Trevor,
The month of contract work is finally drawing to a close. I have to be quickas we are going for a late dinner in Kingston as a way to unwind from a hectic month of the autumn sitting.
Heidegger's key argument against Nietzsche is that Nietzsche did try to overcome the western metaphysical tradition. He broke with platonism and representing the one true world. This is what the postmodernists mean by Nietzsche's destruction of metaphysics--ie., dancing on the grave of metaphysics.
This rupture with the one true world of Platonism opened up a Heraclitean world of flux, stripped of stability, purpose and predictability. Thus life becomes a terrifying and tragic experience amid the constant flux of becoming (Delueze's starting point, if you like.) As there is no moral redemption in a Heraclitean world sufering becomes a means to life's affirmation.
But in rupturing with Platonism Nietzsche, from Heidegger's perspective, became caught up with its subjectivism. That is the crux of Heideger's argument against the ethics of the sovereign individual creating itself anew. Ethics (with its liberation from ends) becomes an experiment (of sacrificing ourselves and letting ourselves a go) not a contract. That is where Foucault's ethics start. What Heidegger sees is the metaphysical residues of the humanist tradition, or a reinvestment in metaphysics as he affirmed the value of life through risking all in the adventure of testing, displaying, self-creating anew and achieiving greatness through our deeds.
But more is involved in Heidegger's argument than this. Nietzsche, the harshest critic of Western culture in the history of philosophy, celebrates the that culture's most cherished value, freedom. Nietzsche, for Heidegger, marks the culmination of metaphysics. This metaphysics had reached its end: it had reached a historical moment when the essential possibilities are exhausted.
By this Heidegger meant something similar to us saying that the analyic tradition has exhausted its possibilities.
For Heidegger Nietzsche's individualism amounted to homlessness --a nomadism--it is the furtherest point in an individualist and subjectivist metaphysics. Nietzsche is no postmodern visitor to metaphysics who might shake the dust from his feet. He is a permanent guest in t e hosue of modern metaphysics.
Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche in the lecture course is based on attempting to "grasp Nietzsche's philosophy as the metaphysics of subjectivity." In this confrontation Heidegger showns that in constantly wrestling with individualism and subjectivism---it is the curse, poison and idol of modernity--- Nietzsche cannot do without its support.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 30, 2004 09:40 PM | TrackBack