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Abstract
Nietzsche was a philosopher who prided himself, in deliberate contradistinction with previous philosophers, on his ‘historical sense’. But this leaves many questions unanswered about the precise role of the historical in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, can the conception of genealogy in Nietzsche’s later philosophy, as a revised historical method, be taken to represent his mature philosophical methodology in general? I argue, firstly, that there is considerable continuity between Nietzsche’s conceptions of history in the early essay ‘On the uses and disadvantages of history for life’ and those of his later philosophy. The former can therefore be used as a resource for understanding the latter. Through a reading of the early history essay I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of the historical here is intimately bound up with the notion of the ‘unhistorical’ and that it is precisely renewed access to the unhistorical which is required in order for history to be conducive to the flourishing of humanity. I go on to contend that this holds for Nietzsche’s later writings as well, and that genealogy, being purely historical, must therefore be seen as one subsidiary part of a broader philosophy in which the unhistorical will play, literally, a vital role.
Notes
1 Thus he complains, in the opening pages of Human, All Too Human that the ‘lack of a historical sense is the congenital defect of all philosophers’ and proposes instead a method of ‘historical philosophy’ (Nietzsche, Citation1994: sections 1–2). More famously, see also Nietzsche’s assertion that previous historians ‘lack the historical spirit’ in the Genealogy’s first essay (Nietzsche, Citation1996: p. 12). For a discussion of this theme relating it, as I will, to the project of the Genealogy, and with which I am broadly in agreement, see Ansell-Pearson, Citation1996: pp. 1–16. All references to Nietzsche's original German text are to Nietzsche 1980.
2 The original and most influential version of such an interpretation is to be found in Foucault, Citation1984; the French original of this essay is in Foucault, Citation1994.
3 I will remain neutral, for the purposes of this paper, on the question of Nietzsche’s development and whether this is evidence of a general continuity in Nietzsche’s thought or just a prophetic anticipation of his later thinking.
4 See Müller-Lauter, Citation1999: pp. 23–40; Ansell-Pearson, Citation1996: p. 16; see also Foucault’s reflections on this issue in Foucault, Citation1984. For a completely contrary view see Brobjer, Citation2004: pp. 301–22. Brobjer insists on the importance for Nietzsche’s mature philosophy of developing a particular historical methodology; I do not dispute such a claim, but Brobjer takes it to imply that Nietzsche distances himself from the thoroughgoing scepticism about historicism represented by the earlier Meditation. As will become apparent, I think this represents a misreading of that Meditation.
5 Beyond Good and Evil, section 224.
6 Ibid.
7 On the Genealogy of Morals, third essay, section 28. Henceforth GM with essay and section numbers.
8 See GM III 27.
9 Owen, Citation2007: p. 141.
10 Owen, Citation2007: pp. 141–3. Nehamas, Citation1985: p. 246, n1.
11 ‘On the Use and Abuse of History for Life’, in Untimely Meditations (Nietzsche, Citation1997) p. 59. Henceforth UM with page number.
12 Cf. Breazeale, 1997: p. xv.
13 See Brobjer, Citation2004.
14 The ‘truly human’ is roughly equivalent to what Nietzsche later describes as ‘self-overcoming’ insofar as it involves going beyond the level that man generally attains just as a matter of course, and thus even has a family connection with the ‘superhuman’ or ‘übermenschlich’; even here it is apparent that to become ‘truly human’ by means of the unhistorical means surpassing the merely human, or what Nietzsche would a few years later describe as the ‘all-too-human’ (‘allzumenschliches’) in Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche, Citation1994).
15 On the importance of the animal in Nietzsche’s philosophy see Lemm, Citation2009.
16 See above, note 9.
17 See Reginster, Citation2006: pp. 18–19; Loeb, Citation2005.
18 GM II 24-5. On the significance of the invocation of Zarathustra at this point see Loeb, Citation2005.
19 This is cached out by Nietzsche in terms simply of doing what makes life most difficult to bear, such as ‘to be sick and send away comforters and make friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want to ask’ (Nietzsche, 1969: p. 54); it is nevertheless natural to think that history itself might be the kind of burden which such a spirit would willingly bear.
20 Nietzsche, 1969: p. 55.
21 See note 25 below.
22 The relevant passage begins: ‘If you ask your acquaintances if they would like to relive the past ten or twenty years…’ (UM: p. 65)
23 It should be noted here that this is a quite different kind of inactivity from that which Nietzsche, at the start of the essay, worries might result from an excess of historical knowledge: in the earlier passages the concern is with an excess of historical information which blocks off our route to the unhistorical, whereas with the suprahistorical, the problem is that a certain conscious realization, the realization that action is pointless, paralyzes our capacity for action. Another distinction to make is that, in the sections on the suprahistorical, Nietzsche uses the term ‘historical’, as when he talks of ‘historical men’, to denote a positive, active approach to history, albeit one which is in fact based on a naive and false view of history, as we shall see.
24 This irony may not be present to the same degree in the phrase ‘Thätigen und Fortschreitenden’ as might appear to be the case from the translation: Kaufmann curiously translates this as ‘believers in deeds and progress’ where the German says nothing about belief: the ‘Thätigen und Fortschreitenden’ are those who themselves act and progress forward (UM: p. 66).
25 Possibly the doctrine of eternal return is what will eventually dissolve this tension for the later Nietzsche and determine once and for all a perspective on history which eludes both categories. At any rate one aspect of the eternal return as Nietzsche conceives it is to undermine all progressivist historicism: if we think we can ‘progress’ in history we will inevitably have to regress also in order to come back to the point of return. Further, by seeing the moment not in terms of its ephemerality, its place in a (historical) succession of moments, but in terms of a kind of permanence it acquires through repetition, the eternal return works to affirm each present moment and so possesses a certain affinity with the unhistorical.
26 This can clearly be seen from, for one thing, Nietzsche’s discussion of the hidden ‘instincts’ at work in philosophers in Nietzsche, 1990: sections 3–6. Nietzsche was never shy of identifying the role of unconscious forces shaping his own views.
27 This is the view put forward by Nadeem Hussain (Citation2007). Hussain summarizes the view as follows: ‘Nietzsche’s free spirits, with the help of art, are to engage in a simulacrum of valuing by regarding things as valuable in themselves while knowing they are not’ (Hussain, Citation2007: p. 175). For a different approach to the same problem, arguing that Nietzsche must construe values as in some sense objective, see Poellner, Citation2007.
28 See Nietzsche, Citation1974: section 290. For a perspicuous account of this tension see Janaway, 2008: pp. 258–61.
29 Nietzsche, Citation1967: section 881.
30 This remains so even in conjunction with the thought of eternal return: these eras would then become, somewhat paradoxically, repeated singular times, times which are singular and unrepeatable except in terms of the repetition of the whole which is eternal return.
31 Again Foucault’s reading would be the paradigm case.
32 See note 18.