Laura Langone

This paper aims to show that Nietzsche’s break with Wagner was also due to Wagner’s assimilation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which Nietzsche regarded as a nihilistic worldview. Insofar as Schopenhauer’s thought recommended hatred of life and resignation, it proved to be nihilistic. Schopenhauer’s was a kind of passive nihilism, together with Christianity and Buddhism. Physiologically, the type incarnating passive nihilism turned out to be characterised by an abnormal feeling of exhaustion due to low metabolism. Ultimately, the article argues, among others, Nietzsche rejected Wagner’s thought because, under the influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, it led to passive nihilism.

Nietzsche’s Ethics of Place. In this paper, I will argue that Nietzsche’s free spirit philosophy provides an ethics of place, showing its similarities with the environmental philosophy and movement of bioregionalism. After outlining a brief history of bioregionalism from its beginnings until its recent developments, I will bring Nietzsche’s free spirit philosophy into dialogue with the main thinkers of bioregionalism such as Peter Berg, Jim Dodge, and Gary Snyder. Nietzsche’s free spirit philosophy is seen to provide fertile ground for acquiring the sense of place which for bioregionalists is a necessary precondition for taking concrete action towards sustainability.

Bringing into dialogue the philosophical systems of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche cannot do without investigating pessimism and eternity – issues to which both thinkers attached great significance. The authors analysed in this essay, Martin Morgenstern and Christopher Janaway, partly touch on such issues. Unfortunately, both perpetuate the long-standing opposition between Schopenhauer’s supposed hopeless pessimism and Nietzsche’s life-affirming philosophy. In contrast, I will show how this opposition is no longer tenable. During aesthetic contemplation, Schopenhauer’s genius finds a way to take an interest in the world despite its evils. The genius exhibits a passionate engagement with knowledge, allowing aesthetic affects to come into play, just as Nietzsche’s artist intensifies and multiplies the affects to achieve a more comprehensive perspective on reality. The shared attitudes of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche towards knowledge reveal deep and often overlooked connections among their philosophical systems. It is in the realm of aesthetics that pessimism and eternity can come together.

In this paper, I aim to call into question a long-established tradition within the Anglo-Saxon Nietzsche scholarship that regards Nietzsche’s middle period as positivist. Unlike most scholars, I shall demonstrate that in Human, All Too Human Nietzsche does not take a positivist position, recognizing the limits of science with regard to knowledge of reality and its contributions toward unleashing human potential. Ultimately, I will show that Nietzsche was coherent, taking an anti-positivist position in all three works of the middle period.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dynamic Encounters between Buddhism and the West ReportLaura Langone and Alexandra S. IlievaThe following is a summary of the 2021 Postgraduate Conference titled "Dynamic Encounters between Buddhism and the West," which took place online on June 28 and 29. The conference was conceptualized, organized, and run by three AHRC funded PhD students at the University of Cambridge: Laura Langone (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages); Alexandra S. Ilieva (Faculty of Divinity); and Harry Harland (Faculty of Law). The conference took place over two days and featured eighteen presenters across six panels, and two keynote speakers. There were speakers from four continents (Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania). A wide range of topics in multiple fields was discussed: religious studies, neuroscience, art history, politics, philosophy, literature, philology, mathematics, art, and music. Each day consisted of three panels, each with three presentations, one keynote presentation, and a networking session.The keynote speakers were Prof. Albrecht Classen (The University of Arizona) and Prof. Graham Parkes (University of Vienna).Prof. Classen opened the conference with his presentation. He taught us that we have been globalized and transcultural since at least the Middle Ages. To support this claim, he provided us with ample evidence of Buddhist-Western exchanges in Art and Literature dotted throughout the literature and architecture of Europe. Prof. Parkes observed that following Zen Master Dōgen's thought as well as Nietzsche's philosophy we can develop a saner approach to the environment, which provides us with resources to help us to tackle the challenges of the climate crisis.Our first panel was titled "Hellenistic-Buddhist Encounters," which followed on nicely from Prof. Classen's thesis that encounters between Buddhism and the West have been ubiquitous and have dated as far back as the Hellenistic period. Our second panel, "Encounters with the Contemporary World," were impressive examples of intercultural philosophy. Each participant demonstrated a unique ability to bring Buddhist ideas into dialogue with contemporary Western philosophy, specifically ethics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology. The third panel, titled "Therapeutic Encounters," taught us of the therapeutic value of Buddhist meditation and philosophical inquiry. As our presenters emphasized, this therapeutic value is not just an ancient artifact to be studied anthropologically, but a relevant and applicable approach to the modern idea of well-being that therefore deserves continued scholarship.On the second day, we started with our fourth panel called "Encounters through Western Conceptual Lenses," which among others gave us insight into the reception [End Page 393] of Japanese Buddhism by the German liberal protestants of the nineteenth century. Our fifth panel—"Encounters with German Philosophy"—was an excellent example of contemporary comparative work between Buddhist philosophy, ethics, and logic, and the German thinkers Hegel and Nietzsche.We learned that Nietzsche labeled Buddhism as nihilism––a position that can be challenged through Ambedkar's reading of Buddhism. On the other hand, despite Nietzsche's criticism of Buddhism, striking similarities between his approach to life and that of Mahāyāna Buddhism can be found, both elaborating a life-affirming philosophy. We also became familiar with similarities and differences between the logic of Nishida and Hegel. Finally, our last panel, "Literary and Artistic Encounters" made for a fitting conclusion, reminding us that Buddhist-Western encounters are ongoing, not just politically and intellectually but also in art, music, and literature. These encounters are dynamic in nature and fundamentally lacking in an essential core. Instead, they are entities that echo through the ages allowing for reinterpretation and reintegration across geographic and temporal scopes.Both during and after the conference we received extremely positive feedback from the participants. The level of participation and enthusiasm was highly promising, showing that the future of intercultural studies of this sort is bright. Graduate conferences like these are key for early career scholars to set up networks and find likeminded peers to engage in ongoing dynamic encounters.In conclusion, this conference served to highlight the sophisticated emerging scholarship taking place that seeks to investigate Buddhist-Western interactions and dialogue. But, perhaps more importantly, the conference itself makes a metapoint: not only has the world been transcultural for many centuries, but the conference itself and in particular the global spatial locations of...

Resumo Este artigo tem o objetivo de mostrar as semelhanças entre o espírito livre de Nietzsche e o gênio de Schopenhauer. Em primeiro lugar, ambos compartilham de uma abordagem mística do conhecimento: perdem sua individualidade e identificam-se aos objetos do conhecimento com o intuito de obter conhecimento do mundo. Em segundo lugar, ambas as figuras encontram-se associadas à loucura. Em terceiro lugar, o espírito livre e o gênio são indivíduos excepcionais que, diferentemente do que se passa com a maior parte dos indivíduos, já não se encontram atrelados a questões mundanas. Conduzem-se na vida pacificamente, pairando sobre os valores em que as pessoas mais acreditam, cientes de sua falsidade.This article aims to show the similarities between Nietzsche’s free spirit and Schopenhauer’s genius. First of all, both share a mystical approach to knowledge: they lose their individuality and identify themselves with the objects of knowledge in order to obtain knowledge of the world. Secondly, both figures are associated with madness. Thirdly, the free spirit and the genius are exceptional individuals who unlike the majority of people are no longer attached to worldly matters. They conduct their lives peacefully, hovering over the values in which most people believe, aware of their falsehood.