11-18-2010, 04:18 AM
Follow-up post....
Quote:I promised on Nietzsche and "Hinduism"- Brahmanism- Manu-India and critique of "Christianity": here is a modern assessment. The author makes the right noises about how N was partially deluded about "Hinduism" and Manu and rather used a "fanciful" reinterpretation by another "fascinated with India European" - Jacolliot, to reconstruct an imagery of "Aryansim/Brahmanism/Hinduism" as a weapon to deconstruct European Christianity and its claims. Ignore the comments needed to be "acceptable" for "Manu-Hindu-Aryan-Brahmanism" bashing requirements in academics, but look at what he is conceding beneath :
Quote:Both Hinduism and Buddhism are of interest to Nietzsche not in themselves but as alternative positions from which to continue his attack on Christianity. Nietzsche declares that "the critic of Christianity is profoundly grateful to the students of India" for making Buddhism available as a religion to compare with Christianity.6 It may fairly be assumed that Nietzsche felt a similar gratitude in respect of the availability of Hinduism. Buddhism, as a pessimistic and decadent religion for Nietzsche, resembles Christianity "but is a hundred times[...] more truthful, more objective" (A23). Hinduism is an affirmative religion rather than a negative one like buddhism and Christianity, but like Buddhism, it is a product of the ruling orders (KSA 13:14[195]/WP 154).7
Nietzsche seldom referred to Hinduism; nor did he use the word Hinduism, speaking rather of Brahmanism, the Vedanta, or Indian philosophy. However the only extensive Indian text that he chose unprompted to read for himself was a central text of Hinduism not relating to philosophy, namely Louis Jacolliot's version of the Laws of Manu. A valuable account of the defects of Jacolliot's book has been given by Anne-Marie Etter.
Nietzsche's Hinduism, Nietzsche's India: Another Look, David Smith, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, (28) (Autumn 2004), pp 37-56. Penn State University Press.
Those who have access to MUSE or the journal can look up more, as I think I should not quote more extensively because of copyright. I think he also has a book.
Nietzsche writes to Heinrich Koselitz (Peter Gast) (31 May 1888):
"I owe to these last weeks a very important lesson: I found Manu's book of laws in a French translation done in India....This absolutely Aryan work, a priestly codex of morality based on the Vedas, on the idea of caste and very ancient (uralten) - not pessimistic, albeit very sacerdotal - supplements my views on religion in the most remarkable way. I confess to having the impression that everything else that we have by way of moral lawgiving seems to me an imitation and even a caricature of it - preeminently, Egypticism does; but even Plato seems to me in all the main points simply to have been well instructed by a Brahmin. It makes the Jews look like a Chandala race which learns form its masters the principles of making a priestly caste the master which organizes a people. The Chinese also seem to have produced their Confucius and Lao-Tse under the influence of this ancient classic of laws. The medieval organization looks like a wondrous groping for a restoration of all the ideas which which formed the basis of primordial (uralte) Indian-Aryan society - but with pessimistic values which have their origin in the soil of racial decadence. Here too, the Jews seem to be merely transmitters - they invent nothing.
[Christopher Middleton, eds and trans, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, Indianapolis: hackett, 1996), pp 297-98.]
There can be pages written about his use and fascination with the "Vedic", and more can be written about his rapture about the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Perhaps later!