The Review: A Nightmare From Which We're Trying to Awake

On the uses and abuses of history. ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. A couple of weeks ago, I [wrote]( about a recent cluster of essays in Modern Intellectual History on the theme of “presentism.” The topic is evidently in the air: The [summer issue]( of The Hedgehog Review is devoted to “The Use and Abuse of History,” the title borrowed from the second of Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations from the 1870s, “Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben.” (You can read a translation [here]( In the [lead essay]( the historian Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen begins by confessing to having undergone a deflationary transformation. Once, she writes, “I believed that the knowledge of history was a skeleton key for unlocking secrets to greater peace, justice, and beauty in the world.” But “the more knowledge I gained, the less credible this notion became. ... I prefer now to recommend history to my own students as an intellectual orientation, a daily practice, but not something they should try to ‘use’ to achieve a goal.” Ratner-Rosenhagen turns to Nietzsche’s essay for the tools with which to analyze her own partial disenchantment. (Although she cautions that Nietzsche “was not writing to us,” and although her essay is a helpful primer on the “history-besotted culture of the German Empire” that was Nietzsche’s target, Ratner-Rosenhagen does not abstain from pressing Nietzsche’s categories into contemporary service — nor should she.) Nietzsche divided history into three modes: monumental, antiquarian, and critical. Each was found wanting. “Monumental history,” Ratner-Rosenhagen writes, “rejects the disappointments and pressures of the present by taking safe harbor in the imagined company of great figures of the past. ... It ultimately ends up enervating rather than energizing the worshipper.” (Think of “Dad books,” popular biographies of Founding Fathers, or great generals, or whatever.) Then there’s antiquarianism, the indiscriminate amassment of every desiccated scrap of the past one can find, reducing history to bundles of trivia. SPONSOR CONTENT | Florida State University [Florida State University’s new president is implementing ambitious strategies]( Critical history might seem to be the savior in the wings. “If he is to live,” Nietzsche writes, “man must possess and … employ the strength to break up and dissolve a part of the past … by bringing it before the tribunal, scrupulously examining it, and finally condemning it.” But here, too, Nietzsche finally saw a threat. As Ratner-Rosenhagen writes, “Nietzsche goes on to argue that the impulse toward critical history is driven by a zeal for condemnation masquerading as impartial justice.” Critical history, in other words, can end up collapsing into the condescending moralism that is one of presentism’s hazards. Nietzsche considered his fellow Germans stuffed with history to the point of stupidity, glutted with what Ratner-Rosenhagen calls “an overabundance of historical consciousness.” “It is hard to see,” she goes on, “how that is our problem in the United States today.” But is it hard to see? As Gordon Wood [wrote]( a decade ago of the Tea Party’s preoccupation with the political heroes of the 18th century, “Americans seem to have a special need for these authentic historical figures in the here and now.” Some of the Americans who stormed the Capitol on January 6 [dressed]( as up as Founding Fathers might not, by a history professor’s lights, have known much history, but they sure had a strong sense of it. Read Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s “Nietzsche’s Quarrel With History” [here](. And for Review essays touching on historiography and presentism, check out Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’s “Beyond the End of History” [here]( Sam Fallon’s “The Rise of the Pedantic Professor” [here]( Priya Satia’s “Why Do We Think Learning About History Can Make Us Better?” [here]( Patrick Iber’s “History in the Age of Fake News” [here]( and Robert Pogue Harrison’s interview with Hayden White on, what else, the meaning of life, [here](. ADVERTISEMENT UPCOMING EVENT [Join us August 2-19]( for a virtual professional development program on overcoming the challenges of the department chair role and creating a strategic vision for individual and departmental growth. [Reserve your spot now](. Space is limited. The Latest THE REVIEW | OPINION [Princeton Betrays Its Principles]( By Clifford Ando [STORY IMAGE]( The corrupt firing of Joshua Katz threatens the death of tenure. ADVERTISEMENT THE REVIEW | OPINION [Abortion Is a Higher-Ed Issue]( By Katie Rose Guest Pryal [STORY IMAGE]( The end of ‘Roe’ will worsen the campus mental-health crisis. Recommended - “As far as I can tell, Chalmers, by contrast with Descartes, is a true naïf, ‘just some guy,’ as Keanu Reeves’s Neo memorably describes himself in The Matrix — one of Chalmers’s touchstones, naturally.” In Liberties, [Justin E.H. Smith on the philosopher]( David Chalmers’s Reality+, which wonders whether we might be living in a simulation. - “In occupied France, even some of the Nazis thought he was a bit too much.” In TNYRB, [Alice Kaplan on Louis-Ferdinand Céline]( whose previously unpublished Guerre is out from Gallimard. - “I’m not arguing that professors should be prophets and priests. Priests should be priests. But we can’t just be experts either.” That’s Jennifer Frey on her [podcast]( Sacred and Profane Love, in conversation with Zena Hitz and Chad Wellmon about Wellmon and Paul Reitter’s book Permanent Crisis. For more about that book, check out this conversation between Merve Emre, Chad Wellmon, Paul Reitter, and myself [here](. Write to me at len.gutkin@chronicle.com. Yours, Len Gutkin SPONSOR CONTENT | Cengage [Ivy Tech Realizes 7 Percent Differentiation in Student Success]( After providing access to extensive library of materials, school sees access model emerge as a differentiator for student success FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [What Community Colleges Need to Thrive]( [What Community Colleges Need to Thrive]( Community colleges and the students they serve were disproportionately hit during the pandemic. Learn how steep enrollment declines and the pandemic's economic fallout complicated these institutions' road to recovery, and what strategies leaders can use to reset and rebuild. [Order your copy today.]( NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. 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