Nietzsche and the Self-Overcoming of Historical Consciousness

Abstract

This paper addresses the self-overcoming of historical consciousness in Nietzsche’s “The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” and contemporaneous texts. I argue that Nietzsche’s particular historical awareness, which conditions his treatment of historiography [Historie], is indebted to the lineage of German Idealism it also overtly contests. That contestation reaches its apex in Nietzsche’s valorization of appearance and the redirection of poietic power, which enables him to affirm an art of history rather than a science thereof, indeed, an art aligned with justice.