The reflection spoken of here is not some
fortuitous
kind of thinking; it is rather that thinking in which
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
758- 6Z.
212 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
encounter a very old word in the German language, one that has multiple meanings. For actually means before. In the Alemannic dialect, the word Fiirtuch is still the common word for "apron. "'" The Fiirsprech speaks "forth" and is the spokesman. Yet at the same time fiir means "on behalf of" and "by way of justification. " Finally, an advocate is one who interprets and explains what he is talking about and what he is advocating.
Zarathustra is an advocate in this threefold sense. But what does he speak forth? On whose behalf does he speak? What does he try to interpret? Is Zarathustra merely some sort of advocate for some arbi- trary cause, or is he the advocate for the one thing that always and above all else speaks to human beings?
Toward the end of the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra appears a section with the heading "The Convalescent. " That is Zarathustra. But what does "convalescent," der Genesende, mean? Genesen is the same word as the Greek neomai, nostos, meaning to head for home. "Nostalgia" is the yearning to go home, homesickness. "The Convales- cent" is one who is getting ready to turn homeward, that is, to turn toward what defines him. The convalescent is under way to himself, so that he can say of himself who he is. In the episode mentioned the convalescent says, "1, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle. . . . "
Zarathustra speaks on behalf of life, suffering, and the circle, and that is what he speaks forth. These three, "life, suffering, circle," be- long together and are the selfsame. If we were able to think this three- fold matter correctly as one and the same, we would be in a position to surmise whose advocate Zarathustra is and who it is that Zarathustra himself, as this advocate, would like to be. To be sure, we could now intervene in a heavy-handed way and explain, with indisputable cor- rectness, that in Nietzsche's language "life" means will to power as the fundamental trait of all beings, and not merely human beings. Nietz- sche himself says what "suffering" means in the following words (VI, 469): "Everything that suffers wills to live. . . . " "Everything" here
• For Fiirtuch (literally, "fore-cloth") Bernd Magnus has found a felicitous English parallel: the pinafore!
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 213
means all things that are by way of will to power, a way that is de- scribed in the following words (XVI, 151): "The configurative forces collide. " "Circle" is the sign of the ring that wrings its way back to itself and in that way always achieves recurrence of the same.
Accordingly, Zarathustra introduces himself as an advocate of the proposition that all being is will to power, a will that suffers in its creating and colliding, and that wills itself precisely in this way in eternal recurrence of the same.
With the above assertion we have brought the essence of Zarathustra to definition-as we say at school. We can write the definition down, commit it to memory, and bring it forward whenever the occasion calls for it. We can even corroborate what we bring forward by referring specifically to those sentences in Nietzsche's works which, set in italic type, tell us who Zarathustra is.
In the above-mentioned episode, "The Convalescent," we read (314): "You [Zarathustra] are the teacher ofeternal return. . . ! "And in the Prologue to the entire work (section 3) stands the following: "/ [Zarathustra] teach you the overman. "
According to these statements, Zarathustra the advocate is a "teacher. " To all appearances, he teaches two things: the eternal return of the same and the overman. However, it is not immediately apparent whether and in what way the things he teaches belong together. Yet even if the connection were to be clarified it would remain question- able whether we are hearing the advocate, whether we are learning from this teacher. Without such hearing and learning we shall never rightly come to know who Zarathustra is. Thus it is not enough to string together sentences from which we can gather what the advocate and teacher says about himself. We must pay attention to the way he says it, on what occasions, and with what intent. Zarathustra does J! Ot utter the decisive phrase "You are the teacher of eternal return! " by himself to himself. His animals tell him this. They are mentioned at the very beginning of the work's Prologue and more explicitly at its conclusion. In section I0 we read:
When the sun stood at midday he [Zarathustra]looked inquiringly into the sky-for above him he heard the piercing cry of a bird. And behold! An
214 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF' THE SAME
eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey, but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck.
In this mysterious embrace about the throat-in the eagle's circling and the serpent's coiling-we can already sense the way circle and ring tacitly wind about one another. Thus the ring scintillates, the ring that is called anulus aeternitatis: the signet ring and year of eternity. When we gaze on the two animals we see where they themselves, circling and coiling about one another, belong. For of themselves they never con- coct circle and ring; rather, they enter into circle and ring, there to find their essence. When we gaze on the two animals we perceive the things that matter to Zarathustra, who looks inquiringly into the sky. Thus the text continues:
"These are my animals! " said Zarathustra, and his heart was filled with joy. "The proudest animal under the sun and the most discerning animal under the sun-they have gone out on a search.
"They want to learn whether Zarathustra is still alive. Verily, am I still alive? "
Zarathustra's question receives its proper weight only if we under- stand the undefined word life in the sense of will to power. Zarathustra asks whether his will corresponds to the will which, as will to power, pervades the whole of being.
The animals seek to learn Zarathustra's essence. He asks himself whether he is still-that is, whether he is already-the one who he properly is. In a note to Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche's literary remains (XIV, 279) the following appears: "'Do I have time to wait for my animals? If they are m y animals they will know how to find me. ' Zarathustra's silence. "
Thus at the place cited, "The Convalescent," Zarathustra's animals say the following to him-and although not all the words are itali- cized, we dare not overlook any of them. The animals say: "For your animals know well, 0 Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of eternal return--that is now your des- tiny! " Thus it comes to light: Zarathustra must first become who he is. Zarathustra shrinks back in dismay before such becoming. Dismay
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 215
permeates the entire work that portrays him. Dismay determines the style, the hesitant and constantly arrested course of the work as a whole. Dismay extinguishes all of Zarathustra's self-assurance and pre- sumptuousness at the very outset of his way. Whoever has failed and continues to fail to apprehend from the start the dismay that haunts all of Zarathustra's speeches-which often sound presumptuous, often seem little more than frenzied extravaganzas-will never be able to discover who Zarathustra is.
If Zarathustra must first of all become the teacher of eternal return, then he cannot commence with this doctrine straightaway. For this reason another phrase stands at the beginning of his way: "/ teach you the overman. "
To be sure, we must try to extirpate right here and now all the false and confusing overtones of the word Obermensch that arise in our customary view of things. With the name overman Nietzsche is by no means designating a merely superdimensional human being of the kind that has prevailed hitherto. Nor is he referring to a species of man that will cast off all that is humane, making naked willfulness its law and titanic rage its rule. Rather, the overman-taking the word quite literally-is that human being who goes beyond prior humanity solely in order to conduct such humanity for the first time to its essence, an essence that is still unattained, and to place humanity firmly within that essence. A note from the posthumously published writings sur- rounding Zarathustra says (XIV, 271): "Zarathustra does not want to lose anything of mankind's past; he wants to pour everything into the mold. "
Yet whence arises the urgent cry for the overman? Why does prior humanity no longer suffice? Because Nietzsche recognizes the historic moment in which man takes it on himself to assume dominion over the earth as a whole. Nietzsche is the first thinker to pose the decisive question concerning the phase of world history that is emerging only now, the first to think the question through in its metaphysical im- plications. The question asks: Is man, in his essence as man hereto- fore, prepared to assume dominion over the earth? If not, what must happen with prior humanity in order that it may "subjugate" the earth and thus fulfill the prophecy of an old testament? Must not prior man
216 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
be conducted beyond himself, over his prior self, in order to meet this challenge? If so, then the "over-man," correctly thought, cannot be the product of an unbridled and degenerate fantasy that is plunging headlong into the void. We can just as little uncover the nature of overman historically by virtue of an analysis of the modern age. We dare not seek the essential figure of overman in those personalities who, as major functionaries of a shallow, misguided will to power, are swept to the pinnacles of that will's sundry organizational forms. Of course, one thing ought to be clear to us immediately: this thinking that pursues the figure of a teacher who teaches the over-man involves us, involves Europe, involves the earth as a whole-not merely today, but especially tomorrow. That is so, no matter whether we affirm or reject this thinking, whether we neglect it or ape it in false tones. Every essential thinking cuts across all discipleship and opposition alike with- out being touched.
Hence it behooves us first of all to learn how to learn from the teacher, even if that only means to ask out beyond him. In that way alone will we one day experience who Zarathustra is. Or else we will never experience it.
To be sure, we must still ponder whether this asking out beyond Nietzsche's thinking can be a continuation of his thought, or whether it must become a step back.
And before that, we must ponder whether this "step back" merely refers to a historically ascertainable past which one might choose to revive (for example, the world of Goethe), or whether the word back indicates something that has been. For the commencement of what has been still awaits a commemorative thinking, in order that it might become a beginning, a beginning to which the dawn grants upsurgence. *
Yet we shall now restrict ourselves to the effort to learn a few provi- sional things about Zarathustra, The appropriate way to proceed would be to follow the first steps taken by this teacher-the teacher that Zara- thustra is. He teaches by showing. He previews the essence of over- man and brings that essence to visible configuration. Zarathustra is
• See "The Anaximander Fragment," in Early Greek Thinking, pp. 16-18.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 217
merely the teacher, not the over-man himself. In turn, Nietzsche is not Zarathustra, but the questioner who seeks to create in thought Zarathustra's essence.
The overman proceeds beyond prior and contemporary humanity; thus he is a transition, a bridge. In order for us learners to be able to follow the teacher who teaches the overman, we must-keeping now to the imagery-get onto the bridge. We are thinking the crucial as- pects of the transition when we heed these three things:
First, that from which the one who is in transition departs. Second, the transition itself.
Third, that toward which the one in transition is heading. Especially the last-mentioned aspect we must have in view; above
all, the one who is in transition must have it in view; and before him, the teacher who is to show it to him must have it in view. If a preview of the "whither" is missing, the one in transition remains rudderless, and the place from which he must release himself remains undeter- mined. And yet the place to which the one in transition is called first shows itself in the full light of day only when he has gone over to it. For the one in transition-and particularly for the one who, as the teacher, is to point the way of transition, particularly for Zarathustra himself-the "whither" remains always at a far remove. The remote- ness persists. Inasmuch as it persists, it remains in a kind of proximity, a proximity that preserves what is remote as remote by commemorating it and turning its thoughts toward it. Commemorative nearness to the remote is what our language calls "longing," die Sehnsucht. We wrongly associate the word Sucht with suchen, "to seek" and "to be driven. " But the old word Sucht (as in Gelbsucht, "jaundice," and
Schwindsucht, "consumption") means illness, suffering, pain. Longing is the agony of the nearness of what lies afar.
Whither the one in transition goes, there his longing is at home.
The one in transition, and even the one who points out the way to him, the teacher, is (as we have already heard) on the way home to the essence that is most proper to him. He is the convalescent. Immedi- ately following the episode called "The Convalescent," in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the episode entitled "On the Great Longing. " With this episode, the third-to-last of Part III, the work
218 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a whole attains its summit. In a note from the posthumously published materials (XIV, 285) Nietzsche observes, "A divine suffering is the content of Zarathustra III. "
In the section "On the Great Longing" Zarathustra speaks to his soul. According to Plato's teaching-a teaching that became definitive for Western metaphysics-the essence of thinking resides in the soul's solitary conversation with itself. The essence of thinking is logos, han aute pros hauten he psyche diexerchetai peri han an skopei, the telling self-gathering which the soul itself undergoes on its way to itself, with- in the scope of whatever it is looking at (Theaetetus, 189e; cf. The Sophist, 263e). "
In converse with his soul Zarathustra thinks his "most abysmal thought" ("The Convalescent," section one; cf. Part III, "On the Vi- sion and the Riddle," section 2). Zarathustra begins the episode "On the Great Longing" with the words: "0 my soul, I taught you to say 'Today' like 'One day' and 'Formerly,' I taught you to dance your round-dance beyond every Here and There and Yonder. " The three words "Today," "One day," and "Formerly" are capitalized and placed in quotation marks. They designate the fundamental features of time. The way Zarathustra expresses them points toward the matter Zara- thustra himself must henceforth tell himself in the very ground of his essence. And what is that? That "One day" and "Formerly," future and past, are like "Today. " And also that today is like what is past and what is to come. All three phases of time merge in a single identity, as the same in one single present, a perpetual "now. " Metaphysics calls the constant now "eternity. " Nietzsche too thinks the three phases of time in terms of eternity as the constant now. Yet for him the constan- cy consists not in stasis but in a recurrence of the same. When Zara-
• Schleiermacher translates the Theaetetus' definition of dianoia, "thinking," as fol- lows: "A speech which the soul goes through by itself concerning whatever it wants to investigate. " And Cornford translates it: "As a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering. " The passage from The Sophist reads as follows:
Oukoun dianoia men kai logos tauton. Plen ho men entos tes psyches pros hauten
dialogos aneu phones gignomenos tout'auto hemin epijnomasthe, dianoia?
Then, thought and speech are the same, except that the inner conversation of the soul with itself, which proceeds altogether without sound, is called thinking?
Theaetetus replies on behalf of Western intellectuality as a whole: "Certainly. "
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 219
thustra teaches his soui to say those words he is the teacher of eternal return of the same. Such return is the inexhaustible abundance of a life that is both joyous and agonizing. Such a life is the destination toward which "the great longing" leads the teacher of eternal return of the same. Thus in the same episode "the great longing" is also called "the longing of superabundance. "
The "great longing" thrives for the most part on that from which it draws its only consolation, that is to say, its confidence in the future. In place of the older word "consolation," Trost (related to trauen, "to trust," "to betroth," and to zutrauen, "to believe oneself capable"), the word "hope" has entered our language. "The great longing" attunes and defines Zarathustra, who in his "greatest hope" is inspired by such longing.
Yet what induces Zarathustra to such hope, and what entitles him to it?
What bridge must he take in order to go over to the overman? What bridge enables him to depart from humanity hitherto, so that he can be released from it?
It derives from the peculiar structure of the work Thus Spoke Zara- thustra, a work that is to make manifest the transition of the one who goes over, that the answer to the question we have just posed appears in the second part of the work, the preparatory part. Here, in the episode "On the Tarantulas," Nietzsche has Zarathustra say: "For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the high- est hope and a rainbow after long storms. "
How strange, how alien these words must seem to the customary view of Nietzsche's philosophy that we have furnished for ourselves. Is not Nietzsche supposed to be the one who goads our will to power, incites us to a politics of violence and war, and sets the "blond beast:' on his rampage?
The words "that man be redeemed from revenge" are even italicized in the text. Nietzsche's thought thinks in the direction of redemption from the spirit of revenge. His thinking would minister to a spirit which, as freedom from vengefulness, goes before all mere fraternizing -but also before all vestiges of the sheer will to punish. It would minister to a spirit that abides before all efforts to secure peace and
220 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
before all conduct of war, a spirit quite apart from that which wills to establish and secure pax, peace, by pacts. The space in which such freedom from revenge moves is equidistant from pacifism, political violence, and calculating neutrality. In the same way, it lies outside feeble neglect of things and avoidance of sacrifice, outside blind inter- vention and the will to action at any price.
Nietzsche's reputation as a "free spirit" arises from the spirit of free- dom from revenge.
"That man be redeemed from revenge. " If we pay heed even in the slightest way to this spirit of freedom in Nietzsche's thinking, as its principal trait, then the prior image of Nietzsche-which is still in circulation-will surely disintegrate.
"For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the highest hope," says Nietzsche. He thereby says at the same time, in a language that prepares yet conceals the way, whither his "great longing" aims.
Yet what does Nietzsche understand here by "revenge"? In what, according to Nietzsche, does redemption from revenge consist?
We shall be content if we can shed some light on these two ques- tions. Such light would perhaps enable us to descry the bridge that is to lead such thinking from prior humanity to the overman. The desti- nation toward which the one in transition is heading will only come to the fore in the transition itself. Perhaps then it will dawn on us why Zarathustra, the advocate of life, suffering, and the circle, is the teacher who simultaneously teaches the eternal return of the same and the overman.
But then why is it that something so decisive depends on redemption from revenge? Where is the spirit of revenge at home? Nietzsche re- plies to our question in the third-to-last episode of the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which bears the heading "On Redemption. " Here the following words appear: "The spirit ofrevenge: my friends, up to now that was man's best reflection; and wherever there was suffer- ing, there also had to be punishment. "
This statement without reservation attributes revenge to the whole of humanity's reflection hitherto.
The reflection spoken of here is not some fortuitous kind of thinking; it is rather that thinking in which
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 221
man's relation to what is, to being, is fastened and hangs suspended. Insofar as man comports himself toward beings, he represents them with regard to the fact that they are, with regard to what they are and how they are, how they might be and how they ought to be-in short, he represents beings with regard to their Being. Such representing is thinking.
According to Nietzsche's statement, such representation has hereto- fore been determined by the spirit of revenge. Meanwhile human be- ings take their relationship with what is, a relationship that is determined in this fashion, to be the best possible sort of relationship.
In whatever way man may represent beings as such, he does so with a view to Being. By means of this view he advances always beyond beings-out beyond them and over to Being. The Greeks said this in the word meta. Thus man's every relation to beings as such is inher- ently metaphysical. If Nietzsche understands revenge as the spirit that defines and sets the tone for man's relationship with Being, then he is from the outset thinking revenge metaphysically.
Here revenge is not merely a theme for morality, and redemption from revenge is not a task for moral education. Just as little are revenge and vengefulness objects of psychology. Nietzsche sees the essence and scope of revenge metaphysically. Yet what does revenge in general mean?
If at first we keep to the meaning of the word, although at the same time trying not to be myopic, we may be able to find a clue in it. Revenge, taking revenge, wreaking, urgere: these words mean to push, drive, herd, pursue, and persecute. In what sense is revenge persecution? * Revenge does not merely try to hunt something down, seize, and take possession of it. Nor does it only seek to slay what it persecutes. Vengeful persecution defies in advance that on which jt avenges itself. It defies its object by degrading it, in order to feel superior to what has been thus degraded; in this way it restores its own self-esteem, the only estimation that seems to count for it. For one who seeks vengeance is galled by the feeling that he has been thwarted and injured. During the years Nietzsche was composing his work Thus
• The clue may reside in the fact that the word here translated as "persecution," Nachstellen, is a morphological pendant to the word Vorstellen, "representation. "
222 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Spoke Zarathustra he jotted down the following observation: "I advise all martyrs to consider whether it wasn't vengeance that drove them to such extremes" (see the third Grossoktav edition, XII, 298).
What is revenge? We can now provisionally say that revenge is per- secution that defies and degrades. And such persecution is supposed to have sustained and permeated all prior reflection, all representation of beings? If the designated metaphysical scope may in fact be attributed to the spirit of revenge, that scope must somehow become visible in terms of the very constitution of metaphysics. In order to discern it, if only in rough outline, let us now turn to the essential coinage of the Being of beings in modern metaphysics. The essential coinage of Being comes to language in classic form in several sentences formulated by Schelling in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence ofHu-
man Freedom and the Objects Pertaining Thereto (1809). The three sentences read:
-In the final and highest instance there is no other Being than willing. Willing is primal Being, and to it [willing] alone all the predicates of the same (primal Being] apply: absence of conditions; eternity; independence from time; self-affirmation. All philosophy strives solely in order to find this supreme expression. *
Schelling asserts that the predicates which metaphysical thought since antiquity has attributed to Being find their ultimate, supreme, and thus consummate configuration in willing. However, the will of the willing meant here is not a faculty of the human soul. Here the word willing names the Being of beings as a whole. Such Being is will. That sounds foreign to us-and so it is, as long as the sustaining thoughts of Western metaphysics remain alien to us. They will remain alien as long as we do not think these thoughts, but merely go on reporting them. For example, one may ascertain Leibniz's utterances concerning the Being of beings with absolute historical precision- without in the least thinking about what he was thinking when he defined the Being of beings in terms of the monad, as the unity of perceptio and appetitus, representation and striving, that is, will. What
* Heidegger cites F. W. f. Schellings philosophische Schriften (Landshut, 1809), I, 419. In the standard edition of Schelling's Siimtliche Werke (1860), VII, 350.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 223
Leibniz was thinking comes to language in Kant and Fichte as "the rational will"; Hegel and Schelling, each in his own way, reflect on this Vernunftwille. Schopenhauer is referring to the selfsame thing when he gives his major work the title The World [not man] as Will and Representation. Nietzsche is thinking the selfsame thing when he acknowledges the primal Being of beings as will to power.
That everywhere on all sides the Being of beings appears consistently as will does not derive from views on being which a few philosophers furnished for themselves. No amount of erudition will ever uncover what it means that Being appears as will. What it means can only be asked in thinking; as what is to be thought, it can only be celebrated as worth asking about; as something we are mindful of, it can only be kept in mind.
In modern metaphysics, there for the first time expressly and explic- itly, the Being of beings appears as will. Man is man insofar as he comports himself to beings by way of thought. In this way he is held in Being. Man's thinking must also correspond in its essence to that toward which it comports itself, to wit, the Being of beings as will.
Now, Nietzsche tells us that prior thinking has been determined by the spirit of revenge. Precisely how is Nietzsche thinking the essence of revenge, assuming that he is thinking it metaphysically?
In the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the episode we have already mentioned, "On Redemption," Nietzsche has Zarathus- tra say: "This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will's ill will toward time and its 'It was. ' "
That an essential definition of revenge emphasizes revulsion and defiance, and thus points to revenge as ill will, corresponds to our characterization of it as a peculiar sort of persecution. Yet Nietzsche does not merely say that revenge is revulsion. The same could be said of hatred. Nietzsche says that revenge is the will's ill will. But will signifies the Being of beings as a whole, and not simply human will- ing. By virtue of the characterization of revenge as "the will's ill will," the defiant persecution of revenge persists primarily in relationship to the Being of beings. It becomes apparent that this is the case when we heed what it is on which revenge's ill will turns: revenge is "the will's ill will against time and its 'It was. ' "
224 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
When we read this essential definition ofrevenge for the first time- and also for a second and a third time-the emphatic application of revenge to time seems to us surprising, incomprehensible, ultimately gratuitous. It has to strike us this way, as long as we think no further about what the word time here means.
Nietzsche says that revenge is "the will's ill will toward time. . . . " This does not say, toward something temporal. Nor does it say, toward a particular characteristic of time. It simply says, "Ill will toward time. . . . "
To be sure, these words now follow: ". . . toward time and its 'It was. ' " But this suggests that revenge is ill will toward the "It was" of time. We may insist, quite rightly, that not only the "it was" but also the "it will be" and the "it is now" also pertain just as essentially to time. For time is defined not only by the past but also by future and present. If therefore Nietzsche stresses the "It was" of time, his char- acterization of the essence of revenge obviously refers, not to time as such, but to time in one particular respect. Yet how do matters stand with time "as such"? They stand in this way: time goes. And it goes by passing. Whatever of time is to come never comes to stay, but only to go. Where to? Into passing. When a man dies we say he has passed away. The temporal is held to be that which passes away.
Nietzsche defines revenge as "the will's ill will toward time and its 'It was. ' " The supplement to the definition does not mean to put into relief one isolated characteristic of time while stubbornly ignoring the other two; rather, it designates the fundamental trait of time in its proper and entire unfolding as time. With the conjunction and in the phrase "time and its 'It was,' " Nietzsche is not proceeding to append one special characteristic of time. Here the and means as much as "and that means. " Revenge is the will's ill will toward time and that means toward passing away, transiency. Transiency is that against which the will can take no further steps, that against which its willing constantly collides. Time and its "It was" is the obstacle that the will cannot budge. Time, as passing away, is repulsive; the will suffers on account of it. Suffering in this way, the will itself becomes chronically ill over such passing away; the illness then wills its own passing, and in
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 225
so doing wills that everything in the world be worthy of passing away. Ill will toward time degrades all that passes away. The earthly-Earth and all that pertains to her-is that which properly ought not to be and which ultimately does not really possess true Being. Plato himself called it me on, nonbeing. *
According to Schelling's statements, which simply express the guid- ing representations of all metaphysics, the prime predicates of Being are "independence from time," "eternity. "
Yet the most profound ill will toward time does not consist in the mere disparagement of the earthly. For Nietzsche the most deepseated revenge consists in that reflection which posits supratemporal ideality as absolute. Measured against it, the temporal must perforce degrade itself to nonbeing proper.
Yet how should humanity assume dominion over the earth, how can it take the earth as earth into its protection, so long as it degrades the earthly, so long as the spirit of revenge determines its reflection? If it is a matter of rescuing the earth as earth, then the spirit of revenge will have to vanish beforehand. Thus for Zarathustra redemption from revenge is the bridge to the highest hope.
But in what does redemption from ill will toward transiency consist? Does it consist in a liberation from the will in general-perhaps in the senses suggested by Schopenhauer and in Buddhism? Inasmuch as the Being of beings is will, according to the doctrine of modern meta- physics, redemption from the will would amount to redemption from Being, hence to a collapse into vacuous nothingness. For Nietzsche redemption from revenge is redemption from the repulsive, from defi- ance and degradation in the will, but by no means the dissolution of
• Heidegger's remarks recall the decisive words of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, Part One (lines 1338-40): " . . . denn alles, was entsteht, I 1st wert, dass es zugrunile geht. " "For everything that comes to be is worthy of its own demise. " Yet because Heidegger here speaks of Vergehen, Vergiingliches, his phrasing has a diabolical way of embracing the concluding words of Part Two (the very words Nietzsche parodied in the first of his Songs o f the Outlaw Prince), words that try to reduce "all that passes away" to a mere image of eternity. Thus Mephisto and the chorus mysticus, the good and evil of metaphysics and morals, join voices to chant revenge, to denigrate time and its "It was. "
226 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
all willing. Redemption releases the ill will from its "no" and frees it for a "yes. " What does the "yes" affirm? Precisely what the ill will of a vengeful spirit renounced: time, transiency.
The "yes" to time is the will that transiency perdure, that it not be disparaged as nothing worth. Yet how can passing away perdure? Only in this way: as passing away it must not only continuously go, but must also always come. Only in this way: passing away and transiency must recur in their coming as the same. And such recurrence itself is per- durant only if it is eternal. According to the doctrine of metaphysics, the predicate "eternity" belongs to the Being of beings.
Redemption from revenge is transition from ill will toward time to the will that represents being in the eternal recurrence of the same. Here the will becomes the advocate of the circle.
To put it another way: Only when the Being of beings represents itself to man as eternal recurrence of the same can man cross over the bridge and, redeemed from the spirit of revenge, be the one in transi- tion, the overman.
Zarathustra is the teacher who teaches the overman. But he teaches this doctrine only because he is the teacher of eternal recurrence of the same. This thought, eternal recurrence of the same, is first in rank. It is the "most abysmal" thought. For that reason the teacher comes out with it last, and always hesitantly.
Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? He is the teacher whose doctrine would liberate prior reflection from the spirit of revenge to the "yes" spoken to eternal recurrence of the same.
As the teacher of eternal recurrence, Zarathustra teaches the over- man. According to an unpublished note (XIV, 276), a refrain accom- panies the latter doctrine: "Refrain: 'Love alone will make it righf-{the creative love that forgets itself in its works). "
As the teacher of eternal recurrence and overman, Zarathustra does not teach two different things. What he teaches coheres in itself, since one demands the other as its response. Such correspondence-in the way it essentially unfolds and the way it withdraws-is precisely what the figure of Zarathustra conceals in itself, conceals yet at the same time displays, thus allowing the correspondence to provoke our thought.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 227
Yet the teacher knows that what he is teaching remains a vision and a riddle. He perseveres in such reflective knowledge.
We today, because of the peculiar ascendancy of the modern sciences, are caught up in the strange misconception that knowledge can be attained from science and that thinking is subject to the juris- diction of science. Yet whatever unique thing a thinker is able to say can be neither proved nor refuted logically or empirically. Nor is it a matter of faith. We can only envisage it questioningly, thoughtfully. What we envisage thereby always appears as worthy of question.
To catch a glimpse of the vision and the riddle which the figure Zarathustra manifests, and to retain that glimpse, let us once again cast our eyes on the spectacle of Zarathustra's animals. They appear to him at the outset of his journeyings:
. . . He looked inquiringly into the sky-for above him he heard the piercing cry of a bird. And behold! An eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey, but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck.
"These are my animals! " said Zarathustra, and his heart was filled with joy.
A passage we cited earlier-yet purposely only in part-from the first section of "The Convalescent" reads: "1, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle-1 summon you, my most abysmal thought! " In the second section of the episode "On the Vision and the Riddle," in Part III, Zarathustra describes the thought of eternal recurrence of the same in identical words. There, in his confrontation with the dwarf, Zarathustra tries for the first time to think that riddlesome thing which he sees as meriting his longing. The eternal recurrence of the same does remain a vision for Zarathustra; but it is also a riddle. It can be neither proved nor refuted logically or empirically. At bottom, this holds for every essential thought of every thinker: something envisaged, but a riddle-worthy of question.
Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? We can now reply in the following formula: Zarathustra is the teacher of eternal return of the same and the teacher of overman. But now we can see more clearly-perhaps also beyond our own formula-that Zarathustra is not a teacher who
228 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
instructs us concerning two sundry items. Zarathustra teaches the over- man because he is the teacher of eternal return of the same. Yet the reverse is also true: Zarathustra teaches eternal return of the same be- cause he is the teacher of overman. These doctrines are conjoined in a circle. In its circling, the teaching corresponds to that which is-to the circle which as eternal recurrence of the same makes out the Being of beings, that is, what is permanent in Becoming.
The teaching, and our thinking of it, will achieve such circling whenever they cross over the bridge called "Redemption from the Spirit of Revenge. " In this way prior thinking is to be overcome.
From the period immediately following the completion of the work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the year 1885, comes a note that has been taken up as number 617 in the book that was pieced together from Nietzsche's literary remains and published under the title The Will to Power. The note bears the underscored title "Recapitulation. "" Here Nietzsche with extraordinary perspicuity condenses the principal matter of his thinking into just a few sentences. A parenthetical remark appended to the text makes explicit mention of Zarathustra. Nietzsche's "Recapitulation" begins with the statement: "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power.
The supreme will to power, that is, what is most vital in all life, comes to pass when transiency is represented as perpetual Becoming in the eternal recurrence of the same, in this way being made stable and permanent. Such representing is a thinking which, as Nietzsche em- phatically notes, stamps the character of Being on beings. Such think- ing takes Becoming, to which perpetual collision and suffering belong, into its protection and custody.
Does such thinking overcome prior reflection, overcome the spirit of revenge? Or does there not lie concealed in this very stampin~which takes all Becoming into the protection of eternal recurrence of the same-a form of ill will against sheer transiency and thereby a highly spiritualized spirit of revenge?
We no sooner pose this question than the illusion arises that we are • See the explanatory note on pp. 201-02, above.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 229
trying to discredit Nietzsche, to impute something as most proper to him which is precisely what he wants to overcome. It is as though we cherished the view that by such imputation we were refuting the thought of this thinker.
The officious will to refute never even approaches a thinker's path. Refutation belongs among those petty intellectual entertainments which the public needs for its amusement. Moreover, Nietzsche him- self long ago anticipated the answer to our question. The text that immediately precedes Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Nietzsche's corpus appeared in 1882 under the title The Gay Science.
212 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
encounter a very old word in the German language, one that has multiple meanings. For actually means before. In the Alemannic dialect, the word Fiirtuch is still the common word for "apron. "'" The Fiirsprech speaks "forth" and is the spokesman. Yet at the same time fiir means "on behalf of" and "by way of justification. " Finally, an advocate is one who interprets and explains what he is talking about and what he is advocating.
Zarathustra is an advocate in this threefold sense. But what does he speak forth? On whose behalf does he speak? What does he try to interpret? Is Zarathustra merely some sort of advocate for some arbi- trary cause, or is he the advocate for the one thing that always and above all else speaks to human beings?
Toward the end of the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra appears a section with the heading "The Convalescent. " That is Zarathustra. But what does "convalescent," der Genesende, mean? Genesen is the same word as the Greek neomai, nostos, meaning to head for home. "Nostalgia" is the yearning to go home, homesickness. "The Convales- cent" is one who is getting ready to turn homeward, that is, to turn toward what defines him. The convalescent is under way to himself, so that he can say of himself who he is. In the episode mentioned the convalescent says, "1, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle. . . . "
Zarathustra speaks on behalf of life, suffering, and the circle, and that is what he speaks forth. These three, "life, suffering, circle," be- long together and are the selfsame. If we were able to think this three- fold matter correctly as one and the same, we would be in a position to surmise whose advocate Zarathustra is and who it is that Zarathustra himself, as this advocate, would like to be. To be sure, we could now intervene in a heavy-handed way and explain, with indisputable cor- rectness, that in Nietzsche's language "life" means will to power as the fundamental trait of all beings, and not merely human beings. Nietz- sche himself says what "suffering" means in the following words (VI, 469): "Everything that suffers wills to live. . . . " "Everything" here
• For Fiirtuch (literally, "fore-cloth") Bernd Magnus has found a felicitous English parallel: the pinafore!
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 213
means all things that are by way of will to power, a way that is de- scribed in the following words (XVI, 151): "The configurative forces collide. " "Circle" is the sign of the ring that wrings its way back to itself and in that way always achieves recurrence of the same.
Accordingly, Zarathustra introduces himself as an advocate of the proposition that all being is will to power, a will that suffers in its creating and colliding, and that wills itself precisely in this way in eternal recurrence of the same.
With the above assertion we have brought the essence of Zarathustra to definition-as we say at school. We can write the definition down, commit it to memory, and bring it forward whenever the occasion calls for it. We can even corroborate what we bring forward by referring specifically to those sentences in Nietzsche's works which, set in italic type, tell us who Zarathustra is.
In the above-mentioned episode, "The Convalescent," we read (314): "You [Zarathustra] are the teacher ofeternal return. . . ! "And in the Prologue to the entire work (section 3) stands the following: "/ [Zarathustra] teach you the overman. "
According to these statements, Zarathustra the advocate is a "teacher. " To all appearances, he teaches two things: the eternal return of the same and the overman. However, it is not immediately apparent whether and in what way the things he teaches belong together. Yet even if the connection were to be clarified it would remain question- able whether we are hearing the advocate, whether we are learning from this teacher. Without such hearing and learning we shall never rightly come to know who Zarathustra is. Thus it is not enough to string together sentences from which we can gather what the advocate and teacher says about himself. We must pay attention to the way he says it, on what occasions, and with what intent. Zarathustra does J! Ot utter the decisive phrase "You are the teacher of eternal return! " by himself to himself. His animals tell him this. They are mentioned at the very beginning of the work's Prologue and more explicitly at its conclusion. In section I0 we read:
When the sun stood at midday he [Zarathustra]looked inquiringly into the sky-for above him he heard the piercing cry of a bird. And behold! An
214 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF' THE SAME
eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey, but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck.
In this mysterious embrace about the throat-in the eagle's circling and the serpent's coiling-we can already sense the way circle and ring tacitly wind about one another. Thus the ring scintillates, the ring that is called anulus aeternitatis: the signet ring and year of eternity. When we gaze on the two animals we see where they themselves, circling and coiling about one another, belong. For of themselves they never con- coct circle and ring; rather, they enter into circle and ring, there to find their essence. When we gaze on the two animals we perceive the things that matter to Zarathustra, who looks inquiringly into the sky. Thus the text continues:
"These are my animals! " said Zarathustra, and his heart was filled with joy. "The proudest animal under the sun and the most discerning animal under the sun-they have gone out on a search.
"They want to learn whether Zarathustra is still alive. Verily, am I still alive? "
Zarathustra's question receives its proper weight only if we under- stand the undefined word life in the sense of will to power. Zarathustra asks whether his will corresponds to the will which, as will to power, pervades the whole of being.
The animals seek to learn Zarathustra's essence. He asks himself whether he is still-that is, whether he is already-the one who he properly is. In a note to Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche's literary remains (XIV, 279) the following appears: "'Do I have time to wait for my animals? If they are m y animals they will know how to find me. ' Zarathustra's silence. "
Thus at the place cited, "The Convalescent," Zarathustra's animals say the following to him-and although not all the words are itali- cized, we dare not overlook any of them. The animals say: "For your animals know well, 0 Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of eternal return--that is now your des- tiny! " Thus it comes to light: Zarathustra must first become who he is. Zarathustra shrinks back in dismay before such becoming. Dismay
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 215
permeates the entire work that portrays him. Dismay determines the style, the hesitant and constantly arrested course of the work as a whole. Dismay extinguishes all of Zarathustra's self-assurance and pre- sumptuousness at the very outset of his way. Whoever has failed and continues to fail to apprehend from the start the dismay that haunts all of Zarathustra's speeches-which often sound presumptuous, often seem little more than frenzied extravaganzas-will never be able to discover who Zarathustra is.
If Zarathustra must first of all become the teacher of eternal return, then he cannot commence with this doctrine straightaway. For this reason another phrase stands at the beginning of his way: "/ teach you the overman. "
To be sure, we must try to extirpate right here and now all the false and confusing overtones of the word Obermensch that arise in our customary view of things. With the name overman Nietzsche is by no means designating a merely superdimensional human being of the kind that has prevailed hitherto. Nor is he referring to a species of man that will cast off all that is humane, making naked willfulness its law and titanic rage its rule. Rather, the overman-taking the word quite literally-is that human being who goes beyond prior humanity solely in order to conduct such humanity for the first time to its essence, an essence that is still unattained, and to place humanity firmly within that essence. A note from the posthumously published writings sur- rounding Zarathustra says (XIV, 271): "Zarathustra does not want to lose anything of mankind's past; he wants to pour everything into the mold. "
Yet whence arises the urgent cry for the overman? Why does prior humanity no longer suffice? Because Nietzsche recognizes the historic moment in which man takes it on himself to assume dominion over the earth as a whole. Nietzsche is the first thinker to pose the decisive question concerning the phase of world history that is emerging only now, the first to think the question through in its metaphysical im- plications. The question asks: Is man, in his essence as man hereto- fore, prepared to assume dominion over the earth? If not, what must happen with prior humanity in order that it may "subjugate" the earth and thus fulfill the prophecy of an old testament? Must not prior man
216 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
be conducted beyond himself, over his prior self, in order to meet this challenge? If so, then the "over-man," correctly thought, cannot be the product of an unbridled and degenerate fantasy that is plunging headlong into the void. We can just as little uncover the nature of overman historically by virtue of an analysis of the modern age. We dare not seek the essential figure of overman in those personalities who, as major functionaries of a shallow, misguided will to power, are swept to the pinnacles of that will's sundry organizational forms. Of course, one thing ought to be clear to us immediately: this thinking that pursues the figure of a teacher who teaches the over-man involves us, involves Europe, involves the earth as a whole-not merely today, but especially tomorrow. That is so, no matter whether we affirm or reject this thinking, whether we neglect it or ape it in false tones. Every essential thinking cuts across all discipleship and opposition alike with- out being touched.
Hence it behooves us first of all to learn how to learn from the teacher, even if that only means to ask out beyond him. In that way alone will we one day experience who Zarathustra is. Or else we will never experience it.
To be sure, we must still ponder whether this asking out beyond Nietzsche's thinking can be a continuation of his thought, or whether it must become a step back.
And before that, we must ponder whether this "step back" merely refers to a historically ascertainable past which one might choose to revive (for example, the world of Goethe), or whether the word back indicates something that has been. For the commencement of what has been still awaits a commemorative thinking, in order that it might become a beginning, a beginning to which the dawn grants upsurgence. *
Yet we shall now restrict ourselves to the effort to learn a few provi- sional things about Zarathustra, The appropriate way to proceed would be to follow the first steps taken by this teacher-the teacher that Zara- thustra is. He teaches by showing. He previews the essence of over- man and brings that essence to visible configuration. Zarathustra is
• See "The Anaximander Fragment," in Early Greek Thinking, pp. 16-18.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 217
merely the teacher, not the over-man himself. In turn, Nietzsche is not Zarathustra, but the questioner who seeks to create in thought Zarathustra's essence.
The overman proceeds beyond prior and contemporary humanity; thus he is a transition, a bridge. In order for us learners to be able to follow the teacher who teaches the overman, we must-keeping now to the imagery-get onto the bridge. We are thinking the crucial as- pects of the transition when we heed these three things:
First, that from which the one who is in transition departs. Second, the transition itself.
Third, that toward which the one in transition is heading. Especially the last-mentioned aspect we must have in view; above
all, the one who is in transition must have it in view; and before him, the teacher who is to show it to him must have it in view. If a preview of the "whither" is missing, the one in transition remains rudderless, and the place from which he must release himself remains undeter- mined. And yet the place to which the one in transition is called first shows itself in the full light of day only when he has gone over to it. For the one in transition-and particularly for the one who, as the teacher, is to point the way of transition, particularly for Zarathustra himself-the "whither" remains always at a far remove. The remote- ness persists. Inasmuch as it persists, it remains in a kind of proximity, a proximity that preserves what is remote as remote by commemorating it and turning its thoughts toward it. Commemorative nearness to the remote is what our language calls "longing," die Sehnsucht. We wrongly associate the word Sucht with suchen, "to seek" and "to be driven. " But the old word Sucht (as in Gelbsucht, "jaundice," and
Schwindsucht, "consumption") means illness, suffering, pain. Longing is the agony of the nearness of what lies afar.
Whither the one in transition goes, there his longing is at home.
The one in transition, and even the one who points out the way to him, the teacher, is (as we have already heard) on the way home to the essence that is most proper to him. He is the convalescent. Immedi- ately following the episode called "The Convalescent," in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the episode entitled "On the Great Longing. " With this episode, the third-to-last of Part III, the work
218 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a whole attains its summit. In a note from the posthumously published materials (XIV, 285) Nietzsche observes, "A divine suffering is the content of Zarathustra III. "
In the section "On the Great Longing" Zarathustra speaks to his soul. According to Plato's teaching-a teaching that became definitive for Western metaphysics-the essence of thinking resides in the soul's solitary conversation with itself. The essence of thinking is logos, han aute pros hauten he psyche diexerchetai peri han an skopei, the telling self-gathering which the soul itself undergoes on its way to itself, with- in the scope of whatever it is looking at (Theaetetus, 189e; cf. The Sophist, 263e). "
In converse with his soul Zarathustra thinks his "most abysmal thought" ("The Convalescent," section one; cf. Part III, "On the Vi- sion and the Riddle," section 2). Zarathustra begins the episode "On the Great Longing" with the words: "0 my soul, I taught you to say 'Today' like 'One day' and 'Formerly,' I taught you to dance your round-dance beyond every Here and There and Yonder. " The three words "Today," "One day," and "Formerly" are capitalized and placed in quotation marks. They designate the fundamental features of time. The way Zarathustra expresses them points toward the matter Zara- thustra himself must henceforth tell himself in the very ground of his essence. And what is that? That "One day" and "Formerly," future and past, are like "Today. " And also that today is like what is past and what is to come. All three phases of time merge in a single identity, as the same in one single present, a perpetual "now. " Metaphysics calls the constant now "eternity. " Nietzsche too thinks the three phases of time in terms of eternity as the constant now. Yet for him the constan- cy consists not in stasis but in a recurrence of the same. When Zara-
• Schleiermacher translates the Theaetetus' definition of dianoia, "thinking," as fol- lows: "A speech which the soul goes through by itself concerning whatever it wants to investigate. " And Cornford translates it: "As a discourse that the mind carries on with itself about any subject it is considering. " The passage from The Sophist reads as follows:
Oukoun dianoia men kai logos tauton. Plen ho men entos tes psyches pros hauten
dialogos aneu phones gignomenos tout'auto hemin epijnomasthe, dianoia?
Then, thought and speech are the same, except that the inner conversation of the soul with itself, which proceeds altogether without sound, is called thinking?
Theaetetus replies on behalf of Western intellectuality as a whole: "Certainly. "
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 219
thustra teaches his soui to say those words he is the teacher of eternal return of the same. Such return is the inexhaustible abundance of a life that is both joyous and agonizing. Such a life is the destination toward which "the great longing" leads the teacher of eternal return of the same. Thus in the same episode "the great longing" is also called "the longing of superabundance. "
The "great longing" thrives for the most part on that from which it draws its only consolation, that is to say, its confidence in the future. In place of the older word "consolation," Trost (related to trauen, "to trust," "to betroth," and to zutrauen, "to believe oneself capable"), the word "hope" has entered our language. "The great longing" attunes and defines Zarathustra, who in his "greatest hope" is inspired by such longing.
Yet what induces Zarathustra to such hope, and what entitles him to it?
What bridge must he take in order to go over to the overman? What bridge enables him to depart from humanity hitherto, so that he can be released from it?
It derives from the peculiar structure of the work Thus Spoke Zara- thustra, a work that is to make manifest the transition of the one who goes over, that the answer to the question we have just posed appears in the second part of the work, the preparatory part. Here, in the episode "On the Tarantulas," Nietzsche has Zarathustra say: "For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the high- est hope and a rainbow after long storms. "
How strange, how alien these words must seem to the customary view of Nietzsche's philosophy that we have furnished for ourselves. Is not Nietzsche supposed to be the one who goads our will to power, incites us to a politics of violence and war, and sets the "blond beast:' on his rampage?
The words "that man be redeemed from revenge" are even italicized in the text. Nietzsche's thought thinks in the direction of redemption from the spirit of revenge. His thinking would minister to a spirit which, as freedom from vengefulness, goes before all mere fraternizing -but also before all vestiges of the sheer will to punish. It would minister to a spirit that abides before all efforts to secure peace and
220 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
before all conduct of war, a spirit quite apart from that which wills to establish and secure pax, peace, by pacts. The space in which such freedom from revenge moves is equidistant from pacifism, political violence, and calculating neutrality. In the same way, it lies outside feeble neglect of things and avoidance of sacrifice, outside blind inter- vention and the will to action at any price.
Nietzsche's reputation as a "free spirit" arises from the spirit of free- dom from revenge.
"That man be redeemed from revenge. " If we pay heed even in the slightest way to this spirit of freedom in Nietzsche's thinking, as its principal trait, then the prior image of Nietzsche-which is still in circulation-will surely disintegrate.
"For that man be redeemed from revenge-that is for me the bridge to the highest hope," says Nietzsche. He thereby says at the same time, in a language that prepares yet conceals the way, whither his "great longing" aims.
Yet what does Nietzsche understand here by "revenge"? In what, according to Nietzsche, does redemption from revenge consist?
We shall be content if we can shed some light on these two ques- tions. Such light would perhaps enable us to descry the bridge that is to lead such thinking from prior humanity to the overman. The desti- nation toward which the one in transition is heading will only come to the fore in the transition itself. Perhaps then it will dawn on us why Zarathustra, the advocate of life, suffering, and the circle, is the teacher who simultaneously teaches the eternal return of the same and the overman.
But then why is it that something so decisive depends on redemption from revenge? Where is the spirit of revenge at home? Nietzsche re- plies to our question in the third-to-last episode of the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which bears the heading "On Redemption. " Here the following words appear: "The spirit ofrevenge: my friends, up to now that was man's best reflection; and wherever there was suffer- ing, there also had to be punishment. "
This statement without reservation attributes revenge to the whole of humanity's reflection hitherto.
The reflection spoken of here is not some fortuitous kind of thinking; it is rather that thinking in which
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 221
man's relation to what is, to being, is fastened and hangs suspended. Insofar as man comports himself toward beings, he represents them with regard to the fact that they are, with regard to what they are and how they are, how they might be and how they ought to be-in short, he represents beings with regard to their Being. Such representing is thinking.
According to Nietzsche's statement, such representation has hereto- fore been determined by the spirit of revenge. Meanwhile human be- ings take their relationship with what is, a relationship that is determined in this fashion, to be the best possible sort of relationship.
In whatever way man may represent beings as such, he does so with a view to Being. By means of this view he advances always beyond beings-out beyond them and over to Being. The Greeks said this in the word meta. Thus man's every relation to beings as such is inher- ently metaphysical. If Nietzsche understands revenge as the spirit that defines and sets the tone for man's relationship with Being, then he is from the outset thinking revenge metaphysically.
Here revenge is not merely a theme for morality, and redemption from revenge is not a task for moral education. Just as little are revenge and vengefulness objects of psychology. Nietzsche sees the essence and scope of revenge metaphysically. Yet what does revenge in general mean?
If at first we keep to the meaning of the word, although at the same time trying not to be myopic, we may be able to find a clue in it. Revenge, taking revenge, wreaking, urgere: these words mean to push, drive, herd, pursue, and persecute. In what sense is revenge persecution? * Revenge does not merely try to hunt something down, seize, and take possession of it. Nor does it only seek to slay what it persecutes. Vengeful persecution defies in advance that on which jt avenges itself. It defies its object by degrading it, in order to feel superior to what has been thus degraded; in this way it restores its own self-esteem, the only estimation that seems to count for it. For one who seeks vengeance is galled by the feeling that he has been thwarted and injured. During the years Nietzsche was composing his work Thus
• The clue may reside in the fact that the word here translated as "persecution," Nachstellen, is a morphological pendant to the word Vorstellen, "representation. "
222 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Spoke Zarathustra he jotted down the following observation: "I advise all martyrs to consider whether it wasn't vengeance that drove them to such extremes" (see the third Grossoktav edition, XII, 298).
What is revenge? We can now provisionally say that revenge is per- secution that defies and degrades. And such persecution is supposed to have sustained and permeated all prior reflection, all representation of beings? If the designated metaphysical scope may in fact be attributed to the spirit of revenge, that scope must somehow become visible in terms of the very constitution of metaphysics. In order to discern it, if only in rough outline, let us now turn to the essential coinage of the Being of beings in modern metaphysics. The essential coinage of Being comes to language in classic form in several sentences formulated by Schelling in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence ofHu-
man Freedom and the Objects Pertaining Thereto (1809). The three sentences read:
-In the final and highest instance there is no other Being than willing. Willing is primal Being, and to it [willing] alone all the predicates of the same (primal Being] apply: absence of conditions; eternity; independence from time; self-affirmation. All philosophy strives solely in order to find this supreme expression. *
Schelling asserts that the predicates which metaphysical thought since antiquity has attributed to Being find their ultimate, supreme, and thus consummate configuration in willing. However, the will of the willing meant here is not a faculty of the human soul. Here the word willing names the Being of beings as a whole. Such Being is will. That sounds foreign to us-and so it is, as long as the sustaining thoughts of Western metaphysics remain alien to us. They will remain alien as long as we do not think these thoughts, but merely go on reporting them. For example, one may ascertain Leibniz's utterances concerning the Being of beings with absolute historical precision- without in the least thinking about what he was thinking when he defined the Being of beings in terms of the monad, as the unity of perceptio and appetitus, representation and striving, that is, will. What
* Heidegger cites F. W. f. Schellings philosophische Schriften (Landshut, 1809), I, 419. In the standard edition of Schelling's Siimtliche Werke (1860), VII, 350.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 223
Leibniz was thinking comes to language in Kant and Fichte as "the rational will"; Hegel and Schelling, each in his own way, reflect on this Vernunftwille. Schopenhauer is referring to the selfsame thing when he gives his major work the title The World [not man] as Will and Representation. Nietzsche is thinking the selfsame thing when he acknowledges the primal Being of beings as will to power.
That everywhere on all sides the Being of beings appears consistently as will does not derive from views on being which a few philosophers furnished for themselves. No amount of erudition will ever uncover what it means that Being appears as will. What it means can only be asked in thinking; as what is to be thought, it can only be celebrated as worth asking about; as something we are mindful of, it can only be kept in mind.
In modern metaphysics, there for the first time expressly and explic- itly, the Being of beings appears as will. Man is man insofar as he comports himself to beings by way of thought. In this way he is held in Being. Man's thinking must also correspond in its essence to that toward which it comports itself, to wit, the Being of beings as will.
Now, Nietzsche tells us that prior thinking has been determined by the spirit of revenge. Precisely how is Nietzsche thinking the essence of revenge, assuming that he is thinking it metaphysically?
In the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the episode we have already mentioned, "On Redemption," Nietzsche has Zarathus- tra say: "This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will's ill will toward time and its 'It was. ' "
That an essential definition of revenge emphasizes revulsion and defiance, and thus points to revenge as ill will, corresponds to our characterization of it as a peculiar sort of persecution. Yet Nietzsche does not merely say that revenge is revulsion. The same could be said of hatred. Nietzsche says that revenge is the will's ill will. But will signifies the Being of beings as a whole, and not simply human will- ing. By virtue of the characterization of revenge as "the will's ill will," the defiant persecution of revenge persists primarily in relationship to the Being of beings. It becomes apparent that this is the case when we heed what it is on which revenge's ill will turns: revenge is "the will's ill will against time and its 'It was. ' "
224 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
When we read this essential definition ofrevenge for the first time- and also for a second and a third time-the emphatic application of revenge to time seems to us surprising, incomprehensible, ultimately gratuitous. It has to strike us this way, as long as we think no further about what the word time here means.
Nietzsche says that revenge is "the will's ill will toward time. . . . " This does not say, toward something temporal. Nor does it say, toward a particular characteristic of time. It simply says, "Ill will toward time. . . . "
To be sure, these words now follow: ". . . toward time and its 'It was. ' " But this suggests that revenge is ill will toward the "It was" of time. We may insist, quite rightly, that not only the "it was" but also the "it will be" and the "it is now" also pertain just as essentially to time. For time is defined not only by the past but also by future and present. If therefore Nietzsche stresses the "It was" of time, his char- acterization of the essence of revenge obviously refers, not to time as such, but to time in one particular respect. Yet how do matters stand with time "as such"? They stand in this way: time goes. And it goes by passing. Whatever of time is to come never comes to stay, but only to go. Where to? Into passing. When a man dies we say he has passed away. The temporal is held to be that which passes away.
Nietzsche defines revenge as "the will's ill will toward time and its 'It was. ' " The supplement to the definition does not mean to put into relief one isolated characteristic of time while stubbornly ignoring the other two; rather, it designates the fundamental trait of time in its proper and entire unfolding as time. With the conjunction and in the phrase "time and its 'It was,' " Nietzsche is not proceeding to append one special characteristic of time. Here the and means as much as "and that means. " Revenge is the will's ill will toward time and that means toward passing away, transiency. Transiency is that against which the will can take no further steps, that against which its willing constantly collides. Time and its "It was" is the obstacle that the will cannot budge. Time, as passing away, is repulsive; the will suffers on account of it. Suffering in this way, the will itself becomes chronically ill over such passing away; the illness then wills its own passing, and in
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 225
so doing wills that everything in the world be worthy of passing away. Ill will toward time degrades all that passes away. The earthly-Earth and all that pertains to her-is that which properly ought not to be and which ultimately does not really possess true Being. Plato himself called it me on, nonbeing. *
According to Schelling's statements, which simply express the guid- ing representations of all metaphysics, the prime predicates of Being are "independence from time," "eternity. "
Yet the most profound ill will toward time does not consist in the mere disparagement of the earthly. For Nietzsche the most deepseated revenge consists in that reflection which posits supratemporal ideality as absolute. Measured against it, the temporal must perforce degrade itself to nonbeing proper.
Yet how should humanity assume dominion over the earth, how can it take the earth as earth into its protection, so long as it degrades the earthly, so long as the spirit of revenge determines its reflection? If it is a matter of rescuing the earth as earth, then the spirit of revenge will have to vanish beforehand. Thus for Zarathustra redemption from revenge is the bridge to the highest hope.
But in what does redemption from ill will toward transiency consist? Does it consist in a liberation from the will in general-perhaps in the senses suggested by Schopenhauer and in Buddhism? Inasmuch as the Being of beings is will, according to the doctrine of modern meta- physics, redemption from the will would amount to redemption from Being, hence to a collapse into vacuous nothingness. For Nietzsche redemption from revenge is redemption from the repulsive, from defi- ance and degradation in the will, but by no means the dissolution of
• Heidegger's remarks recall the decisive words of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, Part One (lines 1338-40): " . . . denn alles, was entsteht, I 1st wert, dass es zugrunile geht. " "For everything that comes to be is worthy of its own demise. " Yet because Heidegger here speaks of Vergehen, Vergiingliches, his phrasing has a diabolical way of embracing the concluding words of Part Two (the very words Nietzsche parodied in the first of his Songs o f the Outlaw Prince), words that try to reduce "all that passes away" to a mere image of eternity. Thus Mephisto and the chorus mysticus, the good and evil of metaphysics and morals, join voices to chant revenge, to denigrate time and its "It was. "
226 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
all willing. Redemption releases the ill will from its "no" and frees it for a "yes. " What does the "yes" affirm? Precisely what the ill will of a vengeful spirit renounced: time, transiency.
The "yes" to time is the will that transiency perdure, that it not be disparaged as nothing worth. Yet how can passing away perdure? Only in this way: as passing away it must not only continuously go, but must also always come. Only in this way: passing away and transiency must recur in their coming as the same. And such recurrence itself is per- durant only if it is eternal. According to the doctrine of metaphysics, the predicate "eternity" belongs to the Being of beings.
Redemption from revenge is transition from ill will toward time to the will that represents being in the eternal recurrence of the same. Here the will becomes the advocate of the circle.
To put it another way: Only when the Being of beings represents itself to man as eternal recurrence of the same can man cross over the bridge and, redeemed from the spirit of revenge, be the one in transi- tion, the overman.
Zarathustra is the teacher who teaches the overman. But he teaches this doctrine only because he is the teacher of eternal recurrence of the same. This thought, eternal recurrence of the same, is first in rank. It is the "most abysmal" thought. For that reason the teacher comes out with it last, and always hesitantly.
Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? He is the teacher whose doctrine would liberate prior reflection from the spirit of revenge to the "yes" spoken to eternal recurrence of the same.
As the teacher of eternal recurrence, Zarathustra teaches the over- man. According to an unpublished note (XIV, 276), a refrain accom- panies the latter doctrine: "Refrain: 'Love alone will make it righf-{the creative love that forgets itself in its works). "
As the teacher of eternal recurrence and overman, Zarathustra does not teach two different things. What he teaches coheres in itself, since one demands the other as its response. Such correspondence-in the way it essentially unfolds and the way it withdraws-is precisely what the figure of Zarathustra conceals in itself, conceals yet at the same time displays, thus allowing the correspondence to provoke our thought.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 227
Yet the teacher knows that what he is teaching remains a vision and a riddle. He perseveres in such reflective knowledge.
We today, because of the peculiar ascendancy of the modern sciences, are caught up in the strange misconception that knowledge can be attained from science and that thinking is subject to the juris- diction of science. Yet whatever unique thing a thinker is able to say can be neither proved nor refuted logically or empirically. Nor is it a matter of faith. We can only envisage it questioningly, thoughtfully. What we envisage thereby always appears as worthy of question.
To catch a glimpse of the vision and the riddle which the figure Zarathustra manifests, and to retain that glimpse, let us once again cast our eyes on the spectacle of Zarathustra's animals. They appear to him at the outset of his journeyings:
. . . He looked inquiringly into the sky-for above him he heard the piercing cry of a bird. And behold! An eagle soared through the air in vast circles, and a serpent hung suspended from him, not as his prey, but as though she were his friend: for she had coiled about his neck.
"These are my animals! " said Zarathustra, and his heart was filled with joy.
A passage we cited earlier-yet purposely only in part-from the first section of "The Convalescent" reads: "1, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle-1 summon you, my most abysmal thought! " In the second section of the episode "On the Vision and the Riddle," in Part III, Zarathustra describes the thought of eternal recurrence of the same in identical words. There, in his confrontation with the dwarf, Zarathustra tries for the first time to think that riddlesome thing which he sees as meriting his longing. The eternal recurrence of the same does remain a vision for Zarathustra; but it is also a riddle. It can be neither proved nor refuted logically or empirically. At bottom, this holds for every essential thought of every thinker: something envisaged, but a riddle-worthy of question.
Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? We can now reply in the following formula: Zarathustra is the teacher of eternal return of the same and the teacher of overman. But now we can see more clearly-perhaps also beyond our own formula-that Zarathustra is not a teacher who
228 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
instructs us concerning two sundry items. Zarathustra teaches the over- man because he is the teacher of eternal return of the same. Yet the reverse is also true: Zarathustra teaches eternal return of the same be- cause he is the teacher of overman. These doctrines are conjoined in a circle. In its circling, the teaching corresponds to that which is-to the circle which as eternal recurrence of the same makes out the Being of beings, that is, what is permanent in Becoming.
The teaching, and our thinking of it, will achieve such circling whenever they cross over the bridge called "Redemption from the Spirit of Revenge. " In this way prior thinking is to be overcome.
From the period immediately following the completion of the work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the year 1885, comes a note that has been taken up as number 617 in the book that was pieced together from Nietzsche's literary remains and published under the title The Will to Power. The note bears the underscored title "Recapitulation. "" Here Nietzsche with extraordinary perspicuity condenses the principal matter of his thinking into just a few sentences. A parenthetical remark appended to the text makes explicit mention of Zarathustra. Nietzsche's "Recapitulation" begins with the statement: "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power.
The supreme will to power, that is, what is most vital in all life, comes to pass when transiency is represented as perpetual Becoming in the eternal recurrence of the same, in this way being made stable and permanent. Such representing is a thinking which, as Nietzsche em- phatically notes, stamps the character of Being on beings. Such think- ing takes Becoming, to which perpetual collision and suffering belong, into its protection and custody.
Does such thinking overcome prior reflection, overcome the spirit of revenge? Or does there not lie concealed in this very stampin~which takes all Becoming into the protection of eternal recurrence of the same-a form of ill will against sheer transiency and thereby a highly spiritualized spirit of revenge?
We no sooner pose this question than the illusion arises that we are • See the explanatory note on pp. 201-02, above.
Who Is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? 229
trying to discredit Nietzsche, to impute something as most proper to him which is precisely what he wants to overcome. It is as though we cherished the view that by such imputation we were refuting the thought of this thinker.
The officious will to refute never even approaches a thinker's path. Refutation belongs among those petty intellectual entertainments which the public needs for its amusement. Moreover, Nietzsche him- self long ago anticipated the answer to our question. The text that immediately precedes Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Nietzsche's corpus appeared in 1882 under the title The Gay Science.
