Why Not Suffering? Buddhism, Nietzsche, and the Value of Suffering

Why Not Suffering? Buddhism, Nietzsche, and the Value of Suffering

The cessation of suffering is Buddhism’s end goal. The Buddha has discovered how to do it, according to Buddhism and Buddhists who have achieved the goal. A supposedly central requirement for achieving the goal is to realize the truth of no-self: there is no substantial self that endures over time. Leaving aside what exactly this means, an important question regards why one should accept the doctrine of no-self. The Buddha gave arguments for the view and later Buddhists gave still more.

Here is the important point: these arguments are philosophical arguments just as susceptible to objections and problems as any philosophical argument. Faced with such a difficulty, faced with the wide morass that is the debate about no-self, a Buddhist practitioner may claim that the convoluted metaphysics of persons is not what matters. What matters is whether the Buddha’s method of ending suffering works. Belief in no-self can come through practicing selflessness over time—by seeing the results of selflessness, i.e., the lessoning/ending of suffering. It needn’t come as the result of an argument.

Here is the problem: belief in no-self may lead to less suffering, may even lead to its complete cessation, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a substantial self. It just means that belief in a substantial self likely leads to suffering. If giving up the belief in a substantial self did help to end suffering, then that would certainly give credence to the overall method of the Buddha. That is, it would mean that he was right that his eightfold path will bring an end to suffering. But, again, that doesn’t mean that he was right about there not being a self. Again, it only means that he was right that giving up the belief in such a self will help end suffering.

But perhaps that’s only a problem if we hold truth above suffering. If we think that the cessation of suffering is worth leaving aside the truth, then it won’t matter whether we have reason to believe that the doctrine of no-self is true. But why hold the cessation of suffering above truth? What is the value of truth? This is a question that Nietzsche asked:

The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect—what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! …We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?
The problem of the value of truth came before us…. (Beyond Good and Evil, Part I, Section 1. Kaufmann’s translation.)

From this point we are lead to another thing that Nietzsche questioned, namely, the value of suffering or rather the question of whether suffering is really an objection to life. Buddhism clearly sees suffering as something that needs to be brought to an end (and, of course, Buddhism is not alone in this. Other religions seek the same). But is such an attitude necessary? And is it perhaps a hindrance to living well? For example, in the Gay Science, Nietzsche writes:

… if you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible stress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of pity you also harbor another religion in your heart that is perhaps the mother of the religion of pity:  the religion of comfortableness.  How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together. (Part of section 338. Kaufmann’s translation.)

And earlier in the same book:

Evil.— Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.  The poison of which weaker natures perish strengthens the strong—nor do they call it poison. (Section 19. Kaufmann’s translation.)

It is clear from these remarks that Nietzsche takes suffering to have value. Great happiness requires great suffering and greatness in general requires great suffering and resistance. In these ways suffering has instrumental value, value as a means, and perhaps what Ramon M. Lemos calls contributory value. “To have contributory value is to contribute in some way to the value of some whole of which that which has contributory value is a part” (The Nature of Value: Axiological Investigations. Page 41). But can it have some other kind of value? In his notebooks later published as the Will to Power we find Nietzsche elaborating on a response to nihilism. That response consists in a radical affirmation of life:

…a Dionysian affirmation of the world as it is, without subtraction, exception, or selection—it wants the eternal circulation:—the same things, the same logic and illogic of entanglements. The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence—my formula for this is amor fati.
It is part of this state to perceive not merely the necessity of those sides of existence hitherto denied, but their desirability; and not their desirability merely in relation to the sides hitherto affirmed (perhaps as their compliment or precondition), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, fruitful, truer sides of existence, in which its will finds clearer expression. (Part of section 1041)

I understand “those sides of existence hitherto denied” to refer to those aspects of life that are usually devalued and avoided, e.g., suffering. Further, for Nietzsche, part of what it means to affirm life in the face of nihilism is to embrace every aspect of one’s life. This requires the radical (impossible?) idea of desiring every aspect of one’s life, including the suffering. But not as a “compliment or precondition” (as he suggests in the passages above from the Gay Science), “but for their own sake.” Here Nietzsche seems to insist that suffering can have a kind of intrinsic value, not merely instrumental or contributory. This does not, of course, contradict the earlier remarks about the value of suffering, but it does go far beyond them.

Each of these passages from Nietzsche provokes a plethora of questions, and likely resistance, for we are wont to deny the value of pain and suffering. And Nietzsche makes clear in other places that he does not think that amor fati is an option available to all. Nietzsche is the arch-unapologetic elitist. Concerning profound suffering, Nietzsche writes that, “it almost determines the order of rank how profoundly human beings can suffer….Profound suffering makes noble; it separates” (Beyond Good and Evil. Part Nine. Section 270. Kaufmann translation.) Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to dismiss what he says because of that. My own response to such claims is to try to understand what exactly he means, at which point I can begin to assess the truth of it. But that is not my purpose here. The point is that there may well be good reason to question the value of the cessation of suffering. And it is, thus, a mistake simply to assume the disvalue of suffering.

A final note: there is a certain danger in all of this. It may be easy to romanticize here or to fall into the same problem facing Buddhism. That is, as much as we may despise our suffering, we do unavoidably experience pain (and suffering, unless we’re good Buddhists or stoics). And it can be tempting, as it must have been to Nietzsche (who suffered so profoundly from ill health), to try to convince ourselves of suffering’s value. This is Buddhism’s opposite, but it amounts to the same (a response to suffering), and it faces the same problem. Where we can question the truth of the claims underlying Buddhism’s way of ending suffering, we can question the truth of Nietzsche’s claims. Perhaps convincing ourselves of suffering’s value will enable us to stave off nihilism, but the question remains: Does suffering really have, can it have, the value Nietzsche claims? Just as we can ask: Is it really true that there is no substantial self? Even when believing it helps end suffering.

7 thoughts on “Why Not Suffering? Buddhism, Nietzsche, and the Value of Suffering

  1. I like Russell’s “Passive renunciation is not the whole of wisdom” from his early essay on cosmology and morality A Free Man’s Worship. Suffering is a problem and it is a fundamental humanist project to try to solve that problem, not to dissolve it through renunciation, whether the self-annihilating kind or the value-inversion kind. I recall seeing Zisek somewhere say that he despises the universe. It is cold, cruel, and inhospitable for beings with values such as ours. While I’ve sometimes taken solace from the Nietzschean suggestion that existence must nevertheless be affirmed (the eternal recurrence something we should will in spite of pervasive suffering), your essay brings me to think that if that “affirmation” takes the form of value-inversion that it turns out to be another form of renunciation rather than genuine affirmation. Another suggestion of Russell’s in A Free Man’s Worship is that the aim of humanism is to “build a temple to the worship of our own ideals” in this inhospitable world, in opposition to the butcher-block of history, and despite the fate of entropy. Russell’s response to stoic renunciation, more than Nietzsche, has always seemed to me more noble, and indeed the example of Russell’s life struggle for peace and justice a better example of a noble life.

  2. Jeremy, I read “A Free Man’s Worship” this morning. I need to reread a few times, but there is a much of interest and value there. I look forward to working through the ideas.

    I often find a lot of inspiration in reading Nietzsche. I feel inspired to be more honest with myself, more aware of my motivations. I feel inspired to be more productive. And I feel more inspired not to let my various pains and problems get to me or keep me from being productive. As such, I’m more sympathetic to the idea that suffering has instrumental value, and perhaps contributory value, at least sometimes. I’m still struggling to work out the requirements for the Nietzschean ideal of the eternal recurrence and the affirmation of life, especially if the claim is that it requires valuing one’s suffering for its own sake. Why couldn’t one, for example, affirm one’s life as a whole in spite of the useless suffering? Why would such affirmation of the whole require desiring all the parts? Is that not simply the fallacy of division?

    Nevertheless, I think one can embrace the idea that suffering has instrumental value and that it is necessary for greatness without that contradicting the humanist project. I don’t think Nietzsche is indiscriminate about what kinds of suffering have great making value, so to speak. He could surely acknowledge that letting thousands starve in a third-world country is not a good idea. That suffering, after all, is not going to make them more noble. They aren’t in the position to utilize that kind of suffering. Or something like that. Similarly, a Buddhist need not be seen as having to sit back and accept all evil. The Buddhist can make an effort to do whatever is possible to end the suffering of others. The problem would only come if one became attached to, i.e., craved, such an end. The Buddhist response, however, leaves me wanting to say that perhaps we should be attached to and crave the ending of suffering in others. Just as I want to say that I should be distraught and destroyed when someone I love dies. A Buddhist state of acceptance and tranquility in such a situation is perverse.

  3. I think you’re right that I was taking the idea that revaluation involves “value inversion” in the wrong way by taking points about instrumental value as saying something about instrinsic value. In fact, Dan Schultz made just that point to me when I was discussing this post with him the other night.

  4. You have a rather shallow understanding of Buddhism. Buddhism has so many branches and a rich history of real philosophy (start with Nagarjuna and the book of the Tao as well as Zen Buddhist writings). Zen Buddhism pretty much outlines your central thesis already, does not stress Suffering, does not believe or ignores reincarnation. A Zen Buddhist would not deny suffering in such a way. A Zen Buddhist would not say “I am in pain.” He would say “Pain happens.” Pain happens because it is unavoidable. There simply is no “I”. Their radical negation of essence and ego is certainly one Nietzsche would have admired had those works been available to him. As it was Nietzsche had favorable things to say about Buddhism as he understood it (only through secondhand sources such as Emerson). What is satori if not “a Dionysian affirmation of the world as it is, without subtraction, exception, or selection—it wants the eternal circulation:—the same things, the same logic and illogic of entanglements. The highest state a philosopher can attain?”

  5. Derik,

    Perhaps I have a shallow understanding of Buddhism. It seems rather to met that you have not really read what I’ve written for this post or others. I’m, of course, familiar with Zen, Nagarjuna, Daoist writings, etc. A point that you seem to have missed is the distinction between suffering and pain. I take it that one of the profound insights of Buddhism is the way it distinguishes pain from suffering. Pain is unavoidable, suffering is not. So, through Buddhist practice, pain happens, but suffering is lessoned or brought to an end. The interesting question regarding what Nietzsche says is: what does that distinction imply for his calling into question the negative valuation of suffering that we find in Buddhism? I read Nietzsche as insisting that the “Dionysian affirmation of the world” requires embracing suffering, not “merely” embracing pain. Insofar as that is correct, such an affirmation of life is incompatible with enlightenment, whether Zen or other conceptions of it.

  6. I don’t know dude but Buddhism deals with suffering from the principle that you transform it, using the middle path ( avoiding extremes ). Maybe cessation is a wrong translation, because in the middle way school we hear that there is no phenomena that have origins or an end, so end the suffering it is not possible but to create the causes to transform it until it gets an automatic response on your mind. Buddhism have a lot of contradictions for lay people, don’t know if i’m right ok?

    Maybe sometimes we have some kind of attachment for suffering on Nietzsche, and it can be exaclty what buddha says to avoid extremes, where we can find the idea of nothingness…Buddha didn’t taught about Nothingness as a void but as Pratityasamutpada – Interdependence of things , the relational reality is empty of substantial things. Nothing exists by itself such things as God, for example

  7. If Suffering have a cause, we can transform it from a visible cause and create another thing on its response.

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