Heidegger's Reading of the Will to Power

Heidegger's discussion of Nietzsche is mainly centered on a complex interpretation of The Will to Power .^[141] This work has come down to us as a series of notes Nietzsche composed in the period 1883-1888. Heidegger's Nietzsche lecture courses present Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche's long-projected, finally unwritten work. The series of lecture courses is composed of two volumes in the version Heidegger worked over for publication,^[142] and of four volumes in the English translation of selected portions of the lecture courses, which also incorporates other material.^[143] For present purposes, I will rely on the English translation, which I will supplement, as necessary, with references to the reworked, published version and to the original lectures. Heidegger's lecture courses on Nietzsche covered five semesters. At present, only two of the five lecture courses as originally given have been published.^[144]

Heidegger indicates his overall aim in a series of programmatic statements in the first volume, containing material from the first lecture course. For Heidegger, Nietzsche is misinterpreted as a poet-philosopher or as a philosopher of life.^[145] Like those students of Plato con-

cerned to interpret Plato's thought through his unwritten texts, Heidegger holds that Nietzsche's main philosophical contribution lies in the text he did not write.^[146] Heidegger points out that the work was planned over many years but never written; and he further points out that it was intended to name "the basic character of all beings.^[147] He regards this book as Nietzsche's chief contribution, the work in which Nietzsche decisively confronts all earlier Western thought. Heidegger believes that the confrontation with Nietzsche has not yet begun and its conditions have not yet even been realized. For Heidegger, then, Nietzsche marks the end of Western metaphysics and the beginning of another question of the truth of Being.^[148] He sums up this very large claim about the main doctrines in Nietzsche's position in hyperbolic language and melodramatic fashion:

Now, if we do not thoughtfully formulate our inquiry in such a way that it is capable of grasping in a unified way the doctrines of the eternal return of the same and will to power, and these two doctrines in their most intrinsic coherence as revaluation, and if we do not go on to comprehend this fundamental formulation as one which is also necessary in the course of Western metaphysics, then we will never grasp Nietzsche's philosophy. And we will comprehend nothing of the twentieth century and of centuries to come, nothing of our own metaphysical task.^[149]

This passage does not demonstrate any of Heidegger's claims about Nietzsche's thought. Rather, it deflects attention from Heidegger's specific claims through a gigantic assertion about the importance of Nietzsche's position for philosophy, for history, even for all human being. This passage provides a reaffirmation of Heidegger's pretense, familiar since the rectoral address, to be able to interpret the present and even the future through Nietzsche's metaphysics. Now we have also seen that he makes a similar assertion in his discussion of Hölderlin. Perhaps, then, the basic idea is less the utility of a given body of thought to comprehend all of history, including what is yet to come, than Heidegger's attribution to himself, in his description of his ability to grasp what will yet be, of a clearly prophetic, magical power, supported by no analysis at all, to see into time. The general idea is that a close scrutiny of the writings of a major thinker or poet—and it doesn't seem to matter which it is—is an adequate substitute for a crystal ball in the interpretation of the future.

In the crucial fourth chapter, Heidegger turns to the content of The Will to Power in order to demonstrate the claimed unity of Nietzsche's position. This chapter has a dual function in Heidegger's discussion: to present Heidegger's interpretation of what he regards as Nietzsche's

crucially important but misunderstood position, and to rule out a supposedly incorrect reading of Nietzsche's view. As the title to the chapter makes clear, Heidegger's own reading is centered on Nietzsche's doctrines of the eternal return of the same and the will to power. He notes that at present the prevalent interpretation does away with the doctrine of the eternal return of the same and, hence, excludes a fruitful grasp of Nietzsche's metaphysics.^[150]

Two issues, which arise in the fourth chapter and should immediately be addressed, are Heidegger's unusual approach to the contemporary discussion of Nietzsche's thought and the relation of his interpretation to the Nazi reading of Nietzsche. Heidegger himself introduces the issue of his use of other interpretations. Early in his initial lecture course on Nietzsche, he states that he will not refer to the massive Nietzsche literature since none of it can help his endeavor.^[151] We are meant to understand that his own approach is so distinctive as to set aside all other discussion of Nietzsche's thought, which need not be taken into account. This is a version of his conceit, on frequent display in his interpretation of prior philosophical views, that only his own readings are authentic. In place of the secondary literature, he recommends "the courage and perseverance" to read Nietzsche's own writings.^[152]

Heidegger's stress on the need to study Nietzsche in preference to writings about Nietzsche is good advice on the premise that in most cases it is preferable to read the original texts rather than the discussion about them. Yet Heidegger's remark is misconstrued as implying that Heidegger in fact abstracted from the Nietzsche literature in the development of his own reading of Nietzsche's thought. His Nietzsche lectures contain occasional remarks on other interpretations; and he unexpectedly devotes a chapter in part to the available Nietzsche literature, with special attention to the writings of Jaspers and Baeumler,^[153] which he treats as examples of an incorrect way to understand the doctrine of the eternal return of the same.^[154]

The relatively circumspect treatment of Baeumler, an insignificant thinker, is probably due to his status as a well-known Nietzsche specialist, whose general interpretation of The Will to Power Heidegger apparently made the basis of his own. Certainly, when Heidegger's lectures were worked over for publication well after the end of the Second World War, Heidegger had nothing more to fear from Baeumler's close connections to the Nazi party.^[155] Heidegger objects to Baeumler's interpretation of Nietzsche on three grounds: Baeumler's assertion that the idea of eternal recurrence expresses a personal "religious" conviction; Baeumler's claim that both the doctrines of the eternal return of the same and the will to power cannot be correct on pain of contradiction; and finally the link drawn between the former doctrine and Heraclitus's thought.^[156]

In response, Heidegger makes the following points.^[157] He denies the correctness of Baeumler's reading of Heraclitus. He uncharacteristically states that even if there is a contradiction, that is merely a demand to think a difficult thought, which cannot therefore be assimilated to religion. And he adds, plausibly in view of Baeumler's role as a professor of political pedagogy, that the latter rejects the importance of the concept of the eternal recurrence for Nietzsche's position on political grounds.^[158]

Baeumler's interpretation of Nietzsche is less important than Jaspers's. Jaspers is widely regarded as a significant philosophical thinker, and his reading of Nietzsche's thought, and its relation to Heidegger's, has attracted attention.^[159] Heidegger's remarks on Jaspers are briefer, but more pointed.^[160] In comparison with Baeumler, Heidegger believes that Jaspers has a better grasp of the function of the idea of the eternal return in Nietzsche's thought. Yet Heidegger complains that Jaspers fails to bring the idea of the eternal recurrence in contact with the grounding question (Grundfrage ) of Western philosophy, which is Heidegger's basic philosophical concern. Heidegger attributes this failure to Jaspers's view that there is "no truth or conceptual import in philosophy," in effect that philosophy is impossible, which causes him to underestimate the vital importance of Nietzsche's idea.^[161] It is, then, interesting to note that Jaspers believed not only that Heidegger did not understand science in his fundamental ontology but that Heidegger's theory was no more than a modern form of gnosticism and of magic.^[162]

Jaspers's stature, unlike Baeumler's, as a worthy philosophical adversary explains Heidegger's unease at Jaspers's supposed rejection in general of the possibility of philosophy; it perhaps also explains the unusually sharp remark on Jaspers in a passage omitted from the lectures as reworked for publication, now available in the publication of the original lectures. In a passage in a postface, entitled "The Falsification of Nietzsche's Philosophy up to Now," Heidegger writes: "The greatest falsification—if one finds all and each in his [reading] and makes the 'so well as also' into a principle, and utilizes the whole only as existential clarification [Erhellung] and as 'psychological phenomenon.' Jaspers!"^[163]

Heidegger's rapid remarks on Baeumler and Jaspers, and occasional comments on other Nietzsche interpreters,^[164] do not constitute an adequate response to the large and varied Nietzsche literature of the time. Heidegger's treatment of the available lines of interpretation is overly selective. On balance, it is obvious that he fails to accord satisfactory attention either to the Nietzsche discussion as a whole—with which he may not have been deeply familiar and which he proposes merely to bracket—or even to the views of Baeumler and Jaspers. Heidegger's account of Jaspers's views of Nietzsche, which he acknowledges as philosophically more significant, is especially brief, schematic, and, hence,

unsatisfactory. But the insufficiency of Heidegger's hasty account of Nietzsche readings that he regarded as competing with his own is not due to his inability to discuss matters in more detail. Rather, it is probable that for Heidegger the approaches of Baeumler and Jaspers to Nietzsche were merely instances of the contemporary juggling with "transmitted concepts" which, being uncritical, failed to come to grips with ontology on a fundamental level.^[165] Heidegger probably thought that it was sufficient to keep open the possibility of his own, "deeper" interpretation of Nietzsche by calling in question those among the available approaches which tended to close off the lines of inquiry he intended to pursue.

The relation of Heidegger's interpretation of The Will to Power to Nazi interpretations of this work is important. It has been suggested that Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche prevented Nietzsche's incorporation into the Nazi pantheon.^[166] Yet Heidegger's overall approach to Nietzsche is redolent of the Nazi line, including his preference for The Will to Power as the height of Nietzsche's art and his treatment of it as a systematic analysis. According to Walter Kaufmann, the two main false readings of the book are both due to Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche: the view that it represents Nietzsche's crowning achievement, prominently represented by Baeumler; and the contrary view that the work is not worth reading at all, due to Karl Schlechta.^[167] Baeumler formulates his view succinctly:

The Will to Power is Nietzsche's philosophical magnum opus . All the basic results of his thinking are brought together in this book. The aversion of its author against systematizers should not prevent us from calling this work a system. Nietzsche only objected to the artificial, logically conclusive form of spinning out systems [Systembauerei]. For he well knew that all true philosophical thought is internally systematic, namely, it has a creative central point, which defines and supports the whole. Nietzsche is a systematic thinker in this sense as Heraclitus is, or Anaximander, whose systematic spirit we recognize from a single sentence that remains extant.^[168]

Heidegger's reading of The Will to Power can be regarded as developing Baeumler's approach with respect to his own theory of Being. Since Nietzsche completed five books in his last active year, 1888, and another two in the two immediately preceding years, a case needs to be made that this particular work represents the key to Nietzsche's position.^[169] Heidegger not only insists without apparent reason on The Will to Power as the peak of Nietzsche's thought, but further appears to adopt a version of the Nazi reading of that work in his approach to Nietzsche. It is, then, difficult to regard Heidegger's Nietzsche interpretation as "saving

Nietzsche from a Nazi distortion," whatever that phrase means, since Heidegger uncritically takes over Baeumler's variant of the Nazi view of The Will to Power as the basis of his own.

Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures occur at a crucial moment in his evolution, when he is in the process of making a transition from fundamental ontology to a new version of his position, supposedly beyond philosophy. Heidegger's view is always labile, but particularly so during this period. In virtue of the unstable nature of Heidegger's thought at this time, his attitude toward Nietzsche is deeply ambivalent. As he does for other views, in the lectures Heidegger studies Nietzsche's thought within the context of the history of ontology. For Heidegger, Nietzsche's "system" is the source of a radically new thesis about Being which, in its novelty, returns back behind the tradition to the early Greek thought of Being.

Heidegger's position evolves between Being and Time and the lectures on Nietzsche. Yet the modifications—which are reflected in such important intervening texts as the work on Kant or An Introduction to Metaphysics —remain, or at least mainly remain, within the overall framework of fundamental ontology. Heidegger's familiar claim that previous thought merely incompletely adumbrates his own, illustrated in his study of Kant, is still present, although to a lesser degree in his lecture course on metaphysics, in such themes as the so-called fault of Being,^[170] the unique philosophical status of the Greek and German languages,^[171] repetition^[172] grounding,^[173] and so on. But there is also a beginning displacement, evident in the emergence of new themes—some of which receive a considerable development in later writings, and which seem to surpass the conceptual armature of fundamental ontology in the direction of something new—such as the uneasy position of Europe between Russia and America,^[174] the full unfolding of Nietzsche's thought,^[175] and techne as neither art nor technology.^[176]

In the Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger's position transgresses fundamental ontology, however understood, to something beyond it. Heidegger's view of the importance of an unfolding of Nietzsche's thought dominates his Nietzsche lectures, where Nietzsche functions as a further development of the original thought of Being and as a transition toward a new form of the original thought. These lectures reflect both a residual permanence and an incipient change in Heidegger's position, the coexistence of the original position, as it developed in the interval between its formulation and these lectures, and the transition to another view, closely based on, but different from, its predecessor, toward which Heidegger moves through what, for want of a better word, is a displacement.

Both the continued presence of the original view and the slow transi-

tion to the new form of the original theory, or the new theory that will arise out of the original position, are visible in the crucial fourth chapter of the initial lecture series where Heidegger comes to grips with other interpretations and begins to state the outlines of his own reading of Nietzsche's thought. Not surprisingly, since Nietzsche functions here to complete the original framework and to point toward a new one, this chapter can be read from either of two angles of vision: from the philosophical perspective of the history of ontology, or as pointing beyond that history to a new form of thought purportedly beyond philosophy.

Here, Heidegger indicates the link between his reading of Nietzsche and the history of ontology. He begins the chapter by reformulating in other words the statement with which the previous chapter ends, cited above, about the unity of Nietzsche's position and its importance for present times and for the centuries yet to come. For Heidegger, the term "will to power" names what is basic to any being. He then introduces an important distinction between the supposedly first, essential question of philosophy and its final preliminary question (Vorfrage ). Nietzsche's doctrine, Heidegger says, answers the final preliminary question but not the first, essential question. To ground this assertion, Heidegger maintains that here, at the end of Western philosophy, the decisive query is not the basic character of beings, but that of Being itself, the meaning of Being.

The expression "will to power" designates the basic character of beings; any being which is, insofar as it is, is will to power. The expression stipulates the character that beings have as beings. But that is not at all an answer to the first question of philosophy, its proper question; rather, it answers only the final preliminary question. For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest?" but "What is this 'Being' itself?" The decisive question is that of "the meaning of Being." not merely that of the Being of beings.^[177]

This passage is helpful to an appreciation of the later development of the Nietzsche lectures and their significance for Heidegger's thought. It is evident from the distinction between the first essential question and the final preliminary question that Heidegger is continuing to operate within the wider context of the fundamental ontology developed in Being and Time . Heidegger signals his intention here to demonstrate the unity of Nietzsche's thought through an appropriate reading of its basic concepts, precisely that unity which he has claimed but not so far demonstrated. At this point he further advances a thesis not present in Being and Time in his observation that we have now arrived at the end of Western philosophy. This new thesis is not a change in the basic position;

it is rather a description of the philosophical tradition as a whole from the perspective of fundamental ontology, whose consequences have now become clearer to Heidegger in his reflection on the position developed in Being and Time . In restating the view advanced in his fundamental ontology according to which the important question is not the nature of beings but the meaning of Being in general, he associates Nietzsche with his basic question. The result is to call attention to a relation between fundamental ontology and Nietzsche's position which was not present, or at least not clearly present, in Being and Time , and which has perhaps only become apparent to Heidegger in the years after he composed this book. Heidegger now depicts Nietzsche as responding not to the question itself but to a condition for its response, which, in turn, opens the way to a possible response to the basic question of all philosophy, a response that has supposedly become possible only now at the end of the Western philosophical tradition.

The history of ontology belongs to a negative approach to the previous discussion of metaphysics intended to free the ground for a positive appropriation of a hidden insight from early Greek thought. The justification of the negative moment of the projected destruction of ontology was to make possible a positive reappropriation of ancient doctrine, which has been covered up in the subsequent but erroneous discussion of Being. In principle, Nietzsche belongs to this discussion as the author of a theory of Being that must be taken into account in any effort to destroy the history of ontology. Since Nietzsche's most important contribution to this history occurs in a book that was never written, Heidegger's effort to destroy the history of ontology requires him to treat as history, and hence in the past, something which literally never took place. In that sense, his discussion is nothing more than a mythical interpretation of a mythical treatise.

From within the perspective of fundamental ontology, and through the interpretation of Nietzsche's unfinished, in fact unwritten, study, a putative masterpiece, Heidegger sees Nietzsche's key contribution to the history of ontology as the conception of the will to power. He insists that Nietzsche's other interpreters, say, Baeumler and Jaspers, have not grasped the importance of this doctrine. For Heidegger, Nietzsche's doctrine is a definitive response to the question of the being of beings as beings. Since Heidegger interprets "will to power" as meaning "the eternal recurrence of the same,"^[178] he objects to the reading of this concept presupposed in the usual association of Nietzsche with Heraclitus.

As a view of the being of beings as beings, Nietzsche's conception of ontology addresses a specific issue which, for that reason, does not respond to Heidegger's own, more general concern with the meaning of Being. A concern with truth occupies an increasingly central position in

Heidegger's later thought, including the Beiträge . He states that "meaning" is what makes it possible that "Being in general can become manifest as such and can come into truth."^[179] But Nietzsche's view must not be ignored, since it is essential to respond to the question of Being preceding the question with which Heidegger is concerned, and so make an answer to the latter question possible. Even if Nietzsche's ontological view falls short of Heidegger's, for Heidegger it nonetheless surpasses all other views, which he stigmatizes collectively as a mere playing with concepts. "What is proffered today as ontology has nothing to do with the question of Being proper; it is a very learned and very astute analysis of transmitted concepts which plays them off, one against the other.^[180]

Heidegger argues for the importance of Nietzsche's thought of Being against the background of Western philosophy. In reference to Heraclitus, he maintains that becoming is grounded in Being. According to Heidegger, through the idea of eternal recurrence Nietzsche returns behind the later tradition to the Greek beginnings of Western thought. He believes that Nietzsche takes up the beginnings of Western philosophy in the customary manner, despite his otherwise original grasp of pre-Socratic thought. Nietzsche's view is revolutionary, Heidegger maintains, not because it overturns another, but rather because it uncovers what has previously been covered up. Heidegger now attributes to Nietzsche the thought of the essence of time.

Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return, means thinking Being as Time. Nietzsche thinks that thought but does not think it as the question of Being and Time. Plato and Aristotle also think that thought when they conceive Being as ousia (presence), but just as little as Nietzsche do they think it as a question.^[181]

Heidegger's discussion of Nietzsche's ontological view collapses an important distinction, which Heidegger apparently overlooks. There is a difference between thinking the being of beings as beings as the will to power and the thought of Being as time. For Heidegger, the view of the being of beings as beings as the will to power is a usual but mistaken approach to ontology repeated erroneously throughout the metaphysical tradition. On the contrary, the thought of Being as time is the view which Heidegger opposes to the metaphysical tradition, and which he wants to recover in pre-Socratic thought. It is the view which he prepares in the entire second division of Being and Time and to which he alludes in later writings. His view of the relation of time to Being is clearly expressed at the outset of his lengthy account of "Dasein and Temporality": "Within the horizon of time the projection of a meaning of Being in general can be accomplished."^[182]

Heidegger reads the "idea of the will to power as eternal recurrence" to mean the "inner character of beings, that is, the basic character of anything insofar as it is," what he refers to as the "final preliminary question," and as "the idea of Being as time." The latter is, of course, an idea which Heidegger also "finds" in Plato and Aristotle, and which Nietzsche "rediscovers." For Heidegger, the idea of Being as time is no longer that of the final preliminary question. This idea, hence, goes beyond beings as beings to address at least implicitly the question of the meaning of Being—not, as Heidegger says, to the book in which this question is raised, but to its question.

In sum, Nietzsche's thought of Being is important for Heidegger's concern with the history of ontology for at least four reasons. First, it provides the definitive account of the being of beings as beings. Second, it raises the thought of Being as time. Third, it points to the problem that occupies Heidegger in Being and Time and in all his subsequent writings, to which he alludes here in terms of the question of the meaning of Being. Fourth, it closes the circle of the ontological tradition in returning to the early idea of being which was later covered up and which Nietzsche helps to uncover through his metaphysical revolution. In a word, with respect to the history of ontology, Nietzsche stands out as "destroying" the received approach. He offers a different view that "solves" the final preliminary question and calls attention to, but does not pose, the basic question. Nietzsche's thought of being differs from the views of previous thinkers, such as Descartes, Kant, and even Hegel, thinkers whom Heidegger regards as having dogmatically repeated the usual but erroneous view of being, which they fail to examine and merely restate. Only Nietzsche opens the way to a new thought of being, which Heidegger regards as a very old thought present in early Greek philosophy.

We have reviewed the way in which Heidegger considers Nietzsche's thought of being, against the history of ontology, within the framework of fundamental ontology. But we can also read the same passage, from a different angle of vision, as opening the way, through study of Nietzsche's thought, to a version of Heidegger's position lying beyond fundamental ontology. This reading is suggested by Heidegger in many places in his lectures on Nietzsche, for instance in an appendix to the first volume of the lectures, added in May 1937 but not taken up in the version reworked for publication. Here, in a comment on Nietzsche as a transitional figure, he notes that the transition leads to a new beginning: "A transition [Ein Übergang], the transitions [Übergänge] introduce a second beginning.^[183] Heidegger further brings in a number of distinctions discussed in detail in the Beiträge , at which he was at work from 1936 to 1938, that is, during the period of the Nietzsche lectures, includ-

ing the concepts of Grundfrage and Leitfrage, Gefüge , and so on, all of which relate to his conception of the other beginning.^[184]

This passage in the fourth chapter offers a series of hints that separately and together point to the way in which Heidegger made use of his Nietzsche lectures in the evolution of his position beyond its original formulation and subsequent development to another, later form. So against the view that a revolutionary merely destroys, Heidegger maintains that as a revolutionary Nietzsche reveals what lay concealed. With respect to Nietzsche's activity, he writes: "But what is essential in the revolutionary is not the overturning [Umwendung] as such; it is rather that in overturning he brings to light what is decisive and essential."^[185] The fruit of Nietzsche's revolutionary activity is his thought of being, namely, his thought of being as time. But like Plato and Aristotle, who also had this thought, Nietzsche failed to think it as the question of Being and time, that is, he failed to anticipate Heidegger's thought.^[186]

This characterization of Nietzsche as a philosophical revolutionary who does not merely destroy is as interesting for what it does not say as for what it says. Unlike his remarks on Descartes, Kant, and all other modern thinkers, Heidegger does not depict Nietzsche as someone who simply perpetuates a traditional but erroneous view of being. In Heidegger's remarks, Nietzsche is promoted to the level of the twin pillars of the Greek tradition, outshining all other thinkers in modern philosophy, whose thought dogmatically continues what since the time of the Greeks has no longer been thought. Nietzsche's limitation is that he fails to question what calls for a question, namely the view of Being as time. In that sense, despite the positive import of his philosophical revolution, like Plato, Aristotle, and all others he falls below the level of Being and Time .

Heidegger is convinced that despite the limitations of Nietzsche's system, Nietzsche's thought of being is decisive and necessary. Since Heidegger collaborated with others on the critical edition in order to improve on the available versions of Nietzsche's texts, we know that he was not satisfied with the editions already available. He correctly points out that we cannot know how Nietzsche would have modified the work we possess had he been able to complete it. He further maintains that we possess the presuppositions to think Nietzsche's authentic philosophical thought.^[187] Once again, Heidegger distinguishes between a so-called genuine interpreter and the crowd of uninformed readers, in practice all others who are supposedly unable to grasp Nietzsche's authentic philosophical thought (Nietzsches eigentliches philosophisches Denken ), or at least are unable really to think it.

How is one to think Nietzsche's thought? For Heidegger, it is not sufficient merely to follow the aphorisms in the order in which they are

disposed, since, as he concedes, the order is arbitrary; this is only possible by thinking through the movement of the thought of the questioning of the authentic questioning (Denkbewegung des Fragens der eigentlichen Fragen heraus ). In this way Heidegger promises to accomplish two crucially important tasks. First, he intends to hear Nietzsche himself, something which, he implies, no one else has so far been able to do. This implication follows from the conjunction of a pair of claims already mentioned: that with respect to ontology Nietzsche towers above anyone else since Plato and Aristotle, and that contemporary ontological thought is quite literally worthless. Second, Heidegger does not merely want to hear Nietzsche. For he does not intend merely to receive another position in passive fashion, even that of Nietzsche; and his goal is not to learn the nature of Nietzsche's thought for itself. Rather, he wants to hear Nietzsche's thought of being in a critical way in virtue of his own conviction that it is essential to Western philosophy. "Still, in all this what remains decisive is to hear Nietzsche himself; to inquire with him and through him and therefore at the same time against him , but for the one single innermost matter that is common to Western philosophy."^[188]

Nietzsche's thought enabled Heidegger to progress beyond his own initial view in a later development which is more than another form of fundamental ontology. The result, paradoxically, is not to go beyond metaphysics to nonmetaphysics, since Heidegger cannot abandon metaphysics in his abandonment of philosophy.^[189] If he did, then he would have to admit the nonphilosophical status of early Greek thought, whose importance never changes in his eyes. Like Kant, who desired to leave behind bad metaphysics at the same time as he specified the condition of metaphysics to come as a science,^[190] Heidegger intends to throw off the bad metaphysics which he sees as pervading the Platonic tradition, and philosophy itself, which he identifies with bad metaphysics, in order, finally, to build correctly on pre-Socratic thought to grasp Being as such in what can only be authentic metaphysics.

Heidegger's and Nietzsche's respective contributions can be assessed in terms of what Heidegger here refers to as the innermost matter (innerste Sache ) of Western philosophy. Heidegger insists that Nietzsche ends metaphysics, and attributes to him a special status as the last metaphysical thinker. Yet he explicitly denies that Nietzsche fulfills metaphysics, for instance by bringing it to a close or successfully completing the metaphysical quest.^[191] To see this point, to comprehend that with Nietzsche the metaphysical discussion has in a sense come to a limit, is to move beyond that limit and toward the completion of metaphysics. But to do so is also to move beyond the position of Being and Time where, depending on one's reading of this text, Nietzsche was either absent or not explicitly appreciated. Since Nietzsche brings this philosophical

movement to an end, since his thought stands at the outer reaches of Western metaphysics, it also stands beyond it as a theory that points beyond the limits and indicates the direction to be taken.

The shift in Heidegger's position enabling him to grasp the dimensions of Nietzsche's contribution is an integral part of the evolution of his own thought. Heidegger regards his own contribution to Nietzsche scholarship as twofold. On the one hand, we have noted that Heidegger literally believes that unlike others he can not only listen to but even hear Nietzsche.^[192] This mystical faith in his own hermeneutic capacity should be illustrated by his capacity to think through Nietzsche's problem, which is not the same as simply reading the aphorisms. In that sense, Heidegger means to suggest that he understands not only the letter but the spirit of a position which has so far escaped its other readers. But there is no basis to evaluate Heidegger's claim to be the authentic interpreter of Nietzsche's thought, and it is even unclear—just as it is unclear in respect to Kant's position—what an authentic reading would look like.

On the other hand, Heidegger holds that he can and must continue the process of unfolding Nietzsche's thought beyond the point at which Nietzsche left it, by thinking it through with and against Nietzsche in order to unfold it against its letter, even against Nietzsche's understanding of its spirit. In the same way as Hegel believed that he could think Kant's revolution in philosophy through to the end and complete the Platonic tradition, Heidegger believes that he can think Nietzsche's system through to the end and complete the pre-Platonic thought of Being beyond Platonism in order to respond to the innermost philosophical task. In this respect, there is an exact analogy between Hegel's dependence on Kant and that of Heidegger on Nietzsche: in both cases the former desired to complete the latter's position in a way perhaps foreign to its spirit, and certainly foreign to its letter, but without which it cannot be grasped and could not initially have been formulated.

The impact of Nietzsche on Heidegger's thought is not exhausted by the Nietzsche lectures. Heidegger's later thought continues to unfold his perceptions of the consequences of Nietzsche's position, as he reads it, in the effort to move decisively beyond the Western tradition in the authentic thought of Being. In this effort, Heidegger depicts Nietzsche from two angles of vision: as one who closes the Western discussion of metaphysics by returning to an earlier view, and as one who in the closing opens another era of authentic ontology.^[193] Through the dialogue with Nietzsche in his later thought, Heidegger extends his initial rejection of modern philosophy to englobe Platonism in all its forms and, to the extent that fundamental ontology is insufficiently radical, his own earlier thought as well.

A measure of the change in Heidegger's position with respect to his earlier writings lies in the various themes he studies in his discussion of Nietzsche's thought. Often these are themes not present in his earlier writings, or not present in the same way, or which take on a different role in later writings. These themes, which Heidegger in every case associates with Nietzsche, include the will to power, the eternal return of the same, and revaluation—the three basic ideas Heidegger identifies in Nietzsche's thought—as well as nihilism and the reversal, or turning. The result is a change of emphasis and, in at least one case, that of the turning, the emergence of an important new idea.