"Nietzsche has destroyed me." - Martin Heidegger
It
is important to remember that Martin Heidegger had read Nietzsche before the 1930s; it
was only after he broke with Being and
Time that Heidegger turned to Nietzsche once more. The Heidegger of Being and Time had no interest at all in
Nietzschean philosophy when it came to metaphysics and art, but more
specifically the critique of nihilism. The ‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche was
brought on by the dynamics of Heideggerian thought as well as the demands of
the time. According to Hans Sluga, we can safely say that Heidegger learned
three major lessons from this ‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche: metaphysics,
politics and the situation in the modern world. Heidegger focused mostly on
Nietzsche as a metaphysician above all else, though this focus did shift over
time it remained largely the same.
For
Heidegger the thoughts Nietzsche had on art illuminated the precarious nature
of metaphysical thinking. Sluga stresses that Heidegger turned to Nietzsche
after he became interested in art, which could not be an extension of Being and Time. Heidegger concludes that
the views of art Nietzsche held are an inverted Platonism, as art remains
semblance and retains its opposition truth. Art is the supreme configuration of
the Will to Power.[1] Art can
be understood in relation to the artist, the creative forces undertaken.[2] Metaphysics
from Plato onwards leads to a conclusion, which Heidegger thought was imminent
and he held up Nietzsche as the last metaphysician of the West. Sluga points
out that this is quite problematic.
The work of Friedrich Nietzsche
is symptomatic of how difficult it is to escape from metaphysics and that there
is a valid focus behind the errors of metaphysics. In the work of Nietzsche the
search for the nature of beings as a whole, a metaphysics of becoming behind
which remains the question of Being – as this question is almost approached
through the eternal recurrence of the same.[3] The
problem is that the focus on the question of Being is never confronted head-on,
as the question is forgotten it haunts the tradition of metaphysics. The task
of overcoming of metaphysics ensnares oneself in metaphysics.[4]
Heidegger
went as far as to see Nietzsche’s doctrines of eternal recurrence and the
Übermensch as part of a metaphysical system.[5] The
doctrine of eternal recurrence points to the question of Being, as Nietzsche
approximates Being through the eternal recurrence of the same and the
Übermensch is important in relation to the recurrence.[6][7] Nietzsche
wrote “To impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme
will to power… That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world
of becoming to a world of being: high point of the meditation”. Heidegger
maintained that the eternal recurrence of the same is illusive insofar as it is
“wrapped in thick clouds – not for us, but for Nietzsche’s own thinking”. But
he insisted that it is to be seen as Nietzsche’s attempt to deal with the being
of Being. For Heidegger the fact that the eternal recurrence of the same is difficult
to grasp is matched by the difficulty to grasp the being of Being.
Hans
Sluga notes that the Heideggerian view of Nietzsche’s politics stands in distinct
to Karl Jaspers and Alfred Baeumler. Karl Jaspers portrayed Nietzsche as an
opposed German nationalism and anti-Semitism as he was in his lifetime. On the
other hand, Alfred Baeumler was out to use Nietzsche as the intellectual
harbinger of the Third Reich.[8] By
contrast Heidegger saw Nietzsche as “anti-political” as well as a potential
source to construct a refined national and social identity for Germans. The
‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche provided a means to attack the existing system
safely, on the grounds that it was linked to an empty will to will and, by
extension, haste to further technological advancements.[9] This
preoccupation with identity came out of the way Heidegger viewed his country.[10]Heidegger
saw the question of Being in connection with German identity, with Nietzsche
and Hölderlin
serving as a guide to what exactly it is to be German. For Heidegger the future of Germany and the
West is “determined” by Nietzsche and Hölderlin, so the
philosopher of the godlessness and worldlessness of modern man belongs with the
poet of the homecoming. To come home means to face the question of Being.
Martin Heidegger
abandoned the project to determine the “essence of being German” through
Nietzsche and instead he opted to reiterate his own thinking without
nationalism, as Heidegger claimed after the war, as society supplanted the
nation. Heidegger saw Nietzsche as diagnostic and symptomatic of the modern
pathologies, just as the belief in historical progress became predominant in
the world it was Nietzsche who pointed to a prevalent destruction. The
metaphysics of becoming was in touch with the spirit of the times, with
specific regards to technology where Nietzsche had foresaw man’s domination of
the world. For Heidegger there is a sense in which Nietzsche reveals the core
of technology which had led to Being as in calculation and the rule of reduced
being by mathematically structured technology.
Heidegger
went on to designate Nietzsche as the philosopher of “the struggle for the
unlimited exploitation of the earth as the sphere of raw materials and fort he
realistic utilisation of the ‘human material’, in the service of the
unconditional empowering of the will to power”. Sluga points out that this
interpretation appears ignorant of the Will to Power as a fundamental aspect of
the world and living things. The world as a ‘monster of energy’ which has no
beginning nor end, subject to contradictions and concord, while it affirms
itself, destructive and self-creating as Dionysus had.[11]
This view is lost as Heidegger reflects critically on Nietzsche’s work. But as
Nietzsche is the philosopher of technology, for Heidegger, this critique is of
the ideas of the modern age. By extension, Sluga argues, we can include the
Third Reich, as well as other political conceptions of the time, as subject to
this critique. The nihilism of modern man is revealed in the work of Nietzsche.[12]
For Heidegger, Nietzsche saw an awful lot more than we can see, but it was
never a clear picture and fell far short of capturing all that there is to see.
"I am not a man. I am dynamite." - Friedrich Nietzsche
[1] The Will
to Power has less to do with aristocratic status, militarism and power over
people than it does with notions of self-discipline and personal restraint.
‘Power’ is meant in the strict sense of self-mastery and the discipline of the
powers of thought, imagination and creativity. It might also be understood in
terms of self-esteem, not just feeling good in the superficial sense but being
energised by your own ideas and talents. It is about confidence and capability.
Solomon, Robert; Lecture 13, Nietzsche: Übermensch and
the Will to Power – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZWlV9sP8n0
[2] Nietzsche
thought art had to be “grasped in terms of the artist” – no doubt beings had to
be understood in terms of “self-creating” as well – the work itself constitutes
a countermovement to nihilism and ultimately it is worth more than “truth”. In
Nietzsche’s words art is “the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of
the will to power”.
Sluga, Hans: Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.110-112
[3] By the
early 40s Heidegger found it possible to summarise the core of Nietzsche’s
metaphysics of becoming: the Will to Power, nihilism, the eternal recurrence,
the Übermensch and justice. He noted importantly that every term “names at the
same time what the others say. The naming of each basic word is exhausted only
when one also thinks with it what the others say”.
Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.106-110
[4] This
would mean that Heidegger is also a metaphysician insofar as he criticises
Nietzsche – for his failure to confront the question of Being – within the
terms of another metaphysics. The critique of Nietzsche along these lines
relies on the distinction between Being and beings, which could be seen as
metaphysical concepts. Ironically, Heidegger became trapped in metaphysical
thinking in holding up Nietzsche as bringing metaphysics to an ‘end’.
Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.110-112
[5] For
Heidegger the Übermensch casts Nietzsche’s metaphysics in a new light as
Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal recurrence of the same became of central
importance. Thus Spoke Zarathustra “thinks
this thinkers one and only thought: the thought of the eternal recurrence of
the same” and “the eternal recurrence of the same is the supreme triumph of the
metaphysics of the will that eternally wills its own willing,” e.g. the Will to
Power.
Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.106-110
[6] The
Übermensch is master morality spiritualised by 2,000 of slave morality, he is
the master of his powers and abilities, he aspires to excellence and ideals
which are very much his own. The Übermensch is free of resentment and regret to
the extent that he can say emphatically and without hesitation in the face of
eternal recurrence, the notion that he would have to live his life over and
over again endlessly, “Yes! Gladly I would accept this!”
Solomon, Robert; Lecture 13, Nietzsche: Übermensch and
the Will to Power – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZWlV9sP8n0
[7] For
Nietzsche a great example of the Übermensch and the Will to Power was Goethe who
exercised all of his talents, ‘created’ himself as a unified being through his
art and he experimented in life – taking jobs as a civil servant and a lawyer,
as well as a playwright and a poet. As a writer he flirted with many styles and
his works are voluminous. In Nietzsche’s terms the passion for life is the
greatest of passions and Goethe was passionate at a creative and spiritual
level. Nietzsche describes Goethe as “not a German event but a European one: a
grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century through a return to nature,
through a going-up to the naturalness
of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century.”
Nietzsche, Friedrich; Twilight of the Idols and The
Anti-Christ (Hollingdale, RJ; Introduction and commentary | Penguin Books,
1968) pg.102-104
[8] Effectively
Baeumler continued on the track which began with the proto-Nazi Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche, who took over her brother’s works and set out to appropriate
these works for the Nazi movement. Baeumler set out to explore Nietzsche as a
metaphysician, who laid the groundwork for National Socialism in his
metaphysical doctrines. Baeumler dismissed the doctrine of eternal recurrence
as “mystical” and saw it incongruous to the Will to Power, whereas Heidegger
(who was heavily influenced by Baeumler) insisted that the Will to Power and
the eternal recurrence of the same were part of a coherent metaphysical
conception. It was because of Baeumler’s political project that the notion of
eternal recurrence had to be dismissed, as it clashed with the political
Nietzsche.
Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.106-110
[9] Heidegger
distinguished between National Socialism as it existed at the time as opposed
to the idealised vision which had not been realised. Heidegger may have been
indulging in a far-right parallel of ultra-leftist ‘comfortable resistance’
which retains a certain distance from power and real decisions in its criticism
of the established order. The farthest Heidegger went, in later life, to
repudiate Nazism was to point to its “failure” to emerge as a genuine Third
Position from American capitalism and Soviet communism. In an interview for Der
Spiegel, Heidegger makes it clear that he regards each of these systems as
determined by ‘planetary technology’. The implication being that there has not
yet been a thorough attempt to move beyond technology and establish a genuine
alternative. This is where the idealised vision of National Socialism would
come in as opposed to the regime established in 1933.
Der Spiegel
interview with Martin Heidegger (September 23rd 1966) - http://lacan.com/heidespie.html
The Philosophy Book (Dorling Kindersley Limited,
2011), Slavoj Zizek, pg.326
[10] In
Heidegger’s own words Germany is “the land of the middle” where “Our people, as
standing in the centre, suffers the most intense pressure”. He goes on to say
“Precisely if the great decision regarding Europe is not to go down the path of
annihilation – precisely then can this decision come about only through the
development of new, spiritual forces from the centre”.
Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.112-116
[11] Nietzsche
posits the Apollonian against the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy. Dionysian is a frenzied and orgiastic sense
in which we feel ourselves as part of life flowing through us. He compared the
Dionysian with intoxication as in a euphoria or ecstasy of sorts. It is the
means by which one can escape from reality, but not into fantasy as with the
Apollonian. Rather the Dionysian is about forgetting yourself, not the world,
to experience a more mystical communal union. But the Dionysiac energies are
dangerous, grotesque, cruel, sexual and wild. It is difficult to find meaning
or beauty in a world of such destructive energies, though it is not on the road
to nihilism for Nietzsche. Culture has emerged as attempts to refine this life
force in a chaotic world driven by this force.
Dionysian – frenzied and orgiastic sense in which we
feel ourselves as part of life flowing through us
Jackson, R; Nietzsche the Key Ideas (Hachette UK,
2008) pg.42-45
[12] This
would probably refer to the Last Man, a concept introduced by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra in contrast with
the Übermensch. Unlike the Übermensch – the point of which was to rouse enthusiasm
in the town’s people for the possibility of overcoming themselves – the Last
Man is presented to get the town’s people to be disgusted with themselves; to
awaken them to the stupidity and philistinism pervasive in their world. Robert
Solomon describes the Last Man as “the ultimate bourgeois consumer and coach
potato without any aspirations. The Last Man is content, comfortable and
satisfied with the way of the world and life as it is.”
Solomon, Robert; Lecture 13, Nietzsche: Übermensch and
the Will to Power – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZWlV9sP8n0
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