nietzsche - brobjer - nietzsche's relation to historical methods

History and Theory 46 (May 2007), 155-179 © Wesleyan University 2007 ISSN: 0018-2656

NIetzSche’S RelatIoN to hIStoRIcal MethodS aNd NINeteeNth-ceNtURy GeRMaN hIStoRIoGRaphy

thoMaS h. BRoBjeR

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Nietzsche is generally regarded as a severe critic of historical method and scholarship; this view has influenced much of contemporary discussions about the role and nature of historical scholarship. In this article I argue that this view is seriously mistaken (to a large degree because of the somewhat misleading nature of Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben). I do so by examining what he actually says about understanding history and historical method, as well as his relation to the founders of modern German historiography (Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen). I show, contrary to most expectations, that Nietzsche knew these historians well and that he fundamentally affirmed their view of historical method. What he primarily objected to among his contemporaries was that historical scholarship was often regarded as a goal in itself, rather than as a means, and consequently that history was placed above philosophy. In fact, a historical approach was essential for Nietzsche’s whole understanding of philosophy, and his own philosophical project.

What would one expect Nietzsche’s relation to and evaluation of German nineteenth-century historiography to have been? I believe that there is a general expectation that it was rather superficial and that his evaluation of the leading historians was rather negative, based among others on statements such as “The so-called objective writing of history is something unthinkable: the objective historians are crushed or smug characters,”1 and many similar claims in Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben.2 In fact, Nietzsche is frequently

�. KSA 7, 29 [�37] (summer–autumn �873): “Die objectiv genannte Geschichtsschreibung ist ein Ungedanke: die objectiven Historiker sind vernichtete oder blasirte Persönlichkeiten..” KSA is the conventional abbreviation for Friedrich Nietzsche: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. G. colli and M. Montinari, �5 vols. [�967] (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, �980). Volume �4 is a com-mentary volume. KSB is the abbreviation for the corresponding eight volumes of Nietzsche’s letters, by the same editors. These letters have not been translated into English (except a small selection by Middleton; see below). I refer to Nietzsche’s letters by recipient and date, which means that they can easily be identified since they are published in chronological order in KSB. KSA does not contain Nietzsche’s writings before he became a professor in Basel in �869. These have been published in Friedrich Nietzsche: Frühe Schriften, 5 vols. [�933–�940] (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, �994), abbre-viated BAW (followed by volume and page numbers). These early writings are now also slowly being published in the bound edition KGW, section I (i.e., Friedrich Nietzsche: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, also edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari). A concordance between the pages of the KSA volumes and the KGW volumes is included in KSA �5. However, since the identifying numbers, e.g., 5 [�7�], are the same in both versions, it is generally easy to find any KSA-reference also in KGW. The transla-tions from Nietzsche’s notes and letters are my own unless otherwise stated.

2. Statements such as “historische Krankheit,” “historische Fieber,” “das überschwemmende,

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regarded as one of the foremost critics and opponents of the historical methods and approaches that were introduced in the nineteenth century. Georg Iggers, for example, claims that Nietzsche “denied the possibility as well as the utility of historical research and scholarly historiography.”� this sort of interpretation is based mainly on his early essay Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben (The Use and Abuse of History for Life) (�874), the only work in which he extensively discusses historical scholarship. I have recently argued that Nietzsche’s view in this essay is not representative of his general view of history—that he rejected it shortly after having published the essay—and therefore in this paper, I will not, contrary to most discussions of his relation to history, concentrate on this essay, but on his more general view of history before and after that time.4 I will attempt to show that contrary to the above-mentioned views and expectations, Nietzsche knew the major historians well (some of them even personally), that his reading and knowledge of them was profound, that he was deeply influenced by them, and that in the most important ways, including regarding method, his view of them was positive. I will also attempt to show that an awareness of this has important consequences for our view and interpretation of Nietzsche’s relation to historical knowledge, research, and writing.

The nineteenth century was the historical century above anything else, and history became the science above all others. Everything was treated historically, and history and classical philology achieved enormous status and became primary in education and at schools. History was for the first time placed above philosophy. This historical bent had its focus and major developments in Germany.5

betäubende und gewaltsame Historisieren,” and “das Zügellos umschweifende Geschichts-Unwesen,” all of them from Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben (Leipzig: Verlag von E. W. Fritzsch, �874).

�. Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, �997), 8. Iggers continues: “He believed not only that the object of research was determined by the interests and biases of the historian but that the conviction on which occidental thinking since Socrates and Plato has been based, namely that there is an objective truth not tied to the subjectivity of the thinker, was untenable. . . . Thus he denied the priority of logical, for example Socratic, over prelogical, that is mythical or poetic, think-ing.” I will show below that this gives a very misleading picture of Nietzsche’s view of history.

4. Thomas H. Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s View of the Value of Historical Studies and Methods,” Journal of the History of Ideas 65 (2004), �01-�22. In this article, I show that not only does Nietzsche have a different view of history and historical scholarship after �875–�876, which is clearly visible in his next book, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (see the text below), but also that on many occa-sions he explicitly rejected the view he proposed in Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben. For example, in �877 he writes: “I want expressly to inform the readers of my earlier writings [i.e., The Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely Meditations] that I have abandoned the metaphysical-artistic views that fundamentally govern them: they are pleasant but untenable”; the following year he characterizes the second Untimely Meditation with the words: “An attempt to close the eyes against the knowledge we get through history”; he frequently refers to it as, in the negative sense, a work of youth, and in �883 “Behind my first period grins the face of Jesuitism: I mean the deliberate holding on to illusion and the forcible annexation of illusion as the foundation of culture.” (In the above cited paper, I give many further examples of Nietzsche’s expression of critique of and distance from this work.) Furthermore, Nietzsche very rarely discusses or praises his essay on history after �875, in stark contrast to all of his other books, and, after �874, he never used the several concepts and expressions, such as monumental, antiquarian, and critical history, or overhistorical, which he coined and used in this book.

5. In Germany, the nineteenth century was frequently called “das historische Jahrhundert” in con-trast to the “philosophische” eighteenth century. See Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed.

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Although this development has a prehistory, it is with Friedrich August Wolf, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Leopold von Ranke, and Theodor Mommsen that this new development breaks through and becomes established. They were the Galileos and Newtons in the field of history—or as Nietzsche called them collectively (without naming them), “the new Columbus of the German spirit.”6 Their work was paralleled on a more philosophical level by Herder and Hegel. In some ways it is difficult for us today to grasp this revolution in historiography and the change of paradigm that then occurred, for we have all accepted the new historical methods and views that were then established. These new methods include critique of sources (that is, determining genuineness and credibility of sources), textual criticism (that is, establishing internal and external consistency and credibility), and historical interpretation. Furthermore, these methods were based on an awareness of cultural evolution, and on an independence from ecclesiastical tradition and contemporary views and values (and the conscious attempts to avoid anachronisms that this independence implied). Before Wolf, Niebuhr, and this revolution in historiography, one generally read historical authors and sources almost as one read the Bible, as dogma.

In this paper I examine three aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking related to history, of which the latter two seem not to have been addressed before. I will begin by discussing and briefly summarizing Nietzsche’s general and philosophical approach and relation to historical scholarship and method. I will show that historical approaches are central to his whole philosophical production, at least all of it produced after �876. Second, I will attempt to give an explanation of why his relation to history has been misunderstood, or has been regarded as ambivalent and obscure, by many commentators. This has two primary causes. One is the misleading nature of his essay Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, and the other is that he valued historical method and scholarship as a precondition of culture (and of cultural discussions and diagnosis), but objected to them as the goal of culture. Then I will examine Nietzsche’s explicit discussion of historical methods, primarily in his lecture notes, and show that on the whole he affirmed them. Third, I discuss his relation to the founders of the historical method and the major German historians, and again show that this reflects an appreciation of historical scholarship and method, with a few exceptions.

I. NIetzSche’S GeNeRal RelatIoN to hIStoRy

Nietzsche was well aware that a revolution in historical scholarship and a corresponding shift of paradigms had occurred, accepted it as valuable and important, and was well educated and versed in these new methods and skillful at using them, as we can see in his philological work; it was largely because he skillfully mastered the historical and philological methods that he was appointed professor by the age of 24. Much of his critique of contemporary historical scholarship and historians was that it was badly done history and that it was often determined by contemporary political and religious views and values. However, he

joachim Ritter et al., �2 vols. (Basel: Schwabe, �97�–), III, “Geschichte,,” 367.6. KSA ��, 37 [8] (June–July �885). This text, with context, is quoted below.


also leveled a fundamental critique at the tendency to view everything historically and at history being placed above philosophy.

Nietzsche’s general awareness and appraisal of developments in historiography can be seen on many occasions. For example, in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 270 he writes:

The art of reading.— . . . Production and preservation of texts, together with their elucidation, pursued in a guild for centuries, has now finally discovered the correct methods . . . to have discovered these methods was an achievement, let no one undervalue it! It was only when the art of correct reading, that is to say philology, arrived at its summit that scholarship of any kind acquired continuity and constancy.

In Der Antichrist he similarly emphasizes the enormous value that the Greeks and Romans bestowed on mankind by learning to read methodically, that is, to see the world as it is, which was lost during the Middle Ages:

The whole labour of the ancient world in vain: I have no word to express my feelings at something so dreadful. . . . Every prerequisite for an erudite culture, all the scholarly methods were already there, the great, the incomparable art of reading well had already been established—the prerequisite for a cultural tradition . . .—the sense for facts, the last developed and most valuable of all the senses, had its schools and its tradition already centuries old! Is this understood? Everything essential for setting to work had been devised—methods, one must repeat ten times, are the essential, as well as being the most difficult, as well as being that which has habit and laziness against it longest.7

Already in the first section of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878) he contrasts metaphysical philosophy (which he had previously affirmed), with its belief in opposites, to historical philosophy (which he now affirms), “the youngest of all philosophical methods,” which claims that there are no such opposites but everywhere only gradual change. In the second section he claims that

A lack of historical sensibility is the original failing of all philosophers. . . . Everything, however, has come to be; there are no eternal facts: just as there are no absolute truths.—From now on therefore, historical philosophizing will be necessary, and along with it the virtue of modesty.

In �879 he praised and congratulated both Paul Rée and Overbeck for becoming more historical.8 After having retired from his university position, and hence no longer with easy access to international journals, he asked his sister in a letter of 2� April �880 to inform him if she encountered recommendations of historical or philosophical books in the journal Revue des deux mondes—indicating the two fields in which he was most interested. In a note from the summer of �885, he explicitly states that the development of history was made by German historians: “The German scholars by whom the sense of ‘history’ was discovered—now the French are exercising this spirit.”9 In an earlier note he emphasizes the fundamental importance of this new development in history: “Let us assume that a good physician came to a primitive people . . . , how superior would he not be in

7. The Antichrist, transl. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, �968), 59. Compare also sections 1�, 26, 47, and 52.

8. In letters to them, end of July �879 and 27 August �879, respectively.9. KSA ��, 37 [�3]: “Die deutschen Gelehrten, bei denen der ‘historische’ Sinn erfunden worden

ist, — jetzt üben sich die Franzosen auf ihn ein.”


comparison with all sorcerers. Likewise is every good historian in comparison to every prophet!”10 It is also clear that Nietzsche, who was educated as a historian/philologist, identified as such and affirmed that identity. See, for example, his observations in Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche, �7, under the title “Happiness of the historian” where he contrasts the historians with the metaphysician.

that Nietzsche regarded historical-philological methods as important and essential is also visible in his descriptions of what he requires of his readers: “For philology is that venerable art . . . this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers . . . My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!”11 Furthermore, when in September �886 he sent his Jenseits von Gut und Böse to hippolyte taine and to Jakob Burckhardt, he states that those most able to understand it are historians.12

His acceptance of critical historical methods is perhaps most obvious when he emphasized the importance of having gone through the school of historical thinking, from Herder to Hegel,1� and that he was consistently hostile to philos-ophers who lacked this sense of history. In a note from �885 he affirmed and emphasized that he and perhaps other contemporary philosophers differ from most earlier philosophers in that they possess a historical sense. “What separates us from Kant, as well as from Plato and Leibniz: we believe in becoming alone, also regarding intellectual matters, we are completely historical [wir sind historisch durch und durch] this is the great change. . . . Heraclitus’ and Empedocles’ manner of thinking is revived.”14

already in Human, All Too Human (�878) Nietzsche had claimed that “a lack of historical sensibility is the original failing of all philosophers”; this is a claim that he repeated many times thereafter. In his notebook from the summer–autumn �884 he lists three things that philosophers have lacked so far, and first among them is “historical sense,”15 and later in the same notebook he repeats: “The historical sense: Plato and all of philosophy has no understanding of it.”16 During the summer of �885 he wrote: “That which most fundamentally separates us from all Platonic and Leibnizian ways of thinking, that is: we do not believe in any eternal concepts, eternal values, eternal forms, eternal souls: and philosophy, insofar as it is scholarship and not lawgiving, means for us only the widest extension of the concept ‘history.’”17

10. KSa 9, 4 [62], 1880.11. Morgenröthe, preface, 5.12. Letter to Taine, dated September �886, and letter to Burckhardt, dated 22 September �886.�3. Nietzsche, for example, criticizes Schopenhauer, who, he argues, had not learned from these

developments: “der von allem historischen Instinkte entblößt war und in der wunderlichsten Weise selbst jener starken Schulung zur Historie, wie sie die Deutschen von Herder bis Hegel durchgemacht haben, entschlüpft war.” KSA �2, 2 [�88] (autumn �885–autumn �886).

�4. KSA ��, 34 [73] (April–June �885). Nietzsche’s note is broken off in the middle of the last sen-tence: “Even Kant had not transcended the contradictio in adjecto ‘pure spirit’: we, however, ---..”

�5. KSA ��, 26 [�00]: “What have the philosophers been lacking a) historical sense;” the other two things listed are knowledge of physiology and a goal for the future.

�6. KSA ��, 26 [393]. See also, KSA �2, 7 [20]: “The morality of philosophers from Socrates onwards is a sort of Don Quixotery . . . complete lack of historical sense.”

17. KSa 11, �8 [14].


Finally, in Twilight of the Idols he again criticizes philosophers for lacking a historical sense: “You ask me about the idiosyncrasies of philosophers? . . . There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they are doing a thing honour when they dehistoricize it, sub specie aeterni—when they make a mummy of it.”18

The critique of a lack of historical sense is with equal severity directed at historians of morality. In the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche claims that he wants to present new facts about the history of morality (as a necessary precondition for an attempt at determining its value), and in the first essay he claims regarding previous historians of morality: “it is, unhappily, certain that the historical spirit itself is lacking in them, that precisely all the good spirits of history itself have left them in the lurch! As is the hallowed custom with philosophers, the thinking of all of them is by nature unhistorical; there is no doubt about that.”19

In an earlier note, Nietzsche had stated the same claim and given a sort of explanation why this was so: “Most philosophers of morality only repeat the contemporary ruling order of rank of values; on the one hand [this is due to] a lack of historical sense, on the other hand they are themselves ruled over by morality.”20 Nietzsche even goes so far as to claim to regard the whole of philosophy as a form of history. “Philosophy, the way I alone regard it, as the most general form of history, as an attempt to somehow describe and abbreviate in symbols the Heraclitian becoming.”21

That the late Nietzsche still embraced historical methods can be seen, apart from his continual use of them, in his explicit discussion in Zur Genealogie der Moral:

there is for historiography of any kind no more important proposition than the one it took such effort to establish but which really ought to be established now: the cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart . . . I emphasize this major point of historical method.22

Most importantly, Nietzsche’s whole understanding of philosophy, and his own philosophical project, especially his attempt at a revaluation of all values, requires and presupposes a thorough knowledge and understanding of history.2� In fact,

18. Twilight of the Idols, transl. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, �968), “Reason” in Philosophy, section �. Immediately thereafter, in section 2, Nietzsche praises Heraclitus and his rejection of being.

19. On the Genealogy of Morals, transl. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, �967), I, 2. Nietzsche continues the critique in the fourth section where he claims that earlier genealogists of morality completely lack historical instincts.

20. KSA ��, 35 [5] (May–July �885). Compare also “Complete lack of a history of moral evalu-ations by the philosophers,” KSA �0, 8 [�5]. See also The Gay Science, �45, KSa 12, 2 [167] and Beyond Good and Evil, 260.

2�. KSA ��, 36 [27] (June–July �885).22. On the Genealogy of Morals, transl. Kaufmann, II, 12. In section 1� Nietzsche again refers to

this “previously developed major point of historical method.”23. To just quote two examples, which I have not seen used before: KSA �0, �6 [�4], from �883:

“To overcome the present ideals (philosopher, artist, saint) a history of its development was necessary. In place of the saintly and passionate, I placed the one who is able to feel sympathetic and just towards all phases of culture: the historical human being of the highest piety;” and KSA �3, �6 [32], from �888: “I searched for beginnings of this creation of reversed ideals in history (the concepts ‘heathen’, ‘classical’, ‘noble’ discovered and presented anew — ).”


Nietzsche used a historical approach to almost all questions; this is reflected in his continual reference to the Greeks, his continual debate with historical figures (such as Caesar, Napoleon, Luther, and many others), and by his allegiance to “becoming” rather than “being.” He emphasized the importance of cultural history (and thus foreshadowed his own work in Zur Genealogie der Moral)—for example, in section seven of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft: “So far, all that has given colour to existence still lacks a history. Where could you find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of pious respect for tradition, or of cruelty? Even a comparative history of law or at least of punishment is so far completely lacking.”24 the importance of historical scholarship and method is especially noticeable and explicit in the three works Morgenröthe, Zur Genealogie der Moral, and Der Antichrist. In the first work he began his critique of morality, and a fundamental aspect of that critique is historical and anthropological. In it he also explicitly defended the new sense of history that had begun in alliance with romanticism but that developed far beyond it:

And strange: it is precisely the spirits the Germans so eloquently conjured up which have in the long run most thwarted the intentions of their conjurers—after appearing for a time as ancillaries of the spirit of obscurantism and reaction, the study of history, understanding the origins and evolutions, empathy for the past, newly aroused passion for feeling and knowledge one day assumed a new nature and now fly on the broadest wings above and beyond their former conjurers as new and stronger genii of that very Enlightenment against which they were first conjured up. This Enlightenment we must now carry further forward.25

Zur Genealogie der Moral is obviously to a large degree historical, while most of Der Antichrist consists of a historical and psychological analysis of christianity.

II. NIETZSCHE’S ExPLICIT DISCUSSIONS OF HISTORICAL METHODS

That Nietzsche knew the new historical methods and approaches is self-evident from his extensive philological education and research. For example, it seems that it was these methods, which Nietzsche had already learned at pforta, that were the main cause of his loss of faith between �862 and �865.26 While a student at university, Nietzsche strongly emphasized method as the most important thing that could be learned there.27 At this time he worked extensively on Quellenkunde in his work on Diogenes Laertios; in his letters to Zarncke, �5 April �868, the editor

24. The Gay Science, transl. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, �974), 7.25. Daybreak, transl. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, �982),

197.26. See Jörg Salaquarda, “Nietzsche and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition,” in The Cambridge

Companion to Nietzsche, ed. B. Magnus and K. M. Higgins (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, �996), and Thomas H. Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s Changing Relation to Christianity: Nietzsche as Christian, Atheist and Antichrist,” in Nietzsche and the Gods, ed. Weaver Santaniello (Albany: State University of New York Press, 200�), �37-�57.

27. Letter to Franziska and Elisabeth, �0 May �865. “Nonetheless, let me express my great joy that I spent precisely my first year at Bonn. as a classicist, the most important thing is to learn methods; and where better than here? The most essential is, just at the beginning of one’s studies, to get used to a particular orientation.” This statement is likely to refer primarily to what he had learned from Ritschl and jahn.


of a review journal to which Nietzsche contributed, and to the University of Basel a year later, he emphasized that the areas he knew best were Quellenkunde and the methods used in the history of Greek literature. Nietzsche’s teacher and mentor, Friedrich Ritschl, was one of the leading classical philologists, and known for his rigorous and detailed mastering of historical-philological methods.28 It was from him that Nietzsche learned many of the historical and philological methods and crafts.29 Much later in life, in a letter to Overbeck, 2 July �885, he claimed that the only valuable things he had learned from classical philology were the methods. (One should be aware that throughout the nineteenth century there was a close relationship between the developments of views, methods, and practices in history and in classical philology; mostly the latter field was leading the development.)

Nietzsche’s rejection of the ahistorical and idealistic neo-humanist view (or the view of Klassizismus) of the Greeks as serene and rational, especially in Die Geburt der Tragödie, was due largely to his deeper historical knowledge and approach. (Note that this work contained little new in regard to professional classical philologists. It has often not been realized to what a large degree Nietzsche merely followed the conventional view among classicists in his discussions of the origin of tragedy. Much of the lack of response to The Birth of Tragedy among classicists was simply due to the fact that it did not contain anything new from a narrow, classical scholarship point of view.�0)

Nietzsche is a favorite thinker among many of those who like to emphasize the importance of method in the humanities, but the mature Nietzsche himself had little interest in pure or abstract methods. One can find few explicit methodological discussions in his writings and when he speaks of methods he almost always does so in a very vague and general manner. He prefers to proclaim the example, the habit, the simile; for him, the person was always more important than the

28. Even after Ritschl had become estranged from Nietzsche, he admitted in a letter to Vischer, 2 February �873 (quoted in KSA �5, p. 46), that Nietzsche carried within him both the capacity for “die strengste Methode geschulter wissenschaftlicher Forschung,” though he also possessed an over-enthusiastic, over-mystical side.

29. He therefore frequently recommends his students to read Ritschl, for example in KGW II.3, �88f.

30. “Nietzsche hat diese Einzelerkenntnisse weder bestritten noch gar bekämpft, sondern er hat sie übernommen und als selbstverständlich vorausgesetzt. Insoweit bedeutete seine eigene Schrift weder eine Revolution noch überhaupt eine Neuerung. [Latacz’ note: Gerade daraus erklärt sich ja die langdauernde Ignorierung der Nietzscheschen Tragödienentstehungstheorie in der Fachwissenschaft: Der eigentlich fachwissenschaftliche Teil seines Buches bot nichts Neues, der mit Neuerung auf-wartende Teil konnte nicht als fachwissenschaftlich gelten.] Dies trifft auch für das von Nietzsche so ausserordentlich stark betonte Element ‘Musik’ zu. . . . Dass am Anfang der Tragödie die Musik stand, was damals eine allgemein geteilte Überzeugung, nicht nur unter Fachgräzisten, sondern auch im gebildeten Publikum.” Joachim Latacz’ Fruchtbares Ärgernis: Nietzsches ‘Geburt der Tragödie’ und die gräzistische Tragödienforschung (lecture held in Basel �994, published as a booklet in Basel, �998), p. �9f. That this is correct can be seen in the only review of the first edition of The Birth of Tragedy, that of Wilamowitz, who claims that it is not a work of classical scholarship: “In der tat liegt der hauptanstoss des buches in ton und tendenz. Herr Nietzsche tritt ja nicht als wissenschaftlicher forscher auf; auf dem wege der intuition erlangte weisheit wird . . . dargeboten. . . . er wollte ja eben nichts von ‘historie und kritik’, von ‘so genanter weltgeschichte’ wissen, er wollte ein dionysisch-apollinisch kunstwek, ‘ein metaphysisches trostmittel’ schaffen, seine behauptungen hätten zwar nicht die gemeine tageswirklichkeit, aber die ‘höhere realität’ der traumwelt.” Wilamowitz, repu-blished in K. Gründer, Der Streit um Nietzsches “Die Geburt der Tragödie” (hildesheim: G. olms, �989), 29 and 55. For a more detailed discussion of this, see my article “Sources and Influences on Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche-Studien �4 (2005), 277-298.

NIetzSche’S RelatIoN to hIStoRIcal MethodS 16�

method.�1 The one place where he discusses methodology more explicitly than elsewhere is in his lecture series “Encyclopaedie der klass. Philologie,” which he held during the summer term �87�, and possibly also during the winter term �873–�874, where he explains to students how they are to become good classical philologists. At the beginning of his methodological discussions there he asks: “How does one become a philologist?,” and he answers, not by methods but by exemplars: “Start from the conception of the great philologists.”�2 thereafter he carries out his “methodological” discussions under headings such as:

7. Methods of Hermeneutics 8. Preparations for Hermeneutics and Critique �0. Diplomatic Critique ��. Literary Critique [Litterarhistorische Kritik]�2. Archeological Critique�3. General Remarks about the Methods of Classical Philological

Studies14. Knowledge in Relation to Methods

However, even here we scarcely find anything that can be called a methodological discussion. As we will see, Nietzsche emphasizes hard work and exercise, with an emphasis on methods,�� but he also warns that too much detailed research or continually having books at hand prevents independent thinking,�4 and makes one fail to attain the goal, which is to understand the classical, that is, that which is characteristic of the highest of human striving.

Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of historical-philological methods,�5 and he stresses that we need to learn to read again—something that in 1888 he will

3�. I have discussed this aspect in some detail in my book Nietzsche’s Ethics of Character: A Study of Nietzsche’s Ethics and its Place in the History of Moral Thinking (Uppsala: Uppsala University press, 1995).

32. “Wie wird der Philolog? Auszugehen vom Bilde der grossen Philologen” (KGW II.3, p. 366). Compare his discussion of the value of lectures, seminars, and reading; “The primary value of lectures always remains methodological . . . One can only learn correct methodology through continual train-ing. Read the good methodological philologists, i.e. those who with love and care present their mate-rial and arguments, not only give results. e.g. Bentley or Wolf, among the more recent G. Hermann and especially Ritschl, Plautin. Excurse, Inschriften, opusc., Parerga Plautina” (p. 388f.).

33. “Also Kritik betrifft die Überlieferung, Hermeneutik das Überlieferte. Es ist nun sehr wichtig, dass sich der junge Philolog an strenge Methode in beiden von vornherein gewöhnt. Eine Verwöhnung ist später kaum wieder gut zu machen. Die allerlehrtesten Bücher sind mitunter nur ver-wirrend u. ohne Nutzen, weil jene sichere Grundlage fehlt. Es handelt sich hier um etwas Ethisches. Der Trieb der Wissenschaft befriedigt sich erst in streng logischen Operationen. Der charaktervolle Philolog macht hier die strengsten Anforderungen. Es ist möglich, dass seine aesthetischen u. ethi-schen Bedürfnisse hier mit einander in Feindschaft sind. Die Wissenschaft hat nichts mit dem Genuss zu thun, ausser in der Lust an der strengen Wahrheit” (p. 374).

�4. KGW II.�, p. 406. 35. See, for example, “Die Textkritik hat methodisch den höchsten Werth für den werdenden

Philologen” (KGW II.3, 382) and “Deshalb liegt auf dem Lesen u. Betrachten antiker Monumente ein solcher Hauptwerth: hier kann sich die wahre Originalität zeigen: die Disciplinen müssen ein natürli-ches Resultat unzähliger Einzelbetrachtungen werden. Auch für den Studenten liegt der Hauptwerth auf den Interpretatorien: oder solchen Kollegien, denen eine kursorische Lektüre der Zuhörer parallel läuft. Um sich über die Methode der litterarhist. Forschung zu unterrichten, muß man selbst irgendwo Hand anlegen. Dann treibt man Litteraturgesch. im Allgemeinen mit größter Behutsamkeit.” (KGW II.�, 405f.).


repeat in Götzen-Dämmerung where he discusses the value of higher education�6—and he exemplifies this capacity by Wolf’s deeds.�7 he states that a philologist needs to have three capacities: �) a pedagogic bent, 2) being a friend of antiquity (classicism), 3) having a pure desire to know (Wissenschaft).�8 the latter two are themes throughout his account.

He points out that the critical-hermeneutical methods are something absolutely essential to be able to reach the goal, which is the comprehension of the classical.�9 However, he states that the most important (and the most difficult) is to acquire a comprehending sympathy for antiquity and to be aware of its difference from the modern era. For this purpose, he further emphasizes that one needs more than methods and knowledge: “only out of love does the most profound understanding arise.”40 Nietzsche summarizes his position with the words: “I require that even the scientific drive is controlled by the classical tendency . . . methods and knowledge are only means. . . . This classical tendency requires �) scientific study of antiquity 2) to truly take possession of antiquity.”41

We can thus already see, in �87�, Nietzsche’s view—a view that he will retain for the rest of his life—that historical scholarship is important as a part of culture, and a precondition for culture, though it is not the goal of culture.

One way to understand the early Nietzsche’s relation to history and antiquity is to realize that he attempted to hold onto the neo-humanist (and romantic) ideal view of the Greeks as an essentially eternal and absolute standard of culture and aesthetics, while at the same time he brought with him more historical knowledge and new methods that made this picture untenable. This led to tensions in the early Nietzsche’s thinking and in his relation to history and philology (including an overreaction to scientific history expressed in Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben). Eventually it led to the “break” in his thinking in �875–�876 in which he rejected the neo-humanists’ ideal views, although he continued to hold Greek culture as the supreme example of human achievement. My claim is thus that this first major “break” in Nietzsche’s thinking was caused not so much by his relation to Schopenhauer and Wagner per se (which is the conventional view), but that it also was caused largely by his thinking about history (especially

�6. Götzen-Dämmerung, “What the Germans Lack,” 6-7.�7. KGW II.�, �7�.�8. Ibid., �66.39. “Dagegen ist die kritisch-hermeneutische Methode etwas Unumgängliches, es ist eine

Garantie, dass der zukünftige Lehrer sich u. seine Schüler in strenge wissenschaftl. Zucht nimmt u. dass er sich nicht nur dilettirt, sondern umbildet. Die Beschäftigung mit den anti-ken Autoren u. Monumenten ist für ihn Mittelpunkt: das Verständiniss des Klassischen sein Ziel: danach bemesse er den Werth vergleich. Sprachstudien. Während die kritisch-herme-neut. Methode nichts ist als die correkte Form, sich dem Alterthum zu nähern” (p. 390). Compare also page 375: “Er [the philologist] muss sich erst dem Zeitalter der Analysis würdig erwei-sen, ehe er an das Zeitalter der Synthesis denken darf.”

40. “Das Wichtigaste ist (u. das Schwereste), sich in’s Alterthum liebevoll hineinzuleben u. die Differenz zu empfinden. . . . nur aus Liebe entstehen die tiefsten Einsichten” (p. 368).

4�. “Ich verlange dass auch der wissenschaftl. Trieb beherrscht werde von jener klassischen tendenz: somit dass die Mittel jener wissenschaftlichen Triebe nicht Selbstzweck werden, noch weni-ger einziger Zweck. Methode u. Kenntnisse sind nur Mittel. . . . Jene klass. Tendenz sucht sich �) wis-senschaftlich dem Alterthum zu nähern 2) wahrhaft sich des Alterthums zu bemächtigen” (p. 392).


while working on the never-finished essay “Wir Philologen” in �875) when he realized that the neo-humanist ideals were not historically tenable.42

Well, if he accepted the methods of critical history, what was it then that he objected to about historical scholarship? To see this better, and to distinguish his more fundamental and principled views from the more contingent ones, let us examine how he responded to the main proponents of critical history. This seems not to have been examined previously.

III. NIETZSCHE’S RELATION TO THE FOUNDERS OF HISTORICAL METHOD

Can we learn anything and clarify questions regarding Nietzsche’s general view of history by examining his relation to the historical revolution and its main proponents? I believe that this is the case, and further that it is not possible to understand Nietzsche’s relation to historical writing and research correctly without such awareness. Perhaps surprisingly for many commentators, Nietzsche had a close, in many cases even a personal, relation to almost every one of the main representatives of the historical revolution, and he had read works by almost all of them. He had studied the founders (Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen) thoroughly. Ranke had gone to the same school as Nietzsche (and seems to have attended the school festivities at least once while Nietzsche was there). another of them, Sybel, had been his teacher at university, and Treitschke was a close friend to his best friend, Overbeck. Burckhardt, who was offered, but declined, to succeed Ranke in Berlin, was of course a highly valued and respected friend and colleague, whom Nietzsche praised throughout his life.4�

Nietzsche regarded Wolf as the founder and as one of the great heroes of critical classical philology, expressed much respect for him, and attempted to emulate him. He read and discussed his philological works extensively, both as a student and in his own lectures.44 Most relevant is that he chose to use Wolf as his main source and inspiration for his installation-speech entitled “About Homer’s Personality” (but published by Nietzsche under the title Homer and Classical Philology),

42. Nietzsche discusses this important “break” in his thinking in Ecce homo (and in many letters and prefaces to his books). There, for example, he states: “Menschliches, Allzumenschliches is the memorial of a crisis . . . almost every sentence in it is the expression of a victory—with this book I lib-erated myself from that in my nature which did not belong to me. Idealism does not belong to me.”

43. I will not deal here with Nietzsche’s relation to Jacob Burckhardt and G. G. Gervinus, both of whom had a broader and more cultural concept of history than the one prevalent in the nineteenth century,

44. Wolf is frequently present in Nietzsche’s philological notes from �867–�868 (published in BAW 4 and 5). For example, he briefly but affirmatively discusses Wolf’s view of classical studies: “Classical philology as the study of antiquity. Fr. Au. Wolf �754–�824. Founded classi-cal philology as profession. Prolegom. �795. He attached to Bentley. ‘Knowledge of everything human itself in antiquity’ as goal. ‘Epitome of philosophical and historical knowledge, through which we learn to know all aspects of antiquity.’ Thus a tendency to become a polymath, but on classical terrain. The concept of antiquity is vague. Indians, Hebrews, Egyptians?” (BAW 4, p. 6). Later in his notes, he seems to plan to write something both about historiography since Wolf (“Geschichtsschreibung seit Wolf”), and a history of classical philology since Wolf (“Einleitung: Geschichte der Disciplin seit Wolf”). In his list of planned philological work, the influence of Wolf is very noticeable. Wolf had started and given an answer to “the Homeric question,” and Nietzsche now intended not only to join this debate, but also to deal with the “Aristotelische,” “Platonische,” and “Democritische” questions, and to deal with Diogenes Laertios in a similar manner (BAW 4, 2��f.)


which he delivered in May 1869.45 there and elsewhere he placed himself squarely in Wolf’s tradition, and he repeatedly praises Wolf’s brave intellectual deeds, “muthigen Geisterthat” (268). Methodologically he affirms Wolf’s manner of working, and he divides the development of classical philology into a pre-Wolfian and a post-Wolfian period in which “everything has become new” due to Wolf and the work of many other philologists (267f.). Also visible in the lectures is Nietzsche’s discussion of the dualism between art and science (scholarship), between an aesthetic and a historical understanding of antiquity and of Homer. Like Wolf, Nietzsche affirms both of them, the ideal and Bildung associated with the first, and the newly-discovered truths and methods of the other. At the very end of the lecture, he somewhat provocatively attempts a sort of synthesis (but with priority given to Bildung) by offering as his Latin motto “philosophia facta est quae philologia fuit,” meaning “that which has been philology has become philosophy,” that is, that the details of philological scholarship need to be placed into a philosophical Weltanschauung that gives sense to it (that is, placing philosophy above philology). Even such a claim is still very much in the spirit of Wolf.46 This valuing the importance of history, but regarding it as less important than good philosophy, characterizes almost all of Nietzsche’s thinking.

In Nietzsche’s lectures on “Encyklopädie” he repeats that Wolf “opened the way” for modern classical philology, and that the most important work in Greek philology was done in the tradition of Richard Bentley (whom Wolf had emphasized as his precursor)—Wolf, Boeckh, Hermann, Lachmann, Ritschl (360). He emphasizes that the tradition of Bentley and Wolf used a strict logic in interpretation and criticism (362). Later, he describes Wolf’s importance for the “strenge Methode für diplomat. u. histor. Kritik” (365), exactly that which influenced Niebuhr and Ranke. He also used Wolf to exemplify how we are to learn to read texts (373). Most importantly, he recommends that his students read “good methodological philologists” and emphasizes Bentley and Wolf (389).

Nietzsche’s reading of Wolf was extensive. It is possible that he had already begun to read him in �86�–�862.47 His library still contains the first two volumes of Wolf’s lectures (Volume �: Vorlesungen über die Encyklopädie der Alterthumswissenschaft [Leipzig, �83�] and Volume 2: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der griechischen Literatur [leipzig, 18�1]), each of over 400 pages. We do not know when he acquired them, but �867 seems probable, and both contain some signs of having been read.48 He had already used the latter volume

45. KGW II.�, pp. 247-269. For an interesting discussion of this text, see Andreas Urs Sommer’s Der Geist der Historie und das Ende des Christentums (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, �997).

46. Nietzsche sent this lecture to Cosima Wagner, who read it with enthusiasm and realized to what a great extent it was shaped by Wolf. She wrote to Nietzsche, 26 August �869: “Your rejoining together August Wolf to the study of the Greeks constitutes to me a parallel to Wagner’s rejoining together the German culture of Goethe and Schiller with the best of the Reformation, and Semper’s [pointing out that] the Roman style of architecture was a continuation of Alexander’s. You should have it published, it cannot be proclaimed loudly enough.”

47. There is a mention of Wolf (though without initials), with what seems to be the price of the book (the title is illegible). KGW I.2, �� [60], also in BAW �, 259.

48. The first volume contains only two dog-ears (which Nietzsche frequently used to mark the extent of his reading or important pages). For us it is interesting to see that these are at the end of the book, where Wolf deals with method. The first is in the middle of the section “Die philologische oder


in �867, while working on Democritus. By �869 he had read Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum, and probably also the German rendition. In his lectures he refers to both volumes of Wolf’s Literarische Analekten, vorzüglich für alte Literatur und Kunst, deren Geschichte und methodik (Berlin, �8�6–�820). In May �87� he borrowed and read attentively J. F. J. Arnoldt’s Friedrich August Wolf in seinem Verhältnisse zum Schulwesen und zur Paedagogik (Braunschweig, �86�–62), two volumes. Finally, in �875 he read Wolf’s Kleine Schriften (see below).

In early �87� he refers to Wolf as “my great predecessor” (“meines grossen Vorgängers”) in a sense more specific than merely referring to him as the founder of modern classical philology.49 In his lectures “On the Future of Our Educational Institutions,” which he gave in early �872, he praises highly the “grossartigen Friedrich August Wolf” and refers to him as one of the few truly educated Germans.50 In his Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen on Schopenhauer, he states that he misses the spirit of Wolf at universities and among those dealing with antiquity.51 In early �875, he borrowed Wolf’s massive Kleine Schriften in lateinischer und deutscher Sprache, edited by G. Bernhardy, volume 2: Deutsche Aufsätze (Halle, �869), which contains a selection and summary of most of Wolf’s published works;52 he read and studied it in detail for his work “Wir Philologen.” He copied down about thirty excerpts, including thirteen quotations that directly relate to Wolf,5� many of them long ones (totaling about twenty printed pages). His notes show he was mostly in agreement with Wolf, but occasionally they point out where he differs from him (Nietzsche accepts that the Greeks were inspired by and borrowed more from other cultures than Wolf believed). He praises Wolf for being liberated from theology. As I mentioned above, it was while working on “Wir Philologen,” and while thinking about history and classical scholarship, that Nietzsche first began to leave his earlier more idealistic views (as, for example, presented in Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben). It is thus possible, even probable, that thinking about Wolf and history was one of the main stimuli for this change (together with reflections on Burckhardt and Schopenhauer, whom he also read intensively at this time, and Ranke a little later). Nietzsche’s excerpts emphasize where Wolf claims that one needs both a philosophical and

Wortkritik,” and the other is on the first page of the section “Die historisch-philologische oder höhere Kritik.” The second volume contains some minor annotations on pages 7 to �7 in the Proemium, writ-ten in Latin and German, and a few dog-ears later in the text.

49. KSa 7, 7 [79].50. KSa 1, 689.51. Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, III, 8.52. Volume II covers pages 593-�200 and contains the following essays and studies: �. Uebersicht

des Inhalts von platons dialog das Gastmal (essentially a translation of Symposion), 59�-620; 2. Ist Homer auch übersetzbar? 620-643; 3. Ueber den Ursprung der Opfer, 643-666; 4. Beitrag zur Geschichte des Somnambulismus aus dem Alterthum, 666-69�; 5. Grundriss der Römischen Litteratur, 69�-700; 6. Noch Etwas über Horazens 28. Ode des �. Buchs, 700-7�0; 7. Ueber Herrn D. Semlers letzte Lebenstage, 7�0-724; 8. Wolf gegen Herder, 724-728; 9. Ueber den Ausdruck Vis comica, 728-730; �0. Winckelmanns Studienzeit, 730-743; ��. Schreiben über eine Hallische Erzählung, 743-807; �2. Darstellung der Alterthums-Wissenschaft, 808-895; �3. Von einer milden Stiftung Trajans, 895-922; �4. Ueber ein Wort Friedrich’s II. Von Deutscher Verskunst, 922-962; �5. Zu Platon’s Phaedon, 962-992; �6. Hortius’ erste Satire, 992-�0�6; �7. Aus den Litterarischen Analekten, �0�6-��54; �8. Vermischtes, ��54-�200.

5�. KSa 8, � [2, 5, 7, 10, ��, �4, 44, 46, 47, 59, 7�] and 5 [107].


aesthetic overall view and “philologische Kritik,” as can be seen in the following excerpt, after which Nietzsche affirmatively has written “True!”:

“In the final analysis really consummate scholarship should be restricted to those few born with artistic talent and equipped with erudition, who take advantage of the best opportunities for acquiring the requisite technical knowledge, both practical and theoretical.”—Wolf. True!54

Thereafter Nietzsche does not publicly refer to Wolf again,55 but in two notes from the mid �880s he praises Wolf and Niebuhr as the best that Germany has produced, and Wolf is surely present in many of Nietzsche’s general statements regarding history and historians (see the discussion following Nietzsche’s relation to Niebuhr, below).

Nietzsche’s relation to Niebuhr was less intensive and enthusiastic than to Wolf, but nonetheless close and important. His first reference to him, from �867–�868, is highly appreciative; he seems to regard him as expressing Nietzsche’s own attitude to the study of classical philology. Under the title “About the Study of Classical Philology” he writes as the single note: “Niebuhr, Brief an einen jungen Philol. Leipzig. �839. The main thing is to have a living view of antiquity. The main condition is an attraction to the ancients.”56 Nietzsche possessed at least three works by Niebuhr (and had read several others), one book and two shorter articles. The book was the one he referred to, and since many, but not all, pages were cut open, it seems likely that he read it at this time, and agreed with much of it.57

In his lecture notes from the �870s he occasionally refers to Niebuhr, but never discusses him. However, Nietzsche clearly read him throughout most of the 1870s.58 During the time of writing Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben (�874) Nietzsche read and excerpted long sections from Lebensnachrichten

54. KSA 8, 3 [47]. I have here used the translation by W. Arrowsmith in Unmodern Observations, ed. W. arrowsmith (New haven and london: yale University press, 1990), ��6.

55. This is not altogether surprising since Wolf was known only to a limited number of scholars, and thus could not be used by Nietzsche as a public point of reference.

56. BaW 4, 8.57. The book in Nietzsche’s library is Niebuhr’s Brief an einen jungen Philologen. Mit einer

Abhandlung über Niebuhr’s philologische Wirksamheit und einigen Excursen, herausgegeben von Dr. Karl Georg Jacob, Professor an der könlichen Preuss. Landesschule Pforta (leipzig, 18�9). the book begins with a long account of Niebuhr’s philological activities, and Nietzsche seems to have read the first twenty-five pages of it (after which the pages have not been cut open), and thereafter Niebuhr’s “Brief,” pages �25-�46. Nietzsche seems not to have read the final essays. I have used information from the excellent listing in Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, ed. Giuliano Campioni et al. (Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 2003), as well as my own work in Nietzsche’s library to establish this.

58. He refers to Niebuhr’s Alte Geschichte, with page references, and refers to the content relating to Solon (KGW II.2, 434). He also paraphrases Niebuhr with regard to Socrates and Plato: “Socrates was a good citizen, Plato a bad one, as Niebuhr dared to state” (KGW II.4, �55), and in a footnote he gives a longer quotation of Niebuhr’s view of Isocrates (KGW II.4, 382). In his lectures on the his-tory of Greek literature, he gives an account of Niebuhr’s philological research about the late writer of tragedy, Lycophron (KGW II.5, �46). His source here is almost certainly the article in his library entitled “Über das Zeitalter Lykophrons des Dunkeln.” Finally, he quotes Niebuhr about the Greek Hellenistic historian Ephoros (KGW II.5, 252). These five references to Niebuhr were made at differ-ent times and show that Nietzsche read Niebuhr fairly extensively and attentively, over a long period. Surprisingly, I have not been able to find any definitive evidence that he read Niebuhr’s magnum opus, Römische Geschichte.


über Barthold Georg Niebuhr (Hamburg, �836), and probably also another work by Niebuhr (some of Nietzsche’s quotations regarding him have not been identified),59 and Goethe’s letters in which he speaks of Niebuhr.60 this enters Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben in sections one and three, but does not seem to be of great importance.

In �880–�88� he seems to have read Niebuhr’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution (Hamburg, �845); he refers to this reading in Morgenröthe 167.61 More important for Nietzsche’s relation to Niebuhr and German writing of history is that in two notes from �885 and �886 he strongly affirms Niebuhr and Wolf, with specific reference to them as historians.62 During the early summer of �885, Nietzsche writes: “The best that Germany has given, critical discipline—Kant, F. A. Wolf, Lessing, Niebuhr etc. The defence of skepticism.—Stronger and more determined courage, the confidence of the hand which moves the knife, pleasure in saying no and analyzing. The opposite movement: Romanticism.”6�

In Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 209 Nietzsche praises the historians who have established skepticism and critical methods:

Thanks to the indomitably strong and tough masculinity of the great German philologists and critical historians [in an early version Nietzsche listed the following examples: Lessing, Herder, Kant, F. A. Wolf, Niebuhr]64 . . . there became established, gradually and in spite of all the romanticism in music and philosophy, a new scepticism . . . : whether as intrepidity of eye, as bravery and sternness of dissecting hand, or as tenacious will for perilous voyages of discovery, for North Pole expeditions of the spirit beneath desolate and dangerous skies. There may be good reason for warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians to cross themselves before precisely this spirit.

It is not improbable that Nietzsche has Wolf and Niebuhr in mind in many of his more general statements about history and historians, such as, for example, in �880 when he highly praises historians, and in particular German historians: “the completely, without hesitation, good Germans, who are productive, have been mediators and have moved on a European level (like Mozart and the historians etc.).”65 Likewise, when Nietzsche in �885 speaks of those who “belong to us,” the free spirits who are concerned about a revaluation of all values, to these belong, as a third group, “all of those critics and historians, who bravely continue the already happily begun discovery of the ancient world—it is the work of the new Columbus of the German spirit.”66 In a note from �880–�88� he emphasizes that the new conception of history during the nineteenth century did not support

59. KSa 7, 29 [189, 190].60. KSa 7, 29 [78, 95, 101, 105, 152, 187].6�. Nietzsche also quotes from this work in KSA 9, �0 [B32], though the source may also have

been some secondary literature. In �888 Nietzsche read and excerpted Victor Hehn’s Gedanken über Goethe (Berlin: Borntraeger, �888), including about Niebuhr’s response to Wilhelm Meister, which entered Der Fall Wagner, �.

62. In an earlier note, KSA ��, 25 [268], from early �884, Niebuhr and others (Luther and Bismarck) are referred to as expressing “the best blood in Germany” and as being “manly.”

63. KSA ��, 34 [22�]: “Das Beste, was Deutschland gegeben hat, kritische Zucht — Kant, F. A. Wolf, Lessing, Niebuhr usw. Abwehr des Scepticismus. — Strenger und beherzter Muth, die Sicherheit der Hand, welche das Messer führt, Lust am Neinsagen und Zergliedern.”

64. KSa 14, �62f.65. KSa 9, 7 [14].66. KSA ��, 37 [8] (June–July �885). Compare the similar statement in KSA ��, 34 [�76].


Romantic “beautiful ideas” but instead one learned to understand better the forces that determine history.67

Two further indications that Nietzsche accepts and finds critical history valuable are that the two contemporary historians he praised most highly, Burckhardt and Taine, were skillful masters of modern historical methodology. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s favorite among ancient historians, Thucydides, whom he knew well and about whom he had taught courses, is the one who most resembles a modern critical historian, and it is in part for this very reason that Nietzsche praises him. He calls him the perfect expression of “realist culture,” and continues:

Thucydides as the grand summation, the last manifestation of that strong, stern, hard matter-of-factness instinctive to the older hellenes. Courage in face of reality ultimately distinguishes such natures as Thucydides and Plato: Plato is a coward in face of reality—consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has himself under control—consequently he retains control over things.68

Nietzsche’s longest and most detailed discussion of Thucydides occurs in his lectures on Greek literature, which he gave twice in �874–�875.69 he refers there to Thucydides as “the greatest researcher and thinker among the historians” (225), and he introduces him with the words: “We now arrive at a man who stands like a miracle before us” (235). Most of this discussion was by the scholar and philologist Nietzsche, but later he adds a long footnote with a more personal touch, in which he describes what sort of historical research and writing he dreams of encountering in the distant future: “A history developed in the spirit of Thucydides and suffused with a still more profound philosophy than his was, remains my hope.”70

What of the third founder, Ranke? Nietzsche seems to have read more by Ranke than by Niebuhr, but his engagement with him was less intensive (probably because Ranke wrote little about antiquity), and more ambivalent and critical.

Ranke, who is generally regarded as the founder of modern historiography, had studied at Schulpforta, and Nietzsche refers to this fact on several occasions. It seems likely that Ranke was discussed at the school more than would otherwise have been the case, both in the teaching of history and by the pupils. Schulpforta celebrated its foundation on May 2� every year, and every tenth year the festivities were especially elaborate. During Nietzsche’s penultimate year there, in �863, this occurred, and many previous pupils of the school partook in the festivities, including Ranke.71 Nietzsche is likely to have met Ranke personally at this early stage of life.

We do not know how much of Ranke Nietzsche had read before he wrote Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben at the end of 187�. almost

67. KSA 9, �0 [D88], early �880 to early �88�: “Mit der Geschichte (neu!!!) . . . Die Historie bewies zuletzt etwas anderes als man wollte: sie erwies sich als das sicherste Vernichtungsmittel jener Principien. Darwin. Anderseits der skeptische Historismus als Nachwirkung, das Nachempfinden. Man lernte in der Geschichte die bewegenden Kräfte besser kennen, nicht unsere ‘schönen’ Ideen!”

68. Twilight of the Idols, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 2.69. KGW II.5. Historical literature is discussed on pages 224-269; Thucydides is mentioned

throughout, but specifically on pages 235-246.70. “Eine Historie im Geiste des Thukydides fortgebildet u. von einer noch tieferen philosophie

durchtränkt als die seinige war bleibt meine Hoffnung” (258).7�. See letter to Franziska and Elisabeth, �7 May �863.


certainly he had read him, even if to a rather limited extent, but he does not discuss him.72 In Nietzsche’s first discussion of Ranke in �873 he places him (and Mommsen) squarely above Strauss as a different sort of scholar and historian, but, he adds, even from them we would not wish beliefs and confessions, but knowledge:

Now, the last thing the real thinker will wish to know is what kind of beliefs are agreeable to such natures as Strauss or what it is they “have half dreamily cobbled together” (p. �0) in regard to things of which only he who knows them at first hand has a right to speak. Who could need the confession of belief of a Ranke or a Mommsen, even though they are scholars and historians of an order quite different from David Strauss? As soon as they sought to interest us in their beliefs rather than in their knowledge they would be overstepping their bounds in a very annoying fashion.7�

Ranke is not mentioned explicitly, but he is present, quoted, and criticized (but relatively mildly) in Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben:

But what are we to think of the following assertion by a famous historical scholar [i.e. Ranke]—an assertion introduced with such conviction and balanced so nicely between tautology and absurdity? “It cannot be denied that all human action and behavior are subject to the course of events, events which are trivial and often undetectable, but powerful and irresistible.” In an assertion like this cryptic wisdom is no more evident than the obvious inanity, as in the maxim of Goethe’s court gardener “Nature can be forced, but not compelled” . . . What inconsistence is there after all between the activities of man and the course of events? I am particularly struck by the fact that historians like the one cited above [i.e. Ranke] cease to instruct as soon as they begin to generalize, betraying in their obscurity the sense of their weakness. In other disciplines generalizations are the crucial factor since they contain laws. But if such assertions as that cited are meant to be valid laws, then we could reply that the historian’s work is wasted. For whatever truth is left in such statements, after subtracting that mysterious and irreducible residue we mentioned earlier, is obvious and even banal since it is self-evident to anyone with the slightest range of experience.74

The source for the quotation has not been identified (apart from being by Ranke), and thus we do not know which work(s) Nietzsche had read by Ranke while writing Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben.75 however, shortly after having written the book, he read Ranke’s Zwölf Bücher preussischer Geschichte, five volumes, together with Overbeck.76 It seems as if Nietzsche’s real discovery and reading of Ranke comes shortly thereafter (possibly including the reading of Zwölf Bücher preussischer Geschichte). In a note from the summer of �885, while working on revising Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (first published in �878, but written during �876–�878), Nietzsche writes: “Only then did I acquire an eye

72. Nietzsche refers to Ranke’s Römische Päpste, with page references, in his lecture Encyklopädie from �87�, and he quotes him briefly (from an unknown source) in his lectures on Greek literature from �874–�875. KGW II.3, 353 and II.5, �65f.

7�. David Strauss: der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller, 3. Quoted from Untimely Meditations, transl. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, �983), �4.

74. Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, 6 (transl. Gary Brown in Unmodern Observations, ed. W. arrowsmith [New haven: yale University press, 1990], 116f). See also KSa 7, 19 [27�] and 29 [92].

75. Nietzsche, in an early version, first made public in �997, states that it comes from Ranke. KGW III.5/2, �46�.

76. See letter to Gersdorff, �8 January �874: “Mit Ranke’s erstem Buch sind wir fast fertig.”


for history: Ranke.”77 Is Nietzsche suggesting here that the reading of Ranke and the sort of critical history he wrote contributed to the “break” in his thinking in �875–�876, when he left Wagner, Schopenhauer, Kant, and idealism behind to embrace history, science, and Enlightenment, which he proclaims in his middle writings? I believe this to be the case. At least he seems to have begun reading Ranke fairly extensively at this time—and his working through historical studies and approaches, particularly in his work on the never finished “Wir Philologen,” certainly influenced the “break.” In early �875 he wrote down as things to do: “Books to acquire or to exchange,” and first on the list is “Historians, e.g. the complete Ranke.”78 Shortly thereafter he writes that he plans to read “many older books on history.”79 Thereafter he does not discuss Ranke for many years, but we know that he bought and read several works by him. In �876 he bought and read (at least most pages have been cut open) Ranke’s Französische Geschichte vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert, four volumes, second edition (Stuttgart und Augsburg, �856), which is still in Nietzsche’s library. Further, he borrowed his Englished Geschichte, vornehmlich im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, three volumes (Berlin, �859ff.) from the university library during the same year. Early in �877, together with the small community in Sorrent, he read (possibly for a second time) Ranke’s Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin, �834–�836). Nietzsche does not mention Ranke during the following years, in fact, not at all during his middle period when he was most positive toward historical scholarship and historians, but it is likely that Ranke is included in some of the positive things he says then of history and historians. One of these statements, though more critical, in Morgenröthe 307, may well be an allusion to Ranke’s famous “wie es eigentlich gewesen,” for Nietzsche here speaks of “was wirklich geschehen ist” in the first sentence:80 “Facta! Yes, Facta ficta!—a historian has to do, not with what actually happened, but only with events supposed to have happened: for only the latter have produced an effect. Likewise only with supposed heroes. . . . All historians speak of things which have never existed except in imagination.”81

If this is an allusion to Ranke, who claimed that it was the historian’s task to be objective and, rather than to judge and evaluate, to describe what had really happened, “wie es eigentlich gewesen,” one must admit that the critique is surprisingly mild. If Nietzsche, as seems probable, refers primarily to how historical events were interpreted at the time they occurred and shortly thereafter, Ranke would surely not have objected too much to what Nietzsche says since

77. KSA ��, 40 [67]. He adds immediately afterward that historians know too little natural science and medicine, which makes them humble presenters of facts (since they do not understand causality, which Nietzsche attempted to emphasize at this time), and he hints that their thinking is colored by christianity.

78. KSa 8, 4 [1], early 1875.79. KSA 8, 8 [4], summer �875.80. Although one should be aware of the fact that many other historians expressed similar senti-

ments, for example, Humboldt, Niebuhr, Sybel, and Gervinus (see Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, III, �69 where references are given).

81. cf. KSa 7, 6 [422].

NIetzSche’S RelatIoN to hIStoRIcal MethodS 17�

what he emphasized was really that historians must attempt to avoid anachronistic interpretations.

The late Nietzsche’s references to Ranke become more critical. He refers to him (and Renan) as “objective” historians with weak personalities, who present facts, not understanding, and who accept and follow the powerful, including accommodation to religious interpretations.82 Only once does Ranke briefly become the focus of the late Nietzsche’s attention: “The whitewashing sort of writing of history practiced by Ranke, his soft treading everywhere where the task would be to present a dreadful nonsense caused by chance; his belief, at the same time, in an immanent finger of God, which occasionally pushes and pulls at something in the clockwork; since he no longer has the courage, the over-cowardly, neither to view him as clockwork, nor as the cause of the clockwork.”8�

The fourth founder of modern German historiography was Theodor Mommsen. Nietzsche knew Mommsen’s work fairly well, and had read much of his philological and historical work about antiquity. Already in �86� in Schulpforta, the headmaster Karl Peter gave a lecture on the theme: “Studien zur römischen Geschichte mit besonderer Beziehung auf Th. Mommsen” (this study was published in the annual Schulnachrichten, and was extensive enough probably to have colored Peter’s teaching during the whole year), and in �862 Nietzsche excerpted about ten pages of text out of Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte.84 there are no references to Mommsen in Nietzsche’s notes from his time at university, probably in part due to Nietzsche’s teacher Ritschl’s dislike of Mommsen, and because Nietzsche concentrated on the Greek world. However, in his own lectures during �869–�879 he frequently refers to, quotes, and briefly discusses Mommsen.85

Mommsen was a frequent contributor to the classical philological journal Rhenisches Museum, and Nietzsche had read all of his contributions;86 he refers to several of them in his lectures. During �870 and �87� he borrowed from the university library and read three of Mommsen’s most important works on antiquity: Römische Geschichte, Römische Forschungen, and Die römische Chronologie bis auf Cäsar. Still other works are referred to as read in his lecture notes.

however, in Nietzsche’s more general and philosophical writing there is essentially no mention of Mommsen, except in David Strauss: der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller, where he is placed with Ranke as a very different sort of scholar and historian than Strauss, as we have seen above. Thereafter he is never referred to again in Nietzsche’s published writings, and only in a few unimportant notes from the early 1870s.87 In most of these Nietzsche accuses Mommsen of being too involved with contemporary politics and letting this influence his historical accounts.88 This critique of Mommsen seems to have been encouraged by Ritschl, Burckhardt, and Wagner, and possibly even has their views as its cause

82. Zur Genealogie der Moral, III, 19, Ecce homo, “Klug,” 9, KSA ��, 26 [449] and 4� [�6].83. KSA ��, 40 [62], Summer–Autumn �885.84. KGW I.2, 494f.85. There are more than twenty references to Mommsen in Nietzsche’s lecture notes.86. See my “Nietzsche’s Forgotten Book: The Index to the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie,”

New Nietzsche Studies 4 (Summer–Fall 2000), �57-�6�.87. KSa 7, 8 [11�], 19 [196, 27�], 27 [1�] and 29 [51, 184].88. See especially KSa 7, 19 [196].


and origin. Nietzsche’s teacher and mentor Ritschl was hostile to Mommsen because he took Jahn’s side in the Ritschl–Jahn quarrel in the �860s, and later Ritschl severely criticized Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte. this hostility to Mommsen is reflected in a letter from Ritschl to Nietzsche, 3 May �87�, which was written in response to a letter (now lost) in which Nietzsche seems to have expressed his loyalty to Ritschl against Mommsen; Ritschl writes: “By the way, I have since 1866 not had the least contact with Napoleon [i.e. Mommsen] . . . my judgment of his history of Rome (cf. Cicero, the man ‘without insight, opinion, circumspection’ etc.).”89 Wagner, too, in a letter to Nietzsche, 4 February �870, criticizes Mommsen’s discussion of Cicero, and regards it as something that one could write in newspapers, but not as scholarship. However, a negative attitude is not evident in Nietzsche’s philological references to Mommsen.

according to a list of planned activities from early 1880, Nietzsche seems to have intended to read a very large number of historians at this time, including Mommsen, some of which he did read, but many, including Mommsen, he probably did not read.90 Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Gast, �8 July �880, he discusses the fire at Mommsen’s home a few days earlier with a fair amount of sympathy:

Did you hear about the fire in Mommsen’s house? And that his notes were destroyed, perhaps the most huge collection of preparatory work ever made by a living scholar? It is said that he kept on rushing back into the flames and, eventually, covered with burns, had to be held back by force. Such undertakings as M’s must be very rare, because there is seldom a combination, or rather cooperation, between such a colossal memory and such critical acumen and capacity for ordering such material. The story made my heart twist around in my body, and I still suffer physically when I think of it. Is that sympathy [Mitleid]? But what does Mommsen matter to me? I am not fond of him.

Not much can be concluded with certainty from Nietzsche’s relation to Ranke and Mommsen. However, he knew them well as historians, he seems to have accepted them as scholars and historians, and he does not question their methods. In his lectures Nietzsche frequently follows Mommsen, quotes him as an authority and refers to his good acumen, “glückliche Scharfsinn,” and in the letter from �880 he refers to his “critical acumen and capacity for ordering.” Considering Ritschl’s, Burckhardt’s, and Wagner’s views, and considering the commonly held view that Nietzsche was negative toward historical scholarship and historians, it is the absence of critique of Mommsen that is most noticeable and perhaps surprising. As late as �880 he seems to have had both an interest in and sympathy and respect for Mommsen’s project (after which he never refers to him). Nietzsche says less about Ranke, but read him intensively at an important stage of his development in �874–�877. The late Nietzsche criticizes Ranke (for his adaptability to the powers, the German state and the Church), but there is no fundamental critique of his methods. In fact, Nietzsche’s critique of Ranke and Mommsen is due primarily

89. See also Renate Müller-Buck’s commentary to Nietzsche’s letters (and letters to him), KGB III.7/�, 54.

90. KGW V.3, 604. This information has not been available in KSA, and was only made public in 200�.


to their shortcomings as historians, for letting their political views and religious faith influence their historical writing.

Ranke had many disciples and followers, many of whom became much more political and nationalistic than Ranke had been; this was after all a time of wars and of German unification. Herbert Butterfield describes the situation after Ranke with the following words:

The historical movement of the nineteenth century came into alliance therefore with the powerful German national movement that culminated in �870–7�; the result was shown in what came to be the classical school of German historiography, which from �86� was dominated by supporters of Prussia and entrenched itself in the universities, putting history at the service of the national cause, and even insisting on this as a point of ethics.91

Ranke’s followers, Heinrich von Sybel, together with J. G. Droysen92 and hein-rich von Treitschke, became the main representatives of the Prussian School, and wrote important historical works, especially related to Prussia’s and Germany’s history. They were strongly pro-Prussia, nationalistic, pro-Bismarck, anti-French, and Romantically flavored. Nietzsche was much more critical of this generation of historians. However, as a young man (before �87�) he had read and sympathized with all of them, although none of them dealt with antiquity. On the other hand, Sybel and Treitschke, who were leading representatives of the Prussian School, had had different and more liberal and less political and nationalistic views before ca. 1871.

The twenty-year-old Nietzsche attended Heinrich von Sybel’s lecture-series “Politik” four days per week during the winter term �864–�865 in Bonn,9� and says in a letter home that the much-attended lectures were spiced with political references.94 Sybel was at this time known not only as a historian but also as an active liberal politician and as such a spokesman for political Prussianism. Half a year later, Nietzsche attended the Arndt festivities, and found Sybel’s speech (later published as “Am Denkmal Arndt’s in Bonn”) to be the best part of it. Nietzsche does not say enough about Sybel at this time for us to know what he thought of him and his approach to history.

Nietzsche returned to and read Sybel in the �880s. In February �887 he read what he referred to as Sybel’s magnum opus, his Geschichte der Revolutionszeit,

91. Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. P. P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, �973), II, article “Historiography,” 493.

92. Of all the major German nineteenth-century historians who also dealt with antiquity, Johann Gustav Droysen is the only one to whom Nietzsche never publicly refers. However, he did read some of his writings (although it has not been determined what or which works he is likely to have read), for he occasionally mentions and briefly quotes him in his lectures, but these comments are of only philological interest. Nowhere does he carry out any discussion of Droysen, nor does he make any evaluative statements.

93. Shortly thereafter, he also attended two courses by Wilhelm Roscher, who treated politics and political economy in a historical manner. Roscher became one of the major influences for the now emerging field of economic history and political economy in Germany.

94. Letter to Franziska and Elisabeth, �0–�7 November �864. Nietzsche’s notes from this lecture series are in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar, but have not yet been published. These notes, about nine pages, cover the discussion of the “Origin, Essence and Task of the State,” divided into two main sections: those with their legitimacy from God, and those from the supremacy of the people. Sybel was at this time strongly opposed to Bismarck, a view that seems to have influenced Nietzsche, although both Sybel and Nietzsche would soon become more positive toward Bismarck.


3 volumes (�853–�858), in a French translation. His comments about nationalism and politics expressed shortly before in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 251, show that he had read Sybel before then, and are typical for the late Nietzsche’s view of politics. His statement here is especially interesting, for he also alludes to his own former sympathies with Sybel, Treitschke, and German nationalism, but he had long since turned hostile toward them for being too political, too nationalistic, and for allowing these views to influence their historical work and writings:

If a people is suffering and wants to suffer from nationalistic nervous fever and political ambition, it must be expected that all sorts of clouds and disturbances—in short, little attacks of stupidity—will pass over its spirit into the bargain: among present-day Germans, for example, now the anti-French stupidity, now the anti-Jewish, now the anti-Polish, now the Christian-romantic, now the Wagnerian, now the Teutonic, now the Prussian (just look at those miserable historians, those Sybels and Treitschkes, with their thickly bandaged heads—), and whatever else these little obfuscations of the German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I too, during a daring brief sojourn in a highly infected area, did not remain wholly free of the disease and began, like the rest of the world, to entertain ideas about things that were none of my business: first symptom of the political infection.95

In �866, the year of the short, but pivotal, Prussian–Austrian War, and the time when the question of German unification came to the absolute forefront all over Germany and Europe, Nietzsche sympathized with Prussia, and a unification of Germany under it. In several letters from this year, especially to Gersdorff, who was an aristocrat and officer, Nietzsche speaks of his optimism about Prussia and the future of Germany,96 of his sympathy with Treitschke and Bismarck,97 and that he for once feels himself to be in agreement with the present government. In Leipzig, where Nietzsche then lived, he bought and read Treitschke’s Über die Zukunft der norddeutschen Mittelstaaten (Berlin, �866), probably with sympathy though he did not clearly express an opinion.

This is the only book by Treitschke that we definitely know that Nietzsche read, but he is likely to have read more, if not books, then articles, and so on. Treitschke was not only a well-known and outspoken pro-Prussian intellectual at this time, but also a close friend of Overbeck, and must have been present in many of Nietzsche’s and Overbeck’s discussions. In fact, it seems likely that Nietzsche and Treitschke met, although I am not aware of any evidence of such a meeting. Overbeck (with Nietzsche in Basel) and Treitschke (in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he succeeded Ranke) continued to meet occasionally until the �880s. For example, in a letter from Overbeck to Nietzsche, 27 August �879, he writes: “Treitschke was here yesterday. He asked, with much sympathy, about you.”

Already in June �87� Overbeck had sent Nietzsche’s Sokrates und die griechische Tragödie to Treitschke as editor of Die Preussisches Jahrbücher, but Treitschke found that it did not suit its audience.98 half a year later, Nietzsche

95. I have discussed Nietzsche’s relation to politics in my paper “The Absence of Political Ideals in Nietzsche’s Writings: The Case of the Laws of Manu and the Associated Caste-Society,” Nietzsche-Studien 27 (1998), �00-�18.

96. Letter to Gersdorff, �5 August �866.97. Letter to Gersdorff, end of August �866.98. KGB II.7/�, p. 635ff.


sent him his Die Geburt der Tragödie,99 but we do not know how Treitschke responded.

Nietzsche had begun with sympathy for Treitschke, but from at least David Strauss: der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller (�873), when Nietzsche turns critical against German nationalism (and later critical of anti-Semitism), it becomes apparent that there was an abyss between Nietzsche and Treitschke. Overbeck’s position was always closer to Nietzsche’s, and eventually his and Treitschke’s friendship cooled. By �88�, when Treitschke wrote an anti-Semitic article defending Stöcker, which ended with the words “The Jews are our misfortune,” the disharmony between him and Overbeck became increasingly difficult to ignore. It is interesting to see that in November �88�, Treitschke wrote to Overbeck and blamed much of their disagreement on Nietzsche: “Your misfortune is this cranky Nietzsche.”100

Nietzsche, however, says little about Treitschke, at least until �886 when he no longer needed to take Overbeck’s feelings for Treitschke into consideration. Until then, he made no public statement, and only refers to him in a single note from �878, where he criticizes him for being too pious—an accusation that he also later directs at Ranke.101 In Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 25� he dismisses Treitschke and Sybel outright as we have seen above, and on three occasions in Ecce homo he briefly criticizes him and the position he had attained in German political and intellectual life.

His main objection to both Sybel and Treitschke seems to have been that they were bad historians, that they were too political, too nationalistic (and Treitschke anti-Semitic), and that they allowed this to color and influence their historical accounts.

What Nietzsche objected to primarily in regard to history was not the new methods introduced in the early part of the nineteenth century, but that history was placed above philosophy—that history and historical scholarship were seen as the goal. He saw this as a reflection of the nihilism that characterized modernity. More specifically, he objected to a number of aspects regarding history and historical scholarship, but most of this is the consequence of having accepted the historical revolution rather than being opposed to it. He was a severe critic of the idea of progress, assumed by almost all major nineteenth-century historians (but not by Burckhardt). He regarded most historians as far too idealistic in their views (and still governed by religious faith), and accused them of lacking adequate knowledge of natural science and medicine. Perhaps even more pronounced is that he regarded most historians (and philosophers) as much more anachronistic than they were aware of, especially in regard to moral and cultural values—he thus considers them to be bad historians according to their own (and his) criteria. Related to this is that he regarded almost all historians as possessing egalitarian and anti-aristocratic values, and therefore as only taking a stand for suppressed and failed groups. He objected to the almost exclusive concern with political

99. See letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, 28 January �872.�00. Quoted from H. Reich, Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2004), 223.101. KSa 8, 27 [8].


history by the leading historians, and much preferred a broader cultural approach. He questioned both the possibility and the desirability of historical objectivity. He regarded history (and science) as by necessity reactive, and he felt that historians were often indecent in digging into private worlds or by questioning things greater than their comprehension. But all these objections, with the possible exception of his view of objectivity, can be and were stated from within the historical turn that had occurred.102

IV. CONCLUSION

The young Nietzsche had a first-rate historical education, and became a skillful philologist and historian. The early Nietzsche (while under the influence of Scho-penhauer and Wagner) emphasized the importance both of critical method and of the “classical,” the ideal and Bildungs-oriented aspect of history, which led to tensions in his thinking. During this whole period, but especially in �873 and Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, he put special stress on history as a potential creator and destroyer of ideals (compare, for example, monumental and antiquarian history as approaches for constructing or reinforcing ideals, even though he mostly regards historical writing as destructive for ideals in that essay). Shortly thereafter, when he leaves Schopenhauer, Wagner, and his former idealism, his emphasis in regard to history becomes more on critical method and factual history, that is, on historical approaches and historical understanding as preconditions for culture and philosophy. During his third period, he begins increasingly to emphasize the importance of values (cf. his revaluation project)—a field in which historians have been remarkably unsuccessful, and often strongly anachronistic—which makes him move in the direction of using history for the purpose of criticizing values and for showing that their origin and earlier use mostly were very different from what one would naturally think.

I have shown that Nietzsche was well educated in historical thinking and methods, and that outside Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben he never questioned the value of these methods. On the contrary, they were pivotal for his whole approach to philosophy and culture, and especially in his late period he would apply these methods to questions of values. This appreciation of historical methods is reflected in the fact that he—contrary to what previously has been assumed—valued and learned from the founders of the revolution in historiography that occurred during the first part of the nineteenth century (Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen). Furthermore, it seems likely that their approach to history directly influenced Nietzsche’s break in �875–�876 (at the time of writing Menschliches, Allzumenschliches) with his earlier more idealistic thinking.

Nietzsche’s critique of history and historical thinking has been widely misun-derstood (to a large degree because of the somewhat misleading nature of Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben) as an overall critique of

�02. I discuss these questions in “The Late Nietzsche’s Fundamental Critique of Historical Scholarship,” in Nietzsche on Time and History, ed. Manuel Dries (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, forth-coming).


historical thinking, including historical method. This is not correct. Nietzsche was well educated and skillful as a historian, and never fundamentally questioned historical methods. Instead, he admired and affirmed the founders of them (Wolf and Niebuhr) and affirmed good contemporary history (Burckhardt, Taine, and Ritschl). History is by its very nature a means, not the goal (the opposite view would mean nihilism), but there was a tendency during the nineteenth century to treat history as a goal, which Nietzsche reacted against. Thus, what he objected to was not historical scholarship and method as such, but their being placed above philosophy (in Nietzsche’s sense, as the creation and legislation of values).

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