Class Synopsis 4/4

Today in class, we recalled the three forms of history according to Nietzsche: monumental, antiquarian, and critical. All three forms of history have healthy forms and diseased forms. Monumental history, in a healthy culture, looks to the past and recognizes the greatness of the past in order to influence our own greatness. A diseased culture is unable to affirm its own greatness, and only sees the past as something that cannot be repeated. Antiquarian form, in a healthy culture, has a pious reverence of the past and views it as a unique string of events that one can not impose current values upon to understand fully. A diseased culture though does not believe that they should impose their own values on the past because they believe their own values do not hold enough meaning for the past. Diseased culture denies the fact that they give meaning to anything. Finally, critical approach criticizes and questions the past when studying it in order for us to overcome the past and for us to not make the same mistakes made in the past. There is a reason for being critical. The diseased culture though does not see any value in itself; therefore they do not see value in anything else and simply criticizes for no purpose.

The healthy forms of doing history recognize the life activity of being human: the will to power. Humans are creative beings that create psychological works that connect us with the external world and give it meaning. Will to power is this process of putting meaning into the external world and us affirming that the external world is in accord with the cycle of those psychological works.

Nietzsche revered the tragic age of the Greeks as healthy, because there was a life affirming will to power, according to Apollo and Dionysian. Apollonian part of society uses reason and has optimistic ideas about how to live life. This part of oneself projects our ideas on to reality of the external world in order to safe guard everything. The Dionysian part of oneself though affirms the madness and flux of life, but also does not care about it, just simply affirms it. The classical world though transforms the will of power on the search of the will of truth. Our individual will to power is denied by asserting the will to truth. The history of the world is a dominance of the will to truth, but that the truth needs to be questioned. One’s personal will to power must be given up in order to see the will to truth, the will of God. Nietzsche uses a Master and Slave simile. Master’s will to power affirms itself and asserts itself over the external world. The slave, or weak will, wants to figure out how to assert his/her own power. But what the master believes is good is not considered good in the eyes of the slave. So the slave makes the master’s values seem bad in order to gain power over the master.

The Age of Nihilism involves a world where meaning is not given to anything. Such as an artist saying, “No, do not look at my piece of art because it is not good and dos not have any meaning.” This is impossible according to Nietzsche because he believes that meaning will always exist and humans will always search for it.