On the Dangers of Antiquarian Investigations: Nietzsche, the Excesses of History, and the Power of Forgetting

Abstract

Drawing on Nietzsche’s insights as well as those of his critics, this article explores the dangers and limitations of the antiquarian type of historical investigations. The author begins his analysis by closely examining Nietzsche’s conception of antiquarian history and explaining why he finds this mode of historical investigation so troubling. Next he shows that the problem that Nietzsche associates with the antiquarian type of historicizing can be seen in a contemporary genealogical investigation: Daniel Mendelsohn’s book The Lost. Returning to Nietzsche, he then analyzes the meaning and value of his notion of the ‘power of forgetting’ and argues that it can serve as an antidote to some of the dangers of antiquarian history. In the final part of this article the author examines how the power of forgetting might be educationally valuable.

Keywords:

• Nietzsche
• Antiquarian history
• Remembering
• Forgetting
• Education

Notes

1. The insight that Mendelsohn reaches at the end of his book when he discovers where Shmiel and Frydka were killed seems rather obvious: ‘that they had been specific people with specific deaths, and those lives and deaths belonged to them, not me…’ (p. 502).