76: Nietzsche’s Apology

This episode concerns the autobiographical essays in Ecce Homo, which Kaufmann has called, Nietzsche’s Apology. Similarly to Socrates, Nietzsche gives a defense of himself and his career: a defense against being “mistaken”, or “misunderstood”. Like Socrates, who came with a special mission for Athens, Nietzsche comes with the greatest demand ever made of mankind. Central to our analysis is the physiologism of Nietzsche, and the rejection of idealism in favor of brute reality. The physiological is reinterpreted as the root cause of the psychological, and Nietzsche uses his life as the basis and the chief example of how the body determines who one is fated to become. Nietzsche expresses a profound gratitude even for his illness: that which allowed him to gain a subtler eye, to overcome pity, to recognize pathologies.