Or perhaps Nietzsche is directing a reader’s attention to the bifurcated nature that underpins much of human reality, the splits and fractures one experiences in the course of adult life. To feel deeply the wisdom-tinged sadness of growing older, to understand that one’s youth isn’t long gone, but rather somewhere forever hidden from view, to face self-destruction while longing for creation—this is to grapple with Ecce Homo. Being a parent is to live out such a disjunction between duty and personal freedom—to love a child with one’s entire being, but to preserve something of one’s identity
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