Ecce Homo

Description

Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche comes with the subtitle How One Becomes What One Is – a subtitle that remarkably summarizes the book and formulates its essence. Written in 1888, the book is the last one written by Nietzsche before his collapse into insanity (according to many critics, he was already suffering from a mental illness at the time he was writing Ecce Homo) and it presents how the philosopher himself saw his own development, his oeuvre and his legacy.

Ecce Homo is certainly one of the most complex and at the same time most disturbing pieces of writing Nietzsche had produced. The chapters of the book bear ironic and strikingly self-laudatory titles such as ‘Why I Write Such Good Books’ or ‘Why I am So Wise’, but the thinker described in the text itself is more characterized by humility towards philosophy and life.

The philosopher reflects not only about his own work, but also upon his childhood memories, his formation years, his tastes as well as upon his vision about the reception of his work by future generations and the future of humanity and human thinking as such. He also provides insights about his other writings, therefore Ecce Homo is an important text for the interpretation of other Nietzsche masterpieces such as The Birth of Tragedy, Twilight of Idols, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and others.

Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo is a slow and difficult read, but well worth the effort. The text is dense, open for many different interpretations and full of references to ancient mythology, to music, as well as to other philosophers. It concludes in a final chapter that is even denser than the rest of the book – in ‘Why I Am Destiny’, Nietzsche’s views on Christianity, Christian morality and his own vocation are formulated in an ecstatic and prophetic way, giving the entire book a provocative, contemplative, satirical, grand and multi-faceted closure.
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