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.
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.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
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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. Of course, one thing ought to be clear to us immediately: this thinking that pursues the figure of a teacher who teaches the over-man involves us, involves Europe, involves the earth as a whole-not merely today, but especially tomorrow. That is so, no matter whether we affirm or reject this thinking, whether we neglect it or ape it in false tones. Every essential thinking cuts across all discipleship and opposition alike with- out being touched.
Hence it behooves us first of all to learn how to learn from the teacher, even if that only means to ask out beyond him. In that way alone will we one day experience who Zarathustra is. Or else we will never experience it.
To be sure, we must still ponder whether this asking out beyond Nietzsche's thinking can be a continuation of his thought, or whether it must become a step back.
And before that, we must ponder whether this "step back" merely refers to a historically ascertainable past which one might choose to revive (for example, the world of Goethe), or whether the word back indicates something that has been. For the commencement of what has been still awaits a commemorative thinking, in order that it might become a beginning, a beginning to which the dawn grants upsurgence. *
Yet we shall now restrict ourselves to the effort to learn a few provi- sional things about Zarathustra, The appropriate way to proceed would be to follow the first steps taken by this teacher-the teacher that Zara- thustra is. He teaches by showing. He previews the essence of over- man and brings that essence to visible configuration. Zarathustra is
• See "The Anaximander Fragment," in Early Greek Thinking, pp. 16-18.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 217
merely the teacher, not the over-man himself. In turn, Nietzsche is not Zarathustra, but the questioner who seeks to create in thought Zarathustra's essence.
The overman proceeds beyond prior and contemporary humanity; thus he is a transition, a bridge. In order for us learners to be able to follow the teacher who teaches the overman, we must-keeping now to the imagery-get onto the bridge. We are thinking the crucial as- pects of the transition when we heed these three things:
First, that from which the one who is in transition departs. Second, the transition itself.
Third, that toward which the one in transition is heading. Especially the last-mentioned aspect we must have in view; above
all, the one who is in transition must have it in view; and before him, the teacher who is to show it to him must have it in view. If a preview of the "whither" is missing, the one in transition remains rudderless, and the place from which he must release himself remains undeter- mined. And yet the place to which the one in transition is called first shows itself in the full light of day only when he has gone over to it. For the one in transition-and particularly for the one who, as the teacher, is to point the way of transition, particularly for Zarathustra himself-the "whither" remains always at a far remove. The remote- ness persists. Inasmuch as it persists, it remains in a kind of proximity, a proximity that preserves what is remote as remote by commemorating it and turning its thoughts toward it. Commemorative nearness to the remote is what our language calls "longing," die Sehnsucht. We wrongly associate the word Sucht with suchen, "to seek" and "to be driven. " But the old word Sucht (as in Gelbsucht, "jaundice," and
Schwindsucht, "consumption") means illness, suffering, pain. Longing is the agony of the nearness of what lies afar.
Whither the one in transition goes, there his longing is at home.
The one in transition, and even the one who points out the way to him, the teacher, is (as we have already heard) on the way home to the essence that is most proper to him. He is the convalescent. Immedi- ately following the episode called "The Convalescent," in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the episode entitled "On the Great Longing. " With this episode, the third-to-last of Part III, the work
218 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a whole attains its summit. In a note from the posthumously published materials (XIV, 285) Nietzsche observes, "A divine suffering is the content of Zarathustra III. "
In the section "On the Great Longing" Zarathustra speaks to his soul. According to Plato's teaching-a teaching that became definitive for Western metaphysics-the essence of thinking resides in the soul's solitary conversation with itself. The essence of thinking is logos, han aute pros hauten he psyche diexerchetai peri han an skopei, the telling self-gathering which the soul itself undergoes on its way to itself, with- in the scope of whatever it is looking at (Theaetetus, 189e; cf. The Sophist, 263e). "
In converse with his soul Zarathustra thinks his "most abysmal thought" ("The Convalescent," section one; cf. Part III, "On the Vi- sion and the Riddle," section 2). Zarathustra begins the episode "On the Great Longing" with the words: "0 my soul, I taught you to say 'Today' like 'One day' and 'Formerly,' I taught you to dance your round-dance beyond every Here and There and Yonder. " The three words "Today," "One day," and "Formerly" are capitalized and placed in quotation marks. They designate the fundamental features of time. The way Zarathustra expresses them points toward the matter Zara- thustra himself must henceforth tell himself in the very ground of his essence. And what is that? That "One day" and "Formerly," future and past, are like "Today. " And also that today is like what is past and what is to come. All three phases of time merge in a single identity, as the same in one single present, a perpetual "now. " Metaphysics calls the constant now "eternity. " Nietzsche too thinks the three phases of time in terms of eternity as the constant now. Yet for him the constan- cy consists not in stasis but in a recurrence of the same. When Zara-
• Schleiermacher translates the Theaetetus' definition of dianoia, "thinking," as fol- lows: "A speech which the soul goes through by itself concerning whatever it wants to investigate. " And Cornford translates it: "As a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering. " The passage from The Sophist reads as follows:
Oukoun dianoia men kai logos tauton. Plen ho men entos tes psyches pros hauten
dialogos aneu phones gignomenos tout'auto hemin epijnomasthe, dianoia?
Then, thought and speech are the same, except that the inner conversation of the soul with itself, which proceeds altogether without sound, is called thinking?
Theaetetus replies on behalf of Western intellectuality as a whole: "Certainly. "
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 219
thustra teaches his soui to say those words he is the teacher of eternal return of the same. Such return is the inexhaustible abundance of a life that is both joyous and agonizing. Such a life is the destination toward which "the great longing" leads the teacher of eternal return of the same. Thus in the same episode "the great longing" is also called "the longing of superabundance. "
The "great longing" thrives for the most part on that from which it draws its only consolation, that is to say, its confidence in the future. In place of the older word "consolation," Trost (related to trauen, "to trust," "to betroth," and to zutrauen, "to believe oneself capable"), the word "hope" has entered our language. "The great longing" attunes and defines Zarathustra, who in his "greatest hope" is inspired by such longing.
Yet what induces Zarathustra to such hope, and what entitles him to it?
What bridge must he take in order to go over to the overman? What bridge enables him to depart from humanity hitherto, so that he can be released from it?
It derives from the peculiar structure of the work Thus Spoke Zara- thustra, a work that is to make manifest the transition of the one who goes over, that the answer to the question we have just posed appears in the second part of the work, the preparatory part. Here, in the episode "On the Tarantulas," Nietzsche has Zarathustra say: "For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the high- est hope and a rainbow after long storms. "
How strange, how alien these words must seem to the customary view of Nietzsche's philosophy that we have furnished for ourselves. Is not Nietzsche supposed to be the one who goads our will to power, incites us to a politics of violence and war, and sets the "blond beast:' on his rampage?
The words "that man be redeemed from revenge" are even italicized in the text. Nietzsche's thought thinks in the direction of redemption from the spirit of revenge. His thinking would minister to a spirit which, as freedom from vengefulness, goes before all mere fraternizing -but also before all vestiges of the sheer will to punish. It would minister to a spirit that abides before all efforts to secure peace and
220 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
before all conduct of war, a spirit quite apart from that which wills to establish and secure pax, peace, by pacts. The space in which such freedom from revenge moves is equidistant from pacifism, political violence, and calculating neutrality. In the same way, it lies outside feeble neglect of things and avoidance of sacrifice, outside blind inter- vention and the will to action at any price.
Nietzsche's reputation as a "free spirit" arises from the spirit of free- dom from revenge.
"That man be redeemed from revenge. " If we pay heed even in the slightest way to this spirit of freedom in Nietzsche's thinking, as its principal trait, then the prior image of Nietzsche-which is still in circulation-will surely disintegrate.
"For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the highest hope," says Nietzsche. He thereby says at the same time, in a language that prepares yet conceals the way, whither his "great longing" aims.
Yet what does Nietzsche understand here by "revenge"? In what, according to Nietzsche, does redemption from revenge consist?
We shall be content if we can shed some light on these two ques- tions. Such light would perhaps enable us to descry the bridge that is to lead such thinking from prior humanity to the overman. The desti- nation toward which the one in transition is heading will only come to the fore in the transition itself. Perhaps then it will dawn on us why Zarathustra, the advocate of life, suffering, and the circle, is the teacher who simultaneously teaches the eternal return of the same and the overman.
But then why is it that something so decisive depends on redemption from revenge? Where is the spirit of revenge at home? Nietzsche re- plies to our question in the third-to-last episode of the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which bears the heading "On Redemption. " Here the following words appear: "The spirit ofrevenge: my friends, up to now that was man's best reflection; and wherever there was suffer- ing, there also had to be punishment. "
This statement without reservation attributes revenge to the whole of humanity's reflection hitherto. The reflection spoken of here is not some fortuitous kind of thinking; it is rather that thinking in which
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 221
man's relation to what is, to being, is fastened and hangs suspended. Insofar as man comports himself toward beings, he represents them with regard to the fact that they are, with regard to what they are and how they are, how they might be and how they ought to be-in short, he represents beings with regard to their Being. Such representing is thinking.
According to Nietzsche's statement, such representation has hereto- fore been determined by the spirit of revenge. Meanwhile human be- ings take their relationship with what is, a relationship that is determined in this fashion, to be the best possible sort of relationship.
In whatever way man may represent beings as such, he does so with a view to Being. By means of this view he advances always beyond beings-out beyond them and over to Being. The Greeks said this in the word meta. Thus man's every relation to beings as such is inher- ently metaphysical. If Nietzsche understands revenge as the spirit that defines and sets the tone for man's relationship with Being, then he is from the outset thinking revenge metaphysically.
Here revenge is not merely a theme for morality, and redemption from revenge is not a task for moral education. Just as little are revenge and vengefulness objects of psychology. Nietzsche sees the essence and scope of revenge metaphysically. Yet what does revenge in general mean?
If at first we keep to the meaning of the word, although at the same time trying not to be myopic, we may be able to find a clue in it. Revenge, taking revenge, wreaking, urgere: these words mean to push, drive, herd, pursue, and persecute. In what sense is revenge persecution? * Revenge does not merely try to hunt something down, seize, and take possession of it. Nor does it only seek to slay what it persecutes. Vengeful persecution defies in advance that on which jt avenges itself. It defies its object by degrading it, in order to feel superior to what has been thus degraded; in this way it restores its own self-esteem, the only estimation that seems to count for it. For one who seeks vengeance is galled by the feeling that he has been thwarted and injured. During the years Nietzsche was composing his work Thus
• The clue may reside in the fact that the word here translated as "persecution," Nachstellen, is a morphological pendant to the word Vorstellen, "representation. "
222 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Spoke Zarathustra he jotted down the following observation: "I advise all martyrs to consider whether it wasn't vengeance that drove them to such extremes" (see the third Grossoktav edition, XII, 298).
What is revenge? We can now provisionally say that revenge is per- secution that defies and degrades. And such persecution is supposed to have sustained and permeated all prior reflection, all representation of beings? If the designated metaphysical scope may in fact be attributed to the spirit of revenge, that scope must somehow become visible in terms of the very constitution of metaphysics. In order to discern it, if only in rough outline, let us now turn to the essential coinage of the Being of beings in modern metaphysics. The essential coinage of Being comes to language in classic form in several sentences formulated by Schelling in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence ofHu-
man Freedom and the Objects Pertaining Thereto (1809). The three sentences read:
-In the final and highest instance there is no other Being than willing. Willing is primal Being, and to it [willing] alone all the predicates of the same (primal Being] apply: absence of conditions; eternity; independence from time; self-affirmation. All philosophy strives solely in order to find this supreme expression. *
Schelling asserts that the predicates which metaphysical thought since antiquity has attributed to Being find their ultimate, supreme, and thus consummate configuration in willing. However, the will of the willing meant here is not a faculty of the human soul. Here the word willing names the Being of beings as a whole. Such Being is will. That sounds foreign to us-and so it is, as long as the sustaining thoughts of Western metaphysics remain alien to us. They will remain alien as long as we do not think these thoughts, but merely go on reporting them. For example, one may ascertain Leibniz's utterances concerning the Being of beings with absolute historical precision- without in the least thinking about what he was thinking when he defined the Being of beings in terms of the monad, as the unity of perceptio and appetitus, representation and striving, that is, will. What
* Heidegger cites F. W. f. Schellings philosophische Schriften (Landshut, 1809), I, 419. In the standard edition of Schelling's Siimtliche Werke (1860), VII, 350.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 223
Leibniz was thinking comes to language in Kant and Fichte as "the rational will"; Hegel and Schelling, each in his own way, reflect on this Vernunftwille. Schopenhauer is referring to the selfsame thing when he gives his major work the title The World [not man] as Will and Representation. Nietzsche is thinking the selfsame thing when he acknowledges the primal Being of beings as will to power.
That everywhere on all sides the Being of beings appears consistently as will does not derive from views on being which a few philosophers furnished for themselves. No amount of erudition will ever uncover what it means that Being appears as will. What it means can only be asked in thinking; as what is to be thought, it can only be celebrated as worth asking about; as something we are mindful of, it can only be kept in mind.
In modern metaphysics, there for the first time expressly and explic- itly, the Being of beings appears as will. Man is man insofar as he comports himself to beings by way of thought. In this way he is held in Being. Man's thinking must also correspond in its essence to that toward which it comports itself, to wit, the Being of beings as will.
Now, Nietzsche tells us that prior thinking has been determined by the spirit of revenge. Precisely how is Nietzsche thinking the essence of revenge, assuming that he is thinking it metaphysically?
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
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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. Of course, one thing ought to be clear to us immediately: this thinking that pursues the figure of a teacher who teaches the over-man involves us, involves Europe, involves the earth as a whole-not merely today, but especially tomorrow. That is so, no matter whether we affirm or reject this thinking, whether we neglect it or ape it in false tones. Every essential thinking cuts across all discipleship and opposition alike with- out being touched.
Hence it behooves us first of all to learn how to learn from the teacher, even if that only means to ask out beyond him. In that way alone will we one day experience who Zarathustra is. Or else we will never experience it.
To be sure, we must still ponder whether this asking out beyond Nietzsche's thinking can be a continuation of his thought, or whether it must become a step back.
And before that, we must ponder whether this "step back" merely refers to a historically ascertainable past which one might choose to revive (for example, the world of Goethe), or whether the word back indicates something that has been. For the commencement of what has been still awaits a commemorative thinking, in order that it might become a beginning, a beginning to which the dawn grants upsurgence. *
Yet we shall now restrict ourselves to the effort to learn a few provi- sional things about Zarathustra, The appropriate way to proceed would be to follow the first steps taken by this teacher-the teacher that Zara- thustra is. He teaches by showing. He previews the essence of over- man and brings that essence to visible configuration. Zarathustra is
• See "The Anaximander Fragment," in Early Greek Thinking, pp. 16-18.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 217
merely the teacher, not the over-man himself. In turn, Nietzsche is not Zarathustra, but the questioner who seeks to create in thought Zarathustra's essence.
The overman proceeds beyond prior and contemporary humanity; thus he is a transition, a bridge. In order for us learners to be able to follow the teacher who teaches the overman, we must-keeping now to the imagery-get onto the bridge. We are thinking the crucial as- pects of the transition when we heed these three things:
First, that from which the one who is in transition departs. Second, the transition itself.
Third, that toward which the one in transition is heading. Especially the last-mentioned aspect we must have in view; above
all, the one who is in transition must have it in view; and before him, the teacher who is to show it to him must have it in view. If a preview of the "whither" is missing, the one in transition remains rudderless, and the place from which he must release himself remains undeter- mined. And yet the place to which the one in transition is called first shows itself in the full light of day only when he has gone over to it. For the one in transition-and particularly for the one who, as the teacher, is to point the way of transition, particularly for Zarathustra himself-the "whither" remains always at a far remove. The remote- ness persists. Inasmuch as it persists, it remains in a kind of proximity, a proximity that preserves what is remote as remote by commemorating it and turning its thoughts toward it. Commemorative nearness to the remote is what our language calls "longing," die Sehnsucht. We wrongly associate the word Sucht with suchen, "to seek" and "to be driven. " But the old word Sucht (as in Gelbsucht, "jaundice," and
Schwindsucht, "consumption") means illness, suffering, pain. Longing is the agony of the nearness of what lies afar.
Whither the one in transition goes, there his longing is at home.
The one in transition, and even the one who points out the way to him, the teacher, is (as we have already heard) on the way home to the essence that is most proper to him. He is the convalescent. Immedi- ately following the episode called "The Convalescent," in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the episode entitled "On the Great Longing. " With this episode, the third-to-last of Part III, the work
218 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a whole attains its summit. In a note from the posthumously published materials (XIV, 285) Nietzsche observes, "A divine suffering is the content of Zarathustra III. "
In the section "On the Great Longing" Zarathustra speaks to his soul. According to Plato's teaching-a teaching that became definitive for Western metaphysics-the essence of thinking resides in the soul's solitary conversation with itself. The essence of thinking is logos, han aute pros hauten he psyche diexerchetai peri han an skopei, the telling self-gathering which the soul itself undergoes on its way to itself, with- in the scope of whatever it is looking at (Theaetetus, 189e; cf. The Sophist, 263e). "
In converse with his soul Zarathustra thinks his "most abysmal thought" ("The Convalescent," section one; cf. Part III, "On the Vi- sion and the Riddle," section 2). Zarathustra begins the episode "On the Great Longing" with the words: "0 my soul, I taught you to say 'Today' like 'One day' and 'Formerly,' I taught you to dance your round-dance beyond every Here and There and Yonder. " The three words "Today," "One day," and "Formerly" are capitalized and placed in quotation marks. They designate the fundamental features of time. The way Zarathustra expresses them points toward the matter Zara- thustra himself must henceforth tell himself in the very ground of his essence. And what is that? That "One day" and "Formerly," future and past, are like "Today. " And also that today is like what is past and what is to come. All three phases of time merge in a single identity, as the same in one single present, a perpetual "now. " Metaphysics calls the constant now "eternity. " Nietzsche too thinks the three phases of time in terms of eternity as the constant now. Yet for him the constan- cy consists not in stasis but in a recurrence of the same. When Zara-
• Schleiermacher translates the Theaetetus' definition of dianoia, "thinking," as fol- lows: "A speech which the soul goes through by itself concerning whatever it wants to investigate. " And Cornford translates it: "As a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering. " The passage from The Sophist reads as follows:
Oukoun dianoia men kai logos tauton. Plen ho men entos tes psyches pros hauten
dialogos aneu phones gignomenos tout'auto hemin epijnomasthe, dianoia?
Then, thought and speech are the same, except that the inner conversation of the soul with itself, which proceeds altogether without sound, is called thinking?
Theaetetus replies on behalf of Western intellectuality as a whole: "Certainly. "
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 219
thustra teaches his soui to say those words he is the teacher of eternal return of the same. Such return is the inexhaustible abundance of a life that is both joyous and agonizing. Such a life is the destination toward which "the great longing" leads the teacher of eternal return of the same. Thus in the same episode "the great longing" is also called "the longing of superabundance. "
The "great longing" thrives for the most part on that from which it draws its only consolation, that is to say, its confidence in the future. In place of the older word "consolation," Trost (related to trauen, "to trust," "to betroth," and to zutrauen, "to believe oneself capable"), the word "hope" has entered our language. "The great longing" attunes and defines Zarathustra, who in his "greatest hope" is inspired by such longing.
Yet what induces Zarathustra to such hope, and what entitles him to it?
What bridge must he take in order to go over to the overman? What bridge enables him to depart from humanity hitherto, so that he can be released from it?
It derives from the peculiar structure of the work Thus Spoke Zara- thustra, a work that is to make manifest the transition of the one who goes over, that the answer to the question we have just posed appears in the second part of the work, the preparatory part. Here, in the episode "On the Tarantulas," Nietzsche has Zarathustra say: "For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the high- est hope and a rainbow after long storms. "
How strange, how alien these words must seem to the customary view of Nietzsche's philosophy that we have furnished for ourselves. Is not Nietzsche supposed to be the one who goads our will to power, incites us to a politics of violence and war, and sets the "blond beast:' on his rampage?
The words "that man be redeemed from revenge" are even italicized in the text. Nietzsche's thought thinks in the direction of redemption from the spirit of revenge. His thinking would minister to a spirit which, as freedom from vengefulness, goes before all mere fraternizing -but also before all vestiges of the sheer will to punish. It would minister to a spirit that abides before all efforts to secure peace and
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before all conduct of war, a spirit quite apart from that which wills to establish and secure pax, peace, by pacts. The space in which such freedom from revenge moves is equidistant from pacifism, political violence, and calculating neutrality. In the same way, it lies outside feeble neglect of things and avoidance of sacrifice, outside blind inter- vention and the will to action at any price.
Nietzsche's reputation as a "free spirit" arises from the spirit of free- dom from revenge.
"That man be redeemed from revenge. " If we pay heed even in the slightest way to this spirit of freedom in Nietzsche's thinking, as its principal trait, then the prior image of Nietzsche-which is still in circulation-will surely disintegrate.
"For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the highest hope," says Nietzsche. He thereby says at the same time, in a language that prepares yet conceals the way, whither his "great longing" aims.
Yet what does Nietzsche understand here by "revenge"? In what, according to Nietzsche, does redemption from revenge consist?
We shall be content if we can shed some light on these two ques- tions. Such light would perhaps enable us to descry the bridge that is to lead such thinking from prior humanity to the overman. The desti- nation toward which the one in transition is heading will only come to the fore in the transition itself. Perhaps then it will dawn on us why Zarathustra, the advocate of life, suffering, and the circle, is the teacher who simultaneously teaches the eternal return of the same and the overman.
But then why is it that something so decisive depends on redemption from revenge? Where is the spirit of revenge at home? Nietzsche re- plies to our question in the third-to-last episode of the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which bears the heading "On Redemption. " Here the following words appear: "The spirit ofrevenge: my friends, up to now that was man's best reflection; and wherever there was suffer- ing, there also had to be punishment. "
This statement without reservation attributes revenge to the whole of humanity's reflection hitherto. The reflection spoken of here is not some fortuitous kind of thinking; it is rather that thinking in which
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 221
man's relation to what is, to being, is fastened and hangs suspended. Insofar as man comports himself toward beings, he represents them with regard to the fact that they are, with regard to what they are and how they are, how they might be and how they ought to be-in short, he represents beings with regard to their Being. Such representing is thinking.
According to Nietzsche's statement, such representation has hereto- fore been determined by the spirit of revenge. Meanwhile human be- ings take their relationship with what is, a relationship that is determined in this fashion, to be the best possible sort of relationship.
In whatever way man may represent beings as such, he does so with a view to Being. By means of this view he advances always beyond beings-out beyond them and over to Being. The Greeks said this in the word meta. Thus man's every relation to beings as such is inher- ently metaphysical. If Nietzsche understands revenge as the spirit that defines and sets the tone for man's relationship with Being, then he is from the outset thinking revenge metaphysically.
Here revenge is not merely a theme for morality, and redemption from revenge is not a task for moral education. Just as little are revenge and vengefulness objects of psychology. Nietzsche sees the essence and scope of revenge metaphysically. Yet what does revenge in general mean?
If at first we keep to the meaning of the word, although at the same time trying not to be myopic, we may be able to find a clue in it. Revenge, taking revenge, wreaking, urgere: these words mean to push, drive, herd, pursue, and persecute. In what sense is revenge persecution? * Revenge does not merely try to hunt something down, seize, and take possession of it. Nor does it only seek to slay what it persecutes. Vengeful persecution defies in advance that on which jt avenges itself. It defies its object by degrading it, in order to feel superior to what has been thus degraded; in this way it restores its own self-esteem, the only estimation that seems to count for it. For one who seeks vengeance is galled by the feeling that he has been thwarted and injured. During the years Nietzsche was composing his work Thus
• The clue may reside in the fact that the word here translated as "persecution," Nachstellen, is a morphological pendant to the word Vorstellen, "representation. "
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Spoke Zarathustra he jotted down the following observation: "I advise all martyrs to consider whether it wasn't vengeance that drove them to such extremes" (see the third Grossoktav edition, XII, 298).
What is revenge? We can now provisionally say that revenge is per- secution that defies and degrades. And such persecution is supposed to have sustained and permeated all prior reflection, all representation of beings? If the designated metaphysical scope may in fact be attributed to the spirit of revenge, that scope must somehow become visible in terms of the very constitution of metaphysics. In order to discern it, if only in rough outline, let us now turn to the essential coinage of the Being of beings in modern metaphysics. The essential coinage of Being comes to language in classic form in several sentences formulated by Schelling in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence ofHu-
man Freedom and the Objects Pertaining Thereto (1809). The three sentences read:
-In the final and highest instance there is no other Being than willing. Willing is primal Being, and to it [willing] alone all the predicates of the same (primal Being] apply: absence of conditions; eternity; independence from time; self-affirmation. All philosophy strives solely in order to find this supreme expression. *
Schelling asserts that the predicates which metaphysical thought since antiquity has attributed to Being find their ultimate, supreme, and thus consummate configuration in willing. However, the will of the willing meant here is not a faculty of the human soul. Here the word willing names the Being of beings as a whole. Such Being is will. That sounds foreign to us-and so it is, as long as the sustaining thoughts of Western metaphysics remain alien to us. They will remain alien as long as we do not think these thoughts, but merely go on reporting them. For example, one may ascertain Leibniz's utterances concerning the Being of beings with absolute historical precision- without in the least thinking about what he was thinking when he defined the Being of beings in terms of the monad, as the unity of perceptio and appetitus, representation and striving, that is, will. What
* Heidegger cites F. W. f. Schellings philosophische Schriften (Landshut, 1809), I, 419. In the standard edition of Schelling's Siimtliche Werke (1860), VII, 350.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 223
Leibniz was thinking comes to language in Kant and Fichte as "the rational will"; Hegel and Schelling, each in his own way, reflect on this Vernunftwille. Schopenhauer is referring to the selfsame thing when he gives his major work the title The World [not man] as Will and Representation. Nietzsche is thinking the selfsame thing when he acknowledges the primal Being of beings as will to power.
That everywhere on all sides the Being of beings appears consistently as will does not derive from views on being which a few philosophers furnished for themselves. No amount of erudition will ever uncover what it means that Being appears as will. What it means can only be asked in thinking; as what is to be thought, it can only be celebrated as worth asking about; as something we are mindful of, it can only be kept in mind.
In modern metaphysics, there for the first time expressly and explic- itly, the Being of beings appears as will. Man is man insofar as he comports himself to beings by way of thought. In this way he is held in Being. Man's thinking must also correspond in its essence to that toward which it comports itself, to wit, the Being of beings as will.
Now, Nietzsche tells us that prior thinking has been determined by the spirit of revenge. Precisely how is Nietzsche thinking the essence of revenge, assuming that he is thinking it metaphysically?
