Nietzsche I

Author(s): Martin Heidegger Year: 1961 (lectures: 1936/37, 1937, 1939; Vorwort: May 1961) Type: Lecture course (three courses; published Neske 1961, GA 6.1 ed. Brigitte Schillbach 1996)

The first of two volumes assembling Heidegger's Freiburg lecture courses on Nietzsche from 1936-1940 plus the four 1940-1946 Abhandlungen (these latter constituting most of Nietzsche II). Nietzsche I contains three lecture courses: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (1936/37), Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen (1937), and Der Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis (1939, broken off mid-course at the close of summer semester). The 1961 Vorwort explicitly frames the publication as making visible "the Denkweg I traveled from 1930 to the Brief über den Humanismus (1947)" — i.e., the Nietzsche-confrontation is integral to Heidegger's own Kehre and the move from Sein und Zeit through Beiträge zur Philosophie (1936-38) to the post-war texts on Hölderlin, technology, and language. The work's central thesis — Nietzsche as Vollendung der Metaphysik (completion of Western metaphysics), not its overcoming — recasts Nietzsche from would-be-revolutionary into the letzter Metaphysiker whose thinking of Wille zur Macht and ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen preserves the Greek determination of Being-as-presence (Anwesenheit) at its most extreme.

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: Nietzsche stands within the Leitfrage (guiding question, "What is the being?") of Western metaphysics, not in the Grundfrage (grounding question, "What is the truth of Being itself?"). His thought is the most extreme position within the Leitfrage-history; with Nietzsche, the Leitfrage exhausts its possibilities. Because: Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht answers the question of the basic character of beings; his ewige Wiederkehr answers the Being-of-beings-as-a-whole. Neither asks the Wesen der Wahrheit (essence of truth). This is "ein Versäumnis eigener Art" (a peculiar omission) that "geht seit Platon und Aristoteles überall durch die ganze Geschichte der abendländischen Philosophie" — Nietzsche shares his omission with all metaphysics. Against: Nietzsche-as-revolutionary readings (Baeumler, popular reception); the view that Nietzsche overcomes metaphysics. The Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche is at the same time the Auseinandersetzung with Western metaphysics as a whole.

  2. Claim: Will to power and eternal recurrence are one thought, not two doctrines. Will to power names what beings are; eternal recurrence names the way this will-to-power is — i.e., the Being-character of becoming. Because: WP 617 is decisive: "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." "Daß Alles wiederkehrt, ist die extremste Annäherung einer Welt des Werdens an die des Seins: — Gipfel der Betrachtung." To think the eternal return as Being is to think Sein als Zeit — the question of Sein und Zeit — though Nietzsche thinks this thought without raising it as a question. Against: Baeumler 1931 (recurrence "ohne Belang"; only will-to-power matters because of Baeumler's political reading); Jaspers 1936 (recurrence is central but no conceptual truth in philosophy is possible).

  3. Claim: The essence of will to power is the Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit — the making-stand-fast of becoming into presence. Because: Will to power is Über-sich-Herrsein (mastery-over-itself) and Über-sich-hinaus-wollen (willing-beyond-itself). The "highest" will to power is the commanding of becoming to remain — willing becoming into the Anwesenheit-form that is the Greek determination of Being. The apparent displacement of Sein by Werden in Nietzsche is in fact the imposition of the Anwesenheit-form on Werden. Hence Nietzsche completes (vollendet) the Western metaphysics whose first determination — Sein als Beständigkeit des Anwesens — runs from the Pre-Socratics to him: "In dieser Auslegung des Seins kommt im Durchgang durch das Äußerste der neuzeitlichen metaphysischen Grundstellung das anfängliche Denken des Seins als physis zu seiner Vollendung." Against: Reading Nietzsche as the metaphysician of becoming who breaks with Greek being-as-presence. Nietzsche's metaphysics of becoming is the metaphysics of presence at its most extreme.

  4. Claim: Will (Wille) is not a soul-faculty among others. The expression "Wille zur Macht" is not "will + the goal of power"; Will = Power. Because: A will that has an external "goal" called power would be a second-order construct. For Nietzsche, will is the willing-beyond-itself that is power, and power is the In-sich-ständige (standing-in-itself) of will. The "zu" in Wille zur Macht expresses not goal-directedness but the internal Verdeutlichung des Wesens des Willens selbst — clarification of will's own essence. Will is not a psychological faculty but a determination of the Da, the openness/concealment of beings within which human Dasein stands. Against: Schopenhauer's reading of will as undifferentiated striving with a goal; political readings (Baeumler) that read "power" as a political category; psychological-physiological readings (Klages) that locate will in the irrational soul-life.

  5. Claim: The Five Theses on Art (1936/37) chart the metaphysical-aesthetic determinations of will to power. The Hauptsatz: Art is the greatest Stimulans of life. (1) Art is the most perspicuous configuration of will to power. (2) Art must be grasped from the artist (creator), not the receiver. (3) Art (in extended sense) is the basic event of all beings — the world is "ein sich selbst gebärendes Kunstwerk." (4) Art is the distinguished counter-movement against nihilism. (5) Art is more valuable than "the truth." Because: Art is Hervorbringen — bringing-forth — where the becoming of beings is most visible. The artist-being (Künstlersein) is "noch am leichtesten durchsichtig" (most-readily-transparent) — WP 797. Hence art is the place to see what will to power is. The Hauptsatz about art-as-stimulant is the thesis that art is a Gestalt of will to power. Against: Art-as-cultural-domain readings; reception-aesthetics ("Weibsästhetik"); the Schopenhauerian art-as-quietive.

  6. Claim: The agitating discord (erregender Zwiespalt) between art and truth is at the heart of Nietzsche's metaphysics. After the Umdrehung des Platonismus, both art and truth are perspectival modes of seeming (Scheinen) within the one perspectival reality. Because: Truth is festgemachter Anschein (fixed appearance — life's holding-fast of a perspective for self-preservation); art is Aufscheinen (shining-forth, transfiguration — life's self-overcoming through created semblance). Both are necessary for life; they pull against each other. Truth would arrest life into mere preservation; art carries life into enhancement. "Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zu Grunde gehn" (WP 822). The discord becomes "entsetzlich" (terrifying) when joined to the death of God: in the absence of the supersensible, Schaffen (creating) is the only mode in which Dasein can be sustained. Against: Cultural-system readings that treat art and science as parallel cultural domains; Platonic-Christian devaluation of the sensible.

  7. Claim: Nietzsche's umgedrehter Platonismus is not Positivism (the swap of supersensible truth for sensible truth). It is the Erschütterung (shaking) of the entire framework "true world / apparent world," accomplished only at the close of Nietzsche's thinking in Götzen-Dämmerung's "Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel wurde" (1888). Because: A mere swap leaves the old "Above and Below" structure intact. Nietzsche's six-stage history (Plato → Christianity → Kant → Positivism → Nietzsche's own early → "Mittag, INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA") shows that with the abolition of the true world the apparent world also falls — there is no "above" and no "below" anymore, only the one perspectival shining of the real. The Umdrehung becomes a Herausdrehung (turning-out-of) Platonism. The "Übermensch" is the figure that comes into view at this threshold. Against: Calling Nietzsche a "positivist" tout court. Heidegger acknowledges Nietzsche passed through extreme positivism in 1879-81, but the mature position transforms it.

  8. Claim: Nietzsche fails to ask the essence of truth. He inherits and operates within truth-as-correctness (Richtigkeit, adaequatio); he varies the value of truth (truth as fixed error in service of life) but never the Wesensbegriff. This omission is shared with all Western metaphysics from Plato onward. Because: The question of the essence of truth would be the question of Unverborgenheit (unconcealedness) — the question of how something can come to presence as true at all. This question is present nowhere in Western metaphysics from Plato through Descartes, Kant, Hegel, to Nietzsche. The variations they introduce (Cartesian certitudo, Kantian transzendental, Hegelian concrete, Nietzschean truth-as-error) are variations within the Richtigkeit-frame, not transformations of the essence. Against: Reading Nietzsche's "truth as error" as a radical break with Western metaphysics. The break, on Heidegger's reading, is structural and unrealized.

  9. Claim: Eternal recurrence cannot be "thought" except by entering the Augenblick (moment) — the temporality of self-action and decision in which past and future converge. Because: The thought of the eternal return strikes back upon (zurückschlägt) the thinker and includes (einbezieht) the thinker into what is thought, because what is thought is "das Seiende im Ganzen." Without the Augenblick, the thought becomes either a cosmological doctrine (where the thinker is outside the world that returns) or a piece of psychological imagery. Heidegger's reading of Zarathustra III's "Vom Gesicht und Rätsel" — the gateway Augenblick where two paths converge, the eagle-snake circle of recurrence — and "Der Genesende" — the shepherd-snake bite, the overcoming-of-nihilism — make the Augenblick the existential topos of recurrence: "Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen wird nur gedacht, wenn sie nihilistisch und augenblicklich gedacht wird." Against: Cosmological readings (Baeumler reduces ER to flux + Egyptianism); psychological-ethical readings (Jaspers); reading recurrence as a thesis one can affirm or reject from outside.

  10. Claim: A metaphysische Grundstellung (metaphysical fundamental position) has a four-fold structure: (a) way of asking the Leitfrage; (b) answer to the Leitfrage; (c) truth-character of beings as such (presupposed in (a) and (b)); (d) ground of human Dasein from which the position is taken. Nietzsche's Grundstellung: (a) basic character of beings = will to power; (b) Being of beings as a whole = eternal recurrence; (c) truth = Gerechtigkeit (justice as fitting bestowal); (d) ground in Dasein = the Übermensch as the type that can think the heaviest thought. Because: Every great metaphysician (Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel) takes a Grundstellung within the Leitfrage. The Leitfrage itself is never explicitly unfolded (entfaltet) within metaphysics — to unfold it would be to step into the Grundfrage. Nietzsche's Grundstellung is the last because the most extreme answer along each axis. With it the Leitfrage reaches its essential closure. Against: Reading metaphysical positions as positions on doxographic-historiographic axes (idealism/realism, monism/pluralism). The four-fold of Grundstellung is structural, not doxographic.

  11. Claim: Knowledge (Erkennen) is the schematizing of a chaos according to practical need. Reason is fundamentally dichtend — poetizing, fictioning. Logic, identity, causality, substance are Erdichtungen of the schematizing will. Nietzsche reads Aristotle's law of non-contradiction not as Satz vom Sein but as Befehl — a command of life to itself. Because: For Nietzsche, life requires holding-fast against the Andrang (surging-onto) of beings-as-a-whole, which is undetermined and resistant. Knowledge produces Schemata (constancies, identities) that allow life to operate. Truth (Richtigkeit) is the value-judgment that holds these schemata as binding. The "true world" is the schematized world; the "apparent world" disappears with it. Against: Knowledge as correspondence to a pre-given reality; knowledge as disinterested theory; logic as discovered law.

  12. Claim: In Nietzsche's most extreme form, truth is Gerechtigkeit (justice) — the fitting-bestowal of constancy by the will to power upon chaos. Because: After the Umdrehung, truth is no longer Übereinstimmung with a pre-given reality but the gerechte (fitting, just) bestowal of value on what shall hold-as-true for life. Justice is not a moral concept; it is the structural-ontological act of the schematizing will. "Die Wahrheit als Gerechtigkeit" is the äußerster Wandel der metaphysisch begriffenen Wahrheit — the most extreme transformation of metaphysically-conceived truth. Against: Truth as moral or epistemic norm independent of life-conditions.

  13. Claim: Nietzsche's Vermenschlichung (humanization of beings) is the metaphysical completion of Cartesian-modern subjektivität. The Leib (body) becomes the leading thread of world-interpretation; the animal rationale completes itself as the Übermensch — and this completion is the Cartesian subiectum in its most extreme form. Because: WP 614: "Die Welt 'vermenschlichen', d. h. immer mehr uns in ihr als Herren fühlen." Heidegger argues this is not contingent error or anthropomorphism in the ordinary sense; it is the metaphysical necessity of the modern subjektivität-position completed. Anthropomorphie "gehört zum Wesen der Endgeschichte der Metaphysik." Against: Reading Nietzsche's anti-cogito polemics as exiting modern subjectivism; reading the Leib as the dissolution of subiectum. Heidegger reads the Leib as subiectum-completed, not subiectum-overcome.

  14. Claim: The Vollendung of metaphysics in Nietzsche is also its Ende — but the Ende opens the Not (need) for another beginning (anderer Anfang). The withdrawal of Being (Seinsverlassenheit) experienced as the overshadowing of Sein by Seiendes is itself a movement of Sein, not human oversight. Because: With Nietzsche the Greek interpretation of Being-as-presence is "in die Fraglosigkeit gerettet" — saved into a state where it can no longer be questioned. This Fraglosigkeit is the Ende. To experience it as need is already to step toward the Grundfrage of the anderer Anfang. The closing Hölderlin verse ("In heiligem Schatten aber, am grünen Abhang wohnet der Hirt und schauet die Gipfel") names this threshold. Against: Reading Heidegger's "completion of metaphysics" as a verdict that Nietzsche failed; the Vollendung is the most that Western metaphysics could be. Reading Seinsverlassenheit as a deficit on the human side; it comes "aus dem Sein selbst."

Argumentative Movement

The work moves not by premise-conclusion but by Auseinandersetzung — Heidegger's own technical name for the mode of con-frontation that brings out a thinker's wirkende Kraft. Each course traces the gestaltgebende Mitte (figure-giving middle) of one of Nietzsche's basic determinations:

  • Course I (1936/37) moves from Nietzsche-as-metaphysical-thinker → the unity of will-to-power and eternal recurrence → the Leitfrage-history Nietzsche stands within → the analysis of will (Affekt/Leidenschaft, mastery-over-itself) → the Five Theses on Art (with Hauptsatz) → the six basic facts of aesthetics history → the analyses of Rausch and Großer Stil → the erregender Zwiespalt between art and truth → the Umdrehung des Platonismus via Götzen-Dämmerung → the new interpretation of sensibility through perspectivism. The arc lands at the figure of the "Übermensch as the founder of Being" — bridge to Course II.

  • Course II (1937) moves from the Grundgedanke-status of eternal recurrence → its origin in 1881 at Lake Silvaplana → the three "communications" (GS §341, Z III "Vom Gesicht und Rätsel", BGE §56) → the four 1881 notebook fragments → the Welt als Chaos exposition → the worry about Vermenschung (humanization) → the analysis of Nietzsche's "proof" as not natural-scientific but metaphysical → recurrence as Glaube and as freedom → the Augenblick as topos of recurrence-thinking → the architecture of metaphysische Grundstellung (the four-fold) → Nietzsche's specific Grundstellung within it.

  • Course III (1939) moves from Nietzsche-as-Vollender → the question of the "Hauptwerk" → will-to-power as principle of new value-positing → knowledge in Nietzsche → truth as Wertschätzung → the alleged biologism (rejected) → Western metaphysics as "logic" → the analysis of Schematisieren and Chaos → Horizontbildung and Perspektive → das dichtende Wesen der Vernunft → non-contradiction as Befehl → truth as Gerechtigkeit → the climactic thesis: Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit. The course breaks off mid-thesis at the close of summer semester 1939; the missing concluding lectures begin Nietzsche II.

The reading proceeds not in textual order but according to a thematic ordering of Nietzsche's Aphorismen — a procedure Heidegger defends explicitly: the published Wille zur Macht book is editorial, not authorial; the only fidelity is to the Gedanken-Gang.

Key Findings

  • Nietzsche is the letzte Metaphysiker — the last metaphysician. His thought vollendet Western metaphysics by preserving its first determination (Sein als Beständigkeit des Anwesens) at its most extreme.
  • Will to power and eternal recurrence are one thought. Will to power names what beings are; eternal recurrence names the way they are (= the Being of beings) — and this way is the willed Beständigung of becoming into presence.
  • The essence of truth remains unasked. Nietzsche's truth-as-error continues to operate within the Richtigkeit-frame inherited from Plato. The question of Unverborgenheit is nowhere asked in Western metaphysics, including Nietzsche.
  • Knowledge is the schematizing of chaos for life-securing. Reason is fundamentally dichtend — poet-making — and the categories of metaphysics (substance, identity, causality) are Erdichtungen of the schematizing will.
  • The agitating discord between art and truth is the heart of Part I. Both are perspectival modes of seeming, equally necessary, pulling against each other. After the death of God, Schaffen (creating-as-art) becomes the only mode in which Dasein can be sustained.
  • The Augenblick is the existential topos of recurrence-thinking. Eternal recurrence cannot be thought from outside; it strikes back upon the thinker and includes the thinker in what is thought.
  • The published Wille zur Macht is not Nietzsche's "Hauptwerk." It is editorial compilation. The fidelity owed Nietzsche is to the Gedanken-Gang, not to the book.
  • The Vollendung is also the Ende. The closing of the Leitfrage-history opens the Not (need) for the anderer Anfang and the unasked Grundfrage — the question of the truth of Being.

Methodology

Heidegger's procedure is Auseinandersetzung — a technical term distinguishing it from interpretation, criticism, and refutation. Auseinandersetzung is "echte Kritik" — true critique — which follows the wirkende Kraft (effective force) of a thinker's thought rather than chasing weaknesses. It is "die höchste und einzige Weise der wahren Schätzung eines Denkers." The procedure has four operative features in Nietzsche I:

  1. Reordering of texts according to thematic logic, not editorial order. Heidegger reads the Aphorismen by topic, not in the sequence the Wille zur Macht book presents them. He warns that the editorial 1906 ordering is one of three "Grundstellungen" Nietzsche worked through and not the latest.
  2. Reconstructing the Gedanken-Gang across published works and notebooks. The notebooks (Großoktav vols. XII-XVI) are treated as continuous with the published works, not as raw material.
  3. Bilingual operation: Greek as historically alive within German. Ousia, physis, eidos, mimesis, dike are read as German philosophical vocabulary's hidden infrastructure. Heidegger frequently retranslates Greek into idiomatic German that exposes what he calls the matter at issue.
  4. Critique-by-confrontation with rival readings. Baeumler 1931 and Jaspers 1936 are explicitly named and rebutted; Klages, Förster-Nietzsche, the editorial figures are all positioned. Heidegger's Auseinandersetzung is at the same time a sorting of the field of Nietzsche-readings.

Concepts Developed

This source is primary on the following concepts (where Heidegger does original work, not merely references):

  • vollendung-der-metaphysik — Nietzsche as completion (not overcoming) of Western metaphysics; the Vollendung-form as what gives the metaphysical age its full stature.
  • bestandigung-des-werdens — "Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit"; the essence of will to power as the willed making-stand-fast of becoming into presence. The climactic thesis of Part III.
  • auseinandersetzung — Heidegger's mode of relation to a thinker; "echte Kritik" that follows the wirkende Kraft of thought.
  • leitfrage-grundfrage — the architectonic distinction between "What is the being?" (Leitfrage) and "What is the truth of Being?" (Grundfrage).
  • metaphysische-grundstellung — the four-fold structure of any metaphysical position (way of asking Leitfrage / answer / truth-character / ground in Dasein).
  • augenblick — the temporal-existential locus where past and future converge in decision; the topos from which eternal recurrence becomes thinkable.
  • erregender-zwiespalt-wahrheit-kunst — the agitating discord between art and truth in Nietzsche's metaphysics.
  • grosser-stil — the form-giving counter-strife of chaos and form; mastery over a chaos that is one's own.
  • umdrehung-des-platonismus — the inversion-then-stepping-out (Herausdrehung) of the Platonic framework; achieved only in Götzen-Dämmerung (1888).
  • schematisieren-eines-chaos — knowledge as horizon-imposition on chaos for life-securing; das dichtende Wesen der Vernunft.
  • wahrheit-als-gerechtigkeit — truth as the fitting-bestowal of constancy by the will to power.

Concepts Referenced

This source touches on but does not develop original work on:

  • friedrich-nietzsche — Heidegger's Auseinandersetzung-partner; the source page extensively recasts his philosophy as Vollendung.
  • will-to-power — Heidegger's reading is recorded here; the concept-page records both Heidegger's and Chouraqui's readings as opposing positions.
  • eternal-recurrence — same; Heidegger reads it as the Sein-als-Zeit answer to the Leitfrage.
  • nihilism — defined via Nietzsche's "the highest values devalue themselves"; the deeper diagnosis (metaphysics-as-nihilism) belongs to Nietzsche II and the later technology-essays.
  • seinsgeschichte — Vollendung-Endzeit-anderer-Anfang fits the seinsgeschichtlich frame.
  • ontological-difference — Leitfrage/Grundfrage is closely related to ontological difference (Sein/Seiendes).
  • ereignis — touches the anderer Anfang horizon at the close.
  • incorporation-of-truth — Nietzsche's Einverleibung is mentioned but not given the central treatment Chouraqui gives it.
  • experimental-platonism — Heidegger's umgedrehter Platonismus is the same operation under a different name.
  • Apollo/Dionysus, Geburt der Tragödie, Götzen-Dämmerung, Zarathustra (esp. III), Ecce Homo, Genealogie der Moral, the four 1881 notebook fragments, Beyond Good and Evil §56 (circulus vitiosus deus).

Terminology

Heidegger's lecture-course is in German, with frequent use of Greek (ousia, eidos, physis, arche, mimesis, dike, theoria) and selective Latin (adaequatio, certitudo). Key technical German terms with English glosses:

German (original) English translation Attestation locations Translation notes
Vollendung completion (not "end" or "fulfillment") III.1, III.20 (esp. lines 3726, 5014) "Vollendung meint die uneingeschränkte Entfaltung aller seit langem aufbehaltenen Wesensmächte"; standard English Krell rendering "completion" preferred over "fulfillment"
Beständigung making-stand-fast / staying-into-presence III.20 (line 5012) A Heideggerian coinage — German has Beständigkeit (constancy) and Bestand (stock); Beständigung is the verbal nominalization of the act of making-stand. Krell renders "making constant" or "permanentizing"
Anwesenheit abiding presence III.20 (line 4998) Heidegger's German for Greek parousia/ousia. Distinct from Gegenwart (the temporal present)
Auseinandersetzung con-frontation / setting-asunder Vorwort, I.1 et al. German aus-einander-setzen literally "to set asunder, mutually." No clean English equivalent; Krell uses "confrontation"
Leitfrage / Grundfrage guiding question / grounding question I.1, II.21 (line 3582) Krell renders this pair
Augenblick moment / glance-of-the-eye I.4, I.18, II.20 Literally "blink-of-the-eye"; etymologically the moment of seeing. Sein und Zeit §65 develops this term
Grundstellung fundamental position II.21, II.22 Distinct from Standpunkt (standpoint)
Umdrehung / Herausdrehung inversion / turning-out-of I.5, I.18, I.22 Krell: "overturning" / "twisting free of"
Erdichtung poet-making / fictioning III.15 Verbal of dichten (to compose poetry, to fashion)
Schematisieren schematizing III.10-13 The Kantian term refunctioned: schematization is now the imposition of horizon-form on chaos
Vermenschlichung humanization III.20 (lines 4986-4992) Stronger than "anthropomorphism"; not contingent error but metaphysical necessity
Versäumnis omission / neglect I.17 (line 1526) Marks the structural failure of all Western metaphysics from Plato onward
Fraglosigkeit unquestionedness III.20 (line 5016) The peculiar mode of Nietzsche's preservation of the Greek determination of Being
Seinsverlassenheit abandonment-by-Being III.20 (line 5024) Distinct from Seinsvergessenheit (forgottenness-of-Being) but closely linked

Nietzsche-specific terms (Heidegger's reading thereof):

German (Nietzsche) English Heidegger's reading
Wille zur Macht will to power Will = power, "die sich zur Macht ermächtigt" — not goal-directed
ewige Wiederkehr eternal recurrence The Being-of-beings answer: Sein als Zeit
Gerechtigkeit justice Truth-character: fitting-bestowal of constancy by will to power
großer Stil grand style Bändigung of chaos; not classicism but mastery-of-surplus
Rausch rapture, intoxication Basic aesthetic Grundstimmung (not psychology)
Übermensch overman The metaphysically-required type of Dasein for the Grundstellung

Key Passages

"Nietzsche – der Name des Denkers steht als Titel für die Sache seines Denkens. Die Sache, der Streitfall, ist in sich selbst Aus-einander-setzung." (Vorwort, line 168)

"Die Aufgabe dieser Vorlesung ist, die Grundstellung deutlich zu machen, innerhalb derer Nietzsche die Leitfrage des abendländischen Denkens entfaltet und beantwortet... Wenn sich in Nietzsches Denken die bisherige Überlieferung des abendländischen Denkens nach einer entscheidenden Hinsicht sammelt und vollendet, dann wird die Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche zu einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem bisherigen abendländischen Denken." (line 218)

"Rekapitulation: Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen — das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht. Dies sagt: Das Werden ist nur, wenn es im Sein als Sein gegründet ist: Daß Alles wiederkehrt, ist die extremste Annäherung einer Welt des Werdens an die des Seins: — Gipfel der Betrachtung." (Nietzsche, WP 617, quoted at line 361)

"Das Sein, den Willen zur Macht, als ewige Wiederkunft denken, den schwersten Gedanken der Philosophie denken, heißt, das Sein als Zeit denken. Nietzsche dachte diesen Gedanken, aber er dachte ihn noch nicht als Frage von Sein und Zeit." (line 365)

"Wollen selbst ist das über sich hinausgreifende Herrsein über...; Wille ist in sich selbst Macht. Und Macht ist das in-sich-ständige Wollen. Wille ist Macht, und Macht ist Wille." (line 523)

"Affekt: der blindlings aufregende Anfall. Leidenschaft: der hellsichtig sammelnde Ausgriff in das Seiende." (line 572)

"Wir müssen erst sehen, daß es sich hier nicht um Psychologie, auch nicht um eine durch Physiologie und Biologie unterbaute Psychologie handelt, sondern um Grundweisen, in denen das menschliche Dasein beruht, um die Weise, wie der Mensch das »Da«, die Offenheit und Verborgenheit des Seienden, in denen er steht, besteht." (line 544)

"Künstlersein ist die durchsichtigste Weise des Lebens. Leben ist die uns bekannteste Form des Seins. Das innerste Wesen des Seins ist Wille zur Macht. Am Künstlersein werden wir die durchsichtigste und bekannteste Weise des Willens zur Macht antreffen." (line 756)

"1. Die Kunst ist die durchsichtigste und bekannteste Gestalt des Willens zur Macht. 2. Die Kunst muß vom Künstler her begriffen werden. 3. Die Kunst ist nach dem erweiterten Begriff des Künstlers das Grundgeschehen alles Seienden... 4. Die Kunst ist die ausgezeichnete Gegenbewegung gegen den Nihilismus. 5. Die Kunst ist mehr wert als »die Wahrheit«." (lines 846-849; the Hauptsatz: "Die Kunst ist das größte Stimulans des Lebens" WP 808, line 853)

"Über das Verhältnis der Kunst zur Wahrheit bin ich am frühesten ernst geworden: und noch jetzt stehe ich mit einem heiligen Entsetzen vor diesem Zwiespalt." (Nietzsche XIV, 368, quoted line 838)

"Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zu Grunde gehn." (Nietzsche, WP 822, quoted line 842)

"Daß Nietzsche die eigentliche Wahrheitsfrage, die Frage nach dem Wesen des Wahren und nach der Wahrheit des Wesens... nicht stellt und den Bereich dieser Frage daher auch niemals entfaltet... Daß in Nietzsches Denken die Frage nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit ausbleibt, ist ein Versäumnis eigener Art, das, wenn je, nicht ihm allein und nicht erst ihm zur Last gelegt werden könnte. Dieses »Versäumnis« geht seit Platon und Aristoteles überall durch die ganze Geschichte der abendländischen Philosophie." (line 1526)

"Meine Philosophie umgedrehter Platonismus: je weiter ab vom wahrhaft Seienden, um so reiner schöner besser ist es. Das Leben im Schein als Ziel." (Nietzsche IX, 190, quoted line 1556)

"Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen wird nur gedacht, wenn sie nihilistisch und augenblicklich gedacht wird." (line 3524)

"Die metaphysische Grundstellung sagt, wie der die Leitfrage Fragende in das nicht eigens entfaltete Gefüge der Leitfrage eingefügt bleibt und dadurch im Seienden im Ganzen und zum Seienden im Ganzen zum Stehen kommt und so den Standort des Menschen im Ganzen des Seienden mitbestimmt." (line 3570)

"Nietzsche, der Denker des Gedankens vom Willen zur Macht, ist der letzte Metaphysiker des Abendlandes. Das Zeitalter, dessen Vollendung in seinem Gedanken sich entfaltet, die Neuzeit, ist eine Endzeit." (line 3732)

"Wir fragen: Warum ist dies der höchste Wille zur Macht? Antwort: Weil der Wille zur Macht in seinem tiefsten Wesen nichts anderes ist als die Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit." (line 5012)

"In dieser Auslegung des Seins kommt im Durchgang durch das Äußerste der neuzeitlichen metaphysischen Grundstellung das anfängliche Denken des Seins als φύσις zu seiner Vollendung... Die anfängliche Auslegung des Seins als Beständigkeit des Anwesens wird jetzt in die Fraglosigkeit gerettet." (lines 5014-5016)

"Die Überschattung des Seins durch das Seiende kommt aus dem Sein selbst, als die Seinsverlassenheit des Seienden im Sinne der Verweigerung der Wahrheit des Seins." (line 5024)

Closing Hölderlin: "Es sagen der Wanderer viele davon, / Und das Wild irrt in den Klüften / Und die Herde schweift über die Höhen, / In heiligem Schatten aber, / Am grünen Abhang wohnet / Der Hirt und schauet die Gipfel." (line 5028, "Der Mutter Erde")

What's Not Obvious

Three things about Nietzsche I that would not appear in a conventional summary or book review:

  1. The work is as much Heidegger's own thinking as Nietzsche-exegesis. The 1961 Vorwort says explicitly that the publication "make[s] visible the Denkweg I traveled from 1930 to the Brief über den Humanismus (1947)." The Auseinandersetzung is one of the operative names for what Heidegger does in Beiträge zur Philosophie (1936-38, unpublished until 1989) — a confrontation that prepares the anderer Anfang. Reading the Nietzsche lectures only as Nietzsche-exegesis misses that they are also the public-lecture-version of Heidegger's most concentrated thinking of his own Kehre. The closing Hölderlin verse on the shepherd in heiligem Schatten — "in holy shadow" — is not a decorative quote but the named threshold of the unasked Grundfrage that Beiträge tries to ask. (See lines 168, 5028-5037.)

  2. The silent key of the work is Versäumnis (omission). Heidegger's central indictment — that Nietzsche fails to ask the essence of truth — is not framed as Nietzsche's personal failing. Used sparingly, the term Versäumnis (line 1526) carries the whole structural claim that Nietzsche's omission is the omission of all Western metaphysics from Plato onward. Without this term, the indictment would seem aimed at Nietzsche; with it, the indictment is structural — and Heidegger himself, qua thinker who identifies the omission, places himself at the threshold of stepping out. The term is also load-bearing for Heidegger's broader positioning: he is not Nietzsche's critic in the doxographic sense but the thinker who first sees what Western metaphysics-as-such is by seeing what Nietzsche completes.

  3. The 1936 Beständigung-thesis foreshadows Heidegger's later "Gestell"-thesis on technology by twenty years. The closing thesis of Part III — that will to power's essence is the willed making-stand-fast of becoming into presence — is structurally identical to Heidegger's later analysis of technology as the Gestell (en-framing, 1953-54): the modern world is the metaphysics of subiectum-completion in which beings are willed-into-standing-reserve. Nietzsche I shows that the technology-essay's diagnosis is already in place in 1939: planetarily-extended Vermenschlichung (line 3696, the "Erscheinung planetarischen Charakters") = the willed humanization of beings = the same metaphysical structure that produces both Nietzsche's will-to-power and the technological Gestell. This continuity is essential for understanding the unity of Heidegger's mature thought, but it is invisible if one reads Nietzsche I as a stand-alone Nietzsche-book. (See martin-heidegger for the connection to seinsgeschichte and Inkpin's critique of Gestell via concrete-mediation.)

Critique / Limitations

  • The reading depends on identifying Wille with Sein-Wollen-zu-Stand-Bringen. Nietzsche's actual texts on will-to-power are strikingly anti-substantialist (will as movement, not stuff). Heidegger's identification works only if one accepts that the will to make-stand is itself a form of Anwesenheit-positing. Critics — Deleuze (Nietzsche et la philosophie, 1962), Klossowski (Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux, 1969), Müller-Lauter, and from the wiki's perspective Chouraqui 2014 — read will-to-power as plurality-without-substantialization. On these readings, Heidegger's Beständigung re-substantializes what Nietzsche de-substantializes. The wiki holds Heidegger's and Chouraqui's readings as opposing positions on a question the wiki does not resolve.

  • The use of Vermenschlichung to bind Nietzsche to "absolute subjectivity / Cartesian subiectum-completion" depends on equating Leib with subiectum. This equation is exactly what Chouraqui's reading of Nietzsche disputes: Nietzsche's body is not the subiectum but its dissolution. Heidegger subordinates the late-Nietzsche dissolution-of-subject to the modern-subjektivität narrative.

  • Some textual readings are tendentious. Heidegger's reading of Götzen-Dämmerung's "Wie die wahre Welt zur Fabel wurde" as the moment of Herausdrehung (turning-out-of Platonism) places Nietzsche's mature position at a specific point (1888) that Nietzsche's other 1888 texts complicate. The eagle-snake / Tor / shepherd-snake reading of Zarathustra III is illuminating but leans heavily on Heidegger's existential-temporal frame; alternative readings (Lampert, Loeb) that read Zarathustra III primarily as cosmological-allegorical do not fit cleanly.

  • The attribution of the four-fold Grundstellung structure to "every great metaphysician" is presented as if it falls out of the Leitfrage itself (II.21). The four moments — way of asking / answer / truth-character / ground in Dasein — are themselves Heidegger's constructions. They map onto Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel only with significant Heideggerian retrofitting.

  • The historical-political context (1936-1939, Freiburg) is not addressed in the lectures themselves. Heidegger's complicated relationship to National Socialism in 1933-34 is not mentioned; the lectures' implicit polemic against Baeumler's political reading of Nietzsche has political dimensions Heidegger does not name. Later commentators (Pöggeler, Faye, Trawny) have argued that the Auseinandersetzung-stance in Nietzsche I is partly a re-positioning of Heidegger's earlier political commitments; this remains contested. Nietzsche I should not be read as politically neutral in 1936-1939, but its philosophical claims are not reducible to political positioning.

Connections

Sources

The work draws principally from:

  • Wille zur Macht (1906 ed., Großoktav vols. XV-XVI) — the Aphorismen-collection, used selectively and with explicit warning that its editorial ordering distorts
  • Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) — esp. III "Vom Gesicht und Rätsel" and III "Der Genesende"
  • Götzen-Dämmerung (1888) — esp. "Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel wurde" and the foreword
  • Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872, with 1886 "Versuch einer Selbstkritik")
  • Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882, esp. §341 "Das größte Schwergewicht")
  • Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886, esp. §56 circulus vitiosus deus)
  • Genealogie der Moral (1887)
  • Ecce Homo (1888)
  • The four 1881 notebook fragments (Großoktav XII)
  • Untimely Meditations III ("Schopenhauer als Erzieher") and IV ("Wagner in Bayreuth")
  • Letters to Overbeck, Peter Gast, Carl von Gersdorff, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
  • Plato's Politeia X (mimesis) and Phaidros 250b-d (beauty as ekphanestaton)
  • Aristotle, Metaphysics Z 1 (the question τί τὸ ὄν) and Γ 1005b (law of non-contradiction)
  • Kant, Critique of Judgment §§5-6 (interesseloses Wohlgefallen)
  • Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818) — preface and main argument
  • Schelling, Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) — "Wollen ist Ursein"
  • Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) — knowing-as-willing; Vorlesungen über Ästhetik (delivered 1828/29) — the end of great art
  • Hölderlin, "Der Mutter Erde" (Hellingrath IV, 156f.) — closing verse
  • Cross-reference within Heidegger's own corpus: Vom Wesen des Grundes (1929), Holzwege (1950, esp. "Nietzsches Wort 'Gott ist tot'")

The published Wille zur Macht book is not a primary source in Heidegger's view — it is editorial. The fidelity owed Nietzsche is to the Gedanken-Gang across the entire body of writings.