Nicholas D More

Against the many who claim that Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo is useless, madness, or merely inscrutable, my close analysis of the philosopher’s last original composition reveals that his so-called autobiography actually inhabits an ancient literary form: satire. After establishing how to read this much-maligned book, I argue that Ecce Homo gives us the best example of Nietzsche interpreting his own philosophy, and constitutes a rhetorical and therapeutic strategy for him to engage and survive his “dangerous truths” through humor. Finally, I outline the import of reading Nietzsche as a satirist—not only in his final work, but across his corpus.

Scholars still struggle to characterize, evaluate, and understand the mesmerizing prose pieces of Ficciones that raised Jorge Luis Borges to the first ranks of literary fame. Speaking to Philosophy and Literature, Borges once described his work as "the fiction of philosophy," and the two prologues he wrote for Ficciones leave enticing clues about what this means in practice. I argue that these long-neglected prologues open critical space for Ficciones, slyly mocking three idols of literary cant: that genre informs a work, that epic tomes best represent the real, and that great authors write unprecedented books. Borges knew better.

Nietzsche's Ecce Homo was published posthumously in 1908, eight years after his death, and has been variously described ever since as useless, mad, or merely inscrutable. Against this backdrop, Nicholas D. More provides the first complete and compelling analysis of the work, and argues that this so-called autobiography is instead a satire. This form enables Nietzsche to belittle bad philosophy by comic means, attempt reconciliation with his painful past, review and unify his disparate works, insulate himself with humor from the danger of 'looking into abysses', and establish wisdom as a special kind of 'good taste'. After showing how to read this much-maligned book, More argues that Ecce Homo presents the best example of Nietzsche making sense of his own intellectual life, and that its unique and complex parody of traditional philosophy makes a powerful case for reading Nietzsche as a philosophical satirist across his corpus.

The chapter outlines Nietzsche's view of decadence, its history and effects. The philosopher held decadence to be any condition, deceptively thought good, which limits what something or someone can be. This concept informs his critical and affirmative projects, acting as a versatile tool to identify and overcome his own decadence and to resist the decadence of Western culture. Decadence appears in five major areas of concern to Nietzsche: physiology; psychology; art and artists; politics; and philosophy. Physical and mental phenomena provide the substrate of his understanding, but they manifest in cultural, political, and philosophical forms that, in turn, affect the body and mind. In each of the five areas, the concept of decadence for Nietzsche serves 1) to unmask valued cultural phenomena as corrupt, 2) to name and analyze degenerate effects, and 3) to spur reflection on how to respond.

The article explores Nietzsche’s view that the Greek agonistic impulse in sport led to an ancient culture that prized the dialectics of philosophy and its humane offspring. The Greeks did not invent physical contests, but the Olympics are unique in the ancient world for bringing together once and future enemies under formal terms of contest. What did this signify? And what were its consequences? In Nietzsche’s view, the ancient Greek obsession with agon (contest) led to the greatest civilization of the western world. How so? The paper shows how the Greeks learned to “spiritualize” violence and redirect its otherwise destructive power. This aggressive but rule-bound ethos became the competitive force in Greek culture to which we owe the disciplines of philosophy, drama, history, and science,—because each was conceived as a new arena of intellectual or artistic competition on the model of competitive sport.