BUDDHISM AND NIETZSCHE: PHILOSOPHICAL PARALLELS

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  A. Strelkova

Abstract

Nietzsche is known by his controversial statements concerning Buddhism, which makes it difficult to give an unequivocal evaluation of the real attitude of the philosopher to this philosophical and religious tradition. This article deals with discovering of the causes of this controversy. For this purpose, the comparative analysis is made of a number of ideas basic for philosophy of Nietzsche and Buddhist teaching (using materials of sources of various branches of Buddhism: Early Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism and, especially, Zen). In particular, the following parallels are examined: understanding of suffering as evil, and of its absence as a criterion of truth; refutation of existence of a permanent, immutable “I” in the Buddhist doctrine of anātman and attitude to ego, soul as to fiction in Nietzsche; negation of any permanent and unchangeable being in Buddhism and in Nietzsche and, in particular, the idea of the man as an uninterrupted “transition” in Nietzsche and in Zen-Buddhism (principle of “non-abiding” of Hui-neng), as well as a parallel between Nietzsche’s “hinübergehen” and wisdom-prajñāpāramitā in Mahayana; Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence” and rebirth (reincarnation) in Buddhism; parallels between ethics of Nietzsche and Buddhist “ethics of emptiness” (ethics without “I”, “God”, “beyond good and evil”); Zaratustra and bodhisattva ideal in Mahayana Buddhism (Nietzsche’s view of compassion and compassion in Buddhism); amor fati and nonduality of nirvana and samsara as a dialectical principle of the controversial nature of reality, common to the Buddhist philosophy of “emptiness” and Nietzsche’s thought. On the basis of analysis of these parallels it is concluded that they are not casual and might be connected one with the other by the “logics of emptiness”, while the controversy of Nietzsche’s attitude to Buddhism is of formal, external character and is caused first of all by the deficit of adequate information in the 19th century Europe concerning the fundamental tenets of Buddhist philosophy and, especially, philosophy of “emptiness”, which was initially misunderstood by the Europeans in a distorted way as “cult of Nothingness”. But in its internal principles the Nietzsche’s philosophical project is very close to the Buddhist philosophy of “emptiness” (in its wider understanding), which, like Nietzsche’s philosophy is an absolute opposition to the pessimism and nihilism.

How to Cite

Strelkova, A. (2020). BUDDHISM AND NIETZSCHE: PHILOSOPHICAL PARALLELS. The World of the Orient, (1 (106), 109-126. https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2020.01.109
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Keywords

Buddhism, Nietzsche, nihilism, nothingness, philosophy of emptiness, śūnyatā, Zen

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