No More Learning

"
We must admit that Nietzsche never pursued these interconnec-
The Thought of Return-and Freedom 139
tions. Yet so much is clear: the doctrine of return should never be contorted in such a way that it fits into the readily available "antino- my" of freedom and necessity. At the same time, this reminds us once again of our sole task-to think this most difficult thought as it de- mands to be thought, on its own terms, leaving aside all supports and makeshifts.
Let us round off our survey of Nietzsche's notes on the doctrine of return from the period when the thought of thoughts first dawned on him (1882) with an observation by Nietzsche that guides us back to his very first plans for that thought, especially the third of these plans, entitled "Midday and Eternity. " The note to which we have already referred (number 114) closes with the following thought:
And in every ring of human existence in general there is always an hour when the mightiest thought emerges, first to one, then to many, and finally to all: the thought of the eternal return of all things. It is, each time, the hour of midday for humanity.
What does Nietzsche want to say here? For one thing, this thought integrates the thought of return itself as propriative event into the circle of beings as a whole, which it creates afresh. The reference to "human existence" here means, not the emergence on the scene of individual beings, but the fundamental fact that a being like human being in general comes to be within the whole of beings. At the same time, the thought tacitly suggests as one of its presuppositions that the thought of thoughts is not always the propriative event in human existence; that event itself has its time, its hour, which is "the hour of midday for humanity. "*
We know what Nietzsche means by this word midday: the moment of the shortest shadow, when fore-noon and after-noon, past and fu- ture, meet in one. Their meeting-place is the moment of supreme
• Heidegger's references to Ereignis, the propriative event, remind us that the lecture on eternal recurrence comes precisely at the time Heidegger was writing his Contribu- tions to Philosophy: On 'Ereignis,' 1936-38. In the first course on Nietzsche, "Will to Power as Art," he invoked Ereignis as the event of nihilism (see V olume I of this series, p. 156 n. ; see also Volume IV, p. 5. ) Here the propriative event involves the thought of eternal recurrence itself, which Nietzsche proffered as the most effective counter to nihilism. The matter is pursued in section 23, below.
140 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
unity for all temporal things in utterly magnificent transfiguration, the moment when they are bathed in the most brilliant light. It is the moment of eternity. The hour of midday is the hour when human existence is each time transfigured to its supreme height and its most potent will. In the word midday a point of time is determined for the propriative event of the thought of eternal return within the eternal return of the same. No timepiece measures this point, here meant as that point in being as a whole when time itself is as the temporality of the moment. The most intrinsic yet most covert relation of the eternal return of the same (as the basic character of beings as a whole) to time now begins to glimmer. Every effort to grasp this teaching depends on our observing the relation that comes to light and on our being able to explicate that relation.
19. Retrospect on the Notes from the Period of The Gay Science, 1881-82
If we now survey the great wealth of material found in the earliest suppressed notes on the doctrine of eternal return, and if we compare all of it with what Nietzsche in the following year proceeds to commu- nicate, then it becomes clear that the published material represents a disproportionately small amount of what Nietzsche already thought and already knew. Yet this remains a purely extraneous finding. Some- thing else is more important, namely, the fact that the two passages which embody Nietzsche's first communication of the thought, at the conclusion of the first edition of The Gay Science, numbers 341 and 342, "The Greatest Burden" and "lncipit Tragoedia," essentially con- join the two fundamental directions taken by the thought in Nietz- sche's very first projected plans: they exhibit the thought of return as one that participates in altering the configuration of being as a whole itself; and they exhibit the thought of return as one which-in order to be a thought, in order actually to be thought-calls for its own thinker and teacher.
In retrospect we may say, and in fact say quite readily, that at the time The Gay Science first appeared with these concluding passages, in the year 1882, it was indeed impossible for anyone to understa11d what Nietzsche knew full well, impossible to understand what he wanted. And in all fairness Nietzsche could not have expected and insisted that he be understood straightaway, especially since such understanding is always a two-edged sword.
Understanding burgeons only when those who understand essential- ly find themselves growing in the direction of the new thought, only
142 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE m' THE SAME
when they question in the direction of those new questions out of the autochthony of their own need, in this way alone taking up those novel questions anew, and thus transfiguring themselves to a greater clarity. Yet in the education of those who are reaching out in order to under- stand, their own lack of understanding, their noncomprehension of the thought that has been thought prior to them, may well be a formative obstacle, perhaps even a necessary one. We know little about these processes. Those who understand fundamentally, from the ground up, that is, those who think the thought itself creatively again, are never the contemporaries of the first thinkers of the thought. Nor are they the ones who are in a hurry to take up the nascent thought as something "modern," since these are truly vagrant, begging meals wherever they can find anything ala mode. Those who properly understand are al- ways the ones who come a long way on their own ground, from their own territory, the ones who bring much with them in order that they
may transform much. That is what Nietzsche is ruminating in a note which stems from the period we are dealing with, 1881-82 (see XII, 18 f. , number 35), but which belongs to the second division of notes on the doctrine of eternal return-if the schema of the original editors is to serve at all as our standard:
A novel doctrine encounters its best representatives last. These are natures that have long been self-assured and assuring, so that their earlier thoughts exhibit the tangled growth and impenetrability of a fertile primeval forest. The weaker, more vacuous, sicklier, and needier types are those who first contract the new infection-the first disciples prove nothing against a doc- trine. I believe the first Christians were the most disgusting people, with all their "virtues. "
Because Nietzsche's concluding thought in The Gay Science could not be understood as Nietzsche meant it to be understood, namely, as the thought that would inaugurate his new philosophy, it was inevi- table that the following communication too, in Thus Spoke Zarathus- tra, remained uncomprehended as a whole-all the more so since its form could only have alienated readers, ultimately distracting them from a rigorous thinking of the most difficult thought rather than guid- ing them toward it. And yet the poetic creation of the thinker of eternal
The Period ofThe Gay Science 143
return was for Nietzsche himself the matter that was "deepest" and was thus most essential for him: it took shape in and as the history of the coming to be-and that means the downgoing-of the hero who thinks the thought.
Let us now examine the suppressed materials from the Zarathustra period, basing our search on the understanding of Nietzsche's second communication of the thought of return in the way we have indicated -the communication via Zarathustra in the book Thus Spoke Zara- thustra. Our search will reveal that the ratio of unpublished notes to what Nietzsche himself communicated is precisely the inverse of what it was in the period of The Gay Science and that book's immediate background.
20. Notes from the Zarathustra Period, 1883-84
The notes in question are to be found in volume XII of the Grossoktav edition, pages 369-71, under numbers 719 to 731. A number of scat- tered observations that allude to the thought of return only indirectly might also be drawn into consideration here, along with the quite extensive "materials"-maxims, plans, and references-from the preliminary sketches to Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
What the editors have collected under the specific title "The Eternal Return" is small in scope but significant in import. When we compare these few fragments-most of them consisting of a single statement or question-with those of the preceding period, the first thing that strikes us is the absence of "proofs" derived from the natural sciences. Com- mentators are wont to conclude that Nietzsche himself must in the meantime have given up on such proofs. Yet we find these ostensibly scientific statements also in notes composed some time later. What we must guard against is our own tendency to extract the import of these statements as though they were formulas of physics. If they never were pieces of scientific evidence in the first place, it cannot be a matter of Nietzsche's surrendering erstwhile proofs.
How are we to interpret the following statement? "Life itself created the thought that is hardest for it to bear; life wants to leap beyond its highest barrier! " (number 720). Here it is not a matter of the doctrine's "ethical impact" or "subjective significance. " The thought pertains to "life" itself. "Life" in this case means the will to power. Being itself, as something that becomes, is creative and destructive; as creative it projects the prospects of its transfiguring possibilities ahead of itself.
The Zarathustra Period 145
Supreme creation is creation of the highest barrier, which is to say, the barrier that embodies the most stubborn resistance to creation itself, thereby catapulting creation magnificently into farther reaches of life- enhancement. The thought of eternal return is the hardest thought for life to think, precisely because life can most easily go astray on account of it, straying from itself as truly creative and allowing everything to submerge in sheer apathy and indifference. In the statement we are considering, eternal recurrence is seen to spring from the essence of "life" itself; hence it is removed at the outset from all fortuitous whimsy and all "personal confessions of faith. " From the present van- tage-point we can also see how the doctrine of eternal return of the same, as a doctrine of perpetual Becoming, relates to the ancient doc- trine of the external flux of all things-a view that is usually called "Heraclitean. "
Commentators are accustomed to equating Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return of the same with the teachings of Heraclitus. Appeal- ing to Nietzsche's own utterances in this respect, they designate Nietz- sche's philosophy a kind of "Heracliteanism. " Now, it is indisputable that Nietzsche sensed a certain kinship between his own and Hera- clitus' teachings-as he saw them, he along with his contemporaries. Especially about the year 1881, immediately prior to the birth of the thought of return, he often spoke of "the eternal flux of all things" (cf. XII, 30; number 57). He even called the doctrine "of the flux of things" the "ultimate truth" (number 89), that is, the truth that can no longer be incorporated. This suggests that the doctrine of the eternal flow of all things, in the sense of thoroughgoing impermanence, can no longer be held to be true; human beings cannot hold firm in it as something true because they would thereby surrender themselves to ceaseless change, inconstancy, and total obliteration, and because everything firm, everything true, would have become quite impossible.
In fact, Nietzsche had imbibed of this basic position vis-a-vis being as a whole, as eternal flow, directly before the thought of eternal return of the same came to him. Yet if as we have seen this thought is the genuine belief, the essential way of holding firm in the true, as what is fixated, then the thought of eternal return of the same freezes the eternal flow; the ultimate truth is now to be incorporated (see the first plans from
146 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
the year 1881). * From our present vantage-point we can see why these first plans speak so emphatically of "incorporation. " As opposed to that, it is now a matter of overcoming the doctrine of the eternal flux of things and its essentially destructive character. Once the doctrine of return emerges, Nietzsche's "Heracliteanism" is a very peculiar affair indeed. The note stemming from Nietzsche's Zarathustra period which we shall now cite (number 723) is crystal clear about this: "I teach you redemption from the eternal flux: the river flows ever back into itself, and you are ever stepping into the same river, as the selfsame ones. "
Nietzsche's utterance is a conscious reply to a thought in Greek philosophy that was associated with Heraclitus-that is to say, with a particular interpretation of his doctrine. According to that thought, we can never step into the identical river, on account of its perpetual and ineluctable onward flow. t Nietzsche designates his doctrine-in
• In the plan dated August 26, 1881 (in CM seeM lll I [197]), Nietzsche entitles the second book of his projected work on eternal recurrence "On the Incorporation of Experiences. " Incorporation, Einverleibung, must be understood initially in biological -not legal-terms, as ingestion; it later assumes a more social, cultural sense. Among the many passages on incorporation (e. g. , M llll [164, 273, 314]) are the two following. Fragment number 162 begins:
In order for there to be some degree of consciousness in the world, an unreal world of error must come to be: creatures that believe in the perdurance of individuals, etc. Only after an imaginary counterworld, in contradiction to absolute flux, had originat- ed could something be recognized on the basis ofit-indeed, we can ultimately get insight into the fundamental error on which all else rests (because opposites can be thought}-yet the error cannot be extirpated without annihilating life: the ultimate truth of the flux of things does not sustain incorporation; our organs (for living) are oriented to error. Thus in the man of wisdom there originates the contradiction oflife and of his ultimate decisions; his drive to knowledge has as its presuppositions the belief in error and the life in such belief.
And at the center of fragment number 262 we find:
Whatever corresponds to the necessary life-conditions of the time and the group will establish itself as "truth": in the long run humanity's sum ofopinions will be incorpo- rated, the opinions that were most useful to them, that is, granted them the possibility of the longest duration. The most essential of these opinions on which the duration of humanity rests are those that it incorporated long ago, for example, belief in same- ness, number, space, etc. The struggle will not turn about these things-it can only be an expansion of these erroneous foundations of our animal existence.
t See, in the Diels-Kranz numeration, B 49a, 91, and 12. See also Jean Brun, Hera- elite (Paris: Seghers, 1965), p. 136 n. 24; and G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Preso- cratic Philosophers, pp. 196-99.
The Zarathustra Period 147
opposition to the ancient one-as "redemption from the eternal flux. " That does not mean brushing aside Becoming, or petrifying it; it means liberation from the irreducible, ceaseless "forever the same. " Becoming is retained as Becoming. Yet permanence-that is, when understood in Greek fashion, Being-is injected into Becoming.
Being as a whole is still a flux, a flowing in the sense of a becoming. However, recurrence of the same is so essential to this becoming that it is such recurrence that primarily defines the character of Becoming. For Nietzsche a particular notion of what is called an "infinite process" is coined on this basis. "An infinite process cannot be thought of in any other way than as periodic" (number 727). In the infinitude of actual time, the only possible kind of occurrence for a finite world that is now still "becoming" is recurrence-the cycle. The sundry episodes that constitute it are not to be imagined as being lined up in some extrinsic way and then joined end to end, since this would result in a vacuous circulation; rather, every episode, each in its own way, is a resonance of the whole and a harmonious entry into the whole. "Didn't you know? In each of your actions the history of everything that has happened is repeated in condensed form" (number 726). While at first blush the doctrine of return introduces an immense, paralyzing indifference into all beings and into human behavior, in truth the thought of thoughts grants supreme lucidity and decisiveness to beings at every moment.
The haunting vision that the thought of return might enervate all being disturbed Nietzsche so profoundly that he was forced to consider quite carefully the consequences of his doctrine: "Fear in the face of the doctrine's consequences: perhaps the best natures perish on ac- count of it? The worst adopt it? " (number 729). The worst adopt it, assert themselves in it, and establish on the basis of it the fact that beings have fallen prey to general indifference and gratuitousness. This as the consequence of a doctrine that in truth wishes to supply the center of gravity and to propel human beings beyond all mediocrity. Yet because this haunting vision cannot be dispelled, because it comes to the fore and oppresses us rudely and relentlessly, it dominates for a time the way we take the doctrine to be true:
148 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
At first the common riffraff will smile upon the doctrine of return, all who are cold and without much inner need. The most vulgar impulse to life will be the first to grant assent. A great truth wins to itself the highest human beings last: this is what anything true must suffer (number 730; cf. number 35). •
When we survey the few fragments of the Zarathustra period that explicitly meditate on the doctrine of return we realize that these are, in terms of import, quite significant; a few vigorous statements and a number of lucidly posed questions say everything that is essential. While Nietzsche's thoughtful and poetically creative work on this most difficult of thoughts drives him to excesses, a kind of pendulum effect intervenes, ensuring that his unrelenting efforts will find the midpoint. Above the turbulence of inquiry and demand prevails the cheerful calm of a victor who is long accustomed to suffering. Nietzsche achieves such calm and tranquillity also with respect to the question of the possible impact of the doctrine (XII, 398; from the year 1883):
The most magnificent thought works its effects most slowly and belatedly! Its most immediate impact is as a substitute for the belief in immortality: does it augment good will toward life? Perhaps it is not true:-may others wrestle with it!
One might be tempted to conclude from this last remark that Nietz- sche himself doubted the truth of the thought and did not take it seriously, that he was only toying with it as a possibility. Such a con- clusion would be a sign of superficial thinking. Of course Nietzsche doubted this thought, as he doubted every essential thought: this per- tains to the style of his thinking. Yet from that we dare not conclude that he failed to take the thought itself seriously. What we must rather conclude is that he took the thought altogether seriously, subjecting it to interrogation again and again, testing it, in that way learning to think on his own two feet, as it were, and conducting himself to knowledge-namely, knowledge of the fact that what is essentially to be thought here is the matter of possibility. Every time Nietzsche writes "perhaps it is not true" he is designating with sufficient clarity
• GOA, XII, number 35 was cited earlier, in section 19, p. 142, above. In CM see M III I [147].
The Zarathustra Period 149
the character of such possibility. Nietzsche knows only thoughts that have to be wrestled with. It is another question altogether whether he is the victor and master over the thought, or whether it still remains for others to grapple with it.
21. Notes from the Period of "The Will to Power," 1884-88
In the years that immediately followed Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1884 to 1886, we find plans for additions to that book and for an altogether different configuration of it. Here too the thought of return everywhere assumes center-stage in Nietzsche's thinking. The guiding notion for the new configuration is the thought of the "magnificent midday" as the "decisive time" (XII, number 419; from the year 1886).
It is important that we take into account the existence of these plans from the time circa 1886. In line with the general insecurity and the vacillation of Nietzsche interpretation heretofore as regards the doc- trine of return, an erroneous view has recently been propagated, to the effect that Nietzsche allowed the thought of return-which ostensibly was only a personal confession of faith anyway-to recede from his thinking the moment he began to plan and prepare his philosophic magnum opus. It is indeed the case that as soon as he had concluded Zarathustra in 1884 Nietzsche became absorbed in plans for a work that was to present his philosophy as a whole in a systematic way. Labors on this work occupied Nietzsche (with interruptions) from 1884 to the end of his creative life, that is, till the end of 1888.
After everything we have heard up to now concerning Nietzsche's "thought of thoughts," with which he had been grappling ever since the year 1881, it would surely be astonishing if the plan for this major philosophical work were not sustained and not pervaded by the thought of eternal return. At all events, the earlier reference to the plan of 1886 makes one thing perfectly clear; even at this time the thought of eternal return constitutes the fulcrum of Nietzsche's thinking. How could he have prepared his major philosophical work during this period without
The Period of ''The Will to Power" 151
the thought, or after having surrendered it? What more striking proof could we demand than the third communication by Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil (number 56; from the year 1886), which dem- onstrates that the thought of return was not only not surrendered and not cast aside-as though it had been a mere personal confession of faith-but enhanced in a new excursion to the very limits and supreme heights of its thinkability? Was not this new attempt, which was con- temporaneous with Nietzsche's most vigorous labors on his magnum opus, to be in the most intrinsic way at one with and at the heart's core of his projected work? Even if we had no more than the previously cited testimony for the existence of the thought of eternal return in 1886, it would be enough to unmask the erroneous view of the thought's imputed retreat. Yet how do matters stand with regard to the things Nietzsche thought and jotted down in the period 1884-88 but did not elect to communicate?
The stock of unpublished materials from these years is quite exten- sive and is to be found in volumes XIII to XVI in the Grossoktav edition. Yet we immediately have to add that the materials appear here in a way that beguiles and thoroughly misleads all interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy during this decisive period-granted that we are speaking of an interpretation, that is, a confrontation in the light ofthe grounding question of Western thinking. * The principal reason for the misleading nature of the arrangement of these notes lies in a happenstance that is always taken far too casually.
Ever since Nietzsche's death at the turn of the century, the editors of Nietzsche's literary remains have launched a series of attempts to col- late these notes for a magnum opus, a work that Nietzsche himself was planning during his final creative period. In a rough and ready sort of way they tried to base their work on plans that stemmed from Nietz- sche's own hand. For a time-yet, nota bene, only for a time, namely, the years 1886-87-Nietzsche planned to entitle his main work The
Will to Power. Under this title Nietzsche's major work was in fact explicitly announced in the treatise that appeared in 1887, Toward a
• On the "grounding question," see the first volume in this series, section II, pp. 67-68, and sections 25-26, below.
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Genealogy ofMorals, where a reference to it appeared in extra heavy type (VII, 480, number 27). The book jacket of the Genealogy also announced the forthcoming work. Yet Nietzsche never released that work. Not only that. He never composed it as a work-in the way that Nietzsche was wont to compose his works. Nor is it a book that was abandoned in the course of its composition and left incomplete. Rather, all we have are particular fragments.
Even this designation is deceptive, however, inasmuch as we cannot make out anything like jointures or direct references to other pertinent fragments by which the gaps among the fragments might be closed. The reason we cannot descry such jointures is the fact that we do not possess an articulation of the whole composition by which the individ- ual notes might find their fitting place.
Ever since the editors of the literary remains took matters into their own hands and published a work called Der Wille zur Macht we have had a book falsely ascribed to Nietzsche; and not just any book but a magnum opus, to wit, that same The Will to Power. In truth, it is no more than an arbitrary selection of Nietzsche's notes from the years 1884 to 1888, years in which the thought of will to power only oc- casionally advanced into the foreground. And even for those times when it assumed preeminence it remains for us to ask why and in what way the thought of will to power thrust its way to the fore. Yet our conception of Nietzsche's philosophy during this period is predeter- mined from the outset by this arbitrary selection-which does, it is true, seek a foothold in Nietzsche's very sketchy plans. Nietzsche's philosophy proper is now for all commentators, quite unwittingly, a "philosophy of will to power. " The editors of the book The Will to Power, who worked more meticulously than the subsequent commen- tators who have used the book, obviously could not have failed to see that in Nietzsche's notes the doctrine of eternal return also plays a role; they accordingly took up those notes into their own collation of Nietz- sche's posthumously published materials, indeed along the guidelines of a plan that derives from Nietzsche himself.
What are we to make of the fact that there is now a "posthumous work" by Nietzsche with the title The Will to Power? Over against the factual existence of the book we must align the following incontroverti-
The Period of "The Will to Power" 153
ble facts: first, in spite of the fact that he announced the book, Nietz- sche himself never wrote it; second, in subsequent years Nietzsche even abandoned the plan that bears this major title; and third, the last-mentioned fact is not without relation to the first-mentioned.
The upshot is that the book The Will to Power cannot be definitive for a comprehensive and thoroughgoing evaluation of Nietzsche's un- published thoughts between the years 1884 and 1888. His plan for a magnum opus is not equivalent to the plan of The Will to Power. Rather, the plan that bears this title constitutes but one transitional phase in Nietzsche's labors on his main work. Yet to the extent that the phrase "will to power" announces the surfacing of something "new and essential" in Nietzsche's thinking, something which in terms of time emerged only after Nietzsche had experienced the thought of eternal return, we must ask how both "will to power" and "eternal return" relate to one another. Does the new thought make the doctrine of eternal recurrence superfluous, or can the latter be united with the former? Indeed, is it not the case that the doctrine of return not only can be united with will to power but also constitutes its sole and proper ground?
In accord with the presentation we are now attempting we must try to determine what the unpublished handwritten materials from the years 1884-88 tell us about the doctrine of return-without being be- guiled by that "work" compiled by editors and called The Will to Power. Because we do not have these posthumously published mate- rials before us in their untouched, actual state, we are constrained by the particular published form the editors have given them. Neverthe- less, we can readily release ourselves from that constraint. All the es- sential notes appear in the book The Will to Power (Grossoktav edition, volumes XV and XVI). The "Appendix" of volume XVI (pages 413-67) also contains all the plans and sketches of plans pro- jected by Nietzsche in the course of his exertions on behalf of his major work, exertions we cannot accurately reconstruct. *
With a view to the unpublished materials and plans of this final creative period we shall pose two questions. First, what does an exami-
• See the Analysis that concludes this volume, section II, "Contexts," for an appraisal of Heidegger's claims.
154 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAMF:
nation of the plans for a major work during the years 1884-88 tell us concerning Nietzsche's commitment to the thought of return? Second, what do the utterances that fall into this period say about the doctrine of return itself?
The first result of such an examination is recognition of the indis- putable fact that the thought of return everywhere occupies the defini- tive position. Because this thought is to prevail over all, it can-indeed must-occupy various positions and exhibit sundry forms in the changing plans. Thus in a multifarious yet unified way it guides and sustains the whole in terms of its mode of presentation. A painstaking examination proves unequivocally that this is so: we do not find a trace of anything like a retreat of the grounding thought, eternal recurrence.
A more important outcome of such an examination is the following: the multifaceted positioning of the thought of return in the architec- tonic of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future" gives an indication of the essence of the thought itself.
Not only must the thought emerge out of the creative moment of decision in some given individual, but as a thought that pertains to life itself it must also be a historical deci- sion--a crisis.
We shall now pursue the question concerning the extent to which the thought of return explicitly comes to the fore in the plans, and the way in which it does so. The first plan (XVI, 413) does not belong here, inasmuch as it stems from the year 1882 and pertains to the circle of thoughts contained in The Gay Science. Only with the sec- ond plan do the proposals and projected plans from the years 1884-85 begin. This is the period in which Nietzsche-above all, in letters- makes explicit mention of an expansion of his "philosophy," of pro- viding a "main structure" for which Thus Spoke Zarathustra is to be the vestibule. "' We do find signs of life for his plan for a magnum opus, but not a trace of a work entitled The Will to Power. The titles we find are The Eternal Return, in three different plans from the year
1884; or Midday and Eternity: A Philosophy of Eternal Return, also from the year 1884; finally, in that same year the subtitle becomes the main title-Philosophy of Eternal Return.
• See Volume I, section 3, esp. pp. 12-13, for a selection of these letters.
The Period of"The Will to Power" 155
As opposed to these titles we find a plan from the year 1885 entitled
The Will to Power: Attempt at an Interpretation o f All Occurrence.
The preface of that projected work is to treat "the threatening meaning- lessness" and the "problem of pessimism. " When we come to discuss the "domain" of the doctrine of return we shall grasp the fact that this entire plan must be viewed from the vantage-point of eternal return- even though it does not cite the thought as such. * From this plan we learn one thing: the question concerning will to power finds its proper place in the philosophy of eternal return. The latter thought attains preeminence over all; it is to be treated in the preface because it is all-pervading.
However, during the year 1884, the year in which Nietzsche pre- sumably achieved clarity concerning will to power as the pervasive character of all beings, an important reference to the connection be- tween eternal recurrence and will to power is made in a plan listed as number 2. t This plan culminates in a fifth point entitled "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " Wherever the thought of thoughts is indeed thought, that is to say, is incorporated, it conducts the thinker to supreme decisions in such a way that he expands beyond himself, thus attaining power over himself and willing himself. In this way such a man is as will to power.
In order to compose his philosophy within a planned major work, Nietzsche now carries out an analysis of all occurrence in terms of will to power. This meditation is essential, and for Nietzsche it comes to occupy the midpoint for the next several years, the midpoint that de- fines all beings themselves. It is far from the case that the doctrine of eternal recurrence is put out of play or reduced in significance; rather, that doctrine is enhanced to a supreme degree thanks to Nietzsche's efforts to shore up the main structure on all sides by means of a most thoroughgoing "interpretation of all occurrence. " From the year 188. 5 stem some other notes (XVI, 415) in which Nietzsche clearly says what he understands by will to power, a matter that is now moving into the
• See section 23, below.
t See now CM, Z II 5a [80].
156 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
forefront of his labors: "Will to power is the ultimate fact we come down to. "*
If we were to ponder these words alone, for the purpose of reflecting on what eternal return is, it would surely become apparent that here it is a matter of two very different things-of things that are different in several senses. Eternal return is not an ultimate fact; it is rather the "thought of thoughts. " Will to power is not a thought; it is an "ulti- mate fact. " The fact can neither suppress nor supplant the thought. The decisive question-one that Nietzsche himself neglected to pose- proves to be: What fundamental matter lies concealed behind the dis- tinction between eternal return as the "most difficult thought" and will to power as "ultimate fact"? As long as we fail to inquire back into the domain where all these matters are grounded we cling to mere words and remain stuck in extrinsic calculations of Nietzsche's thinking.
Study of the plans from the years 1884 and 1885 nonetheless shows unequivocally that the philosophy which Nietzsche was planning to portray as a whole is the philosophy of eternal return. In order to give shape to that philosophy he had to supply an interpretation of all oc- currence as will to power. The farther Nietzsche's thinking penetrated into the total presentation of his philosophy, the more compelling the principal task of interpreting all occurrence as will to power became. For that reason the locution will to power advanced to the very title of the planned magnum opus. Yet it is so transparently clear that the whole remains sustained and thoroughly defined by the thought of eternal return that one is almost reluctant to make explicit reference to this state of affairs.
The plan of 1886 bears the title The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation ofAll Values. The subtitle suggests what the meditation on will to power properly has to achieve; namely, a revaluation of all values. By value Nietzsche understands whatever is a condition for life, that is, for the enhancement of life. Revaluation of all values means- for life, that is, for being as a whole-the positing of a new condition by which life is once again brought to itself, that is to say, impelled beyond itself. For only in this way does life become possible in its true
• See CM, W 17a [61]. Cf. Giorgio Colli's critique in the Nachwort to vol. II of the Studienausgabe, p. 726.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 157
essence. Revaluation is nothing other than what the greatest burden, the thought of eternal return, is to accomplish. The subtitle, which is to exhibit the all-encompassing scope that will to power possesses, might therefore just as well have been the one we find in the year 1884: A Philosophy ofEternal Return (XVI, 414; number 5).
The plan that most fully corroborates the interpretation we are offer- ing here is one from the year 1884 (XVI, 415; number 6*), entitled Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence: An Attempt at the Revaluation of All Values. The plan mentioned earlier, from the year 1886, proposes that the work be divided into four books. This fourfold division is retained in spite of all the other changes up to the end of 1888. We shall now take note of only the first and fourth books, which frame the whole. The question raised in Book One, "The Danger of Dangers," takes aim once again at the "meaninglessness" that threatens-we could also say, at the fact that all things are losing their weight. The compelling question is whether it is possible to provide beings with a new center of gravity. The "danger of dangers" must be averted by the "thought of thoughts. " Book IV bears the title "The Hammer. " If we did not yet know what this word implies, we could gather its meaning perfectly well from plan number 2 of 1884 (XVI, 414). Here the final fragment-to which we have already referred-is called "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " In place of the title of Book IV, "The Hammer," we could also allow the phrase "the doctrine of eternal return" to stand. (See the commentary to Book IV; XVI, 420). t
• See CM, W I 2 [259, 258].
t This plan (W I 8 [100] ) is actually not "fragmented" in GOA as the critical ap- paratus to CM says, but is "padded" by a number of phrases gleaned from elsewhere in the notebooks. There are two "commentaries" to which Heidegger may be referring here. The one I have been able to locate in CM [131] reads as follows:
On Book Four
The greatest struggle:. for it we need a new weapon.
The hammer: to conjure a frightful decision, to confront Europe with the conse- quences, whether its will to perish "is willing. "
Prevention of the tendency toward mediocrity.
Better to perish!
This note was taken up into The Will to Power as WM, 1054.
158 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
The plans for a main work that were drafted in the following year, from 1887 until early 1888, manifest a thoroughly unified structure. lhis is the period when Nietzsche's thoughtful labors on behalf of the will to power reach their zenith. How does the doctrine of return fare during this period? It appears each time in the fourth and final book proposed by the plans. Last in terms of presentation, it is first in terms of the matter and the context that grounds the whole. It pervades all from beginning to end, which is why it can reveal itself in its full truth only at the end of the presentation. Its position at the end also indicates something else, to wit, the fact that the "doctrine" is not a "theory," that it is not to be pressed into service as a scientific explanation, as some sort of hypothesis on the origins of the world. Rather, the think- ing of this thought transforms life in its very grounds and thereby pro- pounds new standards of education.
With a view to the transformative character of the thought of return, as a matter of decision and excision, the very title of the fourth book is conceived in the individual plans of this period. "Discipline and Breeding" it is called in the plan of March 17, 1887, which the editors of Nietzsche's notes chose as the blueprint for the major work. " The next plan, from the summer of 1887, lists as the title of the fourth book "The Overcomers and the Overcome (A Prophecy). " In the fol- lowing plan the title in question reads: "Overcomers and What Is Overcome. "
If we read these titles strictly in terms of their literal content, we of course find nothing concerning eternal return. Nevertheless, one need not know a great deal about this thought to be reminded immediately by the titles of the fact that the thought which is hardest to bear con- fronts us with a question. It demands to know whether we renounce life in all its discordance-whether we try to sidestep it and are inad- vertently crushed under its wheels, thus joining the ranks of those who are overcome-or whether we affirm life and become one of the over- comers. The appended remark, "A Prophecy," clearly alludes to the doctrine of return (XVI, 413; from the year 1884). Furthermore, a more detailed version of the plan of March 17, 1887, drawn up at the
* CM, Mp XVII 3b [64].
The Period of "The Will to Power" 159
end of that year (XVI, 424), explicitly presents as the first title of the fourth book the phrase "The Eternal Return. '"* The titles of the remaining two divisions are Grand Politics and Prescriptions for Our Lives. However, the most telling evidence for the undiminished importance of the doctrine of return at the center of the whole--even during the period when will to power achieves preeminence--consists
in the fact that the fourth book is thought of as a victorious countermove to the first, which treats of European nihilism and its upsurgence.
Nihilism is the propriative event by which the weight in all things melts away-the fact that a center of gravity is missing. Yet the lack first becomes visible and palpable when it is brought to light in the question . concerning a new center of gravity. Seen from this vantage- point, the thinking of the thought of eternal recurrence, as a question- ing that perpetually calls for decision, is the fulfillment of nihilism. Such thinking brings to an end the veiling and painting over of this event, in such a way that it becomes at the same time the transition to the new determination of the greatest burden. The doctrine of eternal return is therefore the "critical point," the watershed of an epoch become weightless and searching for a new center of gravity. It is the crisis proper. Hence, in considerations surrounding plans from the period in which "will to power" is emphasized we find the following (XVI, 422): "The doctrine of eternal return: as fulfillment of it [i. e. , nihilism], as crisis. "
Even the plans from the spring and summer of 1888, the final year of Nietzsche's creative life, whatever transformations they indicate, clearly exhibit the identical articulation: in each case the plan wends its way to the summit, where we find the thought of eternal return. The titles of the final parts vary in any given instance: "The Inverted Ones; Their Hammer, 'The Doctrine of Eternal Return'" (XVI, 425); "Re- demption from Uncertainty" (426); "The Art of Healing for the Fu-
• The plan GOA calls the "third draft" of the plan of March 17, 1887, is to be found in CM at W II 4 [2] and is dated early 1888. Neither it nor the preceding plan in GOA (W II I [164]) can so readily be called later "drafts" of the March 17 plan. Nor is there any convincing reason for the latter's having been chosen as the basis for the volume Der Wille zur Macht.
160 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
ture" (426). For Nietzsche, the "art of healing," as an "art," is a value. That is to say, it is a condition posited by the will to power, indeed, a condition of "life-enhancement. " The "art of healing for the future" is the condition that defines the center of gravity in being as a whole for times to come. In order for this condition to work its effects it is first of all necessary that a "stronger species ofhuman being" be there.
In the final plans, from the fall of 1888, the title The Will to Power disappears, making room for what used to be the subtitle, Revaluation of All Values. Here the titles of Book Four read as follows: "The Re- demption from Nihilism"; "Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal Return";
"Dionysos philosophos"; and again, "Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal Return. ""
This apparently extraneous examination of the plans aims to respond to the following question: Where in the articulated structure of Nietz- sche's planned communication of his philosophy do we find the place where the thought of return is to be presented?
If this teaching is the "crisis," then it must face in two opposite directions. On the one hand, the doctrine must be communicated at the point where the question concerning the center of gravity surfaces as the question of the evanescence of all prior sources of weight. On the other hand, the doctrine must be explicated at the point where the new center of gravity is itself established in beings.
The editors of Nietzsche's works from the period after Thus Spoke Zarathustra up to the end proved that in this respect they saw matters in the proper light. For they distributed the available fragments on the doctrine of return between two places in the volume they composed, namely, The Will to Power: first, in the first book, "European Nihil- ism," Chapter One, Part Four, "The Crisis: Nihilism and the Thought of Return," numbers 55 and 56 (XV, 181-87); and then in the fourth book, "Discipline and Breeding," as the conclusion to the entire "work": "The Eternal Return," numbers 1053 to 1067 (XVI, 393- 402). To be sure, there exist a number of clear indications in Nietz- sche's sketches which support such a distribution. The question of nihilism and the thought of return, treated in the first book, requires
• See Heidegger's delayed commentary on these titles in section 26, below.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 161
separate discussion. * Let us now therefore refer only briefly to those materials that are taken up into Book IV. Our guideline will be the question of the extent to which the notes between 1884 and 1888 exhibit a further development of the teaching, and of the particular direction such a development takes.
When we compare the main features of these fragments with those from the period of The Gay Science (XII) and with the doctrinal im- port expressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, nothing much appears to have changed. We find the same reflections in regard to both the "proofs" for the doctrine and the doctrine's "impact. " Yet when we look more carefully at these materials, having pondered the fact that the notes pertain to a period in which Nietzsche was trying to think through his philosophy as a whole and to bring it to a configuration, the picture changes altogether. The precondition for our seeing this is the refusal simply to accept the given order of the fifteen passages as they appear in their current published form. Rather, we must first of all place them in their chronological order. In the present edition the fragments are jumbled higgledy-piggledy. The first one belongs to the year 1884, the last one, which at the same time concludes the entire
work, stems from the year 1885, while immediately prior to it appears one from the final year, 1888. Let us therefore establish the chronolog- ical sequence of the notes. To the year 1884 belong numbers 1053, 1056, 1059, and 1060. To the year 1885 numbers 1055, 1062, 1064, and 1067. From the period 1885-86 comes number 1054; from the period 1886-87 number 1063; from the period 1887-88 numbers 1061 and 1065. Number 1066 belongs to the year 1888. Two fragments from the period 1884 to 1888 which we cannot date precisely but which, judging from the handwriting, presumably stem from the year
1884-85 are numbers 1057 and 1058. t
• See section 23, below. Heidcgger's 1940 lecture course on nihilism (Volume IV of this series), by and large neglects eternal return as the countermovement to nihilism. See the Analysis at the end of the present volume.
t The folder containing the sheets on which WM, 1057 and 1058 are jotted (Mp XVII lb [4,7]) is dated by CM "Winter 1883-84," a year earlier than Heidegger's estimate. Otherwise, Heidegger's dating of the passages, following GOA, is accurate. Readers should note important textual changes in WM, 1064 (cf. CM, WI 3a [54] and WM, 1066 (cf. CM, W II 5 [188]). I have been unable to locate WM, 1061 in CM.
162 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Because our interpretation proper of Nietzsche's fundamental thought-an interpretation that is to be a confrontation-will have to refer back to Nietzsche's final utterances, let us postpone for the present a more detailed discussion of the fragments we have just now listed. Only one essential circumstance should be emphasized immedi- ately. Nietzsche speaks more clearly than before about the "presupposi- tions" of the doctrine of return, indeed about "theoretical" and "practical" ones. This seems strange at first. If the doctrine of eternal return is to be the fundamental doctrine, determining everything, then it cannot entertain any presuppositions as such. On the contrary, it must be the presupposition for all additional thoughts. Or does Nietz- sche's manner of speaking suggest that the doctrine of return, while not surrendered, is yet to be deposed from its foundational significance and relegated to a subordinate position? We can reach a decision in this matter only if we come to know what Nietzsche means by these "pre- suppositions. " He does not directly say what he means. But from the allusions he makes and the general tendency of his thinking we can unequivocally state that he is referring to the will to power as the pervasive constitution of all beings. The thought of return is now ex- plicitly thought on the basis of the will to power. Hence we might now conclude that the thought of eternal return is to be traced back to will to power. Yet such a conclusion would be too hasty and altogether extrinsic.
Even if such were the case--even if will to power were the presup- position for the eternal return of the same-it would by no means follow that will to power precludes the doctrine of eternal return, that the two cannot subsist side by side. The very reverse would hold: will to power would demand the eternal return of the same.
Nevertheless, the outcome of our survey of the plans from this pe- riod is the realization that the doctrine of return nowhere suffers a setback. It asserts its determinative position everywhere. Accordingly the only thing we must ask is: How do will to power, as the pervasive constitution ofbeings, and eternal return ofthe same, as the mode of Being ofbeings as a whole, relate to one another? What is the signifi- cance of the fact that Nietzsche posits will to power as a "presupposi- tion" for the eternal return of the same? How does he understand
The Period of "The Will to Power" 163
"presupposition" here? Does Nietzsche have a clear, well-grounded conception of the relation that obtains between the two? Nietzsche indeed possesses no clear insight-and certainly no conceptual insight -into the relation which we have now named but not yet pondered.
The will to power can be the "presupposition" for the eternal recur- rence of the same in any of the following three ways. First, eternal return of the same can be demonstrated on the basis of will to power, the latter expressing the character of force in the world totality. Here will to power would be the cognitive ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Second, eternal return may be seen as being possible only if the constitution of will to power is indeed appropriate to beings as such. Here will to power would be the material ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Third, will to power can be the "presupposi- tion" of eternal recurrence of the same inasmuch as the constitution of the being (its "what," quidditas, or essentia) grounds its mode of Being (the being's "how" and "that" "it is," its existentia). As long as the designated relationship between the constitution of the being and its mode of Being remains undetermined, the possibility also arises that the reverse is true-that the constitution of the being springs from its mode of Being.
The relationship now in question cannot be defined in terms of a relation between something that conditions and something that is con- ditioned, between what grounds and what is grounded. In order for the relationship to be defined we first need to discuss the essential prove- nance of the essence of Being.
With these questions we are already anticipating decisive steps in our interpretation and determination of the relation between eternal return of the same and will to power. Yet an apparently extrinsic cir- cumstance betrays how much this obscure relation, which Nietzsche. was unable to come to grips with, was what really lay behind the restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking during this final creative period. The fragment that concludes the "work" entitled The Will to Power, in its current textual arrangement, namely, number 1067, is as it now stands the revised version of an earlier note (XVI, 515). To the ques- tion "And do you also know what 'the world' is to me? " Nietzsche's earlier version replies: it is eternal return of the same, willing back
I64 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
whatever has been and willing forward to whatever has to be. In the second version the reply is: "This world is will to power--and nothing besides! "*
Again we stand before the question that has confronted us many times. Do we merely want to remain entrenched in the extrinsic dis- tinction between these two locutions and turns of phrase, eternal re- turn of the same and will to power? Or do we by now realize that we come to grasp a philosophy only when we try to think what it says? At all events, the revision we have referred to shows that will to power and eternal return of the same cohere. With what right could Nietzsche otherwise substitute the one for the other? Yet what if the will to power, according to Nietzsche's most proper and intrinsic intentions, were in itself nothing else than willing back to that which was and a willing forward to everything that has to be? What if the eternal recur- rence of the same-as occurrence-were nothing other than the will to power, precisely in the way Nietzsche himself understands this phrase, though not in the way some view or other of "politics" bends it to its own purpose? t If matters stood this way, then the designation of being as will to power would only be an elaboration of the original and
• See the commentary in CM to fragment [12] of the group of sheets bearing the archive number 38 (from June-July, 1885); in the Studienausgabe, vol. 14, p. 727. Nietzsche's revised reply, "will to power-and nothing besides," was taken up into the book Beyond Good and Evil as passage number 36 and hence has become quite well known. The passage that Nietzsche excised from the earlier version, and which orig- inally appeared at the decisive word "ring" near the end of WM, 1067, reads as follows:
a ring of good will, turning ever about itself alone, keeping to its wonted way: this world, my world-who is luminous enough to look at it without wishing to be blinded? Strong enough to hold his soul up to this mirror? His own mirror up to the mirror of Dionysos? His own solution to the riddle of Dionysos? And were anyone able to do this, would he not have to do more in addition? To plight his troth to the "ring of rings"? By taking the oath of his own return? By means of the ring of eternal self-blessing, self-affirmation?