From Hinduism to Pantheism: An Existentialist Study of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

Abstract

Siddhartha is a novel about the long journey of an existentially frustrated individual in search of ultimate reality and meaning of existence. The protagonist Siddhartha, a Hindu Brahman is inquisitive in nature and never satisfied with the religious, ontological and philosophical teachings of Brahmans. There are similarities between Siddhartha’s journey from Hinduism to Nirvana and Jacques Lacan’s journey from “symbolic order” to “The Real”. (Lundell) The objective of both Lacan and Siddhartha is to discover the real essence of human life. Siddhartha called it nirvana while Lacan called it The Real. Siddhartha’s journey is existential because he starts his journey by rejecting the social, religious and cultural norms and beliefs of his society. He rejects the teachings of Hinduism and Brahmanism and follows his subjective and authentic understanding in search of reality. In existentialism the individual free will is more important than the societal norms and ideologies. (J. P. Sartre) No meaning is beyond the existing subjective understanding of a free individual as is most briefly explained by famous Sartrean slogan; “existence precedes essence” (J.-P. Sartre). The journey of Lacan is also existential because he was an atheist and went in search of reality with no essentialist beliefs and relied on his own subjective understanding and freewill. This essay is aimed at an explanation and exploration of Siddhartha’s experiences in the novel in the light of ideas of Jacques Lacan and Jean-Paul Sartre. Moreover, the objective is to draw an easily comprehensible line between the real human existence and it’s political, discursive, ideological, “hyperreal” and false representations. (Baudrillard)