Read Nietzsche's Uses and Abuses of History: A Genius' Guide to Life (Part 1)

HELLO!!!

It's Readependence Day!

The little book we're going to read today is Nietzsche's The Use and Abuse of History. Nietzsche is the great philosopher everyone knows, and we also have some familiar words, such as "superman", "genius", "will to power". So where is the best place to enter Nietzsche?

This little book can be seen as one of Nietzsche's long treatises, Nietzsche not yet fully mature, or on his way to becoming the genius we know. Like you and me, Nietzsche grew up slowly. In this book, you can see many "sketches" of his later mature thinking, and also understand why the relationship between knowledge and power is at the heart of Nietzsche's and later Foucault's thinking and discussions. What are knowledge and power talking about?

In this episode, you'll also hear a lot of discussions about everyday life - a little bit unexpected or maybe. In order to become a person with independent judgment, Nietzsche thinks how should we look at history and how should we use history to guide our life? What kind of traps are there in the "historical facts" we know well? What's wrong with the scientific discourse that has dominated human life since the Age of Enlightenment? What should we be wary of? What is truth?

You can hear the full program and see related materials on the Substack page of "Reading the Sun" . You can also write a comment here or leave a message on the substack to put forward suggestions and questions, and you can also participate in related discussions after subscribing to the email.

You can also hear this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify .

Important topic timeline

• 04:00 - Ambrosia shares her first reading of Nietzsche
• 05:53 – What makes Nietzsche special – an aristocratic philosopher, a bestselling author who makes enemies everywhere and ends up crazy.
• 07:35 – Why read this book by Nietzsche – a no-compromise guide to life for youth
• 09:16 - A growing Nietzsche, where Nietzsche's "superman" philosophical thought and the reconstruction of moral genealogy and other philosophical exposition systems are conceived.
• 13:33 —— The core of this book is not the popularization of historical facts, but the role and meaning of history in life, and what kind of historical view young people should have, how to grasp the appropriate scale to understand history, and use history to guide life.
• 14:49 - How to understand "We serve history only if history serves life."?
• 16:09 - "History of Commemoration," "History of Nostalgia," "History of Criticism."
• 26:30 - How to understand "History, as long as it serves life, serves a non-historical power."?
• 29:46 – What is a scientific discourse? "There is only one way of looking at things that is true, correct, and therefore scientific. That way of looking at something is done, historical, not ongoing, eternal."
• 32:12 - Discover in this book the origin of the "will to power" doctrine, at the heart of Nietzsche and Foucault's discussion - the relationship between knowledge and power.

You will hear these wonderful things

All second-hand Nietzsche is unreliable, because the more genius and original something is, the worse and scarier the second-hand version is.

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It is an important book that all young people who are still eager to understand themselves, understand the world, and want to create their own happy future should read the sooner the better. At this point, it can be said that it does what all humanities and arts books are supposed to do, but very few of them actually do.

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It is like the first draft of a great book, the content will be relatively shallow, and it will faithfully show the process of thinking, sorting, and adjusting their own thoughts. In this process, the contradictions of his thoughts, the struggles and ups and downs of his personality, are far more clear and closer than in the completed masterpiece. In this way, we seem to feel that there is a beginning and an end, a coming and going, clear and vivid.

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Brandess, the most famous European critic of the 19th century, described how he felt after reading Nietzsche: You are such a "non-professional" professor .

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"Usage and Abuse" is obviously a question of "degree", that is, degree, which means that it is not talking about a simple question of right and wrong, picking sides, but a methodological question, that is, how do we Grasp this "degree".

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When we draw analogies between historical figures and ourselves, between historical times and our times, we see some similarities, while consciously or unconsciously ignoring differences far greater than these.

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These big words that sound the most irritating... are often disguised poisonous snakes, the easiest to abuse, the easiest to pretend to be a straw rope to appear around us, and we should always be vigilant.

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Because in modern society, knowledge is never neutral and objective, and there is no so-called pure scientific knowledge, just as we cannot find an objective definition of "madness".

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In the era of Nietzsche, the discourse of scientism was only nibbling away step by step; but now, with the help of the soaring Internet technology, it has actually completed the overall domination of the human world.

music

Sidewalk Strut , written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed

Skeptical , written & performed by Lincoln Davis

Distant Water , written & performed by Chelsea Mcgough

Thanks for listening to the second episode of "Reading the Sun", the next issue will be released in a week and is the second part of the discussion in this book. Looking forward to seeing you again.

"Reading the Day" Podcast Issue 1: "Reading Rodin's Art"

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