Friedrich Nietzsche’s "On the Genealogy of Morality" as History Serving Life

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1874 essay "On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life" (HL) presents ideas on how the past ought to be appropriated and how history ought to be written. His 1887 book "On the Genealogy of Morality" (GM) presents an account of the historical development of European morality. Given that Nietzsche appropriates the past through writing in GM, the question arises: does GM put into practice Nietzsche’s earlier ideas from HL concerning how the past ought to be appropriated through the writing of history? I argue that GM does indeed apply some of Nietzsche’s key ideas from HL. In particular, GM remains consistent with HL insofar as it appropriates the past unhistorically, makes use of the monumental and critical modes of history, and appropriates the past in a way that encourages the flourishing of an elite kind of human being. However, Nietzsche’s manner of appropriating the past in GM also diverges from what he espouses in HL. Whereas in HL he emphasizes the usefulness and desirability of forgetting and distorting the past, in GM he exhibits a more notable concern with knowing the truth about the past. I show that this difference in approach is due to the significant change that Nietzsche’s epistemology underwent between the writing of HL and the writing of GM. This difference in approach notwithstanding, the great virtue of illuminating GM through the lens of HL is that it allows us to see more clearly how a lack of concern with truth and knowledge plays a positive role in Nietzsche’s writing of the past in GM. It also helps us to understand why he appropriates the past the way that he does in GM. Just as in HL Nietzsche thought that the past ought to be appropriated in a way that encourages the activity of genius, his writing of the history of European morality in GM is undertaken with the intent to encourage the occurrence and activity of a select kind of human being, a kind of human being that Nietzsche values above all else.