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Nietzsche on Buddhism and the Will

1:40:23 recording · EN · 1 speaker

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Brief overview

Nietzsche admires Buddhism's realism yet condemns it as passive nihilism, because he affirms earthly life instead.

  1. Justification of life lies inside or outside itFor the Buddhist the justification for life cannot lie within life; for Nietzsche it cannot lie outside of it.
  2. Nietzsche rejects free will and determinism alikeBuddhism affirms causality and free will together; Nietzsche rejects causality itself, and with it both doctrines.
  3. Buddhism's endpoint is passivity, hence nihilismBuddhist valuations do inspire action, but the action aims at non-action, which Nietzsche calls the perfect cow and the last man.
Executive Summary AI
  • The host opens by recapping Nietzsche's praise of Buddhism as a religion more realistic, more logical and more effective than Christianity, and as the right mental training for an exhausted, declining civilization.0:21
  • The break comes over ethics: Nietzsche grants that Buddhism suited its time and place, but the prospect of a European Buddhism emerging from the death of God haunts him as another failed outcome.3:51
  • Reading Gay Science 346, he shows Nietzsche calling man as world-denying principle an extravagant error, then turning the knife on himself by asking whether despising those who judge the world is not one more step into pessimism.9:46
  • To give the Buddhist side its full weight, the host reads the Asu Sutra from the Samyutta Nikaya, where the tears shed over the deaths of mother, father, brother, sister, son and daughter across countless rebirths exceed the water in the four great oceans.24:12
  • He closes with Will to Power 23, where active nihilism is a sign of strength and Buddhism is weary nihilism which no longer attacks, and then with Ajahn Chah and Zarathustra both telling the listener to taste the fruit and abandon the teacher.1:33:38
Key Quote
“And so the justification for life for the Buddhist can't lie within life, whereas for Nietzsche it can't lie outside of it.”
— Host9:17
Key Quote
“It is an evil act to tell people there is no causality because you're deceiving people.”
— Host45:26
Key Quote
“He says Pyrrho is a Buddhist for Greece.”
— Host1:01:50