A Heidegger quote from his Nietzsche vol. 3 part two to counterbalance Klossowsk's individual experience interpretation of Nietzsche:
"The essence of modernity is fulfilled in the age of consumate meaninglessness. No matter how our histories may tabulate the concept and course of modernity, no matter which phenomena in the fields of politics, poetry, the natural sciences, and the social order they may appeal to in order to explain modernity, no historical mediation can afford to bypass two mutually related essential determinations within the history of modernity: first, that man installs and secures himself as subiectum, as the nodal point for beings as a whole; and secondly, that the beingness of beings as a whole is grasped as the representedness of whatever can be produced and explained." (p.178)
Modern philosophy--from Descartes onwards---is a reworking of this structure of human beings as the ground of knowledge.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 22, 2004 08:24 PM | TrackBackIs that a fair assessment of Nietzsche, do you think?
Posted by: greatcathy on November 23, 2004 12:49 PMgreatcathy,
probably not. Then again Nietzsche was often read as engaged in attempt to overcome the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger is saying not so quick.
Rightly so. What Nietzsche critique of metaphsyics involved was a critique Platonism, its values and the post-Christian "enlightened" offshoots. One strand of Nietzsche (becoming, will to power, eternal recurrence etc) offered a different metaphysics.
What is contested is Heidegger's unifying interpretation of Nietzsche. Derrida, is saying, whoa. Not so fast Martin.
Is Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche
accurate and balanced? Is it fair?
Depends on what you reckon Heidegger was doing with his deconstruction of the Western metaphysical tradition.
I interpret him to be deconstructing the kind of calculative thinking that objectifies beings and transforms all forms of existence into resources to gain mastery over the earth.He is making explicit the metaphysical presuppositions of what Adorno called instrumental reason. Heidegger was trying to figure out what had gone wrong in the Western philosophical tradition.
Nietzsche's texts are read through that lens. It is common to argue that Heidegger mis read Nietzsche in his Nietzsche lectures from 1936 to 1943.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on November 23, 2004 01:45 PM