Becoming Simple and Honest: Nietzsche’s Practice of Spontaneous Life Writing

Nietzsche (1844–1900) struggles with complexity and many-sidedness throughout his life. He is a nuanced thinker who offers fragments instead of a rigid philosophical system, yet he admires the 'virtuous energy' with which systematic thinkers, especially the pre-Socratic philosophers, express themselves. His ability to write with comparable energy is hindered by university philosophy, which privileges restraint and consistency. Therefore, he adopts a practice of spontaneous life writing in order to become simple and honest in thought and life. Inspired by figures such as Emerson, Diogenes, and Sterne, he grasps the 'nearest shoddy words' and continually produces new insights in disjointed monologues and aphorisms. Nietzsche's vague metaphors, loose language, inconsistency, and hyperbole stem from this practice, and his autobiography, Ecce Homo (1888), is the closest that he ever comes to rekindling the energy of the pre-Socratics.