No-self and compassion: Nietzsche and Buddhism

Abstract

The article examines two claims made by Antoine Panaïoti: (1) That both Nietzsche and Buddhists denounce the self as a misleading fiction. (2) That Buddhist compassion is close to a ‘compassion of strength’ that Nietzsche approves. This article agrees with (1) and disagrees with (2). The descriptive metaphysical commitments of Nietzsche and Buddhism are subordinate to their divergent normative projects. Both reject a single, enduring, and independent self; but where Mahāyāna Buddhism advocates care or compassion towards all sentient beings, Nietzsche questions the value of compassion, holding that suffering is not bad in itself. Some recent commentators suggest that a text by the Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva offers an argument from ‘no-self’ to universal compassion. Nietzsche disputes this connection; and Śāntideva’s Madhyamaka position, in which nothing has an intrinsic nature, cannot easily counter Nietzsche’s claim that suffering is not intrinsically bad. Nietzsche’s privileging of states of ‘becoming’, ‘discovering’, or ‘creating’ oneself sets him deeply at odds with Buddhism. For Buddhists the fundamentally problematic attitude is a pre-theoretical sense of self, ‘egoism’, or ‘self-grasping’ which is at the root of human craving. Agreeing with the philosophical claim that there is no self is not sufficient to dispel this pre-theoretical orientation.

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ORCID for Christopher Janaway: orcid.org/0000-0002-9600-8837

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