[ThisIsOK]

Hello everyone,

First of all i would like to thank all of you for your feedback on the article. Personally, i find Nietzsche's Philosophy very appealing and share many similarties with Buddhism.

Nierzsche was like all of us, he spent his hard life searching for freedom and real happiness. Maybe his research and philosophy have not led him to believe in buddhism but i cant help but to admire him as a truth seeker.

According to his philosophy, man is the sole measure of the universe. there are no moral or intellectual certainties. and its up to the individual to develope himself through his own effort. His philosophy (as i understand it) was NOT trying to convince people to think like himself, but a guide for people to think for themselves (hence i found it very similar to buddhism in this particular aspect). His philosophical journey ended up at the age of 44 in insanity.

His life was definitely not an as easy one. At a very young age his father was diagnosed with a brain disease and died when he was five years old. A year after he lost his baby brother. He was born with severe myopia and was always a delicate and sickly child, as well as contracting diphtheria and dysentery while serving in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War. In addition, he got infected with syphilis which led to his madness so he coped with all these physical ailments by developing his own philosophy.

His book “Human all too human” was a work of psychology as much as of Philosophy. he challenged mankind to think for itself when he said "“And so onwards, along a path of wisdom with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence. However you may be, be your own source of experience, throw off your discontent about your nature, forgive yourself your own self. You have it in your power to merge through everything you have lived through; fore-starts, errors, delusions, passions, your loves and your hopes into your goal with nothing left over."

The death of his father (who was a priest) had a profound influence on him and resulted in his nihilistic views. In a letter to his sister he said “ I write this to you only in order to counter the most usual proofs of believers. Every true faith is infallible , it performs what the believing person wants to find in it, but it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth, here the ways of men divide: if he want to achieve peace of mind and happiness have faith, if he want to be a disciple of truth then search.”

In his efforts of self mastery he came up with the idea of “overman” (i am not sure if its a good idea to compare it with Nibbana in Buddhism) which is an ideal of self overcoming, not by having recourse to a metaphysical realm outside of the human but within the possibilities of human which unfortunately has been used by his sister Elazabith and the Nazis to promote racism.

In conceiving of a world beyond good and evil, beyond the fleeting preoccupations of the human condition. Nietzsche has transcended “the mark” as he called it and turned it to a philosophical goal. Philosophy had become his consolation for a life of disappointment and deep rooted loneliness.

Finally, While his philosophy was against pity and weakness in general, His last sane action (before he got admitted to mental asylum) in January 1889 at the sight of a horse fell overburdened and slept on ice, Netzsche went over and put his arms around the horse. He was able to express in one of his last gestures to the world profound sympathy for the living conditions which both humans and animals share. His last action was to affirm his identity not as a god, but as a human being full of weaknesses.

Regards,