Here we cannot
demonstrate
this matter in any detail.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
" To treat this question as stated and posed is simply to look for an answer.
To develop the question as it is formulated, however, is to pose the question more essentially: in asking the question one enters explicitly into those relationships that become visible when one assimi- lates virtually everything that comes to pass in the very asking of the question.
When we treat the guiding question we are transposed forth- with to a search for an answer and to everything that has to be done on behalf of that search.
Developing the guiding question is something essentially different-it is a more original form of inquiry, one which does not crave an answer.
It takes the search for an answer far more seriously and rigorously than any straightforward treatment of the guid- ing question can-given the particular stance such treatment has adopted.
An answer is no more than the final step of the very asking; and an answer that bids adieu to the inquiry annihilates itself as an answer.
It can ground nothing like knowledge.
It rests content with the
The Essence ofa Fundamental Metaphysical Position 193
sheer opinions it traces and in which it has ensconced itself. A ques- tion-especially a question that involves being as a whole-can be appropriately answered only if it is adequately posed in the first place. The guiding question of philosophy is adequately posed only when it is developed. Here the development assumes such proportions that it transforms the very question, bringing to light the guiding question as such in its utter lack of originality. For that reason we call the question "What is being? " the guiding question, in contrast to the more original question which sustains and directs the guiding question. The more original question we call the grounding question.
Whenever we present the development of the guiding question "schematically," as we are now doing, we easily awaken the suspicion that here we are merely making inquiries concerning a question. To question questioning strikes sound common sense as rather un- wholesome, extravagant, perhaps even nonsensical. If it is a matter of wanting to get to beings themselves-and in the guiding question this is surely the case-then the inquiry into inquiry seems an aberration. In the end, such an attitude, asking about its asking, seems nothing short of noxious or self-lacerating; we might call it "egocentric" and "nihilistic" and all the other nasty names we so easily come by.
That the development of the guiding question appears to be merely inquiry piled on top of inquiry-this illusion persists. That an inquiry concerning inquiry ultimately looks like an aberration, a veritable walk down the garden path-this illusion too cannot be squelched. Con- fronting the danger that only a few or no one at all will be able to muster the courage and the energy required to think through and ex- amine thoroughly the development of the guiding question; and in the expectation that these few might stumble against something quite dif- ferent from a question that is posed merely for its own sake or a piec:;e of sheer extravagance, we shall here undertake to sketch briefly the articulation of the developed guiding question.
The question asks ti to on? What is being? We shall begin to expli- cate the question by following the direction the inquiry itself takes, gradually unraveling all the matters we come across.
What is being? What is meant is being as such, neither some par- ticular being nor a group of beings nor even all of them taken together,
194 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
but something essentially more: what is meant is the whole, being taken as a whoie from the outset, being taken as such unity. Outside of this one, this being, there is no other, unless it be the nothing. Yet the nothing is not some kind of being which is merely other. How matters stand with the nothing is not the question we are now to pursue. We only wish to keep in mind the full range of the area we are approaching when we ask the question "What is being, being as a whole, this unity that admits no other? " Let us then resolve not to forget in anything that follows what it was that rose to meet us in our first tentative step in the question concerning being, namely, the incontrovertible happenstance that we stumbled across the nothing.
Seen from the point of view of the question iself, that which the question is heading toward is the matter to be interrogated-we may call it the field of the question. Yet this field-being as a whole-is not staked out in our questioning merely so that we can take cognizance of its incalculable abundance; nor is it our intention merely to make being a familiar station on our way; rather, the question aims right from the start at being insofar as it is being. With regard to the field of interrogation, we are asking about something that is peculiar to it, something that is most its own. What name shall we give it? If we interrogate being solely with a view to the fact that it is being, interro- gate being as being, then with the question as to what being is we are aiming to discover what makes being a being. We are aiming to dis- cover the beingness of being-in Greek, the ousia of on. We are inter- rogating the Being of beings.
In the field of the question, in the very staking out of the field, the goal of the question is itself already established-what we are asking for in the matter interrogated, to wit, the Being of beings. Just as we collided against the nothing when we undertook to set the field of the question in relief, so here the staking out of the field and the establish- ment of the goal that is at stake condition one another reciprocally. And if we may say that the nothing looms at the border of this ques- tion, then, in accordance with the reciprocity of the field and the goal of the question, we may experience the proximity of the nothing also in the goal, that is, in the Being of beings; provided, of course, that we are actually inquiring, that our aim is true, that we are on target. To be
The Essence ofa Fundamental Metaphysical Position 195
sure, the nothing seems to be an utter nullity; it is as though we were doing it too great on honor when we call it by name. Yet this utterly common affair proves to be so uncommon that we can experience it only in unusual experiences. The meanness of the nothing consists precisely in the circumstance that it is capable of seducing us into thinking that our empty chatter-our calling the nothing an utter nul- lity-can really shunt the matter aside. * The nothing of being follows the Being of being as night follows day. When would we ever see and experience the day as day if there were no night! Thus the most durable and unfailing touchstone of genuineness and forcefulness of thought in a philosopher is the question as to whether or not he or she experiences in a direct and fundamental manner the nearness of the nothing in the Being of beings. Whoever fails to experience it remains forever outside the realm of philosophy, without hope of entry.
If inquiry were no more than what the superficial view often readily takes it to be; if it were simply a fleeting being-on-the-lookout for something, or a dispassionate scrutiny of an object of inquiry, or a passing hit-or-miss glance at a given goal; if inquiry were any of these things, then our unfolding of the question would already be at an end. And yet we have scarcely begun. We are seeking the Being of beings; we are trying to reach it. To that end we must approach being itself and bring it into our ken. Whatever is interrogated is questioned in a number of specific respects, never in an altogether general way, inas- much as the latter runs counter to the very essence of questioning. And so we come to what is asked for. The field is examined in a dual perspective, inasmuch as it is surveyed by a preliminary view toward the goal. The being as such is viewed with respect to what it is, what it looks like, hence with respect to its intrinsic composition. We may call this the constitution of the being. At the same time, a being that. is constituted in this or that fashion has its way to be-as such, being is either possible or actual or necessary. Thus the guiding question,
• When Heidegger refers to the nothing as "this utterly common affair" (dieses Ge- meinste), and when he invokes the "meanness" of the nothing (das Gemeine am Nichts), he adds a new dimension to Hegel's play on the words mein, meinen, Mei- nung, and Allgemeine, discussed on p. 100, above. Being as a whole is not the universal; its common border is with the nothing. And there is something insidious in the intimacy of being and the nothing.
196 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF' THE SAME
besides having its field and its goal, possesses above all its range of vision. Within that range it thinks beings as such according to a two- fold respect. Only in terms of both respects, as they are reciprocally related, can the Being of beings be defined.
When we first hear it, and even long afterwards, the guiding ques- tion "What is being? " sounds altogether indefinite; its universality ap- pears to be engaged in a contest with its haziness and impalpability. All highways and byways seem to be open to its fortuitous search. A re- examination and testing of the various steps involved in the question seems to be without prospect. Certainly-as long as one leaves the question undetermined! Yet our prior explications ought to have made it clear by now that this question possesses a very definite though pre- sumably very complex articulation, one which we have hardly fath- omed and are even less able to master. Of course, we would mistake this articulation from top to bottom if we were to wield it academically and technically in the form of a merely "scientific" formulation-if, for example, we expected to be able to test the steps involved in the question as though they resembled the directly graspable, calculable result of an "experiment. "
Our inquiry into the guiding question is separated from that kind of procedure by a veritable gulf. And being as a whole, itself the field of the question, can never be patched together out of isolated assortments of beings. All the same, the guiding question too in each case sustains an exceptional relationship with a particular region of beings within the field, a region that therefore assumes special importance. This fact has its grounds in the essence of inquiry itself, which, the more sweep- ing it is at the start, the more closely it wants to approach what it is interrogating, in order to survey it with an inquiring gaze. If it is ulti- mately the question concerning being that is involved here, the first thing we have to heed is the fact that being, in its constitution and its ways to be, discloses not only an articulated abundance but also a number of orders and stages which shed light on one another. Here it is by no means a matter of indifference which orders of being become definitive for the illumination of the others-whether, for instance, living beings are conceived in terms of lifeless ones, or the latter in terms of the former.
The Essence ofa Fundamental Metaphysical Position 197
Whatever the particular case, each time the guiding question is posed one region of beings becomes definitive for our survey of being as a whole. In each case the guiding question unfolds in itself some- thing that sets the standard. By this "setting the standard" we· under- stand the preeminence of an exceptional region within being as a whole. The remaining beings are not actually derived from that excep- tional region; yet that region provides the light that illumines them all.
26. Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position
In the foregoing we have attempted to portray Nietzsche's fundamental thought-the eternal return of the same-in its essential import, in its domain, and in the mode of thinking that is expressly proper to the thought itself, that is, the mode demanded by the thought as such. In that way we have laid the foundation for our own efforts to define Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position in Western philosophy. The effort to circumscribe Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical posi- tion indicates that we are examining his philosophy in terms of the position assigned it by the history of Western philosophy hitherto. At the same time, this means that we are expressly transposing Nietzsche's philosophy to that sole position in which it can and must unfold the forces of thought that are most proper to it, and this in the context of an inescapable confrontation with prior Western philosophy as a whole. The fact that in the course of our presentation of the doctrine of return we have actually come to recognize the region of thought that must necessarily and preeminently take precedence in every fruitful reading and appropriating of Nietzschean thought may well be an im- portant gain; yet when viewed in terms of the essential task, namely, the characterization of Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position, such a gain remains merely provisional.
We shall be able to define Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position in its principal traits if we ponder the response he gives to the question concerning the constitution of being and being's way to be. Now, we know that Nietzsche offers two answers with regard to being as a whole: being as a whole is will to power, and being as a whole is
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 199
eternal recurrence of the same. Yet philosophical interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy have up to now been unable to grasp these two simultaneous answers as answers, indeed as answers that necessarily cohere, because they have not recognized the questions to which these answers pertain; that is to say, prior interpretations have not explicitly developed those questions on the basis of a thoroughgoing articulation of the guiding question. If, on the contrary, we approach the matter in terms of the developed guiding question, it becomes apparent that the word "is" in these two major statements-being as a whole is will to power, and being as a whole is eternal recurrence of the same-in each case suggests something different. To say that being as a whole "is" will to power means that being as such possesses the constitution of that which Nietzsche defines as will to power. And to say that being as a whole "is" eternal recurrence of the same means that being as a whole is, as being, in the manner of eternal recurrence of the same. The determination "will to power" replies to the question of being with respect to the latter's constitution; the determination "eternal recur-
rence of the same" replies to the question of being with respect to its way to be. Yet constitution and manner of being do cohere as determi- nations of the beingness of beings.
Accordingly, in Nietzsche's philosophy will to power and eternal recurrence of the same belong together. It is thus right from the start a misunderstanding-better, an outright mistake-of metaphysical pro- portions when commentators try to play off will to power against eter- nal recurrence of the same, and especially when they exclude the latter altogether from metaphysical determinations of being. In truth, the coherence ofboth must be grasped. Such coherence is itself essentially defined on the basis of the coherence of constitution and way to be as reciprocally related moments of the beingness of beings. The constitu: tion of beings also specifies in each case their way to be-indeed, as their proper ground.
What fundamental metaphysical position does Nietzsche's philos- ophy assume for itself on the basis of its response to the guiding ques- tion within Western philosophy, that is to say, within metaphysics?
Nietzsche's philosophy is the end of metaphysics, inasmuch as it reverts to the very commencement of Greek thought, taking up such
200 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
thought in a way that is peculiar to Nietzsche's philosophy alone. In this way Nietzsche's philosophy closes the ring that is formed by the very course of inquiry into being as such and as a whole. Yet to what extent does Nietzsche's thinking revert to the commencement? When we raise this question we must be clear about one point at the very outset: Nietzsche by no means recovers the philosophy of the com- mencement in its pristine form. Rather, here it is purely a matter of the reemergence of the essential fundamental positions of the com- mencement in a transformed configuration, in such a way that these positions interlock.
What are the decisive fundamental positions of the commencement? In other words, what sorts of answers are given to the as yet un- developed guiding question, the question as to what being is?
The one answer-roughly speaking, it is the answer of Parmenides -tells us that being is. An odd sort of answer, no doubt, yet a very deep one, since that very response determines for the first time and for all thinkers to come, including Nietzsche, the meaning of is and Being -permanence and presence, that is, the eternal present.
The other answer-roughly speaking, that of Heraclitus-tells us that being becomes. The being is in being by virtue of its permanent becoming, its self-unfolding and eventual dissolution.
To what extent is Nietzsche's thinking the end? That is to say, how does it stretch back to both these fundamental determinations of being in such a way that they come to interlock? Precisely to the extent that Nietzsche argues that being is as fixated, as permanent; and that it is in perpetual creation and destruction. Yet being is both of these, not in an extrinsic way, as one beside another; rather, being is in its very ground perpetual creation (Becoming), while as creation it needs what is fixed. Creation needs what is fixed, first, in order to overcome it, and second, in order to have something that has yet to be fixated, something that enables the creative to advance beyond itself and be transfigured. The essence of being is Becoming, but what becomes is and has Being only in creative transfiguration. What is and what becomes are fused in the fundamental thought that what becomes is inasmuch as in creation it becomes being and is becoming. But such becoming-a-being becomes a being that comes-to-be, and does so in
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 201
the perpetual transformation of what has become firmly fixed and intractable to something made firm in a liberating transfiguration. *
Nietzsche once wrote, at the time when the thought of return first loomed on his horizon, during the years 1881-82 (XII, 66, number 124): "Let us imprint the emblem of eternity on our life! " The phrase means: let us introduce an eternalization to ourselves as beings, and hence to beings as a whole; let us introduce the transfiguration of what becomes as something that becomes being; and let us do this in such a way that the eternalization arises from being itself, originating for be- ing, standing in being.
This fundamental metaphysical demand-that is, a demand that grapples with the guiding question of metaphysics-is expressed several years later in a lengthy note entitled "Recapitulation," the title suggest- ing that the note in just a few sentences provides a resume of the most important aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. (See The Will to Power, number 617, presumably from early 1886. )t Nietzsche's "Recapit-
• The text is extraordinarily difficult to unravel: Dieses Seiendwerden aber wird zum werdenden Seienden im stiindigen Werden des Festgewordenen als eines Erstarrten zum Festgemachten als der befreienden Verkliirung. The oxymorons of this highly involuted sentence dramatize the inevitable petrifaction of Becoming in a metaphysics of Being. Only as permanence of presence can Becoming come to be. The wording of the sen- tence in Heidegger's original manuscript (1937) varies only slightly from the 1961 Neske text. Yet a series of energetic lines draws the word befreienden, "liberating," into the sentence, as though to break up all such petrifaction. For the liberating transfiguration of Becoming is what Heidegger elsewhere calls the most intrinsic will of Nietzschean think- ing.
t As the note on page 19 of Volume I of this series relates, Heidegger employs the "Recapitulation" note (WM, 617) at crucial junctures throughout his Nietzsche lectures. See, for example, Nl, 466 and 656; Nil, 288 and 339; and p. 228, below. Yet the title "Recapitulation" stems not from Nietzsche himself but from his assistant and later editor Heinrich Koselitz (Peter Cast). Furthermore, the sentences from this long note which Heidegger neglects to cite by no means corroborate the use he makes of it. The whole of Nietzsche's sketch (now dated between the end of 1886 and spring of 1887), as it appears in CM, Mp XVII 3b [54], reads as follows:
To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power.
Twofold falsification, one by the senses, the other by the mind, in order to preserve a world of being, of perdurance, of equivalence, etc.
That everything recurs is the closest approximation ofa world ofBecoming to one ofBeing: peak ofthe meditation.
202 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
ulation" begins with the statement: "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power. " The sense is not that one must brush aside and replace Becoming as the impermanent-for impermanence is what Becoming implies-with being as the permanent. The sense is that one must shape Becoming as being in such a way that as becoming it is preserved, has subsistence, in a word, is. Such stamping, that is, the recoining of Becoming as being, is the supreme will to power. In such recoining the will to power comes to prevail most purely in its essence.
What is this recoining, in which whatever becomes comes to be being? It is the reconfiguration of what becomes in terms of its su- preme possibilities, a reconfiguration in which what becomes is trans- figured and attains subsistence in its very dimensions and domains. This recoining is a creating. To create, in the sense of creation out
The condemnation of and dissatisfaction with whatever becomes derives from val- ues that are attributable to being: after such a world of Being had first been invented.
The metamorphoses of being (body, God, ideas, laws of nature, formulas, etc. )
"Being" as semblance; inversion of values: semblance was that which conferred value-
Knowledge itself impossible within Becoming; how then is knowledge possible? As error concerning itself, as will to power, as will to deception.
Becoming as invention volition self-denial, the overcoming of oneself: not a subject but a doing, establishing; creative, not "causes and effects. "
Art as the will to overcome Becoming, as "eternalization," but shortsighted, de- pending on perspective: repeating on a small scale, as it were, the tendency of the whole
What all life exhibits, to be observed as a reduced formula for the universal ten- dency: hence a new grip on the concept "life" as will to power
Instead of "cause and effect," the mutual struggle of things that become, often with the absorption of the opponent; the number of things in becoming not constant.
Inefficacy of the old ideals for interpreting the whole of occurrence, once one has recognized their animal origins and utility; all of them, furthermore, contradicting life.
Inefficacy of the mechanistic theory--gives the impression of meaninglessness.
The entire idealism of humanity hitherto is about to turn into nihilism-into belief in absolute worthlessness, that is to say, senselessness . . .
Annihilation of ideals, the new desert; the new arts, by means of which we can endure it, we amphibians.
Presupposition: bravery, patience, no "turning back," no hurrying forward
N. B. : Zarathustra, always parodying prior values, on the basis of his own abun- dance.
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 203
beyond oneself, is most intrinsically this: to stand in the moment of decision, in which what has prevailed hitherto, our endowment, is directed toward a projected task. When it is so directed, the endow- ment is preserved. The "momentary" character of creation is the es- sence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being-will to power in its su- preme configuration-is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal
recurrence ofthe same.
The aptness of our interpretation is demonstrated unequivocally in that very fragment which bears the title "Recapitulation. " After the statement we have already cited-"To stamp Becoming with the char- acter of Being-that is the supreme will to power''-we soon read the following sentence: "That everything recurs is the closest approxima-
tion ofa world ofBecoming to one ofBeing: peak ofthe meditation. "
It would scarcely be possible to say in a more lucid fashion, first, how and on what basis the stamping of Being on Becoming is meant to be understood, and second, that the thought of eternal return of the same, even and precisely during the period when the thought of will to power appears to attain preeminence, remains the thought which Nietzsche's philosophy thinks without cease.
(During our discussion of the plans for Nietzsche's magnum opus [see page 160, above], several students noted that whereas sketches for such plans from the final year of Nietzsche's creative life (1888) mention Dionysos in the titles of their projected fourth and final books, our lecture course up to now has said nothing about this god.
Nevertheless, we ought to pay close attention to the phrases that follow the god's name in these titles: "philosophy of eternal return," or simply "philosophos. "
Such phrases suggest that what the words Dionysos and Dionysian mean to Nietzsche will be heard and understood only if the "eternal return of the same" is thought. In turn, that which eternally recurs
204 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
as the same and in such wise is, that is, perpetually presences, has the ontological constitution of "will to power. " The mythic name Dionysos will become an epithet that has been thought through in the sense intended by Nietzsche the thinker only when we try to think the coherence of "will to power" and "eternal return of the same"; and that means, only when we seek those determinations of Being which from the outset of Greek thought guide all thinking about being as such and as a whole. [Two texts which appeared several years ago treat the matters of Dionysos and the Dionysian: Walter F. Otto, Dionysos: Myth and Cult, 1933; and Karl Rein- hardt, "Nietzsche's 'Plaint of Ariadne,'" in the journal Die Antike, 1935, published separately in 1936. ])*
Nietzsche conjoins in one both of the fundamental determinations of being that emerge from the commencement of Western philosophy, to wit, being as becoming and being as permanence. That "one" is his most essential thought-the eternal recurrence of the same.
Yet can we designate Nietzsche's way of grappling with the com- mencement of Western philosophy as an end? Is it not rather a reawak- ening of the commencement? Is it not therefore itself a commence- ment and hence the very opposite of an end? It is nonetheless the case that Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position is the end of West- ern philosophy. For what is decisive is not that the fundamental deter- minations of the commencement are conjoined and that Nietzsche's
• The paragraphs contained within parentheses appear as an indented extract in the Neske edition as they do here. Heidegger's original manuscript from the summer of 1937 does not show these paragraphs. Surprisingly, there is no extant Abschriftor typescript of this course; nor is the typescript that went to the printer in 1961 available for inspection. As a result, the date of the passage remains uncertain. My own surmise is that Heidegger added the note not long after the semester drew to a close: the reference to students' questions and to those two works on Dionysos that had "recently" been published make it highly unlikely that the note was added as late as 1960--61. The works Heidegger refers us to are of course still available-and are still very much worth reading: Walter F. Otto, Dionysos: Mythos und Kultus (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1933); Reinhardt's "Nietzsches Klage der Ariadne" appears now in Karl Reinhardt, Vermiichtnis der Antike: Gesamme/te Essays zur Philosophic und Geschichtsschreibung, edited by Carl Becker (Gottingen: Vandenhock & Ruprecht, 1960), pp. 310--33. See note 20 of the Analysis, p. 275, for further discussion of the Reinhardt article.
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 205
thinking stretches back to the commencement; what is metaphysically essential is the way in which these things transpire. The question is whether Nietzsche reverts to the incipient commencement, to the commencement as a commencing. And here our answer must be: no, he does not.
Neither Nietzsche nor any thinker prior to him--even and espe- cially not that one who before Nietzsche first thought the history of philosophy in a philosophical way, namely, Hegel-revert to the in- cipient commencement. Rather, they invariably apprehend the com- mencement in the sole light of a philosophy in decline from it, a philosophy that arrests the commencement-to wit, the philosophy of Plato.
Here we cannot demonstrate this matter in any detail. Nietzsche himself quite early characterizes his philosophy as inverted Platonism; yet the inversion does not eliminate the fundamentally Platonic posi- tion. Rather, precisely because it seems to eliminate the Platonic posi- tion, Nietzsche's inversion represents the entrenchment of that position.
What remains essential, however, is the following: when Nietzsche's metaphysical thinking reverts to the commencement, the circle closes. Yet inasmuch as it is the already terminated commencement and not the incipient one that prevails there, the circle itself grows inflexible, loses whatever of the commencement it once had. When the circle closes in this way it no longer releases any possibilities for essential inquiry into the guiding question. Metaphysics-treatment of the guid- ing question-is at an end. That seems a bootless, comfortless insight, a conclusion which like a dying tone signals ultimate cessation. Yet such is not the case.
Because Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position is the end of metaphysics in the designated sense, it performs the grandest and most profound gathering-that is, accomplishment-of all the essential fun·- damental positions in Western philosophy since Plato and in the light of Platonism. It does so from within a fundamental position that is determined by Platonism and yet which is itself creative. However, this fundamental position remains an actual, actuating fundamental meta- physical position only if it in turn is developed in all its essential forces and regions of dominion in the direction of its counterposition. For a
206 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
thinking that looks beyond it, Nietzsche's philosophy, which is inher- ently a turning against what lies behind it, must itself come to be a foward-looking counterposition. Yet since Nietzsche's fundamental po- sition in Western metaphysics constitutes the end of that metaphysics, it can be the counterposition for our other commencement only if the latter adopts a questioning stance vis-a-vis the initial commencement - a s one which in its proper originality is only now commencing. After everything we have said, the questioning intended here can only be the unfolding of a more original inquiry. Such questioning must be the unfolding of the prior, all-determining, and commanding question of philosophy, the guiding question, "What is being? " out of itself and out beyond itself.
Nietzsche himself once chose a phrase to designate what we are calling his fundamental metaphysical position, a phrase that is often cited and is readily taken as a way to characterize his philosophy: amor
fati, love of necessity. (See the Epilogue to Nietzsche contra Wagner; VIII, 206). * Yet the phrase expresses Nietzsche's fundamental
• The text Heidegger refers us to begins as follows:
I have often asked myself if I am not more profoundly indebted to the most difficult years of my life than to any of the others. What my innermost nature instructs me is that all necessity-viewed from the heights, in terms of an economy on a grand scale-is also what is inherently useful: one should not merely put up with it, one should love it. . . . Amor fati: that is my innermost nature.
Nietzsche repeats the formula twice in Ecce Homo (II, 10 and III, "Der Fall Wag-
ner," 4), the first time as the ultimate explanation of his "discernment":
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one does not will to have anything different, neither forward nor backward nor into all eternity. Not merely to bear necessity, though much less to cloak it-all Idealism is mendacity in the face of necessity-but to love it. . . .
Nietzsche had first cited the formula six years earlier, at the outset of Book IV of The Gay Science, as the very essence of affirmation: "I want to learn better how to see the necessity in things as what is beautiful-in that way I shall become one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let this be my love from now on! " And he had written to Franz Overbeck, also in 1882, that he was possessed of "a fatalistic 'trust in God'" which he preferred to call amor fati; and he boasted, "I would stick my head down a lion's throat, not to mention. . . . "
The fullest statement concerning amor fati, however, appears as WM, 1041 (CM, W II 7a [32], from spring-summer, 1888). Although the note as a whole merits reprinting, and rereading, the following extract contains the essential lines. Nietzsche explains that
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 207 metaphysical position only when we understand the two words amor
and fatum---and, above all, their conjunction-in terms of Nietzsche's \
ownmost thinking, only when we avoid mixing our fortuitous and familiar notions into it.
Amor-love-is to be understood as will, the will that wants what- ever it loves to be what it is in its essence. The supreme will of this kind, the most expansive and decisive will, is the will as transfigura- tion. Such a will erects and exposes what it wills in its essence to the supreme possibilities of its Being.
Fatum---necessity-is to be understood, not as a fatality that is in- scrutable, implacable, and overwhelming, but as that turning of need which unveils itself in the awestruck moment as an eternity, an eterni- ty pregnant with the Becoming of being as a whole: circulus vitiosus deus.
Amor fati is the transfiguring will to belong to what is most in being among beings. A fatum is unpropitious, disruptive, and devastating to the one who merely stands there and lets it whelm him. That fatum is sublime and is supreme desire, however, to one who appreciates and grasps the fact that he belongs to his fate insofar as he is a creator, that is, one who is ever resolute. His knowing this is nothing else than the knowledge which of necessity resonates in his love.
The thinker inquires into being as a whole and as such; into the world as such. Thus with his very first step he always thinks out beyond the world, and so at the same time back to it. He thinks in the direc- tion of that sphere within which a world becomes world. Wherever that sphere is not incessantly called by name, called aloud, wherever it is held silently in the most interior questioning, it is thought most purely and profoundly. For what is held in silence is genuinely pre- served; as preserved it is most intimate and actual. What to common. sense looks like "atheism," and has to look like it, is at bottom the very
his "experimental philosophy" aims to advance beyond nihilism to the very opposite of nihilism-
to a Dionysian yes-saying to the world as it is, without reduction, exception, or selec- tion; it wants eternal circulation-the same things, the same logic and dislogic of implication. Supreme state to which a philosopher may attain: taking a stand in Dionysian fashion on behalf of existence. My formula for this is amor fati.
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opposite. In the same way, wherever the matters of death and the nothing are treated, Being and Being alone is thought most deeply- whereas those who ostensibly occupy themselves solely with "reality" flounder in nothingness.
Supremely thoughtful utterance does not consist simply in growing taciturn when it is a matter of saying what is properly to be said; it consists in saying the matter in such a way that it is named in nonsay- ing. The utterance of thinking is a telling silence. "' Such utterance corresponds to the most profound essence of language, which has its origin in silence. As one in touch with telling silence, the thinker, in a way peculiar to him, rises to the rank of a poet; yet he remains eternally distinct from the poet, just as the poet in turn remains eternally distinct from the thinker.
Everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy; everything in the demi- god's sphere turns to satyr-play; and everything in God's sphere turns to . . . to what? "world" perhaps?
• Erschweigen, an active or telling silence, is what Heidegger elsewhere discusses under the rubric of sigetics (from the Greek sigao, to keep silent). For him it is the proper "logic" of a thinking that inquires into the other commencement.
Part Two
WHO IS NIETZSCHE'S ZARA THUSTRA?
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 211
Our question, it would seem, can be easily answered. For we find the response in one of Nietzsche's own works, in sentences that are clearly formulated and even set in italic type. The sentences occur in that work by Nietzsche which expressly delineates the figure of Zarathustra. The book, composed of four parts, was written during the years 1883 to 1885, and bears the title Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Nietzsche provided the book with a subtitle to set it on its way. The subtitle reads: A Book for Everyone and No One. "For Everyone," of course, does not mean for anybody at all, anyone you please. "For Everyone" means for every human being as a human being, for every given individual insofar as he becomes for himself in his essence a matter worthy of thought. "And No One" means for none of those curiosity mongers who wash in with the tide and imbibe freely of particular passages and striking aphorisms in the book, and who then stagger blindly about, quoting its language-partly lyrical, partly shrill, sometimes tranquil, other times stormy, often elevated, occasionally trite. They do this instead of setting out on the way of thinking that is here searching for its word.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One. How uncannily true the work's subtitle has proven to be in the seventy years that have passed since the book first appeared-but true precisely in the reverse sense! It became a book for everybody, and to this hour no thinker has arisen who is equal to the book's fundamental thought and who can take the measure of the book's provenance in its full scope. Who is Zarathustra? If we read the work's title attentively we may find a clue: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra speaks. He is a speake. r. Of what sort? Is he an orator, or maybe a preacher? No. Zarathustra the speaker is an advocate [ein Fiirsprecher*}. In this name we
• Ein Fiirsprecher, literally, is one who speaks before a group of people for some particular purpose. In what follows, Heidegger discusses the related words fur ("for") and vor ("fore," "in front of'). The English word "advocate" (from ad-vocare: to call, invite, convene) offers a kind of parallel. For a full discussion of the German words see Her- mann Paul, Deutsches Worterbuch, 6th ed. (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1966), pp. 758- 6Z.
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encounter a very old word in the German language, one that has multiple meanings. For actually means before. In the Alemannic dialect, the word Fiirtuch is still the common word for "apron. "'" The Fiirsprech speaks "forth" and is the spokesman. Yet at the same time fiir means "on behalf of" and "by way of justification. " Finally, an advocate is one who interprets and explains what he is talking about and what he is advocating.
Zarathustra is an advocate in this threefold sense. But what does he speak forth? On whose behalf does he speak? What does he try to interpret? Is Zarathustra merely some sort of advocate for some arbi- trary cause, or is he the advocate for the one thing that always and above all else speaks to human beings?
Toward the end of the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra appears a section with the heading "The Convalescent. " That is Zarathustra. But what does "convalescent," der Genesende, mean? Genesen is the same word as the Greek neomai, nostos, meaning to head for home. "Nostalgia" is the yearning to go home, homesickness. "The Convales- cent" is one who is getting ready to turn homeward, that is, to turn toward what defines him. The convalescent is under way to himself, so that he can say of himself who he is. In the episode mentioned the convalescent says, "1, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle. . . . "
Zarathustra speaks on behalf of life, suffering, and the circle, and that is what he speaks forth. These three, "life, suffering, circle," be- long together and are the selfsame. If we were able to think this three- fold matter correctly as one and the same, we would be in a position to surmise whose advocate Zarathustra is and who it is that Zarathustra himself, as this advocate, would like to be. To be sure, we could now intervene in a heavy-handed way and explain, with indisputable cor- rectness, that in Nietzsche's language "life" means will to power as the fundamental trait of all beings, and not merely human beings. Nietz- sche himself says what "suffering" means in the following words (VI, 469): "Everything that suffers wills to live. . . . " "Everything" here
• For Fiirtuch (literally, "fore-cloth") Bernd Magnus has found a felicitous English parallel: the pinafore!
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 213
means all things that are by way of will to power, a way that is de- scribed in the following words (XVI, 151): "The configurative forces collide. " "Circle" is the sign of the ring that wrings its way back to itself and in that way always achieves recurrence of the same.
Accordingly, Zarathustra introduces himself as an advocate of the proposition that all being is will to power, a will that suffers in its creating and colliding, and that wills itself precisely in this way in eternal recurrence of the same.
With the above assertion we have brought the essence of Zarathustra to definition-as we say at school. We can write the definition down, commit it to memory, and bring it forward whenever the occasion calls for it. We can even corroborate what we bring forward by referring specifically to those sentences in Nietzsche's works which, set in italic type, tell us who Zarathustra is.
In the above-mentioned episode, "The Convalescent," we read (314): "You [Zarathustra] are the teacher ofeternal return. . . ! "And in the Prologue to the entire work (section 3) stands the following: "/ [Zarathustra] teach you the overman. "
According to these statements, Zarathustra the advocate is a "teacher. " To all appearances, he teaches two things: the eternal return of the same and the overman. However, it is not immediately apparent whether and in what way the things he teaches belong together. Yet even if the connection were to be clarified it would remain question- able whether we are hearing the advocate, whether we are learning from this teacher. Without such hearing and learning we shall never rightly come to know who Zarathustra is. Thus it is not enough to string together sentences from which we can gather what the advocate and teacher says about himself. We must pay attention to the way he says it, on what occasions, and with what intent. Zarathustra does J! Ot utter the decisive phrase "You are the teacher of eternal return! " by himself to himself. His animals tell him this. They are mentioned at the very beginning of the work's Prologue and more explicitly at its conclusion. In section I0 we read:
When the sun stood at midday he [Zarathustra]looked inquiringly into the sky-for above him he heard the piercing cry of a bird. And behold! An
214 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF' THE SAME
eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey, but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck.
In this mysterious embrace about the throat-in the eagle's circling and the serpent's coiling-we can already sense the way circle and ring tacitly wind about one another. Thus the ring scintillates, the ring that is called anulus aeternitatis: the signet ring and year of eternity. When we gaze on the two animals we see where they themselves, circling and coiling about one another, belong. For of themselves they never con- coct circle and ring; rather, they enter into circle and ring, there to find their essence. When we gaze on the two animals we perceive the things that matter to Zarathustra, who looks inquiringly into the sky. Thus the text continues:
"These are my animals! " said Zarathustra, and his heart was filled with joy. "The proudest animal under the sun and the most discerning animal under the sun-they have gone out on a search.
"They want to learn whether Zarathustra is still alive. Verily, am I still alive? "
Zarathustra's question receives its proper weight only if we under- stand the undefined word life in the sense of will to power. Zarathustra asks whether his will corresponds to the will which, as will to power, pervades the whole of being.
The animals seek to learn Zarathustra's essence. He asks himself whether he is still-that is, whether he is already-the one who he properly is. In a note to Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche's literary remains (XIV, 279) the following appears: "'Do I have time to wait for my animals? If they are m y animals they will know how to find me. ' Zarathustra's silence. "
Thus at the place cited, "The Convalescent," Zarathustra's animals say the following to him-and although not all the words are itali- cized, we dare not overlook any of them. The animals say: "For your animals know well, 0 Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of eternal return--that is now your des- tiny! " Thus it comes to light: Zarathustra must first become who he is. Zarathustra shrinks back in dismay before such becoming. Dismay
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 215
permeates the entire work that portrays him. Dismay determines the style, the hesitant and constantly arrested course of the work as a whole. Dismay extinguishes all of Zarathustra's self-assurance and pre- sumptuousness at the very outset of his way. Whoever has failed and continues to fail to apprehend from the start the dismay that haunts all of Zarathustra's speeches-which often sound presumptuous, often seem little more than frenzied extravaganzas-will never be able to discover who Zarathustra is.
If Zarathustra must first of all become the teacher of eternal return, then he cannot commence with this doctrine straightaway. For this reason another phrase stands at the beginning of his way: "/ teach you the overman. "
To be sure, we must try to extirpate right here and now all the false and confusing overtones of the word Obermensch that arise in our customary view of things. With the name overman Nietzsche is by no means designating a merely superdimensional human being of the kind that has prevailed hitherto. Nor is he referring to a species of man that will cast off all that is humane, making naked willfulness its law and titanic rage its rule. Rather, the overman-taking the word quite literally-is that human being who goes beyond prior humanity solely in order to conduct such humanity for the first time to its essence, an essence that is still unattained, and to place humanity firmly within that essence. A note from the posthumously published writings sur- rounding Zarathustra says (XIV, 271): "Zarathustra does not want to lose anything of mankind's past; he wants to pour everything into the mold. "
Yet whence arises the urgent cry for the overman? Why does prior humanity no longer suffice? Because Nietzsche recognizes the historic moment in which man takes it on himself to assume dominion over the earth as a whole. Nietzsche is the first thinker to pose the decisive question concerning the phase of world history that is emerging only now, the first to think the question through in its metaphysical im- plications. The question asks: Is man, in his essence as man hereto- fore, prepared to assume dominion over the earth? If not, what must happen with prior humanity in order that it may "subjugate" the earth and thus fulfill the prophecy of an old testament? Must not prior man
216 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
be conducted beyond himself, over his prior self, in order to meet this challenge? If so, then the "over-man," correctly thought, cannot be the product of an unbridled and degenerate fantasy that is plunging headlong into the void. We can just as little uncover the nature of overman historically by virtue of an analysis of the modern age. We dare not seek the essential figure of overman in those personalities who, as major functionaries of a shallow, misguided will to power, are swept to the pinnacles of that will's sundry organizational forms.
The Essence ofa Fundamental Metaphysical Position 193
sheer opinions it traces and in which it has ensconced itself. A ques- tion-especially a question that involves being as a whole-can be appropriately answered only if it is adequately posed in the first place. The guiding question of philosophy is adequately posed only when it is developed. Here the development assumes such proportions that it transforms the very question, bringing to light the guiding question as such in its utter lack of originality. For that reason we call the question "What is being? " the guiding question, in contrast to the more original question which sustains and directs the guiding question. The more original question we call the grounding question.
Whenever we present the development of the guiding question "schematically," as we are now doing, we easily awaken the suspicion that here we are merely making inquiries concerning a question. To question questioning strikes sound common sense as rather un- wholesome, extravagant, perhaps even nonsensical. If it is a matter of wanting to get to beings themselves-and in the guiding question this is surely the case-then the inquiry into inquiry seems an aberration. In the end, such an attitude, asking about its asking, seems nothing short of noxious or self-lacerating; we might call it "egocentric" and "nihilistic" and all the other nasty names we so easily come by.
That the development of the guiding question appears to be merely inquiry piled on top of inquiry-this illusion persists. That an inquiry concerning inquiry ultimately looks like an aberration, a veritable walk down the garden path-this illusion too cannot be squelched. Con- fronting the danger that only a few or no one at all will be able to muster the courage and the energy required to think through and ex- amine thoroughly the development of the guiding question; and in the expectation that these few might stumble against something quite dif- ferent from a question that is posed merely for its own sake or a piec:;e of sheer extravagance, we shall here undertake to sketch briefly the articulation of the developed guiding question.
The question asks ti to on? What is being? We shall begin to expli- cate the question by following the direction the inquiry itself takes, gradually unraveling all the matters we come across.
What is being? What is meant is being as such, neither some par- ticular being nor a group of beings nor even all of them taken together,
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but something essentially more: what is meant is the whole, being taken as a whoie from the outset, being taken as such unity. Outside of this one, this being, there is no other, unless it be the nothing. Yet the nothing is not some kind of being which is merely other. How matters stand with the nothing is not the question we are now to pursue. We only wish to keep in mind the full range of the area we are approaching when we ask the question "What is being, being as a whole, this unity that admits no other? " Let us then resolve not to forget in anything that follows what it was that rose to meet us in our first tentative step in the question concerning being, namely, the incontrovertible happenstance that we stumbled across the nothing.
Seen from the point of view of the question iself, that which the question is heading toward is the matter to be interrogated-we may call it the field of the question. Yet this field-being as a whole-is not staked out in our questioning merely so that we can take cognizance of its incalculable abundance; nor is it our intention merely to make being a familiar station on our way; rather, the question aims right from the start at being insofar as it is being. With regard to the field of interrogation, we are asking about something that is peculiar to it, something that is most its own. What name shall we give it? If we interrogate being solely with a view to the fact that it is being, interro- gate being as being, then with the question as to what being is we are aiming to discover what makes being a being. We are aiming to dis- cover the beingness of being-in Greek, the ousia of on. We are inter- rogating the Being of beings.
In the field of the question, in the very staking out of the field, the goal of the question is itself already established-what we are asking for in the matter interrogated, to wit, the Being of beings. Just as we collided against the nothing when we undertook to set the field of the question in relief, so here the staking out of the field and the establish- ment of the goal that is at stake condition one another reciprocally. And if we may say that the nothing looms at the border of this ques- tion, then, in accordance with the reciprocity of the field and the goal of the question, we may experience the proximity of the nothing also in the goal, that is, in the Being of beings; provided, of course, that we are actually inquiring, that our aim is true, that we are on target. To be
The Essence ofa Fundamental Metaphysical Position 195
sure, the nothing seems to be an utter nullity; it is as though we were doing it too great on honor when we call it by name. Yet this utterly common affair proves to be so uncommon that we can experience it only in unusual experiences. The meanness of the nothing consists precisely in the circumstance that it is capable of seducing us into thinking that our empty chatter-our calling the nothing an utter nul- lity-can really shunt the matter aside. * The nothing of being follows the Being of being as night follows day. When would we ever see and experience the day as day if there were no night! Thus the most durable and unfailing touchstone of genuineness and forcefulness of thought in a philosopher is the question as to whether or not he or she experiences in a direct and fundamental manner the nearness of the nothing in the Being of beings. Whoever fails to experience it remains forever outside the realm of philosophy, without hope of entry.
If inquiry were no more than what the superficial view often readily takes it to be; if it were simply a fleeting being-on-the-lookout for something, or a dispassionate scrutiny of an object of inquiry, or a passing hit-or-miss glance at a given goal; if inquiry were any of these things, then our unfolding of the question would already be at an end. And yet we have scarcely begun. We are seeking the Being of beings; we are trying to reach it. To that end we must approach being itself and bring it into our ken. Whatever is interrogated is questioned in a number of specific respects, never in an altogether general way, inas- much as the latter runs counter to the very essence of questioning. And so we come to what is asked for. The field is examined in a dual perspective, inasmuch as it is surveyed by a preliminary view toward the goal. The being as such is viewed with respect to what it is, what it looks like, hence with respect to its intrinsic composition. We may call this the constitution of the being. At the same time, a being that. is constituted in this or that fashion has its way to be-as such, being is either possible or actual or necessary. Thus the guiding question,
• When Heidegger refers to the nothing as "this utterly common affair" (dieses Ge- meinste), and when he invokes the "meanness" of the nothing (das Gemeine am Nichts), he adds a new dimension to Hegel's play on the words mein, meinen, Mei- nung, and Allgemeine, discussed on p. 100, above. Being as a whole is not the universal; its common border is with the nothing. And there is something insidious in the intimacy of being and the nothing.
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besides having its field and its goal, possesses above all its range of vision. Within that range it thinks beings as such according to a two- fold respect. Only in terms of both respects, as they are reciprocally related, can the Being of beings be defined.
When we first hear it, and even long afterwards, the guiding ques- tion "What is being? " sounds altogether indefinite; its universality ap- pears to be engaged in a contest with its haziness and impalpability. All highways and byways seem to be open to its fortuitous search. A re- examination and testing of the various steps involved in the question seems to be without prospect. Certainly-as long as one leaves the question undetermined! Yet our prior explications ought to have made it clear by now that this question possesses a very definite though pre- sumably very complex articulation, one which we have hardly fath- omed and are even less able to master. Of course, we would mistake this articulation from top to bottom if we were to wield it academically and technically in the form of a merely "scientific" formulation-if, for example, we expected to be able to test the steps involved in the question as though they resembled the directly graspable, calculable result of an "experiment. "
Our inquiry into the guiding question is separated from that kind of procedure by a veritable gulf. And being as a whole, itself the field of the question, can never be patched together out of isolated assortments of beings. All the same, the guiding question too in each case sustains an exceptional relationship with a particular region of beings within the field, a region that therefore assumes special importance. This fact has its grounds in the essence of inquiry itself, which, the more sweep- ing it is at the start, the more closely it wants to approach what it is interrogating, in order to survey it with an inquiring gaze. If it is ulti- mately the question concerning being that is involved here, the first thing we have to heed is the fact that being, in its constitution and its ways to be, discloses not only an articulated abundance but also a number of orders and stages which shed light on one another. Here it is by no means a matter of indifference which orders of being become definitive for the illumination of the others-whether, for instance, living beings are conceived in terms of lifeless ones, or the latter in terms of the former.
The Essence ofa Fundamental Metaphysical Position 197
Whatever the particular case, each time the guiding question is posed one region of beings becomes definitive for our survey of being as a whole. In each case the guiding question unfolds in itself some- thing that sets the standard. By this "setting the standard" we· under- stand the preeminence of an exceptional region within being as a whole. The remaining beings are not actually derived from that excep- tional region; yet that region provides the light that illumines them all.
26. Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position
In the foregoing we have attempted to portray Nietzsche's fundamental thought-the eternal return of the same-in its essential import, in its domain, and in the mode of thinking that is expressly proper to the thought itself, that is, the mode demanded by the thought as such. In that way we have laid the foundation for our own efforts to define Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position in Western philosophy. The effort to circumscribe Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical posi- tion indicates that we are examining his philosophy in terms of the position assigned it by the history of Western philosophy hitherto. At the same time, this means that we are expressly transposing Nietzsche's philosophy to that sole position in which it can and must unfold the forces of thought that are most proper to it, and this in the context of an inescapable confrontation with prior Western philosophy as a whole. The fact that in the course of our presentation of the doctrine of return we have actually come to recognize the region of thought that must necessarily and preeminently take precedence in every fruitful reading and appropriating of Nietzschean thought may well be an im- portant gain; yet when viewed in terms of the essential task, namely, the characterization of Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position, such a gain remains merely provisional.
We shall be able to define Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position in its principal traits if we ponder the response he gives to the question concerning the constitution of being and being's way to be. Now, we know that Nietzsche offers two answers with regard to being as a whole: being as a whole is will to power, and being as a whole is
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 199
eternal recurrence of the same. Yet philosophical interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy have up to now been unable to grasp these two simultaneous answers as answers, indeed as answers that necessarily cohere, because they have not recognized the questions to which these answers pertain; that is to say, prior interpretations have not explicitly developed those questions on the basis of a thoroughgoing articulation of the guiding question. If, on the contrary, we approach the matter in terms of the developed guiding question, it becomes apparent that the word "is" in these two major statements-being as a whole is will to power, and being as a whole is eternal recurrence of the same-in each case suggests something different. To say that being as a whole "is" will to power means that being as such possesses the constitution of that which Nietzsche defines as will to power. And to say that being as a whole "is" eternal recurrence of the same means that being as a whole is, as being, in the manner of eternal recurrence of the same. The determination "will to power" replies to the question of being with respect to the latter's constitution; the determination "eternal recur-
rence of the same" replies to the question of being with respect to its way to be. Yet constitution and manner of being do cohere as determi- nations of the beingness of beings.
Accordingly, in Nietzsche's philosophy will to power and eternal recurrence of the same belong together. It is thus right from the start a misunderstanding-better, an outright mistake-of metaphysical pro- portions when commentators try to play off will to power against eter- nal recurrence of the same, and especially when they exclude the latter altogether from metaphysical determinations of being. In truth, the coherence ofboth must be grasped. Such coherence is itself essentially defined on the basis of the coherence of constitution and way to be as reciprocally related moments of the beingness of beings. The constitu: tion of beings also specifies in each case their way to be-indeed, as their proper ground.
What fundamental metaphysical position does Nietzsche's philos- ophy assume for itself on the basis of its response to the guiding ques- tion within Western philosophy, that is to say, within metaphysics?
Nietzsche's philosophy is the end of metaphysics, inasmuch as it reverts to the very commencement of Greek thought, taking up such
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thought in a way that is peculiar to Nietzsche's philosophy alone. In this way Nietzsche's philosophy closes the ring that is formed by the very course of inquiry into being as such and as a whole. Yet to what extent does Nietzsche's thinking revert to the commencement? When we raise this question we must be clear about one point at the very outset: Nietzsche by no means recovers the philosophy of the com- mencement in its pristine form. Rather, here it is purely a matter of the reemergence of the essential fundamental positions of the com- mencement in a transformed configuration, in such a way that these positions interlock.
What are the decisive fundamental positions of the commencement? In other words, what sorts of answers are given to the as yet un- developed guiding question, the question as to what being is?
The one answer-roughly speaking, it is the answer of Parmenides -tells us that being is. An odd sort of answer, no doubt, yet a very deep one, since that very response determines for the first time and for all thinkers to come, including Nietzsche, the meaning of is and Being -permanence and presence, that is, the eternal present.
The other answer-roughly speaking, that of Heraclitus-tells us that being becomes. The being is in being by virtue of its permanent becoming, its self-unfolding and eventual dissolution.
To what extent is Nietzsche's thinking the end? That is to say, how does it stretch back to both these fundamental determinations of being in such a way that they come to interlock? Precisely to the extent that Nietzsche argues that being is as fixated, as permanent; and that it is in perpetual creation and destruction. Yet being is both of these, not in an extrinsic way, as one beside another; rather, being is in its very ground perpetual creation (Becoming), while as creation it needs what is fixed. Creation needs what is fixed, first, in order to overcome it, and second, in order to have something that has yet to be fixated, something that enables the creative to advance beyond itself and be transfigured. The essence of being is Becoming, but what becomes is and has Being only in creative transfiguration. What is and what becomes are fused in the fundamental thought that what becomes is inasmuch as in creation it becomes being and is becoming. But such becoming-a-being becomes a being that comes-to-be, and does so in
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 201
the perpetual transformation of what has become firmly fixed and intractable to something made firm in a liberating transfiguration. *
Nietzsche once wrote, at the time when the thought of return first loomed on his horizon, during the years 1881-82 (XII, 66, number 124): "Let us imprint the emblem of eternity on our life! " The phrase means: let us introduce an eternalization to ourselves as beings, and hence to beings as a whole; let us introduce the transfiguration of what becomes as something that becomes being; and let us do this in such a way that the eternalization arises from being itself, originating for be- ing, standing in being.
This fundamental metaphysical demand-that is, a demand that grapples with the guiding question of metaphysics-is expressed several years later in a lengthy note entitled "Recapitulation," the title suggest- ing that the note in just a few sentences provides a resume of the most important aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. (See The Will to Power, number 617, presumably from early 1886. )t Nietzsche's "Recapit-
• The text is extraordinarily difficult to unravel: Dieses Seiendwerden aber wird zum werdenden Seienden im stiindigen Werden des Festgewordenen als eines Erstarrten zum Festgemachten als der befreienden Verkliirung. The oxymorons of this highly involuted sentence dramatize the inevitable petrifaction of Becoming in a metaphysics of Being. Only as permanence of presence can Becoming come to be. The wording of the sen- tence in Heidegger's original manuscript (1937) varies only slightly from the 1961 Neske text. Yet a series of energetic lines draws the word befreienden, "liberating," into the sentence, as though to break up all such petrifaction. For the liberating transfiguration of Becoming is what Heidegger elsewhere calls the most intrinsic will of Nietzschean think- ing.
t As the note on page 19 of Volume I of this series relates, Heidegger employs the "Recapitulation" note (WM, 617) at crucial junctures throughout his Nietzsche lectures. See, for example, Nl, 466 and 656; Nil, 288 and 339; and p. 228, below. Yet the title "Recapitulation" stems not from Nietzsche himself but from his assistant and later editor Heinrich Koselitz (Peter Cast). Furthermore, the sentences from this long note which Heidegger neglects to cite by no means corroborate the use he makes of it. The whole of Nietzsche's sketch (now dated between the end of 1886 and spring of 1887), as it appears in CM, Mp XVII 3b [54], reads as follows:
To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power.
Twofold falsification, one by the senses, the other by the mind, in order to preserve a world of being, of perdurance, of equivalence, etc.
That everything recurs is the closest approximation ofa world ofBecoming to one ofBeing: peak ofthe meditation.
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ulation" begins with the statement: "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power. " The sense is not that one must brush aside and replace Becoming as the impermanent-for impermanence is what Becoming implies-with being as the permanent. The sense is that one must shape Becoming as being in such a way that as becoming it is preserved, has subsistence, in a word, is. Such stamping, that is, the recoining of Becoming as being, is the supreme will to power. In such recoining the will to power comes to prevail most purely in its essence.
What is this recoining, in which whatever becomes comes to be being? It is the reconfiguration of what becomes in terms of its su- preme possibilities, a reconfiguration in which what becomes is trans- figured and attains subsistence in its very dimensions and domains. This recoining is a creating. To create, in the sense of creation out
The condemnation of and dissatisfaction with whatever becomes derives from val- ues that are attributable to being: after such a world of Being had first been invented.
The metamorphoses of being (body, God, ideas, laws of nature, formulas, etc. )
"Being" as semblance; inversion of values: semblance was that which conferred value-
Knowledge itself impossible within Becoming; how then is knowledge possible? As error concerning itself, as will to power, as will to deception.
Becoming as invention volition self-denial, the overcoming of oneself: not a subject but a doing, establishing; creative, not "causes and effects. "
Art as the will to overcome Becoming, as "eternalization," but shortsighted, de- pending on perspective: repeating on a small scale, as it were, the tendency of the whole
What all life exhibits, to be observed as a reduced formula for the universal ten- dency: hence a new grip on the concept "life" as will to power
Instead of "cause and effect," the mutual struggle of things that become, often with the absorption of the opponent; the number of things in becoming not constant.
Inefficacy of the old ideals for interpreting the whole of occurrence, once one has recognized their animal origins and utility; all of them, furthermore, contradicting life.
Inefficacy of the mechanistic theory--gives the impression of meaninglessness.
The entire idealism of humanity hitherto is about to turn into nihilism-into belief in absolute worthlessness, that is to say, senselessness . . .
Annihilation of ideals, the new desert; the new arts, by means of which we can endure it, we amphibians.
Presupposition: bravery, patience, no "turning back," no hurrying forward
N. B. : Zarathustra, always parodying prior values, on the basis of his own abun- dance.
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 203
beyond oneself, is most intrinsically this: to stand in the moment of decision, in which what has prevailed hitherto, our endowment, is directed toward a projected task. When it is so directed, the endow- ment is preserved. The "momentary" character of creation is the es- sence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being-will to power in its su- preme configuration-is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal
recurrence ofthe same.
The aptness of our interpretation is demonstrated unequivocally in that very fragment which bears the title "Recapitulation. " After the statement we have already cited-"To stamp Becoming with the char- acter of Being-that is the supreme will to power''-we soon read the following sentence: "That everything recurs is the closest approxima-
tion ofa world ofBecoming to one ofBeing: peak ofthe meditation. "
It would scarcely be possible to say in a more lucid fashion, first, how and on what basis the stamping of Being on Becoming is meant to be understood, and second, that the thought of eternal return of the same, even and precisely during the period when the thought of will to power appears to attain preeminence, remains the thought which Nietzsche's philosophy thinks without cease.
(During our discussion of the plans for Nietzsche's magnum opus [see page 160, above], several students noted that whereas sketches for such plans from the final year of Nietzsche's creative life (1888) mention Dionysos in the titles of their projected fourth and final books, our lecture course up to now has said nothing about this god.
Nevertheless, we ought to pay close attention to the phrases that follow the god's name in these titles: "philosophy of eternal return," or simply "philosophos. "
Such phrases suggest that what the words Dionysos and Dionysian mean to Nietzsche will be heard and understood only if the "eternal return of the same" is thought. In turn, that which eternally recurs
204 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
as the same and in such wise is, that is, perpetually presences, has the ontological constitution of "will to power. " The mythic name Dionysos will become an epithet that has been thought through in the sense intended by Nietzsche the thinker only when we try to think the coherence of "will to power" and "eternal return of the same"; and that means, only when we seek those determinations of Being which from the outset of Greek thought guide all thinking about being as such and as a whole. [Two texts which appeared several years ago treat the matters of Dionysos and the Dionysian: Walter F. Otto, Dionysos: Myth and Cult, 1933; and Karl Rein- hardt, "Nietzsche's 'Plaint of Ariadne,'" in the journal Die Antike, 1935, published separately in 1936. ])*
Nietzsche conjoins in one both of the fundamental determinations of being that emerge from the commencement of Western philosophy, to wit, being as becoming and being as permanence. That "one" is his most essential thought-the eternal recurrence of the same.
Yet can we designate Nietzsche's way of grappling with the com- mencement of Western philosophy as an end? Is it not rather a reawak- ening of the commencement? Is it not therefore itself a commence- ment and hence the very opposite of an end? It is nonetheless the case that Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position is the end of West- ern philosophy. For what is decisive is not that the fundamental deter- minations of the commencement are conjoined and that Nietzsche's
• The paragraphs contained within parentheses appear as an indented extract in the Neske edition as they do here. Heidegger's original manuscript from the summer of 1937 does not show these paragraphs. Surprisingly, there is no extant Abschriftor typescript of this course; nor is the typescript that went to the printer in 1961 available for inspection. As a result, the date of the passage remains uncertain. My own surmise is that Heidegger added the note not long after the semester drew to a close: the reference to students' questions and to those two works on Dionysos that had "recently" been published make it highly unlikely that the note was added as late as 1960--61. The works Heidegger refers us to are of course still available-and are still very much worth reading: Walter F. Otto, Dionysos: Mythos und Kultus (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1933); Reinhardt's "Nietzsches Klage der Ariadne" appears now in Karl Reinhardt, Vermiichtnis der Antike: Gesamme/te Essays zur Philosophic und Geschichtsschreibung, edited by Carl Becker (Gottingen: Vandenhock & Ruprecht, 1960), pp. 310--33. See note 20 of the Analysis, p. 275, for further discussion of the Reinhardt article.
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 205
thinking stretches back to the commencement; what is metaphysically essential is the way in which these things transpire. The question is whether Nietzsche reverts to the incipient commencement, to the commencement as a commencing. And here our answer must be: no, he does not.
Neither Nietzsche nor any thinker prior to him--even and espe- cially not that one who before Nietzsche first thought the history of philosophy in a philosophical way, namely, Hegel-revert to the in- cipient commencement. Rather, they invariably apprehend the com- mencement in the sole light of a philosophy in decline from it, a philosophy that arrests the commencement-to wit, the philosophy of Plato.
Here we cannot demonstrate this matter in any detail. Nietzsche himself quite early characterizes his philosophy as inverted Platonism; yet the inversion does not eliminate the fundamentally Platonic posi- tion. Rather, precisely because it seems to eliminate the Platonic posi- tion, Nietzsche's inversion represents the entrenchment of that position.
What remains essential, however, is the following: when Nietzsche's metaphysical thinking reverts to the commencement, the circle closes. Yet inasmuch as it is the already terminated commencement and not the incipient one that prevails there, the circle itself grows inflexible, loses whatever of the commencement it once had. When the circle closes in this way it no longer releases any possibilities for essential inquiry into the guiding question. Metaphysics-treatment of the guid- ing question-is at an end. That seems a bootless, comfortless insight, a conclusion which like a dying tone signals ultimate cessation. Yet such is not the case.
Because Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position is the end of metaphysics in the designated sense, it performs the grandest and most profound gathering-that is, accomplishment-of all the essential fun·- damental positions in Western philosophy since Plato and in the light of Platonism. It does so from within a fundamental position that is determined by Platonism and yet which is itself creative. However, this fundamental position remains an actual, actuating fundamental meta- physical position only if it in turn is developed in all its essential forces and regions of dominion in the direction of its counterposition. For a
206 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
thinking that looks beyond it, Nietzsche's philosophy, which is inher- ently a turning against what lies behind it, must itself come to be a foward-looking counterposition. Yet since Nietzsche's fundamental po- sition in Western metaphysics constitutes the end of that metaphysics, it can be the counterposition for our other commencement only if the latter adopts a questioning stance vis-a-vis the initial commencement - a s one which in its proper originality is only now commencing. After everything we have said, the questioning intended here can only be the unfolding of a more original inquiry. Such questioning must be the unfolding of the prior, all-determining, and commanding question of philosophy, the guiding question, "What is being? " out of itself and out beyond itself.
Nietzsche himself once chose a phrase to designate what we are calling his fundamental metaphysical position, a phrase that is often cited and is readily taken as a way to characterize his philosophy: amor
fati, love of necessity. (See the Epilogue to Nietzsche contra Wagner; VIII, 206). * Yet the phrase expresses Nietzsche's fundamental
• The text Heidegger refers us to begins as follows:
I have often asked myself if I am not more profoundly indebted to the most difficult years of my life than to any of the others. What my innermost nature instructs me is that all necessity-viewed from the heights, in terms of an economy on a grand scale-is also what is inherently useful: one should not merely put up with it, one should love it. . . . Amor fati: that is my innermost nature.
Nietzsche repeats the formula twice in Ecce Homo (II, 10 and III, "Der Fall Wag-
ner," 4), the first time as the ultimate explanation of his "discernment":
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one does not will to have anything different, neither forward nor backward nor into all eternity. Not merely to bear necessity, though much less to cloak it-all Idealism is mendacity in the face of necessity-but to love it. . . .
Nietzsche had first cited the formula six years earlier, at the outset of Book IV of The Gay Science, as the very essence of affirmation: "I want to learn better how to see the necessity in things as what is beautiful-in that way I shall become one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let this be my love from now on! " And he had written to Franz Overbeck, also in 1882, that he was possessed of "a fatalistic 'trust in God'" which he preferred to call amor fati; and he boasted, "I would stick my head down a lion's throat, not to mention. . . . "
The fullest statement concerning amor fati, however, appears as WM, 1041 (CM, W II 7a [32], from spring-summer, 1888). Although the note as a whole merits reprinting, and rereading, the following extract contains the essential lines. Nietzsche explains that
Nietzsche's Fundamental Metaphysical Position 207 metaphysical position only when we understand the two words amor
and fatum---and, above all, their conjunction-in terms of Nietzsche's \
ownmost thinking, only when we avoid mixing our fortuitous and familiar notions into it.
Amor-love-is to be understood as will, the will that wants what- ever it loves to be what it is in its essence. The supreme will of this kind, the most expansive and decisive will, is the will as transfigura- tion. Such a will erects and exposes what it wills in its essence to the supreme possibilities of its Being.
Fatum---necessity-is to be understood, not as a fatality that is in- scrutable, implacable, and overwhelming, but as that turning of need which unveils itself in the awestruck moment as an eternity, an eterni- ty pregnant with the Becoming of being as a whole: circulus vitiosus deus.
Amor fati is the transfiguring will to belong to what is most in being among beings. A fatum is unpropitious, disruptive, and devastating to the one who merely stands there and lets it whelm him. That fatum is sublime and is supreme desire, however, to one who appreciates and grasps the fact that he belongs to his fate insofar as he is a creator, that is, one who is ever resolute. His knowing this is nothing else than the knowledge which of necessity resonates in his love.
The thinker inquires into being as a whole and as such; into the world as such. Thus with his very first step he always thinks out beyond the world, and so at the same time back to it. He thinks in the direc- tion of that sphere within which a world becomes world. Wherever that sphere is not incessantly called by name, called aloud, wherever it is held silently in the most interior questioning, it is thought most purely and profoundly. For what is held in silence is genuinely pre- served; as preserved it is most intimate and actual. What to common. sense looks like "atheism," and has to look like it, is at bottom the very
his "experimental philosophy" aims to advance beyond nihilism to the very opposite of nihilism-
to a Dionysian yes-saying to the world as it is, without reduction, exception, or selec- tion; it wants eternal circulation-the same things, the same logic and dislogic of implication. Supreme state to which a philosopher may attain: taking a stand in Dionysian fashion on behalf of existence. My formula for this is amor fati.
208 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
opposite. In the same way, wherever the matters of death and the nothing are treated, Being and Being alone is thought most deeply- whereas those who ostensibly occupy themselves solely with "reality" flounder in nothingness.
Supremely thoughtful utterance does not consist simply in growing taciturn when it is a matter of saying what is properly to be said; it consists in saying the matter in such a way that it is named in nonsay- ing. The utterance of thinking is a telling silence. "' Such utterance corresponds to the most profound essence of language, which has its origin in silence. As one in touch with telling silence, the thinker, in a way peculiar to him, rises to the rank of a poet; yet he remains eternally distinct from the poet, just as the poet in turn remains eternally distinct from the thinker.
Everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy; everything in the demi- god's sphere turns to satyr-play; and everything in God's sphere turns to . . . to what? "world" perhaps?
• Erschweigen, an active or telling silence, is what Heidegger elsewhere discusses under the rubric of sigetics (from the Greek sigao, to keep silent). For him it is the proper "logic" of a thinking that inquires into the other commencement.
Part Two
WHO IS NIETZSCHE'S ZARA THUSTRA?
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 211
Our question, it would seem, can be easily answered. For we find the response in one of Nietzsche's own works, in sentences that are clearly formulated and even set in italic type. The sentences occur in that work by Nietzsche which expressly delineates the figure of Zarathustra. The book, composed of four parts, was written during the years 1883 to 1885, and bears the title Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Nietzsche provided the book with a subtitle to set it on its way. The subtitle reads: A Book for Everyone and No One. "For Everyone," of course, does not mean for anybody at all, anyone you please. "For Everyone" means for every human being as a human being, for every given individual insofar as he becomes for himself in his essence a matter worthy of thought. "And No One" means for none of those curiosity mongers who wash in with the tide and imbibe freely of particular passages and striking aphorisms in the book, and who then stagger blindly about, quoting its language-partly lyrical, partly shrill, sometimes tranquil, other times stormy, often elevated, occasionally trite. They do this instead of setting out on the way of thinking that is here searching for its word.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One. How uncannily true the work's subtitle has proven to be in the seventy years that have passed since the book first appeared-but true precisely in the reverse sense! It became a book for everybody, and to this hour no thinker has arisen who is equal to the book's fundamental thought and who can take the measure of the book's provenance in its full scope. Who is Zarathustra? If we read the work's title attentively we may find a clue: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra speaks. He is a speake. r. Of what sort? Is he an orator, or maybe a preacher? No. Zarathustra the speaker is an advocate [ein Fiirsprecher*}. In this name we
• Ein Fiirsprecher, literally, is one who speaks before a group of people for some particular purpose. In what follows, Heidegger discusses the related words fur ("for") and vor ("fore," "in front of'). The English word "advocate" (from ad-vocare: to call, invite, convene) offers a kind of parallel. For a full discussion of the German words see Her- mann Paul, Deutsches Worterbuch, 6th ed. (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1966), pp. 758- 6Z.
212 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
encounter a very old word in the German language, one that has multiple meanings. For actually means before. In the Alemannic dialect, the word Fiirtuch is still the common word for "apron. "'" The Fiirsprech speaks "forth" and is the spokesman. Yet at the same time fiir means "on behalf of" and "by way of justification. " Finally, an advocate is one who interprets and explains what he is talking about and what he is advocating.
Zarathustra is an advocate in this threefold sense. But what does he speak forth? On whose behalf does he speak? What does he try to interpret? Is Zarathustra merely some sort of advocate for some arbi- trary cause, or is he the advocate for the one thing that always and above all else speaks to human beings?
Toward the end of the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra appears a section with the heading "The Convalescent. " That is Zarathustra. But what does "convalescent," der Genesende, mean? Genesen is the same word as the Greek neomai, nostos, meaning to head for home. "Nostalgia" is the yearning to go home, homesickness. "The Convales- cent" is one who is getting ready to turn homeward, that is, to turn toward what defines him. The convalescent is under way to himself, so that he can say of himself who he is. In the episode mentioned the convalescent says, "1, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle. . . . "
Zarathustra speaks on behalf of life, suffering, and the circle, and that is what he speaks forth. These three, "life, suffering, circle," be- long together and are the selfsame. If we were able to think this three- fold matter correctly as one and the same, we would be in a position to surmise whose advocate Zarathustra is and who it is that Zarathustra himself, as this advocate, would like to be. To be sure, we could now intervene in a heavy-handed way and explain, with indisputable cor- rectness, that in Nietzsche's language "life" means will to power as the fundamental trait of all beings, and not merely human beings. Nietz- sche himself says what "suffering" means in the following words (VI, 469): "Everything that suffers wills to live. . . . " "Everything" here
• For Fiirtuch (literally, "fore-cloth") Bernd Magnus has found a felicitous English parallel: the pinafore!
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 213
means all things that are by way of will to power, a way that is de- scribed in the following words (XVI, 151): "The configurative forces collide. " "Circle" is the sign of the ring that wrings its way back to itself and in that way always achieves recurrence of the same.
Accordingly, Zarathustra introduces himself as an advocate of the proposition that all being is will to power, a will that suffers in its creating and colliding, and that wills itself precisely in this way in eternal recurrence of the same.
With the above assertion we have brought the essence of Zarathustra to definition-as we say at school. We can write the definition down, commit it to memory, and bring it forward whenever the occasion calls for it. We can even corroborate what we bring forward by referring specifically to those sentences in Nietzsche's works which, set in italic type, tell us who Zarathustra is.
In the above-mentioned episode, "The Convalescent," we read (314): "You [Zarathustra] are the teacher ofeternal return. . . ! "And in the Prologue to the entire work (section 3) stands the following: "/ [Zarathustra] teach you the overman. "
According to these statements, Zarathustra the advocate is a "teacher. " To all appearances, he teaches two things: the eternal return of the same and the overman. However, it is not immediately apparent whether and in what way the things he teaches belong together. Yet even if the connection were to be clarified it would remain question- able whether we are hearing the advocate, whether we are learning from this teacher. Without such hearing and learning we shall never rightly come to know who Zarathustra is. Thus it is not enough to string together sentences from which we can gather what the advocate and teacher says about himself. We must pay attention to the way he says it, on what occasions, and with what intent. Zarathustra does J! Ot utter the decisive phrase "You are the teacher of eternal return! " by himself to himself. His animals tell him this. They are mentioned at the very beginning of the work's Prologue and more explicitly at its conclusion. In section I0 we read:
When the sun stood at midday he [Zarathustra]looked inquiringly into the sky-for above him he heard the piercing cry of a bird. And behold! An
214 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF' THE SAME
eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey, but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck.
In this mysterious embrace about the throat-in the eagle's circling and the serpent's coiling-we can already sense the way circle and ring tacitly wind about one another. Thus the ring scintillates, the ring that is called anulus aeternitatis: the signet ring and year of eternity. When we gaze on the two animals we see where they themselves, circling and coiling about one another, belong. For of themselves they never con- coct circle and ring; rather, they enter into circle and ring, there to find their essence. When we gaze on the two animals we perceive the things that matter to Zarathustra, who looks inquiringly into the sky. Thus the text continues:
"These are my animals! " said Zarathustra, and his heart was filled with joy. "The proudest animal under the sun and the most discerning animal under the sun-they have gone out on a search.
"They want to learn whether Zarathustra is still alive. Verily, am I still alive? "
Zarathustra's question receives its proper weight only if we under- stand the undefined word life in the sense of will to power. Zarathustra asks whether his will corresponds to the will which, as will to power, pervades the whole of being.
The animals seek to learn Zarathustra's essence. He asks himself whether he is still-that is, whether he is already-the one who he properly is. In a note to Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche's literary remains (XIV, 279) the following appears: "'Do I have time to wait for my animals? If they are m y animals they will know how to find me. ' Zarathustra's silence. "
Thus at the place cited, "The Convalescent," Zarathustra's animals say the following to him-and although not all the words are itali- cized, we dare not overlook any of them. The animals say: "For your animals know well, 0 Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of eternal return--that is now your des- tiny! " Thus it comes to light: Zarathustra must first become who he is. Zarathustra shrinks back in dismay before such becoming. Dismay
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 215
permeates the entire work that portrays him. Dismay determines the style, the hesitant and constantly arrested course of the work as a whole. Dismay extinguishes all of Zarathustra's self-assurance and pre- sumptuousness at the very outset of his way. Whoever has failed and continues to fail to apprehend from the start the dismay that haunts all of Zarathustra's speeches-which often sound presumptuous, often seem little more than frenzied extravaganzas-will never be able to discover who Zarathustra is.
If Zarathustra must first of all become the teacher of eternal return, then he cannot commence with this doctrine straightaway. For this reason another phrase stands at the beginning of his way: "/ teach you the overman. "
To be sure, we must try to extirpate right here and now all the false and confusing overtones of the word Obermensch that arise in our customary view of things. With the name overman Nietzsche is by no means designating a merely superdimensional human being of the kind that has prevailed hitherto. Nor is he referring to a species of man that will cast off all that is humane, making naked willfulness its law and titanic rage its rule. Rather, the overman-taking the word quite literally-is that human being who goes beyond prior humanity solely in order to conduct such humanity for the first time to its essence, an essence that is still unattained, and to place humanity firmly within that essence. A note from the posthumously published writings sur- rounding Zarathustra says (XIV, 271): "Zarathustra does not want to lose anything of mankind's past; he wants to pour everything into the mold. "
Yet whence arises the urgent cry for the overman? Why does prior humanity no longer suffice? Because Nietzsche recognizes the historic moment in which man takes it on himself to assume dominion over the earth as a whole. Nietzsche is the first thinker to pose the decisive question concerning the phase of world history that is emerging only now, the first to think the question through in its metaphysical im- plications. The question asks: Is man, in his essence as man hereto- fore, prepared to assume dominion over the earth? If not, what must happen with prior humanity in order that it may "subjugate" the earth and thus fulfill the prophecy of an old testament? Must not prior man
216 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
be conducted beyond himself, over his prior self, in order to meet this challenge? If so, then the "over-man," correctly thought, cannot be the product of an unbridled and degenerate fantasy that is plunging headlong into the void. We can just as little uncover the nature of overman historically by virtue of an analysis of the modern age. We dare not seek the essential figure of overman in those personalities who, as major functionaries of a shallow, misguided will to power, are swept to the pinnacles of that will's sundry organizational forms.
