Nietzsche's Use of Monumental History

Author(s): Scott Jenkins

Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Summer 2014), pp. 169-181
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jnietstud.45.2.0169
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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History

Scott Jenkins

Abstract: This article examines Nietzsche’s notion of monumental h­ istory

in “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” and considers its
­importance for Nietzsche’s later work. In the first section, I examine the
connections between monumental history and the work of Polybius, Thucydides,
and Livy. Here I argue that Nietzsche takes his notion of monumental history
directly from the practice of history in the ancient world. In the second section,
I demonstrate that Nietzsche regards the production of illusions as the principal
benefit of monumental history, while he criticizes its mendacious and conservative
tendencies. Finally, I argue in the third section that the collection of characters
we encounter in Nietzsche’s later works—including the free spirits and the
figure of Zarathustra—ought to be understood through Nietzsche’s account of
the uses and disadvantages of monumental history. These exemplary figures
neither falsify nor glorify the past, but they remain illusions in the service of life.

Keywords: Nietzsche, history, illusion, Zarathustra, Livy, Thucydides

O f the three forms of history that Nietzsche describes in “On the Uses and
Disadvantages of History for Life,” monumental history is the one that
pertains to us as beings who act and strive (HL 2, p. 67).1 Thus, one might
reasonably expect monumental history to play a significant role in Nietzsche’s
later accounts of life-enhancing practices. But when we turn to Nietzsche’s later
writings, there is absolutely no mention of monumental history. It seems to
disappear along with so-called “antiquarian” and “critical” modes of history.
There is, however, at least one important point of contact between Nietzsche’s
later work and his account of monumental history in HL. One of the most
striking features of the later work is the cast of characters that confront the
reader. We encounter free spirits, good Europeans, philosophers of the future,
last men, and, of course, Zarathustra himself. I will argue that we cannot under-
stand the function of these characters independent of Nietzsche’s early account
of monumental history. I begin by showing that Nietzsche did not simply invent
this notion of monumental history, as is sometimes assumed.2 The notion of

JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2014.

Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

169

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170   Scott Jenkins

monumental history and the term “monumental” itself are taken directly from
the work of ancient historians. I then reconstruct Nietzsche’s assessment of this
form of history in HL and show how it relates to other aspects of Nietzsche’s
thought, in particular, to his views on the value of illusion for life. I conclude by
explaining how the diverse cast of characters we encounter in Nietzsche’s later
philosophy can be understood on the model of the exemplary, inspiring figures
found in the work of ancient historians.

Monumental History as Ancient History

Nietzsche describes monumental history as aiming to guide and motivate present

conduct by considering past agents and events. He cites Polybius as a practi-
tioner of this sort of history on account of his view that the best preparation for
governing a state is the study of political history. For Polybius, he says, such
study has the advantage of illustrating the misfortunes of others and thereby
preparing a ruler to deal with similar circumstances (HL 2, pp. 67–68).3 The
view that history instructs and benefits a politically active person is not unique
to Polybius. As I will demonstrate, Nietzsche could have made a similar point
in connection with Thucydides or Livy. Monumental history is simply the
history of the ancient world.4
In HL Nietzsche never mentions the work from which he surely draws his
terminology of “monumental” history, Livy’s History of Rome. That work sets
out from the following claims: “This is the particularly healthy and productive
element of history: to behold object lessons of every kind of model [omnis te
exempli documenta] as though they were displayed on a conspicuous monument
[monumento]. From this, you should choose for yourself and for your state
what to imitate and what to avoid as abominable in its origin or as abominable
in its outcome.”5 The term monumento is commonly translated “memorial” or
“monument.” It typically refers to concrete objects such as tombs or temples.6
Thus Livy is imagining the past of Rome as a great structure, which a person can
take in through a single act of intuition. Here he likely follows Polybius, who
begins his Histories with the remark, “How striking and grand is the spectacle
presented by the period with which I propose to deal.”7 Livy describes this
monumental past as exhibiting for us models of behavior to be imitated and
avoided—exempla that ought to guide our conduct. Thus history is useful, for
Livy, because it offers proven models of excellence and failure in human affairs.
Livy’s exemplary history is originally action-guiding.
Nietzsche is clearly drawing on Livy’s depiction of the past as a great
monument when he speaks of “the pyramids of the great eras of the past” that
inspire us to imitate (Nachahmen) or surpass (Bessermachen) what we find
there (HL 2, p. 68). He even characterizes the practitioner of monumental

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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History   171

history as vexed by those who regard elements of the past as mere “pictures in a
gallery”—that is, not as models of behavior bearing a practical relation to one’s
life. Nietzsche also shares Livy’s view on the occasion for monumental history.
In the preface to The History of Rome, Livy emphasizes the “evils” and “vices”
of his age, which he aims to correct through presenting examples of past virtue.
Nietzsche similarly regards monumental history as most useful to those who
find themselves in corrupt or uninspiring times: “History belongs above all to
the man of deeds and power, to him who fights a great fight, who needs models
[Vorbilder], teachers [Lehrer], comforters [Tröster] and cannot find them among
his contemporaries. It belonged thus to Schiller: for our time is so bad, Goethe
said, that the poet no longer encounters in the human life that surrounds him a
nature he can employ” (HL 2, p. 67). A note from 1873 explicitly connects the
monumental use of history to the Roman historians Livy and Tacitus (as well
as to Machiavelli, to whom I will return in a moment): “One thinks of Livy’s
goal, of Tacitus, of Machiavelli—flight in the face of the present, and comfort
[Trost]—often it’s enough to consider that things were once different, or that
they were just so, or that they were better” (KSA 7:29[87], p. 669). Monumental
history arises from and answers to a dissatisfaction with one’s own time, and
it is thus particularly suited to untimely figures such as Nietzsche and Livy.
We can divide the intended benefits of monumental history into two
general categories. First, it aims to provide the student of history with information
concerning the ways of human affairs, which Nietzsche describes as knowl-
edge of cause and effect (HL 2, p. 70). Livy, for example, aims to describe “the
kind of lives men lived; what their moral principles were; by what individu-
als and by what skills, both at home and in the field, our dominion was born
and grew.”8 This study of the past yields knowledge of the typical effects of
particular sorts of military action, political activity, or social change, provided
we assume with Livy that the present and future are not radically different from
the past. Thucydides makes this assumption explicit in his talk of “events which
happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some
time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.”9 Of course,
it is one thing to understand the present, and another to use this understanding
to chart an alternate course for the future. Nietzsche describes monumental
history as taking the past to be “imitable [nachahmbar] and possible for a second
time,” which ascribes to monumental history a belief in some degree of control
over the future (HL 2, p. 70). Livy certainly regarded his history of Rome not
merely as informative, but also as capable of steering the nation away from the
course it was on. Thus it is reasonable for Nietzsche to present monumental
history as aiming to benefit life not merely through providing knowledge, but
also through generating maxims of action that enable us to select among possible
futures. Rather surprisingly, Nietzsche says very little about this use of history.
Even when discussing Polybius, who emphasizes the instructional aspect of

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172   Scott Jenkins

monumental history, Nietzsche focuses instead on the ability of the student of

political history to endure changes of fortune—and not, say, to avoid them or
minimize them (HL 2, p. 68).
This takes us to the second use of monumental history for life, which is psycho-
logical, and in particular, affective. Nietzsche says of the person who considers
the past in a monumental manner, “he learns from it that the greatness that once
existed was in any event once possible and may thus be possible again; he goes
his way with more cheerful [muthiger] step, for the doubt which assailed him in
weaker moments, whether he was not perhaps desiring the impossible, has now
been banished” (HL 2, p. 69). Exchanging doubt for good cheer or courage is
certainly in the interest of life. Elsewhere in this discussion Nietzsche speaks of
a person as strengthened or inspired by past greatness (HL 2, p. 69)—a remark
that recalls Livy’s assertion that the monumental approach to history constitutes
the “healthy” and “productive” element of history. Seeing one’s own time as
continuous with a glorious past and instantiating the same general patterns in
human affairs provides the comfort (Trost) of believing that one’s actions are
not in vain. In short, the student of history gains strength through seeing himself
in the exemplum displayed on the monument of history.
This understanding of the past as comforting and nourishing reappears in
Machiavelli as well (as Nietzsche remarks in his note from 1873). Consider
Machiavelli’s description, from a letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, of his
daily transition from mundane existence to evening study:
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold
I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an
ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers
who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only
food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them,
and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me.
Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no
longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.10

It is impossible to know whether Nietzsche had this letter in mind when

he described Machiavelli as one who flees the present and is comforted
by the past, but this remark presents in a personal manner the comforting effect of
the past that appears throughout Machiavelli’s historical writings. Livy similarly
admits that his descriptions of the distant past render him for a short time “wholly
free from the concern” about evils of his age that might “cause anxiety.”11 It is
just this freedom from anxiety and inspired direction toward future action that
Nietzsche regards as the principal benefit of monumental history.

The Disadvantages of Monumental History

Nietzsche also regards monumental history as potentially disadvantageous for

life. Because it aims to produce a particular psychological effect, it tends to

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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History   173

beautify and thus distort our picture of the past. At its limit, the practice of
monumental history becomes “free poetic invention” that produces a stimulat-
ing “mythical fiction” while “the past itself suffers harm” (HL 2, pp. 70–71).
Its ability to provide historical evidence of the possibility of human greatness
transforms into a drive to falsify the past.
In a similar way, monumental history can actually inhibit the drive to live,
strive, and create that it ought to reinforce. The reassurance that greatness existed
in the past can easily give rise to the thought that greatness already exists and
need not be a goal for the present (HL 2, p. 72). Such an orientation toward past
greatness can also limit the range of projects that appear worthwhile—a point
that Nietzsche illustrates with a comment about “strong artistic spirits”: “Their
path will be barred, their air darkened, if a half-understood monument to some
great era of the past is erected as an idol and zealously danced around, as though
to say: ‘Behold, this is true art: pay no heed to those who are evolving and
want something new!’” (HL 2, p. 71). Both of these charges—that monumental
history is falsifying, and that it is conservative—can be substantiated through an
examination of Livy’s History of Rome. The work begins with mythical figures
such as Aeneas, Helen, Mars, and Romulus, and it sets out from the premise that
Romans are the “greatest people on earth.”12 In a similar vein, Thucydides tells
his reader that his subject is “the greatest war of all,” and that when s­ peakers’
exact words are unknown to him they are made to say what, in his opinion,
“was called for by each situation.”13 Of course, what one takes to be called
for depends in part on the historical lesson to be taught, which means that in
Thucydides’s monumental history the details of the past could be made to fit his
ethical and psychological theories. While Thucydides emphasizes that his task
is different from a poet’s, creative invention is an integral part of his method.14
Thus even in its original form, history designed to instruct and inspire has the
potential to turn into its opposite, a myth that leads to complacency.
Nietzsche likely decided to begin HL with an examination of monumental
history in part because its disadvantages provide a clear opportunity to illustrate
the uses of the other two forms of history. The attention to detail characteristic
of antiquarian history counteracts the monumental tendency toward falsification,
and the willingness of critical history to examine and condemn aspects of the
past limits the conservative tendency of monumental history (HL 3, p. 75). But
it would be a mistake to think that Nietzsche’s final judgment of monumental
history held in check by these other relations to the past is unqualifiedly posi-
tive. His more subtle critical remarks cut to the core of monumental history.
On the one hand, Nietzsche notes that those motivated by monumental
history are inspired by the notion of fame, or even immortality. Belief in fame
is belief in “the solidarity and continuity of the greatness of all ages and a
protest against the passing away of generations and the transitoriness of things”
(HL 2, p. 69). The monument of exempla must be “bright [hell]” and “great
[gross]” (HL 2, p. 69) not only because it needs to be visible to us, but also because

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174   Scott Jenkins

we need to imagine ourselves as potential objects of an admiring gaze once we

take our “place of honor in the temple of history” (HL 2, p. 68). Seen from the
point of view of the human future, or perhaps from that of the divine spectators
of all history, this temple preserves what we take to be essential to us. Those
“on their way to immortality and to monumental history” are thus described as
approaching death with an “ironic smile” because they are convinced that while
their animality has come to an end, the “monogram of their most essential being”
will exist eternally (HL 2, p. 69).
This illusion of immortality motivates historians as much as it does the
students of monumental history. Consider Machiavelli’s remark that the
nourishment proper to him is not physical, but rather the spiritual relation to
past rulers.15 Nietzsche also describes Thucydides and Tacitus as writing in “the
style of immortality” and composing their works “with a view to their enduring
immortality [unsterbliche Dauer]” (WS 144). Thucydides himself writes that
his work “is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate
public, but was done to last for ever.”16 And while Livy begins his introduction
by saying that he would be content if his “reputation should remain obscure”
as he celebrates Rome’s past, he clearly imagines himself taking a place on the
illustrious monument he describes later in his preface.17 All of these historians
aim to transcend their particular time and place. Of course, Nietzsche believes
that this comforting thought of immortality is a fiction. Our “protest against
transitoriness” (HL 2, p. 69), either as agents or as historians, must be in vain
because there exists only transitoriness. There are no divine spectators, and when
humanity comes to an end all will be forgotten.18
Nietzsche is also skeptical of the thought that the existence of past greatness
constitutes evidence of its present possibility. Past and present conditions are
always different, and in order for them to appear the same, “what is individual
in [the past] would have to be forced into a universal mould and all its sharp
corners and hard outlines broken up in the interest of conformity!” (HL 2, p. 69).
From this Nietzsche concludes that monumental history invariably “deceives
by analogies” (HL 2, p. 71). Here he is relying on the claim, outlined in TL
and elaborated in GS, that bringing entities under universals always falsifies
because reality does not contain the types that we see in it: “there is nothing
identical in itself [an sich]” (GS 111). While the monumental historian believes
that our present conditions are the same as those in which greatness emerged
in that past—or at least sufficiently similar—in reality they are simply diverse.
Nietzsche maintains that only the Pythagorean doctrine of the recurrence of
each and every event, no matter how small, would provide a foundation for
the thought that the past serves as a reliable guide to the future. But Nietzsche
asserts that a proper understanding of historical cause and effect would show
only that “the dice-game of chance and the future could never again produce
anything exactly similar to what it produced in the past” (HL 2, p. 70). Because
no state of affairs in the past is identical with what we confront in the present,

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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History   175

Nietzsche concludes that the past gives us no theoretical justification for an

optimistic stance toward the future.
We have now seen that monumental history is open to a distinctive sort of
critique. Even when its “disadvantages” are limited by the other forms of
history, it relies upon the fictions of an eternal spectator and the identity of past
and present in order to create its effect. To be sure, these sorts of illusions, or mere
appearances (Schein), are in most cases healthy, that is, in the service of life. This
is why Nietzsche classifies monumental history as pertaining to us as beings who
act and strive (HL 2, p. 67). One of the central claims of HL, which dates back to
BT 18 and appears in various forms throughout Nietzsche’s works, is that we need
certain illusions in order to continue acting, striving, and living. Here Nietzsche
speaks of an “atmosphere” required by living things and quotes Hans Sachs’s
remark that great things “never succeed without some illusion” (HL 7, p. 97). These
illusions are generated by life, for the sake of life, and thus ought to be regarded,
Nietzsche thinks, as fundamentally healthy. But insofar as monumental history rests
on these illusions, it provides the living person with no independent assurance about
the future. The comfort and inspiration we derive from history is not legitimated
by a more adequate understanding of the past. Instead, the utility of monumental
history for life derives primarily from the utility of its underlying illusions.
The utility of these illusions will vary from one person to the next. Nietzsche
believes that persons differ in their ability to endure the truth, and thus in
their need for comforting illusions (GS 347; EH P:3). But this means that a
person’s need for monumental history is in proportion to his or her inability to be
truthful, or to be just to the past (HL 6, p. 89).19 Thus monumental history is
needed most when the seeds of these Nietzschean virtues are lacking.

Whither Monumental History?

What use did Nietzsche have for his early analysis of monumental history? It
would be wrong to assume that the absence of the term “monumental” from
Nietzsche’s later writings indicates that he later had a dim view of the ideas
expressed in HL.20 As I have demonstrated, Nietzsche did not invent the notion
of monumental history, so the mere fact that he does not use this terminology in
later writings does not tell us anything about his later attitude toward his analysis
in HL. And while Nietzsche admittedly has little to say about HL, discussions of
illusion and falsification appear throughout his late works in roughly the same
terms we find in his account of monumental history.
More significantly, Nietzsche continues to discuss and praise ancient histo-
rians. He even indicates that their activity is related to his own. In D Nietzsche
explicitly identifies Thucydides as his model:
A model [Ein Vorbild]—What is it I love in Thucydides, why do I honor him more
highly than Plato? He takes the most comprehensive and impartial delight in all

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176   Scott Jenkins

that is typical [an allem Typischen] in men and events and believes that to each
type [Typus] there pertains a quantum of good sense [. . .] through seeing nothing
but types [Typen] he introduces something great into all things and persons he
treats of; for what interest would posterity, to whom he dedicates his work, have
in that which was not typical [typisch]? (D 168)21

It might be surprising to hear that Thucydides serves as Nietzsche’s model

because he abstracts from the particular and sees only great, inspiring types.22
If Thucydides sees in Pericles only the type statesman, the sort of thing that
might guide present action, is he not engaged in the falsifying activity that
Nietzsche uncovers in HL? Certainly. But remember, Nietzsche regards such
falsifying activity as life-enhancing in its ability to motivate present action.
He likely approves of the diversity of types described in this passage precisely
because such diversity ensures that a wide range of people may be motivated to
act. With its rather narrow conception of the good, Plato’s ethical thought falls
short on this point.
Still, Thucydides’s status as a model for Nietzsche seems strange. While
Nietzsche frequently discusses exceptional figures from the near and distant
past, he tends to focus on their particular features, and he does not hold them up
as types to be imitated. This strangeness disappears when we recognize that the
types Nietzsche puts forward as models for himself and his readers simply are not
drawn from the past. They are all invented types—free spirits, good Europeans,
and philosophers of the future that bear little relation to historical figures.23 As
merely invented types, they avoid the disadvantages of monumental history and
employ its constitutive illusions to the smallest degree possible. That we ought
to approach these types through Nietzsche’s interest in monumental history
is clear, I will argue, from Nietzsche’s brief remarks on the function of these
figures. Like the exempla found in Livy and Thucydides, Nietzsche’s invented
types are intended to provide comfort and inspiration to the living, acting person.
The type that makes this connection clearest is the figure of Zarathustra
himself. In Nietzsche’s later account of the origin of Z in his winter walks
in Genoa, he explicitly describes Zarathustra as a type: “It was on these two
walks that the whole of Zarathustra I occurred to me, and especially Zarathustra
himself as a type [als Typus]: rather, he overtook me” (EH “Thus Spoke
Zarathustra” 1). The next section of EH begins with the remark, “To understand
this type [Typus], one must first become clear about his physiological presup-
position: this is what I call the great health” (EH “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 2).24
Nietzsche then offers GS 382 as a “personal” explanation of the concept of great
health. This section makes clear that the possessor of this “great health” is not
the ideal figure of “superhuman well-being and benevolence” with whom the
“tragedy begins” (Zarathustra himself, of course), but those for whom such an
ideal “runs ahead” (EH “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 2).25 Nietzsche is overtaken
by Zarathustra as a type, then, only when a radically new ideal suddenly occurs

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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History   177

to him from out of his healthy need for such an ideal. Like an exemplum of
monumental history, Zarathustra serves as a model for Nietzsche’s life.
The model that Zarathustra offers is clear enough since he is to serve as a
“counterideal” to the ascetic’s flight from reality and yearning for another world
(EH “On the Genealogy of Morals”). In contrast, Zarathustra’s truthfulness
(EH “Destiny” 3; A 54) enables him to see reality as it actually is, and he affirms
the eternal recurrence of all that occurs (EH “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 6; Z III).
Nietzsche clearly aims to emulate Zarathustra. In EH we hear that the ability
to endure the truth is Nietzsche’s own measure of value (EH P:3), and also
that Nietzsche shares Zarathustra’s project: “Zarathustra once defines, quite
strictly, his task—it is mine, too—and there is no mistaking his meaning: he
says Yes to the point of justifying, of redeeming even all of the past” (EH “Thus
Spoke Zarathustra” 8). Of course, the relation between Nietzsche and Zarathustra
is extremely complex.26 The only point that I want to emphasize here is that
Zarathustra stands for an unreal, and perhaps unrealizable ideal that Nietzsche
projects out of his “great health” and aims to realize.
But why does Nietzsche bother to present his ideals of truthfulness and life
affirmation as virtues of an invented figure? I believe that the answer to this
question again involves the notion of monumental history. Its historical ­exempla
are motivating, remember, only because their actual existence in the past seems
to provide evidence that greatness is currently possible. I believe that Zarathustra
plays just the same role for Nietzsche, who imagines an ideally truthful life
affirmer as a way of motivating his own pursuit of this ideal. Of course, Nietzsche
realizes that this figure never actually existed. But envisioning him as the prophet
Zoroaster (not some hypothetical Dieter or Fritz) and providing him with a life
story of sorts in Thus Spoke Zarathustra ensures that Nietzsche’s ideal has just a
whiff of reality. In this way there arises a minimal illusion in the service of life,
namely, merely apparent evidence that this ideal is realizable.27 Zarathustra as
the type life affirmer inspires Nietzsche, just as Pericles as the type statesman
can inspire a reader of Thucydides.
That Zarathustra plays this role for Nietzsche explains, I think, why we
hear so much about the figure of Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s later writings (and
­especially  in EH). He not only exemplifies the ideal of life affirmation that appears
throughout Nietzsche’s work, but also provides Nietzsche (and his readers) with a
minimal degree of comfort by suggesting that life affirmation is possible, and that
human existence is not in vain.28 As Nietzsche puts the point in his final poem
from BGE, “one turned into two [. . .] Friend Zarathustra came, the guests of
guests! The world now laughs, rent are the drapes of fright” (BGE “Aftersong”).
Zarathustra as “type” is not the only novel model of action that Nietzsche sets
up for us. The free spirits, good Europeans, and philosophers of the future we
encounter in Nietzsche’s writing surely play a similar role. When Nietzsche uses
phrases such as “we good Europeans” or “we scholars” or “we free spirits,” the

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178   Scott Jenkins

community he picks out is largely imagined—a projected community that stands

in for his “unknown friends” (GM III:27). And perhaps even these unknown
friends ought to be understood as merely imagined figures!
I believe that all of these types can be understood as playing the ­comforting,
motivating role of monumental exempla. To consider just one example,
Nietzsche’s 1886 description of his free spirits ascribes to them just this effect:
Thus when I needed to I once also invented for myself the “free spirits” to whom
this melancholy-valiant book with the title Human, All Too Human is dedicated:
“free spirits” of this sort do not exist, did not exist—but, as I have said, I had
need of them at that time if I was to keep in good spirits while surrounded by ills
­(sickness, solitude, unfamiliar places, acedia, inactivity): as brave companions
and familiars with whom one can laugh and chatter when one feels like laughing
and chattering, and whom one can send to the Devil when they become tedious—
as compensation for the friends I lacked. (HH P:2)

Nietzsche’s free spirits rescue him from the sickness, loneliness, and acedia that
threaten to undermine his work. They play the same role in Nietzsche’s life that
the community of long-dead rulers plays for Machiavelli following his removal
from the Florentine government and subsequent imprisonment, torture, and
exile to the countryside. Consider too how the exempla of early Roman great-
ness alleviate the anxiety and despair that burden Livy in post-Actium Rome.
The crucial difference, of course, is that the free spirits are unreal projections
of Nietzsche’s own values. But this difference is hazier than one might think.
After all, the rulers who “warmly greet” Machiavelli in his study and answer his
questions are in an important sense unreal, invented figures. And Thucydides
freely invents the speeches given by his exempla. On the other hand, Nietzsche
tells us that “free spirits of this kind could one day exist” and that he “see[s]
them already coming” (HH P:2), remarks that provide the ideal of freedom of
spirit with a comforting whiff of reality. These exempla are not so different,
even though monumental historians falsify the past while Nietzsche reifies the
imagined future.
The illusion that Nietzsche generates is, of course, rather flimsy. Nietzsche’s
impassioned descriptions of his posse of free spirits, good Europeans, and
philosophers of the future can be almost embarrassing to read. But I think
this is no accident. These descriptions preserve the life-enhancing illusions of
­monumental history only to a very small degree, and they do so for reasons
already articulated in HL. While illusions have great value for life, they limit
the truthfulness and justice that Nietzsche flags as virtues (HL 6, p. 89).29 Thus
he takes his illusions in the smallest possible doses.
In the end, though, the most important point of contrast between monumental
history and Nietzsche’s own cast of model characters concerns the content of
Nietzsche’s ideals. Nietzsche never takes the conservative stance of recom-
mending that one simply emulate the past. Some elements of past greatness in
human affairs are preserved in his ideals, just as they are by the critical mode
of history that serves to “break up and dissolve a part of the past” (HL 3, p. 75).

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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History   179

At its limit, though, critical history yields the pessimistic judgment that the
ubiquity of human weakness ensures that everything deserves to perish (HL 3,
p. 76). Similarly, Zarathustra maintains that humanity itself is something that
must be overcome (Z P:3). Thus it is the conservatism of monumental history that
Nietzsche aims to leave behind entirely. His untimeliness is a matter of relating
to a possible future, and not at all a yearning to return to the greatness of the past.

University of Kansas
jenkinss@ku.edu

Notes
I would like to thank Tom Tuozzo for his helpful remarks on Livy’s Latin. Fred Rush also provided
valuable comments on an early draft of this article.
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” in Untimely
Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 59–123. I have also employed the following translations of Nietzsche’s works: The
Birth of Tragedy, ed. Raymond Geuss, trans. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999); Human, All Too Human, ed. Richard Schacht, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996); Daybreak, ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R.
J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); The Gay Science, ed. Bernard
Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin,
1976), 103–439; Beyond Good and Evil, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage,
1989); On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989);
Twilight of the Idols, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York:
Penguin, 1976), 463–563; Ecce Homo, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage,
1989). Translations of Nietzsche’s notes are my own.
2. See, for example, Thomas Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s View of the Value of Historical Studies
and Methods,” Journal of the History of Ideas 65.2 (2004): 301–22, 311. See also Anthony Jensen,
“Geschichte or Historie? Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation in the Context of Nineteenth-
Century Philological Studies,” in Nietzsche on Time and History, ed. Manuel Dries (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2008), 213–29, 221, 227.
3. Polybius, The Histories, vol. 1, trans. W. R. Paton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1922), 3, 1.2. All citations of Polybius, Livy, and Thucydides include the page number in the
translation employed (here 3) and the standard page number in the form “book.chapter” (here 1.2).
4. In his notes for HL, Nietzsche even uses the terms “monumental” and “classical”
interchangeably. See KSA 7:29[29], pp. 636–37; 29[31], pp. 637–38; 29[38], pp. 640–41.
5. Livy, The History of Rome, Books 1–5, trans. V. M. Warrior (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006),
3–4, Praef.10.
6. See Gary Miles, Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1995), 17.
7. Polybius, Histories, vol. 1, 5, 2.1. For a discussion of history as spectacle in Polybius
and Livy, see Andrew Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1998), 5. Miles notes that historia is derived from an Indo-European root
that means “to see” (Miles, Livy, 10). This partially explains Nietzsche’s use of “Historie”—and
not “Geschichte”—in his essay. History was not originally concerned with recording what has
happened but with providing visible models of action.
8. Livy, History of Rome, 3, Praef.9.

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180   Scott Jenkins

9. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, ed. M. I. Finley, trans. R. Warner (London:
Penguin, 1972), 48, 1.22.
10. Niccolò Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, ed. and trans. D. Wooten (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1994), 3.
11. Livy, History of Rome, 2, Praef.5.
12. Livy, History of Rome, 1, Praef.3.
13. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 47, 1.22.
14. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 47–48, 1.21–1.22.
15. Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, 3. In the larger context of the letter to Vettori,
Machiavelli is contrasting the physical nourishment he receives from having lunch with peasants
with the spiritual nourishment he receives in his study.
16. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 48, 1.22.
17. Livy, History of Rome, 1, Praef.3.
18. In BT 7 Nietzsche describes the “metaphysical solace” we derive from tragedy as
essentially connected with the chorus of satyrs, who “remain eternally the same despite all the
changes of generations and in the history of nations.” Already in BT 18 these eternal spectators
are described as illusions in service of the will.
19. R. Lanier Anderson provides an illuminating account of these issues in his discussion
of honesty and artistry as regulative ideals in “Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption,”
European Journal of Philosophy 13:2 (2005): 185–225; see esp. 203–11.
20. This is Brobjer’s position in “Nietzsche’s View of the Value of Historical Studies and
Methods.”
21. Compare KSA 9:6[383]: “Thukydides is mir der Typus, der mir am nächsten steht: er hat
die Freude an den Typen.”
22. This remark may also appear incompatible with Nietzsche’s well-known praise of
Thucydides as a person whose “strong, severe, hard factuality [Thatsächlichkeit]” gives him
“courage in the face of reality” (TI “Ancients” 2). But here again Nietzsche contrasts Thucydides
with the idealizing Plato. The point in Twilight of the Idols is that Thucydides’s theories are drawn
from the facts, e.g., from the behavior of Athenians during the plague. The description of actual
types in D 168 presupposes the same orientation toward the facts. For further discussion of this
point, see my article, “What Does Nietzsche Owe Thucydides?,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 42
(2011): 32–50; see esp. 42–48.
23. These figures do bear a relation to the past if we regard them as products of what Nietzsche
terms “critical” history (HL 3, 75–76). I consider this point very briefly in my concluding remarks.
24. Later in EH Nietzsche also speaks of “whatever else is typical [typisch] of the type [Typus]
Zarathustra” and asks us to consider a “psychological problem in the type [Typus] of Zarathustra”
(EH “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” 6).
25. Here I disagree with Jill Marsden, who claims that “great health” is nothing that one could
possess. Nietzsche must take himself to have been in this state since he regards it as the necessary
condition of his imagination of Zarathustra. See Marsden, “Sensing the Overhuman,” Journal of
Nietzsche Studies 30 (2005): 102–14, 111.
26. To note just one interesting dimension, it appears that Nietzsche takes himself to fall short
of Zarathustra as ideal. EH ends with a wildly negative judgment of religion and morality, not
the affirmation that one might expect. Loeb also points to evidence that Nietzsche found himself
unable to affirm life. See Paul Loeb, “Suicide, Meaning, and Redemption,” in Nietzsche on Time
and History, ed. Manuel Dries (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 163–90, 181.
27. Because this illusion aims to bring about greater truthfulness as well as some engagement
with Zarathustra’s abysmal thought, there is an added degree of complexity here. While
Zarathustra does enable Nietzsche to approach these ideals, Nietzsche also maintains that we have

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 Nietzsche’s Use of Monumental History   181

no right to the optimistic view that there exists a preestablished harmony between truth and our
own well-being (HH 517). Thus there is no guarantee that the figure Zarathustra is ultimately in
the service of life.
28. Consider also the effect of Nietzsche’s remark that Zarathustra “must come one day!”
(GM II:24).
29. Of course, these illusions are often intended to be in the service of truth. Sorting through
this issue, and the one described in note 27, would require an examination of the confrontation
between truth and life in Z II and Z III.

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