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On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

By Nietzshe, Friedrich

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“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.
Category
Classics
ISBN (softcover)
978-1-935238-77-5
e-ISBN
978-1-935238-31-7
Author
Nietzshe, Friedrich

  • Your translation is wonderfully done. I wrote a paper on \"On the Use...\" in a graduate seminar and the copy from our library was stilted and awkward. Everything else I had read by Nietzsche was wonderfully fluid and poetic. I couldn\'t believe that the version from our library was by the same author. Your translation captures Nietzsche\'s poetic element wonderfully, bravo!

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    I would like to express my sincere thanks for your translation of Nietzsche\'s Genealogy of Morals. I am using it this semester in my Introduction to Philosophy course. I find it forceful and accurate, successfully capturing the spirit of the work, and my students find it stimulating and interesting to read. It is wonderful that you have made such a fine contribution to scholarship. (Rhode Island)

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    I am not a student or academic. In my spare time, I read philosophy and am coming to grips with Nietzsche. I bought a translation of \"The Genealogy of Morality (/Morals)\" by Maudemarie Clark and Peter Swensen, but found your translation of infinitely more value. It is much easier to understand.

    ______

    I have read your translation of Nietzsche\'s Toward a Genealogy of Morals and consider it to be far clearer than Kaufmann\'s.

  • Your translation is wonderfully done. I wrote a paper on \\\"On the Use...\\\" in a graduate seminar and the copy from our library was stilted and awkward. Everything else I had read by Nietzsche was wonderfully fluid and poetic. I couldn\\\'t believe that the version from our library was by the same author. Your translation captures Nietzsche\\\'s poetic element wonderfully, bravo!

    ______

    I would like to express my sincere thanks for your translation of Nietzsche\\\'s Genealogy of Morals. I am using it this semester in my Introduction to Philosophy course. I find it forceful and accurate, successfully capturing the spirit of the work, and my students find it stimulating and interesting to read. It is wonderful that you have made such a fine contribution to scholarship. (Rhode Island)

    ______


    I am not a student or academic. In my spare time, I read philosophy and am coming to grips with Nietzsche. I bought a translation of \\\"The Genealogy of Morality (/Morals)\\\" by Maudemarie Clark and Peter Swensen, but found your translation of infinitely more value. It is much easier to understand.

    ______

    I have read your translation of Nietzsche\\\'s Toward a Genealogy of Morals and consider it to be far clearer than Kaufmann\\\'s.

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On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

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