Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy by Antoine Panaïoti & Antoine Panaïoti

Author:Antoine Panaïoti & Antoine Panaïoti [Panaïoti]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

With the fiction of eternal recurrence, Nietzsche’s healthy type gives to the world of becoming the character of Being, which, after all, is what the will to power qua will to interpretation/meaning always does on a smaller scale. In embracing Dionysus in this way the healthy type pronounces his resounding yes not only to life, but also to himself. Indeed, the healthy type makes himself into a “being” through the tragic myth of eternal recurrence – he becomes enduring and “fixed” through eternal recurrence.151 In this way, this great artist reinstates the twin Apollonian fictions of self and Being, but from a specifically life-affirming perspective. Life is affirmed as the Being “Dionysus” and he also affirms himself as an eternally recurring Self.152

After all, this is what the healthy type needs to do. First, considering the possibility of eternal recurrence, and with it the perpetual repetition of all of one’s sorrows and troubles, is the greatest challenge there can be. It is the most difficult obstacle that which presents the highest risk of faltering into despair and nay-saying. As such, it is what the healthy type must confront if he is to attain full self-overcoming. Second, at a psychological level, the will perpetually to relive one’s life exactly as it has unfolded and as it will unfold allows the healthy type to entirely subvert any and all forms of guilt, shame, or remorse. In this sense, to want it all over and over again is essential to move beyond acceptance and resignation to guiltless celebration and affirmation.153 By recasting becoming as a form of Being and his own contingent and unnecessary self as an eternal recurring Self, the healthy, artistic type invents the object of his love and worship, of his life- and self-affirming amor fati.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between the artistic falsification of Nietzsche’s healthy type and the nihilist theist’s. The twin fictions of amor fati – the falsification of becoming into Dionysus qua Being and the fiction of the eternally recurrent Self – are performed by an artist who is perfectly aware of the falsification he is engaged in. Irony thus has a key role in the healthy type’s summum bonum.154 In amor fati, both Dionysus – the “eternally recurring” – and the fixed, necessary Self are embraced and celebrated, but the healthy type never forgets these are fictions. He embraces them with irony, in full knowledge of the fact that they are his creations, his inventions. This is how he becomes, quite literally, the artist of his destiny (fatum). This is the conscious lie through which “one becomes what one is.”155

In sum, Nietzsche’s ideal of amor fati is modeled on the example of the tragic, Heraclitean Greek, who steps toward suffering and wills suffering as a condition for growth. This is the supreme expression of great health, defined in terms of the predominance of the active, creative, form-giving forces in man. Through a robust pessimism of the strong, Nietzsche’s healthy type wills the greatest suffering of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.