This is a thought I've been wondering about, maybe Veeky Forums can expand on.
So Nietzsche is full of praise for Schopenhauer. And Schopenhauer, in turn, always praises the Upanishads as being this wonderful discovery, this great joy of his life. And yet Nietzsche never seems to mention reading the Upanishads, or much Eastern thought at all, besides the few comments about Buddhism.
I understand, of course, that Eastern thought wasn't N's interest (although he does use Zarathustra/Zoroaster as his own namesake, I always assumed this was more anti-Christian than pro-Zoroastrian). And that philosophy is richer for his having written about the tragic, rather than the transcendent/nondual.
Maybe that's it, in the end, that the tragic and the transcendental are just two different systems that should have nothing to do with each other. Could be. But I can't help but feel like N would have enjoyed reading, I don't know, the Bhagavad Gita (or the Art of War).
I don't consider myself a philosopher or a mystical type, for what it's worth. I just find correspondence between Eastern and Western ideas interesting. So I'm puzzled as to why N didn't read the Upanishads, when a man he praised praised them so highly. I guess the Greeks were just that awesome for him.
Schopenhauer, due to the scant amount of translated texts, general European ignorance of eastern religion and lack of European speaking experts in the field generally misunderstood much of what he read. Nietzsche in the times that he talks of Buddhism seems to have made some of the same mistakes as Schopenhauer and for the same reasons he moves on from Schopenhauer seem to be the same he moves on from Buddhism.
In regards to eastern religion in general I'm reading an introductory book to Confucianism which I intend to follow up with one on Taoism and one for Chan Buddhism ('m on a bit of a China kick right now). I find the east interesting in that (as far as I know) they never did philosophy as we do it in the west. Philosophy seems to be wholly subsumed inside religion so that I would say rather than having philosophy they have theology. I'm hardly an expert and could easily be wrong on this point. Although it does raise the problem of defining what a religion is and it really isn't a simple task. Experts today are not decided on whether or no Confucianism is a religion or not.
Brayden Long
Pic related really has nothing to do with this post, it's just cool.
OP here. I've just come off a long China bender myself. Just wanted to recommend a good book on the subject. There are some sample chapters freely available from it here.
Agreed, that question of what or what is not a religion is huge. It becomes a part of how we define thought itself, whether things are dualistic or nondual. I like Chinese thought for this reason, because they don't have this language of choices, decision-making, and so on: the heart and the mind are one thing, and so there's a much higher role for the question of 'humaneness.' I think part of Nietzsche's reputation comes from the fact that he seemed to have been one of the first Western thinkers to really explore the unconscious (besides Schopenhauer...)
There's also the interesting fact that psychoanalysis, for example, doesn't seem to work in Japan as well...but it's Vedanta/Upanishads that I find the most interesting at the moment, which is why I made the original post.
Anyways, have a look at that book if you're finding the Chinese interesting, user.
Austin Gray
Confucianism can't be called a religion in my opinion. It's more a philosophy, but even that's a stretch - even Buddhism isn't really a religion, certainly not in the Abrahamic sense. I'd say they're more of an ideology or set of ethics, but this path just leads to a debate on semantics really.
I feel there's a greater disparity between the Eastern philosophies/religions or whatever you want to call them, in the sense that it's easier (as far as I know) to connect various branches of Western philosophy, draw up a narrative and map progress.
Caleb King
Sorry, the link doesn't work. Google 'Fingarette/Confucius/Secular as Sacred/' and you'll find the one.
Jose Sanders
Cheers, I'm about to head off to work so I don't have time to read it now.
>Confucianism can't be called a religion >Buddhism isn't really a religion We have lived in a monotheistic world for over 1500 hundred years where the only religions we ever dealt with were Abrahamic. This is given us a very particular idea about how to define religion which is entirely unsuitable for pretty much the whole rest of the world. Buddhism is a religion. If you agree with their ethical principles but are an atheist you have as much right to call yourself a Buddhist as an ethically sympathetic atheist does a Christian. I don't really have a problem with it but you are no either of those things in any normal capacity. The Abrahamic religions are revelatory, just because Buddhism is not does not mean it's not religious. Buddhism has a magical, non-philosophical cosmology, has a plethora of gods and has many superstitions. In the west we get sold this secularised Buddhism because it's easier for us to understand. Travel to anywhere in the world where Buddhism has flourished a long time and tell me after seeing exorcisms, prayer for miracles, belief in magical powers, worship of gods and Buddha, the belief in multiple heaven and hells and try saying then that it isn't a religion.
Confucianism is predicated upon ancestor worship and a belief in tian (heaven) from which good comes. You just can't flat out say it isn't religious as if it's an uncontroversial statement. It is one of those instances that stretches any workable definition of religion.
Jackson Bell
Paul Deussen was his friend, he read his works, he read suttas in translation, the laws of manu etc. he probably read much of it through a schopenhauer tinge because that was in the atmosphere, as was a neokantian tendency in various philosophical commentators and historians he was familiar with.
Nietzsche wasn't full of praise for Schopenhauer. He disagreed with nihilists because the saw no meaning in life and ran away, Nietzsche however though we should embrace the emptiness and struggle of life and enjoy all that is, the beautiful and ugly parts of life.
Levi Thomas
I agree with most of you points.The Abrahamic world view certainly sets the precedent for how we conceive and approach religion in the West. Before any discussion you've got to establish constitutes a religion. Does it come from belief in the afterlife? From ritual? From traditional beliefs?
I'm aware of the variations within Buddhism and for that reason it's difficult to take about it without specifying a branch. I know Zen Buddhists who would consider themselves secular whereas the more orthodox Tibetan schools place much more emphasis on icons, rituals and traditions.
I wouldn't consider Confucianism a religion, but that's just my opinion, it seems more like ethics and philosophical values, influenced by Chinese traditions. Obviously there are many who are more informed and involved in the matter than myself.
Carter Edwards
what's the difference between east and west?
Joshua Green
Nietzsche was gay for Schopenhauer, lol
Adam Gutierrez
Answers will differ for everyone, but for me it has to do with the relationship between philosophy and spirituality. Put another way, I tend to view - not saying it is this way, just the way I look at it - Western thought as being largely dualistic in nature. We like to keep religion and philosophy (and psychology) separate. In the East - China and India - there's a more nondual tradition that sees everything as being part of one big whole. This naturally changes the way we view language and argument, for instance.
There's no good or bad in it, right or wrong, etc. But that is my rough heuristic in distinguishing them. It might even have to do with anthropocentric interpretations of God versus divine beings which are ineffable - Brahman, the Tao, Zen consciousness and so on.
Bear in mind that all 'East' and 'West' stuff is going to be rife with inaccuracy, since these concepts are so vast, and the West will have nondual mystical types (such as Meister Eckhart) just as much as China can have its own version of postmodernity (the Hundred Schools), to name only two examples.
Books like pic related are what make me the most hopeful about this stuff, though. The author is as inspired by Nietzsche as by the Tao (and, weirdly, even by Abrahamic religion) but manages to make it all quite scientific as well.
Julian Jackson
It's hard not to be gay for his writing, though.
His arguments are eloquent but conclusions mostly wrong, which is why a lot of people like him even though they don't agree with him.
Robert Wright
hey buddy, mind naming a couple of those books?
Jaxon Wright
I recall that the professor user said that N used Z because originally Z brought the duality of good and evil to society and linear thinking (towards one after life?). So N thought he could use Z again to introduce his circular perspective that goes beyond the need for morality, the eternal recurrence.
Dylan Jenkins
>transhumanism >Dawkins >The God Delusion >The Big Bang Theory (TV Show) Those were just a few phrases I was able to extract from a quick browse of the book.
The book literally belongs in the trash-bin. Broad-strokes type proclamations and predictions and none of it is grounded in anything other than feeble speculations.
Matthew Russell
Ah, that makes sense, Here's another question, though: what is the relationship between morality and eternal recurrence? Isn't the thing that you would will forever the same as 'morality?' Or is it that because *you* will do it, rather than blame or shame someone else into doing it, that makes it non-moral? I'm not a Nietzsche expert and some of that stuff is confusing for me.
I don't know how useful it will be to responding to phrases extracted from a browsing of the book, but I would like to say that, having read the book, i don't recall the parts about Dawkins or TV being especially numerous or important.
I don't mean to criticize your position or be a douche. If the book isn't appealing to you, that's cool. I won't try to sell you on it. But as I recall, the Dawkins and television elements are so limited that as I write this I can hardly even remember them. And I do feel obliged to write this much so that anyone else who might be interested doesn't get the wrong impression of the work.
This is, however, perhaps one of the inherent dangers of East/West stuff: it tends to come off as flaky or 'New Age' stuff. And indeed, much of it is. It's also not as rigorous as Western thought and it doesn't have the cultural power of thousands of years of tradition. The few books or writers that manage to meaningfully cross the divide are rare, but I like to think that some of them do it.
Xavier Brown
what is the a ma maman supposed to mean? is it a reference to the Stranger?
