No More Learning

13. Suspicions Concerning the "Humanization" of Beings
Yet our entire consideration of Nietzsche's doctrine of return-and what is more, that doctrine itself-stand under the shadow of a suspi- cion. The suspicion, which in some sense is Nietzche's own, might make all further efforts to understand the doctrine and the evidence for it futile. The suspicion is that a humanizing tendency nestles in the thought of eternal return of the same itself, and eminently so. Thus the eternal return would be a thought that provokes more than any other the issuance of Nietzche's own persistent warning: "Let us be on guard! "
From the outset of our presentation we have often enough empha- sized that ifa thought related to beings as a whole must at the same time be related to the human being who is thinking it-indeed, must be thought in terms of the human being preeminently and entirely- then this holds true for the thought of eternal return. It was introduced under the designation "the greatest burden. " The essential relation of this thought to the human being who is thinking it; the essential in- volvement of the thinker in the thought and what it thinks; that is to say, the "humanization" of the thought and of beings as a whole as represented in it-all this is made manifest by the fact that the eternity of recurrence, hence the time of recurrence, and thus recurrence it- self, can be grasped solely in terms of the "Moment. "
We define the "Moment" as that in which future and past "affront one another," in which future and past are decisively accomplished and consummated by man himself, inasmuch as man occupies the site of their collision and is himself that collision. The temporality of the time of that eternity which Nietzsche requires us to think in the eternal
The "Humanization" ofBeings 99
return of the same is the temporality in which humanity stands; preeminently humanity and, so far as we know, humanity alone. Hu- man beings, resolutely open to what is to come and preserving what has been, sustain and give shape to what is present. The thought of eternal return of the same, spawned by such temporality and grounded in it, is therefore a "human" thought in a distinctive sense-the su- preme sense. For that reason the thought of eternal return is vulnera- ble to the suspicion that with it a correspondingly vast humanization of beings as a whole transpires-in other words, the very thing Nietzsche wishes to avoid with every means at his disposal and along every route open to him.
How do matters stand with the suspicion concerning the humaniza- tion of beings implied in the thought of return? Clearly, we can answer the question only if we are capable of penetrating the thought itself in all its ramifications, only if we are capable of thinking it fully. Never- theless, at the present juncture of our considerations, where proofs for the thought and the thought itself in its demonstrability and truth are to be grasped, it is first of all necessary that we formulate very carefully the suspicion concerning the thought's humanizing tendency, a suspi- cion that threatens to render all our labors superfluous.
Every conception of the being and especially of beings as a whole, merely by the fact that it is a conception, is related by human beings to human beings. The relation derives from man. Every interpretation of such a conception discriminates among the ways man proceeds with his conception of the being and adopts a stance toward it. Interpreta- tion is thereby a projection of human representations and modes of representation onto the being. Simply to address the being, to name it in the word, is to equip it with human paraphernalia, to seize it in human nets, if indeed it is true that the word and language in the broadest sense distinguish human being. Hence every representation of beings as a whole, every interpretation of the world, is inevitably an- thropomorphic.
Such reflections are so lucid that whoever has engaged in them, no matter how cursorily, is compelled to see that for all their representa- tions, intuitions, and definitions of beings human beings are cornered in the blind alley of their own humanity. We can make it perfectly clear to every Simple Simon that all human representation comes out
100 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
of this or that corner of the alley, whether it involves a notion of the world stemming from a single paramount and decisive thinker or a residue of notions gradually gaining in clarity for sundry groups, eras peoples, and families of nations. Hegel shed light on the state of affair~ in a striking reference to an aspect of our linguistic usage which gives occasion for a particular play on words, one that is not at all superficial or forced. *
All our representations and intuitions are such that in them we mean something, some being. Yet every time I mean or opine some- thing I at the same time inevitably transform what is meant into some- thing that is mine. Every such meaning, ostensibly related solely to the object itself, amounts to an act of appropriation and incorporation by and into the human ego of what is meant. To mean is in itself simul- taneously to represent something and to make the represented some- thing my own. But even when it is not the individualized "I" that means, when the standards prevailing in the thought of any individual human being presumably do not come to domineer, the danger of subjectivism is only apparently overcome. The humanization of beings as a whole is not slighter here but more massive, not only in scope but above all in kind, inasmuch as no one has the slightest inkling con- cerning such humanization. This gives rise to the initially inexpugna- ble illusion that no humanization is in play. But if humanization pertains to world interpretation ineluctably, then every attempt to dehumanize humanization is without prospect of success. The attempt to dehumanize is itself an attempt undertaken by human beings; hence it ultimately remains humanization, raised to a higher power.
These reflections, especially for someone who encounters them or
• The following reference to Hegel's use of meinen, "to mean," as a playful way to indicate the way in which sheer "opinion" (die Meinung) is something purely "mine" (mein), in contrast to the genuine universality (das Allgemeine) embraced by the lan- guage of concepts, may be traced through the early sections of Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit, from "Sensuous Certainty" to "Certainty and Truth of Reason. " See G. W. F. Hegel, Phfinomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1952), pp. 82-83, 185, 220-21, and 234-36. The same play occupies a special place in Hegel's mature "system. " See the "Remark" to section 20 of the Enzyklopiidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 3d edition, 1830, ed. Friedheim Nicolin and Otto Piiggeler {Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1969), pp. 54-56, where the root mein unites what in English we must isolate as "opinion," "meaning" or "intention," "mine," and "univer- sal. "
The "Humanization" ofBeings 101
similar trains of thought for the first time, are staggeringly convincing. Provided a person does not immediately circumvent them and save him or herself by fleeing into the "praxis" of "life," such reflections generally relegate one to a position where only two alternatives arise: either one doubts and despairs of every possibility of learning the truth and takes it all as a sheer play of representations, or one decides via a confession of faith for one world interpretation-following the maxim that one is better than none, even if it is merely one among others. Perhaps with a bit of luck the one we choose can prove its viability in terms of its success, its utility, and the range of its propagation.
The essential postures we may adopt toward a humanization that is held to be ineradicable in itself may therefore be reduced to two: either we make our peace with it and operate now in the apparent superiority of the Universal Doubter who cannot be hoodwinked and who desires only to be left alone, or we struggle to reach the point where we forget humanization and presume that it has thereby been brushed aside, in this way achieving our tranquillity. The result in either case is that wherever suspicions concerning immitigable humanization arise we find ourselves stuck on the superficies, however easily such reflections on humanization delude themselves into thinking that they are su- premely profound and, above all, "critical. " What a revelation it was for the mass of people who were unfamiliar with actual thinking and its rich history when two decades ago, in 1917, Oswald Spengler an- nounced that he was the first to discover that every age and every civilization has its own world view! Yet it was all nothing more than a very deft and clever popularization of thoughts and questions on which others long before him had ruminated far more profoundly. Nietzsche was the most recent of these. Yet no one by any means mastered these thoughts and questions, and they remain unmastered up to the present hour. The reason is as simple as it is momentous and difficult to think through.
With all these pros and cons with respect to humanization, one believes one knows ahead of time what human beings are, the human beings who are responsible for this palpable humanization. One forgets to pose the question that would have to be answered first of all if the suspicions concerning humanization are to be viable or if refutation of those suspicions is to make any sense. T o talk of humanization before
102 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
one has decided-that is to say, before one has asked-who man is, is idle talk indeed. It remains idle talk even when for the sake of its demonstrations it musters all of world history and mankind's most an- cient civilizations-things which no one is able to corroborate anyway. Hence, in order to avoid superficial and specious discussion of those suspicions concerning humanization, whether affirming or rejecting them, we must first of all take up the question "Who is man? " A number of adroit writers have wasted no time replying to the question, without the question itself becoming any clearer. But for them the question is no more than an interrogatory blurb on a book jacket. The question is not really asked-the authors have long been in secure possession of their dogmatic replies. There is nothing to be said against that. It is merely that one should not give the impression that one is questioning. For the question "Who is man? " is not as harmless as it may seem, and it is not a matter to be settled overnight. If the capaci- ties for questioning are to survive in Dasein, this question is to be Europe's task for the future, for this century and the century to come. It can find its answer only in the exemplary and authoritative way in which particular nations, in competition with others, shape their his- tory.
Yet who else poses and answers the question of who man is, if not man himself? That is surely the case. But does it also follow that the definition of the essence of the human being is simply a humanization by human creatures? That may well be. In fact, it is necessarily a humanization, in the sense that the essential definition of human be- ings is executed by human beings. Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether the essential definition of human being humanizes or dehumanizes it. It is possible that the execution of the definition of human being always and everywhere remains an affair of human be- ings and that to that extent it is human; but it may be that the defini- tion itself, its truth, elevates human being beyond itself and thereby dehumanizes it, in that way ascribing even to the human execution of the essential definition of man a different essence. The question of who man is must first be experienced as a much-needed question. For that to happen, the need of this question concerning human being must burst on the scene with full force and under every guise. We do not do justice to the necessity of this question if we fail to examine
The "Humanization" of Beings 103
what it is that makes the question possible first of all. Whence, and on what basis, is the essence of human being to be defined?
The essence of man may be defined-as we have long been accus- tomed to mean and opine according to the rules of various games-by describing him in the way one dissects and describes a frog or a rabbit. As if it had already been determined that by means of biological proce- dures one can come to know what a living creature is. It is rather the case that the science of biology presupposes and takes for granted in its initial steps what "life" is to mean for it. Of course, one turns his back on the opinion thus taken for granted. One shies from turning to con- front it, not only because he is so busy with his frogs and other ani- mals, but also because he experiences anxiety concerning his own opinion. It might well be that the science as such would suddenly collapse if one looked over one's shoulder, only to discover that presup- positions are very much worthy ofquestion. This is the case in a! l the sciences-without exception. Is it not liberating for all these sciences when they are told nowadays that due to historic political exigencies the nation and the state need results-solid, useful results! "Fine," reply the sciences, "but you know we need our peace and quiet. " Everyone cooperates sympathetically, and the sciences are happy in their unruffied state; they can proceed in utter ignorance of philosoph- ical-metaphysical questions, as they have for the past fifty years. The "sciences" today experience this liberation in the only way they can. Nowadays as never before they feel perfectly assured of their necessity, taking such assurance--erroneously-as a confirmation of their very essence.
If it even occurred to anyone these days to suggest that science could assert itself essentially only if it retrieved its essence by means of an original questioning, such a one would be confessing himself a fool or a subverter of "science as such. "* To ask about ultimate grounds is t~
• Heidegger is of course referring to his inaugural lecture at Freiburg in 1929 a n d - presumably-to the outraged reply by Rudolf Carnap in 1931, "Overcoming Meta- physics through Logical Analysis of Language," which appears in an English translation in A. J. Ayer, ed. , Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 60-81. See especially section 5 for an account of Heidegger's syntactical errors and perversities. It is intriguing to work through the "schema" of section 5, on "the nothing," to learn the extent to which Carnap and Heidegger agree. An equally interesting response to Heideg- ger-Wittgenstein's, as recorded by Friedrich Waismann on December 30, 1929-never
104 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
promulgate a kind of inner flagellation, a process for which the heady word nihilism stands at our beck and call. But that ghost has been laid to rest; all is peace and quiet; the students, we now hear, are willing to go back to work! And so the universal Babbittry of the spirit may begin anew. "Science" has no inkling of the fact that its claim to be of direct practical consequence does not simply obliterate philosophical meditation; it is much more the case that at the instant of science's supreme practical relevance the supreme necessity arises for meditation on matters that can never be gauged according to direct practicability and utility. These matters nevertheless instill a supreme unrest in Dasein, unrest not as distraction and confusion but as awakening and vigilance-as opposed to the tranquillity of that philosophic somno- lence which is nihilism proper. Yet if comfort be our standard of mea- sure, it is doubtless easier to shut our eyes and evade the gravity of these questions, even if our sole excuse is that we have no time for such things.
An odd era for humankind, this, the age in which we have been adrift for decades, a time that no longer has time for the question of who man is. By means of scientific descriptions of extant or past forms of humanity, whether these descriptions are biological or historical or both taken together in a melange of "anthropologies," a mixture that has become popular during recent decades, we can never come to know who man is. Such knowledge is also barred to faith, which must from the start regard all "knowledge" as "heathen" and as folly. Such knowl- edge thrives only on the basis of an original stance of inquiry. The question of who man is must take its departure from that point which even the most desultory view of things can identify as the point of inception for the humanization of all beings, namely, man's mere addressing and naming of beings, that is to say, language. It may be that man does not at all humanize beings by virtue of language; on the contrary, perhaps man has up to now thoroughly mistaken and misin- terpreted the essence of language itself, and with it his own Being and its essential provenance. But when we pose the question of the essence of language we are already asking about being as a whole, provided
reached the public. It is now printed, with a revealing commentary, in Michael Murray, ed. , Heidegger and Modern Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 80-83.
The "Humanization" ofBeings 105
language is not an aggiomeration of words used to designate sundry familiar things but the original resonance ofthe truth ofa world.
The question of who man is must in its very formulation include in its approach man in and with his relations to beings as a whole; it must include in its inquiry the question of being as a whole. But we have just now heard that being as a whole can only be interpreted by human beings in the first place-and now man himself is to be interpreted in terms of being as a whole. Everything here is spinning in a circle. Of that there can be no doubt. The question is whether and in what way we can succeed in taking this circle seriously, instead of continually closing our eyes in the face of it.
The world interpretation that devolves upon the thought of eternal return of the same shows that a relation to man announces itself in the essence of eternity as midday and moment. Here that very circle plays a role, requiring that man be thought on the basis of world, and world on the basis of man. To all appearances that would suggest that the thought of eternal return of the same bears traces of the uttermost humanization; the thought nevertheless is and wants to be the very opposite. Furthermore, this circle would explain the fact that as a consequence of the will to dehumanize world interpretation Nietzsche is compelled to will supreme humanization, hence the fact that each demands rather than excludes the other.
The upshot would be that Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return is not to be measured by gratuitous standards, but only on the basis of its own law. It would demand that we meditate in advance on the kind of evidentiary claim and evidentiary force that are germane to the Nietz- schean proofs for the doctrine of eternal return.
But we can drop the subjunctives. For what we have suggested is indeed the case.
Suspicions concerning humanization, no matter how palpably near they are and no matter how readily everyone can clumsily wield them, remain superfluous and groundless as long as they have not put them- selves in question-by asking the question of who man is. That ques- tion cannot even be posed, much less answered, without the question of what being as a whole is. However, the latter question embraces a more original question, one which neither Nietzsche nor philosophy prior to him unfolded or was able to unfold.
14. Nietzsche's Proof of the Doctrine of Return
With the thought of eternal return of the same Nietzsche is moving in the realm of the question as to what being as a whole is. Now that we have staked out the field of Nietzsche's sense of being as a whole and described its constitution, we would do well to pursue the proofs by which Nietzsche attributes to being as a whole the determination of eternal return of the same. (In the course of such a pursuit we must set aside those suspicions concerning humanization-which, in the meantime, have become dubious indeed. ) Obviously, everything de- pends on the evidentiary force of these proofs. To be sure, evidentiary force. All evidentiary force remains impotent so long as we fail to grasp the mode and the essence of the proofs in question. Yet these things, along with the respective possibility and necessity of proof, are defined by the kind of truth that is in question. A proof can be fully conclusive, without formal logical errors of any kind, and still prove nothing and remain irrelevant, simply because its point of attack misses the precise nexus of truth and alters nothing within that nexus. For example, a proof for the existence of God can be constructed by means of the most rigorous formal logic and yet prove nothing, since a god who must permit his existence to be proved in the first place is ultimately a very ungodly god. The best such proofs of existence can yield is blasphemy. Or, to take another example, one can try-and this has happened over and over again-to prove experimentally, through experience, the fun- damental principle of causality. Such a proof is more deleterious than any attempt to deny the validity of that principle on philosophical or sophistical grounds; more ruinous, because it jumbles all thought and
Nietzsche's Proofofthe Doctrine ofReturn 107
inquiry from the ground up, inasmuch as a fundamental principle in its very essence cannot be empirically proved. Always and everywhere the empiricist concludes, wrongly, that the fundamental principle can- not be proved at all. He takes his proofs and his truth to be the sole possible ones. Everything that is inaccessible to him he proclaims to be superstition, something that "simply cannot be dealt with. " As if what is most magnificent, most profound, were something "we" can never "deal with" unless we deal with it by thinking empirically and thus by shutting ourselves off from it irrevocably. There are many different kinds of proofs.
With regard to Nietzsche's "proofs" for his doctrine of return, prior interpretations and presentations have been especially anxious to make Nietzsche's prediction·come true: "Everyone talks about me-but no- body thinks of me. " No one compels himself to think through Nietz- sche's thoughts. Of course, such thinking through is confronted by a bedeviling peculiarity: it never succeeds if the thinker fails to think beyond-though not away from-the thought he is to be thinking about. Only if it thinks beyond does thinking through possess the free- dom of movement that it needs if it is to avoid getting tangled up in itself.
In the case at hand, namely, the Nietzschean proofs for the eternal return of the same, it was especially gratifying to bid a quick adieu to thought-without losing face thereby. It was said that with these proofs Nietzsche had gotten sidetracked in physics which, number one, he did not understand thoroughly enough and, number two, does not belong in philosophy anyway. We perspicacious fellows know full well that you cannot prove philosophical doctrines with assertions and argu- ments from the natural sciences. But, it is said, we are inclined to- yes, we really must-forgive Nietzsche his aberration in the directioi:~ of natural science. After all, he too went through his positivist phase, at the end of the 1870s and in the early 1880s, a period when anyone who wanted to have any influence at all spoke up for a "scientific world view," much in the manner of Haeckel and his crew. In those
decades "liberalism" was rampant; it spawned the very idea of "world view. " Every "world view" in itself and as such is liberal! So let us say
108 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
that this escapade of Nietzsche's into the natural sciences remains an historical eccentricity and let it go at that.
It seems clear that we could hardly expect persons sporting such an attitude to think through Nietzsche's thought of thoughts.
Recently, however, some attempts have been made to think through the proofs for this thought. Because of the reference to an essential connection between "Being" and "Time," some have paused to won- der, asking themselves: If Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return of the same has to do with the universe, being as a whole, which one could roughly call "Being"; and if eternity and recurrence, as transgressions of past and future, are somehow related to "Time"; then perhaps there is something to Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return of the same, and maybe we had better not shrug off his proofs as effulgences of a project that was doomed to fail. And so the proofs are taken in earnest. Commentators show-by way of mathematical exertions, no less-that his proofs are not so bad, not counting a couple of "mistakes. " Indeed, Nietzsche anticipated several lines of thought in contemporary physics -and what could be more important for a real contemporary man than his science! This apparently more material and more affirmative stance with respect to Nietzsche's "proofs" is, however, every bit as dubious as its opposite; it is immaterial, inasmuch as it does not and cannot confront "the matter" that comes into question here. For both the rejection and the acceptance of these proofs hold fast to the com- mon identical presupposition that here it is a matter of proofs after the manner of the "natural sciences. " This preconception is the genuine error. It precludes all understanding from the outset because it makes all correct questioning impossible.
It remains essential that we attain sufficient clarity concerning the foundations, the approach, the direction, and the region of Nietzsche's thought. Furthermore, we must recognize that even when we have achieved these things we will have performed only the most pressing preliminary work. It could be that the form in which Nietzsche applies and presents his proofs is only a foreground, and that this foreground can deceive us about the properly "metaphysical" train of his thought. In addition, we must confront the extrinsic circumstance that Nietz- sche's notes are not structured in such a way as to be consistent and
Nietzsche's Proofofthe Doctrine ofReturn 109
conclusive. And yet the principal thoughts are clear, recurring again and again in later years, long after Nietzsche had left his "positivistic" phase-the one that ostensibly caused him to get sidetracked among the natural sciences-behind. We shall limit ourselves now to indicat- ing the principal steps on this path of thought.
The eternal return of the same is to prove to be the fundamental determination of the world totality. If we for our part are to anticipate the kind of fundamental determination of being as a whole we are confronting here, by naming it more precisely and by setting it in relief against other such determinations, then we may say that eternal return of the same is to prove to be the way in which being as a whole is. That can succeed only if we show that the way in which being as a whole is necessarily results from what we have called the constitution of the world totality. The latter becomes manifest to us in the determinations listed earlier. Hence we will refer back to them in order to test whether and in what way these determinations in their proper context indicate the necessity of the eternal return of the same.
The general character of force yields the finitude (closure) of the world and of its becoming. According to such finitude of becoming, the advance and progress of cosmic occurrence into infinity is impos- sible. Thus the world's becoming must turn back on itself.
Yet the world's becoming runs backward and forward in endless (infinite) time, as real time. The finite becoming which runs its course in such infinite time must long ago have achieved a kind of homeosta- sis-a state of balance and calm-if such were ever possible for it, inasmuch as the possibilities of being, finite according to number and kind, must of necessity be exhausted in infinite time-must already have been exhausted. Because no such homeostasis or equilibrium prevails, it is clear that it never was attained, and here that means that it never can come to prevail. The world's becoming, as finite, turning back on itself, is therefore a permanent becoming, that is to say, eter- nal becoming. Since such cosmic becoming, as finite becoming in an infinite time, takes place continuously, not ceasing whenever its finite possibilities are exhausted, it must already have repeated itself, indeed an infinite number of times. And as permanent becoming it will con- tinue to repeat itself in the future. Because the world totality is finite in
110 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
the configurations of its becoming, although immeasurable in practical terms, the possibilities of transformation in its collective character are also finite, however much they appear to us to be infinite, because unsurveyable and hence ever novel. And because the nexus of effetts among the particular processes of becoming-finite in number-is a closed nexus, every process of becoming must retroactively draw the entire past in its wake; or, since it works its effects always ahead, it must propel all things forward. This implies that every process of becoming must reproduce itself; it and all the others recur as the same. The eternal return of the totality of world becoming must be a recurrence of the same.
The return of the same would be impossible only if it could be avoided in some way. This would presuppose that the world totality renounced the recurrence of the same, and this in turn would imply a forward-reaching intention to that end and a corresponding positing of the goal, namely, the positing of the ultimate goal of somehow avoid- ing the unavoidable. For, on the basis of the finitude and permanence of becoming in infinite time, recurrence of the same is indeed un- avoidable. Yet to presuppose the positing of such a goal runs counter to the fundamental constitution of the world totality as necessitous chaos. All that remains to be said is what we have already shown to be neces- sary: the character of the world totality, its character as Becoming- and here that also means its character as Being-when defined as the eternal chaos of necessity, is eternal return of the same.
15. The Ostensibly Scientific Procedure of Proof. Philosophy and Science
If we look back over the train of thought we have pursued and ask how the principle of eternal return of the same may be proved, the evidenti- ary procedure involved seems to be something like the following: From statements concerning the constitution of the world totality we must necessarily conclude to the principle of eternal return of the same. Without entering immediately into the question as to what kind of "conclusion" this deduction arrives at, we can reach a decision that remains significant for all our further reflections, albeit only by way of a clarification of the most general kind.
We must ask whether this evidentiary procedure pertains at all to the "natural sciences," whatever :we may make of its suitability and its "merits. " What is "scientific" about it? The answer is: nothing at all.
What is being discussed in the deduction itself and in the series of determinations of the cosmic order which precedes it? Force, finitude, endlessness, sameness, recurrence, becoming, space, time, chaos, and necessity. None of these has anything to do with "natural science. " If one wished to draw the natural sciences into consideration here at all, all he could say would be that the sciences do presuppose determina- tions such as becoming, space, time, sameness, and recurrence-in fact, must of necessity presuppose them as elements that remain eter-· nally barred from their realm of inquiry and their manner of demon- stration.
True, the sciences must make use of a particular notion of force, motion, space, and time; but they can never say what force, motion, space, and time are; they cannot ask what such things are as long as they remain sciences and avoid trespassing into the realm of philos-
112 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
ophy. The fact that every science as such, being the specific science it is, gains no access to its fundamental concepts and to what those con- cepts grasp, goes hand in hand with the fact that no science can assert something about itself with the help of its own scientific resources. · What mathematics is can never be determined mathematically; what philology is can never be discussed philologically; what biology is can never be uttered biologically. To ask what a science is, is to ask a question that is no longer a scientific question. The moment he or she poses a question with regard to science in general, and that always means a question concerning specific possible sciences, the inquirer steps into a new realm, a realm with evidentiary claims and forms of proof quite different from those that are customary in the sciences. This is the realm ofphilosophy. It is not affixed to the sciences or piled on top of them. It lies hidden in the innermost domain of science, so much so that it would be true to say that mere science is only scientific -that is to say, partaking of genuine knowledge, above and beyond being a repertory of certain techniques-to the extent that it is philo- sophical. From this we can gather the alarming proportions of non- sense and absurdity in all ostensible efforts to renew the "sciences" and simultaneously abolish philosophy.
What does it mean to say that a science is "philosophical"? It does not mean that it explicitly "borrows" from a particular "philosophy," or appeals to it for support, or alludes to it, or shares its terminology and employs its concepts. It does not at all mean that "philosophy" as such-that is to say, philosophy as a developed discipline or as an autonomous piece of work-should or could be the clearly visible superstructure for science. The grounds of science must rather be what philosophy alone sets in relief and founds, namely, the cognizable truth of beings as such. Hence, to say that a science is philosophical means that it knowingly and questioningly reverts to being as such and as a whole, and inquires into the truth of beings; such science sets itselfin motion within the fundamental positions we take toward be- ings, and allows these positions to have an impact on scientific work. The standard by which such impact may be measured by no means lies in the number, frequency, or visibility of philosophical concepts and terms that occur in a scientific treatise; the standard lies in the assured-
The Ostensibly Scientific Procedure of Proof 113
ness, clarity, and originality of the questioning itself-in the durability of the will to think. Such a will does not swoon over the results of science, does not rest content in them. It always grasps results as noth- ing more than means to an end, as a route to further work.
A science may therefore become philosophical in either of two ways. First, it may approximate to the thinking that is proper to a philosophy, when at some point the realm of such thinking (and not merely its statements and formulas) places a direct claim on scientific inquiry and induces it to alter meticulously the very horizons of its customary oper- ations. Second, a science may become philosophical as a result of the intrinsic inquisitiveness of the science itself. A science may get caught up in the original attractive power of knowledge by thinking back to its own origins, in such a way that these origins themselves determine every step in the operations of that science.
For these reasons a profound sense of mutual agreement is possible between philosophical thought and scientific research, without their having to act on one another in any explicit way, without each having to penetrate the other's sphere of inquiry and assign it its tasks. In spite of the enormous distance that separates thinker and researcher in their realms and modes of work, there is every likelihood that they will enter into an inherent and mutually fructifying relationship, a way of being with one another that is far more efficacious than the much-acclaimed but extrinsic "cooperation" of a group allied with a view to some spe- cific purpose.
The strongest creative impulses can thrive only on the basis of such mutual agreement, which spans a luminous bridge across vast dis- tances. Here the freedom, alterity, and uniqueness of each can come into expansive play, occasioning a properly fruitful exchange.
On the other hand, it is an old lesson based on incontrovertible experience that academically organized community efforts, arranged and outfitted for some more or less specific purpose, and "cooperative labors" among the sciences springing from utilitarian motives petrify sooner or later. They grow hollow and vacuous, precisely because of the excessive proximity, the familiarity, and the "routine" shared by the co~workers.
If therefore the natural and the human sciences, already wholly
114 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
subservient to technology, are exposed to such unusual stress and such undisguised exploitation-and in our current predicament they are inevitably so exposed-we can prevent the disconcerting situation from becoming truly catastrophic only if the greatest counterweights are brought to bear on the innermost core of the sciences. And this can occur only if the sciences become thoroughly philosophical.
Precisely because chemistry and physics have become necessary to such a vast extent, philosophy is far from superfluous; it is even more necessary-"needful" in a quite profound sense-than, for example, chemistry itself. The latter, left to itself, is soon exhausted. It makes no difference whether it takes a decade or a century before the process of such potential atrophy becomes visible to the casual observer: so far as the essence of such atrophy is concerned we must fend it off wherever it emerges.
Nietzsche did not stray into the natural sciences. Rather, the natural science that was contemporary to him drifted dubiously into a dubious philosophy. The evidentiary procedure for the doctrine of return is therefore in no case subject to the jurisdiction of natural science, even if the "facts" of natural science should run counter to the outcome of that procedure. What are the "facts" of natural science and of all science, if not particular appearances interpreted according to explicit, tacit, or utterly unknown metaphysical principles, principles that re- flect a doctrine concerning beings as a whole?
In order to hold at bay the scientific misconception of Nietzsche's train of thought it is not even necessary to refer to the straightforward state of affairs represented in Nietzsche's reflections-namely, the fact that he never limits those reflections to the region of knowledge at- tained by physics or the other natural sciences. On the contrary, he is concerned with the totality of beings: "Everything has returned: Sirius and the spider and your thoughts during this past hour and this very thought of yours, that everything recurs" (XII, 62). Since when are "thoughts" and "hours" objects of physics or biology?
16. The Character of "Proof" for the Doctrine of Return
As yet our reflections have decided nothing about evidentiary proce- dure in the form of a deductive process and about the train of Nietz- sche's thought as a "proof. " With the sole intention of clarifying Nietzsche's thought we shall now ask the following questions. Is Nietz- sche's train of thought a proofat all in the usual sense? Is it a deduc-
tion based on a series of propositions? Are propositions concerning the veritable essence of the world posited here as major premises for a conclusion? Is the proposition of eternal recurrence deduced from such premises?
At first glimpse, this seems to be the case. We ourselves initiated the evidentiary procedure precisely in this way. We concluded from state- ments concerning the constitution of beings as a whole to the mode of Being of these beings; we deduced the necessity of eternal return of the same for being as a whole. Yet what gives us the right without further ado to draw conclusions concerning the import and the mode of a philosophical train of thought from the form in which we ourselves have presented it, especially when specific historical circumstances condition our presentation? The reply might be ventured: To all ap- pearances, anything that is written and discussed consists of propo~i­ tions and sequences of propositions, and these are the same whether they appear in scientific or philosophical treatises. Their "content"
may differ, perhaps, but their "logic," which is what counts, is identi- cal. Or is the very "logic" of philosophy altogether different? Must it not be totally different, and not merely because philosophical thought relates to a content that is in some respect distinguishable from the
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
124 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
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.