On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life

The final chapter opens with the metaphor of a ship docking after a long voyage. Nietzsche claims that he is guided by “youth” and feels impelled “to protest against the historical education of modern youth” (63). The youthful impulse toward poetry a century before Nietzsche was writing was in Nietzsche’s opinion a flowering not since seen in Germany. In Nietzsche’s Germany, by contrast, the youth are developed to “be useful as soon as possible” (64). Nietzsche asserts that the contemporary belief that “there is no other possibility at all than just our tiresome actuality” (65) is a problematic one.

Nietzsche expounds his position on the contemporary youth further by arguing that the era’s weight of historical education “anaesthetizes and intoxicates” the youth by suppressing the natural. For Nietzsche, nature is the “sole mistress” (65). He chastises the educational system for producing a “crawling brood of botchers and babblers” (65). Faith in the education system is misplaced, nor would Plato’s Republic have worked. Nietzsche’s fellow Germans cannot have a true culture because they lack rootedness in nature, or truth: “first give me life and I will make you a culture from it!” (66).

Returning to the definitions with which he opened his essay, Nietzsche distinguishes once more between the unhistorical and the superhistorical. The former is the ability to forget, while the latter is the focus on the eternal. Superhistoricism is found in art and religion, which are opposed to science. This is because science relies on observation and the accretion of knowledge, which implies contingency. This is the opposite of the eternal, which Nietzsche poetically describes as: “an endless-unlimited light-wave-sea of known becoming” (67).

Nietzsche weighs knowledge against life and rates life higher, because knowledge is contained within life. The youth will suffer both the malady of excessive historicism and be supported by its antidotes: namely, the unhistorical and the superhistorical. Hope will inspire this comparatively uneducated youth, who will use the three kinds of history (monumental, antiquarian and critical) in service to life. This new generation will be indifferent to what is famous, and perhaps even to what is good, but they will have become human and hopeful again, Nietzsche claims.

Finally, Nietzsche reflects on the peoples of history, stating that the Greeks produced the truest and most regenerative culture because they observed the Delphic motto: “know thyself.” It was the ethical strength of the Greeks that led to their “victory over all other cultures” (69). The essay concludes by stating that the fall of a prevailing, decorative culture may be justified by the advancement of a true culture.