Making History and Writing History
This chapter examines the role played by Emerson in the development of Nietzsche’s position regarding history and historiography from the second Untimely Meditation up to the middle period works. Drawing inspiration from Emerson, Nietzsche takes a stance contrary to the theory of active forgetting that he had previously maintained and finds an alternative to the historicism of his age in an active and empathic reading of history in which events are relived “in the first person.” The precondition for developing this type of reading is the virtue that Emerson calls self-reliance, understood as a reverence for oneself and for one’s own task. This chapter also considers Emerson’s contribution to the critique of the metaphysical notion of genius and of the “cult of the hero.” Clarifying the genesis of this critique allows us to clarify in turn Nietzsche’s position regarding the theory of moral and political perfectionism.