Description

Although Nietzsche completed both Ecce Homo and The Antichrist by the end of 1888, they were considered so inflammatory that they were published only years later, in 1895 and 1908, respectively. Both are products of Nietzsche's last creative year.

Yet Ecce Homo is relatively calm and tranquil, while The Antichrist is a jeremiad full of venom and vitriol. In Ecce Homo ("Behold the man") - the words used by Pilate when he presented Jesus to the Jews - Nietzsche presents us with an autobiographical tour de force, containing not only some of the finest, most incisive and instructive commentary on his own works, but also his singular comments on the "little things," which are, to him, "the fundamental affairs of life itself": nutrition, climate, locality, and recreation. His inclination to self-aggrandizement is offset by his comment, "I desire no 'believers,' I think I am too malicious even to believe in myself. I have no wish to be a saint, I would rather be a buffoon. Perhaps I am a buffoon."

The Antichrist is in fact one of the most devastating condemnations of Christianity ever; Nietzsche calls it "the one immortal blemish on mankind," the greatest sin possible against reality, against the spirit of the earth." Ever shocking, Nietzsche sets out to de-legitimize the entire ethical-moral value system which modern western civilization has inherited. His analysis of Jesus and Paul as superlative Jewish types and his portrait of Pontius Pilate as a superior Roman type are thought-provoking, to say the least.

Bibliography, Index.