the exotic nietzsche - east and west - hans-georg moller

Th " x t " N tz h t nd t

Hans-Georg Moller

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 28, Autumn 2004, pp. 57-69(Article)

P bl h d b P nn t t n v r t PrDOI: 10.1353/nie.2004.0014

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The “Exotic” Nietzsche—East and West

Hans-Georg Moeller

I. Introduction

As it is generally known (specifically to readers of this journal), FriedrichNietzsche has thoroughly “haunted” the history of twentieth-century

Western philosophy, and he continues to do so into the beginning of the twenty-first. It is less known, however, that this has not only been the case in the “West,”that is, in Europe and America, but also in Asia, and particularly in China.

Although the immense intellectual influence exerted by Nietzsche (or rather:by what was perceived to be his philosophy) in China has been academicallydocumented in the West, this has been done only relatively recently, and mainlyin the field of Chinese Studies.1 Philosophers, even those with an interest in“Nietzsche and Chinese thought,” concentrate more on comparative issues thanon historical ones—which is, of course, partly due to the fact that the Chinesereception of Nietzsche can only be thoroughly studied by looking into materi-als that are often inaccessible to Western scholars. This essay tries to bridge thegap between, on the one hand, the Sinological research on the Chinese recep-tion of Nietzsche focused on intellectual history and, on the other hand, philo-sophical reflections primarily concerned with Nietzschean and Chinese “ideas.”I will trace the winding road of philosophical Nietzsche interpretations by aneminent Chinese Nietzsche scholar—Chen Guying (b. 1935), who is also oneof the foremost living Daoist thinkers2—and then briefly compare his “Sino-Nietzscheanism” with some Western types of “Sino-Nietzscheanism,” whichalso discover affinities between Nietzschean and Daoist thought. In this way Ihope to show how some Chinese philosophers obviously turn to Nietzsche withthe intention to “westernize” their philosophical heritage (and particularly theDaoist one), while some Westerns, quite contrarily, turn to Daoism with theintention to “easternize” their philosophical heritage (and particularly theNietzschean one). Although Nietzsche and Daoism seem to match quite well forboth Western and Chinese philosophers, they match in quite different ways andfor different purposes.

Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 28, 2004

Copyright ©2004 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

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II. A Chinese “Sino-Nietzschean”

Chen Guying was born on the Chinese mainland in southeastern Fujianprovince. In the course of the separation of China, he moved to Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan. In the early 1970s, he became increasingly suspicious to theauthoritarian Nationalist government and critical of the ruling Guomindangparty. Continuous political conflicts led him finally to abandon his position as aphilosophy professor at the University of Taiwan in Taibei and made him returnto the Communist mainland in 1984. There he became a visiting professor atPeking University [Beida]. From time to time he also taught at the Universityof California at Berkeley. In the meantime he became more and more active inTaiwan again.

Chen’s first philosophical publication was a concise study on Nietzsche enti-tled Nietzsche: The Tragedy-Philosopher [Beiju zhexuejia Nicai]. The book wasprepared at the University of Taiwan under the supervision of the renownedChinese philosopher Fang Dongmei and first published privately by the author.Only in 1966 was it accepted by a professional publisher, Shangwu in Taibei.To this day the book is quite popular and numerous editions have been publishedsince 1966, not only in Taiwan but also in the People’s Republic.3 In the 1970sand 1980s, Chen Guying continued to publish on Nietzsche. The most impor-tant of his articles was “A Comparative Study on the Philosophies of Nietzscheand Zhuangzi” [Nicai zhexue yu Zhuangzi zhexue de bijiao yanjiu].4 I willaddress this article in detail below.

Chen Guying became a well-known philosopher in China for his work onNietzsche, but he probably became even more famous for his writings on Daoismin contemporary China. He published new translations, including extensivephilological and philosophical commentaries, of the Laozi (Daodejing)5 and theZhuangzi6 into modern Chinese (the Laozi edition was later translated intoEnglish by Roger T. Ames and R. Y. W. Young,)7 and also a variety of articlesand books on ancient Daoist thought. In more recent years, he organized con-ferences on Daoism and has initiated a series of books on Daoist culture.8 In thisway he tried to establish a sort of “New-Daoism” in China as a counterweightto the successful renaissance of Confucian thought that has taken place there.

Chen Guying’s early study on Nietzsche as the “tragedy-philosopher” intro-duced the German thinker to a Chinese readership. Chen Guying gives a shortoverview of Nietzsche’s life and works followed by analyses of some mainmotifs of Nietzschean philosophy, such as the death of God, the Übermensch,and the will to power. In his portrait of Nietzschean philosophy, Chen reliedmainly on English translations and secondary literature. Nietzsche was, in theearly 1960s, not yet understood in the light of postmodern thinking, but ratherin connection with the then-popular existentialism. For Chen, too, this per-spective was decisive for his reading of Nietzsche. In anticipation of a later

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publication on Western existentialism,9 he described Nietzsche’s historical rolein Nietzsche: The Tragedy-Philosopher in this way: “Within the very short his-tory of the development of existentialism, Nietzsche occupies a central position.Of all three great masters of existentialism—of the Germans Jaspers andHeidegger as well as of the Frenchman Sartre—it can be said that Nietzsche hadbeen the source of their thinking.”10 In addition to this at-the-time somewhatconventional classification, other aspects dominate Chen’s presentation, andthese are more revealing with regard to his particular reception of Nietzsche,but also with regard to the Chinese reception of Nietzsche in general. In his con-cluding chapter, Chen pointed out: “Nietzsche’s philosophy is actually a painfuloutcry in the face of all mankind’s and his era’s destiny. With this painful out-cry Nietzsche expresses a deeply rooted opposition and a declaration of a strug-gle against the traditional culture of the West.”11 In Chen’s view, Nietzsche’svigorous opposition to the “dualism” in which Western culture had been entan-gled since antiquity and his advocacy of a radically human philosophy of lifeare without precedent in the history of Western thought.12 According to Chen,Nietzsche differs from the later existentialists by attaching neither a pessimisticnor negative attitude to his reflections on man’s being, but instead connectingthem to an optimistic affirmation of life: “Nietzsche emanates a forward-ori-ented driving force, his philosophy is imbued with a spirit striving upwards.”13

Chen Guying’s assessment of Nietzsche’s philosophy is reminiscent of a vari-ety of important aspects characterizing the intellectual history of modern China.First, one is reminded of the activism, the iconoclasm, and the belief in progressthat was so typical for the “May Fourth Movement”—a movement that aroseafter the end of World War I among students and intellectuals in Beijing demand-ing a thorough modernization of Chinese society and politics (and also resist-ance against Japanese and Western hegemony). Thus Nietzsche emerges as aWestern modernizer who basically shared the characteristics of the Chinese spir-itual and cultural modernizers of the beginning of the twentieth century. In thisvein, Chen Guying states in his preface to the mainland edition of his book thathe was filled with a spirit of “anti-traditionalism” when he was writing in theSixties.14 Second, Nietzsche is portrayed as a representative of the humanist phi-losophy of life. It was exactly such a philosophy of life that Chinese thinkersenvisioned to be the connecting bridge between themselves and contemporaryWestern philosophers (such as Bergson and Eucken) in the 1920s, shortly afterthe May Fourth Movement. Thus Nietzsche once more parallels earlier Chineseattempts to bring Chinese and Western thought together. Finally, Chen Guyinghighlights Nietzsche’s “optimism” as being a decisive characteristic that dis-tinguishes him from other existentialists. This interpretation is again to be under-stood in the context of modern Chinese philosophy, which Thomas Metzger hasso fittingly characterized as embracing “epistemological optimism,”15 In thisway Nietzsche implicitly parallels three of the most important trends in

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twentieth-century Chinese thought: he is portrayed as combining the culturalcriticism and antitraditionalism of intellectuals and writers such as Lu Xun withthe philosophical beliefs of philosophers of life such as Zhang Junmai (CarsunChang), and with the ideological and social optimism that is embodied by oth-erwise so different theoreticians as the New Confucian thinker Xiong Shili andthe political leader Mao Zedong.

Because Chen Guying portrays Nietzsche as an existentialist, an iconoclast,an anthropocentrist, and as a representative of “positive thinking,” he can alsoportray him as an advocate of the strong individual in the modern Western sense.However, his apparent similarities to early Chinese modernizers still leave himwith a good deal of “Chineseness.” Thus the Nietzsche who emerges fromNietzsche: The Tragedy-Philosopher is ideally suited to become a hybrid iconfor a new, modern, and antitraditionalist China that is still faithful to its nationalculture and identity.

Chen Guying’s article “A Comparative Study on the Philosophies ofNietzsche and Zhuangzi” was written more than two decades later than his bookon Nietzsche as a “tragic” philosopher. It is based on a 1985 lecture that Chendelivered in Beijing. Now, the reader confronts a quite different Nietzsche. Atthe beginning of this comparative study, Chen highlights the different social andhistorical backgrounds of the respective philosophers—and he does this obvi-ously in recognition of the methodological principles of dialectical materialism.Nietzsche is no longer primarily understood in the light of his later influence onphilosophical developments, that is, he is no longer portrayed as one of the first“existentialists.” Instead, in the light of his historical predecessors and origins,Nietzsche is now primarily depicted as a “romantic.” While Chen Guyingacknowledges Nietzsche’s ambiguous relation to romanticism,16 he defines“romanticism” in a rather peculiar way. He calls romanticism—referring toBertrand Russell—an “anti-capitalist” point of view,17 and names the follow-ing three aspects as the main characteristics of romanticism: first, the expres-sion of inner feelings and envisioned utopia by means of a poetic language filledwith imagery; second, the praise of nature and the unity of man and nature alongwith a critique of urban lifestyle; and third, the pursuit of individual liberation.18

Based on this definition, he views romanticism as a bridge between Nietzscheand Zhuangzi. In the sense of the three criteria, both are classified as “roman-tics.” In addition to a romanticism culminating in individualism, both philoso-phers are also said to share a critical attitude toward the conservative elementsin their respective cultures: while Nietzsche constantly mocked Christianity andtried to overcome the Christian heritage, Zhuangzi threw off the suppressivechains of traditional Confucian ethics.19 According to Chen, there are also somecosmological parallels, namely, the belief in a cyclical and monistic pattern ofthe cosmos.20 But Chen also notes some differences between Nietzsche andZhuangzi beyond their historical backgrounds. While Nietzsche is said to


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embrace this-worldly matters, and to cherish activity, struggle, and hierarchy,Zhuangzi is said, contrarily, to teach passivity, inner calmness, and egalitarian-ism.21 Chen concludes by criticizing both thinkers’ alleged individualism bysupposing that it led to antisocial attitudes. While Zhuangzi is accused of lack-ing any intentions of social struggle or opposition, Nietzsche is accused of beingblind to the negative effects of the specific forces of the “will to power” thatexisted in his lifetime—those of capitalism and imperialism.22

These criticisms particularly reveal that Chen’s article is heavily influencedby Chinese Marxism. Anticapitalist, antireligious, and anticonservative view-points are praised, while antisocial and elitist positions are condemned.Regarding Chen’s Marxist argumentation, it is interesting to see how Chen, asa friend of Daoism, compares Nietzsche’s “Anti-Traditionalism” to an earlyChinese “Anti-Confucianism,” which was itself shared by the Chinese com-munists. By paralleling Zhuangzi’s criticism of Confucianism to Nietzsche’scriticism of Christianity, Chen is able to portray both thinkers as relatively “pro-gressive” in terms of dialectical materialism. Ancient Chinese Daoism andNietzsche thus appear as having some revolutionary merit because of their resist-ance to conservative and reactionary forces.

In the preface to the new Peking edition of Nietzsche:The Tragedy-Philosopher,Chen Guying explains his own philosophical development. He says that his inter-est in Nietzsche led him to Existentialism, that Existentialism led him to Zhuangzi,and that a comparison between Nietzsche and Zhuangzi led him to an insight intotheir historical determinants and, specifically, the historical importance ofChristian and Confucian ethics.23 Following this retrospection, Chen adds that hefinally turned away from individualism and learned to value more the importanceof social life and the destiny of one’s nation and people.24

It is not my intention to pass judgment on Chen Guying’s (in the meantimeprobably totally outdated) political turn or to morally evaluate his interpreta-tions of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi. However, it is obvious that Chen’s differing“Sino-Nietzscheanisms” of the 1960s in Taiwan and of the 1980s in the People’sRepublic correspond to political decisions he made. Notwithstanding these polit-ical dimensions, I believe one aspect of Chen’s reception of Nietzsche to be quiterelevant: his understanding of Nietzsche as a philosophical individualist—be itapprovingly on the basis of an existentialist inclination or disapprovingly on thebasis of Chinese Marxism.

Chen’s understanding of Nietzsche as an “individualist” is of course in linewith earlier Western interpretations that depicted Nietzsche as an “existential-ist” or as an “egocentric” philosopher. Such an interpretation in China was byno means new; it can be traced back as early as to the beginning of the twenti-eth century.25 The “individualist” Nietzsche was quite compatible with thesearch for an “icon” of modern individualism that might provide some orienta-tion within the quest of modernizing and strengthening the Chinese nation and


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culture. It seems remarkable that Chen Guying holds on to this picture of the“individualist” philosopher Nietzsche, notwithstanding his own nonindividual-ist political turn, and quite contrary to the elsewhere more dominate under-standing of Nietzsche as a nonindividualist thinker. In fact, Chen’s later writingson Nietzsche more strongly highlight the alleged individualist components ofNietzsche’s thought than the earlier texts, although the evaluation is no longerthe same. And it is also remarkable that the individualistic Nietzsche interpre-tation seems also to have exerted considerable influence on Chen’s interpreta-tion of Daoism.

Since Chen Guying explicitly declares that he found his way to Zhuangzithrough Nietzsche and existentialism, it is understandable that he portraysZhuangzi (in the vein of an existentialist interpretation of Nietzsche) as a kindof founding figure of the Chinese conception of the free individual. Obviously,the paradigms of Chen’s Nietzsche interpretation were also those of his Zhuangziinterpretation—and they could certainly not have been derived from traditionalChinese interpretations of the Zhuangzi. It is the Western reading of a Westernphilosopher that allows Chen Guying to read Zhuangzi as an individualist.Modern existentialist and individualist readings of the Zhuangzi, both Chineseand Western, seem to be either directly or indirectly dependent or at least par-alleled by similar readings of Western philosophers such as Nietzsche.26

III. Western “Sino-Nietzscheanism”

In the 1960s an existentialist interpretation of Nietzsche inspired Chen Guying’sexistentialist interpretation of Zhuangzi. Today, Western Nietzsche interpretersno longer read Nietzsche primarily as an existentialist or treat him primarily asa predecessor of Sartre, but more often as a predecessor of Derrida. ConsequentlyNietzsche has been classified as a “Pre-Postmodernist.”27Asimilar shift of focuscan also be noted in comparisons between Nietzsche and Chinese philosophy,and, in particular, in comparisons between Nietzsche and Zhuangzi.28 WesternNietzscheans with an interest in Daoism, as opposed to Chen Guying, theChinese Daoist with an interest in Nietzsche, operate on the basis of a reformed—or should one say, refined?—Nietzsche image, which, among other factors, isdue to the now-available Nachlaß materials, and therefore they tend not to readany kind of individualism into Zhuangzi. Günther Wohlfart, the German editorof a selection of Nietzsche’s Nachlaß who is also a “New Daoist,”29 cites a quo-tation to prove Nietzsche’s critical attitude toward the ‘individual“:

Main thought! Not that nature deceives us, the individuals, and promotes its endsby hoodwinking us: instead, the individuals arrange all Being according to indi-vidual—i.e. false—measures; we want to be right in this case, and consequently‘nature’ has to appear as a liar. In truth, there are no individual truths, instead


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there are merely individual errors. The individual itself is an error. Everythinghappening within us is in itself something else that we do not know: only we putthe intention, the hoodwinking and the morality into nature.—But I distinguish:the conceived-conceited individuals and the true ‘life-systems’, of which every-body among us is one—both are conflated into one, while ‘the individual’ is onlya sum of conscious feelings and judgments and errors, a belief, a little piece ofthe true life-system, or many little pieces, thought and imagined to be unified, a‘unit’ that does not hold. We are buds on One tree—what do we know about whatmay become of us in the interest of the tree! But we have a consciousness, as ifwe would want to and should be Everything, a fantasy of ‘I’ and all ‘Non-I’.Ceasing to feel being such a fantastical ego! Learning step by step to throw offthe supposed individual! Discovering the errors of the ego! Looking into egotismas an error! Don’t you ever conceive of its opposite as altruism! This would bethe love of the other supposed individuals! No! Beyond ‘me’ and ‘you’! Feelingcosmic.30

Of course, these sentences can be read in connection with a postmodern phi-losophy that overcomes the old-European notions of individuality. But forNietzschean Daoists like Wohlfart, they are relating Nietzsche not only toPostmodernism but also to East Asian thought,31 and particularly to Daoist (andZen-Buddhist) philosophy. Nietzsche’s negation of individuality seems to cor-respond to some degree, at least in Wohlfart’s eyes, with the maxims of “no I”[wu shen] in the Laozi and “no self” [wu ji] and the “forgetting of the ego” [sangwo] in the Zhuangzi.32 Wohlfart concedes that Nietzsche might not have hadDaoism in mind—but rather the Near East33—when, from time to time, he spokeaffirmatively of the “Orient,” and when he once wrote to himself: “I have tolearn to think more Orientally about philosophy and knowledge. Oriental over-look over Europe!”34 And Wohlfart also suggests that even if Nietzsche hadsome deeper understanding of Daoism, he might well have distanced himselffrom this philosophy in the way he distanced himself from “pessimistic”Buddhism. Nevertheless, Wohlfart points out that there seem to be some inter-esting parallels between the pre-postmodernist Nietzsche’s criticism ofEuropean notions of the “subject” and the early Daoist criticism of the “I.”Therefore he agrees with Roger Ames’s conclusion about the parallels betweenNietzsche and Asian thought: “There is some common ground in the notion ofovercoming ego-self.”35

Similar to Günter Wohlfart (and also to Roger Ames), the comparativistGraham Parkes believes that Nietzsche and Zhuangzi share a sort of multiper-spectivism that transcends the unity of the individual.36 This notion of a multi-plicity of perspectives “overcoming” the single perspective of the subject or theego is definitely compatible with postmodern Western thought. Interestinglyenough, Parkes discusses the multiperspectivism of ancient Daoist philosophyand of Nietzschean thought in connection with a tendency of both philosophiesto overcome an anthropocentric worldview. Parkes points out—quite correctly,I believe—that both Zhuangzi and Nietzsche, most prominently in Thus Spoke


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Zarathustra, oppose a humanist dogmatism by often having animals speakingrather than humans. Parkes writes:

It is striking that in both texts (the Zarathustra and the Zhuangzi, H.G.M.) spe-cific species of animals dominate: Mammals, even though quite numerous, arerelatively scarce in relation to reptiles, insects, birds, and fish. The preference forthe latter can be explained by the greater distance of these specia to human beingswhich allows less projection of human emotions and feelings onto them. Thegreater strangeness of these non-mammals may lead the reader away from tend-ing to anthropomorphisms and thus weaken his or her anthropocentrism.37

Wohlfart and Parkes, both Western “Sino-Nietscheans,” find parallels betweenDaoism and Nietzsche, and they both express these parallels in a rather post-modern way. They are interested in how postmodern “overcomings” of impor-tant traditional Western philosophical concepts and beliefs, such as subjectivism,individualism, anthropocentrism, and humanism, figure prominently inNietzsche and in Daoism. While both comparativists acknowledge the histori-cal differences between ancient Daoism and Nietzsche, they still believe thatthose parallels are worth mentioning and that they are helpful for a better under-standing of what Nietzscheanism and Daoism can mean in the context of today’sphilosophy.38

IV. Conclusion

To contemporary Western “Sino-Nietzscheans” such as Günter Wohlfart andGraham Parkes, neither Nietzsche nor Zhuangzi can be called “individualist”or “humanist” thinkers, and these “negative” parallels are the features that makeNietzsche and Zhuangzi so important for today’s philosophical discourse. ForChen Guying, however, it was exactly a strong “individualism” and a kind of“humanism” (if one may, with Sartre, understand existentialism as being a spe-cific humanism) that characterized what Nietzsche and Daoism have in com-mon and what made them so valuable in regard to Chen’s own philosophicalintentions.

I can think of two reasons for this somewhat odd asymmetry between Chineseand Western “Sino-Nietzscheans.” The first is a historical one: the contexts ofreading philosophy change, and while one can see how first a dominating exis-tentialist paradigm and then a dominating Marxist paradigm influenced ChenGuying’s “Sino-Nietzscheanism,” one can also see how “postmodern” readingsnow influence Nietzsche interpretations such as Graham Parkes’s and GünterWohlfart’s. The substantially changed reception of Nietzsche (from pre-existentialist to pre-postmodernist) leads in these cases to substantially changedcomparisons between Nietzsche and Zhuangzi, and it also leads to differentunderstandings of Zhuangzi. In this way, models of interpretation influenced by


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postmodern philosophy were “imported” into Chinese philosophy, and thusshaped the reception of Zhuangzi, and, on a larger scale, even the Chinese rein-terpretation of the Chinese philosophical heritage in general.39 This demon-strates how the (Western) Zeitgeist not only has an effect on the reception ofNietzsche, but how it subsequently also has an effect on comparative East-Westendeavors—and how it then, through the inroad of comparative philosophy,reforms the Chinese interpretation of Chinese philosophy.

A second reason for the differences between Chinese and Western “Sino-Nietzscheans” may be more cultural than historical. From a Chinese perspective,notions of individuality appear more “provocative,” “novel,” and “exotic” thanfrom a Western one. The Chinese philosophical tradition did not focus on “indi-viduality” as intensely as Western modernity did—and individualism was oftenperceived in twentieth-century China as a core ingredient of “Western” and there-fore also of “modern” civilization. Thus, some Chinese philosophers tended tobe particularly interested in such “modern” aspects as “individualism” when theyread Western philosophers. From this perspective, a thinker such as Nietzschebecomes all the more interesting the more “individualist” he is supposed to be,and even more so if this “individualism” can somehow be related to or connectedwith some forms of “proto-individualism” in the Chinese philosophical tradition.This kind of Chinese Sino-Nietzscheanism is therefore to be understood in con-nection with the broader cultural attempt of “westernizing” Chinese philosophy.

Western Sino-Nietzscheans40 have a different perspective and different inter-ests. For them, a thinker like Nietzsche is not so much “revolutionary” becauseof his modern features, but because of those features that promise to overcomemodernity. This being so, he is perceived more as an antimodernist than a mod-ernist. In the same vein, the anti-individualist elements of Nietzschean thoughtbecome more attractive and are perceived as more advanced than the “individ-ualist” ones. Western “Sino-Nietzscheanists” therefore tend not to look at the“European” side of Nietzsche but to investigate his “exotic” side—his “Asian”inclinations. While for a Chinese “Sino-Nietzscheanist” Nietzsche’s “exotic”quality may be his “individualism,” a Western “Sino-Nietzschean” will findNietzsche’s anti-individualism to be “exotic.” And while a Chinese Sino-Nietzschean may try to import Nietzsche by ways of comparative studies toChina in order to westernize the Chinese tradition, Western Sino-Nietzscheansmay try to use Nietzsche and Nietzsche-Daoism comparisons to “easternize”Western philosophy. Or, in the words of Günter Wohlfart: “After Nietzsche, agood German philosopher will have to be more than a good German philoso-pher. . . . He will have to learn to think in a more oriental, more ‘eurasian’ wayabout philosophy and knowledge.”41

I do not think that either the Chinese or the Western Sino-Nietzscheans canclaim to be more “correct” or “authentic” Nietzscheans than the other (eventhough, being a Westerner, I naturally tend to share the Western perspective and


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find the anti-individualist Nietzsche and the anti-individualist Zhuangzi moreexciting than the respective individualist ones). If Nietzsche is a true “multi-perspectivist,” as Graham Parkes says, he may well allow for many differentand even opposing and contradicting perspectives on his thought. One may onlyfind out, though, that studying or practicing Sino-Nietzscheanism, whetherChinese or Western, can sometimes reveal more about Sino-Nietzscheanismitself than about either Nietzsche or Chinese philosophy.

Brock University

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———. ed. Heidegger and Asian Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.———. “Human/Nature in Nietzsche and Taoism.” In J. B. Callicott and Roger T. Ames, eds.,

Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1989, 79–98.

———. ed. Nietzsche and Asian Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.———. “Nietzsche and East Asian Thought: Influences, Impacts, and Resonances.” In K. Higgins

and B. Magnus, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995.

———. “Nietzsche und Zhuang Zi: Ein Zwischenspiel.” In Rolf Elberfeld, John Minford, andGünter Wohlfart, eds. Komparative Philosophie. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998, 213–22.

Shao, Lixin. Nietzsche in China. New York: Lang, 1999.Wohlfart, Günter. ed. Friedrich Nietzsche: Die nachgelassenen Fragmente. Eine Auswahl.

Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996.


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———. Das spielende Kind. Nietzsche: Postvorsokratiker—Vorpostmoderner. Essen: Blaue Eule,1999.

———. Zhuangzi. Freiburg: Herder, 2002.Yue Daiyun. “Nietzsche in China.” Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 20–21 (1990).

NOTES1. A comprehensive study of the Chinese reception of Nietzsche is offered by Kelly. A

monograph on the same issue (more focused on literature) is Shao. See also Cheung, 1992(annotated bibliography), He, Yue, and, for case studies: Cheung, 1986–87; Findeisen, Galik,1972, Galik, 1980, Lee, Möller, 1997, Möller, 1998.

2. The remarks on Chen Guying in section II of this essay are based on Möller, 2000.3. Chen, 1987.4. There are several editions of this article. Here, I will always refer to the edition listed as

Chen, 1987. Earlier, it was published in the journal Zhongbao yuekan 2/1986, 66–72, 3/1986,65–70, 4/1986, 78–83 as well as in Zhang Songru, Chen Guying, Zhao Ming, and Zhang Jun, eds.,Lao Zhuang lunji (Essays on Laozi and Zhuangzi), Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1987, 344–92. The text hasbeen partly translated into English as Chen, 1991.

5. Chen, 1970.6. Chen, 1983.7. Chen, 1981.8. The series is called Daojia wenhua yanjiu (Studies on Daoist Culture, Shanghai: Guji

Chubanshe). It contains several articles comparing Nietzsche and Zhuangzi: Graham Parkes,“Manyou: Zhuangzi yu Chalasitula” (1/1992, 359–77, a translation of Parkes, 1983); GrahamParkes, “Ren yu ziran: Nicai zhexue yu daojia xueshuo zhi bijiao yanjiu” (2/1993, 402–20, atranslation of Parkes, 1989); Liu Changyuan, “Zhuangzi, Nicai yu yishu de shijiguan” (Zhuangzi,Nietzsche, and the aesthetic worldview, 10/1996, 206–25).

9. Chen and Meng, 1967.10. Chen, 1987, 121.11. Ibid., 117.12. Ibid., 120.13. Ibid., 121.14. Ibid., 4.15. See Metzger, 1977 and 1985–87.16. Chen, 1987, 241. Chen comments on Nietzsche’s explicit treatment of the question “What

is romanticism?” in The Gay Science, 370. According to Chen, Nietzsche distinguishes betweento kinds of romanticists, namely, between (disagreeable) pessimists and (agreeable) “Dionysian”optimists. Thus he assumes, somewhat in line with traditional Chinese “epistemologicaloptimism,” that Nietzsche distinguished between a “good” optimistic kind of romanticism and a“bad” pessimist kind. In fact, Nietzsche does not distinguish two kinds of romanticism, but twokinds of pessimism, namely a romanticist pessimism on the one hand, which he distances himselffrom, and a Dionysian pessimism on the other hand, which he identifies with. Thus Chen Guyingseems to be somewhat overcome by “epistemological optimism” so that he overlooks the fact thatNietzsche obviously sides in these passages of The Gay Science with a particular pessimism ratherthan with any kind of romanticism.

17. Chen, 1987, 240.18. Ibid., 241.19. Ibid., 282.20. Ibid., 283.21. Ibid., 284.22. Ibid., 285.


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23. Ibid., 4.24. Ibid., 5.25. Specifically to the Nietzsche interpretation by Li Shicen (1892–1934), see Kelly, 155–59.

Lee, and Cheung 1986–87 contain also interesting materials on early Chinese “individualist”Nietzsche interpretations.

26. Existentialist-individualist Nietzsche interpretations or existentialist-individualistpositions in general not only influenced Chen Guying’s Zhuangzi interpretations but also quite afew—Chinese and Western—comparative studies on the Zhuangzi or on Daoism (specificallybefore the postmodern paradigm change). The earliest such comparison I know of goes back toAngus C. Graham and was made in regard to the Daoist concept of “Nothing” [wu]: “A similarconception of Nothing is found in the West (for example in Hegel and Existentialism).” SeeGraham, 100. Other “existentialist” claims regarding Daoism can be found in Allinson; Burneko,Liu, and Maxia. A German example for an “individualist” reading of the Zhuangzi is Bauer.

27. See the subtitle of Wohlfart, 1999: “Nietzsche: Postvorsokratiker—Vorpostmoderner”(Nietzsche: Post-Presocratic—Pre-Postmodernist).

28. Similar observations may be made in regard to comparisons between Daoism andHeidegger. See Journal of Chinese Philosophy 11.4 (1984), as well as Parkes 1987, Fu, 1976 and1978, Owens, 1990.

29. See specifically Wohlfart, 2002.30. See Wohlfart, 1996, 298–99, quoting Nietzsche, KSA 9:11[7]. All translations from the

German are mine.31. See Wohlfart, 1996, 298.32. See Wohlfart, 1999, 113–14.33. See ibid., 114, referring to Nietzsche, KSA 11:41[7].34. See ibid., 114, quoting Nietzsche, KSA 11:26[317].35. See ibid., 114, quoting Ames, 148.36. See Parkes, 1998. See also Parkes 1983, 1989, 1995.37. Parkes, 1998, 216.38. I personally agree with most of Parkes’s and Wohlfart’s opinions concerning Zhuangzi and

Nietzsche, namely, that both philosophies can be understood as (different) types of non-humanist,non-anthropocentrist, and non-individualist philosophy. See Moeller, 2004, 153–59.

39. See, for instance, Hoffmann; Owens, 1993.40. I have no hesitation in saying that I sympathize with their views and share many of their

perspectives and interests.41. Wohlfart, 1999, 114.


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the exotic nietzsche - east and west - hans-georg moller

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