The use and Abuse of History

     “The Use and Abuse of History” deals with the dynamics of remembering and forgetting, which Nietzsche sees as the exclusive characteristic of human animal. Unlike the beast, human beings have to come to grips with the problem of leaving to forget an action, which presupposes the prior ability to remember. Whether he wants it or not, man has history. Nietzsche grants that man needs history in three ways. “In relation to his action and struggle, his conservation and reverence, his suffering and his desire for deliverance”. These three needs generate three kinds of history: Monumental, antiquarian and Critical.
1. Monumental: Monumental reading of history makes a man very active. When history teaches us action it is monumental. There are several historical events and personalities whom people could not find in their contemporary time and they simply try to imitate their actions and get energy. Monumental history provides energy, vigor and inspiration to man. Man today is in search or great persons and their noble activities as model. While undergoing monumental history, we do not imitate great warriers, celebrities having great influences. The reader of monumental history is man of action, avoids, despair and disgust. Vigor, monumental history. Sometimes monumental history becomes terrible if not properly handled. Monumental history ignores causes and looks only for results/effects. In history several bad events have occurred if without understanding the real causes we follow or imitate the result will be very bad. In the process of glorification of history sometimes we come to glorify wrong sides history. When monumental type of historical sense enters to the egoist and visionary scoundrel, empires are destroyed, princes are murdered and wars and revolutions are launched. Monumental history also deceives others who are not blessed with greatness into thinking that they too can be great or significant in historical process.
2. Antiquarian history: History which one preserves and respects past with love and loyalty is antiquarian history. The beneficial of this history is related to the preservation of origin and of personal, communal or national histories. In this history, we search our root so that we will not feel dislocated, so that we feel strong rooted in the society. It is related to historico-cultural existence of a person. It gives inner sense of satisfaction and optimism as much as monumental history gives energy and power. Past is equally important to build present civilization. If we preserve the past, our future generation will preserve the present. It is knowledge-based as monumental history is spirit-based and action-based. This history makes us acquire dignity. Antiquarian historian says- “Here we are lived and here we are living and here we shall love”. In the name of preserving past if we blindly preserve anything of past then we will polute our civilization, therefore respect and preserve of the past should be properly done. When the study of history serves the life of the past in such a way that it undermines continuing higher life- then the historical sense does not conserve life but mummifies it. If that happens great desires are reduced, novelty is sacrificed, it pralyzes the man of action, it obstructs something new because it knows only to preserve not to engender the past. Antiquarian historian must rejuvinate, freshen the history with present events also otherwise history degenerates its piety, wither away its scholarlyness, continues to rotate in egoistic self-satisfaction aroused its own axis.
3. Critical History: It is a judgemental historical sense that locates human weakness and violence in the past. It is the history of power that played a dominant role in the past. To live, man must posses the strength to breakup and dissolve a part of the past by examining it and condemning it. In critical method of studying history with analytical method. We are aware that in history all things are not good, many anti-human activities and utter violence are there in history. So we should not respect that part of the history Nietzsche has given the example of Mastin Luther king as having a critical vision of hisotyr. Luther oncef said that the world only came into being through the forgetfulness of God, if God had thought about “heavy artifllery”, he would never have made the world. Critical historians condemn the history. But Nietzsche says that over attack on history will bring detrimental effect to the result of earlier generation but also the result or their passion and errors. We can not free ourselves from the history entirely because it is history that is shaping our life. The best way is to confront the past with our never knowledge and new habits, new instinct and new nature. Knowledge of the past should be instrumental for the past and future. Nietzsche says that man should take history if it serves life and instigates the life force otherwise just damn cave.
In the essay, Nietzsche opposes Christianity as it does not encourage life. Christianity says that human beings are product of sin so our life in this world is simply the preparation for death, but Nietzsche valorizes the life in its extremity at the expense of death. He is an anti-Hegelian in this essay. For Hegel, idea or consciousness is prior to life and life is determined by consciousness. Nietzsche says, that this Hegelian Philosophy has made people simply to think but not act. Nietzsche says one who thinks does not act and one who does not act can’t understand life properly. Hegclian philosophy simply giving people garbage of knowledge which does not promote life and instinct. Contemporary German education system was primarily based on Hegelian philosophy which gives emphasis to knowledge and consciousness at the cast of human instinct, spirit and sensibility. Nietzsche was against this concept of knowledge and consciousness. Having discussed about the contemporary German people, Hietzsche is lamenting on the attitude of modern people who are meandering to the past disregarding the power of present. Due to their retrospective nature whole modern culture is affected resulting bad consequences. He says that present and future are being sacrificed at the acter of the past, as a result feeling is lost, unified subjectivity and spirit and lost, source of hope and belief is muddied. Modern man is racked by knowledge, natural instinct no longer came out, he is just like sage always in retrospective. He says due to the over saturation of history, egoism has been developed in modern culture as a result life force is paralyzed and destroyed.
Now, youths are suffering from malady of history which mass the melody of life. They are eating knowledge without hunger. They have became encyclopaedic in nature.
     Now Nietzsche condemns contemporary science which has made people cog of machine as a result people have become empty of emotions, feelings and instincts. Due to the development of science and rationality people have become eunach. By nature, human beings are one by heart but science has created different fragmentations in life, which is not good for the entire humanity according its Nietzsche.
At last, Nietzsche says that so as to get rid of from modern pathologies the superman is necessary. The birth of superman is the death of problem. Superman is above common humanity. He stands in the super historical standpoint. And what to forget and when to remember and when to forget. Supermen is the person as having will power and life force who creates his own history and is guided by the rules that he himself has created. His own history is truth for him. He believes that truth can be created by oneself. The superman is an individual who overcomes the so-called ‘slave-morality of traditional values and lives according to his own morality.
     Crux of the essay: Look at history very calculatively, do not be voracious reader of history, do not eat history without hunger, criticse if bad, adopt good aspects try to get benefit from all methods of reading history.

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