Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche" 9783869457475, 9783883099552

Citation preview

libri virides 18

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Mădălina Guzun

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Mădălina Guzun

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

LIBRI VIRIDES

18

Edited by

Hans Rainer Sepp

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Editorial Board Suzi Adams · Adelaide │ Babette Babich · New York │ Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray · Waterloo, Ontario │ Damir Barbarić · Zagreb │ Marcus Brainard · London │ Martin Cajthaml · Olomouc │ Mauro Carbone · Lyon │ Chan Fai Cheung · Hong Kong │ Cristian Ciocan · Bucureşti │ Ion Copoeru · Cluj-Napoca │ Renato Cristin · Trieste │ Riccardo Dottori · Roma │ Eddo Evink · Groningen │ Matthias Flatscher · Wien │ Dimitri Ginev · Sofia │ Jean-Christophe Goddard · Toulouse │ Andrzej Gniazdowski · Warszawa │ Ludger Hagedorn · Wien │ Terri J. Hennings · Freiburg │ Seongha Hong · Jeollabukdo │ Felipe Johnson · Santiago de Chile │ René Kaufmann · Dresden │ Vakhtang Kebuladze · Kyjiw │ Dean Komel · Ljubljana │ Pavlos Kontos · Patras │ Kwok-ying Lau · Hong Kong │ Mette Lebech · Maynooth │ Nam-In Lee · Seoul │ Balázs Mezei · Budapest │ Monika Małek · Wrocław │ Viktor Molchanov · Moskwa │ Liangkang Ni · Guanghzou │ Cathrin Nielsen · Frankfurt am Main │ Ashraf Noor · Jerusalem │ Karel Novotný · Praha │ Luis Román Rabanaque · Buenos Aires │ Gian Maria Raimondi · Pisa │ Rosemary Rizo-Patrón de Lerner · Lima │ Kiyoshi Sakai · Tokyo │ Javier San Martín · Madrid │ Alexander Schnell · Paris │ Marcia Schuback · Stockholm │ Agustín Serrano de Haro · Madrid │ Tatiana Shchyttsova · Vilnius │ Olga Shparaga · Minsk │ Michael Staudigl · Wien │ Georg Stenger · Wien │ Silvia Stoller · Wien │ Ananta Sukla · Cuttack │ Toru Tani · Kyoto │ Detlef Thiel · Wiesbaden │ Lubica Ucnik · Perth │ Pol Vandevelde · Milwaukee │ Chung-chi Yu · Kaohsiung │ Antonio Zirion · México City – Morelia.

Edited at the Central-European Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University Prague. www.sif-praha.cz

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Mădălina Guzun

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie. Detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet abrufbar über http://dnb.ddb.de

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

www.europhilosophie.eu

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH D-99734 Nordhausen 2014 Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier Alle Rechte vorbehalten Printed in Germany

ISBN 978-3-88309-955-2

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

...........................................

7

.................................................

9

Chapter I: Reading Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology . . 13 § 1. The Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 2. The Meaning of Wesen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 3. Ἀ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 4.  as Hervorbringen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 5. Modern Technology as Herausfordern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 6. On the Way to Answering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter II: The Critique of Metaphysics

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

§ 7. Being Metaphysical vs. Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 8. Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 9. Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . § 10. Subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter III: Heidegger’s Interpretation of Nietzsche

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

14 15 18 24 27 32

35 38 42 48

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

§ 11. The Will to Power as Subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 § 12. The Eternal Return as Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Chapter IV: World and Finitude

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

§ 13. Thinking the World with Heidegger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 § 14. Confronting Fink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 § 15. Reading Nietzsche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Chapter V: Reading Technology after Nietzsche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 § 16. Technology and Eternal Return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 § 17. The Ethical Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

5

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

6

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to Professor Hans Rainer Sepp, who has guided this research and has invested many hours in discussing my work as well as contributing to its publication. I am also grateful to Lecturer Dr. Bogdan Mincă for his reading and for the rewarding conversations we had about Heidegger from the beginning of my studies, drawing my attention to words when I was tempted to search for ideas. I also wish to thank those in charge of the Master Mundus Program EuroPhilosophie, who have made possible my studying at the Charles University of Prague, and to Dr. Aengus Daly, who gave me the assurance that even when my translations defy the laws of grammar, they remain comprehensible for the ears of an English speaker.

7

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

8

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The main question that guides the following work is how we can understand the Nietzschean notion of ‘eternal return’ today in what Martin Heidegger calls the epoch of technology. The thought that guides my analysis is that if the world we live in opens certain possibilities of understanding Nietzsche, by following these possibilities we will also discover what Nietzsche himself can reveal us about the times we live in. On this way, I have chosen to walk alongside Martin Heidegger’s reading not only because he takes extremely seriously the situatedness of thinking, but also because his reading of Nietzsche is grounded in what touches upon us most intimately as human beings, namely the question of being. I do not, therefore, wish to judge Heidegger’s interpretation as right or wrong, but to follow it to the point where it appropriates Nietzsche’s thought and to see where it opens up the possibility of a leap toward a further reading still, which allows us to put into question Heidegger’s interpretation itself. If Heidegger’s interpretation is widely known for its claim that Nietzsche is the highest point of an ontology of presence in which metaphysics is brought to its end, I will also try to show that this claim stands as true only to a certain extent. Nonetheless, in order to grasp why it is so, one has first of all to understand what is meant under words like ‘metaphysics’ or ‘presence’, words by means of which Heidegger’s texts bring to light more than just a series of ideas or arguments. If our way to the things encountered in the world passes through , it is all the more important to become aware of how the words that we use bear the trace of a certain attitude toward that which is named, influencing in their turn the relation we have to it. For this reason, when treating the problem of technology, I offer a description not of Heidegger’s ‘ideas’, and not even of his ‘concepts’, but rather of the way in which technology reveals itself through language, from the words which name it expressly to those which are hidden in its history. The same motivation has led me not to follow some of the already consecrated English translations for Heideggerian terms like Wesen,

9

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Anwesen, Lichtung or Machenschaft, when they proved to run counter to the relation with the world that these words express in German. I have put forward, instead, other means of translating, which may not be the best, but have at least the merit to make us depart from the vocabulary of ‘essence’ and ‘presence’. What should be underscored, though, is that such a vocabulary is not ‘faulty’ and even less ‘inaccurate in itself’. Rather it hides the ground from out of which it speaks. When we utter one of these words, we concentrate on its meaning, not on its history, and yet the latter impregnates the manner in which we relate precisely to what is meant. This is why the fact of unveiling origins is not just ‘mere recourse to etymology’, but a way of uncovering what might later have become a distorted and one-sided approach to the world – one which opens up the latter not according to its own way of dwelling, but to our imposing will. The latter approach is to be found, for Heidegger, in Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power and of the eternal return of the same, which constitute the utmost affirmation of an ontology of presence as a ‘now’ which, repeating itself eternally, never goes past. Nonetheless, Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche is not limited to the perspective of time seen as a chain of equal ‘nows’, but it also opens another path for understanding the eternal return. If there is an instant – the Augenblick – in which the thought of the eternal return could be itself regarded as an event within the circle then the discontinuity thus introduced prevents us from falling into a mere repetition of an undifferentiated ‘sameness’. But the questions that arise here are: whose repetition are we confronted with and what is it that perpetually returns? An answer to these questions must run up against the problems of world and finitude, problems which have called my attention to Heidegger’s dialogue with Eugen Fink. If being in the world opens an awareness of the fact that one is in the world, this implies, for Fink, that the world is a borderline; and even if he does not take it as proof for an explicit ‘beyond’, it stands nonetheless for the fact that the world is not everything. My point of view, which corresponds to the Heideggerian understanding of ‘world’, is that awareness of the borderline does not imply anything other than the world. Accordingly, I believe that the eternal return can be read precisely as an affirmation of the impossibility of transgressing the frontier. Better said, if someone tried to overcome the horizon he would find himself before nothing but a new horizon and aware of a new frontier. 10

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

The repetition does not therefore presuppose a certain ‘content’ to be repeated, but an act, i.e. a ‘performativity’. Such a reading entails another perspective upon both technology and Nietzsche’s metaphysics, which will be shown to be something other than a mere ‘metaphysics of presence’. Involving our manner of being situated in relation to the world, they both confront us with the danger of losing ourselves into the uniformity of inworldly entities and, at the same time, to the chance of seeing them ‘as such’. The second possibility thus reveals not just the difference between beings and their being, but between the latter and the dwelling of the ‘is’ itself, which calls for our thinking. Whether we are to co-respond to it or not can only be decided, I believe, on the ground of our already ethical stance.

11

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

12

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Chapter I

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Reading Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology

The reading I propose of Heidegger’s lecture The Question Concerning Technology will not focus first and foremost on the sequence of ‘ideas’ presented in the text but rather on how the text speaks. That is to say, I will follow the most important words, which resist a literal translation. I will do this in order to seek their meaning in Heidegger’s philosophy, revealing a path for our further understanding. Thus, rather than just attaining a merely theoretical apprehension of what is in question, we will find ourselves already on the way opened up by the matter itself. By choosing this approach, I am not imposing an arbitrary method; on the contrary – I am following what Heidegger himself asks of his readers at the very beginning of the paper, namely that we are “not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way is a way of thinking. All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead through language […].”1 The question concerning technology will prove to be one about its ‘essence’. The German word Wesen names for Heidegger not first and foremost what a thing is but rather how it unfolds. This will bring us forth into the domain of unconcealment, a domain which requests a closer look into  as the horizon within which both the ancient  and modern technology can take place. The difference between the two will let itself be seen on the basis of the attitude toward the world that each of them implies. If  represents a way of enriching the possibilities of the world 1

Martin Heidegger, “Die Frage nach der Technik”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, Gesamtausgabe 7, p. 7 (The Question Concerning Technology, p. 3). When repeated, the references to the texts published in the complete edition of Heidegger’s work (Gesamtausgabe) will only indicate the number of the volume (for example, GA 7), preceded by the shortened name of the lecture or essay when several texts are gathered within the same volume.

13

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

itself, by unfolding them as they emerge, carrying them to their accomplishment, modern technology, on the contrary, constitutes itself as a movement of force, which imposes its commands on an obeying world. However, the fact of becoming aware of this already entails a liberating attitude from out of which we will be able to understand why technology finds itself strongly related to metaphysics and why this can constitute the ground for Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche. I will look at this last issue in subsequent chapters.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 1. The Question What is at stake in the lecture is, above all, questioning itself. The title suggests that what we are going to be dealing with is not just a description of a certain domain – in which case the text could have been presented, rather simply, under the name Technology or About Technology. Nonetheless, as it is going to be shown further on, the analysis could not have just stayed within the bounds of the theme ‘technology’ because, by concerning ourselves with it, we already take a step out from the mere technological practice. By asking, we are already, in a certain way, led to the essence of the thing. We cease, for one moment, to be confined within the boundaries of a bustling technological activity and we thus become capable of seeing it ‘as such’2 – seeing that what technology is, is not anything technological. By asking, what we await from our questioning is not a certain answer, a general definition, valid once and for all. What we are to achieve is a free relationship to the ‘essence’ of technology – that is, a corresponding one. Where to co-respond (entsprechen3) implies that the situation in which we find ourselves is not that of an overmastering subject who, from himself raises questions to which, by means of research, he will find answers. An authentic question does not skim over a certain matter, in other words, it

2 The ‘as such’ stands here only as provisory and is meant to be understood as ‘technology itself’. Since technology is not one of the beings that we encounter in the world, but a way of being, the relation that we have with it cannot be, properly speaking, one of the order of the ‘as such’ (see below, § 7). 3 Technik, GA 7, p. 7: “Frei ist die Beziehung, wenn sie unser Dasein dem Wesen der Technik öffnet. Entsprechen wir diesem, dann vermögen wir es, das Technische in seiner Begrenzung zu erfahren.”

14

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

does not constitute itself as eine Frage über etwas, as a question trying to encompass the thing from outside in order to attain a totalizing view. An authentic question will much rather arise from the matter itself and in accordance with it – as the title says, ‘die Frage nach der Technik’. In everyday German, nach has first of all the meaning of “after”, but far from expressing an indifferent sequence of facts, and as François Fédier observes4, it retains the trace of nah, “le proche” – the neighboring, the nearby. Therefore, coming “after technology” – après la technique − means to develop a questioning which directs itself toward it, by staying in the nearness – au-près – of a phenomenon that at first renders us estranged. Given that nach, besides the meaning of ‘after’, stands also for ‘about’ or ‘concerned with’, it would not be faulty to interpret it as ‘according yourself to something’: übereinstimmen, literally ‘following the same voice’. And if the asking comes from us as much as from the thing itself, the answer to it can be nothing other than a correspondence; that is, something which brings us and keeps us in accord with the matter in question.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 2. The Meaning of Wesen From the beginning of the lecture, we are warned that technology is not one and the same thing as the essence of technology. And when we ask about the former, we are directed toward the latter; where ‘essence’ should be taken, first and foremost, as what the tradition teaches us about it, namely that which a thing is – quidditas, essentia. Following this tradition and looking at what the general opinion states about the essence of technology, we will find ourselves before the incontestable evidence that technology is a human activity, more precisely, a way of achieving goals or an instrument. However, despite this being a correct interpretation, it is not yet the true one. The distinction made by Heidegger at this point, between richtig and wahr, runs through the entire lecture – and, we might say, through all his work – keeping us from taking for granted what might appear, at first glance, as the answer to our question. That which is correct (richtig) lets us usually know something important about the thing but it does not touch upon it in its ‘essence’ – it does not reveal (enthüllen) it from out of its own way of appearing. This 4

François Fédier, Après la technique, p. 128.

15

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

should suggest to us that, if we were not on the true way to technology, maybe it was because, from the very first moment, we took a misleading step: we took the correct translation of Wesen – namely, essentia – to be everything that the German word could tell us. But it is worth noting that Heidegger understands Wesen as essentia only during the first pages of the lecture, while he is still discussing the traditional interpretation. At a certain point, the word Wesen shifts from the right to the true and expresses nothing less than the way of displaying of the latter. Wesen, in the way Heidegger wants us to read it after this shift, is to be taken in a verbal sense, as one of the three ways of expressing being in the Indo-European languages5. The root *wes is at the basis of what later became the word wesan, ‘to live somewhere’, the participle gewesen, ‘it was’, and of course the verb wesen, which means ‘to be’ in the sense of ‘dwelling’, ‘enduring’, ‘lasting’. From here on, what has been formerly called the ‘essence’ of something must be read as ‘the way in which a thing is’, where ‘is’ should be taken in a transitive sense, like an ‘action’, namely that of unfolding itself in the movement of appearance. For these reasons, I believe that one of the most appropriate words to translate Wesen is the English ‘abode’, which, as a verbal noun from ‘to abide’6, renders both the idea of dwelling in the sense of enduring and that of

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

5

Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, GA 40, pp. 75 – 77. The oldest of these roots is *es, *asus, meaning ‘life’, ‘the living’, ‘that which stands on its own’ (das Eigenständige), and from which have emerged the Greek  and , the Latin essum, esse, sunt, and the German sein, ist. The second root, present also in all IndoEuropean languages, is *bhû, *bheu, having the meaning of ‘growth’ and being found in Greek at the origin of , , in Latin verbal forms like fui, fuo or in the German bin, bist. The third one, *wes, is on the contrary present in the inflexion of the verb ‘to be’ only in German: was, war, west, wesen. A final remark, essential for the understanding of the difference between Anwesen and praesentia, which I will later discuss (see below, § 9), is that “[t]he ‘sens’ in the Latin prae-sens and ab-sens got lost” (GA 40, p. 76, my translation). 6 To abide comes from Old English ābīdan, formed from intensive prefix a- and bīdan, which meant ‘to remain’, ‘to await’, ‘to dwell’ and also ‘to trust’, ‘to rely’, being thus related to the Greek  (‘to persuade’),  (‘faith’) and to the Latin fidere: ‘to trust’, ‘confide in’ (see EDEL, art. abide and bide). Nowadays, to abide has kept, as a transitive verb, the meaning of ‘to await’, while as intransitive it means ‘to endure’, ‘live’, ‘dwell’. It is also interesting to notice that to abide by means ‘to remain faithful’ (for example, to a promise). All the meanings therefore pivot around the idea of dwelling, of remaining, not as an indifferent eternal presence, but

16

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

home as a place of gathering7. For Wesen is that which gathers (versammeln) in itself the whole of the thing and makes it stay together in order to come into appearance. Correlating this with Heidegger’s interpretation of Heraclitus, where he offers an analysis of the Greek word 8, I would say that Wesen itself names a movement of , the primary meaning of which is not that of ‘speaking’, but of assembling that which is gathered, i.e. that which comes together in a unity. We must observe, however, that an explicit reference to  appears already in the lecture concerning technology, at the point at which Heidegger tries to reach the essence of modern technology by searching into the deeper field of the Greek . Whereas the latter is usually explained as the bind between the four Aristotelian causes, Heidegger shows instead that the four causes are not the most original way of approaching  and that a still more profound domain unites them. They are all ‘responsible’ for as enduring in a realm, open to a relationship. In its turn, abode became the equivalent of ‘home’ (Fr. la demeure). The translation that William Lovitt proposes for the verb wesen in Heidegger’s text is ‘to come to presence’, while its gerund is translated with ‘essencing’, and the noun Wesen with ‘coming to presence’ (see Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, pp. 3 – 4, footnote 1). However, I do not follow his proposal because I consider that such a translation runs counter to Heidegger’s effort to express by Wesen – and, later on, by Anwesen – a dimension which he explicitly opposes to what both the Latin essentia and praesentia express. The word ‘abiding’ is mentioned by the translators of the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) in the expression ‘abiding, enduring sway’, even though, for reasons of fluency, they choose to render Wesen with ‘essential sway’ (see Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), p. XXV). See next footnote (indicated from now on as fn.). 7 The meaning of ‘home’ is clarified in a remarkable analysis offered by François Fédier in his book L’humanisme en question, where in order to explain the Heideggerian expression das Haus des Seins, he discusses the translation of Gérard Guest, who rendered Wesen with aître. “Language (la parole) is das Haus des Seins: not there where being lodges (habite), but there where being is […]: ‘where being unfurls’ (aître)” (Fédier, op. cit. p. 136, my translation). His most important remark, that I entirely follow, is that the limit of a translation is given by the answer to the following question: does it bring something fundamental to our reading? In the case of aître, his answer is “yes, for it allows us to abandon definitively the vocabulary of essence” (idem, p. 146, my translation). I believe the same thing could be said about ‘to abide’. 8 See Heidegger, Logos (Heraklit, Fragment 50), GA 7, pp. 214 – 219.

17

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

carrying out (ver-an-lassen) appearing, for letting something come into light and thus stay on its own. The silversmith, for example, who plays the role of the ‘causa efficiens’, is in fact the one who considers (überlegen) the material, the form and the purpose – and by that he is the one who gathers them and allows the thing to come forth. His action of ‘überlegen’ is in fact a , a gathering which brings to light (), which lets something shine in the endurance of its presence. But the silversmith himself can undertake this movement only because he acts in the horizon of Her-vor-bringen, that is, of . And it is only modern technology that turns the causa efficiens into the main character of the play, seeing any product as the result of a forceful making instead of a careful revealing. A deeper analysis of Her-vor-bringen and  will show that they are of crucial importance for understanding both modern technology and the difference that separates it from the ancient . For here not only the link between abode and truth becomes visible, but also the ground of metaphysics as such. In addition to that, the difference between modern technology and , just as the one between metaphysics and its ‘overcoming’, will be a difference that springs up through language. The words that Heidegger uses in order to describe each of the phenomena are neither, as one might say, arbitrary ‘Heideggerian jargon’ and nor are they just ways of departing from the tradition in order to achieve a totally new approach. They do not express, to put it differently, Heidegger’s will, his own and singular decision, but are rather ways in which the things themselves appear through language, when carefully listened to.

§ 3. Ἀ9 The word , normally translated as truth, expresses a lot more if, instead of reading it on the basis of our way of thinking truth nowadays and imposing this meaning on the Greek word, we first try to think in a Greek manner and only afterwards analyze, in the light of this understanding, our concept of ‘truth’. At the same time, this could drive us into a trap if we take ‘thinking in a Greek manner’ as a mere recourse to etymology, on the basis 9 I am following here, in a modified form, the analysis that I pursued in my Bachelor graduation thesis, Heidegger şi Platon: aletheia ca loc al unei întâlniri, presented at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, June 2011.

18

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

of which Heidegger would separate the - privativum from the rest of the word and thus arrive at what would consist in an original ontological meaning of truth. After all, this way of accessing Greek thought has already been contested by Paul Friedländer, who criticized Heidegger’s faulty ‘etymological’ interpretation of the - from  as privative. Friedländer maintained that the Greeks never understood it as such. Further in his later writings Heidegger admits he was wrong in assigning this understanding to the Greeks, conceding that they never took  as play between appearance and retreat10. But then, argues Heidegger, the fact that they did not subject  to an explicit ontological analysis does not prove that the Greeks had not made the experience of  as the realm in which everything comes into appearance. On the contrary, it was only on the basis of this experience that it later became possible to apprehend  as truth in the sense of adaequatio: that is, correctly attaining what appears, exactly as it appears. At the same time, it was because they only saw the dimension of the manifest as having obliterated the retreat – and not the tension itself – that they could consider as ‘true’ a statement which succeeds in retaining the manifestation and in rendering it as such. For this reason, I agree with Heidegger that, far more important than listing all the uses of the word -, what matters is the horizon to which the word calls our attention. The first translation Heidegger proposes for , in accordance to the Greek interpretation of it, is Unverborgenheit, literally unconcealment – where we should hear, simultaneously, several things. First, the fact that Unverborgenheit is rooted in the German verb bergen, which means at the same time ‘to hide’ as ‘to hold’, to hold as ‘to save’. Further, we should also understand the prefix un- not as a complete negation, not as something which makes us depart from concealment, arriving in a realm of absolute appearance, on the contrary. Un- names here, just like the - from , the fact of having come to light through having escaped concealment. Nonetheless, just as the ending -heit, which is the mark of a noun of state, and not of process, the un- indicates that what is in question here concerns only the unconcealed; that is, the ‘result’ of the play between appearance and 10

Heidegger, “Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens”, in Zur Sache des Denkens, GA 14, p. 85: “Die Ἀ ist am Beginn der Philosophie zwar genannt, aber sie wird in der Folgezeit von der Philosophie nicht eigens als solche gedacht.”

19

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

retreat. Therefore,  as Unverborgenheit already makes way for the subsequent perspective in which the manifestation will not even be taken as unconcealed but instead as merely apparent. For Heidegger, a radical thinking of unhiddenness, which did not occur with the Greeks, would take - as Entbergung11 and Entbergsamkeit – disclosure, deconcealment12, in which the ent- indicates the tension, the event of appearing by keeping yourself in relationship with…, by remaining tied to…, and this in such a way that it is precisely this bond which ensures your freedom13. What Heidegger tries to stress is that  directs us not only – and not in the first place – to appearance as such, but first and foremost to the retreat which enables it. This retreat, far from constituting just a lack of knowledge on the human side, belongs to the thing itself. Heidegger’s argument for his translation relies on the analysis of the root * and the meanings which emerged from out of it, namely that of hiding and forgetting. Both of them point toward modes of concealment. The active form of the verb  means passing unseen, unnoticed, i.e. holding the other in a concealment concerning you; only the medium form  means effectively to forget14. But given that in ancient Greek the medium diathesis expresses a profound involvement of the subject in the action he is undertaking, a profound way of being affected by the action, we can read , forgetfulness, as remaining concealed to yourself concerning the fact that something has fallen into concealment, i.e. that it has been forgotten15. Which considerations lead us to two observations. First, concealment, retreat as departure from the phenomenal realm does not indicate a not being in the modern sense of an absolute privation, a complete ‘nothing’, but rather precisely a way of ‘being’ in the manner of 11 Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65, p. 351: “[…] in der  gerade das Geschehnis der Entbergung und Verbergung nicht erfahren und als Grund begriffen wird, da ja das Fragen von der  bestimmt bleibt, das Seiende als Seiendes.” 12 Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet, GA 34, pp. 72 – 73. In the English translation (The Essence of Truth. On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theatetus, p. 54), “deconcealment” stands for Entbergsamkeit, and “deconcealing” for Ent-bergen. 13 For a wider interpretation of Ent-bergung, see Heidegger, Parmenides, GA 54, pp. 197 – 198. 14 LSJ, art. . 15 GA 54, p. 36.

20

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

latency16. Far from having a permanent character, that which does not show itself remains something always held in tension, as likely to emerge at any time, just as that which has been covered over or forgotten or lies just out of view remains in a constant tension with the appearance that had come forth on its ground, as likely to take its place and inverse the roles. Concealment as such always pertains to the phenomenon itself: it is its ‘incompleteness’ that permits it to outline itself against a background and to appear. It is the impossibility of knowing a thing without remainder that enables us to know it at all. Both our attention and our memory work in this way and, with that, they are guided by the relations in which we find ourselves with the world. It would be interesting to think about all the things we have to forget in order to remember all that we do remember. It would also not be without use to become aware, following this analysis, of the fact that the eventuality of knowing everything and at once, of being in the possession of a complete unconcealment, once and for all, is unreachable. And the reason for this is not the subject’s being incapable of reaching a higher degree of knowledge, but the fact that such an all-encompassing ‘perspective’ would cancel the alethic play thanks to which anything can ever come into appearance. The second important observation is that each being does not subsist ‘in itself’, does not have the role of a positum or primary yardstick that gives the measure for all that is and in comparison to which nothing else could ever be. What we learn from the word  is, on the contrary, that each appearing thing is in fact a privative, a not-being-something; that is – a notbeing-concealed. Since it cannot appear otherwise than by fighting the retreat that surrounds it, by keeping up the tension of the play, it will remain, as de-concealed, always threatened by the concealment from which it emerges. As part of this alethic play, we are neither the ideal observer of which science dreams nor the detached spectator that is supposed to contemplate, from his comfortable seat, the scene of the world. On the contrary, in order to have the very idea of this spectator, we must already have dwelt amidst beings, we must have already understood, from out of them, that they are, that they 16 The word ‘latency’ bears too the idea of retreat, of hiding, being rooted in the Latin lateo, which is, at his turn, related to . For a wider analysis, see DELL, art. lateo.

21

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

appear and, in doing so, we are already situated in a relation to concealment. If a thing’s way of being happens under the form of coming into appearance, it is only because there is someone who can relate himself to it as such, namely as an appearance upon a background of a retreat. This retreat is precisely what enables us to say that if the fact that something appears depends on our being there, the how of this appearance is to be sought within the attitude we take toward it17. It would therefore be absurd to ask ‘who’ is first, who is second or who determines or conditions whom. Forcing our language to a certain extent, we might say that the relation comes first as place of encounter, which encounter, however, does not ‘take place’ without those who meet in its realm. For this relation is not a ‘necessity’, either logical or ontological. And it is also far from being a ‘condition of possibility’ which towers above those which it brings into relation. It is only, to put it in Heideggerian terms, the answer that each of them gives to the calling of the other; calling and response which were only able to emerge because the relation already existed18. But as the relation does not exist apart from that which it embraces, as it ‘is’ only by letting be those who meet, the ‘being’ of this relation also finds itself precisely at the discretion of concealment, of sheltering. And yet, the question is how this way of dwelling can be expressed, how it can be said that this relation ‘is’, when only a being is? How is the movement which grants appearance and concealment to beings by bringing them into relation with the only one who can receive their call, with the human being, to be named? And how is this concealment ‘different’ from the fundamental incompleteness of one being or another? If, as I have stressed it before, beings emerge in a tension between appearance and retreat, 17 See Andrew J. Mitchell, The Coming of History: Heidegger and Nietzsche against the Present, p. 407: “What comes to us in Geschichte is not merely particular beings, but concealment and refusal. […] Only with refusal is there responsibility. The things that are coming are not fixed and established presences. […] In a world of discrete beings, there can be no responsibility, everything is already decided. But the coming beings present us with just this decision of existence. Only what comes is capable of being decided, can bring us to a point of decision.” 18 See also Fédier, L’humanisme en question, p. 200: “Il y a quelque chose comme un rapport entre deux qui a ceci de particulier que ce rapport entre eux deux ne peut être distingué qu’une fois que l’on a compris que le rapport lui-même est antérieur aux deux.”

22

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

it is because, depending on one’s perspective, that which lies in shadows can take the place of the appearance that has up to now occupied the scene and can throw it into concealment. No appearance lasts forever just as no concealment stays always the same. This is how each being is. But what about the dwelling of the ‘is’ itself? What about the tension itself which, as tension, never fades away, nor appears as a thing, but lasts in relation with the human being? What about the openness which lets such a tension emerge? Here one could no longer speak of the being of beings, since what is meant is the dwelling proper to being itself, which prevents us from saying either that being ‘is’ or that it ‘is not’ and even from saying ‘it’ other than as a provisional term, faute de mieux.19 If beings have their abode (Wesen) in that they are gathered in their appearance by being, this happens because it is beyng20 itself which abides (west). Thanks to this fundamental relation in which we find ourselves we can grasp something as existent. For this reason we are surrounded not by the mere presence of objects but by what Heidegger choses to call das Anwesen eines Anwesenden21. Here Anwesen, usually translated with ‘presence’, says a lot more – or a lot less – than what we usually understand by the latter. This is the reason why I propose translating it, in line with the previous translation of wesen, by the word ‘abidance’22. While praesentia names the stability of an object forced to stay in my mastering view23, Anwesen names a surrounding area which is not that of an object, but of an openness in which things develop their abode (Wesen) and touch upon man (an-), thus concerning us in a most intimate way and allowing ourselves to unfold our being. Thus grants  its favor to beings as abiding (anwesend).

19

See below, § 8, “Seyn istet”. I am using this written form in order to distinguish between the ‘is’ as the way in which a thing is, i.e. the being of a being and the ‘is’ inasmuch as it is inquired with regard to its own way of dwelling, i.e. of beyng. In German, Heidegger tries to render this difference by using on one hand Sein and, on the other, Seyn. 21 Technik, GA 7, p. 12. 22 Heidegger hears Anwesen as composed from an- and wesen. Even if ‘abidance’ does not render the prefix an- (or its Latin equivalent ad-), it has the advantage of being rooted in the verb ‘to abide’ (see above, fn. 6) and of playing the role of a process noun (indicated by the suffix -ance), and not that of an abstract noun. 23 For a detailed discussion of the notion of praesentia, see below, § 9. 20

23

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

The danger springs up there where the shining is so strong that man lets himself captured by it, now forgetting not only the hiddenness pertaining to each being but the concealment of this tension itself. Neither the things nor the sole human being are to blame for this. It is rather to be seen as the turn taken by their relationship itself. This relationship is built on one hand with each being’s tendency to being, to ‘presencing’ itself in the highest degree and to occupying the instant of its appearing as much as possible and thus disrupting the tension. On the other hand, the human being’s tendency is to bring in the field of his view everything that is to be seen – that is, everything. That is, this tendency is toward seeing what is already and making appear that which is not yet and so withdrawing things from their concealment and withdrawing all concealment from things. If this turn of the relation manifested itself in the Greek thinking through the fact that, amazed by the fact that there is something, man directed his questioning toward beings and not toward the concealed horizon of their appearing, afterwards it became possible that beings constitute the yardstick for the fact of being in general, deciding what is and how can it be discovered. If man answered, at first, to beings’ coming to light by a knowledge which took its model from the  and responded to it by producing in the sense of  then later on  itself became subordinated to man’s creative act. It is by taking this very step that modern technology departs from the ancient . But in order to understand the former, we shall begin, as Heidegger also does, with the latter.

§ 4.  as Hervorbringen Only now are we better prepared for grasping the meaning of the sentence which could have seemed, at first, rather arbitrary – namely that the movement accomplished by  emerges as a bringing-forth (Hervorbringen), on the basis of . The Greek word , from which technique and technology are derived, named two things at a time – the skill of producing something (either an instrument, or an object of art) and a form of knowledge. If, in the second sense,  is related to  (stressing a certain way of seeing and gathering of that which is seen), in the primary sense it is connected with . Interpreting  as Her-vor-bringen, as Heidegger repeatedly does in the conference, we pay attention to two dimensions of this word – 24

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

the intricacy between concealment and unconcealment in the action of producing (her-vor-), and the essentially favorable, I dare say ethical implication, of the word bringen. This also constitutes one of the major differences between, on one side, the ancient  – and, along with it, a certain attitude toward being – and, on the other side, modern technology. The ‘ethical’ dimension of the former is to be understood on the basis of the original sense stressed by Heidegger in the Letter on Humanism, namely that of  as dwelling place24. If ‘ethics’ is therefore one and the same with thinking the truth of beyng, from here on we can reconsider the meaning of ‘ethical’ as that action which follows the way in which beyng abides; an action which does not seek to impose itself on the world, but responds to it in order to lead it to its fulfillment25. When Heidegger translates  by Herstellen and equates the latter with producere, we should be hearing it otherwise than as a simple ‘making’. Or, better said, we should see each making not as an invention, not as something which departs entirely from us and for which we are entirely to be held responsible. ‘To make’, in the productive sense of it, is Her-vor-bringen: to bring-hither from concealment, by bringing-forth into unconcealment26. This does not mean that something simply begins to exists which was not there previously – as any merely correct interpretation would hold up. The limits of such an interpretation are revealed when we read that every human producing follows the model of the  which is to be understood as ‘ in the highest sense’27. For  is the name for the constant growing which has, in itself, the force of breaking into the open – it is the original ‘outbreak which brings-forth’ (Aufbruch des Her-vor-bringens), keeping itself always linked to the background of concealment which lets it 24

Heidegger, “Brief über den »Humanismus«” in Wegmarken, GA 9, p. 354. See below, § 17. 26 Technik, GA 7, p. 13: “Das Her-vor-bringen bringt aus der Verborgenheit her in die Unverborgenheit vor. Her-vor-bringen ereignet sich nur, insofern Verborgenes ins Unverborgene kommt.” 27 Ibid., pp. 12 – 13: “Die  ist sogar  im höchsten Sinne. Denn das  Anwesende hat den Aufbruch des Her-vor-bringens, z.B. das Aufbrechen der Blüte ins Erblühen, in ihr selbst (). Dagegen hat das handwerklich und künstlerisch Her-vor-gebrachte, z.B. die Silberschale, den Aufbruch des Her-vorbringens nicht in ihm selbst, sondern in einem anderen ( ), im Handwerker und Künstler.” 25

25

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

emerge. Nothing comes from out of nowhere nor does it suddenly ‘vanish’. A rosebud does not simply ‘disappear’ or ‘cease to exist’, but it reveals, from out of it, the flower that it, in a certain sense, had always been – paying nonetheless, for that, the price of his concealing as rosebud. Any appearing leans thus on a concealment, while being is not to be found on one side, nor on the other, but precisely in this tension between them – for to be is, in itself, not a ‘result’, but the very tension from which something can emerge and blaze within the intensity of an instant. By letting something appear in this way,  stands as a celebration of the  – it carries something into appearance without imposing, without forcing its way out of concealment. It dis-covers, to a certain extent, that which was already there, but of which it can be equally said that it could never have actually been there if no revealing had taken place. This care for the ‘already’ makes itself known in the verb bringen. As one can hear in the English to bring, it does not simply mean ‘to take’ or ‘to carry’ in an indifferent manner, but much rather to hold the other by carrying him through, bearing him up to the moment when he stands on his own. Not ‘making’ him out of nothing, but letting him be, being there for him in order that he accomplishes his own being – that is, in order to fulfill what was already there, but which couldn’t have emerged without being led to reveal itself. As in a German word related to it, gebären, one should see the idea of carrying in order to give birth: the mother does not ‘make’ her child, she just bears him to his own being, she lets him appear as that which he is – which, however, he couldn’t have been without her being there for him. The same stands in with regard to education, sometimes named very suggestively by the word upbringing. It is in this sense that we should understand also the Latin word producere, seeing it, as I have said before, not as an invention, but as a leading into appearance, a leading ahead (pro-) for the unique sake of that which is being led. This is the original meaning of the Greek , which, far from the realm of love understood as longing and striving, named precisely your being there for another, so that he could accomplish his own possibilities – the unique manner in which you are yourself in the highest degree, on condition that it is to him that you grant the favor of your being.28 28 One of the most eloquent interpretations of  is to be found in Heidegger’s reading of Heraclitus (Heraklit. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens. Logik. Heraklits Lehre vom Logos, GA 55, p. 128) where he notes the following: “Das

26

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

One’s own reveals itself thus as a concept of relation29, for one is only by passing through the other and depending on the attitude that the latter displays – were it an attitude taking the form of bringen or, on the contrary, that of a dominating imposition of the other’s rules and commands. Here lies the key for reading the difference between  and its modern counterpart.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 5. Modern Technology as Herausfordern As we can now grasp it, modern technology is a revealing which operates within the borders of unconcealment. Only its way of revealing is no longer a bearing one, opening up the world by enriching the world’s own possibilities. It is no longer a movement which emerges by taking into account the other and the essential relation which links the two. Even if it remains within the confines of the relationship, springing up on its basis, modern technology ignores this fundamental trait, and sets all action on the side of the human will. Consequently, the form the relation takes becomes an obstructed one, expressed by the word herausfordern. In it we should seek for the same two dimensions that I pointed to in the discussion concerning Her-vor-bringen: first, the way in which concealment and unconcealment occur and, secondly, the attitude toward the world that the word describes. Herausfordern is as far – and yet as close – as a word could be to hervorbringen, for it too names a revealing (heraus-), only that it can no longer be considered a bringing-forth-hither – for this time ‘appearing’ no longer means ‘preserving concealment”. The accent ceases to be put on the her- of the ground, concerning instead the aus- of the revealing, the imposing demand of unconcealment, no longer considered in its essential incompletion. Heraus- asks for a total exposition, for a complete out-going,

ursprüngliche Gönnen ist das Gewähren dessen, was dem anderen gebührt, weil es zu seinem Wesen gehört, insofern es sein Wesen trägt. Die Freundschaft, , ist demgemäß die Gunst, die dem anderen das Wesen gönnt, das er hat, dergestalt, daß durch dieses Gönnen das gegönnte Wesen zu seiner eigenen Freiheit erblüht.” In the same paragraph he translates  with die Gunst schenken, which I render as “granting the favor”, following the Romanian translation “acordarea favorii”, proposed by Bogdan Mincă in Scufundătorii din Delos (pp. 133 – 134). 29 Mincă, op. cit., pp. 285 – 286.

27

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

which is afterwards to be mastered by being kept on hand for its further use, i.e. for sustaining a further successful unconcealment. The thing’s way of being turns into a standing-reserve (Bestand), which differentiates itself even from the former idea of object. The thing no longer stands in an opposition toward the subject, that is, does no longer stand on its own face to the subject; for it has no own, at least no other than the fact of being at one’s disposal.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

“The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging­forth. That challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew.”30

If this revealing cannot be, as such, a bringing, it becomes instead a provocative requirement (fordern), which summons up things to come out to presence, challenging them to be up to our expectations. Most important now is not what things themselves have to offer and the possible that the world itself could open, rather what matters is the incessant will to pursue, to heading forward, further and further into unconcealment, for greater and greater power and reserve which could ensure the further heading forward of the development. The watchword is now ‘production’, not in the sense of producere as Her-vor-bringen, but in that of a mastering creation, a ‘making’ (machen) which, far from revealing anything there is, instead literally pretends to make it out of nothing31. As I have shortly indicated it above, if the responsibility for the produced things was once assigned to the four causes, now it is the causa

30

Technik, GA 7, p. 17 (The Question Concerning Technology, p. 16). It could be said that one of the events that rendered possible such an approach was the passage from the Greek understanding of beings as an already there disclosed by the human presence, to the Christian doctrine of beings as created by God, that is, as made by God. See also GA 65, p. 127: “Der Ursache-Wirkungs-Zusammenhang wird zum allbeherrschenden (Gott als causa sui). Das ist eine wesentliche Entfernung von der  und zugleich der Übergang zum Hervorkommen der Machenschaft als Wesen der Seiendheit im neuzeitlichen Denken.” 31

28

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

efficiens which takes the lead32, rendering everything makeable33 (machbar) and bringing everything under what is maybe not haphazardly called Macht34 (power). Such a way of approaching the world is described by Heidegger in the Beiträge zur Philosophie as Machenscahft, a word which does not at all convey the pejorative meaning that everyday language assigns to it – namely ‘trick’, ‘plot’ or ‘intrigue’ – but should instead be literally heard as Machenschaft, standing thus for the whole domain of a making understood as building, shaping, constructing or kneading; a making which, far from restraining itself to the domain of artifacts, comes to describe the way in which beyng itself abides35. For this reason I will follow François Fédier in translating it with ‘fabrication’36, seeing the latter not as the particular 32 Gavin Rae, Being and Technology: Heidegger on the Overcoming of Metaphysics, p. 311. 33 Fred Dallmayr, Heidegger on Macht and Machenschaft, pp. 253 – 254. See also Branka Brujić, Das Ethos des anderen Anfangs, p. 22: “The borderline between makeable (Machbares) and non-makeable (Nichtmachbares) fades in the present technical world following the technical progress.” (My translation). 34 Even though machen and Macht are not etymologically related, the latter being one of the past forms of the verb mögen in the sense of “can” and “be able to do something”, under the rule of technology one comes to see that the ability of doing something turns into a capacity for making. 35 Heidegger, Besinnung, GA 66, p. 175: “Die Technik enthält und richtet in die unbedingte Herrschaft ein die längst gefallene Entscheidung über das Wesen der Wahrheit als Sicherheit und über das Wesen des Seins als Machenscahft.” 36 The main reason why I choose not to follow the usual translations of Heidegger, which take Machenscahft as ‘machination’, is that, counter to the Latin word machina, which fixed rather the material, concrete sense of ‘machine’ or ‘engine’ (see DELL, art. machina), ‘machination’ only kept the original Greek sense of : ‘trick’, ‘contrivance’, ‘artificial means’ (EDEL, art. machination and machine). Second, in Machenschaft, as used by Heidegger, one should also hear machen as followed by the suffix -schaft, suffix which named the ‘composition (Beschaffenheit) of a thing’, from here on becoming a “gathering concept” (EWDS, art. -schaft). It approaches, in this context, the ge- of Gestell. It is from this meaning on that the modern ‘machine’ should be understood and not the opposite: “Aus dem Wesen der Technik […] wird erst das Wesen der »Maschine« begreifbar” (GA 66, p. 174). When Fédier translates Machenschaft with the French fabrication, his argument, besides the etymological one, is that the latter stays closer to the meaning of machen, allowing one to perceive the difference between machen and its counterpart tun, which is more of an equivalent for the French faire, the English to do and the Greek  (see Heidegger, Apports à la philosophie. De l’avenance, p. 44, fn. 1). Just as in French, ‘fabrication’ in English

29

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

creation of a product, but as that which is placed under the reign of a calculating sustainability: “That which is let loose into its own shackles. Which shackles? The pattern of generally calculable explainability, by which everything draws nearer to everything else equally (jegliches mit jedem gleichmäßig zusammenrückt) and becomes completely alien to itself – yes, totally other than just alien. The relation of non-relationality.“37

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

The same shift that takes place in machen is at stake in stellen, which, at a first glance neutrally means ‘to put’, but now conveys for Heidegger that which is no longer the domain of Herstellen, but instead expresses an entire domineering attitude. To put something, in the context of modern technology, becomes to set upon38, to install39: to catch and keep firm in order to secure (sicherstellen), to chase in order to entrap (nachstellen), to force something to come out (heraus-stellen) so as to set it in order (bestellen) as a standing-reserve (Bestand). The way in which the Heideggerian text speaks when read in German is revealing for the manner in which modern technology occurs, giving us a glance at it long before we had searched for the ideas that the words are also comes from the Latin fabricatio, which EDEL translates with ‘a framing’ (see art. fabrication). 37 GA 65, p. 132 (Contributions to Philosophy, p. 92). 38 Translation proposed by William Lovitt in Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, p. 15. 39 The verb to install is, I think, the one which best expresses the Heideggerian stellen, since its first signification is “to fix equipment or furniture into position so that it can be used”, a meaning on the basis of which it could later signify “to put a new program into a computer”, “to put somebody in a new position or authority”, or “to make somebody comfortable in a particular place or position” (see OALD, art. install). Derived from the ancient Indo-Germanic root *stel – ‘to put in place’, ‘make stand’ –, to install was formed in medieval Latin from in- and stallum, which sends us back to the German Stall (‘stable’, originally stal, ‘place’, ‘location’), belonging thus to the same family as stellen (see EWDS, art. Stal and stellen, and also J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-IndoEuropean World, p. 513). What drew my attention to this word was Fédier’s question of whether it is “purely by chance that, in this era that we call our own, the productions of contemporary art are named, by those who make them, ‘installations’” (Après la technique, p. 142, my translation).

30

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

supposed to carry. That is why I have chosen to pursue my reading by paying the most attention to how the things let themselves be expressed by language, indicating a shift which pertains not to a so-called ‘rational thinking’, but to our attitude toward the world, attitude which always passes through language. Heidegger himself notices it at a certain point during the conference, giving us a hint of how his text should be interpreted:

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

“The fact that now, wherever we try to point to modern technology as the challenging revealing (herausfordernde Entbergen), the words ‘setting-upon’ (stellen), ‘ordering’ (bestellen), ‘standing-reserve’ (Bestand), obtrude and accumulate in a dry, monotonous, and therefore oppressive way, has its basis in what is now coming to utterance.”40 What unfolds all these manners of ordering and installing is, as a manner of revealing, the Ge-stell – which the English translation of the Heideggerian text rendered as enframing. It names the unconcealing which operates in every aspect of technology, gathering the world in such a way that the latter appears as a standing-reserve. Ge-stell, for Heidegger, names therefore not simply a tool, as everyday German understands it, but the entirety of the manner in which unconcealment occurs under the lead of stellen – where ‘entirety’ should in its turn be seen not as the totality of these procedures, neither as their sum, nor as a more general category under which they might fall. Here the prefix ge- sends us to an original gathering in the sense of versammeln41, which runs across every , as well as across every authentic understanding of a thing’s essence as Wesen. Nothing technical as such, Gestell names the manner in which technology is, in the same transitive sense of the verb ‘to be’ that I have stressed before: it describes how technology unfolds the world by means of an imposing command. For technology is nothing else but a way of being, in the subjective sense of the genitive; it belongs to the ‘to be’ itself, making thus of ‘enframing’ a very appropriate translation for the Gestell. Thus it 40

Technik, GA 7, p. 18 (The Question Concerning Technology, p. 17). Ibid., p. 21: “Ge-stell heißt das Versammelnde jenes Stellens, das den Menschen stellt, d.h. herausfordert, das Wirkliche in der Weise des Bestellens als Bestand zu entbergen. Ge-stell heißt die Weise des Entbergens, die im Wesen der modernen Technik waltet und selber nichts Technisches ist.” 41

31

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

“does not create being. It […] is not stamped on being, but is being revealing itself in a particular, partial, closed manner. It is the ‘framework’ that delineates the parameters through which being reveals itself”42. For this reason, stellen indicates not only the disruptive manner in which technology forces things to uncover themselves (herausfordern). It also signals the ground from out of which it emerges, the original uncovering of  in the mode of producere. It reminds us of a ‘hervorbringende Herstellen’ and ‘Darstellen’, that is, of the fact of taking part in something’s appearing by letting it present itself as standing on its own43. If the great gulf between the two stellen remains visible, what we should not ignore is their unique abode, their unique ground. The difference arises from the fact that, while one of them lets this ground to be seen as such, while it involves itself in the relation following the proper way of being of the relation, the other contents itself with the fact of taking place just within the relation, otherwise negating it throughout its attitude.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 6. On the Way to Answering By that, it may seem that the answer to the question concerning technology has been found – its abode lies in the Ge-stell. Only that, as Heidegger warns us once again during the conference, it is not in an answer that we find our connection to modern technology changed, but in a co-responding (entsprechen44). And what does that mean? Precisely putting the question concerning technology. It is only now, after a long attentive reading, that we can understand in what way this stands true. If technology, as I have just said, blinds us to the relation out of which it emerges, if it doesn’t let us see it ‘as such’, this occurs, on one hand, 42

Rae, op. cit., pp. 313 – 314. Technik, GA 7, p. 21. 44 Ibid., p. 24: “Das Wesen der modernen Technik zeigt sich in dem, was wir das Gestell nennen. Allein, der Hinweis darauf ist noch keineswegs die Antwort auf die Frage nach der Technik, wenn antworten heißt: entsprechen, nämlich dem Wesen dessen, wonach gefragt wird.” (The Question Concerning Technology, p. 23: “The essence of modern technology shows itself in what we call Enframing. But simply to point to this is still in no way to answer the question concerning technology, if to answer means to respond, in the sense of correspond, to the essence of what is being asked about.”) 43

32

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

because technology generates the impression that we are uniquely responsible for its development, that everything we do is up to us. Which, on the other hand, prevents us from seeing technology as a form of unconcealment, from seeing it in its abode, that is, seeing that we exist in relation to an otherness and that our attitudes are not entirely ours, but draw themselves in accord with what opens itself to us, what calls from us a certain co-responding. In technological practice, we always head straight to that which is unconcealed, not taking it as unconcealed, but as an energy supplier for a further heading forward. And by not considering it as unconcealed, we do not take into account concealment itself. We do not recognize it as part of everything that appears, we just regard it as ‘that which has not yet appeared’, but which should soon come to light, by means of technological approaches and scientific research. The implied purpose is that everything should be made visible; everything should be uncovered, since there only is that which appears. The provocative way in which technology challenges the real represents the key for understanding its unethical attitude. Instead of following the comingforth of each thing as grounded in concealment, instead of bringing it to light by following its own possibilities, it seeks only the unconcealed, making it shine so brightly and so appealingly that this occupies the entire scene of being. What we are consequently pushed to seek is the brightest appearance which lasts for the longest time: in Aristotelian terms, a complete  that has obliterated all . As we might now interpret it, the ‘essence’ of modern technology is to hide its abode, that it, to prevent us from seeing it as such, from relating to it as unconcealment. And yet, at the same time, it is only now that the hiddenness is so great and overwhelming that it might give us a chance to perceive it. By putting the question concerning technology, we are already on the way to answering in the sense of corresponding, for we are already outside of merely practicing the technical, by setting ourselves on the way to its abode. By revealing the enframing in which technology operates, we were somehow already ‘out’ of its bounds. The whole meaning of entsprechen reveals itself thus as the fact of finding ourselves within the confines of a demand, of a calling, to which we have to respond by hearing (hören) it and listening to it: by being, as Heidegger puts, it, Hörender45, and not by letting 45 Ibid., p. 26: “Denn der Mensch wird gerade erst frei, insofer er in den Bereich des Geschickes gehört und so ein Hörender wird, aber nicht ein Höriger.”

33

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

ourselves be enchanted by its sound to the point of losing ourselves in it as slaves (Höriger). It might be said, then, that if technology is itself a calling, then we truly respond to it insofar as we consider it ‘as such’ – as we question it and respond to it. That is, insofar as we see that it does not end with the technological use of instruments and nor does it begin with this. Starting from the moment when we think the abode of our times as an unconcealing demand which embraces both world and man, we understand that its commencement precedes globalization, precedes the time of industrialization and even precedes modern science which, at first glance, seems to have made all these possible. Technology has its path opened, in a certain sense, ever since the outset of philosophy – what Heidegger will later on call the first beginning – which beginning had unfolded the possibility of metaphysics as well. The overall domination of technology coincides for that reason with the end of metaphysics, which does not represent a certain point in time, but an attitude which gathers our nowadays being. At the same time, Heidegger still points out to a ‘philosophical’ end of metaphysics, which is accomplished by Nietzsche’s philosophy. What is to be questioned, then, is not whether, by affirming that, Heidegger is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but rather the question runs: how does Nietzsche’s philosophy speak to us today, in the epoch of technology? And, first of all, what does the word ‘metaphysics’ say to us from out of the same ground?

34

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Chapter II

The Critique of Metaphysics

In order to understand the intimate connection between technology and metaphysics, we must first pay attention to several meanings that the word ‘metaphysics’ could convey. I will start from what ‘being metaphysical’ means for Heidegger in order to show that it constitutes the ground for the attitude we should have toward technology – and, as we shall see, toward traditional metaphysics as well. This attitude will differentiate itself radically, as Heidegger sees it, from a metaphysics that runs through the entire history of philosophy before culminating with Nietzsche. I will argue, however, that Nietzsche does not just fulfill the possibilities of metaphysics that precedes him, but he throws a gulf between the latter and his own position, disclosing ipso facto a new way of understanding finitude, that is, of understanding world and its boundaries.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 7. Being Metaphysical vs. Metaphysics For Heidegger, the original sense of our ‘being metaphysical’ is to encounter beings as such: “In whatever manner man may represent beings as such to himself, he represents them in view of their being. Because of this man always goes beyond beings and crosses over to being. In Greek, ‘beyond’ is -. Hence man’s every relationship to beings as such is in itself metaphysical.”46 It should be argued, though, that there is a difference between, on one hand, the fact of situating ourselves in relationship to being 46

Heidegger, Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, p. 420. (Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, GA 7, p. 111: “Wie immer auch der Mensch das Seiende als solches vorstellen mag, er stellt es im Hinblick auf dessen Sein vor. Durch diesen Hinblick geht er über das Seiende immer schon hinaus und hinüber zum Sein. Hinüber heißt griechisch . Darum ist jedes Verhältnis des Menschen zum Seienden als solchen in sich metaphysisch.”).

35

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

in our everyday activities, when we take beings as such without necessarily being aware of it – and, on the other hand, the fact of regarding this relationship itself ‘as such’. If the former is exactly what Heidegger’s quotation describes, the latter could be taken as a ‘second-order attitude’, which is required precisely for seeing technology in its abode and gaining, thus, an authentic relation to things in general. What is meant here is that, by knowing that we know – namely, that we know beings in their being – we are always already changing the way in which we are. The structure presented here goes back to that of hermeneutics of facticity47, which names a double genitive: hermeneutics belongs to facticity inasmuch as what it interprets is this facticity itself. The -, in the sense of becoming aware of the as such, does not therefore concern something different from what we already are, does not aim at stepping over our being in the world. On the contrary, it follows the same structure as that of our own being, namely the thrown project (geworfener Entwurf48), which can be understood as a hermeneutical circle: our possibilities are provided by this facticity and, in turn, disclose it in a particular way, on the condition that they are developed authentically. Every step ‘forward’ that Dasein takes is at the same time a step ‘back’ into that which already is, but which couldn’t already be there without his taking the step forward. This double movement is reflected by the German prefix über-, used in Being and Time in two important words – überliefern (‘hand down’) and übernehmen49 (‘receive’, ‘take over’) – both of which designate Dasein’s relation with the tradition. What is demanded of man is not a blind, downright acceptance, but a resolute assuming of his own state. As one of Heidegger’s translators remarks, the prefix über- “acquires here the meaning of a project, of a step forward which enters into dialogue with the fact of 47

See Heidegger, Ontologie. Hermeneutik der Faktizität, GA 63. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 285: “Die Sorge – das Sein des Daseins – […] als geworfener Entwurf […].” 49 Ibid., pp. 383 – 384: “Die Entschlossenheit, in der das Dasein auf sich selbst zurückkommt, erschließt die jeweiligen faktischen Möglichkeiten eigentlichen Existierens aus dem Erbe, das sie als geworfene übernimmt. Das entschlossene Zurückkommen auf die Geworfenheit birgt ein Sichüberliefern überkommener Möglichkeiten in sich, obzwar nicht notwendig als überkommener. Wenn alles »Gute« Erbschaft ist und der Charakter der »Güte« in der Ermöglichung eigentlicher Existenz liegt, dann konstituiert sich in der Entschlossenheit je das Überliefern eines Erbes.” 48

36

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

being-thrown and opens thus, in a translative manner, every situation”50. It is only through this appropriative attitude of Dasein that tradition can appear as Überlieferung, namely as that which sets free by delivering51 to us our own possibilities. When Heidegger translates Überlieferung with the French délivrer, he explicitly associates the idea of liberation with that of an offer: freedom is understood not as ‘to be free of’, but ‘to be free for’. The possibilities are delivered inasmuch as tradition sets us on the way – as it literally gives way. Once again, everything appears as depending on a kinetic relationship. And this is why every apprehension of the relationship as such will not be a step out of it, in an über- which touches upon an absolute beyond, but a step ‘behind’, which, in a certain sense, encircles in order to take along with it, in a further horizon, that which has been encircled. This horizon remains within the confines of the world, that is, within our relationship with beyng52. One makes his way thus to the truth of beyng, to its own dwelling, and not just to the way it lets itself be seen when viewed from the appearance of beings. Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics concerns precisely this point – what metaphysics neglects is the relationship and, along with it, beyng itself. What is at stake for metaphysics is the totality of beings in general, questioned with regard to their being53. Relevant, then, is a common essence of everything there is, including man and beings, without regard to their dissimilarities. Even when this essence receives different attributes, as is the case for Descartes, who distinguishes thinking as a ‘res cogitans’, we are dealing nonetheless with a common essence: for thinking remains all the same a ‘res’. Neglecting the difference that rules over man’s relation to beings, metaphysics therefore ignores that which is proper to man, and thus fails to account for man’s relationship to beyng. Within the bounds of metaphysics, beyng can never be grasped as the primal otherness of man and beings alike, which is to say that it can never be put into light on the ground of the ontological difference54. By failing to account for the latter,

50 Bogdan Mincă, Despre Geschichte şi Geschick la Heidegger şi despre traducerea lor în română, p. 75, my translation. 51 Heidegger, Was ist das – die Philosophie?, p. 8. 52 And so will, for Heidegger, the movement described by the word überwinden, see below, § 11. 53 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, GA 6.2, p. 182. 54 »Humanismus«, GA 9, p. 322.

37

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

metaphysics falls into the trap of the ‘as such’ – following the metaphysical reasoning, one is always tempted to think that being can be known as such, and therefore to understand it on the model of beings. Moreover, this means that beyng will not be thought in terms of its own way of unfolding, revealed on the background of a hospitable attitude; on the contrary, it will be approached from our dominant perspective, one that coincides with technology and concerns, among others, three essential points – appearance, presence and subjectivity. If metaphysics and technology correspond in the aforementioned aspects, it is because they both possess the same manner of disclosing reality. That is why, for Heidegger, the accomplishment of the possibilities of metaphysics in Nietzsche does not bring it to a ‘factual’, concrete end, but clears a path for its endurance, that is, for its dwelling, since metaphysics is in the same transitive way as the abode of technology ‘is’. Its past (Vergangenheit) occurs therefore as a “passing and rising in an essential having been (Ver-gehen und Aufgehen in die Gewesenheit). Inasmuch as it passes by, is metaphysics past. The fact of being past does not exclude, but includes the fact that only now does metaphysics set out on its unconditioned domination in beings and as these, in the truth-lacking form of reality and objects. Experienced from the early beginning, metaphysics is also past in the sense that it entered its ending. The ending lasts longer than the foregoing history of metaphysics.”55

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 8. Appearance In order to understand this history, metaphysics sends us back once again, in a roundabout way, to . As I showed in the previous chapter, every coming into light is sheltered by a retreat. When it is from this retreat that we 55

Heidegger, Überwindung der Metaphysik, GA 7, p. 69: “[…] Die Vergangenheit der Metaphysik. […] Vergangenheit sagt hier: Ver-gehen und Aufgehen in die Gewesenheit. Indem die Metaphysik vergeht, ist sie vergangen. Die Vergangenheit schließt nicht aus sondern ein, daß jetzt erst die Metaphysik ihre unbedingte Herrschaft im Seienden selbst und als dieses in der wahrheitslosen Gestalt des Wirklichen und der Gegenstände antritt. Aus der Frühe des Anfangs erfahren, ist aber die Metaphysik zugleich vergangen in dem Sinne, daß sie in ihre Ver-endung eingegangen ist. Die Verendung dauert länger als die bisherige Geschichte der Metaphysik.” (My translation).

38

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

think appearance, we take being itself as the tension between the two, as the incessant play that allows something to shine for an intensive moment. If, on the contrary, we pursue our thought from appearance itself, taking it as a measure of truth, then we have all the chances to oppose it to something that does not appear, in the sense of something that, of course, is not. Once this rather obvious distinction is made, we can now set being on the side of the apparent and miss the difference between what appears and the fact that it appears. Consequently, there will be no place for considering being as ‘to be’, as the fact ‘that something is’, but purely and simply as a ‘what’ – namely, as ‘that which something really is’: essentia. It will be something, more or less, of the same ‘kind’ as any other thing, since it remains, precisely, some-thing. In this case, one might say unequivocally that being is. And since the main characteristic of appearance is to be visible here and now, its being will also have all the right to be sought within the realm of the visible – be it physical or spiritual – and in that of presence. But, if all things show themselves only now and then, appearing here and there, never entirely, then their essence must somehow appear differently. Identical in ‘kind’, essence must have a different way of deploying itself – a different manner of being. From here on, the story follows the wellknown course: being conceived as essence appears exactly in the way in which one thing or another could never be, namely, fully visible, without any trace of shadow or retreat, and fully present, as a never ending brightness. But, again, it is important to note: being, in the way metaphysics grasps it, does not even remotely stir the question of what does ‘to be’ mean. For, in the sense of metaphysics, being and beings coincide in that that they equally are – though differing by that that they are not equally56. They have, to put it roughly, different manners of being. But what ‘being’, in this sense, means, remains unquestioned57. Tortuous as it may seem, this course of events does nothing but follow an initial decision: everything which appears – the ‘’ – must be taken as the primary yardstick for any reflection; and it accomplishes this role not by being taken into account as constant dispute between appearance and retreat, but, in the best of cases, as this one’s standing ‘result’. As Heidegger 56

They are to an equal degree or extent, but not in an equal or identical manner. It is on this basis that I understand Heidegger’s affirmation that the truth of being was not just ‘up until now’ ignored by metaphysics, but that it represents a question which remains inaccessible to metaphysics as such. (»Humanismus«, GA 9, p. 322). 57

39

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

puts it, “only what Ἀ as lightening58 grants has been experienced and thought, and not what it, as such, ‘is’.”59 The quotation marks – around the word is – underscore the inappropriate manner in which grammar compels us to speak about being or about . Once again, the question arises: how to express being in virtue of the fact that we cannot say that it is? For, we shouldn’t even be saying ‘it’! At times, Heidegger offers us a pathmark: Sein west. But still, the question seems to remain the same – for how could we say, strictly speaking, anything about Sein, since even when we avoid the word ‘is’, our sentences can nonetheless be rephrased into “that which is and which west”? And yet, in the way in which Heidegger wants us to understand this phrase, the question does not arise. On one hand, if the verb wesen, in the way explained above60, means ‘to be’ in the sense of ‘to abide’, if it means ‘to dwell’ in the sense of lingering

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

58

I consider ‘lightening’ one of the most suitable translations for Lichtung, since it allows us to hear in English, just like Heidegger does in German, that die Lichtung is not the illumination of a place, but the reverse – it is the Lichtung which first and foremost takes place, opening a realm where light as such can enter and fight the darkness, that is, where their tension can emerge. Heidegger reads therefore Lichtung not from ‘das Licht’ (‘light’, ‘illumination’), but as related to the verb lichten – ‘to render lighter’, ‘to relieve’, like in the expression den Anker lichten, ‘to weigh anchor’ − and the adjective leicht, ‘light in weight’ (Ende der Philosophie, GA 14, pp. 79 – 81). In English, as well as in German, the two series of words come from different roots, one being *leuq, from which the Greek  (‘white, bright’), the Latin lux and the German Licht are derived, while the other one, *lengh(w), stands at the basis of words like the Greek  (‘small’, ‘little’), the Latin levis, and the German leicht. So, even if in English the two verbs ‘to lighten’ sound the same, their difference is not only one of meaning, but also of origin (see EDEL2, art. light 1 & 2, lighten 1 & 2, alight). Therefore, when translating Lichtung with ‘lightening’, one should hear it precisely not as a pure ‘lightning’, a bright flash breaking into the dark, but in a verbal sense, as the ‘action’ of rendering something light, that is, free, open, alighted. For, as Fédier observes, lichten does not mean merely alléger, ‘to remove a burden’, but much rather allégir − to loosen something which is too dense or compact, to remove from it everything that it is not, so that it can develop its own sway (Fédier, Après la technique, pp. 140 – 141). 59 Ende der Philosophie, GA 14, p. 88: “Erfahren und gedacht wird nur, was die Ἀ als Lichtung gewährt, nicht was sie als solche »ist«. Dies bleibt verborgen.” I render here the quotation marks around the word ‘is’ which appear only in fn. 28, added later by Heidegger, and not in the original version of the text. 60 See above, § 2.

40

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

through the gesture of unfolding and gathering, then it is one and the same with the verb ‘sein’ – once again, in a transitive, unfolding sense. And so it prevents our sentence from following the regular subject / object structure, since we are not predicating any property about something that could be separated from the predicate itself. The way in which the two differ would rather go back to a ‘tautology’, where what is said does not reduce itself to the pure identical (das Gleiche), but introduces a difference through which it is brought into light as ‘the same’ (das Selbe61) – where ‘same’ does not express equality between two separate ‘entities’, but is meant to reveal the fact that one’s own ‘self’ is to be achieved only by passing through an otherness. If it made any sense to the ears of a German speaker, we should say, with all due rigor, that ‘Sein seint’ – taking the first occurrence of Sein not in the sense of the being of beings, but as expressing the manner of unfolding of the to be itself: Seyn (beyng), referred to by Heidegger as Seyn istet62. On the other hand, if the verb ‘sein’, when appertaining to a being, becomes ‘ist’, then it allows us to express the manner in which a thing appears, the way in which it unfurls. On the condition that we don’t reduce it to a mere presence, Sein will cover the same sense as Wesen – which transforms our sentence into ‘Das Wesen west’. The two phrases communicate, in the sense just stressed, the same. The question transforms itself into the following: why did it become so difficult to express something other than the relation of a subject to its predicate? The path to a certain answer proceeds from the fact that we are inclined to establish this relation on a basis of an implied, unquestioned separation – and not from the ‘relation’ itself which is, so to say, primary. Although what one affirms in a proposition about a subject is not literally an ‘object’, but what we call a ‘predicate’, I would like to stress the fact that the 61

Language introduces a difference which bears (Gr. , Lat. fero) beyng, bringing it to light as different from beings (as non-appearing, as hidden), and yet as no ‘other’ than the appearance of beings – as no other than their fact of having been brought to light. “Das  sagt: Alles Seiende ist im Sein. Schärfer gesagt : Das Sein ist das Seiende. Hierbei spricht ‘ist’ transitiv und besagt soviel wie ‘versammelt’.” (Was ist das – die Philosophie?, p. 13). One could translate the sentence “Das Sein ist das Seiende”, daringly enough, with ‘Being beings’ – hearing it on one hand as ‘being dwells, abides (in beings)’ and, on the other hand, as ‘being bears beings, brings them into appearance’. 62 Heidegger, Über den Anfang, GA 70, pp. 66 and 69.

41

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

separation at stake within the structure of the sentence is, essentially, the same as the one that rules over the ontological connection between a subject and its object: a separation of the order of presence.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 9. Presence It might be argued that when we commonly say that a thing is present, we don’t necessarily take it as being detached from us – we just want to assert its being here and now. In this sense, it remains perfectly comprehensible that any momentary presence could symbolize the trace, as metaphysics sees it, of an eternal, ubiquitous ground. And yet, there are many ways of understanding the ‘here and now’ before transforming it into endlessness. Even though this transformation might be implicit within Greek philosophy, viz. Plato and Aristotle and their notions of  and , I will show in this section that it is not until the Romans translate some very important Greek words that a shift becomes explicit, building up the path to subjectivity – and, along with it, to an imposing attitude toward the world. This shift occurs precisely with the word praesentia. To express something’s being here, the Greeks used the preposition , which is translated by the Latin ad or the German an. Its meaning pivots around the idea of nearness, of proximity, or, even better, of vicinity, both in the sense of motion and of rest63. That which ‘is ’ is not just in front me, nor is it in a certain place (), but within a realm, constituting a surrounding where things are adjoined to one another. It can never denote the pure, indifferent occupancy of a space, for it is each time related to something that already bears a sense: it could be said, for example, about being at one’s home – and not about being situated in an anonymous building. It denotes a ‘here’ that marks a relation and an encounter, which is precisely what Heidegger later calls die Umwelt, das Offene, or das Da64. And

63

LSJ, art . Mincă, Die Übersetzung von Heideggers Vorträge und Aufsätze ins Rumänische als ein philosophisches Gespräch mit drei anderen Sprachen (Deutsch, Latein, Griechisch), p. 244. The author argues that the preposition ad- designates in Romanian (as in Latin) a particular exterior position, distinguishing itself from în (‘in’), which is the mark of interiority. It renders the same idea of primordial ‘space’ of inhabitance, where everything is encountered, as the Heideggerian Da. 64

42

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

it is exactly this meaning of standing by someone, with him and beside him that we find expressed in Latin and German through the prepositions ad and an. Both preserve the idea of relation, of one being stirred by something that attains him and therefore calls for his attention65. So it may not be haphazard if ad also refers to a response or accordance. The ‘not being here’ maintains the same structure, starting with the Greek . For it will express, indeed, departure or privation, but always as a departure and a being free from – in other words, a being free within the relation. What  essentially marks, is the point of departure66, thus distinguishing itself from  just as  differs from  (and ad from in). It becomes most striking if, with this in mind, we look upon its last senses, which can be subsumed under the notion of origin or cause. Following this direction, we will see that  can be used to name that from which one is born, the material from or of which a thing is made, the instrument by which it is done, or even the person from whom an act comes67. What brings them all together is the idea of departing while contemporaneously maintaining an essential connection with that from which one departs. Furthermore, it leads us straight to the key of the story: for that which is left behind does not simply disappear, but accompanies the thing in its departure, as any  would. Once it has brought the thing to its own stability, the origin withdraws itself from view, allowing us no longer to see

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

65

What I would like to emphasize by using these words is that our attention (Lat. attendo, ‘stretch toward’, from ad- et tendo) arises as a response to our being attained (Lat. attingo, ‘reach to’, ‘touch’, from ad- et tango). It is because of the fact that things call to us that we make our way toward them – and not the opposite, as metaphysics would uphold. This inversion of our common manner of thinking is best expressed in the word admiror (from ad- et miror): to admire is not properly speaking my action, but a way of being surprised or astonished by something else, at which I therefore marvel. The same reversal occurs in Heidegger’s analysis of : it is because something already lies ahead (liegen) that I can gather it and lay it (legen) through my speech – while everyday language considers things from the opposite direction: every legen is the result of a liegen, just as every stehen the result of a stellen. 66 Just as the Latin ab (see DELL, art. ab). 67 And so will ab, with regard to which DELL underlines that it does not indicate the name of the agent, of the ‘logical’ subject of the action, but “from whom does the action expressed by the verb come” (my translation), as in injuria abs te, ‘injustice which attains me from you’, qui me vient de toi. It is all the more inspiring when the author translates ab with porté, ‘beared, brought by’ (levior est plaga ab amico quam a debitore, ‘la blessure est plus légère, portée par un ami que par un débiteur).

43

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

it ‘as such’. Once their offspring stands on its own, neither an artisan, nor a mother continues being there ‘effectively’. Nor does the material: it is the table itself that we take as such, not the wood. As it will be shown in what follows, the material becomes, in an original sense, absent, fallen into retreat, while still bearing the thing’s development. It remains hidden, while still being there: being, in a certain sense,  – continuously ‘giving way’ to what it produced. Taking into account, then, that they emerge from the same root, it is no wonder that the Latin (and, consequently, the German) ab implies the same perspective, both with regard to the idea of taking distance and to that of source. But what is most astonishing is that we see thus the two series of words sharing certain senses68, rendering the differences between them finer or more difficult to acknowledge. Both in taking distance () and in being there ‘effectively’ (), they seem to imply that nothing is purely and simply ‘there’, nor entirely ‘not there’. For if it was the case, we would not even know that it is not. Both the withdrawal and the appearance take place within a relation, and each preserves a trace of its counterpart. But where does this entire story lead? And how close are we now to understanding what is meant in the word praesentia? The road to it will be cobbled with a few other words. As a first step, we will have to acknowledge that, for expressing the fact that something is either here or missing, the Greek language associated the two prepositions with the verb  (‘to be’) – thus creating  and . Within the same logic, Latin obtained adsum and absum, which the Germans translated as anawesan and abawesan69. Henceforth, one would expect to find all the derivatives – 68 On one hand, , when used with the Genitive, can also express something issuing from a person, like for example in    (‘to be born from’), while ad can indicate direction of departure, as in ad dextram (‘on the right’) – meanings which properly belong to their opponents. But, on the other hand,  also lends from  the idea of staying close by in the sense of following – in expressions like   (‘by reason’) or   (‘by agreement’), while some of the last meanings of ab are those of accomplishing one’s action in accordance with something and also of being at the side of, beside, or among a certain group that one supports (OLD, art. ab, 23-24). 69 Two remarks should be made here. First of all, the fact that anawesan was created in old German as a literal translation of Lat. adesse (see Duden, art. anwesend), meaning precisely da sein. Secondly, by adding an article, German transformed it into

44

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

participles and nouns – as fitting into the same structure. And yet, there is one particular case in which Latin falls short: namely, the one deriving from adsum. Where the other languages have pursued their path as predicted, Latin only accompanied them via ab. Consequently, we dispose of , absent and abwesend to express ‘that which is not here’, but we only dispose of  and anwesend in order to give voice to the counterpart. By the same token, we find , absentia and Abwesenheit, each of which articulates the general fact of not being here, but we find only  and Anwesenheit on the other side of the barricade. What does Latin offer? No more and no less than the already famous p r a e s e n t i a. Just as  and Anwesenheit, praesentia also relates being and time, expressing a ‘here’ and ‘now’ – but within a totally different realm than the one we have been dealing with before. Prae no longer denotes a ‘beside’, but an opposed realm: ‘in front of’, ‘ahead’, all in the sense of vis-à-vis. Still, this opposition could be taken as a neutral separation, if the word didn’t also express anteriority, superiority or preeminence. While ad- and an- betoken the setting-up of a ‘surrounding’ of encounter and relationship, praedescribes a space subjected to domination and control70. In its role of prefix, it will change the meaning of the verb in precisely this way. If scribo says nothing other than ‘to write’, praescribo will become ‘to order, to impose’. Therefore, praesum will first of all equate with being in charge of something, assuming a leading position, commanding – and only its very last

a noun and obtained das Anwesen, which stands for ‘property’, just like the Greek . One is usually tempted to associate these words when it comes to their philosophical meaning, but I consider that for Heidegger they are not equivalent, and that for two reasons. First, because insofar as grammar is concerned we should hear Anwesen in the same way as das Sein, both possessing a much more verbal sense than ; this one, being a participle from , would rather stand for Seiendheit, just like  stands for Anwesenheit. The second reason is given by Heidegger’s own translation for  with Seiendheit, which he associates not with the truth of beyng, but with beings in their being (Was ist das – die Philosophie?, p. 15: “Die Philosophie sucht das, was das Seiende ist, insofern es ist. […] Das Sein des Seienden beruht in der Seiendheit. Diese aber – die  – bestimmt Platon als , bestimmt Aristoteles als die .” See also GA 6.2, p. 266: “Die Seiendheit () des Seienden ist in aller Metaphysik Subjektivität im ursprünglichen Sinne.”). 70 Mincă, op. cit., p. 243.

45

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

sense would eventually make reference to the proper fact of being present71. It wouldn’t, then, be wrong to assume that ‘to be present’ does not imply merely the fact that ‘one is here now’, but that one appears thus inasmuch as he occupies a powerful position. Consequently, praesens and praesentia, the first meaning of which is explicitly ‘the fact of being present, in person’, also pivots around the idea of mastery. For both express resoluteness (as in ‘praesentia animi’), decisiveness, self-control (maîtrise de soi) and even sangfroid. On the other hand, they connote efficacy, immediacy and power, referring to something that occurs without delay and is effective at once. Moreover, praesens can be found in contexts where it designates something manifest, evident or visible72. We could therefore continue our reading of prae- by claiming that not only does it introduce a separation instead of asserting the relationship, but it also assigns the supremacy of one of the terms over the other. The two do not come together as dependent on one another, but heed a logic that opposes submission to superiority. The logic of empire73. According to it, one can keep firm and preserve his position only if everything stays under control – that is, if everything lies ahead of him, in a realm that he can supervise by way of sight. Presence will therefore, as much as possible, outdistance the idea of environs, for how could you ever rule over a disquieting horizon? By splitting it up. Divide et impera. Decide that ‘here’ belongs to the visible domain ahead, and you will have being as standing opposed, ready to give report. Decide ‘there’ in terms of what is behind, and you will soon find that, because it is out of sight, it would of course be absurd to say it ‘is’. Thus, you have reassured yourself even with regard to what you cannot control, for it simply doesn’t exist. All that remains is to call it ‘absent’ and to forget about the old word’s story. You will be now ruling over the greatest of territories. And the Romans did! Within the same logic, from praesens Latin created a verb of the utmost importance: praesento – which, although familiar to us now, initiated a radical 71

Or even none of its meanings, for it must be noticed that only one dictionary (OLD) indicates this sense, while the others (DLF, DLI) do not mention it at all. Still, they almost all agree with the fact that praesum comes from praesens (except DELL). 72 DLI, art. praesens. 73 Heidegger develops a similar analysis with regard to the transformation of the concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’, which have followed the same path of domination when translated, from Greek, by the Romans (see GA 54, pp. 42 – 85).

46

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

shift between the Latin and Greek way of thinking. For if ‘being here now’ is something that one could affirm, in Greek as well as in German, about his own person () or about something else that appears (, anwesend), one could never say ‘I make something be here’ – put in these words, it sounds unnatural even in English. And yet, it is exactly what we imply each time we say, ‘I present something’ – and this we do find so very natural. But at some point it was not, or at least not until the Romans decided, that man is primary in relation with the presence of any kind – and therefore he can render something prae. It goes back to saying that one can make something be by putting it in front of him as opposed. And this act can be translated as ob-jacere, vor-stellen74, the result of which is an ob-jectum, a Gegen-stand and, I might say, also a Vor-stellung, even if later on German will associate it with the more philosophical re-praesentatio. But it would still be interesting to notice that re-presentatio will stand precisely for this original sense in which we could now take vor-stellen, namely to empower being. And yet, praesento remains above all those words that could translate it, for ‘-sento’ says something so unusual that neither stellen, nor jacio can render. These are both transitive verbs: one understands them already as ‘to put’ or ‘to throw something’. But in ‘-sento’ echoes the verb ‘to be’, turned into transitive. And that, in a radically different way from the Heideggerian understanding of it. While, for Heidegger, the ‘action’ of be-ing in the sense of dwelling (wesen) belongs to Sein itself, when speaking Latin one says ‘I dwell something’, ‘I be something’. If, in the normal way of speaking, ‘I am something’ does not presuppose any factual distinction between oneself and ‘what’ one is; on the contrary, what is here outstanding is precisely the fact that one can be (i.e. provide the being of, deploy) something other than him, something which in its turn ‘is’. The reason for it is that “Latin establishes being as something which is given by the subject-man and applied to beings of any kind, while German sees being as something a-rriving at us (advenitor) and opening man’s own being, openness on the basis of which man 74

One should pay attention, though, to the fact that vor- conveys different meanings depending on the word it determines. In vor-stellen, it stands on the side of ob- and gegen-, while vor-liegend is associated with an-liegend and  (see Logos, GA 7, p. 217). The last meaning sends us back to the realm of the relation, just like her-vor-bringen, or vor-stehen, a word used in Being and Time in order to explain the verb verstehen as ‘einer Sache vorstehen können’ (Sein und Zeit, p. 143).

47

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

can relate to a being or another”.75 In the sense of the Letter on Humanism, what first and foremost ‘is’, is being76. In the sense of the Latin language, one would replace ‘being’ with ‘man’.

§ 10. Subjectivity It is no wonder then that metaphysics, in modern times, becomes, as Heidegger calls it, ‘metaphysics of subjectivity’77. The path for it has been traced ever since man started to be understood as subject, long before being explicitly baptized as such. Following the analysis Heidegger develops – we shall see in the end that it is no coincidence that this occurs precisely in the context of a course dedicated to Nietzsche –, we should point to the fact that by setting himself as a subject, man is taking over a position afore belonging to the things themselves. Heidegger argues that subjectum denotes primarily what the Greeks understood as , namely every being inasmuch as it already lies ahead from itself (ein von sich aus Vorliegendes). But the story is slightly more complicated, playing by the same rules as the one of the verb praesento. Because Latin here does not translate the verb , rendered by Heidegger’s liegen, but the action that precedes it: that of putting somewhere (78), now understood as throwing (iacio79),

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

75

See Mincă, op. cit, pp. 243 – 244. The exact quotation I translate here does not appear in the published text, but in the lecture which has preceded it, held in Romanian at the University of Bucharest in 2010. 76 »Humanismus«, GA 9, p. 313: “Was jedoch vor allem ‘ist’, ist das Sein”. Here, as François Fédier notices, “the quotation marks have the role of focusing the attention on the pure and simple fact of being, taken only with regard to itself […]. If one didn’t use quotation marks, one would understand being in the sense of a being.” (L’humanisme en question, pp. 102 – 103, my translation). 77 GA 6.2, p. 171. 78  was understood as a passive of  (this one’s own medio-passive, , being rarely used). But it is interesting to note that its first meanings are not defined in relation with :  is first and foremost said about something which lies down, or about places (‘to be situated’). Only some of its last meanings are properly taken as the result of an ‘action’ of posing, like in the case of laws or names (LSJ, art. ). When an ‘action’ is implied, one should still notice that the gesture described by  is never an imposing one: it either concerns the idea of establishing, or it concerns the sense of letting something appear as such (it is said, for example, about making a woman someone else’s wife, but also about the

48

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

respectively throwing underneath (subicio, with the participle subiectum). So, if the beingness of beings was ever understood as ‘subjectivity in an original sense’, as Heidegger says80, it wasn’t as that which is already there, reposing from out of itself, but taken from the very beginning as a result of an ‘action’ of making it be there. Hence, when modern philosophy takes the subject as subjacent to all things, it draws the equivalence from the former and not from the latter. Still, this move should not be taken as a pure reversal of the Greek perspective – as if a certain ‘primacy’ did nothing other than pass from one side to the other, namely from world to man or from being to thought. The crucial shift stands precisely within the fact that, for the first time, there are sides and primacies, following a comprehension of being as presence. Coming in an explicit relation with their appearance will thus become a re-praesentatio. Had one not paid attention to what praesento implies, ‘re-’ could now be misleading, inducing the idea that one simply renders that which already displays itself. On the contrary, starting with modern philosophy, it’s the representation that has the ascendancy, for it occupies the place of the forceful. In Latin, ‘to represent oneself’ meant to appear in person. ‘To represent another’ was part of the legal language, making reference to someone who can stand in for a person inferior to him, or can take steps on

production of an artist, in which case it is understood as ; see LSJ, art. .) To this extent, it rather comes ‘after’ , in the sense that one cannot produce but that which already ‘is’ (as in the expression ‘to produce a witness’, Fr. produire un témoin). And just like in the case of , (see above, fn. 27), one could say that  in the highest sense is  (Heidegger, Wissenschaft und Besinnung, GA 7, pp. 42 – 43). 79 To render these two aspects, Latin has on one hand iaceo, -ere, which could almost entirely cover the meaning of , had it not been already associated, as DELL sustains, with the idea of ‘being in the state of someone or something which has been thrown’ (art. iaceo). On the other hand, Latin disposes of iacio, -ere, which seems to follow , but also sticks to the idea of throwing. From here, subiaceo became ‘to lie underneath’, while subiacio received ‘to throw from below’ or ‘to place below, underneath’ as its first meanings (OLD, art. subiacio). Subiaceo gave ‘subjacent’, while subiacio offered the participle subiectum that took the lead. Once again, as in the case of ad- and prae-, things were seen from the ‘active’ side of the story betraying thus, to a certain extent, Latin’s own resourcefulness. 80 GA 6.2, p. 266: “Die Seiendheit () des Seienden ist in aller Metaphysik Subjektivität im ursprünglichen Sinne.”

49

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

his behalf81 – it is always the father who can represent the son, and not the opposite. In modern times, to represent to oneself something became a way of somehow putting oneself in the place of the represented thing, standing at its root in order to constitute it. In other words, a way of being subiectum. If “the subjectivity of the subject (the substantiality) is now determined as the act of representation representing itself,” this indicates, first, that man can play the part of the subject in general only inasmuch as he, as a rational being, typifies this act in an eminent sense.82 It is by no means a pure decision of the self, for the latter is much rather the ‘place of accomplishment’ of subjectivity than its origin. Second, since “representing posits that which is encountered and which shows itself within the representation, the being thus disposed becomes ‘object’. All ‘objectivity’ is ‘subjective’.”83 And for this reason, from the very moment of its emergence, it seems to run the risk of being encompassed in that which gave it birth. Subjectivity essentially tends to be unconditional, and that is proven by the fact that the subject par excellence, in the shape of a supreme being, is God the creator: the representation that engenders that which it represents to itself – and which decides, therefore, with regard to being. Which does not let anything be outside its legislation. The death of God, proffered by Nietzsche, would seem to void this act. Moreover, he is deeply criticizing the idea of representation as a false idea man has had about being up to that moment. It stands only as a limitation, still conditioned by something other than itself, namely by the object. If there is something that enables this false image about the world, if there is something more original and more vital, that is the will to power. It relieves itself of all object, and likewise of the subject / object relationship. But then, 81

Alan Watson, Repraesentatio in Classical Latin, p. 18. GA 6.2, p. 267: “Die Subjektivität des subiectum (die Substantialität) wird jetzt als das sich vorstellende Vorstellen bestimmt. Nun ist aber der Mensch als Vernunftwesen das in einem ausgezeichneten Sinne sich vorstellende Vorstellen.” Here, just as in the case of the passage from  to machen, one could say that a key role was played by the Christian image of the world in which not only is God the utmost ‘representation representing itself’, but man himself is seen as being created after God’s likeness. 83 Ibid., pp. 267 – 268: “Weil das Vorstellen das Begegnende und Sichzeigende in die Vorgestelltheit stellt, wird das so zugestellte Seiende zum »Objekt«. Alle Objektivität ist »subjektiv«.” (My translation). 82

50

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

argues Heidegger, it is precisely through this move that it accomplishes the proper of modern subjectivity: only now does it become absolute, unconditioned. Only now does it relieve itself not only of the relationship to the object but, one might say, of every relationship there be – for it is, in itself, everything. Excluding thus the relation, it also excludes any otherness. And that is why one could say, along with Heidegger: “The fundamental way in which the will to will appears, organizing and calculating itself in the unhistorical (Ungeschichtlichen) of the world of accomplished metaphysics84, could be named, in short, ‘technology’. And this name embraces all the domains of beings which put to work, each time, the whole of what is: the objectivized nature, the commissioned culture, the exacerbated ideals. Consequently, ‘technology’ does not refer here to the different domains of machine production and work. […] The word technology is understood in such an abiding way, that its meaning coincides with the expression ‘the accomplished metaphysics’.” 85

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

84

‘History’ (Geschichte), according to Heidegger’s use of the term, is to be understood from out of the different ways in which beyng has concealed itself – thus leading to different epochs (Gr. , ‘interruption’, ‘cessation’) − in order to let something appear as such, unfolding each time a different relation to the human being and allowing a certain understanding of the world. The Un-geschichtliche suggests that concealment itself is now concealed, the refusal now concerning the very dwelling of the relationship. The same could be read in Heidegger’s affirmation about fabrication as the unabode (Unwesen) of the beingness (Seiendheit) of beings (GA 65, p. 128). 85 Überwindung der Metaphysik, GA 7, pp. 78 – 79: “Die Grundform des Erscheinens, in der dann der Wille zum Willen im Ungeschichtlichen der Welt der vollendeten Metaphysik sich selbst einrichtet und berechnet, kann bündig »die Technik« heißen. Dabei umfaßt dieser Name alle Bezirke des Seienden, die jeweils das Ganze des Seienden zurüsten: die vergegen-ständlichte Natur, die betriebene Kultur, die gemachte Politik und die übergebauten Ideale. »Die Technik« meint hier also nicht die gesonderten Bezirke der maschinenhaften Erzeugung und Zurüstung. […] Der Name »die Technik« ist hier so wesentlich verstanden, daß er sich in seiner Bedeutung deckt mit dem Titel: die vollendete Metaphysik.” (My translation).

51

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

52

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Chapter III

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Heidegger’s Interpretation of Nietzsche

Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche aims to bring the latter’s philosophy to light as a reflection upon the being of beings, as a question of . In this way, two possible perspectives regarding our being situated on a borderline are opened. If Heidegger himself takes a step ‘back’ into the world, which is seen as a relationship between man and beyng, on the other hand metaphysics grasps the world on the model of beings in general and thus illegitimately tries to overcome the world in an explicit ‘beyond’. What distinguishes Nietzsche’s philosophy, as I will argue in the next chapter, is that it can be read not as a metaphysical description of this ‘beyond’, but as the movement toward it, that is, as a description of the passage itself, outlining at the same time – deliberately or not – the impossibility of such transgression. However, in this chapter, I would first like to follow Heidegger’s interpretation, for it will be Heidegger himself who clears the way for my reading – a reading which departs from him, but thinks, nevertheless, with him. I will therefore try to present his view on Nietzsche while at the same time commenting its problematic aspects, in order to arrive, in the end, at one of the richest points of Heidegger’s interpretation, which will open the path for my further reading. This point, through which one could say that even Heidegger is departing from himself – or, more precisely, from his interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy as an ontology of presence – concerns the thinking of the eternal return as event emerging within the circle itself.

53

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 11. The Will to Power as Subjectivity The first step toward understanding Heidegger’s argumentation presupposes a detachment from our common approach of ‘willing’. If, customarily, we take it as a wanting, in the sense of desiring something we do not yet possess, what is distinctive about it for Nietzsche is that the will does not yearn for anything that would be stranger to it. Its ‘purpose’ is nothing of the order of an object or of a quality, but is to be found within the performativity of the will itself. ‘Will’ and ‘power’ are not to be separated86 as a subject would be of its object, but go together in a single movement of overtaking. Their indivisibility encompasses everything there is, excluding any possible exteriority or any traditional ‘condition of possibility’. That is why, in order to express the intimate thought at work in the will to power, Heidegger chooses to translate it as a ‘will to will’ and a ‘power to power’. The will appears as moving already in the district of power inasmuch as, instead of just longing for something, it manifests itself always already in the form of a command, to which the one who commands is the first to submit. In this sense, it names an overcoming of oneself toward a realm which is nothing else but the self. It is then no accident that the affirmation of the will to power in Zarathustra takes place in a chapter entitled Von der SelbstÜberwindung, translated in English as ‘On Self-Overcoming’87. Nonetheless, one should at the same time keep in mind that the self only accomplishes the innermost feature of a will which, as such, does not presuppose any bearer in the form of a certain ‘subject’ or ‘individual’88. The word Überwindung itself has also a much wider significance, bringing to light not only Nietzsche’s conception of being – clearly stated in Heidegger’s interpretation – but also a major difference between the two

86

Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe 13, XI [114]: “es giebt kein „wollen“, sondern nur ein Etwas-wollen: man muß nicht das Ziel auslösen aus dem Zustand: wie es die Erkenntnißtheoretiker thun. „Wollen“, wie sie es verstehen, kommt so wenig vor, wie „Denken“: ist eine reine Fiktion”. (The references to the complete edition of Nietzsche’s works, published as Kritische Studienausgabe will be rendered as KSA, followed by the number of the volume.) See also Pavel Kouba, Die Welt nach Nietzsche, p. 225. 87 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and None, trans. by Adrian del Caro. 88 Kouba, op. cit., p. 225.

54

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

philosophers89. If winden means ‘to wind’, ‘to twist’, then über-winden for Nietzsche will not be a pure way of surmounting something, of over-coming it, as if one should achieve a totally new beginning by leaving behind that which has been overcome. On the contrary, the latter will be taken along in the movement, being precisely what ensures the leap toward the next step. Also insofar as the eternal return is concerned, the verb kehren (from Wiederkehr) renders the same aspect of circling and taking along. The ladder is never thrown once the height attained, but is meant to generate, with every new ascent, an equally new stair. When überwinden, transformed into a reflexive verb, has the sense of mastering or controlling oneself, it will always remain a command to go past oneself. Therefore, as Heidegger sums it up, “if the will is a willing-over-oneself, then the over-oneself means that the will is not just sweeping over itself, but that it takes itself along in this willing.”90 In other words, Überwindung will name, for Nietzsche, a continual moving forward, which can recover its ground only on the basis of the advance. The same word, though, receives a totally different connotation when Heidegger uses it to give voice to his own perspective, as in the title of the conference Überwindung der Metaphysik. There, Überwindung is to be understood not as a movement of a self – be it ‘oneself’ or the ‘will’ in general – but as a dialogue between metaphysics and its hidden ground. Consequently, it leads not to an overcoming that follows the model of the avalanche, but to a disclosure of the original, which lets emerge something ‘new’ precisely on the basis of this dialogue; it lets emerge, to be accurate, something other. And it will be only on the basis of this other beginning that Heidegger can read the movement of the will to power91. Only with an eye directed toward the difference can one grasp the profound sense of the ‘new’ at stake in the will to power; even though the 89

A recent study concerning the relationship between the two philosophers with regard to the problem of metaphysics is Louis P. Blond’s Heidegger and Nietzsche. Overcoming Metaphysics. 90 Heidegger, Nietzsche I, GA 6.1, p. 49: “Wenn der Wille aber ist: Über-sich-hinausWollen, so liegt in diesem Über-sich-hinaus, daß der Wille nicht einfach über sich hinweggeht, sondern sich mit in das Wollen hineinnimmt.” (My translation). 91 Überwindung der Metaphysik, GA 7, p. 80: “The abode (Wesen) of the will to power lets itself grasped only from the will to will. Yet this one is to be experienced only when metaphysics has already come into its overcoming (in den Übergang eingegangen ist).” (My translation).

55

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

ascent always makes claim to an absolute ‘newness’ or change of perspective, this ‘new’ remains, on the contrary, always the same – being nothing else but the will to power itself. For this reason, the will does not ‘produce’ any effects: causality as such is grounded, in its turn, in the will to power92, which is, one might say, pure  – pure act which, in order to maintain itself, cannot aim at any goal, nor can it be grounded in something else than itself. The lack of particular ‘purposes’ leads to the fact that the will must always be a ‘will to will’, driven ahead by means of a power which must always increase its lead over the degree once attained. Yet this increase is not – or, at least, not in the first place – a quantitative one, but a way of taking possession of the power’s own essence93. If, viewed from the perspective of the will, power consists in the means that enable any activity, then, were these means dried up by a certain act, the movement would stop. From here comes the horror of void, from here also the horror of the extinction of the will, or of ‘non-willing’: one would rather will nothingness than not will anything at all94. And this is why, in order to develop itself, the will must never come to a standstill, nor bang against a certain ‘object’, stable and fixed. Its course is meant to take any apparent stability only as a stage, as a step pushing farther, higher, toward the next stage of the ascent. Its opposite is not the possession of anything, but the ‘not wanting’. The contrary of the will to power therefore does not stand within a certain ‘ownership’ of the power, but within stagnation. This is one of the most important points of Heidegger’s interpretation, and I would argue that it is also the first one that leads us to conceive the movement of the will to power not as consisting in the assurance of a constant presence – as Heidegger hereafter concludes – but, on the contrary, to see it as an always temporary leap. Or, even better, one could say that ‘presence’ in this sense will cease to be equivalent with an everlasting appearance, for it will be thought as a constant movement; a constant ‘is’, and not a constant ‘what’.

92 GA 6.1, p. 35: “Der Wille ist kein Wirken. Was man gemeinhin als das Bewirkende nimmt, jenes verursachende Vermögen, gründet selbst im Willen.” 93 GA 6.2, p. 239: “So ist die Macht ständig unterwegs »zu« ihr selbst, nicht nur zu einer nächsten Machtstufe, sondern zur Bemächtigung ihres reinen Wesens.” 94 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III, 1, p. 68: “That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim –, and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will.”

56

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Another crucial aspect of Heidegger’s interpretation that should be underlined is the fact that, if the will cannot encounter any otherness, it is not only because it always heads to a continuous accomplishment of its own essence but also because it is the will itself which supplies its own ground. It offers to itself the stages which are to be overstepped – under the form of values – as conditions of its own intensification. Yet, since it is a movement which takes along that which has been overcome, the will also needs to consolidate each stage of its moving forward, to secure it (sichern) in order to dispose of it95. The reinforcement of the power implies, at the same time, its preservation. But since the will is not a ‘substance’, but a movement, this is to be understood as a mode of self-intensifying, not as an ‘expansion’. The steps to be taken by the will appear in the form of ‘perspectives’ on which it counts for each leap, being equivalent to ever interchangeable values. By assuring and calculating that which it institutes, the will lies thus at the basis of everything there is. Subjacent to all things, itself included, it acquires, as Heidegger says, the sense of a subjectum par excellence, accomplishing the essence of subjectivity, which is to become unconditional, nullifying thus any distance that would still be at stake in the ordinary notion of ‘subject’. The will is one and the same with the innerness as such, without any distance or opposing ob-ject. One should also point to the fact that the will to power is here another name for life, which encompasses everything, not just what is ‘alive’. If life means growth – that is, having and wanting to have even more96, gaining greater intensity of itself – then we can understand why, as I have indicated it previously97, man becomes the one who is taken over by life and by subjectivity, and not the one placed at its origin. He cannot ‘want’ the will, decide for it from out of a situation where the will would first be ‘absent’, for each decision or wish finds itself already within the confines of the will98. Just as in the case of technology, it is man who is ‘willed’ by a subjectivity to 95

GA 6.2, p. 240: “Macht ist der Befehl zu Mehr-Macht. Damit aber der Wille zur Macht als Übermächtigung eine Stufe übersteigen kann, muß diese Stufe nicht nur erreicht, sondern festgehalten und gesichert werden.” 96 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, n. 125, p. 77: “[…] I should add, ‘one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.’ For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more – growth, in one word – that is life itself.” 97 See above, § 10. 98 GA 6.1, p. 43.

57

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

which he has to respond. Only that here ‘response’ does not have the Heideggerian meaning of engaging oneself into a dialogue – a corespondence that is called for by the fact that man is ‘needed’ by beyng – but rather stands for an adequacy: one responds inasmuch as he adheres to that to which he is compelled to99. Hence, it is the voice of life that makes itself heard in any creation of values; not the pure ‘subjective’ choice of a specific person, and not even God. No celestial sphere could impose steady values anymore, establishing them from the outside, once and for all. Since the death of God, all perspectives are replaceable in function of their efficiency; that is, of the degree to which they push forward the march of life. But, viewing things from a different perspective, I believe one would not be wrong to say with equal right the opposite: God is dead because he was preventing life to develop itself, and therefore was a value on which the will to power could not have counted for too long. In both cases, the ruling principle remains the same: that which matters and has to be preserved is the continuous becoming; where ‘becoming’, as Heidegger underscores, should not be understood as an “indeterminable flow of situations, of existing states”, neither as “the evolution toward a goal”. ‘Becoming’, as opposed for Nietzsche to a fixed, immutable ‘being’, describes here the very movement of the will to power, the “surpassing of the degree of power already attained”, thus naming, at the same time, the main determination of beings100 – which is called, in Heideggerian terms, ‘the being of beings’. What I would like to stress, though, beyond Heidegger’s analysis, is the fact that Nietzsche succeeds in overcoming metaphysics insofar as values are concerned, but he only reverses it when it comes to the question of being. For on one hand, the ‘reevaluation of all values’ consists not just in exchanging the once binding values with some new ones, but first of all in 99

And this is why “[f]or Heidegger, life as understood by Nietzsche, in its appropriative drive for growth at all costs would remain closed to the relational world of coming […]” (Mitchell, op. cit., p. 406). See also Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, GA 69, p. 99. 100 GA 6.2, p. 241: “Werden meint nicht das unbestimmte Fließen eines charakterlosen Wechselns beliebig vorhandener Zustände. Werden meint aber auch nich »Entwicklung zu einem Ziel«. Werden ist die machtende Übersteigerung der jeweiligen Machtstufe. Werden meint in Nietzsches Sprache die aus ihm selbst waltende Bewegtheit des Willens zur Macht als des Grundcharakters des Seienden.”

58

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

re-placing them, that is – in changing their site101. Thus, Nietzsche does not inverse two separated realms, but cancels their separation and brings everything to earth as the only reality there is.102 Yet, on the other hand, if the separation between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ is also rendered void, the ‘transfer’ operates in the opposite direction. For there are not constancy, stability and presence which are to be incorporated in the becoming or relativized by its incessant changing of perspective – on the contrary. Here, I would follow Heidegger in underscoring the fact that the supreme will to power means “to impose upon becoming the character of being”103. ‘Why supreme?’ asks Heidegger. Because it accomplishes the very essence of the will to power, which is nothing else than to make ‘becoming’ consistent in the realm of presence104 (die Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit). The supremacy of ‘being’ continues thus to rule over the understanding of the to be in general, which later takes the form of fabrication105. Its intimate connection with the abode of technology comes to light through the fact that both are not only set on the way to more and more possession, but they both also ensure this possession in order to keep it at disposal. Fabrication, just as technology, “can alone maintain its position under the absolute command it addresses to itself, namely: to make itself consistent”106. How does that echo Nietzsche’s philosophy? The answer comes right from the lines which follow to the aforementioned quotation:

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

101

The same point is underscored by Gilles Deleuze: what Nietzsche calls transmutation or transvaluation does not imply a changing of values, but of the element from which the values are derived (Nietzsche et la philosophie, p. 188). 102 Nonetheless, one can agree with Heidegger that the decisive step by which Nietzsche remains within the confines of what he criticizes is that he keeps the notion of ‘value’, without interrogating its ground as such. For a further development of this idea, see Werner Stegmaier, Metaphysische Interpretation eines AntiMetaphysikers, p. 177: “Der Nihilismus des abendländischen Denkens lag für ihn [Heidegger] nicht erst in einer Entwertung von Werten [wie für Nietzsche], sondern darin, dass es sich überhaupt an »Werte« hielt und darüber die »Seinsfrage« »vergaß«.” 103 Nietzsche, op. cit., n. 617, p. 330 (I underline ‘upon becoming’). 104 GA 6.1, p. 592. 105 See above, fn. 36. 106 GA 6.2, p. 14: “Die Machenschaft kann sich allein unter dem unbedingten Befehl zu sich selbst in einem Stand halten, das ist: sich beständigen.” The verb sich beständigen echoes here the technological Bestand, as described above, § 5.

59

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

“That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being: – high point of the meditation.”107

§ 12. The Eternal Return as Presence

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

The recurring is to be understood, according to Nietzsche, as accomplishing the reversal between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ – a metaphysical distinction that he thus maintains as unquestioned, precisely at the moment when he criticizes it. If ‘becoming’ turns into something stable, never fading away, its meaning should be sought for beyond the too simple perspective of something which changes continuously and which, in this movement, would remain forever present. One should therefore pay attention, in the ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen, to what each of the terms is supposed to indicate, in its intimate connection with all the others. Heidegger argues that what becomes (das Werdende) is not this or that element of a multiplicity varying infinitely, but the same – das Gleiche selbst108. The identical, manifested in diversity. The one, thought in an ever becoming presence; where ‘presence’ is now conceived as the reiteration of an identity109, rendering the becoming consistent. And yet, all seems to remain an obscure play of words unless one takes into account Heidegger’s own understanding of ‘the same’ and his critique of metaphysics. If what is at stake for the metaphysical thought is the totality of beings, then being itself will be excluded from this realm, ruling over it from a more powerful position. Starting with Plato, being as  takes the form of  , namely the one (ein) which ensures the unity (Einheit) of the multiple. As one can observe, unity does not come from out of the gathering itself, does not pertain to those which unite, but is that which, from a superior outside, unifies. In other words, it is the unique, invariable ground 107

Nietzsche, loc. cit. GA 6.2, p. 5: “Was wird, ist das Gleiche selbst, will heißen: das Eine und Selbe (Identische) in der jeweiligen Verschiedenheit des Anderen. Im Gleichen ist die werdende Anwesenheit des einen Identischen gedacht. Nietzsches Gedanke denkt die ständige Beständigung des Werdens des Werdenden in die eine Anwesenheit des Sichwiederholens des Identischen.” 109 For this reason I choose to translate Anwesenheit with ‘presence’, for Heidegger is using it here in the sense of praesentia. 108

60

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

that rules over an unsteady diversity. By reading then Nietzsche’s ‘same’ in terms of das Eine und Identische, Heidegger tries to put into light the fact that, despite having been long claimed as a reversal of Platonism, Nietzsche still follows the same model of grasping being110. The diverse is not reevaluated upon a new basis, but is still thought as subjugated to a commanding unity. When the character of ‘being’ is imposed upon ‘becoming’, it might be argued that the separation vanishes and that there is no longer an ‘outside’ to establish unity. Indeed. And yet, what remains in turn is not a multiple that would come together from out of itself, but precisely the imposing unity111 – now thought under the form of a constant becoming. The ‘one’ will no longer be equivalent to a pure presence of something forever appearing – since Nietzsche worships movement. And yet, it will be the same standing stability, the same ‘presence’ which characterizes this ever returning movement, conceived as the same. When Heidegger refers to it as this ‘same’ (dieses »Selbe«), the italics, just as the quotation marks around the word ‘same’, indicate the fact that one cannot properly name it das Selbe, for the two are not equivalent. While das Gleiche remains ever repeatable, for it is nothing else but itself, das Selbe names, for Heidegger, “the singularity of the unrepeatable ordering juncture (Ver-fügung) of the belonging together, out of which alone does the difference emerge”.112 The same arises for Heidegger precisely from the encounter, referring once again to the fact that the self (Selbst) is a concept of relation, and that it cannot be gained otherwise than within the relation. Both Selbe and Gleich name, to this extent, being, with the major difference that while the former is conceived as opening an otherness, the latter remains confined to its own deployment. If the will to power describes, as Heidegger maintains, the essence of beings, what they ‘are’, namely power, the eternal return names for him, on the 110

For a wide analysis of the relation between Nietzsche’s philosophy and Plato’s, seen from a different point of view than the Heideggerian one, see Annamaria Lossi, Nietzsche und Platon. Begegnung auf dem Weg der Umdrehung des Platonismus. 111 For things are not gathered in their being through a relation with man, as it is the case in Heidegger’s description of , but it is the will to power that disposes of the appearance, commanding its own overcoming. 112 GA 6.2, p. 5: “Dieses ‘Selbe’ ist durch einen Abgrund geschieden von der Einzigkeit der unwiederholbaren Ver-fügung der Zusammengehörenden, aus der allein der Unterschied anfängt.” (My translation).

61

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

contrary, how something is, and that it is in the mode of the will to power. In both cases, though, one finds oneself before an interpretation of the being of beings113. Yet, I would argue that, since in the ‘eternal return of the same’, the word same is supposed to name ‘being’ as different from the mere entirety of beings, then the eternal return could represent the way in which this ‘same’ itself ‘is’, bringing thus an answer to the question of the dwelling proper to beyng. Which means that Nietzsche does not just end the possibilities of a metaphysics which thinks being on the model of beings, as Heidegger maintains. Rather I believe we are now, for the first time, dealing with something other than just a supreme being which plays the role of the ‘to be’. As I have previously underscored, since the same is not some-thing, then it cannot be accused of equally existing like any other being114. And even though Nietzsche remains a prisoner of the tradition he criticizes – given that he never actually puts the question concerning the abode of beyng – it can still be said that, if we asked it, from out of our own times, then a way toward his answer would unfold. How does beyng occur? Precisely, as eternal return. This sheds a new light upon Heidegger’s interpretation. I think we can find in his reading several ways of conceiving the return, each of them being based on Nietzsche’s writings, which do not offer a less ambiguous description of this matter. What interests me, though, is that if Heidegger mostly maintains that the eternal return is the utmost affirmation of a constant presence, confining Nietzsche to a certain role within the history of metaphysics, we nonetheless also find in his interpretation the means to think the eternal return in a more appropriative way. A first path that Heidegger reveals for understanding the eternal return is to see it as called for by the fact that the same is equivalent with pure

113

Heidegger, Nietzsches Metaphysische Grundstellung im abendländischen Denken: Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen, GA 44, pp. 225 – 226. According to Heidegger, in the phrases “das Seiende im Ganzen ist Wille zur Macht” and “das Seiende im Ganzen ist ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen”, the word ‘is’ (ist) means each time something different – on one hand, it names beings with regard to their constitution, on the other hand with regard to their way of being. Nonetheless, it denominates a trait of beings every time. 114 See above, § 8.

62

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

inconsistency. As such it has to return if any consistency is to be attained115. When read in correlation with the doctrine of the will to power, this goes back to the fact that the will is always in search of a new stage from which it can leap to the next, each of them being only provisional steps within a continuous ascendance. And if the main characteristic of this movement is the überwinden, then its kehren will also maintain itself not as a pure coming back, but as a spiral ascent, taking along with it that which has once been within its reach. Yet, even the thought of an ever returning fact that something is proves that Nietzsche is still related to the separation between the unique and the multiple, at work in Plato. The fact that something is can sustain itself regardless of that which actually is only if the latter is separated from and irrelevant to the dwelling of the former. Within this perspective, being is not, at each time, the being of a being, but the powerful realm which commands the emergence of everything there is, without needing any human comprehension to unfurl. It is in this sense that I would read Heidegger’s affirmation that being as eternal return becomes what is most consistent: the unconditional that (das unbedingte Daß). And it is also from this point of view that one can understand why presence, far from being pure appearance or stability of something present, still maintains the authoritative, ruling character of every praesentia116. A second path for understanding the thought of the eternal return is offered by the very essence of the will to power. If the main feature of the will is to increase in power, this growth is nonetheless finite, for the will to power is equivalent to everything there is; an infinite rise would be a contradiction in terms. But then, does not this nullify the will itself? How could it remain in power, while at the same time avoiding stagnation?117 In this sense, the eternal return represents the encounter between the finitude of the world and the continual surmounting of the will to power. A reading similar to this one appears in another Heideggerian lecture course on

115

GA 6.2, p. 258: “Das Gleiche, das wiederkehrt, hat je nur verhältnismäßigen Bestand und ist daher das wesenhaft Bestandlose. Seine Wiederkehr aber bedeutet das immer wieder in den Bestand Bringen, d.h. Beständigung. Die ewige Wiederkehr ist die beständigste Beständigung des Bestandlosen.” 116 See above, § 9. 117 GA 6.2, p. 256.

63

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Nietzsche118, where he explains the eternal return as a consequence of the relation between the finiteness of the world and an infinite time119. The reason why I do not follow such an analysis entirely is the fact that one cannot argue in the favor of the infinity of time without turning to speculative philosophy. The same problem arises from Fink’s view, which presents the course of time as composed of an infinite past and an infinite future meeting in a present moment. Since each infinity must contain the whole of possible events, the idea of two infinities becomes absurd and therefore requires the thought of the eternal return120. The only way of avoiding the fall into speculative philosophy would be to see infinity, in Fink’s interpretation, as an ‘otherness’ of the present moment – the unlimited openness of the moment-in-fact, which is not to become the object of a positive thinking that would transform it in an explicitly infinite beyond. A final way one could take in order to grasp the meaning of the eternal return is to be found in the chapter of Zarathustra entitled ‘Von der Erlösung’ (‘On Redemption’), interpreted by Heidegger during his lecture course Was heißt Denken?121.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

“That time does not run backward, that is its wrath. ‘That which was’ – thus the stone is called, which it cannot roll aside. […] Thus the will, the liberator, became a doer of harm; and on everything that is capable of suffering it avenges itself for not being able to go back. This, yes this alone is revenge itself: the will’s aversion (Widerwille) toward time and time’s ‘it was’.”122

118

GA 44, p. 45: “Auf Grund dieser Voraussetzungen muß alles, was überhaupt sein kann, schon als Seiendes gewesen sein, denn in einer unendlichen Zeit ist der Lauf einer endlichen Welt notwendig schon vollendet.” 119 For a similar point of view see Pierre Montebello, Nietzsche. La volonté de puissance, pp. 69 – 71, where the eternal return stands for the encounter between a finite sum of forces and a time which is infinite in one of its directions, namely the future. 120 Eugen Fink, La philosophie de Nietzsche, pp. 109 – 111. 121 GA 8, especially pp. 92 – 113. 122 Nietzsche, Zarathustra, p. 111, translation modified. I choose to render the word Widerwille not by ‘unwillingness’, as the translators of Zarathustra do, but by ‘aversion’ or, literally, by ‘counter-will’, because Nietzsche does not refer here to a mere non-will, but to what the will encounters as its opposition.

64

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Aversion, the sentiment of revenge, arises from not being able to will, from coming up against a limit imposed to the will, that is, from coming up against something that paralyzes or denies the will, preventing it from willing. That which was can no longer be wanted, nor changed, remaining fixed somewhere ‘backwards’, into the past, while the will can now only pursue its course ‘forward’, into the future, into that which it can still ‘determine’, i.e. ‘want’. How could one ever be freed from the spirit of revenge? By rendering the past as such void, by withdrawing from time itself? Nothing is less feasible. Only one choice remains: to prevent the past from falling into a mere ‘it was’; to prevent passing from fixing itself in an ‘away’, to exclude thus any exteriority or otherness. The will becomes therefore free when that which goes away does not just slip away from its realm, but comes back, and by so doing brings back that which is gone123.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

“The will becomes free from the adversity of the ‘it was’ when it wants the constant return of every ‘it was’. The will is redeemed from the counterwill when it wants the constant return of the same. Therefore wants the will the eternity of the willed. The will wants the eternity of itself.”124

What ‘eternity’ means in this context remains though fairly ambiguous, and even Heidegger’s interpretation is twofold. On one hand, eternity echoes for him the metaphysics of presence and constant appearance; on the other hand, it seems to hint toward a new understanding of time and human existence, outside of the worldly temporal coordinates. The first Heideggerian perspective follows from seeing the ‘it was’ as the main characteristic of time, that is, as the way in which time deploys itself. Heidegger’s argument consists in reading Nietzsche’s aforementioned quotation – concerning the will’s aversion toward time and time’s ‘it was’ – as an equivalence. For him, it is not a description of time and one of its parts, namely the past, as standing beside present and future, but an explanation 123 GA 8, p. 107: “Der Wille wird frei von diesem Widrigen, wenn er als Wille frei wird, d.h. frei für das Gehen im Vergehen, aber für ein solches Gehen, das dem Willen nicht entgeht, sondern wiederkommt, indem es das Gegangene wiederbringt.” 124 Ibid.: “Der Wille wird frei vom Widrigen des »Es war«, wenn er die ständige Wiederkehr von allem »Es war« will. Der Wille ist erlöst vom Widerwillen, wenn er die ständige Wiederkehr des Gleichen will. So will der Wille die Ewigkeit des Gewolten. Der Wille will die Ewigkeit seiner selbst.” (My translation).

65

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

regarding time itself, which is, as such, nothing else than its ‘it was’. Not in the sense that time were just the past – putting things in this way, one would remain prisoner to the split between several temporal sequences; what is said is that its own nature is to pass, namely to pass into that which is no longer, for it is no longer here. The revenge of the will toward time regarded as transient proves to be based on an understanding of being as presence, an understanding of what is as that which is here now, in its opposition to that which is no longer here, or not yet here. It goes back to saying that time itself is viewed as passing only because the present moment is already taken tacitly as an unquestioned point of view. If metaphysics places being in the realm of an unfading presence, its time correspondingly will be an everlasting now. And that is precisely what Heidegger seems to find in Nietzsche’s notion of Augenblick, the ‘instant’ out of which both fading away and coming forth are grasped. When Zarathustra addresses to his soul by telling it that it is meant to utter ‘today’ just like ‘once’ and ‘formerly’, dancing over all ‘here’ and ‘then’ and ‘there’125, he names the most fundamental features of time, equalizing past and future on the ground of their being one and the same with ‘today’. One of the most revealing of Heidegger’s comments on this passage is the following:

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

“All the three phases of time gather together, as the same, in a same, namely in a single present, a constant now. Metaphysics names this steady now: eternity. Nietzsche also thinks the three phases of time from out of eternity seen as a steady now. Yet, steadiness does not lie, for him, in a staying, but in a return of the same.”126

But then, Heidegger offers in the same lecture course on Nietzsche another perspective on the meaning of eternity, and by that I think that we can also reconsider the above interpretation in a new light. Under the expression ‘steady Now’, one was tempted to read a moment like any other moments from our everyday life – with the only difference that, instead of running 125

Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 179. Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra, GA 7, p. 108: “Alle drei Phasen der Zeit rücken zum Gleichen als das Gleiche in eine einzige Gegenwart zusammen, in ein ständiges jetzt. Die Metaphysik nennt das stete Jetzt: die Ewigkeit. Auch Nietzsche denkt die drei Phasen der Zeit aus der Ewigkeit als stetem Jetzt. Aber die Stete beruht für ihn nicht in einem Stehen, sondern in einem Wiederkehrendes Gleichen.” (My translation). 126

66

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

into the past, it remains here, as a paused sequence in a movie. I would argue, though, that staying does not mean for Heidegger just a ‘property’ added to something indifferent to it – as if the ‘moment’ could either be steady, either fall into the past. On the contrary, I believe that ‘to stay’ here changes the nature of the moment itself, just as the power changes the very essence of the will itself. Thus one should think the notion of Augenblick in a completely different horizon than that of a mere worldly now. What Heidegger underlines is that to see the instant, means to be situated in it127, inasmuch as it reveals the eternal return. But then, we could ask – isn’t one also ‘situated’ in any present moment? Indeed. Only that this everyday state is by no means equivalent with how one finds himself in what Nietzsche calls the Great Noon; which is at the same time what one might call the high noon – a point of decision in which the outcome of the situation is to be determined. This creates the abyss between the doctrine of Zarathustra and the one of the dwarf, unraveling two different paths not only for the understanding of the eternal return, but also, as we shall later see, for our own being in the world, confronted with the sway of technology. When the dwarf believes that time is a circle in the sense of a mere repetition of present events, he proffers his speech from within his worldly, simple now – and for that reason everything appears as a pure repetition of ‘nows’. Eternity appears as a chain of similar moments, consisting in their passing one after the other. If this is due, as the dwarf argues, to the fact that “[a]ll that is straight lies”128, then he is not aware that his own conclusion is trapped within the same falsehood; for despite its roundness, any circling time remains straight inasmuch as it represents a flat succession of equal units, devoid of shape or intensity. While for Zarathustra, on the contrary, eternity is in the instant; and therefore the Augenblick is not a simple fugitive moment, along with other several moments of the kind, but, as Heidegger says, the jointure of past and future129. Rigorously speaking, one cannot even render it in terms of ‘past’ and ‘future’ for both are consequences of observing things from our inner

127

GA 6.1, p. 277. Nietzsche, op cit, p. 125. 129 GA 6.1, p. 278. 128

67

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

time, lived in the form of an ever fugitive present130. One could say thus, along with Nietzsche, that it is eternity itself that we should cast upon our life131, and not the latter upon the understanding of the former. Viewed in this new light, one of the keys to the story could be found in a fragment of Nietzsche’s notes of 1881, which Heidegger quotes: “And in every ring of the human existence in general there is always one hour in which first for a single one, than for many, than for all, emerges the most powerful thought, that of the eternal return of all things: – it is at each time for humanity the hour of noon.”132 Following this quotation, the crucial aspect that Heidegger brings forth is that the thought of the eternal return arises as event within the circle captured by the thought itself, i.e. the circle of beings in their entirety. The event thus breaks any continuity one could have been tempted to assign to the circle.133 Heidegger deduces that ‘human existence’ refers here not to the life of an individual, but to the fundamental fact that a being as the human being in general is amidst beings in their entirety134.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

130

See also Kouba, op. cit., p. 45: “[…] nicht die Gegenwart als eine der drei Zeitdimensionen, die ihren Platz zwischen der Vergangenheit und der Zukunft hat. […] Sie gehören in die Gegenwart als Elemente, die die volle und einheitliche Anwesenheit dessen mitkonstituieren, was der Augenblick zum Vorschein bringt. Die Gegenwart von Vergangenheit und Zukunft bedeutet weiter, daß im Augenblick die ganze Zeit gegenwärtig ist […].” 131 KSA 9, XI [159]: “Drücken wir das Abbild der Ewigkeit auf unser Leben!” 132 KSA 9, XI [148]: “Und in jedem Ring des Menschen-Daseins überhaupt giebt [es] immer eine Stunde, wo erst Einem, dann Vielen, dann Allen der mächtigste Gedanke auftaucht, der von der ewigen Wiederkunft aller Dinge – es ist jedesmal für die Menschheit die Stunde des Mittags.” (Quoted by Heideger in GA 6.1, p. 359, my translation). 133 The problem of the discontinuity introduced in the circle by the thought of the eternal return is underscored also by Pierre Klossowski in Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, pp. 56 sq. A similar paradox is brought to light by Gianni Vattimo, who explains that the revelation brought by the noon also calls for a decision which prevents one from enjoying a moment of pure contemplation (Introduzione a Nietzsche, pp. 76 – 80). 134 This is also due to the fact that the temporality proper to eternity is one in which only man can stand (GA 44, p. 103: “Die Zeitlichkeit der Zeit der Ewigkeit, die in der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen zu denken verlangt wird, ist die Zeitlichkeit, in der vor allem, und soweit wir wissen, allein der Mensch steht […]. Der Gedanke der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen, entsprungen und gegründet in solcher

68

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Could we conclude hereafter that the instant denotes the awareness, the ‘second order reflection’ arising from the only being which already knows that it is there? And whose ‘knowing that’ brings with it any other ‘that’ of any other being? Whose ‘knowing that’ hence brings along with it the world itself? If this was not the case and if such a reading did not at all touch Nietzsche’s philosophy, then how could one understand the fact that “with the word ‘noon’ one determines the moment (Zeitpunkt) of the event that consists in the thought of the eternal return within the eternal return of the same”135? A moment, as Heidegger says, “immeasurable by any clock”, for it represents “the point that time itself, as temporality of the instant, is.”

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

But if the Augenblick reveals the eternal return, all by emerging within the circle, then whose eternal return is it? One could notice that the twofold genitive allows us to read either the eternal return as repetition of the same or to read the same itself as enclosing in it all recurrence136. And yet, in neither of the cases is the question fully answered. For, on one hand, as I have already shown, we cannot speak of the repetition of some pure sum of ‘nows’ and nor can we see it as the return of the Augenblick itself – since this one is a moment incomparable to any other, and even less ‘repeatable’ by any other. On the other hand, the Augenblick is also far from merely bringing us before the evidence of a circling time or recurrent moments. Then what is there explicitly revealed? As I will try to argue in the following chapter, it is the repetition itself, without any ‘object’ or ‘content’ to be repeated. In this sense, what returns is the eternal return itself, what the Augenblick reveals is nothing else but the Augenblick itself.

Zeitlichkeit, ist daher ein »menschlicher« Gedanke im höchsten und ausnehmenden Sinne.”). 135 GA 6.1, p. 360 (I emphasize innerhalb): “Mit dem Wort ‘Mittag’ ist dem Ereignis des Wiederkunftsgedankens innerhalb der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen sein Zeitpunkt bestimmt, ein Zeitpunkt, den keine Uhr mißt, weil er den Punkt im Seienden im Ganzen meint, der die Zeit selbst als Zeitlichkeit des Augenblicks ist.” (My translation). 136 Michael Skowron, Zarathustra-Lehren. Übermensch, Wille zur Macht, ewige Wiederkunft, p. 84.

69

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

70

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Chapter IV

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

World and Finitude

On first reading, Heidegger’s only claim seems to be that Nietzsche attains the end of metaphysics, where metaphysics is understood as a way of grasping the being of beings in the form of an everlasting presence. However, as I have tried to show, Heidegger opens at the same time another path for reading Nietzsche, both with reference to the will to power and the eternal return. Following this thought, I will try to argue that Nietzsche indeed accomplishes the end of metaphysics, but not in the sense of a thinking which grasps being on the model of beings; but rather that what he proves is the impossibility of a metaphysics that wants to take a step beyond the border of the world and to grasp it as such. The ‘end of metaphysics’ is therefore attained not by reaching the highest peak of an ontology of presence, but by carrying out an incessant move toward an ever new horizon. He deploys what I would call an ontology of the provisional, which characterizes both the will to power and the tempo of technology. If this remains connected to the idea of presence, it will not be in the sense of what is here and now present, but by maintaining the authoritative approach implied by any praesentia.

§ 13. Thinking the World with Heidegger The problem which guides my reading of the will to power and of the eternal return goes back to the knowing of the as such and, consequently, to the fact of being situated in the world. Here ‘world’ does not refer to the collection of physical elements that are present in the whole of the universe, a collection of beings, but to the ‘horizon’ in which they all can appear. Even the word ‘horizon’ is rather inappropriate, substantivizing perhaps too much that which should be understood. However, it has nonetheless the merit of

71

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

suggesting that the world is not something. One should even say: it is not, since it lets everything be – that is, it lets everything appear. Therefore, it cannot itself appear, for it would need another ‘world’ to enlighten its revealing; or, better said, it can ‘appear’ only negatively, on condition that we understand ‘appearance’ here as something totally different from the appearance pertaining to inworldly things. Is then the ‘world’ one and the same with ‘being’? Yes and no, depending on the way in which we consider ‘being’ in this context. What allows things to appear as such – i.e. in their being – is the world that is opened through our comprehension of the ‘to be’. In this sense, by asking the question about the world and its unfolding, one is not questioning beings in their being, but is rather questioning what Heidegger calls ‘the truth of beyng’. If we relate to each of the things we encounter by revealing them in the fact that they are, this emerges on the basis of an understanding of the ‘fact that’ in general – and, in a certain sense, this is our relationship to beyng itself. One is always situated in this relationship, even when one does not necessarily think about it and lets it remain only implicit. When it remains implicit it is ‘hidden’ in a twofold sense: first, because it does not appear in the manner of a thing and second, because it is not known that it is hidden and that it is on the basis of this hidden relationship that we can encounter anything in the world. The problem emerges though precisely at the level of this second hiddenness, and this level is the only one which can be surmounted. If, by knowing that something is, we have access to the being of beings, if thus we encounter beings and let the world take place, then what about the fact of knowing that we know that something is? Taking this step, we are already situated in the realm of philosophy and we are inquiring into the meaning of being itself. One could ask, though: does this not lead to an infinite regress, to an ever more encompassing knowing that? The answer is no, on condition that one understands the difference between the two types of ‘that’. If the first one reveals something, namely one or another of the beings encountered in the world, the second one reveals a how, namely how we are – and that we are in the mode of understanding being. Hence, it reveals the world, understood as our being situated in a relationship with beyng. On the contrary, if one confounds the two manners of ‘knowing that’ and interprets both of them on the model of knowing something, of knowing a thing as such, then an infinite regress cannot be prevented, a regress 72

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

occasioned by the ignoring of the above distinction. One would find oneself in a rolling chain of ‘somethings’, from which there would be no possible escape: each new understanding of the ‘as such’ would have to be understood ‘as such’, therefore it would become ‘something known as such’, giving birth to a new ‘as such’ to be understood and so on. Not only does this obstruct any answer to the leading question of how we can know that we find ourselves in a relationship with beyng, but it also prevents any becoming aware of the point at which the misleading step occurred: the one in which we have ignored the fact that knowing the as such cannot be known ‘as such’. What the ‘second order that’ reveals is our finitude; our being situated within a horizon that enlightens the appearance of everything else, but cannot itself be in the same way enlightened. It is the play of  – not in the sense of the retreat which shelters every appearance in particular, but as the hiddenness of the play itself between appearance and retreat. Yet, by the fact that we situate ourselves in relation with it, it is not entirely hidden or non-appearing, as if it were a complete negation. It has, on the contrary, a certain manner of ‘appearance’ – appearing ‘as’ hidden. Should one try to overstep this relation and ask about a total retreat, one entirely foreign to every relation and every understanding, a retreat so profound that it could not even appear as hidden – then wouldn’t that be a manner of transforming our horizon into a finite something in order to reach out to something that this horizon is not? This is one of the questions that arise from the seminars held by Heidegger and Eugen Fink. If Heidegger’s understanding of the horizon implies a movement to an inner ground, Fink, on the contrary, will take the borderline as the sign of a finitude which is at the same time related to its counterpart – to something which exceeds it.

§ 14. Confronting Fink In their discussion on Heraclitus, Fink argues for a more radical perspective than the one offered by the Heideggerian : he tries to think a  which does not contrast with any appearance and which does not stand in any relationship with human comprehension. He calls it the unenlightened sojourn (ungelichteter Aufenthalt), the dark ground (dunkler Grund) which we never experience as such, for when we find ourselves in it we are no longer situated in a relationship with being. What allows us nevertheless to talk about it is the fact that our experience is attested après coup, when we 73

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

return to our worldly perspective. The moment that proves it is, for Fink, the one of sleep, when we fall into the undifferentiated. Then we are no longer situated within the realm of , of the one gathering all (  ), but we are facing the one un-individuated whole (  )137. At the very moment when this takes place, we cannot know that it happens and nor can we account for it or enlighten it in any way: “It is not the dark ground itself, but the comprehension of the dark ground which is halfway enlightened”138. When Heidegger asks whether sleep is the genuine understanding of this ground, he misses, I believe, the main point of Fink’s argument – namely the fact that when ‘experiencing’ such a ground, we do not have an experience of the world anymore, hence no understanding can occur. That is why Fink’s answer tries to make clear the fact that it is not the sleeping one, but the awoken who relates to sleep139. And this is, I think, extremely important for several reasons. First it underscores the idea that it is only from our worldly perspective that we can somehow ‘relate’ to that which goes beyond it. Where ‘that which goes beyond’ does not stand for an explicit ‘exterior’, but for the experience of something that the world is not, yet which can be known from within the world – and this experience is sleep140. Second, it allows us to see that this ‘relation’ can no longer be thought on the model of the hermeneutical circle, for in this case the understanding does not emerge from within the experience, at the very moment when the experience takes place, in order to change it. In Heideggerian terms, one could say that it is no longer a hermeneutics of facticity. In other words, what is enlightened through such an understanding is no explicit ‘beyond’, standing ‘past’ our world, but the borderline itself. Better said – the world as borderline. And by saying ‘the borderline itself’, one should not hear ‘the borderline as such’, for it is not an object and nor does it represent the limit of something, differentiating it from something else. It is not a frontier between two realms, but only 137

Heidegger, Seminare, GA 15, p. 238. GA 15, p. 239: “Nicht der dunkle Grund selbst, sondern das Verstehen des dunklen Grundes ist halbgelichtet.” 139 GA 15, p. 240: “Nicht der Schlafende sondern der Wachende verhält sich zum Schlaf.” 140 Something similar could be said, in Fink’s terms, about keeping ourselves in a relation toward death. For a wider interpretation of this aspect and of Fink’s notion of ‘world’, see Damir Barbarić, Aneignung der Welt. Heidegger – Gadamer – Fink, pp. 219 – 231. 138

74

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

another name for the pure and simple fact that we are here, and that every ‘here’ and every ‘there’ means relationship with being. This is why Fink’s dark ground is not a ‘there’, it is not a ‘ground’ and not even ‘dark’. For, in all rigor one cannot say anything about it, since all saying would be, in this case, a contradiction in terms; from the very first instant when one describes it, even by using negative adjectives, one is already describing something else than that to which one wanted to refer. The ‘dark ground’, once named as such, ceases to be precisely what the words are supposed to express – namely, a completely dark ground, out of perception and of 141. But then, isn’t this unenlightened field condemned to occupy the place of the Kantian Ding an sich, the famous unreachable thing in itself, out of all perception and expression? My answer would be no and for a very specific reason: if Kant’s notion posits an affirmative beyond, Fink’s purpose is only to reveal the negation at stake within life itself. The paradox that Kant has to deal with emerges from the fact that we cannot know anything about the ‘in itself’ – for it is supposed to represent the world-without-ourselves – and yet, by the simple fact that we equate it with the world-as-it-really-is, we have already made an inquiry into the latter. We already know that the world in itself should be in the way in which it would ‘appear’ if no one were there. But how can we know that? To take an example, how could we, were we to wear for our whole life glasses through which everything appears in blue, still know that if we took them off the world would cease to be blue? How could we even know that it is the glasses that are blue and not the world itself, seen maybe through transparent lens? We cannot. All that we do know is that we are wearing glasses. As long as we stick to the dialogue in which Fink engages during the seminar, without taking any step further into his speculative philosophy, can he refrain from falling under the aforementioned critique? When discussing his position, I would avoid though the metaphor of glasses, first because it 141

This is precisely why, when talking about the unenlightened ground, one has no other choice but to distort, to a certain extent, its sense, in order to be able to bring it into discussion. The same point is stressed by Helmuth Vetter in an article dedicated to the dialogue between Heidegger and Fink on this matter (Die nächtliche Seite der Welt, p. 204: “Was Fink mit der ontischen Nähe meint, versucht Heidegger – aus seiner Sicht wohl mit gutem Grund – als »herabgesetzte Offenheit, also ein ontologisches Moment im Menschen« (GA 15, p. 236) zu deuten. Fink bestätigt diese Auffassung aber nur insofern, als ein Rest von Gelichtetsein zugestanden werden muss, um überhaupt noch verstehen und sprechen zu können.”).

75

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

remains too restricted to the field of perception and second because it inevitably induces the idea that there must be a true world on the other side of the lens. Fink does not go that far: the only thing that the experience of sleep reveals is the fact that the world, our world, is a borderline. The point at which I would depart from him concerns nevertheless the meaning of the borderline. Fink takes the frontier as proof for the fact that our world is not everything. Even if we cannot trespass it and make our way into that which the world is not, we at least know that there is a ‘not’142. From a Heideggerian point of view, though, even this would be too much to say143. And the reason why I would agree with Heidegger and return to the example of the glasses is the following: knowing the frontier does not reveal anything else than the frontier itself. A translation of Fink’s affirmation in Heideggerian terms would then be slightly different from the original; it would state that what the world as borderline reveals is that nothing can ever outdistance it – and that even if it could, we would not k n o w it. This is, I believe, where the notion of ‘horizon’ proves extremely revealing. To understand the world as borderline and the borderline as horizon means to account for two essential aspects: first, that there might be something ‘outside’ this horizon – something which, on the other hand, no matter how much we advance toward it, still remains out of reach. But this does not mean that the horizon itself is, as Fink states, a proof for something effectively being ‘outside’ it – even when we agree that ‘outside’ should be taken, once again, not as an explicit beyond, but in the sense that 142 When Heidegger asks if this is to be understood as privative or as negative, Fink decidedly chooses the second alternative: “Das Ungelichtete ist nicht privativ in Bezug auf das Gelichtete aufzufassen. Wohl verstehen wir das Ungelichtete vom Gelichteten her, aber es handelt sich dabei um ein ursprüngliches Verhältnis zur .” (GA 15, p. 238). 143 The difference between Heidegger and Fink’s respective notions of ‘world’ is also noticeable in the Heideggerian interpretation of Nietzsche, where he states that the “finitude of the world does not lie in the fact that it would strike against something else, that the world itself is not, meeting by that its limit, but the finitude comes out of itself” (GA 44, p. 92, my translation). See also “Wozu Dichter?”, in Holzwege, GA 5, p. 310 (Eng. translation “Why Poets?”, in Off the Beaten Track, p. 232: “[…] being would be the uniqueness that preeminently goes beyond itself (the transcendens par excellence). However, this surpassing does not go up and over unto another, but rather it comes over unto itself and back into the essence of its truth. Being itself traverses this passage and is itself its dimension.”).

76

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

there must ‘be’ something else than what our horizon enlightens. Yet, I would say that this we cannot know, for no matter how far we proceed, all that we do achieve is just to push the ‘border of the horizon’ farther and farther away – always remaining, nonetheless, within a horizon. What Fink would reply, though, is that the beyond is not experienced at the end of this linear progression, but through a leap – and he brings as proof the moment of sleep. This is what makes our worldly life appear for him as : as the only existing half of a broken medallion, always bearing the trace of the missing piece. In Fink’s terms, what is at stake is not the missing piece itself, but rather the fact that our own existence has a fragmental character, which is why we always encounter a borderline. Nonetheless, my counterargument to the idea of leaping is that, in this particular case, once the jump is made there is no jumper anymore and there is no realm to host him. Once the glasses are taken off, it is not only the visible world that disappears, but also the eyes perceiving it. How could we know, then, when we put the glasses back on, that in between we have experienced something other than the world? Once again, we cannot. Since our world emerges as relation with the to be itself, which allows all beings to appear in their being, then nothing outside this horizon can, rigorously speaking, be. And it is precisely in this relation that our finitude lies. Finally, what the idea of horizon allows us to grasp is the fact that the second order knowing that means precisely becoming aware of the horizon and not just implicitly being situated within it. It means, therefore, stepping along the borderline without ever trespassing it. Even if, at the same time, an old ‘perspective’ has been overcome, it never changes the fact that we are situated within a horizon. And this is why one should make the distinction between what I will later call an ‘inworldly region’ and the fact of being always situated within a world. Going back to Fink, it must be stressed that, for him, the impossibility of trespassing the borderline leads to an understanding of the fact that our finitude itself is somehow ‘finite’, i.e. that it is not all-encompassing. What I would say, on the contrary, is that the understanding of the finitude opens an unlimited inner-worldly transgression of regions. In the light of this point I will interpret, in what follows, Nietzsche’s eternal return.

77

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 15. Reading Nietzsche The ground for this interpretation is best expressed by a remark of Helmuth Vetter, clearly stated in an article dedicated to Fink: “Knowing the fact that one finds himself in a cavern is indeed an achievement of philosophy (and maybe not philosophy alone); yet the cavern is not, by that, abandoned”144. I would say that the beginning of metaphysics coincides with the opposite belief – according to which, in order to see the cavern as such, one must first make his way out of it. This goes back to saying that, for Plato, the condition for becoming aware of having been situated in a cave is to step out and contemplate the outside. The awareness can never occur from within the experience itself, but only après coup – though heading in a different direction than the après coup belonging to Fink’s analysis of sleep. If, let us say, the cave stands for our world, in Fink’s view one must go back to it in order to account for what one lived while being ‘outside’. On the contrary, in Plato’s sense it is the trespassing of the borderline, it is only the ‘outside’ that reveals what was hidden in the cave. This is where metaphysics begins: the limit is, for the first time with Plato, supposed to be transgressable, thus turning the beyond into an explicit shining that has a name, a form, an identity. In this sense, if metaphysics springs up through a denomination of the beyond, its end will therefore emerge when the impossibility of such a move is revealed. The maybe naïve, but not fruitless question that arises when reading Plato concerns the liberator: if, in order to take the step beyond, one is supposed to be freed of chains by someone else, then it could be asked who is, so to say, the first to be released and by whom. What this question discloses is that it is precisely because of the fact that the cavern cannot be known from the inside that no one can unchain himself by himself. If one needs to contemplate the beyond in order to see the cave as such, this goes back to saying that one needs something coming from the exterior in order to abandon the chains – one needs something which does not belong to him. But with this, two other problems arise.

144

Vetter, op. cit., p. 190: “Dass jemand erkennt, sich in einer Höhle zu befinden, ist zwar eine Leistung, die der Philosophie (und vielleicht nicht nur dieser) zugeschrieben werden kann; doch die Höhle wird dadurch nicht verlassen.” (My translation).

78

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

First, it is not comprehensible how man can perceive shadows in the first place and take them as things. Even if such a question does not arise for Plato, we can ask how – if one didn’t already have an at least implicit comprehension of being – anything could appear to one, and appear as such, namely as this or that thing in particular? If life in the cave represents a ‘first order reflection’ in which man takes things as such without being aware of this, the exit gives birth to a ‘second order reflection’, which makes him become aware of the first one. But if what the second one reveals hadn’t been there from the start, then no step on this way would have ever been possible – not even the enchainment. Second, by effectively transgressing the borderline, one finds oneself in a beyond that requires another ‘horizon’ in which to appear – namely, light. In one of my previous papers145 I have tried to show that, through a careful reading of the allegory of the cave, one discovers the parallel between the role assigned to the fire’s light – in which shadows appear – and the one illuminating the : the sunlight. The latter is nothing else than , naming for Plato not the tension between appearance and retreat, but the pure luminescence enabling the brightness of . Plato does not go any further for the goal has been achieved and the true realm has been attained. Yet, this ignores one important question, making way for what Heidegger would call the forgetfulness of being – what is the dwelling of light? It does not appear, but opens the horizon in which anything else can come up. From here on, another problem arises: if the way of being of shadows, just like the one of true forms, is appearance and if both need light in order to appear, then doesn’t this engender a new limit? Doesn’t this engender some new ‘walls’, just like those of the cavern, which confine the realm of the firelight? In other words, if the second order reflection is meant to unveil an appearing beyond, doesn’t this engender a new cave? Don’t we find ourselves in another horizon, calling for a new transgression? This is, I think, the intuition emerging from the thought of the eternal return – and in this way Nietzsche accomplishes the end of metaphysics, although in a different sense than that stated by Heidegger. Through Nietzsche’s reflection we discover that if one is always situated in the world and if a horizon is always opened, then the fact of wanting to go beyond it only gives birth to a new horizon and to a new borderline to be surpassed, 145

Guzun, op. cit.

79

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

and so on. The fact of trespassing the limit in order to reach that which is out of all horizons will always bring along the same result: no matter ‘where’ we go, we bring the borderline with us, just like we also bear the possibility of establishing a new horizon. The eternal return names therefore not the recurrence of something, but describes what happens when one proceeds to the transgression of the borderline. Viewed from the beyond, this might appear as an infinite regress, eternally condemned to fail in achieving its goal. But understood from within the world, it reveals an inescapable finitude, brought to light on the basis of the world itself. Translated into Platonic terms, it is to say that the cavern can only be known from the inside, and that if one ever tried to make his way out, one would only step in a realm governed by new confines; where the ‘if’ is meant to suggest precisely that one never effectively goes beyond the limit, for this cannot be overcome146. The eternal return describes, therefore, not a ‘positive’ performance but, just as a photograph not yet developed, it reveals ‘in negative’ the finiteness of the world147. Or, better said – the world as finiteness. On the other hand, things could also be seen from an inworldly perspective, namely that of several realms pertaining to the world, what I would call different regions that constitute as many different ‘worlds’, each with their own confines. These can stand for a country, a group of people, an

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

146

This echoes, to a certain extent, Nietzsche’s assertion that even if the returning was only a possibility, and not a concrete fact, the thought of it should be enough to shake and reshape ourselves, just as it has been the case until now for the doctrine of an eternal damnation. See KSA 9, XI [203]: “Prüfen wir, wie der Gedanke, daß sich etwas wiederholt, bis jetzt gewirkt hat (das Jahr z.B. oder periodische Krankheiten, Wachen und Schlafen usw.). Wenn die Kreis-Wiederholung auch nur eine Wahrscheinlichkeit oder Möglichkeit ist, auch der Gedanke einer Möglichkeit kann uns erschüttern und umgestalten, nicht nur Empfindungen oder bestimmte Erwartungen! Wie hat die Möglichkeit der ewigen Verdämmniß gewirkt!” Though he seems here to take the eternal return as, literally, the repetition of a series of events, what I find of the utmost importance is the idea that such a possibility is not meant to lead us ahead, toward an indifferent future – if everything will come back the same way it was, then what point is there to take any action? −, but to bring us back to the decisiveness of our present moment. For it is our own temporality that the awareness of the eternal return should influence. 147 Just as, for Heidegger, the enframing represents “the photographical negative of the Ereignis” (GA 15, p. 366, my translation).

80

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

environment, that is, for certain situations that disclose the world in different settings. These are confines which can be known as such, because each of them can be overcome at the moment when the limits become explicit and appear as such, when one no longer simply obeys them, acting according to the rules of that specific situation, but takes a step ‘back’ and becomes aware of them. This step necessarily encounters another realm as the horizon from which the previous draws the possibility of its appearance. But then, does this imply that one no longer plays according to the rules of the first region? Not necessarily. One can still pursue the game, only that from now on he will always do it somehow differently than before, when the game itself was implicit and therefore had no truth value as all the values were calculated by taking it as a point of reference. When Nietzsche claims that truth means falsity and that there aren’t any absolute certainties, but only better or worse values, pushing forward or preventing the development of life, he is not claiming that truth is equivalent with something false, but just that it is un-true (unwahr). In other words, that it represents the perspective from which something appears in one way or another: the system of beliefs, of prejudices or of rules according to which something is revealed as such. It is that which defines, therefore, what is true and what is false, i.e. what is right (richtig) and what is wrong. But the determinant perspective cannot be itself right or wrong, true or false, for the question does just not arise. It is therefore un-true not as opposed to falsity, but as standing beyond the dichotomy. On the contrary, it can become true or false when brought within the limits of another perspective and made appear as such. In this sense, and in this sense only, the eternal return as transgression of the borderlines names a ‘positive’ performativity, namely the constant passing from one region to another, while always remaining ineluctably situated within a perspective. A new light is thus cast upon Nietzsche’s affirmation that the becoming receives the character of being: what remains eternally is not a certain presence that would never fade away, but the unceasing passing to another perspective. Eternal, I dare say, has nothing to do with ‘eternity’ as we usually understand it, opposed to inworldly time148, nor does it have anything in

148 Cf. Pavel Kouba, who underlines the fact that the doctrine of the eternal return “stands counter the metaphysical separation between eternal and transient” (Kouba,

81

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

common with constancy and stability in the metaphysical sense. It rather means that which is unavoidable, that which cannot be otherwise – the ‘same’. And this does not name one specific perspective or another, but precisely the fact that to live means to be situated within a perspective. This is the world, enabling all transgressions from one particular region to another. It is only because one originally is in the mode of the horizon that one can exchange perspectives and should be able149 to encounter, in this sense, an otherness. This original situation is what prevents both the fall into relativism and the danger of infinite regress. If not all perspectives are equal, if not all have the same intensity (for they do not enlighten things in the same way), neither are they situated within a hierarchy. By revealing the world ‘in negative’, the eternal return is also meant to reveal the inexistence of an all-encompassing perspective. This changing between inworldly points of view might recall the movement of the will to power: a continuous transgressing, where every stage of power attained serves only to assure the leap to the next one. Every limit is to be overcome, thus generating a new horizon, with new limits to be surmounted, all by remaining within a borderline. The movement of the will to power, already in the form described by Heidegger150, allows us no longer to interpret it as an ontology of presence (as Heidegger concludes his own analysis). It can no longer stand for an understanding of being on the model of what is here and now present, taking ‘here’ as an overall appearance and ‘now’ as a never fading moment. The unique point at which the will to power does resonate with praesentia is the imposing, mastering attitude which makes things – in this case, perspectives – be by deciding about them and by assuring their stability; a stability which is, once more, only a temporary, provisory one, consolidated only in order to and up until the moment when it may be overcome. This is why I believe that the movement of the will to power could rather be understood as an ontology of the provisional, where the temporary aspect implied by the word ‘provisional’ emerges precisely as a consequence op. cit., p. 42, my translation), even though afterwards he does not develop this interpretation in the same direction as I do. 149 But, as one will see in what follows, for Nietzsche no otherness is encountered, for the will to power, engendering all perspectives from within itself, can meet itself only. 150 See above, § 11.

82

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

of pro-videre. The will to power is a foreseeing in the sense that it is always directed not to that which is, but to its next step. Every stage is seen not ‘in itself’, but only inasmuch as it propels forward, to the following stage of the ascent. Each move is not confined within the bounds of a specific realm, but is already sent to a new horizon, being at each time a seeing forward. Therefore, we are far from confronting ourselves with a seizure of everything there is, subdued to a totalizing view – a static, contemplative look. Instead the whole is performative. The whole ‘is’ insofar as it is carried through by an act of overcoming. What should be stressed hereafter is that the will to power hollows thus an abyss between Nietzsche’s philosophy and a phenomenological description of the being in the world. Whereas the eternal return, as I have tried to show, lets itself be read as such a description, the will to power homogenizes instead the difference between the world and us. It nullifies the distinction between ourselves and the already there as something other than ourselves. Since everything is will to power and since the will offers to itself its own ground in the form of values and perspectives ensuring its ascent, then, as Heidegger remarks, the will to power is to itself, as form, the unique content151. The regions that it encounters do not represent an otherness to enter in relation with, but the ‘same’ repeating itself. Where ‘same’, here, is not understood in the sense previously stressed – that of an unchangeable situatedness – but is seen now as the one present in any apparent diversity, the will willing man and world alike. One of the conclusions I would draw from this is that while the thought of the eternal return has the merit of revealing the inexorable finitude of the world, rendering void any explicit beyond and thus bringing everything back to ‘earth’ as the only reality there is, on the other hand the will to power represents the failure to acknowledge the difference at stake within the world itself. In other words, while the eternal return successfully proves the impossibility of tracing a difference between the world and something other than the world, the problem is, subsequently, that the same lack of difference is cast upon the world itself. This is where I think that the eternal return could speak to us more than the will to power, disclosing 151 Überwindung der Metaphysik, GA 7, p. 87: “[Der reine Wille] will sich selbst und ist als der Wille das Sein. Deshalb ist, vom Gehalt her gesehen, der reine Wille und sein Gesetz formal. Er ist sich selbst der einzige Inhalt als die Form.”

83

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

something impossible to grasp under the reign of the latter: the trace of a difference emerging within the world. The Augenblick. As I tried to show at the end of the last chapter, a major point in Heidegger’s interpretation is the description of the instant as the event that discloses the eternal return, all by emerging within the eternal return itself. This idea, now related to the fact that the eternal return does not account for a pure repetition of equal moments, but designates the impossible transgression of the borderline, allows us to understand the Augenblick as the moment when one thinks the horizon itself. It is the moment when one relates not to one thing or another appearing in the world, but to worldliness itself. This is what introduces the difference and, along with it, the relationship: in order to emerge, the Augenblick needs to be lived: it is not our creation and nor is it that of the will. One cannot just ‘want’ it to be there in order for it to happen and yet it could not occur without our being there, dwelling it. In this sense, it represents an essential moment of encounter: the emergence of the encounter itself, which is, as such, the Augenblick. Far from being a part of a framework-time filled with events like a coffer carrying an indifferent content, the Augenblick is the moment when nothing ‘else’ happens but the moment itself. It names an encounter which is not the result of some independent thinking that reflects upon an already existing world, as the dwarf maintains152, but the ‘at the same time’ of the occurrence of thinking and world, through the encounter itself. If I insist upon the fact that the Augenblick should not be understood on the basis of our usual conception of time, it is because such a ‘moment’ does not emerge in an already existing temporal framework. On the contrary, it is the Augenblick that gives the measure of time: what it reveals is that there are no equal moments, following each other as the rings on a chain, but only events structuring time on different scales of intensity. Events which – in a transitive sense of the verb ‘to be’ – are time; they dwell it from within and hence are ungraspable by any extrinsic theoria. It is thus the Augenblick that decides on the manner in which we situate ourselves within world and time and not the other way round. 152 GA 44, p. 44: “Therefore is the thought (Gedanke) of the eternal return of the same not yet thought (gedacht) when one only represents (vorstellen) to himself: everything turns around in circle.” (My translation).

84

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

For this reason, one should understand the Augenblick in a deeper sense than the one it has in everyday language or in metaphysics, where it only denotes a very short moment, an in-stant opposed to that which stays. Blicken is one and the same with ‘blink’ – a way of ‘seeing’, but never as a look that entirely grips that which is regarded. While blinking, one’s eyes are not wide open, contemplating a pure shining with no shadows of retreat, but nor are they closed, facing a complete hiddenness. The wink stands, so to say, in between, catching a glimpse of what is concomitantly hidden and revealed – and which appears in this manner not only due to its ‘own’ way of dwelling, but because this is how the Augenblick discloses it. Because this own emerges through the Augen-blick. What the ‘moment’ thus defined suggests is not an indifferent passing time, above and outside our presence, but one emerging throughout our existence. Blinking is always the eyes’ blink, that is – not an all-encompassing view, but a situated one, belonging to us inasmuch as we catch a glimpse of an otherness. Rigorously speaking, it is not even a ‘view’, for even though it emerges from within the horizon, it is not meant to ‘see’ anything appearing within this horizon, but to give sway to the horizon itself. But then, how should one talk about it, without falling out of it and transforming the discourse into a theoria? Without transforming the world into a worldly standpoint, interchangeable with any other? The failure is already depicted by the dwarf’s understanding153. He is convinced that the two ways which part from the gate named Augenblick meet somewhere far from him, in ‘eternity’, and therefore everything appears to him as an indifferent repetition of occurrences, which do not allow any fissure or decision. On this view time exists in itself now, just as it did before and will continue to exist afterwards, fixed once and for all in a never ending circle. This is why the dwarf is entitled to say, as Heidegger notes, that everything is worthless, since it all remains the same, no matter what. This is far from understanding that, on the contrary, once the Augenblick assumed as deciding upon the return, everything is worth, all things are at stake154. 153

Nietzsche, Zarathustra, pp. 125 – 126. GA 44, pp. 203 – 204: “[…] auf der einen Seite: alles ist nichts, alles ist »gleich«, es lohnt sich nichts; auf der anderen Seite: alles kehrt wieder, alles wird wieder als das Gleiche wiederkommen, es lohnt sich alles, es kommt auf alles und jeden Augenblick 154

85

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

What I would insist upon, taking one step further from Heidegger’s analysis, is that the confusion of the dwarf lies in the fact that he does not distinguish between the whole as horizon and the mere totality of everything there is. Accordingly he thinks that the totality is seizable from his point of view, one which he fails to see, precisely, as a point of view. The world as horizon is thus confounded with the limit of any other worldly region which can become object of inquiry when one enters into another perspective. If every region has an outside, the dwarf thinks that there has to be an ‘outside’ of the world as well, one in which – paradoxically enough – he can stand and pass judgment about the all-encompassing totality. But precisely by this move he falls into the whirl of the never-ending horizon proliferation, for if the world is a closed circle of repeatable events, while making this assumption one is also situated within a circle of repeatable events, needing another circle in order to become aware of the former, and so on, in an infinitely enlargeable wave, consisted of ever more encompassing circles. The intriguing question that Zarathustra addresses to him appears then in a new light: “[…] if everything has already been here before, what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must this gateway too not already – have been here? And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore – itself as well?”155 The unvoiced ‘yes’ implied by the dwarf’s silence equals precisely, as explained above, the failure to recognize the ontological split between inworldly events and the horizon within which they take place – between everything there is and the relation toward the is itself. Nonetheless, the dwarf’s ‘failure’ is not ‘false’, nor is it ‘wrong’, as if a generally valid truth stood on the opposite side of the barricade. What it should make us aware of is not just the fact that the Augenblick itself calls for a different understanding, but also that we can all, at some point, find an. Die kleinste Kluft, die Scheinbrücke des Wortes »alles ist Gleich« verbirgt das Ewig-Geschiedene: nämlich »alles ist Gleich« als alles ist gleichgültig; und »alles kehrt wieder«: nichts ist gleichgültig, es gilt alles.” 155 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 126. If everything were to recur, the Augenblick included, then the paradox emerging from such an understanding would be not only that any repetition presupposes an unique, original event to be repeated, but also that there must be a chronological difference between a first repetition, then a second one, and so on. While, on the contrary, the eternal return dismisses, as Fink observes, the ‘before’ and ‘after’, preventing us from thinking the repetition in a linear time, divided into present, past and future (Fink, op. cit., pp. 124 – 126).

86

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

ourselves in the dwarf’s shoes – for he embodies a certain way of being situated within the world. Facing the event which should bring him before the awareness of his situation, he prefers to take refuge in the apparent, thus missing the confrontation with a moment of decision. If he cannot render the eternal return other than by the aid of inworldly concepts, it is not only the world that finds itself distorted, but his own existence as well. Therefore, if the question of expressing the Augenblick remains ahead of us, just like the one concerning the world or the dwelling of beyng, it is not only through a certain event that it emerges, but also through our own way of finding ourselves within it. And if this event made us stand as on the edge of a wink, facing at the same time the chance of a glimpse and the danger of obscurity, what would then our answer be?

87

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

88

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Chapter V

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Reading Technology after Nietzsche

The reading of the will to power and of the eternal return presented in the last chapter sheds a new light upon what I have taken as a point of departure, namely the question of technology, a question which leads to what Heidegger calls ‘the other beginning’. What follows is not a conclusive view of a series of arguments, but the disclosure of how it can be thought the moment in which we find ourselves situated. If Heidegger equates technology with the end of metaphysics and sees the latter as accomplished in Nietzsche’s philosophy, this is because he sees Nietzsche as reaching the utmost pursuit of unhiddenness in the shape of a becoming forever present. What I have tried to show is that the basis for a different reading of Nietzsche is already offered by Heidegger’s analysis, a reading which sees the will to power as always directed to the next step of its ascent, and the eternal return as event breaking the circle of repetitions. If the former depicts an always temporary leap, the latter reveals the impossibility of a transgression that would aspire to reach an entirely different realm than the one from which it sprang. These two aspects allow us now to understand both why technology is something more than a mere pursuit of an everlasting appearance and how, despite its imposing attitude, does it call for our thinking.

§ 16. Technology and Eternal Return Grounding my analysis on Heidegger’s view of technology, I will start by remarking that the main feature shared by technology and the will to power is that they both unceasingly point in the direction of a new step to be attained, without halting at any level that has already been reached. But if technology is grounded, as Heidegger says, in  and if it seems to 89

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

yearn for a complete disclosure, I would then add that its concrete movement consists in an always temporary unhiddenness. The same thought can be derived also from Heidegger’s claim that things do no longer appear as objects, having their own stability, but as standing-reserves: they are only inasmuch as they stand at our disposal. Following this perspective, I shall add that almost nothing of what is created by means of technology pretends to an everlasting presence – unless it is kept under maintenance, if it is to hold itself in the maintenant, that is, in our fugitive now. What the standingreserve brings to light is that things are not only disclosed according to their proper use, but are meant to ensure a further disclosure, and move toward a further stage of progress. Their nature of things is shadowed in favor of the forward movement of technology, suggesting that we have rather to deal with what I had previously called an ontology of the provisional156 than with one of an everlasting presence. And yet, in which sense does this still stand true for our times, which confront us with a very different experience of technology than Heidegger’s? Or, better said, is this description of instruments as standingreserves, pursued for in an unending desire of revealing the only one that corresponds to our today?157 For we do no longer live in a world in which technology would constitute the ‘exception’, as one could formerly have said about the atomic bomb, or even about the invention of more familiar things like cars, telephones or trains. Even though they bore already, as Heidegger would say, the trace of the enframing, even though they were, in their abode, the same as what we live today, I would argue that they still allowed, to a certain extent, a distance from which to be perceived158. While now, as Susanna Lindberg notices, our world “is not determined only by industrial 156

See above, § 12. Almost the same question arises in Florian Grosser’s article »Die Frage nach der Technik«. Vom Wachstum des Rettenden in der Gefahr (p. 239), even though in the end he seems to imply that our times, characterized by renewable energies and social media, would be far from a logic of a challenging demand (Herausfordern) and of ordering (Bestellen). 158 Even though Heidegger already affirms that the invention of television, just like other technical developments of his time, brought along a uniformity nullifying all distances and all proximities (see Das Ding, GA 7, pp. 167 – 168), our world has not only advanced on this path, but has also reduced to a minimum another type of distance, namely the one needed precisely in order to enter into a relation with things, instead of being captivated in their realm. 157

90

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

mega technologies, but also by information technologies whose nature is different: not massive and centralized, but ubiquitous and intimate”159. Not only are they part of our daily life in such a way that the latter can no longer be cut off from the former, but they also respond to our inner desire for beauty, perfection, discretion, functionality and reliability. They do no longer shock us through their gigantesque proportions given by heavy and repulsive materials nor do they burst in our habits violently. Instead they encourage these habits gently, and respond to needs that we were not aware of before and to fears that have now lost their strength. The technological achievements have ceased to emerge suddenly in front of us as uncanny objects before an astonished spectator – they sway instead like waves, filling an undifferentiated surrounding which stands for a user friendly home. And yet, does this really amount to a home? Is there still an 160 to live in, opening a horizon in which our own self is brought to fulfillment through the encounter of an otherness? Or is “the contemporary world of technology […] not only unhomely, but in a specific sense unworldly”161? The speed of newness is so great and the appearance so glittering that, amidst the bustling activities of our everyday life, the question does not even arise. Instead of letting a world be opened, we become the residents of a place which does not resemble the “petrified worldlessness” of a stone, but “seems to approach the animal’s poorness-in-world”162. For we are so captivated and so overwhelmed by the shining which calls for our attention that we do not even feel threatened by the once disquieting perspective of a complete destruction of our physical world. On the contrary, everything seems to be perfectly set in order, allowing us to relish the seductiveness of a peaceful realm, and to return to it with all haste when the lack of sense becomes flagrant. If there is a danger, doesn’t it lie precisely here, in the impossibility of a distance, and therefore of a relation? It lies, just as Heidegger’s analysis underscores, in the fact of being only surrounded by appearance, by

159

Susanna Lindberg, Worldless, Selfless. See above, § 4. 161 Lindberg, op. cit. 162 Ibid. These concepts are used by Heidegger in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (GA 29/30, p. 263), where he describes Dasein as world-building (weltbildend), in comparison with the stone as worldless (weltlos) and the animal as poor in world (weltarm). 160

91

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

unhidden things, which make us lose all horizons. For it is only now that they somehow start to resemble us, answering to our unspoken wishes and anticipating our desires, taking the form of a mild alterity, submissive and available at all times, meeting us with feline grace, and yet, precisely on that account, conducting our moves. The choice of the purpose for which the instruments are used drifts slowly from man to the usage itself, the ‘forwhat’ (das Wozu163) ceases to be determined by our intention (das WorumWillen), determining it instead; for it is the usage that decides we are to play the role of a Wozu among others, transforming us in a resource among others – a human resource. Technology comes in a certain sense so close to us, pervading our intimacy, that we have all the more chances to see it there, if it weren’t for the fact that its nearness constitutes, at the same time, the greatest temptation to yield to. The danger of the enframing does not lie therefore in the technological practice itself, but, just as Heidegger had already noticed, in the way in which technology abides164; for it encourages us to give in to it, since it is obviously nothing else but mere technological practice, putting itself under our complete control, calling for nothing, while offering everything. But if it succeeds in imposing such a view of itself, it is precisely because it is not limited to the creation and usage of products, but rules over several domains of our concern, from politics and economy165 to academic progress166 and globalization, determining our way of ‘relating’ to everything there is. It rules, thus, over our own being in the world. The difference could be made by

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

163

Sein und Zeit, p. 84. Technik, GA 7, p. 29: “Das Gefärliche ist nicht die Technik. Es gibt keine Dämonie der Technik, wohl dagegen das Geheimnis ihres Wesens. Das Wesen der Technik ist als ein Geschick des Entbergens die Gefahr.” 165 Fred Dallmayr, op. cit., p. 261: “Heidegger’s comments seem particularly pertinent to economic or market liberalism, that is, to liberal capitalism which today is the dominant ideology around the world. Under the aegis of liberal capitalism, all beings are uniformly transformed into commodities of production and consumption, with the exchange of commodities governed by a quantitative and calculable price mechanism. Apart from the yardsticks of price, cost, and profitability, no other considerations can possibly enter the capitalist system of production and consumption without vitiating or spoiling its overall efficiency.” 166 Ibid., p. 262, fn. 23: “In American academia, intellectual life is in large measure integrated into the production process, with performance being measured in quantitative terms (funding and output).” 164

92

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

the way in which we are to find ourselves in it; technology, just as the eternal return, does not ‘exist in itself’, but abides accordingly to the manner in which it is lived.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

§ 17. The Ethical Ground We can now understand how the hermeneutical circle, which has led us from technology to the question of metaphysics and of the eternal return, directs us now the other way round, from the latter to the former. For not only do our times allow a certain reading of the eternal return, but also this reading opens another manner of being situated in our own ‘now’. Lived from the unique perspective of technological progress, the eternal return seemed to depict nothing else but an everlasting presence, constituted by equal entities repeating themselves in a never ending factual recurrence. And yet, the same thought of the return comprised the possibility of another experience, namely that of finitude and, along with it, of a horizon. While in the first case one kept himself, just as the dwarf, in an illusory ‘outside’, from where everything appeared to be alike, the second stance came as an assuming of the within – making thus way to an openness from which one was able to recognize both his own manner of being and the danger of living it as an eternal sum of indifferent events. Now, the same possibilities are cast upon the understanding of technology, which could subsequently show itself either as eternal recurrence of a placid series-production – an eternal coming back of the identical, reinforced through fabrication, industrialization and upgrading – or as the situation which reveals us the fact that we are in a world of technology, and in danger of living it as a succession of mass productions. If, as Heidegger says, quoting Hölderlin, “[…] where danger is, grows / the saving also”167, it is precisely because we are not only confronted with the menace at stake in our epoch, but also with the chance brought along through its calling. Technology is, in this sense, the event in which we are situated, but of which we have to become aware in order for it to take place as event revealing our being situated in it. Technology is, itself, that which breaks the circle of its own deployment, on condition that the sense of a difference is introduced: on condition that the thinking of technology occurs. It 167 Technik, GA 7, p. 29: “Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.” (My translation.)

93

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

goes back to saying, as I have previously stated, that the Augenblick cannot emerge without someone living it, though the latter is never to be taken as the ‘cause’ of the former. If “the Gestell shows ‘in negative’ the Ereignis, which does not liberate a new epoch, but frees ours from its forgetfulness”168, it is also true that it can only show it for someone who catches sight (erblicken) of the Gestell; that is, for someone who responds to it and thus enters into a relationship, instead of losing himself into the call. The responding takes place as a difference, without which we become one and the same with the forward movement of technology, just as the will to power is one and the same with that which it pushes forward. We can thus perceive technology as a moment of crisis, taken in the original sense of the Greek  – a moment of separation and decision, brought by with such a bright shining that it can either blind us, or make us see it as shining. From its confines, we can either encounter the world as horizon, or remain forever prisoners therein. It is the moment where we can either lose ourselves in a world that has become an imprisoning cave or become aware of it and thus experience the stepping along the borderline. Only then we do escape the mere return of the identical in favor of the thought of the eternal return; for then we are able to see technology itself as borderline, unable to be transgressed, but knowable as borderline and, by that, already over-come – not by reaching something else than what it is, but toward the difference itself. In this sense the word ‘difference’ stands not for a distinction between one thing and another, but for the ‘between’ itself: for that which allows one thing or another to appear as similar or as different, that is, as comparable; by allowing things to appear ‘as’ in the first place, it lets them be. The ‘between’ is therefore ‘different’ from the first just as from the second entity that it separates, but it is different from them not in the same way as they are one from the other. It is an ‘other’ with no other term of comparison, the sheer otherness in the shape of an outright singularity169. The question which ensues hereafter will therefore recall the one that has been running implicitly throughout all this work: what is the dwelling of such an otherness? How does it abide? If we are the only ones to be stirred 168

Michel Haar, Le tournant de la détresse, p. 354 (my translation). Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, GA 10, p. 125: “[…] das Seiende ist ein jeweiliges und so ein vielfältiges; dagegen ist das Sein einzig, der absolute Singular in der unbedingten Singularität.” 169

94

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

by it then, as Heidegger states, “the question: who are we, must remain plainly and wholly comprised in the questioning of the fundamental question: how does beyng abide?”170 In the world of technology, we can find out whether we still have a home only by asking what offers us a home as human beings in the first place; what opens our  as relationship to an otherness and already offers us the answer to the form that any other relation should take to any other alterity? Such an attempt should not be understood as a mere ‘subjective’ desire of accomplishing our own self, but as a response to that toward which the ‘self’ already calls our attention – namely to the fact that we are inasmuch as we stand in an openness which lets things be, withdrawing itself in order for something to appear on its behalf. If the dwelling of our  occurs as offer and retreat, then ethical is, first and foremost, precisely the abidance of beyng as 171 and Seinlassen. Any questioning of its dwelling will therefore both presuppose and call for another attitude on our side than the one of power and mastery. This we can name an ethical attitude, inasmuch as it follows the way in which we are given what we already are – where the ‘already’ is meant to express not only the ‘how’ of such an approach but also its abinding ‘why’. Far from complying with an ‘obligation’ or constraint that imposes limits on our ‘freedom’, we are to abide by that which dwells as binding172. For if this places us beyond the choice between several ‘ethical theories’ and their different groundings, it is only because it parts once and for all from the good old principle that one cannot take what is as a measure for what should be. When, 170

GA 65, p. 54: “Zumal die Frage: wer wir sind, rein und völlig eingefügt bleiben muß in das Fragen der Grundfrage: wie west das Seyn?” 171 See above, § 4. 172 Startling as the creation of a word like ‘abinding’ may be, I appealed to it due to its capacity for perfectly expressing that the abode (Wesen) of beyng only takes place as relation to the human being, binding us both in the sense of gathering, bringing together (which echoes the versammeln proper to ), and in that of a binding call, to which we cannot but answer. We can nonetheless answer either by overturning the relation, obeying to a logic of mastery and utility or by acting in accordance with – that is, abiding by – that which first and foremost abides, namely being. The ‘tautology’ here implied recalls Heidegger’s own understanding of tautology as   , that is, : saying one and the same with the ,  being thus only another name for  (Was ist das – die Philosophie?, p. 13).

95

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

as Heidegger underscores, “what ‘is’ before all else, is being”173, no ethical fallacy stems from saying that it is the ‘is’ itself which calls for our corresponding attitude, preventing the latter to equal a mere ‘should’. In order for a response of this kind to take place, one has to overcome such a distinction, along with those which separate acting from thinking, activity from passivity and power from weakness174. ‘To overcome’ describes thus, just as in Heidegger’s lecture Überwindung der Metaphysik, a leap into the original, a leap which, far from leaving behind the situation from which it emerges, brings this one to light in its abode. The other beginning will therefore occur not as a ‘new’ one, but as the disclosure of that which grounded the first beginning of philosophy as metaphysics. The thinking through which it reveals itself will then be, in its turn, essentially different from a ‘mental faculty’, a dominating ratio separated from its object. If to think means to be situated within a relationship, bearing this relationship to its accomplishment, then what calls for it will be one and the same with what our times give us to think: the fact that they do not grant any thinking, the fact that we do not yet think175.

173

See above, fn. 76. GA 66, pp. 187 – 188: “Seyn − das Machtlose, jenseits von Macht und Unmacht, besser außerseits von Macht und Unmacht, wesenhaft unbezogen auf Solches.” 175 GA 8, p. 7: “Das Bedenklichste in unserer bedenklichen Zeit ist, daß wir noch nicht denken.” 174

96

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Bibliography

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Martin Heidegger’s Works: −“Brief über den »Humanismus«”, in Wegmarken, Gesamtausgabe 9 (abbreviated GA), Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1976, pp. 313 – 364. −Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1989 / Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. by P. Emad and K. Maly, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1999 / Apports à la philosophie (De l’avenance), trans. by F. Fédier, Gallimard, Paris, 2013. −Besinnung, GA 66, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1997. −“Das Ding”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, GA 7, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, pp. 165 – 187. −“Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens”, in Zur Sache des Denkens, GA 14, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2007, pp. 67 – 90. −“Die Frage nach der Technik”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, GA 7, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, pp. 5 – 36 / “The Question Concerning Technology”, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. by W. Lovitt, Harper & Row, New York, 1977, pp. 3 – 35. −Die Geschichte des Seyns, GA 69, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1998. −Der Satz vom Grund, GA 10, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1997. −Einführung in die Metaphysik, GA 40, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1983. −Heraklit. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens. Logik. Heraklits Lehre vom Logos, GA 55, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1979. −“Logos (Heraklit, Fragment 50)”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, GA 7, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, pp. 212 – 234. −Nietzsche, vol. I, GA 6.1, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1996. −Nietzsche, vol. II, GA 6.2, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1997. −Nietzsches metaphysische Grundstellung im abendländischen Denken. Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen, GA 44, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1986. −Ontologie. Hermeneutik der Faktizität, GA 63, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1988. −Parmenides, GA 54, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1982. −Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1967. −Seminare, GA 15, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1986. −Über den Anfang, GA 70, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2005.

97

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

−“Überwindung der Metaphysik”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, GA 7, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, pp. 67 – 98. −“Vom Wesen der Wahrheit”, in Wegmarken, GA 9, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1976, pp. 177 – 202. −Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet, GA 34, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1988 / The Essence of Truth. On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theatetus, trans. by T. Sadler, Continuum, London, 2002. −Was heißt Denken?, GA 8, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2002. −Was ist das – die Philosophie?, Günther Neske Pfullingen, Tübingen, 1966. −“Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?” in Vorträge und Aufsätze, GA 7, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, pp. 99 – 124 / “Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?”, trans. by B. Magnus, in Review of Metaphysics, March 1967, pp. 411 – 431. −“Wissenschaft und Besinnung”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, GA 7, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 2000, pp. 37 – 66. −“Wozu Dichter?”, in Holzwege, GA 5, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1977, pp. 269 – 320 / “Why Poets?” in Off the Beaten Track, trans. by J. Young and K. Haynes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 200 – 241.

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Works: −Also sprach Zarathustra, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1999 / Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. by A. del Caro, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. −Der Wille Zur Macht, Alfred Kröner Verlag, Leipzig, 1922 / The Will to Power, trans. by W. Kaufman and R.J. Hollingdale, Random House, New York, 1968. −Kritische Studienausgabe (abbreviated as KSA), vol. 9, Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin, 1980. −KSA, vol. 13, Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin, 1980. −Zur Genealogie der Moral, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 2004 / On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. by C. Diethe, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007.

Secondary Literature: Barbarić, Damir, Aneignung der Welt. Heidegger – Gadamer – Fink, Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M, 2007. Blond, Louis P., Heidegger and Nietzsche. Overcoming Metaphysics, Continuum, London, 2010.

98

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Brujić, Branka, “Das Ethos des anderen Anfangs”, in Barbarić, Damir (ed.), Das spätwerk Heideggers. Ereignis – Sage – Geviert, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, 2007, pp. 19 – 27. Casale, Rita, L’esperienza Nietzsche di Heidegger tra Nichilismo e Seinsfrage, Bibliopolis, Napoli, 2005. Dallmayr, Fred, “Heidegger on Macht and Machenschaft”, in Continental Philosophy Review, 34, 2001, pp. 247 – 267. Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche et la philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2010. Fédier, François, L’humanisme en question. Pour aborder la lecture de la Lettre sur l’humanisme de Martin Heidegger, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 2012. −“Après la technique”, in Heidegger Studies, 20, 2004, pp. 129 – 143. Fink, Eugen, La philosophie de Nietzsche, trans. by H. Hildebrand and A. Lindenberg, Éditions du Minuit, Paris, 1965. −“Nietzsches Metaphysik des Spiels”, in Nielsen, Cathrin and Sepp, Hans Rainer (eds.), Welt denken, Karl Alver Verlag, Freiburg i.Br., 2010, pp. 25 – 37. Grosser, Florian, “»Die Frage nach der Technik«. Vom Wachstum des Rettenden in der Gefahr”, in Thomä, Dieter (ed.), Heidegger Jahrbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart, 2013, pp. 236 – 239. Guzun, Mădălina, Heidegger şi Platon: aletheia ca loc al unei întâlniri, Bachelor graduation thesis presented at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, June 2011. Haar, Michel, “Le tournant de la détresse. Ou: comment l’époque de la technique peut-elle finir?”, in Haar, Michel (ed.), Cahier de l’Herne. Heidegger, Éditions de l’Herne, Paris, 1983, pp. 331 – 358. Klossowski, Pierre, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, trans. by D.W. Smith, Athlone Press, London, 1997. Kouba, Pavel, Die Welt nach Nietzsche, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, 2001. Lindberg, Susanna, Worldless, Selfless, lecture held at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal during the colloquium Ort und Selbst. Heideggers Auto-TopoGraphie, November 2013. Lossi, Annamaria, Nietzsche und Platon. Begegnung auf dem Weg der Umdrehung des Platonismus, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, 2006. Löwith, Karl, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. by J.H. Lomax, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997. Mallory, J.P. and Adams, D.Q., The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006. Mincă, Bogdan, “Despre Geschichte şi Geschick la Heidegger şi despre traducerea lor în română”, in Ferencz-Flatz, Christian and Marinescu, Paul (eds.), Timp, memorie şi tradiţie. Studii de fenomenologia istoriei, Zeta Books, Bucureşti, 2012, pp. 72 – 88.

99

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

−“Die Übersetzung von Heideggers Vorträge und Aufsätze ins Rumänische als ein philosophisches Gespräch mit drei anderen Sprachen (Deutsch, Latein, Griechisch)”, in Heidegger Studies, 28, 2012, pp. 237 – 247. −Scufundătorii din Delos. Heidegger şi primii filozofi, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2010. Mitchell, Andrew J., “The Coming of History: Heidegger and Nietzsche against the Present”, in Continental Philosophy Review, 46, 2013, pp. 395 – 411. Montebello, Pierre, Nietzsche. La volonté de puissance, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2001. Nielsen, Cathrin, “Kategorien der Physis. Heidegger und Fink”, in Nielsen, Cathrin and Sepp, Hans Rainer (eds.), Welt denken, Karl Alver Verlag, Freiburg i.Br., 2010, pp. 154 – 183. −and Sepp, Hans Rainer, Welt bei Fink, in Nielsen, Cathrin and Sepp, Hans Rainer (eds.), Welt denken, Karl Alver Verlag, Freiburg i.Br., 2010, pp. 9 – 24. Peinzger, Peter, “Der Augenblick: die Ewigkeit. Nietzsches philosophische Sehnsucht im Spiegel der ewigen Wiederkehr”, in Nietzscheforschung, 18, 2011, pp. 27 – 43. Rae, Gavin, “Being and Technology: Heidegger on the Overcoming of Metaphysics”, in The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 43/3, October 2012, pp. 305 – 325. Skowron, Michael, “Zarathustra-Lehren. Übermensch, Wille zur Macht, ewige Wiederkunft”, in Nietzsche Studien, 33, 2004, pp. 68 – 89. Stegmaier, Werner, “Metaphysische Interpretation eines Anti-Metaphysikers”, in Thomä, Dieter (ed.), Heidegger Jahrbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart, 2013, pp. 174 – 181. Taminiaux, Jacques, “L’essence vraie de la technique“, in Haar, Michel (ed.), Cahier de l’Herne. Heidegger, Éditions de l’Herne, Paris, 1983, pp. 263 – 284. Vattimo, Gianni, Introduzione a Nietzsche, Laterza, Bari, 1990. Vietta, Silvio, Heideggers Kritik am Nationalsozialismus und an der Technik, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1989. Vetter, Helmuth, “Die nächtliche Seite der Welt”, in Nielsen, Cathrin and Sepp, Hans Rainer (eds.), Welt denken, Karl Alver Verlag, Freiburg i.Br., 2010, pp. 184 – 207. Watson, Alan, “Repraesentatio in Classical Latin”, in Scholarly Works, 9, 2006, pp. 15 – 19.

Dictionaries and their abbreviations: DELL: Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Histoire des mots, Librairie C. Klincksieck, Paris, 1951. DLF: Gaffiot, F., Dictionnaire Latin−Français, Hachette, Paris, 1934.

100

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

DLI: Georges, C.E. and Calonghi, F. Dizionario latino−italiano, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino, 1898. DUDEN: Duden, Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 2005 (digital version). EDEL: Klein, E., Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 1971. EDEL2: Skeat, W.W., An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Oxford Clarendon Press, London, 1974. EWDS: Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin, 2002, 24th ed. by E. Seebold (first ed. by F. Kluge, 1883) (digital version). LSJ: Liddell, H.G., Scott, R. and Jones, Sir H.S., A Greek−English Lexicon, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996. OALD: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 8th ed. (digital version). OLD: Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. by P.G.W. Glare et al., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968.

101

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved. Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

LIBRI VIRIDES DAS JUNGE FORUM

Herausgegeben von Hans Rainer Sepp

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Die libri virides versammeln auf den Gebieten der Philosophie und der philosophisch inspirierten Wissenschaften herausragende Texte junger Autorinnen und Autoren. Mit ihnen soll ein Forum bereit stehen, das die Ideen und die Forschungsergebnisse einer neuen Generation vorstellt.

1.1

Matthias Flatscher, Iris Laner et al. (Hg.) Neue Stimmen der Phänomenologie Erster Band: Die Tradition / Das Selbst broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-635-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-636-0

1.2

Matthias Flatscher, Iris Laner et al. (Hg.) Neue Stimmen der Phänomenologie Zweiter Band: Das Andere / Aisthesis broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-637-7 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-638-4

2

Maxim Asjoma Ist japanischer Buddhismus wirklich Buddhismus? Transformationen des Buddhismus in Japan broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-658-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-659-9

3

Wei Zhang Prolegomena zu einer materialen Wertethik. Schelers Bestimmung des Apriori in Abgrenzung zu Kant und Husserl broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-642-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-643-8

4

Johannes Preusker Das Menschenbild in Marsilio Ficinos „Über die Liebe“ broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-660-5 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-661-2

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

5

José Antonio Errázuriz Warum erfordert Gadamers Hermeneutik eine ethische Wende? Über den Zugang zu einer ethischen Dimension des Verstehens broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309- 677-3 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309- 678-0

6

Sophia Kattelmann Liebe als Kommunikationsmedium und als Affektion Die Systemtheorie von Niklas Luhmann und die Lebensphänomenologie von Michel Henry im Vergleich broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309- 679-7 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309- 680-3

7

Georgy Chernavin Transzendentale Archäologie – Ontologie – Metaphysik Methodologische Alternativen in der phänomenologischen Philosophie Husserls broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-681-0 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-682-7

8

Maria Schörgenhumer Wie bewohnt man virtuelle Räume? Mit der Philosophie des Wohnens zu einer Phänomenologie des virtuellen Raums broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-107-5 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-108-2

9

Alexandra Grüttner-Wilke Autorenbild – Autorenbildung – Autorenausbildung broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-706-0 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-707-7

10

Thomas Macher Vollkommene Freundschaft Charakterfreundschaft und ihre Bedeutung für ein glückliches Leben bei Aristoteles broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-714-5 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-715-2

11

Lasma Pirktina Ereignis, Phänomen und Sprache Die Philosophie des Ereignisses bei Martin Heidegger und Jean-Luc Marion broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-720-6 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-721-3

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest

Copyright © 2015. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

12

Alexander Berg Transzendenz bei Hegel und Heidegger broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-735-0 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-736-7

13

Christian Rößner Anders als Sein und Zeit Zur phänomenologischen Genealogie moralischer Subjektivität nach Emmanuel Levinas broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-740-4 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-741-1

14

Beatrix Kersten Von der glücklichen Zeitlichkeit zum gebrochenen Versprechen Ein philosophisches Panorama des Augenblicks von Goethe über Nietzsche bis Adorno broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-773-2 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309- 774-9

15

Maria Hruschka John Cage und Zen Im Spiegel des Noh-Theaters broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-797-8 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-798-5

16

Till Grohmann Der zeitliche Grund des Selbstbewusstseins Reflexion und Zeitlichkeit bei Edmund Husserl broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-818-0 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-819-7

17

Lisa-Marie Lenk Diversity-Management im Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen Am Beispiel des Genderaspekts

18

Mădălina Guzun Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-955-2 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-956-9

19

Kentaro Otagiri Horizont als Grenze Zur Kritik der Phänomenalität des Seins beim frühen Heidegger broschiert: ISBN 978-3-88309-957-6 gebunden: ISBN 978-3-88309-958-3

Eternal Return and the Metaphysics of Presence : "A Critical Reading of Heidegger’s Nietzsche", Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. ProQuest