Becoming Who You Are: Nietzsche on Self-Creation

In this article, I examine Nietzsche's doctrine of self-creation as he develops it from Schopenhauer as Educator through Gay Science (GS). While many scholars have tackled this topic, they have generally focused on a few well-known snippets from Nietzsche's works without putting them in the context of Nietzsche's carefully wrought texts or philosophical development as a whole. Nietzsche's doctrine of self-creation receives its clearest articulation in GS IV, but in order to understand that doctrine fully, I trace its genesis in the writings leading up to GS. Doing so allows me to shed light on long-standing puzzles about Nietzsche's understanding of authenticity, the relationship between self-creation and his so-called fatalism, and the nature and limits of his commitment to the aesthetic model of the self.