On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for the Life of Friedrich Nietzsche reads as a polemic against German historicism, the prevailing attitude of his time towards value of history. Originally published as the second of the four Untimely Meditations, this work offers a cultural critique that is in tension with what Nietzsche sees as the prevailing self-congratulatory spirit of an age paralyzed by the search for a certain kind of knowledge and truth. From the failure of reason's promise to provide knowledge, the nineteenth century emerges with a view of historical knowledge as valuable in and of itself. Nietzsche's criticism of the nineteenth-century approach to history stems from his belief that an objective, scientific approach to history is psychologically and ethically devastating to contemporary men. He opposes the metaphysical claim of historicism, so defined, for its tendency to alienate existing individuals from themselves. Echoing Kierkegaard's characterization of objective truth as unsuitable for existing individuals – belittling such a total picture of reality as “a system – for God; but [not] for any existing spirit” – Nietzsche diagnoses the destructive effects of such an approach. Like religion, historicism places faith in something outside of ourselves and the here and now. Nietzsche accuses his contemporaries of having fallen into an indoctrinated approach to history, passive and retrospective, irrelevant to the real situation. Such an approach to history as a science of what is or has been gives us no creative power to determine what we should do. Thus, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life affirms alternative ways of orienting ourselves toward history that will contribute to society's health and ability to be great. Nietzsche advocates an understanding of the past from a self-conscious perspective, rooted in contemporary existence and serving the interests of life. The fundamental principle of life, that we exist, must motivate all quests for knowledge and serve the existing individual in his attempt to overcome the alienation of historicism's fixation on the past. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayNietzsche diagnoses the historical disease present in his time as the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself, which in its passive retrospection shatters man's ability to live in the present. He accuses his contemporaries of having erred in the search for truth, placing the search for knowledge above their nature as existing individuals. Arguing for the primacy of the fact of our existence, Nietzsche asks “which of these two authorities [life or knowledge] is the higher and more decisive? No one will doubt: life is higher, the ruling authority, because any knowledge that destroys life would also destroy itself” (ADHL, p. 65). It is the primacy of our particular existence that has fallen prey to the backward orientation of historicism. While, in Nietzsche's assessment, knowledge must rightly be pursued only in the service of the affirmation of life, modern man appears ill due to the effects of excessive indulgence in the historical past: “Now life is no longer l the only ruler and master of knowledge of the world. past: rather all boundaries are overturned and everything that once was falls upon man" (ADHL, p. 23). Living our lives in service of the past has caused men to lose their foothold in the present. Searching for objective truths in the past, modern man drags with him “an immensequantity of indigestible stones of knowledge... knowledge which, taken in excess without hunger, even against need, no longer acts as a transforming motive that pushes us to action..." (ADHL, page 24). Suffering from a kind of intellectual paralysis, modern culture “is not a real culture at all, but only a kind of cultureknowledge of culture” (ADHL, p. 24). This is due to its dependence on a false ideal of objectivity, for the sake of historical knowledge pursued as an end in itself. Behind a veil of universality, historicism hides a dogmatic relationship to historical practice that prevents even historians themselves from subjecting their discipline to historical scrutiny. Nietzsche believes that the practice of history as a science, and its demand for the impossible ideal of objectivity, serves only to hide the particular prejudices and assumptions that a historian has by virtue of his existence in historical time and space. In their obsession with the past, his 19th century contemporaries lost sight of their own historical nature. Every existing individual is a link in the chain of historical existence, and “however far and fast he runs, the chain runs with him” (ADHL, p. 8). Each of us exists as a product of a particular and unique history, which generates our subjectivity and concerns as human beings. A quest for objectivity is therefore fundamentally misguided, a “false article of faith” from which truth emerges “as the weakest source of knowledge” (GS, §110). This knowledge is “weak” precisely because its truth is independent of any actual concern for our lives. It is useless and misleading to conduct an investigation, as historicism does, that seeks to overcome this state of affairs. Such an investigation results in a “solitary knowledge,” devoid of “that higher unity in the nature and soul of a people” because the knowledge these people hold dear is alienated from their very essence (ADHL, p. 27) . Nietzsche declares that the remedy for the "historical disease" consists in applying historicism's method of investigating the past to the existing state of affairs. In the midst of objectively valid knowledge, the individual "becomes shy and insecure and may no longer believe in himself: he sinks into himself, into his interiority, which here only means: into the accumulated chaos of knowledge that makes no sense. external effect, of teaching that does not become life" (ADHL, p. 29). Surrounded by knowledge irrelevant to his being, the individual still possesses the tools to redeem himself, to reaffirm his existence with the same tools he is used to using to analyze the historical past. This is because the present is still a historical moment, even if it is before us: we existing individuals remain historical beings. If we apply “the origin of historical education,” which leads us to place so much trust in knowledge extracted from past times, Nietzsche believes that we could overcome the miserly modern spirit (ADHL, p. 45). The same spirit that led historicists to attribute such value to the past can be applied to the situation existing in the present: thus "the origin of historical education... must in turn be understood historically, history itself must solve the problem of history ”. (ADHL, page 45). Without this focused reaffirmation of inquiry into the present, nineteenth-century individuals “must only ever be 'descendants' in all higher cultural matters, for that is all we could be” (ADHL, p. 45). As historical beings – that is, people who exist in a specific time and place – historians must subject their discipline to the same scrutiny that they are accustomed to applying only to past eras. Nietzsche's vision of a true and useful history requires that the historian take a role in it., 1974.