Purpose: Today I revisited this work, relocated my original cassette-to-digital archive, and found the original text of the essay, one variation of which was published as a separate book that I have included below as a PDF document. My goal this afternoon was to provide some extended commentary on the work, but I think I will leave it as the Audio+PDF because 1) I think the work sufficiently speaks for itself—especially has I have provided it in 2 different formats of audio and text, and 2) in this exact moment I am a bit worn out from other tasks that I had to complete today.
Value: The particular value of this section is to be found in two different perspectives from the same work.
First of all, Nietzsche was educated with a strong emphasis in the classics and especially history, and by the time he was in his late teens and early 20s, he was already recognized scholar in this field and that’s why he was awarded his PhD and a professorship at the University of Basel in Switzerland when he was 24 years old. As such, it is a very educated and very informed and beautifully articulated perspective on—as the title states—“the use and abuse of history” in the service of humanity. Especially in the text, he differentiates three different types of historical study: monumental, antiquarian, and critical.
“Friedrich Nietzsche served as a professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Basel from 1869 to 1879, a position he held at the age of 24, making him one of the youngest tenured professors in the history of classical philology.”
“The University of Basel is the oldest university in Switzerland, founded in April 1460, and is among the world’s oldest universities. It is a public research university located in Basel, Switzerland, and has a long tradition of academic excellence.”
Secondly, I think this work has value because he’s reminding us all that we need to occasionally forget about our past (or our society’s past) in order to be able to focus on our present activities. Obviously, I reviewed this for a personal reason and that is: sometimes I have so many different things going on in my life that I’m challenged to sit down and actually focus on the task in front of me because I am (just like virtually all of us) always being pulled in many different directions to this modern phenomenon that we call multitasking. So for that reason, I looked at this work again today and took the time to find the printed version as well as resurrect this old audio recording. Again, the emphasis here is on “intentional forgetting” which we might also refer to as “strategic conscious ignorance“ so that we can let some things rest while we take time to focus on a particular project or develop a certain line of thought or skill, or work – whether that be in business or the creative arts.
“He’s reminding us all that we need to occasionally forget about our past (or our other concerns) in order to focus on our present life activities, whether in business or the creative arts.”
Purchase: The audio that you are hearing is from the audiocassette pictured in the image; it is no longer available, and I (DrV) purchased it twice to have the audiocassette pair of 2 cassettes.
Source: This particular section in the audio reading appears to be creatively excerpted from Nietzsche’s essay which was sometimes printed as a separate book titled “The Use and Abuse of History” which I will provide at HealthyThinking.substack.com approximately 30oct2025.
Publication: I have provided the PDF of this essay published as a book. You will be able to follow the text of the audio by following some of my highlighting, and you will notice that the audio narrator skips around quite a bit, obviously choosing his favorite passages from the book for his excellent narration.
Alternatives: Here are two other sources of the same essay in different formatting from other translations.
Options in how to approach my pet project of Zarathustra: No point in trying to outdo the Naxos masterpiece, so I'll 1) explain the major parts, 2) read and explain the parts that were abridged
As I mention in the video above, I have renewed interest in rereading Zarathustra because I have a more nuanced understanding of what is meant by Human All Too Human and how that book affects what N says in Zarathustra.
