What is the point of history? What is the point of our acquisition of knowledge? Is there a way for man to live unhistorically? And supposing that we cannot do without history, are there uses for it which are helpful? Are there uses which are harmful? Today we take a deep dive into the Untimely Meditations essay, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. In this essay, Nietzsche reveals his love of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German playwright and author of Faust. This essay is a statement of Nietzsche’s allegiance to one side of German culture - embodied in the likes of Goethe and Schopenhauer - against another thread spun out of the tradition of German Idealism, represented by Hegel. In Goethe, Nietzsche finds the all-important maxim that all learning must be in the service of quickening one’s activity and enriching one’s life.
Episode art: Clio, by Gentileschi Artemisia (1632). Clio is the Greek Muse of History. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)