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A review by casparb
Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is; Revised Edition by Friedrich Nietzsche
3.0
3.5 Nietzsche has a thing for titles - Human, All Too Human, Twilight of the Idols, The Birth of Tragedy, The Anti-Christ. Ecce Homo might be his cheekiest, and possibly my favourite in that regard. N is Pilate, Christ, and the Anti-Christ.
It's very unorthodox if we consider it as an autobiography, so perhaps we shouldn't. The meat of the text forms a kind of review or clarification of his own books - Ecce Homo as autobibliography?
There's a lot of variation in interest. Sometimes the details are so trivial that I wonder if Nietzsche is being purely satirical, even insulting: must we know precisely how much tea it is best for the bowels to consume at which time of day? But, as is his way, I think that tends to be made up for in the electric glimpses of something more. There is a very real glimpse of the question of Being as Heidegger would later develop it.
Ecce Homo is therefore something between a curiosity and a necessary revisionary exercise. Interesting but not the most satisfying of his books. I've been meaning to go back to the Genealogy of Morals in order to redeem myself from my initial reaction there.
It's very unorthodox if we consider it as an autobiography, so perhaps we shouldn't. The meat of the text forms a kind of review or clarification of his own books - Ecce Homo as autobibliography?
There's a lot of variation in interest. Sometimes the details are so trivial that I wonder if Nietzsche is being purely satirical, even insulting: must we know precisely how much tea it is best for the bowels to consume at which time of day? But, as is his way, I think that tends to be made up for in the electric glimpses of something more. There is a very real glimpse of the question of Being as Heidegger would later develop it.
Ecce Homo is therefore something between a curiosity and a necessary revisionary exercise. Interesting but not the most satisfying of his books. I've been meaning to go back to the Genealogy of Morals in order to redeem myself from my initial reaction there.