Human Nature and the Nature of Time: A Nietzschean Metaphor and Its Consequences

Abstract

In the first pages of his essay about the advantages and disadvantages of the use of history, Nietzsche introduces the reader into his conceptual world with a group of metaphors, most of which will appear in his later works as well. I will leave open the question whether these metaphors are simply illustrative, helping us to better understand concepts, or whether they not only color concepts, as it were, but give them their ultimate meaning, making them finished conceptions, convincing arguments. In the following pages I will try to demonstrate what Nietzsche could have had in mind when, in the second of his Untimely Meditations, he writes about a playing child, grazing cows, an enshrouding cloud, and the lightening flash of light that pierces this cloud.