“How One Becomes What One Is” *

The idea of giving style to one's character brings back to Nietzsche's view in section 290 of The Gay Science that to have a single character may be more important than the question whether this character is good or bad. The Gay Science denies that consciousness constitutes "the unity of the organism." One way then to become one thing, one's own character, or what one is, is to write Ecce Homo and even to subtitle it "How One Becomes What One Is." could be, of course, that the phrase "How one becomes what one is" was simply a very clever piece of language that happened to catch (as well it might have) Nietzsche's passing fancy. The idea appears elsewhere in Ecce Homo, and can find it present in all the stages of his philosophical career.