Nietzsche’s Lens: The Decline of Buddhism and Rise of Stoicism

Speculations on a shift from slave to master morality

Two recent articles here at Ataraxia or Bust have addressed how Western interest in Buddhism has been falling in near mirror image to increasing interest in Stoicism. These articles have generated a lot of reader comments and interest in exploring what is driving this change further.

The two prior articles are:

• Is Buddhism Losing Its Cool?

• Interest in Buddhism Declines While Stoicism Soars

The following thoughts are a speculation about a possible causal factor for this change, based on Nietzsche’s analysis of morality.

Nietzsche identified two moral systems that humans had invented. One he called “master” morality, and the other “slave” morality.

“Master” morality was his term for the West’s pre-Christian ethical system. This system was established by aristocrats - the kind of people who owned slaves. Christianity’s moral system he called “slave” morality because it had emerged from the ethical thinking of those at the bottom of society, in particular, the slaves.

Those at the top of pre-Christian society conceived of virtue as excellence. That which was good was what produced nobility and independence, and what enhanced ability. Courage was an important part of character. Magnanimity and clemency were praiseworthy. The goal of man was to become like a god, and this was embodied in the Greek heroes such as Achilles and Odysseus, whom Homer refers to as “god-like.” Some important people, such as emperors, were literally deified.

Christianity introduced a competing moral system - slave morality - that inverted many of the values of master morality. For example, the last shall be first; the meek shall inherit the earth. Pride is a sin; humility is a virtue. Other virtues include compassion, charity, and renunciation of worldly desires. This view of man is that he is far from being like a god; he is deeply and inherently flawed.

In master morality, the bad is simply inferior to the good; whereas, in slave morality, the bad may not be simply inferior, but outright evil.

For about 1,700 years, Western ethical thought has largely followed slave morality. Nietzsche thought a belief in God underpinned this. Once disbelief in God became widespread, which he saw was happening, Western morality would become dangerously destabilized. He appears to have been prescient, as demonstrated by the horrors of Communism and Nazism.

The destabilization is ongoing.

Nietzsche didn’t like slave morality. He thought the solution was that society would need to adopt an updated form of the master morality it had embraced in antiquity.

Nietzsche’s thinking here may provide a partial explanation for why many Westerners embraced Buddhism towards the end of the 20th century and why many others have recently turned to Stoicism.

Nietzsche was exceptionally knowledgeable about Buddhism for someone in his time and place; although his understanding was all second-hand and subject to questionable interpretations, some of which he received, others he created himself. He discusses Buddhism several times in his work. He thought it was a far more realistic religion than Christianity, but he also had many criticisms of it. Although Nietzsche thought Buddhism was, in his terms, “beyond good and evil” (The Antichrist, Chapter 20), that doesn’t seem to be how others see it. In Nietzsche’s day, there was no Western Buddhism. Today there is.

The morality of today's Buddhists appears to be easily categorizable as a form of slave morality. Whether this represents “real” Buddhist morality is debatable, but in practice, in the West, this appears to be the case. I suspect the cause of this is that the bulk of the Western adherents to Buddhism started out as having slave morality. They are, after all, Westerners, from a society that has embraced slave morality since late antiquity. Their adoption of Buddhism was not driven by their rejection of slave morality, but by their inability to believe in God. For such spiritually minded Western unbelievers, Buddhism provides an elegant solution. Substitute the Buddha for Jesus, Quanyin for Mary, satori for salvation, meditation for prayer, and the precepts for the commandments. (For a fascinating and much harsher perspective on Western Buddhist morality, see David Chapman.)

If this analysis is correct, it explains why the Boomers, more so than any generation before or since, are particularly attracted to Buddhism. They’re the ones who lost faith in God while still holding strongly to slave morality.

For subsequent generations, loss of faith was not such a big deal. The Boomers had already pioneered it. Associated with this was that subsequent generations were less inculcated in slave morality, perhaps in part due to increasingly common criticism and mocking of Christianity by influential people. These generations were less likely to be looking for a replacement religion, as they were less likely to have been raised in one. Instead, they were interested in a replacement for religion. Similarly, they were less attached to traditional ethics because they knew the provenance of those ethics.

This is where Stoicism comes in. It’s an attractive, rationalist replacement for religion. Adding to that attractiveness is the current fascination with psychotherapy and the fact that one of the most popular current psychotherapeutic systems - Cognitive Behavior Therapy - was inspired by Stoicism.

If this generational analysis is correct, then it’s no wonder the Stoicism revival ignited around 2010, and no wonder Western Buddhism began to decline around the same time.

Although Stoicism is a pre-Christian ethical system, I am unaware of Nietzsche designating what kind of morality it is. Later writers can be found who consider it a form of slave morality. I’m not so sure about that. Stoicism emphasizes many features of master morality:

• nobility of character

• self-actualization

• self-determination

• self-mastery

• independence from external validation or societal pressures

• lovingly embracing one’s fate

• rejection of resentment about hardship and fate

Stoicism also embraced the divinity in oneself: that one needs to awaken to the fact that we are god-like. For example, Epictetus said to his students,

You are a distinct portion of the essence of God, and contain a certain part of him in yourself. Why then are you ignorant of your noble birth? Why do not you consider whence you came? Why do not you remember, when you are eating, who you are who eat, and whom you feed? When you are in the company of women, when you are conversing, when you are exercising, when you are disputing, do not you know that it is the Divine you feed, the Divine you exercise? You carry a God about with you, poor wretch, and know nothing of it. (Discourses 2.8)

If one considers morality as a continuum rather than sharply defined master and slave categories, then Stoic ethics can at least be seen as substantially less slavish than Christian ethics, and hence as a substantial movement in the direction of adopting master morality.