Disadvantages Of Unhistorical Existence

Historical and Unhistorical existence: their meaning, advantages and disadvantages in life.

Title : History or Misery

Gaurav Chordia 2012TT10913 The main aim of this essay is to emphasize on the importance of history in one’s life. Is it really impossible to survive without being aware of the past we had or whether still we can forge a happy future. Most of us will be in favor of present incorporated with history but is it also possible to live unhistorical life with satisfaction and content. Nietzsche in his work justified that how

Beyond some extent it starts weighing us down with its burden by not letting us think afresh and always chained by the atrocities of the past. Excess of it will only prove out to be detrimental and bring infinite chaos to life. Man is a historical being as it’s impossible to get out of the past and live with continuity. Our actions are always whether in a good or bad sense affected by our past. In many cases past starts becoming superior over the present leading to withering away of life. So at times it becomes important to live unhistorical or just the ability to forget. According to Nietzsche, “Whoever cannot settle on the threshold of the moment forgetful of the whole past… will never know what happiness

Nietzsche here introduces the term plastic power of a man or culture. It is a power which gives man strength to behold his past till a certain extent so that his present as well future is not affected by the past. He could heal the wounds repair the broken moulds and at the same time live happily in the present. There are men who have this power so slightly that a single sharp experience, a single pain, often a little injustice, will lacerate their souls like the scratch of a poisoned knife. There are others, who are so little injured by the worst misfortunes, and even by their own spiteful actions, as to feel tolerably comfortable, with a fairly quiet conscience, in the midst of them, — or at any rate shortly afterwards. The strongest man is the one who has power to assimilate all the past, he has no break in the continuum of content and can forget any hurtful thing he wants