120 Nietzschethat we were retreating to a natural state, we were only opting for letting
ourselves go, for comfort and for the smallest possible degree of self-
transcendence" (1,275; HL § 4). Nietzsche took a stand against the pre-
tentiousness of amorphous introspection that passed itself off as
culture. He sided with civilization, which, however, he also subjected to
criticism as mere social convention from the perspective of fresh cre-
ativity. In the later debate about the difference between German "cul-
ture" and French "civilization," the opposing sides were able to cite
Nietzsche in equal measure.
The undigested "stones of knowledge" that keep an individual from
cultivating a true personality stem from the basis of history and the pop-
ularized natural sciences. As for the excess of history in society,
Nietzsche considered it the aftereffect of a simplistic take on
Hegelianism that regarded historical power as reasonable precisely
because it was powerful, and therefore demanded respect for the power
of what existed as well as diligence in appropriating history.
Hegel meant all of that in a different way, as Nietzsche was well
aware. Hegel was a philosopher in love with history. The besotted Hegel
considered history rational, but at the same time captivating and infec-
tious; he called it the "Bacchantic giddiness in which no member is not
drunk" (Hegel 39). It had all begun in the abbey in Tübingen, when
Hegel and his roommates Schelling and Hölderlin planted a freedom
tree on the meadow of the Neckar River after hearing the news of the
storming of the Bastille. This was youthful enthusiasm that sought to
take history into its own hands and both understand it and inject it with
a lively dose of reason. It was precisely that kind of youthful protest that
Nietzsche now demanded for his era, which was suffering from an
excess of historical interpretation and scholarship. Hegel's generation
discovered a revolutionary spirit in history; the act of appropriating his-
tory spurred it OIL History had verve. It did not weigh you down, but
rather swept you along on a journey of adventure. However, in the quar-
ter century after the French Revolution, history had brought great dis-