Introduction to Philosophy -- Thinking and Poetizing

Appendix to Nietzsche’s Metaphysics

Appendix to Nietzsche’s Metaphysics Notes to Nietzsche’s Metaphysics6 This thinking will not become real by being transferred into a practice as philosophy; rather, thinking as thinking of being and, i.e., from out of being, is that which appears in advance from out of the same being among beings themselves. On the determination of the essence of metaphysics, cf. the note about the history of the concept of metaphysics (1932). Essence of metaphysics out of the truth of being. The four determinations: essentia, existentia, history, the human essence—united in the fifth: the truth of beings as such. Metaphysics knows only a few constitutive parts of itself in its interpretation, but not the essential unity from beyng [Seyn].7 Nietzsche’s thought of “justice” and “Christian” metaphysics . Cf. justice and the just in Meister Eckhart;—iustitia and certitudo. “Justice”—its concealed essence: the totality of the truth of beings as such, insofar as being is the will to power as absolute subjectivity. 6. [GA 50, pp. 83–87.—Trans.] 7. [Heidegger’s return to the archaic spelling of Sein as Seyn corresponds to his linguistic attempt to cross over the history of metaphysics to a more originary experience of being that is here translated as “beyng,” an Old English variation of “being.”—Trans.] 63 Subjectivity and certitudo: Descartes; ego cogito, res cogitans, mens. Iustificatio, iustitia—Luther. Iustitia and ordo mentium—Leibniz. }Modernity, beginning Quid iuris—the way of questioning for Kant’s transcendental deduction as the self-certainty of subjectivity. Certitudo—certitude—value; value assessment—more fundamental ; “Justice” more fundamental than certainty. The connection with rectitudo, as this is still in certitudo, altered but preserved by perceptio and repraesentatio. Why Nietzsche himself is unable to think either the essence of truth of certainty, or even that of justice. The thought of values blocks everything. The final testimony of the forgetfulness of being. A question introduces the following consideration. This means: We attempt to bring, and do not deliver, an answer. But asking . . . : point to where the answer could arrive. But is the question important? Whether it is or not emerges out of itself. Pointing in the direction in which Nietzsche’s thinking accomplishes the completion of metaphysics. Who Is Zarathustra? A Confrontation with Nietzsche Let us take the word “confrontation” literally. We are attempting to set Nietzsche’s thinking and our thinking apart from one another and over against one another; but thoughtfully, not comparatively. His thinking: what Nietzsche thought. Our thinking: what is worthy of thought for us. The one and the other fromone another; they are still within each other—not in the sense of two standpoints being tangled with one another; not as if our thinking had flowed out of Nietzsche’s. No thinking emerges out of another, but instead only out of its to-be-thought; nevertheless, [there is] no thinking without what precedes it—the predecessors. Nietzsche is the name for an age: the epoch of the development and installation of the mastery of the human over the 64 Appendix to Nietzsche’s Metaphysics [83–84] earth. The human as the subject of production. The earth as the core area of the objectivity of world use: the forgetfulness of beyng, the remoteness of history, neglect; humans and thinking; thinkingandlanguage;thinkingintheageofneglect;thatwhich has been spoken of this thinking: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Who is Zarathustra?—What is his language like?—What is he within it? Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra The interpretation: to respond so essentially to a matter that Nietzsche’s word might remain untouched and resound purely from this matter. But this matter is the “essence” of the human insofar as it is given over to the question of the world. Yet this essence still remains concealed; concealed because it [is] refused; refused in the way of the omission in the completed subjectivity of the self-producing will to unstable constancy. The ultimate neglect of the human essence in the appearance of the unbounded performance of order and the mere creation of its own conditions. But the order is the controllability. The adequately thoughtful interpretation is achieved where its form is absent. The answer to the question who Zarathustra is cannot be given with a sentence, and also not with several sentences; instead, [it is] only [given] in an encounter with Zarathustra. What Zarathustra is determines what this encounter consists of. We experience who Zarathustra is in the encounter. The circle...