"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'"
About this Quote
Every ascent, Nietzsche warns, drags a shadow behind it: the self that wants credit. The line works because it turns something abstract and evasive - ego, pride, self-regard - into an animal presence with teeth and persistence. A dog is loyal, yes, but also needy, territorial, and hard to shake. You can pretend you are climbing for truth, strength, or liberation, but Ego trots after you, panting for applause, dominance, and storybook meaning.
Nietzsche is also slyly sabotaging the hero narrative. Climbing is a classic moral image: improvement, transcendence, the hard-earned view from above. He punctures that romance by insisting the climber is never alone. Even the most disciplined self-overcoming risks becoming self-congratulation. The higher you go, the more tempting it is to interpret altitude as superiority.
Contextually, this sits inside Nietzsche's larger project: dismantling comfortable moral postures and exposing the psychological motives underneath them. He distrusted sanctimony and the way "virtue" can be a mask for craving status. The phrase is a compact diagnosis of how ambition, spirituality, scholarship, even asceticism can smuggle in vanity. You beat an old weakness and immediately want to build a monument to having beaten it.
The brilliance is that he doesn't say ego appears at the summit; it follows during the climb. The danger is baked into striving itself. Self-overcoming is necessary, Nietzsche thinks, but the dog is always on the leash, tugging.
Nietzsche is also slyly sabotaging the hero narrative. Climbing is a classic moral image: improvement, transcendence, the hard-earned view from above. He punctures that romance by insisting the climber is never alone. Even the most disciplined self-overcoming risks becoming self-congratulation. The higher you go, the more tempting it is to interpret altitude as superiority.
Contextually, this sits inside Nietzsche's larger project: dismantling comfortable moral postures and exposing the psychological motives underneath them. He distrusted sanctimony and the way "virtue" can be a mask for craving status. The phrase is a compact diagnosis of how ambition, spirituality, scholarship, even asceticism can smuggle in vanity. You beat an old weakness and immediately want to build a monument to having beaten it.
The brilliance is that he doesn't say ego appears at the summit; it follows during the climb. The danger is baked into striving itself. Self-overcoming is necessary, Nietzsche thinks, but the dog is always on the leash, tugging.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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