Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation arguing that history must serve life — identifying three types of historical consciousness and warning against the paralysis of excess historical sense.
Three types of history: monumental (models of greatness for the present), antiquarian (reverence for origins and tradition), critical (judging and breaking with the past for life's sake). Each serves life when in proportion; each harms when excessive. Against historicism: the 19th-century German habit of burying oneself in historical knowledge without letting it transform action — 'historical fever.' The paradox: some forgetting is necessary for action; the person who remembers everything cannot act. Anticipates Nietzsche's later eternal recurrence as a solution to the weight of the past.
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