Nietzsche’s Untimely Antidote to the Science of History

In this chapter, I argue that Nietzsche’s diagnosis of ailing modernity is especially relevant to our present-day predicament, particularly when it is clear what he means by (the science of) “history.” To demonstrate the force of this claim, I first consider how Nietzsche wishes his prescription to be understood with a view to his evolving sense of the relationship between art, science, and life. Though HL is typically situated as an “early” work, I complicate that placement by showing how HL does not, like its usual companions in the category, suffer from too romantic an orientation to the past, and thus to art. On the contrary, HL is a threshold text that—though it betrays similar worries about science as The Birth of Tragedy (BT) with which it is often grouped—nonetheless anticipates Nietzsche’s more critical position on science to return on the nether side of his free-spirit experimental period sans the sentimentalism with which he retrospectively charges his early writings. Finally, once we are in a position to take Nietzsche’s 1874 analysis seriously, then we can seriously consider the poisonous postmodern fruit born of the modern tree. I conclude by speculating on connections between Nietzsche’s insights and contemporary forms of what I call “memorial torture.”