On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life

Nietzsche now turns to interrogate the contemporary dictum that modern man is more just than earlier ages. Socrates claimed that to believe one has a virtue when one does not is almost insane, and more problematic than the shortcoming itself. Nietzsche praises the virtue of justice and discerns between ego-serving judgment and Last Judgment. Thus, Nietzsche distinguishes between truth, which has its root in justice, and “curiosity, flight from boredom, envy, vanity, play instinct–drives which have nothing at all to do with truth” (38). It is possible for equanimity, in inconsequential judgments, to mask an absence of “strict and great justice” in trickier verdicts; only strength can judge, and where weakness does so, it “makes an actress of justice” (39).

Nietzsche remarks that talented historians are rare, because many judge the past in accordance with prevailing contemporary ideology, and call this objectivity: “the work is to make the past fit the triviality of their time” (40). The term “objectivity” itself may be misleading for precisely this reason. Nor does art present a just picture of history. Nietzsche is skeptical of the defensive claim that history is so complex as to be impenetrable: this is also not an objective position, but a subjective one.

Unlike scientists, Nietzsche argues, historians are at their least convincing when they generalize. History is better employed in elevating the “common” and “everyday” (41). This requires “a great artistic capacity, and creative overview, a loving immersion in the empirical data, a poetic elaboration of given types–this, to be sure, requires objectivity, but as a positive property.” (41). Too often, the vanity of the historian leads to the conflation of unconcern with objectivity. It requires the greatest strength to interpret the past; otherwise, historians bring the past down to their level. The criteria for judging a historian is the quality of their generalizations, which will recast the familiar and draw profundity from simplicity: “History is written by the experienced and superior man […] only a builder of the future has the right to judge the past” (43).

In conclusion, Nietzsche advises his reader to “set a great goal” in order to avoid wasting the present, and embrace “a hopeful striving” (43). This is in contrast with allowing the education of your age to exploit and control you. Finally, Nietzsche advocates fighting against the imperatives of one’s own time: “become ripe and to flee from that paralyzing educational constraint of the age” (43).