Gottes bedürfen ist des Menschen Vollkommenheit: 40 Predigten aus sechs Jahrzehnten (German Edition)

Stufen: Eine Entwickelung in Aphorismen und Tagebuch-Notizen by Morgenstern

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Von Zeit zu Zeit sind diese Fehlformen im Verlauf der Geschichte in den Randzonen des Gebetes der Kirche aufgetaucht, und heute scheinen sie erneut zahlreiche Christen zu beeindrucken und sich ihnen als psychologisches oder geistliches Heilmittel oder zum raschen Verfahren, um Gott zu finden, zu empfehlen. Andere gehen weiter und suchen mit unterschiedlichen Techniken geistliche Erfahrungen zu erzeugen, analog denen, die in den Schriften katholischer Mystiker beschrieben werden.

Auf Tabor, wo er gewiss in offenkundiger Weise mit dem Vater vereint ist, wird sein Leiden angesprochen vgl. Das Evangelium zielt vor allem auf die sittliche Reinigung von dem Mangel an Wahrheit und Liebe, und, auf einer tieferen Ebene, von allen egoistischen Bestrebungen, die den Menschen daran hindern, den Willen Gottes in seiner Reinheit zu erkennen und anzunehmen. Nicht die Leidenschaften als solche sind negativ wie die Stoiker und Neuplatoniker dachten , sondern vielmehr deren egoistische Tendenz. Von dieser hat der Christ sich zu befreien: Hier ist der hl.

Augustinus ein ausgezeichneter Lehrer: Auf dieser Grundlage kann der Betende durch eine besondere Gnade des Geistes zu jener besonderen Form der Vereinigung mit Gott berufen werden, die im Raum des Christentums als Mystik bezeichnet wird. Die echte christliche Mystik hat nichts mit Technik zu schaffen: Die ersteren kann jeder Christ in sich durch ein eifriges Leben in Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe verlebendigen.

So kann er auch durch eine ernsthafte Aszese zu einer gewissen Erfahrung Gottes und der Glaubensinhalte kommen. Zu den Charismen bemerkt der hl. Paulus, sie seien vor allem zu Gunsten der Kirche und der anderen Glieder am mystischen Leib Christi gegeben vgl. Verschiedene geistliche Schriftsteller aus dem christlichen Osten und Westen haben dieser Tatsache Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt.

Im Gebet muss der ganze Mensch zu Gott in Beziehung treten, also auch sein Leib, der die zur Sammlung geeignetste Stellung einnehmen muss. Die christliche Meditation im Osten [32] hat den psychophysischen Symbolismus ausgewertet, der im Gebet des Westens oft zu kurz kam. Der Apostel sagt uns: In diesen offenkundig negativen Augenblicken wird das deutlich, was der Betende eigentlich sucht: Man versteht daher das Wort des hl.

Papst Johannes Paul II. Oktober , am Fest der heiligen Theresia von Jesus. Das christliche Gebet im Licht der Offenbarung 4. Der christliche Weg der Vereinigung mit Gott Fragen der Methode Es handelt sich also um Meditationsweisen des nichtchristlichen Fernen Ostens, die heute nicht selten auch von manchen Christen bei ihrer Meditation verwendet werden. Institutio generalis de Liturgia Horarum, nn. Institutio generalis de Liturgia Horarum, n.

Ficker, Amphilochiana 1, Leipzig , S. The radical freedom of God who may or may not show itself correlates with the radical freedom of humankind. God comes to appearance as the Crucified God, but the root content is the coming to appearance itself. There is thus relativity to all revelation; what is religiously significant is the event of revealing itself. One source of difficulty is that the necessary and ongoing revision of theology bears a twofold meaning for Heidegger.

Die Frage nach dem kommenden Gott ist Heideggers Denkweg tief eingeschrieben. Bei aller Differenziertheit modifiziert sie allerdings kaum die Verortung Nietzsches als der letzten metaphysischer Grundstellung innerhalb der Onto-theologie. Das sich ausbreitende Nichts verweist auf 3.

Der letzte Gott tritt in die Wegbahnen des Seinsgeschehens ein. Heidegger-Jahrbuch 2 , Allerdings zeigt sich eine gravierende Differenz: Heidegger liegt dieser Gedanke keineswegs fern. Heideggers seinsgeschichtliche Frage nach dem letzten Gott ist dabei gleichwohl nicht frei von einer eschatologischen Zuspitzung. In ihr soll das Geviert als in seinem Grund ruhen. Dieser Einblick lichtete nicht nur das Seiende auf die Selbigkeit von Denken und Sein im ersten Anfang, es kehrte ihn vielmehr auf den anderen Anfang hin um.

Damit ist der Punkt erreicht, an dem gefragt werden kann, wie die Frage nach dem letzten Gott zwischen Heidegger und Nietzsche spielt. Ein guter Diener aber weiss Alles, und Mancherlei auch, was sein Herr sich selbst verbirgt. Es war ein verborgener Gott, voller Heimlichkeit. Wahrlich zu einem Sohne sogar kam er nicht anders als auf Schleichwegen. Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra; in: Heidegger hat den von Nietzsche explizierten Gegenhalt von Christus und Dionysos daher zu Recht in seiner seinsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung erkannt und gesehen, dass dieses Zuspiel noch kaum aufgenommen worden sei.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce homo; in: Dies scheint aber nur so. Das ist die extremste Form des Nihilismus: Jedes Glied dieser Konstellation wird dabei auf seine Beziehung zur tragischen Weisheit befragt. In vielfachen dichterischen Zeugnissen wurden seinerzeit bereits Dionysos, die Gottheit aus dem Osten, und der Menschensohn ineinander gespiegelt.

Manfred Frank, Der kommende Gott. Dieter Henrich, Der Grund im Bewusstsein. Dass Heidegger in der Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche diese Frage beschwieg, ist nicht verwunderlich. Buch der Politeia eingefordert hatte. Sie geben keine Aitiologie menschlichen Leidens, sondern setzen es sich selbst aus. Dort leitet Heidegger das, was er die Grunderfahrung und Grundstimmung des Nietzscheanischen Denkens nennt, aus dem folgenden Ausruf Nietzsches ab: Heidegger misst diesem Passus eine hohe Bedeutung bei: Der Mensch ist dies alles, insofern er in einer ausgezeichneten Weise im Willen zur Macht steht.

Alles, was ist, ist eine einzige Anthropomorphie. Den anthropomorphen Charakter der menschlichen Gottesvorstellungen hatte bereits Feuerbachs Religionskritik eindringlich beschworen. Denn dieses Buch beginnt mit dem Satz: Daher bedeute Nietzsches Wort vom Tod Gottes soviel wie: Sie spendet kein Leben. Die Entwertung dieser obersten Werte aber werde bereits durch die Einsicht vollzogen, dass die ideale Welt innerhalb der realen Welt niemals zu verwirklichen sei.

Sein Wille ist sein Gewolltes. Der Wille will sich selbst. Ihr Wille bestimmt bzw. Es will sich selbst als den Vollstrecker des unbedingten Willens zur Macht. Satz Nietzsches aus Also sprach Zarathustra zum Ausdruck gebracht: Es verwandle alles Seiende in eine Funktion seines Willens. Weil Heidegger das Wertedenken kurzerhand mit Nihilismus gleichsetzt, deutet er selbst Nietzsches Erfahrung des Nihilismus, wonach dieser die Entwertung der obersten Werte sei, als eine nihilistische.

Worin aber besteht diese innere Entzweiung? Hat er sich verlaufen wie ein Kind? Ist er zu Schiff gegangen? Deshalb ruft oder spricht er nicht, sondern er schreit seine Gottessuche heraus im Ton der Verzweiflung. Sein Blick ist ein Wesensblick, der ihre Herzen durchschaut. Rief er, ich will es euch sagen! Sie haben Gott willentlich vernichtet. Und wodurch haben sie dies getan? Dieser Wille, Herr zu sein, wird. Dieser Heraufkunft des Nihilismus nach dem Tod des christlichen Gottes setzt Nietzsche die Notwendigkeit entgegen, den Menschen in Gestalt seiner eigenen Person neu zu bestimmen: Dieser Wille zur Macht ist ein allen Einzelnen eigener Wille, der aber, wie Nietzsche selbst nicht mehr gesehen hat, als endlicher begrenzt Wer gab uns den Schwamm, um den ganzen Horizont wegzuwischen?

Was thaten wir, als wir diese Erde von der Sonne losketteten? Wohin bewegt sie sich nun? Wohin bewegen wir uns? Fort von allen Sonnen? Giebt es noch ein Oben und ein Unten? Irren wir nicht wie durch ein unendliches Nichts? Haucht uns nicht der leere Raum an? Kommt nicht immerfort die Nacht und mehr Nacht? Denn der Horizont als die Grenze des menschlichen Sichtfelds setzt ein Diesseits und ein Jenseits dieser Grenze konstitutiv voraus. Die rhetorischen Fragen, in denen diese Gottesbilder vorkommen, unterstreichen den Eindruck einer Vergeblichkeit solchen Unterfangens.

Heidegger erkennt hellsichtig, dass dieser Wille zur Macht programmatischer Inbegriff von Nietzsches eigener Philosophie ist. Ist es nicht doch die wahre, zeitenthobene Ewigkeit, die Zarathustra letztlich dazu bewegt, die Ewigkeit seines eigenen Willens und seiner Lust als deren zeitliches Ersatz zu wollen? Denn ich liebe dich, oh Ewigkeit! Aber er wollte diese Ewigkeit, die der Mensch nur empfangen, d. Nietzsche iii, San Francisco , 8; Nietzsche I, How does Nietzsche and his expression for the character of all beings stand out as the first and perhaps last amongst those equals who have st at the helm of Western thinking and followed its course?

Nor is this thought merely noteworthy for its relevance to contemporary trends in the sciences. What, then, does the consummation of metaphysics indicate? Metaphysics thinks beings as a whole according to their priority over Being. The whole of Western.

Nietzsche ii, New York , 3; Nietzsche I, Each age of Western history is grounded in its respective metaphysics. Nietzsche anticipates the consummation of metaphysics. His thoughtpath to the will to power anticipates the metaphysics that supports the modern age as it completes itself in its consummation.

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Consummation means the unimpeded development of all the essential powers of beings, powers that have been reserved for a long time, to what they demand as a whole. Western unfolding of Being. Unveiling such a principle will disclose also the onedimensional nature of the metaphysics of the age.

Then, perhaps we will be in a better position to understand how and in what way Heidegger conceives of Nietzsche as the avatar for the consummation of metaphysics. Such examinations will reveal certain difficulties facing all who engage modernity with the conviction of honesty. An examination of nihilism will reveal, as It is not particular to those writers, nations, or epochs that have brought it into focus, nor are such agents the originators of meaninglessness.

It is possible, Heidegger reminds us, to be an atheist in such a way as to merely replace one set of normative explanations with another. But, such a parade of ideals, with each set assuming the throne of the preceding form and appropriating its normative powers sent down from above, merely succeeds in varying the old theme of metaphysics as it was developed through Plato and later in Christendom. This kind of succession falls far short of accomplishing.

That the highest values devalue themselves. But this event does not render all willing to be in vain. The disappearance of such metaphysical aims and their normative powers means for Nietzsche that new necessities are demanded for thinking and for willing: With respect to those metaphysical aims and their normative powers in the age before the so-called death of God, the place for depositing such values, and the most notable characteristic of all pre-Nietzschean metaphysics, was the world of the supersensory. In the sense that Nietzsche recognizes a new necessity for positing the highest values, due to the collapse of this supersensory world, the character of any new valuation must also be altered.

Such an alteration means that a reversal of the ancient, long-standing valuation is in preparation. Heidegger, Nietzsche iv, 5; Nietzsche II, This kind of revaluation demands more than merely positing one value for another. Heidegger, Nietzsche iv, 6; Nietzsche II, What grounds the seeing thing and its values? The seeing thing, in this reading, is grounded in life, and the positing of values here will be taken for the essence of life.

Heidegger, Nietzsche iii, 17; Nietzsche II, As a condition of life, value must therefore be thought as that which supports, furthers, and awakens the enhancement of life. Heidegger, Nietzsche iii, ; Nietzsche II, Heidegger, Nietzsche iii, 15; Nietzsche II, Heidegger, Nietzsche iii, 18; Nietzsche II, Only where the will to power, as the fundamental characteristic of everything real, comes to appearance, i.

It remains to be seen, however, what Nietzsche means by this appellation. Heidegger sets up the affirmative part of his interpretation of will to power with a passage taken from Also sprach Zarathustra, in which Nietzsche first names the concept in the words of the title character: The first command in willing is likewise two-fold: Obedience to oneself is most essential for commanding. It is not exhausted, by comparison, in the mere ordering about of others.

In commanding, one posits and holds oneself as what one is; at the same time, one becomes superior to oneself, and in venturing beyond oneself in this superiority, one becomes, even further, what one is from out of oneself. This essential form of willing as self-commanding, Heidegger argues, is not grounded in privation. Heidegger describes the nature of such willing as self-commanding in the early lecture: But power is power only as enhancement of power Machtsteigerung.

To the extent that it is truly power, alone determining all beings, power does not recognize the worth or value of anything outside itself. That is why will to power as a principle for the new Wertsetzung tolerates no end outside being as a whole. Heidegger, Nietzsche iv, 7; Nietzsche II, Such overpowering to excelling is at the same time the fundamental act of excelling itself.

Heidegger, Nietzsche ii, ; Nietzsche II, It might also be said that the not-present, in this reading, has been ill-considered as we strive to identify, collect, dominate and consume the present with a one-dimensional disclosure of beings as that which is constantly at the disposal of the value-positing agent. Heidegger, Nietzsche iv, 9; Nietzsche II, Heidegger, Nietzsche iii, 91; Nietzsche II, O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe.

This is no loose provocation uttered in a moment of effusiveness. Indeed, Martin Heidegger would later add: However different their conceptions are, for both pain is not a negative force but represents an affirmative power. Firstly, today pain is regarded as a major sickness, affliction, and atrocity. Secondly, the main trend in contemporary pain research consists in the materialist attempt to explain all pain in physical terms. Strict materialists claim that psychological pain is nothing but a myth. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra ; in: The German term for pain is Schmerz.

This is also the term Nietzsche generally applies to the different kinds of pains he refers to.

What are they more particularly? Firstly there are bodily hurts and aches to which Nietzsche refers with the term Weh. They are hurts due to injuries such as cuts or burns, and aches such as toothache or stomach ache. There can be a large difference between the seriousness of an injury and the way we perceive it.

This also pertains to other terms for pain. The third term for pain is affliction and includes torments Qualen , punishment Strafe , torture Folter and other atrocities Grausamkeiten. Now, once we view pain in terms of perception, it is indeed possible to see it in affirmative terms. Normally we would think that pain sets us back rather than spurs us on. Suffering from severe headaches, Nietzsche would have been the last one to deny that.

Pain is a handicap. And yet, according to Nietzsche, pain does not merely denote what is lacking and goes wrong, as Schopenhauer sees it,8 but instead what motivates and energises life. Pain pertains to the dynamics of life rather than to its malfunctioning. What this means Nietzsche demonstrates by means of the figure of Dionysus. Dionysus is the god of festivity. Life entails forces ecstatically exceeding but thereby painfully destroying established forms of living.

However, painful destruction is not a counter-force to life. Rather it is the manifestation of its most basic drive, its continuous transition by way of decline. This is a contradiction that makes life unbearable but also possible. Nietzsche explicitly calls pain a contradiction Widerspruch. Hollingdale, London , Though pain appears to be a handicap, it most essentially resembles the power of life. Life is transition via decline.

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Conversely, this means that all pain, the hurt of an injury, the affliction of torture, like the agony of tragedy, signifies decline that bears on the forces of life. This also means that the rupture of pain finally summons the very forces that help us to surmount it. In this sense Nietzsche challenges us to counter the misery of pain with misery, or to celebrate affliction just as the Greeks did. In fact Nietzsche challenges us to live. A mere toothache occupies my entire attention. A backache changes the whole way I sit or move or feel.

Pain makes a difference to my whole being. When I say, I have a pain, then. I am in pain. No matter whether physical agony or mental anguish, pain makes a difference to our existence as a whole. In Zur Seinsfrage16 Heidegger maintains that it is this difference that is expressed by the original Greek word for pain: This means a painful difference algos in our usual present being coincides with a recollection logos of the meaning of our being.

A backache, for instance, makes us view our present everyday dwelling, our normal bodily movements, differently, and eventually with new appreciation. The experience of pain shows how the darkest rupture in a human being becomes the occasion for an intensified awareness of Being. In this sense Heidegger can call the experience of pain a process of homecoming,18 of coming to what we bear on, to what we really are. As far as pain is life, life begets pain.

The Common Root Like Nietzsche, Heidegger assesses positively a phenomenon that we would normally value negatively. However different their conceptions are, for both pain is the expression of a rupture conveying our most intimate reality. Both challenge us with the idea that pain makes a positive difference to our life.

But does pain always make such a difference to our life? And does it make sense to claim that at bottom this difference is always positive?

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I shall try to answer these questions by first exploring in more detail the meaning of the Greek word for rupture: This is also how Heidegger interprets algos. And this is what he seems to have in common with Nietzsche. As far as Nietzsche ascribes to pain the status of a rupture that makes a difference to my life, he also sees pain in comprehensive terms as suffering.

At first glance this is indeed what the term algos seems to express. But this is not the whole story. The term algos does not stand on its own but in apposition to at least four other terms. The first term is odune, which refers to hurts: The second term is pema, meaning affliction, adversity, a scourge and suffering. As pema, pain is almost an independent being, which sporadically afflicts the subject, invades it and takes over. Rey, The History of Pain, The Greek tragedies as well as Plato and Aristotle use these terms in apposition to algos to refer to aspects of agony such as minor conflict or serious combat as well as anguish, trauma and grief.

Once we see algos in apposition to odune, pema, agon and lupe, it attains spatial and temporal features. This is in contrast with the comprehensive meaning it has if it stands on its own. What is the point of this etymology? It indicates that the contention that pain is a rupture that concerns our whole being underrates the spatial and temporal dimensions that belong to its etymology. The rich etymology of the word algos suggests that not every pain needs to be understood in terms of comprehensive suffering, as a rupture that tears asunder my being.

This is indeed what we also learn from the Latin etymology. This means that, if my arm pains, I would not necessarily say that I suffer. Instead I would suggest the term disturbance. Pain is at least a disturbance of my actual condition. The pain in my arm may disturb me while writing. Yet it must not disrupt my whole life. Nevertheless we can still also apply disturbance to comprehensive suffering. A disturbance can be insignificant as well as devastating.

Of course, states other than pain can also be disturbing. Itching, noise, a sharp light, a bad smell: Not every disturbance is painful. Yet every pain is a disturbance. Pain is a disturbance to the extent that it is a hurt, an affliction, or agony. But the question remains: Nietzsche gives us a point of departure for answering this question by viewing pain as a form of perception.

Disturbed Perception Pain is in our head. The esse of pain is percipi. Now what sounds like a psychology of perception has, as is well known, a sound physiological base. What happens if we see something? To see means to organise the material that is seen into a discernible Gestalt. This means the eyes focus, limit, analyse, construct, and project. What is seen and what it is seen as, that is, our sensory impression and our act of thinking, fully conflate. Physiology and perception thus coincide. Thus perception is primordially a bodily act. Nietzsche only analyses the act of seeing, yet his analysis also pertains to hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling.

Those are not senseless physical sensations we need to supply with meaning a posteriori. I am not a cognising subject standing behind my eyes, ears, hands, tongue and nose giving sense to what I see, hear, touch, taste and smell. We do not first see and then observe the sky, hear and then notice the music, read and then capture the meaning of the words. By sensing I make sense.

I do this prior to any reflection and even on the most basic level of sensation. Instead sensation is a mode of perception just as perception is a mode of cognition.

It is by means of my senses that my body directs me to the world and draws it close by. As sensing bodies we are perceiving subjects. What is the relation between pain and perception? Pain, so I have argued, can be defined as a disturbance bound to hurt, affliction and agony. Now, once we link pain with perception this means that we can say in concrete terms: So we can more completely say: From within this definition we do not need to speculate about physiological, psychological or metaphysical pain; instead, pain is the sine qua non of bodily pain. When I am in pain, the body is in pain.

Defining pain in perceptual terms as hurt, affliction and agony gives us a basis to address the two initial questions now. The Materialist Claim Let us start with the materialist claim: This entails the unravelling of the neurological mechanisms of pain, for example, the description of nerve cells that confer pain sensitivity as well as the central nervous system pathways that transmit the information to higher centres.

According to classical neurological theory, the processing of pain consists of: The materialist claim goes further: Can we explain a pain in physical terms? Contrary to the materialists, I have argued that even the simplest of sensations is a form of perception. Now, as long as we say all pain is bodily pain, we can indeed explain pain sensations in physical terms. And yet, we can do so without reducing them to meaningless physiological impulses. What happens when I get a cramp in my leg? I do not first sense the hurt and then react emotionally and cognitively.

Instead, exclaiming in rage and searching for the place that hurts, my attention is primordially perceptive: I do so by exclaiming emotionally and inquiring cognitively.

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Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, Cambridge , 43ff. Now if we can explain the most simple of pain sensations in perceptual terms, there is no reason not to accept that this applies in particular to complex interactions as in the case of affliction and agony. As long as we take pain to be a form of bodily perception we can say: On the other hand, this bodily understanding does not reduce pain to senseless physical impulses; rather it remains a perception, the way we qua bodies relate to our environment.

This relationship is clearly not reducible to internal processes of the body. Thus, on the basis of defining pain as bodily perception, we can deal with the materialist demand without reducing the meaning pain has for our life to physical processes. The Challenge Pain makes a difference to my life; in pain I see what my life is about. This is what Nietzsche and Heidegger challenge us to face. How far does our pain convey such a challenge? To begin with, not every hurt makes a decisive difference to our bodily well-being.

We do learn from hurts to avoid injuries or to endure them. Otherwise we would not be able to help our children to cope with theirs. In this sense we can challenge our children not to complain or exclaim because of every twinge or ache. Yet not all hurt makes such a difference to our life. But what about affliction, punishment, torture, torment, or agony, conflict, combat, and grief? They assess positively only pain that could be seen as a force of life itself.

In perceptual terms, this is pain that. Yet the question remains: To what extent is pain a perceptual dynamo? The view that pain can be seen as a perceptual force does have merits. Pain may revive our perceptual capacities, yet it may just as easily disturb and even destroy these capacities. Furthermore, a perception can be painful, especially in the case of a change of perspective. But that is not always the case. A change of view can arouse joy rather than pain. Finally, perception exceeding our limits does not need to be painful, but can be simply enjoyable. Not every ecstatic event needs to end with a Dionysian cry of pain.

Instead birth may simply arouse joy or it can end in tragedy. As such, pain poses no particular challenge. Nietzsche and Heidegger bring to light the poignant way humans take up the challenge of pain, yet not every pain poses such a challenge, and not every person is able to meet it. Why did Heidegger in the summer of , when he was most intent on distancing himself from Nietzsche, nevertheless defend him against the charge of biologism? One must guard against giving a political answer to this question, albeit it is one that Heidegger himself seems to have favored at one time. Just before the Nuremburg trials opened in November , in a letter to the Academic Rector at Freiburg University, Heidegger explained that the succession of lecture courses on Nietzsche that he began in constituted his confrontation with and spiritual resistance to National Socialism.

This suggestion has been taken up in some of the secondary literature. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal Between Good and Evil, trans. Rosenberg was, after all, not fond of Nietzsche, even if he was not a vociferous opponent of him either, as, for example, Ernst Krieck was. This shows that there was no uniform view about Nietzsche within National Socialism. Indeed, National Socialism was not a uniform movement. Some, but not all, National Socialists were extreme advocates of biologism, but biologism was also widespread throughout Europe and North America.

Nietzsche iii, San Francisco , Heidegger had long opposed himself to Spengler and, although Spengler had at one time been seen as one of the intellectual precursors of National Socialism, he had died in in disgrace. Wallraff and Fredrick J. Stuart Hughes, Oswald Spengler. A Critical Estimate, New York , Reden und Proklamationen , Part1, vol. See also John Farrenkopf, Prophet of Decline. In the lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger identified and dismissed four Nietzschean analyses of the contempo Perhaps this was to take advantage of some remarks Spengler made about the English there.

Nietzsche i, New York , Faulconer and Mark A. Wrathall, Cambridge , Because Baeumler in his study, Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker, criticized Nietzsche for his biolo According to Baeumler, biologism is the doctrine that everything, including consciousness, can be traced back to life-processes. He granted that if Nietzsche had considered life an empirical fact, as biology does, then his philosophy would have been a uniquely monstrous biologism. Baeumler, Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker, Studia Phaenomenologica , Nietzsche iv, San Francisco , Heidegger, Wegmarken, GA 9, ; Pathmarks, However, although Heidegger thereby Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 46; Being and Time, Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, ; Being and Time, The proper defense against biologism was not border protection but reference to metaphysics: However, this does not mean that Heidegger was engaged in an effort to segregate metaphysics from biology.

He knew that Nietzsche not only employed the language of contemporary biology, but was also well informed about it. Indeed, in his notes for his seminar on Nie I shall show rather that Heidegger sought to demonstrate that an appreciation of the history of being provides a broader perspective from which to view not just biological thinking but the historical context which sustained it, a perspective that saw a certain necessity or logic in history.

In The Will to Power as Art Heidegger suggested that Nietzsche spoke the language of physiology and biology only in order to make his account of the aesthetic state accessible to his contemporaries. Heidegger, Nietzsche Seminare, GA 87, Furthermore, the attempt to distinguish Darwin from Nietzsche by correlating them respectively with the terms preservation and enhancement ran aground when Heidegger was forced to acknowledge that the two terms could not be separated in Nietzsche: Alfred Baeumler, Stuttgart , sec. Nietzsche avoided mere biologism only by virtue of the fact that his biologism was a necessary consequence of a metaphysical interpretation of beingness as will to power.

Even so, this account does not constitute a critique or even a confrontation in the conventional sense of those words. What it does do is to offer a diagnosis of the contemporary situation that allows it to be seen more broadly. There is here a crucial example of that transformation of our relation to philosophical problems and alternatives, such as biologism and mechanism, that Heidegger sought to bring about in his later thinking through the introduction of the term Machenschaft.

It was through an understanding of how the cataclysmic events of his time were organized around the notion of life that Heidegger came to understand Machenschaft. But if the condition becomes unconditional, then what comes to power is not-wanting a goal and cutting off any mindfulness that reaches ahead. This essay was not published until , but it was written and delivered as a lecture in And yet in claiming to offer a confrontation with and spiritual resistance to National Socialism, Heidegger plays on that ambiguity. By initially defending Nietzsche against the charge of biologism only to locate him within the history of Western metaphysics, Heidegger in a double movement elevated Nietzsche above his biologistic contemporaries the better to circumscribe him more forcefully in another way.

To the extent that Heidegger judged that Nietzsche ultimately succeeded in negotiating biologism, it was ultimately only because biologism had, since his earliest discussions of it, been redefined: Heidegger, Nietzsche II, ; Nietzsche iii, Neither Nietzsche, nor the philosophers of life of the early twentieth century, pointed far enough ahead of them. However, in the course of doing so, he had changed the terms of the debate: This becomes clear if one reads those lectures in the context of the contemporary manuscript, Die Geschichte des Seyns, in which he conceded that all attempts to refute biologism are worthless.

In consequence, the motivation for saving Nietzsche from the charge of biologistic thinking by characterizing his thinking as metaphysical cannot Heidegger offered a powerful diagnosis of the ills of his time, but it left little or no room for a political response that was capable of combating it. Introduction What it means to be human is rapidly becoming again the predominant question in academic discourse.

As postmodernism, the great slayer of subjectivity, is tottering on its last leg, philosophers, theologians and cultural critics are once again busy discussing the essence of our humanity. Heidegger and Levinas have emerged as the two most prominent conversation partners in this discussion, because both chart a course beyond modernist ideas of selfhood by defining subjectivity as transcendence in terms of a post-metaphysical humanism.

Each, however, approaches this common goal from a radically different perspective. According to Heidegger, any effort to uncover the true essence of our humanity involves a return to early Greek thought with its openness to being. Levinas challenges this Greek paradigm by suggesting a post-metaphysical, theologically inspired ethical subjectivity.

Nietzsche fails to understand their proper relation because by assigning being a value, even if it is the highest value, namely the principle of the will to power, he still devalues Being by objectifying 2. This humanism defines subjectivity as transcendent freedom. For Heidegger, human existence is transcendent because it stands in the ontological difference as the only be8.

Human existence stands out from any other as ek-sistence. This unique form of existence is reflected in human language, which is not so much a means of selfexpression as it is a correspondence to the event of being, to the ontological difference in which world and things show themselves.

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In his lecture course Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit of summer semester , Heidegger insists that a proper definition of our humanity depends on recognizing the question of being as the foundational question of philosophy. This recognition reveals that freedom and transcendence do not merely depend on but actually are our openness to being itself. Heidegger claims that the essence of our humanity cannot be derived from self-analysis, as classical humanism was wont to do, but from our relation to Being.

Heidegger tells us that if humanism is to think the nature of our humanity Wesen , his philosophy classifies as a humanism because we are most essentially human when we pursue Being. He then also reshapes another central humanist theme, concern for human dignity, in the image of Being because Heidegger believes that traditional humanisms failed in establishing human dignity.

Humanism of the Other: The truly human subject originates within social categories and is expressed primarily as ethical obligation to others and to the world. Levinas sees the reason for their radically different views of humanism in their different interpretive frameworks: For Levinas, the depersonalization of philosophy inevitably brings about the loss of the ethical in knowledge: Existents are reduced to the neuter state of idea, Being, the concept. The ontological difference cannot be thought in theoretical fashion but only as the process of interpreting our historical modes of being.

For Heidegger, transcendence is the openness of human beings to Being itself, the nature of which he does not qualify. For Levinas, by contrast, transcendence is defined not by our relation to Being but the prior ethical relation to another human being. Heidegger remains fascinated with his primary insight that being itself gives rise to the ontological difference and so grants to human beings the central un Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans.

Conversations with Philippe Nemo, Pittsburg , For Heidegger, this cardinal insight was the gift bestowed on the Greeks and passed on to Western thought, a gift we must accept for the sake of genuine thinking: Die Seinsgeschichte aber ist eben die Ge-. He argues against our enslavement to abstract concepts and advocates a stance of freedom for responsibility in the face of death. By replacing responsibility to the other with responsibility to Being, Levinas points out, Heidegger allows for the rationalization of inhuman practices. As long as human being is in any way the reflective site for a greater, impersonal reality i.

To escape this Greek definition of the human, Levinas conceives the human subject and knowledge beyond ontology in a new relation of human being to human being which founds all other knowledge and politics: Paradoxically, in Levinas self-identity and self-knowledge begin not Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, trans. Smitch, New York , We do not discover the essence of our humanity when we open our eyes or ears to Being but when we sense, in the midst of enjoyment and the cares of life, the ethical obligation to our neighbor.

Levinas tries to show in detailed phenomenological analyses of consciousness, memory, and time that at the heart of human existence we find inexplicable limiting experiences rather than control and mastery. Rather than correlation and sameness, we find disruption and breach, which point us to ethical transcendence as the origin of all human communication and meaning.

Conclusion When we compare Levinas and Heidegger carefully by attending to their work as a whole, we find that both reject an autonomous self and timeless, universal reason. Moreover, both strive to overcome subjectivism and define human being as freedom and transcendence. The crucial difference between them is that Heidegger grounds human identity in our relation to Being while Levinas derives human identity from our pre-ontological ethical relation to other human beings.

Yet one nagging question remains concerning this accommodating interpretation. Has not Heidegger himself attuned us to the power of language as an address of Being? And if language unveils, at least to some degree, how things are, whose language appears more human?

Heidegger insists that the essence of humanity lies in our service to being. Are we to measure our dignity by an impersonal entity or by a deity whose primary concern is justice? After all, nothing less than the meaning of freedom, truth, and humanity depends on how we answer this question. I am no man, I am dynamite. The concept of politics then merges completely with a war of spirits [Geisterkrieg], all the power structures of the old society having been exploded, since they are all based on lies: It is first with me that there is grand politics on the earth.

It was in the aftermath of the outbreak of the First World War that the still very Catholic young Heidegger first had occasion to quote Nietzsche. Heidegger will soon translate this millennial mendacity of nihilism into millennia of the oblivion of being by way of the long Occidental tradition of a metaphysics of constant presence, where this metaphysics itself is to be overcome along 1.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Wille zur Macht, Vorrede, 2. I am indebted to Alfred Denker for this reference. The ultimate thrust of this meditation on the sense and direction of the present historical situation of nihilism is a redirection of historical humanity toward its grandest potential. Jaspers sent a copy of the first edition of his book to Heidegger in early Only in that way can historical Da-sein take root and flourish in the realm opened and identified by the goal. Heidegger, Nietzsche I, ; Nietzsche i, Cited according to Guido Schneeberger, Nachlese zur Heidegger.

Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken, Bern , What sets the standards for greatness? Rather, it is measured by the degree to which the artist approaches the grand style, to which he is capable of the grand style. That style has this in common with grand passion, that it disdains to please; that it forgets about persuading; that it commands, that it wills. Native to the Greeks is the holy passion of the heavenly fire; their allotted historical task is the binding of unbound rapture and 11 12 13 14 Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht, n.

German historical Dasein has the opposite task. For its native endowment is the clarity of representation and the ability to order to the point of stringent systematic organization, so that its appointed task is to infuse this order with the fire of passion, of being affected and moved by archaic be-ing. Will we understand this mark? One thing is certain: The shift constitutes a counter-thrust to the totalitarian direction that National Socialism in fact took.

They may be summarized by the following schema: To this site of history belong the gods, the temples, the priests, the celebrations, the games, the poets, the thinkers, the ruler, the council of elders, the assembly of the people, the armed forces and the ships. All this does not first belong to the polis, is not first political, because it enters into a relationship with a statesman and a general and with the affairs of state. Rather, what we have named is political, that is, at the site of history, insofar as, for example, the poets are only poets, but then are actually poets, the thinkers are only thinkers, but then are actually thinkers, the priests are only priests, but then are actually priests, the rulers are only rulers, but then are actually rulers.

Rising to a supreme stature in the site of history, they also become apolis, without city and site, lonesome, uncanny, with no way out amidst beings as a 22 Poets and thinkers, statesmen and prophets are gathered together in lonely, untimely, tragic, and contentious dialogue at this core of history, Dasein. To be truly political is to be at the site of history, Dasein in its root facticity and possibility, which in each of its epochal instantiations is ours hereandnow.

Language here is the original institution of being in the violent words of poetic origin and not just a means of communication for the sake of quick and easy agreement, rhetoric. The community of creators is a combative community of agonistic struggle over the extreme issues of archaic being Seyn. Hearing from one another, listening to one another, reciprocally involves radically placing each other in question over the radical issues at stake. Rapprochement here is contention, contestation, war, a war of agonistic spirits. Coming to an understanding is combat.

We will find this ground and at the same time the calling of the German people in the history of the West only if we expose ourselves to being itself in a new way and new appropriation. I thereby experience the current events wholly out of the future. Translation by Frank W. Heidegger in in fact adjudged Hitler to be a phronimos or statesman capable of rising above narrow party interests to become a leader sensitive to the needs, desires, and tendencies of the German people as a whole. But there are other ways in which the essential bond of cooperation between leader and people are achieved and sustained, and Hitler immediately established himself as a master at not only reading, but also evoking and accentuating the fundamental moods Grundstimmungen of the German people to gain their active cooperation Zustimmung in the grand historical mission Bestimmung and commissions that he only gradually revealed to them.

The will of the leader first of all recreates the others into a following out of which a community arises. It is from this vital solidarity of followers to leader that sacrifice and service arise, and not from sheer obedience and institutional coercion. Other forms of effectuating the will of the state, like the administration of governance and of justice, reinforce political education. A subtle but perceptible shift in Heidegger occurs between and English translation by Lisa Harries slightly modified; in: Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Indeed, in the first week of summer semester , Heidegger sizes up this hope for a second, more philosophical revolution within a transformed German university by taking his bearings from the first upheaval two years earlier, still a fresh experience for his auditors.

The context is the obvious uselessness and untimeliness of a philosophy that endlessly asks the larger questions of sense and direction: Philosophy can never directly supply the forces and create the modes of operation and opportunities which bring about an historical state of affairs, if only because philosophy is always the direct concern of the few. Those who 37 38 39 Prominent thinkers like Max Weber and Max Scheler had recently played dominant roles as government counselors, joining a long line of German intellectuals going back to Goethe and the Humboldt brothers.

This remark was omitted from the first edition of the Schelling course in This prevalence of malice is nothing negative, is not an incapacity and mere misstep. It thus not only awakens the mood of mere displeasure and regret but also fills us with terror by virtue of its perverted greatness. Consternation over the Four Year Plan, especially among the younger faculty at Freiburg, led to a series of working meetings among them, independent of the party sanctioned discussions of the matter. One choice example of the intra-university debate: In demanding undisturbed quiet for supratemporal science, one finds a new common ground for compromise: From the side of science, one concedes that there is no such thing as pure theory, that there is room for a worldview.

Running away solves nothing. Best to remain and exploit the possibility of meeting like-minded individuals. Philosophie und Politik, Frankfurt am Main , , That what we have called science is running its course and technologizing itself, perhaps for a whole century, proves nothing to the contrary!

O.T.O. Phenomenon Books

At this point, Heidegger abandons his fading hope in a difference in the decisions made by narrow-minded party functionaries and by Hitler himself, the statesman whose originative deeds create a new state and a higher order. After he develops a more refined sense of the essence of technology as completed metaphysics, Heidegger will characterize Hitler as the supreme technician of a system as much being imposed upon him as manipulated by him, by way of a shrewd calculative thinking totally devoid of any vestige of the meditative thinking required of the statesman.

XXVI of this collection of notes, a note that was written no earlier than late Some have regarded it as his first unequivocal critique of National Socialism. On the development of the concept of the greatness of Dasein in each case ours at this time, which we have followed only in part in this essay, see also the following: Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. Vietta, Heideggers Kritik am Nationalsozialismus und an der Technik, Instead, he continues to pursue the pre-political Geisterkrieg of grand politics with great thinkers like Nietzsche in trying to come to terms with the planetary meaning of the Second World War.

Is this not a continued expression of hope for enlightened despots who would exercise their will to power Glenn Gray, New York , Particularly as employed in the late work of Paul de Man, reading is a technical term that refers to our mode of access to texts, but also to the capacity of criticism to open up non-totalizing interpretations of traditional works.

In a famous public debate with Ernst Cassi1. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading. For Heidegger, however, metaphysics itself acquires an entirely new meaning through multiple interpretations of philosophical and literary works during the period of Sein und Zeit and extending into the years following its publication. Instead of functioning in the traditional manner as a term that describes the attempt to privilege the intelligible over the sensible world, metaphysics is redefined as the properly ontological concern of Dasein.

While the issue of art does not emerge strongly in the CassirerHeidegger debate, we can easily envision how the basic concerns of aesthetic experience might have figured in a more complete version of this encounter. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Rather than interpret disinterestedness as simply a limiting condition, Heidegger assimilates it to a mode of being that enables the object to appear as such: At the same time, Heidegger does not merely criticize Nietzsche as an interpreter of Kant but readily admits that matters of philosophical originality are sometimes quite distinct from matters of scholarship.

As a hermeneutical concept, the misreading of a text can constitute the basis for a 5. Marshall, New York From the genealogical standpoint, both Kant and Schopenhauer follow Platonic directives7 in elevating noumenal over phenomenal relations on the basis of an underlying ontological difference. The significance of rapture cannot be grasped unless Kantian and post-Kantian conceptions of the aesthetic are held in view: The death of the subject that his philosophy announces can be related to the attempt to retrieve a realm of being that has been denigrated since the origin of metaphysics.

In calling attention to this movement away from the whole concept of the subject, Heidegger is able to suggest how Nietzsche came to perform a crucial role in contemporary thought. And yet, while approaching the problem of aesthetics in an original manner, Nietzsche also risks transferring the dangers of subjectivity into the work of art itself. Heidegger suggests that, as a postWagnerian, Nietzsche often fails to recognize the importance of the 7 8. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. For example, in acknowledging that Nietzsche was always interested in clarifying the relationship between art and truth, Heidegger also contends that his concept of truth was never developed beyond the positions of Plato and Aristotle, which were later enshrined uncritically in the exemplars of early modern thought.

From this standpoint, Nietzsche does not represent a significant advance over the epistemology of Descartes. Hence, while defining truth in terms of error, he refers his definition to a notion of certitude that lies at the heart of the Cartesian theory of knowledge. The connection between Christianity and Platonism has been clearly established in numerous studies, but Nietzsche invites us to rethink this relationship, not on the level of historical influence, but in terms of shared patterns of denial that demonstrate mutual complicity.

It is true that Nietzsche distinguishes Plato from Platonism largely due to issues of historical influence as opposed to authorial meaning. However, Heidegger cannot be identified with this uncomplicated reading. Hence the craftsman allows things to become present as phenomena, that is, as appearances that in some way correspond to ideas. However, the nature of this correspondence remains difficult to determine. Since the craftsman does not produce the eidos, he is essentially estranged from the being of the thing produced.

From this perspective, the material thing can only detract from the original radiance of this idea. Heidegger attempts to explain why it is hard to translate the term that aptly describes this process: This does not mean, however, that Heidegger interprets Plato as providing the model for a basic discordance that Nietzsche simply ap12 Hence beauty and truth are distinguished but related as differently attuned to an experience of radiance that posits Being in nondiscordance.

It is evident to Heidegger that Nietzsche interprets Plato as functioning in terms of a clearly articulated form of metaphysical dualism. For this reason, Nietzsche cannot simply challenge traditional Platonism in a manner that leaves everything intact after basic structures have been displaced and perhaps dismantled. On the contrary, the apparent world also collapses when the true world ceases to be: Heidegger argues that Nietzsche does not arrive at a full understanding of his mature position until very late in his career.

Heidegger discusses this final, Nietzschean phase in terms of two related moments. This abyss is that of life, which is recognized as a contradictory phenomenon that integrates various perspectives in order to function as a coherent entity. The perspectives that enable life to flourish coordinate an encounter with appearances, which constitute the core of reality itself. Nonetheless, Heidegger continues to refer to Nietzsche as a metaphysician who reinterprets the question of being in terms of a revised notion of appearances. Is Heidegger justified in describing Nietzsche as a metaphysician?

Nietzsche turns the history of metaphysics into an allegory, and then Heidegger reads Nietzsche as opposing the traditional idea that reality is stable and unchanging. Heidegger therefore provides an allegory of reading in reading Nietzsche as an allegorist who overturns the metaphysical assumptions that generally govern our interpretation of reality. Reality, when interpreted as will to power, assumes the status of a ground that ultimately exceeds the totality of perspectives that are applied to it.

How can this inconsistent interpretation be acceptable? The way out of this apparent impasse has been perhaps most skillfully explored by Eric Blondel, whose work on Nietzsche has the hermeneutical value of deepening our reading of Heidegger.

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