IN THE FINAL APHORISM in the first section of Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung) Nietzsche tells us: “Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal …” (Formel meines Glücks: ein Ja, ein Nein, eine gerade Linie, ein Ziel …; TI “Sayings and Arrows” §44; KSA 6, 66). How Nietzsche chose his path through life, abandoning the zig-zag of his academic, Wagnerian, decadent path for the straight line of his philosophy, which says “yes” (and hence also says “no”: by affirming one thing, it also “renounces” another), and how he did so in an exemplary fashion, is the story that he tells in Ecce Homo. And he tells it by writing about his life as if this had been the case, so whether his account is (f)actually, (auto)biographically true becomes irrelevant. In the beautiful passage that acts as a prooemium to the work, standing between the foreword and the first chapter, Nietzsche (echoing Zarathustra) proposes to tell himself his life —