Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifecall all historiography 'subjective' that does not accept these popularstandards as canonical.And may an illusion not creep into the word objectivity even in itshighest interpretation? According to this interpretation, the wordmeans a condition in the historian which permits him to observe an"event in all its motivations and consequences so purely that it has noeffect at all on his own subjectivity: it is analogous to that aestheticphenomenon of detachment from personal interest with which apainter sees in a stormy landscape with thunder and lightning, or arolling sea, only the picture of them within him, the phenomenon ofcomplete absorption in the things themselves: it is a superstition,however, that the picture which these things evoke in a man possessingsuch a disposition is a true reproduction of the empirical nature ofthe things themselves. Or is it supposed that at this moment thethings as it were engrave, counterfeit, photograph themselves bytheir own action on a purely passive medium?This would be mythology, and bad mythology at that: and it isforgotten, moreover, that that moment is precisely the strongest andmost spontaneous moment of creation in the depths of the artist, amoment of composition of the highest sort, the outcome of whichmay be an artistically true painting but cannot be an historically trueone. To think of history objectively in this fashion is the silent workof the dramatist; that is to say, to think of all things in relation to allothers and to weave the isolated event into the whole: always with thepresupposition that if a unity of plan does not already reside inthings it must be implanted into them. Thus man spins his web overthe past and subdues it, thus he gives expression to his artistic drivebutnot to his drive towards truth or justice. Objectivity and justicehave nothing to do with one another. A historiography could beimagined which had in it not a drop of common empirical truth andyet could lay claim to the highest degree of objectivity. Indeed,Grillparzer ventures to declare: 'What is history but the way in whichthe spirit of man apprehends events impenetrable to him; unites thingswhen God alone knows whether they belong together; substitutessomething comprehensible for what is incomprehensible; imposeshis concept of purpose from without upon a whole which, if itpossesses a purpose, does so only inherently; and assumes theoperation of chance where a thousand little causes have been atwork. All human beings have at the same time their own individualnecessity, so that millions of courses run parallel beside one anotherin straight or crooked lines, fru strate or advance one another, strive91