Ecce homo (Nietzsche)
Ecce homo. How one becomes what one is is an autobiographical work by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche . Nietzsche worked on the work from October 1888 until his collapse in early 1889, which was first published in 1908 on behalf of the Nietzsche Archives . It has not been passed on completely and in its form recognized today has only been known since the 1970s.
In Ecce homo Nietzsche gives retrospective interpretations of his philosophical writings and presents himself and his findings as fateful events of earth-shattering magnitude. The themes of his late work , especially the criticism of Christianity and the announced “revaluation of all values”, are in the foreground.
There are different views on how credible Nietzsche's representations are and how much the writing is already influenced by his mental illness . Nonetheless, Nietzsche's self-interpretations in Ecce homo were often taken as the starting point for further biographical and philosophical interpretations of his work. As Nietzsche's last major work - the smaller works Nietzsche contra Wagner and Dionysus dithyrambs , which were created at the same time, are essentially compiled from older material - it occupies a special position in Nietzsche's reception . The usual seal of the book is EH .
content
title
The title alludes to two classic phrases: According to the Bible, " ecce homo " (look, what a person!) Said Pontius Pilate about Jesus Christ . The subtitle “How one becomes what one is” goes back to Pindar's sentence “Become who you are” (from the Pythian Odes ), which Nietzsche had already quoted in earlier works. He had already given the title Ecce homo to a little poem in the happy science .
- Yes i know where i am from
- Unsaturated like the flame
- I glow and consume myself.
- Light becomes everything I can grasp
- Coal everything I leave
- I am certainly flame.
Overview
Nietzsche writes in the foreword that he wanted to explain to the world who he was in order not to be confused. He contrasts the size of his task with the smallness of his contemporaries, who would have misunderstood him. He is not a bogeyman, “more of a satyr […] than a saint”, not a sage, not a world savior or improver, not a fanatic or idealist; As evidence, he quotes, as is often the case in the book, some passages from Also Spoke Zarathustra . This is followed by a short personal section (" On this perfect day [...] ").
The remaining chapters are headed as follows:
- Why I am so wise
- Why i'm so smart
- Why I write such good books
- Birth of a tragedy
- The untimely
- humanly, all-to-humanly
- Dawn
- the happy Science
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Beyond Good and Evil
- Genealogy of Morals
- Twilight of the Idols
- The Wagner case
- Why I am a destiny
In the chapter Why I am so wise , Nietzsche describes himself as a dual nature who is capable of both a decadent "sick look" and great health. He personifies this contrast in his parents, and he believes that he owes much to his father in particular . Nietzsche sees himself as fundamentally healthy: This has enabled him to gain knowledge and benefit from his various diseases. For example, he only understood “resentment” (see especially on the genealogy of morality ) because he experienced it “out of strength and out of weakness”.
Nietzsche then protests in the chapter Why I am so clever against the previous religions and philosophies that dealt with supposedly big, but actually unimportant questions and have set up ideals that are unrealistic. The apparently small things are much more important: the question of the right diet, the right choice of location, the climate, the type of relaxation, questions of personal taste in literature and music - here Nietzsche brings in some culturally critical bon motes - and finally suitable means of "selfishness and self-discipline".
“[T] his little things - food, place, climate, relaxation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are more important than anything that was previously taken important. You have to start relearning right now . What mankind has seriously considered so far are not even realities, mere imaginations, more strictly speaking, lies out of the bad instincts of sick, in the deepest sense harmful natures - all the terms "God", "soul", "virtue", “Sin”, “Beyond”, “Truth”, “Eternal Life.”… But one has sought the greatness of human nature, its “divinity” in them… All questions of politics, social order, education are thereby up to falsified in the ground that one took the most harmful people for great people - that one taught to despise the "small" things, that is to say the basic affairs of life itself ... "
Nietzsche introduces the chapter Why I Write Such Good Books by stating that his writings have not yet been understood by anyone, provided that anyone had noticed them at all. The few reviews of his writings that have appeared so far (namely by Joseph Victor Widmann and Carl Spitteler ) are completely wrong. Nietzsche then goes into questions of style and emphasizes his psychological findings.
Nietzsche then gives comments and interpretations on his writings, from the birth of tragedy to the fall of Wagner and the Twilight of the Idols . (The writing The Antichrist wanted to publish that Nietzsche later missing here as well as the same time as Ecce homo incurred Nietzsche contra Wagner and Dionysus Dithyrambs .) Nietzsche these meetings uses for treating other issues, particularly his relationship with Richard Wagner , he discussed several times . The most detailed is the discussion of Zarathustra , whom he depicts in several respects as the high point of his work.
In the last chapter, Why I am a fate , Nietzsche writes about the supposedly earth-shaking significance of his late philosophy, the revaluation of all values . He describes himself as an "immoralist" whose insights would lead to major upheavals:
“The discovery of Christian morality is an unparalleled event, a real catastrophe. Who enlightened about them, is a force majeure, a fate - he breaks the history of mankind in two pieces. One lives before him, one lives after him ... The lightning bolt of truth hit what was the highest point so far: whoever understands what was destroyed there, can see whether he has anything left in his hands at all. Everything that was previously called “truth” is recognized as the most harmful, most insidious, most subterranean form of lie; the sacred pretext to "improve" mankind than the ruse to suck life itself out, to make it anemic. "
Nietzsche asks several times: “Has I been understood?” He closes with the symbolic contrast: “ Dionysus versus the crucified ”.
According to today's research, Nietzsche had two further, short sections entitled Declaration of War and The Hammer Redet removed from the manuscript shortly before the outbreak of his madness.
Emergence
Nietzsche decided on his 44th birthday, October 15, 1888, to write an autobiography. Nietzsche always had a certain inclination towards autobiographical considerations; at the age of 14 he had already written his first such text from my life .
In 1888 he had completed the Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist ; he was, at least according to his own statements, in a downright euphoric, hard-working mood. A first version was ready at the beginning of November and was sent to his publisher Naumann in Leipzig. In the following two months, however, Nietzsche made extensive additions and changes; he worked on the script until his collapse in early January 1889. In Nietzsche's letters from this period, increasing signs of megalomania and other delusions can be recognized, as can also be seen in some passages in Ecce homo . Nietzsche's retrospective self-descriptions have been proven by research in some cases to be astonishingly precise, in others again as clearly stylized or simply erroneous. At that time Nietzsche was actually convinced of its historical significance and saw great events coming; he also settled accounts with unusual accuracy with acquaintances such as Hans von Bülow , Malwida von Meysenbug and his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche .
The exact genesis of the text is quite complicated. In December Nietzsche also worked on Nietzsche contra Wagner and the Dionysus dithyrambs and almost daily changed his mind about which sections should be included in which book and which should be printed at all. Mazzino Montinari presented an exact genesis of the text .
After Nietzsche's collapse, printing of the work was canceled; Heinrich Köselitz got the material from the printer and made a copy in February / March 1889. This "editorial version" Köselitz 'agrees with the surviving manuscript, but Köselitz frankly wrote Franz Overbeck that in his copy he left out "passages which even give me the impression of excessive self-intoxication or even excessive contempt and injustice". These passages - as well as some of the drafts and variants that Nietzsche himself rejected, such as the section “Declaration of War” - were apparently destroyed in the Nietzsche archive in later years .
literature
expenditure
See Nietzsche edition for general information.
- In the by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari founded Critical Edition is Ecce Homo can be found in
- Department VI, Volume 3 (together with Der Fall Wagner , Götzen-Dämmerung , Der Antichrist , the Dionysus dithyrambs and Nietzsche contra Wagner ), ISBN 978-3-11-002554-5 . A follow-up report , ie critical apparatus, is not yet available.
- The same text is provided by the Critical Study Edition ( KSA ) in Volume 6 (together with the same other writings by Nietzsche). The volume KSA 6 is also published as a single volume under ISBN 978-3-423-30156-5 . The associated apparatus can be found in the commentary volume ( KSA 14 ), pp. 454-512.
- 1985 of Montinari and the then head of the published Goethe and Schiller Archive Karl-Heinz Hahn published facsimile edition of the print manuscript obtained by transcription and comment: Edition Leipzig , Leipzig, 1985; License issue at Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 1985, ISBN 3-88226-225-7 .
- Mention should be made of the edition of Der Antichrist , Ecce Homo sic and the Dionysos dithyrambs published by Goldmann Verlag with an afterword and comments by Peter Pütz and a bibliography, ISBN 3-442-07511-4 . The text apparently follows the Schlechta edition and is therefore not up to date (especially in the section “On this perfect day” and section 3 of “Why I am so wise”).
Secondary literature
- Hans-Martin Gauger : Nietzsche's style using the example of “Ecce homo”, in: Nietzsche Studies 13 (1984), pp. 332–355.
- Sarah Kofman : Explosion I: De l '"Ecce homo" de Nietzsche, Paris 1992.
- Andreas Urs Sommer : Commentary on Nietzsche's Der Antichrist. Ecce homo. Dionysus dithyrambs. Nietzsche contra Wagner (= Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (ed.): Historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works, Vol. 6/2), Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2013. ( ISBN 978-3-11-029277-0 ) (new standard comment, comments on every single text passage in detail).
Web links
- Full text
- at Nietzsche Source , Colli / Montinari edition
- Literature on Ecce homo , directory of the Weimar Nietzsche bibliography
Individual evidence
Nietzsche's works are cited according to the Critical Study Edition (KSA) .
- ↑ Menschliches, Allzumenschliches , Fifth Chapter, Aphorism 263 (KSA 2, p. 219); The happy science , Third Book, Aphorism 270 (KSA 3, p. 519); see. also ibid., fourth book, aphorism 335 (KSA 3, p. 563).
- ↑ KSA 3, p. 367.
- ↑ Preface, Section 2 (KSA 6, p. 258.)
- ^ In the commentary volume of the KSA and in the commentary on the facsimile edition, see literature .
- ↑ Köselitz to Overbeck, February 27, 1889, quoted from KSA 14, p. 459.
