No More Learning

E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge, En- gland: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp. 24-37. I know of no detailed discussion of Hesiod in Heidegger's works, but suggest that khaos might be interpreted along the lines of the Timaean khora, the "receptacle" of "space," namely, as the open region in which all beings can first appear and be in being, in Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953), pp. 50-51. See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1961), pp. 53-54.
• See G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Biinden, Theorie-Werkausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 7, 24.
Summary Presentation ofthe Thought 93
Let us guard against believing that the universe displays a tendency to achieve certain forms, that it wants to become more beautiful, more perfect, more complex! All of that is humanization! Anarchy, deformity, form- these concepts are irrelevant. For mechanics, nothing is imperfect. (XII,
111)
Finally, the notion of the collective character of the world as an "organism" is out of the question, not only because it is a special case that dare not be taken to represent the whole, and not only because human notions about what an organism is are modeled on human beings themselves, but above all because an organism always necessari- ly requires something other than itself, something outside itself, for sustenance and nourishment. Yet what could subsist outside the world as a whole, understood as "organism"? "The supposition that the uni- verse is an organism is belied by the essence of the organic" (XII, number 93; The Gay Science, number 109).
How essential it is for Nietzsche to bar these humanizations from his projection of being as a whole, and how absolutely determinative the guiding notion of the world as chaos remains for him, is betrayed most clearly by the phrase that recurs again and again even when he is discussing the doctrine of return: "let us guard against," that is to say, let us shield ourselves from the tendency to project any fortuitous no- tion about ourselves, any human capacity, onto beings. Indeed, the crucial passage from The Gay Science which contains the statement concerning the collective character of the world as chaos (number 109) bears the explicit title "Let us be on guard! " Inasmuch as these human- izations for the most part simultaneously involve notions in which a cosmic ground-in the sense of a moral Creator-God-is represented, the humanization proceeds in tandem with a deification. Accordingly, the notions that suggest some sort of wisdom in the world's proces~, some sort of "providence" in real events, are but "shades" which the Christian interpretation of the world leaves behind to haunt beings and our grasp of them, when actual faith has vanished. To turn matters around, then, the dehumanizing of beings-keeping that which rises of itself, physis, natura, "nature" clear of human admixtures of every kind~amounts to a de-deification of beings. With a view to this inter- connection, passage 109 of The Gay Science thus concludes:
94 THE ETERNAL RECURREf'\CE OF THE SAME
When will all these shades of God cease to darken our paths? When will we have a nature that is altogether undeified! When will we human beings be allowed to begin to naturalize ourselves by means of the pure, newly discov- ered, newly redeemed nature?
To be sure, elsewhere we read: "To 'humanize' the world, that is to say, to feel ourselves increasingly as masters in it-" (WM, 614; cf. WM, 616). Yet we would lapse into terrible error if we were to label Nietzsche's guiding representation of the world as chaos with cheap slogans like "naturalism" and "materialism," especially if we were to think that such labels explained his notion once and for all. "Matter" (that is, tracing everything back to some elemental "stuff') is as much an error as "the god of the Eleatics" (that is, tracing it back to some- thing immaterial). * The most fundamental point to be made about Nietzsche's notion of chaos is the following: only a thinking that is utterly lacking in stamina will deduce a will to godlessness from the will to a de-deification of beings. On the contrary, truly metaphysical thinking, at the outermost point of de-deification, allowing itself no subterfuge and eschewing all mystification, will uncover that path on which alone gods will be encountered-if they are to be encountered
ever again in the history of mankind.
Meanwhile we want to heed the fact that at the time when the
thought of eternal return of the same arises Nietzsche is striving most decisively in his thought to dehumanize and de-deify being as a whole. His striving is not a mere echo, as one might suppose, of an ostensible "positivistic period" now in abeyance. It has its own, more profound origin. Only in this way is it possible for Nietzsche to be driven directly from such striving to its apparently incongruous opposite, when in his doctrine of will to power he demands the supreme humanization of beings.
In Nietzsche's usage, the word chaos indicates a defensive notion in consequence of which nothing can be asserted of being as a whole. Thus the world as a whole becomes something we fundamentally can-
• The Gay Science, number 109, explicitly refers to "matter" and "the god of the Eleatics. " Nietzsche is surely alluding to the famous "Battle of Giants," the gigan- tomachia described in Plato's Sophist, 242c-243a and 246a-c.
Summary Presentation ofthe Thought 95
not address, something ineffable-an arreton. * What Nietzsche is practicing here with regard to the world totality is a kind of "negative theology," which tries to grasp the Absolute as purely as possible by holding at a distance all "relative" determinations, that is, all those that relate to human beings. Except that Nietzsche's determination of the world as a whole is a negative theology without the Christian God.
Such a defensive procedure represents the very opposite of despair concerning the possibility of knowledge, the very opposite of an un- mitigated predilection for denial and destruction. The procedure there- fore becomes a salient feature in every instance of great thought, appearing again and again under different guises; nor can it be directly refuted, so long as it perseveres in its style and refrains from leaping over the barriers it has established for itself.
How do matters stand in the present case?
W e have elaborated a series of determinati9ns concerning the world totality in Nietzsche's view, reducing them to eight points. All eight are brought home in the principal determination contained in point nine: "The collective character of the world . . . into all eternity is chaos. " Must we now take this statement to mean that it is properly incumbent on us to revoke the earlier determinations and to utter no more than "chaos"? Or are all those determinations implied in the concept of chaos, so that they are preserved within this concept and its application to the world totality as the sole determination of that world? Or, on the contrary, do not the determinations and relations pertaining to the essence of chaos (force, finitude, endlessness, Becoming, space, time), as humanizations, also scuttle the concept of chaos? In that case we dare not propose any determinations at all; all we can say is noth- ing. Or is "the nothing" perhaps the most human of all humaniza- tions? Our inquiry must push on to these extremes if it is to catch sight of the uniqueness of the present task, the task of determining being as a whole.
At this juncture we must remember that Nietzsche not only defines
• Arretou, the negation of rhetou, is found in Homer, Hesiod, and throughout the Classical Age. It means what is unspoken, inexpressible, unutterable, shameful, not to be divulged. Ta arreta are irrational numbers or surds.
96 THE ETER 1\A L RECURRE! \CE OF THE SAME
the world totality as chaos but also ascribes to chaos itself a thorough- going trait-and that is "necessity. " In section l09 of The Gay Science Nietzsche says explicitly: "The collective character of the world is . . . chaos, not in the sense that it lacks necessity, but in the sense that it lacks order. " The coming to be of the bounded world, which is with- out beginning or end (and here that means that it is eternal), is of course without "order" in the sense of an intentional arrangement- intended by someone somewhere. All the same, such Becoming is not without necessity. We know that since antiquity in the Western intel- lectual tradition necessity designates a particular trait of beings; and that necessity, as a fundamental trait of beings, has received the most variegated interpretations: Moira, fatum, destiny, predestination, dia- lectical process. *
10. With the statement Cosmic chaos is in itself necessity we reach the conclusion of our series. The series was to characterize provisional- ly the fundamental trait of the Being of that world totality to which the eternal return of the same might be attributed.
What do we achieve when we synthesize the nine (or ten) points? What we wanted to do was to bring some intrinsic order to Nietzsche's disparate sketches and demonstrations concerning the doctrine of re- turn. Yet none of the points even mentions the thought of return, much less the various demonstrations that Nietzsche elaborated for this doctrine. Nevertheless, we have supplied ourselves with an order by which we can approach the entire question, so that we can now pursue the matter of proofs for the doctrine of return, and hence the matter of the doctrine itself. To what extent is this the case?
For one thing, we have circumscribed the field in which the thought of return belongs and which the thought as such concerns: we have surveyed this field of being as a whole and determined it as the inter- lacing unity of the animate and the lifeless. For another, we have
• On Moira as "fateful allotment" in Parmenides' thought, see Martin Heidegger, Vortriige und Aufsiitze (Pfullingen: G. Neske, 1954), pp. 231-56; Early Greek Thinking, tr. D. F. Krell and F. A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 79-101; especially sections VI-VII. One of the rare places where Heidegger discusses dialectical thought is "Grundsiitze des Denkens," in the fahrbuch fiir Psychologic und Psychother- apie, VI (1958), 33-41.
Summary Presentation of the Thought 97
shown how in its foundations being as a whole-as the unity of ani- mate and inanimate-is structured and articulated: it is constituted by the character of force and the finitude of the whole (at one with infini- ty) that is implied in the character of force-which is to say, the im- measurability of the "phenomenal effects. " Now-and we can proceed with the following only on the basis of what we have already worked out-we must show how being as a whole, which is deployed in its field and in its constitution in the manner we have indicated, is sus- ceptible of the eternal return of the same; we must show how eternal return may be ascribed to being as a whole, demonstrated of it. At all events, this is the only possible arrangement by which we can proceed in an orderly fashion through the entire labyrinth of Nietzsche's thoughts, mastering that labyrinth as we proceed-presupposing, of course, that we wish to proceed in the way that is prescribed by the inner lawfulness of the guiding question of philosophy, the question of being as such.
13. Suspicions Concerning the "Humanization" of Beings
Yet our entire consideration of Nietzsche's doctrine of return-and what is more, that doctrine itself-stand under the shadow of a suspi- cion. The suspicion, which in some sense is Nietzche's own, might make all further efforts to understand the doctrine and the evidence for it futile. The suspicion is that a humanizing tendency nestles in the thought of eternal return of the same itself, and eminently so. Thus the eternal return would be a thought that provokes more than any other the issuance of Nietzche's own persistent warning: "Let us be on guard! "
From the outset of our presentation we have often enough empha- sized that ifa thought related to beings as a whole must at the same time be related to the human being who is thinking it-indeed, must be thought in terms of the human being preeminently and entirely- then this holds true for the thought of eternal return. It was introduced under the designation "the greatest burden. " The essential relation of this thought to the human being who is thinking it; the essential in- volvement of the thinker in the thought and what it thinks; that is to say, the "humanization" of the thought and of beings as a whole as represented in it-all this is made manifest by the fact that the eternity of recurrence, hence the time of recurrence, and thus recurrence it- self, can be grasped solely in terms of the "Moment. "
We define the "Moment" as that in which future and past "affront one another," in which future and past are decisively accomplished and consummated by man himself, inasmuch as man occupies the site of their collision and is himself that collision. The temporality of the time of that eternity which Nietzsche requires us to think in the eternal
The "Humanization" ofBeings 99
return of the same is the temporality in which humanity stands; preeminently humanity and, so far as we know, humanity alone. Hu- man beings, resolutely open to what is to come and preserving what has been, sustain and give shape to what is present. The thought of eternal return of the same, spawned by such temporality and grounded in it, is therefore a "human" thought in a distinctive sense-the su- preme sense. For that reason the thought of eternal return is vulnera- ble to the suspicion that with it a correspondingly vast humanization of beings as a whole transpires-in other words, the very thing Nietzsche wishes to avoid with every means at his disposal and along every route open to him.
How do matters stand with the suspicion concerning the humaniza- tion of beings implied in the thought of return? Clearly, we can answer the question only if we are capable of penetrating the thought itself in all its ramifications, only if we are capable of thinking it fully. Never- theless, at the present juncture of our considerations, where proofs for the thought and the thought itself in its demonstrability and truth are to be grasped, it is first of all necessary that we formulate very carefully the suspicion concerning the thought's humanizing tendency, a suspi- cion that threatens to render all our labors superfluous.
Every conception of the being and especially of beings as a whole, merely by the fact that it is a conception, is related by human beings to human beings. The relation derives from man. Every interpretation of such a conception discriminates among the ways man proceeds with his conception of the being and adopts a stance toward it. Interpreta- tion is thereby a projection of human representations and modes of representation onto the being. Simply to address the being, to name it in the word, is to equip it with human paraphernalia, to seize it in human nets, if indeed it is true that the word and language in the broadest sense distinguish human being. Hence every representation of beings as a whole, every interpretation of the world, is inevitably an- thropomorphic.
Such reflections are so lucid that whoever has engaged in them, no matter how cursorily, is compelled to see that for all their representa- tions, intuitions, and definitions of beings human beings are cornered in the blind alley of their own humanity. We can make it perfectly clear to every Simple Simon that all human representation comes out
100 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
of this or that corner of the alley, whether it involves a notion of the world stemming from a single paramount and decisive thinker or a residue of notions gradually gaining in clarity for sundry groups, eras peoples, and families of nations. Hegel shed light on the state of affair~ in a striking reference to an aspect of our linguistic usage which gives occasion for a particular play on words, one that is not at all superficial or forced. *
All our representations and intuitions are such that in them we mean something, some being. Yet every time I mean or opine some- thing I at the same time inevitably transform what is meant into some- thing that is mine. Every such meaning, ostensibly related solely to the object itself, amounts to an act of appropriation and incorporation by and into the human ego of what is meant. To mean is in itself simul- taneously to represent something and to make the represented some- thing my own. But even when it is not the individualized "I" that means, when the standards prevailing in the thought of any individual human being presumably do not come to domineer, the danger of subjectivism is only apparently overcome. The humanization of beings as a whole is not slighter here but more massive, not only in scope but above all in kind, inasmuch as no one has the slightest inkling con- cerning such humanization. This gives rise to the initially inexpugna- ble illusion that no humanization is in play. But if humanization pertains to world interpretation ineluctably, then every attempt to dehumanize humanization is without prospect of success. The attempt to dehumanize is itself an attempt undertaken by human beings; hence it ultimately remains humanization, raised to a higher power.
These reflections, especially for someone who encounters them or
• The following reference to Hegel's use of meinen, "to mean," as a playful way to indicate the way in which sheer "opinion" (die Meinung) is something purely "mine" (mein), in contrast to the genuine universality (das Allgemeine) embraced by the lan- guage of concepts, may be traced through the early sections of Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit, from "Sensuous Certainty" to "Certainty and Truth of Reason. " See G. W. F. Hegel, Phfinomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1952), pp. 82-83, 185, 220-21, and 234-36. The same play occupies a special place in Hegel's mature "system. " See the "Remark" to section 20 of the Enzyklopiidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 3d edition, 1830, ed. Friedheim Nicolin and Otto Piiggeler {Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1969), pp. 54-56, where the root mein unites what in English we must isolate as "opinion," "meaning" or "intention," "mine," and "univer- sal. "
The "Humanization" ofBeings 101
similar trains of thought for the first time, are staggeringly convincing. Provided a person does not immediately circumvent them and save him or herself by fleeing into the "praxis" of "life," such reflections generally relegate one to a position where only two alternatives arise: either one doubts and despairs of every possibility of learning the truth and takes it all as a sheer play of representations, or one decides via a confession of faith for one world interpretation-following the maxim that one is better than none, even if it is merely one among others. Perhaps with a bit of luck the one we choose can prove its viability in terms of its success, its utility, and the range of its propagation.
The essential postures we may adopt toward a humanization that is held to be ineradicable in itself may therefore be reduced to two: either we make our peace with it and operate now in the apparent superiority of the Universal Doubter who cannot be hoodwinked and who desires only to be left alone, or we struggle to reach the point where we forget humanization and presume that it has thereby been brushed aside, in this way achieving our tranquillity. The result in either case is that wherever suspicions concerning immitigable humanization arise we find ourselves stuck on the superficies, however easily such reflections on humanization delude themselves into thinking that they are su- premely profound and, above all, "critical. " What a revelation it was for the mass of people who were unfamiliar with actual thinking and its rich history when two decades ago, in 1917, Oswald Spengler an- nounced that he was the first to discover that every age and every civilization has its own world view! Yet it was all nothing more than a very deft and clever popularization of thoughts and questions on which others long before him had ruminated far more profoundly. Nietzsche was the most recent of these. Yet no one by any means mastered these thoughts and questions, and they remain unmastered up to the present hour. The reason is as simple as it is momentous and difficult to think through.
With all these pros and cons with respect to humanization, one believes one knows ahead of time what human beings are, the human beings who are responsible for this palpable humanization. One forgets to pose the question that would have to be answered first of all if the suspicions concerning humanization are to be viable or if refutation of those suspicions is to make any sense. T o talk of humanization before
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one has decided-that is to say, before one has asked-who man is, is idle talk indeed. It remains idle talk even when for the sake of its demonstrations it musters all of world history and mankind's most an- cient civilizations-things which no one is able to corroborate anyway. Hence, in order to avoid superficial and specious discussion of those suspicions concerning humanization, whether affirming or rejecting them, we must first of all take up the question "Who is man? " A number of adroit writers have wasted no time replying to the question, without the question itself becoming any clearer. But for them the question is no more than an interrogatory blurb on a book jacket. The question is not really asked-the authors have long been in secure possession of their dogmatic replies. There is nothing to be said against that. It is merely that one should not give the impression that one is questioning. For the question "Who is man? " is not as harmless as it may seem, and it is not a matter to be settled overnight. If the capaci- ties for questioning are to survive in Dasein, this question is to be Europe's task for the future, for this century and the century to come. It can find its answer only in the exemplary and authoritative way in which particular nations, in competition with others, shape their his- tory.
Yet who else poses and answers the question of who man is, if not man himself? That is surely the case. But does it also follow that the definition of the essence of the human being is simply a humanization by human creatures? That may well be. In fact, it is necessarily a humanization, in the sense that the essential definition of human be- ings is executed by human beings. Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether the essential definition of human being humanizes or dehumanizes it. It is possible that the execution of the definition of human being always and everywhere remains an affair of human be- ings and that to that extent it is human; but it may be that the defini- tion itself, its truth, elevates human being beyond itself and thereby dehumanizes it, in that way ascribing even to the human execution of the essential definition of man a different essence. The question of who man is must first be experienced as a much-needed question. For that to happen, the need of this question concerning human being must burst on the scene with full force and under every guise. We do not do justice to the necessity of this question if we fail to examine
The "Humanization" of Beings 103
what it is that makes the question possible first of all. Whence, and on what basis, is the essence of human being to be defined?
The essence of man may be defined-as we have long been accus- tomed to mean and opine according to the rules of various games-by describing him in the way one dissects and describes a frog or a rabbit. As if it had already been determined that by means of biological proce- dures one can come to know what a living creature is. It is rather the case that the science of biology presupposes and takes for granted in its initial steps what "life" is to mean for it. Of course, one turns his back on the opinion thus taken for granted. One shies from turning to con- front it, not only because he is so busy with his frogs and other ani- mals, but also because he experiences anxiety concerning his own opinion. It might well be that the science as such would suddenly collapse if one looked over one's shoulder, only to discover that presup- positions are very much worthy ofquestion. This is the case in a! l the sciences-without exception. Is it not liberating for all these sciences when they are told nowadays that due to historic political exigencies the nation and the state need results-solid, useful results! "Fine," reply the sciences, "but you know we need our peace and quiet. " Everyone cooperates sympathetically, and the sciences are happy in their unruffied state; they can proceed in utter ignorance of philosoph- ical-metaphysical questions, as they have for the past fifty years. The "sciences" today experience this liberation in the only way they can. Nowadays as never before they feel perfectly assured of their necessity, taking such assurance--erroneously-as a confirmation of their very essence.
If it even occurred to anyone these days to suggest that science could assert itself essentially only if it retrieved its essence by means of an original questioning, such a one would be confessing himself a fool or a subverter of "science as such. "* To ask about ultimate grounds is t~
• Heidegger is of course referring to his inaugural lecture at Freiburg in 1929 a n d - presumably-to the outraged reply by Rudolf Carnap in 1931, "Overcoming Meta- physics through Logical Analysis of Language," which appears in an English translation in A. J. Ayer, ed. , Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 60-81. See especially section 5 for an account of Heidegger's syntactical errors and perversities. It is intriguing to work through the "schema" of section 5, on "the nothing," to learn the extent to which Carnap and Heidegger agree. An equally interesting response to Heideg- ger-Wittgenstein's, as recorded by Friedrich Waismann on December 30, 1929-never
104 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
promulgate a kind of inner flagellation, a process for which the heady word nihilism stands at our beck and call. But that ghost has been laid to rest; all is peace and quiet; the students, we now hear, are willing to go back to work! And so the universal Babbittry of the spirit may begin anew. "Science" has no inkling of the fact that its claim to be of direct practical consequence does not simply obliterate philosophical meditation; it is much more the case that at the instant of science's supreme practical relevance the supreme necessity arises for meditation on matters that can never be gauged according to direct practicability and utility. These matters nevertheless instill a supreme unrest in Dasein, unrest not as distraction and confusion but as awakening and vigilance-as opposed to the tranquillity of that philosophic somno- lence which is nihilism proper.
Yet if comfort be our standard of mea- sure, it is doubtless easier to shut our eyes and evade the gravity of these questions, even if our sole excuse is that we have no time for such things.
An odd era for humankind, this, the age in which we have been adrift for decades, a time that no longer has time for the question of who man is. By means of scientific descriptions of extant or past forms of humanity, whether these descriptions are biological or historical or both taken together in a melange of "anthropologies," a mixture that has become popular during recent decades, we can never come to know who man is. Such knowledge is also barred to faith, which must from the start regard all "knowledge" as "heathen" and as folly. Such knowl- edge thrives only on the basis of an original stance of inquiry. The question of who man is must take its departure from that point which even the most desultory view of things can identify as the point of inception for the humanization of all beings, namely, man's mere addressing and naming of beings, that is to say, language. It may be that man does not at all humanize beings by virtue of language; on the contrary, perhaps man has up to now thoroughly mistaken and misin- terpreted the essence of language itself, and with it his own Being and its essential provenance. But when we pose the question of the essence of language we are already asking about being as a whole, provided
reached the public. It is now printed, with a revealing commentary, in Michael Murray, ed. , Heidegger and Modern Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 80-83.
The "Humanization" ofBeings 105
language is not an aggiomeration of words used to designate sundry familiar things but the original resonance ofthe truth ofa world.
The question of who man is must in its very formulation include in its approach man in and with his relations to beings as a whole; it must include in its inquiry the question of being as a whole. But we have just now heard that being as a whole can only be interpreted by human beings in the first place-and now man himself is to be interpreted in terms of being as a whole. Everything here is spinning in a circle. Of that there can be no doubt. The question is whether and in what way we can succeed in taking this circle seriously, instead of continually closing our eyes in the face of it.
The world interpretation that devolves upon the thought of eternal return of the same shows that a relation to man announces itself in the essence of eternity as midday and moment. Here that very circle plays a role, requiring that man be thought on the basis of world, and world on the basis of man. To all appearances that would suggest that the thought of eternal return of the same bears traces of the uttermost humanization; the thought nevertheless is and wants to be the very opposite. Furthermore, this circle would explain the fact that as a consequence of the will to dehumanize world interpretation Nietzsche is compelled to will supreme humanization, hence the fact that each demands rather than excludes the other.
The upshot would be that Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return is not to be measured by gratuitous standards, but only on the basis of its own law. It would demand that we meditate in advance on the kind of evidentiary claim and evidentiary force that are germane to the Nietz- schean proofs for the doctrine of eternal return.
But we can drop the subjunctives. For what we have suggested is indeed the case.
Suspicions concerning humanization, no matter how palpably near they are and no matter how readily everyone can clumsily wield them, remain superfluous and groundless as long as they have not put them- selves in question-by asking the question of who man is. That ques- tion cannot even be posed, much less answered, without the question of what being as a whole is. However, the latter question embraces a more original question, one which neither Nietzsche nor philosophy prior to him unfolded or was able to unfold.
14. Nietzsche's Proof of the Doctrine of Return
With the thought of eternal return of the same Nietzsche is moving in the realm of the question as to what being as a whole is. Now that we have staked out the field of Nietzsche's sense of being as a whole and described its constitution, we would do well to pursue the proofs by which Nietzsche attributes to being as a whole the determination of eternal return of the same. (In the course of such a pursuit we must set aside those suspicions concerning humanization-which, in the meantime, have become dubious indeed. ) Obviously, everything de- pends on the evidentiary force of these proofs. To be sure, evidentiary force. All evidentiary force remains impotent so long as we fail to grasp the mode and the essence of the proofs in question. Yet these things, along with the respective possibility and necessity of proof, are defined by the kind of truth that is in question. A proof can be fully conclusive, without formal logical errors of any kind, and still prove nothing and remain irrelevant, simply because its point of attack misses the precise nexus of truth and alters nothing within that nexus. For example, a proof for the existence of God can be constructed by means of the most rigorous formal logic and yet prove nothing, since a god who must permit his existence to be proved in the first place is ultimately a very ungodly god. The best such proofs of existence can yield is blasphemy. Or, to take another example, one can try-and this has happened over and over again-to prove experimentally, through experience, the fun- damental principle of causality. Such a proof is more deleterious than any attempt to deny the validity of that principle on philosophical or sophistical grounds; more ruinous, because it jumbles all thought and
Nietzsche's Proofofthe Doctrine ofReturn 107
inquiry from the ground up, inasmuch as a fundamental principle in its very essence cannot be empirically proved. Always and everywhere the empiricist concludes, wrongly, that the fundamental principle can- not be proved at all. He takes his proofs and his truth to be the sole possible ones. Everything that is inaccessible to him he proclaims to be superstition, something that "simply cannot be dealt with. " As if what is most magnificent, most profound, were something "we" can never "deal with" unless we deal with it by thinking empirically and thus by shutting ourselves off from it irrevocably. There are many different kinds of proofs.
With regard to Nietzsche's "proofs" for his doctrine of return, prior interpretations and presentations have been especially anxious to make Nietzsche's prediction·come true: "Everyone talks about me-but no- body thinks of me. " No one compels himself to think through Nietz- sche's thoughts. Of course, such thinking through is confronted by a bedeviling peculiarity: it never succeeds if the thinker fails to think beyond-though not away from-the thought he is to be thinking about. Only if it thinks beyond does thinking through possess the free- dom of movement that it needs if it is to avoid getting tangled up in itself.
In the case at hand, namely, the Nietzschean proofs for the eternal return of the same, it was especially gratifying to bid a quick adieu to thought-without losing face thereby. It was said that with these proofs Nietzsche had gotten sidetracked in physics which, number one, he did not understand thoroughly enough and, number two, does not belong in philosophy anyway. We perspicacious fellows know full well that you cannot prove philosophical doctrines with assertions and argu- ments from the natural sciences. But, it is said, we are inclined to- yes, we really must-forgive Nietzsche his aberration in the directioi:~ of natural science. After all, he too went through his positivist phase, at the end of the 1870s and in the early 1880s, a period when anyone who wanted to have any influence at all spoke up for a "scientific world view," much in the manner of Haeckel and his crew. In those
decades "liberalism" was rampant; it spawned the very idea of "world view. " Every "world view" in itself and as such is liberal! So let us say
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that this escapade of Nietzsche's into the natural sciences remains an historical eccentricity and let it go at that.
It seems clear that we could hardly expect persons sporting such an attitude to think through Nietzsche's thought of thoughts.
Recently, however, some attempts have been made to think through the proofs for this thought. Because of the reference to an essential connection between "Being" and "Time," some have paused to won- der, asking themselves: If Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return of the same has to do with the universe, being as a whole, which one could roughly call "Being"; and if eternity and recurrence, as transgressions of past and future, are somehow related to "Time"; then perhaps there is something to Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return of the same, and maybe we had better not shrug off his proofs as effulgences of a project that was doomed to fail. And so the proofs are taken in earnest. Commentators show-by way of mathematical exertions, no less-that his proofs are not so bad, not counting a couple of "mistakes. " Indeed, Nietzsche anticipated several lines of thought in contemporary physics -and what could be more important for a real contemporary man than his science! This apparently more material and more affirmative stance with respect to Nietzsche's "proofs" is, however, every bit as dubious as its opposite; it is immaterial, inasmuch as it does not and cannot confront "the matter" that comes into question here. For both the rejection and the acceptance of these proofs hold fast to the com- mon identical presupposition that here it is a matter of proofs after the manner of the "natural sciences. " This preconception is the genuine error. It precludes all understanding from the outset because it makes all correct questioning impossible.
It remains essential that we attain sufficient clarity concerning the foundations, the approach, the direction, and the region of Nietzsche's thought. Furthermore, we must recognize that even when we have achieved these things we will have performed only the most pressing preliminary work. It could be that the form in which Nietzsche applies and presents his proofs is only a foreground, and that this foreground can deceive us about the properly "metaphysical" train of his thought. In addition, we must confront the extrinsic circumstance that Nietz- sche's notes are not structured in such a way as to be consistent and
Nietzsche's Proofofthe Doctrine ofReturn 109
conclusive. And yet the principal thoughts are clear, recurring again and again in later years, long after Nietzsche had left his "positivistic" phase-the one that ostensibly caused him to get sidetracked among the natural sciences-behind. We shall limit ourselves now to indicat- ing the principal steps on this path of thought.
The eternal return of the same is to prove to be the fundamental determination of the world totality. If we for our part are to anticipate the kind of fundamental determination of being as a whole we are confronting here, by naming it more precisely and by setting it in relief against other such determinations, then we may say that eternal return of the same is to prove to be the way in which being as a whole is. That can succeed only if we show that the way in which being as a whole is necessarily results from what we have called the constitution of the world totality. The latter becomes manifest to us in the determinations listed earlier. Hence we will refer back to them in order to test whether and in what way these determinations in their proper context indicate the necessity of the eternal return of the same.
The general character of force yields the finitude (closure) of the world and of its becoming. According to such finitude of becoming, the advance and progress of cosmic occurrence into infinity is impos- sible. Thus the world's becoming must turn back on itself.
Yet the world's becoming runs backward and forward in endless (infinite) time, as real time. The finite becoming which runs its course in such infinite time must long ago have achieved a kind of homeosta- sis-a state of balance and calm-if such were ever possible for it, inasmuch as the possibilities of being, finite according to number and kind, must of necessity be exhausted in infinite time-must already have been exhausted. Because no such homeostasis or equilibrium prevails, it is clear that it never was attained, and here that means that it never can come to prevail. The world's becoming, as finite, turning back on itself, is therefore a permanent becoming, that is to say, eter- nal becoming. Since such cosmic becoming, as finite becoming in an infinite time, takes place continuously, not ceasing whenever its finite possibilities are exhausted, it must already have repeated itself, indeed an infinite number of times. And as permanent becoming it will con- tinue to repeat itself in the future. Because the world totality is finite in
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the configurations of its becoming, although immeasurable in practical terms, the possibilities of transformation in its collective character are also finite, however much they appear to us to be infinite, because unsurveyable and hence ever novel. And because the nexus of effetts among the particular processes of becoming-finite in number-is a closed nexus, every process of becoming must retroactively draw the entire past in its wake; or, since it works its effects always ahead, it must propel all things forward. This implies that every process of becoming must reproduce itself; it and all the others recur as the same. The eternal return of the totality of world becoming must be a recurrence of the same.
The return of the same would be impossible only if it could be avoided in some way. This would presuppose that the world totality renounced the recurrence of the same, and this in turn would imply a forward-reaching intention to that end and a corresponding positing of the goal, namely, the positing of the ultimate goal of somehow avoid- ing the unavoidable. For, on the basis of the finitude and permanence of becoming in infinite time, recurrence of the same is indeed un- avoidable. Yet to presuppose the positing of such a goal runs counter to the fundamental constitution of the world totality as necessitous chaos. All that remains to be said is what we have already shown to be neces- sary: the character of the world totality, its character as Becoming- and here that also means its character as Being-when defined as the eternal chaos of necessity, is eternal return of the same.
15. The Ostensibly Scientific Procedure of Proof. Philosophy and Science
If we look back over the train of thought we have pursued and ask how the principle of eternal return of the same may be proved, the evidenti- ary procedure involved seems to be something like the following: From statements concerning the constitution of the world totality we must necessarily conclude to the principle of eternal return of the same. Without entering immediately into the question as to what kind of "conclusion" this deduction arrives at, we can reach a decision that remains significant for all our further reflections, albeit only by way of a clarification of the most general kind.
We must ask whether this evidentiary procedure pertains at all to the "natural sciences," whatever :we may make of its suitability and its "merits. " What is "scientific" about it? The answer is: nothing at all.
What is being discussed in the deduction itself and in the series of determinations of the cosmic order which precedes it? Force, finitude, endlessness, sameness, recurrence, becoming, space, time, chaos, and necessity. None of these has anything to do with "natural science. " If one wished to draw the natural sciences into consideration here at all, all he could say would be that the sciences do presuppose determina- tions such as becoming, space, time, sameness, and recurrence-in fact, must of necessity presuppose them as elements that remain eter-· nally barred from their realm of inquiry and their manner of demon- stration.
True, the sciences must make use of a particular notion of force, motion, space, and time; but they can never say what force, motion, space, and time are; they cannot ask what such things are as long as they remain sciences and avoid trespassing into the realm of philos-
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ophy. The fact that every science as such, being the specific science it is, gains no access to its fundamental concepts and to what those con- cepts grasp, goes hand in hand with the fact that no science can assert something about itself with the help of its own scientific resources. · What mathematics is can never be determined mathematically; what philology is can never be discussed philologically; what biology is can never be uttered biologically. To ask what a science is, is to ask a question that is no longer a scientific question. The moment he or she poses a question with regard to science in general, and that always means a question concerning specific possible sciences, the inquirer steps into a new realm, a realm with evidentiary claims and forms of proof quite different from those that are customary in the sciences. This is the realm ofphilosophy. It is not affixed to the sciences or piled on top of them. It lies hidden in the innermost domain of science, so much so that it would be true to say that mere science is only scientific -that is to say, partaking of genuine knowledge, above and beyond being a repertory of certain techniques-to the extent that it is philo- sophical. From this we can gather the alarming proportions of non- sense and absurdity in all ostensible efforts to renew the "sciences" and simultaneously abolish philosophy.
What does it mean to say that a science is "philosophical"? It does not mean that it explicitly "borrows" from a particular "philosophy," or appeals to it for support, or alludes to it, or shares its terminology and employs its concepts. It does not at all mean that "philosophy" as such-that is to say, philosophy as a developed discipline or as an autonomous piece of work-should or could be the clearly visible superstructure for science. The grounds of science must rather be what philosophy alone sets in relief and founds, namely, the cognizable truth of beings as such. Hence, to say that a science is philosophical means that it knowingly and questioningly reverts to being as such and as a whole, and inquires into the truth of beings; such science sets itselfin motion within the fundamental positions we take toward be- ings, and allows these positions to have an impact on scientific work. The standard by which such impact may be measured by no means lies in the number, frequency, or visibility of philosophical concepts and terms that occur in a scientific treatise; the standard lies in the assured-
The Ostensibly Scientific Procedure of Proof 113
ness, clarity, and originality of the questioning itself-in the durability of the will to think. Such a will does not swoon over the results of science, does not rest content in them. It always grasps results as noth- ing more than means to an end, as a route to further work.
A science may therefore become philosophical in either of two ways. First, it may approximate to the thinking that is proper to a philosophy, when at some point the realm of such thinking (and not merely its statements and formulas) places a direct claim on scientific inquiry and induces it to alter meticulously the very horizons of its customary oper- ations. Second, a science may become philosophical as a result of the intrinsic inquisitiveness of the science itself. A science may get caught up in the original attractive power of knowledge by thinking back to its own origins, in such a way that these origins themselves determine every step in the operations of that science.
For these reasons a profound sense of mutual agreement is possible between philosophical thought and scientific research, without their having to act on one another in any explicit way, without each having to penetrate the other's sphere of inquiry and assign it its tasks. In spite of the enormous distance that separates thinker and researcher in their realms and modes of work, there is every likelihood that they will enter into an inherent and mutually fructifying relationship, a way of being with one another that is far more efficacious than the much-acclaimed but extrinsic "cooperation" of a group allied with a view to some spe- cific purpose.
The strongest creative impulses can thrive only on the basis of such mutual agreement, which spans a luminous bridge across vast dis- tances. Here the freedom, alterity, and uniqueness of each can come into expansive play, occasioning a properly fruitful exchange.
On the other hand, it is an old lesson based on incontrovertible experience that academically organized community efforts, arranged and outfitted for some more or less specific purpose, and "cooperative labors" among the sciences springing from utilitarian motives petrify sooner or later. They grow hollow and vacuous, precisely because of the excessive proximity, the familiarity, and the "routine" shared by the co~workers.
If therefore the natural and the human sciences, already wholly
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subservient to technology, are exposed to such unusual stress and such undisguised exploitation-and in our current predicament they are inevitably so exposed-we can prevent the disconcerting situation from becoming truly catastrophic only if the greatest counterweights are brought to bear on the innermost core of the sciences. And this can occur only if the sciences become thoroughly philosophical.
Precisely because chemistry and physics have become necessary to such a vast extent, philosophy is far from superfluous; it is even more necessary-"needful" in a quite profound sense-than, for example, chemistry itself. The latter, left to itself, is soon exhausted. It makes no difference whether it takes a decade or a century before the process of such potential atrophy becomes visible to the casual observer: so far as the essence of such atrophy is concerned we must fend it off wherever it emerges.
Nietzsche did not stray into the natural sciences. Rather, the natural science that was contemporary to him drifted dubiously into a dubious philosophy. The evidentiary procedure for the doctrine of return is therefore in no case subject to the jurisdiction of natural science, even if the "facts" of natural science should run counter to the outcome of that procedure. What are the "facts" of natural science and of all science, if not particular appearances interpreted according to explicit, tacit, or utterly unknown metaphysical principles, principles that re- flect a doctrine concerning beings as a whole?
In order to hold at bay the scientific misconception of Nietzsche's train of thought it is not even necessary to refer to the straightforward state of affairs represented in Nietzsche's reflections-namely, the fact that he never limits those reflections to the region of knowledge at- tained by physics or the other natural sciences. On the contrary, he is concerned with the totality of beings: "Everything has returned: Sirius and the spider and your thoughts during this past hour and this very thought of yours, that everything recurs" (XII, 62). Since when are "thoughts" and "hours" objects of physics or biology?
16. The Character of "Proof" for the Doctrine of Return
As yet our reflections have decided nothing about evidentiary proce- dure in the form of a deductive process and about the train of Nietz- sche's thought as a "proof. " With the sole intention of clarifying Nietzsche's thought we shall now ask the following questions. Is Nietz- sche's train of thought a proofat all in the usual sense? Is it a deduc-
tion based on a series of propositions? Are propositions concerning the veritable essence of the world posited here as major premises for a conclusion? Is the proposition of eternal recurrence deduced from such premises?
At first glimpse, this seems to be the case. We ourselves initiated the evidentiary procedure precisely in this way. We concluded from state- ments concerning the constitution of beings as a whole to the mode of Being of these beings; we deduced the necessity of eternal return of the same for being as a whole. Yet what gives us the right without further ado to draw conclusions concerning the import and the mode of a philosophical train of thought from the form in which we ourselves have presented it, especially when specific historical circumstances condition our presentation? The reply might be ventured: To all ap- pearances, anything that is written and discussed consists of propo~i­ tions and sequences of propositions, and these are the same whether they appear in scientific or philosophical treatises. Their "content"
may differ, perhaps, but their "logic," which is what counts, is identi- cal. Or is the very "logic" of philosophy altogether different? Must it not be totally different, and not merely because philosophical thought relates to a content that is in some respect distinguishable from the
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objects of the sciences? For example, the sciences deal with atomic fission, genetic inheritance, price calculation, Frederick the Great, or the criminal code; and they debate over differential equations and Sophocles' Antigone. Correspondingly, philosophy deals with things like eternal recurrence. Different things, different logic. If that were the way matters stood, philosophy would merely be one science among others. However, each science deals with only one particular domain of beings, which it always considers under one particular aspect; phi- losophy thinks beings as a whole, under the aspect that includes every other aspect, necessarily and from the outset. The "logic" of philos- ophy is thus not simply "something else again," but is totally different. To achieve philosophical thinking we need to adopt a wholly different stance toward thought. Above all, we need a special kind of readiness to think. No matter how much attention we pay to formal logic in the presentation of a particular evidentiary procedure, and no matter how much our procedure seems identical with the customary ones, when we think that way we are always thinking formally and extrinsically.
Let us find our way back to the question concerning the character of Nietzsche's train of thought in his "proofs" for the doctrine of return, and let us repeat the question: Is the principle of eternal return dis- closed by way of a deduction from prior propositions asserted of the nature of the world? Or does not the very essence of the world first become palpable as an eternal chaos of necessity by means of the determination of the world totality as one that recurs in the same? If that is how matters stand, then the ostensible proof is not at all a proof that could have its force in the cogency and conclusiveness of its de- ductive steps. What proffered itself as a proof in our own presentation is nothing more than the revelation of positings that are co-posited- indeed necessarily co-posited-in the projection of being as a whole onto Being as eternally recurrent in the same. But then this proof is simply an articulation of the cohesion of the projection itself and what it immediately co-posits. In short, what we have here is the unfolding of a projection, by no means its computation and its grounding.
If our interpretation now brings us to the heart's core of Nietzsche's thought-as a metaphysical thought-then all the rest becomes highly questionable. To posit the nature of the world in terms of the funda-
The Character of "Proof" 117
mental character of eternal return of the same is hence purely arbitrary if the world totality does not really disclose such a basic character-if such a character is merely attributed to it, foisted onto it. Furthermore, such positing is the utter extremity of the very thing Nietzsche wished to avoid, namely, the humanizing of beings. Did not the provenance of the thought of eternal return come to show itself in the experience of the moment as the most poignantly human of attitudes toward time? The upshot is that Nietzsche not only applies one human experience to beings as a whole but also does so in contradiction to himself, inasmuch as he is the one who wants to abjure humanization. Seen in terms of the whole, Nietzsche's own procedure remains unclear in the most decisive respect-and that does not seem auspicious for a philoso- pher, especially one as demanding as Nietzsche. Are we to suppose that Nietzsche does not know he is "reading into things"?
He knows it, only too well. He knows it better-that is to say, more painfully and honestly-than any previous thinker ever knew it. Dur- ing the very years he is trying to think the essence of the world in the direction of eternal return of the same, Nietzsche achieves waxing clarity concerning the fact that human beings always think within the confinements of their little "corner" of the world, their tiny angle of space-time. In the second edition of The Gay Science, published in
1887, Nietzsche writes (number 374): "We cannot see around our own corner. " Here man is grasped and is designated as a veritable Little Jack Horner. Thus we find a clear expression of the fact that everything that is accessible in any way is encompassed within a particular range of vision determined by a particular corner, a clear expression and ac- knowledgment of the fact that the humanization of all things is un- avoidable in every single step that thought takes. Hence the interpreta- tion of the world's nature as a necessitous chaos is also impossible in the intended sense-namely, in the sense that it would strip away ·all humanization. Or it must be conceded merely as a prospect and a perspective that peep from their own little corner. However we decide, it remains the case that the intention to put out of action all humaniz- ing tendencies in our thoughts on the world's essence cannot endure side by side with acknowledgment of mankind's Little-Jack-Horner es- sence. If this particular intention is held to be practicable, then man
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would have to get a grip on the world's essence from a location outside of every corner; he would have to occupy something like a standpoint of standpointlessness.
And in point of fact we still have scholars today who busy themselves with philosophy and who consider freedom-from-every-standpoint not to be a standpoint, as though such freedom did not depend upon those very standpoints. These curious attempts to flee from one's own shad- ow we may leave to themselves, since discussion of them yields no tangible results. Yet we must heed one thing: this standpoint of free- dom-from-standpoints is of the opinion that it has overcome the one- sidedness and bias of prior philosophy, which always was, and is, defined by its standpoints. However, the standpoint of standpointless- ness represents no overcoming. In truth it is the extreme consequence, affirmation, and final stage of that opinion concerning philosophy which locates all philosophy extrinsically in standpoints that are ulti- mately right in front of us, standpoints whose one-sidedness we can try to bring into equilibrium. We do not alleviate the ostensible damage and danger which we fear in the fact that philosophy is located in a particular place-such location being the essential and indispensable legacy of every philosophy-by denying and repudiating the fact; we alleviate the danger only by thinking through and grasping the indige- nous character of philosophy in terms of its original essence and its necessity, that is to say, by posing anew the question concerning the essence of truth and the essence of human Dasein, and by elaborating a radically new response to that question.
Either the excision of every kind of humanization is held to be possible, and there has to be something like a standpoint that is free from all standpoints; or human beings are acknowledged as the cor- nered creatures they are, and we must deny the possibility of any non- humanizing conception of the world totality.