At the beginning of section six of “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” Nietzsche asks two questions of “modern man,” by which he means, in this context, contemporary historians and philologists. He asks, first, “whether on account of his well-known historical ‘objectivity’ [Objektivität] he has a right to call himself strong, that is to say just [gerecht], and just in a higher degree than men of other ages?” And second: “Is it true that this objectivity originates in an enhanced need and demand for justice [Gerechtigkeit]?” (UM II §6). Nietzsche uses the word “justice” here to refer both to the capacities of contemporary historians and to the adequacy of contemporary modes of historical explanation. He also implies a distinction between two conceptions of justice: justice as objectivity, the justice of the contemporary historian, and justice as strength, the kind of justice in which Nietzsche seems to be interested.

I shall attempt to clarify and explore this distinction here in four stages. First, I shall examine the way that Nietzsche uses his negative conception of justice as objectivity to underwrite each of the key distinctions that he makes in the opening sections of this second Untimely Meditation. Second, I shall briefly introduce the alternative conception of justice as strength, more specifically, justice as “an impossible virtue” (UM II §6), which Nietzsche develops in section six of the text.