Nietzsches The Use And Abuse Of History

Between 1873 and 1876 Nietzsche published four â€Å"Untimely Meditations.†Ã‚  The second of these is the essay often referred to as â€Å"The Use and Abuse of History for Life.† (1874)  A more accurate translation of the title, though, is â€Å"On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.† The Meaning of History and Life The two key terms in the title, â€Å"history† and â€Å"life† are used in a very broad way.  By â€Å"history,† Nietzsche mainly means historical knowledge of previous cultures (e.g. Greece, Rome, the Renaissance), which includes knowledge of past philosophy, literature, art, music, and so on.  But he also has in mind scholarship in general, including a commitment to strict principles of scholarly or scientific methods, and also a general historical self-awareness which continually places one’s own time and culture in relation to others that have come before. The term â€Å"life† is not clearly defined anywhere in the essay.  In one place Nietzsche describes it as â€Å"a dark driving insatiably self-desiring power,† but that doesn’t tell us much.  What he seems to have in mind most of the time, when he speaks of â€Å"life,† is something like a deep, rich, creative engagement with the world one is living in.  Here, as in all his writings, the creation of an impressive culture is of prime importance to Nietzsche.   What Nietzsche Is Opposing In the early 19th century, Hegel (1770-1831) had constructed a philosophy of history which saw the history of civilization as both the expansion of human freedom and the development of greater self-consciousness regarding the nature and meaning of history.  Hegel’s own philosophy represents the highest stage yet achieved in humanity’s self-understanding.  After Hegel, it was generally accepted that a knowledge of the past is a good thing.  In fact, the nineteenth century prided itself on being more historically informed than any previous age.  Nietzsche, however, as he loves to do, calls this widespread belief into question.   He identifies 3 approaches to history: the monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical.  Each can be used in a good way, but each has its dangers. Monumental History Monumental history focuses on examples of human greatness, individuals who â€Å"magnify the concept of man†¦.giving it a more beautiful content.†Ã‚  Nietzsche doesn’t name names, but he presumably means people like Moses, Jesus, Pericles, Socrates, Caesar, Leonardo, Goethe, Beethoven, and Napoleon.  One thing that all great individuals have in common is a cavalier willingness to risk their life and material well-being.  Ã‚  Such individuals can inspire us to reach for greatness ourselves.  They are an antidote to world-weariness.   But monumental history carries certain dangers.  When we view these past figures as inspirational, we may distort history by overlooking the unique circumstances that gave rise to them.  It is quite likely that no such figure could arise again since those circumstances will never occur again.  Another danger lies in the way some people treat the great achievements of the past (e.g. Greek tragedy, Renaissance painting) as canonical.  They are viewed as providing a paradigm that contemporary art should not challenge or deviate from.  When used in this way, monumental history can block the path to new and original cultural achievements. Antiquarian History Antiquarian history refers to the scholarly immersion in some past period or past culture.  This is the approach to history especially typical of academics.  It can be valuable when it helps to enhance our sense of cultural identity.  E.g. When contemporary poets acquire a deep understanding of the poetic tradition to which they belong, this enriches their own work.  They experience â€Å"the contentment of a tree with its roots.† But this approach also has potential drawbacks.  Too much immersion in the past easily leads to an undiscriminating fascination with and reverence for anything that is old, regardless of whether it is genuinely admirable or interesting.  Antiquarian history easily degenerates into mere scholarliness, where the purpose of doing history has long been forgotten.  And the reverence for the past it encourages can inhibit originality.  The cultural products of the past are seen as so wonderful that we can simply rest content with them and not try to create anything new. Critical History Critical history is almost the opposite of antiquarian history.  Instead of revering the past, one rejects it as part of the process of creating something new.  E.g. Original artistic movements are often very critical of the styles they replace (the way Romantic poets rejected the artificial diction of 18th-century poets).  The danger here, though, is that we will be unfair to the past.  In particular, we will fail to see how those very elements in past cultures that we despise were necessary; that they were among the elements that gave birth to us.   The Problems Caused by Too Much Historical Knowledge In Nietzsche’s view, his culture (and he would probably say ours too) has become bloated with too much knowledge.  And this explosion of knowledge is not serving â€Å"life†Ã¢â‚¬â€œthat is, it is not leading to a richer, more vibrant, contemporary culture.  On the contrary. Scholars obsess over methodology and sophisticated analysis.  In doing so, they lose sight of the real purpose of their work.  Always, what matters most isn’t whether their methodology is sound, but whether what they are doing serves to enrich contemporary life and culture. Very often, instead of trying to be creative and original, educated people simply immerse themselves in relatively dry scholarly activity.  The result is that instead of having a living culture, we have merely a knowledge of culture.  Instead of really experiencing things, we take up a detached, scholarly attitude to them.  One might think here, for instance, of the difference between being transported by a painting or a musical composition, and noticing how it reflects certain influences from previous artists or composers. Halfway through the essay, Nietzsche identifies five specific disadvantages of having too much historical knowledge.  The rest of the essay is mainly an elaboration on these points.  The five drawbacks are: It creates too much of a contrast between what’s going on people’s minds and the way they live.  E.g. philosophers who immerse themselves in Stoicism no longer live like Stoics; they just live like everyone else.  The philosophy is purely theoretical. Not something to be lived.It makes us think we are more just than previous ages.  We tend to look back on previous periods as inferior to us in various ways, especially, perhaps, in the area of morality.  Modern historians pride themselves on their objectivity.  But the best kind of history isn’t the kind that is scrupulously objective in a dry scholarly sense.  The best historians work like artists to bring a previous age to life.It disrupts the instincts and hinders mature development.  In supporting this idea, Nietzsche especially complains at the way modern scholars cram themselves too quickly with too much knowledge.  The result is that they lose profundity.  Extreme specialization, another fe ature of modern scholarship, leads them away from wisdom, which requires a broader view of things.It makes us think of ourselves as inferior imitators of our predecessorsIt leads to irony and to cynicism. In explaining points 4 and 5, Nietzsche embarks on a sustained critique of Hegelianism.  The essay concludes with him expressing a hope in â€Å"youth†, by which he seems to mean those who have not yet been deformed by too much education. In the Background – Richard Wagner Nietzsche does not mention in this essay his friend at the time, the composer Richard Wagner.  But in drawing the contrast between those who merely know about culture and those who are creatively engaged with culture, he almost certainly had Wagner in mind as an exemplar of the latter type.  Nietzsche was working as a professor at the time at the University of Basle in Switzerland.  Ã‚  Basle represented historical scholarship.  Whenever he could, he would take the train to Lucerne to visit Wagner, who at the time was composing his four-opera Ring Cycle.  Wagner’s house at Tribschen represented life.  For Wagner, the creative genius who was also a man of action, fully engaged in the world, and working hard to regenerate German culture through his operas, exemplified how one could use the past (Greek tragedy, Nordic legends, Romantic classical music) in a healthy way to create something new.

The Power Of The Church - 940 Words

Milgram would interpret the outside environment of the church and the church as a change in environment that is in line with his observation. Although there was a more immediate response to the command inside of the church, the usher outside of the church still obeyed and followed the orders of the authority figure, which in this case is the priest. Therefore, the environment/ background has no significant difference in the subject’s willingness to obey the command of the authority figure. The results from his studies also demonstrates that â€Å"Presence of an authority is an important force contributing to the subject’s obedience or defiance. manipulation of the experimenter’s position yielded more powerful results†. As a result, Milgram would agree that the closeness of the priest affected the assembly’s obedience. In these social situations the authority figure is the priest and he dominates over the assembly. According to Max-Weber, domination is â€Å"the probability that commands will be obeyed by a given group. And legitimate forms of domination are authority† (Smith, PowerPoint-Power Distance Index). The three kinds of authority figures that Weber speaks of is rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic. Rational legal authority consists of people who are in power due to objective rules legally enacted or contractually established. Traditional authority is chosen through customarily transmitted rules that are passed down through time. And is legitimate through theShow MoreRelatedWhat Is The Power Of The Church?1038 Words   |  5 Pagesused their tongues to spread lies, gossip, rumors and to undermine authority while holding high positions in the church. At one point you felt that walking into church was comparable to walking into a war zone. 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The Modern Presidency of Theodore Roosevlet Free Essays

Despite ridicule from his educated and respectable friends, Roosevelt entered politics immediately after graduating from Harvard College in 1880. In 1881,Roosevelt showed the strength of his intention by winning election to the New York State Assembly. He gained reelection twice before personal tragedy, On February 14,1884, in a tragic coincidence, Roosevelt†s young wife died in childbirth just hours after the death of his beloved mother. We will write a custom essay sample on The Modern Presidency of Theodore Roosevlet or any similar topic only for you Order Now Emotionally shattered, Roosevelt left politics and fled New York for the Dakota Territory. In 1886, after a disastrous winter demolished most of his cattle herd, Roosevelt returned east to politics, his first love. For the next 12 years, he held various government positions, from Civil Service Commissioner to Assistant Secretary of the Navy. When the United States went to war against Spain in 1898, Roosevelt resigned and organized a group of volunteers called the Rough Riders. Their successful assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba made Roosevelt a National hero. He rode his new fame to victory in the 1898 race for governor of New York. When President McKinley prepared to run for reelection in 1900, he needed someone to replace Garret Hobart, his first vice president, who had died in 1899. Roosevelt seemed a logical choice. Basically a man of action, Roosevelt considered the vice presidency a do-nothing position leading to political oblivion. The bosses schemed to kick Roosevelt out of New York to serve as McKinley†s vice president. After he and McKinley won the election, Roosevelt sadly wrote to a friend, â€Å"I do not expect to go any further in politics. † Wherever Roosevelt went he became the center of attention. During the late 1800s, the country had been designated by strong Congresses and relatively weak presidents. Roosevelt reversed that traditional division of power. The new president employed the considerable powers of his office and his own personal magnetism to bypass congressional opposition. In doing so, Roosevelt became the first modern president. In 1902 Roosevelt supported passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act, which authorized the use of federal funds from the sale of public lands to pay for irrigation and land development projects in the dry farms and cities of the West. Under new law, Roosevelt supported the construction of 25irrigation or reclamation projects. Roosevelt also backed efforts to save the nation†s forests by preventing shortsighted lumbering companies from overcutting. He appointed close friend Gifford Pinchot to head the U. S. Forest Service. Like President Roosevelt, Pinchot was a firm believer in resource management, the rational scientific management of natural resources such as forests. He added 150 million acres to the national forests, quadrupling the amount of land they contained. Roosevelt also established five new national parks, created 51 federal bird reservations, and started four national game preserves. Other issues were already on the national agenda when Roosevelt took office. One involved the growth of large trusts, which were giant firms that controlled whole areas of industry by buying up all the companies with which they did business. Buy-outs, takeovers, and mergers reached a feverish pitch between 1897 and 1903. Indeed, by 1899 an elite group of six companies controlled about 95 percent of the railroads in the country. In 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was designed to prohibit such monopolies, but it had proven hard to enforce. Industrialists simply devised substitute methods of retaining control, for example, the holding company. Holding companies bought controlling shares of stock in the member companies instead of purchasing the companies outright. While the â€Å"held† companies remained separate businesses on paper, in reality the holding company controlled them. In 1902 J. P. Morgan, a powerful banker, had joined with a handful of the nation†s wealthiest men to finance the Northern Securities Company. This holding company combined the stock of the Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, and Burlington railroads to dominate rail service from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean. Roosevelt, deciding that the company was a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, ordered his attorney general to file suit against the company in 1902. In 1904 the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, sided with Roosevelt, ruling that the Northern Securities Company had indeed violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. In May 1902 the United Mine Workers (UMW) called a strike of the miners who dug the anthracite, or hard, coal that fired most of the furnaces in the United States. The UMW hoped to win a 20 percent pay increase and to reduce their long workday to eight hours. They simply refused to negotiate the striking workers. As the reality of a cold winter approached, the shivering public demanded a settlement. President Roosevelt stepped in and urged the union and the owners to accept arbitration. A settlement imposed by an outside party. The minors won a nine-hour workday and a 10 percent pay increase, which was passed along to consumers in the form of higher coal prices. Roosevelt also defended the public interest on consumer issue. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906outlawed misleading labels and dangerous chemical preservatives. Roosevelt agreed that the government, rather than the packers should pay for the inspection. In addition, he dropped the requirement that meat be dated, which would have informed consumers about the meat†s age. Quick doctors sold concoctions of alcohol, cocaine, opium, and other drugs that claimed to heal everything from liver ailments to baldness. On the same day that Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act, It also passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. This act prohibited the manufacture, sale, or shipment of impure or falsely labeled food and drugs in interstate commerce. The food and Drug Administration (FDA) was not established until much later in 1938. Roosevelt decided not to run for reelection in 1908, Instead, Roosevelt chose his fellow Republican, William Howard Taft, an experienced diplomat and administrator to run for president on the Republican ticket. Taft, a large, slow-moving, but extremely intelligent man, ran a mild-mannered campaign. Nevertheless, thanks to Roosevelt†s energetic efforts on his behalf, Taft won the election. Although he had none of Roosevelt†s flair, Taft carried out- and went beyond-many of his predecessor†s policies. In only four years as president, Taft prosecuted almost twice as many trusts as did Roosevelt in nearly eight years, including two of the most powerful, Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company. He expanded the number of acres of national forests. He supported laws requiring mine owners to improve safety. He established the Children†s Bureau, a federal agency that protected the rights and interests of children. By 1912 Roosevelt had become completely disillusioned with Taft, he was upset over Taft†s failure to exert strong public leadership. With a new presidential eledion on the horizon, Roosevelt wondered if Taft was enough of a progressive activists to warrant his continued support. How to cite The Modern Presidency of Theodore Roosevlet, Essay examples