Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

[KALKI]

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) the great German Philosopher, poet, classical philologist, who became one of the most provocative and influential thinkers of the 19th century. He was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer in his youth. Deeply disillusioned by his native faith Christianity, he called it the immortal blemish of mankind. One of the great European philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche's beliefs were best expressed in his Thus Spake Zarathustra, in which his teachings are put into the mouth of the wandering prophet Zarathustra.

He was very appreciative of the Upanishads and, indeed, contemptuous of those Europeans who, devoid of intellectual discernment, wanted to convert and "civilize" the Brahmans.

When Paul Deussen told him his plan of translating ancient Hindu texts and expounding their wisdom, he expressed great enthusiasm saying that Indian philosophy was the one parallel to their own European philosophy.

He found in the Manusmriti one of the source of his own philosophy of superman. The Laws of Manu have been hailed by Friedrich Nietzsche, as ' a work which is spirited and superior by comparision."

(source: Advanced History of India - By Nilakanta Sastri and G. Srinivasachari p. 10).

Nietzsche so highly esteemed the Hindu text that he declared all other ethical codes to be imitations and even caricatures of this.

(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal p. 237-238).

"One draws a breath of relief when coming out of the Christian sick-house and dungeon atmosphere into this healthier, higher wider world. How paltry the 'New Testament' is compared with Manu, how ill it smells! One sees immediately that it has a real philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an ill-smelling Jewish acidity compounded of rabbinisim and superstition.......All the things upon which Christianity vents its abysmal vulgarity, procreation, for example, woman, marriage, are here treated seriously, with reverence, with love and trust."

"Christianity has been up till now mankind's greatest misfortune." Nietzsche angrily denounced Christianity as a "slave morality," created by the weak as a means of checking the strong."

(source: The Twilight of the Idols - By Friedrich Nietzsche (1889) p. 57. The Antichrist - By Friedrich Nietzsche p. 176).

"One breathes more freely, after stepping out of the Christian atmosphere of hospitals and poisons into this more salubrious, loftier and more spacious world. "

In Nietzsche's estimation Manu is also better because more frank teacher of political science than the philosophers, insincere as they are, of the Western world.

(source: Creative India - By Benoy Kumar Sarkar p. 112-115).

Nietzsche himself had read the Vedas, which he admired profoundly, could quote from the Laws of Manu and thought that "Buddhism and Brahmanism are a hundred times deeper and more objective than Christianity."

(source: Arise O' India! - By Francois Gautier ISBN 81-241-0518-9 Har-Anand Publication p. 25).