A European Buddhism

·期刊原文

A European Buddhism

By A. M. Frazier

Philosophy East & West

Vol. 25, No.2 (April 1975)

pp. 145-160

Copyright 1975 by University of Hawaii Press

Hawaii, USA

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p. 145

Nietzsche viewed himself as living in the waning moments of the Christian era and, thus, as witnessing the gathering darkness of a pervasive nihilism that would sweep over the post-Christian world. He thought that he could discern a close parallel between the paralysis that inexorably was creeping over the exhausted spirit of European culture and the weariness with life that overtook the Indian civilization prior to the dawning of Buddhism. Both eras, in his judgment, were periods of cultural decadence -- a "dark ages" exacerbated by the long shadows cast by the twilight of their gods. In posing to himself the question, what will be the future of European culture?, he foresaw the possibility of the emergence in Europe of a "new Buddhism." This was both a remarkable and paradoxical foreseeing! Given the dynamism of Europe's industrial expansion, the gathering impetus of its technological revolution, the frenetic politics of mass movements, and its burgeoning nationalism, all of which characterize Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century, what possible considerations could have led Nietzsche to expect the development of a "European Buddhism"? Our purpose will be to explore what Nietzsche meant by this startling concept and precisely how he valued such a-prospect as a destiny for European culture.

In order, however, to comprehend what a "Buddhist tendency" meant to Nietzsche, we shall need to examine, in a general way, his interpretation of "classical" Buddhism. Fortunately, the task of sorting out his conclusions regarding "classical" Buddhism is not complicated by a paucity of references to the ancient tradition in his works. Indeed, he referred to Buddhism in almost all of his major works and, in some cases, fairly extensively. [1]

Rather, the fundamental exegetical problems involved in a reconstruction of Nietzsche's views on Buddhism arise from the fact that he discussed Buddhism in widely varying contexts -- contexts in which the principal aim was never merely the critical examination of the Buddhist phenomenon. Since Nietzsche was often concerned with conceptual issues more germane to his task as a philosopher when his judgments regarding Buddhism are propounded, it is methodologically crucial to attend closely to the conceptual focus of each context in order to establish just how seriously Nietzsche might have meant his remarks to be taken. This methodological imperative acquires additional force due to the idiosyncrasies of Nietzsche's style of thought and writing.

Having forewarned his readers on several occasions that he loves masks and, furthermore, that every overt philosophy shelters a hidden philosophy, he has placed us on notice that we cannot always take his judgments at face value. Thomas Mann is surely right when he cautions us: "Who takes Nietzsche at face value, takes him literally, who believes him, is lost." [2]

Nietzsche struts and poses in his writings, often in an exhibitionist frenzy, and seems to revel in the multiple perspectives upon phenomena that are afforded

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him as a result of the shifting persona that he assumes. In recognizing that the different masks that Nietzsche wore in his philosophizing permitted him to make thought experiments from within widely ranging perspectives, we must not lose sight of the additional fact that such masks are constantly cast aside for others, much in the same way that hypotheses are allowed to regulate and to guide inquiry only to be abandoned for other hypotheses which different foci and possibilities.

The characteristic effects of such role playing as a style of speculative inquiry are nowhere more evident than in Nietzsche's AntiChrist. In this work, he donned the persona of the counter-Christian, ignoring, for the duration of that dramatic presentation, his own recognition of the ambivalence of his relationship to the Christian heritage. Such forgetfulness of his personal determination as a fragment of Christian history was required for his role in the AntiChrist as the personification of the reversal of Christian values. He could be the Antichrist only on the condition that he ignore, for the moment at least, that his struggle to overcome Christianity was equally an expression of his own destiny, of the task involved in his personal self-overcoming.

The extreme polemical posture that Nietzsche assumed in this work entailed that Christianity be condemned almost without qualification. Indeed, the struggle was portrayed as a fight with the agencies of thanatos, with specific organization of the energies of life that were inimical to life itself. As the personification of the revaluation of Christian values, Nietzsche took upon himself the task of exposing the hidden history and psychology of the Christian movement. In the course of this enterprise, in order to give added weight to his polemical critique, he brought Buddhism into juxtaposition with Christianity for the purpose of comparative analysis. Under these conditions, he used the history of Buddhism and the development of its basic values as a foil to lay bare the bankruptcy of the Christian tradition. He naturally found more to praise and affirm in Buddhism, as a polemicist against Christianity, than he would had he been arguing from a different vantage point (for example, in the persona of Zarathustra). In short, Buddhism valued and interpreted by a searcher "posing" as the polemical antipode of Christianity was comprehended in a significantly different fashion than Buddhism as seen by the philosopher pondering the meaning, in general, of nihilism.

Constant vigilance concerning the extent to which Nietzsche allowed his masks to distort his valuations and interpretations, is, therefore, indispensable to successful unfolding of the richness and complexity of his thought. Since perspectival analysis constituted the norm for his philosophizing, one ignores the hermeneutic import of such a norm only at the peril of relegating Nietzsche's views to logical chaos, that is, at the risk of permitting Nietzsche's explicit contradictions of "himself" to remain nothing more than simpleminded logical mistakes. [3]

An additional methodological constraint ought to inform the critic seeking

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to unravel Nietzsche's account of Buddhism. Extraordinary care should be taken to distinguish which aspect of the Buddhist phenomenon Nietzsche had in view when he discussed Buddhism in the various contexts in his works. If we use the term 'Buddhism' to connote a total, cultural phenomenon, incorporating a historical, moral, philosophical, artistic, and cultic development, then we are able to distinguish at least three aspects of this total phenomenon that Nietzsche singled out for explicit attention (in addition, of course, to his frequent comments regarding the totality, the "Buddhist culture"): (1) Buddhism regarded as essentially a moral system; (2) Buddhism considered as a religion; (3) Buddhism viewed as a possible, existential lifestyle -- as a genuine manner in which life, at any period of history, at any place, can comport itself toward its given conditions. It is upon the third that this essay shall ultimately focus, although it will be necessary to examine all of them to some extent.

Although Nietzsche never concentrated his complete attention upon Buddhism, he nonetheless exhibited a striking scope of familiarity with the ancient form of Buddhism, that is, the Theravaada tradition. Scattered throughout the corpus of his writings is a delightful variety of references to this "classical" Buddhist tradition. Such references come in the forms of legends, myths, songs, sayings of the Buddha, and philosophical concepts of the Buddhist philosophy. Both the accuracy and range of these references assures us that Nietzsche had read fairly extensively in the texts of the earlier schools of Buddhism. We can infer from both his interpretation of Buddhism and his explicit quotations from Buddhist texts that his familiarity with the Mahaayaana tradition was negligible, if not nonexistent. Actually, some of Nietzsche's most recurring opinions about the nature of Buddhism (for example, its atheism, its absence of faith, etc.) would have required substantial modification had he read, to any significant extent, the Mahaayaana suutras (assuming, of course, his intellectual honesty!). It seems reasonable to infer from the absence of any explicit reference to the ideas and myths of Mahaayaana Buddhism (and his willingness to refer readily to the legends and wisdom of the Theravaada tradition) that he was essentially ignorant of the fantastic flourishing of Buddhist culture and philosophy under the impetus of the Mahaayaana forms of Buddhism. The missionary zeal, the elaborate mythological development, the theo-genesis, the civilizing influence of Mahaayaana throughout Southeast Asia were evidently all events of which Nietzsche had but scant knowledge. To be sure, at some points in referring to "classical" Buddhism, he substituted the phrase "Indian" Buddhism. Whether he intended thereby to distinguish "Indian" Buddhism from other forms of Buddhism in non-Indian cultures (of which he had some specific knowledge), we can only guess. In any case, it seems evident that when he refers to classical Buddhism or to Buddhist culture, he meant that ancient form of Buddhism that arose in the sixth century B.C. and flourished for the next several centuries.

Since most of Nietzsche's judgments regarding this classical Buddhist tradition occur in the context of a polemical exposition of Christianity, a profitable

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point of departure for this study might be his critical juxtaposition of these two traditions.

I. Buddhism Vs. Christianity

A. The Questions of Origins. Buddhism, argued Nietzsche, profoundly differed from Christianity by virtue of the fact that it constituted an immanent development from a high civilization poised on the brink of collapse. Thus, this religious movement was pictured as arising in an epoch of cultural decline (decadence), when all signs pointed to an exhaustion of the human spirit, when life had grown weary with the task of growth and felt the burden of its own spirituality. As such, it became a religion for "late men," men "who have become overspiritual and excessively susceptible to pain." [4] As a manifestation of what Nietzsche took to be (quite unjustifiably) the terminus of the Vedic civilization, Buddhism symptomized the waning impetus of the Indian spirit -- a decline presumably revealed in the inconclusive contentions and fragmentations of the Hindu philosophical movement. In his view, Buddhism took root in a people whose spirit had become overrefined and sensitized by a profound, but futile, training in philosophical disputation and the subtleties of logical analysis.

No doubt Nietzsche had in mind, in this conception of the tutelage of the Indian spirit in philosophical discourse the marvelous flowering of Hindu philosophy in the Upani.sads and the noted "forest" texts. Given the speculative depths and analytical sophistication of this period of Hindu thought, it was reasonable for Nietzsche to suppose that the Vedic civilization had passed through an era of cultural development comparable to what he called, in the Birth of Tragedy, an "Alexandrian culture," [5] that is, an epoch in which culture is dominated by the illusion that knowledge provides the human spirit with a redemptive power capable of effecting a reconciliation of the culture with the given conditions of its life. Apparently, Nietzsche believed that when Buddhism appeared upon the scene, Indian civilization had put behind it the foolish optimism that knowledge could heal the breach in existence. In the sunset glow that its philosophical distinction gave it, the waning civilization was entirely ripe for the fulfillment that Buddhism represented to Nietzsche.

Christianity, on the other hand, while being a development out of the priestly-Judaic tradition, was not seen by Nietzsche as a manifestation of the closing phrases of a civilization's life. "Buddhism is the religion for the end and the weariness of civilization; Christianity finds no civilization as yet -- under circumstances it might lay the foundations for one." [6] The Christian movement, then, according to Nietzsche, did not reflect the spiritual refinement of a great but declining civilization. On the contrary, if exhibited throughout its history its character as a countermovement to achieving "civilized" values, for example, in its perpetual "war" against the ancient values of the Hellenic and Roman

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worlds and in its perversion (in the Reformation) of the enormous potential of the Renaissance. Christianity appealed to a motley collection of dispossessed and disinherited (ungeistig) persons in the ancient world (as contrasted with the origin of Buddhism in the "noble" class). The rancor of the disinherited over the condition of their life infected Christianity in every aspect of its historical manifestation. Eventually, such rancor was transformed into spirit and became a metaphysical revenge against life itself, finding its most powerful expression in the evolution of the Christian moral system.

In this polemical reconstruction of the genesis of Christianity and Buddhism, Nietzsche portrayed both as decadent and nihilistic, but characterized the source of disillusionment in each instance in significantly different ways. For Buddhism, disillusionment with life resulted from the futility of a one-sided spiritual development, an Alexandrian phase of civilized life that issued in only an excess of consciousness (Hegel's "unhappy consciousness"). Having sought redemption through the power of knowledge and harvested only a deeply sensitized and fragile awareness of life's misery, the Buddhist movement, with an exhausted sigh, turned away from the conditions of its life and the will to existence. Having suffered from civilization too long, the Indian spirit looked deeply and frankly into the abyss of life and pronounced the judgment, it ought not to be. By this path, Buddhism came to the "will to nothingness." The Christian disillusionment with reality arose, in contrast, out of the raging discontentment of the exploited, the disinherited, and the alienated. When such resentment achieved metaphysical form ("the spirit of revenge"), it also became the will to nothingness, that is, it became hostile to human life, and, thus, the living contradiction to all natural and instinctive energies.

In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche described three paradigmatic models of cultural life, the Alexandrian, the Hellenic, and the Buddhistic. He used these historical designations to indicate the principal means a culture used to reconcile itself to the given conditions of its life; respectively, those means were knowledge, art, and wisdom.

He argued in this early work that all culture is a mixture of these powerful "stimulants" and that as proportions vary, "we have either a dominantly Socratic or artistic or tragic culture." [7] This topology of cultural forms and their dominant ingredients is very much shaped by Nietzsche's early fascination with Schopenhauer's metaphysics. Indeed, Ulrich Von Wilamowitz's scathing critique of the Birth of Tragedy cites this passage as one of the more egregious errors of the youthful Nietzsche. [8] Prominent in both of Wilamowitz's critiques of the Birth of Tragedy was his questioning of Nietzsche's citing of the Buddhist culture as a historical exemplification of a tragic culture. A modern critic, Walter Kaufmann, echoes this criticism by questioning the intelligibility of Nietzsche's proposing either Buddhism or Brahmanism as a historical model for a tragic culture. [9]

There is, however, a core of intelligibility that can be found in this passage, which both Wilamowitz and Kaufmann have overlooked. From the perspective

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of the Birth of Tragedy, Hellenic culture was understood as redeemed through its art. This conclusion reflected the fundamental thesis of the work that "it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified." [10] Although tragedy was the highest art form of the Hellenic culture, that does not mean that the culture per se was tragic! Indeed, in the artistic culture, life affirms itself through aesthetic phenomena even in the realization of the unbearable suffering in which the culture's life is grounded. Aesthetic creativity transforms pessimistic vision and, thus, life triumphs in the Greek. In a tragic culture, on the other hand, the "tragic insight" into the inexhaustible horror of the abyss of life is also present, but without the consolation of art. As a consequence, the Buddhist must bear his pessimism concerning the actual condition of existence without the affirmative and consoling power of tragic art. He must, therefore, cultivate that kind of Olympian detachment of vision which opens itself entirely to life's misfortunes and yet, remains unmoved by it. [11] The icons of the Buddha nearly all present this ideal of imperturbability and tranquility toward which all Buddhist yoga is finally oriented.

B. Morality and Its Hidden Psychology. Although Buddhism was thought by Nietzsche to have been produced by a spiritual class of men afflicted by an excessive sensitivity to life's misery, he believed that it emerged out of a psychological temperament of sanguine gentility. Despite the Buddhists' belief in the inevitability of misery for all sentient beings, they never succumbed, claimed Nietzsche, to bitterness and resentment. Thus, a pacific spirit dominated the psychology of Buddhist life and led to the renunciation of enmity in every form. Only by renouncing rancor were the Buddhists able to create the conditions required for nobility of character and, more importantly, equanimity in the face of life-events. The struggle of will against resentment became, therefore, a primal duty for Buddhists, since it was out of the condition of rancor, they believed, that the chains binding one to sa^msaara were forged. Buddhists practiced an ethico-psychological therapy of tranquilization, in effect cultivating those states of mind which quieted unruly emotions and desires, while simultaneously promoting even-temperedness and detachment from all violent states. When the turbulence on the surface and within the depths of the psyche were calmed by such discipline, then there followed, argued Nietzsche, a corresponding impoverishment of the psychological soil out of which more barbarous, violent states could grow. As he put it in Ecce Home, the Buddha knew that "nothing burns one up faster than the effects of resentment." [12]

Because the morality of Buddhism had this particular psychology, Nietzsche thought of it as essentially a form of mental hygiene, embodying a set of spiritual-psychological techniques for cleansing the psyche of the madness consequent upon thralldom to desire. Viewed in this light, the Buddha's recommendation of the principle of watchfulness constituted a practical therapy whereby the constraints of a constant vigilance over all aspects of our involve-

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ment with life was prescribed as both prevention and cure for the inexorable ills of life.

The thralldom of desire and its deleterious consequences represented to the Buddhist a kind of sick madness, with a concomitant need for treatment, rather than for moral interpretation.

Nietzsche presented this account of Buddhist psychology most often as a foil against which he could expose and castigate the hidden psychology of Christianity. Since Nietzsche believed that the Christian movement drew its principal motivating energy from the rancor of the disinherited over their life's conditions, resentment was perceived as the fundamental, psychological ground out of which sprang the Christian world view. As a consequence, no matter what outward form Christian conduct or doctrine assumed (be it compassion, mercy, or sympathy), in Nietzsche's estimate that manifested form only masked aggression and passion, "the unrest of a religious fanatic." [13]

Nowhere do the differences between the hidden psychologies of Buddhism and Christianity show themselves more clearly than in their effect upon the types of morality that each religion produced. Before we explore the ways in which these moral systems reveal their psychological foundations, we need to clarify what Nietzsche understands by morality. In Twilight of the Idols, he urged that "there are altogether no moral facts ... morality is-merely an interpretation of certain phenomena -- more precisely, a misinterpretation." [14] As a kind of sign language, moral concepts disclose the basic structure of a culture and, thereby, afford us a valuable insight into the lived-world of its people. By the revelations of moral valuations, provided we adequately translate the sign language, we are introduced to the " inwardness" of a people. But exactly what kind of "inwardness" might we expect the moral system of a culture to disclose? Thus Spoke Zarathustra provides one important answer to this question in the section on "A Thousand and One Goals." [15] Moral valuations illuminate the projects of self-overcomings, the "will to power" of a people. By the agency of such valuations, a people seek to transform the given conditions of their lives. Through moral perspectives, they attempt to increase their power, their will to dominate and control life as they find it (or wish to shape it). Since moral valuating in some crucial sense invents a world of ideality, a world as it ought to be, and sets it over against the given world of actuality, such valuations become means whereby human expectations and aspirations can become transformative acts of devaluing or revaluing the given conditions of life. Thus, moral ideas show themselves as being two-edged. First, they are merely means by which the facticity of life is "overcome" or transformed. Second, they are the ends toward which the energies of life are gathered and impelled, for example, toward the "just society," the "realm of freedom," etc.

Moral valuations, then, as inventions of the will to power in cultural life are, originally, neither true nor false. When, however, they exchange their perspectival character for "literal truth," they become normative for cultural life and are viewed as the exclusive goals for all men to pursue. In short, they become

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prisons for dynamic life forces. "True" moral principles, by their exclusive nature -- by having to render other values "false" and heretical goals of life -- are capable of creating only one-dimensional men, men who have too much of one thing and too little of everything else.

Given such assumptions about the nature of moral concepts, what then, according to Nietzsche, were the most significant moral interpretations of phenomena made by Buddhist ethics? More importantly, what messages did Nietzsche believe himself able to decipher or decode given this sign language reflecting the inwardness of Buddhist culture? A pacific spirit seemed to Nietzsche to dominate Buddhist morality issuing in a generalized impetus to quietism, to avoidance of all affective states, and, eventually, to the cessation of any action whatsoever. This quietism manifested itself most clearly in those exhortations of the Buddha that man ought to cultivate states of thoughts and feelings which Nietzsche characterized as operating narcotically to soothe an overstimulated and excessively sensitized consciousness.

In a surprising relapse into something akin to Hegelian historicism, Nietzsche interpreted the Buddha as a genius, cut of the mold of Hegel's World Historical Individual. Buddha envisioned the direction which the fundamental tendency of his culture would take and boldly proclaimed progress toward that goal as the highest religious ideal. The genius of the Buddha was in his foreseeing that a gentleness and indolence, coupled with a benign asceticism, was pervasive throughout his culture, and furthermore, that this dispositional inertia of the will of his people would eventually slip over into a belief which promised final emancipation from the painful repetition of earthly life. [16] Buddha prescribed as a remedy for the malady of will that beset his culture, a disciplined retreat from existence per se. Evidently Nietzsche was convinced that the normative experience for man in the closing days of the Vedic civilization was that a life, so full of human misery, was totally without meaning. Thus, in Buddhist morality, "the hedonism of the weary is ... the supreme measure of value." [17] What gives pleasure is precisely what brings repose and a constant lowering of the stress of consciousness.

In the final analysis, despite what he saw as the nihilism of Buddhist morality, Nietzsche granted a qualified approval to the status of morality in that tradition. Although Buddhism was pervaded by a morality which had not been completely overcome, its essential view of the goal of life was "beyond good and evil." [18] In fact, Nietzsche saw the goal of Buddhist practice as not a moral condition at all, for moral regulations functioned in Buddhism only as a means toward emancipation from all action whatsoever.

Emancipation even from good and evil appears to be the essence of the Buddhist ideal: a refined state beyond morality is conceived that is identical with the state of perfection, in the presupposition that one needs to perform even good actions only for the time being, merely as a means--namely, as a means to emancipation from all actions. [19]

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Buddhist morality was characterized by Nietzsche as a "consistent type." [20] By this appellation, he meant that Buddhist moral principles enjoined men to pursue "nothingness" through a moral discipline designed to facilitate the disengagement of the person from the will to life. Nietzsche judged that Buddhism was self-consciously and consistently nihilistic in its moral strictures, and thus it recommended only those practices and states of mind which led one asymptotically toward a complete detachment from action, and thence, from existence itself.

Therefore, at no point in Buddhism, argued Nietzsche, do we find an ontologized morality, one which presents itself as an ultimate interpretation of actuality. Such a perspective demanded a complete absence of moral fanaticism and produced "the Buddhist type or the perfect cow." [21] Apparently, Buddhism earned the title, the consistent type, because therein Nietzsche sees a fundamental compatibility between its moral principles, the final goal of the religious life, and the psychological dispositions out of which these concepts (moral ideals and religious emancipation)

could emerge.

With Christianity, on the other hand, the case was quite different. Nietzsche branded Christian morality as the "inconsistent type." [22] Christianity, urged Nietzsche, waged a holy war against all forms of evil, but forgot the effects of any kind of war were essentially destructive of life, for example, inevitably led to hostility of person against person, to the cult of exclusivity, and the elevation of moral values over natural values. A constant theme running through all of Nietzsche's critiques of Christian morality was that between the Christian moral precepts and the inner psychological foundation for the total Christian world view, there existed only an inverse relationship. In other words, Nietzsche claimed that the underlying psychology of the Christian is the opposite of his professed moral virtues. Christian values grew out of resentment and achieved spirit in

the metaphysical forms of revenge, but such psychologically negative groundings

presented themselves to the world in the guise of other virtues, for example, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, neighborly love, etc. The Christian movement thrives

on a kind of moral fanaticism, claimed Nietzsche, and thus we have "the Christian type:

or the perfect bigot." [23]

C. The Question of Truthfulness. Nietzsche repeatedly contends that Buddhism was

characterized by an objectivity and coolness that was conspicuously absent from Christianity. Presumably, a dispassionate spirit of search and discovery was the legacy to Buddhism of the Upani.sadic tradition. Nietzsche apparently believed that the long history of Brahmanic speculation had exposed to the Indian culture the futility of the quest for a unified knowledge that could reconcile man to life. No doubt Nietzsche looked upon both the diversity of the Hindu speculative tradition and the vigorous disputes between opposing systems of thought (clearly manifested in Upanishadic literature) as symptomatic of the failure and one-sidedness of a thought-ridden culture. The inability

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of the Hindu theoretical impulse to provide a cultural synthesis and redemption, established the primary conditions for a radical skepticism concerning knowledge as the path toward spiritual reconciliation. After the fruitless contentions within the Hindu world over the meaning of the real world, their culture lay exhausted. It was only a matter of time before a complete skepticism with respect to this path to emancipation would give way to a new regimen for the achievement of spiritual freedom. The Indian spirit was by now ripe for the most positivistic religion of mankind, one which embodied a strict phenomenalism of knowledge and brought forward a world view beyond good and evil. Thusly, according to Nietzsche, did the Indian culture stand ready to embrace Buddhism.

The meaning of the epistemological, phenomenalism of Buddhism, argued Nietzsche, was to be found in the self-overcoming of the futile search for the "Holy Grail" in Hindu speculation and the attainment, thereby, of an entirely relativistic, perspectival view of knowledge. This suggested to Nietzsche that Buddhism no longer required the consolation of a metaphysical masking of life-events in order to make them either more bearable or more respectable. Part, no doubt, of what Nietzsche had in mind in this regard was the ability of the Buddhist to see the given conditions of life, the thralldom of desire, as a factual causal nexus necessitating both the continuance of existence and its inevitable misery. To dispute metaphysically, concerning the ultimate nature of the causal agencies, which forge the chains binding man to the wheel of existence, constitutes, in the Buddhist view, a fundamental misdirection of the energies of the religious man. Buddhism endorsed the tenet that man could neither name nor express the ultimate sense of existence, and more importantly, that efforts to do so resulted in fundamental errors. Such a realization manifested itself in the interesting Buddhist doctrine of viparyaasa (perverted perspectives). This conception embraced both simple empirical mistakes and metaphysical mistakes. The Buddhists used the term' viparyaasa' to describe the tendency in men to posit permanence where there is only flux, or to superimpose our wishes or our dreams upon the courses of events. Any mind plagued by such a disposition participates ineluctably in reversals of truth -- the consequences of which are devastating. It was thought imperative, therefore, by early Buddhists, that we not dispute the ultimate significance of life events, but rather that we learn to see things as they show themselves, that is, phenomentally.

Perhaps in this interpretation of the phenomenalism of the Buddhist tradition, we can find some basis for Nietzsche's contention that the self-deception which moral concepts allows is overcome in Buddhism. Although Buddhist ethics often resorted to the analysis of human conduct in terms of moral categories, the moral view of behavior, in the final analysis, was strictly subordinated to a phenomenal, causal perspective.

Since a principal result of Nietzsche's thinking was the denial of any absolute knowledge and the positing only of a kind of perspective knowing, it is not

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immediately clear how he could argue, consistently, that Buddhism is more "truthful" than Christianity. Indeed, he believed both to be "false" in the sense that each literally claimed that there was "but a single part to the future," rather than Nietzsche's proclaimed "Thousand and One Goals." [24] Each of these religions contended that it was the goal to the future of mankind. The explications of their pathways to man's future, found in various theological texts, exhibited both their truths (that is, their genuine perspectival discoveries regarding existence, meaning, and value) and their inevitable "falsehoods" (that is, their exclusivity with respect to their mutual claims to possession of all truth, ultimate value, knowledge, etc.). [25]

Since any perspective, by the very fact of being single and definable against all others, excludes (in some sense) elements of other perspectives, it is difficult to comprehend why Nietzsche spoke of Buddhism as being more "truthful" than Christianity. Perhaps the clue to his more favorable judgment is to be found in the oft-repeated statement that in Buddhism, at least, the self-deception of moral ideas is overcome. It is not so much a question of one perspective containing more truth than another, but rather, perhaps, of one's having less egregious falsehood with which to contend ! It is also to be seen in the different ways whereby the adherents of each appropriate the perspectives in question. If man is the creator of meaning, as Nietzsche seems to claim, then a perspective which can take account of this fact and, at the same time, manifest a sophisticated skepticism regarding the whole process of making-meaning would be remarkable indeed. Stated in another way, the Buddhists have articulated a systematic view of the disposition in man to superimpose illusions over the given character of existence and to live in complete unawareness (ignorance) that he even has this capacity. The consequence of such an insight would be to relativize, for the Buddhist, all interpretations of life and things to such an extent that Buddhists tend to treat all stated views with a kind of ultimate skepticism.

II. A European Buddhism

Nietzsche opened his Genealogy of Morals with a revaluation of Schopenhauer, considered as a cultural event in the history of Europe. Thus, at the moment when Schopenhauer's philosophy was a cause celebre, creating spectacular enthusiasm among intellectual and artistic circles, Nietzsche felt compelled to abandon his most influential mentor in order to dramatize the danger that he believed Schopenhauer's Weltanschauung represented when conceived as a European destiny.

It was precisely here that I saw the great danger to mankind, its sublimest enticement and seduction -- but to what? to nothingness? -- it was precisely here that I saw the beginning of the end ... the will turning against life ... I understood

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the ever spreading morality of pity ... as the most sinister symptom of a European culture that had become sinister, perhaps as its by-pass to a new Buddhism? to a Buddhism for Europeans? to -- Nihilism? [26]

In this manner, Nietzsche raised the spector of European culture passing into a nihilistic phase, one characterized by a will to nothingness -- a will to the absolute relativity of all values and, hence, to the frank realization that life was without any given meaning or goal. Such a cultural destiny, Nietzsche called a new or "European" Buddhism.

We should note immediately that Nietzsche took special care to emphasize that a

Buddhistic phase in the cultural life of Europe would constitute a new form of Buddhism and, thus, would exhibit qualities both consistent with and profoundly different from classical Buddhism. Some of those differences we have already encountered in Nietzsche's judgment that classical Buddhism arose out of the death throes of an exhausted civilization and marked, therefore, a final cultural form of excessively spiritual men. Buddhism of the classical type, although thoroughly nihilistic, Nietzsche could not envision as a genuine possibility for the future of Europe. Europe, in his estimate, was essentially without a civilization, largely due to the new barbarism engendered by Christian values and manifested in such phenomena as the movements of mass politics, the prevailing tide of socialist, humanitarian, and democratic concern in Europe, which were all grounded in an underprivileged and gloomy view of life. [27] Moreover, the very pace of European life, its intrinsic restlessness and turbulence, constituted a further impediment to European man's capacity to cultivate the saintly repose and detachment of the classical Buddhist.

It is quite evident that Nietzsche understood cultural development in terms of a dialectical law -- one in which extreme conditions at least partially produced and were succeeded by their opposite extreme. He went so far in this direction as to claim: "All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self-overcoming: thus the law of life will have it, the law of the necessity of self-overcoming' in the nature of life..." [28] The Christian era is succeeded by its opposite, a new Buddhism. Such a movement occurrs within Christianity as a result of its revaluation of itself. Nietzsche postulated that the "will to truth" was the agency by which Christianity overcomes itself and necessarily eventuates in an honest atheism and a radical cultural nihilism. After almost two thousand years of training in the "will to truth," which eventually got sublimated into cleanliness of intellectual conscience (science), European man is finally ripe for the truth of a new Buddhism and the total revaluation of his most precious venerations. The new Buddhism, therefore, will be the terminal phase of the Christian era.

But how could Christianity give birth to a European form of Buddhism? In Nietzsche's judgment, European Christianity's moral world-view and its injunctions produced a man already trained in the ways of practical nihilism. In

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fact, Christians have always been practicing nihilists, and it was this hidden scandal that Nietzsche believed he had uncovered about Christianity. Such a practical nihilism was rooted in the Christian's disposition to invest all of the significance of life in a kingdom beyond this world -- indeed, to devalue the earth -- including human reason, instincts, and passions. Such a tendency brought about a radical depreciation of the richness of earthly life and the concomitant investment of nothing, and the beyond, with ultimate meaning. By these means, Christianity educated European man toward a yearning for nothingness and created a Buddhistic tendency in man. [29] Viewed in this manner, European Buddhism, whatever specific form it might finally take, would have to be seen as the culmination of a moralistic development within Christian culture itself. Its appearance would symbolize the final collapse of the Christian movement and the onset of a post-Christian era.

Strangely, Nietzsche greeted the prospect of a Western form of Buddhism with considerable ambivalence. In Beyond Good and Evil, he spoke of Europe being threatened by a new Buddhism, [30] while in an unpublished note, he characterized the possibility as a "nihilistic catastrophe." [31] Yet in another unpublished note, Nietzsche welcomed a European form of Buddhism as both "the most extreme form of nihilism" and "the most scientific of all possible hypotheses." [32] Such an ambivalence on Nietzsche's part reflected his genuine uncertainty regarding what kind of pessimism (or nihilism) would eventually come to dominate European culture. Nietzsche never doubted that Europe had already entered a nihilistic phase of cultural existence. What he did have serious misgivings about was the specific interpretation that Western man would give to his emerging awareness of a culture-wide crisis of meaning -- that the old values which had supported and shaped his life had collapsed and, therefore, could no longer insure a future for him. In other words, how European man would appropriate the new conditions of his life mattered greatly! The issue turned, for Nietzsche, on whether Europe would succumb to a pessimism of weakness, symbolized by Schopenhauer's metaphysics and an opiate Christianity, [33] or whether it would will the courage of a "pessimism of strength" symbolized by Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the Dionysian man. Only under the latter banner would it be possible to create a future beyond the desert of nihilism. Moreover, it was in the latter sense alone that Christianity could become the proper basis for a new European civilization. [34] Should this occur, then the emergence of a European Buddhism could be viewed as the signal for the beginning of a more spiritual age.

It is not difficult to find cultural models, in Nietzsche's thought, for these two forms of pessimism. Indian culture, during its period of Buddhistic development, clearly represented a culture characterized by the pessimism of weakness. In contrast, ancient Greece, during the period of the flourishing of tragic drama, exhibited all of the features of a cultural manifestation of the pessimism of strength. What Nietzsche believed both cultures had in common was a profound

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realization of the pain of life and its inevitability. Nietzsche characterized the differences between the cultures' comportment toward their realizations in terms of the thesis that in one instance, the Greek, life was ascending, growing, overflowing with vitality, and, in the other, the Indian-Buddhistic life was descending, overspiritualized, and exhausted. Thus, the ancient Greek culture was condemned to suffer profoundly as a consequence of an excess of life, an overflowing vitality which required a tragic insight into life. Such an impetus sought the "more-than-life," a vision afforded them through their tragic myths and dramas. For the Greek, artistic creativity transfigured the pessimistic-nihilistic insight and life triumphed through art. Nietzsche's early formulation of this principle was that "it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified." [35] Although Nietzsche later repudiated the metaphysical character of this principle, he consistently maintained that the greatness of this period of Greek civilization lay in its self-overcoming of pessimism by positing new values for life and, by this means, providing a revaluation of the root conditions of human life.

On the other hand, a culture suffering from reduced vitality and a weariness with the task of life, succumbs to its suffering by willing to do away with its own existence. Life, therein, viewed as the cause of misfortune and pain wills its own dissolution through inaction. Thus, nearly all of the icons of ancient Buddhist art present the ideal of imperturbability and detachment that the Buddhist yogic discipline aimed at achieving. In the eternal passage of things and forms, with its ineluctable measure of misfortune for all who are conditioned thereby, the Buddhist sought the still point of eternity, where in impassive, Olympian calm, he could achieve complete emancipation from life. When such an ideal informs a whole culture, it becomes a nihilism of the weary. It is "the weary nihilism that no longer attacks: its most famous form, Buddhism; a passive nihilism, a sign of weakness." [36]

There is no question but that Nietzsche was deeply troubled concerning the question of which pathway to the future European man would take in the post-Christian era. "Where does our modern world belong -- to exhaustion or ascent?" [37] The shrill tones of Nietzsche's polemics and prophecies often owe their passion to his conviction that the destiny of European man hung precariously in the balance. Simply in order to be heard over the chorus of voices luring Europe to what Nietzsche envisioned as the last man, he resorted to rhetorical pyrotechnics and bombastic prophecy. But one of his most remarkable thoughts was concerned with a kind of European Buddhism, proposed by his Zarathustra, which he believed to be a viable alternative to the new Buddhism of decline and weakness.

A crucial premise of Nietzsche's thought postulated that spirit reached its maximum power (strength-vitality) when it was able to incorporate the capacity for violent destruction of all of its past groundings (those values which shaped its historical identity and gave it meaning), that is when it became actively

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nihilistic as opposed to the passive nihilism of classical Buddhism. This most extreme form of nihilism was, in Nietzsche's eyes, the only possible remedy for European man who stood transfixed between either doing away with his idols or with himself.

Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness:
'the eternal recurrence.' This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the 'meaningless'), eternally!

The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compels this belief. It is the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. [38]

Classical Buddhism represents that knowledge which sees most deeply into the abyss of life and draws back from life in shock and disgust. Such a beholding preys upon the sensitized consciousness until life turns away from its depths and seeks the consolation, the release, of nonexistence, However, this same wisdom can unite with a courageous will-to-be this abyss and, in that life affirmation, create out of the desert of nihilism a new prospect for man. Thus, a European Buddhism, like a phoenix rising out of the ashes of the Christian age, gives man the courage to begin anew, without excuse and illusion, the apotheosis of innocence.

NOTES

1. Notably in The AntiChrist, The Birth of Tragedy, Will to Power, and Genealogy of Morals.

2. Thomas Mann, "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Contemporary Events," Thomas Mann's Addresses (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, 1963), p. 99.

3. Whether one can discern a synthetic unity in Nietzsche's thought -- an "essential" Nietzsche who transcends the separate visions of his masks to forge a unified philosophical view -- is a question that we cannot enter upon here. However, I venture the thesis, which I hope to develop fully at another time, that only when Nietzsche speaks in the voice of Zarathustra is he unmasked.

4. The Portable Nietzsche, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954), p. 590.

5. In The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W. Kaufamann (New York: Vintage Press, 1967), pp. 109- 114, Nietzsche distinguished between three fundamental types of cultural conditions: the Alexandrian, Hellenic, and Buddhistic (roughly equivalent to scientific, artistic, and metaphysical). Each, urged Nietzsche, represented a specific modality by means of which a culture achieved reconciliation with the essential conditions of its life. An Alexandrian culture shaped its life and institutions out of a dominant theoretic impulse and believed, optimistically, that by the power of its knowledge it could master the given conditions of its existence. The Hellenic culture, on the other hand, required the compensation of art, for by its means, culture and life itself were justified as an aesthetic phenomenon. Finally, the Buddhistic culture derived comfort from the metaphysical illusion "that beneath the which of phenomena eternal life flows on indestructibly" [pp. 109-110]. Considerable controversy has swirled around these distinctions, and we shall be obliged to return to them at a later point for a more careful analysis.

6. The Portable Nietzsche, p. 590.

7. The Birth of Tragedy, p. 110.

8. Cf. Wilamowitz-Mollendorff. Ulrich von, Zukunflstphilologie (Berlin, 1872).

9. The Birth of Tragedy, p. 110.

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10. Ibid., p. 52.

11. F. Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, trans. J. M. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1913), p. 147.

12. F. Nietzsche, Ecce Home, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Press,1967), p. 230.

13. F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 96.

14. The Portable Nietzsche, p. 501.

15. F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press,1966), p. 92.

16. F. Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, trans. T. Common (New York: Ungar, 1960), p. 295.

17. The Will to Power, p. 96.

18. Cf. The Will to Power, p. 96, p. 188; Joyful Wisdom, p. 295, The AntiChrist in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 587; and The Dawn of Day, pp. 84-85.

19. The Will to Power, pp. 96-97.

20. Ibid., p. 187.

21. Ibid., p. 188.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 92.

25. Whether Nietzsche had the same sense of relativism regarding his own perspective is an interesting question.

26. F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Press,1967), p. 19.

27. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Press, 1966), p. 116.

28. On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 161.

29. The Will to Power, p. 7.

30. Beyond Good and Evil, p. 116.

31. The Will to Power, p. 43.

32. The Will to Power, p. 36.

33. Ibid., p. 139.

34. The Portable Nietzsche, The AntiChrist, p. 590.

35. The Birth of Tragedy, p. 52.

36. The Will to Power, p. 18.

37. Ibid., p. 48.

38. Ibid., pp. 35-36.