Journal of Philosophical Research

published on November 4, 2015

Hayden White’s Misreading of Nietzsche’s Meta-History

I argue that, despite similarities between them, Hayden White has fundamentally misunderstood Nietzsche’s philosophy of history. White, like many postmodern historical theorists, attributes to Nietzsche a truth-relativism with respect to historical facts and a value-relativism with respect to the worth of competing interpretations. I show that both of these attributions take insufficient account of Nietzsche’s perspectivism. Nietzsche rejects relativism and endorses interpretations that further the interests of particular types of life. When Nietzsche’s position is properly distinguished from the kind of relativism ascribed by White, it will appear a coherent middle-ground between the positivist construal of historical truth and post-modern truth relativism.