Статтю присвячено дослідженню звернення Ф. Ніцше до буддизму. Філософський аналіз його творів здійснюється з точки зору буддійської «філософії порожнечі». Згадки про буддизм присутні у більшості праць мислителя, однак вони мають неоднозначний й суперечливий характер, що було зумовлено відсутністю в буддології другої половини ХІХ ст. адекватного уявлення про засадниче для буддійської думки поняття – «порожнечу» (шуньята). На прикладі окремих паралелей показано близькість ідей Ніцше і буддизму (замежовість добра і зла, абсолютний пріоритет істинного пізнання, переоцінка всіх цінностей і шунья-вада Наґарджуни та ін.). (...) Висловлюється також припущення про можливість ознайомлення Ніцше з текстом «Дгаммапади». Здійснений аналіз дає підстави стверджувати, що Ніцше інтуїтивно передчував майбутні відкриття академічної буддології, причому його розуміння буддизму виявлялося більш адекватним глибинній філософській думці буддизму (філософії порожнечі), ніж панівний за тієї доби «культ Ніщо». (shrink)

Two models of human perfection proposed by Nietzsche and the Buddha are investigated. Both the overman and the arahant need practice and individual effort as key to their realization, and they share roughly the same conception of the self as a construction. However, there are also a number of salient differences. Though realizing it to be constructed, the overman does proclaim himself through his assertion of the will to power. The realization of the true nature of the self does not (...) lead the overman to seek the way to be released from saṃsara as does the arahant. On the contrary, he rejoices in the eternally recurring situation. The arahant, however, has totally relinquished any attachment to the self, constructed or otherwise. The arahant does not care about the Eternal Recurrence, as he only focuses on the present moment. Finally, they are both beyond good and evil, but in a substantively different way. (shrink)

Beyond vague references to his ‘Eastern’ or ‘Oriental’ influences, there exists almost no work on the impact made by Buddhist traditions on the work of Georges Bataille. This study takes a first step towards understanding this impact. It embarks upon a reading of 'La Pratique de la joie devant la mort' as a record of Bataille’s meditation practice infused with Tibetan and Japanese Zen Buddhist concepts and practices as he understood them, through the prism of European interactions therewith. The study (...) traces the evolution of what are here termed the ‘imagined Buddhisms’ emerging from such interactions, from early Euro-Buddhist encounters during the Christian missions, through the 19th-century birth of ‘Buddhist Studies’ and the related influence of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to an interwar avant-garde preoccupied with the rejection of the European values held to have caused WWI. Foremost of the avant-garde factions considered here is the secret society Acéphale, founded by Bataille with the stated aims of creating a new religion and waging war on ‘tout ce qui est reconnu aujourd’hui’. In the course of this investigation, a pattern of Buddhist traditions weaponised in support of European projects is established; one in which they are imagined and re-imagined alternately as equivalent and antagonist to the work of Bataille, his peers and their antecedents. 'La Pratique de la joie devant la mort' emerges in the light of Bataille’s ‘imagined Buddhism’ as a practical version of an inverted Nietzschean sovereignty, incorporating elements of the concepts and practices of Tibetan and Japanese Zen Buddhism as he understood them. In the former case, these include his method of dramatisation and the idea of Tibetan meditation as what he terms a means of ‘put[ting one] to sleep’. Such an ‘put[ting] to sleep’ is argued to be akin to the what Bataille elsewhere calls the ‘narcotic’ of the profane world and to which he offers his own practice as a solution. In the case of Japanese Zen, the process Bataille would come to call the 'opération souveraine' is shown to be present in 'La Pratique de la joie devant la mort' and to bear resemblance to the process of achieving the form of Zen enlightenment called satori. A momentary flash of insight, satori is also shown to be comparable to the breakthrough of sacred from profane. (shrink)