Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Philosophy

Major Professor

Joshua Rayman, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Wei Zhang, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Mor Segev, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Whitney Bauman, Ph.D.

Keywords

Amor Fati, Eternal Recurrence, Nirvana, Not-Self, Ubermensch, Will to Power

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) prophetically called himself an untimely philosopher. But what inspired this untimely genius? In what follows, I argue that Nietzsche’s philosophical departure from the Western metaphysical and epistemological tradition marks a paradigm shift enabled by the European encounter with the East. My thought is that the “untimely” philosopher was very timely—timelier than his educators and philosophical compadres—because he recognized that the Western religious and philosophical system would be, and had to be, forever altered due to the confrontation with new ontological horizons enabled by new, wholly foreign, perspectives. My argument is founded upon the historical significance of India for the German intellectual imaginary in the early nineteenth-century, the allure of atheistic Buddhism (the most populous religion in the world at the time) in an increasingly scientific and industrialized Europe, Nietzsche’s Indian-inspired intellectual benefactors and close circle of friends, and the fruitful comparisons that can be made between Nietzsche’s philosophy of the future (death of God, will to power, eternal recurrence, amor fati, transvaluation of values, perspectivism, and the characteristics of the Übermensch) and Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology. I argue that Nietzsche’s “philosophy of the future” should be recognized as a transcultural contribution to the history of ideas, one that continues to impact us today in the twenty-first century.

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