For Nietzsche self-creation means making one’s life a coherent work of art

Evidence

Self-creation is to make a work of art of oneself. Nehemas suggests that we should think of À la recherche du temps perdu as a model of what is involved. At the end of the novel we discover that the meaning of the narrator’s life is simply the process of its unfolding, which he seeks to capture by beginning to write the book we have just finished. Similarly, ‘[t]o become what one is … is to identify oneself with all one’s actions, to see that everything one does (what one becomes) is what one is. In the ideal case it is also to fit all this into a coherent whole and to want to be what one is: it is to give style to one’s character; to be, we might say, becoming.’ — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 280

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what Nietzschean ‘self-creation’ actually means — giving style to one’s character as a unified aesthetic whole.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 280
• XREF: connects to: Artistic expression is not instinctual sublimation but an objective polemical self-revelation; Authentic artistry requires self-transcendence, which narcissism precludes — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1818; Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 27 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature #corroborates (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 27
• Artistic expression is not instinctual sublimation but an objective polemical self-revelation #qualifies (0.75)
• Authentic artistry requires self-transcendence, which narcissism precludes #complicates (0.70) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1818