No More Learning

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
116 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
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
118 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAM~:
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. How does Nietzsche decide in this either/or? It could hardly have remained concealed from his view, since he is the one who at least helped to develop it. Nietz- sche decides for both-for the will to dehumanize being as a whole and also for the will to take seriously the human being as a creature of corners. Nietzsche decides for the convergence of both wills. He de- mands the supreme humanization of beings and the extreme naturali-
The Character of"Proof" 119
zation of human beings, both at once. Only those who press forward to what Nietzsche's thinking wills of itself can have some inkling of his philosophy. Yet if that is how matters stand it will surely be decisive now to know which corner it is from which the human being sees- and whence that corner is defined in its place. At the same time, the breadth of the horizon that is drawn about the possible dehumanizing of beings as a whole will also be decisive. Finally, whether and in what way the view upon being as a whole definitively serves to locate that corner in which human beings necessarily come to stand-this above all else will be decisive.
Even though Nietzsche did not elevate these ramifications to clearly expressed, conceptual knowledge, he nonetheless-as we shall soon discover----:-advanced a stretch of the way through them, thanks to the innermost will of his thinking. From the very outset we have seen that in the presentation of his fundamental thought what is to be thought- both the world totality and the thinking of the thinker-cannot be detached from one another. Now we comprehend more clearly what this inseparability refers to and what it suggests: it is the necessary relationship of man-a being who is located in the midst of beings as a whole-to that very whole. We are thinking of this fundamental relation in the decisive disposition of human beings in general when we say that the Being of human being-and, as far as we know, of human being alone-is grounded in Dasein: the Da is the sole possible site for the necessary location of its Being at any given time. From this essential connection we also derive the insight that humanization becomes proportionately less destructive of truth as human beings re- late themselves more originally to the location of their essential corner, that is to say, as they recognize and ground Da-sein as such. Yet the essentiality of the corner is defined by the originality and the breadth in which being as a whole is experienced and grasped-with a view to its sole decisive aspect, that of Being.
Our reflections make it clear that in thinking the most burdensome thought what is thought cannot be detached from the way in which it is thought. The what is itself defined by the how, and, reciprocally, the how by the what. From this fact alone we can gather how muddle- headed it is to conceive of evidences for the thought of return after the
120 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
manner of physical or mathematical proofs. What proof means in this case, what it can mean, must be determined purely and simply on the basis of this utterly unique thought of thoughts.
Because of the essential inseparability of the how of thinking from the what of the to-be-thought, another important decision in yet an- other respect has been reached. The distinction between a "theoreti- cal" doctrinal content of the thought and its "practical" effects is impossible from the very start. This thought can be neither "theoreti- cally" thought nor "practically" applied. Not theoretically thought, inasmuch as thinking the thought demands that man, not only as practically acting but generally as being, be caught up in the process of thought, defining himself and his corner in terms of what is to be thought-simultaneously, and not subsequently. As long as such defi- nition remains unachieved, the thought stagnates, remains unthink- able and unthought; and no amount of mental acuity will help to take even the smallest step forward. Yet a "practical" application of the thought is impossible also, inasmuch as it has always already become superfluous the moment the thought has actually been thought.
17. The Thought of Return as a Belief
We shall now proceed with our account of Nietzsche's unpublished notes, retaining the form the first editors of these posthumous materials gave them, and advancing to the second part of their arrangement, entitled, "Impact of the Doctrine on Humanity. " In doing so, it is our purpose to show that in the fragments these editors have selected some- thing else is at stake besides an "impact" on humanity. Even when Nietzsche aims at something of that kind we must elucidate his thought in terms of his own basic notions and not by means of the rough and ready notions that distinguish-apparently quite plausibly- between a doctrine's "presentation" and its "impact. " The dubious na- ture of the point from which the editors attempted their division may be seen in the fact that the fragments numbered 113 and 114 in Divi- sion One could as readily-and perhaps with greater justice-be placed in Division Two, concerning the "impact. " It is not without reason that the editors placed them at the very end of Division One, "The Presentation and Grounding of the Doctrine. " In what follows we shall emphasize the major aspects, those that essentially clarify what it is that Nietzsche is saying. But such emphasis is far from pro- viding an adequate interpretation.
Under numbers 115 through 132 a series of fragments have been collated in which the "content" of the thought of return seems . to recede. Yet what comes to the fore instead is not so much the "impact" of the thought as the precise character of the thought itself. That char- acter consists in its essential relationship to what is being thought. To think the thought is not to drive a vehicle through it. A vehicle re- mains something outside or alongside the place we reach in our thought. When we bicycle over to the hills we call "the Kaiserstuhl"
122 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
our "bicycle" itself has ultimately nothing to do with "the Kaiserstuhl. " Such indifference as that between "bicycle" and "Kaiserstuhl" does not obtain between the thinking of the thought of return and what is actu- ally thought and experienced there.
The most important characterization of the thought of eternal return of the same which we encounter in these notes is its characterization as a "belief. "
The thought and belief is a burden which, in comparison with all other weights, oppresses you far more than they do (number 117).
Future history: this thought will prevail more and more, and those who do not believe in it must, according to their own nature, finally die oH! (num- ber 121).
This doctrine is mild against those who do not believe in it; it has no hellfire, no threats. Whoever does not believe has a fleeting life in his consciousness (number 128).
The fact that Nietzsche called his thought a beliefprobably also led to the customary view that the doctrine of return must have been a personal confession of religious faith on Nietzsche's part. As such it would remain without significance for the "objective" import of his philosophy and thus could be struck from the record. That was espe- cially called for because this thought was discomfiting to think anyway; it did not fit into any of the current pigeonholes of the usual concepts. Such a view-which corrupts every possible understanding of Nietz- sche's philosophy proper-received some further support from the fact that in his notes Nietzsche occasionally spoke of "religion. " Note 124 reads: "This thought contains more than all religions, which disdained this life as fleeting and taught us to search for some unspecified other life. " Here the thought is indisputably brought into relation with the import of particular religions, namely, those that denigrate life on earth and posit a life "beyond'' as definitive. Thus one might be tempt- ed to say that the thought of eternal return of the same epitomizes Nietzsche's purely "earthly" religion, and hence is religious, not philo- sophical.
"Let us guard against teaching such a doctrine as though it were a
The Thought of Return as a Belief 123
religion that suddenly appeared," reads note 130. That note continues: "The most powerful thoughts need many millennia-long, long must the thought be small and weak! " Here, obviously, a religious character is not ascribed to the doctrine of return. Only "sudden" religions are mentioned at all, and even those by way of rejection. And as though to eliminate all doubts in this regard the final sentence of the concluding fragment, number 132, reads: "It [the thought of return] is to be the religion of the freest, most cheerful and sublime souls-a lovely stretch of mountain meadow between glistening ice and an unclouded sky! " This sentence, which seems to snatch the thought of return from phi- losophy and to turn it over to religion, and which therefore threatens to dash at a single stroke the effort we are making here, in fact achieves the very opposite. For it says that we dare not accommodate the thought and its teaching among the various religious sects or custom-
ary forms of religiosity. Rather, the thought itself defines the essence of religion anew on its own terms. The thought itself is to say what kind of religion shall exist for what kind of hu:nan being in the future. The thought itself is to define the relationship to God-and to define God himself.
Granted, one might counter that it is in any case a matter of religion -the thought is designated as a belief-and not philosophy. Yet what does "philosophy" mean here? We dare not adopt any arbitrary con- cept of philosophy or any customary concept of religion as standards.
Here too we must define the essence of Nietzsche's philosophy in terms of its own thinking, in terms of its own thoughts. Ultimately, the thinking of that thought is such that Nietzsche may characterize it as a belief-not only may, but really must. In this respect it is incumbent on us now to do what all agree is reasonable but which no one does, namely, to examine precisely how Nietzsche conceives of the essenc~ of such belief. Belief here surely does not mean the acceptance of articles of faith as revealed in Scripture and proclaimed by a Church. Nor does belief mean (in Nietzsche's case) an individual's trust in the
justificatory grace of the Christian God.
What does belief mean in accordance with its formal concept, a
concept which in its sundry configurations is still undefined? Nietzsche designates the essence of belief in the following words (WM, 15; from
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the year 1887): "What is a belief? How does it originate? Every belief is a taking to be true. " From these words we derive one thing alone, but the most important thing: to believe means to take what is repre- sented as true, and thus it also means to hold fast to the true and hold firm in the true. In belief there lies not only a relation to what is believed but above all to the believer himself. Taking to be true is holding firm in the true, hence holding in a dual sense: having a hold on something and preserving the stance one has. Such holding re-
ceives its determination from whatever it is that is posited as the true. In this regard it remains essential how we grasp the truth of the true, and on the basis of our concept of truth, what sort of relationship results between what is true and our holding fast to it. If holding firm in the truth is a mode of human life, then we can decide something about the essence of belief, and about Nietzsche's concept of belief in particular, only after we have attained clarity concerning his concep- tion of truth as such-along with the relation of truth to "life," that is, in Nietzsche's sense, to being as a whole. Without an adequate con- ception of Nietzsche's notion of belief we will hardly dare to risk a judgment concerning what the word "religion" means when Nietzsche calls his most difficult thought "the religion of the freest, most cheerful and sublime souls. " Neither the "freedom" nor the "cheerfulness" nor the "sublimity" involved here can be understood according to our gratuitous, humdrum representations.
However, it is unfortunately necessary at this particular juncture that we forego detailed consideration of Nietzsche's concept of "truth," as of his conception of holding firm in the "truth" and holding fast to the true. That is to say, we will not be able to elaborate on Nietzsche's concept of belief or even his conception of the relationship between "religion" and "philosophy. " Nevertheless, in order that in the present context our interpretation may take its bearings from some landmark in Nietzsche's own terrain, let us appeal for assistance to a series of max- ims that stem from the period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1882-84.
W e are conceiving of belief, in the sense of a taking to be true, as a holding firm in the true. Such holding firm and the stance it implies will be more genuinely successful the more originally they are deter- mined by the stance, and the less exclusively they are defined purely by
The Thought ofReturn as a Belief 125
the hold they have on things; that is to say, they will be more genuine- ly successful if they are essentially able to revert back to themselves and not lean on things, not depend on them for support. Yet in this par- ticular matter Nietzsche issues a warning to all who would be "self- reliant. " His admonition first says what it means to stand on one's own and thus attain a stance: "You self-reliant ones-you must learn how to stand on your own, else you'll be a pushover" (XII, 250, number 67). * Whenever a stance is nothing more than a mere consequence of the hold attributed to it, whenever the hold undergirds it, it is no real stance at all. The latter holds only if and as long as it is able to stand on its own two feet; in the former case, the stance that relies on some particular hold collapses as soon as the support is withdrawn.
"'I no longer believe in anything'-that is the correct way for a creative human being to think" (number 68). What does it mean to say "I no longer believe in anything"? Usually such an asseveration is testimony to "absolute skepticism" and "nihilism," doubt and despair of all knowledge, all order, and hence a sign of flight in the face of all decision and commitment; normally it is an expression of dissolution, where nothing holds and nothing is worth the trouble. Yet in the present instance unbelief and unwillingness to take-for-true mean something else. They mean refusal to embrace without further ado whatever is pregiven; refusal to rest content and delude oneself with merely ostensible decisions; refusal to shut one's eyes to one's own complacency.
What is the true, according to Nietzsche's conception of it? It is whatever in the perpetual flux and alteration of Becoming is fixated, whatever it is human beings have to get a firm grip on, whatever they
• "lhr Selbststiindigen-ihr miisst euch selber ste/len Iemen oder ihr fa/It urn. " I t is by no means clear what Nietzsche's admonition amounts to: sich ste/len means to turn oneself in, to volunteer, to muster, and even (though the context makes this unlikely) to deceive, to fake; umfa/Jen literally means to fall over, but it is a colloquialism for chang- ing one's mind at every whim. Nietzsche may be advising those who seek self-reliance to muster enough confidence to assert themselves and to fight-or to surrender-or to fake it-whatever it takes not to be a "pushover. " Heidegger clearly understands Nietzsche's remonstrance to mean that if self-reliant persons are those who lean on no one and no thing for support then they must learn to achieve a truly independent stance-without holding on.
126 THE ETE R~AL REC URREI':CE OF THE SAME
will to get a firm grip on. The true is what is firm. It is that about which human beings draw a boundary, as if to say "Off limits! " to all inquiry, all disturbance, all probing. In that way human beings in- troduce a sense of permanence into their own lives--even if it is simply the permanence of what they are used to, what they can dominate, what serves as a protection against all discomfiture and grants the con- solation of tranquillity.
To believe in Nietzsche's sense is thus to fixate the ever-changing throng of beings we encounter in the specific guiding representations of whatever is permanent and ordered. To believe, furthermore, is to entrench oneself in this fixating relationship in the very terms of what is fixated. In accordance with this conception of belief, which is abso- lutely essential in all of Nietzsche's thought (belief as self-entrench- ment in fixation), the phrase "I no longer believe in anything" suggests the very opposite of doubt and paralysis in the face of decision and action. It means the following: "I will not have life come to a standstill at one possibility, one configuration; I will allow and grant life its inalienable right to become, and I shall do this by prefiguring and projecting new and higher possibilities for it, creatively conducting life out beyond itself. " The creator is thus necessarily a nonbeliever, granted the designated sense of belief as bringing to a standstill. The creator is at the same time a destroyer with respect to everything con- gealed or petrified. But he is such only because ahead of time and above all else he communicates to life a new possibility as its higher law. This is what the next maxim (number 69; XII, 250) says: "All creation is communication. The knower, the creator, the lover are one.
Creation as communicatiorr-it is important to listen here in the right way. Every creating is a sharing with others. This implies that creation in itself grounds new possibilities of Being--erects them, or, as Holderlin says, founds them. Creation allots a new Being to prior beings, communicates it to them. Creation as such, and not only in its utilization, is a gift-giving. Genuine creation does not need to ask, does not even possess the inner possibility of inquiring, whether and how it might best be practicable and serviceable. Only where every trace of creative force and creative standards are lacking; only where merely
The Thought ofReturn as a Belief 127
mimetic machinery grinds into action; only where nothing can be shared in some creative process, inasmuch as the very creativity is missing; only there do we find some purpose proclaimed and acclaimed-retrospec- tively, if need be, but more auspiciously by way of anticipation- which provides the rationale for a whole line of products.
To create is to share-the most genuine service we can think of, because the most reticent. Genuine creation is thus utterly remote from the danger of becoming its own purpose; it does not even need to defend itself against such a misunderstanding. Only the sheer sem- blance of creativity needs to be constantly and vociferously reassured that it does not exist for its own sake but performs a service.
However, creation can appear in yet another guise, no less corrupt- ing than the one just mentioned. The sovereign sufficiency that be- longs essentially to creation, which does not need to posit an extraneous purpose, can assume the appearance of mere purposeless whimsy, of l'art pour l'art. Yet this is as far removed from genuine creation, or sharing-with, as the semblance cited above. The outcome of all this is simply the fact that creation itself and what is created are always extremely difficult to recognize and to unravel. And it is good that this is so. For it is their best protection, the guarantee that they will be preserved as something that can never be lost.
From that period on in which Nietzsche's great thought comes to him he recites again and again in various turns of phrase the trinity of knowing, creating, and loving. Love he comprehends as gift-giving and in terms of the giver; often he calls it by these very names. Instead of "knowers" he also likes to speak of "teachers. " If we follow Nietzsche's lead and substitute "the philosopher" for "the knower," "the artist" for "the creator," and "the saint" for "the lover," then the phrase we intro- duced a moment ago tells us that the philosopher, artist, and saint are one. However, it is not Nietzsche's purpose here to concoct an amal- gam that would consist of all the things these words used to mean. On the contrary, he is seeking the figure of a human being who exists simultaneously in the transformed unity of that threefold metamorpho- sis-the knower, the creator, the giver. This human being of the future is the proper ruler, the one who has become master of the last man, indeed in such a way that the last man disappears. His disappearance
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indicates that the ruler is no longer defined in opposition to the last man-which is what always happens as long as future humanity, spawned by what has gone before, has to grasp itself as over-man, that is to say, as a transition. The ruler, that is, the designated unity of knower, creator, and lover, is in his own proper grounds altogether an other. Yet in order that the new form of humanity come to be and provide a standard, the figures of the knower, creator, and giver must themselves be prepared by way of a novel metamorphosis and unifica- tion. Nietzsche at one point expresses the matter in the following way: "The giver, the creator, the teacher-these are preludes to the ruler.
" (See the supplements to Thus Spoke Zarathustra from the years 1882- 86; XII, 363. )
In the fresh light cast by this new perspective on the matter we have to understand maxims like the following one, which, bearing the num- ber 70, follows directly upon number 69 in the series we have been considering (XII, 250): "'Religious man,' 'fool,' 'genius,' 'criminal,' 'tyrant'-these are imperfect names and mere details, as approxima- tions to something ineffable. " If Nietzsche includes the notion of the "religious man" among the others in this sequence, we have to be quite careful. We have to think matters over quite precisely before we earmark the thought of return as a "religious" thought, in effect ostra- cizing it from Nietzsche's "body of knowledge," his "doctrine. " Any reflective person, following the lead of our necessarily limited and scarcely elucidated comments, will already have realized how ridicu- lous such a procedure makes itself look. Precisely the thinking of the most difficult thought becomes supreme knowledge, it is in itself a creating; its creating is a communicating, gift-giving, and loving; and it thereby appears in the fundamental figure of the "saint" and the "reli- gious. " Yet Nietzsche does not designate this thinking of the most difficult thought as believing because it is holy and religious, that is, thanks to its character as creative love; he calls it a believing because as a thinking of beings as a whole it fixates beings themselves in a projec- tion of Being. The thought's character as belief does not in the first place spring from its religious character; rather, the aspect of belief springs from its character as a thinking, inasmuch as thinking, repre- senting relationships and constellations, always erects and intends something that is permanent.
The Thought ofReturn as a Belief 129
The thinking of the most difficult thought is a believing. It holds firm in the true. Truth for Nietzsche always means the true, and the true signifies in Nietzsche's view being-that which is fixated as per- manent. This occurs in such a way that the living creature secures its subsistence in and through the circle of what is fixated. As fixation, belief is the securing of permanence.
The thought of eternal return of the same fixates by determining how the world essentially is-as the necessitous chaos of perpetual Becoming. The thinking of this thought holds firm in being as a whole in such a way that for it the eternal return of the same serves as the Being that determines all beings. Such a truth can never of course be directly proven to particular human beings by way of particular pieces of evidence; it can never be demonstrated in its actuality by way of certain facts, inasmuch as it involves being as a whole. We come to being as a whole always and only by means of a leap that executes our very projection of it, assisting and accomplishing that projection in its process. We never come to being as a whole by moving tentatively and haltingly through a sequence of particular facts and constellations of facts aligned in terms of cause-effect relations. Consequently, what is thought in this thought is never given as some particular, actual thing at hand; it is always proffered as a possibility.
But then does not the thought lose all its weight? When Nietzsche concedes that his thought is merely a possibility, does he not forfeit the right to be taken seriously-surrender the claim that his thought is to be taken seriously? By no means. For the concession actually expresses the fact that to hold firm in this thought is essentially to co-constitute its being true; the fact that the hold itself is defined by the stance, and not vice-versa. Nietzsche provides a helpful point of reference when he says in note 119 (XII, 65):
Even the thought of a possibility can shake us and transform us; it is not merely sensations or particular expectations that can do that! Note how effective the possibility of eternal damnation was!
On the basis of this remark we also recognize the fact that it was no accident that Nietzsche chose the particular form he did for the first communication of his thought in The Gay Science, the form of the demon who interrogates us by opening up a possibility: "What would
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happen if . . . ? *The interrogative mode of thinking corresponds to the heart's core of what is being thought here. The possibility in question-which indeed has to be interrogated thorougly-is mightier as a possibility than anything actual or factual. One possible thing generates other possibilities, inherently and necessarily bringing them to the fore along with itself. What is possible in a given thought transposes us to a number of possibilities: we may think it in this or that way, assume a stance within it in this or that fashion. To think through a possibility truly-that is to say, with all its consequences-means to decide something for ourselves, even if the decision calls for nothing more than a retreat from and exclusion of the possibility.
In accord with the entire history of Western humanity hitherto, and in accord with the interpretation of beings that sustains that history, we are all too accustomed to thinking purely and simply in terms of ac- tualities, to interpreting in terms of the actual (as presence, ousia). For this reason we are still unprepared, we feel awkward and inadequate, when it comes to thinking possibility, a kind of thinking that is always creative. Hence, to the extent that the thought of return involves our adopting this or that stance within the whole of beings, a range of possibilities of decision and scission opens up for human existence in general. t Nietzsche says that the thought contains "the possibility of defining and ordering anew individual human beings in their affects" (number 118). In order to elicit the full content of this statement we have to know that according to Nietzsche it is affects and drives that define the given perspectives within which human beings perceive the world. Such perspectives determine the corner for that Little Jack Horner called "man. "
In the light of the thought of return a decision has to be reached as to who has or does not have the energy and the attunement required to
• See section 3, above: "Nietzsche's First Communication of the Doctrine of Return. " On the power of the possible, cf. Being and Time, sections 31 and 53; see also the "Letter on Humanism," Basic Writings, p. 196.
t "Decision and scission" renders Heidegger's phrase Entscheidung und Scheidung. His coupling of these two words emphasizes the root of decision, meaning to cut off, sever, separate. Decision does not mean a subject's making up his or her mind; it means the realization that one has reached a point of radical change. Entscheidung suggests the crossing of a kind of watershed, Wasserscheide.
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hold firm in the truth. Those who do not "believe" in it are the "fleet- ing ones. " By that Nietzsche means two things. First of all, the fleeting ones are fleeing ones, in flight before magnificent, expansive prospects, which presuppose an ability to wait. The fleeting ones want their hap- piness right there where they can latch onto it; and they want the time to be able to enjoy it. These people who flee are fleeting in yet another sense: they themselves are without stability, are transient creatures; they leave nothing behind; they found nothing, ground nothing. The others, those who are not fleeting, are "the human beings with eternal souls and eternal Becoming and pains that tell of the future. " We might also say that they are the human beings who bear within them- selves a great deal of time and who live to the full the times they
have-a matter that is quite independent of actual longevity. Or, to turn it around the other way: it is precisely the fleeting human being who is least fit to serve as the human being of proper transition, though appearances seem to suggest the opposite, insmuch as "transition" im- plies evanescence. The fleeting ones, who do not and cannot think the thought, "must, according to their own nature, finally die om""Only those who hold their existence to be capable of eternal repetition will remain: and with such people a condition is possible to which no utopian has ever attained! " (number 121). "Whoever does not believe has a fleeting life in his consciousness" (number 128).
The thought does not "work its effects" in that it leaves behind particular consequences for later times. Rather, when it is thought, when the one who is thinking it stands firm in this truth of beings as a whole, when thinkers who are of such a nature are, then beings as a whole also undergo metamorphosis. "From the very moment this thought exists, all colors change their hue and a new history begins" (number 120; cf. number 114*).
The most difficult thought is here grasped as the thought that inaugurates a new history. It is not merely that another series of hap- penstances unfolds; what is different is the kind of happening, acting, and creating. Color, the very look of things, their eidos, presencing,
• GOA, XII, number 114 is cited in section 18, pp. 138--39, below. In CM see M III I [148].
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Being-this is what changes. "Deep yellow" and "incandescent red" begin to radiate.
However, must not a question finally claim its rights at this junc- ture, a question that causes the very essence of this thought, whole and entire, to dissolve into thin air? If everything is necessary-the world as a chaos of necessity-and if everything recurs as it once was, then all thinking and planning become superfluous, indeed are impossible from the outset; we must take everything as it comes; and all is indiffer- ent. Instead of providing us with a burden, the thought deprives us of the ballast and the steadying weight of decision and action, divests us of every sense of planning and willing. It harnesses us to the self- propelling, necessitous course of an eternal cycle, opening up all ave- nues at once to lawlessness and sheer contingency. It ends by causing us to founder in sheer inaction-we let it all slide. And, for good measure, such a thought would not be a "new" burden at all, but an ancient one. For it was the history of antiquity that allowed itself to get bogged down in fatalism.
18. The Thought of Return- and Freedom
When we pause to think about these things we come up against a question. We would mistake what is most difficult in this exceedingly difficult thought were we to take it too lightly, that is, were we to encounter it in a merely formal dialectical way. Instead of conducting us to supreme and ultimate decisions, the thought appears to let us submerge in vacuous indifference. Yet precisely this trait-the fact that the semblance of its utter opposite dwells right alongside the proper truth of the thought-indicates that here it is a question of thinking a genuine philosophical thought. If we reflect on the question for a mo- ment, if we make even the slightest effort to recollect it, this will suffice to reveal the profile of an earlier, truly ancient question. The difficulty that has only now emerged seems to refer us back to that earlier dilemma, which runs as follows: All being, taken as a whole and as a plenitude of details in any of its given sequences, is forged in the iron ring of the eternal recurrence of the identical collective state; whatever enters on the scene now or in the future is but a recurrence, unalterably predetermined and necessary. But then in this ring what are action, planning, resolve-in short, "freedom'~supposed to be? In the ring of necessity freedom is as superfluous as it is impossible. But that is a rebuff to the essence of man; here the very possibility of his essence is denied. If we wish that essence to prevail nevertheless, it is wholly obscure how it may do so.
Obviously, the thought of eternal recurrence of the same guides us back to the question of the relationship between freedom and necessi- ty. The upshot is that this thought cannot be, as Nietzsche claims, the
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thought of thoughts. For if the thought of return pertains to the do. main of the question of freedom and necessity, something fundamen. tal has already been decided about its possible truth. Someone will. surely point out that the question of a possible accord between necessi- ty and freedom belongs among those unavoidable yet insoluble ques- tions which set in motion a ceaseless dispute as soon as they intimate what it is they would like to put into question. *
Indeed, from the moment we learn about Nietzsche's doctrine of return such reflections force themselves upon us. We will be all the more inclined to such reflections since we are familiar with the young Nietzsche's school essays, "Fate and History" and "Free Will and Fate," written during the Easter holidays in 1862 (see the Historical- Critical Collected Edition, volume II, pages 54-63). t If at the same time we think of the nearly contemporary autobiographical composi- tion by Nietzsche which we cited earlier, and of the fact that this early thought of his was later to become the essential center of his thinking,
• Heidegger's use of the word "dispute" (Widerstreit) echoes Kant's throughout the "Antinomies" of the Critique ofPure Reason. Heidegger's reference is of course to the third Antinomy (see KrV, A 444 I B 472) and to Kant's entire project of a Critique of Practical Reason.
t These two "school" essays, written when Nietzsche was eighteen years old, both of them exhibiting the influence of Emerson, are more intriguing than Heidegger's remarks here suggest. "Free Will and Fate" rejects the spirit of Christian "submission to the will of God" and exalts instead a "strong will. " The longer essay, "Fate and History: Thoughts," bemoans throughout the prejudices that condition a youth's view of the world and make "a freer standpoint" all but impossible. The young Nietzsche designates history and natural science as two havens for his storm-tossed speculations on human fate. Having invoked the long history of human evolution and development, Nietzsche asks, "Does this eternal Becoming never come to an end? " History itself he pictures as an enormous clock: when the clock strikes twelve its hands "begin their course all over again-a new period commences for the world. " Finally, against the determining forces of fatum, Nietzsche deploys the following:
Yet if it were possible for a strong will to overturn the world's entire past, we would join the ranks of self-sufficient gods, and world history would be no more to us than a dreamlike enchantment of the self. The curtain falls, and man finds himself again, like a child playing with worlds, a child who wakes at daybreak and with a laugh wipes from his brow all frightful dreams.
See Friedrich Nietzsche Werke und Briefe (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 1934), II (Ju- gendschriften), 54-63. These essays unfortunately do not appear in the Schlechta and CM editions.
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then we seem to be on the right track from Nietzsche's own point of view when we subordinate the doctrine of return to the question of freedom and necessity. Nevertheless, such a procedure overlooks what is most essential. Let us try to make this point sufficiently clear, so that our first efforts to get acquainted with Nietzsche's "doctrine" will manage to keep at bay all inadequate approaches.
What we must pay special attention to will be clarified with the help of Nietzsche's own notes, for example, the following (XII, number 116): "My doctrine says that the task is to live in such a way that you have to wish to live again-you will do so in any case! " The appended phrase, "you will do so in any case" appears to obviate the necessity of assigning the task, "live in such a way. . . . "Why wish, why propose, when you have to take everything as it comes "in any case"? Yet if we read the statement in this way we are not gleaning its true import; we are not entering into its matter, not hearing what it says. The statement speaks to everyone, addressing him or her as "you" in the familiar form. It speaks to us as we are; we ourselves are the ones intended. The intention of the thought thus refers us to our own respective Dasein. Whatever is or is to be will be decided in and by Dasein, inasmuch as only those aspects of Becoming that were once a part of my life are destined to come again.
But then do we know what once was? No! Can we ever know such things? We know nothing of an earlier life. Everything we are now living we experience for the first time, although now and again in the midst of our ordinary experiences that strange and obscure experience crops up which says: What you are now experiencing, precisely in the form it is now taking, you have experienced once before. We know nothing of an earlier "life" when we think back. But can we only think back? No, we can also think ahead-and that is thinking proper. 1':1 such thinking we are capable in a certain way of knowing with certain- ty what once was. Strange-are we to experience something that lies behind us by thinking forward? Yes, we are. Then what is it that already was; what will come again when it recurs? The answer to that question is: whatever will be in the next moment. If you allow your existence to drift in timorousness and ignorance, with all the conse- quences these things have, then they will come again, and they will be
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that which already was. And if on the contrary you shape something supreme out of the next moment, as out of every moment, and if you note well and retain the consequences, then this moment will come again and will have been what already was: "Eternity suits it. " But the matter will be decided solely in your moments. It will be decided on the basis of what you yourself hold concerning beings, and what sort of stance you adopt in their midst. It will be decided on the basis of what you will of yourself, what you are able to will of yourself.
Against all this one might say: Merely to represent to oneself that he or she is a progression of processes and is, as it were, forged as a link in a chain of circumstances that enter on the scene time after time in an endlessly circling monotony-merely to imagine such a thing is to be absent from onself, and is not to be the being that inherently belongs within the whole of beings. To represent a human being in this way means to fail altogether to take him into account as a self; it is like someone who undertakes to count the number of people who are present but forgets to count himself. To represent humanity that way means to calculate extrinsically, as though one could slip stealthily outside and remain aloof from it all. When we calculate in such fash- ion we no longer ponder the fact that as temporal beings who are delivered over to ourselves we are also delivered over to the future in our willing; we no longer ponder the fact that the temporality of hu- man being alone determines the way in which the human being stands in the ring of beings. Here too, as in so many other essential respects, Nietzsche has not explicated his teaching and has left many things obscure. Yet certain hints appear over and over again, making it clear that Nietzsche knew and experienced a great deal more about this thought than he either sketched out or fully portrayed. We may safely
judge how vehemently Nietzsche spurned extrinsic, fatalistic calcula- tion of the import and the consequences of the thought of return, so that such calculation cannot at all be definitive for him, on the basis of note number 122 (XII, 66):
You think you will have a long pause before you are reborn--do not deceive yourselves! Between the last moment of consciousness and the first glimmer of the new life "no time" goes by at all. It passes as quickly as a flash of
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lightning, even if living creatures measure it in terms of billions of years and even then fail to measure it adequately. Timelessness and succession go hand-in-hand with one another as soon as the intellect is gone.
Here the dual possibility for our envisaging things comes more clear- ly to the fore: we can estimate and decide about our relationship with beings as a whole from out of ourselves, in terms of the time each of us experiences; or we can remove ourselves from this time of our tem- porality--covertly relying on such time, however-and settle accounts with the whole by means of an infinite calculation. In the two cases the time interval between each of the recurrences is measured accord- ing to totally different standards. Seen in terms of our own experienced temporality, no time at all passes between the end of one lifetime and the beginning of another, even though the duration cannot be grasped "objectively" even in billions of years (see Aristotle, Physics, Book IV, chapters 10-14). *Y et what are billions of years when measured against eternity; that is to say, at the same time, measured against the standard of the moment of decision? What Nietzsche here says about the
• It is difficult to know what to make of this reference to the entire "treatise on time" in Aristotle's Physics, Book Delta, 10-14, unless Heidegger wishes to reiterate Aristotle's importance for his own conception of Dasein as temporality. Two passages in Aristotle's treatise, which Heidegger may have had in mind when making the present reference, are the following. First, the opening of chapter ll:
But neither does time exist without change [metabole}. For when the state of our own minds does not change at all, or we have not noticed its changing, we do not realize that time has elapsed any more than those who are fabled to sleep among the her! Jes in Sardinia do when they are awakened. . . . So, just as, if the "now" were not different but one and the same, there would not have been time, so too when its difference escapes our notice the interval [metaxy] does not seem to be time.
And second, a passage from chapter 14 (223a 21 ff. ), which Heidegger regards as essen- tial to Aristotle's definition of time as the number of motion:
Whether if soul [psyche] did not exist [me ousa] time would exist or not, is a question· that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted. . . . But if nothing but soul, or in soul reason [nous], is qualified to count, there would not be time unless there were soul. . . .
Heidegger's most complete discussion of Aristotle in this respect, a discussion which may be viewed as an elaboration of the final sections of Being and Time, appears as section 19, "Time and Temporality," in Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1975), pp. 327-62, esp. pp. 335 and 360-61.
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timelessness of the "time in between" seems to contradict what is
observed in another note from the same period (number 114):
Man! Your entire life will be turned over and over again like an hourglass; again and again it will run out--one vast minute of time in between, until all the conditions that went into your becoming converge again in the world's circulation.
One vast minute of time in between-well, then, some time does transpire in the "in-between time," indeed "one vast minute"! Yet what Nietzsche says here does not contradict the preceding; it em- braces both ways of viewing the situation in one. Over against the billions of years that are calculated objectively, one minute of time amounts to no time at all; and "one vast minute" is meant to indicate simultaneously that all the conditions for becoming again, for recur- rence, are gathering meanwhile-"all the conditions from which you took your becoming. " Here, to be sure, the decisive condition is not mentioned: the decisive condition is you yourself, that is to say, the manner in which you achieve your self by becoming your own master, and this by seeing to it that when you engage your will essentially you take yourself up into that will and so attain freedom. We are free only when we become free, and we become free only by virtue of our wills. That is what we read in the second section of the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written in 1883, "On the Blessed Isles": "To will is liberating: that is the true teaching concerning will and freedom-thus Zarathustra teaches it to you. "
We know that Zarathustra is the teacher of eternal return, and that he is this alone. Thus the question of freedom, and hence of necessity too and of the relation between these two, is posed anew by the teach- ing of the eternal return of the same. For that reason we go astray when we reverse matters and try to cram the doctrine of return into some loilg-ossified schema of the question of freedom. And this is what we in fact do-insofar as the traditional metaphysical question of free- dom is conceived of as a question of "causality," while causality itself, in terms of its essential definition, stems from the notion of being as "actuality. "
We must admit that Nietzsche never pursued these interconnec-
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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.