J. Krishnamurti’s “Ideal Man” Finds Answers to Questions Where Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” Leaves Us
The timeless philosophies of these two geniuses can bend humanity’s direction
Jiddu Krishnamurti was born five years before Nietzsche left the world in 1900. The last decade of his life was spent in a state of total delirium.
He had a terrible relationship with his sister and mother. His books didn’t sell, and he had a mental breakdown at 44. In an open-air market in Turin, Italy, Nietzsche witnessed a merchant flogging a horse.
He ran feverishly, yelling to stop the beating. He threw himself between beast and whip and hugged the horse. It was the beginning of his long-suffering dementia.
In the years leading up to his descent into madness, he published ground-breaking works at a breakneck pace. His critical analysis of humanity’s changing condition formed the bedrock for the change of order in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Every dictator, it’s said, needs a philosopher. Stalin had Marx, and Hitler adopted Nietzsche as his intellectual guardian. Historians believe that his ideological commitment was not out of intellectual infatuation but a politically calculated move.
Hitler gave a set of Nietzsche’s books to the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. In 1934 Hitler personally presented his sister with a wreath for Nietzsche’s grave, carrying the words “To A Great Fighter”.
Übermensch
The Nazis’ far-right ideology had the superiority of the German (Aryan) race at its centre. This concept of racial superiority is loosely derived from Nietzsche’s Übermensch — a German word for “superhuman person”.
His ideas were centred around the performance of individual heroism and grandeur.
The Übermensch rises above their circumstances and difficulties to embrace whatever life throws at him.
The basic premise of his “superman” philosophy is the de-conditioning of men from religious beliefs. According to him, men are psychologically secured by religious beliefs and hence do not face the challenges of life.
He gives certain details about becoming what we really are in his revolutionary book, Thus Spake Zarathustra.
- Own up to envy: Envy is not to be ashamed of. It defines our ambition and is the beginning of aspiration towards the realisation of one’s possibilities. He insisted we face our true desires through envy. It is then that our failures can have dignity.
The suppression of envy is nipping in the bud the scope of manufacturing a proud future.
2. Don’t be a Christian: Per Nietzsche, in the entire new testament, there is only one person worth respecting, and that is the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
This is a radical thought in a devout Christian world, but it is based on a solid ground of reasoning. He says that Christianity took root in the slave community and its precepts are born out of weakness. As a result, we never reach our full potential.
We are so inept at going after what we want in life that we hide behind religious sentiments. And above all, people want to make a virtue of their cowardice.
We have invented certain glorious concepts and vocabulary under which we hide our instincts and remain unfulfilled. For example, sexlessness is termed “purity”, while weakness was called “goodness”.
If someone is not able to take revenge, he began to call it “forgiveness” and submission to people one hated was called “obedience.”
What he witnessed was true to Christianity, but is in fact true to all religions — a bitter denial of the truths of life.
3. Never drink alcohol: It isn’t a prescription for a dietary plan. He himself never drank alcohol. He likened alcohol to Christianity for numbing pain and killing the possibility of change. He famously said,
“There have been two great narcotics in European civilization.”
When the pangs of truth begin to shape inside us, we bury our heads in “deep slumber”. We hide from the transformative force by wilfully dulling our minds.
The secret of realising the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves!
4. God is dead: He called for a decisive end in belief. Religion is being used to fill the gaps in life. He didn’t advocate atheism either, for lack of belief would lead to a fall in mortality, resulting in degeneration and the collapse of societal order.
He viewed mass democracy as a threat, which unleashed torrents of undigested envy and venomous resentment.
He suggested that the void created by religion be filled by art, music, and philosophy. “Culture should replace Scripture.”
University education is a dry academic exercise that hasn’t solved long-standing human problems.
Many scholars suggest that Übermensch is an unformed concept of Nietzsche, and he left us with more questions than answers. What, for example, will be an evolved man’s complete moral code?
And, if everyone becomes Superman, won’t different moralities clash?
J Krishnamurti closes the argument
J.K., like Nietzsche, was a true iconoclast. He dismantled the religious order built around him, “The Order of the Star”. He was picked as a young boy by the Theosophical Society. They found “the most wonderful aura, without a particle of selfishness” in him.
He was chosen as a world leader. The first thing he inadvertently taught is that there is no teacher who can tell you what to do. The first thing he did was step down as an authority.
He proclaimed, “Truth is a pathless land,” where no authority, method, or tenet can take you. He spent 60 years speaking as an independent speaker. All the while, he urged people to not take his words without scrutiny.
He would often say, “My words are simply a mirror for you to look at yourself.” He never laid down a single principle or a method.
Krishnamurti is Nietzsche’s Übermensch. His life is his teaching. He says a society where one tells morality to others is, in essence, an immoral society. No book, religion, or any laid down principle can ever show the truth.
An “ideal man” will never fight for supremacy. He has no ideals or a God. He is not looking for an external determinant to rescue him from his misery. This man observes without a centre.
His vision is fresh and carries no burden from the past or expectations for the future. He renews himself every moment and acts as per the needs of the situation, not out of his own compulsions.
It is not a mistake that Nietzsche does not lay down the code of conduct of an Übermensch. A man who follows a laid-down morality is not “the man” he is looking for. Even the ones asking for tenets and principles have not understood the essence of this great philosopher.
A person who defines what is valuable for him, who doesn’t follow the herd, dominates reality, and is not concerned with other-worldliness is a “superman”.
We become such a man by striving to find our own meaning.
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