historical sense

The young man is whipped through all millennia: youths who understand nothing of war, of diplomatic action, of commercial policy are deemed worthy of being introduced to political history. but just as the young man runs through history so we moderns run through art galleris, so we listen to concerts. One may well feel that this sounds different from that, this makes a different impression from that: increasingly to lose this sense of suprise, no longer to be excessively astonished by anything, finally to tolerate everything--that is what we call historical sense, historical culture.

melancholy and apathy.

the proliferation of historic culture simultaneously perpetuates the desensitized self which is essential in constructing a framework for science (also objective) and our capitalist economy. (estranged labour)

...the historical sense makes its servants passive and retrospective; and almost only from momentary forgetfulness, at a brief period of inactivity of that sense, does the man struck ill by historical fever become active, only to dissect this deed as soon as it is done and by observing it analytically to prevent its having any further effect and finally to pare it down to 'history'. In this sense we still live in the Middle Ages and history is still disguised theology: just as the reverence which the layman acords the scientific caste is a reverence inherited from the clergy. What earlier one gave to the church one now gives, even if more sparingly, to science: but that one gives at all is a consequence of the church and not of the modern spirit which rather, along with its other good qualities, is known to be somewhat miserly and a bungler when it comes to the noble virtue of liberality.

Nietzsche points his finger at the hopelessness of momento mori that came from the medieval origins of Christianity...