No More Learning

Such knowledge is also barred to faith, which must from the start regard all "knowledge" as "heathen" and as folly. Such knowl- edge thrives only on the basis of an original stance of inquiry. The question of who man is must take its departure from that point which even the most desultory view of things can identify as the point of inception for the humanization of all beings, namely, man's mere addressing and naming of beings, that is to say, language. It may be that man does not at all humanize beings by virtue of language; on the contrary, perhaps man has up to now thoroughly mistaken and misin- terpreted the essence of language itself, and with it his own Being and its essential provenance. But when we pose the question of the essence of language we are already asking about being as a whole, provided
reached the public. It is now printed, with a revealing commentary, in Michael Murray, ed. , Heidegger and Modern Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 80-83.
The "Humanization" ofBeings 105
language is not an aggiomeration of words used to designate sundry familiar things but the original resonance ofthe truth ofa world.
The question of who man is must in its very formulation include in its approach man in and with his relations to beings as a whole; it must include in its inquiry the question of being as a whole. But we have just now heard that being as a whole can only be interpreted by human beings in the first place-and now man himself is to be interpreted in terms of being as a whole. Everything here is spinning in a circle. Of that there can be no doubt. The question is whether and in what way we can succeed in taking this circle seriously, instead of continually closing our eyes in the face of it.
The world interpretation that devolves upon the thought of eternal return of the same shows that a relation to man announces itself in the essence of eternity as midday and moment. Here that very circle plays a role, requiring that man be thought on the basis of world, and world on the basis of man. To all appearances that would suggest that the thought of eternal return of the same bears traces of the uttermost humanization; the thought nevertheless is and wants to be the very opposite. Furthermore, this circle would explain the fact that as a consequence of the will to dehumanize world interpretation Nietzsche is compelled to will supreme humanization, hence the fact that each demands rather than excludes the other.
The upshot would be that Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return is not to be measured by gratuitous standards, but only on the basis of its own law. It would demand that we meditate in advance on the kind of evidentiary claim and evidentiary force that are germane to the Nietz- schean proofs for the doctrine of eternal return.
But we can drop the subjunctives. For what we have suggested is indeed the case.
Suspicions concerning humanization, no matter how palpably near they are and no matter how readily everyone can clumsily wield them, remain superfluous and groundless as long as they have not put them- selves in question-by asking the question of who man is. That ques- tion cannot even be posed, much less answered, without the question of what being as a whole is. However, the latter question embraces a more original question, one which neither Nietzsche nor philosophy prior to him unfolded or was able to unfold.
14. Nietzsche's Proof of the Doctrine of Return
With the thought of eternal return of the same Nietzsche is moving in the realm of the question as to what being as a whole is. Now that we have staked out the field of Nietzsche's sense of being as a whole and described its constitution, we would do well to pursue the proofs by which Nietzsche attributes to being as a whole the determination of eternal return of the same. (In the course of such a pursuit we must set aside those suspicions concerning humanization-which, in the meantime, have become dubious indeed. ) Obviously, everything de- pends on the evidentiary force of these proofs. To be sure, evidentiary force. All evidentiary force remains impotent so long as we fail to grasp the mode and the essence of the proofs in question. Yet these things, along with the respective possibility and necessity of proof, are defined by the kind of truth that is in question. A proof can be fully conclusive, without formal logical errors of any kind, and still prove nothing and remain irrelevant, simply because its point of attack misses the precise nexus of truth and alters nothing within that nexus. For example, a proof for the existence of God can be constructed by means of the most rigorous formal logic and yet prove nothing, since a god who must permit his existence to be proved in the first place is ultimately a very ungodly god. The best such proofs of existence can yield is blasphemy. Or, to take another example, one can try-and this has happened over and over again-to prove experimentally, through experience, the fun- damental principle of causality. Such a proof is more deleterious than any attempt to deny the validity of that principle on philosophical or sophistical grounds; more ruinous, because it jumbles all thought and
Nietzsche's Proofofthe Doctrine ofReturn 107
inquiry from the ground up, inasmuch as a fundamental principle in its very essence cannot be empirically proved. Always and everywhere the empiricist concludes, wrongly, that the fundamental principle can- not be proved at all. He takes his proofs and his truth to be the sole possible ones. Everything that is inaccessible to him he proclaims to be superstition, something that "simply cannot be dealt with. " As if what is most magnificent, most profound, were something "we" can never "deal with" unless we deal with it by thinking empirically and thus by shutting ourselves off from it irrevocably. There are many different kinds of proofs.
With regard to Nietzsche's "proofs" for his doctrine of return, prior interpretations and presentations have been especially anxious to make Nietzsche's prediction·come true: "Everyone talks about me-but no- body thinks of me. " No one compels himself to think through Nietz- sche's thoughts. Of course, such thinking through is confronted by a bedeviling peculiarity: it never succeeds if the thinker fails to think beyond-though not away from-the thought he is to be thinking about. Only if it thinks beyond does thinking through possess the free- dom of movement that it needs if it is to avoid getting tangled up in itself.
In the case at hand, namely, the Nietzschean proofs for the eternal return of the same, it was especially gratifying to bid a quick adieu to thought-without losing face thereby. It was said that with these proofs Nietzsche had gotten sidetracked in physics which, number one, he did not understand thoroughly enough and, number two, does not belong in philosophy anyway. We perspicacious fellows know full well that you cannot prove philosophical doctrines with assertions and argu- ments from the natural sciences. But, it is said, we are inclined to- yes, we really must-forgive Nietzsche his aberration in the directioi:~ of natural science. After all, he too went through his positivist phase, at the end of the 1870s and in the early 1880s, a period when anyone who wanted to have any influence at all spoke up for a "scientific world view," much in the manner of Haeckel and his crew. In those
decades "liberalism" was rampant; it spawned the very idea of "world view. " Every "world view" in itself and as such is liberal! So let us say
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that this escapade of Nietzsche's into the natural sciences remains an historical eccentricity and let it go at that.
It seems clear that we could hardly expect persons sporting such an attitude to think through Nietzsche's thought of thoughts.
Recently, however, some attempts have been made to think through the proofs for this thought. Because of the reference to an essential connection between "Being" and "Time," some have paused to won- der, asking themselves: If Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return of the same has to do with the universe, being as a whole, which one could roughly call "Being"; and if eternity and recurrence, as transgressions of past and future, are somehow related to "Time"; then perhaps there is something to Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return of the same, and maybe we had better not shrug off his proofs as effulgences of a project that was doomed to fail. And so the proofs are taken in earnest. Commentators show-by way of mathematical exertions, no less-that his proofs are not so bad, not counting a couple of "mistakes. " Indeed, Nietzsche anticipated several lines of thought in contemporary physics -and what could be more important for a real contemporary man than his science! This apparently more material and more affirmative stance with respect to Nietzsche's "proofs" is, however, every bit as dubious as its opposite; it is immaterial, inasmuch as it does not and cannot confront "the matter" that comes into question here. For both the rejection and the acceptance of these proofs hold fast to the com- mon identical presupposition that here it is a matter of proofs after the manner of the "natural sciences. " This preconception is the genuine error. It precludes all understanding from the outset because it makes all correct questioning impossible.
It remains essential that we attain sufficient clarity concerning the foundations, the approach, the direction, and the region of Nietzsche's thought. Furthermore, we must recognize that even when we have achieved these things we will have performed only the most pressing preliminary work. It could be that the form in which Nietzsche applies and presents his proofs is only a foreground, and that this foreground can deceive us about the properly "metaphysical" train of his thought. In addition, we must confront the extrinsic circumstance that Nietz- sche's notes are not structured in such a way as to be consistent and
Nietzsche's Proofofthe Doctrine ofReturn 109
conclusive. And yet the principal thoughts are clear, recurring again and again in later years, long after Nietzsche had left his "positivistic" phase-the one that ostensibly caused him to get sidetracked among the natural sciences-behind. We shall limit ourselves now to indicat- ing the principal steps on this path of thought.
The eternal return of the same is to prove to be the fundamental determination of the world totality. If we for our part are to anticipate the kind of fundamental determination of being as a whole we are confronting here, by naming it more precisely and by setting it in relief against other such determinations, then we may say that eternal return of the same is to prove to be the way in which being as a whole is. That can succeed only if we show that the way in which being as a whole is necessarily results from what we have called the constitution of the world totality. The latter becomes manifest to us in the determinations listed earlier. Hence we will refer back to them in order to test whether and in what way these determinations in their proper context indicate the necessity of the eternal return of the same.
The general character of force yields the finitude (closure) of the world and of its becoming. According to such finitude of becoming, the advance and progress of cosmic occurrence into infinity is impos- sible. Thus the world's becoming must turn back on itself.
Yet the world's becoming runs backward and forward in endless (infinite) time, as real time. The finite becoming which runs its course in such infinite time must long ago have achieved a kind of homeosta- sis-a state of balance and calm-if such were ever possible for it, inasmuch as the possibilities of being, finite according to number and kind, must of necessity be exhausted in infinite time-must already have been exhausted. Because no such homeostasis or equilibrium prevails, it is clear that it never was attained, and here that means that it never can come to prevail. The world's becoming, as finite, turning back on itself, is therefore a permanent becoming, that is to say, eter- nal becoming. Since such cosmic becoming, as finite becoming in an infinite time, takes place continuously, not ceasing whenever its finite possibilities are exhausted, it must already have repeated itself, indeed an infinite number of times. And as permanent becoming it will con- tinue to repeat itself in the future. Because the world totality is finite in
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the configurations of its becoming, although immeasurable in practical terms, the possibilities of transformation in its collective character are also finite, however much they appear to us to be infinite, because unsurveyable and hence ever novel. And because the nexus of effetts among the particular processes of becoming-finite in number-is a closed nexus, every process of becoming must retroactively draw the entire past in its wake; or, since it works its effects always ahead, it must propel all things forward. This implies that every process of becoming must reproduce itself; it and all the others recur as the same. The eternal return of the totality of world becoming must be a recurrence of the same.
The return of the same would be impossible only if it could be avoided in some way. This would presuppose that the world totality renounced the recurrence of the same, and this in turn would imply a forward-reaching intention to that end and a corresponding positing of the goal, namely, the positing of the ultimate goal of somehow avoid- ing the unavoidable. For, on the basis of the finitude and permanence of becoming in infinite time, recurrence of the same is indeed un- avoidable. Yet to presuppose the positing of such a goal runs counter to the fundamental constitution of the world totality as necessitous chaos. All that remains to be said is what we have already shown to be neces- sary: the character of the world totality, its character as Becoming- and here that also means its character as Being-when defined as the eternal chaos of necessity, is eternal return of the same.
15. The Ostensibly Scientific Procedure of Proof. Philosophy and Science
If we look back over the train of thought we have pursued and ask how the principle of eternal return of the same may be proved, the evidenti- ary procedure involved seems to be something like the following: From statements concerning the constitution of the world totality we must necessarily conclude to the principle of eternal return of the same. Without entering immediately into the question as to what kind of "conclusion" this deduction arrives at, we can reach a decision that remains significant for all our further reflections, albeit only by way of a clarification of the most general kind.
We must ask whether this evidentiary procedure pertains at all to the "natural sciences," whatever :we may make of its suitability and its "merits. " What is "scientific" about it? The answer is: nothing at all.
What is being discussed in the deduction itself and in the series of determinations of the cosmic order which precedes it? Force, finitude, endlessness, sameness, recurrence, becoming, space, time, chaos, and necessity. None of these has anything to do with "natural science. " If one wished to draw the natural sciences into consideration here at all, all he could say would be that the sciences do presuppose determina- tions such as becoming, space, time, sameness, and recurrence-in fact, must of necessity presuppose them as elements that remain eter-· nally barred from their realm of inquiry and their manner of demon- stration.
True, the sciences must make use of a particular notion of force, motion, space, and time; but they can never say what force, motion, space, and time are; they cannot ask what such things are as long as they remain sciences and avoid trespassing into the realm of philos-
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ophy. The fact that every science as such, being the specific science it is, gains no access to its fundamental concepts and to what those con- cepts grasp, goes hand in hand with the fact that no science can assert something about itself with the help of its own scientific resources. · What mathematics is can never be determined mathematically; what philology is can never be discussed philologically; what biology is can never be uttered biologically. To ask what a science is, is to ask a question that is no longer a scientific question. The moment he or she poses a question with regard to science in general, and that always means a question concerning specific possible sciences, the inquirer steps into a new realm, a realm with evidentiary claims and forms of proof quite different from those that are customary in the sciences. This is the realm ofphilosophy. It is not affixed to the sciences or piled on top of them. It lies hidden in the innermost domain of science, so much so that it would be true to say that mere science is only scientific -that is to say, partaking of genuine knowledge, above and beyond being a repertory of certain techniques-to the extent that it is philo- sophical. From this we can gather the alarming proportions of non- sense and absurdity in all ostensible efforts to renew the "sciences" and simultaneously abolish philosophy.
What does it mean to say that a science is "philosophical"? It does not mean that it explicitly "borrows" from a particular "philosophy," or appeals to it for support, or alludes to it, or shares its terminology and employs its concepts. It does not at all mean that "philosophy" as such-that is to say, philosophy as a developed discipline or as an autonomous piece of work-should or could be the clearly visible superstructure for science. The grounds of science must rather be what philosophy alone sets in relief and founds, namely, the cognizable truth of beings as such. Hence, to say that a science is philosophical means that it knowingly and questioningly reverts to being as such and as a whole, and inquires into the truth of beings; such science sets itselfin motion within the fundamental positions we take toward be- ings, and allows these positions to have an impact on scientific work. The standard by which such impact may be measured by no means lies in the number, frequency, or visibility of philosophical concepts and terms that occur in a scientific treatise; the standard lies in the assured-
The Ostensibly Scientific Procedure of Proof 113
ness, clarity, and originality of the questioning itself-in the durability of the will to think. Such a will does not swoon over the results of science, does not rest content in them. It always grasps results as noth- ing more than means to an end, as a route to further work.
A science may therefore become philosophical in either of two ways. First, it may approximate to the thinking that is proper to a philosophy, when at some point the realm of such thinking (and not merely its statements and formulas) places a direct claim on scientific inquiry and induces it to alter meticulously the very horizons of its customary oper- ations. Second, a science may become philosophical as a result of the intrinsic inquisitiveness of the science itself. A science may get caught up in the original attractive power of knowledge by thinking back to its own origins, in such a way that these origins themselves determine every step in the operations of that science.
For these reasons a profound sense of mutual agreement is possible between philosophical thought and scientific research, without their having to act on one another in any explicit way, without each having to penetrate the other's sphere of inquiry and assign it its tasks. In spite of the enormous distance that separates thinker and researcher in their realms and modes of work, there is every likelihood that they will enter into an inherent and mutually fructifying relationship, a way of being with one another that is far more efficacious than the much-acclaimed but extrinsic "cooperation" of a group allied with a view to some spe- cific purpose.
The strongest creative impulses can thrive only on the basis of such mutual agreement, which spans a luminous bridge across vast dis- tances. Here the freedom, alterity, and uniqueness of each can come into expansive play, occasioning a properly fruitful exchange.
On the other hand, it is an old lesson based on incontrovertible experience that academically organized community efforts, arranged and outfitted for some more or less specific purpose, and "cooperative labors" among the sciences springing from utilitarian motives petrify sooner or later. They grow hollow and vacuous, precisely because of the excessive proximity, the familiarity, and the "routine" shared by the co~workers.
If therefore the natural and the human sciences, already wholly
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subservient to technology, are exposed to such unusual stress and such undisguised exploitation-and in our current predicament they are inevitably so exposed-we can prevent the disconcerting situation from becoming truly catastrophic only if the greatest counterweights are brought to bear on the innermost core of the sciences. And this can occur only if the sciences become thoroughly philosophical.
Precisely because chemistry and physics have become necessary to such a vast extent, philosophy is far from superfluous; it is even more necessary-"needful" in a quite profound sense-than, for example, chemistry itself. The latter, left to itself, is soon exhausted. It makes no difference whether it takes a decade or a century before the process of such potential atrophy becomes visible to the casual observer: so far as the essence of such atrophy is concerned we must fend it off wherever it emerges.
Nietzsche did not stray into the natural sciences. Rather, the natural science that was contemporary to him drifted dubiously into a dubious philosophy. The evidentiary procedure for the doctrine of return is therefore in no case subject to the jurisdiction of natural science, even if the "facts" of natural science should run counter to the outcome of that procedure. What are the "facts" of natural science and of all science, if not particular appearances interpreted according to explicit, tacit, or utterly unknown metaphysical principles, principles that re- flect a doctrine concerning beings as a whole?
In order to hold at bay the scientific misconception of Nietzsche's train of thought it is not even necessary to refer to the straightforward state of affairs represented in Nietzsche's reflections-namely, the fact that he never limits those reflections to the region of knowledge at- tained by physics or the other natural sciences. On the contrary, he is concerned with the totality of beings: "Everything has returned: Sirius and the spider and your thoughts during this past hour and this very thought of yours, that everything recurs" (XII, 62). Since when are "thoughts" and "hours" objects of physics or biology?
16. The Character of "Proof" for the Doctrine of Return
As yet our reflections have decided nothing about evidentiary proce- dure in the form of a deductive process and about the train of Nietz- sche's thought as a "proof. " With the sole intention of clarifying Nietzsche's thought we shall now ask the following questions. Is Nietz- sche's train of thought a proofat all in the usual sense? Is it a deduc-
tion based on a series of propositions? Are propositions concerning the veritable essence of the world posited here as major premises for a conclusion? Is the proposition of eternal recurrence deduced from such premises?
At first glimpse, this seems to be the case. We ourselves initiated the evidentiary procedure precisely in this way. We concluded from state- ments concerning the constitution of beings as a whole to the mode of Being of these beings; we deduced the necessity of eternal return of the same for being as a whole. Yet what gives us the right without further ado to draw conclusions concerning the import and the mode of a philosophical train of thought from the form in which we ourselves have presented it, especially when specific historical circumstances condition our presentation? The reply might be ventured: To all ap- pearances, anything that is written and discussed consists of propo~i­ tions and sequences of propositions, and these are the same whether they appear in scientific or philosophical treatises. Their "content"
may differ, perhaps, but their "logic," which is what counts, is identi- cal. Or is the very "logic" of philosophy altogether different? Must it not be totally different, and not merely because philosophical thought relates to a content that is in some respect distinguishable from the
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objects of the sciences? For example, the sciences deal with atomic fission, genetic inheritance, price calculation, Frederick the Great, or the criminal code; and they debate over differential equations and Sophocles' Antigone. Correspondingly, philosophy deals with things like eternal recurrence. Different things, different logic. If that were the way matters stood, philosophy would merely be one science among others. However, each science deals with only one particular domain of beings, which it always considers under one particular aspect; phi- losophy thinks beings as a whole, under the aspect that includes every other aspect, necessarily and from the outset. The "logic" of philos- ophy is thus not simply "something else again," but is totally different. To achieve philosophical thinking we need to adopt a wholly different stance toward thought. Above all, we need a special kind of readiness to think. No matter how much attention we pay to formal logic in the presentation of a particular evidentiary procedure, and no matter how much our procedure seems identical with the customary ones, when we think that way we are always thinking formally and extrinsically.
Let us find our way back to the question concerning the character of Nietzsche's train of thought in his "proofs" for the doctrine of return, and let us repeat the question: Is the principle of eternal return dis- closed by way of a deduction from prior propositions asserted of the nature of the world? Or does not the very essence of the world first become palpable as an eternal chaos of necessity by means of the determination of the world totality as one that recurs in the same? If that is how matters stand, then the ostensible proof is not at all a proof that could have its force in the cogency and conclusiveness of its de- ductive steps. What proffered itself as a proof in our own presentation is nothing more than the revelation of positings that are co-posited- indeed necessarily co-posited-in the projection of being as a whole onto Being as eternally recurrent in the same. But then this proof is simply an articulation of the cohesion of the projection itself and what it immediately co-posits. In short, what we have here is the unfolding of a projection, by no means its computation and its grounding.
If our interpretation now brings us to the heart's core of Nietzsche's thought-as a metaphysical thought-then all the rest becomes highly questionable. To posit the nature of the world in terms of the funda-
The Character of "Proof" 117
mental character of eternal return of the same is hence purely arbitrary if the world totality does not really disclose such a basic character-if such a character is merely attributed to it, foisted onto it. Furthermore, such positing is the utter extremity of the very thing Nietzsche wished to avoid, namely, the humanizing of beings. Did not the provenance of the thought of eternal return come to show itself in the experience of the moment as the most poignantly human of attitudes toward time? The upshot is that Nietzsche not only applies one human experience to beings as a whole but also does so in contradiction to himself, inasmuch as he is the one who wants to abjure humanization. Seen in terms of the whole, Nietzsche's own procedure remains unclear in the most decisive respect-and that does not seem auspicious for a philoso- pher, especially one as demanding as Nietzsche. Are we to suppose that Nietzsche does not know he is "reading into things"?
He knows it, only too well. He knows it better-that is to say, more painfully and honestly-than any previous thinker ever knew it. Dur- ing the very years he is trying to think the essence of the world in the direction of eternal return of the same, Nietzsche achieves waxing clarity concerning the fact that human beings always think within the confinements of their little "corner" of the world, their tiny angle of space-time. In the second edition of The Gay Science, published in
1887, Nietzsche writes (number 374): "We cannot see around our own corner. " Here man is grasped and is designated as a veritable Little Jack Horner. Thus we find a clear expression of the fact that everything that is accessible in any way is encompassed within a particular range of vision determined by a particular corner, a clear expression and ac- knowledgment of the fact that the humanization of all things is un- avoidable in every single step that thought takes. Hence the interpreta- tion of the world's nature as a necessitous chaos is also impossible in the intended sense-namely, in the sense that it would strip away ·all humanization. Or it must be conceded merely as a prospect and a perspective that peep from their own little corner. However we decide, it remains the case that the intention to put out of action all humaniz- ing tendencies in our thoughts on the world's essence cannot endure side by side with acknowledgment of mankind's Little-Jack-Horner es- sence. If this particular intention is held to be practicable, then man
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would have to get a grip on the world's essence from a location outside of every corner; he would have to occupy something like a standpoint of standpointlessness.
And in point of fact we still have scholars today who busy themselves with philosophy and who consider freedom-from-every-standpoint not to be a standpoint, as though such freedom did not depend upon those very standpoints. These curious attempts to flee from one's own shad- ow we may leave to themselves, since discussion of them yields no tangible results. Yet we must heed one thing: this standpoint of free- dom-from-standpoints is of the opinion that it has overcome the one- sidedness and bias of prior philosophy, which always was, and is, defined by its standpoints. However, the standpoint of standpointless- ness represents no overcoming. In truth it is the extreme consequence, affirmation, and final stage of that opinion concerning philosophy which locates all philosophy extrinsically in standpoints that are ulti- mately right in front of us, standpoints whose one-sidedness we can try to bring into equilibrium. We do not alleviate the ostensible damage and danger which we fear in the fact that philosophy is located in a particular place-such location being the essential and indispensable legacy of every philosophy-by denying and repudiating the fact; we alleviate the danger only by thinking through and grasping the indige- nous character of philosophy in terms of its original essence and its necessity, that is to say, by posing anew the question concerning the essence of truth and the essence of human Dasein, and by elaborating a radically new response to that question.
Either the excision of every kind of humanization is held to be possible, and there has to be something like a standpoint that is free from all standpoints; or human beings are acknowledged as the cor- nered creatures they are, and we must deny the possibility of any non- humanizing conception of the world totality. 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
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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"
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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. 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
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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.
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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
130 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
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).