According to Nietzsche
the ‘I’ is a fiction. It is true that looked
at from a purely intellectual point of view this conclusion
is inevitable. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason ends
in the conclusion that God, immortality and freedom are
mere fictions though useful for practical purposes. Nietzsche
only follows Kant in this conclusion. There is, however,
another point of view that is to say the point of view
of inner experience. From this point of view the ‘I’
is an indubitable fact, (vide Bradley’s discussion
on this point) which stares us in the face in spite of
our intellectual analysis of it. In this respect Leibnitz
is nearer to truth than either Kant or Nietzsche. The
monad or the I (alone) according to him is an ultimate
fact. His mistake, however, is that he regards the I (alone)
as something closed and windowless. This, however, is
contradicted by experience, because we know that the ‘I’
grows and expands by education. The question, therefore,
which should be raised in regard to the human, ‘I’
is not whether it is a substance or not. The question
was raised by our theologians whose philosophical discussion
achieved nothing. The question which ought to be raised
in my opinion is whether this weak, created and dependent
Ego or ‘I’ can be made to survive the shock
of death and thus become a permanent element in the constitution
of universe. The answer that 'Asrar-i-Khudi' [‘Secrets
of the Self’] tries to give to this question, of
course in a poetical way and not in a philosophical manner,
is this that the human ego can be made permanent by adopting
a certain mode of life and thereby bringing it into contact
with this ultimate source of life. The various stages
of its growth are mentioned in the 'Asrar-i-Khudi'. Thus
in its essence 'Asrar-i-Khudi' and Nietzsche are diametrically
opposed to each other. 'Asrar-i-Khudi' wholly depends
on the factum in which Nietzsche does not believe.
Special
thanks to Iqbal Academy Pakistan
