Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1675174 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-28
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
Libro desconcertante y enigmatico, escrito en circunstancias dramaticas --Los editores

Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation)

About the Author
Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. He died in 1900. R.J. Hollingdale translated 11 of Nietzsche's books and published 2 books about him.

Customer Reviews

If only all autobigraphies were like this...
"Ecce Homo, on eof the supreme masterpieces of German prose, is perhaps the strangest 'autobiography' ever written"

"In late 1888, only four weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche (1844-1900) set out to trace his development as a tragic philosopher. He examines the heroes he has identified with, struggled against, and then overcome - Schopenhauer, Wagner, Christ - he predicts the cataclysmic impact of his forthcoming revaluation of all values, and he gives final, definitive expression to his main beliefs. Throughout he employs the range of exuberant but unsettling styles descibed in Michael Tanner's Introduction, 'the high spirits, the manic self-celebrations, the parodistic orgies', which blend with a far more elegiac voice in a way 'that is uniquely moving, especially when one knows that total and permanent breakdown was imminent.'"

Isn't this what we are looking for when we go to read an autbiography? Isn't this the spirit that those who choose to write their autobiographies are interested in? Nietzsche was definitley ahead of his time in this genre of prose...take a look at Martha Stewart and Oprah....

Portrait Of An Ubermensch
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche, clocked in the overt convention of the critical autobiography, lashes out at the practice of divorcing art from action. He takes aim at the reification of the linguistic world, which he believes has grown at the expense of the pre-linguistic world and his quarrel is with those who use words to mediate their experiences in the world in order to deny their own heroic capabilities.

"Saying 'Yes' to life," says Nietzsche, "is its strangest and hardest problem; the will to life rejoicing over its inexhaustibility even in the sacrifice of its highest types--that is what I call Dionysian, that is what I understood as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet." This Dionysian status, he goes on to say, is not gained through "thumbing through books," but by suffering through experience and rejoicing in the vitality of living.

Nietzsche also writes, "In questions of decadence I am experienced." In this he intimates his own experience of life denial through words and his imagery compares intellectual endeavors with physical conditions, e.g. digestion.

"The German spirit," he says, "is an indigestion: it does not finish with anything." Nietzsche uses the human stomach as a metaphor of the reification of the linguistic world. The stomach digests food by breaking it down into its component parts, readily recognizable to physiology but having little to do with the original product.

An orange, after all is not just vitamin C. Furthermore, says Nietzsche, what the body cannot use is rejected as waste product. When disorders of the stomach occur, the body cannot distinguish between waste and nutrient and consequently it churns endlessly, causing distress to the entire organism. Nietzsche, himself, is not embarrassed by his experience of decadence but sees it as something which has given him a special sensitivity to the "signs of ascent and decline."

For Nietzsche, the world is a chaotic place, given order only by the imposition of human will. Humans, in this way, says Nietzsche, create something out of nothing. However, in the face of the "abyss," man creates and acts as if his creation is real, in such a manner as to allow himself the vital and joyous activity of affirming the very importance of his creation. The heroic figure then moves on towards greater acts of creation using each personal, willful creation as a stepping stone, not towards an ultimate goal, but towards other projects. Nietzsche tells us to beware of the organizing "idea" which "...leads back from side roads and wrong roads...as a means towards a whole." The endless road of "becoming" is traveled by a will which is excited and invigorated by its trip, enjoying its stops along the way, but which ultimately has no other purpose but to go further and further as the journey becomes more and more exhausting.

For Nietzsche, the battle is always emphasized over the goal. It is a simple matter, he tells us, to conquer that which is already beneath you. To move beyond that which is your equal is the real test of the will. This is the essential process of "overcoming" which leads one higher and higher, eventually reaching the experience of the "tragic." As the linguistic world becomes more and more complex, its position in relation to nothingness becomes more and more precarious. This situation threatens a fall of apocalyptic proportions, for it is necessary for the tragic aesthetic that there be a certain height to the descent. For Nietzsche, rejoicing in the sacrifice of the highest types is a key element in experiencing tragedy.

"...and whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil, must first be an annihilator and break values." Creation, according to Nietzsche presupposes the willingness to destroy. The order we impose upon the world is a constraint upon us when the time to overcome occurs, and at such times, the spirit of the Ubermensch is needed in order to decimate the linguistic constructs that we have come to depend upon. For original, creative activity to be allowed, there must be nothing available to plagiarize or react against. Nietzsche refers to this resignation in the face of the void as "Russian fatalism" which occurs when the individual no longer attempts to "...accept anything at all--to cease reacting altogether."

In the end, for Nietzsche, nobility of spirit is akin to a meniscus, relying on the tension created by contrasting nothingness with creation. It can tolerate very little unequal pressure; too much and it ruptures. And aesthetically pleasing life is to be sought in that in between area inaccessible to words or to action alone. Ironically, Nietzsche's severe philosophy seems to advocate a kind of moderation. For the truly heroic figure is valued for his ability to live a life in which he moderates the need for order with the desire for creative action. Standing between empowerment and dissolution, as he must, the hero, says Nietzsche, is as deserving of "songs of praise" as is any god.

Wonderful Self-Portrait
Nietzsche's literary addendum to his philosophical oeuvre is, at its root, a radically modern autobiography. Written weeks before his collapse into paralysis, these are the final reflections of cogency from this great thinker; the sections are indeed self-inflated and passionate, with titles like `Why I am So Wise,' and `Why I am So Clever,' etc. However, Nietzsche is finally dubious about his reputation and whether or not he will ever be truly understood. He insists that his name "will be associated with the memory of something tremendous," and indeed it would. His work sought to expose the power structures of old societies and to expose the moral systems of Christianity. Nietzsche's tone is eerily prophetic as he insists that "there will be wars the like of which no one has ever seen," his stylish prose rings of a bold yet hysterical urgency. However, at the foundation of Nietzsche's thought is one of the great and subtle tensions in philosophy, the idea that his negating and destroying are "conditions of saying Yes." This is the difficulty of Nietzsche, who is all too easily categorized as the "Will to Power" philosopher of the modern period. We are still catching up to his profound insight, and this self-analysis should be a window into his genius and original intentions.