Nietzsche on history as science Christoph Schuringa From his earliest writings to his very last, Nietzsche shows a persistent interest in the question of how, and to what ends, history should be studied. In his second Untimely Meditation he takes a critical attitude toward the excessive pursuit of historical study in his own time, characterizing it as a “historical sickness” (HL 10, KSA 1, 329). In his own later work, however, he makes widespread use of history for philosophical ends, notably in his histories of morality and religion. The relationship between these approaches, early and late, has been characterized by Karl Schlechta, and others following him, as a revaluation or Umwerthung in Nietzsche’s estimation of history, the early Nietzsche being generally critical of historical study (geschichtsfeindlich), the later Nietzsche valuing history more highly (Schlechta 1958). This characterization seems to me to be seriously mistaken. The early Nietzsche is not simply critical of historical study as such, as a careful reading of the Untimely Meditation will show. Rather, Nietzsche consistently here, and throughout his work, places emphasis on the uses that can be made of historical study if this study is made to serve the right ends. I shall argue that the primary target of Nietzsche’s criticism in HL is not history per se but, as he puts it, “the demand that history should be a science” (HL 4, KSA 1, 271). In this way, a different Umwerthung altogether can be seen to emerge in Nietzsche’s thought on the value and nature of historical study. This revaluation takes place in relation specifically to the scientific status of history, and ways of pursuing it which ascribe such a status to it, not in relation to the value of history itself. Such a shift seems to be initiated by the opening aphorism of Human, All Too Human, where Nietzsche calls for a “historical philosophy” that “can no longer be thought of as separate from natural science” (HaH I 1). This commitment seems to be an enduring one for the remainder of Nietzsche’s output. It should be noted at the outset that the apparent shift in Nietzsche’s views on the scientificality of history cannot be explained away by appeal to the multiple meanings of the term Wissenschaft, notoriously much broader than the English ‘science’; as we shall see, he makes explicit reference to what we can call the ‘exact’ sciences (mathematics and natural science) in the relevant discussions both before and after the shift. It will be my contention that the early and late positions can be seen to be consistent with one another once we identify a development in what Nietzsche allows to count as ‘science’. This development is complex and not straightfor- Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM 412 Christoph Schuringa wardly linear; there is no decisive moment of Umwerthung (and the seeds of the later conception can be found to be sown in the earlier work). I will begin by outlining Nietzsche’s objections against history as science in HL. I shall then examine the conception of history as science at work from HaH onwards. Finally, I will raise various problems about this conception in the light of Nietzsche’s remarks about nature and science in other contexts. My brief account will inevitably leave out much that is important, but will, I hope, capture something central to Nietzsche’s development. 1. Against history as science: the second Untimely Meditation The first two Untimely Meditations are strongly critical in tone – Nietzsche would later describe them as “warlike” and “attempts at assassination” (EH UM 1 & 2, KSA 6, 316 f.). In the case of the first Meditation, the target is clear: what Nietzsche characterizes rather unfairly as the self-satisfied, self-deceiving Christianity of David Friedrich Strauss. (This seems particularly unjust in light of Nietzsche’s proximity in On the Genealogy of Morality and elsewhere to the type of naturalizing, ‘disenchanting’ accounts of religious phenomena exemplified by Strauss in his Life of Jesus.)1 The critical target of HL is less obvious, since, unlike the other Meditations, it does not deal with a named person. The subject matter is, clearly enough, the historische Bildung of contemporary Germany, which Nietzsche characterizes as the “oversaturation of an age with history” (HL 5, KSA 1, 279). The target of his critique is not simply the pursuit of historical knowledge itself, however. He regards historische Bildung, significantly, not as a vice but as a “hypertrophied virtue” (HL Preface, KSA 1, 246): it is a plant that has turned into a weed. Pace Schlechta and others, Nietzsche is not simply geschichtsfeindlich here, as would be surprising for someone trained as a classical philologist and whose first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, took a historical subject matter (whatever its present-directed purposes).2 The clue to what is wrong with such a reading is contained in the title of the Meditation itself: “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life.” History is not harmful for life per se, but it becomes so if pursued in the wrong way. And this is not simply a matter of pursuing one kind of history rather than another. 1 2 See Lanfranconi (2000, 98 f.), for a persuasive account of an Umwerthung of Strauss in Nietzsche’s estimation from HaH onwards. Furthermore, texts and fragments showing Nietzsche’s appreciation of the potential value of historical study appear remarkably early in the Nachlaß. See, e. g., the text “Fatum und Geschichte” from 1862 (KGW I/2, 430 – 437), and the fragment 16[17] from 1863 – 64 (KGW I/3, 291). Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM Nietzsche on history as science 413 In identifying what Nietzsche has in mind as the right way of pursuing history, commentators are often tempted to refer to his tripartite division of the modes of history into “monumental,” “antiquarian” and “critical” and to ask which of these Nietzsche is singling out for praise.3 But Nietzsche is emphatic that all three modes of history are useful for life if pursued in their proper places and according to their proper function, as is reinforced by Jçrg Salaquarda’s careful textual study of the preparatory notes for the Meditation, where this nuanced Nietzschean position can be seen being gradually worked out (Salaquarda 1984). Salaquarda’s analysis is valuable in showing that Nietzsche, in his notes, at first operated with a simple dichotomy between “monumental” (or, interchangeably, “classical”) and “antiquarian” history, where the former was simply valued positively and the latter negatively. Nietzsche then comes to his subtler position, which recognizes that it is the function that each type of history serves that is at issue, a development that involves the introduction of the third, “critical,” kind of history. Nietzsche’s real critical target, then, is neither history per se nor one or more of the modes of history he proposes. I propose that the ultimate target can be identified as the demand that history be made scientific. Nietzsche’s criticisms of this demand occur in three different sections of the Meditation. Thus, he writes at HL 1: History become pure, sovereign science would be for mankind a sort of conclusion of life and a settling of accounts with it. […] Insofar as it stands in the service of life, history stands in the service of an unhistorical power, and, thus subordinate, it can and should never become a pure science such as, for instance, mathematics is (KSA 1, 257). Again, at HL 4, he asks what has gone wrong with the relationship between history and life. The answer he gives to his own question is that a “mighty, hostile star” has been interposed between history and life. We see “a gleaming and glorious star interposing itself, the constellation really has been altered – b y s c i e n c e , b y t h e d e m a n d t h a t h i s t o r y s h o u l d b e a s c i e n c e ” (KSA 1, 271). Lastly, at HL 10, Nietzsche contends, in opposition to claims to deliver history with a scientific status, that history should be subject to the “eternalizing powers of art and religion.” (KSA 1, 330). What is less clear is what exactly Nietzsche has in mind as constituting the Wissenschaftlichkeit that he disapproves of in the study of history. At least two candidates emerge with some clarity from the remarks that Nietzsche makes: 3 While perhaps the most obvious choice is to identify Nietzsche with critical history (see, e. g., Breazeale 2000), some have seen him as an advocate of monumental history (Ottmann 1987, 36; Jensen 2008, 227). Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM 414 Christoph Schuringa Hegelian philosophy of history4 and the historicism of Ranke.5 (Ranke, although not mentioned by name in HL, is the “celebrated historical virtuoso” of HL 6, as is confirmed by the quotation given there from Ranke’s Die rçmischen Ppste in den letzten vier Jahrhunderten.)6 It is important to emphasize the distinctness of these targets. While some commentators speak, confusingly, of ‘Hegel’s historicism’ (e. g. Beiser 1993; Forster 1998), it is advisable to keep Hegelianism in the philosophy of history and the phenomenon of historicism in German historiography firmly separate (see Jordan 1998). Ranke should properly be seen as largely reacting against Hegelianism.7 It is possible that the distinction between the two was to an extent blurred in Nietzsche’s own mind (Raulet 2000, 185), or he may have seen both tendencies as manifestations of an underlying trend. For present purposes, however, it remains useful to treat them separately, since Nietzsche’s objections can be seen to fall into two categories, anti-Hegelian and anti-Rankean. Nietzsche has two basic objections against Hegelian philosophy of history and its claims to be ‘scientific’. Namely, it posits ‘laws of history’ the existence of which Nietzsche denies. Further, it sees history as a progressive movement towards a goal; for Nietzsche there is no such goal. Taken together, these views lead to two harmful consequences: what Nietzsche calls the “idolatry of the factual” (HL 8, KSA 1, 309) – acquiescence in whatever exists because it is supposed to exist out of necessity – and epigonism (the belief that one stands at the end of history; HL 8, KSA 1, 307). The latter is notoriously lampooned by Nietzsche as Hegel’s alleged belief that world history culminated in his own 4 5 6 7 Nietzsche’s attack on Hegelianism is largely effected through his critique of Hartmann’s supposed “parody” of Hegelianism in his Philosophie des Unbewussten. This strategy is motivated by Nietzsche’s view that Hartmann undermines the Hegelian by showing its inevitable consequences: “Hartmann is important because he deals a deathblow to the idea of a world process simply by being consistent” (NL 1873 29[52], KSA 7, 648). Anthony K. Jensen rightly emphasizes the importance of Nietzsche’s engagement with the methods and aims of philology as background to his reflections on historiography. I do not, however, wish to follow him in identifying Nietzsche’s principal targets in HL with the respective schools of the philologists Boeckh and Hermann (Jensen 2008). That I do not think that these rival camps can be mapped onto the categories of “antiquarian” and “critical,” as Jensen contends, follows from what I say above about how Nietzsche arrives at these categories. Cf. HL 6, KSA 1, 291; Ranke (1867 – 1890, Vol. XXXVII, 23). In a text from the 1830 s, for example, Ranke attacks the type of philosophy of history he associates with Hegel in scathing terms: “Es ist oft ein gewisser Widerstreit einer unreifen Philosophie mit der Historie bemerkt worden. Aus apriorischen Gedanken hat man auf das geschlossen, was da sein msse. Ohne zu bemerken, daß jene Gedanken vielen Zweifeln ausgesetzt seien, ist man daran gegangen, sie in der Historie der Welt wiederzusuchen. Aus der unendlichen Menge der Tatsachen hat man alsdann diejenigen ausgewhlt, welche jene zu beglaubigen schienen. Dies hat man wohl auch Philosophie der Geschichte genannt.” (Ranke 1964 – 1975, Vol. IV, 86). Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM Nietzsche on history as science 415 existence in Berlin (HL 8, KSA 1, 308). A different kind of objection to the scientific aspirations of history seems to be much more aptly directed at Ranke than at Hegel. This is the criticism of the demand for unbounded ‘objectivity’, an objectivity that, lacking all criteria of selection and treating all data as equally relevant, would end in utter indiscriminacy as to the objects of history – in Nietzsche’s image, it would end with the historian dredging up the slime at the bottom of the sea for signs of his own existence (HL 9, KSA 1, 312 f.). In part, admittedly, these criticisms are directed at the consequences of such ‘scientific’ approaches, not at those approaches themselves. But Nietzsche supplies further criticisms of the approaches themselves, especially in the notebooks. History simply isn’t like this, and even if it were, we could not know about it, since we are merely “earthly fleas”, not “governors of the world” (NL 1873 29[74], KSA 7, 662). 2. History as science: Human All Too Human Given Nietzsche’s opposition to the demand that history be made scientific in the Untimely Meditation, he makes what seems like a startling announcement at the beginning of his next published work after the Meditations, Human All Too Human. Here Nietzsche bewails the lacks of historical sense of all philosophers hitherto and calls for a new kind of philosophy which he calls “historical philosophy [das historische Philosophiren]”, a “method” in philosophy that he says has recently come into being (HaH I 1, KSA 2, 23 f.). This new method stands opposed to the old ‘metaphysical’ philosophy. Whereas metaphysical philosophy attempts to discover the eternal realities that stand behind the world of appearance, historical philosophy eschews any such attempt to get at the unchanging. It acknowledges that the world is one of flux, and that the contradictions manifested in that flux are not to be explained by resorting to fixed, stable entities that stand in opposition to each other. It is significant that the repudiation of metaphysical philosophy and the demand for historical philosophy corresponds closely to a turn away from Schopenhauer’s stated views on the subject. Schopenhauer had used precisely the same phrase, das historische Philosophieren, to characterize an approach to philosophy which he condemned.8 As he put it in The World as Will and Representation (I, §53): anyone who imagines that the inner nature of the world can be historically comprehended, however finely glossed over it may be, is still infinitely far from a philosophical knowledge of the world. […] Such historical philosophizing 8 This was noted by Heller (1972, 6). See also the discussion in Lanfranconi (2000, 86 – 90). Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM 416 Christoph Schuringa [historisches Philosophieren] in most cases furnishes a cosmogony admitting of many varieties, or else a system of emanations, a doctrine of diminutions, or finally, […] conversely, a doctrine of a constant becoming, springing up, arising, […] or some other drivel of this kind. (Schopenhauer 1969, Vol. I, 273) For Schopenhauer, the proper objects of philosophical contemplation were the unchanging and eternal, not the fleeting and transitory. This view, according to Nietzsche, could be traced back to a wrong turning taken in philosophy in the period before Plato; in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks and in his lectures on Pre-Platonic philosophy, he makes it clear that he regards Parmenides as the culprit for the turn toward metaphysical philosophy (PTAG 10, KSA 1, 843 f.). Parmenides originates the tradition of looking for the true nature of things behind the world, positing a stable realm of ‘being’ to serve as the ground and explanation of all ‘becoming’.9 The hero of these texts on pre-Platonic philosophy is evidently Heraclitus, whom Nietzsche singles out for praise repeatedly (and continues to do into his late work, e. g. TI Reason 2; EH BT 3). For Heraclitus, the nature of the world consists not in some grounding element (e. g. water, as it had been for Thales) but in the conflictual play of the apparent world itself (PTAG 5 – 6, KSA 1, 822 – 830). That Nietzsche closely identifies his “historical philosophy” with a Heraclitean “philosophy of becoming” is made manifest in the revised version of HaH I 1 he produced in 1888, where the phrase “historical philosophy” is replaced by “philosophy of becoming [Philosophie des Werdens]” (KSA 14, 119). On Nietzsche’s reading, Heraclitus’ key insight was that we should not look behind the realm of flux for a ‘true’ world which contained stable objects capable of explaining that flux; we should accept the flux itself, in its everchanging forms, as our object of investigation. We should not think of Nietzsche’s endorsement of Heraclitean doctrines in HaH as appearing totally ex nihilo, however. The seeds of an Umwerthung towards a Heraclitean view of history had, in fact, been sown in earlier texts. In HL Nietzsche had described “the doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts, types and species” in a double-edged way as “doctrines which I consider true but deadly” (HL 9, KSA 1, 319).10 Their deadliness here motivated him to advise against embracing them and to advocate counteracting 9 This doctrine is most fully developed in Plato’s philosophy. For a locus classicus, see Timaeus, 27d: “What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes but never is? The former is grasped by understanding, which involves a reasoned account. It is unchanging. The latter is grasped by opinion, which involves unreasoning sense perception. It comes to be and passes away, but never really is.” See also Philebus, 53c; Theaetetus, 152d-e; Sophist, 248a; Republic, 7.521d. 10 Cf., however, the more straightforwardly critical remarks about the doctrine of becoming in SE 4, where Nietzsche writes, e. g.: “In becoming, everything is hollow, deceptive, shallow and worthy of our contempt.” (KSA 1, 374). Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM Nietzsche on history as science 417 them with the “eternalizing forces” of art and religion. Significantly, the Heraclitean doctrine of becoming was at this stage already aligned in Nietzsche’s mind with a certain conception of science, a conception that is evidently not the one he has in mind when criticizing the demand to make history scientific earlier in the Meditation. “Science,” he writes, “considers the only right and true way of regarding things, that is to say the only scientific way, as being that which sees everywhere things that have been, things historical, and nowhere things that are, things eternal” and “seeks to abolish all limitations of horizon and launch mankind upon an infinite and unbounded sea of light whose light is knowledge of all becoming” (HL 10, KSA 1, 330). This conception of science is more fully worked out in HaH. Here history and science become intimately linked. That “historical philosophy” has aspirations to scientific status is affirmed repeatedly in the text. Thus, in HaH I 1, we are told that historical philosophy “can no longer be thought of as separate from natural science,” and that “all we require […] is a c h e m i s t r y of the moral, religious, and aesthetic conceptions and sensations” (KSA 2, 23 f.); at HaH I 16 it is claimed that “the steady and laborious progress of science […] will one day celebrate its greatest triumph in a h i s t o r y o f t h e g e n e s i s o f t h o u g h t ” (KSA 2, 37); at HaH I 37, “there rules that science which asks after the origin and history of the so-called moral sensations” (KSA 2, 59 f.). At HaH I 416, history is referred to as a constituent part of “science” (KSA 2, 274). Furthermore, Nietzsche closely linked Heraclitus’ conception of the world with the latest developments in the natural sciences. Thus, in his lectures on prePlatonic philosophy, he cites a recent lecture by the entomologist Karl Ernst von Baer to lend credence to Heraclitus’ philosophy (Baer 1862). Nietzsche borrows an example from von Baer that is intended to suggest that our perception of the world as containing stable, unchanging entities is an illusion brought about by the peculiarities of our organization as organisms. The example asks us to consider, in turn, a human life that is radically accelerated (say 1,000-fold) and one that is radically decelerated (again, say 1,000-fold). In a life decelerated 1,000-fold, but with the same number of heart beats as a normal life (the heartrate being correlated, according to von Baer, with rate of perception), what seem to us like stable objects will be perceived as constantly undergoing change. This raises the possibility that all objects we perceive as stable mask changes that we do not observe simply due to the way we are organized as perceiving creatures (KGW II/4, 267 – 270). It may be questioned whether von Baer’s thought experiment is sufficient to show that our perception of the world misleads us into supposing that things are more stable than they are, or whether it merely raises such a possibility without settling the matter. It is clear, however, that Nietzsche himself regarded a scientific view of the world as delivering a world of Heraclitean flux. Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM 418 Christoph Schuringa 3. History as science and Nietzsche’s conception of nature The project of ‘historical philosophy’ inaugurated in HaH is one that Nietzsche pursues through later texts, such as Daybreak, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil and, in particular, On the Genealogy of Morality and The Antichrist. Specifically, these texts take up the projects of delivering histories of morality and of religion with the aim of dispelling their claims to a Wunder-Ursprung. It needs to be argued first of all that these approaches are genuinely historical in intent. Some commentators continue to regard them, in particular the narratives offered in the Genealogy, as being fictional or hypothetical in nature. This view often, though not necessarily, goes together with the view that ‘genealogy’ must be some kind of special ‘method’ or ‘argument form’.11 The denial that Nietzsche’s genealogies are meant to be historical is unfounded for a number of reasons. First of all, Nietzsche himself characterizes his genealogical approach as getting away from the hypothetical nature of the accounts of Paul Re and his English forerunners and as being an attempt to get at the “real h i s t o r y o f m o r a l i t y,” the “morality that has really existed, really been lived” (GM Preface 7, KSA 5, 254). Furthermore, Nietzsche demonstrably relied heavily on historical sources for the examples he uses in his genealogies.12 Finally, a consideration of what the genealogies are meant to achieve will show that they must be historical in intent. The claim that ‘genealogy’ is a particular method or argument form that is imbued, thanks to its special structure, with a power of its own to critique or ‘debunk’ its object, e. g. morality, can itself be shown to be mistaken by, again, appealing to things Nietzsche himself says. A genealogy tells a narrative about how, say, our morality has come to be. Were such a narrative to have the function, by itself, of debunking that morality, it would commit a genetic fallacy. Nietzsche himself repeatedly points out his awareness of such a fallacy (e. g. GS 345), and emphasizes that a history of moral valuations and its critique are distinct projects.13 Ultimately, Nietzsche has the intention to bring them 11 Treatments of genealogy as if it were a “method” are rife in the literature; the efforts of Raymond Geuss to point out that, for Nietzsche at least, there is no special method with this name seem to have been to little avail (Geuss 1999, 1). For a recent consideration of the “philosophical function” of genealogy, see Guay (2006). 12 In particular the work of Albert Hermann Post. See Stingelin (1991) for evidence of Nietzsche’s practice of excerpting from Post’s work. 13 GS 345: “I have scarcely detected a few meager preliminary efforts to explore the history of the origins of these feelings and valuations (which is something quite different from a critique and again different from a history of ethical systems)” (KSA 3, 578). Cf., from the Nachlaß, e. g.: “Die Geschichte der bisherigen Werthschtzungen und ihrer Grnde ist etwas anderes als die Schtzung selber” (NL 1883 16[33], KSA 10, 511). “Die Frage nach der Herkunft unserer Werthschtzungen und Gtertafeln fllt ganz und gar nicht mit deren Kritik zusammen, wie so oft geglaubt wird: so gewiß auch die Einsicht in Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM Nietzsche on history as science 419 together, with the genealogy forming the preparation for the critique that takes place in the “revaluation of all values.” The genealogy cannot by itself effect this critique. The subversive or debunking power of the genealogy resides, rather, in its capacity to show the adherent of the morality in question (or whatever the object of the genealogy happens to be) that he or she had (tacitly or otherwise) held that morality to be justified by a Wunder-Ursprung inconsistent with the genealogical story. The genealogical story shows that the object in question in fact has many, disparate antecedents which have become conjoined at various points in history in a contingent and haphazard manner. Nietzsche’s genealogies are not, then, to be regarded as belonging to a different genus from other historical narratives that he gives. Indeed, in his notebooks of the period of GM in which he is sketching out his genealogical project he never uses the term ‘genealogy’, but repeatedly refers to the need for a ‘history of valuations’.14 It is particularly clear in the case of Nietzsche’s histories of Christianity that accounts are being offered that are, at least in principle, verifiable. Where his approach is more problematic is where appeals are made to periods which are, by Nietzsche’s own account, situated in pre-history rather than in a documented period (e. g., much of the narrative of GM II). Nietzsche thus sometimes frustrates himself in his aim to get away from the hypothetical accounts offered by Paul Re, which rely on Darwinian constructions rather than appeal to historical fact. For instance, he repeatedly calls for an Entstehungsgeschichte des Denkens (“history of the genesis of thought”), using this term in HaH and again in a note from 1885.15 Such a ‘history’ would seem to constitute an exercise in what is effectively evolutionary epistemology.16 It is very difficult to see how such a history could be documented, since it seeks to make claims of a highly sceptical nature about earlier stages in the development of our faculty of cognition itself. Leaving aside these epistemological problems about Nietzsche’s narratives, however, their aspiration, for the most part, to be historical is evident. This historical intent can be closely tied to a scientific intent, in the postUmwerthung sense outlined above. One very important feature Nietzsche’s narratives possess has been pointed out by numerous commentators: they are meant to have a naturalizing component.17 Here Nietzsche’s conception of 14 15 16 17 irgend eine pudenda origo fr das Gefhl eine Werthverminderung der so entstandenen Sache mit sich bringt und gegen dieselbe eine kritische Stimmung und Haltung vorbereitet.” (NL 1885 – 1886 2[189], KSA 12, 160). See NL 1883 8[15], KSA 10, 337; NL 1883 16[33], KSA 10, 511; NL 1884 26[130], KSA 11, 184; NL 1884 26[164], KSA 11, 192. HaH I 16, 18; NL 1885 40[27], KSA 11, 643. For a discussion of this, see Poellner (1995, 138 – 49). See e. g. Cox (1999); Leiter (2002); Williams (2002, 22): “Genealogy is intended to serve the aims of naturalism (and was understood to do so by Nietzsche, who first applied the term ‘genealogy’ in this sense).” Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM 420 Christoph Schuringa history is crucial, for it is this that tells us that a naturalistic account must take a historical form. If the world under consideration is regarded as one of Heraclitean flux, then any examination of it must proceed, in accordance with the principles of historical philosophy set out in HaH, by examining the way things have come to be, always guarding against the temptation to see things as they are around us as determined to be so by unchanging entities in the world beyond. What should not be forgotten is that Nietzsche, in announcing his naturalizing project, is explicit about the picture of nature that he has in mind – and this is one far removed from that of contemporary ‘naturalism’ as a philosophical project. Nietzsche’s naturalistic project is specifically, as he puts it, to “‘n a t u r a l i z e’ humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature” – and this is contingent upon our completing our “dedeification of nature” (GS 109, KSA 3, 469). The nature we are to be translated back into will not be, for Nietzsche, nature as standardly conceived by the natural science of his day (and as it is, perhaps, still generally considered today). Nietzsche’s radical conception of nature is highlighted when at GS 109 he goes so far as to claim that even matter itself is “as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics” (KSA 3, 468); in other places, he strikes right at the heart of the conception of nature as bound by laws by suggesting that this very idea is an anthropomorphic fiction.18 His ‘naturalized’ history is, thus, certainly not to be thought of as gaining its scientific status from a capacity to make predictions from general laws. Nevertheless, history has become for Nietzsche a scientific pursuit in the sense that it is indistinguishable from the study of nature. Quite how Nietzsche’s picture of nature is meant to function is a difficult matter that can only be tackled in conjunction with an examination of his more general epistemological views, in particular his perspectivism; this question is not, however, the one at issue here. Conclusion From HaH onward, I have argued, Nietzsche offers a highly original conception of history as scientific, that is, as capturing the Heraclitean flux that nature (as Nietzsche wants to conceive it) exhibits. This conception can be accommodated alongside his critique in his early work of scientific models of history since the claims to scientificality in play there appeal to a metaphysical picture which he 18 In some places, e. g. GS 109, Nietzsche’s objection seems to be simply against “laws” in nature viewed as “commanding” nature, where this notion of command is thought of in too anthropomorphic a sense. In other places, however, he seems more far-reachingly sceptical about the very notion of a law in nature (see e. g. NL 1886 – 1887 7[14], KSA 12, 299; NL 1883 15[50], KSA 10, 493; BGE 22). Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Authenticated | 172.16.1.226 Download Date | 2/5/12 6:03 PM Nietzsche on history as science 421 seeks to dismantle in the period from HaH onward. Serious questions remain over how the conception of nature in play in the later thought might work; it is, nevertheless, the conception we should expect given the more general antiPlatonic, perspectivistic trend of his thinking. Once we take note of the endorsement of his Heraclitean conception of nature (and thus of science) which takes place from HaH onwards, the apparent shift in Nietzsche’s views on the prospects of a ‘scientific’ history can be seen to turn about this axis. The result is that Nietzsche’s early and late views can be seen to be consistent with one another. His complaints both against the teleological, nomological commitments of Hegel’s approach to history and against the ‘objective’ aspiration of Ranke’s remain in force in his later work. The critique of teleology is itself a central plank of Nietzsche’s advocacy of a philosophy of becoming – becoming never attains a final state;19 Nietzsche’s enduring critiques of ‘objectivity’ hardly require mention. Nietzsche’s early critique, then, is ultimately complemented, not contradicted, by the scientific aspirations of ‘historical philosophy’. References Baer, Karl Ernst von (1862): Welche Auffassung der Natur ist die richtige? Berlin (Hirschwald). Beiser, Frederick C. (1993): “Hegel’s Historicism”. In: F. C. Beiser (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), pp. 270 – 300. Breazeale, Daniel (2000): “Nietzsche, Critical History, and ‘das Pathos der Richtertum’”. In: Revue internationale de Philosophie. Vol. 54, pp. 57 – 76. Cox, Christoph (1999): Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation. Berkeley (University of California Press). Forster, Michael N. (1998): Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit. Chicago (Chicago University Press). 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