The Word of Nietzsche: "Qod Is Dead"

The following exposition attempts

place
to point the

way toward

the

from which it may be possible someday to ask the question concerning the essence of nihilism. 1 The exposition stems from a thinking that is for once just beginning to gain some clarity
concerning Nietzsche's fundamental position within the history
of Western metaphysics. This pointing of the
a stage in

way

will clarify
final stage;

for

Western metaphysics that is probably its inasmuch as through Nietzsche metaphysics has
itself

in a certain

sense divested
sibilities

of

its

own

essential possibility, other pos-

of metaphysics can no longer appear. Through the over2 turning of metaphysics accomplished by Nietzsche, there re-

mains for metaphysics nothing but a turning aside into its own inessentiality and disarray. The suprasensory is transformed

"Essence" will be the translation of the noun Wesen throughout this The reader should continually keep in mind that the "essence" of metaphysics or of nihilism, of the will to power or of value or of truth, always means fundamentally for Heidegger the manner in which each, in its ongoing presence, "holds sway" and prevails as whatever it is. See QT3,
1.

essay.

n. 1, 30.
2. Throughout this essay the word "overturning" (Umkehrung) is used in the sense of an upsetting or a turning upside down, never in the sense of

an overcoming or conquest (Uberwindung).

54
into

The Question Concerning Technology

an unstable product of the sensory.
of
its

The Word

of Nietzsche

55

And

with such a debase-

ment

antithesis / the sensory denies

its

own

essence.

The

for Nietzsche: to represent

Nietzsche seriously as a thinker. But also, to think means this what is as what is. Any metaphysical
is

deposing of the suprasensory does away with the merely sensory and thus with the difference between the two. The deposing of the suprasensory culminates in a "neither-nor" in relation to
the distinction between the sensory (aestheton) and the non-

nothing at all. 5 For the reflection we are attempting here, it is a question of preparing for a simple and inconspicuous step in thought. What matters to preparatory thinking is to light up that space within
thinking

onto-logy or

it is

sensory (noeton).

It

culminates in meaninglessness.
to

It

remains,
its

which Being

itself

nevertheless, the unthought and invincible presupposition of

to his essence, into a primal relationship.

might again be able to take man, with respect To be preparatory is

own

blind attempts

extricate

through a mere assigning of sense In what follows, metaphysics is is as such in its entirety, and not as thinker. Each thinker has at any
philosophical position
ticular

itself from meaninglessness and meaning. thought as the truth of what the doctrine of any particular given time his fundamental

the essence of such thinking.

within metaphysics. Therefore a parmetaphysics can be called by his name. However, according to what is here thought as the essence of metaphysics, that does not mean in any way that metaphysics at any given time is
the accomplishment and possession of the thinker as a personality

That thinking, which is essential and which is therefore everywhere and in every respect preparatory, proceeds in an unpretentious way. Here all sharing in thinking, clumsy and groping though it may be, is an essential help. Sharing in thinking proves a sowing that cannot be authento be an unobtrusive sowing ticated through the prestige or utility attaching to it by sowers who may perhaps never see blade and fruit and may never know a harvest. They serve the sowing, and even before that they

serve

its

preparation.
It is

within the public framework of creative cultural activity. In

Before the sowing comes the plowing.

a matter of

making

every phase of metaphysics there has been visible at any particular time a portion of a

the field capable of cultivation, the field that through the un-

way

that the destining of Being

is,

avoidable predominance of the land of metaphysics has had to

prepares as a path for

itself

over and beyond whatever

in

sudden epochs of truth. 3 Nietzsche himself interprets the course of Western history metaphysically, and indeed as the rise and development of nihilism. The thinking through of Nietzsche's metaphysics becomes a reflection on the situation and place of contemporary man, whose destiny is still but little experienced with respect to its truth. Every reflection of such a kind, however, if it is not simply an empty, repetitious reporting, remains 4 out beyond what usually passes for reflection. Its going beyond is not merely a surmounting and is not at all a surpassing; moreover, it is not an immediate overcoming. The fact that we are reflecting on Nietzsche's metaphysics does not mean that, in addition to considering his ethics and his epistemology and his aesthetics, we are also and above all taking note of his metaphysics; rather it means simply that we are trying to take

remain in the unknown. It is a matter first of having a presentiment of, then of finding, and then of cultivating, that field. It is a matter of taking a first walk to that field. Many are the ways, still unknown, that lead there. Yet always to each thinker there is assigned but one way, his own, upon whose traces he must again and again go back and forth that finally he may hold although it never belongs to to it as the one that is his own him and may tell what can be experienced on that one way. Perhaps the title Being and Time is a road marker belonging

built from the Greek present participle ontos by Heidegger's use of the German present participle das Seiende employed as a noun, literally, being, i.e., what is, what has or is in being. The meaning of "what is" can extend from "a being" to the most inclusive encompassing of whatever is as such, in its
5.

The word "onto-logy"

Ontos
is

is

(being).

paralleled

entirety. For

Das Seiende stands always

tion to das Sein, the

Heidegger connotations of inclusiveness regularly predominate. in reciprocal and mutually determinative rela-

German

infinitive translated "Being."

On

this relation,

3. 4.

On

the

Besinnung.

meaning of "epoch," see T 43, n. 10. On the meaning of this word, see SR 155

"The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics," in Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp.
see
n. 1.

64, 132.

56

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word

of Nietzsche

57

to such a way. In accordance with the essential interwovenness

among metaphysics' own offspring an interwovenness demanded by metaphysics itself and forever sought anew preparatory thinking must move from time to time in the sphere of the sciences;
of metaphysics with the sciences, which are counted

Preparatory thinking therefore maintains itself necessarily within the realm of historical reflection. For this thinking, history
is

not the succession of eras, but a unique nearness of the

Same B

for the sciences, in manifold ways, always claim to give the

modes of destining and out of changing immediacy, approaches and concerns thinking. What is important to us now is the reflection pertaining to
that, in incalculable

fundamental form of knowing and of the knowable, in advance, whether deliberately or through the kind of currency and effectiveness that they themselves possess.

Nietzsche's metaphysics. Nietzsche's thinking sees itself as be-

The more unequivocally

more decisively does knowledge laid claim
its title

historical

longing under the heading "nihilism." That is the name for a movement, recognized by Nietzsche, already ruling

the sciences press

on toward

their

predetermined technological

throughout preceding centuries, and

tury. Nietzsche

now

determining this cenit

essence and

its

distinctive character, the

sums up
is

his interpretation of

in the brief

the question concerning the possibility of

to in technology clarify itself

statement:

"God

dead."

the question concerning the kind

to Tightness.
is

One

could suppose that the pronouncement

"God
is

is

dead"

and

limits of that possibility

and concerning
its

expresses an opinion of Nietzsche the atheist and

accordingly

An

education in thinking in the midst of the sciences

fulfillment.

part

of preparatory thinking and

To

find the suitable

such education in thinking does not fall is the hard thing. This objective is in danger, then, above all when thinking is simultaneously and continually under the obligation of first
this, so that

form for

only a personal attitude, and therefore one-sided, and for that reason also easily refutable through the observation that today everywhere many men seek out the houses of God and endure

victim to a confusion with research and erudition,

hardships out of a trust in

is

God

as defined

the question remains whether the aforesaid

by Christianity. But word of Nietzsche

To think in the midst of the sciences means to pass near them without disdaining them. We do not know what possibilities the destining of Western
finding
its

own

abode.

history holds in store for our people and the West. Moreover,
is not important only that learners in thinking should share in learning and, at the same time, sharing in teaching after their manner, should remain on the way and

the external shaping and ordering of those possibilities

is

primarily what

needed.

It is

merely an extravagant view of a thinker about whom the is readily at hand: he finally went mad. And it remains to ask whether Nietzsche does not rather pronounce here the word that always, within the metaphysically determined history of the West, is already being spoken by implication. Before taking any position too hastily, we must first try to think this pronouncement, "God is dead," in the way in which it is
correct assertion
6. For Heidegger the "Same" is a unity that far from being abstract and simpleis rather a together that involves a reciprocal relation of belonging. That unity of belonging together springs out of the disclosing bringinginto-its-own (Ereignis) that is the unique bringing-to-pass that takes place within Being itself (cf. T 45 ff.). It holds sway in the primal relatings ofBeing and what is, and of Being and man. Thus the Same is that very difference, that separating-between (Unter-Schied), out of which Being and what is endure as present in their differentiating, which is an indissoluble relating. And again, "thinking and Being belong together into the Same and from out of the Same." (See "The Principle of Identity," in Identity and Difference, pp. 27 ff., 90 ff.) Thus the Same of which Heidegger here speaks

be there

at the right moment. The following exposition confines

itself in its

aim and scope

to

the sphere of the one experience from out of which Being and
is thought. That thinking is concerned unceasingly with one single happening: In the history of Western thinking, indeed continually from the beginning, what is, is thought in reference to Being; yet the truth of Being remains unthought, and not only is that truth denied to thinking as a possible experience, but Western thinking itself, and indeed in the form of metaphysics, expressly, but nevertheless unknowingly, veils the happening of

Time

that denial.

the Same in the sense of the belonging together that rules in the modes of the destining of the Being of what is, and that concerns a thinking that apprehends that Being as determined out of that unity which gives distinctiveness while uniting. (See "The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics," in Identity and Difference, pp. 64 ff., 133 ff.)
is

58
intended.
all

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word

of Nietzsche

59

To

that end, therefore,

we would do

well to put aside

God

himself

is

dead.

..."

Hegel's pronouncement carries a

premature opinions that immediately obtrude for us at this dreadful word. The following reflections attempt to elucidate Nietzsche's pronouncement in a few essential respects. Once again let it be emphasized: The word of Nietzsche speaks of the destining of

thought different from that contained in the word of Nietzsche. Still, there exists between the two an essential connection that
conceals itself in the essence of
Pascal, taken
all

metaphysics.
est

The word

of

from Plutarch, "Le grand Pan

694:),

Pan
even

is if

dead"] (Pensees,

mort" ["Great belongs within the same realm,

full text
is

two millennia of Western

history.

We

ourselves, unprepared as

for contrary reasons.

we

us together, must not suppose that through a lecon the word of Nietzsche we can alter this destining or even simply learn to know it adequately. Even so, this one thing is now necessary: that out of reflection we receive instruction, and that on the way of instruction we learn to reflect. Every exposition must of course not only draw upon the substance of the text; it must also, without presuming, imperceptibly give to the text something out of its own substance. This part that is added is what the layman, judging on the basis of what
are, all of

Let us listen, to begin with, to the

of section no. 125,

entitled

ture

from the work The Gay Science. The piece man" and runs

"The Mad-

he holds to be the content of the text, constantly perceives as a meaning read in, and with the right that he claims for himself
criticizes as

an arbitrary imposition.

Still,

while a right eluci-

The Madman. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, "I seek God! I seek God!" As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Why, did he get lost? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his
in the bright

dation never understands the text better than the author under-

glances.

does surely understand it differently. Yet this difference must be of such a kind as to touch upon the Same toward
stood
it,

it

which the elucidated

the third
in the

text

is

thinking.

Nietzsche spoke the word

"God is dead" for the first time in work The Gay Science, which appeared year 1882. With that work begins Nietzsche's way toward
book of
his
it

the development of his fundamental metaphysical position. Be-

tween
lies

and

his vain efforts at

shaping his proposed masterpiece

Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The proposed masterpiece was never completed. Tentatively it was to bear the title "The Will to Power" and to receive the subtitle "Attempt
the publication of
at a

Revaluation of All Values."

"Whither is God" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is
dead.

The strange notion of the death of a god and the dying of the gods was already familiar to the younger Nietzsche. In a note from the time of the completion of his first work, The Birth of
Tragedy, Nietzsche writes (1870) "I believe in the ancient German saying: 'All gods must die/ " The young Hegel, at the end
:

God

remains dead.
all

And we

have

killed him.

How

shall

we,

the murderers of

murderers, comfort ourselves?

What was

holiest

and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What
water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater

of his treatise Faith

and Knowledge (1802), names the "feeling

on which

rests the religion of the

modern period

the

feeling

60

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word
concerning the death of
less certain,

of Nietzsche

61

for the sake of this deed be part of a higher history than all history hitherto/' Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out.

deed; and whoever will be born after us

will

he

he said then; "my time has not come yet. This on its way, still wandering it has not yet reached the ears of man. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars and yet they have done it themselves." It has been related further that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to have replied each time, "What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and
"I

come too

early/'

tremendous event

is still

sepulchers of

God?" 7

Four years later (1886) Nietzsche added to the four books of The Gay Science a fifth, which is entitled "We Fearless Ones." Over the first section in that book (Aphorism 343) is inscribed "The Meaning of Our Cheerfulness." The piece begins, "The greatest recent event that 'God is dead,' that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe." From this sentence it is clear that Nietzsche's pronouncement

God means the Christian god. But it is and it is to be considered in advance, that the terms "God" and "Christian god" in Nietzsche's thinking are used to designate the suprasensory world in general. God is the name for the realm of Ideas and ideals. This realm of the suprasensory has been considered since Plato, or more strictly speaking, since the late Greek and Christian interpretation of Platonic philosophy, to be the true and genuinely real world. In contrast to it the sensory world is only the world down here, the changeable, and therefore the merely apparent, unreal world. The world down here is the vale of tears in contrast to the mountain of everlasting bliss in the beyond. If, as still happens in Kant, we name the sensory world the physical in the broader sense, then the suprasensory world is the metaphysical world. The pronouncement "God is dead" means: The suprasensory world is without effective power. It bestows no life. Metaphysics, i.e., for Nietzsche Western philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end. Nietzsche understands his own philosophy as the countermovement to metaphysics, and that means for him a
no

movement

in opposition to Platonism.
it

Nevertheless, as a mere countermovement

necessarily re-

mains, as does everything "anti," held fast in the essence of that

over
against

which

it

moves. Nietzsche's countermovement

7. The translation of this passage is from Walter Kaufmann's The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1968), pp. 95-96. The quotations from Nietzsche in this essay are regularly taken from Kaufmann or Kauf-

mann-HolIingdale translations when these are available. In some instances quotations have been revised, usually only slightly, where the context of Heidegger's thinking makes changes necessary so as to bring out the meaning that Heidegger sees in Nietzsche's words. The following is a list of passages where alterations in translation have been made; page numbers in parentheses refer to pages in this volume. From The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York Random House, 1968) Aph 2 (p. 66), Aph. 1021 (p. 69), Aph. 28 (p. 69), Aph. 14 (p. 70), Aph. 715 (p. 71), Aph. 556 (p. 73), Aph. 715 (p. 74), Aph. 14 (p. 74), Aph. 675 (p. 7778), Aph. 853 (p. 85). From On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967): Third Essay, Section I (p. 79). From Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967): Aph. 23 (p. 79). From Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in
:

is, as the mere turning upside down of an inextricable entanglement in metaphysics, in metaphysics, such a way, indeed, that metaphysics is cut off from its essence and, as metaphysics, is never able to think its own essence. Therefore, what actually happens in metaphysics and as metaphysics itself remains hidden by metaphysics and for meta-

against metaphysics

physics.
If

God
if

as the suprasensory

ground and goal of

all

reality is

dead,

the suprasensory world of the Ideas has suffered the

and above all its vitalizing and upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient himself. That is why in the passage just cited there stands this question: "Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?" The pronouncement "God is dead" conloss of its obligatory

The Portable Nietzsche; Close, Part I (p. 111). In Nietzsche's unless otherwise indicated.

all

quotations, italics are

tains

the confirmation that this Nothing is spreading out. "Nothing" means here: absence of a suprasensory, obligatory

62

The Question Concerning Technology

all

The Word
is

of Nietzsche

63

world. Nihilism, "the most uncanny of

at the door.

guests,"

standing

ment of the peoples of the earth who have been drawn into the power realm of the modern age. Hence it is not only a pheof the present age, nor is it primarily the product of the nineteenth century, in which to be sure a perspicacious eye for nihilism awoke and the name also became current. No more whose is nihilism the exclusive product of particular nations

The attempt
the

to elucidate Nietzsche's

word "God

is

dead" has

nomenon

same

significance as does the task of setting forth

what

Nietzsche understands by "nihilism" and of thus showing

how

Nietzsche himself stands in relation to nihilism. Yet, because this name is often used only as a catchword and slogan and
frequently also as an invective intended to prejudice,
it is

neces-

means. Not everyone who appeals to his Christian faith or to some metaphysical conviction or other stands on that account definitely outside nihilism. Conversely also, however, not everyone who troubles himself with thoughts about Nothing and its essence is a nihilist. This name is readily used in such a tone as would indicate that the mere designation "nihilist," without one's even thinking to oneself anything specific in the word, already suffices to prosary to

know what

it

thinkers and writers speak expressly of it. Those who fancy themselves free of nihilism perhaps push forward its development most fundamentally. It belongs to the uncanniness of this

uncanny guest
is

that

it

cannot

name

its

own

origin.

Nihilism also does not rule primarily

disavowed or where Christianity is exclusively where common atheism is preached in a secular setting. So long as we confine ourselves to looking only at this unbelief turned aside from Christianity, and at the forms in which it appears, our gaze remains fixed merely on the external

where the Christian god combated; nor does it rule

vide proof that a reflection on Nothing inevitably leads to a

and paltry facades of

nihilism.

The speech
is

of the

madman

says

plunge into Nothing and means the establishment of the dictatorship of Nothing.

Actually,

we
i.e.,

should be asking whether the

name

"nihilism,"

thought

strictly in the

sense of Nietzsche's philosophy, has only

dead" has nothing in common specifically that the merely standing about and who are those with the opinions of in God." For those who believe not "do talking confusedly, who has not yet asserted nihilism that way, are merely believers in

word "God

a nihilistic,

a negative, meaning, one that floats off into the

itself at all as the

destining of their
are thinking

own
it

history.
is

void of nothingness. Given the vague and arbitrary use of the

So long

as

we

understand the

word "God

dead" only

as a

word

"nihilism,"

it is

surely necessary, before a thorough dis-

cussion of what Nietzsche himself says about nihilism, to gain

the right perspective from

which we may

first

begin to question

manformula of unbelief, we what to claims all renouncing are ner of apologetics, and we what has ponders that reflection the matters to Nietzsche, i.e., to
theologically in the

concerning nihilism.

already happened regarding the truth of the suprasensory world

movement, and not just any view or doctrine advocated by someone or other. Nihilism moves history after the manner of a fundamental ongoing event that is scarcely recognized in the destining of the Western peoples. Hence nihilNihilism
is

a historical

and regarding

its

relation to

man's essence.

Hence, also, nihilism in Nietzsche's sense in no way coincides with the situation conceived merely negatively, that the Christian god of biblical revelation can no longer be believed in, just
as Nietzsche does not consider the Christian life that existed

ism

is

also not simply one historical

phenomenon among

others

not simply one intellectual current that, along with others, with

Christendom, with humanism, and with the Enlightenment also comes to the fore within Western history. Nihilism, thought in its essence, is, rather, the fundamental movement of the history of the West. It shows such great profundity that its unfolding can have nothing but world catastrophes as its consequence. Nihilism is the world-historical move-

once for a short time before the writing down of the Gospels and before the missionary propaganda of Paul to belong to Christendom. Christendom for Nietzsche is the historical, world-

Church and its claim to power and its modern culture. humanity within the shaping of Western of New TestaChristianity Christendom in this sense and the life can affirm non-Christian ment faith are not the same. Even a
political

phenomenon

of the

64

The Question Concerning Technology

it

The Word

of Nietzsche

65

Christendom and use

fore, a confrontation

as a

means

of power, just as, conversely,

The realm

for the essence

itself

and the coming-to-pass of nihilism

a Christian life does not necessarily require Christendom. There-

with Christendom

is

absolutely not in any

way an

attack against
is

what

is

Christian,

of theology

necessarily a critique of faith,

is

any more than a critique whose interpretain the flatlands of the

provided always that we do not mean by is alone only one particular discipline of doctrine, let a this name rather on the fundamental structhink but that we philosophy, whole, insofar as that whole is which as a is, that turing of
metaphysics
differentiated into a sensory

tion theology
conflicts

said to be.

We

move

between world views so long

as

we

disregard these

essential distinctions.

In the
tially,

word "God

is

dead" the name "God," thought essenlife

and a suprasensory world and the determined by the latter. Metaphysics and supported former is a destining that the becomes wherein it space open is history's moral law, the authority the the Ideas, God, world, suprasensory
of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, civilization, suffer the loss of their constructive force and

stands for the suprasensory world of those ideals which

for that
life

contain the goal that exists beyond earthly

and

that, accordingly,

a certain

God,

as

determines life from above, and also in way, from without. But now when unalloyed faith in determined through the Church, dwindles away, when
its

become
sensory

void.
its

decay in the essence of the supra8 Unbelief in the sense [Verwesung]. disessentializing

We

name

this

of a falling

away from

the Christian doctrine of faith

is,

there-

in particular the doctrine of faith, theology, in

as the normative explanation of that

role of serving

which is as a whole, is and thrust aside, then the fundamental structuring, in keeping with which the fixing of goals, extending into the suprasensory, rules sensory, earthly life, is in no way thereby
curtailed

fore, never the essence and the ground, but always only a consequence, of nihilism; for it could be that Christendom itself

represents one consequence and bodying-forth of nihilism. From here we are able also to recognize the last aberration to

shattered as well.
Into the position of the vanished authority of

God and

of the

teaching office
up.

of the Church

steps the authority of conscience,

obtrudes the authority of reason. Against these the social instinct

rises

which we remain exposed in comprehending and supposedly combating nihilism. Because we do not experience nihilism as a historical movement that has already long endured, the ground of whose essence lies in metaphysics, we succumb to the ruinous passion for holding phenomena that are already and simply
consequences of nihilism for the latter itself, or we set forth the consequences and effects as the causes of nihilism. In our
thoughtless accommodation to this

The flight from the world into the suprasensory is replaced by historical progress. The otherworldly goal of evertransformed into the earthly happiness of the greatest number. The careful maintenance of the cult of religion is relaxed through enthusiasm for the creating of a culture or the spreading of civilization. Creativity, previously the unique property of the biblical god, becomes the distinctive mark of human activity. Human creativity finally passes over into busilasting bliss
is

way

of representing matters,

we have

for decades

now accustomed

ourselves to cite the

dominance of technology or the revolt of the masses as the cause of the historical condition of the age, and we tirelessly
dissect the intellectual situation of the time in keeping with such views. But every analysis of man and his position in the midst

ness enterprise.

of

what

is,

however enlightened and ingenious

it

may

be, remains

Accordingly, that which must take the place of the suprasensory world will be variations on the Christian-ecclesiastical and
interpretation of the world, which took over its schema of the ordo of the hierarchy of beings from the JewishHellenistic world, and whose fundamental structure was established and given its ground through Plato at the beginning of Western metaphysics.
theological

and the 8. The noun Verwesung in ordinary usage means decomposition, corresponding verb verwesen means to perish or decay. Heidegger here uses Verwesung in a quite literal sense, to refer to that ongoing event of the deposing of the suprasensory world in which the suprasensory loses its essence. As this event takes place, culminating in Nietzsche's decisive work of the overturning of metaphysics, metaphysics, as the truth of what is as such, becomes the very reverse of itself and enters into its own nonenduring.

66

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word

of Nietzsche

67

thoughtless, and engenders only the semblance of reflection so

long as

it

fails to

think on the place of habitation proper to man's

essence and to experience that place in the truth of Being.

So long
hilism

as

we merely

itself,

take the appearances of nihilism for niour taking of a position in relation to nihilism

remains

superficial. It is

not one whit less futile when, out of

dissatisfaction with the world situation, or out of half-avowed

despair or moral indignation, or a believer's self-righteous su-

becoming valueless of the highest values, then we would have that conception of the essence of nihilism that has meanwhile become current and whose currency is undoubtedly strengthened through its being labeled "nihilism": to wit, that the devaluing of the highest values obviously means decay and ruin. Yet for Nietzsche nihilism is not in any way simply a phenomenon of decay; rather nihilism is, as the fundamental event of Western history, simultaneously and above all the intrinsic law of that
history.

assumes a certain defensive vehemence. it is important above all that we reflect. Therefore, let us now ask Nietzsche himself what he understands by nihilism, and let us leave it open at first whether with this understanding Nietzsche after all touches on or can touch nihilperiority,
it

In contrast to this,

For that reason, in his observations about nihilism Nietzsche gives scant attention to depicting historiographically
the ongoing
est values

movement

of the event of the devaluing of the highdefinitively

and

calculation, the downfall of the

ism's essence.

nihilism as

from this, through West; rather Nietzsche thinks the "inner logic" of Western history.
to discovering

from the year 1887 Nietzsche poses the question, "What does nihilism mean?" (Will to Power, Aph. 2). He answers: "That the highest values are devaluing themselves." This answer is underlined and is furnished with the explanatory amplification: "The aim is lacking; 'Why?' finds no answer."
In a note

With

this,

Nietzsche recognizes that despite the devaluing for

that,

the world of the highest values hitherto, the world itself remains;

and he recognizes

above

all,

the world,

become

value-less,

presses inevitably on toward a

new

positing of values. After the

According to this note Nietzsche understands nihilism as an ongoing historical event. He interprets that event as the devaluing of the highest values up to now. God, the suprasensory world as the world that truly is and determines all, ideals and Ideas, the purposes and grounds that determine and support everything that is and human life in particular all this is here represented as meaning the highest values. In conformity with the opinion that is even now still current, we understand by this the true, the good, and the beautiful; the true, i.e., that which really is; the good, i.e., that upon which everything everywhere depends; the beautiful, i.e., the order and unity of that which is in its entirety. And yet the highest values are already devaluing themselves through the emerging of the insight that the ideal world is not and is never to be realized within the real world. The

former values have become untenable, the new positing of values changes, in respect to those former values, into a "revaluing of
all

values."

The no

to the values hitherto

comes out of
to or

a yes to

the

new

positing of values. Because in this yes, according to

is

Nietzsche's view, there

no accommodation

compromise

with the former values, the absolute no belongs within this yes to the new value-positing. In order to secure the unconditionality of the new yes against falling back toward the previous values,
i.e.,

in order to provide a foundation for the

new

positing of

values as a countermovement, Nietzsche even designates the

positing of values as "nihilism," namely, as that nihilism through which the devaluing to a new positing of values that is alone definitive completes and consummates itself. This definitive phase of nihilism Nietzsche calls "completed," i.e., classical, nihilism. Nietzsche understands by nihilism the devaluing of the highest values up to now. But at the same time he takes an
affirmative stand toward nihilism in the sense of a "revaluing
all previous values." Hence the name "nihilism" remains ambiguous, and seen in terms of its two extremes, always has first of all a double meaning, inasmuch as, on the one hand, it designates the mere devaluing of the highest values up to now,

new

obligatory character of the highest values begins to totter.

The

question arises:

Of what

avail are these highest values if they

do not simultaneously render secure the warrant and the ways and means for a realization of the goals posited in them? If, however, we were to insist on understanding Nietzsche's definition of the essence of nihilism in so many words as the

of

68

The Question Concerning Technology

it

The Word
in
its

of Nietzsche

69

but on the other hand

also

means

at the

same time the un-

conditional countermovement to devaluing. Pessimism, which

is already twoAccording to Schopenhauer, pessimism is the belief that in this worst of worlds life is not worth being lived and affirmed. According to this doctrine, life, and that means at the same time all existence as such, is to be denied. This pessimism is, according to Nietzsche, the "pessimism of weakness." It sees everywhere only gloom, finds in everything a ground for failure, and claims to know how everything will turn out, in the sense of a thoroughgoing disaster. Over against this, the pessimism of strength as strength is under no illusion, perceives what is dangerous, wants no covering up and glossing over. It sees to the heart of the ominousness of mere impatient waiting for the return of what has been heretofore. It penetrates

as such maintain the ascendancy. in

twofold form, extremes become manifest. Those extremes There thus arises a situation

Nietzsche sees as the prefiguration of nihilism,

fold also, in the

same

sense.

which everything is brought to a head in the absoluteness of an "either-or." An "in-between situation" comes to prevail in which it becomes evident that, on the one hand, the realization
of the highest values hitherto
is

not being accomplished.

world appears value-less.

of the
its

On

the other hand, through this

is

The mak-

ing conscious, the inquiring gaze

directed toward the source

new

positing of values, but without the world's regaining

all

value at

in the process.

To be

sure,

something

else

can

still

be attempted in face of
is, if

the tottering of the dominion of prior values. That

God

in

the sense of the Christian god has disappeared from his authoritative position in the suprasensory world, then this authoritative place itself is still always preserved, even though as that which has become empty. The now-empty authoritative realm of the suprasensory and the ideal world can still be adhered to. What is more, the empty place demands to be occupied anew and to have the god now vanished from it replaced by something else. New ideals are set up. That happens, according to Nietzsche's conception (Will to Power, Aph. 1021, 1887), through doctrines regarding world happiness, through socialism, and equally through Wagnerian music, i.e., everywhere where "dogmatic Christendom" has "become bankrupt." Thus does "incomplete nihilism" come to prevail. Nietzsche says about the latter:

analytically into

phenomena and demands consciousness

of the

conditions and forces that, despite everything, guarantee mastery

over the historical situation.

in what Nietzsche accomplished the rising up of modern humanity into the unconditional dominion of sub9 jectivity within the subjectness of what is. Through pessimism

more

essential reflection could

show how
is

calls

the pessimism of strength there

"Subjectness" translates Subjektitat, a word formed by Heidegger to mode of Being's coming to presence in its reciprocal interrelation with what is, namely, that mode wherein Being manifests itself in respect to what is, appearing as subject, as subiectum, as hypokeimenon (that which lies before). As such, subjectness has ruled from ancient times, while yet it has changed with the change in the destining of Being that took place at the beginning of the modern age and has reached consummation, through Nietzsche's metaphysics, in the subjectness of the will to power. In like manner, throughout Western history what is has been appearing as subject, though with a transformation corresponding to that change in the destining of Being. What is appeared as the hypokeimenon for the Greeks. Subsequently, the character of the hypokeimenon was transformed into the selfconscious, self-assertive subject, which, in its subjectivity, holds sway in our age. Heidegger writes elsewhere that the name "subjectness" "should emphasize the fact that Being is determined in terms of the subiectum, but not necessarily by an ego." Subjectness "names the unified history of Being, beginning with the essential character of Being as idea up to the completion of the modern essence of Being as the will to power." (The End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh [New York: Harper & Row, 1973], pp. 46, 48. Professor Stambaugh translates Subjektitat as "subiectity.") Later in this essay (pp. 79 ff.), Heidegger will take up the discussion adumbrated in this sentence and this word.
9.

refer to a

"Incomplete nihilism:

its

forms:

we

live

in

the midst of

it.

Attempts to escape nihilism without revaluing our values so far:

they produce the opposite,
to

make

the problem

more acute" (Will

Power, Aph. 28, 1887). can grasp Nietzsche's thoughts on incomplete nihilism more explicitly and exactly by saying: Incomplete nihilism does indeed replace the former values with others, but it still posits the latter always in the old position of authority that is, as it were, gratuitously maintained as the ideal realm of the suprasensory. Completed nihilism, however, must in addition do away even with the place of value itself, with the suprasensory as a realm, and accordingly must posit and revalue values differently. From this it becomes clear that the "revaluing of all previous values" does indeed belong to complete, consummated, and

We

70

The Question Concerning Technology

define

The Word
God, the

of Nietzsche

71
as the high-

therefore classical nihilism, but the revaluing does not merely

summum

ens qua

summum bonum,

becomes the overturning of the nature and manner of valuing. The positing of values requires a new principle, i.e., a new principle from which it may proceed and within which it may maintain itself. The positing of values requires another realm. The principle can no longer be the world of the suprasensory become lifeless. Therefore nihilism, aiming at a revaluing understood in this way, will seek out what is most alive. Nihilism itself is thus transformed into "the ideal of superabundant life" (Will to Power, Aph. 14,
replace the old values with new. Revaluing

hold science to be value-free and relegate the making of value judgments to the sphere of world views. Value
est value.

We

and the valuable become the

physical.

positivistic substitute for the

is

metaa

The frequency

of talk about values

matched by

corresponding vagueness of the concept. This vagueness, for its part, corresponds to the obscurity of the essential origin of value from out of Being. For allowing that value, so often invoked in such a way, is not nothing, it must surely have its essence in
Being.

1887). In this
praisal of

new

highest value there

is

concealed another ap-

life, i.e.,

of that wherein lies the determining essence

it

of everything living. Therefore

remains to ask what Nietzsche

understands by

life.

does Nietzsche understand by value? Wherein is the Why is Nietzsche's metaphysics the metaphysics of values? Nietzsche says in a note (1887-88) what he understands by
essence of value grounded?
value:

What

The

allusion to the various levels

and forms of nihilism shows

is,

"The point-of-view

of 'value'

is

the point-of-view con-

that nihilism according to Nietzsche's interpretation

out, a history in

throughit is

stituting the preservation-enhancement conditions with respect

which

it is

a question of values

the establishing
a

to

complex forms of

relative duration of life within

becoming"

of values, the devaluing of values, the revaluing of values;

(Will to Power, Aph. 715). 10

question of the positing of values

value-positing

anew

and, ultimately and

intrinsically, a question of the positing of the principle of all

a positing that values differently.

The highest
is,

purposes, the grounds and principles of whatever

the suprasensory,

ideals

and

God and the gods all this is conceived in advance as value. Hence we grasp Nietzsche's concept of nihilism adequately only when we know what Nietzsche understands by value. It is from here that we understand the pronouncement "God is dead" for the first time in the way in which it is thought.

Value means that which view for a seeing that aims at something or that, as we say, reckons upon something and therewith must reckon with something else. Value stands in intimate relation to a so-much, to quantity and number. Hence values are related to a "numerical and mensural scale" (Will to Power, Aph. 710, 1888). The question still remains: Upon what is the scale of increase and decrease, in its turn, grounded?
is fixed.
is

The essence of value lies in means that upon which the eye
in

its

being a point-of-view. Value

A sufficiently clear exposition of what Nietzsche thinks in the word "value" is the key to an understanding of his metaphysics. It was in the nineteenth century that talk of values became current and thinking in terms of values became customary. But
only after the dissemination of the writings of Nietzsche did
talk of values

Through
results the

the characterization of value as a point-of-view there

one consideration that

is

for Nietzsche's concept of

become popular.

We

speak of the values of

life,

is posited at any given time by a seeing and for a seeing. This seeing is of such a kind that it sees inasmuch as it has seen, and that it has seen inasmuch as it has set before itself and thus posited what is sighted, as a

value essential: as a point-of-view, value

of cultural values, of eternal values, of the hierarchy of values, of spiritual values, which
for example.

we

believe

we

find in the ancients,

Through

scholarly preoccupation with philosophy

and through the reconstructions of Neo-Kantianism, we arrive at value-philosophy. We build systems of values and pursue in ethics classifications of values. Even in Christian theology we

10. Italics Heidegger's. "Point-of-view" (Cesichtspunkt) is hyphenated in order to differentiate it from its usual meaning, point of view as a subjective opinion or standpoint. The latter meaning is present in Gesichtspunkt as it is used here; but Heidegger stresses immediately that what is mainly involved in valuing for Nietzsche is, rather, a focusing on the point that is in view.

71

The Question Concerning Technology

a
It is

The Word of Nietzsche

73

is only through this positing which the directing for necessary is representing that the point that ot path the guides way this gaze toward something, and that in matters which that becomes view-i.e., sight, becomes the aim in guided by sight. Values therefore, action all in and seeing all in can on in themselves so that they are not antecedently something occasion be taken as points-of-view. 11 It counts inasmuch as Value is value inasmuch as it counts. posited through an so is which matters. It it is posited as that has to be reckoned which that aiming at and a looking toward the sigh beheld both here mean upon. Aim, view, field of vision, out of Greek from determined and seeing, in a sense that is

particular something.

taneously as conditions of preservation as well as of enhance-

ment?
Preservation and enhancement
cies of life,

mark

the fundamental tenden-

tendencies that belong intrinsically together.

life

To
of

the

essence of
instance

belongs the will to grow, enhancement. Every

stands
at

of

life-preservation
life

the

service

life-

enhancement. Every
is

already in decline.
is

mere preservation The guaranteeing of space in which to live,

that restricts itself to
is alive,

for example,

never the goal for whatever

but
is

is

only

means

to life-enhancement. Conversely, life that

the change of idea from thought, but that has undergone representing which since Leibniz has to percevtio. Seeing is that terms of its fundamental charbeen grasped more explicitly in All being whatever is a putting acteristic of striving {appetite). belongs to the Being setting forth, inasmuch as there
eidos

forward or of whatever

is

in being the

-that enjoins anything to essence essence of everything that is-an its coming forth. The and way this in itself hold of thus possessed of msws-lays
posits for itself

rnsws-the impetus to come forward determines arise (to appear) and thus

its prior need to expand its enhancement possible where a stable reserve is not already being preserved as secure, and in this way as capable of enhancement. Anything that is alive is therefore something that is bound together by the two fundamental tendencies of enhancement and preservation, i.e., a "complex form of life." Values, as points-of-view, guide seeing "with respect to complex forms." This seeing is at any given time a seeing on behalf of a view-

heightens in turn
is

enhanced space. But nowhere

to-life that rules

completely in everything that

lives.

In that
in

it

posits the aims that are in

view

for whatever
(cf.

is alive, life,

its

essence, proves to be value-positing

Will to Power, Aph.

the perspective an aim in view. That aim provides

to.

556, 1885-86).

that

prespoints-of-view According to Nietzsche, with values as through Precisely ervation-enhancement conditions" are posited. the "and" is omitted between this way of writing, in which replaced with a hyphen, "preservation" and "enhancement" and values as points-of-view are Nietzsche wants to make clear that constantly and simultaneously condiessentially and therefore enhancement. Where values are postions of preservation and must be constantly kept both ways of serving as conditions
ited,

is

to

be conformed

The aim

in

view

is

value.

"Complex forms
that

of life" are oriented with reference to con-

in such a way become, in enhancement, what is unstable. The duration of these complex forms of life depends on the reciprocal relationship of enhancement and preservation. Hence duration is something comparative. It is always the "relative duration" of what is alive, i.e.,

ditions of preserving

and

stabilizing,

and indeed

what

is

stable stands fast only in order to

of

life.

Value

is,

according to Nietzsche's words, the "point-of-view

in

view in such a way another Why? Obviously, simply that it itself so is in its essence such, represents and strives, as values do view. For what requires these twofold aims in
points-of-view serve as conditions,
11
gilt

to one that they remain unitively related as which, being because any

constituting the preservation-enhancement conditions with re-

if

they must function simul-

extending from to be of gelten has a range of meaning real or to pass current, and to be influence, have to through worth or force; stake. at have true; to, to rest upon or

spect to complex forms of relative duration of life within becoming." Here and in the conceptual language of Nietzsche's metaphysics generally, the stark and indefinite word "becoming" does not mean some flowing together of all things or a mere change of circumstances; nor does it mean just any devel-

The verb

opment or unspecified unfolding. "Becoming" means the passing over from something to something, that moving and being moved

74

The Question Concerning Technology

Here
it is

The Word

of Nietzsche

75

which Leibniz calls in the Monadology (chap. 11) the changements naturels, which rule completely the ens qua ens, i.e., the ens percipiens et appetens [perceptive and appetitive being]. Nietzsche considers that which thus rules to be the fundamental
characteristic of everything real,
i.e.,

clear: values are the conditions of itself posited

by

the will to power. Only where mental characteristic of everything

i.e.,

the will to
real,

power, as the funda-

comes

to appearance,

of everything that

is,

in

the widest sense.

He

conceives as the "will to power" that which

essentia whatever
is.

thus determines in

its

When

Nietzsche concludes his characterization of the essence

of value with the

word "becoming," then

this closing

word

gives

the clue to the fundamental realm within which alone values

and accordingly is it become evident from whence values originate and through what all assessing of value is supported and directed. The principle of value-positing has now been recognized. Henceforth value-positing becomes achievable "in principle," i.e., from out of Being as the ground of whatever is. Hence the will to power is, as this recognized, i.e., willed, becomes
true,

grasped as the reality of

everything

real,

does

and value-positing properly belong. "Becoming"

the "will to power."
characteristic of

is,

for Nietzsche,

principle, simultaneously the principle of a value-positing that

is

The "will to power" is thus the fundamental "life," which word Nietzsche often uses also in
(cf.

new.

It is

new because

for the

first

time

it

takes place con-

sciously out of the

is

the broad sense according to which, within metaphysics

has been equated with "becoming." "Will to power," "becoming," "life," and "Being" in the broadest sense these mean, in Nietzsche's language, the Same (Will to Power, Aph.
Hegel),
it

582, 1885-86, and Aph. 689, 1888). Within becoming,

aliveness

life

shapes

new because it simultaneously adheres to this securing as a value posited out

of
its

knowledge of its principle. This value-positing itself makes secure to itself its principle and

own

principle.
will to

As

the principle of the

is,

new

value-positing,

however, the

power

in relation to previous values, at

i.e.,

itself into

centers of the will to

power par-

ticularized in time.
figurations.
science,
is

These centers are, accordingly, ruling conSuch Nietzsche understands art, the state, religion, society, to be. Therefore Nietzsche can also say: "Value
is,

the same time the principle of the revaluing of all such values. Yet, because the highest values hitherto ruled over the sensory from the height of the suprasensory, and because the structuring of this dominance

was metaphysics, with

all

the positing of the

essentially the point-of-view for the increasing or decreasing

of these dominating centers" (that

character) (Will to Power,

with regard to their ruling

Aph. 715, 1887-88). Inasmuch as Nietzsche, in the above-mentioned defining of the essence of value, understands value as the condition having the character of point-of-view of the preservation and enhancement of life, and also sees life grounded in becoming as the will to power, the will to power is revealed as that which posits that point-of-view. The will to power is that which, out of its

values there takes place the overturning of all metaphysics. Nietzsche holds this overturning of metaphysics to be the overcoming of metaphysics. But every overturning of this kind remains only a self-deluding entangle-

new

principle of the revaluing of

ment in the Same that has become unknowable. Inasmuch as Nietzsche understands nihilism

as the intrinsic

law of the history of the devaluing of the highest values hitherto, but explains that devaluing as a revaluing of all values, nihilism lies, according to Nietzsche's interpretation, in the dominance

"internal principle" (Leibniz) as the nisus esse of the ens, judges

and esteems in terms of values. The will to power is the ground and of the origin of the possibility of value judgment. Thus Nietzsche says: "Values and their changes are related to the increase in power of that which 12 posits them" (Will to Power, Aph. 14, 1887).
of the necessity of value-positing
12. Italics Heidegger's.

and in the decay of values, and hence in the possibility of valuepositing generally. Value-positing itself is grounded in the will to power. Therefore Nietzsche's concept of nihilism and the

pronouncement "God is dead" can be thought adequately only from out of the essence of the will to power. Thus we will complete the last step in the clarifying of that pronouncement when we explain what Nietzsche thinks in the name coined by him,
"the will to power."

The name

"will to

power"

is

considered to be so obvious

76

The Question Concerning Technology

here, in

The Word

of Nietzsche

77

in meaning that it is beyond comprehension why anyone would be at pains specifically to comment on this combination of words. For anyone can experience for himself at any time what "will" means. To will is to strive after something. Everyone today knows, from everyday experience, what power means as the exercise of rule

what has preceded and in what follows, everything is thought from out of the essence of metaphysics and not merely from out of one of its phases. In the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which appeared the year after the work The Gay Science (1883), Nietzsche for
the
first time names the "will to power" in the context out of which it must be understood: "Where I found the living, there I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve I found the will to be master." To will is to will-to-be-master. Will so understood is also even

and authority. Will "to" power

into power.

is,

then, clearly

the striving to

come

According to this opinion the appellation "will to power" presupposes two disparate factors and puts them together into a
subsequent relation, with "willing" on one side and "power" on
the other.
If

we

ask, finally, concerning the ground of the will

it

in the will of

him who

serves. Not, to be sure, in the sense that

to power, not in order merely to express

in other

words but
is

the servant could aspire to leave his role of subordinate to be-

also simultaneously to explain

it

it,

then what

we

are

shown

that

come himself
him, which he

a master. Rather the subordinate as subordinate,

obviously originates out of a feeling of lack, as a striving after that which is not yet a possession. Striving, the exercise
of authority, feeling of lack, are
states (psychic capacities) that

the servant as servant, always wills to have something else under

ways of conceiving and are we comprehend through psycho-

the will to

knowledge. Therefore the elucidation of the essence of power belongs within psychology. The view that has just been presented concerning the will to power and its comprehensibility is indeed enlightening, but
logical

commands in the midst of his own serving and of which he makes use. Thus is he as subordinate yet a master. Even to be a slave is to will-to-be-master. The will is not a desiring, and not a mere striving after something, but rather, willing is in itself a commanding (cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, parts I and II; see also Will to Power, Aph.
668, 1888).

what Nietzsche thinks in the word "will to power" and the manner in which he thinks it. The name "will to power" is a fundamental term in the fully developed philosophy of Nietzsche. Hence this philosophy can be called the metaphysics of the will to power. We will never understand what "will to power" in Nietzsche's sense means with the aid of just any popular conception regarding willing and power; rather we will understand only on the way that is a reflection beyond metaphysical thinking, and that means at the same time beyond the whole of the history of Western
it is

a thinking that in every respect misses both

master
bilities
is

Commanding has its essence in the fact that the who commands has conscious disposal over the possifor effective action. What is commanded in the command
command,
is

the accomplishing of that disposal. In the

(not only the one

the one

who commands
way obeys

who

executes)

obedient to

that disposing and to that being able to dispose,

and

in that

himself. Accordingly, the one

superior to himself in that he ventures manding, which is to be sharply distinguished from the mere ordering about of others, is self-conquest and is more difficult

who commands proves even his own self. Com-

metaphysics.

The following

elucidation of the essence of the will to

it

thinks out of these contexts. But

must

at the

power same time, even

while adhering to Nietzsche's

own

statements, also grasp these

more

clearly than Nietzsche himself could

it is

them. However,

immediately utter always only what already has become more

meaningful for us that becomes clearer to us. What is meaningful is that which draws closer to us in its essence. Everywhere

than obeying. Will is gathering oneself together for the given task. Only he who cannot obey himself must still be expressly commanded. What the will wills it does not merely strive after as something it does not yet have. What the will wills it has already. For the will wills its will. Its will is what it has willed. The will wills itself. It mounts beyond itself. Accordingly, the will as will wills out beyond itself and must at the same time in that way bring itself behind itself and beneath itself. Therefore Nietzsche can say:

"To

will at all is the

same thing

as to

78
will to

The Question Concerning Technology

become
stronger, to will to
13

The Word
of power.
It

of Nietzsche

79

grow ..." (Will to Power, Aph. 675, 1887-88). "Stronger" means here "more power," and that means: only power. For the essence of power lies in being master over the level of power attained at any time. Power is power only when and only so long as it remains powerenhancement and commands for itself "more power." Even a mere pause in power-enhancement, even a mere remaining at a
standstill at a level of

manifests the unconditional essence of the will,

which as pure will wills itself. Hence the will to power also cannot be cast aside in exchange for the will to something else, e.g., for the "will to Nothing";
for this latter will also
is still

the will to will, so that Nietzsche

can say, "It (the will) will rather will Nothing, than not will" (Genealogy of Morals, 3, Section I, 1887). 15
"Willing Nothing" does not in the least

power,

is

already the beginning of the

mean

willing the

mere

decline of power.

To

powering of itself. from power itself,

power belongs the overSuch overpowering belongs to and springs in that power is command and as command
the essence of

absence of everything real; rather

real,

it

means

precisely willing the

yet willing the latter always and everywhere as a nullity

this,

and, through

willing only annihilation.

In such willing,

empowers itself for the overpowering of its particular level of power at any given time. Thus power is indeed constantly on the way to itself, but not as a will, ready at hand somewhere for itself, which, in the sense of a striving, seeks to come to power. Moreover, power does not merely empower itself for the overpowering of its level of power at any given time, for the sake of reaching the next level; but rather it empowers itself for this reason alone: to attain power over itself in the unconditionality
belonging to
its its

power always further secures

and the ability-to-be-master.

to itself the possibility of

command

The essence of
fundamental
to
trait

the will to

power

is,

as the essence of will, the

The will power is "the innermost essence of Being" (Will to Power, Aph. 693, 1888). "Being" means here, in keeping with the language of metaphysics, that which is as a whole. The essence of the will to power and the will to power itself, as the fundamental
of everything real. Nietzsche says:

essence. Willing
little

is,

according to this defining of

all

character of whatever
receives

is,

therefore cannot be identified through

essence, so

a striving that, rather,

striving

is

only

psychological observations; but on the contrary psychology itself

its essence, i.e., the positability and knowability through the will to power. Hence Nietzsche does not understand the will to power psychologically, but rather, conversely, he defines psychology anew as the "morphology and the doctrine of the development of the will to power" (Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 23). 16 Morphology is the ontology of on whose morphe, transformed through the change of eidos to

an embryonic form of willing. "will to power" the word "power" connotes nothing less than the essence of the way in which the will wills itself inasmuch as it is a commanding. As a commanding the will unites itself to itself, i.e., it unites itself to what it wills. This
a vestigial or

first

In the

name

of

its

object,

gathering

itself

together

is itself

power's assertion of power. Will

for itself.
14

for itself does not exist any

more than does power

Hence,

also, will

and power

are, in the will to

power, not merely

is itself

perceptio, appears, in the appetitus of perceptio, as the will to

linked together; but rather the will, as the will to will,

the will to

power. The fact that metaphysics

thinks that which
is,

which

power
its

in the sense of the

empowering
it

to power.

But

in respect to its Being, as the

from ancient times hypokeimenon,

power has

essence in the fact that

stands to the will as the

sub-iectum
only

is

transformed into the psychology thus defined

a consequent
in a

will standing within that will.

The

will to

power

is

the essence

testifies, as

phenomenon,

to the essential event,

which consists
13. 14.

to will" (Wille zum Willen) is a noun, not a verb, a distinction impossible to show in English. "Will to will" immediately parallels "will to power" (Wille zur Macht).

Here Nietzsche italicizes "to will." Heidegger italicizes "stronger." Here and subsequently the second word "will" in the phrase "will

change in the beingness of what is. The ousia (beingness) of the subiectum changes into the subjectness
15. Parenthesis Heidegger's. 16.

will to

Heidegger omits Nietzsche's power."

italicization of "the

development of the

80

The Question Concerning Technology

which now manifests
is,

The Word
its

of Nietzsche

81

of self-assertive self-consciousness,

es-

power
ever

sence as the will to

will.

17

The
its

will

as the will to power, the

is, in its essence, the value-positing will. Values are the preservation-enhancement conditions within the Being of whatis. The will to power is, as soon as it comes expressly to appearance in its pure essence, itself the foundation and the realm of value-positing. The will to power does not have its ground in a feeling of lack; rather it itself is the ground of superabundant life. Here life means the will to will. "Living: that already means 'to ascribe worth' " (loc. cit.). Inasmuch as the will wills the overpowering of itself, it is not satisfied with any abundance of life. It asserts power in overreaching i.e., in the overreaching of its own will. In this way it continually comes as the selfsame back upon itself as the same. 20 The way in which that which is, in its entirety whose essentia is the will to power exists, i.e., its existentia, is "the 21 eternal returning of the same." The two fundamental terms of

command
ing of

its overpowerany given time, that level, once reached, must be made secure and held fast. The making secure of a particular level of power is the necessary

to

more power.

In order that the will in

particular level at

itself

may

surpass

condition for the heightening of power. But this necessary condition is not sufficient for the fact that the will is able to will
itself, for

the fact, that

of power,
first
is.

is,

that a willing-to-be-stronger, an en-

hancement of vision and

will must cast its gaze into a field open it up so that, from out of this, possibilities may first of all become apparent that will point the way to an enhancement of power. The will must in this way posit a condition for a willing-out-beyond-itself. The will to power must, above all, posit conditions for power-preservation and

The

power-enhancement. To the will belongs the positing of these conditions that belong intrinsically together. "To will at all is the same thing as to will to become stronger,
to will to

grow and, in addition, to will the means thereto" 18 (Will to Power, Aph. 675, 1887-88). The essential means are the conditions of itself posited by the will to power itself. These conditions Nietzsche calls values. He 19 says, "In all will there is valuing ..." (XIII, Aph. 395, 1884). To value means to constitute and establish worth. The will to power values inasmuch as it constitutes the conditions of enhancement and fixes the conditions of preservation. The will to
and 17. The German noun Selbstbewusstsein means both self-assertion self-consciousness. In all other instances of its occurrence, it will be translated simply as "self-consciousness." As the discussion here in progress shows, connotations of self-assertion should always be heard in Heidegger's
references to self-consciousness. 18. Heidegger italicizes "stronger" and "means." 19. When, as here, Heidegger cites a work by Roman numeral, he is referring to the collection of Nietzsche's works called the Grossoktavausgabe, which was edited under the general supervision of Elizabeth Forster Nietzsche and published by Kroner in Leipzig. Heidegger's references are always to those volumes included in the second section (Volumes IX-XVI) entitled Nachlass. First published between 1901 and 1911, they contain "notes, fragments, and other materials not published by Nietzsche himself." See Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist Kaufmann translation of these (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 481.

20. In this sentence both "selfsame" and "same" translate gleich (equal, equivalent, even, like). Subsequently in this discussion gleich will be translated simply with "same." "Same" and "selfsame" must here be taken to carry the meaning of "equivalence." They should not be understood to

volumes of the Nachlass

is

not available.

connote sameness in the sense of simple identity, for they allude to an equivalence resident in the self-relating movement of what is intrinsically one. This latter meaning should be clearly distinguished from that of the "Same," namely, the identity of belonging together, which is fundamental for Heidegger's own thinking. See p. 57 n. 6 above. Because of possible confusion, "selfsame" and "same" have been used here only with reluctance, but none of the usual translations of gleich prove suitable for the phrasing of the translation. 21. Nietzsche's phrase die ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen, here translated as "the eternal returning of the same," is usually translated as "the eternal recurrence (or return) of the same." The translation "returning" has been chosen in accordance with the burden of Heidegger's present discussion of the will to power as turning back upon itself. The phrase might well be rendered here the "perpetual returning of the selfsame." The turning back of the will to power upon itself, that it may move forward as the will to power, has its correlate for Heidegger in the reflexive movement characteristic of what is as such. "The eternal returning of the same," as the existentia of the essentia, the will to power, is taken by Heidegger to speak of that mode of Being of all that is which he elsewhere calls "subjectness" (Subjektitat). Just as the will to power, as the Being of what is, simultaneously and necessarily turns back upon itself in going beyond itself; so, correspondingly, whatever is, in its Being, simultaneously and necessarily goes out beyond itself while yet underlying itself, thereby perpetuating and securing itself. Thus, "Everywhere the Being of whatever is lies in setting-itself-before-itself and thus in setting-itself-up" (p. 100). This is that self-objectifying, self-establishing character of what is which

82

The Question Concerning Technology

power" and "eternal returning

The Word
essence, ruling from of old, of
ing,

of Nietzsche

83

Nietzsche's metaphysics, "will to

of the same/' define whatever is, in its Being ens qua ens in in accordance with the views the sense of essentia and existentia

what is as the constantly presencwhich everywhere already lies before (hypokeimenon, sub-

iectum), Descartes also asks, as does Aristotle, concerning the

that have continually guided metaphysics from ancient times. The essential relationship that is to be thought in this way,

hypokeimenon. Inasmuch as Descartes seeks this subiectum along the path previously marked out by metaphysics, he, thinking truth as certainty, finds the ego cogito to be that which presfixed and constant. In this way, the ego sum is transformed into the subiectum, i.e., the subject becomes selfconsciousness. The subjectness of the subject is determined out

between the "will to power" and the "eternal returning of the same," cannot as yet be directly presented here, because metaphysics has neither thought upon nor even merely inquired after the origin of the distinction between essentia and existentia. When metaphysics thinks whatever is, in its Being, as the
will to

ences as

of the sureness, the certainty, of that consciousness.

power, then it necessarily thinks it as value-positing. thinks everything within the sphere of values, of the authoritative force of value, of devaluing and revaluing. The metaphysics of the modern age begins with and has its essence in
It
it

The
at the

will to
its

securing, of

power, in that it posits the preservation, i.e., the own constancy and stability as a necessary value,
justifies the necessity of

same time
is

such securing in every-

the fact that

seeks the unconditionally indubitable, the certain

22

which, as something that by virtue of its very essence represents sets in place before something that is
thing that

and assured [das Gewisse], certainty. It is a matter, according to the words of Descartes, of firmum et mansurum quid stabilire, of bringing to a stand something that is firmly fixed and that
remains. This standing established as object
is

also always holds-to-be-true.

this holding-to-be-true is

The making secure

that constitutes

adequate to the

Thus, according to Nietzsche's judgment, certainty as the principle of modern metaphysics is grounded, as regards its truth, solely in the will to power, provided of course that truth is a necessary value and
called certainty.

to the will to its character as "representing" and which corresponds power's simultaneously advancing to greater power and establishing a reserve on the basis of which it can so advance. verb 22. Gewiss (certain) and Gewissheit (certainty) are allied to the wissen (to know). Both words carry a strong connotation of sureness, firmness the sureness of that which is known. During the discussion that here
is

certainty

respect the
in

the modern form of truth. This makes clear in what modern metaphysics of subjectness is consummated Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power as the "essence" of
is

everything

real.

words ensues, the connotations of sureness should always be felt in the "certain" and "certainty." In particular, "certainty" must never be taken to refer to some sort of merely intellectual certainty. For, as the discussion of a being itself makes clear, the sure certainty here in question partakes Heisecure (n. 28 below). This note of "secureness" will here dominate degger's presentation at length, culminating in the discussion of "justice"^ 89 ff.), which, as here under consideration, involves "making secure."
(pp.

Therefore Nietzsche can say. "The question of value is more fundamental than the question of certainty: the latter becomes
serious only by presupposing that the value question has already been answered" (Will to Power, Aph. 588, 1887-88). However, when once the will to power is recognized as the principle of value-positing, the inquiry into value must immediately ponder what the highest value is that necessarily follows from this principle and that is in conformity with it. Inasmuch
as the essence of value proves itself to be the preservation-

The words "knowing"

[wissen), "self-knowing-itself"

[Sich-selbstwissen),

"gathering-of-knowing" [Ge-wissen [normally Gewissen, consciousness, conscience]), "conscious" [bewusst), and "consciousness" (Bewusstsein), which Heidegger will subsequently introduce here, all originate from the same root wiss that is found in gewiss and Gewissheit, and must be seen words. to lie closely within the sphere of meaning just pointed out for those The most fundamental root meaning resident in wissen and its cognates in view, for it is that of seeing, and this meaning should here also be kept doubtless has a part in the meaning that Heidegger intends for truth which is for him unconcealment when he speaks of truth as certainty [Gewissheit) and of the true as the certain [das Gewisse) that is represented,
i.e.,

enhancement condition posited

has been opened up.

in the will to power, the perspec-

tive for a characterization of the

normative structuring of value

The preservation

of the level of

power belonging

to the will

set before.

reached at any given time consists in the will's surrounding itself with an encircling sphere of that which it can reliably

84
grasp
at,

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word

of Nietzsche

85

each time, as something behind itself, in order on the to contend for its own security. That encircling sphere bounds off the constant reserve of what presences (ousia, in the everyday meaning of this term for the Greeks) that is immedibasis of
it

This that is steadily constant, constant, i.e., becomes fixedly the into transformed however, is disposal, only in being something's at steadily that which stands
ately at the disposal of the will.

23

brought to a stand through a setting in place. That setting in 24 That place has the character of a producing that sets before.

which is steadily constant in this True to the essence of Being (Being

ing
is

way

is

that

which remains.
calls this that

But because the will can will only from out of its disposal over something steadily constant, truth is a necessary value precisely from out of the essence of the will to power, for that will. The word "truth" means now neither the unconcealment of what is in being, nor the agreement of a judgment with its object, nor certainty as the intuitive isolating and guaranteeing of what is represented. Truth is now, and indeed through an essentially historical origin out of the modes of its essence just mentioned, that which making stably constant makes secure the constant reserve, belonging to the sphere from out of which the will to

enduring presence) hold-

sway
is

in the history of metaphysics, Nietzsche

steadily constant "that

which

is

in being."

Often he

calls that

power wills itself. With respect to the making secure of the level of power that has been reached at any given time, truth is the necessary value.
does not suffice for the reaching of a level of power; for which is stably constant, taken alone, is never able to provide what the will requires before everything else in order to move out beyond itself, and that means to enter for the first time into the possibilities of command. These possibilities are
it

which

steadily constant

again remaining true to the manner

But

of speaking of metaphysical thinking "Being." Since the beginning of Western thinking, that which is has been considered to

that

be the true and truth, while yet, in connection with this, the meaning of "being" and "true" has changed in manifold ways.
Despite
tion
all his overturnings and revaluings of metaphysics, Nietzsche remains in the unbroken line of the metaphysical tradi-

given only through a penetrating forward look that belongs to

the essence of the will to power; for, as the will to
it

when he

calls that

which

is

established and

made

fast in the

is,

in itself, perspectively directed

toward

possibilities.
is

more power, The

that con-

power for its own preservation purely and simply Being, or what is in being, or truth. Accordingly, truth is a condition
will to

opening up and supplementing of such

dition for the essence of the will to

possibilities

posited in the essence of the will to power, namely, the condition of the preservation of power. Truth is, as this condition, a value.
does not 23. "Constant reserve" renders Bestand. Cf. QT 17. Bestand here have the fully developed meaning of the "standing-reserve" present in that chronologically later essay, but does already approach it. "The constant reserve of what presences," i.e., of what is as such, that the will to power needs for its own preservation and enhancement, becomes, when viewed with regard to man as accepting and accomplishing the dominion of the will to power, that which must be made secure as available for man. Heidegger speaks later in this essay of a making secure of "the stably constant reserve of what is for a willing of the greatest possible uniformity and equality" may be used as a secure (p. 102) and the constant reserve is secured that it
;

power which as that which in the literal sense goes before overtops and extends beyond the condition just mentioned. Therefore Nietzsche says: "But truth does not count as the supreme standard of value, even less as the supreme power" (Will to Power, Aph. 853, 1887-88). The creating of possibilities for the will on the basis of which the will to power first frees itself to itself is for Nietzsche the

essence

of

art.

In

keeping with

this

metaphysical

concept,

Nietzsche does not think under the heading "art" solely or even primarily of the aesthetic realm of the artist. Art is the essence
all willing that opens up perspectives and takes possession of them: "The work of art, where it appears without an artist, e.g., as body, as organization (Prussian officer corps, Jesuit

of

resource for every aspect of man's life (p. 107). Here must lie close at hand for us the thought of the standing-reserve as the undifferentiated reserve of the available that is ready for use. In keeping with this, Heidegger's discussion of man under the dominion of the will to power has a close parallel in his discussion of the rule of Enframing in the modern age. Cf.

Order).

To what
as a

extent the artist

25

is

only a preliminary stage.

The world

work

of art that gives birth to itself" (Will to

19 ff. also p. 100 below, 24. Dieses Stellen hat die Art des vor-stellenden Herstellens.

QT

Power, Aph. 796, 1885-86)

25. Italics Heidegger's.

86

The Question Concerning Technology

The essence
of art, understood

The Word
and
is

of Nietzsche

87

consists in the fact that art excites the will to

toward

itself

[i.e.,

from out of the will to power, power first of all toward the will] and goads it on to willing

sufficient for the

itself.

conditions of the enhancement and

reference to the twofold essence of

preservation of

The

value-positing brings thinking expressly before the question con-

out beyond
will to
is

itself.

Because Nietzsche, in fading reminiscence of

cerning the essential unity of the will to power. Inasmuch as the

the zoe and physis of early

Greek thinkers, often

real, life,

also calls the

power, as the reality of the

is

"the great stimulant of life" (Will

to

he can say that art Power, Aph. 851, 1888).

it is,

power is the "essence" of means moreover that it is the true

will to

that

which

is

as such,

which

of metaphysics,

we

are asking

concerning the truth of this true

unity of the will to power.

Art

the condition posited in the essence of the will to

to ascend to

for the will's being able, as the will that

power power

With

when we ponder the essential that, we attain to the highest

point of this and every metaphysics. But

and

to

enhance that power. Because

it

conditions in this way,

art is a value.

As

that condition

conditioning pertaining to the

serve
it is

which in the hierarchy of the making secure of a constant reall

takes the lead and in that way precedes

the value that
first

conditioning,
is

opens

all

heights of ascent. Art

it

the

what does "highest what we mean with reference to the essence of the will to power, and shall thus remain within the bounds that have been drawn for this discussion. The essential unity of the will to power can be nothing other than the will itself. This unity is the way in which the will to
point"

mean

here?

We

shall explain

highest value. In relation to the value truth,

value.

is

the higher

power, as
in such a
sentiert]

will,

brings itself before

itself.

It
it

orders the will

The one, ever

in a fresh

way,

calls forth the other.

Both

forth into the will's

own

testing

and

sets

before the latter

represents \repra-

values determine in their value-relation the unitive essence of

the intrinsically value-positing will to power.
is

way
itself

that in such testing the will

first

the reality of the real or,

is

The will to power taking the word more broadly than

purely and therewith in

is,

its

highest form. Here,

representation [Reprasentation]
senting [Darstellung] that
is

however, in no way a preis

accustomed to using it: the Being of that which is. If metaphysics must in its utterance exhibit that which is, in respect to Being, and if therewith after its manner it names the ground of that which is, then the grounding principle of the metaphysics of the will to power must state this ground. The principle declares what values are posited essentially and in
Nietzsche usually

supplementary; but rather the presthe

is.

ence [Prasenz] determined from out of that presenting

mode in which and as which the will to power Yet this mode in which the will is, is at
manner in which the ment 20 of itself. And

the

same time the

will sets itself forth into the unconceal-

what value hierarchy they are posited within the essence of the value-positing will to power as the "essence" [Essenz] of that which is. The principle runs: "Art is worth more than truth" (Will to Power, Aph. 853, 1887-88).

therein lies the will's truth. The question concerning the essential unity of the will to power is the question concerning the type of that truth in which the will to power is
as the Being of whatever is. This truth, moreover, is at the same time the truth of that which is as such, and it is as that truth
that metaphysics
is.

The grounding principle of the metaphysics of the will to power is a value-principle. It becomes clear from the highest value-principle that valuewhether expressly articulated or not, a necessary and a sufficient value are always posited, although both are posited from out of the prevailing relationship of the two to one another. This twofoldness of value-positing corresponds to its principle. That from out of which value-positing as such is supported and guided is the will to power. From out of the unity of its essence it both craves
positing as such
is

The

truth concerning

which we
is,

are

now
itself

asking

is

accordingly not that truth which the will to power

posits as the necessary condition of that

in being; but rather
will to in
it is

which

as something

essentially twofold. In

it,

the truth in which the condition-positing

power as such already comes to presence [xyesf]. This One which the will to power comes to presence, its essential unity, concerns the will to power itself.
26.

tion of truth as

das Unverborgene. In this passage, Heidegger's central characterizaunconcealment (Unverborgenheit) must be kept in mind.

88

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word
for
its

of Nietzsche

89

But
is? It

now

of what type

is

this truth of the

Being of whatever

part a derivative of the former essence of truth, namely,

can be defined only from out of that whose truth it is. However, inasmuch as within modern metaphysics the Being has determined itself as will and therewith as self-willing, and, moreover, self -willing is already inherently selfof whatever
is

of the correctness (rectitudo) of a representing.

However, now

the correct no longer consists in an assimilation to something

presencing that is unthought in its presence. Correctness consists now in the arranging of everything that is to be represented,
according to the standard that is posited in the claim to knowledge of the representing res cogitans sive mens [thinking thing or mind]. This claim moves toward the secureness that consists
in this, that everything to

knowing-itself, therefore that which

is,

the hypokeimenon, the

of self-knowing-itself.

That which

subiectum, comes to presence in the is (subiectum) presents

itself to itself, in

mode

itself [prdsentiert sich],

and

indeed presents

the

mode

of the ego cogito.

This self-presenting, this re-presentation [Re-prasentation] (setting-before [Vor-stellung]), is the Being of that which is in being

are driven together into the clarity

be represented and representing itself and lucidity of the matheis

matical idea and there assembled.

perceptionis [the being that
ceiving].

qua subiectum. Self-knowing-itself

is

is

transformed into subject

all

The ens is the ens coagitatum driven together and consists in percorrect

purely and simply. In self-knowing-itself,

knowing and what

a gathering to-

The
it

representing

is

now

when

it is

right in re-

knowable for

it

gathers

itself together. It is
is a

lation to this claim to secureness.

this at

gether of knowing, as a mountain range

of mountains.

gathering together
is,

way,

is,

Proved correct [richtig] in as "rightly dealt with" [recht gefertigt] and as

The

subjectivity of the subject

as

such a

gathering together, co-agitatio (cogitatio), conscientia, a gathering of

our disposal, made right, justified [gerecht-fertigt]. 29 The truth of anything that is in being, in the sense of the selfcertainty of subjectness, is, as secureness (certitudo), fundamentally the making-right, the justifying, of representing and

knowing [Ge-wissen], consciousness

is

(conscience). 27 But

the co-agitatio
of

already, in

itself, velle, willing.

In the subject-

ness of the subject, will comes to appearance as the essence

subjectness.

of

what

it

represents before representing's

is

own
30

clarity. Justifica-

Modern metaphysics,

as

the metaphysics
is

of

tion (iustificatio)

the accomplishing of iustitia [justice or Tightitself.

subjectness, thinks the Being of that

which

in

the sense

ness]

and

is

thus justice [Gerechtigkeit]

Since the subject

of

will.
It

belongs to subjectness, as the primary determination of

its

essence, that the representing subject

makes

itself

sure of itself

and that means makes

represents

itself

sure continually also of

what

it

as
its

a particular something. In accordance with such

is,

29. Note that Heidegger here brings together three words, all of which are derived from the stem recht (right). By so doing, he is able implicitly to show that much of the truth of his statement lies in the words themselves. The discussion that now ensues includes a variety of recht words that can be translated accurately in English only by introducing the stem "just."

a making sure, the truth of that which

heit],

as certainty [Gewiss28

has

character of secureness [Sicherheit] (certitudo).

is

The

self-knowing-itself, wherein

certainty as such, remains

27. The French word conscience. On the meaning of the prefix ge- as "gathering," see QT 19. 28. Sicherheit (certainty, security, trustworthiness, safeguard) very closely parallels Gewissheit (certainty, sureness, certitude, firmness), although in it the connotation of making secure is present in a way not found in Gewissheit. This nuance, resident heretofore in Heidegger's discussion in the verb sichern (to make secure, to guarantee, to make safe), is now, with this use of Sicherheitin conjunction with sich versichern (to assure oneself, to attain certainty, to insure one's life, to arrest [someonel) and Versicherung (insurance, assurance, guarantee)brought forward into the pivotal position it maintains in the discussion immediately following.

The full significance of this discussion can be appreciated only if we bear constantly in mind the intimate relationship that these recht words have to one another. Thus: richtig (correct), rechtfertigen and Rechtfertigung (to justify; justification), Gerechtigkeit (justice, Tightness, or righteousness), Gerecht (right, just, righteous), das Rechte (the morally right). 30. The English word "justice" carries strong connotations of an apportioning in an ethical or legal sense. Iustitia (justice), as used in medieval and Reformation theology, has a more ample meaning. It alludes to the entire Tightness of man's life and the Tightness of his relationship to God, i.e., his righteousness. Heidegger here points to the roots of the modern philosophical understanding of justice in this theological tradition. The German word Gerechtigkeit (justice or righteousness), because of the centrally formative influence exerted by Luther's translation of the Bible on the modern German language, inevitably carries something of this theological connotation, and the range of its meaning colors Heidegger's present
discussion.

90
is It

The Question Concerning Technology

forever subject,
justifies itself
it

The Word
secureness.
itself

of Nietzsche

91

makes

itself certain

of

its

own
it

truth of subjectness, and subjectness thought as the Being of

is concealed justice, experienced in terms of the having to do with secureness. Indeed, justice holds sway as the essence of the truth of subjectness, although in the metaphysics of subjectness justice is not thought as the truth of that which is. Yet, on the other hand, justice must in fact confront modern metaphysical thinking as the self-knowing Being of everything in being as soon as the Being of whatever is

before the claim to justice that

has

whatever

posited.

justification

At

the beginning of the

modern age

the question

was

freshly

raised as to
31

how man,

within the totality of what

is, i.e.,

before

that ground of everything in being

(God),

can become certain

i.e.,

which is itself most in being and remain certain of his own sure
i.e.,

continuance,
salvation
is

his salvation. This question of the certainty of

the question of justification,

of justice (iustitia).
is

Within modern metaphysics it is Leibniz who first thinks the subiectum as ens percipiens et appetens [the perceptive and appetitive being]. He is the first to think clearly in the vischaracter [force-character] of the ens the Being of whatever
truth of whatever
heit]. In his
is
is.

appears as the will to power. The latter knows

is

itself as that
its

which
its

essentially value-positing, as that which, in

positing

of values as the conditions of the constant reserve belonging to

the volitional essence of

In a

modern manner he thinks

the

in being as sureness

and certainty [Gewissseu perfectio circa

Twenty-four Theses on Metaphysics, Leibniz says

Iustitia nihil aliud est
i.e.,

(Thesis 20)

quam ordo

the res cogitantes [thinking things], are, according to Thesis 22, the primariae mundi unitates [primary units of the world] Truth as certainty is the making secure
.

mentes? 2 The mentes,

of secureness;

it

is

order {ordo) and thoroughgoing establishutter completion (per-fectio).

ment,
in
its

i.e.,

full

and

secure that characterizes that

Being,

The making which primarily and genuinely is,

foundations of metaphysics,

makes itself secure, and in that way perpetually and right to itself and in such becoming is justice. It is in justice and as justice that the unique essence of the will to power must represent [repriisentieren], and that means, when thought according to modern metaphysics: be. Just as in Nietzsche's metaphysics the idea of value is more fundamental than the grounding idea of certainty in the metaphysics of Descartes, inasmuch as certainty can count as the right only if it counts as the highest value, so, in the age of the consummation of Western metaphysics in Nietzsche, the intuitive self-certainty of subjectness proves to be the justification belonging to the will to power, in keeping with the justice holding sway in the Being of what-

own

essence,
just

becomes

is iustitia (justice).

ever

is.

Kant, in his laying of the

critical

thinks the ultimate self-securing of transcendental subjectivity as the quaestio iuris of the transcendental deduction. This is the legal question of the making right, the justification, of the representing subject, which has itself firmly fixed
self-justifiedness of its "I think."
38

its

essence in the

In the essence of truth as certainty

vox

certainty

thought as the

31.

dem

seiendsten

32. "Justice is

Grund alter Seienden (Cott). nothing but the order and perfection that obtains in respect

Already in an earlier and more generally known work, the second Untimely Meditation, "Of the Use and Disadvantage of History" (1874), Nietzsche substitutes "justice" for the objectivity of the historical sciences (fragment 6). But otherwise Nietzsche is silent on the subject of justice. Only in the decisive years 1884-85, when the "will to power" stands before his mind's eye as the fundamental characteristic of whatever is in being, does he write down two ideas on justice without publishing them. The first note (1884) bears the title: "The Ways of Freedom."
It

to

minds."
33. "Self-justifiedness" is the translation of Selbst-Gerechtigkeit. Selbsi-

reads: "Justice, as building, separating, annihilating

mode

of
life

gerechtigkeit, without a hyphen, is always translated "self-righteousness." By hyphenating it here, Heidegger lets it show what in the context of this discussion might be called its more fundamental meaning of self-justifiedness.

thinking, out of value-judgments; highest representative of

itself" (XIII,

Aph. 98). The second note (1885) says "Justice, as function of a power having a wide range of vision, which sees out beyond the narrow
:

92

The Question Concerning Technology

good and
evil,

The Word
what

of Nietzsche

93

perspectives of

thus has a wider horizon of interest

is

the aim, to preserve Something that

particular person" (XIV,

more than

this or that

Aph. 158). 34

A thorough exposition of these thoughts would extend beyond

the limits of the reflection being attempted here.
of the essential sphere within

An

indication

is nor brought to utterance from out of such thought the metaphysics of completed subjectness. Justice is, however, the truth of whatever is, the truth determined by Being itself. As this truth it is metaphysics itself in its modern completion. In metaphysics as such is concealed the reason why Nietzsche can

by Nietzsche belongs

will

which the justice that is thought have to suffice. To prepare ourselves

indeed experience nihilism metaphysically as the history of valuepositing, yet nevertheless cannot think the essence of nihilism.

for an understanding of the justice that Nietzsche has in view,

we must

stem from Christian, humanistic, Enlightenment, bourgeois, and socialist morality. For Nietzsche does not at all understand justice primarily as it is defined in the ethical and juridical realms. Rather, he thinks it from out of the Being of what is as a whole, i.e., from out of the will to power. The just is that which is in conformity with the right. But what is right is determined from out of that which, as whatever is, is in being. Thus Nietzsche says: "Right = the will to eternalize a momentary power relation. Satisfaction with that relation is its presupposition. Everything sacred is drawn toward it to let the right appear as eternal" (XIII, Aph. 462, 1883).
rid ourselves of those conceptions of justice that

do not know what concealed form, ordained from out of its truth, was reserved for the metaphysics of the will to power. Scarcely has its first fundamental principle been articulated; and when it has, it has not once been experienced in the form of a principle. To be sure, within this
the essence of justice as

We

metaphysics the principle-character of that principle is of a peculiar kind. Certainly the first value-principle is not the major
premise for a deductive system of propositions. If we take care to understand the designation "fundamental principle of metaphysics" as naming the essential ground of whatever is as such, i.e., as naming the latter in the unity of its essence, then this principle remains sufficiently broad and intricate to determine at any given time, according to the particular type of metaphysics,
the

With

this

belongs the note from the following year: "The

way

in

which the

latter declares that

first

ground.

problem of

justice.

What

is first

and most powerful, of course,

is

Nietzsche articulated the

physics of the will to

value-principle of the meta-

and the strength for suprapower. The ruler establishes 'justice' only afterward, i.e., he measures things according to his standard; if he is very powerful, he can go very far toward giving free rein to and recognizing the individual who tries" (XIV, Aph. 181). Nietzsche's metaphysical concept of justice may well seem strange when compared with our familiar conception, and this is to be expected; yet for all that, it touches
precisely the will to

power

in

still

another form:

"We

possess

art lest we perish of the truth" (Will to Power, Aph. 822). We must not, of course, understand in terms of our everyday

conceptions of truth and art this principle that concerns the metaphysical relation pertaining to essence i.e., the metaphysical value-relation

squarely the essence of the justice that at the beginning of the

and truth. If that happens, everything becomes banal and, what is all the more ominous, takes from us the possibility of attempting an
subsists

that a

between

art

consummation of the modern

of the earth,
is

age, amidst the struggle for mastery

essential discussion with the concealed position of the meta-

already historically true, and that therefore deactivity in this period,

physics of our world age

pletion

metaphysics
free our

termines

all

human

whether

explicitly

in

order that

we may

now coming to comown historical essence

or not, whether secretly or openly.

The justice thought by Nietzsche is the truth of what is which now is in the mode of the will to power. And yet Nietzsche
neither thought justice explicitly as the essence of the truth of
34.

from being clouded by historiography and world views. In the formulation of the fundamental principle of the metaphysics of the will to power just cited, art and truth are thought as the primary forms of the holding-sway of the will to power in
relation to
is

Heidegger

italicizes "interest"

and "more."

as such to

man. How the essential relation of the truth of what man's essence is to be thought at all within meta-

94

The Question Concerning Technology

Thus
it is

The Word
valid,

of Nietzsche

95
else, to

physics in keeping with the latter's essence remains veiled to our thinking. The question is scarcely asked, and because of
the predominance of philosophical anthropology
it is

everywhere and before everything

pose

the question of value. This questioning comes to experience itself

as historical.

hopelessly

confused. In any case, however,

it

would be erroneous were we

testimony that Nietzsche philosophizes existentially. That he never did. But he did think metaphysically. We are not yet mature enough for the rigor of a thought of the kind found in the following note that Nietzsche wrote down at about the time when he was doing
the thinking for his projected masterpiece,

to take the formulation of the value-principle as

How does it stand with the highest values up to now? What does the devaluing of those values mean in relation to the revaluing of
all

values? Because thinking in terms of values

is

grounded

in the metaphysics of the will to

power, Nietzsche's
is

interpretation of nihilism as the event of the devaluing of the

highest values and the revaluing of

interpretation,
will to

all

values

a metaphysical

The Will to Power:

"Around the hero everything turns

into 'world'?"

into tragedy;

demi-god, into a satyr-play; and around

God

around the what? perhaps

and that in the sense of the metaphysics of the power. However, inasmuch as Nietzsche understands his
value-positing"

own

thinking

(Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 150, 1886). But the time has come for us to learn to perceive that Nietzsche's thinking, although it must display another mien when judged historiographically and on the basis of the label assigned it, is no less possessed of matter and substance and is no less rigorous than is the thinking of Aristotle, who in the fourth book of his Metaphysics thinks the principle of contradiction as the primary truth regarding the Being of whatever is. The comparison between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard that has become customary, but is no less questionable for that reason, fails to recognize, and indeed out of a misunderstanding of the essence of thinking, that Nietzsche as a metaphysical thinker preserves a closeness to Aristotle. Kierkegaard remains essentially remote from Aristotle, although he mentions him more often. For Kierkegaard is not a thinker but a religious writer, and indeed not just one among others, but the only one in accord with the destining belonging to his age. Therein lies his greatness, if to speak in this way is not already a misunderstanding. In the fundamental principle of Nietzsche's metaphysics the
unity of the essence of the will to power
is

of the

new

the doctrine of the will to power as the "principle the sense of the actual consumin
it

mation of nihilism, he no longer understands nihilism merely

negatively as the devaluing of the highest values, but at the

same time he understands

i.e.,

positively, that

is,

as the

overcoming

of nihilism; for the reality of the real,

now

explicitly experienced,

the will to power, becomes the origin and

like

value-positing. Its values directly determine

and in

manner

inspire

human

activity.

norm of a new human representing Being human is lifted

into another dimension of happening.

from The Cay Science (Aph. 125), the men whereby God was killed, i.e., whereby the suprasensory world was devalued: "There has never been a greater deed; and whoever will be born after us for the
In the passage quoted

madman

says this of the act of

sake of this deed he will be part of a higher history than

history hitherto."

all

With the consciousness that "God is dead," there begins the consciousness of a radical revaluing of the highest values hitherto.

Man

himself, according to this consciousness, passes over into another history that is higher, because in it the principle of all
is

naming of

the essential relation between art

and

named with the truth. Out of

value-positing, the will to power,

that

experienced and accepted

expressly as the reality of the real, as the Being of everything

is.

this unity of essence

physical essence of value

belonging to what is as such, the metais determined. Value is the twofold

With

this,

the self-consciousness in

which modern huIt

manity has

its

essence completes
at

its last step.

wills itself as

condition of the will to

for the will to power.

power

itself,

posited in the will to

power

the executer of the unconditional will to power. the normative values

is

The

decline of

as the will to power, his thinking

Because Nietzsche experiences the Being of everything that is must think out toward value.

an end. Nihilism, "that the highest values are devaluing themselves," has been overcome. The humanity which wills its own being human as the will to power,

96

The Question Concerning Technology The Word

of Nietzsche

97

and experiences that being human as belonging within the reality determined in its entirety by the will to power, is determined by a form of man's essence that goes beyond and surpasses man
hitherto.

earth.

the Being of

Has man hitherto sufficiently considered in what mode what is has meanwhile appeared? Has man hitherto

assured himself as to whether his essence has the maturity and

for this

form of man's essence that surpasses the race of men up to now is "overman." 35 By this name Nietzsche does not mean any isolated exemplar of man in whom the abilities and purposes of man as ordinarily known are magnified and enhanced to gigantic proportions. "Overman" is also not that form of man that first originates upon the path of the practical application of Nietzsche's philosophy to life. The name "overman" designates the essence of humanity, which, as modern humanity, is begining to enter into the consummation belonging to the essence of its age. "Overman" is man who is man from out of the reality determined through the will to power, and for
that reality.

The name

strength to correspond to the claim of that Being?

that drive

Or does man

hitherto simply get along with the help of expedients and detours

him away ever anew from experiencing that which is? 36 Man hitherto would like to remain man hitherto; and yet he is at the same time already the one who, of all that is, is willing whose Being is beginning to appear as the will to power. Man
hitherto
is,

in his essence, not yet at all

which
is.

all

the while has been holding complete

prepared for Being, sway over what

In the latter there rules the necessity that

man go beyond man

hitherto, not out of

mere desire or mere

arbitrariness, but solely

for the sake of Being.

Nietzsche's thought that thinks overman arises from the think-

which is willing, i.e., ready, from out of the will to power is overman. The willing that characterizes the essence of man that is willing in this way must correspond to the will to power as to the Being of whatever is.
essence
is

Man whose

that essence

ing that thinks whatever

it

is

ontologically as

what

is

in being,

and

thus accommodates itself to the essence of metaphysics, yet

without being able to experience that essence from within metaphysics. For this reason the respect in which the essence of man
is

Therefore, simultaneously with the thinking that thinks the will to power, there necessarily arises the question: In what form

must the essence of man Being of what is, present

becomes willing from out of the and unfold, in order that it may be adequate to the will to power and may thus be capable of receiving dominion over all that is? Unexpectedly, and above all in a way unforeseen, man finds himself, from out of the Being of what is, set before the task of taking over dominion of the
that
itself

determined from out of the essence of Being remains concealed it does in all metaphysics before him. Therefore, the ground of the essential connection between the will to
for Nietzsche, just as

power and the essence of overman

necessarily veils itself in

Nietzsche's metaphysics. Yet in every veiling there already rules

simultaneously an appearing. The existentia that belongs to the

essentia of whatever
is, i.e.,

to the will to power,

is

the eternal

35. "Overman" is the translation of der Ubermensch, which ordinarily means superhuman being, demigod, superman. The term "overman," introduced into Nietzsche translation by Walter Kaufmann, has the advantage of avoiding the misinterpretations that lie ready to hand in the usual trans-

thought in that returning contains the relation to the essence of overman. But this relation necessarily remains unthought in its essence as that essence relates to Being. It thus remains obscure even to Nietzsche
returning of the same.
that
is

The Being

himself what connection the thinking that thinks overman in the

lation

as

"superman." In keeping with Nietzsche's presentation of der

in the figure of Zarathustra,

Ubermensch

Kaufmann

regularly uses "the

overman." Here the article has been dropped in the translation of the noun in accordance with the fact that, as Heidegger's ensuing discussion itself

makes

Ubermensch is not intended in that discussion to refer at all man. Rather, the noun has a generic meaningit refers to man, to humanity. Ubermensch might almost be translated "man-beyond," for overman stands in contrast with man hitherto and goes beyond (hinclear,

Hence Zarathustra Thus Spoke as a work the character of the work when some future thought is brought remains concealed. Only into the situation of thinking this "Book for All and None"
figure of Zarathustra has with the essence of metaphysics.

to an individual

ausgeht

uber) the latter in his surpassing of him.

was isf, rather 36. Here, "that which is" exceptionally translates das than das Seiende. This allusion will return below (p. 102) in the question, "What is?" where the reference in question is Being itself and not any
.
.

particular being. Cf

T 46.

98

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word

of Nietzsche

99

together with Schelling's Investigations on the Essence of

Human

Freedom (1809) and that means at the same time also with Hegel's work The Phenomenology of Mind (1807), and also with the Monadology (1714) of Leibniz and only when it is brought into the situation of thinking these works not only metaphysically but from out of the essence of metaphysics will there be established the right and duty as well as the foundation and horizon for an explication. It is easy but irresponsible to be indignant at the idea and figure of overman, which has clothed itself in the very misunderstanding that attaches to it, and to make this indignation pass

ing and operative principle of what is happening now. The suprasensory ground consisting of the suprasensory world, thought as the operative, working reality of everything real, has become unreal. 37 That is the metaphysical meaning of the word "God is dead," thought metaphysically. Will we persist in closing our eyes in face of the truth of this word, to be thought in this way? If we do so, the word will certainly not become untrue through this curious blindness.

God

for a refutation.

It is difficult,

but for future thinking

it

will

be

inescapable, to attain to the high responsibility out of which

Nietzsche pondered the essence of that humanity which, in the

is being determined toward the assuming of dominion over the earth. The essence of overman is no license for the frenzy of self-will. It is the law grounded in Being itself of a long chain of the highest of selfconquests that are first making man mature for that which is, which, as that which is, belongs to Being to Being that, as the will to power, is bringing to appearance its essence as will, and through that appearing is making an epoch, namely, the ultimate epoch of metaphysics. Man hitherto is called this, according to Nietzsche's metaphysics, because, although his essence is indeed determined by the will to power as the fundamental characteristic of all that is, he has still not experienced and accepted the will to power

destining of Being as the will to power,

as that principal characteristic.

Man who

surpasses

man up

to
all

now
that

takes the will to power, as the principal characteristic of

is, up into his own willing and in that way wills himself in manner of the will to power. All that is, is as that which is posited within this will. That which formerly conditioned and determined the essence of man in the manner of purpose and norm has lost its unconditional and immediate, above all its ubiquitously and infallibly operative power of effective action. That suprasensory world of purposes and norms no longer quickens and supports life. That world has itself become life-

the

When God and the gods are dead in the sense of the metaphysical experience just elucidated, and when the will to power is deliberately willed as the principle of all positing of the conditions governing whatever is, i.e., as the principle of valuepositing, then dominion over that which is as such, in the form of dominion over the earth, passes to the new willing of man determined by the will to power. Nietzsche closes the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which appeared one year after The Gay Science, in 1883, with the statement: "Dead are all gods: now we will that overman live'."

not a living God when we persist in trying to master the real without taking God's reality seriously and calling it in question beforehand, and when we persist in this without pondering whether man has so matured for the essence into which, from out of Being, he is being drawn, that he may withstand and surmount that destining genuinely from out of his essence and not do so with the sham help of mere expedients. The attempt to experience the truth of that word concerning the death of God without illusions is something different from an espousing of Nietzsche's philosophy. Were the latter our intention, thinking would not be served through such assent. We show respect for a thinker only when we think. This demands that we think everything essential that is thought in his thought.
is still

We could believe, were we thinking crassly, that this pronouncement says that dominion over all that is, is passing from God to man or, even more crassly, that Nietzsche puts man in the place of God. Those who believe thus do not, of course, think
37. Der iibersinnliche Grund der tibersinnlichen Welt ist, ah die wirksame Wirklichkeit alles Wirklichen gedacht, unwirklich geworden. On the meanmg of the "real" (das Wirkliche), as shown through the meaning of wirken (to work), see SR 159 ff.

less,

dead. There will be Christian faith here and there. But

the love holding

sway

in that

world

is

not the effectively work-

100

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word

of Nietzsche

101

in a very godly

way about

the divine essence.

Never can man

put himself in the place of God, because the essence of man never reaches the essential realm belonging to God. On the contrary, compared with this impossibility something far more uncanny can happen, something whose essence we have scarcely

originated comes this note of Nietzsche's: "The time over the earth will be is coming when the struggle for dominion carried on. It will be carried on in the name of fundamental

Madman"

begun

to consider.

Thought metaphysically, the place

that

is

philosophical doctrines" (XII, 441). This does not mean that the struggle for unlimited exploitafor the tion of the earth as the sphere of raw materials and
material," in the service of the unconditional empowering of the will to power in its essence, would specifically have recourse to an appeal to a philosophy.
realistic utilization of

38

peculiar to

God

is

the place of the causative bringing about and

"human

preserving of whatever

God
is

is, as something created. That place of can remain empty. Instead of it, another, i.e., a place corresponding metaphysically, can loom on the horizon a place that

identical neither with the essential realm belonging to God nor with that of man, but with which man comes once more into a distinctive relationship. Overman never enters at all into the place

God; rather the place into which his willing enters is another realm belonging to another grounding of what is, in its other Being. This other Being of what is, meanwhile and this marks the beginning of modern metaphysics has become subjectness.
of

be conjectured that philosophy as the doctrine and image of culture will disappear, and that also in as it has been its present form it can disappear; for insofar genuine it has already brought the reality of the real to utterance and in that way has brought that which is as such into the

On

the contrary,

it is

to

history of

not mean

is, is now either what is real [das Wirkliche] as the what works the real [das Wirkende], as the objectifying within which the objectivity of the object takes shape. Objectifying, in representing, in setting before, delivers up the

All that

does its Being. "Fundamental philosophical doctrines" the doctrines of scholars but the language of the truth form of what is as such, which truth metaphysics itself is in the will the of subjectness unconditional of the metaphysics of the
to power.

object or

object to the ego cogito. In that delivering up, the ego proves

struggle for dominion over the earth is in its historical essence already the result of the fact that whatever is as such is appearing in the mode of the will to power without yet being

The

be that which underlies its own activity (the delivering up that sets before), i.e., proves to be the subiectum. The subject
to
is

recognized or without being understood at all as that will. At any rate, the doctrines of action and the conceptual ideologies
that are

subject for

itself.

The essence of consciousness

is, is

is

self-con-

sciousness. Everything that

therefore either the object of

commonly subscribed to never utter that which is, and which therefore is happening. With the beginning of the struggle
for

the subject or the subject of the subject. Everywhere the Being

of whatever

is

lies

in

setting-itself-before-itself

and thus

in

setting-itself-up.

Man, within

the subjectness belonging to what-

ever

is,

rises

up

into the subjectivity of his essence.

Man

enters

into insurrection.

The world changes

into object. In this revolu-

is, the earth, that which must be put at the disposal of representing and setting forth, moves into the midst of human positing and analyzing. The earth itself can show itself only as the object of assault, an

tionary objectifying of everything that

first

dominion over the earth, the age of subjectness is driving toward its consummation. To this completion belongs the fact power that whatever is which is in the manner of the will to and certain becoming respect, every is, after its fashion and in Making itself. about truth own its of therefore also conscious conscious is a necessary instrument of the willing that wills from
out of the will to power. in the form of planning.
ing of

of

all

man

happens, in respect to objectification, It happens, in the sphere of the uprisinto self -willing, through the ceaseless dissecting of
It

assault that, in
objectification.

human

willing, establishes itself as unconditional

the historical situation.

is

Thought metaphysically, the "situation"

Nature appears everywhere because willed from out of the essence of Being as the object of technology. From the same period, 1881-82, in which the passage "The

constantly the stage for the action of a subject. Every analysis

38. Italics Heidegger's.

102

The Question Concerning Technology

is

The Word

of Nietzsche
40

103
is

of the situation

grounded, whether

it

knows

it

or not, in the

stant of the stability of the constant reserve

a necessary con-

metaphysics of subjectness.

dition of

its

"The great noon" is the time of the brightest brightness, namely, of the consciousness that unconditionally and in every respect has become conscious of itself as that knowing which consists in deliberately willing the will to power as the Being of whatever is; and, as such willing, in rebelliously withstanding and subjugating to itself every necessary phase of the objectifying of the world, thus
of

itself posits.

own securing of itself, which the will to power Can Being possibly be more highly esteemed than

through being expressly raised to a value? Yet, in that Being is accorded worth as a value, it is already degraded to a condition posited by the will to power itself. Already from of old, insofar as Being itself has been esteemed at all and thus given worth,
it has been despoiled of the dignity of its essence. When the Being of whatever is, is stamped as a value and its essence is thereby sealed off, then within this metaphysics and that means continually within the truth of what is as such during this age every way to the experiencing of Being itself is obliterated. Here, in speaking in such a way, we presuppose what we should perhaps not presuppose at all, that such a way to Being has at some

making secure the

stably constant reserve

what

is

for a willing of the greatest possible uniformity

equality. In the willing of this will, however, there

and comes upon

man

the necessity that he concomitantly will the conditions, the

requirements, of such a willing. That means: to posit values and

to ascribe a

worth

to everything in keeping with values. In such

all

manner does value determine

that

is

in its Being.

This brings
of the objectively represented as a value, a determining condition directing power-actualizing willing. Hence the metaphysics of the will to power can, with Nietzsche, take Being to be a value (cf. p. 84); or it might say that to be is to have value. And it is Being itself, ruling in the modern age in the mode of the will to power, that gives itself to the thinking of metaphysics in this way. Yet, at the same time, metaphysics is not here thinking Being itself. It is not thinking Being as Being, "presencing specifically as presencing, from out of its truth" (p. 109). Being, in manifesting itself precisely as value through the thinking belonging to the metaphysics of the will to power, is, at the same time, concealing itself as regards that

us to the question:

now, in the age when the unconditional dominion of the will to power is openly dawning, and this openness and its public character are themselves becoming a function of this will? What is? We are not asking about events and facts, for every one of which at any time, in the realm of the will to power, testimonies may always be brought forward and laid aside on demand. What is? We do not ask concerning this or that particular being, but rather we ask concerning the Being of whatever is. More especially, we are asking what is happening to Being itself. Furthermore, we do not ask at random, but with a view to the truth of what is as such, which is coming to utterance in the form of the metaphysics of the will to power. What is hapis

What

which

it is

as Being.

pening to Being in the age of the dominion,

the unconditional will to power?

now

beginning, of

Being has been transformed into a value. 39 The making con39. Within the highly elliptical connection between this and the following sentence in the text lies Heidegger's understanding of the complex interrelation of Being, what is, and man. That meaning might, in the context of the present discussion of the will to power, be suggested as follows. The "Being" to which Heidegger here refers is, first of all, the Being possessed by what is. The metaphysics of the will to power, which thinks Being in thinking the truth, the unconcealedness of what is, takes the Being of what is a Being linked indissolubly with the security and certainty

Metaphysics, for Heidegger, "grounds an age" (AWP 115). In interpreting or in laying out (auslegen), i.e., in thinking forth, the Being of what is precisely as a value, that is, in making Being manifest insofar as it is given to metaphysics to apprehend and manifest Being at all in the latter's holding-sway in the mode of the will to power the metaphysics of the will to power, as the consummation of the modern metaphysics begun with Descartes, provides the thought-out basis for the activity of modern man. And Being needs that activity, undergirded by that thinking, in order to endure as present and to rule in the manner that is now proper to it. Precisely when Being has become a value, when to be is to have value, the metaphysical basis has been consummately given for that human activity through which whatever is offering itself in the manner governed by the will to power is fixed as a stable reserve that has value and can be of use just in virtue of its being and of its being available for future "willing to will" and "empowering to power." And precisely through just that metaphysically grounded activity and through it alone, the holding-sway of Being of Being now manifesting itself in the mode of the will to power is accomplishing itself through the only open center through which it can ever find accomplishment, namely, through man. 40. Bestandigung der Bestiindigkeit des Bestandes.

104

The Question Concerning Technology

all

The Word

of Nietzsche

105

time existed and that a thinking on Being has already thought

Being as Being.
its own truth, Western thinking has beginning continually been thinking what is in being as such. All the while, this thinking has been thinking Being only in such truth, so that it brings the name "Being" to utterance only with considerable awkwardness and in a manifoldness

Unmindful of Being and

its

questions concerning Being become and remain superfluous. is if the thinking that thinks everything in terms of values nihilism when thought in relation to Being itself, then even

But

since

Nietzsche's own experience of nihilism, i.e., that it is the devaluing of the highest values, is after all a nihilistic one. The interpretation of the suprasensory world, the interpretation of God as
is not thought from out of Being itself. The blow against God and against the suprasensory world 42 is degraded consists in the fact that God, the first of beings, is not that God against blow heaviest The value. highest the to

the highest value,

of meaning that remains confused because it is not experienced. This thinking that has remained unmindful of Being itself is the

ultimate

simple and all-sustaining, thus enigmatic and unexperienced, coming-to-pass [Ereignis] of that Western history which meanwhile is on the point of broadening out into world history. Finally, in metaphysics, Being has debased itself to a value. Herein lies the testimony that Being has not been accepted and

acknowledged as Being. What does this mean? What is happening to Being? Nothing is happening to Being. 41 But what if, precisely in that, the essence of nihilism, which has been veiled up to now, were first to proclaim itself? Would
thinking in terms of values then itself be pure nihilism? But surely Nietzsche understands the metaphysics of the will to power specifically as the overcoming of nihilism. And in fact, so long as nihilism is understood only as the devaluing of the highest

is held to be unknowable, not that God's existence is demonstrated to be unprovable, but rather that the god held to be real is elevated to the highest value. For this blow comes precisely not from those who are standing about, who do not believe in God, but from the believers and their theologians who 43 discourse jn the being that is of all beings most in being, without ever letting it occur to them to think on Being itself, in

God

order thereby to become aware that, seen from out of faith, their thinking and their talking is sheer blasphemy if it meddles
in the theology of faith.

Now,

for the

first

time a faint light begins to penetrate the

and the will to power, as the principle of the revaluing of all values, is thought from out of a re-positing of the highest values, the metaphysics of the will to power is indeed an overcoming of nihilism. But in this overcoming of nihilism valuevalues,

darkness enveloping the question that earlier we wanted to direct to Nietzsche while we were hearing the passage about the madman. How can it happen at all that men are ever capable of killing God? But obviously it is precisely this that Nietzsche is
thinking. For in the entire passage there are only two sentences expressly placed in italics. The one reads: "We have killed him,"

thinking

is

elevated to a principle.

If, however, value does not let Being be Being, does not let it be what it is as Being itself, then this supposed overcoming is above all the consummation of nihilism. For now metaphysics not only does not think Being itself, but this not-thinking of Being clothes itself in the illusion that it does think Being in the most exalted manner, in that it esteems Being as a value, so that

namely, God. The other reads: "And yet they have done it themselves," which is to say men have performed the deed of killing God, even though today they have still heard nothing about it.

The two word "God

italicized sentences give the interpretation for the

is

The pronouncement does not meanas though it were spoken out of denial and common hatred there worse God has is no god. The pronouncement means something
dead."
:

Sein? Mit dem Sein ist es nichts. Here and in the two preceding instances of this question, the verb "happening"usually reserved for the translation of the German verb geschehen has been used so as to preserve the colloquial force of Heidegger's words. Subsequently this construction will be translated using the verb "befall" instead of
41.
ist es

Wie

mii

dem

been

killed.

In this

way

the decisive thought

appearance. Yet, nevertheless, the understanding of

more
42. 43.

difficult.

For the

word "God

is

comes to becomes more much be would dead"

first
it

"happen."

vom

das Seiende des Seienden. Seiendsten alles Seienden,

106

The Question Concerning Technology

if it

The Word

of Nietzsche

107

readily grasped

declared:

God

himself, of his

own

accord,

has distanced himself from his living presence. But that God should be killed by others and indeed by men is unthinkable.
Nietzsche himself
killed
is

astounded
I.

at this thought. It is

only for

suprasensory world as the world that truly is. This is at that whole which envelops all and in itself includes all, as does the sea. The earth, as the abode of man, is unchained from its sun. The realm that constitutes the suprato the

the

same time

that reason that immediately after the decisive words,

"We

have

him yon

and

All of us are his murderers," he allows

the

madman

to ask:

"But

how have we done

it,

this?" Nietzsche

what is were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun?"
elucidates the question as he repeats
spelling out

asked in three images:

"How

no longer stands over man field of vision has been wiped away. The whole of that which is as such, the sea, has been drunk up by man. For man has risen up into the I-ness of the ego cogito. Through this uprising, all that is, is transformed into object. That which is, as the objective, is swallowed up into the immanence of subjectivity. The horizon no longer emits light of
is

sensory, which as such,

in itself

43

as the authoritative light.

The whole

To

the last question

we

could answer:

What men

did

when

its sun is told in the last three and a half centuries of European history. What, then, has happened at the foundation of this history to that which is? When Nietzsche names the relationship between the sun and the earth

they unchained the earth from

It is now nothing but the point-of-view posited in the value-positing of the will to power.

itself.

he

is

not thinking merely of the Copernican revolution in the

of nature.

modern understanding
Plato's allegory.

The word "sun"

latter,
is

at

once

recalls

According to the

the sun and the realm

of

its light
its

are the sphere in

which that which

appears accord-

ing to

visible aspect, or according to its

many countenances

(Ideas). The sun forms and circumscribes the field of vision wherein that which is as such shows itself. 44 "Horizon" refers
bildet. The German bilden means to form, passage the meaning of "constitute" should be heard within the translation "forms" virtually with the force of "is." The word "sun" speaks, as does the word "horizon" that follows, of the self-manifesting that characterizes what is as such. It speaks of what is as being, in itself, unconcealed. In thinking in his own way Nietzsche's and Plato's image of the sun, Heidegger speaks here of what is, the real, as that which is looked at because it lets itself be seen. It is just this character of what is as what gives itself to sight that, in what here immediately follows, he sees as transformed in the modern period, so that it appears differently when, under the dominion of the will to power, everything real is transformed into value, i.e., into "point-of-view," that both is seen and permits seeing. When possessed of this new character, what is, is no longer

44.

Here "forms" translates

to shape, to constitute. In this

By means of the three key images (sun, horizon, and sea), which are for thinking presumably something quite other than images, the three questions elucidate what is meant by the event of the killing of God. The killing means the act of doing away with the suprasensory world that is in itself an act accomplished through man. It speaks of the event wherein that which is as such does not simply come to nothing, but does indeed become different in its Being. But above all, in this event man also becomes different. He becomes the one who does away with that which is, in the sense of that which is in itself. The uprising of man into subjectivity transforms that which is into object. But that which is objective is that which is brought to a stand through representing. The doing away with that which is in itself, i.e., the killing of God, is accomplished in the making secure of the constant reserve by means of which man makes secure for himself material, bodily, psychic, and spiritual resources, and this for the sake of his own security, which wills dominion over what-

ever

is

as the potentially objective

is,

in order to correspond to

the Being of whatever

to the will to power.

is

Making
neath
all

secure, as the creating of secureness,

grounded in
slain beis

value-positing. Value-positing has brought

itself
is

rather, either as subject or as object, always at the disposal of assertive self-consciousness, and hence of free to
itself directly in itself.
It is,

show

and has therefore killed as that which

blow

down and

for itself

that mode of Being, the will to power, ruling in the latter. Accordingly, in his discussion of the meaning of value for Nietzsche as "point-of-view," Heidegger has said above (p. 72) "Aim, view, field of vision, mean here
:

that

in itself. This ultimate

in the killing of

God

is

perpetrated by metaphysics, which, as the metaphysics of the

45. des

both the sight beheld and seeing, in a sense that ." Greek thought.
.
.

is

determined from out of

an sich seienden Ubersinnlichen.

108
will

The Question Concerning Technology

to

The Word

of Nietzsche

109

power, accomplishes thinking in the sense of value-

However, Nietzsche himself no longer recognizes this ultimate blow, through which Being is struck down to a mere value, for what the blow is when thought with respect to Being
thinking.
itself.

This is not thought even where pre-Platonic thinking, as the beginning of Western thinking, prepares for the unfolding of metaphysics in Plato and Aristotle. The estin (eon) gar einai does

indeed

name Being

itself.

But

it

does not think presencing speits truth.

And

yet, does not Nietzsche himself say: "All of us are his

murderers!
will to

you

cifically as

presencing, from out of

The

history of Being

and

I"?

Certainly.

And

according to

this,

Nietzsche also continues to understand the metaphysics of the power as nihilism. To be sure. But this means for Nietzsche only that that metaphysics, as the countermovement in the
sense of the revaluing of
all

begins, and indeed necessarily, with the forgetting of Being. It is not due then to metaphysics as the metaphysics of the will to

power

that Being itself in

its

truth remains unthought. This

former values, brings to completion

the previous "devaluing of the highest values hitherto"

radically,

most

because definitively.

is due only to metaphysics as metaphysics? Do we know its essence? Can it itself know that essence? If it conceives it, it grasps it metaphysically. But the metaphysical concept of metaphysics

strange remaining-away of Being

is

metaphysics. But what

no longer think as killing and nihilism on the basis of the principle of all value-positing. Within the field of vision of the selfwilling will to power, i.e., within the perspective of value and value-positing, that new positing of value is no longer a deyet Nietzsche can
precisely that

And

constantly
logic,

falls

short of

its

essence. This holds also for every

new

positing of value

assuming that logic is still at all capable of thinking what logos is. Every metaphysics of metaphysics, and every logic of philosophy, that in any way whatever attempts to climb beyond metaphysics falls back most surely beneath metaphysics, without

valuing.

knowing where,

precisely in so doing,

it

has fallen.

But what happens to value-positing itself when value-positing is thought in respect to that which is as such, and that means at the same time from out of a view toward Being? Then, thinking in terms of values is radical killing. It not only strikes down that which is as such, in its being-in-itself, but it does away utterly with Being. The latter can, where it is still needed, pass only for a value. The value-thinking of the metaphysics of the will to power is murderous in a most extreme sense, because it absolutely does not let Being itself take its rise, i.e., come into the vitality of its essence. Thinking in terms of values precludes in advance that Being itself will attain to a coming to presence
in its truth.

Meanwhile, at least one feature of the essence of nihilism has become clearer to our thinking. The essence of nihilism lies in
history; accordingly, in the appearing of whatever
its entirety,
is

as such, in
truth,

Nothing

is

befalling Being itself

and

its

and

indeed in such a

way

that the truth of

what

is

as such passes for

Being, because the truth of Being remains wanting. In the age of that completion and
nihilism,

ginning, Nietzsche indeed experienced

and

at

consummation of nihilism which is besome characteristics of the same time he explained them nihilistically,

thus completely eclipsing their essence. And yet Nietzsche never recognized the essence of nihilism, just as no metaphysics before him ever did.

murdering that kills at the roots first and excluof the metaphysics of the will to power? Is it only the interpretation of Being as value that does not let Being itself be the Being that it is? If this were the case, then metaphysics before Nietzsche would have to have experienced and thought Being itself in its truth, or at least to have questioned concerning it. But nowhere do we find such experiencing of Being itself. Nowhere are we confronted by a thinking that thinks the truth of Being itself and therewith thinks truth itself as Being.
But
is this

But

if

the essence of nihilism

entirety,

lies

in history, so that the truth

is

sively the

way

of Being remains wanting in the appearing of whatever

as

such, in

its

and

if,

accordingly, Nothing

is

befalling

Being and
of

its

truth, then
is,

what

is

as such,

in its essence, nihilism.

metaphysics as the history of the truth If, finally, metais

physics
history

is

the historical ground of the world history that

in

being determined by Europe and the West, then that world

is,

an entirely different sense,

nihilistic.

Thought from out

of the destining of Being, the nihil in

110
"nihilism"

The Question Concerning Technology

The Word
every respect proper to
is.
it

of Nietzsche

111

means that Nothing is befalling Being. Being is not coming into the light of its own essence. In the appearing of whatever is as such, Being itself remains wanting. The truth of Being falls from memory. It remains forgotten. Thus nihilism would be in its essence a history that runs its course along with Being itself. It would lie in Being's own essence, then, that Being remain unthought because it withdraws. Being itself withdraws into its truth. It harbors itself safely within its truth and conceals itself in such harboring. In looking toward this self-concealing harboring of its own essence, perhaps we glimpse the essence of that mystery in the guise of which the truth of Being is coming to presence. According to this, metaphysics itself would not be merely a neglect of a question still to be pondered concerning Being. Surely it would not be an error. Metaphysics, as the history of the truth of what is as such, would have come to pass from out of the destining of Being itself. Metaphysics would be, in its essence, the mystery of Being itself, a mystery that is unthought because
withheld.
to

when
that

it is

experienced as that which

is

Hence nihilism means

its

as such, in
is

entirety.

Nothing But whatever is,

befalling whatever

is
it

is

what

it is

and how
is

from out of Being. Assuming

Being
itself.

that every "is" lies in Being,

the essence of nihilism consists in the fact that Nothing

falling

be-

Being

itself is

Being in

its

truth,

which truth

Were

it

otherwise, a thinking that takes pains to hold

"What

Being in what is to be thought could not unceasingly ask, is metaphysics?" Metaphysics is an epoch40 of the history of Being itself. But
is

The essence of nihilism belongs to that history as which Being itself comes to presence. However, provided that Nothing in whatever manner also points
in its essence metaphysics nihilism.

toward Being, the determination and defining of nihilism from out of the history of Being might well at least indicate antecedently the realm within which the essence of nihilism can be experienced in order to become something thought that concerns our thinking. We are accustomed above all to hearing a false note in the name "nihilism." However, when we ponder
the essence of nihilism as belonging to the history of Being,
there
note.
is is

name "nihilism" that other note wherein sounds the essence of that which it names, then we are also hearing differently the language of that metaphysical thinking which has experienced something of nihilism without being able to think its essence. Perhaps with that other note in our ears, we will someday ponder the age of that consummation of nihilism which is now beginning in another way than we have hitherto. Perhaps then we will recognize that neither the political nor the economic nor the sociological, nor the technological and scientific, nor even the metaphysical and the religious perspectives are adequate to think what is happening in that age. What is given to thinking to think is not some deeply hidden underlying meaning, but rather something lying near, that which lies nearest, which, because it is only this, we have therefore constantly already passed over. Through this passing over we are, without noticing it, constantly accomplishing the killing in relation to the Being of whatever is in being. In order to pay heed to it and to learn to pay heed, it can be enough for us simply to ponder for once what the madman says about the death of God and how he says it. Perhaps we will no
longer pass by so quickly without hearing what
is

belongs to Being. When we hear in the

said at the

beginning of the passage that has been elucidated: that the

madman

once something dubious in simply hearing a false indicates that nihil (Nothing) is, and essentially, in that which it names. Nihilism means: Nothing
is

at

T seek God! I seek God!' 47 For he In what respect is this man mad? He is "de-ranged." is dis-lodged from the level of man hitherto, where the ideals of the suprasensory world, which have become unreal, are passed
"cried incessantly:
off for real

"

The word "nihilism"

and

while yet their opposite

is

realizing itself. This de-

befalling everything
is,

in every respect. "Everything"

means

whatever
46.

in its entirety.

And whatever

is

stands there in

47. "De-ranged" translates ver-ruckt, which, unhyphenated, means mad or insane. Other adjectival translations of related past participles built on riicken (to jerk, to pull, to change the place of) follow here "dislodged" (ausgeriickt), "carried out beyond" (hinausgeriickt), and "drawn into"
:

self-withholding.

(eingeriickt).

112
ranged
in this

The Question Concerning Technology

has only been drawn utterly into being the predetermined essence of man hitherto, the animal rationale. The man who is deranged in this way has nothing in common with

man is way he

carried out

beyond man

hitherto. Nevertheless,

men standing about in the market place "who do not God." For these men are not unbelievers because God as God has to them become unworthy of belief, but rather because they themselves have given up the possibility of belief, inasmuch as they are no longer able to seek God. They can no longer seek because they no longer think. Those standing about in the market place have abolished thinking and replaced it with idle babble that scents nihilism in every place in which it
the kind of
believe in

Part

III

supposes its own opinion to be endangered. This self-deception, forever gaining the upper hand in relation to genuine nihilism, attempts in this way to talk itself out of its anguished dread in
the face of thinking. But that dread
is

dread in the face of dread.

last,

The madman, on
and more
he
cries

the contrary, is clearly, according to the first,

clearly

still

according to the

sentences of the

passage, for

him who can hear, the one who seeks God, since out after God. Has a thinking man perhaps here really

cried out de profundis?

still

And

the ear of our thinking, does

it

it

not hear the cry?

It

will refuse to hear

so long as

it

does
stiff-

not begin to think. Thinking begins only

to

when we have come

is

know

that reason, glorified for centuries,

the

most

necked adversary of thought.