On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life

A German statesman, Niebuhr became Germany’s foremost historian of ancient Rome. He inspired patriotism in his students at the University of Berlin through recourse to Roman governance. Nietzsche critiques Niebuhr’s concept of the superhistorical (an omniscient understanding of history) in Chapter 1 in order to establish his own (the eternal) in Chapter 10.

The British empiricist David Hume was an influential proponent of Enlightenment thought. He was also a historian, essayist, and economist. He is best known for his 1739 work A Treatise of Human Nature.

Nietzsche mentions the Greek statesman and orator on page 61. Demosthenes’s speeches were some of the most impactful of the 4th century BCE. His first judicial speeches were delivered at the age of 20, and he is an exemplar of the kind Nietzsche discusses in Chapters 6 and 10.

Gibbon was a British historian and parliament member. Although on page 64 Nietzsche attributes the notion that “only time […] is required for the world to perish” to Gibbon, this may be erroneous, as it does not appear in Gibbon’s most famous work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

The German philosopher and poet played a central role in German Romanticism, continuing the tradition of Goethe. On page 46, Nietzsche makes reference to a letter from Holderlinto Isaak von Sinclair, dated December 24, 1798. In the letter, Holderlin discusses the lives and works of the ancient Greek philosophers, in particular Diogenes Laertius.

Alongside Jacob Grimm, Wackernagel was the most foremost Germanist of his time. Nietzsche cites him on pages 50 and 51 in his discussion of the German identity.

Nietzsche writes that:

[…] there has been no dangerous change or turn in the German education of this century which has not become more dangerous through the enormous influence, continuing to the present moment, of this philosophy, the Hegelian (52).

Nietzsche’s grand statement refers to the German philosopher’s influential role in German idealism, and Western philosophy more widely. His best known work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, is one of the most major modern additions to that canon.

The Dominican preacher made a name for himself in Renaissance Florence by denouncing papal corruption and calling for reform. He is most famous for his bonfire of vanities, brief rule over Florence after its invasion by French forces, and excommunication. Nietzsche passes over this preacher in his discussion of Christian doctrine on page 50.

The German literary critic was instrumental in bringing French aesthetic standards to German literature. His most famous work is Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst fur die Deutschen (1730). He is mentioned by Nietzsche on page 64 in the course of a discussion of German culture.

Goethe was a seminal writer and statesman whom Nietzsche cites continuously throughout his essay (pages 20, 24, 27, 35, 36, 44, 53, and 54). This wealth of references to the great German evidently show that Goethe is the sort of German who attained the kind of greatness about which Nietzsche is talking when he speaks of “giants” calling to each other across the ages, and a “first generation” of youths unimpeded by historicism. Nietzsche may have seen Goethe’s Germany as a kind of golden age, before the battles that afflicted Nietzsche’s own Germany with the division and dissatisfaction he describes. Goethe is an important figurehead in the essay, as both authority and emblem.

Nietzsche calls Hartmann the “rogue of rogues” (57) and rubbishes the ideas set out in Hartmann’s Philosophie des Unbewussten or, Philosophy of the Unconscious (published in Berlin in 1869) in Chapter 9. The German philosopher rose to prominence after gaining his PhD from the University of Rostock.

The German poet referenced disparagingly by Nietzsche on page 64 was a professor of logic at Berlin’s military school before working as director of the national theater between 1790 and 1796.