The Private and Public Appeal of Self-Fashioning

Abstract

Self-creation, or self-fashioning, already with long and impressive pedi gree running from the medical models of the Ancient Greeks and Romans through the aesthetic models of Foucault, and Rorty (among oth ers), has made its way into both pop-philosophy and pop-psychology, with the assumption that such terms are meaningful, that such actions are possible, and that (with insight and effort) blueprint for an original, self-created-work-of art-self can be drafted and implemented. What's more, there is an assumption that self-fashioning is something good, that it is something that we ought to (or at least do) value. is occasionally invoked to lend some philosophical weight to pro grams of self-creation. This is not without some support. We, however, want to become those we are?human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give or laws, who create or herself (GS, 335).1 In comment on Goethe, says that sought totality and to that end he disciplined to wholeness, created (TI, Skirmishes, 49).2 Nehamas complicates such picture by denying that Nietzsche's discussion of self-creation can be attributed to him as a positive view of human conduct, consisting perhaps of description of the right kind of life or of set of princi ples for becoming the sort of person admires.3 Instead, Nehamas describes how exemplifies, through his own writings, way in which one individual may have succeeded in fashioning itself.... This individual is none other than himself, who is creature of his own texts.4 That is, through his writings and his self-interpretation in such works as Ecce Homo, Friedrich (the writer) created Nietzsche (the Philosopher/Author of such texts as Ecce Homo). Nietzsche consists essentially of the specific actions?that is, of the specific writings?that make him up and that only could write (ibid.). artwork that created out of was Nietzsche, the literary character who is philosopher. Nietzsche's texts exem plify his ideal character?none other than the character these very texts con stitute: himself (ibid., 233). alludes to such an interpretation when writes, The 'work,' whether of the artist or the philoso pher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it; great men, as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fic tion (ibid.).5