Nietzsche’s Philosophy and Buddhism: A Comparative Study

This work opens the discussion upon the critique of Buddhism and Christianity found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche’s interest in the Buddhist philosophy stimulated his critique of Western metaphysics and his considerations on the formation of Christian morality. The realization Nietzsche reaches at the end of XIX century reveals the end of the presence of Christian dogmatism in Europe. Respectively, Nietzsche’s nihilist position indicates a transitory movement from the Judeo-Christian morals to, what he calls, Euro-Buddhism. The quest of this work is to open the discussion upon the following questions: What are the basic presuppositions upon which both traditions, Christianity as well as Buddhism, exist? Moreover, why did Friedrich Nietzsche think of Buddhism as surpassing Christianity? Essentially, this work will reveal that while Buddhism has surpassed Christianity by repudiating a philosophy of being, metaphysics, it still remains life-negating insofar as it, too (as well as Christianity), proposes a form of passive nihilism in terms of the self- denial through the extinguishing experience of nirvana. A notion of nirvana present in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, a tradition that Nietzsche himself was unaware of, can be argued to reconcile Nietzsche’s notion of eternal return.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 1983

Philosophy East and West, 2021

book discussion prepublication version, see final published version in: Philosophy East and West Volume 71, Number 4, October 2021 pp. 1082-1093

a response in the form of an examination of the approach to Buddhism. means a contemplation of feelings, which includes pain and pleasure, for the purpose of insight into the true nature of feeling. In this practice, one needs to contemplate pain as pain, pleasure as pleasure, from part, the practice of will be investigated the article will show that while Nietzsche has important

2019

Facetten Nietzsches im Spiegel junger Forschung (Hgs. v. Benjamin Kaiser), 2018

In this paper I examine Nietzsche’s discussion of Buddhism, by referring primarily to his late work entitled The Antichrist. I also review his earlier views and interpretation of Buddhism, which are closely related to that of Schopenhauer, as well as Schopenhauer’s own philosophical position. I try to present a balanced view of Buddhism in Nietzsche, given the fact that both severe critique as well as notable praise of the doctrine are present in his oeuvre.

Los Angeles Review of Books, September 23, 2019

Review of Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy by Jason M. Wirth

While others have written important works that put Buddhism and Nietzsche in conversation, and others still have promoted a socially conscious Buddhism, I have not found works that recognizes the potential of Nietzschean thought to invigorate the Zen Buddhist conception and practice of the Bodhisattva Ideal; the Bodhisattva's goal being to awaken everyone before themselves. As Dale S. Wright notes, Nietzsche has important critical insights concerning the valorizing of a transcendent world and the degradation of this world in the history of Western (religious) values. We can also see Mahayana Buddhism as critical of the renunciation of this world—e.g., through its identification of the " world " of enlightenment with that of delusion and its emphasis on compassionate activity in the world—in practice, however: We see very few images of lives embodying this abstract concern [for others] in practice; few proposals for institutions or sociopolitical orders that really do care for the poor, underprivileged, and those who are suffering…. Although Mahayana images of nirvana were crafted to discourage thinking of the ultimate goal as the extinction of finite life, for the most part Mahayana monks continued to practice as though it was. Concomitant with this is the ease with which Zen Buddhism can fall into a kind of quietism through the oft seen (partial) description of enlightenment as a state of non-judgmental acceptance of each moment as it is.