Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeA historical phenomenon, known clearly and completely andresolved into a phenomenon of knowledge, is, fo r him who has perceivedit, dead: fo r he has recognized in it the delusion, the injustice,the blind passion, and in general the whole earthly and darkeninghorizon of this phenomenon, and has thereby also understood itspower in history. This power has now lost its hold over him insofaras he is a man of knowledge: but perhaps irhas not done so insofar a.she is a man involved in life.History become pure, sovereign science would be fo r mankind asort of conclusion of life and a settling of accounts with it. The studyof history is something salutary and fr. uitful fo r the fu ture only as theattendant of a mighty new current of life, of an evolving culture fo rexample, that is to say only when it is dominated and directed by ahigher fo rce and does not itself dominate and direct.Insofar as it stands in the service of life, history stands in the serviceof an un historical power, and, thus subordinate, it can and shouldnever become a pure science such as, fo r instance; mathematics is.The question of the degree to which life requires the service of historyat all, however, is one of the supreme questions and concerns inregard to the health of a man, a people or a culture. For when itattains a certain degree of excess, life crumbles and degenerates, andthrough th is degeneration history itself finally degenerates too .2That life is in need of the services of history, however, must be graspedas firmly as must the proposition, which is to be demonstrated later,that an excess of history is harmful to the living man. History pertainsto the living man in three respects: it pertains to him as a beingwho acts an d strives, as a being who preserves and reveres, as a beingwho suffe rs and seeks deliverance. This threefold relationship correspondsto three species of history - insofar as it is permissible todistinguish between a monumental, an antiquarian and a critical speciesof history.History belongs above all to the man of deeds and power, to himwho fights a great fight, 'who needs models, teachers, comforters an dcan not find them among his contemporaries. It belonged thus toSchiller: fo r our time is so bad, Goethe said, that the poet no longerencounters in the human life that surrounds him a nature he canemploy. It is the man of deeds Polybius has in mind when he callspolitical history the proper preparation fo r governing a state an d the67