Preface
Original German
Ecce homo
Wie man wird – was man ist
1 In Voraussicht, dass ich über Kurzem mit der schwersten Forderung an die Menschheit herantreten muß, die je an sie gestellt wurde, scheint es mir unerläßlich, zu sagen, wer ich bin. Im Grunde dürfte man’s wissen: denn ich habe mich nicht „unbezeugt gelassen“. Das Mißverhältniß aber zwischen der Größe meiner Aufgabe und der Kleinheit meiner Zeitgenossen ist darin zum Ausdruck gekommen, daß man mich weder gehört, noch auch nur gesehn hat. Ich lebe auf meinen eignen Credit hin, es ist vielleicht bloß ein Vorurtheil, daß ich lebe?… Ich brauche nur irgend einen „Gebildeten“ zu sprechen, der im Sommer in’s Ober-Engadin kommt, um mich zu überzeugen, daß ich nicht lebe… Unter diesen Umständen giebt es eine Pflicht, gegen die im Grunde meine Gewohnheit, noch mehr der Stolz meiner Instinkte revoltirt, nämlich zu sagen: Hört mich! denn ich bin der und der. Verwechselt mich vor Allem nicht!
2 Ich bin zum Beispiel durchaus kein Popanz, kein Moral-Ungeheuer, – ich bin sogar eine Gegensatz-Natur zu der Art Mensch, die man bisher als tugendhaft verehrt hat. Unter uns, es scheint mir, daß gerade Das zu meinem Stolz gehört. Ich bin ein Jünger des Philosophen Dionysos, ich zöge vor, eher noch ein Satyr zu sein, als ein Heiliger. Aber man lese nur diese Schrift. Vielleicht gelang es mir, vielleicht hatte diese Schrift gar keinen andren Sinn, als diesen Gegensatz in einer heitren und menschenfreundlichen Weise zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Das Letzte, was ich versprechen würde, wäre, die Menschheit zu „verbessern“. Von mir werden keine neuen Götzen aufgerichtet; die alten mögen lernen, was es mit thönernen Beinen auf sich hat. Götzen – mein Wort für Ideale – umwerfen, das gehört schon eher zu meinem Handwerk. Man hat die Realität in dem Grade um ihren Werth, ihren Sinn, ihre Wahrhaftigkeit gebracht, als man eine ideale Welt erlog… Die „wahre Welt“ und die „scheinbare Welt“ – auf deutsch: die erlogene Welt und die Realität… Die Lüge des Ideals war bisher der Fluch über der Realität, die Menschheit selbst ist durch sie bis in ihre untersten Instinkte hinein verlogen und falsch geworden, bis zur Anbetung der umgekehrten Werthe, als die sind, mit denen ihr erst das Gedeihen, die Zukunft, das hohe Recht auf Zukunft verbürgt wäre.
3 Wer die Luft meiner Schriften zu athmen weiß, weiß, daß es eine Luft der Höhe ist, eine starke Luft. Man muß für sie geschaffen sein, sonst ist die Gefahr keine kleine, sich in ihr zu erkälten. Das Eis ist nahe, die Einsamkeit ist ungeheuer – aber wie ruhig alle Dinge im Lichte liegen! wie frei man athmet! wie Viel man unter sich fühlt! – Philosophie, wie ich sie bisher verstanden und gelebt habe, ist das freiwillige Leben in Eis und Hochgebirge – das Aufsuchen alles Fremden und Fragwürdigen im Dasein, alles dessen, was durch die Moral bisher in Bann gethan war. Aus einer langen Erfahrung, welche eine solche Wanderung im Verbotenen gab, lernte ich die Ursachen, aus denen bisher moralisirt und idealisirt wurde, sehr anders ansehn als es erwünscht sein mag: Die verborgene Geschichte der Philosophen, die Psychologie ihrer großen Namen kam für mich an’s Licht. – Wie viel Wahrheit erträgt, wie viel Wahrheit wagt ein Geist? das wurde für mich immer mehr der eigentliche Werthmesser. Irrthum (– der Glaube an’s Ideal –) ist nicht Blindheit, Irrthum ist Feigheit… Jede Errungenschaft, jeder Schritt vorwärts in der Erkenntniß folgt aus dem Muth, aus der Härte gegen sich, aus der Sauberkeit gegen sich… Ich widerlege die Ideale nicht, ich ziehe bloß Handschuhe vor ihnen an… Nitimur in vetitum: in diesem Zeichen siegt einmal meine Philosophie, denn man verbot bisher grundsätzlich immer nur die Wahrheit. –
4 Innerhalb meiner Schriften steht für sich mein Zarathustra. Ich habe mit ihm der Menschheit das größte Geschenk gemacht, das ihr bisher gemacht worden ist. Dies Buch, mit einer Stimme über Jahrtausende hinweg, ist nicht nur das höchste Buch, das es giebt, das eigentliche Höhenluft-Buch – die ganze Thatsache Mensch liegt in ungeheurer Ferne unter ihm –, es ist auch das tiefste, das aus dem innersten Reichthum der Wahrheit heraus geborene, ein unerschöpflicher Brunnen, in den kein Eimer hinabsteigt, ohne mit Gold und Güte gefüllt heraufzukommen. Hier redet kein „Prophet“, keiner jener schauerlichen Zwitter von Krankheit und Willen zur Macht, die man Religionsstifter nennt. Man muß vor Allem den Ton, der aus diesem Munde kommt, diesen halkyonischen Ton richtig hören, um dem Sinn seiner Weisheit nicht erbarmungswürdig Unrecht zu thun. „Die stillsten Worte sind es, welche den Sturm bringen, Gedanken, die mit Taubenfüßen kommen, lenken die Welt –“
Die Feigen fallen von den Bäumen, sie sind gut und süß: und indem sie fallen, reißt ihnen die rothe Haut.
Ein Nordwind bin ich reifen Feigen.
Also, gleich Feigen, fallen euch diese Lehren zu, meine Freunde: nun trinkt ihren Saft und ihr süßes Fleisch!
Herbst ist es umher und reiner Himmel und Nachmittag –
Hier redet kein Fanatiker, hier wird nicht „gepredigt“, hier wird nicht Glauben verlangt: aus einer unendlichen Lichtfülle und Glückstiefe fällt Tropfen für Tropfen, Wort für Wort, – eine zärtliche Langsamkeit ist das Tempo dieser Reden. Dergleichen gelangt nur zu den Auserwähltesten; es ist ein Vorrecht ohne Gleichen, hier Hörer zu sein; es steht Niemandem frei, für Zarathustra Ohren zu haben… Ist Zarathustra mit Alledem nicht ein Verführer?… Aber was sagt er doch selbst, als er zum ersten Male wieder in seine Einsamkeit zurückkehrt? Genau das Gegentheil von dem, was irgendein „Weiser“, „Heiliger“, „Welt-Erlöser“ und andrer décadent in einem solchen Falle sagen würde… Er redet nicht nur anders, er ist auch anders…
Allein gehe ich nun, meine Jünger! Auch ihr geht nun davon und allein! So will ich es.
Geht fort von mir und wehrt euch gegen Zarathustra! Und besser noch: schämt euch seiner! Vielleicht betrog er euch.
Der Mensch der Erkenntniß muß nicht nur seine Feinde lieben, er muß auch seine Freunde hassen können.
Man vergilt einem Lehrer schlecht, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt. Und warum wollt ihr nicht an meinem Kranze rupfen?
Ihr verehrt mich: aber wie, wenn eure Verehrung eines Tages umfällt? Hütet euch, daß euch nicht eine Bildsäule erschlage!
Ihr sagt, ihr glaubt an Zarathustra? Aber was liegt an Zarathustra! Ihr seid meine Gläubigen, aber was liegt an allen Gläubigen!
Ihr hattet euch noch nicht gesucht: da fandet ihr mich.
So thun alle Gläubigen; darum ist es so wenig mit allem Glauben.
Nun heiße ich euch, mich verlieren und euch finden; und erst, wenn ihr mich Alle verleugnet habt, will ich euch wiederkehren…
Friedrich Nietzsche
Musean translation
A complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from the German of the 1908 Insel edition, including its concluding poem. This early edition's readings and omissions are retained, not replaced with later critical restorations.
Ecce Homo
How One Becomes—What One Is
1 Foreseeing that before long I must confront humanity with the heaviest demand ever laid upon it, I find it indispensable to say who I am. At bottom, people ought to know: I have not left myself “without testimony.” Yet the disproportion between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found expression in the fact that I have neither been heard nor even seen. I live on my own credit; perhaps it is merely a prejudice that I am alive?… I need only speak to some “educated person” who comes to the Upper Engadin in summer to convince myself that I do not live… Under these circumstances there is a duty against which my habits, and still more the pride of my instincts, revolt: to say, Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else!
2 I am, for instance, by no means a bogeyman, a monster of morality—I am even the opposite in nature to the kind of person hitherto revered as virtuous. Between ourselves, it seems to me that precisely this is a source of my pride. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus; I would rather be a satyr than a saint. But just read this book. Perhaps I have succeeded—perhaps this book had no other purpose—in expressing that opposition cheerfully and with goodwill toward humanity. The last thing I would promise would be to “improve” humanity. I erect no new idols; let the old ones learn what it means to have legs of clay. To overthrow idols—my word for ideals—is rather more in my line of work. Reality has been robbed of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness to the very extent that an ideal world has been lied into being… The “true world” and the “apparent world”—in plain terms, the world invented by lies and reality… The lie of the ideal has hitherto been the curse upon reality; through it humanity itself has become mendacious and false down to its deepest instincts—to the point of worshiping the opposite values to those that alone could guarantee its flourishing, its future, its high right to a future.
3 Whoever knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is the air of the heights, a bracing air. One must be made for it; otherwise there is no small danger of catching cold in it. The ice is near, the solitude immense—but how peacefully all things lie in the light! How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath oneself! Philosophy, as I have understood and lived it hitherto, is a voluntary life among ice and high mountains—a seeking-out of everything strange and questionable in existence, of everything morality has so far placed under its ban. From the long experience such wandering in the forbidden gave me, I learned to regard the causes of moralizing and idealizing very differently from what might be wished: the hidden history of philosophers, the psychology of their great names, came to light for me. How much truth does a spirit bear, how much truth does it dare? That became for me, more and more, the true measure of value. Error—belief in the ideal—is not blindness; error is cowardice… Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness toward oneself, from cleanliness toward oneself… I do not refute ideals; I merely put on gloves before them… We strive toward the forbidden: under this sign my philosophy will one day triumph, for hitherto truth alone has been forbidden on principle.—
4 Among my writings, my Zarathustra stands apart. With it I have given humanity the greatest gift it has yet received. This book, with a voice that carries across millennia, is not only the loftiest book there is, the true book of mountain air—the whole fact of humanity lies at an immense distance beneath it—it is also the deepest, born of the innermost wealth of truth: an inexhaustible well into which no bucket descends without coming up filled with gold and goodness. No “prophet” speaks here, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power whom people call founders of religions. Above all, one must correctly hear the tone that comes from this mouth, this halcyon tone, so as not to do pitiable injustice to the meaning of its wisdom. “It is the stillest words that bring the storm; thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the world—”
“The figs fall from the trees; they are good and sweet: and as they fall, their red skins split.
“I am a north wind to ripe figs.
“Thus, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now drink their juice and their sweet flesh!
“Autumn is about us, and clear sky and afternoon—”
No fanatic speaks here; this is no “preaching”; no faith is demanded here: out of an infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness, drop by drop, word by word, it falls—a tender slowness is the pace of these discourses. Such things reach only the most select; to be a listener here is a privilege without equal; no one can choose at will to have ears for Zarathustra… Yet is Zarathustra not, for all that, a seducer?… But what does he himself say as he returns for the first time to his solitude? Precisely the opposite of what any “sage,” “saint,” “world-redeemer,” or other decadent would say in such a case… Not only does he speak differently; he also is different…
“Now I go alone, my disciples! You too now go away, and alone! So I will it.
“Go away from me and defend yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.
“The person of knowledge must not only love his enemies; he must also be able to hate his friends.
“One repays a teacher badly by always remaining only a pupil. And why will you not pluck at my wreath?
“You revere me: but what if one day your reverence topples? Take care that a statue does not strike you dead!
“You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter! You are my believers: but what do all believers matter!
“You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me.
“So it is with all believers; hence all belief amounts to so little.
“Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you…”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Plain English translation
A complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the same German edition, including its concluding poem. This is the 1908 text, not a modern critical edition.
Ecce homo
How you become—what you are
1 I expect that very soon I will have to make the hardest demand ever made on humanity. So I think I have to say who I am. People should really know already: I haven't left myself “without witnesses.” But the gap between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has shown itself in this: they haven't heard me or even seen me. I live on my own credit. Perhaps the idea that I'm alive is just a prejudice?… I only need to speak to some “educated” person visiting the Upper Engadin in summer to convince myself that I'm not alive… In these circumstances I have a duty that goes against my habits and, even more, the pride of my instincts. I have to say: Listen to me! This is who I am. Above all, don't mistake me for someone else!
2 For example, I'm certainly no bogeyman, no monster of morality. My nature is actually the opposite of the kind of person people have honored as virtuous until now. Between ourselves, I think that's precisely something to be proud of. I'm a follower of the philosopher Dionysus. I would rather be a satyr than a saint. But just read this book. Perhaps I've managed to express this contrast in a cheerful, friendly way; perhaps that was the whole point of writing it. The last thing I would promise is to “improve” humanity. I won't set up any new idols. Let the old ones find out what it means to have legs of clay. Knocking down idols—my word for ideals—is more my line of work. The more people lied an ideal world into existence, the more they robbed reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness… The “true world” and the “apparent world”—in plain language, the world made up by lies and reality… The lie of the ideal has been a curse on reality until now. Through it, humanity itself has become dishonest and false down to its deepest instincts. It has even come to worship values that are the reverse of those that alone could guarantee its flourishing, its future, its great right to a future.
3 Anyone who knows how to breathe the air in my writings knows it's mountain air, strong air. You have to be made for it. Otherwise there's a real danger of catching cold in it. The ice is close, the solitude is enormous—but how calmly everything lies in the light! How freely you breathe! How much you feel below you! Philosophy, as I've understood and lived it until now, means choosing to live among ice and high mountains. It means seeking out everything strange and questionable in existence, everything morality has forbidden until now. Long experience of traveling through forbidden territory taught me to see the reasons behind moralizing and idealizing very differently from how people might like me to see them. The hidden history of philosophers, the psychology behind their great names, came to light for me. How much truth can a mind bear? How much truth does it dare to face? More and more, that became my real measure of value. Error—belief in the ideal—isn't blindness. Error is cowardice… Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, comes from courage, from being hard on yourself, from keeping yourself clean… I don't refute ideals; I just put on gloves before handling them… We strive for what is forbidden: under this sign my philosophy will one day win, because until now it has always been truth, and nothing else, that people have forbidden on principle.—
4 Among my writings, my Zarathustra stands apart. With it I've given humanity the greatest gift it has ever received. This book speaks across thousands of years. It isn't just the highest book there is, the true book of mountain air—the whole fact of being human lies immensely far below it. It's also the deepest book, born from the innermost richness of truth. It's a well that never runs dry: no bucket goes down into it without coming back up filled with gold and goodness. No “prophet” is speaking here, none of those horrifying mixtures of sickness and will to power that people call founders of religions. Above all, you have to hear the tone of this voice correctly, its deep calm, or you'll do a pitiful injustice to the meaning of its wisdom. “The quietest words are the ones that bring the storm. Thoughts that arrive on doves' feet guide the world—”
“Figs are falling from the trees. They're good and sweet, and as they fall their red skin splits.
“I'm a north wind to ripe figs.
“Like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends. Now drink their juice and their sweet flesh!
“It's autumn all around, with clear skies and afternoon—”
No fanatic is speaking here. No one is “preaching”; no belief is demanded. Out of an endless abundance of light and depth of happiness, it falls drop by drop, word by word. These speeches move at a tender, slow pace. Something like this reaches only the most select few. To listen here is a privilege like no other. No one can just choose to have ears for Zarathustra… Doesn't all this make Zarathustra a seducer?… But what does he himself say when he returns to his solitude for the first time? Exactly the opposite of what any “sage,” “saint,” “savior of the world,” or other decadent would say in that situation… He doesn't just speak differently. He is different too…
“Now I go alone, my students! You too must leave now, and go alone! That's what I want.
“Leave me and defend yourselves against Zarathustra! Better still, be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.
“A person who seeks knowledge must not only love their enemies. They must also be able to hate their friends.
“You repay a teacher badly if you always remain just a student. And why don't you want to pull at my wreath?
“You admire me. But what if your admiration one day topples over? Be careful that a statue doesn't fall on you and kill you!
“You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter! You're my believers, but what do any believers matter!
“You hadn't yet looked for yourselves when you found me.
“That's what all believers do. That's why all belief amounts to so little.
“Now I tell you to lose me and find yourselves. Only when you have all denied me will I return to you…”
Friedrich Nietzsche
About this section
Preface is part of Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 1 of 17 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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