On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life

In Chapter 9, Nietzsche reiterates the position of modern man in relation to history: “Hard by the pride of modern man we find his irony about himself” (54). The awareness of history puts modern man in what Nietzsche calls an “evening mood,” which verges on cynicism. This veering into cynicism is problematic because it limits opportunities for change and growth. Modern man, Nietzsche argues, posits human history as the evolution of natural history: “We are the apex of nature” (55). This knowledge, though, “does not complete nature but only kills [man’s] own” (55).

Citing Edouard von Hartmann’s Philosophie des Unbewussten (1869), Nietzsche claims that Hartmann’s idea of the Unconscious is symptomatic of an excess of historical knowledge. Hartmann’s appraisal of modernity in the light of doomsday is, for Nietzsche, a “parody” of history. It is typical of the antiquarian, conservative history Nietzsche outlined in Chapter 2.

Nietzsche interrogates Hartman’s notion that the individual should surrender their personality to the “world process for the sake of its goal, the redemption of the world” (57). Nietzsche argues that Hartmann’s idea of the “world process” is “to the detriment of existence and life” and hence proclaims it “a joke” (59).