37 pages • 1 hour read
Friedrich NietzscheOn The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1874A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Nietzsche claims that the overabundance of history in an age is potentially damaging to its life in five respects, which he sets out in Chapter 5. Through excess, an age imagines itself as more worthy than other ages, or, alternately, as a latecomer, and thus regards itself with irony and cynicism. This paralyses society, which Nietzsche claims has grown lax and weak, its instinct blunted.
Individuals become unsure and lack self-belief in such an atmosphere. Outward identity, meanwhile, becomes a series of masks and puppets. Sincerity will redress this dichotomy between inner and outer, helping cultivate a society that responds to true need. Education, at present, too often serves to “teach [one] to lie to oneself about those needs and thus become a walking lie” (27).
The vacillations and cowardice of the modern soul are contrasted with the constancy of the Stoics. The contemporary ruling class could not be compared with the ancient Romans, since the former are “incarnate compendia.” History is neuter according to Nietzsche, for whom neutrality pertains both to gender and objectivity. Criticism, the echo that an act has within the culture, is positive, because it means that the act has made an impact. However, Nietzsche balances this remark with the observation that effusive criticism lacks potency.
Chapter 5 Analysis
In Chapter 5, Nietzsche continues his explication of the problems with excess history, developing on his assertion that the society of his time had a collective personality that had been “weakened.” The chaotic inner world of society that was examined in Chapter 4 flows down into a discussion of how this affects the individual in Chapter 5.
Becoming an actor diminishes the value that individuals can offer society because they are engaged in replicating what has come before. The culture ceases to grow, in the sense that Nietzsche advocates in Chapter 10, where the “truth-in-need” flowers in parallel with the culture’s ability to undertake Socrates’ dictum, “know thyself.” Nietzsche draws another example from antiquity, claiming that the fall of the Roman Empire was proceeded by a loss of cultural integrity; as Rome overreached itself, it “ceased to be Roman” (33).
In its appeal to the natural (substantially developed in Chapter 9), Nietzsche’s thought may show the influence of German Romanticism, which, in 1876, was well established in the country. The movement looked to the perceived spiritual unity of medievalism as a source of unity for contemporary culture. The reification of the natural was typical of the Romantic frame of thought. For instance, Nietzsche’s language is redolent with vocabulary pertaining to the Romantic register:
It appears almost impossible to elicit a strong full sound even with the mightiest sweep of the strings: it fades away immediately, and in the next moment it already echoes away strength less in historically subdued vapours. In moral language: you no longer succeed in holding fast the sublime, your deeds are sudden claps, not rolling thunder (33).
The sonorous notes of German Romantic composers such as Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn can almost be heard behind such hopeful passages of Nietzsche. Wagner is referenced on page 45, and Beethoven on pages 39 and 45.
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