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Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism

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Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School November 2019 Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism Megan Flocken University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons Scholar Commons Citation Flocken, Megan, "Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism" (2019). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/8098 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism by Megan Flocken A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Lee Braver, Ph.D. Charles Guignon, Ph.D. Ofelia Schutte, Ph.D. Iain Thomson, Ph.D. Stephen Turner, Ph.D. Date of Approval: November 12, 2019 Keywords: continental philosophy, ontology, comparative philosophy, Kehre Copyright © 2019, Megan Flocken TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii CHAPTER ONE: HEIDEGGER’S WILL TO POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF NIETZSCHE’S NIHILISM INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO: HEIDEGGER’S KNOWLEDGE AND NIHILISM ...................................... 11 CHAPTER THREE: INTERMISSION TO NIETZSCHE ........................................................... 61 CHAPTER FOUR: NIETZSCHE'S TURN .................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER FIVE: NIETZSCHE’S WILL TO POWER ............................................................. 109 CHAPTER SIX: PRÉCIS ........................................................................................................... 132 CHAPTER SEVEN: INTERMISSION TO HEIDEGGER’S ART ........................................... 137 CHAPTER EIGHT: HEIDEGGER’S ART ................................................................................ 145 CHAPTER NINE: HEIDEGGER’S WILL TO POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF NIETZSCHE’S NIHILISM CONCLUSION ....................................................................... 159 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 166 i ABSTRACT In his 1936-1940 Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger transitions from defining will to power as art to defining will to power as knowledge. While his transition serves to launch and fine-tune Heidegger's critique against nihilism and its handmaiden, technological thinking, it does a great disservice to Nietzsche's own philosophy, as Heidegger increasingly relies upon it as a target for his assault against the metaphysical tradition. I argue through the course of this work that Nietzsche's relationship with nihilism is misconstrued by Heidegger. In departure from Heidegger, I will show how Nietzsche's philosophical thinking could have aided Heidegger's attack on a prevailing contemporary technological thinking, or 'tool-mindedness', from a very similar angle rather than as a foil. ii CHAPTER ONE: HEIDEGGER’S WILL TO POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF NIETZSCHE’S NIHILISM INTRODUCTION “Nowhere does an absolute persistence exist, ..Rather, whenever a human being believes he recognizes any sort of persistence in living nature, it is due to our small standards.” - Nietzsche, on Heraclitus1 “Becoming cannot be conceived.” - Nietzsche, on Parmenides2 In his 1936-1940 Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger transitions from defining will to power as art to defining will to power as knowledge.3 While his transition serves to launch and fine-tune Heidegger's critique against nihilism and its handmaiden, technological thinking, it does a great disservice to Nietzsche's own philosophy, as Heidegger increasingly relies upon it as a target for his assault against the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger locates the 'essence' of Nietzsche's 1 Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Translated by Greg Whitlock, “Heraclitus,” 60. Nietzsche adds to this a note on power, as the check on such 'small' ideas of persistence: “...because we always come in the final analysis to forces, whose effects simultaneously include a desire for power [Kraftverlust].” (I will address the difference between conceptions of power—perhaps easily classified by 'force' (Kraft) or 'power' (Macht)—in the last section of this paper.) Nietzsche goes on to pose a thought experiment very similar to the one which opens “Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” to prove that “whatever remains, the unmoving...[is] a complete illusion.” Arguing that human perception is what accounts for fixity and form, he says, “If we could conceive of human perception indefinitely increased according to the strength and power of the organs, there would conversely [to the perception limited by human intellect] exist no persistent thing...but rather only a Becoming.” (Ibid., 61-2). These lectures were delivered c. 1872. (See Whitlock's “Translator's Preface” on the difficulty of determining the date of their delivery). 2 Nietzsche, Ibid., “Parmenides and Xenophanes,” 87. 3 Heidegger, Nietzsche Vol 1: “The Will to Power as Art” [der Wille zur Macht als Kunst], trans. David Krell (subsequently N1, page number); Heidegger, Nietzsche Vol 3: “The Will to Power as Knowledge” [der Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis], trans. David Krell (subsequently N3, page number.) 1 philosophy in the will to power.4 For Heidegger, will to power can be traced through four additional concepts—revaluation, eternal recurrence, overman, and nihilism, and the lot of them, for Heidegger, characterize Nietzsche's philosophical system. I will argue through the course of this work that Nietzsche's relationship with nihilism is misconstrued by Heidegger. In what follows, I will address Heidegger's misinterpretation of Nietzsche's will to power, the 'essence' of Nietzsche's philosophy, as that which, for Heidegger, is responsible for the technologization of Being in what Heidegger dubs the age of enframing [Gestell]. In departure from Heidegger, I will show how Nietzsche's concept of will to power could have aided Heidegger's attack on a prevailing contemporary 'tool-mindedness' from a very similar angle rather than as a foil. Indeed, Heidegger in/famously notes in this very lecture course that “[A]ll great thinkers think the same”5; in this work I will stress the similarity of these two thinkers with respect to their understanding of the nature of existence, or at least what Heidegger is wont to call the Being of beings. I will also examine the framework and consequences of their respective but I argue similar, 'turns' which each thinker makes in his philosophy on this particular philosophical problem. The will to power is a fulcrum of similarity between Nietzsche and Heidegger. Though other scholars from both Nietzsche and Heidegger camps disagree on this point, both Nietzsche and Heidegger themselves articulate the will to power as the fundamental operation of existence in Nietzsche's philosophy. In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes that the will to power is “the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, form-giving forces that give new interpretations and 4 There is, of course, scholarly debate as to whether will to power does in fact constitute an essential point of Nietzsche's philosophy (cf. Dale Wilkerson, ). I will not be addressing this debate, but rather, the characterization which Heidegger makes of Nietzsche's concept of will to power. 5 Heidegger, Nietzsche Vol 1, 36. He continues, “Yet this “same” is so essential and so rich that no single thinker exhausts it.” Directly prior to this assertion, Heidegger discusses the history of metaphysics and its conception of 'the will' as the “basic character of beings” and notes that “In philosophy the Being of beings is to be thought.” It is this commitment to the question of Being that joins all 'great thinkers' in kinship (Ibid. 35-6.) 2 directions" operating in all events.6 Heidegger, in his Nietzsche Vol 4: Nihilism, writes: “The phrase “will to power” tells what beings are in their “essence” (in their constitution).” He goes on to say in the same passage, “The phrase “eternal recurrence of the same'” tells how beings of such an essence must as a whole be.”7 My work will be divided between exposition on Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche's concept of will to power, especially as it relates to Heidegger's charge of nihilism, and, second, Nietzsche's own description of will to power. Lastly, I will return to Heidegger's writings on art to show how Nietzsche and Heidegger share common philosophical frames with respect to thinking existing. Heidegger's transitions from thinking the will to power as art to thinking it as knowledge [Erkenntnis], and I suggest in this work that his transition on this point is more responsible for Heidegger's critique against Nietzsche's philosophical entanglement with nihilism than Nietzsche's own use of the term will to power. My analysis is in four sections, whose major arguments are as follows: 1) Heidegger's Knowledge and Nihilism: This section will set out Heidegger's
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