Repository | Book | Chapter

Though it is often vague, naive, nostalgic and sometimes cloying, Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditations, which denounces history as long as it is not made to "serve life', must still be taken seriously — for two reasons.¹ First, because of its virtues, which we must not allow its vices to obscure and which, if Nietzsche is right in agreeing with Goethe that "when we cultivate our virtues we at the same time cultivate our vices' (Foreword, p. 60), may be intimately connected with them. Second, because Nietzsche's essay addresses the question of the relationship of our past to our present and future: "If you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so only out of the fullest exertion of the vigour of the present.... When the past speaks it always speaks only as an oracle: only if you are an architect of the future will you understand it' (VI, p. 94). The essay thus addresses the most central theoretical question concerning interpretation: Is meaning discovered or created? Better put: Can meaning be discovered at all if it is not at the same time being created? And since the ultimate product of this question is Nietzsche's genealogical method, the second Untimely Meditation provides us with the material for a genealogy of genealogy itself. But if that is the case, then we certainly must not be deterred by its vices.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-21613-0_12

Full citation: