Antiquarianism, critical history, genealogical and life-affirming history

Abstract

The most encompassing aim of this paper is to test Nietzsche's critique of antiquarianism and its relation to genealogy. In the first place, we shall deal with Nietzsche's critique of nineteenth-century erudition and antiquarian history and its focusing on the philosopher's thought, where history appears not as a mere activity of erudition and antiquary inquiry, but as knowledge put at the service of life. After dwelling on the idea that Nietzsche is an opponent of antiquarianism, it argues about his defense of the critical history model, which emphasizes notions of forgetfulness, justice, and the breaking away with shreds of the past. In the sequence, it tries to sketch an analysis of the argument that structures all the article, that is, that Nietzsche's displacement of questions - that come and go, but are manifested by forms of writing and research seen within the antiquarian model still practiced in his time and directed towards a critical record – provides, as a plausible alternative, the creation of a new registry of the values that it is referred here according to our own terms, as the genealogical and life-affirming history.