Any advocate for a historical "essence" is an escape from uncertainty

(translated from my Chinese blog)

This is my new project, “Nietzschean Philology”. In each installment, I’ll read a passage from Nietzsche’s original writings. By practicing text analysis, we can enhance our ability to understand the world.

The reading of "We Philologists" continues. In Section 21, Nietzsche first presents the debate between the teleology of history and relativism, and through an examination of the escapist psychology behind people's fear of becoming the ultimate goal of history, that is, rather than constructing overly simplified historical views, explaining history as the result of the movement of some objective external cause, explaining oneself as a speck of dust in the grand historical process, thus completely avoiding one's historical responsibility over the generations.

Careful meditation upon the past leads to the impression that we are a multiplication of many pasts · so how can we be a final aim? But why not? In most instances, however, we do not wish to be this. We take up our positions again in the ranks, work in our own little corner, and hope that what we do may be of some small profit to our successors. But that is exactly the case of the cask of the Danæ · and this is useless, we must again set about doing everything for ourselves, and only for ourselves--measuring science by ourselves, for example with the question · What is science to us? not . what are we to science? People really make life too easy for themselves when they look upon themselves from such a simple historical point of view, and make humble servants of themselves. "Your own salvation above everything"--that is what you should say; and there are no institutions which you should prize more highly than your own soul.--Now, however, man learns to know himself: he finds himself miserable, despises himself, and is pleased to find something worthy of respect outside himself. Therefore he gets rid of himself, so to speak, makes himself subservient to a cause, does his duty strictly, and atones for his existence. He knows that he does not work for himself alone; he wishes to help those who are daring enough to exist on account of themselves, like Socrates. The majority of men are as it were suspended in the air like toy balloons; every breath of wind moves them.--As a consequence the savant must be such out of self-knowledge, that is to say, out of contempt for himself--in other words he must recognise himself to be merely the servant of some higher being who comes after him. Otherwise he is simply a sheep.

"We Philologists" 21, Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by J. M. Kennedy 

In the previous section, Nietzsche used the phrase "the present 'culture'" in quotation marks to hint at the distinction between genuine and false culture. And I say, after "everything is appearance," this distinction can only mean one thing: history. A culture that creates new values rooted in its own time is genuine culture, while one that mechanically continues the values of the past gradually becomes a false and empty culture.

This section begins with "History," which can be seen as confirming my interpretation of the previous section. (Someday in the future I will explain that these paragraph divisions are actually editorial work, not authorial, but the editor generally followed the principle of arranging the writings by time and theme, so the context is still meaningful.) Here Nietzsche asks, however, once we delve deeply into history, history itself as a criterion of value becomes questionable, because "we are a multiplication of many pasts," not the product of a single linear causality, and cannot be written as "all history is the history of XX," unless the XX here is plural and variable. Therefore, when we trace any piece of history and attribute it, ensuring that we are not influenced by any ideology, then history must be multi-causal, and any historical event is caused by many factors (population, geography, economy, politics, culture, society, religion, species, energy, technology, gender, etc.) acting simultaneously. We can certainly try to find more important factors, and in today's era, many people believe that technology is more important than other factors, but this does not mean that other factors can be ignored. As a result, we feel that history is ungraspable, and it seems we cannot possibly become the masters of history.

Thus Nietzsche asks: How can we possibly become the goal of history rather than the means? Since history is a process of superimposing and interacting factors, which obviously cannot end in our era, we can only be the stepping stones for future generations, i.e. we be the means not the goal.

This question seems difficult to answer directly, to the point where Nietzsche abruptly asks again: why not? He transforms the original "how" (how could it be) into "why" (why not) – feasibility is one thing, but willingness to do so is another. Nietzsche is implying that we even don't want to do it before considering feasibility, not because it's not feasible that we don't do it, but because we don't want to "become the aim of history" in the first place. This makes me think of Fukuyama's "end of history": liberal democracy has already defeated other ideologies and is the completed form of human society, which in turn caused the rise of the Last Man -- Fukuyama's idea is that the structure comes first, the culture backfires after, but could it be the exact opposite, i.e. precisely because the Last Man culture refuses to move forward historically, because the Last Man would rather history to stop right here, that the form of society stagnates? Could it be possible that it is precisely in this way, i.e. to block the changes of various historical factors so as to be "the last generation," that the Last Man covertly becomes the end of history?

This outcome has clearly deviated significantly from Nietzsche's prophecy of the Last Man. Nietzsche meant that the Last Man is someone who rejects becoming a historical goal. Because "becoming a goal" itself implies immense pressure, we naturally tend to avoid becoming the goal itself. Imagine if you were suddenly entrusted by all of humanity with the task of intercepting an asteroid, with failure meaning extinction for humanity—would you take on this task? Your first thought would probably be: What qualifications do I have to shoulder such a task? Surely there are more capable people than me? There's no way it would fall to me, right? I can at most provide some help in other areas for society, "work in our own little corner, and hope that what we do may be of some small profit to our successors." If you think this way, congratulations, everyone else thinks the same.

This means that everyone is willing to be the countless zeros behind the one, but no one is willing to stand out as the one. As a result, even with countless zeros accumulated, it is still worthless. Those who blindly believe in scientific progress and quietly pray that their papers will be "make a humble contribution to the cause of human science" are actually throwing their lives into the "cask of the Danæ." Because if people cannot propose new values, science itself is just countless zeros and will not have inherent value. Scientists are accustomed to asking themselves "What can I provide for science?" "What do I mean to science?" but are never accustomed to asking themselves "What can the entire human scientific cause provide for my life / How should I utilize it?" or "What does science mean to me?"

Nietzsche's psychological insight cuts to the chase: you think "all history is the history of science/productivity/class struggle/etc," you believe humans live in such an objective historical process, but in fact, it is just this idea that reveals your (and the entire generation behind you) slave mentality: avoiding historical complexity, yearning to view yourself with a linear view of single attribution to escape historical responsibility. What the "essence" of history is does not really matter (in fact, there is no essence), what matters is that, the fact that you advocate for the existence of a historical "essence" reveals your attitude towards life: you do not believe in the rich possibilities of history; you fear uncertainty, especially grand failure; you would rather give up these possibilities for "stable happiness," entrusting your life value to some objective external cause.

However, in the past hundred or so years, especially under the influence of psychology, the above-mentioned escape psychology has undergone an interesting transformation: previously, people avoided historical responsibility by completely avoiding the possibility of self-examination. Nowadays, in this era of the increasingly widespread use of psychology, self-examination has become a fashionable gesture, called "know thyself" - this Greek aphorism, if restored to its historical context, might really prompt people to move from "know thyself" to "save thyself" (i.e., Foucault's "care for thyself"). But modern people are too clever; they also use "know thyself" as a means of escape, through self-deprecation and self-contempt, completely undermining the potential value contained in the self, and thus undermining the rich possibilities of the self, because the self is "a multiplication of many pasts." In this way, value must necessarily "be seeked from without," and so science, technology, productivity, "intelligence," organization, markets, information, and everything else that can eliminate human spontaneity, everything that seems "not subject to human will," all become the possible idols of the new era. As a result, this transformation, while seemingly profound, is actually superficial, as it ends up back at the starting point.

But here, Nietzsche's train of thought shifts back to practical considerations: escape has become a political correctness of our era, akin to equality, a self-evident and unassailable value. The masses have become the new omnipotent deity; you must cater to them, never provoke them. If the masses flee their historical responsibilities as if it were a plague, let them flee. Guide them so that this escape becomes submission to the individual genius: if you do not wish to live for yourself, would it not be better to serve those "who are daring enough to exist on account of themselves"? Let the philologists willingly become the servants of philosophers, let the masses willingly become the sustenance of the superman; let those who yearn to be the very goal of history receive as much assistance as possible, let these individuals inspire all those who help them to begin to believe in the value of humanity again, to overcome the self-contempt of modern man. Otherwise, the masses can only be sheep, or, to put it more bluntly, the Last Men.