This is the gist of Heidegger’s two complimentary essays, taken from his lecture notes, in a nutshell, “In the instant that metaphysics is overcome through beyng, things get serious with philosophy because a decisive moment in the history of beyng arrives…. That which is to be overcome must now be placed into its essence, which has been veiled so far; it must be elevated to its essentiality…. The decisive aspect of the overcoming lies in a rift that is opened between the beingness of beings and the truth of beyng…. It is from this point on that the differentiation between beyng and beings is first grounded in an abyss as that which belongs to the history of beyng.”
Heidegger questions the theology (and ontology) beyond the act of overcoming, “Overcoming metaphysics—does this not mean creating “new,” different gods? But who creates them? Or indeed going beyond gods—that we no longer need them, in turn to be enslaved more than ever by such a lack of need…. Or is over-coming completely different—not an elevated-beyond of a super-metaphysics, but an acceptance and recognition of a lapse—something very slight and peculiar and simple, whose continued existence makes “demands” on the more essential capacities of the human being than the ascent into the making and despising of gods, both of which belong together, balancing each other out.”
Heidegger refines his definition of metaphysics. Metaphysics is removed from the chain of causation and, therefore, from history as experienced, “Metaphysics is not doctrine and opinion. It is also not just a basic stance of the thinking human, but the truth of beings; however here the essence of truth in ungrounded…. Ungrounding from early on unfolds a peculiar predominance of beings over being.” Heidegger contrasts nihilism, “The essence of nihilism lies in the neglect of the nothing, which comes from nihilism’s incapacity to grasp its own essence as the essentially “corrupted essence” of beyng and to experience the inception of the grounding to come, in the abyss of the truth of beyng…. The errancy of metaphysics consists in this: it is familiar with only one way out of being lost in the emptiest-most universal, which is to flee into the “particular” and the concrete, whether this be the positivity of the sciences or the “praxis” of so-called “life” or the moral “appeal” to individual existence (“anthropology”)…. We are seeking the “ground,” not some particular ground for some particular being, but the ground for beings as such…. One may say that [Being and Beings] are infinitely distinct—distinguished by an abyss—separated from each other by an abyss, which is beyng itself…. Metaphysics projects the beingness of beings without grounding it…. Indeed the a priori character shows that being is no more and will henceforth never at all be interrogated in all of metaphysics, that is to say, will never at all be creatively questioned from itself and back into itself—The a priori denies being its own essencing back into itself.”
Heidegger circles back to the history of metaphysics, “Metaphysics begins with Socrates insofar as we mean metaphysics in the narrow sense as the establishment of the truth about beings…. With the evolved “doctrine of ideas,” Plato created the instrument for all metaphysics…. Socrates brought philosophy from heaven to earth and turned it against metaphysics in order to “care” for the human being alone. This opinion is erroneous on two counts. For one, there was still no metaphysics before Socrates; the thought of Heraclitus and Parmenides is “physics”…. Secondly, the turn toward the human being is, however, precisely the precondition for all metaphysics. Prior to this, the human being, as in any inceptual (i.e. non-metaphysical) philosophy, was inessential and not more essential than the gods, who remained out of consideration. Socrates makes it his business to strive after the good and with this metaphysics is first posited…. Absolute knowledge as the truth of beings as a whole knows itself and thus excludes any questionability. From this, we can see in historical reflection that metaphysics, as soon as it becomes the thinking of thinking, distances itself, if anything, from reflecting on the truth of being.”
Heidegger moves on to nihilism by first defining it, “Nihil (nothing) exists essentially in what it names. Nihilism means: there is nothing with respect to a being…. There is nothing with respect to beings as such as a whole…. Not every metaphysics has experienced nihilism, only the metaphysics of Nietzsche…. “God is dead.” With this expression Nietzsche gives a theological and, seemingly, only a negative formula for what he, thinking metaphysically, understands under nihilism. Nihilism, thought positively, is metaphysics understood as the truth of a being (of what is actual) in terms of the will to power from the eternal recurrence of the same…. The happening whereby the supersensible world falls away and loses its binding-formative essence is construed as the act of the human being. Nihilism, understood as the history of the devaluation of the highest values, is the work of humans…. The name God stands, metaphysically speaking, for the supersensible world. Since Plato, it is the realm of the “ideas.”… The murder of God, metaphysically speaking, consists in wiping away the entire horizon. The horizon of the supersensible is erased.”
The experienced world is nothing but history traced back to the ground. Heidegger states, “Because there is nothing permanent and everything “is” a becoming-having-become, “permanence” remains something only imagined in fancy. Indeed, this imagination is necessary, as the positing of the permanent, for assuring the continued existence of the will to power…. What is actual is only what becomes…. Nietzsche thinks what becomes in its becoming as the will to power…. Nietzsche himself figured it out because he experienced Western history in its occurrence as nihilism. Nihilism, as the process of the devaluation of the highest values, the murder of God, must lead to the revaluation of all values…. Nietzsche experiences nihilism as the history of the devaluation of the highest values…. Nietzsche’s fundamental experience says: a being is, and as such it is not nothing. As a consequence, nihilism, according to which there is nothing with respect to beings as such, is excluded from the foundations of metaphysics. Thus, it has overcome nihilism…. Yet, does he also recognize in such a recognition the being of beings and indeed being itself, namely, as being? By no means…. Being is not recognized as being…. It is as if it is nothing: being is a nihil…. There is nothing with respect to being in Nietzsche’s metaphysics. We therefore say: Nietzsche’s metaphysics is nihil proper.”
Heidegger concludes by contrasting metaphysics with nihilism. “Metaphysics itself thus blocks the path toward the experience of the essence of nihilism. Metaphysics, at any time, puts the affirmation or the denial of beings as such up for decision and sees its alpha and omega in the relevant explanation of beings on the basis of their ground, a ground that also exists as a being…. Being abandons its own nature to the thinking of metaphysics, which omits this staying-away as such and also does not admit to this omission…. The essence of nihilism is not a matter pertaining to human beings at all, but to beyng itself…. The dignity of being does not consist in being considered as a value, even if it be the highest value. Rather, the dignity of being consists in being the freedom, which frees all beings as such into itself…. The fact that beings exist as if being were not the unrelenting and the one requiring accommodation, as if it were not the urgency of the truth itself that urges, is the dominance of the lack of urgency, which is reinforced in the metaphysics that has reached consummation.”
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