28 Nietzschethe kind of life that would yield food for thought. His life was a testing
ground for his thinking. The essay was a mode of living.
Nietzsche made an explicit and emphatic point of expressing his
ideas in the first-person singular, yet, paradoxically, he insisted that the
process of thought was fundamentally anonymous—he considered it a
mere quirk of grammar that people say "I think" like every predicate,
the predicate "think" requires a subject, which misleads readers into
concluding that because "I" is the subject, it is in fact the agent. Quite
the opposite applies: the act of thinking gives rise to the consciousness
of an "I." The basis of thought is first and foremost the act, and only
secondarily the agent (5,31; BGE § 17).
Nietzsche could easily envision thinking without the first-person sub-
ject, and yet, with the possible exception of Montaigne, no other
philosopher has employed the pronoun 'T' as often as Nietzsche. The
reason is evident· Nietzsche knew that he was Nietzsche. He considered
himself exemplary. It was worth his while to be himself, and he believed
that it would be worth our while to share in his experiences. He con-
sciously crafted his work with all of mankind in view. His late writings
brimmed with unmistakable pride and confidence. "I know my destiny.
Someday my name will be associated with the memory of something
tremendous, a crisis like no other on earth, the profoundest collision of
conscience, a decision conjured up against everything that had been
believed, required, and held sacred up to that time" (6,365; £7/"Why I
Am a Destiny" § 1).
When writing about himself Nietzsche aspired to several simultane-
ous and consecutive goals. His first objective was to wrest abiding
images of memory from evanescent moments of time. He sought to
engage his friends and family in this project of memory and found it
most compelling to communicate memories to people who had some
direct connection to the scenes he was recalling. Although Nietzsche
wrote for these readers, he himself remained the primary intended audi-
ence for his chronicles. He supplied material for retrospection that
would elevate his self-esteem to epic proportions. In the moment of