Nietzsche’s “Ecce Homo” ed. by Nicholas Martin and Duncan Large (review)

The volume consists of twenty-one essays, many of which were part of a conference organized by the editors. Although the authors were apparently given the opportunity to revise their presentations, the collection retains the vibrancy of oral presentations. This seems entirely fitting given that the collection focuses on a short, cheerful book, one in which scholars are distinguished from professors (Branco, 329–30). The collection’s organization somewhat follows the structure of EH. Like Nietzsche’s book, Martin and Large’s collection begins with their introduction, which is followed by Daniel Conway’s discussion of the intercalated passage (“On this perfect day . . .”). “Why I am So Wise,” arguably the closest EH comes to a traditional autobiography, finds its parallel in section I, “Ecce Homo: Autobiography and Subjectivity,” with essays by Anthony K. Jensen, Kathleen Merrow, Aaron Parrett, André van der Braak, and Rebecca Bamford. My attempt to parallel EH with the collection is a bit forced at this point, as “Why I am so Clever” would be section II, “Specific Concepts in Ecce Homo,” with contributions from Paul Bishop, Katrina Mitcheson, Julia S. Happ, and Carol Diethe. But the parallelism strengthens in the third section. In place of Nietzsche’s “Why I Write such Good Books,” there is “Ecce Homo in Relation to Nietzsche’s Other Writings,” which includes essays by Frank Chouraqui, Paul S. Loeb, and Thomas Brobjer. “Why I am a Destiny” requires two sections, section IV, “Revaluation and Revolution,” and section V, “Inspiration, Madness and Extremity,” the latter concluding with Werner Stegmaier’s careful analysis of the opening paragraph of “Why I am a Destiny.” Before that are entries by Martine Prange, C. Heike Schotten, Yannick Souladié, Maria João Mayer Branco, John F. Whitmire Jr., Martin Liebscher, and Duncan Large.

While all the contributions involve EH, they do so to varying extents. Stegmaier focuses nearly exclusively on the opening section of “Why I am a Destiny.” Large does a word-level analysis of the paragraph of “Wise” 3 that “Montinari substituted in 1969” (380), comparing it with sections from BT and Z. Others (e.g., Merrow, van der Braak, Schotten, Diethe, Loeb) range over the entire book. Still others (e.g., Bamford, Mitcheson, Happ, Chouraqui, Brobjer, Prange, Souladié) spend at least as much time on Nietzsche’s other works. At the other extreme, Liebscher focuses on the history of EH as we have it and its reception relative to Erich Friedrich Podach’s work. More commonly, though, the contributors connect EH with Nietzsche’s other writings, authorized publications and not. Chouraqui deserves special note for focusing on Schopenhauer as Educator, surely one of the most neglected of Nietzsche’s texts. Others connect EH with other philosophical writings, such as Augustine’s Confessions (Parrett), Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (Bishop), Plato’s Ion (Branco), and some of the work of Thomas J. J. Altizer (Whitmire). Certainly, the editors have achieved their goal of “illuminat[ing] Nietzsche’s text from a wide variety of perspectives” (2). This richness indicates that the study of EH has greatly matured. It wasn’t that long ago that scholars generally cited it only for a biographical snippet or, as Kaufmann suggests, “Nietzsche on Nietzsche.”

Given the number of contributions, it is impossible to summarize each; moreover, there is no need to do so as each essay includes an abstract in addition to the traditional editors’ summary in the introduction. What I propose to do instead is to give a précis of how the contributions address the more common objections to taking EH seriously as a work of philosophy that have been lodged against it since its publication over a century ago. Since readers pursuing particular projects related to EH can find the essays of interest using the editors’ introduction and the abstracts (though alas the index may fall short of being helpful, on which, more...