How One Becomes What One Is: Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo"

Ecce Homo was the last book Friedrich Nietzsche wrote before his final mental collapse, and it is one of the strangest autobiographies ever penned. Its subtitle is “How One Becomes What One Is,” and its chapter titles are gleefully, provocatively immodest: “Why I Am So Wise,” “Why I Am So Clever,” “Why I Write Such Good Books,” “Why I Am a Destiny.” Written in a state of soaring, almost feverish exaltation, it is at once a self-portrait, a review of his own works, and a final, defiant statement of his philosophy. There is something poignant and unsettling in reading it, knowing the breakdown that came just after, and yet it contains, in concentrated form, the great affirming ideas of his life’s work.

Here is what Ecce Homo taught me about becoming who you are, about amor fati, and about reading Nietzsche’s self-portrait with both wonder and care.

Key takeaways

• “How one becomes what one is”: the task of realizing one’s true, unique self.
• Amor fati: to love one’s fate, to want nothing to be different.
• Self-affirmation: Nietzsche reviews his own life and work with audacious confidence.
• Saying yes to life in all its difficulty is the culmination of his philosophy.
• Read with care: the exaltation borders on the breakdown that soon followed.

Becoming what you are

The subtitle, “How One Becomes What One Is,” names a paradox at the centre of Nietzsche’s thought. How can one “become” what one already “is”? His answer is that we are not born already ourselves; we have to grow into our own true, individual nature, to realise the unique self we are capable of being, against all the pressures of convention, conformity, and inherited morality that would make us into something generic. To “become what you are” is a lifelong task of self-creation and self-discovery, of shedding the borrowed values and identities laid on us by others and coming, at last, into your own. This is Nietzsche’s deeply individualist ideal, and stripped of his bombast, it is a genuinely inspiring one: the call to become fully, authentically oneself rather than a pale copy of what one is told to be.

Amor fati

The deepest and most beautiful idea in Ecce Homo, and the culmination of Nietzsche’s whole philosophy, is amor fati, “love of fate.” His formula for human greatness, he writes, is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity; not merely to bear what is necessary, but to love it. This is Nietzsche’s ultimate affirmation. After all his attacks on conventional morality and comforting illusions, what he offers in their place is not nihilism but its opposite: a total, joyful yes to life, exactly as it is, with all its suffering, difficulty, and loss. To love your fate is to embrace your whole life, the pain along with the joy, the failures along with the triumphs, so completely that you would not wish a single moment of it otherwise. This is the same idea as the eternal recurrence: to live so that you could will your life back, again and again, forever. It is a staggeringly demanding and strangely moving ideal.

Reading with wonder and care

Ecce Homo must be read with both wonder and care. Its self-celebration is so extreme, the chapter titles so outrageous, that readers have long debated how much is philosophical provocation, deliberate self-mythologising, and how much is the first sign of the manic breakdown that would engulf him within weeks of finishing it. The line between audacious self-affirmation and the loss of self is, here, painfully thin. I find it impossible to read the soaring, exalted confidence of the book without sadness, knowing what came next. And yet this is not a reason to dismiss it. The ideas at its heart, becoming who you are, loving your fate, saying yes to life, are the genuine distillation of Nietzsche’s thought, delivered with a final, blazing intensity. We can hold both things at once: wonder at the philosophy and tenderness toward the man on the edge of the abyss.

What I’m taking with me

Ecce Homo is Nietzsche’s strange, blazing farewell, and beneath its provocations lies the essence of his most affirming thought. What I am taking from it is the demanding ideal of “becoming what you are,” the lifelong task of realising your own true, unique self against the pull of conformity; and above all amor fati, the love of fate, the total yes to one’s whole life, suffering and all, that crowns his philosophy. Read with care, and with compassion for the man who wrote it on the brink of darkness, it leaves me with a question worth carrying: could I love my own life so completely that I would want it back, exactly as it was, again and again?

Frequently asked questions

What is Ecce Homo about?

It is Friedrich Nietzsche’s unconventional autobiography and final book, reviewing his life and works, with the subtitle “How One Becomes What One Is,” and culminating in his affirming idea of amor fati, the love of fate.

What does amor fati mean?

“Love of fate”: Nietzsche’s ideal of wanting nothing in one’s life to be different, embracing and even loving everything that happens, including suffering, as a total affirmation of life.

Why should Ecce Homo be read carefully?

Because its extreme self-celebration borders on the mental breakdown Nietzsche suffered just after writing it, making it hard to separate philosophical provocation from the onset of his collapse. Yet it distills his most affirming ideas.

References & further reading

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo. (Written 1888, published 1908; translated by Walter Kaufmann, 1967, or R. J. Hollingdale, 1979.)
2. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton University Press, 1950.
3. Hollingdale, R. J. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Louisiana State University Press, 1965.