Nietzsche "The Use and Abuse of History"; Benjamin "Theses on the Philosophy of History"

I'd like to start with a brief overview of what I understood Nietzsche to mean in his essay

Nietzsche's essay begins with an analogy, stating that humans are memory ridden beings, and that humans would be most happy, or at least would be best fit for happiness if they could quit this, creating a being (much like his cow) that approaches each moment afresh, without any record of this moment or event ever taking place before. It seems that humanity is obsessed with memory and history, and because of this the present and the future are undeniably influenced by a way of constructing history. He continues noting that each individual conception (of a community's or a personal identity conception) is deeply influence by history; persons, cities, nations, humanity to a certain extent molds and forms its identity. The use of history becomes more broad as the scale increases in population. It seems, however, that Nietzsche sees this not as a theory, but a law.

This is a universal law: a living thing can only be healthy, strong, and productive within a certain horizon; if it be incapable of drawing one round itself, or too selfish to lose its own view in another's, it will come to an untimely end. cheerfulness, a good conscience, belief in the future, the joyful deed, all depend in the individual as well as the nation, on there being a line that divides the visible and clear from the vague and shadowy; ... This is the point that the reader is asked to consider; that the unhistorical and the historical and equally necessary to the health of an individual, a community, and a system of culture.

Thus he presents his case: humanity is intimately connected with history, so how has it been used and abused; how does it form and influence the health of cultures, individuals, communities? After hovering over a possible "superhistorical" being: an individual who for either an unending hope in the present redeemed in the future or due to a depression that deems that history has nothing to teach, that history has no salvation to bring, "how could the next ten years teach what the past ten were not able to teach?"

Then, N. brings three general uses of history: Monumental, Antiquarian, Critical. Quickly, Monumental looks to the past and finds greatness. An eternal redemption by the past of the present. She (the monumental historian) seeks redemption through a sort of imitation in character of the past: "his goal is happiness, not perhaps his own, but often the nation's, or humanity's at large; he avoids quietism, and uses history as a weapon against it. For the most part he has no hope of reward except fame, which means the expectation of a niche in the temple of history, where he in his turn may be the consoler and counselor of posterity." Monumental historians seek to concretize certain historical moments and uphold them as great, true, authoritative.

Secondly, antiquarian historian sees history only and profoundly within her ancestral or cultural line. This is a historian who tightens the strings on her "horizon" and upholds all of it as great: The antiquarian sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a very limited field. ... There is no measure: equal importance is given to everything, and therefore too much to anything. For the things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just values, but values and perspective change the with the individual or the nation that is looking back on its past." This line of thought plays into culture hegemony and domination more so than the monumental historian. And to a certain extent can explain the logic behind the "great books" tradition. It does not see a sort of regenerative notion concerning the present (the monumental sees the possibility of redemption of the present through certain, specific great moment of the past). Antiquarian understands the past only as great. And thus remains only in the past.

The final way that N. gives is the "critical" historian. Simply, this is a historian who sees all history as contemptible, unjust, destroyed (to a certain extent, though not erased). "Every past is worth condemning: this is the rule in mortal affairs, which always contain a large measure of human power and human weakness." In place of this first history is a new way of life, a second way. It seeks a redemption of the present and future through the destruction and judgment of the past. However, this is dangerous, N. notes, due to the fact that in attempting to destroy all of history, she is destroying her own identity's foundation.

N. then goes into a commentary concerning the current cultural historical situation in Germany. Noting the fact that much of the education system concentrates on a "knowledge of the past" as opposed to actual incorporation.

This, however, is where I am a bit confused on what N. is asking for. he does not seem to uphold either monumental, antiquarian or critical, so what does he call for? My initial thoughts tell me that he seems to be asserting that there is some sort of German identity grounded in the past, though in constant pursuit of regeneration of the present and future through upholding good things in the past, denying others, while concentrating on a german way of doing things. In other words he wants to take good things from all three methods and assert them as the true way of education. "the people that can be called cultured, must be in a real sense living a unity , and not be miserably cleft asunder into form and substance." (Which is his criticism of the education system only providing the idea that if one "knows" of history, cultures, then one is aware of them. (I'm not sure about "aware" maybe a bad choice of wording.)