On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

The treatise "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" is one of Nietzsche's early writings on culture. It was published in 1874, after his professorship in Basel, Switzerland. At first, there was hardly any response to this text. It was only with the reception of Heidegger during the twenties and thirties of the next century that it developed its historical effect on modern thinking.

Thanks to its easy-to-understand account, this paper is well suited to understand the thinking of the early Nietzsche. In addition, basic features of his later concepts of the "revaluation of all values" and the "overman" can already be detected here. In addition to the English language version, this e-book also contains the original German text.