In the part of the book called The Bestowing Virtue, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote something odd in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
In it, Zarathustra — a sage who is the main figure of the book — tells his disciples to stop following him. “I now go alone, my disciples! You too go now, alone! Thus I want it.
I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.”.
“This is one of my favorite parts of the book. I found it surprising but interesting that the sage would tell his followers to be ashamed of him, abandon him, and mistrust him.
Why would he do that? As usual, I’m gonna explore this idea through a dialogue.
A young student spent years searching for enlightenment.
He travelled through many countries and lived among various sects of sages, but after all these years, he found nothing.
Finally, he lost hope and became a farmhand. The farmer, F, whom he was attending to was not an intellectual man. He barely ever spoke. When he did, it was always to indulge the student in philosophical debates.
The student was initially open to arguing and questioned almost everything the farmer said, thinking him pretty much like the other sanyasis the…