Siddhartha & Nihilism

Exildah Chishala

February 18, 2011

Siddhartha as as Nihilist

1. The last passage of Siddhartha first part is nihilistic in a sense that Siddhartha came to realized that everything that he was taught or made to believe were meaningless, they did not make sense at all.  Where many, including his best friend, Govinda, accepted the conservative teaching of the priests and the monks, Siddhartha on his part rejected these teachings.  Nihilism see things differently from everyone else, they believe that the world that many see as meaningful is actually with no meaning.  Like many nihilists, Siddhartha did not want to accept concepts that did not make sense to him; he needed to be convinced that what he was learning was actually meaningful; unfortunately nothing made sense to him.  I have to say that I admire his stance on many issues.  For his spiritual wellbeing, he questioned everything that his teachers, including his own father taught him.  They are very few people in the world that can do that.  A lot of people are raised to believe in a particular tradition or religion, and yet even when they do not fully understand what they are being taught, go ahead an accept those teaching.  Siddhartha concluded that in order for him to learn about the world, he must learn about himself, and no teacher was qualify to teach him about who he was, but himself.  Convinced that he has to learn about himself, he started seeing things in his own way, different from what he was taught to look and see things, and this is the wisdom of nihilism, and this is why the last passage is in a sense a nihilistic passage.  

2. Nietzsche & the Samanas



2. What would Nietzsche think of the Samanas?

In the Western Societies, Nietzsche saw a lot of people who were practicing nihilism without knowing it.  I think if Nietzsche was to mingle with the Samanas, he will classify them as somehow semi nihilists.  Samanas, also known as the wondering monks who renounce their world in order to abstain from all sorts of worldly pleasures for the purpose of spiritual development and liberation, are popular are in many Indian’s traditions.  They believe that each human being is responsible for his or her own deeds, and that each human being will reap what he/she sows.  I say that Nietzsche will classify the Samanas as semi nihilists because although they renounce their world to lead a simple or ascetic life, they still follow and abide by what their spiritual leaders teaches them.  When Siddhartha and his friend Govinda joined the Samanas, they had higher expectations; they thought that they were going to learn things that they did not know.  When they realized that the Samanas did not offer anything new or valuable, they started questioning, and eventually left the group all together.  Most of the Samanas are satisfy with the teaching of their teachers, and most of them don’t even questions these teaching.  Renouncing the worldly things is not enough for one to be classified as a nihilist; it is simply one step in the path of nihilism.  Siddhartha is a nihilist because he questioned when was not satisfied, he looked for more meaning and classification for things that everyone thought was well explained.  He believed that “neither yoga-veda shall teach him anything more, or the ascetics, or any kind of teachings.  Like many nihilist, he wanted to learn from himself, he wanted to be his own student, he wanted to know himself.    

Nietzsche believed and emphasized that there was no meaningful substance to political, moral, social, and religious values.  He argued that every traditional value that was imposed on society was indeed meaningless, and not worthy to believe in.  Where many believed in the higher power, and the spiritual world, Nietzsche questioned the meaningful of these practices; to him, the old values and morality didn’t make sense and they did not possess any power as believed.  On Spirituality, Nietzsche believed that some of the traditional values many thoughts to be essential were actually harmful to society and humanity.  On religion Nietzsche believed that “God was dead”; he argued that the belief that God is the only source of everything was useless because God didn’t really matter in the modern world.  Apparently what, Nietzsche was implying is that in order to believe in something, one has to know that something in and out, it is not wise for one to believe in something withou knowing or understanding it.