Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche
and Buddhism
Bret W. Davis
Is Nietzsche’s affirmation of the world and oneself as “the will to power—and nothing besides "the path to a self-overcoming of nihilism; or is it, as Heidegger contends, the “ultimate entanglement in nihilism”?
Is Buddhism the purest expression of a “passive nihilism,” as Nietzsche claims; or does it teach a radical “middle path” that twists free of both the life of the will to power and a pessimistic negation of the will to live? Does the Buddhist path go so far as to intimate a great affirmation of living otherwise than willing?
From the outset, one thing does seem certain: venturing out to sail on the "open sea”
(GS343) of Nietzsche’s thought, we confront Buddhism as one of the most interesting and challenging “foreign perspectives” from which to "question one’s own.”
And yet, rather than let his exposure to this other tradition call into question his own philosophy of the will to power, Nietzsche him-self more often used his interpretation of Buddhism as a “rhetorical instrument” for his critique of Christianity, crediting the former religion in the end only with the dubious honor of representing a more honest expression of a more advanced stage of nihilism. Recent studies on this theme often begin by emphasizing Nietzsche's limited knowledge, his misunderstanding, and the distortions involved in his appropriation of Buddhism. Many then go on to develop what Robert Morrison has called the “ironic affinities” between Nietzsche and a Buddhism correctly understood.
Although Morrison and others have pursued these affinities with respect to the Theravada tradition, profounder resonances may in fact be found with the Mahayana tradition, of which Nietzsche remained unfortunately ignorant.
