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Classics/ Philosophy ISBN:
978-1-935238-77-5
USD $8.95
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On the Use and Abuse of History
Translated by Ian Johnston
“We wish to serve history only insofar as it serves
living. But there is a degree of doing history and valuing it through
which life atrophies and degenerates. To bring this phenomenon to light
as a remarkable symptom of our time is now every bit as necessary as it
may be painful.” With these words Friedrich Nietzsche, the revolutionary
German philosopher, launches a frontal assault on the modern historical
scholarship of his age. That scholarship, which prides itself on its
objectivity and its ruthless enquiry into the facts, Nietzsche argues,
undermines life, because it destroys our confidence in our own culture,
our instincts, and our ability to live meaningful lives. We end up
knowing all there is to know about our past, but losing contact with the
emotionally meaningful value of that past. With so much knowledge we can
have no horizon of significance, no moral frame of reference, because
everything is dissolved into an infinite sea of becoming, and the most
important elements of our lives become subservient to historical
scholarship instead of the other way around. The best solution for this
acute problem is a new generation of young people who will use history
to expose its dangers and who will re-establish the priorities which
serve life, by putting human beings in charge of history and no longer
allowing a perverse mania for scientific knowledge to corrupt cultures
and individuals.
Ian Johnston’s new translation of this famous essay captures the
clarity, energy, and urgency of Nietzsche’s challenge to the culture of
his time, a challenge every bit a pertinent today as when it first
appeared.