Abstract

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche flaunts his credentials to convince his readers to take him seriously. At the same time, he needs to counteract the human herd instinct. In the works of 1888, Nietzsche diagnoses humanity as approaching the enervated state of the last men. Nietzsche knows that he is similarly afflicted, so he must do what he can to avoid spreading an infected teaching while trying to improve his readers' health. At the end of "Why I Am So Clever," he mentions amor fati. By the time his readers reach this section, Nietzsche has made it clear that he has failed to live up to the ideal of amor fati. This failure forces them to question whether he has failed because it's a poor teaching or whether the teaching is a healthy one despite his failings. In either case, Nietzsche succeeds in getting his readers to focus on the teaching, not the teacher.

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