In the foreword to Von Hegel, Löwith states that he has no intention of writing a "Geistesgeschichte in the usual sense of the word" since its principles "evolving from Hegel's metaphysics of the spirit have become so attenuated that they are now trivial." Rather he seeks "to bring accurately to life the epoch which starts with Hegel and ends with Nietzsche, "transcribing' the philosophical history of the nineteenth century within the horizon of the present." But in sharp contrast to the "transcribing" activities of many of his contemporaries, Löwith emphasizes that "to transcribe history does not mean to counterfeit the irrevocable power of what has taken place once and for all, or to increase vitality at the expense of truth, but to do justice to the vital fact of history that the tree may be known only by its fruits, the father by his son." Thus Löwith's "transcription" of the intellectual developments of the nineteenth century is based on the view that past and present are intimately related and manifest fundamental similarities. "Hegel seems to stand very far removed from us and Nietzsche very near, if we consider only the latter's influence and the former's works. In fact, though, Hegel's work mediated through his pupils had an effect upon intellectual and political life which it would be difficult to overestimate, while the numerous influences exerted by Nietzsche since 1890 have given birth to a German ideology only in our own time. The Nietzscheans of yesterday correspond to the Hegelians of the 1840's." ¹