Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy

by Jason M. Wirth (Author)

In Nietzche and Other Buddhas, author Jason M. Wirth brings major East Asian Buddhist thinkers into radical dialogue with key Continental philosophers through a series of exercises that pursue what is traditionally called comparative or intercultural philosophy as he reflects on what makes such exercises possible and intelligible. The primary questions he asks are: How does this particular engagement and confrontation challenge and radicalize what is sometimes called comparative or intercultural philosophy? How does this task reconsider what is meant by philosophy? The confrontations that Wirth sets up between Dogen, Hakuin, Linji, Shinran, Nietzsche, and Deleuze ask readers to think more philosophically and globally about the nature of philosophy in general and comparative philosophy in particular. He opens up a new and challenging space of thought in and between the cutting edges of Western Continental philosophy and East Asian Buddhist practice

Review
"Jason Wirth has written a book that is the product of his love for both East-Asian and Western philosophy, and as such a book that bridges differences. In that respect, then, Nietzsche and Other Buddhas is an important book for an age marked by intolerance and disregard for the "other"… and where the love of thought, spirit, and body that is indeed philosophy has an important role to play."

(Los Angeles Review of Books)

"By probing the relationship between the extra-philosophical grounds of philosophy and philosophy itself, Jason M. Wirth puts forward a fundamental meditation on the origin and nature of philosophical activity. Rather than an exercise in comparative philosophy in the traditional sense, he reflects on what makes comparative philosophy possible and intelligible."
(André van der Braak, author of Nietzsche and Zen: Self-Overcoming Without a Self)

"The field of comparative or intercultural philosophy is growing steadily, and Jason M. Wirth's excellent work of scholarship is based on thorough research across several fields of philosophy and contains a host of original insights and good ideas."
(Graham Parkes, author of Nietzsche and Asian Thought)