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Nietzsche and Gandhi, Society

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Friedrich Nietzsche and Mahatma Gandhi, two mammoth political figures of their time, attack the current trend of society. Their individual philosophies and concepts suggest a fundamental problem: if civilization is so diseased, can we overcome this state of society and the sickness that plagues the minds of the masses in order to advance? Gandhi and Nietzsche attain to answer the same proposition of sickness within civilization, and although the topic of unrest among both may be dissimilar, they have parallel means of finding a cure to such an illness as the one that plagues society. Nietzsche’s vision of spiritual health correlates directly with Gandhi’s image of industrialism and the self-sufficiency. This correlation prevails by …show more content…

This situation exemplifies everything that Gandhi was attempting to convey about the over indulgence of man as aided by doctors. Because of the doctoral profession, Nietzsche states, “my body… felt more at ease; but my mind became weakened” (Nietzsche 33). By weakening the minds of the public, doctors are directly contributing to the sickness of civilization. Nietzsche reveals slave and master morality as a paramount concept, conveying the power of the wealthy and prominent over the poor and downtrodden. Nietzsche states that “In order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world; it needs… external stimuli in order to act at all- its action is fundamentally reaction” (Nietzsche 37). The weak, passive, cowardly, and sick are reacting to the overbearing nature of the nobility. The lower, sickened class is insecure and unable to act because they know that they are weak. They have the fundamental drive in the universe, the will to power, yet they are unable to act, rather they can merely react to the harsh and unjust situations that external world is placing on them. They harbor a ressentiment towards the elite The cure of such a sickness in civilization would not come easily. Nietzsche’s treatment would be to capitalize on the will to power. Every person is driven by a force to overcome their oppression, and find the “happiness in “slight superiority,” involved

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