Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
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Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) - Friedrich Nietzsche
The Complete Works of
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
VOLUME 23 OF 24
Ecce Homo
Parts Edition
By Delphi Classics, 2015
Version 1
COPYRIGHT
‘Ecce Homo’
Friedrich Nietzsche: Parts Edition (in 24 parts)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2017.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 78877 874 9
Delphi Classics
is an imprint of
Delphi Publishing Ltd
Hastings, East Sussex
United Kingdom
Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com
www.delphiclassics.com
Friedrich Nietzsche: Parts Edition
This eBook is Part 23 of the Delphi Classics edition of Friedrich Nietzsche in 24 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Ecce Homo from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.
Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Friedrich Nietzsche or the Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche in a single eBook.
Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
IN 24 VOLUMES
Parts Edition Contents
The Philosophical Writings
1, Homer and the Classical Philology
2, On the Future of Our Educational Institutions
3, The Greek State and Other Fragments
4, The Relation Between a Schopenhauerian Philosophy and a German Culture
5, Homer’s Contest
6, The Birth of Tragedy
7, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
8, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
9, Thoughts Out of Season
10, Human, All Too Human
11, The Dawn of Day
12, The Joyful Wisdom
13, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
14, Beyond Good and Evil
15, The Genealogy of Morals
16, The Case of Wagner
17, The Twilight of the Idols
18, The Antichrist
19, Nietzsche Contra Wagner
20, The Will to Power
21, We Philologists
The Poetry
22, Collected Poems
The Autobiography
23, Ecce Homo
The Criticism
24, The Criticism
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Ecce Homo
HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS
Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici
This 1888 autobiography was the last complete book written Nietzsche, before his final years of insanity, which were to last until his death in 1900. The book presents Nietzsche’s own interpretation of his development and works, while charting his significance in the history of philosophy. The book is well-known for its ironic self-laudatory titles, such as Why I Am So Wise
, Why I Am So Clever
, Why I Write Such Good Books
and Why I Am a Destiny
. However, Ecce Homo is a personal reflection of Nietzsche’s humility as a philosopher, writer and thinker, offering interesting parallel’s to Plato’s Apology.
In the book, Nietzsche self-consciously strives to present a new image of the philosopher and of himself, as neither an Alexandrian academic nor an Apollonian sage, but instead a Dionysian. Nietzsche argues that he is a great philosopher due to his withering assessment of the pious fraud of the entirety of philosophy, which he considers as a retreat from honesty when most necessary and a cowardly failure to pursue its stated aim to a reasonable end. He insists that his suffering is not noble but the expected result of hard inquiry into the deepest recesses of human self-deception and that by overcoming one’s agonies a person achieves more than any relaxation or accommodation to intellectual difficulties. Nietzsche goes on to proclaim the ultimate value of everything that has happened to him, including his father’s early death and his near-blindness. In this regard, the wording of his title was not meant to draw parallels with Jesus, but suggest a contrast, that Nietzsche truly is a man.
Nietzsche’s point is that to be a man
alone is to be more than a Christ
.
Nietzsche in 1899
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
NOTE
ECCE HOMO
WHY I AM SO CLEVER
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN
THE DAWN OF DAY: THOUGHTS ABOUT MORALITY AS A PREJUDICE
JOYFUL WISDOM: LA GAYA SCIENZA
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA: A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: THE PRELUDE TO A PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS: A POLEMIC
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS: How TO PHILOSOPHISE WITH THE HAMMER
THE CASE OF WAGNER: A MUSICIAN’S PROBLEM
WHY I AM A FATALITY
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra Wagner was prepared a month later than the Autobiography; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as anything more than a compilation, seeing that it consists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous works as Joyful Wisdom, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, etc. Coming at the end of a year in which he had produced the Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist, Ecce Homo is not only a coping-stone worthy of the wonderful creations of that year, but also a fitting conclusion to his whole life, in the form of a grand summing up of his character as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and his achievement as a thinker. As if half conscious of his approaching spiritual end, Nietzsche here bids his friends farewell, just in the manner in which, in the Twilight of the Idols (Aph. 36, Part ix.), he declares that every one should be able to take leave of his circle of relatives and intimates when his time seems to have come — that is to say, while he is still himself while he still knows what he is about, and is able to measure his own life and life in general, and speak of both in a manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning invalid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and exhausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting disease. Nietzsche’s spiritual death, like his whole life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine: he died suddenly and proudly, — sword in hand. War, which he — and he alone among all the philosophers of Christendom — had praised so whole-heartedly, at last struck him down in the full vigour of his manhood, and left him a victim on the battlefield — the terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet been established or even thought of.
To those who know Nietzsche’s life-work, no apology will be needed for the form and content of this wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the significance of what he has accomplished, and that if he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chapter headings as Why I am so Wise,
Why I am a Fatality,
Why I write such Excellent Books,
— however much they may have disturbed the equanimity, and objectivity
in particular, of certain Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as pathological only in a democratic age in which people have lost all sense of gradation and rank, and in which the virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached I far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pretensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For little people can be endured only as modest citizens or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a like modesty on the part of the truly great; if they raise their voices against Nietzsche’s lack of the very virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to possess, it is time to remind them of Goethe’s famous remark: "Nur Lumpe sind bescheiden (Only nobodies are ever modest). it took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this story of his life. Begun on the 15 th of October 1888, his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the 4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietzsche left it. It was not published in Germany until the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche’s death. In a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares the object of the work to be to dispose of all discussion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own personality, in order to leave the public mind free to consider merely
the things for the sake of which he existed (
die Dingey derentwegen ich da bin"). And, true to his intention, Nietzsche’s honesty in these pages is certainly one of the most remarkable features about them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly acknowledges the decadent elements within him, to the last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one symbol, Dionysus versus Christ, — everything comes straight from the shoulder, without hesitation, without fear of consequences, and, above all, without concealment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal something, and then he actually leads one to understand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner, the greatest friend of his life. Who doubts,
he says, that I. old artillery-man that I am, would be able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner?
— But he adds: Everything decisive in this question I kept to myself — I have loved Wagner
(p. 122).
To point, as many have done, to the proximity of all Nietzsche’s autumn work of the year 1888 to his breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and to argue that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little too obvious and simple to require refutation. That Nietzsche really was in a state which in medicine is known as euphoria — that is to say, that state of highest well-being and capacity which often precedes a complete breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned; for his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigour, reach their zenith in the works written in this autumn of 1888; but the contention that the matter, the substance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever of waning mental health, or, as a certain French biographer has it of an inability to hold himself and his judgments in check,
is best contradicted by the internal evidence itself. To take just a few examples at random, examine the cold and calculating tone of self-analysis in Chapter I. of the present work; consider the reserve and the restraint with which the idea in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out, — not to speak of the restraint and self-mastery in the idea itself, namely: —
"To be one’s enemy’s equal — this is the first condition of an honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war. Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one, one ought not to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four principles: First, I attack only things that are triumphant — if necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find no allies, against which I stand alone — against which I compromise nobody but myself.... Thirdly, I never make personal attacks — I use a personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more apparent.... Fourthly, I attack only those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing as a