves, the problems raised
above would be fatal to the BuddhismSchopenhauer rapprochement so
central to Nietzsches positive thinking. However, in so far as Nietzsche is
interested in the larger trends at work in what may be called the history of
nihilism, this rapprochement is not affected by the form metaphysical vs.
positivist transparently life-negating thinking takes in the midst of
nihilist crises.
Though Schopenhauer is a metaphysician, to Nietzsches eyes he is also
one of the seminal European gures responsible for killing God, and with
him much of the fanciful nihilistic thinking that had held sway over Europe
for so long. Certainly, the doctrine of the world as Will is a traditional
56
68
58
59
61
In the preface to WWV i , Schopenhauer describes the work of Kant as the most important
phenomenon to have appeared in philosophy for two thousand years (p. xv), though it transpires
in the appendix of this work that the only thing Schopenhauer is really impressed with in Kants
philosophy is his doctrine of transcendental idealism. Schopenhauer, in this connection, refers to the
transcendental ideality of time and space as a proved and incontestable truth (WWV i, Anhang:
Kritik der kantischen Philosophie, pp. 4967; see also FM 22).
See the introduction to the 1847 edition of WSG, especially 8. Schopenhauers argument is
analytical. Since (1) everything happens for a reason and (2) even if something uncaused were to
exist, it in turn could not cause anything, the very notion of a causa sui acting as prime mover is
incoherent.
On this point, see FW 357. 60 See WWV i 29.
This is a point Schopenhauer forcefully makes throughout FmW.
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
69
ephemeral goals with the same compulsion as that with which a plate is
pulled to the ground after being knocked off a table.
This is underscored by what I call Schopenhauers empirical materialism,62 which led him to adopt a strict naturalist physicalism when it comes
to the mindbody problem. As phenomenon, everything in the world is
matter through and through.63 As in Buddhism and Nietzsches thought,
there is no immaterial soul, no I.64 Consciousness, for its part, is a purely
physical phenomenon; it is the result of the brains activity.65 Atheism,
determinism, naturalism, and physicalism these are all positions Nietzsche
also endorsed.
Nietzsche never ceased admiring Schopenhauer for these views. In some
late passages, we nd him praising Schopenhauers honesty: Schopenhauer,
he writes, is the rst to have reminded us that we are little more than beasts
and that, fundamentally, we are something stupid.66 He taught, long
before Darwin . . . the doctrine of milieu and adaptation, going so far
perhaps even too far for Nietzsche as to reduce human will to reexes which
operate with the harsh rigidity of the mechanistic process.67 Nietzsche, in
this context, rightly speaks of Schopenhauers naturalisme.68 In short, he
considered Schopenhauer to be one of those formidable characters who
62
63
64
65
66
68
Schopenhauers claim is that, as spatiotemporal phenomena, all things are material. This is because
matter is the objective correlate of what he calls the subjective form of the understanding, namely
causality (WWV i , 4). The forms of sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) in Schopenhauers epistemology are
space and time, as they are for Kant. But Schopenhauer dispenses with Kants complex analysis of the
understanding (Verstand), leaving only causality as its form. What understanding does, when
perception occurs, is that it brings space and time together in the form of the material object, which
is thereby inferred as the cause of perception (see WWV i 4 and his early treatise on vision, SF,
especially 1). Perceptibility and materiality thus imply each other: Every object, Schopenhauer
declares, is matter as phenomenon (WWV ii xxiv, p. 349). It is appropriate, then, to speak of
Schopenhauers empirical materialism in the same way as Kant spoke of his empirical realism in
contrast to his transcendental idealism. In Schopenhauers case, of course, empirical materialism is
tempered by a robust transcendental immaterialism ( la Berkeley), namely the world as Will.
WWV ii xxiv, p. 349.
Schopenhauer forcefully rejects the I, or . . . its transcendent hypostasis called soul as an
extremely old and universal fundamental error (WWV ii xviii, p. 222).
For Schopenhauers naturalist epistemology, based exclusively on the subjects brain and nervous
system, see WWV ii i.
NL 18871888, 9(178). 67 Ibid.
Ibid. Nietzsches naturalist interpretation of Schopenhauer runs against the grain of the interpretation favored by a number of contemporary Schopenhauer scholars, namely, D. Hamlyn,
Schopenhauer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), Berman, Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche, J. Young, Schopenhauer (London: Routledge, 2005), and R. Wicks, Schopenhauer
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2008). All of these scholars defend some version or another of what I call the
animist interpretation, which holds that Schopenhauers doctrine is that a singular, immaterial World
Soul stands behind all phenomena. Nietzsches view is far closer to that of Janaway, who notes that
in attempting to subsume human action within a wider account of striving and active forces,
[Schopenhauers] aspiration is as much to naturalize humanity as it is to humanize nature.
70
69
70
72
73
74
C. Janaway, Self and World in Schopenhauers Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 203;
see also B. OShaughnessy, The Will: A Double Aspect Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1980),
p. xxv. Nietzsche would perhaps go even further than this and claim that in making all of nature the
expression of the same basic dynamic principle, Schopenhauer was more than anything naturalizing
humans.
Of course, this overtly contradicts Kant, who wrote: Never may the smallest thing be asserted of the
thing-in-itself which underlies these phenomena (KrV A49/B66). But Schopenhauer was happy to
bite this bullet (see the Appendix to WWV i ).
WWV i 23. 71 Ibid. 19f.
Indeed, like any metaphysician (on Nietzsches model), Schopenhauer infers the properties of his
wahre Welt through a contradiction of the properties of this world. If everything in this world happens
for a reason (on this key point, see Schopenhauers WSG), the Will is on the contrary entirely
groundless (WWV i 29).
At WWV i 23, Schopenhauer explains that the sentient subjects will is but a species of the
metaphysical Will qua genus. Unlike the former, the latter presupposes neither consciousness,
intention, nor goal-directedness. It should be noted that on Schopenhauers account, unconscious
activities such as digestion or the beating of the heart are instances of willing. Even as it relates to the
subject and her body, then, Schopenhauers understanding of willing is markedly different from what
is normally understood by the term.
WWV i 57.
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
71
72
realism.81 The common person thinks of the world as a set of objects and of
his own person as a real, independent entity distinct from other things. It is
on the basis of this pre-reective standpoint that all creatures in the world
exhibit a fundamental egoism82 and that the unitary Will appears to express
itself in manifold desires and goals.
However, in so far as the illusion of the principium individuationis
dissipates, individuals become less and less self-centered and increasingly
concerned with others. In this connection, Schopenhauer argues that the
two pillars of morality justice (not harming) and benevolence (actually
helping) are grounded in a deeply metaphysical phenomenon, namely
compassion.83 Compassion involves seeing through the illusory veil of
plurality and recognizing that we are all just one. Justice and non-harming
form the rst stage in this process one refrains from committing injustice
because the difference between self and other is starting to fade. Active
benevolence is the next one desires to help others and relieve them of their
sorrow as one moves closer to the realization that self and other are really
one. The conception that abolishes the difference between ego and nonego . . . described by the Hindus as my, i.e. illusion, deception, phantasm,
mirage, Schopenhauer writes, is directly related to the metaphysical basis
of ethics, which consists in one individual once more recognizing in
another his own self.84 Compassion, then, is the practical correlate of
metaphysical monism.
Virtuous behavior, however, is only the rst stage. Indeed, the compassion of the person who has pierced the veil of my actually gives way to
complete self-abnegation.85 This happens when the compassionate person
becomes so utterly disillusioned with the Will and its groundless cruelty
that he nally decides to chastise it in and through his own person.86 If
ethical behavior is already counter-natural egoism and the principium,
after all, comprise the sole natural standpoint it is only a weak shadow of
what happens to the compassionate sage who fully appreciates the illusory
nature of individuation and fully turns against his own nature. Full world
destruction then becomes his goal.
81
82
83
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
73
The truly radical nature of Schopenhauers vision now comes to the fore.
Sexuality, as the most essential feature of the will of sentient beings,87 is the
rst target of asceticism. Indeed, the ascetic looks beyond his own limited
existence and sees that the eradication of the Will and the destruction of
nature requires putting an end to the regeneration of the species.88
Schopenhauers suggestion, in a passage such as WWV i 68, that animals
would stop reproducing if humans did, is far from convincing as is his
reliance on idealism to show that nothing would survive the death of the last
subject but at least it has the virtue of making his view very clear. The
ascetic saint, through celibacy, embarks on a mission to destroy the entire
world.
But this is only the rst step. Celibacy and desirelessness are quickly
followed by the quest for shame and injury, closely followed by active
self-destruction.89 In this way, the ascetic eventually attains a level of
complete willlessness. Everything natural about him has been destroyed.
His will is entirely quieted. He attains complete sanctication and
salvation, whose phenomena are the state of resignation previously
described, the unshakable peace accompanying this, and the highest joy
and delight in death.90 This is the result of the most advanced denial of
the will.
In sum, Schopenhauers ethics is based on an attendant mystical ability to
see through the web of appearance and on a mystical motive, namely
compassion. Such compassion leads the virtuous man from justice to
asceticism. Ultimately, Schopenhauers salvation (Erlsung) consists in the
complete inverse of natural health. If nature and world are Will to life,
then Schopenhauers salvation, precisely, is the complete negation of self
and world. Schopenhauers ethical ideal, in short, is a counter-health, a
saintly sickness.
Most fundamentally, the metaphysics behind Schopenhauers ethics
is of relative indifference to Nietzsche. The real problem, for him, is
Schopenhauers jump from the merely descriptive claims that humans
are animals, that the world is full of suffering, that struggle is an essential
feature of existence, etc., to the normative claim that non-existence is
preferable to existence and therefore ought to be aimed at through active
self- and life-negation. It is in doing this in shifting directly from
God to nihil as the goal of the good life that Schopenhauers
87
88
See, in this connection, Schopenhauers comments on the primacy of the sexual impulse at WWV ii
xliv.
WWV i 68. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid.
74
92
94
As Droit writes, Schopenhauer transfers unto Buddhism a form of fascinated enthrallment born with
the century with regard to Brahmanism (Loubli de lInde, p. 182). For a full list of Schopenhauers
Indological and Buddhological sources, see the appendix to M. Nicholls, The Inuence of Eastern
Thought on Schopenhauers Doctrine of the Thing-in-Itself, in C. Janaway (ed.),The Cambridge
Companion to Schopenhauer (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
WWV ii xvii, p.186. 93 PP ii 114.
WW ii xliv, p. 640. Schopenhauer also attempts to clarify his denition of the Will in terms of the
relation between denial of the will and nirvna: We can only describe it [i.e. the Will] as that which
has the freedom to be the Will to live, or not to be it. For the latter case, Buddhism describes it with
the word nirvna (ibid.).
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
75
96
97
101
WWV ii xliv, p. 623: In truth it is not Judaism with its all is good, but Brahmanism and
Buddhism that . . . are akin to Christianity . . . By virtue of its origins, Christianity belongs to the
ancient, true, and sublime faiths of mankind. This stands in contrast to the false, shallow, and
pernicious optimism that manifest itself in Greek paganism, Judaism and Islam.
The phrase Indomania was coined by R. Grard in his LOrient et la pense romantique allemande
(Nancy: Thomas, 1963). On the German Romantic enthrallment with India which provides the
background for Schopenhauers engagement with Indian religions, see also Halbfass, India and
Europe, A. L. Willson, A Mythical Image: The Ideal of India in German Romanticism (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1964), and Schwab, La Renaissance orientale.
98
99
WWV ii xliv, p. 623.
Ibid., p. 633.
Ibid., p. 628. 100 WWV ii l, p. 698.
GM i 6. 102 Ibid. iii 17.
76
rehashed version of Schopenhauers philosophy of religion. More importantly, Nietzsches idea that something like Buddhism (in this case
Schopenhauers thought itself) is what takes the place of Christianity once
its theistic optimistic garb as been cast away is precisely Schopenhauers
position.
Of course, Nietzsche turns the tables on Schopenhauer. If Schopenhauer
showered merit on himself for seeing eye to eye with the Buddha when it
comes to the denial of the will,103 Nietzsche accuses Schopenhauer of
remaining caught in moralistic, life-negating thinking even after he has
seen through so many of Christianitys ctions. For Nietzsche, being to
Europe what the Buddha had been to India is no ground for praise on
the contrary. And of course Nietzsche also innovates. He attributes lifenegation to dcadence and ressentiment and records its impact far beyond the
realm of religion, into the far wider domain of metaphysics of Being
in general. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the source for the
SchopenhauerBuddhism rapprochement so central to Nietzsches assessment of Buddhism is Schopenhauers philosophy itself. It is on the basis
of Schopenhauers own self-understanding that Nietzsche interprets
Christianity, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Schopenhauers philosophy as
expressions of the same will to nothingness.104 And it is on this basis that he
sees the Buddhas and Schopenhauers ethics as two cases of the same
passive nihilism.
More specically, Nietzsche sees Buddhist philosophy and Schopenhauers
thought as two forms of the same type of pessimism, namely the pessimism
of the weak.105 This is the pessimism that goes beyond the merely descriptive claim that living implies suffering and draws the normative implications
that it is undesirable to live and desirable to die. Nietzsche certainly believed
that the Buddhist form of such pessimism is far more mature that
Schopenhauers European variety.106 Not only is Buddhism beyond metaphysics, it is also more dignied and sober when it comes to concrete ethics.
It does not recommend such extreme self-mortication as Schopenhauers
ethics does.107 It does not give in to explicit self-hatred and active guilt.
103
104
107
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
77
78
111
113
114
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
79
Another text to consider in this connection is the following passage from GD:
History of an error
1. The true world, attainable to the wise, the pious, the virtuous he dwells in it, he
is it.
(Oldest form of the idea, relatively sound, simple, convincing. Transcription
of the statement I, Plato, am the truth.)
116
118
119
120
FW 357 and GM iii 25. This point was also discussed in Chapter 1. 117 See GM iii 245.
It is Nietzsche who coined the now common phrase free spirit. On the gure of the free spirit as an
anti-Christian visionary, see MM ii 186, M 201, FW 343, and GD iv. The great honesty
(Redlichkeit) and pitiless truthfulness of the free spirit is highlighted at JGB 230, in particular.
The idea that nihilism qua crisis might present an opportunity is very explicitly stated in certain
passages e.g. FW 346 and FN, 18851887, 2(45) where it is viewed as an opportunity to seek new
values and to come to the realization that this world, and human existence more generally, might be
far more valuable than formerly thought.
FW 343.
80
2. The true world, unattainable for the moment, but promised to the wise, the
pious, the virtuous (to the sinner who repents).
(Progress of the idea: it becomes subtler, more enticing, more incomprehensible it becomes a lady, it becomes Christian . . .)
3. The true world, unattainable, improvable, cannot be promised, but still just
thought of as a consolation, a duty, an imperative.
(The same old sun, fundamentally, but shining through mist and skepticism;
the idea grown sublime, pale, northerly, Knigsbergian.)
4. The true world unattainable? Unattained in any case. And since unattained
also unknown. Therefore also not consoling, not redeeming, not binding: how
could something unknown provide us with a duty?
(Grey morning. First yawns of reason. Cockcrow of positivism.)
5. The true world an idea no longer of any use, not even a duty any more an
idea which has become useless, superuous, therefore a refuted idea: let us
destroy it!
(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato blushes out
of shame; all free spirits run riot.)
6. We have abolished the true world: what world remains? Maybe the apparent
world? . . . But no! with the true world we have also destroyed the apparent world!
(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; zenith of
mankind . . .)121
Here, Nietzsche takes us through the various stages of the wahre Welts
history in the West from the Platonic notion of Being, or the Good, via
Christian theology and Kantian metaphysics, to the nihilism of godlessness.
What is notable about this passage is the cheerfulness involved in the end
of the longest error. Here, the nihilism associated with the end of the error
of the wahre Welt is not a dark cloud that casts the shadow of meaninglessness over the world, but the bright sun that washes away the haze
of theistic lies and opens up new horizons. Nihilism as the lack of any
absolute values after the death of God is barely even a crisis here. It is a
merry, sun-lit breakfast after a long night of confusion.
By paying attention only to passages suggesting that an underlying, archdcadent pessimism of the weak is responsible for the death of God, one fails
to distinguish between nihilism as mentality, nihilism as event, and nihilism
as response to the nihilist crisis.122 In reality, the death of God that provokes
121
122
GD iv.
This seems to be a problem for both Deleuze and Williams (see Deleuze, Nietzsche, p. 170, and
Williams, Introduction, p. xiii). Heidegger gets it wrong the other way around, as it were. He reads
Nietzsches texts on the European nihilist crisis (WM 2f.) the crisis of meaninglessness attendant
upon Gods death as texts about nihilism in general, and thus about the entire history of human
thought (Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. ii, pp. 6371). As a result, he nds himself making the awkward
claim that nihilist wahre Welt metaphysics was somehow born of a sense of aimlessness, valuelessness,
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
81
the nihilist crisis is not only the work of reactive weak pessimists in too
advanced a state of decline to continue to uphold higher values, it is also the
work of healthy free spirits who actively wield Christian truthfulness for
creative purposes.
It is important, in this connection, to highlight the intimate connection
between the arch-Christian lie-denouncing truthfulness that kills God and
dcadence. Indeed, the death of God consists in the self-overcoming of
dcadence. This opens up two major possible scenarios:123 the death of
God may be an instance of dcadence overcoming one of its embodiments
to make way for a yet more pernicious form of dcadence (i.e. European
Buddhism), or it may give rise to a full overcoming of dcadence. The rst
scenario is what had taken place in India. Nietzsches wish was that things
would happen differently this time around in Europe.
Herein lies the hope, the promise, the opportunity in the nihilist crisis.
On Nietzsches horizon is a process of healing which attacks the illness of
dcadence at its root. In the clarity of full daylight, he begins to envision a
state of great health fundamentally opposed to the Buddhas, free of any
residual attachment to the ctions of Good and evil. Nietzsche writes:
Anyone who for a long time has struggled, as I have, with a mysterious desire to
think down to the depths of pessimism and redeem it from the half-Christian, halfGerman narrowness and plainness with which it has most recently been expressed,
namely in the form of Schopenhauerian philosophy; anyone who has truly looked
with an Asiatic and trans-Asiatic eye into and underneath the most worlddenying of all possible ways of thinking (beyond good and evil and no longer
helplessly under the spell and delusion of morality, like the Buddha and
Schopenhauer) this person may, without really intending it, have opened his
eyes to the inverse ideal: to the ideal of the most daring, lively, and world-afrming
human being.124
123
and meaninglessness similar to that which Europe faces after the death of God. As such, Heidegger
entirely misses Nietzsches fundamental insight that the wahre Welt is rst and foremost a product of
ressentiment against existence. It is not just that the dcadent nihilists failed to nd meaning and
purpose in the world, but that their weaknesses prevented them from doing so and that, as a result,
they could not but feel anger, resentment, and rancor against existence. Next to this, it is a relatively
minor shortcoming of Heideggers that he fails to see that the crisis of valuelessness only arises after
God dies.
Cf. Chapter 3, where I discuss a third scenario. 124 JGB 56.
82
125
126
127
128
NL 18881889, 14(25). See also GT Versuch einer Selbstkritik 1 and NL 18851887, 10(21).
Pessimism of strength, Nietzsche even tells us, nds senseless suffering the most interesting (NL
18851887, 10(21)).
NL 18871888, 9(35). On this point, see also Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, pp. 22f.
NL 18821884, 4(2).
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
83
129
130
131
132
It is no surprise, then, to nd Russell pitting Nietzsche against the Buddha in connection to ethics
(History of Western Philosophy , pp. 7379). In fact, Russell puts his nger on precisely the two topics I
will discuss here, namely Nietzsches and the Buddhas antithetical attitudes toward suffering and
toward compassion.
On the contrary, from a healthy perspective, suffering is not a problem, but an opportunity (GD i
8). This is a point I will explore in far greater detail in the next chapter. More generally, everything
that will follow on the topic of amor fati is only background. Chapter 3 consists in a detailed
discussion of the afrmation of suffering in amor fati. Likewise, the cursory discussion on the
overcoming of compassion below is only a preamble for the more detailed analyses of Chapter 5. The
goal, for now, is to show how Nietzsches ethics of life-afrmation is the mirror image of (alleged)
Buddhist life-negation.
NL 18871888, 10(190). For further comments on the relation between dcadence and hedonism, see
A 30.
See NL 18871888, 11(76) and (77).
84
for amor fati is motivated by a life-afrming will to suffer naturally expressive of the strength of ascendance.133 This nds its clearest articulation in the
test of eternal recurrence:
The heaviest weight What if some day or night a demon were to slip into your
loneliest loneliness and said to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it,
you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be
nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and
everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the
same succession and sequence, even this spider and this moonlight between the
trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is
turned over again and again and you with it, you speck of dust! Would you not
throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?
Or have you once experienced a terric moment when you would have answered
him: You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine. If this thought
gained power over you, it would, as you are, transform and perhaps crush you; the
question on everything, Do you want this once more and innumerable times
again? would lie on your behavior as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed
would you have to become to yourself and to life to desire nothing more fervently
than this ultimate eternal conrmation and seal?134
Nietzschean healthy types are those who would be strong enough to bear
this heaviest of weights. Their life-afrmation is such that they would
desire all of existence with all of its suffering to repeat innitely. Amor fati
thus consists in embracing the eternal recurrence of the worlds limitless
suffering. It is the very opposite of the Buddhists painless state of nirvna.135
Amor fatis role as an anti-nirvna is even more obvious from the
a implies nal liberation from the
cosmological perspective. While nirvn
the full circle of ones pain-ridden life over and over again indenitely.136
133
134
135
136
On the contrast between Nietzsches and the Buddhas attitudes to suffering, see also S. M. Amadea,
Nietzsches Thirst for India: Schopenhauerian, Brahmanist, and Buddhist Accents in Reections on
Truth, the Ascetic Ideal, and the Eternal Return, Idealistic Studies 34(3), 2004: 23962, at pp. 240
and 2567.
FW 341. The connection between the test of eternal recurrence and amor fati is made obvious in
such passages as EH Warum ich so klug bin 10: My formula for human greatness is amor fati:
that one wants nothing different, not forward, backward, not in all eternity; not merely bear what is
necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.
Indeed, when Nietzsche rst speaks of his inverse Anti-Buddhist ideal at JGB 56, he speaks of the
ideal of the most daring, lively, and world-afrming human being, one who has learned not only to
accept and bear what has been and is, but who also wants to have it over again, just as it was and as it is,
throughout all eternity, calling out insatiably da capo [from the beginning]. It is obvious that
Nietzsche is alluding to amor fati and its embracing of eternal recurrence here.
Whether eternal recurrence in Nietzsches thought is actually supposed to be cosmological is not a
question I need to answer in the present context. In my opinion, Nietzsche has no cosmological view.
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
85
In short, by articulating his view of great health in terms of the Stoics amor
fati, Nietzsche selects an Ancient doctrine which perfectly suits his purposes
for propounding a counter-Buddhism. Nietzsches healthy types long for
the endless cycle of samsra, rather than its end in nirvna. In a sense, amor
137
137
138
139
But this is of no relevance for my immediate purposes. In the present context, what really matters is
(1) eternal recurrence as a test of strength and (2) the embracing of eternal recurrence in amor fati as
an anti-nirvna.
As Halbfass writes: [Nietzsches] own doctrine of eternal recurrence afrms what the Buddha
denies (India and Europe, p. 128).
Because Nietzsche seems committed to the deeply problematic view that only men can attain great
health an opinion he does not share with the Buddha I will use masculine forms alone when
discussing his ethics.
EH Warum ich so weise bin 4.
86
NL 18881889, 15(13).
It may be objected that I must be misrepresenting Nietzsches thought because, at bottom, Nietzsche
was in no way interested in upholding an ethical ideal. Indeed, is it not the case that there is
something dcadent in the very gesture of envisaging a state of great health? Is there not an implicit
saying no to the world as it is in saying that anything ought to be different? Should a coherent
active nihilism not be purely negative and critical? Should it not only destroy myths and ctitious
values, and abstain from putting any new ones forward? Should it not involve overcoming the very
need to overcome anything? The worry, in short, is that there is still a latent ressentiment against
reality in pitting an ought (great health) against an is (quasi-universal dcadence). Is there not
something moralistic and dcadent in diagnosing the illness of dcadence itself? It seems inevitable,
after all, that in any yes yes to eternal recurrence, to amor fati, to this world of turmoil and
contradiction there is an implicit no no to life-negation, to dcadence, to ressentiment. It is
important, however, to see that Nietzsches no is not pronounced from the standpoint of the
Transcendent, of Being, of pure Goodness, or of anything like this. It is a no pronounced from
within this world; a no which in and of itself posits no world transcendence, no overcoming of the
world, no negation of the world. Yet more importantly, it is a no that follows from a yes yes to life
and health, no to dcadence and death rather than a yes that follows from a no no to life, yes to
God. This is why active nihilism must go beyond the negative and still reactive domain of destroying
myths, idols, and false higher values. It must also embark upon the truly active, creative project of
forging new values and new ideals that are entirely immanent. It is for this reason that even the active
nihilism Nietzsche opposes to Buddhisms passive nihilism is only an intermediate pathological
state (NL 18851887, 9(35)). Nietzsche might reject all previous morals, but his thought is not devoid
of a distinctive ethics. Though he may believe very few people can actually heal themselves, he is
perfectly serious when he claims that treatment of the sick is one of the things that actually
deserves to be taken seriously in life (EH Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 8). Indeed, beyond
nihilism lies a new, life-afrming ethics geared toward a state in which one recovers from the malady
of dcadence. Such an ethics will invest this world of becoming, struggle, and pure immanence with
value, worth, and purpose. Unlike previous morals, this is not an ethics of absolute values and
categorical imperatives, but a path to great health.
Nietzsche as Anti-Buddha
87
beyond good and evil; unlike in the Buddhas (or Schopenhauers) case, no
underlying ressentiment against reality remains in his thinking. He is an AntiBuddha in that his ethics of life-afrmation stands diametrically opposed to
the Buddhas life-negating ethics; in that his vision of great health is the
mirror image of the Buddhas. To the Buddhas nirvna, Nietzsche opposes
compassion, Nietzsche opposes the overcoming of compassion. As AntiBuddha, in short, Nietzsche combats everything the Buddha stands for
the ght against desire, instinct, and passion, unselving, self- effacement and
negation, etc. by presenting an opposed ethics of unconditional life- and
self-afrmation. His (active) nihilism, his (strong) pessimism, and his ideal are
all the inverse of the Buddhas nihilism, pessimism, and ideal. Nietzsche
and the Buddha begin from the same nihilist ground, but head in opposite
directions from there. Nietzsche, in this way, is both the Buddha of Europe
and the antipode of his Indian counterpart.
part ii
Suffering
chapter 3
As the highest expression of great health, amor fati is the heart of Nietzsches
ethics of life-afrmation. And while there is much to gain from understanding
it as a deliberate anti-nirvna, this is by no means an exhaustive description of
I will proceed in the same way in Part III. Accordingly, Chapter 5 will be devoted to Nietzsches ideas
on compassion and its overcoming, while Chapter 6 will examine Buddhist views on compassion
before plunging into the comparative domain.
Janaway is thinking along the same lines when he writes that, in the context of Nietzsches philosophy,
to give suffering a meaning is to give life a meaning. C. Janaway, Beyond Selessness: Reading Nietzsches
Genealogy (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 239.
91
92
implies struggle, conict, disorder, unpredictability, destruction, impermanence, and decay, and that all these things are painful. Consequently, to get
to the bottom of life-afrmation let alone of its supreme expression in
amor fati it is necessary to get a rm grasp on what exactly it is Nietzsche
understands by suffering (other than that which characterizes life and
that which should be afrmed). By taking us to the heart of his philosophy, examining Nietzsches thoughts on suffering is the surest way to
comprehend amor fati in all of its dimensions.
Unfortunately, suffering is one of the hardest things in Nietzsches
philosophy to get a rm grasp on. In terms of slipperiness, it comes second
only to nihilism. Indeed, an attempt at reconstructing a theory of suffering on the basis of Nietzsches writing delivers a frustratingly contradictory
model. Indeed, when suffering is treated as an affect as one would assume
it should be what is arrived at is not a story with a few inconsistencies, but
two accounts, which are internally consistent, yet diametrically opposed.
What is most disquieting is that these two models happen to be opposed
precisely in relation to the most central concept of Nietzsches ethics,
namely that of health. I will provide a quick outline of each of these two
models.
On the rst of Nietzsches two accounts, the affect of suffering promotes
health. A good point of entry into this model is the (now proverbial)
aphorism which Nietzsche coins in GD: From lifes school of war What
does not kill me makes me stronger.3 Here we nd the general idea that
strength, or health, grows by facing adversity. In biology, this is the
principle behind vaccination, for instance. To begin with, however, we
ought to set the big idea aside for a moment and dwell on Nietzsches use of
the rst-person pronoun. This is no mere stylistic trick. On the contrary, it
is positively enlightening.
Nietzsche, it is important to remember, credits the excruciatingly painful
illness that aficted him throughout his writing career with making him
decisively stronger and healthier.4 More specically, it is what brought
[him] back to reason by allowing him to see through the follies of
Schopenhauerian pessimism5 and, more importantly yet, providing the
3
4
GD i 8.
NW Epilog 1: I owe a higher health to it [my illness], a health that becomes stronger from
everything that does not kill it! In reading passages such as this one, it is important to keep in mind
the distinction I drew in Chapter 1 between health as conventionally understood in the medical
sciences and the ethical concept of health on which Nietzsches positive philosophy hinges.
EH Warum ich so klug bin 2. See also MM ii Vorrede 5: It is a fundamental cure against all
pessimism . . . to become sick in the manner of these free spirits, to remain sick for quite a while, and
93
impetus for him to turn [his] will to health, to life, into philosophy.6
More generally, Nietzsche explains that it is his agonizing illness and the
deep suffering it caused him that afforded him some of the key psychological insights that form the background of his oeuvre.7 It is by experiencing
states of decline (dcadence) rst-hand and observing the effect of illness on
his mind and his behavior that Nietzsche became aware of the psychological
effects of dcadence and of the affects of ressentiment that follow from it in
short, of how the weak feel and think.8 This is what allowed him to gain
insight into what lies at the core of life-negation, to abandon this unhealthy
attitude to life, and to gain the higher health of life-afrmation. On
Nietzsches autobiography,9 then, suffering was a necessary condition for
becoming truly health instead of killing him, his illness made him
stronger.
Of course, the idea that suffering is an agent of health is by no means
limited to Nietzsches autobiographical comments. In fact, the oft-ignored
rst half of the GD aphorism from lifes school of war provides a good
clue as to where this theory of suffering originated. The phrase lifes school
of war is an unambiguous reference to Heraclitus. One of the few philosophers with whom Nietzsche felt any true afnity,10 Heraclitus was the rst
to teach that all things emerge from struggle, grow by facing adversity, and
6
7
10
then, slowly, slowly, to become healthy, by which I mean healthier, again. It goes without saying
that the pessimism he refers to here is pessimism of weakness (namely, Schopenhauers or the
Buddhas pessimism).
EH Warum ich so weise bin 2.
This is obvious from several passages in EH, though the idea is by no means expressed in Nietzsches
autobiography alone. For instance, there is a distinctly self-referential air to passages like FW
Vorrede 3, M 114, and JGB 270, where Nietzsche extols the heightened insight and sensibility of
the sufferer.
Nietzsche might be criticized for using the rather unreliable method of introspection to formulate
broad generalizations about human psychology. This is a valid point, though I think Nietzsche
should be judged on the basis of his results, so to speak, not of his method. In my opinion, there is
much to gain from positing dcadence as a widespread human condition and ressentiment as a
fundamental psychological mechanism, though the theory, like any other, also has its limitations.
Nietzsche denounces past philosophies as unconscious autobiographies which owe more to their
authors predispositions, physiologies, and (primarily moral) biases than to any genuine impersonal
insight (JGB 6). What is supposed to distinguish his own philosophy from that of his forebears is not
that it is not autobiographical, but that it is a conscious autobiography (Berman, Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche, p. 180). Even Nietzsches concern with the allure of Buddhism for a dcadent Europe
faced with the nihilist crisis is rooted in the attraction Buddhism exerted on him in the early years of
his illness, as his 1875 letter to Carl von Gersdorff attests (NB 18751879, 495) on this point, see also
Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, p. 15, and Amadea, Nietzsches Thirst for India, pp. 23941.
EH Warum ich so gute Bcher schreibe GT 3; see also GD iii 2. Heraclitus rst impressed
Nietzsche when he was a young philologist in Basle. This is clear from Nietzsches lectures from the
late 1860s and early 1870s (collected in VP), as well as from PtZG. In his lectures on pre-Platonic
philosophers, many important strands of Nietzsches later thought are anticipated in his treatment of
Heraclitus, especially his rejection of substance metaphysics.
94
eventually fade away in the great ery torrent of becoming in short, that
war is the father of all things.11 Heraclitus describes the cosmos as a re
ever-living, kindled in measures and in measures going out.12 The idea, as
Nietzsche understood it, is that everything arises and passes away; that the
universe is a dynamic process analogous to combustion rather than a static,
unmoving Whole. Permanence, Endurance, and Being, Heraclitus recognized, are little more than empty ction[s].13 This is the worldview that
underpins the GD aphorism. The world as Heraclitus understands it is a
torrent of struggle governed, as it were, by the law what does not kill you
makes you stronger.
However, what is most signicant about Heraclitus role in Nietzsches
development is not his thought, but his example. Heraclitus served as a
model for Nietzsche. And he serves as a model for him precisely in so far as
his case conrms Nietzsches law. Heraclitus suffered greatly, yet only
grew stronger from this ordeal. More specically, Heraclitus had the honesty and courage to recognize this world of brutality, sorrow, and contradiction for what it is, but he also had the strength not to condemn it as
unjust all the while.14 Like Anaximander before him, Heraclitus came to the
shocking realization that this world is one of turbulent becoming alone, and
yet, unlike Anaximander, he refused to condemn the world as guilty and
proclaimed its innocence instead.15 Going further yet, Heraclitus rises to
the occasion by translating his dread and horror before becoming into
brave joy.16 Anaximander condemned the passing away of all things as
unjust and this world of struggle and suffering as evil. He thus condemned
the world of becoming as a whole. Heraclitus, in contrast, not only accepts
it as it is, he even celebrates it as a beautiful, innocent play of the aeon.17
Instead of succumbing to life-negation in the face of the horrors of a
senseless world of becoming, Heraclitus emerges stronger from the ordeal
he adopts the fundamentally healthy attitude of life-afrmation.
In short, Heraclitus response to the existential vertigo caused by the
realization that pain, contradiction, and struggle are of the nature of life
provided Nietzsche with the very paradigm through which he came to
11
12
14
15
Fragment lxxxiii.a, in C. H. Khan (ed.), The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge University
Press, 1981). It is of no relevance to the present discussion that Classicists are now calling into question
whether any of Heraclitus aphorisms can be attributed to Heraclitus himself, rather than to the Stoics
in whose texts these fragments have been preserved. What matters is that Nietzsche attributed these
aphorisms to Heraclitus.
Fragment xxxvii.cd, in Khan, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. 13 GD iii 2.
On this point, see D. N. Lambrellis, Beyond the Moral Interpretation of the World: The World as
Play: Nietzsche and Heraclitus, Philosophical Inquiry 27(2), 2005: 21121.
PtZG 7. 16 Ibid. 5. 17 Ibid. See also VP 10.
95
understand great health. Heraclitus could not have attained the great health
of rejecting his predecessors life-condemnation in favor of life-celebration
without being subjected to the tremendous suffering caused by seeing the
world for what it is.18 What did not kill Heraclitus made him stronger.
Similarly, what did not kill Nietzsche also made him stronger.19 Heraclitus
case, in short, is the model for Nietzsches conception of a healthy attitude
to suffering, and thus to life.
It is precisely this Heraclitean feat of not just accepting, but afrming and
celebrating a horrible, unfair, and painful world, which is instantiated in Attic
tragedy. According to Nietzsches analysis of tragedy in GT, Dionysus qua
pain-ridden, tumultuous torrent of destruction and becoming Heraclitus
vision, in short20 is given an individuated, Apollonian form so that he may
be worshiped.21 In this way, this entire world of endless suffering can be
deied and afrmed. The sense of the tragic which is the hallmark of Classical
Greek culture is thus a Heraclitean trait. It takes the world and all its senseless
horrors at face value, but it steers away from an unhealthy, Anaximanderian
moral evaluation of it, and celebrates it instead as an aesthetic phenomenon.
Moreover, it is precisely in suffering the truth that the world is a torrent of
becoming and suffering in being courageously open to the profound
sorrows and turmoil of existence that the Greeks were given the opportunity
to transform their profound pain and dread into the great health of Dionysus
worship. The story is the same as Heraclitus or Nietzsches what did not kill
the Greeks made them stronger.
In sum, it is from Nietzsches early Classical studies that his Heraclitean
rule from lifes school of war emerged. What is more, his entire vision of
18
19
20
21
96
23
24
25
26
As Kaufmann writes, Nietzsche though he does not use exactly these expressions denes health
not as an accidental lack of infection but as the ability to overcome disease. Kaufmann, Nietzsche,
p. 131.
GD ix 38.
Brogan observes: Suffering, here, is the very force which underlies and makes possible the creative
act. W. A. Brogan, The Central Signicance of Suffering in Nietzsches Thought, International
Studies in Philosophy 20(1), 1988: 5362, at p. 57.
NL 18871888, 11(77).
97
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering, Nietzsche tells us, has given
rise to every enhancement in humanity so far,27 to wit: Every important
growth is accompanied by a terrible crumbling and passing away:
Suffering . . . belong[s] in the times of tremendous advances.28 The idea
is the same at the level of individuals. Danger, risk, and suffering are
essential for happiness and growth the path to ones own heaven leads
through the voluptuousness of ones own hell.29 Nietzsche presents a
poetic expression of the general principle that suffering qua resistance is a
necessary condition for any increase in life and health in Z: Where do the
highest mountains come from? I once asked, condes Zarathustra, then I
learnt that they come from the sea.30
Ultimately, Nietzsches conviction that health and life thrive on suffering, or are lured on by suffering, is grounded in an even more abstract
principle. The idea is that resistance is an essential ingredient for any action.
For Nietzsche, any genuine activity (as opposed to mere reactivity) requires
some form of resistance, or some obstacle to overcome.31 He illustrates the
idea with a few examples: The normal dissatisfaction of our drives, e.g. of
hunger, of the sexual drive, of the drive to motion . . . works as an agitation
of the feeling of life . . . This dissatisfaction . . . is the greatest stimulus of
life.32 Nietzsche, in this connection, is careful not to make pleasure and
pain plain opposites, claiming instead that they are false opposites.33
While pleasure indicates that an obstacle has successfully been overcome,
pain does not merely signal the presence of an obstacle, but corresponds
instead to the stimulation provided by the presence of an obstacle, of a
resistance to be overcome.34 Suffering, seen in this light, is enticing. It lures
27
28
29
30
31
32
34
98
the person on and acts as a necessary condition for the joy of overcoming an
obstacle. The great health of amor fati is itself an overcoming an overcoming of the limitless suffering involved in the very realization that this
world is full of suffering. As such, the joy it involves is also unparalleled.
It is precisely with the tragic feat of total life-afrmation in mind that
Nietzsche describes suffering not only as valuable, but as desirable.35 It is in
facing the supreme threat of complete despair before the dreadful nature of
existence and in being thus burdened with the greatest pains, turmoil, and
anguish that one can overcome the greatest of obstacles. The result is the
great health of amor fati the highest demonstration of strength there can
be. Suffering, seen in this light, is necessary and desirable.
A surprising corollary of this theory of suffering is that the healthiest and
strongest are precisely those who are most prone to suffering. The tragic
Greeks, Nietzsche tells us, were such extraordinary artists and dramatists
precisely because they were uniquely capable of the most exquisite and
heaviest suffering.36 Nietzsche would later present the idea more generally
with his claim that order of rank is almost determined by just how deeply a
person can suffer.37
Nietzsches healthy type, then, is by denition highly sensitive to suffering. This sensitivity might even bring him to the brink of despair and as
such it is potentially dangerous Nietzsche could have remained a pessimist, Heraclitus might have gone down Anaximanders path, the Greeks
could have embraced the life-negating wisdom of Silenus, etc.38 But without
this great danger, without this tremendous obstacle, higher health will not
be attained.
The healthiest are thus not only those who suffer the most deeply, but
those whose will to suffer is the greatest. What does not kill them makes
them stronger and healthier, and so they want to be exposed to what could
35
36
37
38
See Z iv Vom hheren Menschen 6, FW 338, NL 18871888, 10(118), and (103). On this point,
see also Janaway, Beyond Selessness, pp. 68 and 243.
GT 7. See also DW 2, where Nietzsche explains in connection to the Greeks that talent for
suffering, wisdom of suffering is the correlative of artistic talent. On this point, see A. Danto,
Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Macmillan, 2005), pp. 345.
JGB 270. See also NL 18871888, 10(118). It is interesting to note that in an early text Nietzsche
presented Schopenhauer in a similar light, claiming that it was the philosophers great capacity for
suffering and his ability courageously to accept the truth of the worlds horrors that made him the
great thinker he was (UB iii 3).
According to Aeschylus, Silenus was a wise demon, a companion of Dionysus. When forced to share
his wisdom with King Midas, he reveals himself to be a true prophet of life-negation: Miserable,
ephemeral race, children of chance and of hardship, he roars, why are you forcing me to tell you that
which it would be most protable for you not to hear? The best thing of all is entirely unreachable: not
to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is to die soon
(GT 3; see also DW 2).
99
very well kill them. It is in this sense that the great health of amor fati
involves not only accepting and embracing suffering, but also willing it. For
without great suffering, there is no great health.
What are we to do, then, with the second of Nietzsches two theories of
suffering, which states that suffering is an agent of sickness, or dcadence,
and that it is the weak type, precisely, who is most prone to suffering? There
is indeed a wealth of passages in Nietzsches work that unequivocally
describe life-negation in general and the Christian variety in particular as
a product of the suffering masses, and the Christian as the quintessential
sufferer type.39 More specically, it is the dcadents extreme weakness and
irritability (Reizbarkeit)40 that cause them to despise the world and to
cook up the ction of a realm of Peace, Bliss, and Stability to take their
revenge on it. It is the suffering of the nihilist dcadent, in short, that is
responsible for the emergence of the metaphysics of Being. The great
suffering of the masses, in short, accounts for some of the unhealthiest
ideological developments in the history of mankind.
Suffering, on this model, is what breeds the illness of nihilism qua
longing for the great nothing. Accordingly, Nietzsche accuses the dcadent
of paying too much attention to trivial pains and discomforts41 and of
placing too much emphasis on the pleasuredispleasure dichotomy.42
What the dcadent desires is a realm of coziness.43 But this vision of
pleasure is really negative; the heavenly wahre Welt is just an absence of
39
40
42
43
See, for instance, GM iii 15 as well as NL 18871888, 9(18) and (159), 11(112), 14(125) and (142), 15(110),
and 16(476).
JGB 293. 41 See NL 18871888, 11(228) and 17(6).
JGB 225. In this passage, Nietzsche derides modern philosophers obsession with pleasure and
suffering, claiming that any philosophy that would conne itself only to these is naive on the
grounds that there are more important problems than pleasure and suffering. But is it not the case
that Nietzsches philosophy likewise accords tremendous importance to suffering? Is Nietzsche being
somewhat hypocritical, then, in criticizing others for what he himself does? The solution to this
problem is to read JGB 225 in relation to the broader framework of Nietzsches discussion of
suffering. What Nietzsche is actually critical of are philosophies that posit pleasure and suffering as
plain opposites and aim for a pleasure that in its essence is really nothing more than the absence of
suffering. As seen above, suffering and pleasure are actually false opposites for Nietzsche, in so far as
resistance which implies a certain degree of pain is necessary for any genuine experience of joy (NL
18881889, 14(173)). It is precisely in assuming that they really are opposites that most philosophies
reveal themselves to be naive. Moreover, as we will soon see, the negative notion of pleasure that
these types of philosophies (implicitly or explicitly) aim for i.e. pleasure as absence of pain can be a
goal only for weary dcadents who want to end suffering. For now, sufce it to say that a change in
perspective on suffering and thus a change in approach to suffering is precisely one of the more
important matters Nietzsche thinks philosophy should deal with. Nietzsches thinking on the
problem of suffering, in short, has nothing in common with the fundamentally life-negating, reactive
philosophies he condemns at JGB 225.
FW 338.
100
46
47
101
directed rst against the naturally strong ruling classes. It thereby leads to
a fundamentally reactive inversion of the ruling classes moral code.48
The rulers good becomes the slaves evil (bse), and the rulers bad
(schlecht) becomes the slaves negative good (e.g. not-proud, not-strong,
not-rich, not-powerful, and so on).49 But this is only the rst step. The
ascetic priest then turns such morals against the very subject of ressentiment.
Turned inward, ressentiment militates against everything lively, natural, and
healthy that remains in the weak type. These are characterized as sinful.
This results in guilt and bad conscience. The self-loathing of guilt becomes
the leitmotif of morality.50 It is in this type of ideological context that
suffering, enfeeblement, and illness qua diminution of life are looked upon
as valuable in themselves. Hence asceticism in all of its forms.
Ressentiment and guilt ultimately make suffering much worse, however.51 By further weakening and suffocating the little life force of the
weak, the self- and life-negating ethics of the ascetic ideal makes them even
more vulnerable and prone to suffering. The nihilist dcadent response to
suffering, in short, increases dcadence, which increases suffering by
infecting the wound,52 as it were. Nihilistic ideologies are supposed to
be soothing, but they actually create conditions in which more pain is
experienced.
Accordingly, Nietzsche suggests that it is in fact because of Christian
morals that Europeans have become the suffering-prone creatures that they
are.53 Nietzsches idea is that had it not been for the morality of guilt and
ressentiment spawned by the nihilist mentality, Westerners would not be as
effete, sensitive, and prone to suffering as they are today.
Nowhere is the contrast between this theory of suffering and Nietzsches
Heraclitean model greater than when it comes to who suffers, then. While
the latter tells us that greatness is a function of how much one suffers, the
former says exactly the opposite those who suffer from existence are
the weak, the ill, the feeble. This second theory, in short, underscores the
irritability of the dcadent and its disastrous cultural and physiological
effects. Nietzsche, in certain passages, even attacks dcadents for their
extreme sensitivity to pain and contrasts them to the strong masters who
48
49
50
51
52
GM i 10.
GMs rst essay Gut und Bse, Gut und schlecht is entirely devoted to this theme.
GM iii 15.
I say ultimately because the ascetic priests morals do also, in the short term, relieve some of the
dcadents suffering by giving them an outlet for their frustration (hatred of life, of the masters, of
existence in this world, etc.) and by distracting them through a profusion of affects (rancor, guilt,
moralizing condemnation, etc.). On this point, see GM iii 15.
GM iii 15. This idea is further developed at ibid. 1617. 53 M 52 and 476.
102
Here Nietzsche begins with two distinct types of suffering suffering qua
decrease of strength vs. suffering qua resistance to be overcome and two
correlative types of pleasure a purely negative pleasure qua absence of
suffering and a positive pleasure qua overcoming of resistance. Toward the
end of the passage, however, it becomes abundantly clear that the real
54
55
GM iii 14.
56
NL 18881889, 14(174).
103
typology is not between types of suffering, but between two ideal types of
sufferers who experience suffering in very different ways.
Healthy, strong types experience suffering as an enticing challenge.
Because they are sturdier and more resilient, suffering does not diminish
them, but, on the contrary, summons them to ever greater heights. Sick,
weak types experience suffering as something enfeebling. Because they are
already so weary, they cannot respond to suffering, but only passively react
to it by suffering its impact, so to speak. In light of this typology, there is
nothing contradictory about the idea that suffering is an agent of health/
ascendance and an agent of sickness/dcadence. Really, it all depends on who
is suffering.
This points to the crucial distinction between extensional and intensional
suffering.57 Extensional suffering is the actual physical or psychological
harm that a person undergoes. Intensional suffering involves the interpretation of extensional suffering. The real difference between the healthy and
sick types experience of suffering plays out at the level of intensional
suffering. In short, it is all about how suffering is interpreted.
Take the most glaring contradiction between Nietzsches two models,
namely the contradiction over who, the strong or the weak, suffers most.
What Nietzsche focuses on in texts where he attacks dcadents for being
over-sensitive to suffering is closely linked to their interpretation of suffering. The idea is that the dcadents interpretation opens an entire domain of
extensional suffering to which the strong, indeed, are not susceptible. This
is the moral domain of guilt.58 Of course, it is not just that we suffer more
from guilt, but also that systematically interpreting suffering in moral
terms for example: an accident has occurred, how atrocious, how unfair,
something/somebody must be to blame makes us overall more sensitive
to suffering and less capable of enduring and accepting it. In this sense, slave
morals have made wide swathes of humanity more prone to moral suffering,
thereby considerably widening the scope of extensional suffering through a
specic mode of intensional focus. This is what Nietzsche means when he
says dcadents suffer more and that we in the modern age are more
susceptible to suffering, more irritable, than our forebears.
But this is only half the story. By inventing theological and metaphysical
ctions to make life bearable and by distracting themselves with the affects
of moral outrage inwardly and outwardly directed sick types also shelter
themselves from the profound existential suffering which the healthy type
alone can dare to withstand. By giving suffering a meaning, moreover,
57
58
GM iii 8.
104
they take much of the sting out of it. Finally, through the unselving morals
of self-belittlement, dcadents avoid expending their energy by entering
conict or putting up resistance. In this way, they meet as few obstacles as
possible, and thus suffer less. Dcadents thus close down an entire domain of
extensional suffering to which healthy types remain fully open. In remaining open to all suffering and willing it even the greatest suffering of all,
namely the very realization that this world is senselessly and perpetually
satiated with suffering healthy types really are the ones capable of the
greatest suffering. In intending suffering not as a moral, but an aesthetic
phenomenon, and thus in accepting its senselessness, they are in fact far
more open to it than those who wrap it up in a cloak of moral signicance.
This typology of sufferers points in turn to a fundamental typology of
pessimisms. Here we leave the domain of individual people experiencing and
interpreting suffering in different ways and we enter the domain of broader,
often unarticulated approaches to the greatest problem of life. There is
in pessimism a descriptive element which is common to both unhealthy
ideological developments namely, Buddhist and Schopenhauerian pessimism, but also Christianity and any form of metaphysics of Being, delusional optimism, millennialism, etc. and healthy ones namely, tragic
Greek culture and Nietzsches philosophy of life-afrmation. Be it
Anaximander or Heraclitus, the Buddha/Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, the
ascetic priest or the free spirit, the Christian or the Dionysian, all at least
implicitly agree that to live is to suffer. Whether or not they believe there is a
realm of Being where suffering is absent Christians, for instance, do,
Buddhists do not there is clear agreement on the fact that this world of
becoming is a world of perpetual struggle and limitless suffering. Where the
discrepancy arises is in responding to this fact.
This points to a central distinction between pessimisms. On the one
hand, there is the healthy types pessimism of strength,59 which Nietzsche
also refers to as the artists pessimism,60 or Classical pessimism.61 This is
the tragic pessimism that stands behind Heraclitus celebration of life, Attic
tragedy, and Nietzsches Dionysian wisdom. On the other hand, there is
the sick types pessimism of the weak,62 also dubbed moral-religious
[as opposed to the artists] pessimism,63 or Romantic [as opposed to
Classical] pessimism.64 This is the pessimism of all great nihilistic religions
(of Brahmanism, of Buddhism, of Christianity) religions, Nietzsche
59
60
63
GT Versuch einer Selbstkritik 1. See also NL 18851887 10(21), and ibid. 18881889, 14(25).
NL 18871888, 10(168). 61 Ibid. 18881889, 14(25). 62 Ibid. 18871888, 11(294).
Ibid. 10(168). 64 Ibid. 18881889, 14(25).
105
explains, which can be called nihilistic because all three have elevated the
opposite of life, nothingness, to a goal, to the highest good, or to God.65
These two pessimisms correspond to the two fundamental types of response
a person may have to the reality of limitless suffering. Pessimism of strength
corresponds to the healthy types experience of suffering as something
enticing, as a lure to life. Pessimism of weakness, in contrast, is exactly
what one would expect of the dcadent type for whom suffering implies
enfeeblement.
Accordingly, these two pessimisms are diametrically opposed on every
point. Pessimism of weakness poses a negative moral judgment on existence:
this world is evil. Pessimism of strength refuses to cast a moral judgment on
life and casts instead a positive aesthetic judgment: this world is beautiful.66
Pessimism of weakness is fundamentally reactive: it steps back from the great
obstacle suffering represents. Pessimism of strength is fundamentally active: it
steps forward and seeks to engage with suffering. Pessimism of weakness sees
the senselessness of suffering as a problem and needs to explain it. Pessimism
of strength nds nothing more interesting than senseless suffering and has no
need of an explanation, let alone a justication, for suffering.67 Pessimism of
weakness looks upon life itself as guilty on the grounds that suffering is unfair
and arbitrary, which leads to weak types sense of personal guilt and selfloathing when they exhibit signs of vitality. Pessimism of strength has no
place for guilt: neither life nor the strong pessimist is guilty of anything.
Pessimism of weakness leads one to take measures to limit suffering, to numb
oneself, etc. Pessimism of strength rejects anything that would have a
numbing effect, for it wills suffering as a condition for the joy of overcoming
obstacles. Pessimism of weakness, nally, leads to life-negation. Pessimism of
strength, in contrast, paves the way to life-afrmation.68
The opposition between the pessimism of the weak and of the strong is
the paradigm in which Nietzsche thinks health and sickness. The sick
type of Nietzsches ethics the dcadent is a weak pessimist. The healthy
type of Nietzsches ethics is a strong pessimist. The inescapable reality of
suffering is the same for both; what is different is how these two ideal
65
67
68
106
Here Dionysus and Christ are presented as the ultimate symbols of lifeafrmation and life-negation: of the pessimism of the strong and of the
weak. They both suffer horrendous deaths and come back to life, and to this
extent they are similar, but it is in the meaning of this great suffering that they
diverge so strongly. The suffering and resuscitation of Dionysus stands for the
destructivecreative torrent of becoming. It incites us to celebrate life joyfully.
The martyrdom of Christ, in contrast, denounces life as unfair and brutal,
and his resurrection points to the deathless realm of Being. The aesthetic
celebration of pessimism of strength is thus opposed to the moralizing spite of
pessimism of weakness. The opposite of pessimism of weakness, then, is not
optimism all delusional optimisms are in fact predicated on an underlying
pessimism of weakness but pessimism of strength. These consist in opposite
interpretations of suffering a fundamentally healthy, i.e. life-afrming,
interpretation vs. a fundamentally unhealthy, i.e. life-negating, interpretation.
It is now clear that the distinction between life-negation and life-afrmation
hinges on how suffering and especially the limitlessness and senselessness
of suffering is interpreted. If suffering can breed both health and sickness,
it is because its effects are a function of how the particular sufferer construes
suffering. The afrmation of suffering constitutive of life-afrmation, then,
is a matter of interpreting suffering in a certain way. What is thus required
to complete our reconstruction of Nietzsches positive philosophy is an
examination of Nietzsches theory of interpretation.
Understanding the role and nature of interpretation in Nietzsches
philosophy involves a close examination of his infamous theory of the will
to power.70 It is indeed in terms of the will to power doctrine that
69
70
NL 18881889, 14(89).
I do not capitalize the phrase will to power because, as I will explain below, the will to power is not,
strictly speaking, a metaphysical doctrine. Nietzsches theory of the will to power has received
considerable attention in commentarial literature and many of the debates surrounding this doctrine
107
71
72
73
74
are technical and highly confusing, if not simply confused. M. Clarks Nietzsche on Truth and
Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1990) provides an excellent survey of the principal interpretations of the doctrine of the will to power up to the late 1980s. More recent notable works which
discuss the will to power include G. Abel, Nietzsche: Die Dynamik der Willen zur Macht und die ewige
Wiederkehr (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1998), V. Gerhardt, Vom Willen zur Macht: Anthropology und
Metaphysik der Macht am exemplerischen Fall Friedrich Nietzsches (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1996),
Reginster, The Afrmation of Life, and Janaway, Beyond Selessness.
See, on this point, Nehamas, Nietzsche, pp. 74105.
Though Richardson misrepresents the doctrine as a genuine metaphysics, there is something to be said
for his observation on Nietzsches power ontology to the effect that Nietzsche thinks his other thoughts
in its terms (Nietzsches System, p. 16). See, in this connection, Janaways exhaustive overview of the
several arguments in GM that explicitly or implicitly rely on the view that life is the will to power in
Beyond Selessness, pp. 1437. I take exception to Richardsons use of the term ontology, however. The
will to power doctrine admits of processes alone, and not of a single thing (onts).
Horstmann, in this connection, distinguishes between the psychological and the cosmological
doctrine of the will to power. See Introduction, in R.-P. Horstmann and J. Norman (eds.), Beyond
Good and Evil, trans. J. Norman (Cambridge University Press), pp. iixxviii.
JGB 13. 75 NL 18881889, 14(121); ibid. 18871888, 11(75). 76 GM ii 12 77 JGB 13.
108
84
Ibid. 259. 79 On this point, see FW 349 and JGB 13. 80 NL 18881889, 14(121).
Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 262. See, in this connection, NL 18881889, 14(174).
NL 18871888, 11(77).
Ibid. 18881889, 14(173). Consider, in this connection, Brogan, The Central Role of Suffering, p. 55:
Power does not avoid suffering. It grows out of suffering. Suffering is not to be avoided; it is normal
and necessary as an aspect of growth. Intrinsic to the feeling of pleasure, which is a response to an
increase in power, is displeasure or the experience of an obstacle to this power.
JGB 13. 85 GM ii 12.
109
110
drive of the entire organic realm, not all organisms will always look, on the
face of it, as though they were blindly striving to extend their dominance at
all costs and in all circumstances. The will to power is a drive, not necessarily
a conscious desire. Just as, according to contemporary social biologists,
gene-transference is not necessarily the conscious goal of all our actions
though it is the primary drive that guides them,88 will to power drives us
without our necessarily realizing it. It is no more of a mental cause than
the drive to pass ones genes on in Dawkinss theory: will to power
characterizes the body just as much as the mind. Moreover, as the primary
affect of sentient beings psychology,89 the will to power is best understood
as the overarching genus of which various affects are species. There is no
pure will to power affect. The will to power, in short, does not necessarily
produce itself as a desire for power (let alone as a conscious volition), nor
does it necessarily lead to manifestly power-enhancing behavior. In fact,
there are important cases in which the will to power will give rise to a will to
powerlessness and to behavior which seems to reduce power, strength, and
liveliness. This will be the case among primarily reactive types.
Second, if the will in will to power is very much unlike standard
volition, the power at issue in this doctrine is equally distinctive. When it
comes to the sub-individual forces that make up organisms, it is clear that in
willing power these forces are really just exhibiting their systemic propensity to expend themselves. This is true of both reactive and active forces,
which are not different in kind, only in degree and as a consequence of the
role they play within the organism.90 Moreover, when it comes to human
behavior, Deleuze aptly makes the point that, even if Nietzsche occasionally
(and polemically) uses such language, power in the phrase will to power
should not be understood in terms of common representations of power
physical superiority, political control, wealth, honors, reputation, etc.91 This
is what sets Nietzsches theory apart from Thomas Hobbess, for instance.
The idea is that such a conception of power corresponds to the ways in which
weak, dominated people the slaves of GM i reactively represent it.92
Moreover, it is a kind of conformist desire for power which slaves harbor;
88
89
90
91
This theory was rst set out in R. Dawkins, The Selsh Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976).
NL 18881889, 14(121).
As Deleuze explains very clearly (Nietzsche, pp. 4850), there is no qualitative difference between
reactive and active forces in so far as the seemingly qualitative difference between reactive and
active is reducible to a quantitative difference in the relative strength of various forces. It is to
relations between forces of different strengths that the reactive/active dichotomy pertains.
Deleuze, Nietzsche, pp. 904. 92 Ibid., p. 91.
111
they want the goods society has already agreed on for them.93 However,
from the standpoint of the spontaneous exercise of power from the
standpoint of activity power is creation, vision, invention. In many
cases it might have very little to do with actual political domination.94
At the most exalted level, moreover, it is in fact the very opposite of
conformism it is the creation, envisioning, and invention of new values,
new goods. This will be the case among primarily active types.
The third thing to note is that, according to Nietzsche, organisms are
by no means unitary entities that will power. Each sentient beings
psyche is composed of a plurality of clusters of active and reactive forces
impersonal sub-individuals, as it were which pull and tug in different
directions.95 This generally occurs at subconscious levels, though the
internal conicts occasionally bubble up to the surface of consciousness.
Of course, all of these sub-individuals are driven by a will to power and
may thus be at war with one another. Ultimately, however, some will
come out stronger than others and will thus establish themselves as
dominant and active, in opposition to their dominated, reactive counterparts. Will to power does not just give rise to conicts between people,
then, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to conicts within people.
Having said this, in the case of most organisms, a number of peace
treaties hold so that the organism acts in a relatively coherent fashion and
with an apparent unity of purpose.96 In fact, however, willing is never
something simply and unitary.97 Consciousness, which ultimately offers
only a very supercial view of what is happening within, represents willing
as something unitary, but in fact there is no unitary will that wills, only
various instances of willing produced by a formidable effervescence of
plural, often conicting wills whose battles are played out beneath the
purview of consciousness.
The will to power, then, is not so much about what we all actually
want, as how best to account for the whole range of human, animal, and
93
94
Ibid., p. 92.
Consider, in this connection, the following fragment from one of Nietzsches early notebooks:
I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without
the least desire to rule and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward
weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak . . . The powerful natures
dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one nger. Even if, during their lifetime, they bury
themselves in a garden house! (NL 18801881, 6(209))
95
97
112
98
99
NL 18881889, 14(812). In Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Clark tries to distinguish rmly
between Nietzsches psychological views and his presumed cosmological pretensions. Given
Nietzsches mindbody non-dualism, however, it seems very difcult to see why and how what
he says of the sub-personal and impersonal forces that make up the subjects body (and thus also
psyche) could fail to apply equally to what makes up the inorganic realm.
JGB 36. 100 Ibid.
113
101
102
103
104
At NL 18881889, 14(812), Nietzsche points out that his theory solves the problem of
causality. In truth, any non-dualist doctrine which argues for the co-substantiality of matter
and mind does away with the perennial problem of physical objects affecting a presumably
immaterial mind/soul.
NL 18851887, 2(76).
On Nietzsches scientic sources for the doctrine of the will to power as an alternative to atomism
and materialism, see Janaway, Beyond Selessness, pp. 15960, and G. Moore, Nietzsche, Biology and
Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
FW 109. 105 JGB 12. See also FW 10910.
114
107
Janaway, Beyond Selessness, pp. 349, is right to point to some difculties with Leiters discussion of
Nietzsches naturalism. See B. Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002). Indeed, it is
hard to accept the idea that there is much continuity between Nietzsches philosophy and the results
of the empirical sciences (ibid., p. 3) when, with the will to power, Nietzsche so radically departs
from the scientic establishments view of the world.
Horstmann, Introduction, p. xxvi.
115
NL 18851887, 7(60).
The best version of this interpretation can be found in Clarks Nietzsche on Philosophy and Truth.
Ibid., p. 32.
116
113
115
116
NL 18881889, 14(186).
Clark rightly argues that Nietzsches critique of Truth is really a critique of the correspondence theory
of truth (Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, pp. 2961). What she fails to see is that the reason there
can be no neutral correspondence and only involved interpretation is precisely because everything is
will to power.
NL 18851887, 7(60). 114 Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. i, p. 12.
See, especially, ibid., vol. ii, pp. 473516.
On this point, see R. H. Grimms detailed monograph, Nietzsches Theory of Knowledge
(Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1977).
117
the other. Nietzsche certainly does away with the rst, but there is no reason
to think he does away with the second.117 To say that there is no transcendent realm of Being of what is but does not become and therefore
no Truth (with a capital T), does not imply that all statements concerning
the world we are left with are equally untrue. To draw this inference would
be a sign of nihilistic withdrawal. Certainly all statements about this
mundane world used to be looked upon as statements about an illusory
world and were thus regarded as untrue relative to the Truth of the True/
Real World. After the collapse of the True vs. the illusory world distinction,
however, statements that describe the world (now neither true nor
merely apparent) may be looked upon as far truer than they were formerly
assumed to be. To go from there is no Truth (about Being, about the
Real, etc.) to there is no relative truth, relative accuracy, etc. about this
world of becoming is the epistemic equivalent of the passive nihilists
ethical jump from there is no Good to the world has no value whatsoever. Neither is warranted.
The critique of wahre Welt metaphysics, then, does not imply that it is
impossible to present better or worse interpretations of how this world of
becoming should be understood. Such descriptions will not have the robust,
determinate character of claims about Being. There will be no absolute, nal
fact of the matter. But there can still be more or less accurate perspectives.118
Knowledge of denite Truths will be replaced with interpretative models that
seek to explain various processes with varying degrees of success. The world as
will to power is the model Nietzsche proposes. Presenting such a description
of the world of becoming is an option for Nietzsche.
Indeed, the will to power is not a metaphysics of Being, but an account of
becoming, or a process metaphysics in todays parlance. It does not claim
that, beneath appearances, things are actually will to power. It simply
claims that the processes that make up the entire world are constituted of
forces that this is what best explains phenomena as we experience them.
117
This is evinced with particular clarity in Nietzsches comments on religion and morality, where he
exhibits a clear commitment to a distinction between truth and gments of the imagination. See, for
instance, GD vii 1:
Moral judgments have this in common with religious judgments, that they believe in realities which
are not realities. Morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena a misinterpretation. Like
the religious judgment, the moral judgment belongs to a stage of ignorance at which the very concept
of the real and the distinction between what is real and what is imaginary are still lacking: so that
truth, at this stage, designates a number of things which today we call gments of the
imagination.
118
As Nehamas writes, perspectivism does not result in the relativism that holds that any view is as good
as any other (Nietzsche, p. 72).
118
This neither true nor apparent realm of becoming is an ocean of conicting forces in perpetual struggle, and this is what accounts for the perpetual
arising and passing away of all things. There is no qualitative difference
between what makes up non-organic entities and organic beings, and this is
what accounts for the so-called minds perception of objects, for the socalled wills effects on the body, etc. The fundamental drive governing an
organisms behavior is not self-preservation or a desire for wellbeing, but the
will to power, which accounts, among other things, for why people are
restless and dissatised even when all their needs are met and thus continue
tormenting themselves and one another. The subject of knowledge is an
actively interpreting nexus of forces in contact with other such nexuses,
which accounts for why all knowledge is really interpretation and all provisional truths are really perspectives. In short, Nietzsches doctrine of the
will to power is a non-dualist process metaphysics which does without the
twin ctions of metaphysics of Being, namely Being itself the domain of
Truth and the Good and the soul this divine breath which alone has
access to Truth and the Good. It might not be the denitive Truth about
the world, but there is every reason to think Nietzsche thought it was a far
superior interpretation than most. What is more, he was perfectly entitled
to hold this belief.
The will to power doctrine is the conceptual framework in which
Nietzsche elaborates his views on suffering and, yet more importantly, on
how suffering is interpreted. As such, it constitutes the background for his
understanding of pessimism and thus also of health and sickness.
To begin, it should be noted that Nietzsches doctrine is, in its essence, a
(strong pessimistic) Heraclitean worldview. The world as will to power is
essentially a vision of the world as Dionysus an endless, shifting struggle
where war is quite literally the father of all things.119 In itself, this directly
implies descriptive pessimism. A world of perpetual struggle is a world of
limitless suffering. At the psychological level, moreover, the insatiability of the
fundamental drive at the heart of our being ensures that satisfaction never
lasts. Will to power does not will any particular thing other than its exercise of
power; acquiring an object, establishing ones control, or giving rise to a
119
That the will to power qua philosophy of nature owes much to Heraclitus is intimated in one of
Nietzsches 1869 lectures. Here Nietzsche discusses Heraclitus scientic view of the world.
Everything is in perpetual motion and struggle, nothing is permanent, and all of reality consists
of shifting exchanges of forces, which, each in their own way, strive for power: Nowhere is there rm
persistence, because in the end we always come to forces, whose effects simultaneously comport a
desire for power (VP 10).
119
particular state of affairs will never quench it. Dissatisfaction, restlessness, and
discontent are thus the norm.120 Hence descriptive pessimism.
In so far as the will to power directly implies a theory of interpretation,
however, its main import concerns not suffering itself, but the way suffering
is construed. Interpretation consists in giving something a meaning. It is the
result of a particular nexus of forces constituting a particular fact, object, or
state of affairs121 in terms of a perspective that reects its fundamental
character qua nexus of force.122 Pessimism of weakness, then, is expressive
of the way in which weak, fundamentally reactive types interpret the reality
of limitless, senseless suffering. It reects the meaning reactive types give to
the boundlessness of suffering.
Indeed, Nietzsches typology of forces within a body active vs. reactive
extends to a typology of fundamental types of people. Dcadents are people
constituted by endlessly conicting clusters of forces this is why they are in
decline.123 As a result of endless inner struggles, they do not have the
required strength to engage actively and creatively with the outer world.
In the overall economy of forces in the world, they are thus reactive parties.
Their response to the endless suffering they meet in the world is to react to it
by saying no to it, by declaring it evil, and to denounce it by inventing
an antithetical True/Real World entirely bereft of struggle and suffering.
The moral element in pessimism of the weak is the gesture of reaction par
excellence.
120
121
122
Cf. Schopenhauers observation on his Wills groundlessness at WWV i 57. Nietzsche can agree
with Schopenhauer on this point, while disagreeing with him on the notion of Will as thing-in-itself
and with the idea of willing as unitary.
Nietzsche claims that there is no thing prior to this constituting and that the object, thing, or
fact is entirely constructed by the process of interpretation (GM ii 12). But this position should
not be construed as radical subjectivism, let alone idealism. Two key ideas are actually at play here.
First, the implication of Nietzsches views is that the denition, meaning, and function of a particular
thing never reect its presumed mind-independent properties, but rather grow out of the
dynamic relation between the thing in question and the interpreter. As Nehemas explains,
perspectivism is not so much a traditional theory of knowledge as the view that all efforts to
know are also efforts of particular people to live particular kinds of lives for particular reasons
(Nietzsche, p. 73). Second, Nietzsches idea is that the world is not made up of things, precisely, but of
processes and events. Engaging with the world, however, requires us to organize and categorize an
ever-uctuating reality of ceaselessly dynamic becoming along the lines of more or less strict, static
categories. Various groups of processes and events, which commonly appear in specic sequences, are
thus given particular names and denitions and construed as static things in specic causal
relations, e.g. the seed, the sapling, the tree. The idea is that, because there are really only processes
and events, the boundaries between so-called things are always somewhat arbitrary, or conventional.
More specically, the way a set of events is constituted as a thing reects the needs and the character
of the subject doing the constituting. What is at play here is the will to untruth at the heart of all
interpretation. I discuss this essential feature of the will to power in greater detail below.
NL 18851887, 7(60), ibid. 18881889, 14(186), and GM ii 12. 123 GD ii 11. See also A 17.
120
121
such, these ideological developments manifest the reactive weak types will
to power. They are pro-life (pro-dcadent-life) in being anti-life.
Perhaps more importantly yet, at the level of the persons inner life, the
nihilist dcadent morals of unselving allow unhealthy reactive forces within
a person to combat and dominate the active, pro-life forces that are also
at work within. It is in this sense that Nietzsche describes dcadence as the
need to ght the instincts (by which he means active, life-promoting
instincts).128 This is how reactive forces go from being dominated to being
dominating within the individual. Through guilt, shame, and remorse,
along with the self-belittling and self-enfeebling prescriptions of unselving
morals, whatever is left inside the dcadent of active, creative forces willing
to engage genuinely with life is undone. This again is the work of the will to
power of reactive forces seeking to expand their control over the very active
forces which are meant to coordinate and direct them.
Dcadence, ressentiment, the invention of the wahre Welt, and unselving
morals are all accounted for in terms of the will to power in Nietzsches
thought. And at the basis of it all is pessimism of the weak, this fundamentally
reactive response to or interpretation of the reality of limitless suffering. This
is what, as a result of the dcadents fundamental weakness, construes suffering
as a problem, as an argument against life, and as something to be removed.
Pessimism of strength, of course, is also an expression of the will to
power. But it is an interpretation of suffering that indicates a predominance
of active forces in an individual. Nietzsches healthy type is a person in
whom creative, active, form-giving forces are in control of reactive forces. It
is in this sense that he is a fundamentally healthy, well-turned-out type. In
facing suffering, the healthy strong pessimist does not spare himself the
most profound of troubles. He keeps himself open to the greatest dread by
rejecting any appeal to a world of Being behind becoming and with it to all
false optimisms. He embraces suffering wholeheartedly. In doing so, he is
creating conditions in which he will grow stronger and healthier, for, unlike
in the dcadents case, what does not kill him, makes him stronger.
Indeed, in exposing himself to the highest suffering through an open and
unconditional recognition of the worlds senseless suffering, the strong
pessimist qua healthy/active type stands before the greatest stimulant, the
most challenging lure to life. This is what he needs to attain the pinnacle
of great health, to grow as strong as can be. Finally, the strong pessimists
life-afrming declaration that life is beautiful in the face of all of its
horrors and turmoil is his active will to power overcoming the resistance
128
GD ii 11.
122
NL 18851887, 7(54).
130
123
In this connection, Nietzsche speaks of the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite into
me (EH Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 3).
NL 18851887, 9(164).
Hence Nietzsches frequent use of the term self-overcoming with reference to life-negating, selfnegating morals, namely, at M 183, GM iii 16, and NL 18851887, 1(129).
124
135
See, in this connection, GM iii 13. At GD v 5 Nietzsche explains, in a similar vein, that even that
anti-natural morality which conceives of God as the counter-concept of life is only a value judgment
of life, albeit of declining, weakened, weary, condemned life.
See, in this connection, Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 131.
125
See, in this connection, Nietzsches comments on being both a dcadent and the opposite of a
dcadent and on how irting with illness is essential to attaining great health (EH Warum ich so
weise bin 2).
126
142
143
JGB 59. See also NL 18851887, 38(20), ibid. 18821884, 20(63) and (295).
NL 18851887, 7(54). 139 JGB 4. See also NL 18821884, 27(48) and ibid. 18851887, 34(352).
NL 18851887, 7(54).
Nietzsche rst articulates his views on the falsication involved in knowledge in WL 1. Williamss
critique of this text attributes to Nietzsche the view that in itself the world does not contain . . .
anything . . . you might mention. See B. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton University
Press, 2002), p. 17. Given Nietzsches critique of the appearance/reality divide in his later work, this is
certainly not what he has in mind in JGB and his late notes. Here, the falsication at work in the
production of graspable things does not falsify the determinate, unconstructed Truth of things as
they are in and of themselves. Rather, falsication involves reifying what is really a ux of becoming
into a property-bearing being, or thing. What is false is the form of the concept (a static as
opposed to a dynamic, property-bearing substance/substratum, etc.) rather than its content.
See, in this connection, JGB 4 and 17, GM ii 12, and NL 18851887 40(13).
NL 18851887 38(2). Consider, in this connection, Lvi-Strausss comments on the continuity
between mythical or magical thought and scientic knowledge and the aesthetic activities of
taxonomic categorizations and modelization which both involve. C. Lvi-Strauss, La pense sauvage
(Paris: Plon, 1962), pp. 37f.
127
hypostasis that delivers the self, they ignore the falsifying reication that
delivers a world of apparently stable, xed objects, which corresponds to
the knowledge they have of them. They grasp both self and things
because these ctions are consoling; they make it look like the world is a
more or less predictable universe of Being and beings. It is through this same
process of falsication, on a grand scale, that reactive types invent a wahre
Welt of pure Being entirely devoid of becoming.
When it comes to life-negation in all its forms, including that which has
moved beyond the metaphysics of self and Being, the interpretation that
forms the crux of pessimism of weakness is that becoming as a whole i.e.
the entire world is to be understood and dealt with as that which is evil,
deceptive and corrupt. The meaning given to this world is arrived at
through the invention of the counter-concept of the Good, or God for
theists. This, of course, is result of the ressentiment-harboring dcadents will
to untruth and its invention of Being. As such, it is creative and artistic in its
own life-negating way. It is, like all art, a will to untruth, a will to power.
The homines religiosi, Nietzsche muses, might be counted among the
artists, as their highest class.144 If they form the highest class of artist, it is
because they have swayed the most people, and in the deepest way, with
their art. And this in spite of the fact that they are deluded artists who
believe their own ctions are the Truth.
The summum bonum at the heart of Nietzsches ethics of life-afrmation
also involves a grand falsication, albeit a deliberate and conscious one.
Recall how Nietzsches positive model for the ideal of life-afrming great
health is the tragic Greek,145 the supreme pessimistic artist. Nietzsches
Anti-Buddhist healthy type is a tragic, Heraclitean esthte. Amor fati his
great anti-nirvna is the worship and celebration of the terrible God
Indeed, the positive aesthetic judgment that forms the
Dionysus himself.
heart of the pessimism of the strong and leads to the worship of Dionysus
instantiated in Attic tragedy is also what embracing eternal recurrence in
amor fati ultimately involves. This is why Nietzsche claims that art is the
only superior counterforce to all will to life-negation, the anti-Christian,
anti-Buddhist, anti-nihilist par excellence.146
Genuine, spontaneous, and self-conscious art (as opposed to mere delusion) is the fruit of the pessimism of strength. The aesthetic is the essence of
144
145
146
JGB 59.
Nietzsche opposes the Buddhistic to the Hellenic in relation to the meaning of suffering as early
as 1872, at GT 7 and 18.
NL 18881889, 17(3).
128
With the ction of eternal recurrence, Nietzsches healthy type gives to the
world of becoming the character of Being, which, after all, is what the will to
power qua will to interpretation/meaning always does on a smaller scale. In
embracing Dionysus in this way the healthy type pronounces his resounding yes not only to life, but also to himself. Indeed, the healthy type makes
himself into a being through the tragic myth of eternal recurrence he
becomes enduring and xed through eternal recurrence.151 In this way,
this great artist reinstates the twin Apollonian ctions of self and Being, but
147
148
149
150
151
NL 18871888, 10(168).
From the point of view of the ApollonianDionysian dichotomy, it is true that the Dionysus of GT
and the Dionysus of the later works is not exactly the same character. Kaufmann, in this connection,
argues that the Dionysian, which was initially conceived as a ood of passion to which the
Apollonian principle of individuation might give form, later gave way to a post-Zarathustrian
union of Dionysus and Apollo: a creative striving that gives form to itself (Nietzsche, pp. 2812).
Indeed, with the will to untruth, the Apollonian in Nietzsches late works becomes an essential
feature of the Dionysian.
For a detailed discussion of why there is no conclusive reason to believe Nietzsche actually held the
theory of eternal recurrence as a cosmological doctrine, see Nehamas, Nietzsche, pp. 14350.
NL 18851887, 7(54).
This is what prompts Nehamas to describe eternal recurrence as, more than anything else, a view of
the self (Nietzsche, p. 150). Nehamass discussion of eternal recurrence in relation to the construction
of ones identity and ones eternal life is particularly enlightening in this regard (ibid., pp. 15069).
129
153
154
Nietzsches ideal vis--vis the self nds an early expression in the following fragment: Let us imprint
the emblem of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions, which have
condemned this life as ephemeral and have taught us to place our hopes in an indeterminate other
life (NL 18811882, 11(159)).
It is in this sense that Nietzsches amor fati is not the Stoics ideal. The Stoic sage is no artist. He
accepts suffering and its necessity with dignity, but he does not engage with the world aesthetically
and dynamically. In his wish to live in accordance with Nature, he is, on the contrary, aiming for
staticity and rmness (JGB 12). There is a latent nihilism here, which is absent in Nietzsches ideal.
See, in this connection, Deleuzes discussion of the distinction between the asss afrmation, which is
just a putting up and pure Dionysian afrmation, which involves an element of creation
(Nietzsche, pp. 1745). On my reading, the Stoic is an ass.
Heidegger completely misses out on the irony of the healthy type who embraces eternal recurrence in
amor fati (Nietzsche, vol. i, pp. 465f.). As an artist, the healthy type, who gives the meaning
Dionysus to the mass of becoming that constitutes the world, knows he is falsifying becoming
by stamping it with the character of Being. There is thus no reason to believe Nietzsche sincerely
wants to reinstitute Being with the idea of eternal recurrence, even less that his so-called fundamental metaphysical position is at bottom the very opposite [of atheism] (ibid., vol. i, p. 471).
Though amor fati is effectively the worship of Dionysus, Nietzsche is by no means proposing a new
theism. Contra Heidegger, embracing eternal recurrence in amor fati is an ironic gesture. Like any
non-delusional artist, the healthy type knows his creation is not real.
130
embraces them with irony, in full knowledge of the fact that they are his
creations, his inventions. This is how he becomes, quite literally, the artist of
his destiny (fatum). This is the conscious lie through which one becomes
what one is.155
In sum, Nietzsches ideal of amor fati is modeled on the example of the
tragic, Heraclitean Greek, who steps toward suffering and wills suffering as a
condition for growth. This is the supreme expression of great health,
dened in terms of the predominance of the active, creative, form-giving
forces in man. Through a robust pessimism of the strong, Nietzsches
healthy type wills the greatest suffering of all that which made
Heraclitus such a hero and the tragic Greeks such artistic geniuses namely
dread and horror before the boundlessness and senselessness of suffering
and struggle in a world of perpetual, unfathomable becoming. This is the
ultimate test of strength, for such dread invites reactive, life-negating forces
to come to the fore and creates ideal conditions for the poison of ressentiment to proliferate. By overcoming the great challenge of looking at this
monstrous world with an unswerving gaze, and yet to declare it beautiful
rather than evil, the healthy type secures the greatest victory over everything reactive and dcadent inside him. This is the highest self-overcoming,
the most exalted manifestation of the will to power.
The healthy types afrmation of suffering takes the form of embracing
eternal recurrence in amor fati. At the prospect of a perpetual replay of ones
entire existence, with all its sorrows and mistakes, eternal recurrence is the
most brutal vision of the pessimism of strength. By embracing it, the
healthy type overcomes the greatest of horrors and wipes away all traces of
guilt. He says yes to all of life, and to all he was, is, and ever will be. In the
form of eternal recurrence, becoming assumes the character of Being, or the
God Dionysus, and the tragic healthy type becomes what he is as an
enduring, xed Self. It is through an ironical embrace of these deliberate
and conscious ctions that the healthy type, qua artist, attains the highest
health of amor fati. It is in this way that he goes beyond enduring and
resigning himself to suffering, but embraces, afrms, celebrates, and wills it.
Nietzsches ethics of life-afrmation form a coherent whole. His vision of
amor fati as the absolute afrmation of suffering through the embrace of
eternal recurrence seems, on the face of it, to provide a true life-afrming
155
This is the subtitle of Nietzsches pseudo-autobiography, EH. I emphasize is because the healthy
type knows he never is, but only becomes. This, of course, is part of the essential ingredient of
irony in amor fati.
131
chapter 4
denitions
read: 1. the going out of a lamp or re (popular meaning).
2. health, the sense of bodily wellbeing (probably, at rst, the passing away
of feverishness . . .).1 The combustive and medical connotations of the
term nirvna can thus be seen to overlap very neatly if we regard fever as
a re of sorts, and feverishness as a form of burning.2 Nirvna, on this
1
2
T. W. Rhys Davids and W. Stede (eds.), Pli Text Societys PliEnglish Dictionary (Chipstead: Pli
Text Society, 1925), p. 198 (my emphasis).
Cf. the Greek pyrum (re), from which English derives pyretic (relating to fever).
132
suffering.
Recovering from an illness always brings about a form of wellbeing characterized by the cessation of the symptoms of the illness. Nirvna
5
6
By no means does this imply that other, more common, re metaphors in Buddhist moral psychology
should be discounted: namely, the canonical idea that nirvna corresponds to the going out of the
(SN iv.28f.). Having said this, as this
three res, or afictions, of attraction, aversion, and delusion
chapter will show, there is much more to gain, philosophically, from building on the refever analogy
that colloquial uses of the word nirvna in Ancient India apparently presupposed.
and a host of other passages. In Chapter 2, I spoke of desire
SN iii.190. See also AN i.133, SN i.136,
rather than thirsting because I was presenting Nietzsches perspective. Henceforth, I will use the
term thirsting to render the technical Buddhist term tr..sn, which really has a far more specic
meaning that the generic English desire. Though tr..sn can simply be rendered as thirst (the two
better conveys its dynamic nature.
forms are actually cognates), the verbal noun thirsting
V i.1011.
This claim admittedly ies in the face not only of the vast majority of contemporary commentaries on
Buddhist doctrine, but also the traditional accounts on which they are based. Philosophical rigor,
however, demands that tradition not be followed on this point.
134
The standard, traditional reply to this objection has it that desire, or thirsting,
is what keeps us bound up in the world of cyclical transmigration. As a result,
thirsting is responsible even for the suffering to which it is not directly related,
and the cessation of thirsting effectively brings suffering to an end by virtue of
bringing rebirth to an end.7 This response does not have much purchase,
however, in that it presupposes metempsychosis. What is more, it suggests
the Buddhist goal is indeed to attain non-existence, as Nietzsche surmised.
However, if thirsting is seen as the illness and suffering as the symptom, it
becomes possible to present a promising alternative response. The second
noble truth should not be read as a blunt causal claim about the origin of
suffering. Instead, it becomes evident that the suffering the Buddhist seeks
to bring to cessation is something slightly more specic than what falls
under the scope of the generic notion of pain, or suffering. Indeed, if
thirsting is the illness and duh.kha the symptom, then we are entitled to
consider under the heading duh.kha all of the dissatisfaction, frustration,
exasperation, and pain that may arise from thirsting, but we are not entitled
to draw the conclusion that all and any form of suffering must at bottom
result from thirsting. On this interpretation, the semantic scope of
duh.kha is not as wide as that of the generic English suffering.8 Rather,
it specically stands for the vast family of torments big and small that
afict people when they suffer from the fever of thirsting. As such, the
second noble truth is not designed to explain why the ame hurts my nger,
or the splinter my foot.9
7
8
9
This response, admittedly, coheres with the word of the second noble truth, which states that thirsting
is related to rebirth (punarbhvika) (V i.10). Later in this chapter, I will explain why it would be a
mistake to read too much into the Buddhas use of pan-Indian idioms relating to the cycle of rebirth
and its cessation in nirvna.
use the Sanskrit form duhkha rather than the far less specic suffering
This is why I will henceforth
.
to discuss Buddhist ideas.
I use the splinter example because my account of how duh.kha should be understood actually makes it
possible for Buddhists to explain away the apparent contradiction in a famous story about the historical
Buddha. The story tells of how Devadatta, the Buddhas jealous cousin, attempts to murder the Buddha
Though there is also evidence for this in the Buddhas discourses, later
developments in Buddhist philosophy during the Classical period make it
clear that the Buddhist etiology of duh.kha goes far deeper than the fever of
thirsting. Fever, after all, remains a symptom. What, we may ask, is the
underlying illness of which the fever of thirsting is only a consequence?
10
by hurling an enormous rock at him. Devadatta only succeeds in injuring the Buddhas foot, which is
pierced by a splinter from the boulder. At SN i.27, we are told that though this caused him excruciating
pain, the Buddha endured his suffering unperturbed. Since the Buddha has attained nirvna, he has
kha. And
entirely recovered from thirsting, which in theory makes it impossible for him to experience duh
.
yet the Buddha suffers from his injury. How is this possible? The story coheres with Buddhist moral
psychology, of course, if we keep in mind that the duh.kha that ceases in nirvna is specically the suffering
136
13
15
16
SN iii.44. This certainly does not exhaust all the possible ways of conceptualizing the self, but that
does not alter the point being made here. It seems that in the recension of this discourse, a shorthand
version of self-views was used. Other discourses make it obvious there were other theories of self
around (see DN i.12f., for instance).
SN iii.44. 14 Ibid.
Cf. Albahari, Analytical Buddhism, pp. 613. Alhabari reads this text in a very similar light, yet draws
only the more modest, allegedly empirical conclusion that thirsting and the sense of self co-arise.
Contra Alhabari, it is obvious that the Pat.ipadsuttas claims is that thirsting is conditional upon a
self-delusion of sorts.
These include Vasubandhu (AKBh, p. 478), Candrakrti (MV, p. 349 and MA vi.120), ntideva (BA
IX.78), and Prajkaramati (BAP, p. 492), among many others.
root cause.17 Translating this back into the medical discourse, we can say
that the ego-principle is the underlying infection of which the fever of
thirsting is a symptom.
To tell the full story of the arising of thirsting qua fever on the basis of the
ego-principle qua infection, it is necessary to bring another pathogenic
character into play. Indeed, the Buddhas discourses indicate that there is
in fact an intermediate link between the notion and sense of self, on the
one hand, and thirsting, on the other. Explaining what happens to an
accomplished Buddhist, the Buddha states that a person who has relinquished all modes of conceptualizing the self does not grasp anything in
the world, on account of not grasping, thirsts no longer, and on account of
not thirsting, attains complete nirvna.18 What this suggests is that
stands a form of grasping
between the self view and thirsting
19
(updna). This last concept needs to be examined closely.
The Sanskrit form updna is confusing. Not only does it refer to
grasping or clinging, but it also means fuel as an object noun and
something like combustion as an action noun. In the latter sense, it stands
for what a ame does to the fuel it consumes. The ame, in Ancient and
Classical Indian languages, clings to the fuel it consumes. In Buddhist
texts, the ambiguity surrounding the term updna is deliberately played
upon. For instance, updna as the psychological activity of grasping is
clearly alluded to when the ve psycho-physical constituents are described
as the fuel that one clings to.20 Nirvna, in a similar vein, is spoken of as
exhaustion of fuel.21
the going out of a re resulting from the
17
18
19
20
21
On this point, see A. Panaoti, Antmat, Moral Psychology and Soteriology in Indian Buddhism,
in N. Mirning (ed.), Pus.pik: Tracing Ancient India through Text and Traditions. Contributions to
Current Research in Indology, vol. i (Oxford: Oxbow Books Press, forthcoming). The idea that the
ego-principle (ahamkra) is the root cause of duh.kha is borrowed from ntideva (BA ix.78.a). Cf.
Candrakrti on theview of the real self as the root of all afictions and of samsra itself (MV, p. 349;
see also MA vi.120 (in MV, p. 340)), or Vasubandhu on grasping at the self as the source of all
afictions (AKBh, p. 461).
DN ii.68.
In the central canonical teaching of dependent co-arising, the Buddha states that grasping arises
dependent upon feelings (vedan), which in turn requires a sensory apparatus, and so on (see V i.1).
But this doctrine only tells us about the necessary condition for grasping to arise, not about its
psychological ground. What concerns us here, in contrast, is the underlying ground of grasping
namely the ego-principle not the conditions required for it to arise.
V i.11. The term used is updnaskandha, which may be rendered as fuel-constituent, i.e. constituent that is fuel. See Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, p. 200.
Hence the following simile for the accomplished Buddhist: [He goes out] just as a re without fuel
would go out because it is not fed more fuel (SN ii.85). Consider, in this connection, the Buddhas
deliberately ambiguous claim nibbuto ham asmi anupdno ham asmi (MN ii.237) which can be
rendered as I am put out, I am without fuel or I am put out, I am without attachment.
138
23
MMK x.114.
24
Ibid. 15.ab.
25
Pp, p. 212.
27
On this point, see also Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, pp. 200f. and D. S. Ruegg, The
Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1981),
p. 40. I will henceforth render inward-directed grasping, or updna, as appropriation.
Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, p. 203. See also J. Ganeri, Subjectivity, Selfhood and the Use of
the Word I, in Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Self, No Self?, pp. 17692, at p. 190; MacKenzie,
Enacting the Self, pp. 2645; and M. Siderits, Buddhas as Zombies: A Buddhist Reduction of
Subjectivity, in Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Self, No Self?, pp. 30831, at p. 311.
140
Indeed, if the egotistic mode of engagement with the world that characterizes thirsting presupposes and depends upon the robust sense of self
that the ego-principle generates via appropriation, it also co-arises with
specic forms of cognitive behavior which are closely related to outwarddirected grasping. More specically, outward-directed grasping co-arises
with the conceptual proliferation (prapaca) of hypostatized constructs
(vikalpa) and reifying views (dr..st.i).28 The idea is that to constitute something as an object of attraction or aversion is de facto to constitute it as a
stable entity bearing specic properties. Thirsting is thus conditional
upon the mental operations of hypostasis and reication that constitute
this world of evanescent becoming i.e. of instable processes as a world of
xed substances and eeting attributes. Our unhealthy affective take on the
world, in short, goes hand in hand with an unhealthy cognitive take on
the world.
The Buddhist claim is that thirsting-based attraction or aversion for x
implies thinking of x as a static thing with specic qualities, rather than as a
dynamic, ever-changing process. Indeed, it is to reied things alone that
attraction and aversion can pertain. Nothing, for instance, tests love or
enmity so much as changes in who the loved/hated person is. Such
affective responses imply being able to grasp a given x in the sense of
comprehending x in a particular way, namely as an entity that is either
desirable/useful/good or undesirable/harmful/bad for me. Through the
discursive proliferation of conceptual constructs and reifying views, we
thus create an all-encompassing justicatory scheme for our desires and
aversions.29 If this were not unconscious and pre-reective, this activity of
self-referential horizon construction might be described as large-scale
rationalization. Since it is unconscious and pre-reective, we must look
upon it as the spontaneous expansion of beliefs that corroborate our desires
or aversions and co-arise with these. Most fundamentally, the idea is that
the occurrence of thirsting implies that the ego has situated itself in the
center of a world populated by stable entities to which it bears determinate
relations. Since the world as I experience it is already structured in reference
to myself, all of the desires, hopes, expectations, aversions, etc. that make up
28
29
Though this idea has rm roots in canonical texts namely, DN ii.276f., MN i.108f., Sn 7807, 796
803, 82434, and 86277, to list but a few sources it is in Madhyamaka texts that it is most
thoroughly worked out, especially in commentaries to MMK xviii.5. Ngrjunas root verse describes
the intimate connection between the conceptual proliferation of hypostatized constructs and forms of
behavior conditioned by the three afictions. The account which follows is a philosophical
reconstruction of the Madhyamaka position.
On this point, see Gethins comments on the ethical impetus behind Ngrjunas critique of
substance metaphysics in The Foundations of Buddhism, pp. 2402.
142
This idea nds its rst articulation in an early Buddhist verse, which states that the thought I am is
the root of [all] labeling (smkhy) and conceptual proliferation (prapaca) (Sn 916.ab).
YS.K 53.
Ganeri is not quite right, then, to claim that prapaca, which he translates as thesis-thinking, is the
primary source of attachment (The Concealed Art of the Soul, p. 104). The idea, rather, is that
attachment and discursive proliferation are two sides of the same coin the affective side and the
cognitive side. In so far as one is attached to things, one thinks of them in a certain reifying way.
Conversely, in so far as one thinks of things in a certain reifying way, one experiences attachment
(either to the thing or to ones beliefs concerning the thing).
144
34
Alhabari, Nirvana and Ownerless Consciousness, p. 88. Like practically all scholars of Buddhism,
Alhabari thinks the self is a mere illusion according to Buddhist philosophy. As far as I know, I am the
rst to make the point that it is more than an illusion, but a pathological delusion.
Dreyfus, Self and Subjectivity, p. 131. 35 Ibid., p. 124.
delusions are far worse. They can distort the way in which the subject
constitutes a great number of states of affairs, thereby warping a vast range
of the subjects behavior. As we have just seen, Buddhist philosophy makes
the bold claim that the self-delusion actually affects the full scope of the
subjects affective and cognitive behavior.
Under the spell of the self-delusion, I am convinced that I am a xed,
enduring self at the center of a world of xed, enduring things, and that I see
and evaluate the entire world through the sieve of a foundationless selfinterest. As such, I am prey to a large family of debilitating mental states,
which include fear, frustration, apprehension, disappointment, despair,
anxiety, identity crises, etc. This is domain of duh.kha. Buddhist philosophy
adds that the self-delusion and the thirsting it gives rise to also cause me
to act in (often unwittingly) manipulative, contriving, disingenuous, and
opportunistic ways. In short, the operative mode of thirsting-based behavior
is best characterized as one of systemic egotism, (often counter-productive)
egoism, and enmity toward all that is adverse and other. Such an attitude
only broadens the scope of duh.kha.
The idea that the self-delusion is pathological and debilitating can be
eshed out with two analogies. Consider the case of a person suffering from
a paranoid personality disorder.36 This condition is characterized by a
profound narcissism. When paranoid subjects hear someone laughing
across the street, they assume they are being laughed at. Hearing something
tangentially related to their life on the radio, they will assume that someone,
somehow, is trying to tell them something. If a child accidently steps
on their foot in a crowded shop, they will believe this is an intentional
attack. In extreme cases, those suffering from paranoia will interpret
practically all events as evidence that the system or society is plotting
against them, that they are under surveillance, that everyone around them
is play-acting, etc. More generally, when presented with the threat of
harm or disappointment, people who suffer from paranoia do not see
that practically everything that happens to them has nothing to do with
them, but is, on the contrary, purely accidental, contingent, and arbitrary.
As a result of such delusional egotism, they will constitute the harm as
somehow intended, the narcissistic-paranoid implication being that they
matter quite a bit more than they really do. Now, the structure of narcissistic self-referentiality so characteristic of paranoia is essentially what
Buddhist philosophy attributes to standard human behavior. Such
36
On this devastating disorder, see R. J. Waldinger, Psychiatry for Medical Students (Washington, DC:
American Psychiatric Press, 1997), pp. 14751.
146
delusional self-importance, it is claimed, goes hand in hand with the selfdelusion and gives rise to an attitude of systemic enmity.
Another dimension of the Buddhist idea is brought out by the (slightly
clichd) example of a developer who visits a farm with his animal-loving
children. Initially reluctant to take his children to the country for lack
of time, our developer has nally found a way of conciliating business
interests and parental duties by taking his children to visit an educational
farm whose owners also happen to be looking to sell their property.
While his children are busy enjoying country activities such as grooming
and feeding animals, the developer walks around the farm and proceeds
to evaluate the property. He notes everything that increases the value of
the property with excitement (attraction), and everything that decreases
its value with disappointment, or frustration (aversion). Of course, his
cost-benet analyses leave him blind to everything that does not affect
the propertys value (apathy). The entire evaluation, of course, is done
in relation to the capital he has at his disposal and the prot or loss he
stands to make. On the Buddhist view, the self-delusion implies that
ones emotional world operates in a way that closely resembles the
developers attitude toward the farm. The evaluative claim is that such
an experience of the world is particularly impoverishing, and ultimately
disabling.
Overall, Buddhist philosophy regards the effects of the self-delusion on
the human psyche at the emotional, conative, and cognitive level as deeply
debilitating. The idea, in its most basic form, is that we set ourselves up for
disappointment. This is because this world of ux, disorder, and impermanence cannot satisfy a person looking for stability, order, and permanence.
Our bodies and minds change in ways that are contrary to our desire
especially, though not exclusively, through aging and death. The people we
love all eventually behave in ways that disappoint or frustrate us, and
ultimately die during our lifetime if we do not precede them in exiting
this world. Moreover, we have very limited control over the fate of our
material possessions or over the behavior of all the potentially harmful
agents around us. At the conceptual level, moreover, reality continually
seems to evade our capacity to conceptualize it and render it predictable. As
for the Supra-Natural realm of Being be it Heaven, God, Pure Forms,
brahman, and so on which we may hope to attain after death, this is
probably the vainest and most delusional hope we have. It is in all of these
ways that thirsting constitutes the condition for our experience of the world
as painful and unsatisfactory. This, most fundamentally, is what it means to
be in samsra.
How, then, does one gain liberation from samsra and attain nirvna?
the infection of the ego
What is required is an antibiotic which can remove
principle and thereby bring the inammation of grasping and the fever of
thirsting to an end. In short, what is required is an antidote, which undercuts
the cognitive and affective effects of the self-delusion. This antidote is the
teaching of selessness (in a metaphysical, not an ethical sense), which in
Madhyamaka circles is extended to all things under the guise of the teaching
of universal emptiness of own-being/substance. In positive terms, this is the
teaching that all things are dependently co-arisen that the world is made up
of dynamic processes and entirely devoid of stability and permanence.
The Buddhist strategy, in short, is to focus on the cognitive expressions of
the self-delusion. Presumably this is because average people have more control
over their beliefs than their feelings. Now the doctrine of emptiness, Ngrjuna
tells us, brings conceptual proliferation to cessation.37 The Buddha, he also
claims, gave his teaching so that all reifying views may be abandoned.38 On
Ngrjunas view, learning to see that the very notions of self and thing are
delusional is supposed to lead the Buddhist eventually to bring to an end the
mechanisms of reication and hypostasis that deliver rigid views.
Consider, in this connection, the passage in which the Buddha insists that
instead of metaphysical knowledge concerning abstruse speculative subjects,
the only thing he has knowledge of are the ve constituents, their arising,
and their passing away. He concludes by stating that this phenomenalistic
knowledge of processes, as opposed to metaphysical knowledge of reied,
hypostasized entities, is what leads him to a state where the ego- and mineprinciples are dismantled and grasping has ceased.39 The underlying idea is
that bringing grasping and thirsting to an end requires specically undermining those ways in which I implicitly think about self and world when
grasping and thirsting hold sway.
I love myself. I am constantly concerned with myself. I lter all of reality,
organize the entire world, in terms of myself. I am the measure of all things.
I have strong desires and aversions, which are debilitating in so far as they
render me perpetually fretful, tense, anxious, dissatised, if not positively
distraught, disappointed, frustrated, angry, or depressed. All of this is the
result of the self-delusion. The Buddhist therapy consists in learning to see and
eventually to feel that there is no permanent, enduring I: that the sense of
37
38
MMK xviii.5.cd. See also the propitiating verses at the opening of the MMK, which claim that the
doctrine of dependent co-arising, the positive formulation of emptiness, brings conceptual proliferation to an end.
Ibid. xxvii.30.cd. 39 MN i.486.
148
VV i.
41
Ibid. ii.
149
tasks i.e. transporting wood, hay or soil, containing honey, water or milk,
protecting from the cold, the wind, or heat, etc. just so, this statement of mine,
although it lacks substance on account of being dependently co-arisen, functions in
establishing the inexistence of substance.42
At the same time, Ngrjuna does concede that, strictly speaking, he is not
putting forward a thesis per se. Emptiness is unlike any other philosophical
position because it does not posit reied, hypostatized entities. Ngrjuna
explains: I have no thesis whatsoever . . . How could there be a thesis when
all things are empty, completely appeased and devoid of [inherent]
nature?43 It is obvious that this reply turns on a very specic understanding
of thesis, namely that theses and more generally views make claims
about real, self-standing entities. In so far as emptiness denies that there are
any such things, the doctrine of emptiness is not a thesis or a view.
Instead, the doctrine of lack of self and substance is nothing more than a
therapeutic doctrine. And it is an antidote precisely in so far as it halts all
constructed reifying views.44 To look upon it as a positive view all things
are empty of substance is a mark of the greatest foolishness there can be.
Emptiness, Ngrjuna explains, is taught as a remedy to get rid of all
reifying views. Those who look upon it as a view are declared to be
incurable.45 Ngrjuna justies this claim with great clarity: If something
[in the world] were non-empty [of substance], then there might also be
something empty [of substance]. And yet there is nothing non-empty
[of substance] [in the world], so how could there ever be something
empty [of substance]?46 Similarly, claims Candrakrti, the Buddhas teaching that there is no self is only a provisional teaching, a conventional truth.
In so far as the very notion of an enduring, unitary self is incoherent in
so far as it is a pure ction that does not correspond to anything in the world
at all the real fact of the matter, or ultimate truth, is that it is neither the
case that there is a self, nor that there is not a self.47
In this way, the real point of the Buddhist teaching is not so much to
negate a thesis (the existence of self and substance) and to replace it with
another thesis (lack of self and substance), but to undermine the very
delusion that gives rise to this dichotomy.48 Ganeri describes this move as
a sort of Trojan Horse strategy.49 The doctrine of lack of self looks like a
42
45
46
47
48
150
51
SN iv.1745.
52
On this point, see Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, pp. 46f.
152
motto there is no self to the accomplished sages there is neither self nor
no-self.56
The third thing to emphasize, in this connection, is that the Buddhist
therapeutic program is not purely cognitivist.57 Certainly, emptiness and
lack of self target the cognitive outgrowths of the self-delusion, but it would
be a mistake to assume that Buddhist philosophy simply understands duh.kha
to be the result of erroneous beliefs and of the desires that follow from them.
Buddhist therapy is only partially cognitivist. It is not simply concerned
with rectifying a false belief. This, again, is because the self is not a mere
illusion, but a delusion. Belief in the self which, admittedly, is belief in
an illusion is a mere surface phenomenon for Buddhist philosophy.
What is of far greater signicance is the pre-reective construction of the self
and its horizon through grasping and its effects on our affective and
cognitive behavior. The problem, then, is far more serious than a mere
misalignment between the way I think things are and the way they really
are. At issue is a deeply delusional mind-set. Knowing that there is no self
and that all supposed things are really impermanent eeting groupings of
intertwined processes is not enough. To undermine grasping (both inwardand outward-directed) and with it thirsting in all of its forms, it is not
enough to merely realize that all things are changing, unstable, and impermanent and to align ones desires and expectations accordingly. What is
required is something far more radical. What is required is a complete
transformation of the way in which we not only think self and world, but
also feel and experience them.
Beyond the mere cessation of duh.kha, what is the outcome of the great
transformation that leads to nirvna? How does the Buddhist healthy type
live and experience the world? Oneconcern is that the cessation of the activity
of grasping whereby body and mind are constituted as mine and my
world horizon is organized around me would lead to a state which
contemporary psychiatrists call depersonalization. This state is linked
with specic pathologies which render people entirely dysfunctional: namely,
epileptic automatism, akinetic mutism, and advanced Alzheimers disease.58
Is this what the Buddhas vision of great health involves?59
56
57
58
59
Similarly, secular societies remain far from the stage at which talk of God there is a God vs. there
is no God can be abandoned altogether.
But cf. Burtons cognitivist (and therefore deeply unsatisfactory) account of Buddhist moral psychology at Curing Diseases of Belief and Desire, pp. 190f.
A. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Makings of Consciousness (London:
William Heinemann, 1999), p. 98.
Other attempts to answer this question can be found at Albahari, Nirvana and Ownerless
Consciousness, pp. 11112, and Dreyfus, Self and Subjectivity, pp. 13940.
Other, related concerns may arise. Rid of the sense of self and with it the
desires and aversions born of thirsting, how can the Buddhist healthy type
be motivated to act to bring about or avert a certain state of affairs? Free of
all reifying views and hypostatized conceptual constructs, will healthy types
hold no beliefs whatsoever? Are they global skeptics or dismal relativists who
admit only of unfathomable universal becoming, or indeterminate dependent co-arising? Can they still use language, when language so clearly seems
to presuppose the existence of subjects and predicates, or substances and
attributes?60
Looking at the gure of the Buddha and of other advanced Buddhists
believed to have attained (or come close to attaining) the great health of
nirvna, it is questionable whether these concerns are justied. The Buddha
was manifestly
functional physically and psychologically. He acted, deliberated, expressed a wide range of ideas, and carried out projects with a clear
sense of purpose. The skeptic will say that this merely proves that he had not
attained the goal he propounded, or he would have been rendered entirely
dysfunctional, non-engaged, and globally non-committal with regard to his
views and doctrines.
There is, however, one way to account for the apparent normality of
Buddhist healthy types without denying that they have actually overcome
the self-delusion. Buddhist healthy types, I suggest, are masters of irony.61
This is true at the level of their identity, of their engagement in the world
through various projects, and of the views they propound.
Consider, to begin, the problem of post-nirvna identity. The real
or appropriation, is
problem with the activity of inward-directed grasping,
that the identity it delivers is not recognized to be a fabrication. If the selfdelusion has all the pernicious effects on human psychology that Buddhist
philosophy claims it has, it is because of the delusion that the fabricated,
performed self is somehow real. The delusion lies not in constructing the
self, but in taking it to be real, or unconstructed. The difference between the
common person and Buddhist healthy types, then, is not that the latter have
no sense of personal identity whatsoever, but that they are no longer
deluded as regards this identitys fabricated status. A Buddhist healthy type
who has recovered from the self-delusion could thus continue to perform a
60
61
On this point, consider Dennetts neuroscientic research, which has led him to the conclusion that
the conceptual construction of the self is intimately tied to our linguistic capacities, and vice versa.
D. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (London: Little, Brown and Co., 1991).
I am indebted to Siderits for rst suggesting that ironic engagement plays a key role in the
accomplished Buddhists functioning in the world see Siderits, Buddhist Philosophy, pp. 1069,
1845, and 2023.
154
self for the sake of the functional integration of body and mind, but with
full knowledge that this self is a construction.
A foray into contemporary discussions of personal identity might be
useful at this juncture. The metaphysical focus of philosophical discussions
on personal identity has recently been criticized on the grounds that what
really matters is how we characterize ourselves, not whether we think of
ourselves as selves with robust numerical identity over time.62 Siderits,
Thompson, and Zahavi aptly describe the main thrust of this so-called
narrativity approach:
The basic idea is that as agents in the world in time, we require some scheme for
tting individual affordances into an overall hierarchy that facilitates prioritizing
our responses. This is provided when we view our lives as narratives that we are
simultaneously living out and making up. By viewing ourselves as both the author
and the central character in the story of our lives, we achieve the ability to formulate
long-term plans and projects, work out subordinate goals, and thus avoid paralysis
each time we are presented with a new opportunity for action.63
Proponents of this approach tend to criticize views that reject the existence
of an enduring self on the grounds that the metaphysical considerations that
underlie them are simply beside the point.
Things are not so simple, however. The no-self theorist can happily reply
that the vast majority of narrative constructions in fact already presuppose
(often pre-reectively) the metaphysical view that there is, in effect, an
entity that is both the author and the central character of ones life-story.64
The Buddhist position in this debate would be that the self is indeed a
narrative construct hence the horizon construction which is an essential
component of the construction of a xed identity but that most of us
mistake the ctional character we construct for a real, robust self. On the
Buddhist view, this form of performance of the narrative self is unhealthy. It
is rather like the case of the delusional actor who becomes convinced that he
is his character e.g. Val Kilmer who spent months convinced he was Jim
Morrison after shooting The Doors.
Buddhist healthy types, in contrast, will carry on with their performance they will continue to generate a narrative self through conscious,
62
63
64
See, in particular, M. Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1996).
Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Introduction, p. 6. Proponents of this approach nd support in
Dennetts neuroscientic views about the construction of a narrative identity that is essential to
survival in the world. On Dennetts view of narrative selfhood see, especially, Consciousness, p. 418.
Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi, Introduction, p. 7. Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi say this of
narrativity approaches, but the claim applies mutatis mutandis to narrative constructions.
deliberate, skillful appropriation but will do so in a healthy, nondelusional way.65 In short, they will assume and construct an identity,
they will lay claim to the psycho-physical constituents that make them
up and construct a world horizon around themselves, but they will do so
with irony and thus also with detachment. Indeed, ironic distance will make
it possible to preserve all the advantages of being functionally integrated as a
unitary person without falling prey to the pernicious effects of taking the
ction of the self for something real. In fact, the Buddhist claim is that
such an ironic performance of self is supremely enabling and empowering.66
The reason for this is that Buddhist healthy types mode of action in the
world is likewise one of ironic engagement.67 In so far as they construct and
maintain their consciously fabricated identity with irony, the healthy types
projects, plans, and desires are also characterized by a certain detachment.
Having attained the highest wellbeing of nirvna and undone the selfdelusion, Buddhist healthy types are in no way wanting, dissatised, or
fretful. This makes it possible for them to engage in the world with specic
intentions and projects all the more freely and lightly. Moreover, it is
precisely in terms of their specic projects that healthy types will construct
and maintain their functional narrative identity. The Buddha, indeed, is
described as changing and adapting with incredible skill to the situation
he is presented with. Different roles and characters, different masks, or
personae, are called for, depending on the situation. All of this, of course, is
done with irony with a full awareness of the performance at play.
Accordingly, Buddhist healthy types fundamentally ironic attitude reaches all the way down to the views they propound. As a therapist, the
Buddha is known to have given different cures for different conditions.
To some he taught that there is a self, to others that there is no self, and
to others, nally, that there is neither self nor no self.68 This is but one
example. The basic idea is that, for a healthy type, purely pragmatic,
contextualist concerns dictate what should be taught and, more
importantly, how the interlocking web of processes that make up this
world of dependent co-arising should be splintered into particular
65
66
67
68
In reply to the accusation that this ies in the face of the ideal of authenticity, the Buddhist will point
out that the very idea of authenticity presupposes a delusional view of the self.
For a similar point on Buddhist enlightenment, see Dreyfus, Self and Subjectivity, p. 139.
Cf. Siderits, Buddhist Philosophy, pp. 1069 and 2023. Note that Siderits places the emphasis on the
irony involved in treating people as persons when it is known that they are but bundles of psychophysical events. Here, instead, the emphasis is placed on the irony involved in a healthy types
fabrication of a self-consciously ctional identity and on the forms of engagement in the world that
follow from this.
See, on this point, Ganeri, The Concealed Art of the Soul, pp. 108f.
156
73
74
76
Ibid., p. 123.
158
twist and turn, as Schopenhauer does. On the contrary, Buddhist texts speak
of several forms of existence that are almost entirely pleasant and in which one
barely meets with suffering.77 Admittedly, the Buddha pointed out that none
of this pleasure lasts. As a result, frustration, nostalgia, and sorrow are never
far ahead.78 However, this is far from being as radical as Schopenhauers claim
that pleasure is nothing other than the absence of suffering.
What are we to make of the rst noble truth, then? Does it not claim that
samsra is replete with duh.kha? Is this not a clear statement of pessimism la
Schopenhauer?
One promising way of gaining a better understanding of the
Buddhist attitude to suffering is to analyze the compound ryasatya (noble
truth).79 Using the tools of Sanskrit syntactical analysis, this compound may
be analyzed in either of two ways. It can be analyzed as what Sanskrit
grammarians called a karmadhraya compound where rya has the role of
an adjective that qualies satya. An ryasatya, on this analysis, is a truth that is
noble. Alternatively, the compound can be analyzed as a so-called .sas..thitatpurus.a compound, which implies a genitive relation between satya and
rya as a substantive (noble person). An ryasatya, on this analysis, is a truth
of the noble one(s). However, the sixth case (s.as..th) in Indian languages does
not only indicate possession, but also a looser relation which overlaps with the
dative case. As a .sas..thitatpurus.a compound, ryasatya can thus mean a truth for
the noble one(s), i.e. for an enlightened being, such as the Buddha.80 This, I
suggest, is how the rst noble truth ought to be understood.
The upshot of this analysis is that the view that duh.kha pervades the world
is a matter of perspective.81 Many of us might be relatively satised with our
lives. From the perspective of an enlightened person who has attained the
supreme health of nirvna, however, everyone seems to be suffering. Such
soften Buddhist pessimism. It makes it clear why
considerations signicantly
the Buddha would not have shared Schopenhauers view that the world is
objectively saturated with pain and sorrow. From the standpoint of great
health, the Buddha sees that all states involve duh.kha to some degree or
another, but this does not make him as radically pessimistic as Schopenhauer.
77
78
79
80
81
The whole point is that things could be signicantly better for me, not that
everything in my life is terrible. Underlying the Buddhist view that life is full
of suffering is a message of hope, not existential despair. The Buddhist quest
for nirvna and the Schopenhauerian thirst for salvation, then, are based on
very different
assessments of the human predicament. The Buddhas assessment is perspectival, relative, and geared toward a state of wellbeing.
Schopenhauers assessment, in contrast, is absolute, dogmatic, and hopelessly
negative. Nietzsche was manifestly not aware of this nuance.
Another point of apparent overlap between Schopenhauers ethics and
Buddhist moral psychology concerns the role of the individuation principle.
In both Schopenhauers thought and Buddhist philosophy, the source of
ordinary human beings problems is that they take the personal self much
too seriously. Accordingly, both Buddhist philosophy and Schopenhauers
thought claim that progress toward the summum bonum is a function of
ones emancipation from the primordial delusion of the I.
The overlap stops here, however. Indeed, there is an enormous difference
between saying, as the Buddha did, that there is no abiding self, ego, or soul,
and saying, as Schopenhauer did, that we are all the same great one. There
might be a self-delusion for the Buddha, but there is no I am different
from you illusion.82
Nirvna does not involve the realization that all differences in this world,
that between self and other, are illusory and, as a result, that we all
including
partake in a mystical, non-spatiotemporal oneness.83 Strictly speaking, I
attain nirvna when I recover from the self-delusion which conditions my
and cognitive approach to the world. There were in Ancient as
entire affective
well as in Classical India several schools which taught, as Schopenhauer does,
that the key to ending duh.kha is to reject the illusory personal self in favor
of the Real Self, i.e. the abiding One beneath all illusory, transient things.84
On the Buddhist view, however, this in no way constitutes a true recovery
82
83
84
On this point, see also Panaoti, Wrong View, Wrong Action, pp. 1516.
Certainly, Ngrjunas deconstruction of any possible realist ontology, or taxonomy of real, irreducible entities, does deny that any substantial differences between things can be established. But this is
because the world we experience is a world of processes and dynamic relations, and not of discrete,
concrete things amenable to analyses in terms of substance and attribute. It is not because we are really
a unied One.
This is the position of the Advaita Vednta and of several aivite schools, among others. It should be
noted, admittedly, that the Advaita Vedntin also employs the Ngrjunian strategy of showing that
our discursive knowledge of the phenomenal world is beset with contradictions, antinomies and
sublation. D. Chattopadhyaya, Skepticism Revisited: Ngrjuna and Nyya via Matilal, in
P. Bilimoria and J. Mohanty (eds.), Relativism, Suffering and Beyond: Essays in Memory of Bimal
K. Matilal (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 5068, at p. 58. The Advaita Vedntin does so,
however, for a very different end: namely, to show that behind the veil of my lies a Unitary Absolute.
160
But cf. Morrisons misguided attempt to show that thirsting has a cosmological role in Buddhism as
the most primitive form of affect, a role which he (wrongly) sees as being identical to that of the
will to power in Nietzsches philosophy. Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, pp. 13254, especially
pp. 1378.
MMK xviii.4.
More specically, nirvna is sometimes described as the cessation of becoming (at SN ii.117, for
and rebirth in samsra.
instance) and thus of death
SN iii.12.
162
Considered against the backdrop of Buddhist moral psychology, moreover, it is not clear that these formulations are negative in content, even
though they are certainly negative in form. Indeed, let us assume for a
moment that we can interpret the terms life, samsra, or rebirth in
with duhkha. It is
these idioms as simply standing for existence permeated
.
then possible to see how gaining liberation from life/samsra/rebirth does
independent
of any account of reincarnation. This is not because anything
essential was left out. The fact of the matter is that, as philosophy, Buddhism
presents a model of moral psychology which in no way depends on the
doctrine of reincarnation. If we were to understand nirvna simply as the
principally to
end of rebirth, then a relatively unimportant factor owing
inessential cultural and historical contingencies would be preventing us from
seeing something of far greater philosophical and psychological signicance.
Consider, in this connection, Ngrjunas surprising statement to the
effect that nothing distinguishes samsra from nirvna.89 Ngrjunas
point is that there is no ontological or metaphysical difference between
the realm of nirvna and that of samsra90 nirvna is not some sort of
MMK xxv.19.
This is because what distinguishes samsra from nirvna is the subjects perspective (or, more
is an actual ontological identity between
precisely, its attitude toward the world), not because there
the two, as is too often assumed see Rupps simplistic claim that the Mahynas insistence that
nirvna and samsra are ultimately one constitutes an at least potentially positive valuation of the
D. Rupp, The Relationship between Nirvna and Samsra: An Essay on the
whole of being.
5567,at p. 65.
Evolution of Buddhist Ethics, Philosophy East and West 21(1), 1971:
164
The rst thing to note is that, from the standpoint of Buddhist moral
psychology, Nietzsches explanation of how Buddhists bring suffering to an
end seems rather supercial. There is no doubt that the Buddha urges his
followers to stamp out the re of aversion.94 All forms of animosity,
resentment, and desire for revenge are manifestations of thirsting and result
from the self-centered attitudes that the self-delusion gives rise to. What
Buddhists regard as proper conduct accordingly includes relinquishing not
only harmful acts and slanderous speech, but also any angry thoughts. But
this alone is not what leads to the cessation of suffering. Rather, such physical,
verbal, and mental actions are condemned because they reinforce the deeper
self-centered biases and proclivities that bind us to samsra. The real target
thirsting among
of Buddhist therapy is the self-delusion; the affects of
which we may count Nietzsches ressentiment1 are combated precisely in
so far as they reinforce the egocentrism in which they nd their source.
Fundamentally, the Buddhas therapy focuses on what is at the root of
resentment, anger, and aversion; tackling these surface phenomena alone is
not sufcient to attain nirvna. Nietzsches description of Buddhist therapy is
but it is slightly off the mark.
not entirely inaccurate, then,
What Nietzsche entirely fails to see, however, is that in undermining the
self-delusion, the Buddhist does not only destroy the root of ressentiment1,
but also that of ressentiment2. On Nietzsches analysis, ressentiment2 is the
product of the dcadents great irritability and weakness. Life for the
exhausted dcadents is studded with perpetual pains and sorrows. As a result,
they feel targeted by life and decide that life is evil. This is what leads them
to take revenge on life through various forms of life-negating ideologies.
Nietzsche writes:
The instinct of revenge has gained domination over mankind in the course of
millennia, so that all of metaphysics, of psychology, of the idea of history, but above
all of morality bears its mark. And so far as man has simply thought, he has
introduced the bacillus of revenge into things.95
The very idea of Buddhist great health, however, is to recover from the
debilitating, enfeebling fever that causes one to experience life as duh.kha, or
painful. Thirsting, on the Buddhist analyses, is that by virtue of which
unpleasant experiences hurt me, harm me, discourage me, cause me to
despair from life, etc. Free of thirsting, I no longer feel targeted by life. I am
no longer fearful, fretful, and defensive, let alone aggressive. This is not
because I have frozen my instincts, or fallen asleep, but because I have
94
95
NL 18881889 15(30).
96
97
MMK xiii.8. This is but one of several epithets that suggest that the Buddhist healthy type is strong
and powerful. For other such epithets, see Sn 29, 213, and 646.
See EH Warum ich so gute Bcher schreibe GT 4 and ibid. FW 4.
166
This might explain why reaching nirvna seems to involve everything but
fati is an anti-unselving ideal. It
the unselving that Nietzsche attacks. Amor
is an ideal of self-love and self-afrmation. As paradoxical as this may seem,
the Buddhas overcoming of the self-delusion apparently leads to a similar
result.98 In both their self-praise and in third-person descriptions of them,
Buddhist healthy types seem to radiate a healthy self-love, an exuberant
condence, and an unconditional afrmation of their superiority.99 It
would seem, then, that on the Buddhist account, the self-afrmation and
self-love Nietzsche extols is conditional upon victory over the debilitating
sickness of the self-delusion. Beyond the absence of all forms of ressentiment
and the cessation of depressing suffering, then, nirvna, like amor fati, also
realist taxonomic
grid that identies the irreducible, substantial particulars
of which the world is made up. In short, Buddhist philosophy and
98
99
100
101
The paradox quickly dissolves when it is seen that self in idioms such as self-love, self-afrmation,
etc., only designates a reexive grammatical relation devoid of any ontological implications concerning a robust self that would act as the object of love or afrmation.
A few canonical passages in which this is obvious include V i.7, MN i.68, SN i.278, and Sn 213 and
646.
GD iii 2 and 5, NL 18851887, 7(63), ibid. 18871888, 9(98), and ibid. 10(19).
NL 18851887, 7(63).
Nietzsche agree not only that the model for Being is the I but also that
the psychological source for the ction of Being modeled on the I is some
form of deep dissatisfaction with life.
Nietzsche does not make the relation between the subject-feeling and the
existential despair that fuels the invention of Being (on the I model)
explicit. It is possible, however, to merge Nietzsches account with the
Buddhist story. A Buddhist version of Nietzsches theory would trace the
heightened irritability characteristic of dcadence back to the self-delusion.
On this view, if Nietzsches sick, reactive type is so prone to suffering,
sorrow, and despair, it is precisely because of the fundamental delusion that
stands behind the subject-feeling. The Self-delusion would therefore be at
the basis of the dcadents longing for a realm of Bliss and Stillness. It would
also be at the basis of their ressentiment2, which, in Buddhist terms, might be
described as a form of thirsting-based anger vis--vis a world of becoming
that continually frustrates sick types needs. Nietzsches explanation that it
is on account of fear and a desire for comfort and relief that we explain the
world to ourselves by slipping a doer (subject) . . . behind everything that
happen[s], posit stable, discrete things as causes in analogy with the ego,
etc.,102 could then be taken one explanatory step further. At the root of the
suffering and fear that fuels such large-scale personication lies the very
delusion that there is a unitary, enduring core at the heart of ones being.
On this Buddho-Nietzschean hybrid account, the debilitating self-delusion
is what stands behind the sickly reactivity of interpreting the world in terms
of stable things and enduring substances and then of inventing the ctions
of a wahre Welt, a Heaven, or a God. The predominance of reactive forces,
on this account, is a function of the self-delusion.
Ultimately, the question of whether or not Nietzsche would have
assented to a Buddhist explanation of reactivity, or dcadence, is moot.103
What is worth noting is that the Buddhist psychological account can, in
theory at least, complement Nietzsches. What is more, if what Nietzsche
calls reactive behavior relating to the self and individuation lines up so
neatly with what is regarded as unhealthy behavior in Buddhist philosophy
so neatly that the Buddhist explanation for this behavior also ts Nietzsches
102
103
GD vi 3 and 5.
It should be noted, however, that a specic passage in GM suggests Nietzsche might in fact have
recognized a genetic relation between the self-delusion and reactivity. The passage speaks of the
slaves reactive ressentiment against his masters in the following terms: Slave morality from the outset
says no to what is external, what is other, what is not self; and this no is the creative act (GM i
10). This ts with the Buddhist analysis, which has it that the constitution of the inimical other is
dependent on a robust sense of self.
168
Buddhist philosophy comes close to the ideal of embracing the grand ction
of eternal recurrence in amor fati. Self-love and a certain form of selfafrmation are obviously part of Buddhist great health, but there is no
parallel in Buddhism for the ironic ctions of an eternal Self and a Cosmic
Being (Dionysus) that play a central role in Nietzsches ideal of lifeafrmation.
And this, in turn, points to the distinct role irony plays in Nietzsches and
the Buddhas ethical ideals. The irony of the Buddhist healthy type has a
purely functional role. It is something pragmatic that allows healthy types to
carry out their projects in the world. The ironic ctions of Self and Being in
Nietzsches great health, in contrast, are part and parcel of amor fati.
Nietzsches healthy type says yes to a tragic Life in a tragic World, and it
is in order to do so that he ironically embraces the ctions of Self and Being.
The ctions of self and being, for the Buddhist healthy type, are merely
useful constructs which the healthy type can freely play with, but they play
no direct role in the attainment of the great health of nirvna. Even if there
being and in
is much overlap in our two healthy types relation to self and
the irony with which they perpetuate these ctions, there is thus also an
important difference in the role this irony plays in our two ethical visions.
This difference in the role of irony in Buddhist philosophy and
Nietzsches ideal of great health points to a far more signicant discrepancy
between nirvna and amor fati. Certainly, both might involve the same kind
of cessation of suffering. Both, that is to say, involve no longer suffering as
the reactive, sick type of Nietzsches thought suffers. But what about the
active types interpretation of suffering as a resistance or obstacle to overcome? This, after all, is how Nietzsches healthy type looks upon the dread
and horror experienced in the face of eternal recurrence. And it is for the
sake of thus looking upon existence that he invents the ironic ctions of an
eternally recurring Self and World. To have this healthy stance toward great
suffering is the whole point of amor fati. Indeed, the cessation of the weak
types suffering in amor fati is only meant to prepare the terrain for the
heroic will to suffer. Nirvna, in contrast, might imply no longer interpreting experiences and states as painful in the way Nietzsches reactive type
interprets things as painful, but it does not seem to leave any place for
suffering qua stimulation.
Of course, in so far as the Buddhist concept of duh.kha stands for something that presupposes thirsting, prima facie there can be no discussion of
such suffering in Buddhist philosophy, let alone of a will to duh.kha.
Without thirsting, there is no duh.kha. Whatever obstacles an enlightened
person may meet will not be experienced as duh.kha. On the face of it, then,
170
it looks as though nothing in Buddhism could play the role of suffering qua
stimulating resistance to overcome.
Having said this, there is a sense in which the Buddhist healthy type is
stimulated by suffering and seeks out challenges, adventures, and obstacles
to overcome. According to Buddhist texts, this is the result of the healthy
types boundless compassion, which, it would appear, is a positively painful
affect.104 At this point, however, any rapprochement between Buddhist
ethics and Nietzsches positive philosophy seems to fall apart. Nietzsche, on
the face of it, is an uninching enemy of compassion. Suffering born of
compassion cannot be the healthy types lure to life and action. On the
contrary, Nietzsche has it that compassion itself is to be overcome if one is
to attain great health.
It may be, however, that the compassion of Buddhist healthy types and
the compassion Nietzsche has in mind are signicantly different affects. It is
thus to compassion that we must turn in order to bring greater focus to the
relation between Nietzsches and the Buddhas visions of great health. This
will be our task in the next two chapters.
104
part iii
Compassion
chapter 5
Overcoming compassion
EH Warum ich so weise bin 4. I translate Mitleid/Mitleiden as compassion rather than pity for
two reasons. First, com-passion (literally suffering-with, or shared suffering; cf. commiseration) is morphologically and semantically closer to the German (Mit-leid) and, as such, evokes one of
the central ideas behind Nietzsches critique of compassion, namely that feeling compassion involves
suffering (leiden). Second, it seems clear in view of recent terminological discussions that compassion,
not pity, is what Nietzsche is concerned with. Contra earlier attempts to distinguish pity from
compassion in terms of the potential for contempt which pity would supposedly involve and
compassion be immune from, Tappolet argues that the real difference is that a person who is not
aware of a misfortune (e.g. of having recently lost a loved one) or who feels no suffering (e.g. an
apathetic alcoholic) can be pitied, whereas one must be actively and consciously suffering to be the
object of compassion. C. Tappolet, Compassion et altruisme, Studia Philosophica 59, 2000: 17593,
at pp. 1778. For reasons that will soon be obvious, the emotion Nietzsche is concerned with clearly
has its origin in the others suffering, not in ones assessment of the others state or condition. It is
compassion, not pity.
This strand has been under-examined. A few exceptions aside, Nietzsches views on compassion have
received very little attention in commentarial literature, though this has begun to change in the last
two decades. Nevertheless, this is the rst study in which an attempt is made to present a systematic
exposition of Nietzsches critique(s) of compassion.
173
174
compassion can be subsumed under two broad headings. First, there is what
I call Nietzsches psychological critique of compassion. Second, there is what I
call Nietzsches cultural critique of compassion. Though both these critiques
imply each other and ultimately form a whole, each of them needs to be
examined independently, for the sake of clarity and precision. Together,
they serve as the background for practically everything Nietzsche has to say
about compassion.
The psychological phenomenon of compassion as Nietzsche understands
it has four fundamental features. The rst is that compassion is little more
than immature sentimentality. This is one of Nietzsches earliest critical
views on compassion. The rst formulations of this view, in MM i , are
founded on the opposition between reason and emotion, head and heart,
mind and gut. Here, Nietzsche echoes La Rochefoucaulds claim to the
effect that compassion is a mere passion useful only to those who lack reason
and therefore need an emotion to be prompted to help others.3 Nietzsche
also enlists the Ancients to back his case against compassion. In contrast
with the modern moralists obsession with compassion and altruism, the
Ancient Greeks allegedly saw the propensity to feel compassion as a common aw of character among feeble souls.4 This is because they had the
maturity and good sense to recognize compassion as a vulgar and sentimental reaction that owes everything to the heart and nothing to the head.
Nietzsche concurs. Conversely, he speaks of the people who do not feel
compassion as rational, level-headed, and self-controlled individuals who
are embarrassed by the faint-heartedness which lies at the root of
compassion.5
3
MM i 50. Nietzsche concludes: One should certainly manifest compassion [to please weak and ailing
people], but guard oneself against having it. This seems to be directly drawn from La Rochefoucaulds
1659 self-portrait: Autoportrait, in Maximes et rexions diverses, ed. P. Kuetz (Paris: Bordas, 1966),
p. 20. La Rochefoucaulds cynical views on human psychology are laid out there (1678, 3rd edn). This
text had an enormous inuence on Nietzsche, especially in the late 1870s and early 1880s. For a
systematic study of Nietzsches engagement with La Rochefoucauld, see R. Abbey, Descent and
Dissent: Nietzsches Reading of Two French Moralists (unpublished doctoral dissertation, McGill
University, 1994), especially pp. 14266. See also R. Abbey, Nietzsches Middle Period (Oxford
University Press, 2000), pp. 5863.
MM i 50. See also M 134 and especially 131, where Nietzsche explains that the ethics of the Ancients
prescribed sustained, self-controlled egoism and strove precisely against feeling with others. Of
course, Nietzsche is ignoring an important number of Greek authors who did not see compassion in
this light, foremost among them Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics iii.7). In fact, Nietzsche seems to be
specically thinking of the Stoics when he speaks of the Ancients and their attitude toward
compassion. On this point, see M. Nussbaum, Pity and Mercy: Nietzsches Stoicism, in
R. Schacht (ed.), Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals
(University of California Press, 1994), pp. 13947.
M 133.
Overcoming compassion
175
It is of no small signicance that Nietzsche continues to regard compassion as sentimental and immature even after distancing himself from MM
i s and Ms praise of cold, hard reason in contrast to ckle affects and
instincts.6 In MM ii (1886), he describes the prevalent morality of sentimental compassion and bleeding-heart benevolence as an instinctive morality which has no head and seems to consist only of heart and helping
hands.7 In a fragment from the same year, he complains that compassion
does not depend upon maxims, but upon affects.8 Nietzsche, at this stage
in his thinking, has nothing against instincts and affects, so why does he
continue to blame compassion for being an emotional, rather than a
rational, response to the others suffering?
It turns out that Nietzsches problem with compassion is not in itself that
it is an affect, but that it is an affect born of weakness. In EH, Nietzsche
explains that compassion is a particular case of being unable to withstand
stimuli compassion is called a virtue only among dcadents.9 Nietzsches
main idea from MM i to EH, then, is that compassion results from a lack of
self-control. It is a sentimental response to which are prone weak and
irritable people bereft of emotional and physical resilience i.e. those
Nietzsche eventually called dcadents. As such, compassion is a reactive
response to the others suffering.10 It is undergone purely for lack of control
and resilience.
The second fundamental feature of compassion on Nietzsches psychological critique is that it is a painful affect. Nietzsche takes the term
Mitleid in a very literal, etymological sense. Compassion is suffering; it
involves suffering (leiden) with (mit) the other, or, more precisely, because
of the other. The idea is that compassion is a weakening affect:
Compassion, in so far as it creates suffering . . . is a weakness, like all selfloss through a damaging affect.11 Nietzsche thus blames compassion for
increas[ing] the suffering of the world.12 It is, in short, a depressive,
6
The rehabilitation of instincts in contrast to the more rationalist tone of MM i , M, and some
sections of FW (rst edition) are generally regarded as characteristic of Nietzsches late period (as
opposed to his middle period).
7
MM ii Der Wanderer und sein Schatten 45.
8
NL 18851887, 7(4). Consider, in this connection, Nietzsches claim that no man of knowledge
could ever take compassion seriously (JGB 172). Man of knowledge, here, is not a pejorative term
(as it is elsewhere in Nietzsches writing). On the contrary, it seems to designate higher men. The
sentimentality of compassion, Nietzsche also tells us in JGB, is made evident by the fact that it
exhibits an almost feminine inability to be a witness, to let suffering happen (202).
9
EH Warum ich so weise bin 4.
10
On reactivity (as opposed to activity) and the dcadent as the fundamental reactive type, see
Chapter 3.
11
M 134. 12 Ibid. See also JGB 30.
176
The more people are compassionate and lack the self-control not to feel pain
when faced with the others suffering, the more contagious suffering
becomes. Compassion, in this sense, is a fundamentally enfeebling, infectious affect.16
This feature of compassion stands behind Nietzsches view that compassion is little more than immature sentimentality. The irritable, oversentimental dcadent cannot but undergo harm as a result of feeling
compassion. The dcadent, after all, is a reactive type for whom all forms
of suffering involve a setback and loss of force. And indeed, if compassion is
so common among dcadents, it is precisely because it is symptomatic of a
propensity to be easily hurt and an inability to resist psychological damage.
Feeling pain in the face of the others suffering is something utterly banal for
Nietzsche. It is the default mode of the dcadents rapport with the other,
precisely in so far as it is a fundamentally reactive affect. Far from being a
virtue, then, compassion is a manifestation of sentimentality and excessive
psychological susceptibility.
The third feature of the psychology of compassion outlined by Nietzsche
is that the actions to which it leads are in fact indirectly self-regarding. In so
far as mitleiden (having compassion for) reduces to leiden (suffering),
claims Nietzsche, to call actions born of compassion seless or altruistic
betrays a supercial grasp of psychology. Nietzsche, in this connection,
argues that Mitleid is a misleading form because the suffering experienced in
13
16
Overcoming compassion
177
the face of the others woe is really very much ones own suffering.17 What
we call compassionate action, Nietzsche contends, is profoundly selfcentered.18 At bottom, to act out of compassion is really to act on ones
own behalf.19 It is my own suffering that I get rid of in performing acts
motivated by compassion.20
The fourth and nal feature of the psychology of compassion is that it
motivates the agent to supercial actions alone. Nietzsche explains:
Compassion has a singular form of impudence as its companion: Because it
absolutely desires to help, there is no concern either as to the means of healing,
or as to the form or origin of the illness, but instead it happily starts quackdoctoring
the health and reputation of its patient.21
Compassion does not pierce to the heart of the others suffering. As such, it
strips the others suffering of what is actually personal.22 The result is
supercial, even insulting action.23 To the compassionate person, why or
how the other suffers is of no interest. Nor, more importantly, does the
compassionate person care whether this suffering might actually be good for
the other i.e. make the other stronger, rather than killing him. The
impersonal fact that a person suffers is the problem for me, because this is
what causes me to suffer, and thus prompts me to act.
Of course, the deeper root of this phenomenon is the very painfulness of
compassion. Because I am really concerned with my own pain and not what
has provoked it i.e. the others suffering I make no attempt to understand the nature of the others sorrows and unreectively rush to help.
17
18
19
20
21
178
M. Scheler, Gesammelte Werke (Bern: Francke), vol. vii, pp. 289. 25 Ibid., p. 27.
Ibid., p. 28.
On Darwalls account, emotional contagion is only a primitive form of empathy, involving no
projection into the others standpoint nor even, necessarily, any awareness of the other as a distinct
self. S. Darwall, Empathy, Sympathy, Care, Philosophical Studies 89(3), 1998: 26182, at p. 266.
Overcoming compassion
179
180
taste33 and bad manners.34 Compassion is bad taste in the sense that it
exhibits the weakness, emotional ckleness, and lack of self-control of the
lowly dcadent. It is, in short, characteristic of over-sensitive, whiny individuals who cannot but feel pain and sorrow when faced with someone
elses suffering. Moreover, dcadents compassion-born lament is really only
about their own woe. To exhibit compassion, in view of this, is shameful.
Actions motivated by compassion, accordingly, are bad manners in so far
as they are ultimately self-regarding, and as such supercial and misdirected,
if not outright hypocritical. Imagine a person who suffers from hunger and
yet cannot eat for several hours so as to avoid undermining the effectiveness
of the medication she has been prescribed to cure a disease. An idiotic
compassionate agent, aficted by the signs of hunger-induced suffering, will
urge this person to eat. Seen in this light, bad manners is something of an
understatement.
The second implication concerns Nietzsches views on the enigmatic
gure of the physician of mankind. Whoever wants to serve as a physician
for humanity in any sense at all, Nietzsche writes, will have to be very
careful to guard against such a sensation [compassion].35 Given Nietzsches
characterization of compassion, it is not surprising to nd him making the
claim that compassion is unt for a true physician. Nietzsches physician
will not be concerned with his own suffering, but with his patients in fact,
it is not clear that he will suffer in the face of his patients suffering. The idea
Nietzsche gestures toward here is that only when one does not feel compassion can one be of any help to the other. Moreover, Nietzsches reference
to the gure of the physician in this regard is no coincidence. With his
vision of great health, after all, Nietzsche himself is something of a physician
of humanity. As such Nietzsche strives to overcome compassion. This is a
point I will return to shortly.
The third implication of Nietzsches psychological critique of compassion is that compassion constitutes the greatest danger36 for healthy types
on their path to great health. What could this mean? Nietzsches broader
claims on nihilist morals and their impact on higher types provides us with
an answer. Every morality of altruism and compassion, Nietzsche warns, is
a seduction and an injury to the higher men.37 The greatest danger idea
is twofold, then: (1) being the object of compassion can injure the healthy
type, and (2) being the subject of compassion can seduce him away from
fullling his destiny.
33
36
Overcoming compassion
181
With regard to the risk of injury through compassion, Nietzsche contends that so-called benefactors may hurt the healthy type more than his
enemies do.38 He explains: In some circumstances, compassionate hands
can interfere most destructively in a great destiny, in the isolation under
wounds, in the privilege of a heavy burden.39 Such a claim presupposes that
great suffering is a necessary condition for achieving higher health. The idea
is that being the object of compassion being continually helped, assisted,
and supported by bleeding hearts prevents the healthy type from growing
stronger from what does not kill him.
As far as the seduction of compassion is concerned, Nietzsches idea is
that even superior types may lapse back into sentimental ckleness and, on
account of compassion, squander their energy on some unworthy cause.40
Compassion, Nietzsche thus claims, is the easiest way to lose ones way.41
It is in this context that he speaks of the seduction inherent to anything
compassion-eliciting (Mitleid-erweckend).42 For Nietzsche, compassion is
such a natural, intuitive reaction to the others woe that there is always a risk
that even the highest type may be prey to such enfeebling, distracting
sentimentality. This is why the overcoming of compassion is a noble
virtue.43 The overcoming of compassion, after all, is a true victory over
ourselves.44 It is a victory over a fundamentally reactive affect which
represents a threat to everything afrmative and creative in man.
We can now turn to Nietzsches cultural critique of compassion. The
target of this critique is the collective glorication of compassion which
Nietzsche witnessed in late nineteenth-century Europe. Though it originates from the soil of Christianity, this religion of compassion45 is the
creed standing behind even the most secular ethical systems of modern
Europe. Fundamentally, all of these morals and ideologies exhibit an
obsession with disinterestedness, altruism, selessness, etc.46 As such, the
religion of compassion represents the supreme ideological victory of
unselving morals, the dcadents most potent instrument of life- and
38
40
41
46
182
50
See, on this point, GD viii 37. On unselving morals and its relation to dcadence, see Chapter 2.
FW 377. See also NL 18881889, 17(6).
At NL 18851887, 9(85), Nietzsche points out that unegoistic behavior is the result of an actual herd
instinct in the individual. On this point, see R. Havas, Nietzsches Genealogy: Nihilism and the Will to
Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 211f. Nietzsches account, it should be
noted, is compatible with recent developments in evolutionary psychology, though evolutionary
psychologists, unlike Nietzsche, tend to look upon the prevalence of herd instincts as a positive
development. See E. Sober and D. S. Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselsh
Behaviour (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). This only conrms Nietzsches
suspicion concerning the scientist as the modern incarnation of the ascetic priest (GM iii 24f.).
JGB 199. 51 See, in particular, GD viii 37. 52 JGB 202.
Overcoming compassion
183
54
58
NL 18851887, 9(85). The gure of the free spirit is the prototypical non-conformist whom the herd
despises. See, in this connection, the gure of the inquirer, the seeker, the overcomer who lives in
the wilderness, in contrast to the famous sages who feed the masses the wisdom they wish to be fed
(Z ii Von den berhmten Weisen).
NL 18851887, 9(85). 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 18881889, 14(29). 57 Ibid.
I should mention that though I use the term calculated self-interest, there is actually no deliberate
and conscious calculation here. Instincts do all the work.
184
64
GM Vorrede 5. 60 Ibid. 61 A 7.
M 133. On this point, see Kiowski, Nietzsches Kritik an Schopenhauers Mitleidsbegriff, Prima
Philosophia 12(1), 1999: 4761.
In a key fragment, Nietzsche explicitly groups mortication of the self, compassion, and the
negation of life together (NL 18881889, 15(13)). See also JGB 225: There are moments, when we
look upon your compassion with indescribable fear, when we ght against this compassion . . .
Wellbeing as you understand it that is certainly no goal, it looks to us like an end! A condition
that makes decline something desirable.
JGB 30. 65 NL 18881889, 15(110). 66 Ibid. See also A 7.
Overcoming compassion
185
program into his claim that compassion acts against evolution. Indeed,
there are good reasons to think that Nietzsche would never support the
mass murder or quarantining of the physically weak and unhealthy. To wit:
Nietzsches concepts of health and sickness do not correspond to those of
biological medicine or contemporary genetics. Consider Nietzsches case.
Nietzsche was ill for most of his adult life, and yet he believed that his
sickness was precisely what allowed him to attain a higher health.
Accordingly, many medically healthy people might count as sick and
weak for Nietzsche. Likewise, many medically unhealthy people might
count as healthy and strong.67 In itself, this gives us good reasons to take
the passages on compassion as the counter-principle of selection with a
pinch of salt.
What does Nietzsche mean, then? Nietzsches comment at MM ii 45
might prove helpful on this point. This passage ridicules the morality of
compassion for implying that others must be hurt so that a person may
become good. Seeing as suffering is necessary for compassion, what
results is a case for all injury on earth.68 On the face of it, this argument
seems utterly sophistical. The whole point of praising compassion, the critic
will object, is that it is good to feel compassion, so there is nothing about the
morality of compassion that implies that others ought to be injured. But this
objection misses Nietzsches point. What Nietzsche is concerned with is an
ideology in which compassion with the lowly and the aficted is the
measure for the elevation of the soul.69 It is not just that feeling compassion is
good, but that goodness consists in being compassionate. In such a
context, it is correct to point out that ethical prowess will require that
people be suffering, unwell, downtrodden, etc. In light of this, the religion
of compassion will effectively militate against the evolution, or development, of higher, stronger types who are not so susceptible to sorrow,
sadness, and depression.
67
68
186
A 7.
71
72
GM iii 14.
Overcoming compassion
187
It would be an unfortunate mistake to assume, on the basis of his vociferously critical views, that Nietzsche assumes a purely negative stance vis--vis
compassion. A more careful reading of his oeuvre reveals, on the contrary,
that there is room in Nietzsches philosophy for a healthy form of compassion.75 Examining this counterweight to Nietzsches critique of compassion
is the key to gaining a proper understanding of what is really involved in
overcoming compassion.
In a few highly signicant passages, Nietzsche accuses the nihilist prophet
of unselving of misconstruing compassion by illegitimately tracing it back to
false roots. Consider the following fragment:
Under the pressure of the ascetic unselving morals precisely the affects of love, goodness, compassion, even fairness, generosity, heroism had to be misunderstood . . . It is
richness in personality, fullness in oneself, overowing and giving out, instinctive
wellbeing and yea-saying to oneself which produces great sacrice and great love: it
is out of this strong and divine selfhood that these affects grow.76
76
188
Overcoming compassion
189
The general idea behind Nietzsches comparison between the strong and
weak types relation to compassion is that there are really two forms of
compassion, as it were. One is born of weakness and is symptomatic of an
inability to resist psychological damage; the other is born of strength and is
expressive of an active, expansive propensity to extend ones care, to shelter
others under ones wings, etc. Just as there is both a pessimism of weakness
and a pessimism of strength for Nietzsche, there is also a compassion of the
weak and a compassion of the strong. In both cases, the given is the
same boundless, senseless suffering in the case of pessimism, the others
woe in the case of compassion but the psychological effect is quite the
opposite.
Admittedly, Nietzsche does not tell us very much about compassion of
strength. His discussion of his compassion, however, provides an interesting hint. Indeed, it would appear that the compassion of the weak and
the compassion of the strong have very different intentional objects. To
explain what distinguishes his compassion from that of his contemporaries, Nietzsche points to the bipartite nature of human beings: a so-called
individual is part creature or matter, fragment, excess, clay, lth, nonsense, chaos and part creator or sculptor, hammer-hardness.81 Recall
the distinction between reactive and active forces in the individual. The
difference between Nietzsches compassion of strength and the herds
compassion is that the former is concerned with the active creator side of
the individual, while the latter focuses on the reactive creature in the
individual what should be broken, molded, and overcome.82 From the
prevalent standpoint of the herd, the compassion of the strong is thus
inverted (umgekehrt) compassion. This is the form of compassion
Nietzsche alludes to when, in his notebooks, he likewise denes my
compassion as the emotion he feels when a superior type wastes his
potential and nds himself halted on his path to greatness or diverted
away from attaining this goal, or when he looks at modern Europe and
the deep nihilism in which it wallows.83 In short, while the compassion of
the strong looks out for what is active in human beings and will seek to assist
these active forces against the onslaught of reactive forces, the compassion of
the weak is concerned with what is reactive in the human being. As such, the
compassion of the weak will even combat active forces in so far as these are a
threat to the dominance of reactive forces.
The key to gaining a fuller understanding of what compassion of the
strong involves is to build on the idea of the compassion of strength as
81
Ibid. 225.
82
Ibid.
83
NL 18841885, 36(7).
190
Overcoming compassion
191
M 103.
85
192
JGB 225.
chapter 6
Cultivating compassion
1
2
JGB 56.
On this point, see also L. Vivard, Vacuit (nyat) et compassion (karun) dans le bouddhisme
193
194
7
8
MN ii.100. See also SN i.110, where the Buddha is described as having compassion for all beings.
AN i.22; DN ii.212.
This view is repeatedly expressed in the discourses (namely, at MN i. 23, ii.238, and iii.302; SN i.110
and iv.359; and AN i.22, iii.6, and iv.139). The idea that the most salient characteristic of the Buddha
and other enlightened beings is their compassionate disposition is particularly emphasized in later
Sanskrit texts, especially (though not exclusively) those of the Mahyna tradition. For a survey of the
several Sanskrit passages in which compassion is described as the root of enlightenment and of all of the
Buddhas and/or bodhisattvas qualities, see Vivard, Vacuit, p. 156.
I am referring to the meditative exercises centered on the four so-called brahma-abodes, in which the
trainee is instructed to imagine pervading the entire world with a mind full of goodwill, compassion,
sympathetic joy, and nally equanimity (DN i.251). This instruction is repeated verbatim several times
in the Pli canon.
This is something Ellis, one of the founders of cognitive behavioral therapy, seems to have been aware
of. A. Ellis, Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1991), p. 35.
Admittedly, most cognitive behavioral therapy, especially that of Beck and his followers, is more
cognitivist than Buddhist therapy. See A. T. Beck, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
(New York: International Universities Press, 1976). Overall, Buddhist psychology focuses more on
states of mind in which there is no clear line of demarcation between the cognitive, emotive, and
conative. If anything, then, Buddhist therapy is more behavioral in a sense that includes cognitive
behavior than cognitive. In reality, this therapeutic model and the psychology that underpins it is not
Cultivating compassion
195
specic to Buddhism, but is common to a number of Indian traditions. Fort points out that in Advaita
Vednta the psychological traits of the jvanmukta (liberated soul) the Advaitin healthy type are
also those the cultivation of which lead to this status. A. Fortin, Liberation while Living in the
Jvanmuktiviveka, in A. Fort and P. Mummes (eds.), Living Liberation in Hindu Thought (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 13555, at p. 144. C. M. Brown observes something
similar in the case of the Mahbhratas ethics in Modes of Perfected Living in the Mahbhrata and
the Purnas, also in Fort and Mummes, Living Liberation in Hindu Thought, pp. 15783, at p. 161. In
short, it seems
to have been a widespread belief in India that to make oneself think and feel more like
one would if healthy, or healthier, is effective in warding off harmful symptoms.
SN i.206. 10 Ibid. (my emphasis).
196
13
Vsm, p. 318.
Ibid., p. 319. The technical term employed here is sorrow based on the home life, which, as the
canonical citation Buddhaghosa adduces makes clear, stands for the sadness that results from losing
possessions and/or loved ones.
As Vivard points out, a great number of Classical Indian Buddhist authors were in agreement on this
point. Vivard presents several citations from these authors concerning the personal distress involved
in compassion in Vacuit, pp. 1801.
Cultivating compassion
197
trainees to begin by developing compassion for family and loved ones, then
to progressively extend the scope of their compassionate concern to people
they are indifferent to, and nally even to enemies.14 Such training suggests
that the healthy types compassion is not qualitatively different from what
everyone naturally feels toward those to whom they are attached. This
comes as something of a surprise given that Buddhaghosa then tries to
qualify this form of compassion as rmly distinct from sorrow and selfregarding sadness. There is at the very least a palpable tension here. Is the
Buddhas compassion qualitatively different from the common persons, or
is it only that it has a broader scope?
Fortunately, this is a question to which Vasubandhu and Asanga provide
two complementary answers. Vasubandhu distinguishes between the compassion that the trainee is preliminarily instructed to develop and the great
compassion characteristic of the Buddhas supremely healthy mind. While
the former is characterized by the absence of aversion alone, the latter is also
characterized by the absence of delusion.15 What, one might ask, is the
delusion of which the Buddhas compassion is supposed to be devoid? This
is a question Asanga can help us answer. While discussing the love involved
in compassion, Asanga explains that unlike the fathers or mothers love,
which consists in thirsting, a Buddhist healthy types love consists in
compassion.16 Though this distinction is somewhat circular, it nevertheless
makes it very clear that the Buddhas compassion is different from mundane
compassion in that it does not involve thirsting. This, in turn, suggests that
though compassion might involve suffering, this suffering must be qualitatively different from the thirsting-based duh.kha which is brought to
cessation in nirvna. What is more, we can now infer, on the basis of
it is from the self-delusion that Vasubandhus great
Asangas claim, that
compassion is free. Buddhist philosophy, after all, traces thirsting back to
the self-delusion. The Buddhas great compassion, then, is qualitatively
different from the ordinary persons attachment-based sympathy in that it
is free of the self-delusion (Vasubandhu) and therefore does not involve
thirsting (Asanga).
There is thus an intimate link between the full realization of selessness
and the arising of boundless compassion in a Buddhist healthy types
perfected mind. Consider, in this connection, Vivards synopsis of
Madhyamaka moral psychology: The compassion of the profane individual rests on the tman . . . The perfection of compassion is proportional to
the disappearance of the idea of tman. Such [perfection] is progressive, and
14
Vsm, p. 314.
15
AK, p. 415.
16
198
Cultivating compassion
199
though bodhisattvas rst recoil before the suffering they experience out of
compassion, this same suffering lls them with joy when it is properly
apprehended.20 He goes on to explain that in compassionately assisting
others in their progression toward the great health of nirvna, the bodhisattvas compassion-caused suffering turns into happiness.21 This is presumably why the bodhisattvas compassion-born suffering lls them with joy
to begin with.
ntideva evokes a similar idea. He explains that the suffering born of
Buddhist healthy types compassion is far outweighed by the formidable
pleasure they feel when the other is helped to get closer to nirvna.22
MSA xvii.46.
21
22
BA viii.1048.
200
son. The one with ten powers [i.e. the Buddha] will know of a medicine for her.
He spoke: My dear, go to the Awakened One and ask him for medicine for your
son. Having gone to [his] abode while the master was teaching the doctrine,
[Kisagotam] said: Exalted one, please give me medicine for my son! Having seen
the promise in her, the master said: Go! Enter the city and bring me a mustard
seed from a house which has never known death. Very well, sir! [she said], her
mind pleased. She entered the city, went to the rst house and said: The master
wishes to be brought a mustard seed for my sons medicine, if this house has never
known death, [then] please give me a mustard seed. Who is able to count the
dead here? [was she answered,] what, then, is the use of this mustard seed? She
went to a second, a third, a fourth house. [Then,] freed from frenzy thanks to the
Buddha, [Kisagotam] regained normal consciousness. She thought: Certainly this
will hold in the whole city. The lord will have seen this out of compassion and
concern for my welfare. She developed samvega,23 went away from there, aban these verses:
doned her son in a charnel grove, and uttered
This is no village law, no town law,
Nor is it a law for a single family.
For this entire world, including the gods,
This very law holds: everything is impermanent.24
There are a number of things to note about this striking story. The rst is
the medical discourse in which the entire story is couched. Kisagotam is
repeatedly described as mad with sorrow until she is nally freed from her
frenzy and restored to normal consciousness. Kisagotam is truly ill on
account of sorrow. This is something the wise passerby immediately sees. In
fact, there is a telling and most probably deliberate ambiguity in the
formulation of the wise mans thought the Buddha will know of a
medicine for her. Will the Buddhas medicine be for her son, or for her?
This is not clear. When he addresses her, after all, the passerby explicitly
speaks of a medicine for her son. What is very clear, however, is that it is
ultimately Kisagotam, and not her son, who is treated. The Buddha,
nally, does not so much cure her as create conditions in which she recovers.
Note, in this connection, that the Buddha sees promise in Kisagotam.
This presumably affected the form of treatment he devised. The Buddha
seems to foresee that going from grief-stricken house to grief-stricken house
will not only lead Kisagotam to recover from her frenzy, but also lead her to
higher pursuits. His compassionate action, then, is not directed at her
immediate pain, but at something deeper. Accordingly, the Buddha neither
23
24
Samvega is a technical Buddhist term that designates the kind of agitation caused by the realization of
the impermanence of all things, which leads to the taking up of the Buddhist path.
ThGA x.1.
Cultivating compassion
201
consoles nor comforts Kisagotam. He does not even try to reason with her.
Instead, he sends her off with the false hope that her son will be cured from
death if she can nd the right mustard seed. This cold-hearted, almost
unsympathetic intervention is what the great physicians compassion translates into. It is Kisagotam herself, nally, who arrives at the realization that
all is impermanent, that attachment is futile, etc., which eventually leads her
to embark upon the path to the great health of nirvna. She is the one who
will ultimately cure herself of the most fundamental of illnesses.
Many people are disturbed upon rst hearing this story. The supposedly
compassionate Buddha appears inhuman, unsympathetic, and almost cruel.
Even his teaching of impermanence is indirect and takes the form of what
may be looked upon as a tasteless practical joke. How, one may ask, can this
be the great compassionate physician admired and worshipped for more
than two millennia? This impression, of course, derives from the unreective assumption that the compassion the Buddha feels is identical to what
most of us experience when we feel compassion. But this assumption is
wrong. In reality, the story of Kisagotam is one of the most illustrative and
telling examples of what active Buddhist compassion consists in. The
Buddha sees the potential for great health in Kisagotam and leads her to
arrive, on her own, at the conclusion that will set her on the path to nirvna,
even if this happens via profound disillusion. His compassion does not
manifest itself as commiseration or consolation. Rather, it translates into
cool, dispassionate, straightforward, and ultimately effective action. What is
more, he does not do anything directly for Kisagotam. He only orchestrates
the conditions in which she will come to help herself. Kisagotams suffering
is her responsibility alone. No one can put an end to it other than
Kisagotam herself.
Prima facie, there seems to be a certain ethical ambiguity about the
practice of compassionBuddhist.25 In the discourses, we nd the Buddha
claiming that he would not hesitate to cause harm out of compassion if
necessary. Just as most of us would decide to pull a pebble out of a childs
throat if it was choking on it even though blood may be drawn, the
Buddha, out of compassion, will occasionally cause suffering and torment
with his words.26 Conversely, Kisagotams case makes it evident that
suffering can easily be turned to prot, especially at the hands of a skillful
25
26
Henceforth I will use the superscripted compassionBuddhist to designate the compassion that
accompanies the great health of nirvna as opposed to other emotions commonly referred to as
Buddha
, happinessBuddha, etc., as opposed to
compassion. Cf. Flanagans eudaimonia
eudaimoniaAristotle, happinessAristotle, etc., in The Bodhisattvas Brain.
MN i.395.
202
therapist. To the question of how much suffering can be caused for the sake
of healing someone can thus be added the question of how much suffering
may be allowed to take place. How much harm and laissez-faire does
compassionBuddhist really involve?
Most formulations of the Mahyna bodhisattva vow seem to imply that
compassionBuddhist prompts one to help anyone who suffers in every way
and in any situation.27 But if the goal of healthy types is to direct people
toward the great health of nirvna which implies the complete cessation of
duh.kha not just to ght any and every instance of suffering as it presents
itself, then it is far from clear that this is what compassionBuddhist actually
prompts them to do.
The Buddha does not offer Kisagotam a shoulder to cry on. Instead, he
sends her off on a futile quest for a mustard seed he knows she will never
nd, thereby prolonging her suffering and even temporarily feeding her
delusional hope that her son can be cured from death. In short, it looks as
though Buddhist healthy types will both cause suffering and allow it to occur
with an eye to nudging the other in the direction of nirvna. The practice of
some Buddhist
compassionBuddhist might thus involve less benevolence than
texts seem to suggest. More worryingly yet, one could wonder whether the
Buddha, seeing the promise in Kisagotam, would have even prevented her
son from dying had he been able to. This, after all, might have delayed
Kisagotams recovery from the fever of thirsting.
Consider, in this connection, the Buddhist concept of skillful means
(kualopya) which comes to the fore in Classical Indian Buddhist philosophy. The idea here is that in assisting others in their progress toward great
health, the Buddhist healthy type exhibits perfect skillfulness in means.28
This notion is intimately related to the Buddhas formidable versatility as a
teacher.29 According to some Buddhist texts, almost any action is admissible,
including murder or sexual intercourse for a nominally abstinent monk, if it
will help a fellow creature stuck in samsra.30 This only adds to the worry that
of means might involve both causing
compassionBuddhist and its skillful use
suffering and/or allowing more suffering to happen.
Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to believe that compassionBuddhist
involves neither causing nor being indifferent to that much harm. Buddhist
27
28
29
30
See, for instance, BA iii.810, one of the most famous formulations of this vow.
On this difcult feature of Buddhist ethics, and its role in the Mahyna in particular, see M. Pye,
Skilful Means: A Concept in Mahyna Buddhism (New York: Routledge, 2003).
See, on this point, Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, p. 228.
On this point, see P. Williams, Mahyna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge,
1989), pp. 144f.
Cultivating compassion
203
authors throughout the ages have made it clear that too much suffering is
profoundly distracting and prevents people from embarking onto the path to
the great health of nirvna. This is why those in the human realm of traditional Indian cosmology are far better off than those in the three inferior
realms.31 Hell-beings, ghosts, and animals all suffer far too much to have
the leisure to think about life or to take up the Buddhist path. If we translate
cosmology into psychology, as Buddhist texts invite us to do,32 we obtain the
principle that people who are too miserable cannot even begin helping
themselves. If the bodhisattva vow seems to involve such broad benevolence,
then, it may be because there is an enormous mass of distracting suffering in
the world which needs to be removed before people can even begin to heal
themselves.
Nevertheless, living in happy (though also impermanent) godly realms is
also considered to be less favorable to attaining great health than living in the
human realm, in large part because gods suffer too little. If we translate this
cosmological claim into psychology, we obtain the principle that some people
have it too easy for their own good, so to speak. As a result, the practice of
compassionBuddhist, which aims to help creatures put an end to suffering by
attaining the great health of nirvna, might very well involve allowing suffer who may not have encountered enough
ing to occur in the case of someone
suffering so far and perhaps even to cause them harm. After all, with the
arch-pragmatic skillfulness in means doctrine, there are no categorical constraints on what the Buddhist healthy type may do out of compassion.
While active compassionBuddhist does involve much free and spontaneous
benevolence for the simple sake of relieving suffering, then, things are not as
straightforward as they are depicted in some Buddhist texts. The Buddhist
healthy type will ght much suffering just because it distracts people from the
pursuit of great health. But the ultimate goal of compassionBuddhist is to direct
the other toward the complete self-healing that will bring all suffering to an
end. And to this end some harm might be caused, and some might be
allowed, albeit with sharp discrimination.
The idea, in short, is that always helping someone might not be truly
helpful to them. Take, for instance, the case of a parent who rushes into its
one-year-old childs room as soon as it cries, only to spend ten minutes
consoling it and singing it back to sleep each time. This parents lack of
restraint, though motivated by concern for the childs welfare, is actually
31
32
MN i.73; DN iii.234.
On the principle of the equivalence of cosmology and psychology in interpreting the Buddhist
cosmological scheme, see Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, pp. 119f.
204
harming the child, who is deprived of the opportunity to develop the capacity
to comfort itself, to gain a certain autonomy, etc. Admittedly, things are not
so clear-cut in most cases and it thus requires a very ne judgment to evaluate
the situation and settle on the optimal course of action. Fortunately, Buddhist
healthy types are supposed to be the nest psychologists. This is in large part
thanks to their freedom from the self-delusion and the ensuing cessation of
the debilitating egotism that clouds the normal persons judgment.
Now that Buddhist compassionBuddhist has been examined in greater detail, it
is possible to return to Nietzsche and to see whether the second axis of the lifenegation/afrmation dichotomy fares any better than the rst. When it
comes to the ideal response to ones own suffering, Nietzsches thought and
Buddhist philosophy are far from being as opposed as Nietzsche believed.
But are their views effectively opposed when it comes to the others suffering?
Or could it be the case that, here also, the implosion of the life-negation/
afrmation dichotomy delivers signicant overlap in ethical visions?
Setting Buddhist views and Nietzsches views on compassion side by side
delivers two apparent oppositions: (1) Nietzsches injunction to overcome
compassion vs. the Buddhists injunction to cultivate compassion; (2)
Nietzsches compassion-free physician of mankind vs. the Buddhists
boundlessly compassionate great physician. Of course, Nietzsches two
apparently Anti-Buddhist positions concern compassion of weakness alone.
It is this form of compassion that the healthy type must overcome and from
which the genuine physician of mankind must be free. For the oppositions
between Nietzsches thought and Buddhist philosophy to hold up, then,
it would have to be the case that the Buddhas compassionBuddhist and
Nietzsches compassion of the weak designate similar phenomena.
This condition, however, is far from being satised. Consider the most
salient points raised by Nietzsche in his critique of compassion of weakness:
(1) It exhibits weakness, or inability to resist stimuli, unrestrained sentimentality, and lack of self-control.
(2) It gives rise to a type of suffering that is depressing and debilitating.
(3) Its motivational structure is one of subliminal self-regard the underlying purpose of the actions it leads to is to assuage ones own suffering.
(4) It is focused on the creature, not on the creator, in man, potentially at
the expense of the creator.
(5) In view of (1) and (2), it is a seduction for the higher men on their way
to great health, i.e. the seduction to relapse into ckle, dissipated, and
self-enfeebling sentimentality.
(6) In view of (4), it is an injury to the higher men who are its object.
Cultivating compassion
205
206
consists in cultivating a virtue that is the exclusive province of the highest and
healthiest a virtue of a fundamentally different nature from that of the
ordinary persons thirsting-based, self-delusion-fueled compassion. Though
it might be to the herds advantage to have masters motivated by
compassionBuddhist, then, the ethical primacy of compassion is no more the
disingenuous glorication of a herd instinct than the expression of the herds
calculated self-interest. Though Buddhism did ght the Brahmins oppressive
hereditary class system, there is in fact something strikingly hierarchical about
its ethics. Buddhism is not egalitarian when it comes to ethical worth; the
hatred of rank order (Rangordnung) characteristic of the herd animal34 is
entirely foreign to it. The Buddha did not have it that there are no Brahmins
(in the sense of higher types), only that there are no Brahmins by birth. If
anything, from a historical perspective, the rise of Buddhism was not a slave
revolt, but on the contrary a master revolt against the priestly class to which the
aristocratic class came second in the caste system. The Buddhist healthy type
who exhibits compassionBuddhist is thus a superior type if ever there was one.
If anything, Buddhist ethics and its focus on compassion are expressive of
a ruler mentality, not a herd mentality. As such, cultivating compassionBuddhist
has nothing to do with the self-belittlement and self-effacement characteristic of life-negating unselving morals as Nietzsche describes them.
CompassionBuddhist is expressive of the exuberant self-love, the potent
condence, and the overowing strength that attend the overcoming of the
debilitating self-delusion. As in the case of attaining nirvna, cultivating
Cultivating compassion
207
Vsm, p. 319.
208
sympathetic joy. And its ultimate focus is on the promise of great health a
person holds, not on the despondent sufferer as such.
A quick glance at the three other great virtues that complement
compassionBuddhist and likewise characterize the Buddhist healthy types
perfected mind only conrms that there is much afnity between
Nietzsches and the Buddhas ideal. When it comes to Buddhism,
Nietzsche cannot complain, as he does in FW, about an exclusive concern
with suffering. Unlike other preachers of compassion,37 the Buddha also
reserves an important place for the giving and sharing of happiness. The
former is the province of the prime virtue of goodwill, while the Buddhist
emphasis on sympathetic joy resoundingly answers Nietzsches call for
Mitfreude (literally, shared happiness) as a counterweight to Mitleid.38 The Buddhist psychology of compassionBuddhist, moreover, actually
connects the two, with the suffering of compassionBuddhist serving as the
prelude for a surge of sympathetic joy.
The fourth great virtue of the discourses, equanimity, also ts quite
nicely with what Nietzsche says about rank order in JGB. Value and
rank, Nietzsche tells us, may be determined in terms of how much one
can carry and take upon oneself, how far one can extend ones responsibility.39 This extension of responsibility and care is precisely what the
Buddhist healthy types cultivation of the great virtue of equanimity
involves. Perfected equanimity implies that one extend ones responsibility
and care to all beings. The healthy types limitless goodwill, compassion,
sympathetic joy, and equanimity, in short, are precisely the manifestations
of a boundless responsibility arising out of strength and health. The virtues
cultivated by Buddhists are the Nietzschean virtues of the strong.
This further rapprochement between Nietzsches ethics and Buddhist
philosophy makes it possible to address two potential difculties for
Nietzsches views on compassion. The rst is that Nietzsche can really
only be telling half the story when he says progress toward great health
involves overcoming compassion. The reason for this, presumably, is that
compassion is a debilitating, painful affect. But Nietzsches active type is
supposed to interpret and thus experience all pain not as depressive and
harmful, but as stimulating and ultimately empowering. Why, then, would
he wish to avoid the suffering born of compassion?
Unlike Buddhist moral psychology, it seems as though Nietzsche does
not establish clearly enough a link between great health or the prevalence
37
FW 338.
38
Ibid.
39
JGB 212.
209
Cultivating compassion
41
BA viii.119.
210
First, there is what I call the overow principle. Let us assume that
Nietzsches healthy type, like his Buddhist counterpart, necessarily manifests compassion of the strong, as I suggest he should. In so far as both
manifest such compassion out of an overow of the condence and
strength born of great health, there will be no clear limit to the scope of
their compassion-born care and responsibility. Since this compassion is
born of what, in Nietzschean terms, might be described as an overowing
fullness of self, there will be no need for healthy types to be sparing with
what they give, and to whom. This is what stands behind the Buddhas and
the bodhisattvas limitless benevolence and boundless goodwill. In the case
of both Nietzsches and Buddhists healthy types, the only real constraint on
compassionate action will thus be on misguided benevolence, which
could actually impede a higher type in achieving greatness. Such a constraint, however, would only hold for those made for greatness. Actions
designed to alleviate the suffering of those who are hopelessly mediocre will
know no such constraint. On such people, the torrent of the healthy types
cheerful compassionate care will be allowed to ow unimpeded.
Second comes what I call the suffering as distraction principle. Buddhist
philosophy recognizes that many beings are far too deeply ensconced in
suffering to even begin helping, and ultimately healing, themselves. Their
great suffering distracts them from pursuing higher aims. This is why the
Buddhist healthy types compassion-born benevolence far exceeds the more
limited domain of actions that directly assist the other in progressing toward
the great health of nirvna. Something similar might hold for Nietzsches
Cultivating compassion
211
in illness to attaining great health (e.g. Kisagotam). Given that the tragic
life-afrming health of amor fati is conditional upon a heightened tension
between reactive and active forces, it likewise comes as no surprise that
thoroughly dcadent gures are among those who hold the highest promise
of attaining great health on Nietzsches account.42 Nietzsche, after all, even
describes himself as both a dcadent and the opposite of a dcadent.43 The
upshot is that even if compassion of strength were exclusively focused on
what impedes those with promise from attaining great health, uncertainty
as to who may ultimately turn out to hold promise would imply a considerable amount of liberality in compassion-born benevolence.
The relation between the ethics of compassion in Buddhist philosophy and
in Nietzsches thought is rich and complex. Contrary to appearances,
cultivating compassion and overcoming compassion are not opposite
ideals. In fact, there is a deep sense in which the former presupposes the
latter. What is more, compassionBuddhist is very close indeed to the compassion of strength that Nietzsche attributes to healthy types, himself
included. As such, Nietzsches account of the healthy types attitude to
the others suffering stands to gain from a more careful examination of the
Buddhist psychology of compassion. Not only does the opposition between
cultivating and overcoming compassion implode, but beneath the rubble
lie exciting patterns of complementarity.
42
43
If Nietzsche wished to push his ship resolutely beyond good and evil, the
ultimate purpose of the present study is to explore the seas that lie beyond
life-afrmation and life-negation. We are now approaching the wide open
horizon which has been our destination from the very start. The guiding star
which has illuminated our tortuous path is nothing other than a new
response to the challenge of nihilism. At stake, ultimately, is the formulation of a human ideal in and for a world of evanescent becoming and pure
immanence an ideal that stands beyond the bankrupt dichotomy that
forms the spine of Nietzsches attempt to respond to the challenge of
nihilism. On the horizon lies a new, hybrid vision of great health.
The challenge of nihilism is not a philosophical pseudo-problem cooked up
by an over-imaginative Nietzsche. On the contrary, it is a concrete cultural,
ethical, and existential challenge, which we have not yet really begun to face
up to. The challenge of nihilism is the challenge of nding some grounding
for value after the collapse of the ction on which all values formerly relied.
It is, in short, the challenge of developing an ethics entirely divorced from
the wahre weltlich ction of Being.
In trying to evade or sidestep the challenge of nihilism (consciously or
not), contemporary secular moral philosophers only reveal that they remain
under the sway of this inebriating ction. Consider one of the main
strategies contemporary atheists employ to nd a way out of the nihilist
impasse. A quick glance at the history of ideas suggests that morality has
always been intimately tied to notions of the Transcendent and, in particular, to doctrines pertaining to God. Today, the trend is for secular moralists to claim that this is a purely contingent association. Nothing, on their
view, should be read into the historical fact that moral systems have relied
on metaphysical creeds, and vice versa. Morality is not a branch shooting off
212
213
from the trunk of religious thought, but a self-standing tree that just
happens to have entwined around religion, a contingent proximate neighbor.1 When the tree of religion is felled, then, morality need not come
crashing down with it.
It is obvious that these arguments are put forth so as to diffuse the theists
fear-mongering. The idea is to defang the theists who insist it is important
to retain God, lest all morality is washed into the sea. The atheists
moralitytheism disjunction appears to be ideologically motivated, then.
Some plausible arguments might be adduced in its favor, but it uncannily
ts the agenda. This does not in and of itself imply the atheist moralists
thesis is wrong, but it does make it look suspiciously polemical. The fact
that religion and morality have been so thoroughly intertwined at the level
of institutions and ideas is hard to explain without acknowledging that
there is some sort of profound connection between traditional morality
and religious/metaphysical thinking. The burden of proof falls upon the
atheist moralist. To insist that morality is really a self-standing edice
that owes nothing of substance to religious thought, notions of ritual
purity, and various metaphysical conceptions without giving any reasons
for things appearing otherwise does not make the atheists case particularly
compelling.2
Nietzsche represents an altogether different strand of atheistic thought.
According to him, we have no choice but to be honest and bite the theists
bullet. Morality as we have known it is dependent on religion. More
precisely, prevalent moral systems have all been dependent on the broader
type of which various religion are mere genera, namely the metaphysics of
Being. In fact, Nietzsche ips the picture entirely upside down. It is neither
the case that morality and metaphysics/religion are two independent currents in human thought, nor that morality derives from the experience of
the sublime to which philosophical insight and/or revelation provides
access.3 Rather, it is the metaphysics of Being itself that stems from a
1
2
This view is expressed with particular clarity by J. Baggini in Atheism: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford University Press, 2003).
The atheist moralists best argument for their position is that all important moral laws can be derived
on the basis of non-religious premises, be they empirical or purely rational. A cogent and
compelling Nietzschean reply consists in arguing that a close examination of these premises reveals
that, despite appearances, they are not metaphysically non-committal, but on the contrary rely on
some form of the wahre weltlich ction of Being, if not on an outright deication of nature. This is the
line of thought that will be developed over the next few pages.
Taylor, in Sources of the Self, espouses a form of the latter view. Having said this, his arguments to the
effect that many of our modern liberal moral intuitions are grounded in their genetic Christian context
are otherwise very convincing. On this front, he and Nietzsche work hand in hand.
214
215
F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1996).
See R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 2006), pp. 1127. See also the opening
chapters of Genesis in A. C. Graylings The Good Book: A Humanist Bible (New York: Walker and
Co., 2011).
216
to be further analyzable, but let us forget all that and celebrate with awe and
adoration the immutable laws of Nature discerned through the marvelous
work of Reason. More than 20 percent of humanity suffers from malnutrition and/or famine (and the numbers are rising) while we produce ever
more food; in the twentieth century technology and scientic organization
contributed to the industrialization of murder and unparalleled military
horrors; chauvinistic totalitarianism is doing quite alright, and seems to be
perfectly compatible with the market economy, as communist Chinas
example indicates; we are set for ecological meltdown but didnt the
Beatles write great songs, didnt Philip Roth write great novels, didnt Steve
Jobs make all of our lives so much easier, and arent we all heading for great
things if we just get our act together, follow the strictures of enlightened
self-interest, and continue to innovate? Deluded optimism, indeed, remains
the norm.
The point Nietzsche helps us appreciate is that secular optimistic
Enlightenment eschatology in all its forms (socialist, communist, anarchist,
liberal, libertarian, utilitarian, scientic, etc.) remains predicated on one
form or another of the naive, wahre Welt ction. All these ideologies
postulate a True, Static Being behind the treacherous appearances of
dynamic, unstable becoming. As such, they also remain essentially nihilist.
The psychological grounds for all optimism, after all, is a judgmental form
of pessimism. It is fear and repulsion before this world of senseless becoming, painful change, and bewildering contradictions that create a need for
the Security and Stability of Being for a Meaning, a Purpose, a Good
behind the apparent evil. Accepting what I called descriptive pessimism
accepting that the world has no inherent meaning, purpose, or unity, that
history will have no end, that life is and always will be replete with pain and
sorrow, that a theory of everything will always escape us is the rst step
in facing up to the challenge of nihilism with dignity and clear-headedness.
It is a step the world has not yet shown the courage to take.
Abandoning the optimistic ction of Being is only the rst step in facing
up to the challenge of nihilism, however. In fact, this is only where the
difculties begin. As in the case of intoxication, when the inebriating ction
of Being comes to an end, the result is a harsh hangover. More specically,
humankind must then deal with a value withdrawal from which it may be
difcult to recover. All ethics formulated so far, after all, has been predicated
on the metaphysics of Being. It may seem impossible, then, to develop an
ethics in and for a world of pure becoming. Nihilistic despair is a real and
tangible risk. Schopenhauer decided to declare nature evil. Many today
unwittingly follow his example and espouse a cowardly, cynical attitude to
217
the human condition such is human nature, they say, we are condemned to failure and self-destruction. Hence the crisis in the nihilist
crisis. Hence the challenge in the challenge of nihilism. This is a severe
challenge, which Nietzsche rightly recognized.
It is also a challenge to which he strove to respond, and in doing so he
developed fascinating insights concerning human psychology. At the same
time, Nietzsches attempt to respond to the challenge of nihilism was founded
on a misapprehension. He was right in looking to Buddhism. This, after all,
is the only large-scale ideology in history to have likewise denounced Being
as a ction and thus to have developed a genuinely post-theistic, postmetaphysical ethics. Like many of his contemporaries, however, Nietzsches
vision was distorted by the Schopenhauerian prism through which he contemplated Buddhism. To his eyes, Buddhist ethics appeared to be a thoroughly life-negating response to the challenge of nihilism a nihilism of
passive despair which, in the face of the nihilist crisis, failed to overcome the
weak pessimistic judgment at the core of all previous ideologies and likewise
judged that life is evil. Nietzsche approved of the way the Buddha had
formulated his post-metaphysical ethics in terms of a distinct vision of great
health. But, for Nietzsche, what the Buddha had really propounded was an
ideal of great sickness which sought to end life. To this fundamental lifenegation, which lays bare the nihilism at the heart of previous predominant
ideologies, Nietzsche opposed his ethics of life-afrmation.
There is no point in repeating why Nietzsche was wrong in thinking
that Buddhism is life-negating, or that amor fati and the overcoming of
compassion are diametrically opposed to nirvna and the cultivation of
218
to grab the elephant in the room by the trunk and send it packing. The twoheaded delusion of Being and self on which morals, religion, rational
enquiry, etc. have been founded is not a contingent accident of human
history and/or psychology. Like all delusions, it exhibits a fundamentally
unhealthy take on the world. A Buddho-Nietzschean ethics thus has for its
target the sickness that from the start underlies our thirst for the Stability of
Being, Truth, the Good, God, etc. The goal, in short, is to achieve a state of
great health in which the instable ux of evanescent, evasive becoming,
which is all that the world actually contains, is no longer experienced as
despairingly frustrating. The idea is not just to avoid promulgating values
that rely on the ctions of Being and self, then, but to undermine these
ctions by targeting their very roots in human psychology.
By way of structure, what is arrived at is a form of perfectionism
formulated in terms of the gure of a distinctive healthy type. This runs
against the grain of the bulk of contemporary Anglo-American moral
philosophy, which, as Taylor rightly observes, has tended to focus on
what is right to do rather than on what it is good to be, on dening the
content of obligation rather than the nature of the good life.6 Our BuddhoNietzschean ethics, of course, is not so much concerned with a good life
amenable to an objective description or reducible to clear criteria. Rather, it
delineates the contours of a striving toward a higher health. In and of itself,
it does not spell out duties, obligations and constraints.7 As such, the
evaluation grid it delivers is not concerned with evaluating actions, states
of affairs, or goods, but with determining the worth of persons. In a
fashion similar to other forms of so-called virtue ethics, it is committed to
the view that good actions are actions performed by good (i.e. healthy)
agents, and bad actions are actions performed by bad (i.e. unhealthy) agents.
Given the derivative nature of the value of actions, ethics, on this type of
view, needs only to focus on what is essential, namely the status, or in this
case healthiness, of agents. Our Buddho-Nietzschean response to the
challenge of nihilism, accordingly, takes the form of a perfectionist virtue
ethics based on the ideal of an exalted healthy type.
There are a number of things to note about what I will call great health
perfectionism. First, it is in fact a novel strand of perfectionism, which shares
little common ground with its predecessors.8 Most perfectionist ethics
6
7
8
219
In some Mahyna circles, the notion of Buddha-nature assumes the role of a human nature of sorts.
The idea is that the potential for Buddhahood, or the embryo (garbha) of a Buddhas puried mind,
lies at the core of every being. This development, however, is little more than a relapse into the
metaphysics of Being, which Siddhrtha Gautama would have certainly condemned, from the standpoint of ultimate truth at the very least.
220
10
11
See J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), D. Part,
Overpopulation and the Quality of Life, in P. Singer (ed.), Applied Ethics (Oxford University
Press, 1986), pp. 14564, and J. Grifn, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
They may also be legally and/or politically condemnable, but this falls outside the relatively restrained
scope of the ethics of great health which, admittedly, is prima facie entirely apolitical.
221
actions, but they do this because such behavior causes harm, not because it
is inherently evil.
Nevertheless, there is certainly a place for moral discourse in the ethics of
great health, and even for the setting up of codes and constraints. Indeed, a
key component of the healthy types instrumentalist use of language,
authority, and whatever other means may be at their disposal, is to promulgate codes of conduct that will ultimately prove benecial to those for
whom they are designed. A form of health consequentialism12 will serve as
a deliberative framework for perfected healthy types in this context. An
important aspect of their engagement in the world will thus be to articulate
various moral positions consequentialist, deontological, or virtue-based,
depending on the context albeit with irony. Different people will hear
very different things from healthy types, all of which are uttered for the
ultimate purpose of preventing pointless harm and injury and also of
directing those with the potential to heal themselves toward great health.
These interventions will be as varied as types of people are varied. Different
people may be ill to various degrees, and the specic manifestation of their
illness, at a given time in particular, may bear sharply distinct idiosyncrasies.
As such, the spiritual diet different people are prescribed13 will vary
considerably. From the standpoint of the healthy, however, there are no
objective, categorically binding obligations, duties, or constraints. Moral
discourse, like language in general, has a purely instrumental value for
masters of irony like our healthy types. Even the healthy types interventions
in the lives of others, for that matter, do not proceed from some obligation
to which healthy types are subject, but from their spontaneous goodwill and
compassion.
The last thing to note about Buddho-Nietzschean great health perfectionism is that it is not monist. Though the fundamental illness humans
suffer from has the same basic structure in all cases, and though all healthy
types will thus be free of the same basic symptoms, they will not all be
identical types with an identical character and behavior. Again, the key idea
here is that of Buddhist ironic engagement. Different healthy types will be
strikingly different gures in so far as they are brought to play strikingly
different roles in various contexts. The idea is that they will ironically engage
with the world through endless permutations in their identity and behavior.
Great health involves an extraordinary level of versatility, and thus also great
12
13
Cf. the virtue consequentialism of J. Driver, Uneasy Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2001), or
B. Bradley, Virtue Consequentialism, Unitas 17(3), 2005: 28298.
I borrow the phrase spiritual diet from EH Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 8.
222
223
endlessly prone to harmful desires, aggressive attitudes, (often unconsciously) manipulative behavior, etc. The idea, then, is that the self-delusion
is ultimately what people with a genuine concern for their wellbeing (and
that of those around them) will aim to recover from. In short, they will aim
to attain the perfected state of great health.
While this model is broadly borrowed from Buddhist philosophy, it can
be complemented with two key Nietzschean ideas. The rst is the idea of
reactivity. The sick type is a reactive type. The concept of reactivity brings
out the paranoid-like quality of this gures psychology. More specically,
it claries how self-delusion leads to perpetual suffering. In the grip of
delusional narcissistic egotism, sick types continually feel targeted. When
the threat of harm or disappointment appears on their horizon, sick types
do not see that practically everything that happens to them has nothing
to do with them, but is on the contrary purely accidental and arbitrary. As
a result of delusional egotism, the harm will be constituted as somehow
intended, the narcissistic-paranoid implication being that the sick type
matters quite a bit more than s/he does. As a result of the co-arising senses
of me and inimical other, the sick type is thus continually reacting.
Hence, among many other things, the thirst for a realm of Permanence,
Peace, and Bliss in short, Being which is really a reaction to the
countless frustrations the sick type encounters in the midst of this turbulent sea of becoming.
The second Nietzschean idea is closely connected to this. For Nietzsche,
great health involves a shift in ones relationship to suffering a shift,
precisely, away from reactivity and toward activity. The idea is that the
healthy type will no longer experience difculties, resistance, and obstacles
as setbacks or occasions for despair, frustration, and disillusionment.
Instead of suffering such a reaction, the healthy type will instead be impelled
to action. Meeting obstacles and facing difculties, for the healthy type, will
be stimulating and invigorating. The ideal of great health, then, should not
simply be conceived in terms of ending suffering, as it so often is
nominally at least in Buddhism. Certainly, the idea is to stop suffering
as the sick type suffers by removing the condition for engaging with the
world in a debilitating way. Beyond this, however, the idea is also to develop
a rapport with the world in which difculties and challenges become
grounds for active engagement, rather than despair, frustration, and
disengagement.
These two Nietzschean ideas make it possible to esh out the psychology of
great health with greater clarity. Indeed, striving toward great health involves
shifting, even more generally, away from reactive/passive undergoing and
224
225
then reied by the human (and animal) mind, but this alone is not enough
to rid them of the feeling that they are their characters and that the stage
world is real. To go from a merely intellectual understanding of these
insights to genuine recovery from self-delusion requires tremendous effort.
Healthy types are supremely skillful actors.
To further esh out this Buddho-Nietzschean ideal of great health it will
be necessary to address two key issues. The rst relates to a perennial
difculty for Buddhist philosophy. The traditional question is: who, if
there is no self, attains nirvna? In the present context, the question can
226
contingency and inessentiality, the shifting subsystem also gains far greater
autonomy. Hence the boundless versatility of the healthy types ironic
engagement.
This explanation, however, leads to a further concern. It seems as though
the passage from sickness to great health as I have described it involves going
from being passively determined to being actively determinant (on self and
world). But this is certainly inconsistent with Nietzsches unequivocal
commitment to strict determinism. Indeed, it seems as though no
Nietzschean vision can admit of degrees of determination, in so far as
everything, for Nietzsche, is strictly determined.15
Two strategies can be employed to circumvent this problem. The rst
consists in arguing that though Nietzsche is a determinist, the reactive/
active distinction does allow for various nexuses of forces being more or less
determined/determinant. Healthy types, on this view, will effectively
become more determinant as they progress toward great health, though
even this progression and gain in determinant-ness will be necessary, or
determined, i.e. their unavoidable fate.
The other strategy is more controversial, but also more interesting. The
idea is that Nietzsches commitment to determinism is in fact both (1)
implicitly committed to a view of the universe admitting of reactive forces
alone and (2) reactive in and of itself. Note that both of these critiques are
launched from a rmly Nietzschean standpoint. To begin with, it is not
difcult to see how determinism implies a strictly mechanistic worldview.
Universal causal interrelatedness delivers a dense, impermeable cosmic
block of xed determination only in so far as causal relations are purely
mechanistic. But, as Nietzsche himself points out, the domain of the
mechanistic is the domain of reaction or, more precisely, of strict proportionality between action and reaction. Strict determinism is thus a
worldview that admits of reactive forces alone. If Nietzsche is sincere
about the role of active, creative, dynamic form-giving forces, then strict
determinism is ruled out.
Why, then, did Nietzsche so forcefully endorse a worldview that clashes
with his championing of the active? I would argue that he did so out of
unwitting reactivity. Nietzsche reacts to the prevalent doctrine of libertarian
free will, which he sees as an instrument dcadents use to blame their
oppressors for their deliberate hurtful acts and to praise themselves for
their disingenuously deliberate meekness and passivity (really an inability
to retaliate). Nietzsche likewise signals that the doctrine of free will is part of
15
227
Note that guilt is in fact rmly related to robust diachronic personal identity. It presupposes that I am
the same person as the one who performed the act I feel guilty about. Moreover, guilt blocks
compassion. Feeling guilty for a persons woe, in any way, shape or form, implies a formidably selfreferential rapport with the others suffering, which inhibits genuine compassion and may in fact lead
to resentment and irritation. These observations are not Nietzsches (or the Buddhas), but my own.
228
229
On this objection, see G. Scarre, Utilitarianism (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 182f.
There is of course an important difference between this objection and the traditional saintliness or
over-demandingness objection, which attacks utilitarianism for making it a moral requirement to
become a saint. Because the ethics of great health does not require that we all strive to great health, the
issue cannot be about what it is reasonable to demand. Instead, the problem consists in aiming too
high, in an unrealistic manner, which would presumably put many people off.
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236
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238
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239
Index
240
Index
Christian, 17, 104, 227
Christian truthfulness, 25, 26, 79, 81
compassion, 646, 82, 170, 173, 174, 187,
209, 227
and herd instincts, 1823
and self-negation, 65
and unselving-morals, 1824
as counter-principle of selection, 185
compassionBuddhist, 2016, 208, 209, 211
cultivation of, 3, 64, 85, 87, 173, 184, 193,
207, 217
in Buddhist philosophy, 193204
morality of, 183, 185, 186, 187
Nietzsches cultural critique of, 1817
Nietzsches psychological critique of, 17481
of strength, 190, 191, 192, 207, 209, 211
of the strong, 18790, 191, 209, 210
of the weak, 189, 190, 207
of weakness, 2045
overcoming of, 2, 3, 83, 856, 181, 193, 207, 217
religion of, 1816
conceptual proliferation (prapaca), 140, 141, 143,
147, 148
constituents (skandha), 32, 34, 35, 36, 1369, 141,
142, 147, 155, 156
creativity
creation, 23, 109, 111, 113, 128
creative force, 121, 130. See also active force
creative type, 120. See also healthy type
Dawkins, R., 110, 215
dcadence, 4, 21, 22, 42, 50, 54, 55, 56, 59, 61, 63,
64, 66, 76, 78, 81, 83, 85, 86, 93, 99, 101,
102, 103, 121, 125, 163, 167, 182, 186, 191,
192, 222
dcadent, 214, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 77, 79,
99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 116, 11925, 127, 163,
164, 167, 175, 176, 178, 1804, 186, 188, 191,
192, 205, 211, 226. See also sick type
ethics, 4
idiosyncrasy of dcadents, 61, 62, 65
Deleuze, G., 20, 110
delusion (as opposed to illusion), 1445, 1567
dependent co-arising (prattyasamutpda), 11, 40,
148, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156
depersonalization, 152, 224
determinism, 2267
Dhammapla, 198, 199
Ding an sich, 48, 59. See also thing-in-itself
Dionysus, 95, 96, 106, 118, 12730, 169
Dionysian wisdom, 104
ego, 3, 10, 11, 46, 47, 48, 72, 139, 140, 159, 160, 167,
222. See also self
241
162, 163
egoism, 63, 72, 145, 160, 183, 214, 227
egotism, 145, 198, 204, 205, 222, 223, 227
emotional infection, 178, 179
emptiness (nyat), 402, 147, 148, 149, 151,
152, 198
End of History, 214, 215
enlightenment, 40, 161
equanimity (upeks.), 64, 194, 208, 228
eternal recurrence, 84, 12730, 169
falsication, 42, 45, 12630
Foucault, M., 8
free spirit, 79, 80, 81, 104, 123, 210
Ganeri, J., 139, 149, 157
God, 1, 3, 20, 21, 247, 42, 449, 59, 67, 68, 73, 75,
79, 81, 105, 120, 124, 127, 146, 150, 166,
167, 21215, 218
death of, 2, 17, 18, 256, 27, 51, 52, 59, 70,
7781, 122, 186
Indian, 28
Einsteins, 215
Kingdom of, 214, 215
shadow of, 113, 122
goodwill (maitr), 194, 196, 208, 210, 221, 228
grasping (updna), 1379, 142, 147, 148, 151, 152
and the ego-principle, 1412
inammation of, 147, 148, 162
inward-directed, 138, 139, 153
outward-directed, 140, 141, 142
great health, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55,
57, 60, 63, 78, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 91, 95,
96, 98, 99, 121, 123, 127, 1303, 148, 152,
153, 157, 158, 1625, 169, 170, 173, 180, 191,
192, 193, 195, 196, 2014, 206, 20812,
21723, 2259
ethics of, 3, 501, 221
of nirvna, 14, 135, 169, 194, 195, 198, 199, 201,
203, 205, 210
202,
guilt, 49, 64, 76, 100, 101, 103, 105, 120, 121, 124,
125, 129, 130, 227
healthy type, 50, 51, 83, 84, 85, 98, 1025, 1215,
12831, 153, 155, 166, 168, 169, 170, 180, 181,
190, 191, 192, 196, 197, 202, 204, 209, 210,
211, 21825, 227, 228
Buddhist, 127, 1527, 165, 166, 168, 169, 197,
198, 199, 2026, 208, 209, 210
Heraclitean, 168
Heidegger, M., 116, 129
Heraclitus, 42, 936, 98, 104, 130
hermeneutics, 13, 14
242
Index
higher type, 180, 190, 191, 205, 206, 207, 209. See
also healthy type
Hobbes, T., 110
horizon construction, 140, 1412, 154
human nature, 219
Hume, D., 32, 35
hygiene, 49, 52, 56
hypostatized construct (vikalpa), 1403, 153
hypostasis, 126, 140, 141, 147, 168, 222
identity, 32, 36, 37, 43, 44, 48, 141, 142, 145, 153,
154, 155, 221, 224, 225, 227, 228
personal, 31, 32, 34, 36, 153, 154
narrativity approach to, 154
sense of, 46
impermanence, 3, 23, 34, 37, 39, 42, 92, 142, 146,
148, 201
interpretation, 24, 100, 103, 106, 109, 115, 117, 118,
11922, 1258, 163, 168, 169, 205, 209
and falsication, 126
irony, 129, 155, 156, 157, 168, 169, 221, 227
ironic detachment, 156
ironic distance, 155, 224
ironic engagement, 155, 156, 221, 224, 226, 228
master of, 153, 168, 221
Jesus Christ, 106
Kant, I., 67
Kisagotam, 199201, 202, 205, 211
La Rochefoucauld, F., 174, 191
Leibniz, G. F., 71
life-afrmation, 2, 3, 7, 78, 816, 91, 936, 104,
105, 106, 115, 123, 126, 128, 157, 165, 169,
192, 204, 210
ethics of, 2, 4, 82, 86, 87, 91, 123, 127, 130, 217
life-negation, 23, 55, 5762, 64, 67, 68, 71, 73,
758, 81, 82, 83, 85, 91, 93, 94, 96, 99, 105,
106, 115, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 157, 163,
165, 173, 184, 204, 206, 212, 217
ethics of, 3, 4, 124
Locke, J., 32
Madhyamaka, 11, 45, 147
Mdhyamika, 44, 45, 138, 198
Mahyna, 196, 202
my, 71, 72
mechanism theory, 108, 109, 113, 226
medical discourse, 4, 13, 14, 514, 133, 137, 139, 200
in Buddhism, 50
moral psychology, 4, 136, 162
Buddhist, 91, 132, 134, 13957, 159, 160, 162,
164, 198, 199, 207, 208, 222
Madhyamaka, 197
Index
paranoid personality disorder, 1456
Part, D., 32, 33, 219
Parmenides, 1, 41, 42
Pat.ipadsutta, 136
perfectionism, 218
Buddho-Nietzschean, 222
great health, 21821, 228, 229
objective goods, 219
personication, 43, 142, 148, 167
perspectivism, 56, 7, 115, 11617
pessimism, 2930, 71, 74, 75, 81, 82, 87, 96, 118,
188, 214, 216
Buddhist vs. Schopenhauerian, 1579
descriptive, 29, 30, 118, 119, 125, 216
of the strong, 105, 106, 125, 127, 130
of the weak, 30, 7680, 82, 104, 105, 106, 119,
121, 125, 126
pessimist religion, 75
pessimistic religion, 75
Schopenhauerian, 78, 92, 104
physician, 12, 50, 52, 60, 161, 180, 194, 201
dcadent, 57
of humanity, 180
of mankind, 180, 190, 204, 206
Plato, 1, 5, 17, 41, 52, 54, 79, 80
Platonic philosophy, 53
Platonism, 18, 77
pleasure, 21, 29, 61, 65, 97, 99, 102, 108, 120, 158,
199, 209, 215
pleasure-seeking, 107, 108
power, 108, 11011. See also will to power
principium individuationis, 71, 72, 74, 168
process metaphysics, 4, 117, 118
psychology. See also moral psychology
evolutionary, 5
of compassion, 656, 1749
of dcadence, 212
rank-order, 206, 208
reactivity, 23, 97, 120, 125, 167, 222, 223, 226
reaction, 22, 56, 59, 108, 112, 113, 119, 174, 181,
183, 223, 226
reactive affect, 176, 179, 181, 188
reactive drive, 8
reactive force, 10811, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 130,
165, 167, 189, 190, 209, 211, 219, 226
reactive response, 121, 175, 227
reactive type, 110, 119, 122, 124, 127,
165, 167, 176, 191, 192, 207, 223. See also
sick type
Reality, 20, 41, 42, 114, 156
realism, 71, 114, 143, 168
Reason, 54, 122, 216
rationalism, 9, 54, 122
rebirth, 10, 60, 134, 161, 162
243
202
ntideva, 199, 209
Scheler, M., 1789, 190
Schopenhauer, 24, 29, 30, 60, 66, 6777, 78, 87,
104, 143, 15761, 163, 184, 216
Anti-, 66
self, 3, 11, 12, 308, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 51, 54, 66,
72, 73, 12730, 13644, 14757, 159, 160,
167, 168, 169, 210, 218, 222, 2247
as substance, 33, 45, 142
Buddhist critique of, 306
lack of, 31, 36, 148, 149, 151, 156, 188, 198
narrative, 154
Nietzsches critique of, 368
self-afrmation, 85, 86, 87, 115, 166, 169, 188,
190, 192
self-construction, 224
self-control, 86, 175, 176, 180, 204, 205, 207
self-delusion (tmamoha), 45, 47, 136, 1428,
151, 152, 153, 155, 159, 160, 163, 164, 166,
167, 197, 198, 204, 205, 206, 222, 223, 225,
227, 228, 229
self-identication, 139, 224, 225, 227
as a process of combustion, 1389
self-negation, 60, 61, 62, 65, 73, 74, 87, 161,
181, 184
self-overcoming, 25, 26, 79, 81, 1225, 129, 130,
219
of nihilism, 123
self-preservation, 107, 108, 109, 118, 183
selessness, 11, 44, 45, 147, 148, 161, 181, 191, 197
sickness, 8, 14, 22, 23, 52, 63, 73, 85, 99, 102, 103,
105, 106, 115, 118, 144, 163, 165, 166, 185,
186, 217, 218, 224, 226
sick type, 13, 21, 23, 50, 1025, 124, 125, 1659,
190, 191, 205, 210, 220, 223, 224, 225, 227
Siddhrtha Gautama, 3, 9, 50, 55, 161
Siderits, M., 9, 154
244
Index
therapeutic ethics, 86
therapist, 12, 155, 194, 201
the Buddha as, 13
thing-in-itself, 48, 67, 68, 70. See also Ding an sich
thirsting (tr..sn), 11, 13340, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147,
152, 153, 160, 161, 163, 164, 169, 197, 198,
206, 219
fever of, 1337, 139, 147, 148, 1603, 165, 202,
205
vs. Schopenhauers Will, 160
tragedy, 7, 95, 96, 104, 127, 128, 131
Transcendence, 1, 20, 51
metaphysics of, 20
Truth, 1, 6, 20, 23, 25, 41, 43, 115, 117, 118, 122, 127,
156, 218
Absolute, 6
conventional truth (samvr.tisatya), 36, 149, 151,
156
critique of, 116
ultimate truth (paramrthasatya), 36, 149, 156
typology
of pessimisms, 1045
of sufferers, 1024
bermensch, 14
unselving (Entselbstung), 623, 65, 66, 77, 85, 86,
87, 121, 123, 166, 182, 187, 188, 206
updna, 137. See also grasping
Upanis.ads, 34, 39, 43
Vasubandhu, 35, 197
virtue, 1, 4, 52, 53, 65, 66, 82, 86, 175, 176, 182, 183,
184, 192, 194, 205, 206, 208, 219, 228
noble, 173, 181, 228
perfectionist ethics, 218
wahre Welt, 19, 20, 227, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 51, 52,
53, 55, 59, 67, 70, 75, 80, 99, 100, 114, 120,
121, 124, 127, 167, 214, 215, 216
metaphysics, 22, 25, 44, 117
weak type, 22, 99, 101, 103, 105, 120, 121, 169, 188,
189, 190, 192
Will, 62, 67, 703, 150, 160
denial of the will, 73, 76
will to life, 75
will to power, 106, 10718, 11922, 1248, 130, 188
as philosophy of nature, 11214
contra standard evolutionary theory, 109
Williams, B., 8, 126
Zarathustra, 14, 97