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From his beginnings Nietzsche viewed the philosopher as the rare and highest attainment of human intellect and spiritedness. But only slowly did he come to see himself as such a man, the philosopher of our time. A new task fell to him once that became clear: he had to make public the story of his own becoming a philosopher. Nietzsche therefore turned autobiographical late in his career and did so to show his age, a democratic age that values equality of rights, what a philosopher is and how a philosopher is possible. His autobiographical task first took the form of Forewords introducing each of his already published books and showing how each was a station on his way to becoming himself. My book uses Nietzsche’s Forewords as inlets into his most important books displaying his becoming a philosopher. Guided by his Forewords and his autobiographical Ecce Homo, I treat the unfolding theme of the philosopher as Nietzsche presents it in The Birth of Tragedy, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Things Human All Too Human Vol. 1, and “Sanctus Januarius,” the final Book of the 1881 Gay Science. I also use another indispensable source as guidance for Nietzsche’s becoming: his private workbooks in their complete, unedited form that no published version makes available. The sequence of entries as Nietzsche wrote them out in certain select workbooks shows chronologically the stages he passed through in gaining the philosophic maturity that he first made public in “Sanctus Januarius.”

Friedrich Nietzsche has been one of the most widely read authors in the world from the time of his death to the present day, as well as one of the most controversial. He has been celebrated as a liberating theorist of individual creativity and self-care, but also condemned as the inhumane advocate of anti-modern politics and hierarchical communalism. This book contends that Nietzsche’s complex legacy is the consequence of a self-conscious and artful tension within his work. That tension is reflected by the two major character-types that he established in his writings, the Free Spirit and Zarathustra, who represent different approaches to the conduct and understanding of life: one that strives to be as independent and critical of the world as possible, and one that engages with, cares for, and aims to change the world. Nietzsche developed these characters at different moments of his life, in order to confront from contrasting perspectives such elemental experiences as the drive to independence, the feeling of love, and the assessment of one’s overall health (or well-being). Understanding the tension between the Free Spirit and Zarathustra takes readers to the heart of what Nietzsche identified as the tensions central to his life, and to all of human life. The book highlights the fact that Nietzsche equipped his writings with retrospective self-commentaries and an autobiographical apparatus that clarify how he understood his development as an author, thinker, and human being, as well as the challenges that he left for readers to confront on their own.