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Man to be Surpassed
"MAN is a thing that shall be surpassed". This burning phrase of Nietzsche has unsealed many eyes: it has also scalded and frightened others. It has been hailed by many as the motto, the mantra of the age to come; it has been denounced equally as a false light, a lead of arrogance and egoism. Erich Kahler (a Czech now become an American citizen) in his book Man the Measure seeks to strike a balance, but as the title indicates, evidently leans more to the second, the reactionary, than to the original ideal. He posits that man's humanity is to be preserved and fostered, that is to say, his true humanity, that which distinguishes him from mere animality. The Greek ideal, according to Kahler, was an advance upon the animal man; it brought in the ideal of the rational man. And yet the Greek ideal, in spite of its acceptance of the whole man – mens sana in corpore sano – embracing as it did his physical, ethical and æsthetic development, laid on the whole a greater emphasis upon reason, upon ration-alising, that is, ordering life according to a rational pattern. And then the Greek ideal was more for the individual; it was for the culture and growth of the individuality in man. Society was considered as composed of such individualised units. The degree of personal choice, of individual liberty, of free understanding that a Greek citizen enjoyed marked the evolution secured by man out of the primitive society. Still the integral man is not the rationalistic man, even as he is not the mere biological man: and he is not predominantly individualistic either. Yes, man's true humanity, says Kahler, almost echoing Nietzcshe, consists precisely in his capacity to surpass himself. The animal is wholly engrossed in its natural nature and
Page – 358 activities; but man is capable of standing back, can separate from his biological self, observe, control and direct. For him "existence" truly means (as the Existentialist declares today) ex+sistere or ex+stare, to stay or stand outside. That is the surpassing enjoyed by him and demanded of him – going beyond one's natural or normal self. But there is a danger here. For there can be a too much surpassing, a going away altogether, as religion or spirituality usually enjoins. Christianity, for example, which is in many senses a movement contrary to the Greek spirit, taught a transcendence that was for luring or driving the human soul away from the world and men towards an extra-terrestrial summum bonum. That is a false light, a wrong lead. Surpassing should not mean going beyond-up and away: it means rather coming out of one's self and going abroad, finding one's kinship and unity with others, with the world around. The individualisation of the self – given by the Greek culture – was the first step; the next step in evolution is the "collectivisation" of the self. It is not in the Nazi or Bolshevic sense that we have to understand the word: it does not equate with totalitarianism. The peril is there, no doubt. But there was danger in individualism too: and the Greek polity suffered from it. For individualism meant clash of personalities: indeed rivalry, ambition, intolerance, arrogance, all the violent or vulgar movements of egoism occupy a good part of the life story of the old-world peoples trained in the classical culture. On the other hand, modern collectivism tends towards a uniform levelling down of all individual eccentricity. But dangers apart, the truth of either conception, ingrained in human nature, has to be recognised and accepted. A humanity, composed of developed and formed individuals living in broad commonalty – that is the highest achievement the present author holds before mankind.
Mr. Kahler does not define very clearly the nature and
function of this commonalty: but it almost borders on what I may call
human humanism, something in the manner of the other modern humanist
Albert Schweitzer. Two types of humanism have been distinguished:
man-centred humanism and God-centred humanism. Kahler's (and even
Schweitzer's) humanism belongs, very much to the first category. He
does
Page – 359 not seem to believe in any transcendent Spirit or God apart from the universal totality of existence, the unitary life of all, somewhat akin to the Vie Unanime of Jules Romains.
The limitation of such a human ideal is for us evident.
We demand a total surpassing of man, although that does not mean a
rejection of man. Unless human life is built upon foundations quite
other than what they are now, we say there can be no permanent or
radical remedy to the ills it suffers from. Hence we are for utter
transcendence; for, the highest height it is possible for the
consciousness to reach and the being to dwell in, even the experience
of Brahman or un-mitigated Absolute of the Mayavadin or the Zero,
Shunyam of the Buddhist not excluded. Since it is there that the true
foundations of creation lie hidden and it is from there that a new
world has to be recreated, a new humanity reshaped. The very stuff of
human nature has to be changed, not only what is considered as bad in
it but what is valued as good also. For beyond good and evil is
Nature Divine. Man has to find out this divine nature and dissolve
his human nature into that, remould it, reshape it in that pattern.
So long as human consciousness remains too human, it will be always
branded with the bar sinister of all earthly things. Man has to grow
into the immortal seated within mortality, into the light that shines
inviolate on the other side of the darkness we live in. That
immortality, that light one has to bring down here on earth and in
ourselves, and out of it build a new earth and a new human self and
life. Page – 360
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