No More Learning

The Period of "The Will to Power" 161
separate discussion. * Let us now therefore refer only briefly to those materials that are taken up into Book IV. Our guideline will be the question of the extent to which the notes between 1884 and 1888 exhibit a further development of the teaching, and of the particular direction such a development takes.
When we compare the main features of these fragments with those from the period of The Gay Science (XII) and with the doctrinal im- port expressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, nothing much appears to have changed. We find the same reflections in regard to both the "proofs" for the doctrine and the doctrine's "impact. " Yet when we look more carefully at these materials, having pondered the fact that the notes pertain to a period in which Nietzsche was trying to think through his philosophy as a whole and to bring it to a configuration, the picture changes altogether. The precondition for our seeing this is the refusal simply to accept the given order of the fifteen passages as they appear in their current published form. Rather, we must first of all place them in their chronological order. In the present edition the fragments are jumbled higgledy-piggledy. The first one belongs to the year 1884, the last one, which at the same time concludes the entire
work, stems from the year 1885, while immediately prior to it appears one from the final year, 1888. Let us therefore establish the chronolog- ical sequence of the notes. To the year 1884 belong numbers 1053, 1056, 1059, and 1060. To the year 1885 numbers 1055, 1062, 1064, and 1067. From the period 1885-86 comes number 1054; from the period 1886-87 number 1063; from the period 1887-88 numbers 1061 and 1065. Number 1066 belongs to the year 1888. Two fragments from the period 1884 to 1888 which we cannot date precisely but which, judging from the handwriting, presumably stem from the year
1884-85 are numbers 1057 and 1058. t
• See section 23, below. Heidcgger's 1940 lecture course on nihilism (Volume IV of this series), by and large neglects eternal return as the countermovement to nihilism. See the Analysis at the end of the present volume.
t The folder containing the sheets on which WM, 1057 and 1058 are jotted (Mp XVII lb [4,7]) is dated by CM "Winter 1883-84," a year earlier than Heidegger's estimate. Otherwise, Heidegger's dating of the passages, following GOA, is accurate. Readers should note important textual changes in WM, 1064 (cf. CM, WI 3a [54] and WM, 1066 (cf. CM, W II 5 [188]). I have been unable to locate WM, 1061 in CM.
162 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Because our interpretation proper of Nietzsche's fundamental thought-an interpretation that is to be a confrontation-will have to refer back to Nietzsche's final utterances, let us postpone for the present a more detailed discussion of the fragments we have just now listed. Only one essential circumstance should be emphasized immedi- ately. Nietzsche speaks more clearly than before about the "presupposi- tions" of the doctrine of return, indeed about "theoretical" and "practical" ones. This seems strange at first. If the doctrine of eternal return is to be the fundamental doctrine, determining everything, then it cannot entertain any presuppositions as such. On the contrary, it must be the presupposition for all additional thoughts. Or does Nietz- sche's manner of speaking suggest that the doctrine of return, while not surrendered, is yet to be deposed from its foundational significance and relegated to a subordinate position? We can reach a decision in this matter only if we come to know what Nietzsche means by these "pre- suppositions. " He does not directly say what he means. But from the allusions he makes and the general tendency of his thinking we can unequivocally state that he is referring to the will to power as the pervasive constitution of all beings. The thought of return is now ex- plicitly thought on the basis of the will to power. Hence we might now conclude that the thought of eternal return is to be traced back to will to power. Yet such a conclusion would be too hasty and altogether extrinsic.
Even if such were the case--even if will to power were the presup- position for the eternal return of the same-it would by no means follow that will to power precludes the doctrine of eternal return, that the two cannot subsist side by side. The very reverse would hold: will to power would demand the eternal return of the same.
Nevertheless, the outcome of our survey of the plans from this pe- riod is the realization that the doctrine of return nowhere suffers a setback. It asserts its determinative position everywhere. Accordingly the only thing we must ask is: How do will to power, as the pervasive constitution ofbeings, and eternal return ofthe same, as the mode of Being ofbeings as a whole, relate to one another? What is the signifi- cance of the fact that Nietzsche posits will to power as a "presupposi- tion" for the eternal return of the same? How does he understand
The Period of "The Will to Power" 163
"presupposition" here? Does Nietzsche have a clear, well-grounded conception of the relation that obtains between the two? Nietzsche indeed possesses no clear insight-and certainly no conceptual insight -into the relation which we have now named but not yet pondered.
The will to power can be the "presupposition" for the eternal recur- rence of the same in any of the following three ways. First, eternal return of the same can be demonstrated on the basis of will to power, the latter expressing the character of force in the world totality. Here will to power would be the cognitive ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Second, eternal return may be seen as being possible only if the constitution of will to power is indeed appropriate to beings as such. Here will to power would be the material ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Third, will to power can be the "presupposi- tion" of eternal recurrence of the same inasmuch as the constitution of the being (its "what," quidditas, or essentia) grounds its mode of Being (the being's "how" and "that" "it is," its existentia). As long as the designated relationship between the constitution of the being and its mode of Being remains undetermined, the possibility also arises that the reverse is true-that the constitution of the being springs from its mode of Being.
The relationship now in question cannot be defined in terms of a relation between something that conditions and something that is con- ditioned, between what grounds and what is grounded. In order for the relationship to be defined we first need to discuss the essential prove- nance of the essence of Being.
With these questions we are already anticipating decisive steps in our interpretation and determination of the relation between eternal return of the same and will to power. Yet an apparently extrinsic cir- cumstance betrays how much this obscure relation, which Nietzsche. was unable to come to grips with, was what really lay behind the restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking during this final creative period. The fragment that concludes the "work" entitled The Will to Power, in its current textual arrangement, namely, number 1067, is as it now stands the revised version of an earlier note (XVI, 515). To the ques- tion "And do you also know what 'the world' is to me? " Nietzsche's earlier version replies: it is eternal return of the same, willing back
I64 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
whatever has been and willing forward to whatever has to be. In the second version the reply is: "This world is will to power--and nothing besides! "*
Again we stand before the question that has confronted us many times. Do we merely want to remain entrenched in the extrinsic dis- tinction between these two locutions and turns of phrase, eternal re- turn of the same and will to power? Or do we by now realize that we come to grasp a philosophy only when we try to think what it says? At all events, the revision we have referred to shows that will to power and eternal return of the same cohere. With what right could Nietzsche otherwise substitute the one for the other? Yet what if the will to power, according to Nietzsche's most proper and intrinsic intentions, were in itself nothing else than willing back to that which was and a willing forward to everything that has to be? What if the eternal recur- rence of the same-as occurrence-were nothing other than the will to power, precisely in the way Nietzsche himself understands this phrase, though not in the way some view or other of "politics" bends it to its own purpose? t If matters stood this way, then the designation of being as will to power would only be an elaboration of the original and
• See the commentary in CM to fragment [12] of the group of sheets bearing the archive number 38 (from June-July, 1885); in the Studienausgabe, vol. 14, p. 727. Nietzsche's revised reply, "will to power-and nothing besides," was taken up into the book Beyond Good and Evil as passage number 36 and hence has become quite well known. The passage that Nietzsche excised from the earlier version, and which orig- inally appeared at the decisive word "ring" near the end of WM, 1067, reads as follows:
a ring of good will, turning ever about itself alone, keeping to its wonted way: this world, my world-who is luminous enough to look at it without wishing to be blinded? Strong enough to hold his soul up to this mirror? His own mirror up to the mirror of Dionysos? His own solution to the riddle of Dionysos? And were anyone able to do this, would he not have to do more in addition? To plight his troth to the "ring of rings"? By taking the oath of his own return? By means of the ring of eternal self-blessing, self-affirmation? By. means of the will to will oneself once more and yet again? The will to will back all the things that ever have been? To will forward to everything that ever has to be? Do you now know what the world is to me? And what I am willing when I will this world? -
t The reference is presumably to Alfred Baeumler's Nietzsche: Philosopher and Politi- cian. In addition to the material in my Analyses of Volumes I and IV, see also Mazzino Montinari, "Nietzsche zwischen Alfred Baumler und Georg Lukacs," in Basis, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 18&-207, esp. pp. 201 ff.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 165
primary projection of being as eternal recurrence of the same. In truth, matters do stand this way.
Will to power is a "presupposition" for eternal return of the same, inasmuch as will to power alone allows us to recognize what eternal return of the same means. Because in terms of the matter itself eternal return of the same constitutes the ground and the essence of will to power, the latter can be posited as the ground and point of departure for insight into the essence of eternal return of the same.
Yet even after the essential coherence of will to power and eternal return of the same has come to light we still find ourselves at the very beginning of philosophical comprehension. Whenever being as such and as a whole takes on the sense of eternal return of the same, of will to power, and of the coherence of these two notions, in this way con- fronting our thinking, the question arises as to what is being thought here in general and how it is being thought.
Hence our survey of those aspects of the doctrine of return which Nietzsche communicated and those which he suppressed concludes with questions that must open a path that will lead us to what we shall call Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position. Such a survey of the gestation of the doctrine of return is itself carried out with a view to the way that doctrine comes to stand in the whole of his philosophy; this view, for its part, keeps unbroken watch over the whole of Nietz- sche's philosophy. For that reason our presentation was repeatedly con- strained to go beyond mere reportage, making further connections visible by means of questions. In that way we tacitly performed the preliminary work for a discussion of questions that now must be an- swered explicitly-the questions of the configuration and the domain of the doctrine of return.
22. The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return
Before we try to define the configuration of the doctrine of return we shall have to ask whether it possesses any configuration at all. If the survey we have conducted exhibits anything it is the multifaceted fig- ure, or better, the figurelessness or unfinished figure cut by the doc- trine. But what do we mean by the doctrine's configuration, and why are we inquiring into it? Our inquiry would be of only secondary im- portance if the doctrine's configuration were nothing more than a subsequent collation of doctrinal statements and fragments, arranged according to such fortuitous points of view as the doctrine's greatest possible impact or the likelihood of its being understood. However, we are asking about the configuration in order to advance beyond an ini- tial survey and get a closer look at other more essential matters.
By the configuration of the doctrine we understand the inner struc- ture of the truth of the doctrine itself, the structure that is prefigured in the doctrine's proper truth. The "structure of its truth" does not refer to the way in which statements are ordered into arguments, and se- quences of arguments into books; it means the way in which the open- ness of being as a whole is structured into being itself, so that being first shows and articulates itself by means of such openness. Does Nietz- sche's doctrine possess a configuration in this sense? The question can- not be answered immediately. :. . . . . . . especially inasmuch as a configuration understood in this way could exist even if its presentation were not finished and perfectly polished. If a determining ground is always proper to a configuration, a ground by virtue of which a truth comes to prevail on its own grounds; if therefore a configuration is possible only
The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return 167
on the basis of a fundamental position; and if we on the path of our own interpretation are presupposing such a fundamental position for Nietzsche's thinking; then whatever it is that calls for a configuration and makes it possible will be vital to Nietzsche's philosophy.
When we look back we discern that a particular law of truth an- nounces itself everywhere in Nietzsche's thought, at least indirectly. The announcement is heard in our realization that every attempt to characterize the doctrine by pigeonholing it into customary representa- tions comes to grief. Whether we distinguish between its "scientific" import and its "ethical" significance; or, more generally, between its "theoretical" and "practical" sides; and even if we substitute some terms which we today prefer, although they are hardly clearer, distin- guishing between the doctrine's "metaphysical" meaning and its "exis- tentiell" appeal-in each case we take refuge in two-sided affairs, neither side of which is apt. And this is a sign of the intensified predicament in which we find ourselves, however reluctant we may be to admit it. What is essential and peculiar to the doctrine is not brought to light in this way; it is rather clothed in other representation- al modes long since grown customary and threadbare. The same is true of those somewhat novel distinctions between a "poetic" and a "prosa- ic" presentation of the doctrine, or of its "subjective" and "objective" aspects. We have already achieved something of considerable impor- tance when we have noticed that in the case of this "doctrine," no matter how ill-defined or uncertain our experience of it may be, the above-mentioned efforts at interpretation are dubious-they distort our view of the doctrine. To attain this insight is the first intention of our inquiry into the configuration.
The initial consequence of our rejection of these comfortable repre- sentational arrangements will be that we must strive to attain a perspec- tive within which the configuration or the determining grounds of the configuration's law begin to glimmer. Yet how are we to catch sight of the perspective itself? The perspective can arise only from a preview of the entirety of Nietzsche's philosophy, of the totality which impels itself to its own configuration in accord with its own law. Where do we encounter this impulse, this thrust and counterthrust? Nowhere else but in Nietzsche's efforts surrounding his "main work. " The oscillation
168 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
of the plans must perforce exhibit those matters that are to be main- tained, rejected, or transformed; here the axes must come to light on which all the vast restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking turns.
The three axes, which run counter to one another and about which all the restlessness of Nietzsche's search for a configuration turns, are recognizable in the three rubrics that were successively chosen as the main titles of the planned work. None of these three ever managed to suppress the remaining two. The three titles are: the eternal return, the will to power, and the revaluation of all values. The articulation of these three, indeed the articulation that is prefigured in these three titles themselves, is the configuration-the configuration which we are seeking and which indeed is seeking itself. All three rubrics apply to the entirety of Nietzsche's philosophy, while none of them is perfectly apt, inasmuch as the configuration of this philosophy cannot be leashed to a single strand.
Although at the outset we are utterly unable to take up one single unequivocal anticipation of the articulated structure in which "eternal return," "will to power," and "revaluation of all values" would cohere as one, all of them with equal originality, we must just as certainly assume that Nietzsche himself for his part saw a number of distinct possibilities for the shaping of his work. For without this vision the sense of security which we find reflected in the fundamental stance shared by the whole range of plans would be incomprehensible.
However, these plans and arid lists of titles and fragment numbers will come to speak to us only when they are penetrated and pervaded by the light of a certain kind of knowledge-namely, knowledge of what it is they wish to grapple with. We do not possess such knowl- edge. It will take decades for it to mature. Our attempt to locate the structural law in these plans by way of a comparison of one plan with another therefore threatens to wind up being an artificial procedure that presumes to sketch the outline of Nietzsche's "system" in a purely extrinsic way. In order to approach our goal-indeed, in order to set ourselves a goal in the first place-we must select a provisional way that will also enable us to avoid the danger of mouthing hollow catch- words like so many cliches.
What we are seeking is the inner structure of a thought's truth, the
The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return 169
thought of eternal return of the same, the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy. The truth of this thought concerns being as a whole. Yet because the thought essentially wants to be the greatest burden, because it therefore would define human being (that is to say, define us) in the midst of beings as a whole, the truth of this thought is such only when it is our truth.
Someone might counter that this is obvious and to be taken for granted, inasmuch as the thought of eternal return of the same in- volves all beings, hence ourselves as well, we who belong to being as particular cases of it-perhaps as specks of dust blown hither and thither in it. Yet this thought is only when those who are thinking- are. Accordingly, those who are thinking are more than, and some- thing other than, mere particular cases o f what is thought. Those who think the thought are not merely a given set of human beings who come to the fore somewhere at some time or other. The thinking of this thought has its most proper historical necessity; the thinking itself determines a historical moment. Out of this moment alone the eterni- ty of what is thought in the thought looms large. Thus what the thought of eternal return of the same encompasses, the domain to which it reverts and which it pervades, constituting that domain for the first time, is not yet circumscribed when we aver in summary fashion that all beings are contained in it like walnuts in a sack. The thought's domain first of all needs to be staked out. Only with a view to the domain do we really have any hope of discerning something of the articulated whole which the truth of this thought demands for itself as its configuration.
23. The Domain of the Thought of Return: The Doctrine of Return as the Overcoming of Nihilism
We would have been thinking the thought of return quite extrinsically -in fact, we would not have been thinking it at all-if an awareness of the domain of that thought too had not everywhere encroached upon us. By the concept of the domain of the thought of eternal return we understand the unified context in terms of which this thought is defined and is itself definitive; domain means the unity of the regions of the thought's provenance and dominion. Our inquiry into the do- main aims to grant the thought of thoughts its determinateness, inas- much as this most general thought is easily thought all too generally, that is to say, thought in an indiscriminate manner that drifts off into generalities.
Every thought that thinks being as a whole seems to be circum- scribed in its domain unequivocally and conclusively, at least as long as the as a whole is represented as the region that "encompasses" every- thing. And yet this as a whole is actually a locution that tends more to veil than to pose and to explicate an essential question. The as a whole in this designation "being as a whole" is always to be understood as an interrogative phrase, a questionable phrase, one worthy of the follow- ing questions: How is the as a whole determined; how is the determina- tion grounded; and how are the grounds for the grounding established? Whenever it is a matter of thinking being as a whole the question of the domain becomes a burning question.
However, in Nietzsche's thought concerning being as a whole there is something else, something distinctive, which we must think as well
The Domain of the Thought of Return 171
-not as a supplementary addition but as a preliminary characteristic that arises at the very outset to suggest the thought's possible configura- tion. This distinctive characteristic touches the essential core of the thought-the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietz- sche's philosophy, in the intrinsic movement of its thought, is a coun- termovement. Yet it may well be that a countermovement is what every philosophy is, opposing every other philosophy. Nevertheless, in Nietzsche's thinking the movement of this countering has a special sense. It does not wish to reject that which is countered in its thought, in order to replace it with something else. Nietzsche's thinking wills to invert. Yet that toward which the inversion and its particular kind of countermovement aim is not some arbitrary past tendency (or even present trend) in one type of philosophy or another. It is rather the whole of Western philosophy, inasmuch as such philosophy remains the form-giving principle in the history of Western man.
The collective history of Western philosophy is interpreted as Pla- tonism. Plato's philosophy provides the standard of measure for the way we conceive of all post-Platonic as well as pre-Platonic philos- ophy. That standard remains determinative inasmuch as philosophy posits specific conditions for the possibility of being as a whole and for man as being within this whole. Such conditions set their seal on being. That which first and last obtains, that which accordingly consti- tutes the condition of "life" as such, Nietzsche calls value. What prop- erly sets the standard are the uppermost values. If therefore Nietzsche's philosophy wants to be the countermovement to the whole of prior Western philosophy in the designated sense, it must set its sights on the uppermost values posited in philosophy. But because Nietzsche's countermovement possesses the character of an inversion, when it homes in on the uppermost values it becomes a "revaluation of all values. "
A countermovement of such scope and significance must of course be sufficiently necessary. Whatever impels it cannot rest on some gratuitous views and opinions concerning what is to be overcome. That in opposition to which the countermovement would set to work must itself be worthy of such work. Hence the most profound acknowl- edgment lies concealed in the countermovement that manifests such a
172 THE ETERJ\AL RECURREJ\CE OF THE SAME
style; the countermovement takes whatever has donned the colors of the opposition with consummate seriousness. In turn, such esteem presupposes that whatever stands in opposition has been experienced and thought through in its full power and significance; that is to say, has been suffered. The countermovement must in its necessity arise from such an original experience; and it must also remain rooted in such an experience.
Now, if the eternal return of the same is the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy proper, and if his philosophy is itself a counter- movement, then the thought of thoughts is inherently a counter- thought. The essence of this thought and its thinking, however, are a taking-for-true in the sense explained earlier: they are a belief. The thought of eternal return of the same is thus the counterbelief, the sustaining and guiding stance in the entire countermovement. The counterbelief itself is rooted in a particular experience involving prior philosophy and Western history in general, the experience t~at gener- ates the necessity of a countermovement or inversion in the sense of a revaluation.
What is this experience? What kind of need is experienced in it, as a need that makes a wending of the way necessary, a needful wending that calls for a revaluation and thereby a new valuation? * It is that propriative event in the history of Western man which Nietzsche designates by the name nihilism. What this word says is not something we can gather in some arbitrary way from a hodgepodge of political notions or world views. We must define it solely in terms of its meaning for Nietzsche.
In his experience of the development of nihilism, the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy is rooted and suspended. At the same time, that philosophy strives to clarify in an initial way the experience of nihilism and to make the scope of nihilism increasingly transparent. With the unfolding of Nietzsche's philosophy we also find a deepening of Nietzsche's insight into the essence and the power of nihilism, as well as a development of the need and the necessity of its overcommg.
What we have just said also suggests that the concept of nihilism can
*On the "needful wending," Not-wend-igkeit, see the note on page 175, below.
The Domain of the Thought of Return 173
be thought adequately only if we assimilate simultaneously the funda- mental thought-the counterthought-of Nietzsche's philosophy. Hence the reverse obtains as well: the fundamental thought, to wit, the doctrine of eternal return, can be grasped solely on the basis of the experience of nihilism and knowledge of the essence of nihilism. If we are to take the measure of the full domain of this most difficult thought; if our gaze is to penetrate at one and the same time the regions of that thought's provenance and dominion; then we must also adjoin to our provisional characterization of the thought's import and the manner of its communication a characterization of nihilism.
If we turn to the word itself we may say that nihilism is an event-or a teaching-whereby it is a matter of the nihil, the nothing. Con- sidered formally, the nothing is a negation of something-indeed of every kind of something. What constitutes being as a whole is every such something. To posit the nothing is thus to negate being as a whole. Nihilism thereby has as its explicit or tacit fundamental teach- ing the following: being as a whole is nothing. Yet precisely this avowal can be understood in such a way that it would be susceptible to the Nietzschean suspicion that it is not at all an expression of nihilism.
That which determines being as a whole is Being. At the beginning of his general metaphysics (in The Science of Logic) Hegel makes the following statement: Being and the Nothing are the same. One can also easily alter the proposition to read as follows: Being is the Nothing. Yet the Hegelian proposition is so little nihilism that it can be said to embody something of that very "grandiose initiative" that Nietzsche sees in German idealism (WM, 416*) which would overcome nihilism. The practice of referring broadly to "nihilism" whenever the nothing emerges in Hegel's text, especially when it stands in essential relation to the doctrine of Being; and furthermore the practice of speaking of nihilism in such a way as to give it a tinge of "Bolshevism," is not merely superficial thinking but unconscionable demagogy.
• WM, 416 (CM, W I 8 [106]) begins as follows:
The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to constitute in thought a pantheism in which evil, error, and suffering are not felt to be arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative was misused by the reigning powers (the state, etc. ), as though to sanction the rationality of whoever happened to be ruling.
174 THE ETERJ\'AL RECURRENCE O f THE SAME
Above all, such trivial reductions fail to grasp or even touch on Nietzsche's thought, either in terms of its understanding of nihilism or in the kind of nihilism that is proper to it. For Nietzsche does understand his own thinking in terms of nihilism: his thinking passes through "consummate nihilism," and Nietzsche himself is "Europe's first consummate nihilist, one who in himself has lived nihilism as such to its end, who has left it behind, beneath, and outside himself" (WM, Preface, section 3). "
The domain of the thought of eternal return of the same-of that thought's provenance and dominion-will open itself to us only when we have come to recognize the propriative event of nihilism, that is, only when we ponder the fact that Nietzsche experienced and thoroughly interrogated nihilism as the fundamental development of history as such. Nietzsche experienced and interrogated nihilism to the utmost by pursuing the path of his own thinking. The thought of eternal return thinks being in such a way that being as a whole sum- mons us without cease. It asks us whether we merely want to drift with the tide of things or whether we would be creators. Prior to that, it asks us whether we desire the means and the conditions by which we might again become creators.
lnsightinto nihilism remains something terrifying. Hence it is terri- bly difficult to think the thought that is hardest to bear and to prepare for the coming of those who will think it truly and creatively. What is most difficult at the outset is the confrontation with nihilism along with the thought of return, inasmuch as the latter itself betrays a nihi- listic character in the fact that it refuses to think of an ultimate goal for beings. From one point of view, at least, this thought ascribes the "in vain," the lack of an ultimate goal, to eternity. To this extent it is an utterly crippling thought (WM, 55; from the years 1886-87):
Let us think this thought in its most frightful form: existence as it is, without meaning and goal, yet inevitably recurring; existence with no finale to sweep it into nothingness: eternal recurrence.
• In I961 Heidegger added the following in square brackets: "A detailed explication and discussion of the essence of nihilism is to be found in Volume II of the present publication. " See Volume IV of this English-language series, entitled Nihilism.
The Domain ofthe Thought ofReturn 175 That is the utterly extreme form of nihilism: the nothing ("meaningless-
ness") eternally!
Yet when we think the Nietzschean thought of eternal return in this way we are doing so halfheartedly-in fact we are not thinking it at all. For we are not grasping it in its character as decision, the character of the moment. Only when this happens do we plumb the depths of the thought in its proper domain; only when this happens is there in Nietz- sche's view such a thing as the overcoming of nihilism. As an over- coming, the thought obviously presupposes nihilism, in the sense that it takes up nihilism into its thought, thinking it through to its uttermost end. Understood in this way, the thought of return too is to be thought "nihilistically," and only so. But this now implies that the thought of return is to be thought only in conjunction with nihilism, as what is to be overcome, what is already overcome in the very will to create. Only the one whose thinking ventures forth into the uttermost need of nihil- ism will be able to think the overcoming thought, which is the needed thought-the thought that wends its way toward the need as such. "'
• Nur wer in die iiusserste Not des Nihilismus hinausdenkt, vermag auch den iiber- windenden Gedanken als den not-wendenden und notwendigen zu denken. Cf. Heideg- ger's brief Foreword to the fourth edition of Erliiuterungen zu Holder/ins Dichtung (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1971), p. 7. The above phrase plays on the rootedness of both "overcoming" and "necessity" in a kind of wending or turning toward the need in our destitute time. See also the discussion of need and needlessness in Volume IV of this series, pp. 244-50, including the note on pp. 244-45.
24. Moment and Eternal Recurrence
What is the fundamental position in the midst of beings that results from such thinking? Earlier we heard that the serpent that coils itself in rings about the eagle's throat, thus becoming a ring that itself turns in the widening spiral of the eagle's ascent into the heights, is the image of the ring in the doctrine of eternal return. In the middle of our account of "The Vision and the Riddle," while we were recounting Zarathustra's tale told on shipboard of how he had once climbed a mountain in company with the dwarf, we broke off at a particular point with the remark that the remainder of Zarathustra's tale would become comprehensible only later. We have now arrived at that junc- ture at which we can take up the matters postponed earlier. At the same time we can once again think through the entire tale-the tale that thinks the thought that is hardest to bear.
W e recall that Zarathustra poses two questions to the dwarf concern- ing the vision of the gateway. The second question the dwarf does not answer. Indeed, Zarathustra reports that his own talk concerning what is decisive in this vision of the gateway-namely, the question of the "moment"-grows softer and softer, and that he himself begins to fear his "own thoughts and hinterthoughts. " He himself is not yet master of this thought-which is tantamount to saying that the victory of his thought is not yet decided, not even for Zarathustra. True, he tells the dwarf, "It is either You or me! " and he knows that he is the stronger one; still, he is not yet master of his own strength; he must test it and thus attain it for the first time, in confrontation. Whither the con- frontation tends, and what domain of provenance and dominion the thought of thoughts occupies, we have in the meantime considered.
With one eye on this domain we may now proceed to interpret the remainder of Zarathustra's tale.
Moment and Eternal Recurrence 177
Zarathustra is approaching his ownmost thought, fearing it more intensely with each advancing step. "Then suddenly I heard a dog nearby howling. " It is now a dog that comes into Zarathustra's vicinity, not an eagle with a serpent coiled about its throat; and now we hear, not the singing of songbirds, but a "howling. " Now all the images turn counter to the mood of the thought of eternal return.
When the dog howls Zarathustra's thoughts "race back" to his child- hood. The reference to childhood shows that we are now retreating to the earlier history of Zarathustra, the thinker of the thought of return, and also to the vast prehistory of that thought-to the genesis and emergence of nihilism. At some point in his childhood Zarathustra saw a dog, "bristling, its head raised, shivering in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts. " The scene, with all its counter- images, is thus defined in greater detail. It is midnight, the most remote time, the hour that is farthest removed from midday-midday being the time of the most luminous, shadowless moment. "For at that instant the full moon, silent as death, rose over the house and then stood still, a round, glowing coal; stood still on the flat roof, as though trespassing on a stranger's property. . . . " Instead of the brilliant sun it is the full moon that is shining here; it too is a light, but a merely borrowed light, the most pallid reflection of actual illumination, a diaphanous ghost of light. Yet it shines enough to affright the dogs and set them baying-"since dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. " At that time the child took pity on the dog that took fright at a ghost and yowled and raised a great din. In such a world compassion is most likely to be found among children-who comprehend nothing of what is happening and who are not of age with respect to being.
"And when I heard such howling once again I took pity. " Zarathus- tra reports that even now-though he is no longer a child-he slip~ into the mood of pity and compassion, imagining on the basis of that mood how the world must look. Through Zarathustra's words, Nietz- sche is here alluding to the time when Schopenhauer and Wagner determined his outlook on the world. Both of them taught, albeit in divergent ways, a form of pessimism-ultimately the flight into disso- lution, into nothingness, into sheer suspension, into a sleep which promised itself an awakening only in order that it might go on sleeping undisturbed.
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Meanwhile, Nietzsche himself had renounced all slumbering and dreaming; for he had already begun to question. The world of Scho- penhauer and Wagner became questionable to him early on, earlier than even he knew, already at the time he was writing the third and fourth of his Untimely Meditations, "Schopenhauer as Educator" and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. " However much in both of these writ- ings he appeared to be an advocate of Schopenhauer's and Wagner's, and however much he wanted to be precisely that, here already we see a struggle for release, though not yet a real awakening. Nietzsche was not yet his own man, was not yet hard by his own thought. He first had to pass through the prehistory of that thought, and through the limbo that always leaves us so perplexed-a limbo of past experiences which we cannot truly come to terms with and of things to come which we cannot yet truly penetrate. Where exactly was Zarathustra? "Was I dreaming? Was I awakening? At one stroke I stood among wild cliffs, alone, bleak, in the bleakest moonlight. " Bleakness pervades the period
1874 to 1881, the years Nietzsche once described as the period in which his life plunged to its nadir. Nevertheless, the bleakness of this lunar light was peculiarly bright, bright enough to enable him to see and to be visionary, especially when he heard the howling of a dog, having in the meantime developed an ear for that miserable specimen which is more whelp than human being and which has lost all pride, believing only in its own believing and nothing more.
And what did Zarathustra descry in this bleak lunar light? "A man was lying there! " The italic print lends special emphasis to what is seen: a human being lying prostrate on the ground-not erect and standing. Yet this is not enough. "And, truly, what I now saw was unlike anything I had ever seen. " A man lying on the ground may be nothing unusual; and the experience that human beings do not often rouse themselves to stand, do not take a stand, that they generally lurch on with the help of crutches and supports, is a common one; and that humankind is in a wretched state is the customary jeremiad of pessimism, with all its inexhaustible twists and turns. Yet the way in which Zarathustra saw humanity at that moment was a way it had never been seen before. A human being, prostrate. But of what sort, and in what circumstances? "I saw a young shepherd, writhing, chok-
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ing in spasms, his face distorted; a thick black snake hung out of his mouth. " It is a young man, then, one who has barely left his child- hood behind; perhaps he is the very one who heard the howling dog, namely, Zarathustra. A young shepherd, one who intends to guide and lead. He lies prostrate in the bleak light of illusion. "Had he been sleeping? A snake crawled into his mouth-and there it bit fast. "
By nuw we are sufficiently prepared to discern in the "thick black snake" the counterimage of the serpent that winds itself about the ea- gle's throat, the eagle in turn soaring in the midday sky and holding effortlessly in the heights. The black snake is drear monotony, ulti- mately the goallessness and meaninglessness of nihilism. It is nihilism itself. Nihilism has bitten the young shepherd during his sleep and is now firmly entrenched. Only because the shepherd was not vigilant could the power of the snake assert itself, could the snake wriggle its way into the young shepherd's mouth, incorporating itself in him. When Zarathustra sees the young shepherd lying there, he does the first thing anyone would do. He pulls at the snake, tugs at it, "-in vain! "
The implication is that nihilism cannot be overcome from the out- side. We do not overcome it by tearing away at it or shoving it aside- which is what we do when we replace the Christian God with yet another ideal, such as Reason, Progress, political and economic "So- cialism," or mere Democracy. Try as we might to cast it aside, the black snake attaches itself ever more firmly. Zarathustra thus immedi- ately gives up such rescue operations. "With one cry," he now relates, "it cried out of me. " What is this it? Zarathustra replies, "All my goodness and my wickedness. " Zarathustra's complete essence and his entire history precipitate in him and cry out, "Bite! You must bite! " W e need not say a great deal more in order to make the meaning of the passage perfectly clear. The black snake of nihilism threatens to inc~r­ porate humanity altogether; it must be overcome by those who are themselves inflicted with it and endangered by it. All tugging-all that frantic activity from the outside, all temporary amelioration, all mere
repulsion, postponement, and deferment-all this is in vain. Here nothing avails if human beings themselves do not bite into the danger, and not blindly, not just anywhere. We must bite off the head of the
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black snake, its properly definitive and leading part, which looms at the forefront.
Nihilism will be overcome only from the ground up, only if we grapple with the very head of it; only if the ideals which it posits and from which it derives fall prey to "criticism," that is, to enclosure and overcoming. Yet such overcoming transpires only in the following way: everyone who is affected-and that means each of us-must bite into the matter for himself or herself; for if we leave it to another to tug at the darkling need that is our own, all will be futile.
-But the shepherd bit as my cry urged him to, bit with a good bite! He spewed out the snake's head, spat it far away, and leapt to his feet.
No longer a shepherd, no longer human, but as one transformed, il- luminated--one who laughed!
What sort of gaiety gives vent to such laughter? The gaiety of the gay science. Now, at the end of our long path, we recognize-and we recognize it as no accident but as the most intrinsic necessity-that at the conclusion of the treatise which Nietzsche entitled The Gay Science the thought of eternal return of the same is communicated for the first time. For this thought is the bite that is to overcome nihilism in its very foundation. Just as Zarathustra is no one else than the thinker of this thought, so too is the bite nothing other than the over- coming of nihilism. Thus it becomes transparently clear that the young shepherd is Zarathustra himself. In this vision Zarathustra is advancing toward himself. With the full force of his complete essence he must call out to himself, "You must bite! " Toward the end of the tale that Zarathustra recounts to the seamen-those searchers and re- searchers-Zarathustra poses this question to them: "Who is the shep- herd into whose gorge the snake crawled? " We can now reply that it is Zarathustra, the thinker of the thought of eternal return. Zarathustra's ownmost animals, his eagle and his serpent, exalt him only after he has overcome the world of the howling dog and the black snake. Zara- thustra becomes a convalescent only after he has passed through a period of illness, only after he has come to know that the black snake that chokes us pertains to knowledge as such, that the knower must also come to terms with the disgust occasioned by the contemptible human being as something that is necessary.
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Now for the first time we can recognize the inner correspondence of the two passages from Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra on which we have been commenting. Now we understand why Zarathustra replies as follows to his animals, who wish to perform for Zarathustra's enjoy- ment the delightful ditty of the eternal return of the same in the loveli- est words and tones: "The intense disgust with man-this choked, me, this had crawled into my throat, this and also what the soothsayer had said: 'It is all alike, nothing is worthwhile, knowledge chokes. ' " Who- ever takes the thought of eternal return to be a ditty belongs among those who flee from genuine knowledge, inasmuch as such knowledge "chokes. " Thus in the episode entitled "The Convalescent," with ex- plicit reference to the section "On the Vision and the Riddle," precise- ly at the point when Zarathustra begins to respond to the animals' ditty, we hear the following:
"Oh, you rascally jesters and barrel organs, be still now! " replied Zara- thustra, smiling once again. "How well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days-and how that beast wriggled down my throat and choked me! But I bit its head off and spewed it far away from me.
And you? You've made a hurdy-gurdy song out of it! Here am I, lying here, weary of this biting and spewing, still sick from my own redemption. And you looked on all the while?
These two distinct episodes, "On the Vision and the Riddle" and "The Convalescent," hence coalesce, both in terms of their content and their place in the work in question. We achieve a more balanced understanding of the book as a whole. Yet we must guard against the presumption that we now belong among those who really understand. Perhaps we too are mere onlookers. Perhaps we do not heed the second question Zarathustra poses straightaway to the crew. He asks not only "Who is the shepherd? " but also "Who is the human being into whose gorge all that is heaviest and blackest will creep? " The answer is that it is the one who thinks-in company with others-the thought of eter- nal return. Yet he or she is not thinking the thought in its essential domain until the black snake has penetrated the gorge and its head has been bitten off. The thought is only as that bite.
As soon as we understand this we realize why Zarathustra grows fearful when he thinks the thought of the moment, and why the dwarf,
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rather than answering, simply vanishes. The moment cannot be thought before the bite has occurred, because the bite answers the question as to what the gateway itself-the moment-is: the gateway of the moment is that decision in which prior history, the history of nihilism, is brought to confrontation and forthwith overcome.
The thought of eternal return of the same is only as this conquering thought. The overcoming must grant us passage across a gap that seems to be quite narrow. The gap opens between two things that in one way are alike, so that they appear to be the same. On the one side stands the following: "Everything is nought, indifferent, so that noth- ing is worthwhile-it is all alike. "And on the other side: "Everything recurs, it depends on each moment, everything matters-it is all alike. "
The smallest gap, the rainbow bridge of the phrase it is all alike, conceals two things that are quite distinct: "everything is indifferent" and "nothing is indifferent. "
The overcoming of this smallest gap is the most difficult overcoming in the thought of eternal return of the same as the essentially overcom- ing thought. If one takes the thought ostensibly "for itself' in terms of its content-"Everything turns in a circle"-then it is perhaps sheer delusion. But in that case it is not Nietzsche's thought. Above all, it is not the thought "for itself," inasmuch as for itself it is precisely the overcoming thought, and this alone.
If we survey once again at a single glance our presentation of Nietz- sche's thought of eternal return of the same, we cannot but be struck by the fact that our explicit discussion of the thought's content has receded markedly before our constant emphasis on the right way of approaching the thought and its conditions. The conditions may be reduced to two-and even these cohere and constitute but one.
First, thinking in terms of the moment. This implies that we trans- pose ourselves to the temporality of independent action and decision, glancing ahead at what is assigned us as our task and back at what is given us as our endowment.
Second, thinking the thought as the overcoming of nihilism. This implies that we transpose ourselves to the condition of need that arises with nihilism. The condition requires of us that we meditate on the
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endowment and decide about the task. Our needy condition itself is nothing other than what our transposition to the moment opens up to us.
Yet what accounts for the fact that with this thought it is precisely thinking, and the conditions of thinking, that are emphasized so essen- tially? What else could it be but the thought's "content," what it gives us to think? Accordingly, the content does not really go into abeyance, as it seemed to; rather, it comes to the fore in a singular way. For now the conditions of the thought-process as such thrust their way to the forefront. With the thought in question, what is to be thought recoils on the thinker because of the way it is to be thought, and so it compels the thinker. Yet it does so solely in order to draw the thinker into what is to be thought. To think eternity requires that we think the moment, that is, transpose ourselves to the moment of being-a-self. " To think the recurrence of the same is to enter into confrontation with the "it is all alike," the "it isn't worthwhile'; in short, with nihilism.
Only by way ofnihilism and the moment is the eternal recurrence of the same to be thought.