The title of the post here brings out a contrast, a difference made visible by the ambivalence of the additive or supplementary: the comma with the conjunction counting Heidegger, tacking him on like an afterthought, in a set philosophers in which there exists hyperbole. In sum, the title announces a problem, rather than a solution. It is a question about the correctness of its formula, and it is accomplished already in its formulation. Hyperbole, it says, Is it also in Heidegger? Is there hyperbole in Heidegger? And this question, we already know, risks proving something that seems itself hyperbolic: Heidegger never ever used hyperbole. If he did, it was a million times less remarkable than any regular use of hyperbole.But in a way this is already a miscalculation: to ask if there is hyperbole also in Heidegger risks presupposing that Nietzsche is hyperbolic. Is this true? In fact, it presupposes more than this: if it is possible for Heidegger to be hyperbolic here, as it were, along with Nietzsche, Nietzsche must be himself hyperbole--that is, 100% hyperbolic, some standard of real, authentic, total use of hyperbole--since Heidegger comes afterwards to measure himself against Nietzsche. But is this the case? To understand all this about hyperbole, then--and it should be obvious that we're talking about hyperbole in a wide sense, about the figure and the logic that makes it up--we must be vigilant enough to pose this question of Heidegger (Is there hyperbole in Heidegger?) and, at the same time, question this question, which is to question Nietzsche (Does there exist the hyperbole of Nietzsche?)--that is, to add (Heidegger) and subtract (him) at the same time.
Working out the formula, checking for mistakes, we nevertheless seem to see that this odd operation it forces us to perform has its basis in the extreme nature of the Nietzschian task. As we said, Nietzsche isn't prompting us to ask just whether he is (also) hyperbolic, like Heidegger, but whether hyperbole exists. Nietzsche makes us ask, first and foremost, whether there is such a thing as hyperbole at all, whether hyperbole is such a thing that could be used in Nietzsche to the extent that he can be said to be a standard, some sort of authentic user of hyperbole, in comparison to Heidegger. Thus, like the question of Heidegger, this risks proving something hyperbolic as well: in the entirety of Western discourse there never was any hyperbole. Hyperbole never existed. Until Heidegger's poor use of hyperbole, that is a million times easier to miss than any normal use of hyperbole, hyperbole was completely nonexistent.
Let's note that this more extreme of the two claims--more extreme, more hyperbolic, because it questions whether there exists at all what is the basis of its very question--already touches upon the question of madness, which seems to be inextricably bound up with hyperbole. Must we be mad to question whether there is such a thing as the hyperbolic? Before we answer yes, we must reflect: isn't this question--whether we can hurl ourselves (ballein) above ourselves (húper) at all--not the sanest question of our current status, of our being, of our self-identity, of whether we are what we are (because it is questionable whether we can be higher than we are)? Another way to put this would be to say it touches upon the question of the overman.
But, to return to the question, is there hyperbole? Is it in Nietzsche at all? Let's simply try to prove this--regardless of whether this might end up disproving things. To prove this, many are tempted to simply look at the title of Nietzsche's work that seems most hyperbolic (and also, incidentally, nearest madness): Ecce Homo. Already, there it is. But we also know, from Nietzsche's letters (October 30, 1888), that the title was chosen to test the censors. Regardless of whether this is true, it is clear that it could just basic, pointless blasphemy, rather than hyperbole. Already, then, we have a sense of what will be so troubling to our efforts to point to hyperbole: Nietzsche's hyperbole is, at the same time as it is hyperbole, dishonest. And while this describes perfectly just what hyperbole is--dishonesty, being above oneself--it also hints that there is no such thing as "pure" hyperbole--a hyperbole that would honestly just be hyperbole.
We have already disproven things then. This, it would seem, is what is so disturbing and disarming about the hyperbole in Nietzsche: at the same time as it is hyperbole, we sense that it isn't. This forces us to look at it as truth, however, which is just as disarming, since the claim is so grand. There is no way to get around the problem: either Nietzsche is boasting, or he is merely being descriptive. The two acts map onto each other so well that we are not left with any alternative between true and false. And thus with no hyperbole: the extreme or hyperbolic nature of his task is then to show that hyperbole actually outlines a structure of truth.
But, given what we know about Nietzsche, this seems itself problematic. For we might just as well think that hyperbole would actually be something very contrary to the rest of Nietzsche's claims. Why? Simply because hyperbole seems to make a qualitative claim. And Nietzsche, we know, is the thinker of the quantitative par excellence. How do we reconcile this emphasis upon hyperbole with the emphasis upon quantitative relations of force? How do we see one as the other? Can we see one as the other?
Let's look at a passage to outline the problem more clearly:
I am an evangelist the like of which there has never been; I know tasks so lofty that there has not yet been a concept for them; I am the first to give rise to new hopes.
-Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny," 1.
Isn't this a claim similar to that claim of Heidegger, the qualitative claim?
If a thinking question is not so simple and so outstanding as to determine the will and the style of thinking for centuries--by yielding to them what is the most profound issue to think--then it is best that it not be asked.
-Contributions to Philosophy (from Enowning), #5: "For the Few and the Rare."
Isn't the claim of Nietzsche a claim that says: it is almost better if the rest (of the evangelists, of those who thought they knew lofty tasks, of those who hoped) were dispensed with? In other words, that what makes up the hyperbole--the lump of that which Nietzsche is greater than (in a more normal hyperbole, "I could sleep for a zillion hours," it would be the hours)--is, despite its makeup, simply a set of identical things? Things that, because they are that set, can be dispensed with, compared to Nietzsche, who has more value? The question already arises, then, of whether this is indeed what Heidegger is here saying as well. And the more basic question of the relation of Heidegger to hyperbole. Perhaps we can address that now, in order to come back to Nietzsche.
Is Heidegger really saying that it is better for us if an unthinking question is never asked? In other words, is he serious? We would be mistaken if we said either yes or no. And yet, I maintain this is a qualitative claim, one which Nietzsche's claim, which should be quantitative and not qualitative, is in danger of approaching. How can this sentence of Heidegger be qualitative and not be serious? And, then, how can it not be unserious? And is either of these hyperbole?
It is just as much a mistake to say yes as to say no, because the particular type of qualitative claim does not move on the level here of identity. When Heidegger is saying that there is such a thing as a question, and that it is better off that a particular kind of question not be asked, he isn't talking about the existence of the question. He's not saying that a certain set of existent things have a particular quality--let's call it, being unthinking, or simply not being determinative enough of the will and style of thinking--which does not make them worthy of existence. The unthinking questions do not all exist such that they are identical in this respect. They do not have, that is, a relationship of identity with respect to each other. Their relation is, for Heidegger, that of sameness. Which means that a certain set of questions are unthinking in the sense that they all would not heavily participate in the determination of the will and style of thinking--even if they do not exist in the sense of just being present there. Thus, a question that is not yet on someone's lips, but is deep and unformulated in their mind, or scattered in notes somewhere, yet still ready to come together to become a question that is unthinking, that does not determine the will and the style of thinking immensely--this is what makes up the type of question that is better off not asked. This is what constitutes the quality of unthinkingness: essentially, what a piece of a question will do when it is eventually a question.
It is hard not to explain this in terms that are teleological (though Gadamer rightly calls this, and similar reasonings by Heidegger, only a "teleology in reverse"), but it is clear from this that when the question is better off being not asked, it does not mean that burning the pieces of paper with unthinking thoughts or silencing all the people who would only ask unthinking thoughts would not get rid of the quality here of unthinkingness. So, if Heidegger is not totally serious about what he is saying, it is not to be unserious or false. It is to be serious in a different way--and hyperbolic in a different way.
What is clear, however, is that this does not totally make a claim about truth or falsity in the way we found Nietzsche to be doing already. Heidegger is actually dismissing both alternatives--as we saw when neither saying yes or no would characterize his statement. What Heidegger is doing, then, is finding a different type of a claim to truth. Its relationship to hyperbole will have to be, then, ambivalent, insofar as hyperbole is not determined with respect to this new conception of truth. In essence, what Heidegger is doing here, on the level of our inquiry, is trying to show that hyperbole hits a limit with a conception of truth that is based on identities and things that are existent. What should we get out of this? Not that Heidegger lacks a certain ironic, jocular willingness to use hyperbole, or that his hyperboles are indeed serious, but that what he is in search for--if this were a concern for him--is a way of being hyperbolic that is precisely what we have already sensed Nietzsche resists: a way of being purely hyperbolic, hyperbolic in a way that is not at the same time a bit dishonest. What would this hyperbole look like? Would it still be hyperbole? This is where critiques of Heidegger may be launched.
But now we can return to Nietzsche and make more sense of the type of qualitative claim he is in danger of approaching. For there are actually two types of qualitative claim that we distinguished: the type that lumps things together based on their identity with respect to each other, that is, based on their existence, and the Heideggerian type, which lumps things together in terms of their possibility, in terms of their essence (that is, when we understand essence as the same or sameness). Is Nietzsche, then, in claiming that he is an evangelist the likes of which has never been actually claiming that it is better off if the whole set of previous evangelists are better off not existing? Or is he claiming that all other evangelists weren't really evangelists, wouldn't be evangelists when they came to be evangelists, and thus we would be better off if they never came to be this? Obviously, the answer is closer to the second: this is what Nietzsche comes close to claiming. But this is so only because we can't admit that this is a qualitative claim.
When Nietzsche is saying he is the first to give rise to new hopes, he is in danger of claiming that there is a particular quality that he has which others don't: that of being able to give rise to hope. But we can understand this in a different way: Nietzsche is so hopeful, so more hopeful than those who have been hopeful, so much more of a quantity of force, that to do any justice to the quantity, we have to make a qualitative shift. The shift isn't qualitative, however, since it is just to mark anew a qualitative difference. This is what it means to revalue in Nietzsche: to collect energy along a different distribution so that it gives rise to what seem to be qualitative shifts, shifts which actually can only really be described--can only really be--quantitative. In other words, suddenly there is so much more hope, that all the previous people who hoped look like they are less--to the extent that the phenomenon of hope that they exhibit seems different. What this does is not only make the phenomenon appear reversed or overturned, it determines the scale on which phenomena are compared upon quantity. Hope looks different because it is more, and thus also because it is not a quality.
The reason why this comes close to what Heidegger is claiming is actually, then, because it is closer to the first situation: really, the previous people who hoped should not exist--as people who exhibited the quality and not quantity of hope. Nietzsche isn't denying their right to exist as well. He is transforming, however, everything that centers around what right means. This transformation, then, is different than that effort of Heidegger's--it is precisely the reverse of that. This hyperbole of Nietzsche does not strive to make hyperbole pure: it seeks to infect the entire range of what is not considered hyperbolic with its hyperbole. One could say, then, that to read Nietzsche right, one has to take every word as hyperbolic--which means taking it as both true and false--whereas with Heidegger one has to look for another level at which hyperbole and truth would be more originary.
So, to return to our formula: Heidegger would be ambivalent with respect to the hyperbole of Nietzsche, precisely because Nietzsche's hyperbole would be dishonest--that is, would not be hyperbole. He would also be ambivalent because we could not be sure whether his hyperbole had any relationship to what seems like hyperbole in Nietzsche. Which makes the ambivalence into a reversal or opposition.
5 comments:
As this comment will mark my first upon Countermemory, let me begin by simply saying thank you for your remarkable and remarkably consistent work on this impressive "blog". I have been reading along for some time and have not failed to be intrigued with what I have found.
In regards to this problem of hyperbole, I would like to follow up on what I take to be an essential --even if only briefly mentioned --tendency of your posting. The tendency might be identified as a Greek one --and this identification would no doubt be utterly hyperbolic, insofar at least as this once Greek word "hyperbole" finds its essence only when it has been returned to Greek soil, unreachable though even its very shores may be. Indeed perhaps I can, by way of an introduction to this tendency I am attributing to your posting, condense Heidegger's peculiar need to --in his own way --hyperbolize, into a single sentence, a sentence that states the one and only source of this need. If it could be given, this sentence would run: "To speak is to speak Greek." To elaborate: those endowed with the capacity of speech are so endowed to the extent, and only to the extent, that they speak Greek. Without yet further clarifying what this strange and extreme confinement of speaking is to mean, let me at least suppose it to serve as an introduction to my interest in what is essential in your posting:
Isn't it in terms of each thinker's relation to the Greeks that the essential difference obtaining between their 'employment' of hyperbole finds its measure? How does does "hyperbole" sound in Greek? What, in our "hyperbole", still speaks in Greek?
After some preparation, you write:"isn't this question--whether we can hurl ourselves (ballein) above ourselves (húper) at all--not the sanest question of our current status, of our being, of our self-identity, of whether we are what we are (because it is questionable whether we can be higher than we are)?" Your question as I understand it, serves --among other things --to be a check upon the temptation to walk the tightrope, to pass over to the overman. The question then exercises a kind of restraint upon the temptation to obey the call to what might be called the urgent necessity of hubris, a call that first resonates and can be heard only in the time of the death of god. Among other things, however, your question also allows us to hear a smidgeon of what I would like to call Nietzsche's Greek, or IN OTHER WORDS, the Greek that still speaks in Nietzsche. According to this strange and twisted tongue, "hyperbole" is performative and is nothing but self-overcoming: to hyper-bolize is to fore-cast the coming of the overman. According to the lexicon of Nietzche's Greek, hyperbole is the true "self-fulfilling prophecy". It is precisely because this prophecy is a prophecy OF sel-fulfillment, where here again, the "of" is a genitive both subjective and objective, that Nietzschean hyperbole can rightly be said to be neither true nor false or both at once, as you point out so keenly: "Nietzsche's hyperbole is, at the same time as it is hyperbole, dishonest. And while this describes perfectly just what hyperbole is--dishonesty, being above oneself--it also hints that there is no such thing as "pure" hyperbole--a hyperbole that would honestly just be hyperbole." Here, throwing oneself above oneself is the only way to truly maintain oneself, and this maintainence by augmentation --and it alone --is the truth (that is, power, properly speaking). This predicament, in which the matter of what is said is displaced from a realm in which 'truth' and 'falsehood' are what matters for what is said, is a predicament in which the predicative option of either "boast or description" is overcome; the hyperbole describes insofar as it realizes, and the description is a description of the hyperbole --in so far as the latter is a fore-casting which realizes what it predicts, namely the aforementioned predicament, which is otherwise stated in Zarathustra's imperative that man must become creator and fore-father to the overman. If this fore-casting is what is needed in order to let the man whose essence belongs to a deity-now-deceased overcome himself, it is also the case that it is nothing other than this self-overcoming that it fore-casts; the prophecy is a prophecy of self-fulfillment.
My point in saying all of this is simply to suggest that, in listening to Nietzsche's Greek, what we hear amidst the self- fulfilling prophecy of self-fulfillment (and prophecy is an absolute requisite of self- fulfillment when the self depends on its own futural augmentation --or in other words what I understand you to be calling "quantity") is the voice of time still speaking in the Greek of Nietzsche. It is therefore ABOVE ALL the temporal element of the hyperbole, the time in and of which hyperbole speaks, that I wish to concentrate upon and devote the present comment to. Indeed, it seems to me that this temporality of the hyperbole, as it is voiced in Greco-Nietzschean terms, is precisely what Nietzsche is referring to in the the quote you have posted from Ecce Homo:
"I am an evangelist the like of which there has never been; I know tasks so lofty that there has not yet been a concept for them; I am the first to give rise to new hopes."
The passage belongs to "Why I am a Destiny" because it prophesies self-fulfillment. It regards shicksal and geschichte; it regards time. The "Destiny" which Nietzsche knows himself to be is the coming reality of hyperbole. Thus when he says "I am an evangelist the like of which there has never been", Nietzsche is not simply separating himself off from all other evangelists, present and past. If this were the case, Nietzsche would only be "new" and "unlike all evangelists" for the moment, and in this way he would be EXACTLY like all other evangelists, who each enjoyed their moment of glory in the audience of their time. But Nietzsche is a Destiny. When Nietzsche says that he is "an evangelist the like of which there has never been", he is ABOVE ALL juxtaposing this "evangelist" with himself AS HE HAS HITHERTO BEEN, and this is what makes him completely different than all prior evangelists. In other words, Nietzsche's evangelism evangelizes OF and FROM the future. Nietzsche evangelizes only insofar as he is a destiny. This is why he is the "first to give rise to new hopes", i.e hopes that are essentially new, hopes that remain new. Just as the "transvaluation of all values" does not propose to erect new values in place of the old, devalued values, so too Nietzsche does not propose to be yet another evangelist --the newest for the moment --in the succession of evangelists, the history of evangelism. the succession of values or the succession of evangelists, it does not matter. What counts is that the succession is overcome, that time as it has HITHERTO been reckoned be overcome, and that man learn to live in the future, i.e. that he learn to accept the hyperbolic invitation to come over to the overman.
I would like to comment LATER on Heidegger's hyperbole, if possible. But for now I wish to pose the question of why you chose, in this thought-provoking posting, to bring the difference between the hyperbole of Nietzsche and that of Heidegger under the rubric of "quality and quantity" as it seems to me that this rubric only serves to conceal the manner in which time is at play in this seynsgeschichtlich hyperbolism.
I can only reply quickly to what is a great comment--and one which I thank you very much for:
You seemed to hit at the real tension I actually was trying to deal with here--and I should mention this post probably shouldn't have been put up, as I've been busy and it is much too unclear and whatever it says it says too schematically. That doesn't matter so much because what you talk about here is precisely what I was trying to elaborate about hyperbole.
1. First and foremost, a concern about the relation of our present use of the figure to that of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and to the further history of the word, which you center--a little too quickly, in my view, though this was occasioned by my use of the origin of the word--in the Greek use. But I feel you distort this concern a bit to fit precisely the Heideggerian schema that I was worried about applying here--and it is a schema, as you employ it... there is no way around this except to affirm simply against what I am saying that it is genuine thinking, the bringing into language of thought, or, what you quite mistakenly, in my opinion (since it can equally be the modest act of miming and representational thinking), call "the urgent necessity of hubris". When you articulate the principle that my post, in your mind, tends to revolve around--"Isn't it in terms of each thinker's relation to the Greeks that the essential difference obtaining between their 'employment' of hyperbole finds its measure?"--well, I am a bit confused, because why could my use of the Greek origin, precisely as it is written, not also be to stress the division in the original word itself? Returning to huperballein, I split it: "isn't this question--whether we can hurl ourselves (ballein) above ourselves (húper) at all--not the sanest question of our current status, of our being..." You have to force it into the resistance or restraint (which is different than a hesitancy or a suspension) of a possibility--a possibility I perhaps am not avoiding but precisely calling into question: as you put it, "the temptation to obey the call to what might be called the urgent necessity of hubris." You quite graciously (and I thank you for it) call this a way to hear a smidgeon of Nietzsche's Greek, but what I am doing here perhaps could also be trying to find a way of allowing Nietzsche to speak (and alongside Heidegger, without avoiding him) that does not resist but rather suspend this "temptation"--precisely by not seeing it as a temptation, as a possibility. To this extent it is also not an effort to side with Nietzsche against Heidegger. It is to bring what Heidegger called an auseinandersetzung to a head, to the point where it cannot work as he uses it.
2. Your focus upon the time of hyperbole is therefore right on, completely. This was something I had to reduce to the utmost with the quality/quantity distinction--which was pretty hopeless as an effort, I think you'll agree. But my point in making it was precisely to bring out the structure of the distinction between Heidegger and Nietzsche to the utmost, by taking what is the most basic aspect anyone might notice regarding each of their ways of looking at questions: for Nietzsche, a question is a problem of force, for Heidegger, it is a question of essence. Both transform completely the respective notions that they employ--force and essence. And it was my aim to show this transformation as it engaged (and engaged itself in) hyperbole, so as to suspend for a moment the quite easy distinction that anyone from either side arguing against the other (and you are not one of these "anyone's") would miss: for Heidegger, there is no hyperbole, yet Nietzsche is completely hyperbolic. This has to overlook that crucial element of time, but I hoped my hesitation in submitting this difference between the two thinkers to one of time (for both their approaches ) would bring the necessity of this aspect of the analysis out perhaps a bit. But more basically, I did this because I don't really know a way of posing the question of time here, however, that would not privilege Heidegger, since the question of time as it determines the basic approach of a thinker to a question and especially a mode of language is more his than Nietzsche's. Or, put better, I personally know how to articulate this question in Heidegger's mode, so I did not yet trust myself with trying to articulate it from out of a Nietzschian viewpoint. Insofar as you try to do so, however, I think that you put forth some pretty questionable theses, though again I thank you for them. They exhibit, I think, that privilege that I spoke of and avoided (only because I was not at all comfortable enough to even pose it--which is a fault, not an excuse). I seriously doubt that Nietzsche evangelizes simply of and from the future. Doesn't this sound already like the importation of Heidegger's Nietzsche into Nietzsche? Or quite simply Heidegger himself just into Nietzsche? I'll be clearer: I was trying precisely to suspend with the word "quantity" the equation of quantity with "futural augmentation," that you make--because this is to subscribe to an idea of the will to power as will to the same: that is, a Heideggerian interpretation of time. And while this allows an interpretation of Nietzsche, it is only an interpretation. In short, the problem of time is what is underlying the whole discussion of Nietzsche seeming at first to be someone who would resist hyperbole. The question I broach there is precisely one that suspends what you assert: that Nietzsche is different than previous evangelists. In order to say he is different, you have to have an idea of difference. And this idea of difference--what if it did not rely, regardless of whether it was difference between what is identical or what is the same, on the notion of essence, that is, of quality? This is what I try to bring out with quantity: what if the difference was simply additive? What if it was precisely, more? Not more-in-order-to-be-more, but just simply more? What if, that is, Nietzsche was different than other evangelists not qualitatively or in essence, but simply because he had more force somehow? Precisely because he did not believe in himself (perhaps I am a buffoon):
I do not want to be a holy man; sooner even a buffoon.— Perhaps I am a buffoon.— Yet in spite of that—or rather not in spite of it, because so far nobody has been more mendacious than holy men—the truth speaks out of me. (this is a crappy translation)
Moreover, it is precisely a question of Shicksal--and not reducing this to what Heidegger calls it. Destiny, what if it were merely something quantitative? What if it did not have any center? Any gathering, other than that of force and what can, precisely, be reckoned? It isn't an accident that you use this word disparagingly, as what needs to be overcome. What if overcoming were not to bring about a difference in essence? This is what needs to be questioned: and insofar as this is the case, it means suspending the question of time as Heidegger poses it. Perhaps it also means questioning whether being is as important as we think it is--or whether our focus should be on the otherwise than being, to use Levinas' phrase. But, then, this is all to Nietzschian: how to question both at the same time without subscribing to any? By suspending both? This is why I had to use the old stupid distinction between quality and quantity--when neither is totally identifiable with either. Things fall back into this, perhaps, and I only end up what I tried to resist (thinking Heidegger as thinker of essence, Nietzsche as force). Sorry I am so hasty and extremely sloppy here: I have to run--and am just throwing as much as I can at you to try and give you something perhaps that might be useful or explanatory.
Thank you for the thorough nature of your response (it made me wonder what you would write were you not in a rush!). Would that I could respond in kind.
As far as I can see there are two considerations to be made which your response has required of the discussion. I wish only to touch upon the first in passing and then address the second in some detail.
1.) The first is broad and far-reaching, and it is so precisely because it is a question of the trajectory and intent –if not the very possibility –of this discussion itself. That is to say, the first issue is an issue of the appropriate prejudice one must bring with them in order to properly consider the matter at stake in the title “Heidegger and Nietzsche”, a matter which was provisionally named at the discussion’s inception as “hyperbole”. Should we be scrupulous about not forcing Nietzsche into Heidegger’s Nietzsche? Shouldn’t we guard Nietzsche against that strained and serious portrait Heidegger so masterfully (and not without his typical slight of hand) rendered, namely “Frederick Nietzsche, Metaphysician”? It seems to me that these cautionary questions are emphatically reiterated in your response: “But more basically, I did this because I don't really know a way of posing the question of time here, however, that would not privilege Heidegger, since the question of time as it determines the basic approach of a thinker to a question and especially a mode of language is more his than Nietzsche's. Or, put better, I personally know how to articulate this question in Heidegger's mode, so I did not yet trust myself with trying to articulate it from out of a Nietzschian viewpoint.” The idea you seem to have in mind here is that of an equal hearing; Nietzsche’s viewpoint and Heidegger’s viewpoint are to be weighed by the discussion in a way that aims at respecting the uniqueness belonging to each and is in this sense ideally an exercise of impartiality. I would respond to this –and I somehow feel positive that you actually agree with me –that not only is this not possible but it is not desirable. It is not desirable because, in the end, it foregoes what first of all has to be thought. Perhaps there has never been an issue that brings this undesirablity out more explicitly than the issue named “Heidegger and Nietzsche”, since neither Heidegger nor Nietzsche claimed to have a viewpoint.
Both in fact thought in terms of a lack of a viewpont, insofar as each thought in virtue of a lack of philosophy, though each experienced this lack differently. I am alive to the objection that with this last statement, I have done nothing but taken up Heidegger’s Nietzsche again, but I am equally alive to the fact that this objection presupposes that there is a Nietzsche according to Heidegger, i.e. it reduces the matter once again down to viewpoint. While a simple roundabout of offsetting objections such as these may serve only to induce a paralysis of discussion, there is something quite remarkable that it indicates and is symptomatic of, something which might be called anfangliche entsheidenheit, something for which a certain decisiveness of thought is demanded in advance.
Let me see if I can present this dilemma in a rough and ready way. Put plainly, I am referring to the question, which either remains a question or is already decided in its answer before it is asked ---the question, that is, of whether thinking will catch up to its beginning. Has thinking even begun? Heidegger never tires of marveling over the manner in which we –and especially he himself –are still not thinking. Now either this is Heidegger’s “perspective”, or even, to use a much different word, his doctrine, or it is the only manner in which of the matter to be thought can be properly indicated. If the former is the case then Heidegger’s doctrine is a manifest contradiction of the variety known as a liar’s paradox; his teaching is that he has no teaching. Alles ist weg, in the idiomatic sense of “it is all gone”. But if the latter is the case, the question is not “to whom should we attribute the thought ‘we are still not thinking’?”, for the thought has not been granted to us yet. The question is, what is it that we are coming to think, what of our present thoughtlessness still has need of our thought? Are we simply thoughtless today, or is thought coming? Alles is weg.
This second option, no matter how much we immediately and undeniably (but also superficially and unquestionably) detect its “Heideggerian language”, cannot possibly belong to Heidegger. The point is not for me to poorly parrot Heidegger here, but to raise the question of whether one can, despite all appearances, parrot Heidegger at all. Is Heidegger there at all? Gibt es Heidegger? That is the de-cision that before all else faces thought nach Heidegger. To concentrate all I have been diffusely and clumsily trying to say into a single sentence: the difference between “option one” and “option 2” is not merely a matter of perspective (otherwise we would have decided in advance for option one and thus there would never have been an option).
With this let me return to your concern which I have quoted above:
“But more basically, I did this because I don't really know a way of posing the question of time here, however, that would not privilege Heidegger, since the question of time as it determines the basic approach of a thinker to a question and especially a mode of language is more his than Nietzsche's. Or, put better, I personally know how to articulate this question in Heidegger's mode, so I did not yet trust myself with trying to articulate it from out of a Nietzschian viewpoint.” My question is not whether we should privilege Heidegger but HOW we could possibly do so. To put the issue poignantly (and to employ a turn of phrase that we tend to think we are all familiar with: is it not the case that what Heidegger has said remains to be said? Let’s put this in a way that moves the articulation of the question an inch (and only an inch) further away from the easily conceded appearance of ‘Heideggerian dogmatism’: if the “question of time as it determines the basic approach of a thinker to a question and especially a mode of language is more his than Nietzsche's”, might this very claim already involve Nietzsche, that is to say, might this predominance of the question of time ‘in Heidegger’ be not the style or approach of Heidegger so much as an historical necessity (geschichtliche notwendigkeit), i.e. a need according to which history would have to show itself to the present time? If this seemingly wild or dogmatic/fanatical claim can be granted for the nonce, then it must also be granted that Nietzsche’s voice cannot be heard by attending impartially to his perspective, but only by carrying the proper prejudices of history into a conversation with Nietzsche which we are seeking to begin. Chief among those prejudices is the recognition in advance that Nietzsche is not a man nor a doctrine nor a perspective, but an historical event that has not yet happened.
To wrap up this brief indication of a monstrous issue that stands in the way of today’s attempts to think, let me refer to a perceptive critical remark you made which I found invaluable: “I was trying precisely to suspend with the word "quantity" the equation of quantity with "futural augmentation," that you make--because this is to subscribe to an idea of the will to power as will to the same: that is, a Heideggerian interpretation of time.” You carefully point out the essential here: an idea of the will to power as will to the same is already a peculiar interpretation of time. In response to this I am trying to suggest that Such an ‘idea’ of the will to power as will to the same marks one way toward the only place where Nietzsche can truly be found, and this way must be understood as the radical alternative to a reading of Nietzsche that is both unfree of historiography and at bottom unclarified. But the flipside of what I have been suggesting is this: that when we interpret Nietzsche in terms of the Will to the same not only is it the case that we may not be merely applying a Heideggerian reading; we cannot be. But I hope the foregoing has at least made a passing glance at why this does not amount to the bare and forceful assertion of my own viewpoint that instead of the application of an ‘Heideggerian Schema’, “that it is genuine thinking, the bringing into language of thought”.
2.) Secondly, I just wanted to address a few of the points you rightly brought up regarding the confusion or unclarity of my initial response. (I’ll be quick about this).
A.)THE GREEK USE OF HYPERBOLE:
1.)“the necessity of hubris” –I intended this phrase to imply the terrible (in the sense of deinon) consequence that Nietzsche shyly and astutely perceives to have taken place as a result of the death of god, namely that man will be forced to shoot his own arrow further beyond himself than he ever has, and will be less equipped to do it than he ever has been. In other words, that he will either have the unknowing and loathsome hubris of the last man, and in this way will have to “invent happiness”, or he will have the mindful hubris of the one who is coming, i.e. the overman, and in this way will have to exist hyperbolically and in the future, i.e. the zu-kunft. But the coming of the overman is radically different than the “futural existenz of Dasein” or Beitrage’s “The Ones To Come”. Similarly, this phrase “necessity of hubris”, while attempting to lay down the condition for Nietzschean huperballein, was by no means intended to be equated with “genuine thinking, the bringing of thought to language” or the so-called imposition of a Heideggerian schematic.
2.)The question of the Greek-relation – When I asked: "Isn't it in terms of each thinker's relation to the Greeks that the essential difference obtaining between their 'employment' of hyperbole finds its measure?", I was not referring to your lack of acknowledgement of the word’s origins (you very obviously drew upon them). Rather was I suggesting that, instead of “quantity and quality” marking the difference between Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s hyperbole, perhaps this difference finds its fitting measure in the relation of each thinker’s hyperbole to the original Greek, which, it might also be added, is not merely an etymological consideration.
B.) Nietzsche and the other evangelists: The Difference of the Loneliest Loneliness –You ask in your original post: “ Isn't the claim of Nietzsche a claim that says: it is almost better if the rest (of the evangelists, of those who thought they knew lofty tasks, of those who hoped) were dispensed with? In other words, that what makes up the hyperbole--the lump of that which Nietzsche is greater than (in a more normal hyperbole, "I could sleep for a zillion hours," it would be the hours)--is, despite its makeup, simply a set of identical things? Things that, because they are that set, can be dispensed with, compared to Nietzsche, who has more value? ”. My question is: what sets the boundary’s of that set? How doe Nietzsche possibly have “more value”? Why is there “not yet a concept” for this “more” which separates Nietzsche from all others? My point was that Nietzsche is this difference himself, and what he has to evangelize is the necessity of suffering this difference which has never been suffered before. This difference is Nietzsche’s great burden, and it is why his heaviest thought came to him in the moment (augenblick) of his loneliest loneliness, i.e. that moment in which this un-bearble thought stole itself away from Nietzsche before it was born. I am speaking of Nietzsche’s thought of the moment, i.e. his thought of Eternal Return. It is this thought which is the teaching of Zarathustra and the evangelism of Nietzsche. And it is the very possibility of this thought (i.e. the fact that in order to have it you must have already had it) which enacts the difference between all evangelists (including Nietzsche as he has been) and Nietzsche himself. The difference, to reiterate, lies in Nietzsche himself, an abyssal cleavage which is bridged only by huperballein. Zarathustra speaks of this difference when he says “ I drew this conclusion but now it draws me”. No other evangelist has ever lost his teaching and lost himself, and no other evangelist has spread the message of this loss. No other evangelist, that is, including Nietzsche.
Your response is so fruitful and expansive I can't reply to it all--nor should I, since it has given me a lot to think about. I will mark one thing however, which has to do with the following quote, which follows me trying to counter the idea of the the will to power being the will to the same (which is actually an idea of Deleuze's in his amazing book on Nietzsche):
You carefully point out the essential here: an idea of the will to power as will to the same is already a peculiar interpretation of time. In response to this I am trying to suggest that Such an ‘idea’ of the will to power as will to the same marks one way toward the only place where Nietzsche can truly be found, and this way must be understood as the radical alternative to a reading of Nietzsche that is both unfree of historiography and at bottom unclarified. But the flipside of what I have been suggesting is this: that when we interpret Nietzsche in terms of the Will to the same not only is it the case that we may not be merely applying a Heideggerian reading; we cannot be. But I hope the foregoing has at least made a passing glance at why this does not amount to the bare and forceful assertion of my own viewpoint that instead of the application of an ‘Heideggerian Schema’, “that it is genuine thinking, the bringing into language of thought”.
What I mean to bring up is that you quite rightly (this is the only way I think that there might be real thinking) try to maintain the difference between the Heideggerian schema of which I was talking about and genuine thinking by showing how the distinction, while it could still perhaps be applied, could only be applied externally, from the outside. When we really think, the distinction dissolves precisely because Heidegger's thought only exists in its application, so to speak--so there is no application, really, and no schema to apply. In other words, you give good reasons to show why the affirmation that there is genuine thinking taking place instead of what I call miming (but which I don't mean disparagingly)--you give good reasons as to why this affirmation is at the same time the case, but also unnecessary: if you had to affirm this against the charge that one was only miming Heidegger, well then you've already exited thinking. But this exit is precisely what is always the situation of the thinker: this is why the question of whether we are really thinking yet (that wonderful question of Was Heisst Denken?) is always able to be asked, and why we have to learn thinking. Thinking lies beyond where we can get to it with our representations, that is. We can't be sure of it. We have to try and take it up, not in the form of reasoning how to get there or, indeed, trying to apply a schema that will bring it about. And you are very right to call attention to all this--as what I am calling "miming" might be too quickly taken to be overlooking all this.
But I am calling this now maintaining the difference between the idea of the Heideggerian schema (a set of tropes, a toolkit for problems, etc) and genuine Heideggerian thinking because I think the idea of miming still applies somewhere deeper. That is, you don't take the work of dissolving the difference between the two seriously enough--you therefore maintain their separation and indeed rely on them.
To be a bit clearer: what I was talking about was that if you really want to show that the way to think must be on some level where the question as to whether it is miming a mode of thinking is itself external to thinking--well, you're going to have a tough time of it. Because in order to do so, you do indeed have to collapse the distinction between genuine thinking and miming. And the only way to do this would be not to relegate miming to some sphere outside of genuine thinking, but to really seriously think that one is identical to the other. Thinking would be miming thinking. This is what you have to shy away from--and necessarily, I admit I do too, because it is a pretty intense thought. This is indeed the notion that we could perhaps actually bring about the there is in a calculated manner: if we merely mime what is there, there it is. This would be the only way to collapse the distinction--otherwise you are preserving it, even when you are dissolving it in the way you are.
Gadamer ran into all these problems. But at every step he resisted giving into this possibility--and indeed an amazing way to think and read was brought out of them. But what these problems lead to means that your "only way" of getting to Nietzsche, is not the only one. This also means that your very Gadamer-like criticisms of where I was going--saying I was trying to give Neitzsche and Heidegger each a presuppositionless/prejudiceless conflict--don't really seem in my eyes to apply, though of course they are always good points to make and ones which we can fall into doing here if we search indeed for another way than the "only" way.
This is not to malign that way at all. It is just to take it perhaps just a little further than even your inch goes: it means questioning the es gibt, and its a bigger question than anyone can get into here. But it does indeed bear on how we bring together Nietzsche and Heidegger. Your way isn't just some importation of one into the other (I was wrong to make this comment)--but on some level, what I am saying is that it still must import. It still must judge Nietzsche in terms of Heidegger, even when it is beyond Heidegger--that is, not able to be sure whether it is being faithful to Heidegger. To say this, however, doesn't mean one is striving for a clean fight between the two, nor a history without any prejudices, etc. It means that there might be other terms in which one could look at them. And this is what I would say is what I meant by taking over the Auseinandersetzung and freeing it from Heidegger. But this is beyond the point--you are aware of this at a certain level, and are pushing towards it and rightly find it incoherent. But that means that any decisiveness you (or anyone) needs in advance to interpret Nietzsche alongside Heidegger risks not really being decisive: it risks, at this deeper level, planning what it says it has spontaneously decided. In other words, it risks miming--not as something we can't just be sure about, but as something we can never actually be sure about. This is all a bit beyond the point--I just wanted to indicate I understood you here and was not so much concerned with an unprejudiced view. Brilliant response--I thank you for it. I am still thinking about what you have to say... I'll be mulling it over for a while!
Post a Comment