Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit

Heidegger's climactic thesis on the essence of will to power: it is the Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit — the making-stand-fast of becoming into abiding presence. The phrase appears at the close of Der Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis (1939, heidegger-1961-nietzsche-i line 5012) and is Heidegger's distillation of why Nietzsche, far from overcoming metaphysics, completes it: in willing becoming to remain — to stand-in-being-as-presence — the will to power preserves the originary Greek determination of Sein als Beständigkeit des Anwesens at its most extreme. The thesis is the operative ground of Vollendung der Metaphysik.

What the Concept Does

The concept performs the following work:

  1. Distills the essence of will to power into a single phrase. Nietzsche presents will to power across thousands of Aphorismen with diverse vocabulary (will, power, drives, force, life). Heidegger argues that the metaphysical Wesen of all these formulations is the same operation: the willed Beständigung — the act by which becoming is brought to stand. The textual anchor is WP 617: "Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen — das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht" / "to stamp upon becoming the character of being — that is the highest will to power."

  2. Identifies will with Sein-Wollen-zu-Stand-Bringen. Will is not a faculty among others; it is the bringing-to-stand of beings — the willing of Being-as-presence. The "highest" will to power is the will to make becoming stand. The "Anwesenheit" Nietzsche imposes on Werden is the same Anwesenheit the Greeks (Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle) thought as ousia — but now imposed by Wollen rather than received from physis.

  3. Closes the circle of Western metaphysics. "Aufgehen und Erscheinen, Werden und Anwesen sind im Gedanken des Willens zur Macht in die Einheit des Wesens von 'Sein' nach dem erstanfänglichen Sinn zurückgedacht, nicht als Nachmachung des griechischen, sondern als Verwandlung des neuzeitlichen Denkens des Seienden in seine ihm gewiesene Vollendung." The willed Beständigung is the modern transformation of the Greek question into its appointed completion.

  4. Saves the Greek determination of Being into Fraglosigkeit (unquestionedness). With the willed Beständigung, the Greek meaning of Being-as-presence becomes so taken-for-granted that it can no longer be questioned: "Die anfängliche Auslegung des Seins als Beständigkeit des Anwesens wird jetzt in die Fraglosigkeit gerettet." This saving-into-unquestionability is the Vollendung's specific danger: the Greek determination becomes invisible-as-question and therefore unrevisable from within metaphysics.

What It Rejects

  • Nietzsche-as-thinker-of-becoming-against-being. Heidegger explicitly rebuts (line 5000) the popular reading: "Allein, hörten wir nicht immer wieder, für Nietzsche sei das Wesen des Seienden im Ganzen das Chaos, also das 'Werden' und gerade nicht ein 'Sein' im Sinne des Festen und Beständigen?" The answer is that Nietzsche's Werden is precisely willed into the Beständigkeit-form — it is the Bleibende, the staying-form, that Nietzsche commands becoming to be. Werden in Nietzsche is Sein under another name.
  • Heraclitean readings that pair Nietzsche with Heraclitus on the basis of "everything flows." Heidegger argues this reading misreads Heraclitus (whose physis is not "immer-weiter" but the staying-of-self-revealing) and reduces Nietzsche to a flux-philosopher.
  • Process-philosophical readings (Whitehead-style) that read Nietzsche as the precursor of becoming-ontology. The willed Beständigung re-substantializes what process-philosophers claim Nietzsche de-substantializes.
  • The view that Sein and Werden are opposed in Nietzsche. Heidegger reads them as a unity within will-to-power: "Sein als die Beständigkeit soll das Werden ein Werden sein lassen" (line 2035) — Being as constancy lets becoming be a becoming.

Stakes

If will to power is Beständigung, then:

  • Nietzsche's revaluation of values does not exit metaphysics. The "values" are constancies imposed on chaos; the willing of values is the willed Beständigung. Even the Übermensch-figure is the type that performs Beständigung at maximum power.
  • The Cartesian subiectum is completed (not overcome) in Nietzsche. The Leib (body) becomes the leading thread of world-interpretation, but as the willed-imposing center it is subiectum in its most extreme form. See heidegger-1961-nietzsche-i §"Vermenschlichung."
  • The technological Gestell (Heidegger 1953) is the planetary form of Beständigung: beings standing-in-reserve as exploitable material is the modern face of will-to-power as Beständigung. Nietzsche's metaphysics is the philosophical preparation of the Gestell-age.
  • Critique of Nietzsche from outside the Beständigung-frame requires the anderer Anfang — a different relation to Being than the willed-bringing-to-stand. The Hölderlin verse closing the lecture course names this threshold.

Problem-Space

The concept articulates a recurring philosophical problem: how does the willed imposition of constancy on becoming differ from receptive openness to constancy? The problem appears in:

  • The Greek pre-history: physis (the self-revealing-staying) vs. poiesis (the produced-bringing-to-stand). Heidegger argues Beständigung is the late form of poiesis taken to extremity.
  • Spinoza's natura naturans / natura naturata — the active vs. passive relation to staying.
  • The phenomenological problem of passive synthesis (Husserl, MP) vs. active constitution: how much of "what is constant" is willed and how much is received?
  • The 20th-century technology critique (Heidegger, Anders, Ellul) that diagnoses the willed-imposing relation as the form of modern Welt-stellung.

Positions

  • Heidegger (this source): Beständigung is the essence of will to power; it preserves Greek Sein als Anwesenheit at extremity; it is the Vollendung.
  • Chouraqui 2014: Rejects Heidegger's substantialization. Will to power is metaphysical but not ontological — it is essentially relational (requires resistance) and so cannot describe self-identical Being. Heidegger's Beständigung re-substantializes what Nietzsche de-substantializes. For Chouraqui, Nietzsche's mature ontology is self-falsification (Being as the very movement of falsification), not Beständigung.
  • Deleuze: Will to power as the affirmation of difference; Beständigung misreads will as substantializing what for Nietzsche is plurality.
  • Klossowski: Will to power as the cercle vicieux — the impossibility of fixing identities (eternal recurrence as the structure that prevents Beständigung).

The wiki records Heidegger's and Chouraqui's positions as opposing readings on what will-to-power is doing. See friedrich-nietzsche and will-to-power Positions sections.

Connections

  • is the climactic thesis of heidegger-1961-nietzsche-i — Part III's closing section
  • is the operative ground of vollendung-der-metaphysik — what makes Nietzsche the letzter Metaphysiker
  • is the Heideggerian reading of will-to-power — held in opposition to Chouraqui's "metaphysical-not-ontological" reading
  • is rejected by chouraqui-2014-ambiguity-and-absolute — see friedrich-nietzsche §"Will to Power as Metaphysical"
  • is the philosophical anticipation of Heidegger's later Gestell-thesis (1953-54) on technology
  • contrasts with ereignis — Ereignis is the non-willed letting-come-to-presence; Beständigung is the willed-bringing-to-stand
  • is the modern form of the Greek Sein als Anwesenheit — preserved-by-inversion
  • contrasts with MP's indirect-ontology — MP refuses the willed-imposing stance Heidegger diagnoses in Nietzsche
  • is structurally continuous with the modern subiectum (Descartes through Kant through Hegel) — completed in Nietzsche

Open Questions

  • Does Heidegger's Beständigung-reading depend on a specific construal of Sein als Anwesenheit that goes back to Heidegger's own Sein und Zeit §6 reading of Greek philosophy? If so, the thesis is internal to Heidegger's project, not an interpretive finding about Nietzsche.
  • How does Beständigung relate to Nietzsche's explicit anti-substantialism in WP §550-§560 (the critique of substance, identity, the "thing")? Heidegger's answer: those passages critique received substance; Beständigung is the willed imposing of substance, which Nietzsche endorses. But this requires Heidegger to read the imposing as substantializing — a step Deleuze and others contest.
  • Is Beständigung a uniquely Heideggerian way to say what Nietzsche says, or is it a misreading whose force comes from Heidegger's own metaphysical commitments (Greek-as-foundational, Anwesenheit-as-the-meaning-of-Being)?
  • What would Beständigung look like in non-modern metaphysical systems? Heidegger implies it is a specifically modern (post-Cartesian) operation; Plato's "stamping" of becoming with form (in Timaeus) is structurally analogous but not "willed" in the modern sense.

Sources

  • heidegger-1961-nietzsche-i — III.20 "Das Wesen des Willens zur Macht. Die Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit" is the primary site (lines 4944-5037). The textual anchor is Nietzsche's WP 617 (Recapitulation): "Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen — das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht." Heidegger reads this Aphorismus as the self-conscious metaphysical core of will-to-power.
  • chouraqui-2014-ambiguity-and-absolute — Ch. 3 "Will to Power as Metaphysics" provides the contesting reading.