Jemand, der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht und kann iiberhaupt nicht wollen; ein W ollen im
allgemeinen
gibt es nicht; "denn der Wille ist, als Affekt des Befehls, das entscheidende Abzeichen der Selbstherrlichkeit und Kraft" ("Die frohliche Wissenschaft," 5.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
For example, a lizard hears the slightest rustling in the grass but it does not hear a pistol shot fired quite close by.
Accordingly, the creature develops a kind of interpretation of its surroundings and there- by of all occurrence, not incidentally, but as the fundamental process of life itself: "The perspectival [is] the basic condition of all life" (VII, 4).
With a view to the basic constitution of living things Nietzsche says (XIII, 63), "The essential aspect of organic beings is a new manifold, which is itself an occurrence. " The living creature possesses the char- acter of a perspectival preview which circumscribes a "line of horizon" about him, within whose scope something can come forward into appearance for him at all. Now, in the "organic" there is a multiplicity of drives and forces, each of which has its perspective. The manifold
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 213
of perspectives distinguishes the organic from the inorganic. Yet even the latter has its perspective; it is just that in the inorganic, in attraction and repulsion, the "power relations" are clearly fixed (XIII, 62). The mechanistic representation of "inanimate" nature is only a hypothesis for purposes of calculation; it overlooks the fact that here too relations of forces and concatenations of perspectives hold sway. Every point of force per se is perspectival. As a result it becomes manifest "that there is no inorganic world" (XIII, 81). Everything "real" is alive, is "per- spectival" in itself, and asserts itself in its perspective against others. On that basis we can understand Nietzsche's note from the years 1886-87 (XIII, 227-28):
Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is proper to the being, and is not only a form of observation, a relation between different beings? Do the various forces stand in relation, so that the relation is tied to a perceptual optics? That would be possible if all Being were essentially something which perceives.
We would not have to go far to find proof to show that this conception of beings is precisely that of Leibniz, except that Nietzsche eliminates the latter's theological metaphysics, i. e. , his Platonism. All being is in itself perspectival-perceptual, and that means, in the sense now deline- ated, "sensuous. "
The sensuous is no longer the "apparent," no longer the penumbra; it alone is what is real, hence "true. " And what becomes of semblance? Semblance itself is proper to the essence of the real. We can readily see that in the perspectival character of the actual. The following statement provides an opening onto the matter of semblance within the perspectivally constructed actual: "With the organic world begin in- determinateness and semblance" (XIII, 288; cf. also 229). In the unity of an organic being there is a multiplicity of drives and capacities (each of which possesses its perspective) which struggle against one another. In such a multiplicity the univocity of the particular perspective in which the actual in any given case stands is lost. The equivocal char- acter of what shows itself in several perspectives is granted, along with the indeterminate, which now appears one way, then another, which
214 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
first proffers this appearance, then that one. But such appearance becomes semblance in the sense of mere appearance only when what becomes manifest in one perspective petrifies and is taken to be the sole definitive appearance, to the disregard of the other perspectives that crowd round in turn.
In that way, palpable things, "objects," emerge for creatures in what they encounter; things that are constant, with enduring qualities, by which the creature can get its bearings. The entire range of what is fixed and constant is, according to the ancient Platonic conception, the region of "Being," the "true. " Such Being, viewed perspectivally, is but the one-sided, entrenched appearance, which is taken to be solely definitive. It thus becomes mere appearance; Being, the true, is mere appearance, error.
Error begins in the organic world. "Things," "substances," properties, act- "ivities" [Tiitig"keiten"]-one should not read all that into the inorganic world! They are the specific errors by virtue of which organisms live (XIII, 69).
In the organic world, the world of embodying life, where man too resides, "error" begins. That should not be taken as meaning that creatures, in distinction to members of the inorganic realm, can go astray. It means that those beings which in the definitive perspectival horizon of a creature appear to constitute its firmly established, existent world, in their Being are but appearance, mere appearance. Man's logic serves to make what he encounters identical, constant, ascertainable. Being, the true, which logic "firmly locates" (petrifies}, is but sem- blance; a semblance, an apparentness, that is essentially necessary to the creature as such, which is to say, a semblance that pertains to his survival, his establishment of self amidst ceaseless change. Because the real is perspectival in itself, apparentness as such is proper to reality. Truth, i. e. , true being, i. e. , what is constant and fixed, because it is the petrifying of any single given perspective, is always only an apparent- ness that has come to prevail, which is to say, it is always error. For that reason Nietzsche says (WM, 493}, "Truth is the kind of error without
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 215
which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides. "
Truth, that is, the true as the constant, is a kind of semblance that is justified as a necessary condition of the assertion of life. But upon deeper meditation it becomes clear that all appearance and all apparent- ness are possible only if something comes to the fore and shows itself at alL What in advance enables such appearing is the perspectival itself. That is what genuinely radiates, bringing something to show itself. When Nietzsche uses the word semblance [Schein] it is usually am- biguous. He knows it, too. "There are fateful words which appear to express an insight but which in truth hinder it; among them belongs the word 'semblance,' 'appearance'" (XIII, 50). Nietzsche does not become master of the fate entrenched in that word, which is to say, in the matter. He says (ibid. ),~· 'Semblance' as I understand it is the actual and sole reality of things. " That should be understood to mean not that
reality is something apparent, but that being-real is in itself perspecti- val, a bringing forward into appearance, a letting radiate; that it is in itself a shining. Reality is radiance.
Hence I do not posit "semblance" in opposition to "reality," but on the contrary take semblance to be the reality which resists transformation into an imaginative "world of truth. " A particular name for that reality would be "will to power," designated of course intrinsically and not on the basis of its ungraspable, fluid, Protean nature (XIII, 50; from the year 1886, at the latest).
Reality, Being, is Schein in the sense of perspectival letting-shine. But proper to that reality at the same time is the multiplicity of perspectives, and thus the possibility of illusion and of its being made fast, which means the possibility of truth as a kind of Schein in the_ sense of "mere" appearance. If truth is taken to be semblance, that is, as mere appearance and error, the implication is that truth is the fixed semblance which is necessarily inherent in perspectival shining-it is illusion. Nietzsche often identifies such illusion with "the lie": "One who tells the truth ends by realizing that he always lies" (XII, 293).
216 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Indeed Nietzsche at times defines perspectival shining as Schein in the sense of illusion and deception, contrasting illusion and deception to truth, which, as "Being," is also at bottom error.
We have already seen that creation, as forming and shaping, as well as the aesthetic pleasures related to such shaping, are grounded in the essence of life. Hence art too, and precisely it, must cohere most intimately with perspectival shining and letting shine. Art in the proper sense is art in the grand style, desirous of bringing waxing life itself to power. It is not an immobilizing but a liberating for expansion, a clarifying to the point of transfiguration, and this in two senses: first, stationing a thing in the clarity of Being; second, establishing such clarity as the heightening of life itself.
Life is in itself perspectival. It waxes and flourishes with the height and heightening of the world which is brought forward perspectivally to appearance, with the enhancement of the shining, that is, of what brings a thing to scintillate in such a way that life is transfigured. "Art and nothing but art! " (WM, 853, section II). Art induces reality, which is in itself a shining, to shine most profoundly and supremely in scintil- lating transfiguration. If "metaphysical" means nothing else than the essence of reality, and if reality consists in shining, we then understand the statement with which the section on art in The Will to Power closes (WM, 853}: " . . . 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity . . . . ' " Art is the most genuine and profound will to semblance, namely, to the scintillation of what transfigures, in which the supreme lawfulness of Dasein becomes visible. In contrast, truth is any given fixed apparition that allows life to rest firmly on a particular perspective and to preserve itself. As such fixation, "truth" is an im- mobilizing of life, and hence its inhibition and dissolution. "We have art so that we do not perish from the truth" (WM, 822}. It is "not possible . . . to live with the truth," if life is always enhancement of life; the "will to truth," i. e. , to fixed apparition, is "already a symptom of degeneration" (XIV, 368}. Now it becomes clear what the fifth and concluding proposition concerning art avers: art is worth more than truth.
Both art and truth are modes of perspectival shining. But the value
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 217
of the real is measured according to how it satisfies the essence of reality, how it accomplishes the shining and enhances reality. Art, as transfiguration, is more enhancing to life than truth, as fixation ofan apparition.
Now too we perceive to what extent the relation of art and truth must be a discordance for Nietzsche and for his philosophy, as inverted Platonism. Discordance is present only where the elements which sever the unity of their belonging-together diverge from one another by virtue of that very unity. The unity of their belonging-together is granted by the one reality, perspectival shining. To it belong both apparition and scintillating appearance as transfiguration. In order for the real (the living creature) to be real, it must on the one hand ensconce itself within a particular horizon, thus perduring in the illu- sion of truth. But in order for the real to remain real, it must on the other hand simultaneously transfigure itself by going beyond itself, surpassing itself in the scintillation of what is created in art-and that means it has to advance against the truth. While truth and art are
proper to the essence of reality with equal originality, they must diverge from one another and go counter to one another.
But because in Nietzsche's view semblance, as perspectival, also possesses the character of the nonactual, of illusion and deception, he must say, "The will to semblance, to illusion, to deception, to Becom- ing and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical' [that is to say, corre- sponding more to the essence of Being] than the will to truth, to actuality, to Being" (XIV, 369). This is expressed even more decisively in The Will to Power, no. 853, section I, where semblance is equated with "lie": " W e need the lie in order to achieve victory over this reality, this 'truth,' which is to say, in order to live . . . . That the lie is necessary for life is itself part and parcel of the frightful and questionable char- acter of existence. "
Art and truth are equally necessary for reality. As equally necessary they stand in severance. But their relationship first arouses dread when we consider that creation, i. e. , the metaphysical activity of art, receives yet another essential impulse the moment we descry the most tremen- dous event-the death of the God of morality. In Nietzsche's view,
218 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
existence can now be endured only in creation. Conducting reality to the power of its rule and of its supreme possibilities alone guarantees Being. But creation, as art, is will to semblance; it stands in severance from truth.
Art as will to semblance is the supreme configuration of will to power. But the latter, as the basic character of beings, as the essence of reality, is in itself that Being which wills itself by willing to be Becoming. In that way Nietzsche in will to power attempts to think the original unity of the ancient opposition of Being and Becoming. Being, as permanence, is to let Becoming be a Becoming. The origin of the thought of "eternal recurrence" is thereby indicated.
In the year 1886, in the middle of the period when he labored on the planned major work, Nietzsche's first treatise, The Birth of Trage- dy from the Spirit of Music (1872), appeared in a new edition. It bore the altered title The Birth of Tragedy, or Greek Civilization and Pessi- mism; New Edition, with an Attempt at Self-criticism (see I, l-14). The task which that book had first ventured to undertake remained the same for Nietzsche.
He pinpoints the task in a passage that is often quoted but just as often misinterpreted. The correct interpretation devolves from the entirety of this lecture course. Rightly grasped, the passage can serve as a rubric that characterizes the course's starting point and the direc- tion of its inquiry. Nietzsche writes (I, 4):
. . . Nevertheless, I do not wish to suppress entirely how unpleasant it now seems to me, how alien it stands before me now, after sixteen years-before an eye which has grown older, a hundred times more fastidious, but by no means colder, an eye which would not be any the less prepared to undertake the very task that audacious book ventured for the first time: to see science under the optics of the artist, but art under the optics of life. . . .
Half a century has elapsed for Europe since these words were penned. During the decades in question the passage has been misread again and again, precisely by those people who exerted themselves to resist the increasing uprooting and devastation of science. From Nietzsche's words they gathered the following: the sciences may no longer be conducted in an arid, humdrum manner, they may no longer
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 219
"gather dust," far removed from "life"; they have to be shaped "artisti- cally," so that they are attractive, pleasing, and in good taste-all that, because the artistically shaped sciences must be related to "life," re- main in proximity to "life," and be readily useful for "life. "
Above all, the generation that studied at the German universities between 1909 and 1914 heard the passage interpreted in this way. Even in the form of the misinterpretation it was a help to us. But there was no one about who could have provided the correct reading of it. That would have required re-asking the grounding question of Occidental philosophy, questioning in the direction of Being by way of actual inquiry.
To explain our understanding of the phrase cited, "to see science under the optics o f the artist, but art under the optics o f life," we must refer to four points, all of which, after what we have discussed, will by now be familiar to us.
First, "science" here means knowing as such, the relation to truth.
Second, the twofold reference to the "optics" of the artist and of life indicates that the "perspectival character" of Being becomes essential. Third, the equation of art and the artist directly expresses the fact that art is to be conceived in terms of the artist, creation, and the grand
style.
Fourth, "life" here means neither mere animal and vegetable Being
nor that readily comprehensible and compulsive busyness of everyday existence; rather, "life" is the term for Being in its new interpretation, according to which it is a Becoming. "Life" is neither "biologically" nor "practically" intended; it is meant metaphysically. The equation of Being and life is not some sort of unjustified expansion of the biologi- cal, although it often seems that way, but a transformed interpretation of the biological on the basis of Being, grasped in a superior way-this, of course, not fully mastered, in the timeworn schema of "Being and Becoming. "
Nietzsche's phrase suggests that on the basis of the essence of Being art must be grasped as the fundamental occurrence of beings, as the properly creative. But art conceived in that way defines the arena in which we can estimate how it is with "truth," and in what relation art and truth stand. The phrase does not suggest that artistic matters be
220
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
jumbled with the "conduct of science," much less that knowledge be subjected to aesthetic rehabilitation. Nor does it mean that art has to follow on the heels of life and be of service to it; for it is art, the grand style, which is to legislate the Being of beings in the first place.
The phrase demands knowledge of the event of nihilism. In Nietz- sche's view such knowledge at the same time embraces the will to overcome nihilism, indeed by means of original grounding and ques- tioning.
To see science "under the optics of the artist" means to estimate it according to its creative force, neither according to its immediate utility nor in terms of some vacuous "eternal significance. "
But creation itself is to be estimated according to the originality with which it penetrates to Being, neither as the mere achievement of an individual nor for the entertainment of the many. Being able to esti- mate, to esteem, that is, to act in accordance with the standard of Being, is itself creation of the highest order. For it is preparation of readiness for the gods; it is theYes to Being. "Overman" is the man who grounds Being anew-in the rigor of knowledge and in the grand style of creation.
APPENDIX, ANALYSIS, AND GLOSSARY
Appendix
A manuscript page from the lecture course Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst, Winter Semester 1936--37
It was Heidegger's practice to write out his lectures on unlined sheets measuring approximately 21 by 34 centimeters, the width of the page exceeding the length. (These dimensions would be somewhat larger than those of a "legal pad" turned on its side. ) The left half of each manuscript sheet is covered recto with a dense, minuscule script, con- stituting the main body of the lecture. The right half is reserved for major emendations. It is characteristic of Heidegger's manner of com- position that this half is almost as densely covered as the first. Heideg- ger's script is the so-called Siitterlinschrift, devised by Ludwig Sutterlin (1865-1917), quite common in the southern German states. It is said to be a "strongly rounded" script but to the English and American penman it still seems preeminently Gothic, vertical and angular. To the exasperated Innocent Abroad it seems a partner in that general con- spiracy of Continental scripts other than the "Latin" to make each letter look like every other letter.
The manuscript page reproduced following p. 223 is the one men- tioned in the Editor's Preface, Archive number A 33/14. It begins with the words der Grundirrtum Schopenhauers, found in the Neske edition at NI, 50, line 25, and ends with the words nichts zu tun, found at the close of section 7, NI, 53, line 24. Hence this single page of holograph constitutes three entire pages of the printed German text. (Of course I should note that Neske's page is rather generously spaced. ) The
([il "~J. ,~·jt'. . J~,j~. . JJ \ --"1r~ ~J-"" +-+ d". Mf' ~1""-'
. -:. ·•~·
i-Jl·l'ji·. ;. ,. . J. Irr/1) "Vtrt -· .
226 THE WILL TO PO\VER AS ART
English translation of the German text taken from this manuscript page is found on pp. 40-43 above.
The right half of the manuscript page contains five major emenda- tions to the text and one addition to an emendation. These changes are not substitutions for something in the body of the lecture; they are expansions and elaborations of what is found there. (The addition to the emendation is a text from Nietzsche's The Gay Science in support of Heidegger's argument. ) Precisely when these emendations were made is impossible to tell, but the handwriting suggests that they are roughly contemporaneous with the main body of the text, added in all probability before the lecture was delivered. Only in rare cases (the revised clause and the bracketed phrase discussed below) is there any evidence that changes on the holograph page may have been made substantially later-for example at the time of the publication of Nietzsche in 1961.
The Neske edition reproduces the lecture notes of A 33/14 word for word up to the phrase gesetzte will at NI, 51, line 7. At that point, the insertion of the first emendation is indicated. It is a lengthy addition, amounting to fifteen printed lines. Here the Neske edition varies in some respects from the holograph. A comparison of the two passages may be instructive:
Neske edition
Der Wille bringt jeweils von sich her eine durchgiingige Bestimmtheit in sein Wollen.
Jemand, der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht und kann iiberhaupt nicht wollen; ein W ollen im allgemeinen gibt es nicht; "denn der Wille ist, als Affekt des Befehls, das entscheidende Abzeichen der Selbstherrlichkeit und Kraft" ("Die frohliche Wissenschaft," 5. Buch, 1886; V , 282). Oagegen kann das Streben unbestimmt sein, sowohl hin- sichtlich dessen, was eigentlich ange- strebt ist, als auch mit Bezug auf das
Holograph
% Der Wille bringt so seinem W esen
nach in sich selbst heraus immer eine ----
Bestimmtheit im Ganzen; jemand der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht u. kann i. ibhpt. nicht wollen; ein Wol- len im Allgemeinen gibt es; wahl dagegen kann das Streben [word crossed out] unbedingt sein-sowohl hinsichtlich dessen, was eigentlich an- gestrebt ist-als auch mit Bezug auf das Strebende selbst. [At this point a mark to the left of the emendation indicates that the passage from The Gay Science is to be inserted-but its
Strebende selbst. Im Streben und Driingen sind wir in ein Hinzu . . . mit hineingenommen und wissen selbst nicbt, was im Spiel ist. Im blo/3en Streben nach etwas sind wir nicht ei- gentlicb vor uns selbst gebracbt, und desbalb ist bier aucb keine Moglicb- keit, tiber uns binaus zu streben, sondern wir streben blo/3 und geben in solcbem Streben mit Entscblossen- beit zu sich-ist immer: tiber sicb hinaus wollen.
precise location is not indicated. ] Im Streben u. Drangen sind wir in ein Hin zu-etwas mit hineingenommen - u . wissen selbst nicbt was [word crossed out] im Spiel ist. Im blossen Streben nach etwas-sind wir nicbt eigentlich vor uns selbst gebracbt u. deshalb ist bier aucb keine Moglicb- keit-tiber uns binaus zu [word crossed out] streben-sondern wir streben blo/3 [-en crossed out] u. geb- en in solcbem Streben auf [? ]. Ent- scblossenbeit zu sicb ist immer tiber sicb binaus wollen.
Appendix 227
The changes introduced in the Neske edition are of five sorts. First, a more variegated punctuation replaces the series of semicolons and dashes. Second, the number of stressed words (italics, reproducing underlinings) is greatly reduced. Third, obvious oversights (such as the omission of the word nicht after the phrase ein Wollen im allgemeinen gibt es) are corrected, abbreviated words written out, and crossed-out words and letters deleted. Fourth, a precise location for the quotation from The Gay Science is found. Fifth, and most important, several
phrases are entirely recast. Thus Hin zu-etwas (underlined) becomes Hinzu . . . (not italicized), and the entire opening clause is revised. The holograph version of the latter would read, in translation, "Thus will, according to its essence, in itself always brings out a determinateness in the totality. " The Neske lines say, "In each case will itself furnishes a thoroughgoing determinateness to its willing. " When this change occurred is impossible to determine; it may well have come at the time of publication. (The Abschrift or typewritten copy here follows the holograph. )
At the end of this long emendation the problem mentioned in the Preface arises. The last word runs up against the edge of the page and could as easily be mit as auf. (The practice of adding a diacritical mark over the non-umlauted u, which often makes it resemble a dotted i,
228
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
complicates the situation here. ) The meaning of the sentence depends to a great extent upon the separable prefix: it is according to the sense of the holograph page that I read it as auf What is quite clear is that the main body of the text continues with a new sentence: Entschlossen- heit zu sich ist immer. . . . The words Wille dagegen are inserted in the Abschrift in order to emphasize the distinction between "will" and "striving. " Although the origin, date, and status of the Abschrift are unknown, I have retained them in my own reading. Finally, I have added als in order to make the apposition of "will" and "resolute openness" clear.
The Neske edition prints the remainder of A 33/14 with only a few alterations, all but one of them minor ones. Two further major emenda- tions from the right half of the page are incorporated into the main body of the text without any disturbing consequences (NI, 51, line 30 toNI, 52, line 2; and NI, 52, lines 22-29}. The published text of NI, 52, lines 20-21 alters the holograph rendering only slightly. Then comes the second important change. Three lines in the holograph which are set off by brackets, lines which would have appeared at NI, 53, line 18, are omitted. When Heidegger added the brackets or "bracketed out" the passage is, again, not clear. The lines read:
Man ist gliicklich beim Irrationalismus-jenem Sumpf, in dem aile Denk- faulen und Denkmiiden eintriichtlich sich treffen, aber dabei meistens noch allzu "rational" reden und schreiben.
In translation:
People are delighted with irrationalism-that swamp where all those who are too lazy or too weary to think convene harmoniously; but for the most part they still talk and write all too "rationally. "
Heidegger often bracketed out such sardonic remarks when a lecture manuscript was on its way to becoming a book, apparently because he considered such off-the-cuff remarks more obtrusive in print than in speech. (Cf. for example the following remarks published in Walter Biemel's edition of the lecture course Logik: Aristoteles, volume 21 of the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt/Main, 1976: on fraudulent logic courses, p. 12; on Heinrich Rickert's gigantomachia, p. 91; on two
Appendix 229
kinds of Hegelian confusion, pp. 260 and 267; and on the hocus-pocus of spiritualism and subjectivism, p. 292. These are remarks which we are delighted to read but which Heidegger himself, had he edited the text, might have deleted. )
Finally, on the right half of the holograph page a general reference to WM 84 and 95 appears. These two aphorisms in The Will to Power juxtapose the Nietzschean sense of will as mastery to the Schopen- hauerian sense of will as desire. The reference's identifying mark does not appear anywhere in the text or in the other emendations, so that the reference has nowhere to go; in the Neske edition it is omitted.
By way of conclusion I may note that the Neske edition is generally closer to the holograph than is the sole extant Abschrift. The text we possess~notwithstanding the one major difficulty cited-seems remarkably faithful to Heidegger's handwritten lecture notes, assuming that the relation of A 33/14 to the relevant pages of the Neske edition is typical. Whether or not that is so the editor of volume 43 of the Gesamtausgabe will have to determine. *
*In the third edition of Heidegger's Nietzsche (without date, but available since the mid-1970s) the Neske Verlag altered the passage discussed above by adding a period to NI, 51,1ine 22, between the words mit and Entschlossenheit. (Cf. p. 227 of this volume, line 10 in the first column. ) The passage would thus read: "For that reason it is not possible for us to strive beyond ourselves; rather, we merely strive, and go along with such striving. Resolute openness to oneself-is always: willing out beyond oneself. " The addition of the period is a significant improvement in the text, but I still prefer the full reading suggested in this Appendix and employed on p. 41 of the translation.
The third edition does not correct the erroneous duplication of the word nicht at NI, 189, line 5 from the bottom.
I am grateful to Ursula Willaredt of Freiburg, whose painstaking checking of the page proofs uncovered this change in the third Neske edition of Nietzsche.
Analysis
By DAVID FARRELL KRELL
No judgment renders an account of the world, but art can teach us to reiterate it, just as the world reiterates itself in the course of eternal returns. . . . To say "yes" to the world, to reiterate it, is at the same time to recreate the world and oneself; it is to become the great artist, the creator.
A. CAMUS, Man in Rebellion, 1951
Early in 1961 Brigitte Neske designed a set of handsome book jackets for one of the major events in her husband's publishing career. Along the spine of the volumes two names appeared, black and white on a salmon background, neither name capitalized: heidegger nietzsche. Both were well known. The latter was famous for having been, as he said, "born posthumously. " And that apparently helped to give rise to the confusion: when the volumes first appeared in Germany no one was sure whether they were heidegger's books on nietzsche or nietzsche's books on heidegger.
Readers of this and the other English volumes may find themselves recalling this little joke more than once and for more than one reason.
Aus-einander-setzung, "a setting apart from one another," is the word Heidegger chooses in his Foreword to these volumes to character- ize his encounter with Nietzsche. That is also the word by which he translates polemos in Heraclitus B53 and B80. Is Heidegger then at war with Nietzsche? Are his lectures and essays on Nietzsche polemics? In the first part of his lecture course "What Calls for Thinking? " Heideg- ger cautions his listeners that all polemic "fails from the outset to
Analysis 231
assume the attitude of thinking. "1 In Heidegger's view polemos is a name for the lighting or clearing of Being in which beings become present to one another and so can be distinguished from one another. Heraclitus speaks of ton polemon xynon, a setting apart from one another that serves essentially to bring together, a contest that unites. In these volumes the English word "confrontation" tries to capture the paradoxical sense of Heidegger's Aus-einander-setzung with Nietzsche's philosophy. Before we say anything about Heidegger's "interpretation" of Nietzsche we should pause to consider the koinonia or community of both thinkers. For at the time Heidegger planned a series of lectures on Nietzsche he identified the task of his own philosophy as the effort "to bring Nietzsche's accomplishment to a full unfolding. "2 The magnitude of that accomplishment, however, was not immediately discernible. Heidegger's first attempt to delineate Nietzsche's accomplishment and to circumscribe his confrontation with Nietzsche traces the profile of will to power as art.
I. THE STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENT OF THE LECTURE COURSE
The published text of Heidegger's 1936-37 lecture course, "Nietz- sche: Will to Power as Art," consists of twenty-five unnumbered sections. ~ Although no more comprehensive parts or divisions appear, the course unfolds in three stages. Sections 1-10 introduce the theme of Nietzsche as metaphysician and examine the nature of "will," "power," and "will to power" in his thought. Sections 12-18 pursue the significance of art in Nietzsche's thinking. Sections 20-25 compare his conception of art to that in Platonism-the philosophy which Nietzsche sought to overturn-and in Plato's dialogues. But if the first
1Martin Heidegger, Was heisst Denken? (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1954), p. 49. Cf. the English translation, What Is Called Thinking? , tr. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 13; cf. also Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 354.
2Martin Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953), p. 28. Cf. the English translation, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (Garden City, N. Y. : Anchor-Doubleday, 1961), p. 30.
~The sections have been numbered in the present edition to facilitate reference.
232 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
two stages, "will to power" and "art," cover the ground staked out in the title Wille zur Macht als Kunst, why the third stage at all? Why especially the preoccupation with Plato's own texts? What is the significance of the fact that in the Foreword Heidegger designates "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" and "On the Essence of Truth" as the first milestones along the route traversed in his lectures and essays on Nietzsche?
Perhaps we have already taken a first step toward answering these questions when we notice that the analysis of the course's three stages leaves two sections out of account, section 11, "The Grounding Ques- tion and the Guiding Question of Philosophy," and section 19, "The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art. " These two sections are not mere entr'actes preceding and succeeding the central discussion of art; they are in fact, altering the image, the hinges upon which the panels of the triptych turn. Heidegger's lecture course on will to power as art is joined and articulated by a question that is presupposed in all the guiding and grounding of philosophy since Plato, that of the es- sence of truth. By advancing through a discussion of Nietzsche's meta- physics of will to power to his celebration of art in the grand style, a celebration conducted within the dreadfully raging discordance of art and truth, Heidegger tries to pinpoint Nietzsche's uncertain location on the historical path of metaphysics. That is the only way he can estimate his own position, the only way he can discern the task of his own thinking. But if the "last 'name' in the history of Being as meta- physics is not Kant and not Hegel, but Nietzsche,"4 the first "name" is Plato. And if Nietzsche's situation at the end of philosophy is ambiguous, so is that of Plato at the beginning. Plato dare not be confounded with Platonism; Nietzsche dare not be confounded with anyone else. Heidegger designs the structure and initiates the move- ment of his lecture course in such a way as to let the irreducible richness of both thinkers come to light.
4Eckhard Heftrich, "Nietzsche im Denken Heideggers," Durchblicke (Frankfurt/ Main: V. Klostermann, 1970), p. 349. Cf. H. ·G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tiibingen: Mohr und Siebeck, 1960), p. 243.
Analysis 233
The structure and movement of the course may become more palpa- ble if we recall the task undertaken in each section, reducing it to bare essentials and ignoring for the moment the amplitude of each section. Only when we arrive at the jointures or hinges (sections 11 and 19) will the summary become more detailed.
Heidegger begins (section 1) by asserting that "will to power" de- fines the basic character of beings in Nietzsche's philosophy. That philosophy therefore proceeds in the orbit of the guiding question of Occidental philosophy, "What is a being (das Seiende)? " Yet Nietzsche "gathers and completes" such questioning: to encounter Nietzsche is to confront Western philosophy as a whole-and there- fore to prepare "a feast of thought. " Nietzsche's philosophy proper, his fundamental position, is in Heidegger's view ascertainable only on the basis of notes sketched during the 1880s for a major work. That work was never written. The collection of notes entitled The Will to Power may not be identified as Nietzsche's Hauptwerk, but must be read critically. After examining a number of plans for the magnum opus drafted during the years 1882-88 (section 3), Heidegger argues for the unity of the three dominant themes, will to power, eternal recurrence of the same, and revaluation of all values (section 4). For Nietzsche all Being is a Becoming, Becoming a willing, willing a will to power (section 2). Will to power is not simply Becoming, however, but is an expression for the Being of Becoming, the "closest approximation" to Being (WM, 617). As such it is eternal recurrence of the same and the testing stone of revaluation. Thus the thought of eternal recurrence advances beyond the guiding question of philosophy, "Was ist das Seiende? " toward its grounding question, "Was ist das Sein? " Both questions must be raised when we try to define Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position or Grundstellung (section 5). .
After discussing the structural plan employed by the editors of The Will to Power, Heidegger situates his own inquiry in the third book, "Principle of a New Valuation," at its fourth and culminating division, "Will to Power as Art. " Why Heidegger begins here is not obvious. Nor does it become clear in the sections immediately following (6-10), which recount the meaning of Being as "will" in metaphysics prior to
234 THE \VILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche and in Nietzsche's own thought. Heidegger wrestles with the notions of "will" and "power," which must be thought in a unified way and which cannot readily be identified with traditional accounts of affect, passion, and feeling. Nor does it help to trace Nietzsche's doc- trine of will back to German Idealism or even to contrast it to Idealism. The sole positive result of these five sections is recognition of the nature of will to power as enhancement or heightening, a moving out beyond oneself, and as the original opening onto beings. But what that means Nietzsche alone can tell us.
Section 11, "The Grounding Question and the Guiding Question of Philosophy," the first "hinge" of the course, initiates the interpretation of "Will to Power as Art" by asserting once more that the designated starting point is essential for the interpretation of will to power as a whole. In order to defend that assertion Heidegger tries to sharpen the "basic philosophical intention" of his interpretation. He reiterates that the guiding question of philosophy is "What is a being? " That question inquires into the grounds of beings but seeks such grounds solely among other beings on the path of epistemology. But the grounding question, "What is Being? ," which would inquire into the meaning of grounds as such and into its own historical grounds as a question, is not posed in the history of philosophy up to and including Nietzsche. Both questions, the penultimate question of philosophy, and the ultimate question which Heidegger reserves for himself, are couched in the words "What is . . . ? " The "is" of both questions seeks an ouverture upon beings as a whole by which we might determine what they in
truth, in essence, are. Both questions provoke thought on the matter of truth as unconcealment, aletheia; they are preliminaries to the ques- tion of the "essence of truth" and the "truth of essence. " Nietzsche's understanding of beings as a whole, of what is, is enunciated in the phrase "will to power. " But if the question of the essence of truth is already implied in the guiding question of philosophy, then we must ascertain the point where "will to power" and "truth" converge in Nietzsche's philosophy. They do so, astonishingly, not in knowledge (Erkenntnis) but in art (Kunst). The way Nietzsche completes and
Analysis 235
gathers philosophy hitherto has to do with that odd conjunction "truth and art" for which no tertium comparationis seems possible.
Heidegger now (section 12) begins to sketch out the central panel of the triptych. He turns to a passage in The Will to Power (WM, 797) that identifies the "artist phenomenon" as the most perspicuous form of will to power. Grasped in terms of the artist and expanded to the point where it becomes the basic occurrence of all beings, art is pro- claimed the most potent stimulant to life, hence the distinctive coun- termovement to nihilism. As the mightiest stimulans to life, art is
worth more than truth. Heidegger now tries to insert this notion of art into the context of the history of aesth~tics (section 13) with special reference to the problem of form-content. Nietzsche's attempt to de- velop a "physiology of art," which seems to militate against his celebra- tion of art as the countermovement to nihilism, focuses on the phenomenon of artistic Rausch (section 14). After an analysis of Kant's doctrine of the beautiful (section 15), Heidegger defines rapture as the force that engenders form and as the fundamental condition for the enhancement of life (section 16). Form constitutes the actuality of art in the "grand style" (section 17), where the apparent contradiction between physiological investigation and artistic celebration dissolves: Nietzsche's physiology is neither biologism nor positivism, however much it may appear to be.
With a view to the basic constitution of living things Nietzsche says (XIII, 63), "The essential aspect of organic beings is a new manifold, which is itself an occurrence. " The living creature possesses the char- acter of a perspectival preview which circumscribes a "line of horizon" about him, within whose scope something can come forward into appearance for him at all. Now, in the "organic" there is a multiplicity of drives and forces, each of which has its perspective. The manifold
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 213
of perspectives distinguishes the organic from the inorganic. Yet even the latter has its perspective; it is just that in the inorganic, in attraction and repulsion, the "power relations" are clearly fixed (XIII, 62). The mechanistic representation of "inanimate" nature is only a hypothesis for purposes of calculation; it overlooks the fact that here too relations of forces and concatenations of perspectives hold sway. Every point of force per se is perspectival. As a result it becomes manifest "that there is no inorganic world" (XIII, 81). Everything "real" is alive, is "per- spectival" in itself, and asserts itself in its perspective against others. On that basis we can understand Nietzsche's note from the years 1886-87 (XIII, 227-28):
Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is proper to the being, and is not only a form of observation, a relation between different beings? Do the various forces stand in relation, so that the relation is tied to a perceptual optics? That would be possible if all Being were essentially something which perceives.
We would not have to go far to find proof to show that this conception of beings is precisely that of Leibniz, except that Nietzsche eliminates the latter's theological metaphysics, i. e. , his Platonism. All being is in itself perspectival-perceptual, and that means, in the sense now deline- ated, "sensuous. "
The sensuous is no longer the "apparent," no longer the penumbra; it alone is what is real, hence "true. " And what becomes of semblance? Semblance itself is proper to the essence of the real. We can readily see that in the perspectival character of the actual. The following statement provides an opening onto the matter of semblance within the perspectivally constructed actual: "With the organic world begin in- determinateness and semblance" (XIII, 288; cf. also 229). In the unity of an organic being there is a multiplicity of drives and capacities (each of which possesses its perspective) which struggle against one another. In such a multiplicity the univocity of the particular perspective in which the actual in any given case stands is lost. The equivocal char- acter of what shows itself in several perspectives is granted, along with the indeterminate, which now appears one way, then another, which
214 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
first proffers this appearance, then that one. But such appearance becomes semblance in the sense of mere appearance only when what becomes manifest in one perspective petrifies and is taken to be the sole definitive appearance, to the disregard of the other perspectives that crowd round in turn.
In that way, palpable things, "objects," emerge for creatures in what they encounter; things that are constant, with enduring qualities, by which the creature can get its bearings. The entire range of what is fixed and constant is, according to the ancient Platonic conception, the region of "Being," the "true. " Such Being, viewed perspectivally, is but the one-sided, entrenched appearance, which is taken to be solely definitive. It thus becomes mere appearance; Being, the true, is mere appearance, error.
Error begins in the organic world. "Things," "substances," properties, act- "ivities" [Tiitig"keiten"]-one should not read all that into the inorganic world! They are the specific errors by virtue of which organisms live (XIII, 69).
In the organic world, the world of embodying life, where man too resides, "error" begins. That should not be taken as meaning that creatures, in distinction to members of the inorganic realm, can go astray. It means that those beings which in the definitive perspectival horizon of a creature appear to constitute its firmly established, existent world, in their Being are but appearance, mere appearance. Man's logic serves to make what he encounters identical, constant, ascertainable. Being, the true, which logic "firmly locates" (petrifies}, is but sem- blance; a semblance, an apparentness, that is essentially necessary to the creature as such, which is to say, a semblance that pertains to his survival, his establishment of self amidst ceaseless change. Because the real is perspectival in itself, apparentness as such is proper to reality. Truth, i. e. , true being, i. e. , what is constant and fixed, because it is the petrifying of any single given perspective, is always only an apparent- ness that has come to prevail, which is to say, it is always error. For that reason Nietzsche says (WM, 493}, "Truth is the kind of error without
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 215
which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides. "
Truth, that is, the true as the constant, is a kind of semblance that is justified as a necessary condition of the assertion of life. But upon deeper meditation it becomes clear that all appearance and all apparent- ness are possible only if something comes to the fore and shows itself at alL What in advance enables such appearing is the perspectival itself. That is what genuinely radiates, bringing something to show itself. When Nietzsche uses the word semblance [Schein] it is usually am- biguous. He knows it, too. "There are fateful words which appear to express an insight but which in truth hinder it; among them belongs the word 'semblance,' 'appearance'" (XIII, 50). Nietzsche does not become master of the fate entrenched in that word, which is to say, in the matter. He says (ibid. ),~· 'Semblance' as I understand it is the actual and sole reality of things. " That should be understood to mean not that
reality is something apparent, but that being-real is in itself perspecti- val, a bringing forward into appearance, a letting radiate; that it is in itself a shining. Reality is radiance.
Hence I do not posit "semblance" in opposition to "reality," but on the contrary take semblance to be the reality which resists transformation into an imaginative "world of truth. " A particular name for that reality would be "will to power," designated of course intrinsically and not on the basis of its ungraspable, fluid, Protean nature (XIII, 50; from the year 1886, at the latest).
Reality, Being, is Schein in the sense of perspectival letting-shine. But proper to that reality at the same time is the multiplicity of perspectives, and thus the possibility of illusion and of its being made fast, which means the possibility of truth as a kind of Schein in the_ sense of "mere" appearance. If truth is taken to be semblance, that is, as mere appearance and error, the implication is that truth is the fixed semblance which is necessarily inherent in perspectival shining-it is illusion. Nietzsche often identifies such illusion with "the lie": "One who tells the truth ends by realizing that he always lies" (XII, 293).
216 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Indeed Nietzsche at times defines perspectival shining as Schein in the sense of illusion and deception, contrasting illusion and deception to truth, which, as "Being," is also at bottom error.
We have already seen that creation, as forming and shaping, as well as the aesthetic pleasures related to such shaping, are grounded in the essence of life. Hence art too, and precisely it, must cohere most intimately with perspectival shining and letting shine. Art in the proper sense is art in the grand style, desirous of bringing waxing life itself to power. It is not an immobilizing but a liberating for expansion, a clarifying to the point of transfiguration, and this in two senses: first, stationing a thing in the clarity of Being; second, establishing such clarity as the heightening of life itself.
Life is in itself perspectival. It waxes and flourishes with the height and heightening of the world which is brought forward perspectivally to appearance, with the enhancement of the shining, that is, of what brings a thing to scintillate in such a way that life is transfigured. "Art and nothing but art! " (WM, 853, section II). Art induces reality, which is in itself a shining, to shine most profoundly and supremely in scintil- lating transfiguration. If "metaphysical" means nothing else than the essence of reality, and if reality consists in shining, we then understand the statement with which the section on art in The Will to Power closes (WM, 853}: " . . . 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity . . . . ' " Art is the most genuine and profound will to semblance, namely, to the scintillation of what transfigures, in which the supreme lawfulness of Dasein becomes visible. In contrast, truth is any given fixed apparition that allows life to rest firmly on a particular perspective and to preserve itself. As such fixation, "truth" is an im- mobilizing of life, and hence its inhibition and dissolution. "We have art so that we do not perish from the truth" (WM, 822}. It is "not possible . . . to live with the truth," if life is always enhancement of life; the "will to truth," i. e. , to fixed apparition, is "already a symptom of degeneration" (XIV, 368}. Now it becomes clear what the fifth and concluding proposition concerning art avers: art is worth more than truth.
Both art and truth are modes of perspectival shining. But the value
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 217
of the real is measured according to how it satisfies the essence of reality, how it accomplishes the shining and enhances reality. Art, as transfiguration, is more enhancing to life than truth, as fixation ofan apparition.
Now too we perceive to what extent the relation of art and truth must be a discordance for Nietzsche and for his philosophy, as inverted Platonism. Discordance is present only where the elements which sever the unity of their belonging-together diverge from one another by virtue of that very unity. The unity of their belonging-together is granted by the one reality, perspectival shining. To it belong both apparition and scintillating appearance as transfiguration. In order for the real (the living creature) to be real, it must on the one hand ensconce itself within a particular horizon, thus perduring in the illu- sion of truth. But in order for the real to remain real, it must on the other hand simultaneously transfigure itself by going beyond itself, surpassing itself in the scintillation of what is created in art-and that means it has to advance against the truth. While truth and art are
proper to the essence of reality with equal originality, they must diverge from one another and go counter to one another.
But because in Nietzsche's view semblance, as perspectival, also possesses the character of the nonactual, of illusion and deception, he must say, "The will to semblance, to illusion, to deception, to Becom- ing and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical' [that is to say, corre- sponding more to the essence of Being] than the will to truth, to actuality, to Being" (XIV, 369). This is expressed even more decisively in The Will to Power, no. 853, section I, where semblance is equated with "lie": " W e need the lie in order to achieve victory over this reality, this 'truth,' which is to say, in order to live . . . . That the lie is necessary for life is itself part and parcel of the frightful and questionable char- acter of existence. "
Art and truth are equally necessary for reality. As equally necessary they stand in severance. But their relationship first arouses dread when we consider that creation, i. e. , the metaphysical activity of art, receives yet another essential impulse the moment we descry the most tremen- dous event-the death of the God of morality. In Nietzsche's view,
218 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
existence can now be endured only in creation. Conducting reality to the power of its rule and of its supreme possibilities alone guarantees Being. But creation, as art, is will to semblance; it stands in severance from truth.
Art as will to semblance is the supreme configuration of will to power. But the latter, as the basic character of beings, as the essence of reality, is in itself that Being which wills itself by willing to be Becoming. In that way Nietzsche in will to power attempts to think the original unity of the ancient opposition of Being and Becoming. Being, as permanence, is to let Becoming be a Becoming. The origin of the thought of "eternal recurrence" is thereby indicated.
In the year 1886, in the middle of the period when he labored on the planned major work, Nietzsche's first treatise, The Birth of Trage- dy from the Spirit of Music (1872), appeared in a new edition. It bore the altered title The Birth of Tragedy, or Greek Civilization and Pessi- mism; New Edition, with an Attempt at Self-criticism (see I, l-14). The task which that book had first ventured to undertake remained the same for Nietzsche.
He pinpoints the task in a passage that is often quoted but just as often misinterpreted. The correct interpretation devolves from the entirety of this lecture course. Rightly grasped, the passage can serve as a rubric that characterizes the course's starting point and the direc- tion of its inquiry. Nietzsche writes (I, 4):
. . . Nevertheless, I do not wish to suppress entirely how unpleasant it now seems to me, how alien it stands before me now, after sixteen years-before an eye which has grown older, a hundred times more fastidious, but by no means colder, an eye which would not be any the less prepared to undertake the very task that audacious book ventured for the first time: to see science under the optics of the artist, but art under the optics of life. . . .
Half a century has elapsed for Europe since these words were penned. During the decades in question the passage has been misread again and again, precisely by those people who exerted themselves to resist the increasing uprooting and devastation of science. From Nietzsche's words they gathered the following: the sciences may no longer be conducted in an arid, humdrum manner, they may no longer
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 219
"gather dust," far removed from "life"; they have to be shaped "artisti- cally," so that they are attractive, pleasing, and in good taste-all that, because the artistically shaped sciences must be related to "life," re- main in proximity to "life," and be readily useful for "life. "
Above all, the generation that studied at the German universities between 1909 and 1914 heard the passage interpreted in this way. Even in the form of the misinterpretation it was a help to us. But there was no one about who could have provided the correct reading of it. That would have required re-asking the grounding question of Occidental philosophy, questioning in the direction of Being by way of actual inquiry.
To explain our understanding of the phrase cited, "to see science under the optics o f the artist, but art under the optics o f life," we must refer to four points, all of which, after what we have discussed, will by now be familiar to us.
First, "science" here means knowing as such, the relation to truth.
Second, the twofold reference to the "optics" of the artist and of life indicates that the "perspectival character" of Being becomes essential. Third, the equation of art and the artist directly expresses the fact that art is to be conceived in terms of the artist, creation, and the grand
style.
Fourth, "life" here means neither mere animal and vegetable Being
nor that readily comprehensible and compulsive busyness of everyday existence; rather, "life" is the term for Being in its new interpretation, according to which it is a Becoming. "Life" is neither "biologically" nor "practically" intended; it is meant metaphysically. The equation of Being and life is not some sort of unjustified expansion of the biologi- cal, although it often seems that way, but a transformed interpretation of the biological on the basis of Being, grasped in a superior way-this, of course, not fully mastered, in the timeworn schema of "Being and Becoming. "
Nietzsche's phrase suggests that on the basis of the essence of Being art must be grasped as the fundamental occurrence of beings, as the properly creative. But art conceived in that way defines the arena in which we can estimate how it is with "truth," and in what relation art and truth stand. The phrase does not suggest that artistic matters be
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THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
jumbled with the "conduct of science," much less that knowledge be subjected to aesthetic rehabilitation. Nor does it mean that art has to follow on the heels of life and be of service to it; for it is art, the grand style, which is to legislate the Being of beings in the first place.
The phrase demands knowledge of the event of nihilism. In Nietz- sche's view such knowledge at the same time embraces the will to overcome nihilism, indeed by means of original grounding and ques- tioning.
To see science "under the optics of the artist" means to estimate it according to its creative force, neither according to its immediate utility nor in terms of some vacuous "eternal significance. "
But creation itself is to be estimated according to the originality with which it penetrates to Being, neither as the mere achievement of an individual nor for the entertainment of the many. Being able to esti- mate, to esteem, that is, to act in accordance with the standard of Being, is itself creation of the highest order. For it is preparation of readiness for the gods; it is theYes to Being. "Overman" is the man who grounds Being anew-in the rigor of knowledge and in the grand style of creation.
APPENDIX, ANALYSIS, AND GLOSSARY
Appendix
A manuscript page from the lecture course Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst, Winter Semester 1936--37
It was Heidegger's practice to write out his lectures on unlined sheets measuring approximately 21 by 34 centimeters, the width of the page exceeding the length. (These dimensions would be somewhat larger than those of a "legal pad" turned on its side. ) The left half of each manuscript sheet is covered recto with a dense, minuscule script, con- stituting the main body of the lecture. The right half is reserved for major emendations. It is characteristic of Heidegger's manner of com- position that this half is almost as densely covered as the first. Heideg- ger's script is the so-called Siitterlinschrift, devised by Ludwig Sutterlin (1865-1917), quite common in the southern German states. It is said to be a "strongly rounded" script but to the English and American penman it still seems preeminently Gothic, vertical and angular. To the exasperated Innocent Abroad it seems a partner in that general con- spiracy of Continental scripts other than the "Latin" to make each letter look like every other letter.
The manuscript page reproduced following p. 223 is the one men- tioned in the Editor's Preface, Archive number A 33/14. It begins with the words der Grundirrtum Schopenhauers, found in the Neske edition at NI, 50, line 25, and ends with the words nichts zu tun, found at the close of section 7, NI, 53, line 24. Hence this single page of holograph constitutes three entire pages of the printed German text. (Of course I should note that Neske's page is rather generously spaced. ) The
([il "~J. ,~·jt'. . J~,j~. . JJ \ --"1r~ ~J-"" +-+ d". Mf' ~1""-'
. -:. ·•~·
i-Jl·l'ji·. ;. ,. . J. Irr/1) "Vtrt -· .
226 THE WILL TO PO\VER AS ART
English translation of the German text taken from this manuscript page is found on pp. 40-43 above.
The right half of the manuscript page contains five major emenda- tions to the text and one addition to an emendation. These changes are not substitutions for something in the body of the lecture; they are expansions and elaborations of what is found there. (The addition to the emendation is a text from Nietzsche's The Gay Science in support of Heidegger's argument. ) Precisely when these emendations were made is impossible to tell, but the handwriting suggests that they are roughly contemporaneous with the main body of the text, added in all probability before the lecture was delivered. Only in rare cases (the revised clause and the bracketed phrase discussed below) is there any evidence that changes on the holograph page may have been made substantially later-for example at the time of the publication of Nietzsche in 1961.
The Neske edition reproduces the lecture notes of A 33/14 word for word up to the phrase gesetzte will at NI, 51, line 7. At that point, the insertion of the first emendation is indicated. It is a lengthy addition, amounting to fifteen printed lines. Here the Neske edition varies in some respects from the holograph. A comparison of the two passages may be instructive:
Neske edition
Der Wille bringt jeweils von sich her eine durchgiingige Bestimmtheit in sein Wollen.
Jemand, der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht und kann iiberhaupt nicht wollen; ein W ollen im allgemeinen gibt es nicht; "denn der Wille ist, als Affekt des Befehls, das entscheidende Abzeichen der Selbstherrlichkeit und Kraft" ("Die frohliche Wissenschaft," 5. Buch, 1886; V , 282). Oagegen kann das Streben unbestimmt sein, sowohl hin- sichtlich dessen, was eigentlich ange- strebt ist, als auch mit Bezug auf das
Holograph
% Der Wille bringt so seinem W esen
nach in sich selbst heraus immer eine ----
Bestimmtheit im Ganzen; jemand der nicht wei/3, was er will, will gar nicht u. kann i. ibhpt. nicht wollen; ein Wol- len im Allgemeinen gibt es; wahl dagegen kann das Streben [word crossed out] unbedingt sein-sowohl hinsichtlich dessen, was eigentlich an- gestrebt ist-als auch mit Bezug auf das Strebende selbst. [At this point a mark to the left of the emendation indicates that the passage from The Gay Science is to be inserted-but its
Strebende selbst. Im Streben und Driingen sind wir in ein Hinzu . . . mit hineingenommen und wissen selbst nicbt, was im Spiel ist. Im blo/3en Streben nach etwas sind wir nicht ei- gentlicb vor uns selbst gebracbt, und desbalb ist bier aucb keine Moglicb- keit, tiber uns binaus zu streben, sondern wir streben blo/3 und geben in solcbem Streben mit Entscblossen- beit zu sich-ist immer: tiber sicb hinaus wollen.
precise location is not indicated. ] Im Streben u. Drangen sind wir in ein Hin zu-etwas mit hineingenommen - u . wissen selbst nicbt was [word crossed out] im Spiel ist. Im blossen Streben nach etwas-sind wir nicbt eigentlich vor uns selbst gebracbt u. deshalb ist bier aucb keine Moglicb- keit-tiber uns binaus zu [word crossed out] streben-sondern wir streben blo/3 [-en crossed out] u. geb- en in solcbem Streben auf [? ]. Ent- scblossenbeit zu sicb ist immer tiber sicb binaus wollen.
Appendix 227
The changes introduced in the Neske edition are of five sorts. First, a more variegated punctuation replaces the series of semicolons and dashes. Second, the number of stressed words (italics, reproducing underlinings) is greatly reduced. Third, obvious oversights (such as the omission of the word nicht after the phrase ein Wollen im allgemeinen gibt es) are corrected, abbreviated words written out, and crossed-out words and letters deleted. Fourth, a precise location for the quotation from The Gay Science is found. Fifth, and most important, several
phrases are entirely recast. Thus Hin zu-etwas (underlined) becomes Hinzu . . . (not italicized), and the entire opening clause is revised. The holograph version of the latter would read, in translation, "Thus will, according to its essence, in itself always brings out a determinateness in the totality. " The Neske lines say, "In each case will itself furnishes a thoroughgoing determinateness to its willing. " When this change occurred is impossible to determine; it may well have come at the time of publication. (The Abschrift or typewritten copy here follows the holograph. )
At the end of this long emendation the problem mentioned in the Preface arises. The last word runs up against the edge of the page and could as easily be mit as auf. (The practice of adding a diacritical mark over the non-umlauted u, which often makes it resemble a dotted i,
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THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
complicates the situation here. ) The meaning of the sentence depends to a great extent upon the separable prefix: it is according to the sense of the holograph page that I read it as auf What is quite clear is that the main body of the text continues with a new sentence: Entschlossen- heit zu sich ist immer. . . . The words Wille dagegen are inserted in the Abschrift in order to emphasize the distinction between "will" and "striving. " Although the origin, date, and status of the Abschrift are unknown, I have retained them in my own reading. Finally, I have added als in order to make the apposition of "will" and "resolute openness" clear.
The Neske edition prints the remainder of A 33/14 with only a few alterations, all but one of them minor ones. Two further major emenda- tions from the right half of the page are incorporated into the main body of the text without any disturbing consequences (NI, 51, line 30 toNI, 52, line 2; and NI, 52, lines 22-29}. The published text of NI, 52, lines 20-21 alters the holograph rendering only slightly. Then comes the second important change. Three lines in the holograph which are set off by brackets, lines which would have appeared at NI, 53, line 18, are omitted. When Heidegger added the brackets or "bracketed out" the passage is, again, not clear. The lines read:
Man ist gliicklich beim Irrationalismus-jenem Sumpf, in dem aile Denk- faulen und Denkmiiden eintriichtlich sich treffen, aber dabei meistens noch allzu "rational" reden und schreiben.
In translation:
People are delighted with irrationalism-that swamp where all those who are too lazy or too weary to think convene harmoniously; but for the most part they still talk and write all too "rationally. "
Heidegger often bracketed out such sardonic remarks when a lecture manuscript was on its way to becoming a book, apparently because he considered such off-the-cuff remarks more obtrusive in print than in speech. (Cf. for example the following remarks published in Walter Biemel's edition of the lecture course Logik: Aristoteles, volume 21 of the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt/Main, 1976: on fraudulent logic courses, p. 12; on Heinrich Rickert's gigantomachia, p. 91; on two
Appendix 229
kinds of Hegelian confusion, pp. 260 and 267; and on the hocus-pocus of spiritualism and subjectivism, p. 292. These are remarks which we are delighted to read but which Heidegger himself, had he edited the text, might have deleted. )
Finally, on the right half of the holograph page a general reference to WM 84 and 95 appears. These two aphorisms in The Will to Power juxtapose the Nietzschean sense of will as mastery to the Schopen- hauerian sense of will as desire. The reference's identifying mark does not appear anywhere in the text or in the other emendations, so that the reference has nowhere to go; in the Neske edition it is omitted.
By way of conclusion I may note that the Neske edition is generally closer to the holograph than is the sole extant Abschrift. The text we possess~notwithstanding the one major difficulty cited-seems remarkably faithful to Heidegger's handwritten lecture notes, assuming that the relation of A 33/14 to the relevant pages of the Neske edition is typical. Whether or not that is so the editor of volume 43 of the Gesamtausgabe will have to determine. *
*In the third edition of Heidegger's Nietzsche (without date, but available since the mid-1970s) the Neske Verlag altered the passage discussed above by adding a period to NI, 51,1ine 22, between the words mit and Entschlossenheit. (Cf. p. 227 of this volume, line 10 in the first column. ) The passage would thus read: "For that reason it is not possible for us to strive beyond ourselves; rather, we merely strive, and go along with such striving. Resolute openness to oneself-is always: willing out beyond oneself. " The addition of the period is a significant improvement in the text, but I still prefer the full reading suggested in this Appendix and employed on p. 41 of the translation.
The third edition does not correct the erroneous duplication of the word nicht at NI, 189, line 5 from the bottom.
I am grateful to Ursula Willaredt of Freiburg, whose painstaking checking of the page proofs uncovered this change in the third Neske edition of Nietzsche.
Analysis
By DAVID FARRELL KRELL
No judgment renders an account of the world, but art can teach us to reiterate it, just as the world reiterates itself in the course of eternal returns. . . . To say "yes" to the world, to reiterate it, is at the same time to recreate the world and oneself; it is to become the great artist, the creator.
A. CAMUS, Man in Rebellion, 1951
Early in 1961 Brigitte Neske designed a set of handsome book jackets for one of the major events in her husband's publishing career. Along the spine of the volumes two names appeared, black and white on a salmon background, neither name capitalized: heidegger nietzsche. Both were well known. The latter was famous for having been, as he said, "born posthumously. " And that apparently helped to give rise to the confusion: when the volumes first appeared in Germany no one was sure whether they were heidegger's books on nietzsche or nietzsche's books on heidegger.
Readers of this and the other English volumes may find themselves recalling this little joke more than once and for more than one reason.
Aus-einander-setzung, "a setting apart from one another," is the word Heidegger chooses in his Foreword to these volumes to character- ize his encounter with Nietzsche. That is also the word by which he translates polemos in Heraclitus B53 and B80. Is Heidegger then at war with Nietzsche? Are his lectures and essays on Nietzsche polemics? In the first part of his lecture course "What Calls for Thinking? " Heideg- ger cautions his listeners that all polemic "fails from the outset to
Analysis 231
assume the attitude of thinking. "1 In Heidegger's view polemos is a name for the lighting or clearing of Being in which beings become present to one another and so can be distinguished from one another. Heraclitus speaks of ton polemon xynon, a setting apart from one another that serves essentially to bring together, a contest that unites. In these volumes the English word "confrontation" tries to capture the paradoxical sense of Heidegger's Aus-einander-setzung with Nietzsche's philosophy. Before we say anything about Heidegger's "interpretation" of Nietzsche we should pause to consider the koinonia or community of both thinkers. For at the time Heidegger planned a series of lectures on Nietzsche he identified the task of his own philosophy as the effort "to bring Nietzsche's accomplishment to a full unfolding. "2 The magnitude of that accomplishment, however, was not immediately discernible. Heidegger's first attempt to delineate Nietzsche's accomplishment and to circumscribe his confrontation with Nietzsche traces the profile of will to power as art.
I. THE STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENT OF THE LECTURE COURSE
The published text of Heidegger's 1936-37 lecture course, "Nietz- sche: Will to Power as Art," consists of twenty-five unnumbered sections. ~ Although no more comprehensive parts or divisions appear, the course unfolds in three stages. Sections 1-10 introduce the theme of Nietzsche as metaphysician and examine the nature of "will," "power," and "will to power" in his thought. Sections 12-18 pursue the significance of art in Nietzsche's thinking. Sections 20-25 compare his conception of art to that in Platonism-the philosophy which Nietzsche sought to overturn-and in Plato's dialogues. But if the first
1Martin Heidegger, Was heisst Denken? (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1954), p. 49. Cf. the English translation, What Is Called Thinking? , tr. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 13; cf. also Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 354.
2Martin Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953), p. 28. Cf. the English translation, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (Garden City, N. Y. : Anchor-Doubleday, 1961), p. 30.
~The sections have been numbered in the present edition to facilitate reference.
232 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
two stages, "will to power" and "art," cover the ground staked out in the title Wille zur Macht als Kunst, why the third stage at all? Why especially the preoccupation with Plato's own texts? What is the significance of the fact that in the Foreword Heidegger designates "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" and "On the Essence of Truth" as the first milestones along the route traversed in his lectures and essays on Nietzsche?
Perhaps we have already taken a first step toward answering these questions when we notice that the analysis of the course's three stages leaves two sections out of account, section 11, "The Grounding Ques- tion and the Guiding Question of Philosophy," and section 19, "The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art. " These two sections are not mere entr'actes preceding and succeeding the central discussion of art; they are in fact, altering the image, the hinges upon which the panels of the triptych turn. Heidegger's lecture course on will to power as art is joined and articulated by a question that is presupposed in all the guiding and grounding of philosophy since Plato, that of the es- sence of truth. By advancing through a discussion of Nietzsche's meta- physics of will to power to his celebration of art in the grand style, a celebration conducted within the dreadfully raging discordance of art and truth, Heidegger tries to pinpoint Nietzsche's uncertain location on the historical path of metaphysics. That is the only way he can estimate his own position, the only way he can discern the task of his own thinking. But if the "last 'name' in the history of Being as meta- physics is not Kant and not Hegel, but Nietzsche,"4 the first "name" is Plato. And if Nietzsche's situation at the end of philosophy is ambiguous, so is that of Plato at the beginning. Plato dare not be confounded with Platonism; Nietzsche dare not be confounded with anyone else. Heidegger designs the structure and initiates the move- ment of his lecture course in such a way as to let the irreducible richness of both thinkers come to light.
4Eckhard Heftrich, "Nietzsche im Denken Heideggers," Durchblicke (Frankfurt/ Main: V. Klostermann, 1970), p. 349. Cf. H. ·G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tiibingen: Mohr und Siebeck, 1960), p. 243.
Analysis 233
The structure and movement of the course may become more palpa- ble if we recall the task undertaken in each section, reducing it to bare essentials and ignoring for the moment the amplitude of each section. Only when we arrive at the jointures or hinges (sections 11 and 19) will the summary become more detailed.
Heidegger begins (section 1) by asserting that "will to power" de- fines the basic character of beings in Nietzsche's philosophy. That philosophy therefore proceeds in the orbit of the guiding question of Occidental philosophy, "What is a being (das Seiende)? " Yet Nietzsche "gathers and completes" such questioning: to encounter Nietzsche is to confront Western philosophy as a whole-and there- fore to prepare "a feast of thought. " Nietzsche's philosophy proper, his fundamental position, is in Heidegger's view ascertainable only on the basis of notes sketched during the 1880s for a major work. That work was never written. The collection of notes entitled The Will to Power may not be identified as Nietzsche's Hauptwerk, but must be read critically. After examining a number of plans for the magnum opus drafted during the years 1882-88 (section 3), Heidegger argues for the unity of the three dominant themes, will to power, eternal recurrence of the same, and revaluation of all values (section 4). For Nietzsche all Being is a Becoming, Becoming a willing, willing a will to power (section 2). Will to power is not simply Becoming, however, but is an expression for the Being of Becoming, the "closest approximation" to Being (WM, 617). As such it is eternal recurrence of the same and the testing stone of revaluation. Thus the thought of eternal recurrence advances beyond the guiding question of philosophy, "Was ist das Seiende? " toward its grounding question, "Was ist das Sein? " Both questions must be raised when we try to define Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position or Grundstellung (section 5). .
After discussing the structural plan employed by the editors of The Will to Power, Heidegger situates his own inquiry in the third book, "Principle of a New Valuation," at its fourth and culminating division, "Will to Power as Art. " Why Heidegger begins here is not obvious. Nor does it become clear in the sections immediately following (6-10), which recount the meaning of Being as "will" in metaphysics prior to
234 THE \VILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche and in Nietzsche's own thought. Heidegger wrestles with the notions of "will" and "power," which must be thought in a unified way and which cannot readily be identified with traditional accounts of affect, passion, and feeling. Nor does it help to trace Nietzsche's doc- trine of will back to German Idealism or even to contrast it to Idealism. The sole positive result of these five sections is recognition of the nature of will to power as enhancement or heightening, a moving out beyond oneself, and as the original opening onto beings. But what that means Nietzsche alone can tell us.
Section 11, "The Grounding Question and the Guiding Question of Philosophy," the first "hinge" of the course, initiates the interpretation of "Will to Power as Art" by asserting once more that the designated starting point is essential for the interpretation of will to power as a whole. In order to defend that assertion Heidegger tries to sharpen the "basic philosophical intention" of his interpretation. He reiterates that the guiding question of philosophy is "What is a being? " That question inquires into the grounds of beings but seeks such grounds solely among other beings on the path of epistemology. But the grounding question, "What is Being? ," which would inquire into the meaning of grounds as such and into its own historical grounds as a question, is not posed in the history of philosophy up to and including Nietzsche. Both questions, the penultimate question of philosophy, and the ultimate question which Heidegger reserves for himself, are couched in the words "What is . . . ? " The "is" of both questions seeks an ouverture upon beings as a whole by which we might determine what they in
truth, in essence, are. Both questions provoke thought on the matter of truth as unconcealment, aletheia; they are preliminaries to the ques- tion of the "essence of truth" and the "truth of essence. " Nietzsche's understanding of beings as a whole, of what is, is enunciated in the phrase "will to power. " But if the question of the essence of truth is already implied in the guiding question of philosophy, then we must ascertain the point where "will to power" and "truth" converge in Nietzsche's philosophy. They do so, astonishingly, not in knowledge (Erkenntnis) but in art (Kunst). The way Nietzsche completes and
Analysis 235
gathers philosophy hitherto has to do with that odd conjunction "truth and art" for which no tertium comparationis seems possible.
Heidegger now (section 12) begins to sketch out the central panel of the triptych. He turns to a passage in The Will to Power (WM, 797) that identifies the "artist phenomenon" as the most perspicuous form of will to power. Grasped in terms of the artist and expanded to the point where it becomes the basic occurrence of all beings, art is pro- claimed the most potent stimulant to life, hence the distinctive coun- termovement to nihilism. As the mightiest stimulans to life, art is
worth more than truth. Heidegger now tries to insert this notion of art into the context of the history of aesth~tics (section 13) with special reference to the problem of form-content. Nietzsche's attempt to de- velop a "physiology of art," which seems to militate against his celebra- tion of art as the countermovement to nihilism, focuses on the phenomenon of artistic Rausch (section 14). After an analysis of Kant's doctrine of the beautiful (section 15), Heidegger defines rapture as the force that engenders form and as the fundamental condition for the enhancement of life (section 16). Form constitutes the actuality of art in the "grand style" (section 17), where the apparent contradiction between physiological investigation and artistic celebration dissolves: Nietzsche's physiology is neither biologism nor positivism, however much it may appear to be.
