17 - Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy

Summary

This chapter aims to use Nietzsche as a prism for examining the parallels between ancient India and ancient Greece. As Mervyn Sprung maintains, ideas of Greece and India are viewed by Nietzsche very much through a ‘powerful Nietzschean lens’ in that he mines these cultures for concepts, attitudes and Weltanschauungen which will provide him with alternatives to the life-denying Christian morality he so deplored. I would like to suggest, however, that the interpretations Nietzsche offers are by no means redundant. The parallels between ancient Indian and ancient Greek philosophy have frequently been noted by commentators, and various theories have been put forward to account for them. One prevalent theory is the idea of parallel autonomous intellectual development in these countries. I would like to suggest here that the genealogical approach Nietzsche advances in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) complements this notion of parallel autonomous intellectual development in Greece and India. The genealogical method asserts that the value systems which emerge in societies are driven by and supported by certain physiological, psychological and sociological trends. There is no sole origin for values; instead we see a conjunction of diverse lines of development and a multiplicity of origins. In this way it seems very possible that we would see parallels between Greek and Indian thought if certain conditions obtained in both cultures.

In particular this chapter will examine the idea of value systems arising in India and Greece in part due to the emergence of city-states, and the ever present threat of war. Such conditions cultivated a spirit of agon (ἀγών, often translated as conflict, strife, competition), at both a personal and societal level, leading to a certain set of values. The idea of conflict and agon preoccupied Nietzsche across his oeuvre. I would like to suggest that such themes are manifest not only in Greek thought – we need only think of Homer's Iliad, Hesiod's two Erises and Heraclitean strife – but also in Indian texts such as the Mahābhārata and the Ramayana, both of which Nietzsche was acquainted with from as early on as his school days.