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SUMMARY:The Übermensch and the Bodhisattva: the two Offspring of Nihilism
  - Antoine Panaioti
DTSTART:20081202T131500Z
DTEND:20081202T140000Z
UID:TALK14892@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:T.S. Thompson
DESCRIPTION:Friedrich Nietzsche once described himself as "the Buddha of\n
 Europe\," albeit as the "antipode" of his Indian counterpart. Indeed\,\nNi
 etzsche believed that the historical Buddha's starting assumptions were\nn
 ot so different from his own: no God\, no metaphysics\, no objective value
 \nto existence and no purpose to the endless sufferings of life. From this
 \ncommon nihilist ground\, however\, Nietzsche believed two opposite roads
 \nopened up: the life-negating ethics of the Buddha's Bodhisattva ideal\, 
 or\nthe life-affirming ethics of his own Übermensch ideal. In this talk\,
  I will\npresent the way in which Nietzsche sets up this dichotomy and exp
 lore some\nfeatures of his ambivalent relation to Buddhism. After highligh
 ting the\nimportant affinities between Nietzsche's and the Buddha's views 
 on\nmetaphysics and on the universality of suffering\, I will examine the 
 ways\nin which Nietzsche's Übermensch is meant to stand as the polar oppo
 site of\nthe Buddhist ideal.\n
LOCATION:Entertaining Room\, Darwin College
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