In this commentary on chapter one, "Why I am So Wise," of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, the author dispels the long-standing impression that Ecce Homo is an irrational book in which the madness that claimed Nietzsche only months after he began writing it had already begun its work. Ecce Homo, it is alleged, is not egotistical, or narcissistic, or megalomaniacal. It is not a work of madness. In his linear exposition of this first chapter, the author presents Nietzsche's revelation of the tragic fact that his very aliveness was in a state of being overwhelmed, consumed, by powerful unconscious emotion, the condition he called decadence. Nietzsche's madness may have caused him to lose perspective on the meaning of having dwelt in "a world of exalted and delicate things," as he writes of himself in Ecce, but the original experience of elevation that comes of an abundance of life, of a surplus of life, certainly was not pathological.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s intellectual autobiography Ecce Homo has always been a controversial book. Nietzsche prepared it for publication just before he became incurably insane in early 1889, but it was held back until after his death, and finally appeared only in 1908. For much of the first century of its reception, Ecce Homo met with a sceptical response and was viewed as merely a testament to its author’s incipient madness. This was hardly surprising, since he is deliberately outrageous with the ‘megalomaniacal’ self-advertisement of his chapter titles, and brazenly claims ‘I am not a man, I am dynamite’ as he attempts to explode one preconception after another in the Western philosophical tradition. In recent decades there has been increased interest in the work, especially in the English-speaking world, but the present volume is the first collection of essays in any language devoted to the work. Most of the essays are selected from the proceedings of an international conference held in London to mark the centenary of the first publication of Ecce Homo in 2008. They are supplemented by a number of specially commissioned essays. Contributors include established and emerging Nietzsche scholars from the UK and USA, Germany and France, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands.

'Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether?' Self-celebrating and self-mocking autobiographical writings from Ecce Homo, the last work iconoclastic German philosopher Nietzsche wrote before his descent into madness. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

In late 1888, only weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche (1844-1900) set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo remains one of the most intriguing yet bizarre examples of the genre ever written. In this extraordinary work Nietzsche traces his life, work and development as a philosopher, examines the heroes he has identified with, struggled against and then overcome - Schopenhauer, Wagner, Socrates, Christ - and predicts the cataclysmic impact of his 'forthcoming revelation of all values'. Both self-celebrating and self-mocking, penetrating and strange, Ecce Homo gives the final, definitive expression to Nietzsche's main beliefs and is in every way his last testament.

This book demonstrates that Nietzsche's autobiographical and much-maligned Ecce Homo is a sophisticated satire by which the thinker unifies his disparate corpus.

'I am not a man, I am dynamite.' Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the book sub-titled 'How To Become What You Are' passes under review all Nietzsche's previous works so that we, his 'posthumous' readers, can finally understand him aright, on his own terms. He reaches final reckonings with his many enemies - Richard Wagner, German nationalism, 'modern men' in general - and above all Christianity, proclaiming himself the Antichrist. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career, a last great testament to Nietzsche's will.

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its creatures. His memoir The Dun Cow Rib is the story of a boy's awakening to the wonders of the natural world. Lister-Kaye's joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds and small beasts, keeping pigeons in the loft and tracking foxes around the edge of the garden - were the perfect apprenticeship for his two lifelong passions: exploring the wonders of nature, and writing about them. Threaded through his adventures - from moving to the Scottish Highlands to work with Gavin Maxwell, to founding the famous Aigas Field Centre - is an elegy to his remarkable mother, and a wise and affectionate celebration of Britain's natural landscape.