ckening my activity" (Nietzsche, 1980, 7). Sharing Goethe's sentiments, Nietzsche is highly skeptical of history when it is used as a mode of restriction or even enslavement. The study of history should allow individuals to move forward and even to leap gladly into the future. Nietzsche's meditations indicate that history need not be con-ceived as the antithesis of creativity as it often has been presented. History is to be "hated" when it arises as a "costly intellectual exercise and luxury" (Nietzsche, 1980, 7). If the "historical sense" is allowed to rule "without restraint", it "uproots the future" since "it destroys illusions" and robs "existing things of their atmosphere" (Nietzsche, 1980, 38). Creativity for Nietzsche resides within the space of the altered vision, in seeing things from a radically new perspective. Nietzsche suggests that as drama attempts to elevate a "common theme", it must exhibit "a great artistic capacity and creative overview" by "loving immersion in the empirical data" as it struggles to offer a "poetic elaboration of given types" (Nietzsche, 1980, 36). Nietzsche suggests that the best culture to emulate is the Greek culture since they learned eventually "to organize chaos by reflecting on themselves in accordance with the Delphic oracle" (Nietzsche, 1980, 64). Culture here is perceived as a new improved nature liberated from convention and illusion. Contrasting Mill & Nietzsche's Views on Creativity
As an Enlightenment thinker Mill is interested in ascertaining how the appropriate use of an historical perspective can contribute to society's advance. Nietzsche's position is a bit more radical. He is most suspicious of history as an intellectual force which cements constraints into place. Nietzsche wishes to reject that use of history which seeks to enforce a rigidity. In order to allow history to act as a creative and liberating force for Nietzsche it must return to the primal force of...