Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's The Gay Science Plot Summary. Learn more about The Gay Science wh a tailed plot summary and plot diagram.
Contents:
THE GAY SCIENCE (A MORNIZED TRANSLATN WH A NEW INTRODUCTN AND BGRAPHY) KDLE EDN
* ecce homo gay *
While I praised the origal German edn the Wter 1999 issue of this magaze [then The Harvard Gay & Lbian Review], the nservative Nietzsche tablishment has displayed nsirably ls enthiasm. Leer also disput the flammatory statement ma by Pl Fern durg the April 1, 1908, meetg of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society: “From a reliable source he uld say that Nietzsche had lived om time to time a homosexual life and ntracted his lu [syphilis] a homosexual borllo Genoa. Here Frd himself weighed and offered his solutn to the riddle posed by Nietzsche: “Cut off pletely om life by the illns [syphilis], he turns to the only object of rearch that remaed to him and that lay closer to him anyway as a homosexual, the ego.
Frd’s fal remark about Ecce Homois also worth quotg: “The whole nceptn of the book suggts that a chapter entled ‘On My Sexualy’ belongs and was perhaps also wrten. Köhler serv up another surprise speculatg that Nietzsche may have been faiar wh the wrgs of Karl Herich Ulrichs (1825–1895), regard as the most important pneer of the early gay rights movement.
If the entire sectn is an oteric reference to the nascent gay rights movement, then we n say that Nietzsche was exprsg here his disagreement wh the new termology, such as Ulrich’s term “Urng, ” that was beg proposed to talk about the phenomenon of same-sex love.
Around the begng of 1989 I was thkg a lot about the way which gay sex was beg monored by the medil thori San Francis. The image of * ecce homo gay *
If Köhler’s hypoth about Nietzsche’s relatnship to such key figur as Gloen, Hössli, and Ulrichs are rrect, then they are a bombshell that tablish him as a philosopher of gay liberatn.
It is also misleadg and nscendg to say that there “appears” to have been a lony of gay artists livg Taorma, as there certaly was a gay artist, namely the photographer Gloen, and his many visors and alyt. If, as both Köhler and I would mata, he is fact the preement morn philosopher of gay liberatn, then his crique of Christiany be even more explosive, for was ultimately due to biblil relign that we the Wt hered the prohibn agast homosexualy.
The central metaphor of this short poem is his parison of himself to a flame, a rich metaphor worthy of exploratn to s shas of meang and possible many of n hontly say that we are “unsatiated like a flame, ” as Nietzsche says of himself the send le of “Ecce Homo”—relentlsly pursg the sir of our hearts? Nietzsche’s tobgraphy, Ecce Homo) wh many thgs that others take for granted and embrace so openly: Christiany wh s fear-based supprsn and power-hungry opprsn of real human strength and dividualy, the herd-like averagens of Christian moraly, the hegemony of Wtern philosophil nceptns of the human person and human nature, naive scientism wh s disregard for the uniquely human aspects of the human experience, and philosophil and relig pism that Nietzsche thks of as beg at odds wh the blogil facts of our own human realy. Thoands of pilgrims each year walk unr the Ecce Homo Arch near the begng of the Via Dolorosa whout realisg that extensive remas of first-century Jesalem lie beneath their feet.