His own
solution
to the riddle of Dionysos?
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
Because this thought is to prevail over all, it can-indeed must-occupy various positions and exhibit sundry forms in the changing plans.
Thus in a multifarious yet unified way it guides and sustains the whole in terms of its mode of presentation.
A painstaking examination proves unequivocally that this is so: we do not find a trace of anything like a retreat of the grounding thought, eternal recurrence.
A more important outcome of such an examination is the following: the multifaceted positioning of the thought of return in the architec- tonic of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future" gives an indication of the essence of the thought itself. Not only must the thought emerge out of the creative moment of decision in some given individual, but as a thought that pertains to life itself it must also be a historical deci- sion--a crisis.
We shall now pursue the question concerning the extent to which the thought of return explicitly comes to the fore in the plans, and the way in which it does so. The first plan (XVI, 413) does not belong here, inasmuch as it stems from the year 1882 and pertains to the circle of thoughts contained in The Gay Science. Only with the sec- ond plan do the proposals and projected plans from the years 1884-85 begin. This is the period in which Nietzsche-above all, in letters- makes explicit mention of an expansion of his "philosophy," of pro- viding a "main structure" for which Thus Spoke Zarathustra is to be the vestibule. "' We do find signs of life for his plan for a magnum opus, but not a trace of a work entitled The Will to Power. The titles we find are The Eternal Return, in three different plans from the year
1884; or Midday and Eternity: A Philosophy of Eternal Return, also from the year 1884; finally, in that same year the subtitle becomes the main title-Philosophy of Eternal Return.
• See Volume I, section 3, esp. pp. 12-13, for a selection of these letters.
The Period of"The Will to Power" 155
As opposed to these titles we find a plan from the year 1885 entitled
The Will to Power: Attempt at an Interpretation o f All Occurrence.
The preface of that projected work is to treat "the threatening meaning- lessness" and the "problem of pessimism. " When we come to discuss the "domain" of the doctrine of return we shall grasp the fact that this entire plan must be viewed from the vantage-point of eternal return- even though it does not cite the thought as such. * From this plan we learn one thing: the question concerning will to power finds its proper place in the philosophy of eternal return. The latter thought attains preeminence over all; it is to be treated in the preface because it is all-pervading.
However, during the year 1884, the year in which Nietzsche pre- sumably achieved clarity concerning will to power as the pervasive character of all beings, an important reference to the connection be- tween eternal recurrence and will to power is made in a plan listed as number 2. t This plan culminates in a fifth point entitled "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " Wherever the thought of thoughts is indeed thought, that is to say, is incorporated, it conducts the thinker to supreme decisions in such a way that he expands beyond himself, thus attaining power over himself and willing himself. In this way such a man is as will to power.
In order to compose his philosophy within a planned major work, Nietzsche now carries out an analysis of all occurrence in terms of will to power. This meditation is essential, and for Nietzsche it comes to occupy the midpoint for the next several years, the midpoint that de- fines all beings themselves. It is far from the case that the doctrine of eternal recurrence is put out of play or reduced in significance; rather, that doctrine is enhanced to a supreme degree thanks to Nietzsche's efforts to shore up the main structure on all sides by means of a most thoroughgoing "interpretation of all occurrence. " From the year 188. 5 stem some other notes (XVI, 415) in which Nietzsche clearly says what he understands by will to power, a matter that is now moving into the
• See section 23, below.
t See now CM, Z II 5a [80].
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forefront of his labors: "Will to power is the ultimate fact we come down to. "*
If we were to ponder these words alone, for the purpose of reflecting on what eternal return is, it would surely become apparent that here it is a matter of two very different things-of things that are different in several senses. Eternal return is not an ultimate fact; it is rather the "thought of thoughts. " Will to power is not a thought; it is an "ulti- mate fact. " The fact can neither suppress nor supplant the thought. The decisive question-one that Nietzsche himself neglected to pose- proves to be: What fundamental matter lies concealed behind the dis- tinction between eternal return as the "most difficult thought" and will to power as "ultimate fact"? As long as we fail to inquire back into the domain where all these matters are grounded we cling to mere words and remain stuck in extrinsic calculations of Nietzsche's thinking.
Study of the plans from the years 1884 and 1885 nonetheless shows unequivocally that the philosophy which Nietzsche was planning to portray as a whole is the philosophy of eternal return. In order to give shape to that philosophy he had to supply an interpretation of all oc- currence as will to power. The farther Nietzsche's thinking penetrated into the total presentation of his philosophy, the more compelling the principal task of interpreting all occurrence as will to power became. For that reason the locution will to power advanced to the very title of the planned magnum opus. Yet it is so transparently clear that the whole remains sustained and thoroughly defined by the thought of eternal return that one is almost reluctant to make explicit reference to this state of affairs.
The plan of 1886 bears the title The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation ofAll Values. The subtitle suggests what the meditation on will to power properly has to achieve; namely, a revaluation of all values. By value Nietzsche understands whatever is a condition for life, that is, for the enhancement of life. Revaluation of all values means- for life, that is, for being as a whole-the positing of a new condition by which life is once again brought to itself, that is to say, impelled beyond itself. For only in this way does life become possible in its true
• See CM, W 17a [61]. Cf. Giorgio Colli's critique in the Nachwort to vol. II of the Studienausgabe, p. 726.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 157
essence. Revaluation is nothing other than what the greatest burden, the thought of eternal return, is to accomplish. The subtitle, which is to exhibit the all-encompassing scope that will to power possesses, might therefore just as well have been the one we find in the year 1884: A Philosophy ofEternal Return (XVI, 414; number 5).
The plan that most fully corroborates the interpretation we are offer- ing here is one from the year 1884 (XVI, 415; number 6*), entitled Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence: An Attempt at the Revaluation of All Values. The plan mentioned earlier, from the year 1886, proposes that the work be divided into four books. This fourfold division is retained in spite of all the other changes up to the end of 1888. We shall now take note of only the first and fourth books, which frame the whole. The question raised in Book One, "The Danger of Dangers," takes aim once again at the "meaninglessness" that threatens-we could also say, at the fact that all things are losing their weight. The compelling question is whether it is possible to provide beings with a new center of gravity. The "danger of dangers" must be averted by the "thought of thoughts. " Book IV bears the title "The Hammer. " If we did not yet know what this word implies, we could gather its meaning perfectly well from plan number 2 of 1884 (XVI, 414). Here the final fragment-to which we have already referred-is called "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " In place of the title of Book IV, "The Hammer," we could also allow the phrase "the doctrine of eternal return" to stand. (See the commentary to Book IV; XVI, 420). t
• See CM, W I 2 [259, 258].
t This plan (W I 8 [100] ) is actually not "fragmented" in GOA as the critical ap- paratus to CM says, but is "padded" by a number of phrases gleaned from elsewhere in the notebooks. There are two "commentaries" to which Heidegger may be referring here. The one I have been able to locate in CM [131] reads as follows:
On Book Four
The greatest struggle:. for it we need a new weapon.
The hammer: to conjure a frightful decision, to confront Europe with the conse- quences, whether its will to perish "is willing. "
Prevention of the tendency toward mediocrity.
Better to perish!
This note was taken up into The Will to Power as WM, 1054.
158 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
The plans for a main work that were drafted in the following year, from 1887 until early 1888, manifest a thoroughly unified structure. lhis is the period when Nietzsche's thoughtful labors on behalf of the will to power reach their zenith. How does the doctrine of return fare during this period? It appears each time in the fourth and final book proposed by the plans. Last in terms of presentation, it is first in terms of the matter and the context that grounds the whole. It pervades all from beginning to end, which is why it can reveal itself in its full truth only at the end of the presentation. Its position at the end also indicates something else, to wit, the fact that the "doctrine" is not a "theory," that it is not to be pressed into service as a scientific explanation, as some sort of hypothesis on the origins of the world. Rather, the think- ing of this thought transforms life in its very grounds and thereby pro- pounds new standards of education.
With a view to the transformative character of the thought of return, as a matter of decision and excision, the very title of the fourth book is conceived in the individual plans of this period. "Discipline and Breeding" it is called in the plan of March 17, 1887, which the editors of Nietzsche's notes chose as the blueprint for the major work. " The next plan, from the summer of 1887, lists as the title of the fourth book "The Overcomers and the Overcome (A Prophecy). " In the fol- lowing plan the title in question reads: "Overcomers and What Is Overcome. "
If we read these titles strictly in terms of their literal content, we of course find nothing concerning eternal return. Nevertheless, one need not know a great deal about this thought to be reminded immediately by the titles of the fact that the thought which is hardest to bear con- fronts us with a question. It demands to know whether we renounce life in all its discordance-whether we try to sidestep it and are inad- vertently crushed under its wheels, thus joining the ranks of those who are overcome-or whether we affirm life and become one of the over- comers. The appended remark, "A Prophecy," clearly alludes to the doctrine of return (XVI, 413; from the year 1884). Furthermore, a more detailed version of the plan of March 17, 1887, drawn up at the
* CM, Mp XVII 3b [64].
The Period of "The Will to Power" 159
end of that year (XVI, 424), explicitly presents as the first title of the fourth book the phrase "The Eternal Return. '"* The titles of the remaining two divisions are Grand Politics and Prescriptions for Our Lives. However, the most telling evidence for the undiminished importance of the doctrine of return at the center of the whole--even during the period when will to power achieves preeminence--consists
in the fact that the fourth book is thought of as a victorious countermove to the first, which treats of European nihilism and its upsurgence.
Nihilism is the propriative event by which the weight in all things melts away-the fact that a center of gravity is missing. Yet the lack first becomes visible and palpable when it is brought to light in the question . concerning a new center of gravity. Seen from this vantage- point, the thinking of the thought of eternal recurrence, as a question- ing that perpetually calls for decision, is the fulfillment of nihilism. Such thinking brings to an end the veiling and painting over of this event, in such a way that it becomes at the same time the transition to the new determination of the greatest burden. The doctrine of eternal return is therefore the "critical point," the watershed of an epoch become weightless and searching for a new center of gravity. It is the crisis proper. Hence, in considerations surrounding plans from the period in which "will to power" is emphasized we find the following (XVI, 422): "The doctrine of eternal return: as fulfillment of it [i. e. , nihilism], as crisis. "
Even the plans from the spring and summer of 1888, the final year of Nietzsche's creative life, whatever transformations they indicate, clearly exhibit the identical articulation: in each case the plan wends its way to the summit, where we find the thought of eternal return. The titles of the final parts vary in any given instance: "The Inverted Ones; Their Hammer, 'The Doctrine of Eternal Return'" (XVI, 425); "Re- demption from Uncertainty" (426); "The Art of Healing for the Fu-
• The plan GOA calls the "third draft" of the plan of March 17, 1887, is to be found in CM at W II 4 [2] and is dated early 1888. Neither it nor the preceding plan in GOA (W II I [164]) can so readily be called later "drafts" of the March 17 plan. Nor is there any convincing reason for the latter's having been chosen as the basis for the volume Der Wille zur Macht.
160 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
ture" (426). For Nietzsche, the "art of healing," as an "art," is a value. That is to say, it is a condition posited by the will to power, indeed, a condition of "life-enhancement. " The "art of healing for the future" is the condition that defines the center of gravity in being as a whole for times to come. In order for this condition to work its effects it is first of all necessary that a "stronger species ofhuman being" be there.
In the final plans, from the fall of 1888, the title The Will to Power disappears, making room for what used to be the subtitle, Revaluation of All Values. Here the titles of Book Four read as follows: "The Re- demption from Nihilism"; "Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal Return";
"Dionysos philosophos"; and again, "Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal Return. ""
This apparently extraneous examination of the plans aims to respond to the following question: Where in the articulated structure of Nietz- sche's planned communication of his philosophy do we find the place where the thought of return is to be presented?
If this teaching is the "crisis," then it must face in two opposite directions. On the one hand, the doctrine must be communicated at the point where the question concerning the center of gravity surfaces as the question of the evanescence of all prior sources of weight. On the other hand, the doctrine must be explicated at the point where the new center of gravity is itself established in beings.
The editors of Nietzsche's works from the period after Thus Spoke Zarathustra up to the end proved that in this respect they saw matters in the proper light. For they distributed the available fragments on the doctrine of return between two places in the volume they composed, namely, The Will to Power: first, in the first book, "European Nihil- ism," Chapter One, Part Four, "The Crisis: Nihilism and the Thought of Return," numbers 55 and 56 (XV, 181-87); and then in the fourth book, "Discipline and Breeding," as the conclusion to the entire "work": "The Eternal Return," numbers 1053 to 1067 (XVI, 393- 402). To be sure, there exist a number of clear indications in Nietz- sche's sketches which support such a distribution. The question of nihilism and the thought of return, treated in the first book, requires
• See Heidegger's delayed commentary on these titles in section 26, below.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 161
separate discussion. * Let us now therefore refer only briefly to those materials that are taken up into Book IV. Our guideline will be the question of the extent to which the notes between 1884 and 1888 exhibit a further development of the teaching, and of the particular direction such a development takes.
When we compare the main features of these fragments with those from the period of The Gay Science (XII) and with the doctrinal im- port expressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, nothing much appears to have changed. We find the same reflections in regard to both the "proofs" for the doctrine and the doctrine's "impact. " Yet when we look more carefully at these materials, having pondered the fact that the notes pertain to a period in which Nietzsche was trying to think through his philosophy as a whole and to bring it to a configuration, the picture changes altogether. The precondition for our seeing this is the refusal simply to accept the given order of the fifteen passages as they appear in their current published form. Rather, we must first of all place them in their chronological order. In the present edition the fragments are jumbled higgledy-piggledy. The first one belongs to the year 1884, the last one, which at the same time concludes the entire
work, stems from the year 1885, while immediately prior to it appears one from the final year, 1888. Let us therefore establish the chronolog- ical sequence of the notes. To the year 1884 belong numbers 1053, 1056, 1059, and 1060. To the year 1885 numbers 1055, 1062, 1064, and 1067. From the period 1885-86 comes number 1054; from the period 1886-87 number 1063; from the period 1887-88 numbers 1061 and 1065. Number 1066 belongs to the year 1888. Two fragments from the period 1884 to 1888 which we cannot date precisely but which, judging from the handwriting, presumably stem from the year
1884-85 are numbers 1057 and 1058. t
• See section 23, below. Heidcgger's 1940 lecture course on nihilism (Volume IV of this series), by and large neglects eternal return as the countermovement to nihilism. See the Analysis at the end of the present volume.
t The folder containing the sheets on which WM, 1057 and 1058 are jotted (Mp XVII lb [4,7]) is dated by CM "Winter 1883-84," a year earlier than Heidegger's estimate. Otherwise, Heidegger's dating of the passages, following GOA, is accurate. Readers should note important textual changes in WM, 1064 (cf. CM, WI 3a [54] and WM, 1066 (cf. CM, W II 5 [188]). I have been unable to locate WM, 1061 in CM.
162 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Because our interpretation proper of Nietzsche's fundamental thought-an interpretation that is to be a confrontation-will have to refer back to Nietzsche's final utterances, let us postpone for the present a more detailed discussion of the fragments we have just now listed. Only one essential circumstance should be emphasized immedi- ately. Nietzsche speaks more clearly than before about the "presupposi- tions" of the doctrine of return, indeed about "theoretical" and "practical" ones. This seems strange at first. If the doctrine of eternal return is to be the fundamental doctrine, determining everything, then it cannot entertain any presuppositions as such. On the contrary, it must be the presupposition for all additional thoughts. Or does Nietz- sche's manner of speaking suggest that the doctrine of return, while not surrendered, is yet to be deposed from its foundational significance and relegated to a subordinate position? We can reach a decision in this matter only if we come to know what Nietzsche means by these "pre- suppositions. " He does not directly say what he means. But from the allusions he makes and the general tendency of his thinking we can unequivocally state that he is referring to the will to power as the pervasive constitution of all beings. The thought of return is now ex- plicitly thought on the basis of the will to power. Hence we might now conclude that the thought of eternal return is to be traced back to will to power. Yet such a conclusion would be too hasty and altogether extrinsic.
Even if such were the case--even if will to power were the presup- position for the eternal return of the same-it would by no means follow that will to power precludes the doctrine of eternal return, that the two cannot subsist side by side. The very reverse would hold: will to power would demand the eternal return of the same.
Nevertheless, the outcome of our survey of the plans from this pe- riod is the realization that the doctrine of return nowhere suffers a setback. It asserts its determinative position everywhere. Accordingly the only thing we must ask is: How do will to power, as the pervasive constitution ofbeings, and eternal return ofthe same, as the mode of Being ofbeings as a whole, relate to one another? What is the signifi- cance of the fact that Nietzsche posits will to power as a "presupposi- tion" for the eternal return of the same? How does he understand
The Period of "The Will to Power" 163
"presupposition" here? Does Nietzsche have a clear, well-grounded conception of the relation that obtains between the two? Nietzsche indeed possesses no clear insight-and certainly no conceptual insight -into the relation which we have now named but not yet pondered.
The will to power can be the "presupposition" for the eternal recur- rence of the same in any of the following three ways. First, eternal return of the same can be demonstrated on the basis of will to power, the latter expressing the character of force in the world totality. Here will to power would be the cognitive ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Second, eternal return may be seen as being possible only if the constitution of will to power is indeed appropriate to beings as such. Here will to power would be the material ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Third, will to power can be the "presupposi- tion" of eternal recurrence of the same inasmuch as the constitution of the being (its "what," quidditas, or essentia) grounds its mode of Being (the being's "how" and "that" "it is," its existentia). As long as the designated relationship between the constitution of the being and its mode of Being remains undetermined, the possibility also arises that the reverse is true-that the constitution of the being springs from its mode of Being.
The relationship now in question cannot be defined in terms of a relation between something that conditions and something that is con- ditioned, between what grounds and what is grounded. In order for the relationship to be defined we first need to discuss the essential prove- nance of the essence of Being.
With these questions we are already anticipating decisive steps in our interpretation and determination of the relation between eternal return of the same and will to power. Yet an apparently extrinsic cir- cumstance betrays how much this obscure relation, which Nietzsche. was unable to come to grips with, was what really lay behind the restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking during this final creative period. The fragment that concludes the "work" entitled The Will to Power, in its current textual arrangement, namely, number 1067, is as it now stands the revised version of an earlier note (XVI, 515). To the ques- tion "And do you also know what 'the world' is to me? " Nietzsche's earlier version replies: it is eternal return of the same, willing back
I64 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
whatever has been and willing forward to whatever has to be. In the second version the reply is: "This world is will to power--and nothing besides! "*
Again we stand before the question that has confronted us many times. Do we merely want to remain entrenched in the extrinsic dis- tinction between these two locutions and turns of phrase, eternal re- turn of the same and will to power? Or do we by now realize that we come to grasp a philosophy only when we try to think what it says? At all events, the revision we have referred to shows that will to power and eternal return of the same cohere. With what right could Nietzsche otherwise substitute the one for the other? Yet what if the will to power, according to Nietzsche's most proper and intrinsic intentions, were in itself nothing else than willing back to that which was and a willing forward to everything that has to be? What if the eternal recur- rence of the same-as occurrence-were nothing other than the will to power, precisely in the way Nietzsche himself understands this phrase, though not in the way some view or other of "politics" bends it to its own purpose? t If matters stood this way, then the designation of being as will to power would only be an elaboration of the original and
• See the commentary in CM to fragment [12] of the group of sheets bearing the archive number 38 (from June-July, 1885); in the Studienausgabe, vol. 14, p. 727. Nietzsche's revised reply, "will to power-and nothing besides," was taken up into the book Beyond Good and Evil as passage number 36 and hence has become quite well known. The passage that Nietzsche excised from the earlier version, and which orig- inally appeared at the decisive word "ring" near the end of WM, 1067, reads as follows:
a ring of good will, turning ever about itself alone, keeping to its wonted way: this world, my world-who is luminous enough to look at it without wishing to be blinded? Strong enough to hold his soul up to this mirror? His own mirror up to the mirror of Dionysos?
His own solution to the riddle of Dionysos? And were anyone able to do this, would he not have to do more in addition? To plight his troth to the "ring of rings"? By taking the oath of his own return? By means of the ring of eternal self-blessing, self-affirmation? By. means of the will to will oneself once more and yet again? The will to will back all the things that ever have been? To will forward to everything that ever has to be? Do you now know what the world is to me? And what I am willing when I will this world? -
t The reference is presumably to Alfred Baeumler's Nietzsche: Philosopher and Politi- cian. In addition to the material in my Analyses of Volumes I and IV, see also Mazzino Montinari, "Nietzsche zwischen Alfred Baumler und Georg Lukacs," in Basis, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 18&-207, esp. pp. 201 ff.
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primary projection of being as eternal recurrence of the same. In truth, matters do stand this way.
Will to power is a "presupposition" for eternal return of the same, inasmuch as will to power alone allows us to recognize what eternal return of the same means. Because in terms of the matter itself eternal return of the same constitutes the ground and the essence of will to power, the latter can be posited as the ground and point of departure for insight into the essence of eternal return of the same.
Yet even after the essential coherence of will to power and eternal return of the same has come to light we still find ourselves at the very beginning of philosophical comprehension. Whenever being as such and as a whole takes on the sense of eternal return of the same, of will to power, and of the coherence of these two notions, in this way con- fronting our thinking, the question arises as to what is being thought here in general and how it is being thought.
Hence our survey of those aspects of the doctrine of return which Nietzsche communicated and those which he suppressed concludes with questions that must open a path that will lead us to what we shall call Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position. Such a survey of the gestation of the doctrine of return is itself carried out with a view to the way that doctrine comes to stand in the whole of his philosophy; this view, for its part, keeps unbroken watch over the whole of Nietz- sche's philosophy. For that reason our presentation was repeatedly con- strained to go beyond mere reportage, making further connections visible by means of questions. In that way we tacitly performed the preliminary work for a discussion of questions that now must be an- swered explicitly-the questions of the configuration and the domain of the doctrine of return.
22. The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return
Before we try to define the configuration of the doctrine of return we shall have to ask whether it possesses any configuration at all. If the survey we have conducted exhibits anything it is the multifaceted fig- ure, or better, the figurelessness or unfinished figure cut by the doc- trine. But what do we mean by the doctrine's configuration, and why are we inquiring into it? Our inquiry would be of only secondary im- portance if the doctrine's configuration were nothing more than a subsequent collation of doctrinal statements and fragments, arranged according to such fortuitous points of view as the doctrine's greatest possible impact or the likelihood of its being understood. However, we are asking about the configuration in order to advance beyond an ini- tial survey and get a closer look at other more essential matters.
By the configuration of the doctrine we understand the inner struc- ture of the truth of the doctrine itself, the structure that is prefigured in the doctrine's proper truth. The "structure of its truth" does not refer to the way in which statements are ordered into arguments, and se- quences of arguments into books; it means the way in which the open- ness of being as a whole is structured into being itself, so that being first shows and articulates itself by means of such openness. Does Nietz- sche's doctrine possess a configuration in this sense? The question can- not be answered immediately. :. . . . . . . especially inasmuch as a configuration understood in this way could exist even if its presentation were not finished and perfectly polished. If a determining ground is always proper to a configuration, a ground by virtue of which a truth comes to prevail on its own grounds; if therefore a configuration is possible only
The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return 167
on the basis of a fundamental position; and if we on the path of our own interpretation are presupposing such a fundamental position for Nietzsche's thinking; then whatever it is that calls for a configuration and makes it possible will be vital to Nietzsche's philosophy.
When we look back we discern that a particular law of truth an- nounces itself everywhere in Nietzsche's thought, at least indirectly. The announcement is heard in our realization that every attempt to characterize the doctrine by pigeonholing it into customary representa- tions comes to grief. Whether we distinguish between its "scientific" import and its "ethical" significance; or, more generally, between its "theoretical" and "practical" sides; and even if we substitute some terms which we today prefer, although they are hardly clearer, distin- guishing between the doctrine's "metaphysical" meaning and its "exis- tentiell" appeal-in each case we take refuge in two-sided affairs, neither side of which is apt. And this is a sign of the intensified predicament in which we find ourselves, however reluctant we may be to admit it. What is essential and peculiar to the doctrine is not brought to light in this way; it is rather clothed in other representation- al modes long since grown customary and threadbare. The same is true of those somewhat novel distinctions between a "poetic" and a "prosa- ic" presentation of the doctrine, or of its "subjective" and "objective" aspects. We have already achieved something of considerable impor- tance when we have noticed that in the case of this "doctrine," no matter how ill-defined or uncertain our experience of it may be, the above-mentioned efforts at interpretation are dubious-they distort our view of the doctrine. To attain this insight is the first intention of our inquiry into the configuration.
The initial consequence of our rejection of these comfortable repre- sentational arrangements will be that we must strive to attain a perspec- tive within which the configuration or the determining grounds of the configuration's law begin to glimmer. Yet how are we to catch sight of the perspective itself? The perspective can arise only from a preview of the entirety of Nietzsche's philosophy, of the totality which impels itself to its own configuration in accord with its own law. Where do we encounter this impulse, this thrust and counterthrust? Nowhere else but in Nietzsche's efforts surrounding his "main work. " The oscillation
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of the plans must perforce exhibit those matters that are to be main- tained, rejected, or transformed; here the axes must come to light on which all the vast restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking turns.
The three axes, which run counter to one another and about which all the restlessness of Nietzsche's search for a configuration turns, are recognizable in the three rubrics that were successively chosen as the main titles of the planned work. None of these three ever managed to suppress the remaining two. The three titles are: the eternal return, the will to power, and the revaluation of all values. The articulation of these three, indeed the articulation that is prefigured in these three titles themselves, is the configuration-the configuration which we are seeking and which indeed is seeking itself. All three rubrics apply to the entirety of Nietzsche's philosophy, while none of them is perfectly apt, inasmuch as the configuration of this philosophy cannot be leashed to a single strand.
Although at the outset we are utterly unable to take up one single unequivocal anticipation of the articulated structure in which "eternal return," "will to power," and "revaluation of all values" would cohere as one, all of them with equal originality, we must just as certainly assume that Nietzsche himself for his part saw a number of distinct possibilities for the shaping of his work. For without this vision the sense of security which we find reflected in the fundamental stance shared by the whole range of plans would be incomprehensible.
However, these plans and arid lists of titles and fragment numbers will come to speak to us only when they are penetrated and pervaded by the light of a certain kind of knowledge-namely, knowledge of what it is they wish to grapple with. We do not possess such knowl- edge. It will take decades for it to mature. Our attempt to locate the structural law in these plans by way of a comparison of one plan with another therefore threatens to wind up being an artificial procedure that presumes to sketch the outline of Nietzsche's "system" in a purely extrinsic way. In order to approach our goal-indeed, in order to set ourselves a goal in the first place-we must select a provisional way that will also enable us to avoid the danger of mouthing hollow catch- words like so many cliches.
What we are seeking is the inner structure of a thought's truth, the
The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return 169
thought of eternal return of the same, the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy. The truth of this thought concerns being as a whole. Yet because the thought essentially wants to be the greatest burden, because it therefore would define human being (that is to say, define us) in the midst of beings as a whole, the truth of this thought is such only when it is our truth.
Someone might counter that this is obvious and to be taken for granted, inasmuch as the thought of eternal return of the same in- volves all beings, hence ourselves as well, we who belong to being as particular cases of it-perhaps as specks of dust blown hither and thither in it. Yet this thought is only when those who are thinking- are. Accordingly, those who are thinking are more than, and some- thing other than, mere particular cases o f what is thought. Those who think the thought are not merely a given set of human beings who come to the fore somewhere at some time or other. The thinking of this thought has its most proper historical necessity; the thinking itself determines a historical moment. Out of this moment alone the eterni- ty of what is thought in the thought looms large. Thus what the thought of eternal return of the same encompasses, the domain to which it reverts and which it pervades, constituting that domain for the first time, is not yet circumscribed when we aver in summary fashion that all beings are contained in it like walnuts in a sack. The thought's domain first of all needs to be staked out. Only with a view to the domain do we really have any hope of discerning something of the articulated whole which the truth of this thought demands for itself as its configuration.
23. The Domain of the Thought of Return: The Doctrine of Return as the Overcoming of Nihilism
We would have been thinking the thought of return quite extrinsically -in fact, we would not have been thinking it at all-if an awareness of the domain of that thought too had not everywhere encroached upon us. By the concept of the domain of the thought of eternal return we understand the unified context in terms of which this thought is defined and is itself definitive; domain means the unity of the regions of the thought's provenance and dominion. Our inquiry into the do- main aims to grant the thought of thoughts its determinateness, inas- much as this most general thought is easily thought all too generally, that is to say, thought in an indiscriminate manner that drifts off into generalities.
Every thought that thinks being as a whole seems to be circum- scribed in its domain unequivocally and conclusively, at least as long as the as a whole is represented as the region that "encompasses" every- thing. And yet this as a whole is actually a locution that tends more to veil than to pose and to explicate an essential question. The as a whole in this designation "being as a whole" is always to be understood as an interrogative phrase, a questionable phrase, one worthy of the follow- ing questions: How is the as a whole determined; how is the determina- tion grounded; and how are the grounds for the grounding established? Whenever it is a matter of thinking being as a whole the question of the domain becomes a burning question.
However, in Nietzsche's thought concerning being as a whole there is something else, something distinctive, which we must think as well
The Domain of the Thought of Return 171
-not as a supplementary addition but as a preliminary characteristic that arises at the very outset to suggest the thought's possible configura- tion. This distinctive characteristic touches the essential core of the thought-the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietz- sche's philosophy, in the intrinsic movement of its thought, is a coun- termovement. Yet it may well be that a countermovement is what every philosophy is, opposing every other philosophy. Nevertheless, in Nietzsche's thinking the movement of this countering has a special sense. It does not wish to reject that which is countered in its thought, in order to replace it with something else. Nietzsche's thinking wills to invert. Yet that toward which the inversion and its particular kind of countermovement aim is not some arbitrary past tendency (or even present trend) in one type of philosophy or another. It is rather the whole of Western philosophy, inasmuch as such philosophy remains the form-giving principle in the history of Western man.
The collective history of Western philosophy is interpreted as Pla- tonism. Plato's philosophy provides the standard of measure for the way we conceive of all post-Platonic as well as pre-Platonic philos- ophy. That standard remains determinative inasmuch as philosophy posits specific conditions for the possibility of being as a whole and for man as being within this whole. Such conditions set their seal on being. That which first and last obtains, that which accordingly consti- tutes the condition of "life" as such, Nietzsche calls value. What prop- erly sets the standard are the uppermost values. If therefore Nietzsche's philosophy wants to be the countermovement to the whole of prior Western philosophy in the designated sense, it must set its sights on the uppermost values posited in philosophy. But because Nietzsche's countermovement possesses the character of an inversion, when it homes in on the uppermost values it becomes a "revaluation of all values. "
A countermovement of such scope and significance must of course be sufficiently necessary. Whatever impels it cannot rest on some gratuitous views and opinions concerning what is to be overcome. That in opposition to which the countermovement would set to work must itself be worthy of such work. Hence the most profound acknowl- edgment lies concealed in the countermovement that manifests such a
172 THE ETERJ\AL RECURREJ\CE OF THE SAME
style; the countermovement takes whatever has donned the colors of the opposition with consummate seriousness. In turn, such esteem presupposes that whatever stands in opposition has been experienced and thought through in its full power and significance; that is to say, has been suffered. The countermovement must in its necessity arise from such an original experience; and it must also remain rooted in such an experience.
Now, if the eternal return of the same is the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy proper, and if his philosophy is itself a counter- movement, then the thought of thoughts is inherently a counter- thought. The essence of this thought and its thinking, however, are a taking-for-true in the sense explained earlier: they are a belief. The thought of eternal return of the same is thus the counterbelief, the sustaining and guiding stance in the entire countermovement. The counterbelief itself is rooted in a particular experience involving prior philosophy and Western history in general, the experience t~at gener- ates the necessity of a countermovement or inversion in the sense of a revaluation.
What is this experience? What kind of need is experienced in it, as a need that makes a wending of the way necessary, a needful wending that calls for a revaluation and thereby a new valuation? * It is that propriative event in the history of Western man which Nietzsche designates by the name nihilism. What this word says is not something we can gather in some arbitrary way from a hodgepodge of political notions or world views. We must define it solely in terms of its meaning for Nietzsche. In his experience of the development of nihilism, the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy is rooted and suspended. At the same time, that philosophy strives to clarify in an initial way the experience of nihilism and to make the scope of nihilism increasingly transparent. With the unfolding of Nietzsche's philosophy we also find a deepening of Nietzsche's insight into the essence and the power of nihilism, as well as a development of the need and the necessity of its overcommg.
What we have just said also suggests that the concept of nihilism can
*On the "needful wending," Not-wend-igkeit, see the note on page 175, below.
The Domain of the Thought of Return 173
be thought adequately only if we assimilate simultaneously the funda- mental thought-the counterthought-of Nietzsche's philosophy. Hence the reverse obtains as well: the fundamental thought, to wit, the doctrine of eternal return, can be grasped solely on the basis of the experience of nihilism and knowledge of the essence of nihilism. If we are to take the measure of the full domain of this most difficult thought; if our gaze is to penetrate at one and the same time the regions of that thought's provenance and dominion; then we must also adjoin to our provisional characterization of the thought's import and the manner of its communication a characterization of nihilism.
If we turn to the word itself we may say that nihilism is an event-or a teaching-whereby it is a matter of the nihil, the nothing. Con- sidered formally, the nothing is a negation of something-indeed of every kind of something. What constitutes being as a whole is every such something. To posit the nothing is thus to negate being as a whole. Nihilism thereby has as its explicit or tacit fundamental teach- ing the following: being as a whole is nothing. Yet precisely this avowal can be understood in such a way that it would be susceptible to the Nietzschean suspicion that it is not at all an expression of nihilism.
That which determines being as a whole is Being. At the beginning of his general metaphysics (in The Science of Logic) Hegel makes the following statement: Being and the Nothing are the same. One can also easily alter the proposition to read as follows: Being is the Nothing. Yet the Hegelian proposition is so little nihilism that it can be said to embody something of that very "grandiose initiative" that Nietzsche sees in German idealism (WM, 416*) which would overcome nihilism. The practice of referring broadly to "nihilism" whenever the nothing emerges in Hegel's text, especially when it stands in essential relation to the doctrine of Being; and furthermore the practice of speaking of nihilism in such a way as to give it a tinge of "Bolshevism," is not merely superficial thinking but unconscionable demagogy.
• WM, 416 (CM, W I 8 [106]) begins as follows:
The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to constitute in thought a pantheism in which evil, error, and suffering are not felt to be arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative was misused by the reigning powers (the state, etc. ), as though to sanction the rationality of whoever happened to be ruling.
174 THE ETERJ\'AL RECURRENCE O f THE SAME
Above all, such trivial reductions fail to grasp or even touch on Nietzsche's thought, either in terms of its understanding of nihilism or in the kind of nihilism that is proper to it. For Nietzsche does understand his own thinking in terms of nihilism: his thinking passes through "consummate nihilism," and Nietzsche himself is "Europe's first consummate nihilist, one who in himself has lived nihilism as such to its end, who has left it behind, beneath, and outside himself" (WM, Preface, section 3). "
The domain of the thought of eternal return of the same-of that thought's provenance and dominion-will open itself to us only when we have come to recognize the propriative event of nihilism, that is, only when we ponder the fact that Nietzsche experienced and thoroughly interrogated nihilism as the fundamental development of history as such. Nietzsche experienced and interrogated nihilism to the utmost by pursuing the path of his own thinking. The thought of eternal return thinks being in such a way that being as a whole sum- mons us without cease. It asks us whether we merely want to drift with the tide of things or whether we would be creators. Prior to that, it asks us whether we desire the means and the conditions by which we might again become creators.
lnsightinto nihilism remains something terrifying. Hence it is terri- bly difficult to think the thought that is hardest to bear and to prepare for the coming of those who will think it truly and creatively. What is most difficult at the outset is the confrontation with nihilism along with the thought of return, inasmuch as the latter itself betrays a nihi- listic character in the fact that it refuses to think of an ultimate goal for beings. From one point of view, at least, this thought ascribes the "in vain," the lack of an ultimate goal, to eternity. To this extent it is an utterly crippling thought (WM, 55; from the years 1886-87):
Let us think this thought in its most frightful form: existence as it is, without meaning and goal, yet inevitably recurring; existence with no finale to sweep it into nothingness: eternal recurrence.
• In I961 Heidegger added the following in square brackets: "A detailed explication and discussion of the essence of nihilism is to be found in Volume II of the present publication. " See Volume IV of this English-language series, entitled Nihilism.
The Domain ofthe Thought ofReturn 175 That is the utterly extreme form of nihilism: the nothing ("meaningless-
ness") eternally!
Yet when we think the Nietzschean thought of eternal return in this way we are doing so halfheartedly-in fact we are not thinking it at all. For we are not grasping it in its character as decision, the character of the moment. Only when this happens do we plumb the depths of the thought in its proper domain; only when this happens is there in Nietz- sche's view such a thing as the overcoming of nihilism. As an over- coming, the thought obviously presupposes nihilism, in the sense that it takes up nihilism into its thought, thinking it through to its uttermost end. Understood in this way, the thought of return too is to be thought "nihilistically," and only so. But this now implies that the thought of return is to be thought only in conjunction with nihilism, as what is to be overcome, what is already overcome in the very will to create. Only the one whose thinking ventures forth into the uttermost need of nihil- ism will be able to think the overcoming thought, which is the needed thought-the thought that wends its way toward the need as such. "'
• Nur wer in die iiusserste Not des Nihilismus hinausdenkt, vermag auch den iiber- windenden Gedanken als den not-wendenden und notwendigen zu denken. Cf. Heideg- ger's brief Foreword to the fourth edition of Erliiuterungen zu Holder/ins Dichtung (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1971), p. 7. The above phrase plays on the rootedness of both "overcoming" and "necessity" in a kind of wending or turning toward the need in our destitute time. See also the discussion of need and needlessness in Volume IV of this series, pp. 244-50, including the note on pp. 244-45.
24. Moment and Eternal Recurrence
What is the fundamental position in the midst of beings that results from such thinking? Earlier we heard that the serpent that coils itself in rings about the eagle's throat, thus becoming a ring that itself turns in the widening spiral of the eagle's ascent into the heights, is the image of the ring in the doctrine of eternal return. In the middle of our account of "The Vision and the Riddle," while we were recounting Zarathustra's tale told on shipboard of how he had once climbed a mountain in company with the dwarf, we broke off at a particular point with the remark that the remainder of Zarathustra's tale would become comprehensible only later. We have now arrived at that junc- ture at which we can take up the matters postponed earlier. At the same time we can once again think through the entire tale-the tale that thinks the thought that is hardest to bear.
W e recall that Zarathustra poses two questions to the dwarf concern- ing the vision of the gateway. The second question the dwarf does not answer. Indeed, Zarathustra reports that his own talk concerning what is decisive in this vision of the gateway-namely, the question of the "moment"-grows softer and softer, and that he himself begins to fear his "own thoughts and hinterthoughts. " He himself is not yet master of this thought-which is tantamount to saying that the victory of his thought is not yet decided, not even for Zarathustra. True, he tells the dwarf, "It is either You or me! " and he knows that he is the stronger one; still, he is not yet master of his own strength; he must test it and thus attain it for the first time, in confrontation. Whither the con- frontation tends, and what domain of provenance and dominion the thought of thoughts occupies, we have in the meantime considered.
With one eye on this domain we may now proceed to interpret the remainder of Zarathustra's tale.
Moment and Eternal Recurrence 177
Zarathustra is approaching his ownmost thought, fearing it more intensely with each advancing step. "Then suddenly I heard a dog nearby howling. " It is now a dog that comes into Zarathustra's vicinity, not an eagle with a serpent coiled about its throat; and now we hear, not the singing of songbirds, but a "howling. " Now all the images turn counter to the mood of the thought of eternal return.
When the dog howls Zarathustra's thoughts "race back" to his child- hood. The reference to childhood shows that we are now retreating to the earlier history of Zarathustra, the thinker of the thought of return, and also to the vast prehistory of that thought-to the genesis and emergence of nihilism. At some point in his childhood Zarathustra saw a dog, "bristling, its head raised, shivering in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts. " The scene, with all its counter- images, is thus defined in greater detail. It is midnight, the most remote time, the hour that is farthest removed from midday-midday being the time of the most luminous, shadowless moment. "For at that instant the full moon, silent as death, rose over the house and then stood still, a round, glowing coal; stood still on the flat roof, as though trespassing on a stranger's property. . .
A more important outcome of such an examination is the following: the multifaceted positioning of the thought of return in the architec- tonic of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future" gives an indication of the essence of the thought itself. Not only must the thought emerge out of the creative moment of decision in some given individual, but as a thought that pertains to life itself it must also be a historical deci- sion--a crisis.
We shall now pursue the question concerning the extent to which the thought of return explicitly comes to the fore in the plans, and the way in which it does so. The first plan (XVI, 413) does not belong here, inasmuch as it stems from the year 1882 and pertains to the circle of thoughts contained in The Gay Science. Only with the sec- ond plan do the proposals and projected plans from the years 1884-85 begin. This is the period in which Nietzsche-above all, in letters- makes explicit mention of an expansion of his "philosophy," of pro- viding a "main structure" for which Thus Spoke Zarathustra is to be the vestibule. "' We do find signs of life for his plan for a magnum opus, but not a trace of a work entitled The Will to Power. The titles we find are The Eternal Return, in three different plans from the year
1884; or Midday and Eternity: A Philosophy of Eternal Return, also from the year 1884; finally, in that same year the subtitle becomes the main title-Philosophy of Eternal Return.
• See Volume I, section 3, esp. pp. 12-13, for a selection of these letters.
The Period of"The Will to Power" 155
As opposed to these titles we find a plan from the year 1885 entitled
The Will to Power: Attempt at an Interpretation o f All Occurrence.
The preface of that projected work is to treat "the threatening meaning- lessness" and the "problem of pessimism. " When we come to discuss the "domain" of the doctrine of return we shall grasp the fact that this entire plan must be viewed from the vantage-point of eternal return- even though it does not cite the thought as such. * From this plan we learn one thing: the question concerning will to power finds its proper place in the philosophy of eternal return. The latter thought attains preeminence over all; it is to be treated in the preface because it is all-pervading.
However, during the year 1884, the year in which Nietzsche pre- sumably achieved clarity concerning will to power as the pervasive character of all beings, an important reference to the connection be- tween eternal recurrence and will to power is made in a plan listed as number 2. t This plan culminates in a fifth point entitled "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " Wherever the thought of thoughts is indeed thought, that is to say, is incorporated, it conducts the thinker to supreme decisions in such a way that he expands beyond himself, thus attaining power over himself and willing himself. In this way such a man is as will to power.
In order to compose his philosophy within a planned major work, Nietzsche now carries out an analysis of all occurrence in terms of will to power. This meditation is essential, and for Nietzsche it comes to occupy the midpoint for the next several years, the midpoint that de- fines all beings themselves. It is far from the case that the doctrine of eternal recurrence is put out of play or reduced in significance; rather, that doctrine is enhanced to a supreme degree thanks to Nietzsche's efforts to shore up the main structure on all sides by means of a most thoroughgoing "interpretation of all occurrence. " From the year 188. 5 stem some other notes (XVI, 415) in which Nietzsche clearly says what he understands by will to power, a matter that is now moving into the
• See section 23, below.
t See now CM, Z II 5a [80].
156 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
forefront of his labors: "Will to power is the ultimate fact we come down to. "*
If we were to ponder these words alone, for the purpose of reflecting on what eternal return is, it would surely become apparent that here it is a matter of two very different things-of things that are different in several senses. Eternal return is not an ultimate fact; it is rather the "thought of thoughts. " Will to power is not a thought; it is an "ulti- mate fact. " The fact can neither suppress nor supplant the thought. The decisive question-one that Nietzsche himself neglected to pose- proves to be: What fundamental matter lies concealed behind the dis- tinction between eternal return as the "most difficult thought" and will to power as "ultimate fact"? As long as we fail to inquire back into the domain where all these matters are grounded we cling to mere words and remain stuck in extrinsic calculations of Nietzsche's thinking.
Study of the plans from the years 1884 and 1885 nonetheless shows unequivocally that the philosophy which Nietzsche was planning to portray as a whole is the philosophy of eternal return. In order to give shape to that philosophy he had to supply an interpretation of all oc- currence as will to power. The farther Nietzsche's thinking penetrated into the total presentation of his philosophy, the more compelling the principal task of interpreting all occurrence as will to power became. For that reason the locution will to power advanced to the very title of the planned magnum opus. Yet it is so transparently clear that the whole remains sustained and thoroughly defined by the thought of eternal return that one is almost reluctant to make explicit reference to this state of affairs.
The plan of 1886 bears the title The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation ofAll Values. The subtitle suggests what the meditation on will to power properly has to achieve; namely, a revaluation of all values. By value Nietzsche understands whatever is a condition for life, that is, for the enhancement of life. Revaluation of all values means- for life, that is, for being as a whole-the positing of a new condition by which life is once again brought to itself, that is to say, impelled beyond itself. For only in this way does life become possible in its true
• See CM, W 17a [61]. Cf. Giorgio Colli's critique in the Nachwort to vol. II of the Studienausgabe, p. 726.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 157
essence. Revaluation is nothing other than what the greatest burden, the thought of eternal return, is to accomplish. The subtitle, which is to exhibit the all-encompassing scope that will to power possesses, might therefore just as well have been the one we find in the year 1884: A Philosophy ofEternal Return (XVI, 414; number 5).
The plan that most fully corroborates the interpretation we are offer- ing here is one from the year 1884 (XVI, 415; number 6*), entitled Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence: An Attempt at the Revaluation of All Values. The plan mentioned earlier, from the year 1886, proposes that the work be divided into four books. This fourfold division is retained in spite of all the other changes up to the end of 1888. We shall now take note of only the first and fourth books, which frame the whole. The question raised in Book One, "The Danger of Dangers," takes aim once again at the "meaninglessness" that threatens-we could also say, at the fact that all things are losing their weight. The compelling question is whether it is possible to provide beings with a new center of gravity. The "danger of dangers" must be averted by the "thought of thoughts. " Book IV bears the title "The Hammer. " If we did not yet know what this word implies, we could gather its meaning perfectly well from plan number 2 of 1884 (XVI, 414). Here the final fragment-to which we have already referred-is called "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. " In place of the title of Book IV, "The Hammer," we could also allow the phrase "the doctrine of eternal return" to stand. (See the commentary to Book IV; XVI, 420). t
• See CM, W I 2 [259, 258].
t This plan (W I 8 [100] ) is actually not "fragmented" in GOA as the critical ap- paratus to CM says, but is "padded" by a number of phrases gleaned from elsewhere in the notebooks. There are two "commentaries" to which Heidegger may be referring here. The one I have been able to locate in CM [131] reads as follows:
On Book Four
The greatest struggle:. for it we need a new weapon.
The hammer: to conjure a frightful decision, to confront Europe with the conse- quences, whether its will to perish "is willing. "
Prevention of the tendency toward mediocrity.
Better to perish!
This note was taken up into The Will to Power as WM, 1054.
158 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
The plans for a main work that were drafted in the following year, from 1887 until early 1888, manifest a thoroughly unified structure. lhis is the period when Nietzsche's thoughtful labors on behalf of the will to power reach their zenith. How does the doctrine of return fare during this period? It appears each time in the fourth and final book proposed by the plans. Last in terms of presentation, it is first in terms of the matter and the context that grounds the whole. It pervades all from beginning to end, which is why it can reveal itself in its full truth only at the end of the presentation. Its position at the end also indicates something else, to wit, the fact that the "doctrine" is not a "theory," that it is not to be pressed into service as a scientific explanation, as some sort of hypothesis on the origins of the world. Rather, the think- ing of this thought transforms life in its very grounds and thereby pro- pounds new standards of education.
With a view to the transformative character of the thought of return, as a matter of decision and excision, the very title of the fourth book is conceived in the individual plans of this period. "Discipline and Breeding" it is called in the plan of March 17, 1887, which the editors of Nietzsche's notes chose as the blueprint for the major work. " The next plan, from the summer of 1887, lists as the title of the fourth book "The Overcomers and the Overcome (A Prophecy). " In the fol- lowing plan the title in question reads: "Overcomers and What Is Overcome. "
If we read these titles strictly in terms of their literal content, we of course find nothing concerning eternal return. Nevertheless, one need not know a great deal about this thought to be reminded immediately by the titles of the fact that the thought which is hardest to bear con- fronts us with a question. It demands to know whether we renounce life in all its discordance-whether we try to sidestep it and are inad- vertently crushed under its wheels, thus joining the ranks of those who are overcome-or whether we affirm life and become one of the over- comers. The appended remark, "A Prophecy," clearly alludes to the doctrine of return (XVI, 413; from the year 1884). Furthermore, a more detailed version of the plan of March 17, 1887, drawn up at the
* CM, Mp XVII 3b [64].
The Period of "The Will to Power" 159
end of that year (XVI, 424), explicitly presents as the first title of the fourth book the phrase "The Eternal Return. '"* The titles of the remaining two divisions are Grand Politics and Prescriptions for Our Lives. However, the most telling evidence for the undiminished importance of the doctrine of return at the center of the whole--even during the period when will to power achieves preeminence--consists
in the fact that the fourth book is thought of as a victorious countermove to the first, which treats of European nihilism and its upsurgence.
Nihilism is the propriative event by which the weight in all things melts away-the fact that a center of gravity is missing. Yet the lack first becomes visible and palpable when it is brought to light in the question . concerning a new center of gravity. Seen from this vantage- point, the thinking of the thought of eternal recurrence, as a question- ing that perpetually calls for decision, is the fulfillment of nihilism. Such thinking brings to an end the veiling and painting over of this event, in such a way that it becomes at the same time the transition to the new determination of the greatest burden. The doctrine of eternal return is therefore the "critical point," the watershed of an epoch become weightless and searching for a new center of gravity. It is the crisis proper. Hence, in considerations surrounding plans from the period in which "will to power" is emphasized we find the following (XVI, 422): "The doctrine of eternal return: as fulfillment of it [i. e. , nihilism], as crisis. "
Even the plans from the spring and summer of 1888, the final year of Nietzsche's creative life, whatever transformations they indicate, clearly exhibit the identical articulation: in each case the plan wends its way to the summit, where we find the thought of eternal return. The titles of the final parts vary in any given instance: "The Inverted Ones; Their Hammer, 'The Doctrine of Eternal Return'" (XVI, 425); "Re- demption from Uncertainty" (426); "The Art of Healing for the Fu-
• The plan GOA calls the "third draft" of the plan of March 17, 1887, is to be found in CM at W II 4 [2] and is dated early 1888. Neither it nor the preceding plan in GOA (W II I [164]) can so readily be called later "drafts" of the March 17 plan. Nor is there any convincing reason for the latter's having been chosen as the basis for the volume Der Wille zur Macht.
160 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
ture" (426). For Nietzsche, the "art of healing," as an "art," is a value. That is to say, it is a condition posited by the will to power, indeed, a condition of "life-enhancement. " The "art of healing for the future" is the condition that defines the center of gravity in being as a whole for times to come. In order for this condition to work its effects it is first of all necessary that a "stronger species ofhuman being" be there.
In the final plans, from the fall of 1888, the title The Will to Power disappears, making room for what used to be the subtitle, Revaluation of All Values. Here the titles of Book Four read as follows: "The Re- demption from Nihilism"; "Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal Return";
"Dionysos philosophos"; and again, "Dionysos: Philosophy of Eternal Return. ""
This apparently extraneous examination of the plans aims to respond to the following question: Where in the articulated structure of Nietz- sche's planned communication of his philosophy do we find the place where the thought of return is to be presented?
If this teaching is the "crisis," then it must face in two opposite directions. On the one hand, the doctrine must be communicated at the point where the question concerning the center of gravity surfaces as the question of the evanescence of all prior sources of weight. On the other hand, the doctrine must be explicated at the point where the new center of gravity is itself established in beings.
The editors of Nietzsche's works from the period after Thus Spoke Zarathustra up to the end proved that in this respect they saw matters in the proper light. For they distributed the available fragments on the doctrine of return between two places in the volume they composed, namely, The Will to Power: first, in the first book, "European Nihil- ism," Chapter One, Part Four, "The Crisis: Nihilism and the Thought of Return," numbers 55 and 56 (XV, 181-87); and then in the fourth book, "Discipline and Breeding," as the conclusion to the entire "work": "The Eternal Return," numbers 1053 to 1067 (XVI, 393- 402). To be sure, there exist a number of clear indications in Nietz- sche's sketches which support such a distribution. The question of nihilism and the thought of return, treated in the first book, requires
• See Heidegger's delayed commentary on these titles in section 26, below.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 161
separate discussion. * Let us now therefore refer only briefly to those materials that are taken up into Book IV. Our guideline will be the question of the extent to which the notes between 1884 and 1888 exhibit a further development of the teaching, and of the particular direction such a development takes.
When we compare the main features of these fragments with those from the period of The Gay Science (XII) and with the doctrinal im- port expressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, nothing much appears to have changed. We find the same reflections in regard to both the "proofs" for the doctrine and the doctrine's "impact. " Yet when we look more carefully at these materials, having pondered the fact that the notes pertain to a period in which Nietzsche was trying to think through his philosophy as a whole and to bring it to a configuration, the picture changes altogether. The precondition for our seeing this is the refusal simply to accept the given order of the fifteen passages as they appear in their current published form. Rather, we must first of all place them in their chronological order. In the present edition the fragments are jumbled higgledy-piggledy. The first one belongs to the year 1884, the last one, which at the same time concludes the entire
work, stems from the year 1885, while immediately prior to it appears one from the final year, 1888. Let us therefore establish the chronolog- ical sequence of the notes. To the year 1884 belong numbers 1053, 1056, 1059, and 1060. To the year 1885 numbers 1055, 1062, 1064, and 1067. From the period 1885-86 comes number 1054; from the period 1886-87 number 1063; from the period 1887-88 numbers 1061 and 1065. Number 1066 belongs to the year 1888. Two fragments from the period 1884 to 1888 which we cannot date precisely but which, judging from the handwriting, presumably stem from the year
1884-85 are numbers 1057 and 1058. t
• See section 23, below. Heidcgger's 1940 lecture course on nihilism (Volume IV of this series), by and large neglects eternal return as the countermovement to nihilism. See the Analysis at the end of the present volume.
t The folder containing the sheets on which WM, 1057 and 1058 are jotted (Mp XVII lb [4,7]) is dated by CM "Winter 1883-84," a year earlier than Heidegger's estimate. Otherwise, Heidegger's dating of the passages, following GOA, is accurate. Readers should note important textual changes in WM, 1064 (cf. CM, WI 3a [54] and WM, 1066 (cf. CM, W II 5 [188]). I have been unable to locate WM, 1061 in CM.
162 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Because our interpretation proper of Nietzsche's fundamental thought-an interpretation that is to be a confrontation-will have to refer back to Nietzsche's final utterances, let us postpone for the present a more detailed discussion of the fragments we have just now listed. Only one essential circumstance should be emphasized immedi- ately. Nietzsche speaks more clearly than before about the "presupposi- tions" of the doctrine of return, indeed about "theoretical" and "practical" ones. This seems strange at first. If the doctrine of eternal return is to be the fundamental doctrine, determining everything, then it cannot entertain any presuppositions as such. On the contrary, it must be the presupposition for all additional thoughts. Or does Nietz- sche's manner of speaking suggest that the doctrine of return, while not surrendered, is yet to be deposed from its foundational significance and relegated to a subordinate position? We can reach a decision in this matter only if we come to know what Nietzsche means by these "pre- suppositions. " He does not directly say what he means. But from the allusions he makes and the general tendency of his thinking we can unequivocally state that he is referring to the will to power as the pervasive constitution of all beings. The thought of return is now ex- plicitly thought on the basis of the will to power. Hence we might now conclude that the thought of eternal return is to be traced back to will to power. Yet such a conclusion would be too hasty and altogether extrinsic.
Even if such were the case--even if will to power were the presup- position for the eternal return of the same-it would by no means follow that will to power precludes the doctrine of eternal return, that the two cannot subsist side by side. The very reverse would hold: will to power would demand the eternal return of the same.
Nevertheless, the outcome of our survey of the plans from this pe- riod is the realization that the doctrine of return nowhere suffers a setback. It asserts its determinative position everywhere. Accordingly the only thing we must ask is: How do will to power, as the pervasive constitution ofbeings, and eternal return ofthe same, as the mode of Being ofbeings as a whole, relate to one another? What is the signifi- cance of the fact that Nietzsche posits will to power as a "presupposi- tion" for the eternal return of the same? How does he understand
The Period of "The Will to Power" 163
"presupposition" here? Does Nietzsche have a clear, well-grounded conception of the relation that obtains between the two? Nietzsche indeed possesses no clear insight-and certainly no conceptual insight -into the relation which we have now named but not yet pondered.
The will to power can be the "presupposition" for the eternal recur- rence of the same in any of the following three ways. First, eternal return of the same can be demonstrated on the basis of will to power, the latter expressing the character of force in the world totality. Here will to power would be the cognitive ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Second, eternal return may be seen as being possible only if the constitution of will to power is indeed appropriate to beings as such. Here will to power would be the material ground of eternal recurrence of the same. Third, will to power can be the "presupposi- tion" of eternal recurrence of the same inasmuch as the constitution of the being (its "what," quidditas, or essentia) grounds its mode of Being (the being's "how" and "that" "it is," its existentia). As long as the designated relationship between the constitution of the being and its mode of Being remains undetermined, the possibility also arises that the reverse is true-that the constitution of the being springs from its mode of Being.
The relationship now in question cannot be defined in terms of a relation between something that conditions and something that is con- ditioned, between what grounds and what is grounded. In order for the relationship to be defined we first need to discuss the essential prove- nance of the essence of Being.
With these questions we are already anticipating decisive steps in our interpretation and determination of the relation between eternal return of the same and will to power. Yet an apparently extrinsic cir- cumstance betrays how much this obscure relation, which Nietzsche. was unable to come to grips with, was what really lay behind the restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking during this final creative period. The fragment that concludes the "work" entitled The Will to Power, in its current textual arrangement, namely, number 1067, is as it now stands the revised version of an earlier note (XVI, 515). To the ques- tion "And do you also know what 'the world' is to me? " Nietzsche's earlier version replies: it is eternal return of the same, willing back
I64 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
whatever has been and willing forward to whatever has to be. In the second version the reply is: "This world is will to power--and nothing besides! "*
Again we stand before the question that has confronted us many times. Do we merely want to remain entrenched in the extrinsic dis- tinction between these two locutions and turns of phrase, eternal re- turn of the same and will to power? Or do we by now realize that we come to grasp a philosophy only when we try to think what it says? At all events, the revision we have referred to shows that will to power and eternal return of the same cohere. With what right could Nietzsche otherwise substitute the one for the other? Yet what if the will to power, according to Nietzsche's most proper and intrinsic intentions, were in itself nothing else than willing back to that which was and a willing forward to everything that has to be? What if the eternal recur- rence of the same-as occurrence-were nothing other than the will to power, precisely in the way Nietzsche himself understands this phrase, though not in the way some view or other of "politics" bends it to its own purpose? t If matters stood this way, then the designation of being as will to power would only be an elaboration of the original and
• See the commentary in CM to fragment [12] of the group of sheets bearing the archive number 38 (from June-July, 1885); in the Studienausgabe, vol. 14, p. 727. Nietzsche's revised reply, "will to power-and nothing besides," was taken up into the book Beyond Good and Evil as passage number 36 and hence has become quite well known. The passage that Nietzsche excised from the earlier version, and which orig- inally appeared at the decisive word "ring" near the end of WM, 1067, reads as follows:
a ring of good will, turning ever about itself alone, keeping to its wonted way: this world, my world-who is luminous enough to look at it without wishing to be blinded? Strong enough to hold his soul up to this mirror? His own mirror up to the mirror of Dionysos?
His own solution to the riddle of Dionysos? And were anyone able to do this, would he not have to do more in addition? To plight his troth to the "ring of rings"? By taking the oath of his own return? By means of the ring of eternal self-blessing, self-affirmation? By. means of the will to will oneself once more and yet again? The will to will back all the things that ever have been? To will forward to everything that ever has to be? Do you now know what the world is to me? And what I am willing when I will this world? -
t The reference is presumably to Alfred Baeumler's Nietzsche: Philosopher and Politi- cian. In addition to the material in my Analyses of Volumes I and IV, see also Mazzino Montinari, "Nietzsche zwischen Alfred Baumler und Georg Lukacs," in Basis, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 18&-207, esp. pp. 201 ff.
The Period of "The Will to Power" 165
primary projection of being as eternal recurrence of the same. In truth, matters do stand this way.
Will to power is a "presupposition" for eternal return of the same, inasmuch as will to power alone allows us to recognize what eternal return of the same means. Because in terms of the matter itself eternal return of the same constitutes the ground and the essence of will to power, the latter can be posited as the ground and point of departure for insight into the essence of eternal return of the same.
Yet even after the essential coherence of will to power and eternal return of the same has come to light we still find ourselves at the very beginning of philosophical comprehension. Whenever being as such and as a whole takes on the sense of eternal return of the same, of will to power, and of the coherence of these two notions, in this way con- fronting our thinking, the question arises as to what is being thought here in general and how it is being thought.
Hence our survey of those aspects of the doctrine of return which Nietzsche communicated and those which he suppressed concludes with questions that must open a path that will lead us to what we shall call Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position. Such a survey of the gestation of the doctrine of return is itself carried out with a view to the way that doctrine comes to stand in the whole of his philosophy; this view, for its part, keeps unbroken watch over the whole of Nietz- sche's philosophy. For that reason our presentation was repeatedly con- strained to go beyond mere reportage, making further connections visible by means of questions. In that way we tacitly performed the preliminary work for a discussion of questions that now must be an- swered explicitly-the questions of the configuration and the domain of the doctrine of return.
22. The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return
Before we try to define the configuration of the doctrine of return we shall have to ask whether it possesses any configuration at all. If the survey we have conducted exhibits anything it is the multifaceted fig- ure, or better, the figurelessness or unfinished figure cut by the doc- trine. But what do we mean by the doctrine's configuration, and why are we inquiring into it? Our inquiry would be of only secondary im- portance if the doctrine's configuration were nothing more than a subsequent collation of doctrinal statements and fragments, arranged according to such fortuitous points of view as the doctrine's greatest possible impact or the likelihood of its being understood. However, we are asking about the configuration in order to advance beyond an ini- tial survey and get a closer look at other more essential matters.
By the configuration of the doctrine we understand the inner struc- ture of the truth of the doctrine itself, the structure that is prefigured in the doctrine's proper truth. The "structure of its truth" does not refer to the way in which statements are ordered into arguments, and se- quences of arguments into books; it means the way in which the open- ness of being as a whole is structured into being itself, so that being first shows and articulates itself by means of such openness. Does Nietz- sche's doctrine possess a configuration in this sense? The question can- not be answered immediately. :. . . . . . . especially inasmuch as a configuration understood in this way could exist even if its presentation were not finished and perfectly polished. If a determining ground is always proper to a configuration, a ground by virtue of which a truth comes to prevail on its own grounds; if therefore a configuration is possible only
The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return 167
on the basis of a fundamental position; and if we on the path of our own interpretation are presupposing such a fundamental position for Nietzsche's thinking; then whatever it is that calls for a configuration and makes it possible will be vital to Nietzsche's philosophy.
When we look back we discern that a particular law of truth an- nounces itself everywhere in Nietzsche's thought, at least indirectly. The announcement is heard in our realization that every attempt to characterize the doctrine by pigeonholing it into customary representa- tions comes to grief. Whether we distinguish between its "scientific" import and its "ethical" significance; or, more generally, between its "theoretical" and "practical" sides; and even if we substitute some terms which we today prefer, although they are hardly clearer, distin- guishing between the doctrine's "metaphysical" meaning and its "exis- tentiell" appeal-in each case we take refuge in two-sided affairs, neither side of which is apt. And this is a sign of the intensified predicament in which we find ourselves, however reluctant we may be to admit it. What is essential and peculiar to the doctrine is not brought to light in this way; it is rather clothed in other representation- al modes long since grown customary and threadbare. The same is true of those somewhat novel distinctions between a "poetic" and a "prosa- ic" presentation of the doctrine, or of its "subjective" and "objective" aspects. We have already achieved something of considerable impor- tance when we have noticed that in the case of this "doctrine," no matter how ill-defined or uncertain our experience of it may be, the above-mentioned efforts at interpretation are dubious-they distort our view of the doctrine. To attain this insight is the first intention of our inquiry into the configuration.
The initial consequence of our rejection of these comfortable repre- sentational arrangements will be that we must strive to attain a perspec- tive within which the configuration or the determining grounds of the configuration's law begin to glimmer. Yet how are we to catch sight of the perspective itself? The perspective can arise only from a preview of the entirety of Nietzsche's philosophy, of the totality which impels itself to its own configuration in accord with its own law. Where do we encounter this impulse, this thrust and counterthrust? Nowhere else but in Nietzsche's efforts surrounding his "main work. " The oscillation
168 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
of the plans must perforce exhibit those matters that are to be main- tained, rejected, or transformed; here the axes must come to light on which all the vast restlessness of Nietzsche's thinking turns.
The three axes, which run counter to one another and about which all the restlessness of Nietzsche's search for a configuration turns, are recognizable in the three rubrics that were successively chosen as the main titles of the planned work. None of these three ever managed to suppress the remaining two. The three titles are: the eternal return, the will to power, and the revaluation of all values. The articulation of these three, indeed the articulation that is prefigured in these three titles themselves, is the configuration-the configuration which we are seeking and which indeed is seeking itself. All three rubrics apply to the entirety of Nietzsche's philosophy, while none of them is perfectly apt, inasmuch as the configuration of this philosophy cannot be leashed to a single strand.
Although at the outset we are utterly unable to take up one single unequivocal anticipation of the articulated structure in which "eternal return," "will to power," and "revaluation of all values" would cohere as one, all of them with equal originality, we must just as certainly assume that Nietzsche himself for his part saw a number of distinct possibilities for the shaping of his work. For without this vision the sense of security which we find reflected in the fundamental stance shared by the whole range of plans would be incomprehensible.
However, these plans and arid lists of titles and fragment numbers will come to speak to us only when they are penetrated and pervaded by the light of a certain kind of knowledge-namely, knowledge of what it is they wish to grapple with. We do not possess such knowl- edge. It will take decades for it to mature. Our attempt to locate the structural law in these plans by way of a comparison of one plan with another therefore threatens to wind up being an artificial procedure that presumes to sketch the outline of Nietzsche's "system" in a purely extrinsic way. In order to approach our goal-indeed, in order to set ourselves a goal in the first place-we must select a provisional way that will also enable us to avoid the danger of mouthing hollow catch- words like so many cliches.
What we are seeking is the inner structure of a thought's truth, the
The Configuration of the Doctrine of Return 169
thought of eternal return of the same, the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy. The truth of this thought concerns being as a whole. Yet because the thought essentially wants to be the greatest burden, because it therefore would define human being (that is to say, define us) in the midst of beings as a whole, the truth of this thought is such only when it is our truth.
Someone might counter that this is obvious and to be taken for granted, inasmuch as the thought of eternal return of the same in- volves all beings, hence ourselves as well, we who belong to being as particular cases of it-perhaps as specks of dust blown hither and thither in it. Yet this thought is only when those who are thinking- are. Accordingly, those who are thinking are more than, and some- thing other than, mere particular cases o f what is thought. Those who think the thought are not merely a given set of human beings who come to the fore somewhere at some time or other. The thinking of this thought has its most proper historical necessity; the thinking itself determines a historical moment. Out of this moment alone the eterni- ty of what is thought in the thought looms large. Thus what the thought of eternal return of the same encompasses, the domain to which it reverts and which it pervades, constituting that domain for the first time, is not yet circumscribed when we aver in summary fashion that all beings are contained in it like walnuts in a sack. The thought's domain first of all needs to be staked out. Only with a view to the domain do we really have any hope of discerning something of the articulated whole which the truth of this thought demands for itself as its configuration.
23. The Domain of the Thought of Return: The Doctrine of Return as the Overcoming of Nihilism
We would have been thinking the thought of return quite extrinsically -in fact, we would not have been thinking it at all-if an awareness of the domain of that thought too had not everywhere encroached upon us. By the concept of the domain of the thought of eternal return we understand the unified context in terms of which this thought is defined and is itself definitive; domain means the unity of the regions of the thought's provenance and dominion. Our inquiry into the do- main aims to grant the thought of thoughts its determinateness, inas- much as this most general thought is easily thought all too generally, that is to say, thought in an indiscriminate manner that drifts off into generalities.
Every thought that thinks being as a whole seems to be circum- scribed in its domain unequivocally and conclusively, at least as long as the as a whole is represented as the region that "encompasses" every- thing. And yet this as a whole is actually a locution that tends more to veil than to pose and to explicate an essential question. The as a whole in this designation "being as a whole" is always to be understood as an interrogative phrase, a questionable phrase, one worthy of the follow- ing questions: How is the as a whole determined; how is the determina- tion grounded; and how are the grounds for the grounding established? Whenever it is a matter of thinking being as a whole the question of the domain becomes a burning question.
However, in Nietzsche's thought concerning being as a whole there is something else, something distinctive, which we must think as well
The Domain of the Thought of Return 171
-not as a supplementary addition but as a preliminary characteristic that arises at the very outset to suggest the thought's possible configura- tion. This distinctive characteristic touches the essential core of the thought-the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietz- sche's philosophy, in the intrinsic movement of its thought, is a coun- termovement. Yet it may well be that a countermovement is what every philosophy is, opposing every other philosophy. Nevertheless, in Nietzsche's thinking the movement of this countering has a special sense. It does not wish to reject that which is countered in its thought, in order to replace it with something else. Nietzsche's thinking wills to invert. Yet that toward which the inversion and its particular kind of countermovement aim is not some arbitrary past tendency (or even present trend) in one type of philosophy or another. It is rather the whole of Western philosophy, inasmuch as such philosophy remains the form-giving principle in the history of Western man.
The collective history of Western philosophy is interpreted as Pla- tonism. Plato's philosophy provides the standard of measure for the way we conceive of all post-Platonic as well as pre-Platonic philos- ophy. That standard remains determinative inasmuch as philosophy posits specific conditions for the possibility of being as a whole and for man as being within this whole. Such conditions set their seal on being. That which first and last obtains, that which accordingly consti- tutes the condition of "life" as such, Nietzsche calls value. What prop- erly sets the standard are the uppermost values. If therefore Nietzsche's philosophy wants to be the countermovement to the whole of prior Western philosophy in the designated sense, it must set its sights on the uppermost values posited in philosophy. But because Nietzsche's countermovement possesses the character of an inversion, when it homes in on the uppermost values it becomes a "revaluation of all values. "
A countermovement of such scope and significance must of course be sufficiently necessary. Whatever impels it cannot rest on some gratuitous views and opinions concerning what is to be overcome. That in opposition to which the countermovement would set to work must itself be worthy of such work. Hence the most profound acknowl- edgment lies concealed in the countermovement that manifests such a
172 THE ETERJ\AL RECURREJ\CE OF THE SAME
style; the countermovement takes whatever has donned the colors of the opposition with consummate seriousness. In turn, such esteem presupposes that whatever stands in opposition has been experienced and thought through in its full power and significance; that is to say, has been suffered. The countermovement must in its necessity arise from such an original experience; and it must also remain rooted in such an experience.
Now, if the eternal return of the same is the fundamental thought of Nietzsche's philosophy proper, and if his philosophy is itself a counter- movement, then the thought of thoughts is inherently a counter- thought. The essence of this thought and its thinking, however, are a taking-for-true in the sense explained earlier: they are a belief. The thought of eternal return of the same is thus the counterbelief, the sustaining and guiding stance in the entire countermovement. The counterbelief itself is rooted in a particular experience involving prior philosophy and Western history in general, the experience t~at gener- ates the necessity of a countermovement or inversion in the sense of a revaluation.
What is this experience? What kind of need is experienced in it, as a need that makes a wending of the way necessary, a needful wending that calls for a revaluation and thereby a new valuation? * It is that propriative event in the history of Western man which Nietzsche designates by the name nihilism. What this word says is not something we can gather in some arbitrary way from a hodgepodge of political notions or world views. We must define it solely in terms of its meaning for Nietzsche. In his experience of the development of nihilism, the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy is rooted and suspended. At the same time, that philosophy strives to clarify in an initial way the experience of nihilism and to make the scope of nihilism increasingly transparent. With the unfolding of Nietzsche's philosophy we also find a deepening of Nietzsche's insight into the essence and the power of nihilism, as well as a development of the need and the necessity of its overcommg.
What we have just said also suggests that the concept of nihilism can
*On the "needful wending," Not-wend-igkeit, see the note on page 175, below.
The Domain of the Thought of Return 173
be thought adequately only if we assimilate simultaneously the funda- mental thought-the counterthought-of Nietzsche's philosophy. Hence the reverse obtains as well: the fundamental thought, to wit, the doctrine of eternal return, can be grasped solely on the basis of the experience of nihilism and knowledge of the essence of nihilism. If we are to take the measure of the full domain of this most difficult thought; if our gaze is to penetrate at one and the same time the regions of that thought's provenance and dominion; then we must also adjoin to our provisional characterization of the thought's import and the manner of its communication a characterization of nihilism.
If we turn to the word itself we may say that nihilism is an event-or a teaching-whereby it is a matter of the nihil, the nothing. Con- sidered formally, the nothing is a negation of something-indeed of every kind of something. What constitutes being as a whole is every such something. To posit the nothing is thus to negate being as a whole. Nihilism thereby has as its explicit or tacit fundamental teach- ing the following: being as a whole is nothing. Yet precisely this avowal can be understood in such a way that it would be susceptible to the Nietzschean suspicion that it is not at all an expression of nihilism.
That which determines being as a whole is Being. At the beginning of his general metaphysics (in The Science of Logic) Hegel makes the following statement: Being and the Nothing are the same. One can also easily alter the proposition to read as follows: Being is the Nothing. Yet the Hegelian proposition is so little nihilism that it can be said to embody something of that very "grandiose initiative" that Nietzsche sees in German idealism (WM, 416*) which would overcome nihilism. The practice of referring broadly to "nihilism" whenever the nothing emerges in Hegel's text, especially when it stands in essential relation to the doctrine of Being; and furthermore the practice of speaking of nihilism in such a way as to give it a tinge of "Bolshevism," is not merely superficial thinking but unconscionable demagogy.
• WM, 416 (CM, W I 8 [106]) begins as follows:
The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to constitute in thought a pantheism in which evil, error, and suffering are not felt to be arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative was misused by the reigning powers (the state, etc. ), as though to sanction the rationality of whoever happened to be ruling.
174 THE ETERJ\'AL RECURRENCE O f THE SAME
Above all, such trivial reductions fail to grasp or even touch on Nietzsche's thought, either in terms of its understanding of nihilism or in the kind of nihilism that is proper to it. For Nietzsche does understand his own thinking in terms of nihilism: his thinking passes through "consummate nihilism," and Nietzsche himself is "Europe's first consummate nihilist, one who in himself has lived nihilism as such to its end, who has left it behind, beneath, and outside himself" (WM, Preface, section 3). "
The domain of the thought of eternal return of the same-of that thought's provenance and dominion-will open itself to us only when we have come to recognize the propriative event of nihilism, that is, only when we ponder the fact that Nietzsche experienced and thoroughly interrogated nihilism as the fundamental development of history as such. Nietzsche experienced and interrogated nihilism to the utmost by pursuing the path of his own thinking. The thought of eternal return thinks being in such a way that being as a whole sum- mons us without cease. It asks us whether we merely want to drift with the tide of things or whether we would be creators. Prior to that, it asks us whether we desire the means and the conditions by which we might again become creators.
lnsightinto nihilism remains something terrifying. Hence it is terri- bly difficult to think the thought that is hardest to bear and to prepare for the coming of those who will think it truly and creatively. What is most difficult at the outset is the confrontation with nihilism along with the thought of return, inasmuch as the latter itself betrays a nihi- listic character in the fact that it refuses to think of an ultimate goal for beings. From one point of view, at least, this thought ascribes the "in vain," the lack of an ultimate goal, to eternity. To this extent it is an utterly crippling thought (WM, 55; from the years 1886-87):
Let us think this thought in its most frightful form: existence as it is, without meaning and goal, yet inevitably recurring; existence with no finale to sweep it into nothingness: eternal recurrence.
• In I961 Heidegger added the following in square brackets: "A detailed explication and discussion of the essence of nihilism is to be found in Volume II of the present publication. " See Volume IV of this English-language series, entitled Nihilism.
The Domain ofthe Thought ofReturn 175 That is the utterly extreme form of nihilism: the nothing ("meaningless-
ness") eternally!
Yet when we think the Nietzschean thought of eternal return in this way we are doing so halfheartedly-in fact we are not thinking it at all. For we are not grasping it in its character as decision, the character of the moment. Only when this happens do we plumb the depths of the thought in its proper domain; only when this happens is there in Nietz- sche's view such a thing as the overcoming of nihilism. As an over- coming, the thought obviously presupposes nihilism, in the sense that it takes up nihilism into its thought, thinking it through to its uttermost end. Understood in this way, the thought of return too is to be thought "nihilistically," and only so. But this now implies that the thought of return is to be thought only in conjunction with nihilism, as what is to be overcome, what is already overcome in the very will to create. Only the one whose thinking ventures forth into the uttermost need of nihil- ism will be able to think the overcoming thought, which is the needed thought-the thought that wends its way toward the need as such. "'
• Nur wer in die iiusserste Not des Nihilismus hinausdenkt, vermag auch den iiber- windenden Gedanken als den not-wendenden und notwendigen zu denken. Cf. Heideg- ger's brief Foreword to the fourth edition of Erliiuterungen zu Holder/ins Dichtung (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1971), p. 7. The above phrase plays on the rootedness of both "overcoming" and "necessity" in a kind of wending or turning toward the need in our destitute time. See also the discussion of need and needlessness in Volume IV of this series, pp. 244-50, including the note on pp. 244-45.
24. Moment and Eternal Recurrence
What is the fundamental position in the midst of beings that results from such thinking? Earlier we heard that the serpent that coils itself in rings about the eagle's throat, thus becoming a ring that itself turns in the widening spiral of the eagle's ascent into the heights, is the image of the ring in the doctrine of eternal return. In the middle of our account of "The Vision and the Riddle," while we were recounting Zarathustra's tale told on shipboard of how he had once climbed a mountain in company with the dwarf, we broke off at a particular point with the remark that the remainder of Zarathustra's tale would become comprehensible only later. We have now arrived at that junc- ture at which we can take up the matters postponed earlier. At the same time we can once again think through the entire tale-the tale that thinks the thought that is hardest to bear.
W e recall that Zarathustra poses two questions to the dwarf concern- ing the vision of the gateway. The second question the dwarf does not answer. Indeed, Zarathustra reports that his own talk concerning what is decisive in this vision of the gateway-namely, the question of the "moment"-grows softer and softer, and that he himself begins to fear his "own thoughts and hinterthoughts. " He himself is not yet master of this thought-which is tantamount to saying that the victory of his thought is not yet decided, not even for Zarathustra. True, he tells the dwarf, "It is either You or me! " and he knows that he is the stronger one; still, he is not yet master of his own strength; he must test it and thus attain it for the first time, in confrontation. Whither the con- frontation tends, and what domain of provenance and dominion the thought of thoughts occupies, we have in the meantime considered.
With one eye on this domain we may now proceed to interpret the remainder of Zarathustra's tale.
Moment and Eternal Recurrence 177
Zarathustra is approaching his ownmost thought, fearing it more intensely with each advancing step. "Then suddenly I heard a dog nearby howling. " It is now a dog that comes into Zarathustra's vicinity, not an eagle with a serpent coiled about its throat; and now we hear, not the singing of songbirds, but a "howling. " Now all the images turn counter to the mood of the thought of eternal return.
When the dog howls Zarathustra's thoughts "race back" to his child- hood. The reference to childhood shows that we are now retreating to the earlier history of Zarathustra, the thinker of the thought of return, and also to the vast prehistory of that thought-to the genesis and emergence of nihilism. At some point in his childhood Zarathustra saw a dog, "bristling, its head raised, shivering in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts. " The scene, with all its counter- images, is thus defined in greater detail. It is midnight, the most remote time, the hour that is farthest removed from midday-midday being the time of the most luminous, shadowless moment. "For at that instant the full moon, silent as death, rose over the house and then stood still, a round, glowing coal; stood still on the flat roof, as though trespassing on a stranger's property. . .
