Abstract
This article examines Heidegger’s thoughts on Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal return and the self-overcoming power of thinking. Scholarly commentators argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche reduces the open possibilities of thinking about temporality, becoming and difference into a rigid metaphysical framework of being as a whole. However, a close reading of Heidegger’s thoughts on the eternal recurrence shows that his interpretive attempt to disclose the metaphysical ground of Nietzsche’s thinking reveals a deeper, dynamic dimension of Nietzsche’s recurrent efforts of self-overcoming. In this light, I argue that Heidegger’s interpretive thinking intends to uncover an empowering ground of Nietzsche’s philosophical struggle to overcome the metaphysical limit of human thoughts facing the lively unity of difference. For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s thinking of the eternal recurrence is not to suggest a metaphysical doctrine of being but to grasp a determinate basis of one’s own existence, repeatedly seeking the greater possibility of being with others.
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27 December 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-023-09705-2
Notes
In the following discussions, I will focus on the second volume of Heidegger’s Nietzsche (1991, 4 vols.), which deals with Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal return as its main theme. Hereafter HN. The original German manuscript is based on Heidegger’s lecture course on Nietzsche delivered at the University of Freiburg during the summer semester of 1937. It was originally published in Nietzsche, Erster Vand (Verlag Günther Neske, Pfullingen, 1961). When it is necessary to cite other volumes of Heidegger’s Nietzsche, I will put volume numbers of the English edition before page numbers.
See also Nietzsche (1967: 34): “Philosophical men even have a presentiment that the reality in which we live and have our being is also mere appearance, and that another, quite different reality lies beneath it”.
In this light, Nietzsche’s philosophical doctrine basically reveals the historical “dispersions and differences” of beings rather than a metaphysical truth of being (Foucault, 1984: 89). But Bryan shows that Nietzsche’s view of the past reveals a complicated understanding of the historical possibilities of nostalgia, revenge and politics, which leads to deeper metaphysical questioning of being as such (Bryan, 2012: 35).
The temporal unity of a being is always subjugated to the varying forces of becoming. Kuiken, however, argues that “a proximity returns within the very distance that separates Deleuze and Heidegger, around the question of the Being of becoming” (Kuiken, 2005: 305).
For Deleuze, Heidegger’s notion of being does not fully disclose Nietzsche’s critical insight of difference and repetition: the genuine power of being reveals itself merely as the permanent differentiator of beings.
For Derrida, Heidegger attempts to define the entirety of Western metaphysics without disclosing the open possibilities of Nietzsche’s philosophizing. Heidegger’s rigid perspective of being reduces the questionable ground of Nietzsche’s thinking into a unitary framework of the eternal return.
Although Scott rightly sees the self-overcoming mode of Nietzsche’s philosophy, he does not show the deeper relationship between Nietzsche and Heidegger in their thoughts of the eternal return of being as a whole. On the other hand, Löwith sees that for Nietzsche, the recurrent problem of human life cannot be separated from the permanent question of being as such: “The real problem in Nietzsche’s philosophy is, however, at bottom none other than what it always was: What meaning does human existence have in the whole of Being?” (Löwith, 1997: 4)
In this article, I use the term “being with others” to signify the phenomenon of necessary coexistence of human beings in everyday life (see Heidegger, 1962: 153–162). For Heidegger, the human self is historical in that its everyday mode of existence already belong to the “selfhood of a people” in which their individual differences come to be suitable to each other (Heidegger, 2012: 42). But in his view, the historicality of being does not imply that the human beings are simply enclosed in the particular historical community; rather, it means that they can seek the open possibility of being as such precisely from their ongoing efforts to overcome the limited historical conditions of being with others. Therefore, Heidegger sees that the philosophical meditation of the self necessarily produces new modes of creative thinking that can reveal the “other beginning” of human coexistence (Heidegger, 2012: 43).
The original German manuscript of the Contribution to philosophy (of the Event) was written during the years 1936–1938. It was originally published as Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (Vittorio Klostrmann: Frankfurt am Mein, 1989). In the late 1930s, while Heidegger were reflecting upon the questionable ground of Nietzsche’s philosophizing, he suggests a new conception of being distinguishing between Sein (the being of beings) and Seyn (the questionable occurrence of the truth of being [beyng]). Therefore, discussions of Heidegger’s Nietzsche in light of his contemporary reflection upon the basic question of being (beyng) will be helpful to understand his peculiar emphasis on Nietzsche’s recurring confrontation with the questionable ground of being and truth.
Seeking a more questionable origin of human thinking as such, Heidegger separates the “basic question” of being (beyng) from the “guiding question” of being: the basic question of being tries to disclose a deeper ground of the guiding question of being, allowing a philosophical thinker to dive into a questionable ambiguity of “the truth (clearing and concealing) of being itself” (CP: 60; HN: 193).
Nietzsche’s early character to seriously think about his own self is also revealed in the preface of his final autobiographical work, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is (Nietzsche, 1989b: 216–220).
Heidegger quotes this text from Nietzsche’s early draft which was written on September 18, 1863. The young Nietzsche used the term ‘ring’ in the preliminary sketch of his own being in the world. Here, Heidegger emphasizes that Nietzsche’s early thoughts on the self-overcoming of human beings and its deeper context already revealed his determined approach to the questionable basis of beings.
See Nietzsche (1974: 336): “But I should think that today we at least far from the ridiculous immodesty that would be involved in decreeing our corner that perspectives are permitted only from this corner. Rather the world become ‘infinite’ for us all over again, in as much as we cannot reject the possibility that it may include infinite interpretations”.
Depth implies height (Nietzsche, 1982: 266): “Whence comes the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its heights”.
Thus, Heidegger argues that the genuine possibility of truth can reveal itself not from the direct seeking of the answer to the question of being but from a constant awakening of the human power to create this event of questioning itself (CP: 60).
See Nietzsche (1974: 86): “We benefit and show benevolence to those who are already dependent on us in some way…[W]e want to increase their power because in that way we increase ours, or we want to show them how advantageous it is to be in our power…”.
For Deleuze, the possibility of determination is based on the grounding function of representation: “To ground is to determine. But what is determination, and upon what is it exercised? Grounding is the operation of the logos, or of sufficient reason” (Deleuze, 1994: 272 f.).
For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s view of chaos signifies the ambiguous nature of truth (alêtheia). For Heidegger’s conception of truth as the “dis-closedness (a-lêtheia)” of being, see Heidegger (2002: 7–9; 1962: 56f.).
Heidegger characterizes this thoughtful openness of human existence as “Dasein [being-there]’: the possibility and limit of humanity can be grasped from the human being’s original questioning of its possible site (Da) of being (sein) at any given time (Heidegger, 1962: 32–35).
For Deleuze, however, the genuine totality of being can be grasped only from the “formless ungrounded chaos” of beings which display the endless repetition of differing forces (Deleuze, 1994: 69).
Here, the meaning of “potential philosopher” cannot be reduced to a merely academic sense of philosophy. The term also includes various types of creative thinking such as art, music and writing.
The permanent flow of a river is not a groundless motion but a determinate movement that has a peculiar origin and end of its becoming (HN: 146).
Here, Heidegger points out that this outstanding gaiety of the young shepherd is related to the import of Nietzsche’s Gay Science (see Nietzsche, 1974: 255 [no. 324]; 347–348 [no.383]).
See Aristotle (1933: 311–313 [1028a–b]). Greek thinking of nature (physis) inquires into the archē as a governing power of being that originates and maintains beings as a whole: “Metaphysics, meta ta physica, is knowledge and inquiry that posits being as physis…asking about being as being” (HN, 189). See also Heidegger (2000: 15–19; 2004: 98) and Aristotle (1933: 219–223 [1014b16–1015a20]).
See Nietzsche, 1968: 544 [no. 1054; no. 1057]. For Nietzsche, the doctrine of eternal return is a philosopher’s “hammer” to “provoke a fearful decision” and “make a new order of life”.
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This work was supported by Incheon National Univesrsity Research Grant in 2020.
The original version of this article has been revised: The references to (Heidegger, 1961) and (Heidegger, 1989) have been corrected to references to the English translations of these works, i.e., (Heidegger, 1991) and (Heidegger, 2012), resp.
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Lee, S. Facing the Lively Unity of Difference: Heidegger’s Thoughts on Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Eternal Return and the Self-Overcoming Power of Thinking. Hum Stud 45, 223–241 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-022-09620-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-022-09620-y