Answer: the eternal
recurrence
of the same.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
The highest form of human existence?
Indeed.
But at the same time we must observe how Nietzsche views the essence of the feast, in such a way that he can think of it only on the basis of his fundamental conception of all being, will to power.
"The feast implies: pride, exuberance, frivolity; mockery of all earnest- ness and respectability; a divine affirmation of oneself, out of animal plenitude and perfection-all obvious states to which the Christian may not honestly say Yes.
The feast is paganism par excellence" (WM, 916).
For that reason, we might add, the feast of thinking never takes place in Christianity.
That is to say, there is no Christian philosophy.
There is no true philosophy that could be determined anywhere else than from within itself.
For the same reason there is no pagan philos- ophy, inasmuch as anything "pagan" is always still something Christian -the counter-Christian.
The Greek poets and thinkers can hardly be designated as "pagan.
"
6 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Feasts require long and painstaking preparation. This semester we want to prepare ourselves for the feast, even if we do not make it as far as the celebration, even if we only catch a glimpse of the preliminary festivities at the feast of thinking-experiencing what meditative thought is and what it means to be at home in genuine questioning.
2. The Book, The Will to Power
The question as to what being is seeks the Being of beings. All Being is for Nietzsche a Becoming. Such Becoming, however, has the char- acter of action and the activity of willing. But in its essence will is will to power. That expression names what Nietzsche thinks when he asks the guiding question of philosophy. And for that reason the name obtrudes as the title for his planned magnum opus, which, as we know, was not brought to fruition. What lies before us today as a book with the title The Will to Power contains preliminary drafts and frag- mentary elaborations for that work. The outlined plan according to which these fragments are ordered, the division into four books, and the titles of those books also stem from Nietzsche himself.
At the outset we should mention briefly the most important aspects of Nietzsche's life, the origins of the plans and preliminary drafts, and the later publication of these materials after Nietzsche's death.
In a Protestant pastor's house in the year 1844 Nietzsche was born. As a student of classical philology in Leipzig in 1865 he came to know Schopenhauer's major work, The World as Will and Representation. During his last semester in Leipzig (1868-69), in November, he came into personal contact with Richard Wagner. Apart from the world of the Greeks, which remained decisive for the whole of Nietzsche's life, although in the last years of his wakeful thinking it had to yield som. e ground to the world of Rome, Schopenhauer and Wagner were the earliest intellectually determinative forces. In the spring of 1869, Nietz- sche, not yet twenty-five years of age and not yet finished with his doctoral studies, received an appointment at Basel as associate professor of classical philology. There he came into amicable contact with Jacob
8 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Burckhardt and with the Church historian Franz Overbeck. The ques- tion as to whether or not a real friendship evolved between Nietzsche and Burckhardt has a significance that exceeds the merely biographical sphere, but discussion of it does not belong here. He also met Bachofen,* but their dealings with one another never went beyond reserved collegiality. Ten years later, in 1879, Nietzsche resigned his professorship. Another ten years later, in January, 1889, he suffered a total mental collapse, and on August 25, 1900, he died.
During the Basel years Nietzsche's inner disengagement from Scho- penhauer and Wagner came to completion. But only in the years 1880 to 1883 did Nietzsche find himself, that is to say, find himself as a thinker: he found his fundamental position within the whole of beings, and thereby the determinative source of his thought. Between 1882 and 1885 the figure of "Zarathustra" swept over him like a storm. In those same years the plan for his main philosophical work originated. During the preparation of the planned work the preliminary sketches, plans, divisions, and the architectonic vision changed several times. No deci- sion was made in favor of any single alternative; nor did an image of the whole emerge that might project a definitive profile. In the last year before his collapse (I888) the initial plans were finally abandoned. A peculiar restlessness now possessed Nietzsche. He could no longer wait for the long gestation of a broadly conceived work which would be able to speak for itself, on its own, as a work. Nietzsche himself had to speak, he himself had to come forth and announce his basic position vis-a-vis the world, drawing the boundaries which were to prevent anyone's confusing that basic position with any other. Thus the smaller works originated: The Wagner Case, Nietzsche contra Wagner, TwJ1ight of
the Idols, Ecce Homo, and The Antichrist-which first appeared in 1890.
But Nietzsche's philosophy proper, the fundamental position on the basis of which he speaks in these and in all the writings he himself
*J. J. Bachofen (1815-1887), Swiss historian of law and religion, interested in myths and symbols in primitive folklore, today best known as the author of the classic work on matriarchy, Das Mutterrecht, published in 1861.
The Book, The Will to Power 9
published, did not assume a final form and was not itself published in any book, neither in the decade between 1879 and 1889 nor during the years preceding. What Nietzsche himself published during his creative life was always foreground. That is also true of his first treatise, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). His philosophy proper was left behind as posthumous, unpublished work.
In 1901, a year after Nietzsche's death, the first collection of his preliminary drafts for a magnum opus appeared. It was based on Nietzsche's plan dated March 17, 1887; in addition, the collection referred to notes in which Nietzsche himself arranged particular frag- ments into groups.
In the first and in later editions the particular fragments selected from the handwritten Nachlass were numbered sequentially. The first edition of The Will to Power included 483 selections.
It soon became clear that this edition was quite incomplete when compared to the available handwritten material. In 1906 a new and significantly expanded edition appeared, retaining the same plan. It included 1,067 selections, more than double the number in the first edition. The second edition appeared in 1911 as volumes XV and XVI of the Grossoktav edition of Nietzsche's works. But even these volumes did not contain the amassed material; whatever was not subsumed under the plan appeared as two Nachlass volumes, numbered XIII and XIV in the Collected Works.
Not long ago the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar undertook to publish a historical-critical complete edition of Nietzsche's works and letters in chronological order. It should become the ultimate, definitive edition. * It no longer separates the writings Nietzsche himself published and the Nachlass, as the earlier complete editions do, but collates for each period both published and unpublished materials. The extensive
*The Historisch-kritische Cesamtausgabe der Werke und Briefe (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1933-42), edited by a group of scholars including H. J. Mette, W. Hoppe, and K. Schlechta, under the direction of Carl August Emge, published fewer than a dozen of the many volumes of works and letters planned. For an account of the "principles" of the edition-with which Heidegger takes issue below-see the Foreword to the Nietzsche Cesamtausgabe, I, x-xv.
10 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
collection of letters, which thanks to new and rich finds is growing steadily, is also to be published in chronological sequence. The historical-critical complete edition, which has now begun, remains in its foundations ambiguous. First of all, as a historical-critical "complete edition" which brings out every single thing it can find, guided by the fundamental principle of completeness, it belongs among the undertakings of nineteenth-century publication. Second, by the manner of its biographical, psychological commentary and its similarly thorough research of all "data" on Nietzsche's "life," and of the views of his contemporaries as well, it is a product of the psychological- biological addiction of our times.
Only in the actual presentation of the authentic "Works" (1881-89) will this edition have an impact on the future, granted the editors succeed in their task. That task and its fulfillment are not a part of what we have just criticized; moreover, the task can be carried out without all that. But we can never succeed in arriving at Nietzsche's philosophy proper if we have not in our questioning conceived of Nietzsche as the end of Western metaphysics and proceeded to the entirely different question of the truth of Being.
The text recommended for this course is the edition of The Will to Power prepared by A. Baeumler for the Kroner pocket edition series. It is a faithful reprint of volumes XV and XVI of the Grossoktavaus- gabe, with a sensible Afterword and a good, brief outline of Nietzsche's life history. In addition, Baeumler has edited for the same series a volume entitled Nietzsche in His Letters and in Reports by Contempo- raries. For a first introduction the book is useful. For a knowledge of Nietzsche's biography the presentation by his sister, Elisabeth Forster- Nietzsche, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (published between 1895 and 1904), remains important. As with all biographical works, however, use of this publication requires great caution.
W e will refrain from further suggestions and from discussion of the enormous and varied secondary literature surrounding Nietzsche, since none of it can aid the endeavor of this lecture course. Whoever does not have the courage and perseverance of thought required to become
The Book, The Will to Power II
involved in Nietzsche's own writings need not read anything about him either.
Citation of passages from Nietzsche's works will be by volume and page number of the Grossoktav edition. Passages from The Will to Power employed in the lecture course will not be cited by the page number of any particular edition but by the fragment number which is standard in all editions. These passages are for the most part not simple, incomplete fragments and fleeting observations; rather, they are carefully worked out "aphorisms," as Nietzsche's individual nota- tions are customarily called. But not every brief notation is automat- ically an aphorism, that is, an expression or saying which absolutely closes its borders to everything inessential and admits only what is essential. Nietzsche observes somewhere that it is his ambition to say in a brief aphorism what others in an entire book . . . do not say.
3. Plans and Preliminary Drafts of the "Main Structure"
Before we characterize more minutely the plan on which the presently available edition of The Will to Power is based, and before we indicate those passages with which our inquiry shall begin, let us introduce testimony from several of Nietzsche's letters. Such testimony sheds light on the origin of the preliminary drafts for the planned chief work and suggests the fundamental mood from which the work derives.
On April 7, 1884, Nietzsche writes to his friend Overbeck in Basel:
For the past few months I've been preoccupied with "world history," en- chanted by it, in spite of many hair-raising results. Did I ever show you Jacob Burckhardt's letter, the one which led me by the nose to "world history"? If I get to Sils Maria this summer I want to undertake a revision of my metaphysica and my epistemological views. Now I must work through a whole series of disciplines step by step, for I am resolved to devote the next five years to the construction of my "philosophy," for which I have in my Zarathustra constructed a vestibule.
We should take this opportunity to observe that the common as- sumption that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra was to present his philosophy in poetic form, and that, since Zarathustra did not achieve this goal, Nietzsche wanted to transcribe his philosophy into prose for purposes of greater intelligibility, is an error. The planned major work,
The WJ11 to Power, is in truth as much a poetic work as Zarathustra is a work of thought. The relationship between the two works remains one of vestibule and main structure. Nevertheless, between 1882 and 1888 several essential steps were taken which remain wholly concealed
Plans and Preliminary Drafts l3
in prior collections of the Nachlass fragments, such concealment pre- venting a glimpse into the essential structure of Nietzsche's metaphy- sics.
In mid-June, 1884, Nietzsche writes to his sister:
So, the scaffolding for the main structure ought to be erected this summer; or, to put it differently, during the next few months I want to draw up the schema for my philosophy and my plan for the next six years. May my health hold out for this purpose! *
From Sils Maria on September 2, 1884, to his friend and assistant Peter Cast:
In addition, I have completely finished the major task I set myself for this summer-the next six years belong to the elaboration of a schema in which I have outlined my "philosophy. " The prospects for this look good and promising. Meanwhile, Zarathustra retains only its entirely personal mean- ing, being my "book of edification and consolation"--otherwise, for Every- man, it is obscure and riddlesome and ridiculous.
To Overbeck, July 2, 1885:
I have dictated for two or three hours practically every day, but my "philos- ophy"-if I have the right to call it by the name of something that has maltreated me down to the very roots of my being-is no longer communi- cable, at least not in print.
Here doubts about the possibility of a presentation of his philosophy
*According to Karl Schlechta's "Philologischer Nachbericht," in Friedrich Nietzsche Werke in drei Biinden (Munich: C. Hanser, 6th ed. , 1969), III, 1411, 1417, and 1420-22, this letter, number 379 in the edition by Frau Fiirster-Nietzsche, is a forgery. More
specifically, it appears that Nietzsche's sister altered the addressee (the letter was sent not to her but to Malwida von Meysenbug) and enlarged upon the original contents of the letter. Because she managed to destroy all but a fragment of the original, it is virtually impossible to determine whether or not the words Heidegger cites are Nietzsche's. Nevertheless, the fragment does contain the following lines, relevant to the present issue: " . . . nachdem ich mir diese V orhalle meiner Philosophie gebaut habe, muss ich die Hand wieder anlegen und nicht miide werden, his auch der Haupt-Bau fertig vor mir steht. " In translation: ". . . now that I have built this vestibule for my philosophy, I must get busy once again and not grow weary until the main structure too stands finished before me. "
14 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
in book form are already stirring. But a year later Nietzsche is again confident.
To his mother and sister, September 2, 1886:
For the next four years the creation of a four-volume magnum opus is proposed. The very title is fearsome: "The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. " For it I have everything that is necessary, health, solitude, good mood, and maybe a wife. *
With this mention of his major work Nietzsche refers to the fact that on the cover of the book that had appeared during that year, Beyond Good and Evil, a work with the above-mentioned title was cited as the volume to appear next. In addition, Nietzsche writes in his Toward a Genealogy of Morals, which appeared in 1887 (See Division Three, no. 27):
. . . with respect to which [i. e. , the question of the meaning of the ascetic ideal] I refer to a work I am now preparing: The Will to Power, Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values.
Nietzsche himself emphasized the title of his planned work by means of special, heavy print.
To Peter Cast, September 15, 1887:
I vacillated, to be honest, between Venice and-Leipzig: the latter for learned purposes, since in reference to the major pensum of my life, which is presently to be resolved, I still have much to learn, to question, and to read. But for that I would need, not an "autumn," but an entire winter in Germany: and, all things considered, my health forcefully discourages such a dangerous experiment for this year. Therefore it has turned out to be a matter of Venice and Nice: -and also, as you yourself may judge to be true, I now need the profound isolation which in my case is even more compelling than further study and exploration into five thousand particular problems.
To Carl von Gersdorff, December 20, 1887:
In a significant sense my life stands right now at high noon: one door is closing, another opening. All I have done in the last few years has been a
*Schlechta (ibid. ) does not cite this letter as a forgery.
Plans and Preliminary Drafts 15
settling of accounts, a conclusion of negotiations, an adding up of things past; by now I have finished with men and things and have drawn a line under it all. Who and what remain for me, whither I must now go, toward the really most important matter of my existence (a transition to which I have been condemned), are now capital questions. For, between you and me, the tension in which I live, the pressure of a great task and passion, is now too great for me to allow still more people to approach me. The desert that surrounds me is vast indeed. I really can bear only complete strangers or passers-by, or, on the other hand, people who have been a part of me for a long time, even from childhood. Everyone else has drifted away or has been repulsed (there was much violence and much pain in that-).
Here it is no longer simply the matter of a magnum opus. Here already are early signs of the last year of his thinking, the year in which everything about him radiates an excessive brilliance and in which therefore at the same time a terrible boundlessness advances out of the distance. In that year, 1888, the plan of the work changes altogether. When madness overwhelms Nietzsche in the first days of January, 1889, he writes to the composer Peter Cast, as a final word to his friend and helper, a postcard dated January 4 with the following contents:
To my maestro Pietro. Sing me a new song: the world is transfigured and all the heavens rejoice. The Crucified.
Although Nietzsche expresses in them what is most interior, these few pieces of evidence can for us at first be only an extrinsic indication of the fundamental mood in which the planning of the work and its preliminary casting moved. But at the same time we need to refer to the plans themselves and to their transformation; and even that can occur at first only from the outside. The plans and proposals are published in volume XVI, pages 413-67.
Three fundamental positions can be distinguished in the sequen~e of proposals: the first extends chronologically from 1882 to 1883 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra); the second from 1885 to 1887 (Beyond Good and Evil, Toward a Genealogy of Morals); the third embraces the years 1887 and 1888 (Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, The Antichrist). But these are not stages of development. Neither can the three funda-
16 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
mental positions be distinguished according to their scope: each is concerned with the whole of philosophy and in each one the other two are implied, although in each case the inner configuration and the location of the center which determines the form vary. And it was nothing else than the question of the center that genuinely "mal- treated" Nietzsche. Of course, it was not the extrinsic question of finding a suitable connection or link among the handwritten materials available; it was, without Nietzsche's coming to know of it or stumbling across it, the question of philosophy's self-grounding. It concerns the fact that, whaiever philosophy is, and however it may exist at any given time, it defines itself solely on its own terms; but also that such self- determination is possible only inasmuch as philosophy always has al- ready grounded itself. Its proper essence turns ever toward itself, and the more original a philosophy is, the more purely it soars in turning about itself, and therefore the farther the circumference of its circle presses outward to the brink of nothingness.
Now, when closely examined, each of the three fundamental posi- tions may be identified by a predominant title. It is no accident that the two titles displaced in each case by the main title recur under that title.
The first fundamental position derives its character from the main title, "Philosophy of Eternal Return," with the subtitle "An Attempt at the Revaluation of All Values" (XVI, 415). A plan pertaining to this title (p. 414) contains as its crowning, concluding chapter (the fifth) "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " Thus we see that the thought of power, which always means will to power, extends through the whole simultaneously from top to bottom.
The second fundamental position is marked by the title "The Will to Power," with the subtitle "Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. " A plan pertaining to this title (p. 424, number 7) contains as the fourth part of the work "The Eternal Return. "
The third fundamental position transposes what was only the subtitle of the two previous positions to the main title (p. 435), "Revaluation of All Values. " The plans pertaining to this title contain as their fourth
Plans and Preliminary Drafts 17
part the "Philosophy of Eternal Return," and they propose another part, concerning the "yes-sayers," whose place within the whole was not fixed. Eternal Recurrence, Will to Power, Revaluation: these are the three guiding phrases under which the totality of the planned major
work stands, the configuration in each case differing. *
Now, if we do not thoughtfully formulate our inquiry in such a way that it is capable of grasping in a unified way the doctrines of the eternal return of the same and will to power, and these two doctrines in their most intrinsic coherence as revaluation, and if we do not go on to comprehend this fundamental formulation as one which is also neces- sary in the course of Western metaphysics, then we will never grasp Nietzsche's philosophy. And we will comprehend nothing of the twen- tieth century and of the centuries to come, nothing of our own meta-
physical task.
*An examination of CM VIII, I, 2, and 3 reveals that the selection of plans provided as an appendix to the GOA, the edition Heidegger employed, oversimplified the matter of the organization of the Nachlass. Yet Heidegger's analysis of the changing stratifica- tion of eternal recurrence, will to power, and revaluation in Nietzsche's plans still seems tenable.
4. The Unity of Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and Revaluation
The doctrine of the eternal return of the same coheres in the most intimate way with that of will to power. The unity of these teachings may be seen historically as the revaluation of all values hitherto.
But to what extent do the doctrines of the eternal return of the same and will to power belong essentially together? This question must animate us more thoroughly, indeed as the decisive one. For the present, therefore, we offer a merely provisional answer.
The expression "will to power" designates the basic character of beings; any being which is, insofar as it is, is will to power. The expression stipulates the character that beings have as beings. But that is not at all an answer to the first question of philosophy, its proper question; rather, it answers only the final preliminary question. For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest? " or "How may the Being of beings be characterized? " but "What is this 'Being' itself? " The decisive question is that of "the meaning of Being," not merely that of the Being of beings. "Meaning" is thereby clearly delineated concep- tually as that from which and on the grounds of which Being in general can become manifest as such and can come into truth. What is prof- fered today as ontology has nothing to do with the question of Being proper; it is a very learned and very astute analysis of transmitted concepts which plays them off, one against the other.
The Unity of Will to Power 19
What is will to power itself, and how is it?
Answer: the eternal recurrence of the same.
Is it an accident that the latter teaching recurs continually in decisive passages throughout all plans for the philosophical main work? What can it mean when in one plan, which bears the unadorned title "Eternal Return" (XVI, 414), Nietzsche lists the first part under the title "The most difficult thought"? To be sure, the question of Being is the most difficult thought of philosophy, because it is simultaneously its inner- most and uttermost thought, the one with which it stands and falls.
We heard that the fundamental character of beings is will to power, willing, and thus Becoming. Nevertheless, Nietzsche does not cling to such a position-although that is usually what we are thinking when we associate him with Heraclitus. Much to the contrary, in a passage purposely and expressly formulated to provide an encompassing over- view (WM, 617), Nietzsche says the following: "Recapitulation: To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power. " This suggests that Becoming only is if it is grounded in Being as Being: "That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of Becoming to one of Being: peak of the meditation. "* With his doctrine of eternal return Nietzsche in his way thinks nothing else than the thought that pervades the whole of Western philosophy, a thought that remains concealed but is its genuine driving force.
Nietzsche thinks the thought in such a way that in his metaphysics he reverts to the beginnings of Western philosophy. More precisely, he reverts to that beginning which Western philosophy became accustomed to seeing in the course of its history. Nietzsche shared in
* Heidegger often cites the "Recapitulation" aphorism during the Nietzsche lectures and essays. See, for example, Nl, 466 and 656; Nil, 288, 327, and 339. He employs it also for instance in "The Anaximander Fragment," the first chapter of Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, tr. D. F. Krell and F. A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 22. Yet it was not Nietzsche but Peter Cast (Heinrich Koselitz) who supplied the title of the aphorism: see Walter Kaufmann's note in his edition of The Will to Power, p. 330, and cf. CM VIII, I, p. 320, which does not print the title. Furthermore, WM, 617 is a note the entire context and contents of which must be carefully examined. The problem will be discussed in the Analysis of volume Ill in the present series.
20 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
such habituation in spite of his otherwise original grasp of pre-Socratic philosophy.
In the popular view, and according to the common notion, Nietzsche is the revolutionary figure who negated, destroyed, and prophesied. To be sure, all that belongs to the image we have of him. Nor is it merely a role that he played, but an innermost necessity of his time. But what is essential in the revolutionary is not that he overturns as such; it is rather that in overturning he brings to light what is decisive and essen- tial. In philosophy that happens always when those few momentous questions are raised. When he thinks "the most difficult thought" at the "peak of the meditation," Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. What does that mean, taken quite broadly and essentially? Eternity, not as a static "now," nor as a sequence of "nows" rolling off into the infinite, but as the "now" that bends back into itself: what is that if not the concealed essence of Time? Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return, thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time. Nietzsche thinks that thought but does not think it as the question of Being and Time. Plato and Aristotle also think that thought when they conceive Being as ousia (presence), but just as little as Nietzsche do they think it as a question.
If we do ask the question, we do not mean to suggest that we are cleverer than both Nietzsche and Western philosophy, which Nietz- sche "only" thinks to its end. W e know that the most difficult thought of philosophy has only become more difficult, that the peak of the meditation has not yet been conquered and perhaps not yet even discovered at all.
If we bring Nietzsche's "will to power," that is, his question concern- ing the Being of beings, into the perspective of the question concerning "Being and Time," that does not at all mean that Nietzsche's work is to be related to a book entitled Being and Time and that it is to be measured and interpreted according to the contents of that book. Being and Time can be evaluated only by the extent to which it is equal or unequal to the question it raises. There is no standard other than the question itself; only the question, not the book, is essential. Further-
The Unity of Will to Power 21
more, the book merely leads us to the threshold of the question, not yet into the question itself.
Whoever neglects to think the thought of eternal recurrence to- gether with will to power, as what is to be thought genuinely and philosophically, cannot adequately grasp the metaphysical content of the doctrine of will to power in its full scope. Nevertheless, the connec- tion between eternal recurrence as the supreme determination of Being and will to power as the basic character of all beings does not lie in the palm of our hand. For that reason Nietzsche speaks of the "most difficult thought" and the "peak of the meditation. " It is nonetheless true that the current interpretation of Nietzsche does away with the properly philosophical significance of the doctrine of eternal recur- rence and thus irremediably precludes a fertile conception of Nietz- sche's metaphysics. We will introduce two examples, each quite inde- pendent of the other, of such a treatment of the doctrine of eternal return in Nietzsche's philosophy: Alfred Baeumler, Nietzsche: Philoso- pher and Politician (I 931 ), and Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: Introduction
to an Understanding of His Philosophizing (I936). * The negative position taken by each author with respect to the doctrine of eternal recurrence-and for us that means the misinterpretation by each-varies in kind and has different grounds.
Baeumler portrays what Nietzche calls the most difficult thought and the peak of the meditation as an entirely personal, "religious" conviction of Nietzsche's. He says, "Only one can be valid: either the doctrine of eternal return or the doctrine of will to power" (p. 80). He tries to ground this either-or by the following argument: will to power is Becoming; Being is grasped as Becoming; that is the ancient doctrine of Heraclitus on the flux of things and it is also Nietzsche's genuine teaching. His thought of eternal recurrence has to deny the unlimited flux of Becoming. The thought introduces a contradiction into
*Alfred Baeumler, Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker (Leipzig: P. Reclam, 1931), and Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche. Einfiihrung in das Verstiindnis seines Philosophierens (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1936). Both books are discussed in the Analysis (section II) at the end of this volume. The analyses to the later volumes of the present series will treat Baeumler more thoroughly.
22 TilE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche's metaphysics. Therefore, either the doctrine of will to power or that of eternal recurrence, only one of them, can define Nietzsche's philosophy. Baeumler writes, "In truth, seen from the point of view of Nietzsche's system, this thought is without impor- tance. " And on page 82 he opines, "Now, Nietzsche, who is a founder of religion, also accomplishes an Egyptification of the Heraclitean world. " According to Baeumler's account, the doctrine of eternal recurrence implies bringing Becoming to a standstill. With his either- or, Baeumler presupposes that Heraclitus teaches the eternal flux of things, in the sense of the ever-ongoing. For some time now we have known that this conception of Heraclitus' doctrine is utterly foreign to the Greek. Just as questionable as the interpretation of Heraclitus, however, is whether Nietzsche's will to power should automatically be taken as Becoming in the sense of the onward-flowing. In the end, such a concept of Becoming is so superficial that we had better not be too quick to ascribe it to Nietzsche. The immediate result of our consider- ations so far is that there is not necessarily a contradiction between the two statements "Being is Becoming" and "Becoming is Being. " Pre- cisely that is Heraclitus' teaching. But assuming that there is a contra- diction between the doctrines of will to power and eternal recurrence, we have known since Hegel's day that a contradiction is not necessarily
proof against the truth of a metaphysical statement, but may be proof for it. If therefore eternal recurrence and will to power contradict one another, perhaps the contradiction is precisely the demand to think this most difficult thought, instead of fleeing into the "religious. " But even if we concede that here we have a contradiction which cannot be transcended and which compels us to decide in favor of either will to power or eternal recurrence, why does Baeumler then decide against Nietzsche's most difficult thought, the peak of his meditation, and for will to power? The answer is simple: Baeumler's reflections on the relationship between the two doctrines do not press toward the realm of actual inquiry from either side. Rather, the doctrine of eternal recurrence, where he fears "Egypticism," militates against his concep- tion of will to power, which, in spite of the talk about metaphysics, Baeumler does not grasp metaphysically but interprets politically.
The Unity of Will to Power 23
Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence conflicts with Baeumler's conception of politics. It is therefore "without importance" for Nietz- sche's system. This interpretation of Nietzsche is all the more remark- able since Baeumler belongs among those few commentators who re- ject Klages' psychological-biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. *
The second conception of Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return is that of Karl Jaspers. True, Jaspers discusses Nietzsche's teaching in greater detail and discerns that here we are in the presence of one of Nietzsche's decisive thoughts. In spite of the talk about Being, how- ever, Jaspers does not bring the thought into the realm of the ground- ing question of Western philosophy and thereby also into actual connection with the doctrine of will to power. For Baeumler the doc- trine of eternal recurrence cannot be united with the political interpre- tation of Nietzsche; for Jaspers it is not possible to take it as a question of great import, because, according to Jaspers, there is no conceptual truth or conceptual knowledge in philosophy.
But if in contrast to all this the doctrine of eternal recurrence is seen to coincide with the very center of Nietzsche's metaphysical thinking, is it not misleading, or at least one-sided, to collate all the preliminary sketches for a philosophical magnum opus under the plan that takes as its definitive title "Will to Power"?
That the editors selected the middle one of the three basic positions in the plans testifies to their considerable understanding. For Nietzsche himself first of all had to make a decisive effort to visualize the basic character of will to power throughout beings as a whole. Yet this was never for him the ultimate step. Rather, if Nietzsche was the thinker we are convinced he was, then the demonstration of will to power would always have to revolve about the thought of the Being of beings, which for Nietzsche meant the eternal recurrence of the same.
*Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) developed as his life's work a "biocentric metaphysics" which was to clarify once and for all the problem of the body-soul-mind relationship. His major work is the three-volume Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele (1929-32); the work Heidegger refers to here is Die psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches (1926). Cf. section 17, below, and section II of the Analysis. For a critical edition of Klages' writings see Ludwig Klages, Siimtliche Werke (Bonn: Bouvier, 1964 H. ).
24 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
But even if we grant the fact that this edition of the preliminary sketches for the major work, dominated by the theme of will to power, is the best edition possible, the book that lies before us is still some- thing supplementary. Nobody knows what would have become of these preliminary sketches had Nietzsche himself been able to transform them into the main work he was planning. Nevertheless, what is avail- able to us today is so essential and rich, and even from Nietzsche's point of view so definitive, that the prerequisites are granted for what alone is important: actually to think Nietzsche's genuine philosophical thought. W e are all the more liable to succeed in this endeavor the less we restrict ourselves to the sequence of particular fragments as they lie before us, collected and subsumed into book form. For such ordering of particular fragments and aphorisms within the schema of divisions, a schema which does stem from Nietzsche himself, is arbitrary and inessential. What we must do is think through particular fragments, guided by the movement of thought which occurs when we ask the genuine questions. Therefore, measured against the order established by the text before us, we will jump about within various particular divisions. Here too an arbitrariness, within certain limits, is unavoid- able. Still, in all this what remains decisive is to hear Nietzsche himself; to inquire with him and through him and therefore at the same time against him, but for the one single innermost matter that is common to Western philosophy. We can undertake such a task only if we limit its scope. But the important thing is to know where these limits are to be set. Such limitation does not preclude but expects and demands that in time, with the help of the book The Will to Power, you will work through whatever is not explicitly treated in the lectures, in the spirit and manner of our procedure here.
5. The Structure of the "Major Work. " Nietzsche's Manner of Thinking as Reversal
Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position may be defined by two state- ments. First, the basic character of beings as such is "will to power. " Second, Being is "eternal recurrence of the same. " When we think through Nietzsche's philosophy in a questioning way, along the guide- lines of those two statements, we advance beyond the basic positions of Nietzsche and of philosophy prior to him. But such advance only allows us to come back to Nietzsche. The return is to occur by means of an interpretation of "The Will to Power. "
The plan upon which the published edition is based, a plan Nietz- sche himself sketched and even dated (March 17, 1887), takes the following form (XVI, 421):
THE WILL TO POWER Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values
Book 1: European Nihili'sm.
Book II: Critique of the Highest Values. Book III: Principle of a New Valuation. Book IV: Discipline and Breeding.
Our inquiry proceeds immediately to the third book and restricts itself to that one. The very title, "Principle of a New Valuation," suggests that here a laying of grounds and an erection of structures are to be brought to language.
Accordingly, in Nietzsche's view, philosophy is a matter of valuation,
26 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
that is, establishment of the uppermost value in terms of which and according to which all beings are to be. The uppermost value is the one that must be fundamental for all beings insofar as they are beings. A "new" valuation would therefore posit another value, in opposition to the old, decrepit one, which should be determinative for the future. For that reason a critique of the highest values hitherto is advanced before- hand, in Book II. The values in question are religion, specifically, the Christian religion, morality, and philosophy. Nietzsche's manner of speaking and writing here is often imprecise and misleading: religion, morality, and philosophy are not themselves the supreme values, but basic ways of establishing and imposing such values. Only for that reason can they themselves, mediately, be posited and taken as "highest values. "
The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established. Critique of the highest values hith- erto therefore properly means illumination of the dubious origins of the valuations that yield them, and thereby demonstration of the question- ableness of these values themselves. Prior to this critique, which is offered in Book II, the first book advances an account of European nihilism. Thus the work is to begin with a comprehensive presentation of the basic development of Western history, which Nietzsche recog- nizes in its range and intensity here for the first time: the development of nihilism. In Nietzsche's view nihilism is not a Weltanschauung that occurs at some time and place or another; it is rather the basic character of what happens in Occidental history. Nihilism is at work even-and especially-there where it is not advocated as doctrine or demand, there where ostensibly its opposite prevails. Nihilism means that the uppermost values devalue themselves. This means that whatever realities and laws set the standard in Christendom, in morality since Hellenistic times, and in philosophy since Plato, lose their binding force, and for Nietzsche that always means creative force. In his view nihilism is never merely a development of his own times; nor does it pertain only to the nineteenth century. Nihilism begins in the pre-
The Structure of the "Major Work" 27
Christian era and it does not cease with the twentieth century. As a historical process it will occupy the centuries immediately ahead of us, even and especially when countermeasures are introduced. But neither is nihilism for Nietzsche mere collapse, valuelessness, and destruction. Rather, it is a basic mode of historical movement that does not exclude, but even requires and furthers, for long stretches of time, a certain creative upswing. "Corruption," "physiological degeneration," and such are not causes of nihilism but effects. Nihilism therefore cannot be overcome by the extirpation of those conditions. On the contrary, an overcoming of nihilism would merely be delayed by countermea- sures directed toward alleviation of its harmful side effects. In order to grasp what Nietzsche designates in the word "nihilism" we need pro- found insight and even more profound seriousness.
Because of its necessary involvement in the movement of Western history, and on account of the unavoidable critique of prior valuations, the new valuation is necessarily a revaluation of all values. Hence the subtitle, which in the final phase of Nietzsche's philosophy becomes the main title, designates the general character of the countermove- ment to nihilism within nihilism. No historical movement can leap outside of history and start from scratch. It becomes all the more historical, which is to say, it grounds history all the more originally, as it overcomes radically what has gone before by creating a new order in that realm where we have our roots. Now, the overwhelming experience derived from the history of nihilism is that all valuations remain with- out force if the corresponding basic attitude of valuing and the corre- sponding manner of thinking do not accompany them.
Every valuation in the essential sense must not only bring its pos- sibilities to bear in order to be "understood" at all, it must at the same time develop a breed of men who can bring a new attitude to the nevy valuation, in order that they may bear it into the future. New require- ments and prerequisites must be bred. And this process consumes, as it were, most of the time that is allotted to nations as their history. Great ages, because they are great, are in terms of frequency quite rare and of endurance very brief, just as the most momentous times for individual men often consist of a single moment. A new valuation itself
28 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
implies the creation and inculcation of requirements and demands that conform to the new values. For that reason the work is to find its conclusion in the fourth book, "Discipline and Breeding. "
At the same time, however, it is a basic experience gained from the history of valuations that even the positing of the uppermost values does not take place at a single stroke, that eternal truth never blazes in the heavens overnight, and that no people in history has had its truth fall into its lap. Those who posit the uppermost values, the creators, the new philosophers at the forefront, must according to Nietzsche be experimenters; they must tread paths and break trails in the knowledge that they do not have the truth. But from such knowledge it does not at all follow that they have to view their concepts as mere betting chips that can be exchanged at any time for any currency. What does follow is just the opposite: the solidity and binding quality of thought must undergo a grounding in the things themselves in a way that prior philosophy does not know. Only in this way is it possible for a basic position to assert itself over against others, so that the resultant strife will be actual strife and thus the actual origin of truth. * The new thinkers must attempt and tempt. That means they must put beings themselves to the test, tempt them with questions concerning their Being and truth. So, when Nietzsche writes in the subtitle to his work, "attempt" at a revaluation of all values, the turn of phrase is not meant to express modesty and to suggest that what follows is still incomplete; it does not mean an "essay" in the literary sense; rather, in an utterly clearminded way, it means the basic attitude of the new inquiry that grows out of the countermovement against nihilism. " - W e are con- ducting an experiment with truth! Perhaps mankind will perish because of it! Fine! " (XII, 410).
*The reference to strife and to the origin of truth is to "Der Ursprung des Kunst- werkes" ["The Origin of the Work of Art"]. See Martin Heidegger, Ho/zwege (Frank- furt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1950), pp. 37-38 ff. ; cf. the revised edition (Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1960), pp. 51-52 ff. Heidegger first reworked this essay during the autumn of 1936, which is to say, while the first Nietzsche course was in session. W e will hardly be surprised therefore to hear echoes of each in the other. For an English translation of the essay, see Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 17-87.
The Structure of the "Major Work" 29
We new philosophers, however, not only do we begin by presenting the actual gradations in rank and variations in value among men, but we also desire the very opposite of an assimilation, an equalizing: we teach estrange- ment in every sense, we tear open gaps such as never were, we want man to become more wicked than he ever was. Meanwhile, we ourselves live as strangers to one another, concealed from one another. It is necessary for many reasons that we be recluses and that we don masks-consequently, we shall do poorly in searching out our comrades. We shall live alone and probably come to know the torments of all seven solitudes. If perchance our paths should cross, you may wager that we will mistake one another or betray one another (WM, 988).
Nietzsche's procedure, his manner of thinking in the execution of the new valuation, is perpetual reversal. We will find opportunity enough to think through these reversals in a more detailed way. In order to clarify matters now we will bring forward only two examples. Schopenhauer interprets the essence of art as a "sedative for life," something that ameliorates the miseries and sufferings of life, that puts the will-whose compulsiveness makes existence miserable-out of commission. Nietzsche reverses this and says that art is the stimulans of life, something that excites and enhances life, "what eternally com- pels us to life, to eternal life" (XIV, 370). Stimulans is obviously the reverse of sedative.
A second example. To the question "What is truth? " Nietzsche answers, "Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides" (WM, 493). "'Truth': this, according to my way of thinking, does not neces- sarily denote the antithesis of error, but in the most fundamental cases only the position of various errors in relation to one another" (WM, 535). It would of course be utterly superficial to explain such state. - ments in the following way: Nietzsche takes everything that is an error to be true. Nietzsche's statement-truth is error, error truth-can be grasped only in terms of his fundamental position in opposition to all Western philosophy since Plato. If we have grasped this fact, then the statement already sounds less alien.
6 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Feasts require long and painstaking preparation. This semester we want to prepare ourselves for the feast, even if we do not make it as far as the celebration, even if we only catch a glimpse of the preliminary festivities at the feast of thinking-experiencing what meditative thought is and what it means to be at home in genuine questioning.
2. The Book, The Will to Power
The question as to what being is seeks the Being of beings. All Being is for Nietzsche a Becoming. Such Becoming, however, has the char- acter of action and the activity of willing. But in its essence will is will to power. That expression names what Nietzsche thinks when he asks the guiding question of philosophy. And for that reason the name obtrudes as the title for his planned magnum opus, which, as we know, was not brought to fruition. What lies before us today as a book with the title The Will to Power contains preliminary drafts and frag- mentary elaborations for that work. The outlined plan according to which these fragments are ordered, the division into four books, and the titles of those books also stem from Nietzsche himself.
At the outset we should mention briefly the most important aspects of Nietzsche's life, the origins of the plans and preliminary drafts, and the later publication of these materials after Nietzsche's death.
In a Protestant pastor's house in the year 1844 Nietzsche was born. As a student of classical philology in Leipzig in 1865 he came to know Schopenhauer's major work, The World as Will and Representation. During his last semester in Leipzig (1868-69), in November, he came into personal contact with Richard Wagner. Apart from the world of the Greeks, which remained decisive for the whole of Nietzsche's life, although in the last years of his wakeful thinking it had to yield som. e ground to the world of Rome, Schopenhauer and Wagner were the earliest intellectually determinative forces. In the spring of 1869, Nietz- sche, not yet twenty-five years of age and not yet finished with his doctoral studies, received an appointment at Basel as associate professor of classical philology. There he came into amicable contact with Jacob
8 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Burckhardt and with the Church historian Franz Overbeck. The ques- tion as to whether or not a real friendship evolved between Nietzsche and Burckhardt has a significance that exceeds the merely biographical sphere, but discussion of it does not belong here. He also met Bachofen,* but their dealings with one another never went beyond reserved collegiality. Ten years later, in 1879, Nietzsche resigned his professorship. Another ten years later, in January, 1889, he suffered a total mental collapse, and on August 25, 1900, he died.
During the Basel years Nietzsche's inner disengagement from Scho- penhauer and Wagner came to completion. But only in the years 1880 to 1883 did Nietzsche find himself, that is to say, find himself as a thinker: he found his fundamental position within the whole of beings, and thereby the determinative source of his thought. Between 1882 and 1885 the figure of "Zarathustra" swept over him like a storm. In those same years the plan for his main philosophical work originated. During the preparation of the planned work the preliminary sketches, plans, divisions, and the architectonic vision changed several times. No deci- sion was made in favor of any single alternative; nor did an image of the whole emerge that might project a definitive profile. In the last year before his collapse (I888) the initial plans were finally abandoned. A peculiar restlessness now possessed Nietzsche. He could no longer wait for the long gestation of a broadly conceived work which would be able to speak for itself, on its own, as a work. Nietzsche himself had to speak, he himself had to come forth and announce his basic position vis-a-vis the world, drawing the boundaries which were to prevent anyone's confusing that basic position with any other. Thus the smaller works originated: The Wagner Case, Nietzsche contra Wagner, TwJ1ight of
the Idols, Ecce Homo, and The Antichrist-which first appeared in 1890.
But Nietzsche's philosophy proper, the fundamental position on the basis of which he speaks in these and in all the writings he himself
*J. J. Bachofen (1815-1887), Swiss historian of law and religion, interested in myths and symbols in primitive folklore, today best known as the author of the classic work on matriarchy, Das Mutterrecht, published in 1861.
The Book, The Will to Power 9
published, did not assume a final form and was not itself published in any book, neither in the decade between 1879 and 1889 nor during the years preceding. What Nietzsche himself published during his creative life was always foreground. That is also true of his first treatise, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). His philosophy proper was left behind as posthumous, unpublished work.
In 1901, a year after Nietzsche's death, the first collection of his preliminary drafts for a magnum opus appeared. It was based on Nietzsche's plan dated March 17, 1887; in addition, the collection referred to notes in which Nietzsche himself arranged particular frag- ments into groups.
In the first and in later editions the particular fragments selected from the handwritten Nachlass were numbered sequentially. The first edition of The Will to Power included 483 selections.
It soon became clear that this edition was quite incomplete when compared to the available handwritten material. In 1906 a new and significantly expanded edition appeared, retaining the same plan. It included 1,067 selections, more than double the number in the first edition. The second edition appeared in 1911 as volumes XV and XVI of the Grossoktav edition of Nietzsche's works. But even these volumes did not contain the amassed material; whatever was not subsumed under the plan appeared as two Nachlass volumes, numbered XIII and XIV in the Collected Works.
Not long ago the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar undertook to publish a historical-critical complete edition of Nietzsche's works and letters in chronological order. It should become the ultimate, definitive edition. * It no longer separates the writings Nietzsche himself published and the Nachlass, as the earlier complete editions do, but collates for each period both published and unpublished materials. The extensive
*The Historisch-kritische Cesamtausgabe der Werke und Briefe (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1933-42), edited by a group of scholars including H. J. Mette, W. Hoppe, and K. Schlechta, under the direction of Carl August Emge, published fewer than a dozen of the many volumes of works and letters planned. For an account of the "principles" of the edition-with which Heidegger takes issue below-see the Foreword to the Nietzsche Cesamtausgabe, I, x-xv.
10 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
collection of letters, which thanks to new and rich finds is growing steadily, is also to be published in chronological sequence. The historical-critical complete edition, which has now begun, remains in its foundations ambiguous. First of all, as a historical-critical "complete edition" which brings out every single thing it can find, guided by the fundamental principle of completeness, it belongs among the undertakings of nineteenth-century publication. Second, by the manner of its biographical, psychological commentary and its similarly thorough research of all "data" on Nietzsche's "life," and of the views of his contemporaries as well, it is a product of the psychological- biological addiction of our times.
Only in the actual presentation of the authentic "Works" (1881-89) will this edition have an impact on the future, granted the editors succeed in their task. That task and its fulfillment are not a part of what we have just criticized; moreover, the task can be carried out without all that. But we can never succeed in arriving at Nietzsche's philosophy proper if we have not in our questioning conceived of Nietzsche as the end of Western metaphysics and proceeded to the entirely different question of the truth of Being.
The text recommended for this course is the edition of The Will to Power prepared by A. Baeumler for the Kroner pocket edition series. It is a faithful reprint of volumes XV and XVI of the Grossoktavaus- gabe, with a sensible Afterword and a good, brief outline of Nietzsche's life history. In addition, Baeumler has edited for the same series a volume entitled Nietzsche in His Letters and in Reports by Contempo- raries. For a first introduction the book is useful. For a knowledge of Nietzsche's biography the presentation by his sister, Elisabeth Forster- Nietzsche, The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (published between 1895 and 1904), remains important. As with all biographical works, however, use of this publication requires great caution.
W e will refrain from further suggestions and from discussion of the enormous and varied secondary literature surrounding Nietzsche, since none of it can aid the endeavor of this lecture course. Whoever does not have the courage and perseverance of thought required to become
The Book, The Will to Power II
involved in Nietzsche's own writings need not read anything about him either.
Citation of passages from Nietzsche's works will be by volume and page number of the Grossoktav edition. Passages from The Will to Power employed in the lecture course will not be cited by the page number of any particular edition but by the fragment number which is standard in all editions. These passages are for the most part not simple, incomplete fragments and fleeting observations; rather, they are carefully worked out "aphorisms," as Nietzsche's individual nota- tions are customarily called. But not every brief notation is automat- ically an aphorism, that is, an expression or saying which absolutely closes its borders to everything inessential and admits only what is essential. Nietzsche observes somewhere that it is his ambition to say in a brief aphorism what others in an entire book . . . do not say.
3. Plans and Preliminary Drafts of the "Main Structure"
Before we characterize more minutely the plan on which the presently available edition of The Will to Power is based, and before we indicate those passages with which our inquiry shall begin, let us introduce testimony from several of Nietzsche's letters. Such testimony sheds light on the origin of the preliminary drafts for the planned chief work and suggests the fundamental mood from which the work derives.
On April 7, 1884, Nietzsche writes to his friend Overbeck in Basel:
For the past few months I've been preoccupied with "world history," en- chanted by it, in spite of many hair-raising results. Did I ever show you Jacob Burckhardt's letter, the one which led me by the nose to "world history"? If I get to Sils Maria this summer I want to undertake a revision of my metaphysica and my epistemological views. Now I must work through a whole series of disciplines step by step, for I am resolved to devote the next five years to the construction of my "philosophy," for which I have in my Zarathustra constructed a vestibule.
We should take this opportunity to observe that the common as- sumption that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra was to present his philosophy in poetic form, and that, since Zarathustra did not achieve this goal, Nietzsche wanted to transcribe his philosophy into prose for purposes of greater intelligibility, is an error. The planned major work,
The WJ11 to Power, is in truth as much a poetic work as Zarathustra is a work of thought. The relationship between the two works remains one of vestibule and main structure. Nevertheless, between 1882 and 1888 several essential steps were taken which remain wholly concealed
Plans and Preliminary Drafts l3
in prior collections of the Nachlass fragments, such concealment pre- venting a glimpse into the essential structure of Nietzsche's metaphy- sics.
In mid-June, 1884, Nietzsche writes to his sister:
So, the scaffolding for the main structure ought to be erected this summer; or, to put it differently, during the next few months I want to draw up the schema for my philosophy and my plan for the next six years. May my health hold out for this purpose! *
From Sils Maria on September 2, 1884, to his friend and assistant Peter Cast:
In addition, I have completely finished the major task I set myself for this summer-the next six years belong to the elaboration of a schema in which I have outlined my "philosophy. " The prospects for this look good and promising. Meanwhile, Zarathustra retains only its entirely personal mean- ing, being my "book of edification and consolation"--otherwise, for Every- man, it is obscure and riddlesome and ridiculous.
To Overbeck, July 2, 1885:
I have dictated for two or three hours practically every day, but my "philos- ophy"-if I have the right to call it by the name of something that has maltreated me down to the very roots of my being-is no longer communi- cable, at least not in print.
Here doubts about the possibility of a presentation of his philosophy
*According to Karl Schlechta's "Philologischer Nachbericht," in Friedrich Nietzsche Werke in drei Biinden (Munich: C. Hanser, 6th ed. , 1969), III, 1411, 1417, and 1420-22, this letter, number 379 in the edition by Frau Fiirster-Nietzsche, is a forgery. More
specifically, it appears that Nietzsche's sister altered the addressee (the letter was sent not to her but to Malwida von Meysenbug) and enlarged upon the original contents of the letter. Because she managed to destroy all but a fragment of the original, it is virtually impossible to determine whether or not the words Heidegger cites are Nietzsche's. Nevertheless, the fragment does contain the following lines, relevant to the present issue: " . . . nachdem ich mir diese V orhalle meiner Philosophie gebaut habe, muss ich die Hand wieder anlegen und nicht miide werden, his auch der Haupt-Bau fertig vor mir steht. " In translation: ". . . now that I have built this vestibule for my philosophy, I must get busy once again and not grow weary until the main structure too stands finished before me. "
14 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
in book form are already stirring. But a year later Nietzsche is again confident.
To his mother and sister, September 2, 1886:
For the next four years the creation of a four-volume magnum opus is proposed. The very title is fearsome: "The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. " For it I have everything that is necessary, health, solitude, good mood, and maybe a wife. *
With this mention of his major work Nietzsche refers to the fact that on the cover of the book that had appeared during that year, Beyond Good and Evil, a work with the above-mentioned title was cited as the volume to appear next. In addition, Nietzsche writes in his Toward a Genealogy of Morals, which appeared in 1887 (See Division Three, no. 27):
. . . with respect to which [i. e. , the question of the meaning of the ascetic ideal] I refer to a work I am now preparing: The Will to Power, Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values.
Nietzsche himself emphasized the title of his planned work by means of special, heavy print.
To Peter Cast, September 15, 1887:
I vacillated, to be honest, between Venice and-Leipzig: the latter for learned purposes, since in reference to the major pensum of my life, which is presently to be resolved, I still have much to learn, to question, and to read. But for that I would need, not an "autumn," but an entire winter in Germany: and, all things considered, my health forcefully discourages such a dangerous experiment for this year. Therefore it has turned out to be a matter of Venice and Nice: -and also, as you yourself may judge to be true, I now need the profound isolation which in my case is even more compelling than further study and exploration into five thousand particular problems.
To Carl von Gersdorff, December 20, 1887:
In a significant sense my life stands right now at high noon: one door is closing, another opening. All I have done in the last few years has been a
*Schlechta (ibid. ) does not cite this letter as a forgery.
Plans and Preliminary Drafts 15
settling of accounts, a conclusion of negotiations, an adding up of things past; by now I have finished with men and things and have drawn a line under it all. Who and what remain for me, whither I must now go, toward the really most important matter of my existence (a transition to which I have been condemned), are now capital questions. For, between you and me, the tension in which I live, the pressure of a great task and passion, is now too great for me to allow still more people to approach me. The desert that surrounds me is vast indeed. I really can bear only complete strangers or passers-by, or, on the other hand, people who have been a part of me for a long time, even from childhood. Everyone else has drifted away or has been repulsed (there was much violence and much pain in that-).
Here it is no longer simply the matter of a magnum opus. Here already are early signs of the last year of his thinking, the year in which everything about him radiates an excessive brilliance and in which therefore at the same time a terrible boundlessness advances out of the distance. In that year, 1888, the plan of the work changes altogether. When madness overwhelms Nietzsche in the first days of January, 1889, he writes to the composer Peter Cast, as a final word to his friend and helper, a postcard dated January 4 with the following contents:
To my maestro Pietro. Sing me a new song: the world is transfigured and all the heavens rejoice. The Crucified.
Although Nietzsche expresses in them what is most interior, these few pieces of evidence can for us at first be only an extrinsic indication of the fundamental mood in which the planning of the work and its preliminary casting moved. But at the same time we need to refer to the plans themselves and to their transformation; and even that can occur at first only from the outside. The plans and proposals are published in volume XVI, pages 413-67.
Three fundamental positions can be distinguished in the sequen~e of proposals: the first extends chronologically from 1882 to 1883 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra); the second from 1885 to 1887 (Beyond Good and Evil, Toward a Genealogy of Morals); the third embraces the years 1887 and 1888 (Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, The Antichrist). But these are not stages of development. Neither can the three funda-
16 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
mental positions be distinguished according to their scope: each is concerned with the whole of philosophy and in each one the other two are implied, although in each case the inner configuration and the location of the center which determines the form vary. And it was nothing else than the question of the center that genuinely "mal- treated" Nietzsche. Of course, it was not the extrinsic question of finding a suitable connection or link among the handwritten materials available; it was, without Nietzsche's coming to know of it or stumbling across it, the question of philosophy's self-grounding. It concerns the fact that, whaiever philosophy is, and however it may exist at any given time, it defines itself solely on its own terms; but also that such self- determination is possible only inasmuch as philosophy always has al- ready grounded itself. Its proper essence turns ever toward itself, and the more original a philosophy is, the more purely it soars in turning about itself, and therefore the farther the circumference of its circle presses outward to the brink of nothingness.
Now, when closely examined, each of the three fundamental posi- tions may be identified by a predominant title. It is no accident that the two titles displaced in each case by the main title recur under that title.
The first fundamental position derives its character from the main title, "Philosophy of Eternal Return," with the subtitle "An Attempt at the Revaluation of All Values" (XVI, 415). A plan pertaining to this title (p. 414) contains as its crowning, concluding chapter (the fifth) "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " Thus we see that the thought of power, which always means will to power, extends through the whole simultaneously from top to bottom.
The second fundamental position is marked by the title "The Will to Power," with the subtitle "Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. " A plan pertaining to this title (p. 424, number 7) contains as the fourth part of the work "The Eternal Return. "
The third fundamental position transposes what was only the subtitle of the two previous positions to the main title (p. 435), "Revaluation of All Values. " The plans pertaining to this title contain as their fourth
Plans and Preliminary Drafts 17
part the "Philosophy of Eternal Return," and they propose another part, concerning the "yes-sayers," whose place within the whole was not fixed. Eternal Recurrence, Will to Power, Revaluation: these are the three guiding phrases under which the totality of the planned major
work stands, the configuration in each case differing. *
Now, if we do not thoughtfully formulate our inquiry in such a way that it is capable of grasping in a unified way the doctrines of the eternal return of the same and will to power, and these two doctrines in their most intrinsic coherence as revaluation, and if we do not go on to comprehend this fundamental formulation as one which is also neces- sary in the course of Western metaphysics, then we will never grasp Nietzsche's philosophy. And we will comprehend nothing of the twen- tieth century and of the centuries to come, nothing of our own meta-
physical task.
*An examination of CM VIII, I, 2, and 3 reveals that the selection of plans provided as an appendix to the GOA, the edition Heidegger employed, oversimplified the matter of the organization of the Nachlass. Yet Heidegger's analysis of the changing stratifica- tion of eternal recurrence, will to power, and revaluation in Nietzsche's plans still seems tenable.
4. The Unity of Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and Revaluation
The doctrine of the eternal return of the same coheres in the most intimate way with that of will to power. The unity of these teachings may be seen historically as the revaluation of all values hitherto.
But to what extent do the doctrines of the eternal return of the same and will to power belong essentially together? This question must animate us more thoroughly, indeed as the decisive one. For the present, therefore, we offer a merely provisional answer.
The expression "will to power" designates the basic character of beings; any being which is, insofar as it is, is will to power. The expression stipulates the character that beings have as beings. But that is not at all an answer to the first question of philosophy, its proper question; rather, it answers only the final preliminary question. For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest? " or "How may the Being of beings be characterized? " but "What is this 'Being' itself? " The decisive question is that of "the meaning of Being," not merely that of the Being of beings. "Meaning" is thereby clearly delineated concep- tually as that from which and on the grounds of which Being in general can become manifest as such and can come into truth. What is prof- fered today as ontology has nothing to do with the question of Being proper; it is a very learned and very astute analysis of transmitted concepts which plays them off, one against the other.
The Unity of Will to Power 19
What is will to power itself, and how is it?
Answer: the eternal recurrence of the same.
Is it an accident that the latter teaching recurs continually in decisive passages throughout all plans for the philosophical main work? What can it mean when in one plan, which bears the unadorned title "Eternal Return" (XVI, 414), Nietzsche lists the first part under the title "The most difficult thought"? To be sure, the question of Being is the most difficult thought of philosophy, because it is simultaneously its inner- most and uttermost thought, the one with which it stands and falls.
We heard that the fundamental character of beings is will to power, willing, and thus Becoming. Nevertheless, Nietzsche does not cling to such a position-although that is usually what we are thinking when we associate him with Heraclitus. Much to the contrary, in a passage purposely and expressly formulated to provide an encompassing over- view (WM, 617), Nietzsche says the following: "Recapitulation: To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power. " This suggests that Becoming only is if it is grounded in Being as Being: "That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of Becoming to one of Being: peak of the meditation. "* With his doctrine of eternal return Nietzsche in his way thinks nothing else than the thought that pervades the whole of Western philosophy, a thought that remains concealed but is its genuine driving force.
Nietzsche thinks the thought in such a way that in his metaphysics he reverts to the beginnings of Western philosophy. More precisely, he reverts to that beginning which Western philosophy became accustomed to seeing in the course of its history. Nietzsche shared in
* Heidegger often cites the "Recapitulation" aphorism during the Nietzsche lectures and essays. See, for example, Nl, 466 and 656; Nil, 288, 327, and 339. He employs it also for instance in "The Anaximander Fragment," the first chapter of Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, tr. D. F. Krell and F. A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 22. Yet it was not Nietzsche but Peter Cast (Heinrich Koselitz) who supplied the title of the aphorism: see Walter Kaufmann's note in his edition of The Will to Power, p. 330, and cf. CM VIII, I, p. 320, which does not print the title. Furthermore, WM, 617 is a note the entire context and contents of which must be carefully examined. The problem will be discussed in the Analysis of volume Ill in the present series.
20 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
such habituation in spite of his otherwise original grasp of pre-Socratic philosophy.
In the popular view, and according to the common notion, Nietzsche is the revolutionary figure who negated, destroyed, and prophesied. To be sure, all that belongs to the image we have of him. Nor is it merely a role that he played, but an innermost necessity of his time. But what is essential in the revolutionary is not that he overturns as such; it is rather that in overturning he brings to light what is decisive and essen- tial. In philosophy that happens always when those few momentous questions are raised. When he thinks "the most difficult thought" at the "peak of the meditation," Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. What does that mean, taken quite broadly and essentially? Eternity, not as a static "now," nor as a sequence of "nows" rolling off into the infinite, but as the "now" that bends back into itself: what is that if not the concealed essence of Time? Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return, thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time. Nietzsche thinks that thought but does not think it as the question of Being and Time. Plato and Aristotle also think that thought when they conceive Being as ousia (presence), but just as little as Nietzsche do they think it as a question.
If we do ask the question, we do not mean to suggest that we are cleverer than both Nietzsche and Western philosophy, which Nietz- sche "only" thinks to its end. W e know that the most difficult thought of philosophy has only become more difficult, that the peak of the meditation has not yet been conquered and perhaps not yet even discovered at all.
If we bring Nietzsche's "will to power," that is, his question concern- ing the Being of beings, into the perspective of the question concerning "Being and Time," that does not at all mean that Nietzsche's work is to be related to a book entitled Being and Time and that it is to be measured and interpreted according to the contents of that book. Being and Time can be evaluated only by the extent to which it is equal or unequal to the question it raises. There is no standard other than the question itself; only the question, not the book, is essential. Further-
The Unity of Will to Power 21
more, the book merely leads us to the threshold of the question, not yet into the question itself.
Whoever neglects to think the thought of eternal recurrence to- gether with will to power, as what is to be thought genuinely and philosophically, cannot adequately grasp the metaphysical content of the doctrine of will to power in its full scope. Nevertheless, the connec- tion between eternal recurrence as the supreme determination of Being and will to power as the basic character of all beings does not lie in the palm of our hand. For that reason Nietzsche speaks of the "most difficult thought" and the "peak of the meditation. " It is nonetheless true that the current interpretation of Nietzsche does away with the properly philosophical significance of the doctrine of eternal recur- rence and thus irremediably precludes a fertile conception of Nietz- sche's metaphysics. We will introduce two examples, each quite inde- pendent of the other, of such a treatment of the doctrine of eternal return in Nietzsche's philosophy: Alfred Baeumler, Nietzsche: Philoso- pher and Politician (I 931 ), and Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: Introduction
to an Understanding of His Philosophizing (I936). * The negative position taken by each author with respect to the doctrine of eternal recurrence-and for us that means the misinterpretation by each-varies in kind and has different grounds.
Baeumler portrays what Nietzche calls the most difficult thought and the peak of the meditation as an entirely personal, "religious" conviction of Nietzsche's. He says, "Only one can be valid: either the doctrine of eternal return or the doctrine of will to power" (p. 80). He tries to ground this either-or by the following argument: will to power is Becoming; Being is grasped as Becoming; that is the ancient doctrine of Heraclitus on the flux of things and it is also Nietzsche's genuine teaching. His thought of eternal recurrence has to deny the unlimited flux of Becoming. The thought introduces a contradiction into
*Alfred Baeumler, Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker (Leipzig: P. Reclam, 1931), and Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche. Einfiihrung in das Verstiindnis seines Philosophierens (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1936). Both books are discussed in the Analysis (section II) at the end of this volume. The analyses to the later volumes of the present series will treat Baeumler more thoroughly.
22 TilE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche's metaphysics. Therefore, either the doctrine of will to power or that of eternal recurrence, only one of them, can define Nietzsche's philosophy. Baeumler writes, "In truth, seen from the point of view of Nietzsche's system, this thought is without impor- tance. " And on page 82 he opines, "Now, Nietzsche, who is a founder of religion, also accomplishes an Egyptification of the Heraclitean world. " According to Baeumler's account, the doctrine of eternal recurrence implies bringing Becoming to a standstill. With his either- or, Baeumler presupposes that Heraclitus teaches the eternal flux of things, in the sense of the ever-ongoing. For some time now we have known that this conception of Heraclitus' doctrine is utterly foreign to the Greek. Just as questionable as the interpretation of Heraclitus, however, is whether Nietzsche's will to power should automatically be taken as Becoming in the sense of the onward-flowing. In the end, such a concept of Becoming is so superficial that we had better not be too quick to ascribe it to Nietzsche. The immediate result of our consider- ations so far is that there is not necessarily a contradiction between the two statements "Being is Becoming" and "Becoming is Being. " Pre- cisely that is Heraclitus' teaching. But assuming that there is a contra- diction between the doctrines of will to power and eternal recurrence, we have known since Hegel's day that a contradiction is not necessarily
proof against the truth of a metaphysical statement, but may be proof for it. If therefore eternal recurrence and will to power contradict one another, perhaps the contradiction is precisely the demand to think this most difficult thought, instead of fleeing into the "religious. " But even if we concede that here we have a contradiction which cannot be transcended and which compels us to decide in favor of either will to power or eternal recurrence, why does Baeumler then decide against Nietzsche's most difficult thought, the peak of his meditation, and for will to power? The answer is simple: Baeumler's reflections on the relationship between the two doctrines do not press toward the realm of actual inquiry from either side. Rather, the doctrine of eternal recurrence, where he fears "Egypticism," militates against his concep- tion of will to power, which, in spite of the talk about metaphysics, Baeumler does not grasp metaphysically but interprets politically.
The Unity of Will to Power 23
Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence conflicts with Baeumler's conception of politics. It is therefore "without importance" for Nietz- sche's system. This interpretation of Nietzsche is all the more remark- able since Baeumler belongs among those few commentators who re- ject Klages' psychological-biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. *
The second conception of Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return is that of Karl Jaspers. True, Jaspers discusses Nietzsche's teaching in greater detail and discerns that here we are in the presence of one of Nietzsche's decisive thoughts. In spite of the talk about Being, how- ever, Jaspers does not bring the thought into the realm of the ground- ing question of Western philosophy and thereby also into actual connection with the doctrine of will to power. For Baeumler the doc- trine of eternal recurrence cannot be united with the political interpre- tation of Nietzsche; for Jaspers it is not possible to take it as a question of great import, because, according to Jaspers, there is no conceptual truth or conceptual knowledge in philosophy.
But if in contrast to all this the doctrine of eternal recurrence is seen to coincide with the very center of Nietzsche's metaphysical thinking, is it not misleading, or at least one-sided, to collate all the preliminary sketches for a philosophical magnum opus under the plan that takes as its definitive title "Will to Power"?
That the editors selected the middle one of the three basic positions in the plans testifies to their considerable understanding. For Nietzsche himself first of all had to make a decisive effort to visualize the basic character of will to power throughout beings as a whole. Yet this was never for him the ultimate step. Rather, if Nietzsche was the thinker we are convinced he was, then the demonstration of will to power would always have to revolve about the thought of the Being of beings, which for Nietzsche meant the eternal recurrence of the same.
*Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) developed as his life's work a "biocentric metaphysics" which was to clarify once and for all the problem of the body-soul-mind relationship. His major work is the three-volume Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele (1929-32); the work Heidegger refers to here is Die psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches (1926). Cf. section 17, below, and section II of the Analysis. For a critical edition of Klages' writings see Ludwig Klages, Siimtliche Werke (Bonn: Bouvier, 1964 H. ).
24 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
But even if we grant the fact that this edition of the preliminary sketches for the major work, dominated by the theme of will to power, is the best edition possible, the book that lies before us is still some- thing supplementary. Nobody knows what would have become of these preliminary sketches had Nietzsche himself been able to transform them into the main work he was planning. Nevertheless, what is avail- able to us today is so essential and rich, and even from Nietzsche's point of view so definitive, that the prerequisites are granted for what alone is important: actually to think Nietzsche's genuine philosophical thought. W e are all the more liable to succeed in this endeavor the less we restrict ourselves to the sequence of particular fragments as they lie before us, collected and subsumed into book form. For such ordering of particular fragments and aphorisms within the schema of divisions, a schema which does stem from Nietzsche himself, is arbitrary and inessential. What we must do is think through particular fragments, guided by the movement of thought which occurs when we ask the genuine questions. Therefore, measured against the order established by the text before us, we will jump about within various particular divisions. Here too an arbitrariness, within certain limits, is unavoid- able. Still, in all this what remains decisive is to hear Nietzsche himself; to inquire with him and through him and therefore at the same time against him, but for the one single innermost matter that is common to Western philosophy. We can undertake such a task only if we limit its scope. But the important thing is to know where these limits are to be set. Such limitation does not preclude but expects and demands that in time, with the help of the book The Will to Power, you will work through whatever is not explicitly treated in the lectures, in the spirit and manner of our procedure here.
5. The Structure of the "Major Work. " Nietzsche's Manner of Thinking as Reversal
Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position may be defined by two state- ments. First, the basic character of beings as such is "will to power. " Second, Being is "eternal recurrence of the same. " When we think through Nietzsche's philosophy in a questioning way, along the guide- lines of those two statements, we advance beyond the basic positions of Nietzsche and of philosophy prior to him. But such advance only allows us to come back to Nietzsche. The return is to occur by means of an interpretation of "The Will to Power. "
The plan upon which the published edition is based, a plan Nietz- sche himself sketched and even dated (March 17, 1887), takes the following form (XVI, 421):
THE WILL TO POWER Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values
Book 1: European Nihili'sm.
Book II: Critique of the Highest Values. Book III: Principle of a New Valuation. Book IV: Discipline and Breeding.
Our inquiry proceeds immediately to the third book and restricts itself to that one. The very title, "Principle of a New Valuation," suggests that here a laying of grounds and an erection of structures are to be brought to language.
Accordingly, in Nietzsche's view, philosophy is a matter of valuation,
26 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
that is, establishment of the uppermost value in terms of which and according to which all beings are to be. The uppermost value is the one that must be fundamental for all beings insofar as they are beings. A "new" valuation would therefore posit another value, in opposition to the old, decrepit one, which should be determinative for the future. For that reason a critique of the highest values hitherto is advanced before- hand, in Book II. The values in question are religion, specifically, the Christian religion, morality, and philosophy. Nietzsche's manner of speaking and writing here is often imprecise and misleading: religion, morality, and philosophy are not themselves the supreme values, but basic ways of establishing and imposing such values. Only for that reason can they themselves, mediately, be posited and taken as "highest values. "
The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established. Critique of the highest values hith- erto therefore properly means illumination of the dubious origins of the valuations that yield them, and thereby demonstration of the question- ableness of these values themselves. Prior to this critique, which is offered in Book II, the first book advances an account of European nihilism. Thus the work is to begin with a comprehensive presentation of the basic development of Western history, which Nietzsche recog- nizes in its range and intensity here for the first time: the development of nihilism. In Nietzsche's view nihilism is not a Weltanschauung that occurs at some time and place or another; it is rather the basic character of what happens in Occidental history. Nihilism is at work even-and especially-there where it is not advocated as doctrine or demand, there where ostensibly its opposite prevails. Nihilism means that the uppermost values devalue themselves. This means that whatever realities and laws set the standard in Christendom, in morality since Hellenistic times, and in philosophy since Plato, lose their binding force, and for Nietzsche that always means creative force. In his view nihilism is never merely a development of his own times; nor does it pertain only to the nineteenth century. Nihilism begins in the pre-
The Structure of the "Major Work" 27
Christian era and it does not cease with the twentieth century. As a historical process it will occupy the centuries immediately ahead of us, even and especially when countermeasures are introduced. But neither is nihilism for Nietzsche mere collapse, valuelessness, and destruction. Rather, it is a basic mode of historical movement that does not exclude, but even requires and furthers, for long stretches of time, a certain creative upswing. "Corruption," "physiological degeneration," and such are not causes of nihilism but effects. Nihilism therefore cannot be overcome by the extirpation of those conditions. On the contrary, an overcoming of nihilism would merely be delayed by countermea- sures directed toward alleviation of its harmful side effects. In order to grasp what Nietzsche designates in the word "nihilism" we need pro- found insight and even more profound seriousness.
Because of its necessary involvement in the movement of Western history, and on account of the unavoidable critique of prior valuations, the new valuation is necessarily a revaluation of all values. Hence the subtitle, which in the final phase of Nietzsche's philosophy becomes the main title, designates the general character of the countermove- ment to nihilism within nihilism. No historical movement can leap outside of history and start from scratch. It becomes all the more historical, which is to say, it grounds history all the more originally, as it overcomes radically what has gone before by creating a new order in that realm where we have our roots. Now, the overwhelming experience derived from the history of nihilism is that all valuations remain with- out force if the corresponding basic attitude of valuing and the corre- sponding manner of thinking do not accompany them.
Every valuation in the essential sense must not only bring its pos- sibilities to bear in order to be "understood" at all, it must at the same time develop a breed of men who can bring a new attitude to the nevy valuation, in order that they may bear it into the future. New require- ments and prerequisites must be bred. And this process consumes, as it were, most of the time that is allotted to nations as their history. Great ages, because they are great, are in terms of frequency quite rare and of endurance very brief, just as the most momentous times for individual men often consist of a single moment. A new valuation itself
28 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
implies the creation and inculcation of requirements and demands that conform to the new values. For that reason the work is to find its conclusion in the fourth book, "Discipline and Breeding. "
At the same time, however, it is a basic experience gained from the history of valuations that even the positing of the uppermost values does not take place at a single stroke, that eternal truth never blazes in the heavens overnight, and that no people in history has had its truth fall into its lap. Those who posit the uppermost values, the creators, the new philosophers at the forefront, must according to Nietzsche be experimenters; they must tread paths and break trails in the knowledge that they do not have the truth. But from such knowledge it does not at all follow that they have to view their concepts as mere betting chips that can be exchanged at any time for any currency. What does follow is just the opposite: the solidity and binding quality of thought must undergo a grounding in the things themselves in a way that prior philosophy does not know. Only in this way is it possible for a basic position to assert itself over against others, so that the resultant strife will be actual strife and thus the actual origin of truth. * The new thinkers must attempt and tempt. That means they must put beings themselves to the test, tempt them with questions concerning their Being and truth. So, when Nietzsche writes in the subtitle to his work, "attempt" at a revaluation of all values, the turn of phrase is not meant to express modesty and to suggest that what follows is still incomplete; it does not mean an "essay" in the literary sense; rather, in an utterly clearminded way, it means the basic attitude of the new inquiry that grows out of the countermovement against nihilism. " - W e are con- ducting an experiment with truth! Perhaps mankind will perish because of it! Fine! " (XII, 410).
*The reference to strife and to the origin of truth is to "Der Ursprung des Kunst- werkes" ["The Origin of the Work of Art"]. See Martin Heidegger, Ho/zwege (Frank- furt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1950), pp. 37-38 ff. ; cf. the revised edition (Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1960), pp. 51-52 ff. Heidegger first reworked this essay during the autumn of 1936, which is to say, while the first Nietzsche course was in session. W e will hardly be surprised therefore to hear echoes of each in the other. For an English translation of the essay, see Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 17-87.
The Structure of the "Major Work" 29
We new philosophers, however, not only do we begin by presenting the actual gradations in rank and variations in value among men, but we also desire the very opposite of an assimilation, an equalizing: we teach estrange- ment in every sense, we tear open gaps such as never were, we want man to become more wicked than he ever was. Meanwhile, we ourselves live as strangers to one another, concealed from one another. It is necessary for many reasons that we be recluses and that we don masks-consequently, we shall do poorly in searching out our comrades. We shall live alone and probably come to know the torments of all seven solitudes. If perchance our paths should cross, you may wager that we will mistake one another or betray one another (WM, 988).
Nietzsche's procedure, his manner of thinking in the execution of the new valuation, is perpetual reversal. We will find opportunity enough to think through these reversals in a more detailed way. In order to clarify matters now we will bring forward only two examples. Schopenhauer interprets the essence of art as a "sedative for life," something that ameliorates the miseries and sufferings of life, that puts the will-whose compulsiveness makes existence miserable-out of commission. Nietzsche reverses this and says that art is the stimulans of life, something that excites and enhances life, "what eternally com- pels us to life, to eternal life" (XIV, 370). Stimulans is obviously the reverse of sedative.
A second example. To the question "What is truth? " Nietzsche answers, "Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides" (WM, 493). "'Truth': this, according to my way of thinking, does not neces- sarily denote the antithesis of error, but in the most fundamental cases only the position of various errors in relation to one another" (WM, 535). It would of course be utterly superficial to explain such state. - ments in the following way: Nietzsche takes everything that is an error to be true. Nietzsche's statement-truth is error, error truth-can be grasped only in terms of his fundamental position in opposition to all Western philosophy since Plato. If we have grasped this fact, then the statement already sounds less alien.
