Introduction to the piece (from our curator)
Early work of Nietzsche. 12 years before Genealogy. Thoughts about history as a
discipline in 19th century Europe still apply?
Main interest: value of history for life. Genealogical critique as also pursuing that, starts
from the present and seeks transformation. Poscolonial history and genealogy and their
value for transforming the present.
We began with questions:
● Why can’t history become a pure science? (61)
● How do we think about the relation between knowledge, history and life?
(64)
Analogies/universals in historical explanation?
● What does life designate in this essay? Dark power, health and human
action.
● How can history endanger life? Genealogy? (76).
● What does it look like for life to sit in judgment? (76)
Is forgetfulness really the right term?
● Is Nietzsche committed to an external perspective by which to evaluate
these histories? (76)
Do we need a history of forgetting?
We then moved to discussion:
Our first theme was life vis-a-vis the present. Possible meanings of life?
Contemporary problems tied to living.
Life in relation to the development of a habit: prudence vs excess/lack (Aristotle).
Prereflexive character of life.
Biological life: instinct, becoming more powerful. Also ethical, not solely biological, in
relation to virtue as a habit.
Plastic power: capacity to develop out of oneself…healing wounds (62).
Collective trauma, collective memory.
Question of the animal (62): animal life seems to be relevant or tied to the unhistorical,
to the now, lack of knowledge.
Is life as a goal justifiable? What does this furthering of life look like?
History is something salutary only “as the attendant of a mighty new current of life” (67).
Excess of history = degeneration of life and degeneration of history (67).
vs objective history (the facts), but making the past suffer (74). Debates on genealogy
vs archaeology: to what extent is our inquiry objective? Genealogy as a method
challenges the objectivity of history as such.
Healthy thing: only when bounded by a horizon that has been self-determined (63).
Instinct of when to feel historically or unhistorically (63): objectivism and subjectivism.
“Subjective life” = possible category mistake. Subjectivity related to experience.
Life in a more cosmic sense, not subjectivity; therefore, not necessarily political.
Degeneration = “the critic without need/urgency, the antiquary without piety, the man
who recognizes greatness but cannot himself do great things” (72).
Connection to Spengler: cultural decay, degeneration.
Deleuze vs Foucault: schizoanalysis. Deleuze wasn’t historical enough because there is
too much focus on the intensive, forces.
What relation to the past is exposed in critical history in contrast to monumental and
antiquarian?
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