Nietzsche’s Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für
das Leben is a remarkable work, in the sense of how many notes of
the highest value it manages to strike in the course of its relatively few
pages. Three of them in particular I wish to mention here in passing, as
their intense discussion has already taken place elsewhere, that is, in other
sections..
The first of them is Nietzsche’s
original and exciting subdivision of history into three principal categories: monumental,
antiquarian, and critical, which is discussed in my
personal-historical entry Antiquarian Of The Monumental, which is the
peculiar Nietzsche-based name I am giving to myself as a historian. There is no
reason to repeat his or mine argument here (otherwise, it would defy the
meaning of “in passing”!), but a short reminder to the reader, in
the form of the following paragraph, may be of some use:
“History
belongs to the living man in three respects: it belongs to him so far as he is
active and striving, so far as he preserves and admires, and so far as he
suffers and is in need of liberation. To these correspond three kinds of
history: monumental, antiquarian, and critical.” (Unzeitgemäßen:
Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, 2-4.)
Mind
you, of these three types I consider monumental history to be superior, and
critical history inferior to the other two for basically the same reasons that
Nietzsche offers. Paraphrasing my father for the purpose of translation into
English, a smoking gun can be planted,
in other words, historical facts oftentimes belong not to what really happened,
but to the conscientious angle of the writers of history, which makes such
facts largely worthless, and the work of the critical historian largely futile
and occasionally misguided. On the other hand, monumental history is based not
so much on fact as on myth, having an ethical and pedagogical value, thus
demonstrating its unquestionable worth.
My second key note in passing concerns
Nietzsche’s bold assertion that only a history maker has the right to write
history. (“Only the builder of the future has the
right to judge the past.” [!]). For much more on this I will
direct the reader to the proper place in my Sources & Comments, but in general terms, this is a logical
development of the “monumental history” argument, with everything that
it entails.
Now, here is that essential
Nietzschean passage for the reader’s reference:
“Only
from the standpoint of the highest strength of the present may you interpret
the past: only in the highest exertion of your noblest qualities will you
discern what is worthy of being known and preserved, what is great in the past.
Like by like! Otherwise you will draw the past down to yourselves. Do not
believe any historical writing if it does not issue from the heads of the
rarest minds; but you will always notice the quality of mind of such writing
whenever it is required to assert something general or to repeat something
generally known: the genuine historian must have the strength to recast the
well-known into something never heard before and to proclaim the general so
simply and profoundly that one overlooks its simplicity because of its
profundity and its profundity because of its simplicity.
“So,
history is written by the experienced and superior man. If you have not had
some higher and greater experiences than all others, you will not know how to
interpret anything great and high in the past. Only the builder of the future
has the right to judge the past.”
My complete agreement with
Nietzsche here results from my knowledge of precisely such people that he is
writing about, and appreciating their rendering of history far above all
armchair historians, even the best of them. Without false modesty, I’d like to
consider myself such a historian, in the best Nietzschean sense of this word.
And finally Nietzsche’s immortal
one-liner: “Fiat veritas pereat vita.” (From
Vom Nutzen #4.) I have made an extensive use of it throughout this book,
occasionally even reversing this adage to read “Fiat vita pereat veritas.”
I cannot imagine any other aphoristic wisdom which in just four words
conveys such a complexity of ideas, emotions, and subtlest nuances. Had he
written just these four words in all his life, his philosophical greatness
would already have been assured.
And here we are now moving on to
other things, having touched three incomparable gems of his casually, in
passing, as he has so many more in store for us…
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