No More Learning

First, "science" here means knowing as such, the relation to truth.
Second, the twofold reference to the "optics" of the artist and of life indicates that the "perspectival character" of Being becomes essential. Third, the equation of art and the artist directly expresses the fact that art is to be conceived in terms of the artist, creation, and the grand
style.
Fourth, "life" here means neither mere animal and vegetable Being
nor that readily comprehensible and compulsive busyness of everyday existence; rather, "life" is the term for Being in its new interpretation, according to which it is a Becoming. "Life" is neither "biologically" nor "practically" intended; it is meant metaphysically. The equation of Being and life is not some sort of unjustified expansion of the biologi- cal, although it often seems that way, but a transformed interpretation of the biological on the basis of Being, grasped in a superior way-this, of course, not fully mastered, in the timeworn schema of "Being and Becoming. "
Nietzsche's phrase suggests that on the basis of the essence of Being art must be grasped as the fundamental occurrence of beings, as the properly creative. But art conceived in that way defines the arena in which we can estimate how it is with "truth," and in what relation art and truth stand. The phrase does not suggest that artistic matters be
220
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
jumbled with the "conduct of science," much less that knowledge be subjected to aesthetic rehabilitation. Nor does it mean that art has to follow on the heels of life and be of service to it; for it is art, the grand style, which is to legislate the Being of beings in the first place.
The phrase demands knowledge of the event of nihilism. In Nietz- sche's view such knowledge at the same time embraces the will to overcome nihilism, indeed by means of original grounding and ques- tioning.
To see science "under the optics of the artist" means to estimate it according to its creative force, neither according to its immediate utility nor in terms of some vacuous "eternal significance. "
But creation itself is to be estimated according to the originality with which it penetrates to Being, neither as the mere achievement of an individual nor for the entertainment of the many. Being able to esti- mate, to esteem, that is, to act in accordance with the standard of Being, is itself creation of the highest order. For it is preparation of readiness for the gods; it is theYes to Being. "Overman" is the man who grounds Being anew-in the rigor of knowledge and in the grand style of creation.
APPENDIX, ANALYSIS, AND GLOSSARY
Appendix
A manuscript page from the lecture course Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst, Winter Semester 1936--37
It was Heidegger's practice to write out his lectures on unlined sheets measuring approximately 21 by 34 centimeters, the width of the page exceeding the length. (These dimensions would be somewhat larger than those of a "legal pad" turned on its side. ) The left half of each manuscript sheet is covered recto with a dense, minuscule script, con- stituting the main body of the lecture. The right half is reserved for major emendations. It is characteristic of Heidegger's manner of com- position that this half is almost as densely covered as the first. Heideg- ger's script is the so-called Siitterlinschrift, devised by Ludwig Sutterlin (1865-1917), quite common in the southern German states. It is said to be a "strongly rounded" script but to the English and American penman it still seems preeminently Gothic, vertical and angular. To the exasperated Innocent Abroad it seems a partner in that general con- spiracy of Continental scripts other than the "Latin" to make each letter look like every other letter.
The manuscript page reproduced following p. 223 is the one men- tioned in the Editor's Preface, Archive number A 33/14. It begins with the words der Grundirrtum Schopenhauers, found in the Neske edition at NI, 50, line 25, and ends with the words nichts zu tun, found at the close of section 7, NI, 53, line 24. Hence this single page of holograph constitutes three entire pages of the printed German text. (Of course I should note that Neske's page is rather generously spaced. ) The
([il "~J. ,~·jt'. . J~,j~. . JJ \ --"1r~ ~J-"" +-+ d". Mf' ~1""-'
. -:. ·•~·
i-Jl·l'ji·. ;. ,. . J. Irr/1) "Vtrt -· .
226 THE WILL TO PO\VER AS ART
English translation of the German text taken from this manuscript page is found on pp. 40-43 above.
The right half of the manuscript page contains five major emenda- tions to the text and one addition to an emendation. These changes are not substitutions for something in the body of the lecture; they are expansions and elaborations of what is found there. (The addition to the emendation is a text from Nietzsche's The Gay Science in support of Heidegger's argument. ) Precisely when these emendations were made is impossible to tell, but the handwriting suggests that they are roughly contemporaneous with the main body of the text, added in all probability before the lecture was delivered. Only in rare cases (the revised clause and the bracketed phrase discussed below) is there any evidence that changes on the holograph page may have been made substantially later-for example at the time of the publication of Nietzsche in 1961.
The Neske edition reproduces the lecture notes of A 33/14 word for word up to the phrase gesetzte will at NI, 51, line 7. At that point, the insertion of the first emendation is indicated. It is a lengthy addition, amounting to fifteen printed lines. Here the Neske edition varies in some respects from the holograph. A comparison of the two passages may be instructive:
Neske edition
Der Wille bringt jeweils von sich her eine durchgiingige Bestimmtheit in sein Wollen. Jemand, der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht und kann iiberhaupt nicht wollen; ein W ollen im allgemeinen gibt es nicht; "denn der Wille ist, als Affekt des Befehls, das entscheidende Abzeichen der Selbstherrlichkeit und Kraft" ("Die frohliche Wissenschaft," 5. Buch, 1886; V , 282). Oagegen kann das Streben unbestimmt sein, sowohl hin- sichtlich dessen, was eigentlich ange- strebt ist, als auch mit Bezug auf das
Holograph
% Der Wille bringt so seinem W esen
nach in sich selbst heraus immer eine ----
Bestimmtheit im Ganzen; jemand der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht u. kann i. ibhpt. nicht wollen; ein Wol- len im Allgemeinen gibt es; wahl dagegen kann das Streben [word crossed out] unbedingt sein-sowohl hinsichtlich dessen, was eigentlich an- gestrebt ist-als auch mit Bezug auf das Strebende selbst. [At this point a mark to the left of the emendation indicates that the passage from The Gay Science is to be inserted-but its
Strebende selbst. Im Streben und Driingen sind wir in ein Hinzu . . . mit hineingenommen und wissen selbst nicbt, was im Spiel ist. Im blo/3en Streben nach etwas sind wir nicht ei- gentlicb vor uns selbst gebracbt, und desbalb ist bier aucb keine Moglicb- keit, tiber uns binaus zu streben, sondern wir streben blo/3 und geben in solcbem Streben mit Entscblossen- beit zu sich-ist immer: tiber sicb hinaus wollen.
precise location is not indicated. ] Im Streben u. Drangen sind wir in ein Hin zu-etwas mit hineingenommen - u . wissen selbst nicbt was [word crossed out] im Spiel ist. Im blossen Streben nach etwas-sind wir nicbt eigentlich vor uns selbst gebracbt u. deshalb ist bier aucb keine Moglicb- keit-tiber uns binaus zu [word crossed out] streben-sondern wir streben blo/3 [-en crossed out] u. geb- en in solcbem Streben auf [? ]. Ent- scblossenbeit zu sicb ist immer tiber sicb binaus wollen.
Appendix 227
The changes introduced in the Neske edition are of five sorts. First, a more variegated punctuation replaces the series of semicolons and dashes. Second, the number of stressed words (italics, reproducing underlinings) is greatly reduced. Third, obvious oversights (such as the omission of the word nicht after the phrase ein Wollen im allgemeinen gibt es) are corrected, abbreviated words written out, and crossed-out words and letters deleted. Fourth, a precise location for the quotation from The Gay Science is found. Fifth, and most important, several
phrases are entirely recast. Thus Hin zu-etwas (underlined) becomes Hinzu . . . (not italicized), and the entire opening clause is revised. The holograph version of the latter would read, in translation, "Thus will, according to its essence, in itself always brings out a determinateness in the totality. " The Neske lines say, "In each case will itself furnishes a thoroughgoing determinateness to its willing. " When this change occurred is impossible to determine; it may well have come at the time of publication. (The Abschrift or typewritten copy here follows the holograph. )
At the end of this long emendation the problem mentioned in the Preface arises. The last word runs up against the edge of the page and could as easily be mit as auf. (The practice of adding a diacritical mark over the non-umlauted u, which often makes it resemble a dotted i,
228
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
complicates the situation here. ) The meaning of the sentence depends to a great extent upon the separable prefix: it is according to the sense of the holograph page that I read it as auf What is quite clear is that the main body of the text continues with a new sentence: Entschlossen- heit zu sich ist immer. . . . The words Wille dagegen are inserted in the Abschrift in order to emphasize the distinction between "will" and "striving. " Although the origin, date, and status of the Abschrift are unknown, I have retained them in my own reading. Finally, I have added als in order to make the apposition of "will" and "resolute openness" clear.
The Neske edition prints the remainder of A 33/14 with only a few alterations, all but one of them minor ones. Two further major emenda- tions from the right half of the page are incorporated into the main body of the text without any disturbing consequences (NI, 51, line 30 toNI, 52, line 2; and NI, 52, lines 22-29}. The published text of NI, 52, lines 20-21 alters the holograph rendering only slightly. Then comes the second important change. Three lines in the holograph which are set off by brackets, lines which would have appeared at NI, 53, line 18, are omitted. When Heidegger added the brackets or "bracketed out" the passage is, again, not clear. The lines read:
Man ist gliicklich beim Irrationalismus-jenem Sumpf, in dem aile Denk- faulen und Denkmiiden eintriichtlich sich treffen, aber dabei meistens noch allzu "rational" reden und schreiben.
In translation:
People are delighted with irrationalism-that swamp where all those who are too lazy or too weary to think convene harmoniously; but for the most part they still talk and write all too "rationally. "
Heidegger often bracketed out such sardonic remarks when a lecture manuscript was on its way to becoming a book, apparently because he considered such off-the-cuff remarks more obtrusive in print than in speech. (Cf. for example the following remarks published in Walter Biemel's edition of the lecture course Logik: Aristoteles, volume 21 of the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt/Main, 1976: on fraudulent logic courses, p. 12; on Heinrich Rickert's gigantomachia, p. 91; on two
Appendix 229
kinds of Hegelian confusion, pp. 260 and 267; and on the hocus-pocus of spiritualism and subjectivism, p. 292. These are remarks which we are delighted to read but which Heidegger himself, had he edited the text, might have deleted. )
Finally, on the right half of the holograph page a general reference to WM 84 and 95 appears. These two aphorisms in The Will to Power juxtapose the Nietzschean sense of will as mastery to the Schopen- hauerian sense of will as desire. The reference's identifying mark does not appear anywhere in the text or in the other emendations, so that the reference has nowhere to go; in the Neske edition it is omitted.
By way of conclusion I may note that the Neske edition is generally closer to the holograph than is the sole extant Abschrift. The text we possess~notwithstanding the one major difficulty cited-seems remarkably faithful to Heidegger's handwritten lecture notes, assuming that the relation of A 33/14 to the relevant pages of the Neske edition is typical. Whether or not that is so the editor of volume 43 of the Gesamtausgabe will have to determine. *
*In the third edition of Heidegger's Nietzsche (without date, but available since the mid-1970s) the Neske Verlag altered the passage discussed above by adding a period to NI, 51,1ine 22, between the words mit and Entschlossenheit. (Cf. p. 227 of this volume, line 10 in the first column. ) The passage would thus read: "For that reason it is not possible for us to strive beyond ourselves; rather, we merely strive, and go along with such striving. Resolute openness to oneself-is always: willing out beyond oneself. " The addition of the period is a significant improvement in the text, but I still prefer the full reading suggested in this Appendix and employed on p. 41 of the translation.
The third edition does not correct the erroneous duplication of the word nicht at NI, 189, line 5 from the bottom.
I am grateful to Ursula Willaredt of Freiburg, whose painstaking checking of the page proofs uncovered this change in the third Neske edition of Nietzsche.
Analysis
By DAVID FARRELL KRELL
No judgment renders an account of the world, but art can teach us to reiterate it, just as the world reiterates itself in the course of eternal returns. . . . To say "yes" to the world, to reiterate it, is at the same time to recreate the world and oneself; it is to become the great artist, the creator.
A. CAMUS, Man in Rebellion, 1951
Early in 1961 Brigitte Neske designed a set of handsome book jackets for one of the major events in her husband's publishing career. Along the spine of the volumes two names appeared, black and white on a salmon background, neither name capitalized: heidegger nietzsche. Both were well known. The latter was famous for having been, as he said, "born posthumously. " And that apparently helped to give rise to the confusion: when the volumes first appeared in Germany no one was sure whether they were heidegger's books on nietzsche or nietzsche's books on heidegger.
Readers of this and the other English volumes may find themselves recalling this little joke more than once and for more than one reason.
Aus-einander-setzung, "a setting apart from one another," is the word Heidegger chooses in his Foreword to these volumes to character- ize his encounter with Nietzsche. That is also the word by which he translates polemos in Heraclitus B53 and B80. Is Heidegger then at war with Nietzsche? Are his lectures and essays on Nietzsche polemics? In the first part of his lecture course "What Calls for Thinking? " Heideg- ger cautions his listeners that all polemic "fails from the outset to
Analysis 231
assume the attitude of thinking. "1 In Heidegger's view polemos is a name for the lighting or clearing of Being in which beings become present to one another and so can be distinguished from one another. Heraclitus speaks of ton polemon xynon, a setting apart from one another that serves essentially to bring together, a contest that unites. In these volumes the English word "confrontation" tries to capture the paradoxical sense of Heidegger's Aus-einander-setzung with Nietzsche's philosophy. Before we say anything about Heidegger's "interpretation" of Nietzsche we should pause to consider the koinonia or community of both thinkers. For at the time Heidegger planned a series of lectures on Nietzsche he identified the task of his own philosophy as the effort "to bring Nietzsche's accomplishment to a full unfolding. "2 The magnitude of that accomplishment, however, was not immediately discernible. Heidegger's first attempt to delineate Nietzsche's accomplishment and to circumscribe his confrontation with Nietzsche traces the profile of will to power as art.
I. THE STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENT OF THE LECTURE COURSE
The published text of Heidegger's 1936-37 lecture course, "Nietz- sche: Will to Power as Art," consists of twenty-five unnumbered sections. ~ Although no more comprehensive parts or divisions appear, the course unfolds in three stages. Sections 1-10 introduce the theme of Nietzsche as metaphysician and examine the nature of "will," "power," and "will to power" in his thought. Sections 12-18 pursue the significance of art in Nietzsche's thinking. Sections 20-25 compare his conception of art to that in Platonism-the philosophy which Nietzsche sought to overturn-and in Plato's dialogues. But if the first
1Martin Heidegger, Was heisst Denken? (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1954), p. 49. Cf. the English translation, What Is Called Thinking? , tr. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 13; cf. also Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 354.
2Martin Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953), p. 28. Cf. the English translation, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (Garden City, N. Y. : Anchor-Doubleday, 1961), p. 30.
~The sections have been numbered in the present edition to facilitate reference.
232 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
two stages, "will to power" and "art," cover the ground staked out in the title Wille zur Macht als Kunst, why the third stage at all? Why especially the preoccupation with Plato's own texts? What is the significance of the fact that in the Foreword Heidegger designates "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" and "On the Essence of Truth" as the first milestones along the route traversed in his lectures and essays on Nietzsche?
Perhaps we have already taken a first step toward answering these questions when we notice that the analysis of the course's three stages leaves two sections out of account, section 11, "The Grounding Ques- tion and the Guiding Question of Philosophy," and section 19, "The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art. " These two sections are not mere entr'actes preceding and succeeding the central discussion of art; they are in fact, altering the image, the hinges upon which the panels of the triptych turn. Heidegger's lecture course on will to power as art is joined and articulated by a question that is presupposed in all the guiding and grounding of philosophy since Plato, that of the es- sence of truth. By advancing through a discussion of Nietzsche's meta- physics of will to power to his celebration of art in the grand style, a celebration conducted within the dreadfully raging discordance of art and truth, Heidegger tries to pinpoint Nietzsche's uncertain location on the historical path of metaphysics. That is the only way he can estimate his own position, the only way he can discern the task of his own thinking. But if the "last 'name' in the history of Being as meta- physics is not Kant and not Hegel, but Nietzsche,"4 the first "name" is Plato. And if Nietzsche's situation at the end of philosophy is ambiguous, so is that of Plato at the beginning.
Plato dare not be confounded with Platonism; Nietzsche dare not be confounded with anyone else. Heidegger designs the structure and initiates the move- ment of his lecture course in such a way as to let the irreducible richness of both thinkers come to light.
4Eckhard Heftrich, "Nietzsche im Denken Heideggers," Durchblicke (Frankfurt/ Main: V. Klostermann, 1970), p. 349. Cf. H. ·G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tiibingen: Mohr und Siebeck, 1960), p. 243.
Analysis 233
The structure and movement of the course may become more palpa- ble if we recall the task undertaken in each section, reducing it to bare essentials and ignoring for the moment the amplitude of each section. Only when we arrive at the jointures or hinges (sections 11 and 19) will the summary become more detailed.
Heidegger begins (section 1) by asserting that "will to power" de- fines the basic character of beings in Nietzsche's philosophy. That philosophy therefore proceeds in the orbit of the guiding question of Occidental philosophy, "What is a being (das Seiende)? " Yet Nietzsche "gathers and completes" such questioning: to encounter Nietzsche is to confront Western philosophy as a whole-and there- fore to prepare "a feast of thought. " Nietzsche's philosophy proper, his fundamental position, is in Heidegger's view ascertainable only on the basis of notes sketched during the 1880s for a major work. That work was never written. The collection of notes entitled The Will to Power may not be identified as Nietzsche's Hauptwerk, but must be read critically. After examining a number of plans for the magnum opus drafted during the years 1882-88 (section 3), Heidegger argues for the unity of the three dominant themes, will to power, eternal recurrence of the same, and revaluation of all values (section 4). For Nietzsche all Being is a Becoming, Becoming a willing, willing a will to power (section 2). Will to power is not simply Becoming, however, but is an expression for the Being of Becoming, the "closest approximation" to Being (WM, 617). As such it is eternal recurrence of the same and the testing stone of revaluation. Thus the thought of eternal recurrence advances beyond the guiding question of philosophy, "Was ist das Seiende? " toward its grounding question, "Was ist das Sein? " Both questions must be raised when we try to define Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position or Grundstellung (section 5). .
After discussing the structural plan employed by the editors of The Will to Power, Heidegger situates his own inquiry in the third book, "Principle of a New Valuation," at its fourth and culminating division, "Will to Power as Art. " Why Heidegger begins here is not obvious. Nor does it become clear in the sections immediately following (6-10), which recount the meaning of Being as "will" in metaphysics prior to
234 THE \VILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche and in Nietzsche's own thought. Heidegger wrestles with the notions of "will" and "power," which must be thought in a unified way and which cannot readily be identified with traditional accounts of affect, passion, and feeling. Nor does it help to trace Nietzsche's doc- trine of will back to German Idealism or even to contrast it to Idealism. The sole positive result of these five sections is recognition of the nature of will to power as enhancement or heightening, a moving out beyond oneself, and as the original opening onto beings. But what that means Nietzsche alone can tell us.
Section 11, "The Grounding Question and the Guiding Question of Philosophy," the first "hinge" of the course, initiates the interpretation of "Will to Power as Art" by asserting once more that the designated starting point is essential for the interpretation of will to power as a whole. In order to defend that assertion Heidegger tries to sharpen the "basic philosophical intention" of his interpretation. He reiterates that the guiding question of philosophy is "What is a being? " That question inquires into the grounds of beings but seeks such grounds solely among other beings on the path of epistemology. But the grounding question, "What is Being? ," which would inquire into the meaning of grounds as such and into its own historical grounds as a question, is not posed in the history of philosophy up to and including Nietzsche. Both questions, the penultimate question of philosophy, and the ultimate question which Heidegger reserves for himself, are couched in the words "What is . . . ? " The "is" of both questions seeks an ouverture upon beings as a whole by which we might determine what they in
truth, in essence, are. Both questions provoke thought on the matter of truth as unconcealment, aletheia; they are preliminaries to the ques- tion of the "essence of truth" and the "truth of essence. " Nietzsche's understanding of beings as a whole, of what is, is enunciated in the phrase "will to power. " But if the question of the essence of truth is already implied in the guiding question of philosophy, then we must ascertain the point where "will to power" and "truth" converge in Nietzsche's philosophy. They do so, astonishingly, not in knowledge (Erkenntnis) but in art (Kunst). The way Nietzsche completes and
Analysis 235
gathers philosophy hitherto has to do with that odd conjunction "truth and art" for which no tertium comparationis seems possible.
Heidegger now (section 12) begins to sketch out the central panel of the triptych. He turns to a passage in The Will to Power (WM, 797) that identifies the "artist phenomenon" as the most perspicuous form of will to power. Grasped in terms of the artist and expanded to the point where it becomes the basic occurrence of all beings, art is pro- claimed the most potent stimulant to life, hence the distinctive coun- termovement to nihilism. As the mightiest stimulans to life, art is
worth more than truth. Heidegger now tries to insert this notion of art into the context of the history of aesth~tics (section 13) with special reference to the problem of form-content. Nietzsche's attempt to de- velop a "physiology of art," which seems to militate against his celebra- tion of art as the countermovement to nihilism, focuses on the phenomenon of artistic Rausch (section 14). After an analysis of Kant's doctrine of the beautiful (section 15), Heidegger defines rapture as the force that engenders form and as the fundamental condition for the enhancement of life (section 16). Form constitutes the actuality of art in the "grand style" (section 17), where the apparent contradiction between physiological investigation and artistic celebration dissolves: Nietzsche's physiology is neither biologism nor positivism, however much it may appear to be. Even aesthetics it carries to an extreme which is no longer "aesthetics" in the traditional sense. At this point (section 18) Heidegger returns to the outset of his inquiry into Nietzsche's view of art and tries to provide a foundation for the five theses on art. Things go well until the third thesis: art in the expanded sense constitutes the "basic occurrence" (Grundgeschehen) of beings as such. A host of questions advances. What are beings as such in truth? Why is truth traditionally viewed as supersensuous? Why does. Nietzsche insist that art is worth more than truth? What does it mean to say that art is "more in being" (seiender) than are other beings? What is the "sensuous world" of art? These questions evoke another which "runs ahead" of both the guiding and grounding questions of philosophy and which therefore may be considered the "foremost"
236 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
question: truth as unconcealment, aletheia, the question broached in section 11.
Heidegger analyzes Nietzsche's anticipation of that question in sec- tion 19, "The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art," the second "hinge" of the course. Nietzsche stands "in holy dread" before the discordance. Why? To answer that we must inquire into the history of the Grundwort or fundamental word "truth. " The decisive develop- ment in that history, argues Heidegger, is that "truth" comes to possess a dual character quite similar to that of Being. Truth can mean a truth, "truths" of various kinds, such as historical judgments, mathematical equations, or logical propositions. Yet each of these can be called a truth only if it participates in a single essence, traditionally designated as "the universal," always valid, hence "immutable and eternal, tran- scending time. " According to Heidegger, Nietzsche's response to the question of truth holds to the route which deviates from the essential one:
It is of decisive importance to know that Nietzsche does not pose the question of truth proper, the question concerning the essence of the true and the truth of essence, and with it the question of the ineluctable possibility of its essential transformation. Nor does he ever stake out the domain of the question.
But if that is so, how can Nietzsche's philosophy gather and com- plete all philosophy hitherto? According to the tradition, "the true" is what is known to be: truth is knowledge. W e recall that this is not the answer for Nietzsche, whose notes on Erkenntnis in the first part of Book III Heidegger deliberately bypasses in order to find in those on Kunst the essential source of the philosophy of will to power. The implication is that, although Nietzsche does not formulate the question of the essence of truth, he removes "the true" from the realm of knowledge to the domain of art. Heidegger does not at this point draw out the consequences of such a removal, but initiates the final stage of the inquiry.
In order to elaborate the meaning of "the true" as an object of knowledge, Heidegger inquires into the doctrines of Platonism and
Analysis 237
positivism (section 20). For the former, the standard for knowledge is the supersensuous idea; for the latter, it is the sensible positum. Each doctrine understands itself as a way of attaining certain knowledge of beings, acquiring truths; the second is merely the inversion of the first. If Nietzsche describes his own philosophy as "inverted Platonism," is it then nothing other than positivism? Nietzsche's manner of overturn- ing, inspired by insight into the fundamental Ereignis of Western history (i. e. , nihilism) and by recognition of art as the essential counter- movement, distinguishes his thought from positivism. Nietzsche's phi- losophy is not merely upside-down Platonism.
Heidegger now (sections 21-23) turns to a number of Platonic texts where the supersensuous character of truth and the duplicitous nature of art become manifest. Art haunts the sensuous realm, the region of nonbeing, which nonetheless is permeated by beauty: because it shares in beauty, art is a way of letting beings appear. However fleeting its epiphanies may be, art is reminiscent of stable Being, the eternal, constant, permanent ideai. The upshot is that if there is a discordance between truth and art in Platonism it must be a felicitous one; by some sort of covert maneuver Platonism must efface the discordance as such. When Nietzsche overturns Platonism, removing "the true" from knowledge to art, he exposes the maneuver and lets the discord rage (section 24). Such exposure arouses dread. For it eradicates the horizon which during the long fable of Occidental thought has segregated the true from the apparent world. Although Nietzsche treads the inessen- tial path of "the true" and does not pose the question of the essence of truth, he pursues that path to the very end (section 25): "the true," "truth" in the traditional metaphysical sense, is fixation of an appari- tion; it clings to a perspective that is essential to life in a way that is ultimately destructive of life. Art, on the contrary, is transfiguration of appearances, the celebration of all perspectives, enhancing and height- ening life. Nietzsche's philosophy rescues the sensuous world. In so doing it compels a question that Nietzsche himself cannot formulate: since all appearance and all apparentness are possible "only if some- thing comes to the fore and shows itself at all," how may the thinker and artist address himself to the self-showing as such?
238 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
I have ignored the amplitude of each section in Heidegger's lecture course for much more than a moment. But certain questions have forced their way to the surface. Why art, in the question of truth? Why Nietzsche, in the question of art?
II. CONTEXTS
In the final hour of the lecture course Heidegger alludes to that generation-his own-which studied at German universities between 1909 and 1914. He complains that during those years Nietzsche's "perspectival optics" of creative art and life implied little more than an aesthetic "touch-up" of traditional academic disciplines and that Nietzsche's significance in and for the history of philosophy remained unrecognized.
Long before he was taken seriously as a thinker, Nietzsche achieved fame as an essayist and acerbic critic of culture. For the prewar genera- tion in all German-speaking countries Nietzsche reigned supreme as the definitive prose stylist and as a first-rate lyric poet. He was a literary "phenomenon" whose work and fate caused his name continually to be linked with that of Holderlin. It was the time when Georg Trakl could recite a number of verses to the aspiring poets of Salzburg's "Minerva Club" and after his confreres began to disparage the poems, believing they were his, could rise and sneer "That was Nietzsche! " and storm out of the place, abandoning them to their public confessions of incom- petence.
Writing in 1930 of the "transformation" taking place in Nietzsche interpretation, Friedrich Wiirzbach looked back to the earliest re- sponses to Nietzsche as a philosopher. 5 He described them as the plaints of wounded souls whose "holiest sentiments" Nietzsche had ravaged and who were now exercising vengeance. A second wave of books and articles endeavored to show that what Nietzsche had to say was already quite familiar and hence harmless; when that did not work a third wave advanced, stressing Nietzsche's utterly novel and peculiar
5Friedrich Wiirzbach, "Die Wandlung der Deutung Nietzsches," Blatter fiir deut- sche Philosophic, IV, 2 (Berlin, 1930), 202-11.
Analysis 239
character, as if to say that he was but a flaw on the fringes of culture which left the fabric of things intact.
It is not until the publication in 1918 of Ernst Bertram's Nietzsche: An Essay in Mythology that Wiirzbach sees a decisive transformation in Nietzsche interpretation. 6 For at least a decade afterward no book on Nietzsche could ignore Bertram's alternately fascinating and in- furiating but always dazzling essay. Bertram's Nietzsche is a legendary "personality" whose individuality transcends the customary confine-
ments of a single human life to ascend "through all the signs of the zodiac" and become a "fixed star" in the memory of man. Such legends rise of themselves in spite of all that scientific demythologizing can do, assuming for each succeeding generation a special meaning, represent- ing a particular "mask of the god. " Nietzsche, whose legend has only begun, is a mask of Dionysus crucified. He embodies "the incurability of his century. " Nietzsche is torn in two; his mythos is "duality. "
The style of Bertram's essay seems a German counterpart to the prose of Yeats' middle period. It is the "extravagant style" which the poet, according to Robartes, "had learnt from Pater. " Bertram's fasci- nation with myth and legend also is reminiscent of Yeats' A Vision. (Both Bertram's Versuch einer Mythologie and Yeats' "The Phases of the Moon" appeared in 1918. ) Yeats' poem contains the following lines, spoken by Robartes but expressing Ernst Bertram's principal theme:
. . . Eleven pass, and then Athene takes Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the hero's crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. ?
6Ernst Bertram, Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie {Berlin: Georg Bondi, 1918). For the quotations in the text see pp. 7-10, 12, and 361-62.
7William Butler Yeats, "The Phases of the Moon," The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Definitive Edition {New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 161. See also William Butler Yeats, A Vision {New York: Collier, 1966), p. 60; note the references to Nietzsche on
pp. 126 ff. and 299. Cf. Bertram, p. 10
240 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Unlike Yeats, however, Bertram dispenses with much of Nietzsche's thought. He derides eternal recurrence-which in Heidegger's view is Nietzsche's central thought-as a "fake revelation," the "deceptively aping, lunatic mysterium of the later Nietzsche. "
Wi. irzbach voices the complaint of all those who struggled to free themselves from Bertram's bewitchment: however convincing his in- sertion of Nietzsche into the tradition of Luther, Novalis, and Holder- lin, of Eleusis and Patmos may be, it manacles Nietzsche to a moribund tradition and lets him sink with it. Bertram's extravagant style therefore seems an elaborate Grabrede or obsequy, soothing, mystifying, mes- merizing, in a word, Wagnerian. Ernst Gundolf and Kurt Hildebrandt reject Bertram's "supratemporal" approach to Nietzsche. 8 They are writing (in 1922) at a time of "dire need" in Germany and see in Nietzsche not the stuff of myths but "the judge of our times" and "guide to our future. " For Nietzsche is the legislator of new values. His "office" is juridical. "His basic question was not 'What is? ' " writes Gundolf, in opposition to what Heidegger will later assert, "but the far more compelling question, 'What is to be done? ' " Yet for Kurt Hildebrandt, as for all members of the Stefan George circle, Nietzsche is ultimately a legend of the Bertramesque sort. He is a hero who wills to supply a "norm" to replace the dilapidated structures of Platonic ideality but whose role as opponent consumes him. He would be
Vollender, apotheosis, and is but Vorlaufer, precursor. Rejecting the Platonic idea, perhaps "out of envy toward Plato," Nietzsche does not achieve the heights to which Platonic eros alone could have conducted him; he remains foreign to the Phaedrus and is banned from the Symposium. Liberator he may be; creator he is not. "He was not Holderlin, who was able to mold a new world in poetry, but the hero who hurled himself upon a despicable age and so became its victim. "9 Neither is he Stefan George. "What Nietzsche frantically craved to be
8Ernst Cundolf and Kurt Hildebrandt, Nietzsche als Richter unsrer Zeit (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1922). For the quotations in the text, unless otherwise noted, see pp. 4, 89, 96, and 103.
9Ibid. , p. 92.
Analysis 241
George is. "10 Still, whatever the outcome of his contest with Plato and Socrates,11 and of his battle against the nineteenth century, which became a battle against Wagner,12 Nietzsche remains the "judge of our times" in search of values which will halt the degeneration of man and the decline of the state.
The outcome of preoccupations with Nietzsche as "judge" is of course hardly a fortunate one. Stefan George and his circle dream of a grandiose politeia, "a new 'Reich,' " as one writer puts it, created along the guidelines of "the Dionysian Deutsch"; they foresee the development of a supreme race combining elements of Greek and Nordic civilization, flourishing on German soii. n That same writer recognizes in Alfred Baeumler's Nietzsche: Philosopher and Politician a giant stride in the right direction. I4
To summarize: Nietzsche first gained notoriety as a literary phe- nomenon; his writings were exemplary for the generation that came to maturity during the Great War; by the end of that conflict Nietzsche was a legend, a Cassandra whose prophecy was fulfilled in Europe's ruin. Interest in Nietzsche as a philosopher remained over- shadowed by interest in his prophecy and personal fate. Symptomatic
10Ibid. , p. 102.
11Kurt Hildebrandt, Nietzsches Wettkampf mit Sokrates und Plato (Dresden: Sibyl- lenverlag, I922).
12Kurt Hildebr;~dt, Wagner und Nietzsche: lhr Kampf gegen das neunzehnte fahr- hundert (Breslau, 1924). Heidegger refers to the work in section 13 of The Will to Power as Art.
13Cf. Theodor Steinbiichel, "Die Philosophic Friedrich Nietzsches, ihre geistesge- schichtliche Situation, ihr Sinn und ihre Wirkung," Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Ceis- tesgeschichte, III (Salzburg, I937), 280-81.
14Alfred Baeumler, Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker (Leipzig: P. Reclam, 1931 ). This is of course the work that Heidegger criticizes in section 4, above. Heidegger'. s opposition to the Nietzsche interpretation of Baeumler, professor of philosophy and a leading ideologue in Berlin from I933 to 1945, I will discuss in the Analysis of Nietzsche IV: Nihilism. Baeumler's arguments concerning the Nietzschean Nachlass, which ap- pear to have influenced Heidegger, I will take up in the Analysis of Nietzsche Ill: Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Baeumler's thesis on the contradiction between will to power and eternal recurrence I will consider in the Analysis of Nietzsche II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same.
242 THE \VJLL TO POWER AS ART
of that interest was the fascination exerted by his medical history, especially his insanity, and reflected in the studies by P. J. Mobius (1902), Kurt Hildebrandt (1926), Erich Podach (1930), and Karl Jaspers (1936). Only as a critic of culture, as the philosopher of cultural revaluation, was Nietzsche's voice heard.
But a second strain of interest in Nietzsche develops alongside that of Kulturphilosophie, mirrored in the title "Nietzsche and the philos- ophy of 'life. ' "15 Here Nietzsche is acclaimed as the passionate advocate of life and opponent of the "paralyzed, soulless formulas" of the contemporary "transcendental" philosophy. Nietzsche struggles to find a new scale of values, not in some schema imposed upon life by a transcendent world, but in life itself.