The main thrust of Nietzsche’s Vom
Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, and overwhelmingly so,
belongs to his categorization of the historical, the unhistorical, and
the superhistorical, which starts at the beginning of his first section
and ends, with a few definitions, at the end of the tenth, last section.
The concept of unhistorical
societies, where the so-called historical education would be considered absurd
and superstitious, raises two important questions: What exactly is “historical”
education and what exactly is an “unhistorical society”? Here are
some excerpts from Nietzsche’s very important first section, which help us best
to understand his meaning:
If,
in any sense, it is some happiness or the pursuit of happiness, which binds the
living being to life, and urges him to live, then, perhaps, no philosopher is
closer to the truth than the cynic: for the happiness of the animal, that
thorough cynic, is the living proof of the truth of cynicism. With the
smallest, as with the greatest happiness, however, there is always one thing,
which makes it happiness: to be able to forget, or, to express it in a more
learned fashion, the capacity to live unhistorically, while it endures. It is
possible to live with almost no memories, even to live happily, as the animal
shows; but without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all. Or, to say
it simpler yet, there is a degree of insomnia, of rumination, of historical
sense, which injures every living thing and finally destroys it, be it a man, a
people, or a culture.
Apparently, the historical element
lies within our memory of the past, and, with it, our fear of the future. It is
well said that the best prescription for good health is bad memory. But the
latter may be going too far, as the real life saver is not an absent memory,
but a selective memory that perpetuates good things of the past and projects
them into our future, while allowing us to forget everything that is painful,
traumatic, causing us to fear its inevitable recurrence in the future, which is
in many ways worse than the fear of natural death.
Curiously, the destructive effect
of compassion, discussed by Nietzsche elsewhere, is equally caused not
by a spontaneous emotional response to human misery, but by a memory that fails
to be selective.
To
determine this degree, one would have to know how great the plastic power of
a man, a folk or a culture is. There are persons who will incurably
bleed over one single experience, a single pain. On the other hand, there are
those who are so little affected by the calamities of life, and even by their
own malicious acts, that in the midst of them, or shortly thereafter, they
achieve a tolerable degree of well-being and a kind of clear conscience. The
stronger the roots of one’s innermost nature are, the more of the past will he
appropriate or master. What such a nature cannot master, it knows how to
forget; the horizon is closed and it is whole, and nothing can serve as a
reminder that beyond this horizon there remain men, passions, doctrines,
purposes. Cheerfulness in an individual, as well as in a people, depends on
one’s being able to forget at the right time, as well as to remember at the
right time; on discerning when there is a need to experience historically, and
when, unhistorically.
The
unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary for the health of an
individual, a people, and a culture.
Everyone
will have made the following observation: a man’s historical knowledge and
perception may be very limited, his horizon restricted, and, despite all
injustice and error, he stands firmly in good health and vigor, while right
beside him the man of justice and learning crumbles. We have seen that the
unhistorical animal is in a certain sense happy. Therefore, the capacity to
perceive unhistorically is to a certain degree more important, as it provides
the foundation upon which alone something right, healthy, and truly human may
grow. As the man of action, in Goethe’s phrase, is always without a conscience,
so is he also without knowledge. He forgets a lot, to do one thing, and knows
only one right: of that which is to become.
And now comes the superhistorical
category:
If
someone could discern and breathe again the unhistorical atmosphere, in which
every historical event came to be, he might elevate himself to a
superhistorical standpoint. One who adopts it can no longer be tempted to
continue to live and cooperate in making history, since he understands
blindness and injustice in the soul of each agent, as the condition of all
activity. He is even cured of taking history seriously, as he has learned, with
regard to each person and each experience, to answer his question about how and
why people live, whether among Greeks, or Turks, in the first century, or in
the nineteenth. Whoever asks his acquaintance whether they would want to relive
the last twenty years, will notice readily which of them is prepared for the
superhistorical standpoint. They will all answer No, of course, but for
different reasons. Some may take comfort in the hope that the next twenty years
are better. Let us call them the historical men. Looking into the past urges
them toward the future. They believe that ever more light is shed on the
meaning of existence in the course of its process, and they look back only to understand
the present better and learn to desire the future more vehemently. They do not
know how unhistorically they think and act, despite all their history, and how
even their concern with historiography does not serve pure knowledge, but life.
But
the No of the superhistorical man does not see salvation in the process, the
world is complete and achieves its end at every single moment. What could the
new years teach that the past were incapable of teaching! The past and present
are one and the same, a static structure of unchanged value and eternally the
same meaning.
To be continued…
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