Ecce Homo Precis

In Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, his argument throughout each of the four works essentially is that one could break free of the chains of the herd mentality of followers of ideological institutionality by exercising their will to power and the will to health. With the ideas of “health” and illness used throughout his essay, Nietzsche establishes both a literal register as well as a type of metaphoric tension. Using this method of approach, the provided connections are consistent with his actual mental and physical conditions, yet figuratively effective as the condition of having religious “faith” what he refers to as “error” requiring methods of ridding the body and mind of “illness.” Other arguments are made through the use of contradictions that in them contain a message for the reader. In “How One Becomes What One Is” Nietzsche begins the exploration into the self and who he is by identifying what he is not. When paired with what he claims at the end of the piece, that one cannot become what one already is, the title of the first section becomes paradoxical in nature with the concluding idea. This paradox suggests an argument that is to say that, through an examination of what one cannot be, and thus what one has not been and could not become, one arrives at what one is. This meditative exercise of one’s “will to power,” by rejection or “overthrowing” of the ideals, or “idols,” of the ideological institutions of the society in which one finds oneself, is the central theme to his work, and serves as the purpose to which Nietzsche speaks throughout his four sections of Ecce Homo. This intent is pitched primarily to an audience who Nietzsche would consider intellectually“ill” and who seek direction in life apart from the direction of essentially the path that the river current takes them. It is then clearly seen why he begins his first section of “how one becomes what one is” with a brief description of what he is not—with purpose. “I am, for example, by no means a bogey or a moralistic monster.” In saying this, he is not one to impose his morals or will on people, but he is simply “the disciple of Dionysus.” This too serves as a central argument to his works, in which the word “disciple” is a contiguous ironic trope that places Nietzsche in direct opposition to the disciple of the faith and all that goes along with it. As for what he IS, he notes that he is the resident of a place high “…among ice and high mountains...” which is an idea that serves at least two functions. Firstly, it is a reference to the idea of ascendancy through knowledge that occurs diametrically apart from faith. Secondly, it is an ironic stab at the concept of faith, or “error,” that holds ascension in high regard as an act occurring after death. In this way, the irony speaks to his argument that intellectual, cognitive, or spiritual ascension occurs right here on earth, not after we die, through the “courage” to question the aspects of life and through the gaining of knowledge; furthermore, that it is not given to us by an authority external to us.

In “Why I am So Wise,” the main argument is contained within the first body paragraph “as my own father I am dead, as my own mother I still live and grown old.” This is an argument that can be decoded yet again by paradoxical inspection. This is an argument by which he cannot “already be dead” as well as “still live,” so the reader is forced to contend with under what terms could he be dead, as relating to his father, as well as alive, relating to his mother—simultaneously. It is here, and continuously through his discussion in the two subsequent readings of Ecce Homo that he discusses the decline of his health. Granted, that he was in pretty bad shape for a large portion of his life, we as readers must try to make sense of the peculiar nature of how he intertwines his decline of “health” with the avoidance of institutional “decadence”—a recurring theme throughout his books referring to the way in which one is to exercise their “will to power” or “will to health.” An example of this can be seen when Nietzsche writes “…for with every improvement of my general bodily health came a corresponding increase of my power of vision…need I say that I am experienced in questions of decadence?“ From this he discusses three different types of sight that he acquires that alludes to the first, being of the Christian “views” of which he was brought up under by his father who was a priest, a second sight of what he has learned from the first which could be an “anti-“ decadent/Christian view, and a third of an individualistic consciousness that arises out of the juxtaposition of the previous two. Nietzsche, speaking of what he owes his father, writes “What I owe him above all this, that I do not need special intention, but merely patience, in order to voluntarily enter into a world of higher and finer things.” We know that Nietzsche, like Oscar Wilde, is the Icon of irony and a master of metaphor, so when Nietzsche is speaking to us about the patience he owes his father, about figuratively recovering from his illness that he literally never recovered from, and the ways in which we might be able to maintain our health, there might be more figurative words of wisdom that could be uncovered—or at least that’s how I saw things. J It is here that we may interpret what Nietzsche owes his father to be the patience, inspired by his religious upbringing which he alludes to as his figurative “illness” throughout the text, concluding with the realizations necessary to exercise his “will to health;” ultimately granting him his third sight. Nietzsche notes that, similarly to his father, his life declined at the age of 36. Nietzsche was born in 1844, which if “in his thirty-sixth year his health declined,” would put him in the year 1880—the time when he wrote the third addition to his Human, All Too Human called The Wanderer And His Shadow—the first of his pieces of literature that specifically targeted the “decadence” of institutionalized religion apart from the Apollonian-Dionysian distinction of Greek thematics. He undeniably alludes to this connection as he says “…I was then at my lowest ebb. The wanderer and his shadow was the product of this period. There is no doubt that I was familiar with shadows then.” It is with this in mind that a conclusion can be made that substantiates both a literal and figurative interpretation of his illness, as he also refers those others who are in intellectual “error” as “ill.” It is clear that he never got over his physical and mental illness, yet he writes “I placed myself in my own hands, I restored myself to health.” It is at least somewhat clearer now that by this contradiction, through which he invokes his central theme of the “will to health,” that we can validate the argument that a major theme in “Why I am So Wise” is the dual function of the “illness.” Not only does the “illness” serve a dual function as we have shown, but so too does the “will to health” and its components as discussed in the succeeding section of Ecce Homo. His likenesses to his priest father, and the Christian values associated with this figure, are thereby dead through the metaphorical function of his own restoration to health. Perhaps it was because Nietzsche was able to take the severity and, shall we say, “gnarliness” of his true physical and mental illness, and turn it into a new language, through which he could connect his readers to his critique on ideological institutions, that allows us to see deeper into why he is so wise.

The logical extension of the argument of the last section of Ecce Homo regarding the “illness” can be seen in “Why I Am So Clever.” This is an argument in which Nietzsche breaks down the components to his will to health. This is a section within which he prescribes his remedy for what he alludes to as the “illness” of Christian morality being “ye shall not think!” The first of these components is with regard to “…the question of nutrition.” Food is definitely a critical means of achieving and maintaining good health, but if we dig deeper into the figurative nature of Nietzsche’s suggestion, we uncover that this is not simply “The Nietzsche Diet Plan.” Nietzsche tells us that the food he had eaten “up to a very mature age …was quite badly expressed in moral terms, it was ‘impersonal,’ ‘selfless,’ altruistic,’ to the glory of cooks and other fellow-Christians.” It is here that the reader gets a sense of the figurative nature of Nietzsche’s ideas of proper digestion and the upkeep of the body and mind through the “Will to Health.” Nietzsche provides the reader with ideas that convey literal meanings of food consumption, but can be interpreted as notions that stress the importance of one’s will to ingest anything one chooses to and the direct influence of those things ingested and their effect on the body, mind, and soul. It is indeed clever how Nietzsche can speak to us in this way when he notes that he is therefore “an opponent of vegetarianism,” given that “A heavy meal is digested more easily than one that is too meager. The first condition of a good digestion is that the stomach should be active as a whole. Therefore a man ought to know the size of his stomach.” If we maintain that Nietzsche is speaking to his readers in this figurative catachrestic fashion, then this passage serves as the necessity for one to know the capacity of his mind before accepting information of little to no substance that might work against him, than of the “heavier” type of information of which is sought out on one’s own that overwhelms him and favors him—as is the case with literal digestion. Nietzsche continues to oppose the consumption of alcohol for substituting it for water; for “water answers the same purpose” of thirst but, unlike the wine and what wine metaphorically represents, does not disorient the body and souls in which it is being digested. This figuratively shows the effect that occurs within the body when consuming “substantial” information that shares the same qualities of water—such information that is clear, simple, yet beautifully fluid and understandable. Relating to the metaphorical ascension up Nietzsche’s mountain, the argument here is that for one to exercise one’s “will to power” and “will to health,” one must “courageously” consume and digest a healthy serving of knowledge to stay intellectually healthy. With this in mind, it is in the most metaphorical way possible that Nietzsche stresses to the world that it is vitally important that one be aware and regulatory of the information that one digests; for one’s body, mind, soul, and “will to health” depend on this in order to treat one’s “illness.” The second component of Nietzsche’s remedy to preserve one’s “will to health” is “…closely related to that of locality and climate.” It is here that he tells us essentially that the places in which we live and the associations of people in which we emerge ourselves are entirely critical for a person’s well being; that one must not eat or live in a place that gives you inadequate food and that, by living there, makes digestion difficult. As we extract meaning from the greater power of this idea’s metaphorical meaning, however, we see that this is not simply the “Nietzsche Traveler’s Guide to Europe.” Nietzsche, by noting that “Germany, alone, is more than enough to discourage the strongest and most heroic intestines…indeed spirit itself is only a form of these bodily functions,” he alludes to his readers that where one resides is crucial to one’s spiritual soundness or “will to health.” In other words, if one is to be fully “able” to exercise one’s will to live by one’s own standards apart from religious value standards, that living in “disastrous places” that are highly religious or Christian in societal values isn’t a great idea. This indeed explains, for one, why Nietzsche roamed from city to city in Europe, and secondly, that “it was ‘illness’ that first bright [me] to reason” to relocate as such. The third component “…concerns the method of recuperation and recreation.” This component, referred to predominately as the importance of reading or “by intercourse with books,” in another imperative to establishing and maintaining optimal “health;” for it is the choice of literature that “enables me to escape.” As before, however, if the reader digs deeper into what Nietzsche is telling us, we find that this is not a subscription to a “Nietzsche Reader’s Digest.” It is the authors of not just the Bible, but also the other philosophical essays of Delacroix, Berlioz, and Wagner, that contribute to “illness” that Nietzsche argues, “…who are essentially sick and incurable” themselves. In this section the theme is that one ought to exercise one’s will to power by reading the books one wishes to read whenever they wish to read them, instead of being spoon-fed books that construct “a destiny” by the one holding the spoon. It is Wagner, however, that Nietzsche admires as “…the greatest benefactor of my life…” through what Nietzsche argues is a worthy opponent to his views. Lastly, as a part of this third segment of “Why I Am So Clever,” Nietzsche tends to the symptoms and “instincts of disease” that brings his metaphorical “illness” argument closer into focus than at any other previous point in Ecce Homo. He describes these symptoms as “fantasies…lies…all the concepts of ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘sin,’ beyond,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘eternal life’…All questions of politics, of social order, of education, have been falsified from top to bottom, because the most harmful men have taken for great men.” These are the individuals who Nietzsche, through his metaphoric approach, argues have degraded society by aggravating our intellectual digestion to which one must eat healthily to combat; who have regionally spread like a plague to which one must choose a different climate to allow one to be free from multitude; and who have produced literature that invades the body and soul to which one must choose books that free ones own mind. All of these components are metaphorically expressed by Nietzsche in a clear and powerful way that allow for one to exercise “will to health” through the practice of seeing themselves as their own “destiny.”

As the fourth and final element to Nietzsche’s argument, it is critical that one not believes in oneself but knows oneself. Through knowing oneself, Nietzsche argues that one is in control of one’s own fate and one’s destiny. In knowing his fate, Nietzsche properly titles this fourth section of Ecce Homo as “Why I Am a Fatality (or destiny).” In this sense, to know one’s fate, is to live life in a way that takes its course with the one living that life at the drivers seat. It is to not offer up their “will to life” to an external agent, nor is it to put faith in the unknown. Using himself as an example, in this section, Nietzsche need not believe in himself because he is certain of himself. This certainty, not only in oneself but also in the power one has to change the course of ones own life, is what Nietzsche defines as “the truth.” “The truth speaks out of me—But my truth is terrible; for so far one has called lies truth.” This contradiction forces the readers to critique the terms of “terrible” and “truth.” The reverse effect of what the reader would expect from these terms is induced by the equivalency between lies and truth; in doing so, anything that could be considered terrible, by a society that disguises lies for truths, becomes a thing to be desired. The unique use of the concept of “terrible” in this way fits the claim of Nietzsche’s argument—that he is the author of his own destiny. He argues further that what is considered “good” for those institutions in society that have decided what is “good” and “evil” for one and all others can only be “evil.” Nietzsche alludes to Christian morality when discussing these institutions that cause its followers to say “no” to concepts of the self. He advises “…the only good-natured herd animals…” who follow institutional doctrines to lead their own lives instead by “saying yes” to their “will to heath” and to eliminate true “evil” prevailing at the expense of “truth” and of the future. Finally, when Nietzsche explains “Christian morality has been the Circe of all thinkers so far…”he uses severely descriptive metonymical device used to further illustrate what he is arguing. It is here that contact is made between Christian morality and the beckoning seductive temptress of Greek Mythology who transforms the men that wander into her cave into pigs for her own consumption.

In conclusion, we have looked to Nietzsche’s general argument of Ecce Homo by seeking a better understanding of the figurative and literal registers of his “illness.” We have analyzed Nietzsche’s concept of “illness,” and furthermore, how one’s “will to health” might be achieved through the breaking down into its further metaphorical constituents of proper nutrition, climate/location, and recreational reading. It is the function of Ecce Homo to stimulate the reader’s sense of identity in the world apart from the chains of ideological institutions. Nietzsche’s rebirth, after the death of the Christian likenesses of his father, stimulated his will to live life as one’s own destiny and to not be mistaken for someone else.