Nietzsche contra Vivekananda: Views on women

Nietzsche is generally considered one of the two most influential modern philosophers outside academia. The other is Karl Marx. One would hope that such an influential philosopher would have realistic and egalitarian ideas about women. Unfortunately,   Nietzsche’s views of women are derogatory. The disturbing thing about his offensive views is that they occur in the authorized text of a mainstream philosopher:[1]  “Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!”[2]  I cannot do better than to repeat Russell’s comment: Any woman worth her salt would take the whip away from Nietzsche in a matter of seconds and make short work of him.[3]  A weak, immature mind dealing with rejection tries to find compensation for its deficiencies through a paranoid fantasy:

 ‘Careful, have I found all buyers, all of them have astute eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.’[4]

All I can say is that ignorance is bliss! Most mature, self-respecting men do not ‘buy’ their wives, either in a sack or standing up. In Nietzsche’s world, all men are warriors, all women are dolls:

‘Men shall be trained for war, and women for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly. Too sweet fruits – these warrior liketh not. Therefore liketh he woman; - bitter is even the sweetest woman’…A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come…The happiness of man is, “I will.” The happiness of woman is, “He will.”[5]

If I might be forgiven for being unscholarly for a minute, after reading Nietzsche I have this great urge to fall on my knees in rapt adoration: ‘My Liege, my Lord, my master, shall I play the harp, sing or beget one more superman for the  utopian world yet to come?

A woman is shallow. A man deep.  She is made for obedience, he for command. Women serve just one purpose for Nietzsche: Giving birth to the superman:

‘Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution – it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman, a means: The purpose is always the child…Let your hope say: “May I bear the Superman.”’ (Nietzsche, p.82)

 Little doth Nietzsche know about women and most of it is well, fantasy. We are all moo cows. Seriously Nietzsche makes even motherhood seem petty.

 It is only after reading someone like Nietzsche that one gets a glimmer of what Swami Vivekananda means when he says; ‘My religion now is manliness.’[6] His views are radically different. He was, however, always the monk first:

‘If the most beautiful woman in the world were to look at me in an immodest or unwomanly way, she would immediately turn into a hideous green frog and one does not, of course, admire frogs.’[7]

Women deserve the same respect as men and must be given opportunities for education:

“In what scriptures do you find statements that women are not competent for knowledge and devotion? ... (The priests) deprived the women...of all their rights. Otherwise you will find that in the Vedic or Upanishdic age Maitreyi, Gargi, and other ladies of revered memory have taken the places of Rishis through their skill in discussing about Brahman. In an assembly of a thousand Brahmanas who were all erudite in the Vedas, Gargi boldly challenged Yajnavalkya in a discussion about Brahman. Since such ideal women were entitled to spiritual knowledge, why shall not the women have the same privilege now...All nations have attained greatness by paying proper respect to women. That country and that nation which do not respect women have never become great, nor will ever be in future...Manu says, “Where women are respected, there the gods delight; and where they are not, there all works and efforts come to naught.” (7.214-215)

 One of Swami Vivekananda’s great missions was setting up a monastery for women with Sri Sarada Devi as the nucleus. He brought Sister Nivedita to India for the education of women because illiteracy chained them to ignorance and misery.

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[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich, (2009), Thus Spake Zarathushtra, (Mumbai: Wilco press)

[2] ibid, p.84

[3] Russell, Bertrand (1991),History of Western Philosophy, (London: Routledge), p. 733-34

[4] ibid, p. 88

[5] Nietzsche, op cit  , p. 83.

[6] Ibid., p. 160

[7] Swami Nikhilananda (2010), Vivekananda: A Biography,(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama), p. 91

Nietzsche contra Vivekananda: The concept of Eternal Recurrence

   Nietzsche’s view that the soul will be dead even before the body is not consistent with his concept of ‘eternal recurrence’:

“Look at this gateway...”it hath two faces. Two roads come together here: these hath no one gone to the end of. This long lane backwards: it continueth for an eternity. And that long lane forward – that is another eternity. They are antithetical to one another... and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The name of the gateway is....’This Moment.’ ...there runneth a long eternal lane backwards; behind us lieth an eternity .Must not whatever can run its course...have already run along that lane? Must not whatever can happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?

...For whatever can run its course of all things, also in this long lane outward – must it once more run! - And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight and this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway...must we not all have already existed?”[1] (Nietzsche, p. 189-90)

The concept of two eternities defies logic because eternity is an unbroken continuum, an indivisible entity by definition. The idea of two antithetical eternities meeting in a moment is patently absurd. Perhaps one could say that the past and future connect in the present.  According to Nietzsche, the law of conservation of energy implies that everything in the universe will repeat itself in exactly the same way. Time is eternal. The universe with everything in it is finite. From this it follows that it will repeat itself ad infinitum.  Is Nietzsche reintroducing the concept of immortality through artistic eternal recurrence? The only difference is that matter is eternal, not soul. In a sense, Swami Vivekananda comes to Nietzsche’s rescue:

‘The effect is the cause manifested. There is no essential difference between the effect and the cause...When the cause is changed and limited for a time, it becomes the effect...Applying it to our idea of life, the whole of the manifestation of this one series, from the protoplasm up to the most perfect man, must be the very same thing as cosmic life...everything in this universe is indestructible. There is nothing new; there will be nothing new...Each manifestation of life is coming up and then going back again. What goes down? The form. The form breaks to pieces, but it comes up again. In one sense bodies and forms even are eternal...there must come  a time when exactly   the same combination  comes again, when you will be here, and this form will be here, this subject will be talked...An infinite number of times this has been, and an infinite number of times this will be repeated. Thus far with the physical forms...even the combination of physical forms is eternally repeated.’ [2](2.228-230)

‘...Nature is like the chain of the Ferris Wheel, endless and infinite, and these  little carriages are the bodies or forms in which fresh batches of souls are riding, going up higher ... until they become perfect and come out of the wheel. But the wheel goes on. And so long as the bodies are in the wheel, it can be absolutely and mathematically foretold where they will go, but not so of the souls...there is recurrence of the same material phenomenon at certain periods, and that the same combinations have been taking place through eternity.’ (2.230-231)

‘...No force can die, no matter can be annihilated...It goes on changing, backwards and forwards, until it returns to the source from which it came. There is no motion in a straight line. Everything moves in a circle; a straight line, infinitely produced, becomes a circle...you and I must be part of the cosmic consciousness, cosmic life, cosmic mind, which got involved and we must complete the circle and go back to this cosmic intelligence which is God (2.231). ..There is only One Being, One Existence, the ever-blessed, the omnipresent, the omniscient, the birth less, the deathless...You are all God. See you not God and call Him man? Therefore, if you dare, stand on that –‘(2.236-237)

 Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence is a tiny part of Swamiji’s conceptualization. Nietzshe does not give a rationale for his idea. Since he rejects the idea of God, one eternal existence, the oneness of all beings and the idea of a soul evolving through rebirth, his idea of eternal recurrence is not consistent with reason.

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[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich, (2009), Thus Spake Zarathushtra, (Mumbai, Wilco Press)

[2] The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,9 vols. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989: 9, 1997). For a fuller description of Vivekananda's views on reincarnation, please see; Davidson,Pramila;"Carl Jung:"Deconstructing the Reincarnation Myth," Prabuddha Bharata, vol.116,No.3,March 2011www.google.com

Nietzsche contra Vivekananda: The body/soul dichotomy

         

A key concept in Nietzsche is the idea that the body is a thing-in-itself. Zarathustra’s meeting with an acrobat from a circus illustrates this.  The acrobat loses his balance and falls to his death. Zarathustra gently consoles the dying man and tells him that he does not need to fear heaven or hell. His soul will be dead even before his body. (Italics mine)Human life is meaningless. Even a buffalo may prove fatal to it.  Nietzsche introduces the idea of materialistic monism. The ‘creating’ body creates for itself a ‘spirit’ as a tool for its will.[1] People do not have bodies. They are bodies.  The world is a physical entity and nothing more:

 ‘Body  am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body...Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage - it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.’[2]

Swami Vivekananda dismisses this ‘all I am is the body’ concept:

‘There is a great discussion going on as to whether the aggregate of materials we call the body is the cause of manifestation of the force we call the soul, thought, etc., or whether it is the thought that manifests this body. ...There are schools of modern thought which hold that what we call thought is simply the outcome of the adjustment of the parts of the machine which we call body....What makes the body...What force is there which takes up material from the mass of matter around and forms my body one way, another body another way ... To say that the force called the soul is the outcome of the combinations of the molecules of the body is putting the cart before the horse. How did the combinations come; where was the force to make them? ...It is more logical to say that the force which takes up the matter and forms the body is the same which manifests through that body. To say ...that the thought forces manifested by the body are the outcome of the arrangement of molecules and have no independent existence has no meaning: neither can force evolve out of matter. Rather it is possible to demonstrate that what we call matter does not exist at all. It is only a certain state of force. Solidity, hardness, or any other state of matter can be proved to be the result of motion... A thread of a spider’s web, if it could be moved at almost infinite velocity, would be as strong as an iron chain and would cut through an oak tree. Looking at it in this way, it would be easier to prove that what we call matter does not exist. But the other way cannot be proved.’ [3]

 There is one, undifferentiated consciousness. When it is condensed, we get a solid state. This consciousness becomes finer and finer as in a thread of the spider’s web until it becomes pure spirit.  Normally we think of every human being as having a body-mind-soul-spirit complex. The body lives and dies. The mind disintegrates. The atma/soul-spirit is eternal. What is the difference between body and spirit? Here is Swami Vivekananda’s explanation:

‘This pure and perfect being, the soul is one wheel, and this external hallucination of body and mind is the other wheel, joined together by the pole of work, of Karma. Knowledge is the axe which will sever the bond between the two, and the wheel of the soul will stop ...But upon the other wheel, that of the body and mind, will be the momentum of past acts; so it will live for some time, until that momentum of past work is exhausted...and then the body and mind fall, and the soul becomes free.(4)

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1. Nietzsche, Friedrich, (2005)Thus Spake Zarathushtra,(Mumbai, Wilco Press), p.47

2. ibid, p. 46

3. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,9 vols., (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989: 9, 1997), 2.75-76
4. ibid,2.81

        

Nietzsche contra Vivekananda: The death of God

                            

The prologue of Thus Spake Zarathustra [1]echoes Plato’s cave analogy. Nietzsche rejected Plato’s transcendental reality but he was influenced by Plato to some extent.  Plato’s ideal was the austere Socrates. His cave   is the soul’s struggle to break free from the chains of ignorance and find the light of justice, wisdom, truth. The seer returns to the cave to pull his dungeon mates out of darkness. Is Plato elitist? Of course! For all that his philosopher king is a far cry from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s take away from Plato is the idea that the only people who matter in a community are   great individuals - artists, intellectuals, what Russell calls the anarchist aristocracy.  Plato’s cave is the journey from the dark imprisonment of ignorance to the light of truth – for every seeker. Those who are strong enough to see the world in the blazing light of the sun become leaders of the community. For Nietzsche, the journey out of the cave gets transformed into ‘self-transcendence’ in the Darwinian sense of each surviving organism ‘surpassing’ creatures who fail to adapt and hence perish:

‘Man is something that is to be surpassed....what is the ape to man? A laughing stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.’ (Nietzsche, p.20)

 Evolution, for Nietzsche is linear.  Every new species is better than the previous one. From this it follows that the new prophet, Zarathustra is better than the old prophet, Christ or the older prophet Zoroaster.  The bible consecrated the ‘Thou.’ It is replaced by the sacred ‘I,’ the ego.  The commandment to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ is replaced by ‘love the farthest, the future ones, i.e. the coming superman (p.77). Nietzsche side steps evolutionary logic and speaks of metamorphosis: In the first, the ‘spirit’ changes into ‘the load bearing camel who feeds on the grass of knowledge.’ The camel is a symbol of obedience: ‘thou shalt.’ The camel then changes into the lion, a symbol of strength and ‘lordship.’ He represents the spirit of ‘I will.’ In the third metamorphosis, the lion is transformed into the child:

‘Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea... its own will.’ ( Nietzsche,p.39)

The child signifies affirmation and the coming superman. This is the first statement of the core concept of the book: the will to power.  Swami Vivekananda views egoism as imprisonment:

‘The admantine wall that shuts us in is egoism; we refer everything to ourselves, thinking, “I do this, that and the other.” Get rid of this puny “I”... “Not I, but Thou” – say it, feel it, live it...To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all – living in the body, but not of it. This rascal ego must be obliterated.’ [2]

The ‘I’ is anything but sacred. Only a few of us can aspire to or achieve Swami Vivekananda's  ideal ‘Thou.’ He is adamant that we must hold on to the highest ideals even if we struggle, falter and fail.

 The narrative of Thus Spake Zarathustra is sketchy. The first person whom Zarathustra meets when he comes down from his solitary mountain is an old hermit clinging to God. Here comes the most quoted line from the book ‘Can it be that he does not know God is dead?’ And a little later ‘God is dead, I teach you the superman.’ The phrase ‘God is dead’ is very dramatic and caught the imagination of Europe and North America.  It was first used by Hegel:

‘The highest divestment of the Divine idea ...is expressed in a Lutheran hymn as follows: ‘God has died, God himself is dead.’^[3]

An incarnation of God has human as well as divine attributes. Both are true. When Jesus was crucified, he died as a human being.  The belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a critical element in traditional Christianity. This is a mark of his divinity. With the rise of science and rational thinking, beliefs in creationism   and an afterlife which are central to dualistic religions were rejected.  Thus God is dead both as body and spirit. This creates what Hegel calls ‘the unhappy consciousness’:

”...This hard saying (that ‘God is dead’) is the expression of innermost simple self-knowledge, the return of consciousness (i.e. of an object) into the depths of the night in which “I=I”, a night which no longer distinguishes or knows anything outside of it. This (painful) feeling is, in truth, the loss of substance (God)...”^[4]

 There is never going to be any light at the end of the tunnel except the light of a rational dialectical reality. In his Encyclopaedia of logic (194), Hegel explains the significance of Christ:

“In the Christian religion, God becomes known as love, precisely because he revealed himself to man in his Son, who is one with him, he revealed himself as this single man, and redeemed mankind by doing that. What this also means is that the antithesis of objectivity and subjectivity is overcome implicitly; it is our business to participate in this redemption by laying aside our immediate subjectivity (putting off the old Adam) and becoming conscious of God as our own true and essential Self” ^[5]

 Is Hegel shifting the idea of divinity from a God in heaven, outside us to a God inside the core of our being as in Vedanta? Generally,   Hegel’s ideas are associated with totalitarian thought – both fascist and communist.  His dialectic is a key element of Marxist ideology, as is the Feuerbach thesis that   it is man who creates God. The holy family is sacred because we value the earthly family. The idea of God is a personification of the highest human ideals.  Thus God gets relocated inside humanity without His divine attributes. Swami Vivekananda expresses an idea similar to Feuerbach’s radical materialism:

”We see this universe as human beings, and our God is our human explanation of the universe. Suppose a cow were philosophical and had religion, it would have a cow universe, and a cow solution of the problem, and it would not be possible that it should see our God. Suppose cats became philosophers, they would see a cat universe and have a cat solution of the problem of the universe, and a cat ruling it.” (2.155)

The critical difference is that Feuerbach is rooted in humanism, the Marxist view is atheistic. Swami Vivekananda deifies everything so that the worm that crawls under our feet becomes divine.

Commenting on creationism or the concept of God as the creator of the universe, Swami Vivekananda says:

‘...If there is a God, that God must be both the material and the efficient cause of the universe. Not only is He the creator, but He is also the created. He Himself is this universe.’(2.248)

And again:

‘The ancient sages penetrated deeper and deeper until they found that in the innermost core of the human soul is the centre of the whole universe... That is the common ground, and standing there alone can we find a common solution. So the question who made this world is not very philosophical, nor does its solution amount to anything.’ (2.157)

Swami  Vivekananda uses the analogy of the banyan tree to illustrate our oneness with God:

‘He is that Banyan tree; He is the root of all and has branched out until He has become this universe, and however far He extends, every one of these trunks and branches is connected.’ (2.183-184)

“...Where to find Him in the external world, where to find Him in the suns, and moons, and stars? There the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars; the flash of lightening cannot illumine the place; what to speak of this mortal fire? He shining, everything else shines. It is His light that they have borrowed, and He is shining through them.” (2.183)

The bottom line is that if God is dead, so are we.  If He does not exist, neither does the self-evident ‘I’.  Dualism, secular or spiritual is an early stage in religion or mental evolution when   compared to the Advaitic    idea of truth.   In Swami Vivekananda’s view,   it is man who becomes divine, becomes God. In a monistic system of thought, the man who achieves perfection like Buddha or Christ becomes God. So if there is a ‘superman’ who can transcend human frailty, he is in the process of becoming God. Swami Vivekananda’s familiar parable of the sheep lion expresses this beautifully. (2.86-87) each one of us starts as a sheep lion. Every soul is potentially divine. Life is a struggle to manifest our divinity through work, worship, mysticism or knowledge.

“Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation.” (2.87)

  It is a matter of opening our eyes, looking at our real selves and realizing who we are:  “He that is the Essence of your soul, He is the Truth, He is the Self, Thou art That, O Shvetketu.”  (2.134) For Swami Vivekananda, there is just one infinite existence and we are all part of it.  It is not a question of ‘becoming’.  We are that being already. We need to cut our way out of nature to Eternal Bliss:

“Thou sun, who hast covered the Truth with thy golden disc, do thou remove the veil, so that I may see the Truth that is within thee. I have known the Truth that is within thee, I have known what is the real meaning of thy rays and thy glory and have seen That which shines in thee; the Truth in thee I see, and That which is within thee is within me, and I am That.” (2.154)

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[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich (2009), Thus Spake Zarathushtra,(Mumbai: Wilco press).For an analysis of Plato's cave, please see; Davidson,Pramila;"Plato's Allegory of the Cave:a Vedantic Reading,Prabuddha Bharata"Vol.114,No.8,August 2009 and Davidson, Pramila;"Aspects of Western Philosophy and Swami Vivekananda,Prabuddha Bharata,Vol.117, No.4, April 2012.

[2] Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols., (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989: 9, 1997

[3] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, (2008)” The Consummate Religion,” Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Vol. III, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Trans. Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson and J Michael Stewart, p. 125

[4] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, (1807) Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (1977), (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 476

[5] Hegel, G.W.F.,(1991) The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part 1 of The Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusatze, trans. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchhting, H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett), p. 273

Nietzsche contra Vivekananda: The sacred 'I'

                                                                 

                                                                    

 

The post Darwinian era was an age where many honest, thinking minds found it difficult or impossible to accept Christian theology. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was perceptive enough to see that the vacuum created by the collapse of Christian values would prove devastating for Europe. His Thus Spake Zarathustra^[1] was published in 1883-85. A new messiah, an ‘ubermensch’, a higher man or overman was the need of this dark hour. Yeats captures the mood of the age in ‘The Second Coming’:

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’^[2]

Yeats was writing in 1919, in the aftermath of World War I. His words proved prophetic. World War II saw the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.  German soldiers were given copies of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra during World War I and during the build up to World War II.  Germany, humiliated by the Allies in World War I was ripe for Nietzsche’s superman.   Both Hitler and Mussolini were ‘inspired’ by Nietzsche, though it is not clear how much of Nietzsche Hitler actually read. Hitler visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar several times. There are pictures of him standing next to Nietzsche’s bust. Nietzsche was never anti-Semitic and the idea of an organized idol state did not appeal to him (pp. 64-65) but the Nazis used his work selectively. Ideas like the overman, the master race, and the lords of the earth provided a justification for their ambition. Dostoevsky captures this unethical strain:  In his novel The Brothers Karamazov,^[3] the protagonist Ivan seems to feel that if there is no God, everything is permitted.  The chapter called ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ is set in the fifteenth century. A hundred people have been executed the previous day. Jesus appears and every one rushes to him asking for mercy and miracles. The Inquisitor throws Jesus in jail and tells Him not to speak, to add nothing to what He has said already. He must give no excuse for granting men free will or try to justify His glorification of suffering. The rules have changed. Satan is in command because he makes men happy, gives them dominion over earth:

‘Why hast Thou come to hinder us...We are not working with Thee, but with him(Devil) – that is our mystery...we took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar and proclaimed ourselves rulers of the earth...we shall triumph, and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of man’^[4]

 The discipline of living within a common moral code is a relic of the dead past so it is back to the law of the jungle. Nietzshe rephrases this to: ‘nothing is true, all is permitted.’^[5]  Existential thinkers like Sartre, Camus and Kierkegard took a different track. They wrote about the dilemma of existence and what came to be known as the existential ‘angst’ (anxiety).  Sartre’s work is an acceptance of a Godless existence. His ‘solution’, like that of Russell is a humanist ethic.  All we can aspire to is ordinary, everyday human decency.  Camus uses the myth of Sisyphus to express the hopelessness of human life: Sisyphus is cursed by the Gods to push a huge boulder to the top of a mountain. As soon as he reaches the peak, the boulder comes crashing to the base and Sisyphus has to start pushing the rock to the top again. This cycle goes on for an eternity.^[6] Camus’ ‘Etranger’ (stranger) is ‘alienated’, out of sync with his environment, a misfit in his social milieu.^[7] Kierkegaard, a deeply religious man, expressed his anguish as an ‘either/or’: Accept the old, flawed morality or face the anguish of living without God.  The post war era was scarred by the raw hunger and desperation of hundreds of thousands of homeless destitutes living on the streets with nowhere to go.   To use a phrase of Franz Fanon, Europe was littered with the human debris of ‘the wretched of the earth’. Countries like Poland went through the fire first with the Nazis and then with the Soviets.  The ‘scorched earth’ policy of the Russians created vast acres of dead land pock marked by the dust of pillaged home and farms.

  Nietzsche’s   Zarathustra, touted as the solution to the moral chaos in the Christian world, ended up as a part of the problem.   His prophet is closer to Yeats’ ‘rough beast’ than to future human perfection; a thinly veiled disguise for Nietzsche himself.  Swamiji’s thesis that every evolution is followed by an involution is proved by Nietzsche: After Jesus of Nazareth, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra!    Nietzsche had this to say about why he chose the Persian prophet:

“People have never asked me, as they should have done, what the name Zarathustra precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first Immoralist; for what distinguishes that philosopher from others in the past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The translation of morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, end in itself, was his  work...Zarathustra created the most portentous error, morality, consequently he should also be the first to perceive that error...all history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the  so called moral order of things...To tell the truth and to aim straight : that is the first Persian virtue...The overcoming of morality through itself – through truthfulness, the overcoming of the moralist through his opposite – through me –: that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.” (Nietzsche, p.13-14)

There is no denying Nietzsche’s intellectual brilliance. The problem is his ethic, his values.  Nietzsche discards Christian morality and the utilitarian, democratic, rational, ‘thou not I’ ethic based on it.  This is slave morality. The Christian ethic has ceased to be a valid foundation for thinking men.   Pity and compassion are dead abstractions. Man has become weak through dependence on salvation from outside himself.  Nietzsche ‘transvalues’ the Christian ethic and replaces it by a cult of individuality and a language of self.   Each one of us must get in touch with the depths of his soul and create his own destiny .We need to develop a personal ethic, rules which will govern our life. Every man is a law unto himself and creates his own values.  We are free spirits and need no outside morality. There is no universal morality.  All we have is interpretations of morality.  Nietzsche rejects Kant’s categorical imperative; i.e. treating others as ends in themselves and not as a means to our personal goals.^[8] Our primal instinct is the will to power.  Exploiting others to serve our goals is a sign of strength. Nietzsche either ignores or treats the ordinary individual with contempt. The herd is meant to serve great individuals like Goethe and Napoleon.

The old ethic assumed that the ordinary human being was rational, would pursue happiness and work to get the most out of life because he had free will. This is not true. There is chaos in our hearts. We are tethered to nihilistic primal instincts over which we have little or no control. The idea of the unconscious had been around since the eighteenth century. Nietzsche uses it to bring out the dark irrational elements in man’s soul. The aggressive, violent, primitive chaos at the core of our being must be transformed into ‘a dancing star.’ We are not made in the image of God.  The face that stares back at us from the mirror is evil. This is our deepest reality. Evil is good. Suffering fuels achievement.    Weakness both inside our psyche and outside is contemptible.  The values which we create for ourselves should be so grand that they are a work of art and can be repeated eternally like a Beethoven symphony.

 Nietzsche’s grand vision is partly subjective:  He was a man of poor health and physique: He celebrates warriors and war like qualities. He did not get much recognition and appreciation for his work. Even the few copies of his books that he commissioned could not be distributed; the ordinary person becomes a thing of contempt, too stupid to understand his lofty ideas. He had a gentle streak when it came to animals: He was outraged when he saw a horse being whipped in the street. Nietzsche tried to stop the beating and actually put his arms around the animal. As a result, he collapsed in an epileptic fit and had to be committed to a psychiatric facility.  His health was poor and his eyesight dim.  His brain collapsed during the last ten years of his life and   he was declared insane. These adverse circumstances embittered him. Beethoven wrote his beautiful ninth symphony based on Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ when he was completely deaf.   Nietzsche created Zarathustra.

How does Nietzsche portray his Zarathustra? He is ‘a seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, a bridge to the future. (p.168) ‘He is a ‘Roman Caesar with the heart of Christ,’ a higher being. It is difficult to understand how you can logically have the heart of Christ when you reject Christianity. “Behold Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?’ (p.107) Zarathustra stands out from the rabble.” Men are not equal “and neither shall they become so. (p.123)   Swami Vivekananda says ‘you are what you feel. If you feel like Christ, you are Christ.’ Would Jesus have said that he walked among men as among animals?   Zarathustra is the ‘awakened one’ in ‘the land of the sleepers.’  Nietzsche draws up a triangular structure: the wide base is populated by the insignificant superfluous ones, the ‘herd.’ Their only purpose in life is to serve, obey and sacrifice themselves for the superman.  A little higher are the companions of the superman.  They have the qualities of warriors. They seek out their enemies and wage wars with courage. It is war that sanctifies every cause.  At the pinnacle stands the superman in his solitary splendour:

‘Thou (Zarathustra) goest the way to thy greatness; here shall no one steal after thee! Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth written: Impossibility’ (p.184)...I will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my gardens! (p.226)

  Those who cannot be taught to fly must be taught ‘to fall faster. ‘(p.248)

 This is the mark of a Caesar according Nietzsche. Russell‘s criticism of Nietzsche’s superman theory is scathing:

‘...the superman’s desires and pleasures and pains are so immeasurably more intense than those of ordinary men that they contribute more to the total than those of millions of the “bungled and botched,” as Nietzsche calls them...vanity and conceit furnish the definition (of the superman): I am, of course, a superman, and I must admit enough people of approximately equal merit to give the group a chance of surviving the indignation and ridicule of the rest. But this is not a theory; it is a myth generated by megalomania.’^[9]

Reading Nietzsche in conjunction with Swami Vivekananda is a discipline like no other. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra does not speak simple, direct English like Swami Vivekananda. He ‘spake’/’speaketh from an invisible pulpit throughout the prologue and all four parts of the book. The style is dramatic and aphoristic. Nietzsche speaks in metaphors which contradict each other. Vivekananda   expresses complex ideas in a way that everyone can understand. He has this amazing way of becoming one with people at different levels of intelligence, education, morality and spirituality. It is only when you read and re read him that a familiar word or sentence takes on new meaning. Non thinkers are a blessed lot: there is hope for a man with a little heart. Dry intellectualism is dust.  Vivekananda leaves the door open for everybody:

“Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the strong man walking in the pride of youth, Thou art the old man tottering on crutches. Thou art in everything. Thou art everything O Lord.”^[10]

 There is no difference between the greatest man and the lowliest worm. Everything in the universe, everyone in the universe, man, animal, insect, bird – are all He, are all God. Each soul must come to truth and freedom at last, some sooner than others. The squirrel that brings his tiny quota of sand to build Sri Rama’s bridge is as great as the mighty monkeys. The little birds who hurl themselves into the fire to feed their guests are just as moral as the sanyasin. (1.50, 51) There are other differences.  It never occurs to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra that he needs to modify and rethink his ideas, that perhaps people reject his teachings because they are unethical and elitist.  Vivekananda is emphatic about each person being responsible for his fate.  When we are faced with failure and rejection, we need to change ourselves and try harder:

“...when we have nobody to grope towards, no devil to lay our blame upon, no Personal God to carry our burdens, when we are alone responsible, then we shall rise to our highest and best. I am responsible for my fate, I am the bringer of good unto myself, I am the bringer of evil...I have neither death nor fear...the body is not mine, nor am I subject to the superstitions and decay that come to the body, I am Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Absolute; I am the Blissful One, I am the Blissful One, I am the Blissful One.” (2.202)

For Nietzsche, the ‘I’ is sacred., for  Vivekananda, the ‘I’ is universal, the sum total of all the souls in the universe. It is holy because we are all part of one infinite existence. I must love my neighbour as myself because he and I are one.

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[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich, (2009), Thus Spake Zarathustra (,Mumbai: Wilco Press)

[2] Yeats, William Butler (1920) .Michael Robartes and the Dancer, Churchtown, Dundrun: The Chuala Press. Full text at www.PotW.org.

[3] Dostoevsky, Fyodor, (2004) Translated by  Constance Garnette, Maire Jaanus, The Brothers Karamazov, (New York: Barnes & Noble))

 [4] ibid,  p. 238.

[5] Nietzsche, op. cit, p.309

[6] Camus, Albert (1955). The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, translated by Justin O’Brian (London: Hamilton)

[7] Camus, Albert (1988) The Stranger, (New York: Knopf)

[8] Kant Immanuel, (1989) “Good Will, Duty and Categorical Imperative,” ed. Anthony Sefaris, Ethics and Social Concern, (New York: Paragon House): ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.’

[9] Russell, Bertrand,(2010) Human Society in Ethics and Politics, ( London: Routledge Classics), p. 59

[10]The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989; 9, 1997), 2. 211 Davidson,Pramila,"Plato's Allegory of the Cave," Prabuddha Bharata,August 2009