Ecce Homo

The subtitle of this book is "How one becomes what one is." This is clarified somewhat in Nietzsche's Preface, which seems reminiscent in mood to Ralph Ellison's great novel Invisible Man. As Nietzsche puts it, "I only need to speak to one of the 'educated' who come to the Upper Engadine for the summer, and I am convinced that I do not live." Clearly, Nietzsche continued to be plagued by doubts about his "readership."

Ecce Homo was begun on Nietzsche's forty-fourth birthday, October 15, 1888. It is full of concern for self-definition. Was the intended audience Nietzsche himself or the public that was not reading him? Between the Preface and the first chapter, he writes, "How could I fail to be grateful for my whole life? --- and so I tell my life to myself." And what does it mean to question "how one becomes what one is"? Is it consistent with Nietzsche's thought itself to even suggest a "what" that "one is . . "? Indeed, perhaps the emphasis belongs on 'becomes' because that is what Nietzsche always takes as the issue. As Nietzsche observed long before, we do not have to struggle for survival; we are; one is in the present. It is becoming, then, that takes all the effort. One could say, "becoming what one will be," except that the eternal present -- the "is" -- is the image given us in Nietzsche's concept of the Eternal Recurrence. In a sense, it is Nietzsche's "arrival" that he celebrates here; it is a hard-won arrival. Nor is "arrival" ever a landing in a solid and changeless place. All possible presents are arrivals; the emphasis is on the work required, the effort expended.

One of his most revealing remarks, perhaps -- "I turned my will to health, to life, into a philosophy." And following this is an amazing description of Nietzsche himself. ("Why I Am So Wise," #2)

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