Machenschaft and Seynsgeschichte in the Black Notebooks: Heidegger on Nietzsche’s “Rediscovery” of the Greeks

ABSTRACT

One of the outcomes of the publication of the Black Notebooks has been to invite scholars to rethink their understanding of Heidegger’s thinking, including his “world-historical anti-Semitism,” his relation to war and politics, via Schmitt and Jünger, as well as machination/calculation but not less his Seynsgeschichte. Other questions include education and academic life in addition to Heidegger’s anxieties regarding the reception of Being and Time in the framework of his history of Beyng/Seyn. Refusing Nietzsche on the Greeks, especially Anaximander, Heidegger “plays out” typically bellicose interpretations of Will to Power, consummating the “abandonment of beings by being, the abandonment that gained sovereignty in the history of metaphysics.” If Heidegger’s Nietzsche thus suspiciously resembles the Nazi Nietzsche, reading the proliferation of editions bears out Heidegger’s claims for the backwards-working force of the Nachlaß.

KEYWORDS:

• Decisionism and power
• Nietzsche’s Preplatonics
• transhumanism
• editorial policy
• Solicitude/Assistance/Fürsorge

ORCID

Babette Babich http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4499-0718

Notes

1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Zu: ‘Nietzsche hat mich kaputtgemacht’,” Aletheia, 9/10 (1996): 19.

2 Martin Heidegger, Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942–1948), GA 97 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2015), 464.

3 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, “Poetizing Essence of Reason,” Joan Stambaugh, trans. (San Francisco: Harper, 1987 [1961]), 96.

4 Max Weber: “Die Redlichkeit eines heutigen Gelehrten, und vor allem eines heutigen Philosophen, kann man daran messen, wie er sich zu Nietzsche und Marx stellt.” In: Eduard Baumgarten, Max Weber. Werk und Person (Tübingen: Mohr, 1964), 554f. Kostas Axelos details the origin and context of the quote at the outset of his Einführung in ein künftiges Denken. Über Marx und Heidegger (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1966 [1961]).

5 There is an allusion to Feuerbach here, which Theodor Adorno and Günther Anders develop into a politico-economic literality as a consumer metaphor.

6 Robert Bernasconi, “‘I will tell you who you are.’ Heidegger on Greco-German Destiny and Amerikanismus” in: Babich, ed., From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire: Essays in Honor of William J. Richardson, S.J. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), 301–313, here: 301.

7 Ullrich Haase and Mark Sinclair explain their option for historiology by noting not only the lack of English terminology as such but that the more familiar Anglophone historiography “can name a metareflection on the writing of history.” “Translator’s Introduction” in Heidegger, Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation, GA 46, Ullrich Haase and Mark Sinclair, trans. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016 [2003]), xiii.

8 Heidegger, Überlegungen XII-XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939–1944), GA 96 (Frankfurt am Main: Klosterman, 2014), 11.

9 Heidegger, GA 96, 11.

10 Ibid., 12.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 176.

13 Ibid., 12.

14 Ibid.

15 Robert Bernasconi, The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being (London: Macmillan, 1985), 29–47.

16 “Die Verwirrung in der Irre erreicht aber den Gipfel, wenn Hölderlin zum »schwäbischen Nietzsche« gemacht wird. Sollen aber schon Namen genannt und soll Hölderlin nicht allein genannt werden, dann müssen wir sagen Hölderlin und — Stifter.” Heidegger, GA 96, 27. Cf. 15; 189; 199.

17 Heidegger, GA 96, 15.

18 Heidegger, GA 97, 143.

19 Heidegger writes: “Man entdeckt jetzt bei Jünger sogar eine »Metaphysik«; wie ich meinen möchte, reichlich spät; denn diese Metaphysik, nämlich diejenige von Nietzsches Willen zur Macht, bestand schon, ehe es eine »Materialschlacht« gab, in der Ernst Jünger nur das »erfuhr«, was er aus Nietzsche bereits wußte.” GA 96, 224.

20 “Im Amerikanismus erreicht der Nihilismus seine Spitze.” Ibid., 225. See, cited above, and again, Bernasconi, “‘I will tell you who you are’” in addition to Charles Bambach, Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks (Ithaca; Cornell University Press, 2003) and, via Jünger rather than Nietzsche, Laurence Paul Hemming, “Work as Total Reason for Being: Heidegger and Jünger’s Der Arbeiter,” Journal for Cultural Research, Volume 12, Issue 3 (2008): 231–251.

21 Heidegger, GA 96, 268–269. Ponderings XV, 213.

22 Heidegger, GA 96, 70.

23 Ibid., 93.

24 Ibid., 198.

25 See for instance, the mainstream classicist, Glenn Most, “Heidegger’s Greeks,” Arion, 3rd series, 10 (2002): 83–98. Most seeks to advance Heidegger at the expense of Nietzsche, in what is, arguably, a Pippinian move.

26 Heidegger GA 96, 199.

27 Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie. Vorwort. KSA I, 247.

28 Heidegger, Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation, 99.

29 Nietzsche names “naïve” what Herbert Butterfield dubbed the “Whig” interpretation of history:

The naïve historians call “objectivity” the measuring of past opinions and deeds by popular opinions of the present moment; in this they discover the canon of all truths, their task to conform the past to contemporary triviality. By contrast, they call every writing of history “subjective” that does not take popular opinions to be canonical. UB II: 6, KSA 1, 289.

30 Heidegger, Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation, 101.

31 Nietzsche UB II: 8, KSA 1, 308.

32 Ibid.

33 Heidegger, Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation, 141f.

34 Ibid., 217.

35 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

36 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

37 See Tracy Strong’s chapter on Schmitt in his Politics Without Vision: Thinking Without a Bannister in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 218–262.

38 Bruno Gulli, “The Sovereign Exception: Notes On Schmitt’s Word That Sovereign Is He Who Decides On The Exception,” Glossator, 1 (Fall 2009): 23–30, here 23.

39 Gulli, “The Sovereign Exception,” 26–27.

40 Schmitt, Political Theology, 79, cited in Gulli, “The Sovereign Exception,” 28.

41 Gulli, "The Sovereign Exception," 28.

42 Heidegger, GA 96, 15f.

43 Ibid., 21.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 35.

46 Ibid., 36.

47 Ibid.

48 Carl Raschke, “Forget Schmitt! Political Theology Must Follow Agamben’s ‘Double Paradigm’ of Sovereignty,” Political Theology, 19/1 (2018): 1–3.

49 See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Daniel Heller-Roazen, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

50 See Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, Joan Stambaugh, David Farrell Krell, and Frank A. Capuzzi, trans. (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 166. Reflecting on Oedipus, Nietzsche writes: “I call myself the last philosopher because I am the last man.” KSA 7, 19 131.

51 Heidegger GA 96, 12.

52 See, for further references, Babich, “Heidegger’s Will to Power,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 38, No. 1 (January 2007): 37–60.

53 Heidegger GA 96, 178.

54 Nietzsche’s Werke. Nachgelassene Werke. Von Friedrich Nietzsche. Aus den Jahren 1872/73 — 1875/76, Vol 10 (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1903).

55 Dated there “Anfang 1873,” Nietzsche’s Werke. 2. Abteilung, Vol X (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1896), 1–132.

56 Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” Early Greek Thinking, 17.

57 Ibid., “The Anaximander Fragment,” 31.

58 Ibid., 40.

59 Ibid., 43.

60 Ibid., 45.

61 Heidegger, Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation.

62 Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” 17.

63 Ibid., 15.

64 Cf. Heidegger, Nietzsche III.

65 See Heidegger, Nietzsche IV: Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being, trans. Frank Capuzzi (San Francisco: Harper, 1982 [1961]), 197–252.

66 I reference some of these debates in Babich, “Nietzsche’s Posthuman Imperative: On the Human, All too Human Dream of Transhumanism” in: Tuncel, ed., Nietzsche and Transhumanism (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2017), 101–113.

67 Heidegger, GA 96, 14.

68 Ibid., 15.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 40.

71 Ibid., 93–94.

72 Goethe institutes the concept of an Ausgabe letzter Hand with respect to his own undertaking, begun in 1821, of a dedicated editio princeps of his own work according to authorial design.

73 Boss, “Zollikoner Seminare” in: Günther Neske, (Ed.) Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger (Pfullingen: Neske, 1977), 31–45, 31. I am grateful to Alfred Denker for his presentation on Boss’ edition in Messkirch 26 May 2019. Denker, although citing the passage Boss cites from Sein und Zeit, did not foreground Heidegger’s Fürsorge, key to Daseinsanalyse, as Heidegger himself argues. See, too, my essay(s) below.

74 See, most recently: Babich, “Solicitude: Towards a Heideggerian Care-Ethics-of-Assistance” in: Paul Fairfield and Saulius Geniusas, eds., Relational Hermeneutics (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 9–28. Cf., “Zu einer Ethik der Fürsorge,” Divinatio, 41 (2016): 141–165, but originally written on the theme of nursing philosophy, « Vers une éthique de l’assistance », Symposium: The Journal of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, Vol. 20, Nr. 1 (2016): 194–212.

75 Boss, Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology (New York: Jason Aronson, 1983 [1970]).

76 “Heute (am 23 Januar 1946) hat mir der Rektor der Universität eröffnet, der Senat habe einstimmig mein am 8. Oktober 1 945 eingereichtes Emeritierungsgesuch bewilligt, allerdings unter »Versagung« der Lehrtätigkeit auf unbefristete Zeit.” Heidegger, Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942–1948), GA 97 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2015), 69. Cf., in this context, including creative “forgeries” of Heidegger’s de-Nazifying deposition, Babich, “On Heidegger on Education and Questioning” in: Michael A. Peters, ed., Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory (Singapore: Springer, 2017), 1641–1652.

77 Otto Pöggeler “Sein als Ereignis — Martin Heidegger zum 70. Geburtstag,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 13 (1959): 597.

78 Pöggeler, “Being as Appropriation,” Philosophy Today, 19 (2) (1975): 152–178.

79 See Babich, “Heidegger Against the Editors: Nietzsche, Science, and the Beiträge as Will to Power,” Philosophy Today, 47 (Winter 2003): 327–359 as well as, more expressly, “Heidegger’s Will to Power,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 38, No. 1 (January 2007): 37–60; “Heidegger’s Black Night: The Nachlass and Its Wirkungsgeschichte” in: Ingo Farin and Jeff Malpas, eds., Reading Heidegger’s Black Notebooks: 1931–1941 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016), 59–86.

80 Heidegger denounces these as crude and facile, Heidegger, GA 96, 23; cf. 148.

81 Ibid., 159. That Heidegger knows better and that he means to stake a claim for Greece contra Rome, does not make his denunciation of Nietzsche any less problematic if it was, following the views of mainstream classicists of his day, like the reigning views today, argumentative child’s play.

82 Trawny in: Heidegger, Ponderings: Black Notebooks, Richard Rojcewicz, trans. (Indiana University Press, 2016), 225.

83 Ibid.

84 Heidegger, GA 96, 200.

85 See on Archilochus, and crucial for the classical force of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, Babich, “Nietzsches Lyrik. Archilochos, Musik, Metrik” in: Christian Benne and Claus Zittel, eds., Nietzsche und die Lyrik. Ein Kompendium (Frankfurt am Main: Metzler, 2017), 405–429.