# The Historical Sense explained — Beyond Good and Evil

> Chapter companion for Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.

## What happens

The chapter examines the 'historical sense' as a distinctly modern, European faculty born from the democratic mingling of classes and races, which grants access to all past cultures but at the cost of noble taste and proportion. It contrasts the modern, semi-barbaric soul—chaotic, curious, and appreciative of wild syntheses like Shakespeare—with the self-sufficient, tasteful cultures of the past that rejected the strange.

## Themes in this chapter

### Critique of Modernity

The historical sense is portrayed as a product of modern democratic semi-barbarity, leading to a chaotic, ignoble, and tasteless soul that lacks proportion and noble self-sufficiency.

### Nobility and Order of Rank

Contrasts the 'distinguished and self-sufficing culture' of the past—with its decided taste and aversion to the strange—against the modern plebeian curiosity and lack of proportion.

## Character check-ins

### Europeans

Claim the historical sense as their specialty, described as modern souls and semi-barbarians due to democratic mingling.

### Saint-Évremond

Cited as an example of a distinguished 17th-century French culture that reproached Homer for his 'esprit vaste' and could not easily appreciate him.

### Voltaire

Described as the last echo of the 17th century, sharing its difficulty in appropriating and enjoying Homer.

### William Shakespeare

Presented as a 'marvelous Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste' that moderns enjoy with secret confidence, despite its wild motleyness and proximity to the English populace.

### Homer

Appreciation of Homer is cited as a happy acquisition for moderns, which men of distinguished past culture could not easily appropriate.

## Key lines

> the historical sense... has come to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which Europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races

Our modern ability to understand historical values arose from the chaotic mixing of social classes and ethnic groups in Europe, a state of semi-barbarism.

_Establishes the origin of the historical sense in modern social conditions._

> we ourselves are a kind of chaos

Our modern souls are a disordered mixture of all past cultures and instincts.

_Describes the internal state of the modern European._

> what is most difficult for us men of the 'historical sense' to grasp... is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art, the essentially noble in works and men

We moderns struggle to appreciate true perfection, nobility, and self-sufficient completion in art and life.

_Highlights the deficiency of modern taste in contrast to noble cultures._

> our itching is really the itching for the infinite, the immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward panting horse, we let the reins fall before the infinite

Our modern desire is for the boundless and limitless; we surrender control and rush toward it.

_Metaphor for the modern lack of restraint and proportion, finding bliss in danger._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/224
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters