Nietzsche’s On the Use and Abuse of History for Life
(Preface) history, much like food is a means to life
We may eat for fuel or for pleasure. Depending on one’s predominant attitude towards food, two distinct bodies emerge: (i) one is healthy, muscular and vigorous, (ii) the other sickly, weak and slow. In the first case, the person eats in order to live. They understand that food is a means to building a better body and leading a better life. In the second case, the person misunderstands food. They act as though food is not a means to an end, i.e. life. They either live to eat or hardly eat. In both cases they malnourish themselves.
From the get go, Nietzsche wants us to place history in the same conceptual framework as food. He claims that much like food, history carries the capacity to nourish life and enliven our activity. Yet, at the same time, he asks us to adopt an “eat for fuel” attitute towards it, as opposed to a “gorge yourself” attitude or “eat sparsely” attitude. In other words, Nietzsche wants us to focus on the quality of the history “meat” and not its quantity.
This, the philosopher does during a time in which many educated people find it fashionable to greedily gorge themselves with whatever historical knowledge they can lay their hands on. They then proceed to evacuate their mind’s bowel by publishing tomes of their “philosophies of history”. These are filled with pompous univeralisms and historical “truths” which are toxic to life and occlute its arteries.
If you have reached this point, then you have read a first free preview of my upcoming project, a Classical History Study Group. Where I preface this study group with my commentary on an essay by Nietzsche, the main course will consists of works by Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato and other classical writers. The book after Nietzsche’s “On the Use and Abuse of History” is Xenophon’s “Anabasis”.
Choose to support me with a paid subscription, and, alongside Aristotle, I will slowly yet steadily deliver to you my commentary on the works of Nietzsche, Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato and many others.
