Nietzsche's concept of the tragic grew steadily clearer in step with the inner
transformation
and clarification of his thinking.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
What is left of gaiety now?
Do we not rather confront the onset of dread?
Obviously.
We need only cast a glance at the title of the passage that immediately follows and that concludes Book Four, passage number 342, which is entitled "Incipit tragoedia.
" The tragedy begins.
How can such knowledge still be called "gay science"?
A demonic inspiration, yes, but not science; a terrifying condition, yes, but not "gay"!
Yet here it is not a matter of our gratuitous remarks concerning the title The Gay Science.
All that matters is what Nietzsche is thinking about.
What does gay science mean? Here science is not a collective noun for the sciences as we find them today, with all their paraphernalia, in the shape they assumed during the course of the last century. Science means the stance adopted, and the will directed, toward essential knowing. Of course, we cannot get around the fact that a certain amount of acquired knowledge is proper to every knowing, and in Nietzsche's time that meant especially knowledge attained by the natu- ral sciences. But such acquired knowledge does not constitute the es- sence of genuine knowing. The latter lies in the basic relation- prevailing at any given time--of man to beings, and consequently also in the mode of truth and in the decisiveness we attain through this basic relation. Here the word Wissenschaft [science] resounds like Lei- denschaft [passion], namely, the passion of a well-grounded mastery over the things that confront us and over our own way of responding to what confronts us, positing all these things in magnificent and essential goals.
Nietzsche's Ji'. irst Communication of the Doctrine 21
Gay science? The gaiety mentioned here is not that of the inane "gay blade. " It is not the superficiality of fleeting enjoyment, the "fun" one might have, for example, even in undisturbed engrossment in scientific questions. What Nietzsche means is the cheerfulness that comes of a certain superiority, a cheerfulness that is not dashed by even the hardest and most terrifying matters. In the realm of knowing, cheerfulness is not dashed by the most questionable matters, but is rather invigorated by them, inasmuch as cheerfulness affirms the necessity of these most questionable things.
Only a gay science understood in this way can embrace a knowing that fathoms the terrifying character of the thought of eternal return- hence, a knowing that fathoms the thought in its essential import. Now we are better prepared to grasp the reason why Nietzsche commu- nicates this demonic thought only at the conclusion of The Gay Science: what is referred to here at the conclusion is-in terms of the matter-not the end but the beginning of the "gay science," its com- mencement and its end alike. The matter in question is the eternal return of the same, which the "gay science" must come to know, first and last, if it is to be proper knowing. "Gay science" is for Nietzsche nothing other than the name for that "philosophy" which in its funda- mental doctrine teaches the eternal return of the same.
Two matters are of equal importance for our understanding of this doctrine: first, the fact that Nietzsche first communicates it at the con- clusion of The Gay Science; and second, the way in which Nietzsche at the outset characterizes the thought of return. The appropriate pas- sage is number 341, entitled "The greatest burden. " The thought as burden! What do we think of when we say the word "burden"? * A burden hinders vacillation, renders calm and steadfast, draws all forces to itself; gathers them and gives them definition. A burden also exerts a downward pull, compelling us constantly to hold ourselves erect; but
• The German word das Schwergewicht nowadays means "heavyweight" and is re- stricted to athletics. But it carries connotations of chiefimportance or principal empha- sis, and I have chosen the word "burden" in order to capture these connotations. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger appear to hear in the word the related term der Schwerpunkt, "center of gravity," and both are aware of the ambiguity attached to matters of "great weight," which may stabilize us or wear us down, but which will most certainly deflect us from our former trajectory.
22 THE ETER! \:AL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
it also embodies the danger that we will fall down, and stay down. In this way the burden is an obstacle that demands constant "hurdling," constant surmounting. However, a burden creates no new forces, while it does alter the direction of their motion, thus creating for whatever force is available new laws of motion.
Yet how can a "thought" be a burden, that is to say, something that becomes determinative as rendering steadfast, gathering, drawing and restraining, or as altering directions? And what is this thought to deter- mine? Who is to be afflicted with this burden, in whom is it to be installed? Who is to bear it to great heights, in order not to remain below? Nietzsche provides the answer toward the close of the passage. As the question "Do you will this once more and countless times more? " the thought would everywhere and at all times weigh upon our actions. By "actions" Nietzsche does not mean merely practical activi- ties or ethical deeds; rather, he means the totality of man's relations to beings and to himself. The thought of eternal return is to be a burden -that is, is to be determinative-for our envelopment within beings as a whole.
Yet now we would really have to insist: How can a thought possess determinative force? "Thoughts"! Such fleeting things are to be a cen- ter of gravity? On the contrary, is not what is determinative for man precisely what crowds around him, his circumstances-for instance, his foodstuffs? Recall Feuerbach's famous dictum, "Man is what he eats. " And, along with nourishment, locale? Recall the teachings of the classical English and French sociologists concerning the milieu- meaning both the general atmosphere and the social order. But by no stretch of the imagination "thoughts"! To all this Nietzsche would reply that it is precisely a matter of thoughts, since these determine man even more than those other things; they alone determine him with respect to these very foodstuffs, to this locality, to this atmosphere and social order. In "thought" the decision is made as to whether men and women will adopt and maintain precisely these circumstances or whether they will elect others; whether they will interpret the chosen circumstances in this way or that way; whether under this or that set of conditions they can cope with such circumstances. That such deci-
Nietzsche's First Communication ofthe Doctrine 23
sions often collapse into thoughtlessness does not testify against the dominion of thought but for it. Taken by itself, the milieu explains nothing; there is no milieu in itself. In this regard Nietzsche writes (WM, 70; from the years 1885-86): "Against the doctrine of influence from the milieu and from extrinsic causes: the inner force is infinitely superior. " The most intrinsic of "inner forces" are thoughts. And if the thought of eternal return of the same thinks some by no means fortui- tous thought, by no means either this, that, or the other; if it instead thinks being as whole, as it is; and if this thought is actually thought, that is, if as a question it installs us amid beings and thereby places us at a distance from them; if this thought of eternal return is "the thought of thoughts," as Nietzsche at one point calls it (XII, 64); then should it not be perfectly capable of being a "burden" to every human being, and not simply one burden among others but "the greatest bur- den"?
Yet why the burden? What is man? Is he the creature that needs a burden, the creature that always afflicts himself with burdens, and has to do so? What sort of treacherous necessity is here in play? A burden can also drag down, can humiliate a man. And when he is all the way down the burden becomes superfluous, so that now, suddenly bereft of all burdens, he can no longer descry what he once was in his ascend- ancy, no longer notice that he is now as low as he can go. Instead, he takes himself to be the median and the measure, whereas these are but expressions of his mediocrity.
Was it only a pointless happenstance, was there nothing behind it, when the thought of this burden came to Nietzsche? Or did it come because all prior burdens had abandoned men and gone up in smoke? The experience of the necessity of a new "greatest burden," and the experience that all things have lost their weight, belong together:
The time is coming when we will have to pay for our having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the burden that allowed us to live. For some time we will not know whether we are coming or going. (WM, 30; written in 1888)
This statement, still obscure to us, should for the present merely indicate that Nietzsche's thought of the new "greatest burden" is rooted
24 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
in the context of two millennia of history. That is the reason for the way in which the thought is introduced in its first communication: "What would happen if one day. . . . " The thought is introduced as a question and a possibility. Indeed, the thought is not directly proffered by Nietzsche himself. How should a contemporary man--one who does not know whether he is coming or going, and Nietzsche must account himself such a one-how should such a man come upon this thought all by himself? Rather, what we hear is: "What would happen if . . . a demon were to steal upon you in your loneliest loneli- ness. . . . " Neither does the thought come from any arbitrary human being, nor does it come to any arbitrary human being in his or her most arbitrary everydayness, that is to say, in the midst of all the hub- bub that enables us to forget ourselves. The thought comes in a human being's "loneliest loneliness. " Where and when is that? Is it where and when a human being simply goes into retreat, withdraws to the periph- ery, and busies himself with his "ego"? No, more likely then and there where a human being is altogether himself, standing in the most essen- tial relationships of his historical existence in the midst of beings as a whole.
This "loneliest loneliness" subsists prior to and beyond every distin- guishing of I from Thou, of lffhou from the "We," and of the individ- ual from the community. In such loneliest loneliness there is no trace of individuation as isolation. It is rather a matter of that kind of in- dividuation which we must grasp as authentic appropriation, in which the human self comes into its own. * The self, authenticity, is not the "ego"; it is that Da-sein in which the relation of I to Thou, I to "We,"
• "Authentic appropriation" translates Heidegger's word Vereigentlichung. The novel term refers us back to the theme of "authenticity" in Being and Time, especially sections 25-27, on the problem of the selfhood of Dasein, and section 53, "Existential Projection of an Authentic Being toward Death. " Central to the latter is the notion of the death of Dasein as the "ownmost" or "most proper" (eigenste) possibility of existence, a possibility that Dasein must freely face and in this sense "appropriate. " Precisely at this point in Sein und Zeit (p. 264) Heidegger cites Zarathustra's words about the danger of our becoming "too old for our victories. " In Heidegger's subsequent view, thinking the thought of eternal recurrence is one decisive way to confront the danger and to rejuve- nate the task of "authentic appropriation. " See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 12th ed. (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1972), pp. 263-64. Finally, compare "authentic appro- priation" to what Heidegger in section 24, below, calls "being-a-self. "
Nietzsche's First Communication ofthe Doctrine 25
and "We" to "Ye" is grounded; it is that on the sole basis of which these relationships can first be brought under control-must be brought under control if they are to be a force. In being a self, certain things are decided: the weight that things and human beings will have, the scale on which they will be weighed, and the one who will do the weighing. Imagine what would happen if in such loneliest loneliness a demon were to steal upon you and confront you with the eternal return of the same: "The eternal hourglass of existence turning over and over-and you with it, speck of dust! "
Nietzsche does not say what would in fact happen. He continues to question instead, and he uncovers two alternatives. Would you curse the demon, or would you perceive in him a god? Would you be man- gled by the thought, or would you ask nothing more than that it be true? Would you be dragged into the abyss by the greatest burden, or would you yourself become its even greater counterweight?
The way Nietzsche here patterns the first communication of the thought of the "greatest burden" makes it clear that this "thought of thoughts" is at the same time "the most burdensome thought" (XVI, 414). It is the most burdensome thought in several respects. It is most burdensome, for example, with respect to that which is to be thought in it, namely, being as a whole. The latter commands the heaviest weight and so is more burdensome in the sense of weightiest. But it is also the hardest to bear with respect to the thinking itself, and thus is the most difficult thought. Our thinking must penetrate in thought the innermost abundance of beings, must probe in thought the uttermost limits of being as a whole, and must at the same time proceed in thought through the human being's loneliest loneliness.
By virtue of such distinctions we are trying to clarify Nietzsche's thought. Clarification is always necessarily interpretation. For in it we employ corresponding yet different concepts and words. Let us there- fore insert at this point some remarks on Nietzsche's and our own use of language.
Nietzsche does not invoke "being as a whole. " We use this phrase in order to designate basically everything that is not simply nothing: na- ture (animate and inanimate), history (what it brings about, the per- sonages who fill it, and those who propel it), God, the gods, and
26 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
demigods. When we speak of things that are in being, we are also referring to what comes to be, what originates and passes away. For it already is no longer the nothing, or not yet the nothing. When we allude to things that are in being, we are also referring to appearance, illusion, deception, and falsehood. If such things were not in being they could not delude us and make us err. All these things too are named in the phrase "being as a whole. " Even its limit, nonbeing pure and simple, the nothing, pertains to being as a whole, inasmuch as without being as a whole there would be no nothing. Yet at the same time the phrase "being as a whole" means beings precisely as what we are asking about, what is worthy of question. The phrase leaves open the questions as to what being as such is and in what way it is. T o that extent the expression is no more than a collective noun. But it "col- lects" in such a way as to gather beings together; and it gathers them with a view to the question of the gathering that is proper to being itself. The phrase "being as a whole" thus designates the most ques- tionable matter and is hence the word most worthy of question.
As for Nietzsche, he is secure in his use of language here, but he is not unequivocal. When he means to refer to all reality or to the uni- verse he says "the world" [die Welt] or "existence" [das Dasein]. This usage derives from Kant. Whenever Nietzsche poses the question as to whether existence has meaning, whether a meaning can be defined for existence at all, his use of the word "existence" roughly parallels what we mean by "being as a whole"-though with some reservations. "Ex- istence" has for Nietzsche the same breadth of meaning as "world"; he also uses the word "life" to say the same thing. By "life" Nietzsche does not mean merely human life and human existence. We, on the other hand, use "life" only to designate beings that are vegetable or animal; we thereby differentiate human being from these other kinds, human being meaning something more and something other than mere "life. " For us the word Dasein definitively names something that is by no means coterminous with human being, and something thoroughly distinct from what Nietzsche and the tradition prior to him understand by "existence. " What we designate with the word Dasein does not arise in the history of philosophy hitherto. This difference in usage does not rest on some gratuitous obstinacy on our part. Behind
Nietzsche's First Communication ofthe Doctrine 27
it stand essential historical exigencies. But these differences in lan- guage are not to be mastered by artificial scrutiny and detection. Wax- ing in confrontation with the matter itself, we must become capable of the capable word. (On Nietzsche's conception of Dasein, see, for ex- ample, The Gay Science, Book IV, number 341; Book V, numbers 357, 373, and 374. )*
• In The Gay Science, number 341, Nietzsche speaks of "the eternal hourglass of existence," equating such Dasein with "this life," the Leben toward which one would have to become beneficent. Section 357, one of Nietzsche's most detailed statements on the German philosophical tradition (especially Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel), cites Scho- penhauer's lucubrations on the "value" or "meaning" of "existence" and Hegel's "gran- diose attempt" to convince us of "the divinity of existence. " In passage number 373 Nietzsche doubts whether the paragons of scientific optimism such as Herbert Spencer are capable of espying "genuinely great problems and question-marks," that is to say, questions pertaining to Dasein. Here, as in the earlier passages, Nietzsche equates Da- sein with Welt, identifying optimism as a particularly naive Welt-Interpretation. The latter is capable of seeing only the "most superficial and most extrinsic elements of existence. " Section 374 "Our new 'infinite'," also refers to the conceptual triad Dasein,
Welt, Leben. In reproducing it I have placed these words in capitals:
How far the perspectival character of existence extends, or even whether EXISTENCE has any other character than that; whether it is not the case that an EXISTENCE without interpretation, without "sense," amounts precisely to "nonsense"; whether, on the other hand, all EXISTENCE is not essentially an interpreting EXISTENCE;-it is fitting that these things cannot be descried by even the most diligent, painfully scrupulous analysis and self-examination of the intellect. . . . It is futile curiosity to want to know . . . , for example, whether some creature exists that can experience time as running backwards, or alternately forward and back (at which point another segmentation of LIFE . . . would be at hand). But I think that we today at least are far removed from such ridiculous vainglory. . . . The WORLD has rather once again become "infinite" to us, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it encompasses infinite interpreta- tions. . . .
4. "lncipit tragoedia"
The thought of eternal return of the same, as the greatest burden, is also the thought that is hardest to bear. What happens when we actual- ly think the thought? Nietzsche provides the answer in the title of the section that follows immediately upon his first communication of the most burdensome thought, and that forms the proper conclusion to The Gay Science (1st edition, 1882; number 342): "lncipit tragoedia. " The tragedy begins. Which tragedy? The tragedy of beings as such. But what does Nietzsche understand by "tragedy"? Tragedy sings the tragic. We have to realize that Nietzsche defines the tragic purely in terms of the beginning of tragedy as he understands it. When the thought of eternal return is thought, the tragic as such becomes the fundamental trait of beings. Viewed historically, this marks the beginning of the "tragic age for Europe" (WM, 37; cf. XVI, 448). What begins to hap- pen here transpires in utter stillness; it remains concealed for a long time and to most men; nothing of this history goes into the history books. "It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that approach on doves' feet govern the world" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, conclusion to Part II). "What does it matter that we more cautious and reserved ones do not for the nonce abandon the venerable belief that it is only the great thought that lends greatness to any deed or thing" (Beyond Good and Evil, number 241). And finally: "The world re- volves, not about the discoverers of new forms of hullaballoo, but about the discoverers of new values. It revolves inaudibly' (Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Part Two, "Of Great Events").
Only the few, the rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible
revolutions will perceive the "Incipit tragoedia. " Yet how does Nietz- sche understand the essence of the tragic and of tragedy? W e know that Nietzsche's first treatise, published in 1872, was devoted to the ques- tion of "the birth of tragedy. " Experience of the tragic and meditation
"lncipit tragoedia" 29
on its ongm and essence pertain to the very basis of Nietzschean thought.
Nietzsche's concept of the tragic grew steadily clearer in step with the inner transformation and clarification of his thinking. From the very outset he opposed the interpretation of Aristotle, according to which the tragic is said to accomplish katharsis, the moral cleansing and elevation that are attained when fear and pity are aroused. "I have repeatedly put my finger on the egregious misconception of Aristotle, who believed he had found the tragic emotions in two depressive af- fects, namely, terror and pity" (WM, 851; from the year 1888). The tragic has absolutely no original relation to the moral. "Whoever en- joys tragedy morally still has a few rungs to climb" (XII, 177; from 1881-82). The tragic belongs to the "aesthetic" domain. To clarify this we would have to provide an account of Nietzsche's conception of art. Art is "the metaphysical activity" of "life"; it defines the way in which beings as a whole are, insofar as they are. The supreme art is the tragic; hence the tragic is proper to the metaphysical essence of beings.
The aspect of terror does pertain to the tragic as such, but not as what arouses fear, in the sense that the tragic would actually allow one to circumvent terror by fleeing toward "resignation," by yearning for nothingness. On the contrary, the terrifying is what is affirmed; in- deed, affirmed in its unalterable affiliation with the beautiful. Tragedy prevails where the terrifying is affirmed as the opposite that is intrinsi- cally proper to the beautiful. Greatness and great heights subsist to- gether with the depths and with what is terrifying; the more originally the one is willed, the more surely the other will be attained. "Fright- fulness is proper to greatness: let us not be deceived" (WM, 1028). Affirmation of the convergence of these opposites is tragic insight, the tragic attitude; it is what Nietzsche also calls the "heroic. " "What makes someone heroic? " asks Nietzsche in The Gay Science (number. 268); and he replies, "Going out to meet one's supreme suffering and supreme hope alike. " The word "alike" is decisive here: not playing off one against the other, still less averting his glance from both, but be- coming master over his misfortune and good fortune as well, in that way preventing his ostensible victory from making a fool of him. *
• On mastery of one's misfortune and good fortune, or unhappiness and happiness, see Volume I of this series, p. 159. On the entire question of beauty and the terrible or terrifying, see sections 16--17 of that lecture course.
30 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
"The heroic spirits are those who in the midst of tragic horror say to themselves, "Yes": they are hard enough to feel suffering as pleasure' (WM, 852). The tragic spirit incorporates contradictions and uncertainties (XVI, 391; cf. XV, 65; XVI, 377; and XIV, 365 f. ). The tragic holds sway only where the "spirit" rules, so much so that it is only in the realm of knowledge and of knowers that the supremely tragic can occur. "The supremely tragic motifs have remained untouched up to now: the poets have no knowledge based on experience of the hundred tragedies of knowers" (XII, 246; from 1881-82). Beings themselves imply torture, destruction, and the "no" as proper to them. In Ecce Homo, at the place where he describes the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same, Nietzsche calls that thought "the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be achieved" (XV, 85). Why is the thought of return supreme affirmation? Because it affirms the uttermost "no," annihilation and suffering, as proper to beings. Thus it is precisely with this thought that the tragic spirit first comes into being, originally and integrally. "lncipit tragoedia," Nietzsche says. But he adds, "INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA" (Twilight ofthe Idols, VIII, 83).
Zarathustra is the initial and proper thinker of the thought of thoughts. To be the initial and proper thinker of the thought of eternal return of the same is the essence ofZarathustra. The thought of eternal return of the same is so much the hardest to bear that no prior, medi- ocre human being can think it; he dare not even register a claim to think it; and that holds for Nietzsche himself. In order to let the most burdensome thought-that is, the tragedy-begin, Nietzsche must therefore first create poetically the thinker of that thought. This hap- pens in the work that begins to come to be one year following The Gay Science, that is to say, from 1883 on. For Nietzsche's report on the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same also says that the thought constitutes "the fundamental conception of the work. "* Nevertheless, the concluding section of The Gay Science itself, bearing the title "lncipit tragoedia," runs as follows:
• The "work" in question is, of course, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
"lncipit tragoedia" 31
Jncipit tragoedia. -When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left Lake Urmi and his homeland and went into the mountains. There he communed with his spirit and his solitude and for ten years did not weary of them. But at last something in his heart turned-and one morning he rose with the dawn, confronted the sun, and addressed it in this way: "You magnificent star! What would become of your felicity if you did not have those you illumine? For ten years you've been coming up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and that path had it not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent. But every morning we waited for you, relieved you of your excess, and blessed you for it. Behold, I am glutted with my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out, I want to give, to dispense, until the wise among men are happy again in their folly and the poor in their splendor. For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you slip behind the sea and bring light to the very underworld, you superabundant star! Like you, I must go down, as men call it, and it is men I want to go down to. So bless me, then, tranquil eye that can look without envy upon a happiness that is all-too-great! Bless the cup that wants to overflow until the waters stream from it golden, bearing to all parts reflections of your delight! Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again. "-Thus began Zara- thustra's downgoing.
The conclusion of The Gay Science constitutes the unaltered begin- ning of the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published the follow- ing year; the sole change is that the name of the lake, "Urmi," is dropped and is replaced by the phrase "the lake of his homeland. " When Zarathustra's tragedy begins, so does his downgoing. The down- going itself has a history. It is the history proper; it is not merely an end. Here Nietzsche shapes his work by drawing upon his profound knowledge of great Greek tragedy. For Greek tragedy is not the "psy- chological" matter of preparing a "tragic conflict," of "tying the knots," and such. Rather, everything that one usually takes as constituting "the tragedy" has already occurred at the moment tragedy as such begins. The "only thing" that happens in tragedy is the downgoing. The "only thing," we say, quite ineptly, for only now does the proper matter begin. Without the "spirit" and the "thought," all deeds are but -nothing.
5. The Second Communication of the Doctrine of Return
The book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, considered as a whole, constitutes the second communication of the doctrine of eternal return. Here Nietzsche no longer speaks of it incidentally, as though it were a mere possibility. To be sure, he does not speak of the doctrine directly and peremptorily. When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zara- thustra he creates the thinker, creates that other kind of humanity which, in opposition to humanity heretofore, initiates the tragedy by positing the tragic spirit in being itself. Zarathustra is the heroic think- er, and, granted the way this figure takes shape, whatever the thinker thinks must also be fashioned as tragic, that is, as the supreme "yes" to the extreme "no. " And according to the statement that serves as the guiding thought of our own lecture course, everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy. In order to render the tragedy visible, Nietz- sche must first of all create the solitary hero in whose sphere alone the tragedy will crystallize. The ground for the figure of this hero is the thought ofeternal return; this is also the case when that thought is not expressly mentioned. For the thought of thoughts, and its teaching, require a unique teacher. In the figure of the teacher the teaching will be presented by way of a mediation.
As in the case of the first communication of the thought of return, so too in the second the how of the communication is initially more important than the what. The crucial matter is that human beings come to exist who will not be shattered by this doctrine. Prior man is unable actually to think it. He thus must be made to transcend him- self, to be transformed-into the overman. When Nietzsche employs
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 33
the latter word, he is by no means designating a creature that is no longer human. The "over," as an "above and beyond," is related to a particular kind of man; the determinate shape of that man first becomes visible when we have passed through him to a transformed humanity. Only then, in retrospect, can we see prior man as some- thing preliminary; only in retrospect does prior man become visible. The man whom it behooves us to overcome is man as he is today. Man today is at the same time-reckoned from the standpoint of the humanity that overcomes him, that is, from the standpoint of the new commencement-the "last man. " The last man is the man of "mid- dling felicity. " He is incomparably sly, knows just about everything, and is as busy as can be; but with him everything peters out into something harmless, mid-range, and universally bland. In the sphere of the last man each thing gets a little bit smaller every day. Even what he takes to be great is actually petty; and it is diminishing all the time.
The overman is not a fairy-tale character; he is the one who recog- nizes the last man as such and who overcomes him. Over-man is the one who ascends above the "last" man and thereby earmarks him as last, as the man of bygone days. In order therefore to make this opposi- tion palpably clear at the outset, Nietzsche has the teacher of eternal return of the same refer in his first speech-in the Prologue to the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section 5-to the one who must be "most contemptible" to him, namely, the "Last Man. "
"Now I shall speak to them of what is most contemptible, and that is the
Last Man. "
And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
"The time has come for man to stake out his goal. The time has come for man to sow the seed of his supreme hope.
"His soil is still rich enough for that. But one day this soil will be poo~ and tame, and no tall tree will be able to flourish in it.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!
"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in him to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in you.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars.
34 THE ETER~/\L RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Woe! The time of the mo~t contemptible man is coming, the one who can no longer feel contempt for himself.
"Behold, I show you the Last Man. "
To this passage we ought to compare the section entitled "On the Attenuating Virtue" in Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The last man is mentioned at the conclusion of subsection 2:
"We have placed our stools in the middJe"-that is what your smirk tells me-"equidistant from dying warriors and pleasure-loving sows. "
But this is mediocrity, even though it be called moderation.
However, the fact that the last man is cited as the most contemptible man at the outset of the work, the fact that Zarathustra gives vent to his feeling of nausea at the very beginning, has in terms of the work as a whole a still more profound sense. Zarathustra is here merely at the beginning of his path, upon which he is to become the one who he is. He himself must first of all learn; among other things he must learn how to feel contempt. As long as contempt derives from nausea in the face of what is despised it is not yet supreme contempt. Such contempt based on nausea is itself contemptible. "Out of love alone should my contempt and my admonishing bird soar in me, and not out of the swamp! " (Part III, "On Passing By"). "0 my soul, I taught you the contempt that does not come gnawing like a worm; I taught you the great, the loving contempt that loves most where it most feels con- tempt" (Part III, "On the Great Longing").
When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zarathustra he projects the space of that "loneliest loneliness" cited at the end of The Gay Science, the loneliness that induces the thought of thoughts. Nietzsche does so in such a way that Zarathustra resolves to follow the direction which in The Gay Science is mentioned as merely one possi- bility among others, namely, that of "becoming beneficent toward life," that is, affirming life in its extreme anguish and in its most rollicking joy.
The communication of the thought most difficult to bear, the great- est burden, first of all requires the poetic creation of the figure who will think this thought and teach it. But in such creation the doctrine itself cannot be wholly disregarded. It is in fact portrayed in the third part of
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 35
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was composed in 1883-84. Neverthe- less, whenever the doctrine is directly introduced, it is invoked in a poetic manner-in similes that portray the sense and the truth of the doctrine in images, that is to say, in the realm of the sensuous, so that these images are sensuous-sensible. When Nietzsche pursues the sen- suous presentation of the thought of eternal return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he is following-among other essential motivations-a thought that he had jotted down during this same period (1882-84): "The more abstract the truth that one wishes to teach is, the more one
must begin by seducing the senses to it" (XII, 335).
However, we would be misinterpreting Zarathustra were we to ex-
trapolate the doctrine of eternal return from the work, even in the form of figures of speech, as its "theory. " For the most intrinsic task of this work is the· limning of the teacher himself and, through him, the teaching. At the same time, of course, it remains the case that the figure of the teacher can be comprehended only on the basis of the teaching, of what comes to light in its truth, and of the way in which the teaching-<:oncerning as it does beings as a whole-defines the Being of beings. The implication is that our interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a work can proceed only on the basis of Nietz- sche's metaphysics in its entirety.
After the publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche had oc- casion to rue the fact that he had risked the surrender of his most intimate and loftiest experiences. With the passage of time he learned to endure this anguish as well, knowing that the publication was a necessity and that miscomprehension is part and parcel of all such communication. Nietzsche once pinpointed this insight in the follow- ing note: "The necessary concealment of the wise man: his awareness that he is unconditionally not to be understood; his Machiavellian strategy; his icy rejection of the present" (XIII, 37; from the year 1884).
What is difficult to grasp about this work is not only its "content," if it has such, but also its very character as a work. Of course, we are quick to propose a ready-made explanation: here philosophical thoughts are presented poetically. Yet what we are now to call thinking and poetizing dare not consist of the usual notions, inasmuch as the work defines both of these anew, or rather, simply announces them.
36 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
And when we say that this work constitutes the center of Nietzsche's philosophy, it remains nonetheless true that the work stands outside the center, is "eccentric" to it. Finally, when we emphasize the fact that this work is the highest peak attained by Nietzsche's thinking, w~ forget--or, more precisely, we are unapprised of the fact-that precise- ly after the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, during the years 1884 to 1889, Nietzsche's thinking continued to take essential steps that brought him to new transformations of his thought.
Nietzsche provided the work entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a subtitle: "A Book for Everyone and No One. " What the book says is directed to all, to everyone. Yet no one ever truly has the right, as he is, to read the book, if he does not ahead of time and in the process of his reading undergo a metamorphosis. That means that the book is for no one of us as we happen to be at the moment. A book for everyone and no one, and consequently a book that can never, dare never, be "read" complacently.
All this must be said in order for us to acknowledge how very extrin- sic, how full of reservations, our own way of proceeding will remain. For our provisional characterization of the second communication of the doctrine of return will indicate only quite briefly those "figures of speech," which, more directly than the other utterances, treat of the thought of eternal return.
6. "On the Vision and the Riddle"
The eternal return of the same is discussed quite clearly and explicitly as the fundamental teaching in the section entitled "On Redemption," toward the end of Part II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written in the fall of 1883. But discussion of the doctrine flourishes principally in two sections of Part III of that work, composed in January 1884.
The first of these two sections bears the title, "On the Vision and the Riddle. "* It is not a matter of just any vision or just any riddle about something or other. It is a matter of that particular riddle with which Zarathustra comes face to face, the riddle in which being as a whole lies concealed as "the vision of the loneliest one," the riddle that becomes visible only "in our loneliest loneliness. " But why a "riddle"? What the riddle conceals and contains becomes open to view whenever it is surmised. Yet surmise is essentially different from calculation. The latter discloses step by step, along the guideline of some "thread" given beforehand, something unknown from what is known. But in surmise we take a leap, without guidelines, without the rungs of any ladder which anyone can clamber up anytime. To grasp the riddle is to leap, especially when the riddle involves being as a whole. Here there is no particular being or assortment of beings from which the whole could ever be disclosed. To make surmises on this riddle we must venture a journey into the open region of what in general is concealed, into that untraveled and uncharted region which is the unconcealment (aletheia) of what is most concealed. We must venture a journey into truth. Such riddling ventures the truth of being as a whole. t For Nietzsche knows that he occupies an exceptional
• The second of the two, "The Convalescent," is treated in section 8, below.
t Dieses Raten ist ein Wagen der Wahrheit des Seienden im Ganzen. On the word
38 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
place in the history of philosophy. During the period of The Dawn,
about 1881, he jots down the following note (XI, 159):
What is novel about the position we take toward philosophy is a conviction that no prior age shared: that we do not possess the truth. All earlier men "possessed the truth," even the skeptics.
Corresponding to this is a later utterance which also characterizes Nietzsche's own thinking within the confines of the position he takes. In the plans for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (XII, 410) Nietzsche remarks, "We are conducting an experiment with truth. Perhaps mankind will perish as a result! Splendid! "
Nevertheless, we would misunderstand the riddle and our riddling on it abysmally if we were to believe that our task is to hit upon a solution that would dissolve all that is questionable. Riddling on this riddle should rather bring us to experience the fact that as a riddle it cannot be brushed aside.
Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any sort of totalized view of the world. The magic of the opposite kind of thinking: not letting oneself be deprived of the stimulation in all that is enigmatic (WM, 470; from the years 1885-86).
And in The Gay Science (Book V, number 375, written 1887) Nietz- sche speaks of the "addiction to knowledge, which will not let the questionmark behind all things go at a bargain price. "
Thus we must take these words "riddle" and "riddling" in their es- sential importance and scope if we are to understand why Nietzsche grants Zarathustra himself the sobriquet "riddler" (Part Ill, "On Old and New Tablets," section 3). What sort of visage, then, does the riddle which Zarathustra tells have? Again we must pay heed to the way he tells it, to the where and when and to whom, if we are to estimate the what aright. Zarathustra tells the riddle aboard ship, un-
Wagen, related to way, weight, risk, hazard, venture and adventure, see Heidegger, "Wozu Dichter? " in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950), pp. 255 ff. , esp. pp. 259 and 275. See the English translation by Albert Hofstadter in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 99 ff. , esp. pp. 103-04 and 139-40. Heidegger's use of the word in his Nietzsche course antedates that in the Rilke lecture by almost a decade.
"On the Vision and the Riddle" 39
derway on a voyage to open, "unexplored" seas. And to whom does he tell it? Not to the other passengers but to the crew alone: "To you, bold searchers and researchers, and those that ever took to ship with cun- ning sails on terrifying seas. . . . " In the same vein we hear now one of the "Songs of the Outlaw Prince," appended to the second edition of The Gay Science in 1887:
Toward New Seas•
I will go there, and will confide In myself and in my steady grip. Open lies the sea; into the tide Plunges my Genuese ship.
All shines new before the mast! Space and time sleep at midday.
What does gay science mean? Here science is not a collective noun for the sciences as we find them today, with all their paraphernalia, in the shape they assumed during the course of the last century. Science means the stance adopted, and the will directed, toward essential knowing. Of course, we cannot get around the fact that a certain amount of acquired knowledge is proper to every knowing, and in Nietzsche's time that meant especially knowledge attained by the natu- ral sciences. But such acquired knowledge does not constitute the es- sence of genuine knowing. The latter lies in the basic relation- prevailing at any given time--of man to beings, and consequently also in the mode of truth and in the decisiveness we attain through this basic relation. Here the word Wissenschaft [science] resounds like Lei- denschaft [passion], namely, the passion of a well-grounded mastery over the things that confront us and over our own way of responding to what confronts us, positing all these things in magnificent and essential goals.
Nietzsche's Ji'. irst Communication of the Doctrine 21
Gay science? The gaiety mentioned here is not that of the inane "gay blade. " It is not the superficiality of fleeting enjoyment, the "fun" one might have, for example, even in undisturbed engrossment in scientific questions. What Nietzsche means is the cheerfulness that comes of a certain superiority, a cheerfulness that is not dashed by even the hardest and most terrifying matters. In the realm of knowing, cheerfulness is not dashed by the most questionable matters, but is rather invigorated by them, inasmuch as cheerfulness affirms the necessity of these most questionable things.
Only a gay science understood in this way can embrace a knowing that fathoms the terrifying character of the thought of eternal return- hence, a knowing that fathoms the thought in its essential import. Now we are better prepared to grasp the reason why Nietzsche commu- nicates this demonic thought only at the conclusion of The Gay Science: what is referred to here at the conclusion is-in terms of the matter-not the end but the beginning of the "gay science," its com- mencement and its end alike. The matter in question is the eternal return of the same, which the "gay science" must come to know, first and last, if it is to be proper knowing. "Gay science" is for Nietzsche nothing other than the name for that "philosophy" which in its funda- mental doctrine teaches the eternal return of the same.
Two matters are of equal importance for our understanding of this doctrine: first, the fact that Nietzsche first communicates it at the con- clusion of The Gay Science; and second, the way in which Nietzsche at the outset characterizes the thought of return. The appropriate pas- sage is number 341, entitled "The greatest burden. " The thought as burden! What do we think of when we say the word "burden"? * A burden hinders vacillation, renders calm and steadfast, draws all forces to itself; gathers them and gives them definition. A burden also exerts a downward pull, compelling us constantly to hold ourselves erect; but
• The German word das Schwergewicht nowadays means "heavyweight" and is re- stricted to athletics. But it carries connotations of chiefimportance or principal empha- sis, and I have chosen the word "burden" in order to capture these connotations. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger appear to hear in the word the related term der Schwerpunkt, "center of gravity," and both are aware of the ambiguity attached to matters of "great weight," which may stabilize us or wear us down, but which will most certainly deflect us from our former trajectory.
22 THE ETER! \:AL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
it also embodies the danger that we will fall down, and stay down. In this way the burden is an obstacle that demands constant "hurdling," constant surmounting. However, a burden creates no new forces, while it does alter the direction of their motion, thus creating for whatever force is available new laws of motion.
Yet how can a "thought" be a burden, that is to say, something that becomes determinative as rendering steadfast, gathering, drawing and restraining, or as altering directions? And what is this thought to deter- mine? Who is to be afflicted with this burden, in whom is it to be installed? Who is to bear it to great heights, in order not to remain below? Nietzsche provides the answer toward the close of the passage. As the question "Do you will this once more and countless times more? " the thought would everywhere and at all times weigh upon our actions. By "actions" Nietzsche does not mean merely practical activi- ties or ethical deeds; rather, he means the totality of man's relations to beings and to himself. The thought of eternal return is to be a burden -that is, is to be determinative-for our envelopment within beings as a whole.
Yet now we would really have to insist: How can a thought possess determinative force? "Thoughts"! Such fleeting things are to be a cen- ter of gravity? On the contrary, is not what is determinative for man precisely what crowds around him, his circumstances-for instance, his foodstuffs? Recall Feuerbach's famous dictum, "Man is what he eats. " And, along with nourishment, locale? Recall the teachings of the classical English and French sociologists concerning the milieu- meaning both the general atmosphere and the social order. But by no stretch of the imagination "thoughts"! To all this Nietzsche would reply that it is precisely a matter of thoughts, since these determine man even more than those other things; they alone determine him with respect to these very foodstuffs, to this locality, to this atmosphere and social order. In "thought" the decision is made as to whether men and women will adopt and maintain precisely these circumstances or whether they will elect others; whether they will interpret the chosen circumstances in this way or that way; whether under this or that set of conditions they can cope with such circumstances. That such deci-
Nietzsche's First Communication ofthe Doctrine 23
sions often collapse into thoughtlessness does not testify against the dominion of thought but for it. Taken by itself, the milieu explains nothing; there is no milieu in itself. In this regard Nietzsche writes (WM, 70; from the years 1885-86): "Against the doctrine of influence from the milieu and from extrinsic causes: the inner force is infinitely superior. " The most intrinsic of "inner forces" are thoughts. And if the thought of eternal return of the same thinks some by no means fortui- tous thought, by no means either this, that, or the other; if it instead thinks being as whole, as it is; and if this thought is actually thought, that is, if as a question it installs us amid beings and thereby places us at a distance from them; if this thought of eternal return is "the thought of thoughts," as Nietzsche at one point calls it (XII, 64); then should it not be perfectly capable of being a "burden" to every human being, and not simply one burden among others but "the greatest bur- den"?
Yet why the burden? What is man? Is he the creature that needs a burden, the creature that always afflicts himself with burdens, and has to do so? What sort of treacherous necessity is here in play? A burden can also drag down, can humiliate a man. And when he is all the way down the burden becomes superfluous, so that now, suddenly bereft of all burdens, he can no longer descry what he once was in his ascend- ancy, no longer notice that he is now as low as he can go. Instead, he takes himself to be the median and the measure, whereas these are but expressions of his mediocrity.
Was it only a pointless happenstance, was there nothing behind it, when the thought of this burden came to Nietzsche? Or did it come because all prior burdens had abandoned men and gone up in smoke? The experience of the necessity of a new "greatest burden," and the experience that all things have lost their weight, belong together:
The time is coming when we will have to pay for our having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the burden that allowed us to live. For some time we will not know whether we are coming or going. (WM, 30; written in 1888)
This statement, still obscure to us, should for the present merely indicate that Nietzsche's thought of the new "greatest burden" is rooted
24 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
in the context of two millennia of history. That is the reason for the way in which the thought is introduced in its first communication: "What would happen if one day. . . . " The thought is introduced as a question and a possibility. Indeed, the thought is not directly proffered by Nietzsche himself. How should a contemporary man--one who does not know whether he is coming or going, and Nietzsche must account himself such a one-how should such a man come upon this thought all by himself? Rather, what we hear is: "What would happen if . . . a demon were to steal upon you in your loneliest loneli- ness. . . . " Neither does the thought come from any arbitrary human being, nor does it come to any arbitrary human being in his or her most arbitrary everydayness, that is to say, in the midst of all the hub- bub that enables us to forget ourselves. The thought comes in a human being's "loneliest loneliness. " Where and when is that? Is it where and when a human being simply goes into retreat, withdraws to the periph- ery, and busies himself with his "ego"? No, more likely then and there where a human being is altogether himself, standing in the most essen- tial relationships of his historical existence in the midst of beings as a whole.
This "loneliest loneliness" subsists prior to and beyond every distin- guishing of I from Thou, of lffhou from the "We," and of the individ- ual from the community. In such loneliest loneliness there is no trace of individuation as isolation. It is rather a matter of that kind of in- dividuation which we must grasp as authentic appropriation, in which the human self comes into its own. * The self, authenticity, is not the "ego"; it is that Da-sein in which the relation of I to Thou, I to "We,"
• "Authentic appropriation" translates Heidegger's word Vereigentlichung. The novel term refers us back to the theme of "authenticity" in Being and Time, especially sections 25-27, on the problem of the selfhood of Dasein, and section 53, "Existential Projection of an Authentic Being toward Death. " Central to the latter is the notion of the death of Dasein as the "ownmost" or "most proper" (eigenste) possibility of existence, a possibility that Dasein must freely face and in this sense "appropriate. " Precisely at this point in Sein und Zeit (p. 264) Heidegger cites Zarathustra's words about the danger of our becoming "too old for our victories. " In Heidegger's subsequent view, thinking the thought of eternal recurrence is one decisive way to confront the danger and to rejuve- nate the task of "authentic appropriation. " See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 12th ed. (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1972), pp. 263-64. Finally, compare "authentic appro- priation" to what Heidegger in section 24, below, calls "being-a-self. "
Nietzsche's First Communication ofthe Doctrine 25
and "We" to "Ye" is grounded; it is that on the sole basis of which these relationships can first be brought under control-must be brought under control if they are to be a force. In being a self, certain things are decided: the weight that things and human beings will have, the scale on which they will be weighed, and the one who will do the weighing. Imagine what would happen if in such loneliest loneliness a demon were to steal upon you and confront you with the eternal return of the same: "The eternal hourglass of existence turning over and over-and you with it, speck of dust! "
Nietzsche does not say what would in fact happen. He continues to question instead, and he uncovers two alternatives. Would you curse the demon, or would you perceive in him a god? Would you be man- gled by the thought, or would you ask nothing more than that it be true? Would you be dragged into the abyss by the greatest burden, or would you yourself become its even greater counterweight?
The way Nietzsche here patterns the first communication of the thought of the "greatest burden" makes it clear that this "thought of thoughts" is at the same time "the most burdensome thought" (XVI, 414). It is the most burdensome thought in several respects. It is most burdensome, for example, with respect to that which is to be thought in it, namely, being as a whole. The latter commands the heaviest weight and so is more burdensome in the sense of weightiest. But it is also the hardest to bear with respect to the thinking itself, and thus is the most difficult thought. Our thinking must penetrate in thought the innermost abundance of beings, must probe in thought the uttermost limits of being as a whole, and must at the same time proceed in thought through the human being's loneliest loneliness.
By virtue of such distinctions we are trying to clarify Nietzsche's thought. Clarification is always necessarily interpretation. For in it we employ corresponding yet different concepts and words. Let us there- fore insert at this point some remarks on Nietzsche's and our own use of language.
Nietzsche does not invoke "being as a whole. " We use this phrase in order to designate basically everything that is not simply nothing: na- ture (animate and inanimate), history (what it brings about, the per- sonages who fill it, and those who propel it), God, the gods, and
26 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
demigods. When we speak of things that are in being, we are also referring to what comes to be, what originates and passes away. For it already is no longer the nothing, or not yet the nothing. When we allude to things that are in being, we are also referring to appearance, illusion, deception, and falsehood. If such things were not in being they could not delude us and make us err. All these things too are named in the phrase "being as a whole. " Even its limit, nonbeing pure and simple, the nothing, pertains to being as a whole, inasmuch as without being as a whole there would be no nothing. Yet at the same time the phrase "being as a whole" means beings precisely as what we are asking about, what is worthy of question. The phrase leaves open the questions as to what being as such is and in what way it is. T o that extent the expression is no more than a collective noun. But it "col- lects" in such a way as to gather beings together; and it gathers them with a view to the question of the gathering that is proper to being itself. The phrase "being as a whole" thus designates the most ques- tionable matter and is hence the word most worthy of question.
As for Nietzsche, he is secure in his use of language here, but he is not unequivocal. When he means to refer to all reality or to the uni- verse he says "the world" [die Welt] or "existence" [das Dasein]. This usage derives from Kant. Whenever Nietzsche poses the question as to whether existence has meaning, whether a meaning can be defined for existence at all, his use of the word "existence" roughly parallels what we mean by "being as a whole"-though with some reservations. "Ex- istence" has for Nietzsche the same breadth of meaning as "world"; he also uses the word "life" to say the same thing. By "life" Nietzsche does not mean merely human life and human existence. We, on the other hand, use "life" only to designate beings that are vegetable or animal; we thereby differentiate human being from these other kinds, human being meaning something more and something other than mere "life. " For us the word Dasein definitively names something that is by no means coterminous with human being, and something thoroughly distinct from what Nietzsche and the tradition prior to him understand by "existence. " What we designate with the word Dasein does not arise in the history of philosophy hitherto. This difference in usage does not rest on some gratuitous obstinacy on our part. Behind
Nietzsche's First Communication ofthe Doctrine 27
it stand essential historical exigencies. But these differences in lan- guage are not to be mastered by artificial scrutiny and detection. Wax- ing in confrontation with the matter itself, we must become capable of the capable word. (On Nietzsche's conception of Dasein, see, for ex- ample, The Gay Science, Book IV, number 341; Book V, numbers 357, 373, and 374. )*
• In The Gay Science, number 341, Nietzsche speaks of "the eternal hourglass of existence," equating such Dasein with "this life," the Leben toward which one would have to become beneficent. Section 357, one of Nietzsche's most detailed statements on the German philosophical tradition (especially Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel), cites Scho- penhauer's lucubrations on the "value" or "meaning" of "existence" and Hegel's "gran- diose attempt" to convince us of "the divinity of existence. " In passage number 373 Nietzsche doubts whether the paragons of scientific optimism such as Herbert Spencer are capable of espying "genuinely great problems and question-marks," that is to say, questions pertaining to Dasein. Here, as in the earlier passages, Nietzsche equates Da- sein with Welt, identifying optimism as a particularly naive Welt-Interpretation. The latter is capable of seeing only the "most superficial and most extrinsic elements of existence. " Section 374 "Our new 'infinite'," also refers to the conceptual triad Dasein,
Welt, Leben. In reproducing it I have placed these words in capitals:
How far the perspectival character of existence extends, or even whether EXISTENCE has any other character than that; whether it is not the case that an EXISTENCE without interpretation, without "sense," amounts precisely to "nonsense"; whether, on the other hand, all EXISTENCE is not essentially an interpreting EXISTENCE;-it is fitting that these things cannot be descried by even the most diligent, painfully scrupulous analysis and self-examination of the intellect. . . . It is futile curiosity to want to know . . . , for example, whether some creature exists that can experience time as running backwards, or alternately forward and back (at which point another segmentation of LIFE . . . would be at hand). But I think that we today at least are far removed from such ridiculous vainglory. . . . The WORLD has rather once again become "infinite" to us, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it encompasses infinite interpreta- tions. . . .
4. "lncipit tragoedia"
The thought of eternal return of the same, as the greatest burden, is also the thought that is hardest to bear. What happens when we actual- ly think the thought? Nietzsche provides the answer in the title of the section that follows immediately upon his first communication of the most burdensome thought, and that forms the proper conclusion to The Gay Science (1st edition, 1882; number 342): "lncipit tragoedia. " The tragedy begins. Which tragedy? The tragedy of beings as such. But what does Nietzsche understand by "tragedy"? Tragedy sings the tragic. We have to realize that Nietzsche defines the tragic purely in terms of the beginning of tragedy as he understands it. When the thought of eternal return is thought, the tragic as such becomes the fundamental trait of beings. Viewed historically, this marks the beginning of the "tragic age for Europe" (WM, 37; cf. XVI, 448). What begins to hap- pen here transpires in utter stillness; it remains concealed for a long time and to most men; nothing of this history goes into the history books. "It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that approach on doves' feet govern the world" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, conclusion to Part II). "What does it matter that we more cautious and reserved ones do not for the nonce abandon the venerable belief that it is only the great thought that lends greatness to any deed or thing" (Beyond Good and Evil, number 241). And finally: "The world re- volves, not about the discoverers of new forms of hullaballoo, but about the discoverers of new values. It revolves inaudibly' (Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Part Two, "Of Great Events").
Only the few, the rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible
revolutions will perceive the "Incipit tragoedia. " Yet how does Nietz- sche understand the essence of the tragic and of tragedy? W e know that Nietzsche's first treatise, published in 1872, was devoted to the ques- tion of "the birth of tragedy. " Experience of the tragic and meditation
"lncipit tragoedia" 29
on its ongm and essence pertain to the very basis of Nietzschean thought.
Nietzsche's concept of the tragic grew steadily clearer in step with the inner transformation and clarification of his thinking. From the very outset he opposed the interpretation of Aristotle, according to which the tragic is said to accomplish katharsis, the moral cleansing and elevation that are attained when fear and pity are aroused. "I have repeatedly put my finger on the egregious misconception of Aristotle, who believed he had found the tragic emotions in two depressive af- fects, namely, terror and pity" (WM, 851; from the year 1888). The tragic has absolutely no original relation to the moral. "Whoever en- joys tragedy morally still has a few rungs to climb" (XII, 177; from 1881-82). The tragic belongs to the "aesthetic" domain. To clarify this we would have to provide an account of Nietzsche's conception of art. Art is "the metaphysical activity" of "life"; it defines the way in which beings as a whole are, insofar as they are. The supreme art is the tragic; hence the tragic is proper to the metaphysical essence of beings.
The aspect of terror does pertain to the tragic as such, but not as what arouses fear, in the sense that the tragic would actually allow one to circumvent terror by fleeing toward "resignation," by yearning for nothingness. On the contrary, the terrifying is what is affirmed; in- deed, affirmed in its unalterable affiliation with the beautiful. Tragedy prevails where the terrifying is affirmed as the opposite that is intrinsi- cally proper to the beautiful. Greatness and great heights subsist to- gether with the depths and with what is terrifying; the more originally the one is willed, the more surely the other will be attained. "Fright- fulness is proper to greatness: let us not be deceived" (WM, 1028). Affirmation of the convergence of these opposites is tragic insight, the tragic attitude; it is what Nietzsche also calls the "heroic. " "What makes someone heroic? " asks Nietzsche in The Gay Science (number. 268); and he replies, "Going out to meet one's supreme suffering and supreme hope alike. " The word "alike" is decisive here: not playing off one against the other, still less averting his glance from both, but be- coming master over his misfortune and good fortune as well, in that way preventing his ostensible victory from making a fool of him. *
• On mastery of one's misfortune and good fortune, or unhappiness and happiness, see Volume I of this series, p. 159. On the entire question of beauty and the terrible or terrifying, see sections 16--17 of that lecture course.
30 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
"The heroic spirits are those who in the midst of tragic horror say to themselves, "Yes": they are hard enough to feel suffering as pleasure' (WM, 852). The tragic spirit incorporates contradictions and uncertainties (XVI, 391; cf. XV, 65; XVI, 377; and XIV, 365 f. ). The tragic holds sway only where the "spirit" rules, so much so that it is only in the realm of knowledge and of knowers that the supremely tragic can occur. "The supremely tragic motifs have remained untouched up to now: the poets have no knowledge based on experience of the hundred tragedies of knowers" (XII, 246; from 1881-82). Beings themselves imply torture, destruction, and the "no" as proper to them. In Ecce Homo, at the place where he describes the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same, Nietzsche calls that thought "the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be achieved" (XV, 85). Why is the thought of return supreme affirmation? Because it affirms the uttermost "no," annihilation and suffering, as proper to beings. Thus it is precisely with this thought that the tragic spirit first comes into being, originally and integrally. "lncipit tragoedia," Nietzsche says. But he adds, "INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA" (Twilight ofthe Idols, VIII, 83).
Zarathustra is the initial and proper thinker of the thought of thoughts. To be the initial and proper thinker of the thought of eternal return of the same is the essence ofZarathustra. The thought of eternal return of the same is so much the hardest to bear that no prior, medi- ocre human being can think it; he dare not even register a claim to think it; and that holds for Nietzsche himself. In order to let the most burdensome thought-that is, the tragedy-begin, Nietzsche must therefore first create poetically the thinker of that thought. This hap- pens in the work that begins to come to be one year following The Gay Science, that is to say, from 1883 on. For Nietzsche's report on the gestation of the thought of eternal return of the same also says that the thought constitutes "the fundamental conception of the work. "* Nevertheless, the concluding section of The Gay Science itself, bearing the title "lncipit tragoedia," runs as follows:
• The "work" in question is, of course, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
"lncipit tragoedia" 31
Jncipit tragoedia. -When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left Lake Urmi and his homeland and went into the mountains. There he communed with his spirit and his solitude and for ten years did not weary of them. But at last something in his heart turned-and one morning he rose with the dawn, confronted the sun, and addressed it in this way: "You magnificent star! What would become of your felicity if you did not have those you illumine? For ten years you've been coming up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and that path had it not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent. But every morning we waited for you, relieved you of your excess, and blessed you for it. Behold, I am glutted with my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out, I want to give, to dispense, until the wise among men are happy again in their folly and the poor in their splendor. For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you slip behind the sea and bring light to the very underworld, you superabundant star! Like you, I must go down, as men call it, and it is men I want to go down to. So bless me, then, tranquil eye that can look without envy upon a happiness that is all-too-great! Bless the cup that wants to overflow until the waters stream from it golden, bearing to all parts reflections of your delight! Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again. "-Thus began Zara- thustra's downgoing.
The conclusion of The Gay Science constitutes the unaltered begin- ning of the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published the follow- ing year; the sole change is that the name of the lake, "Urmi," is dropped and is replaced by the phrase "the lake of his homeland. " When Zarathustra's tragedy begins, so does his downgoing. The down- going itself has a history. It is the history proper; it is not merely an end. Here Nietzsche shapes his work by drawing upon his profound knowledge of great Greek tragedy. For Greek tragedy is not the "psy- chological" matter of preparing a "tragic conflict," of "tying the knots," and such. Rather, everything that one usually takes as constituting "the tragedy" has already occurred at the moment tragedy as such begins. The "only thing" that happens in tragedy is the downgoing. The "only thing," we say, quite ineptly, for only now does the proper matter begin. Without the "spirit" and the "thought," all deeds are but -nothing.
5. The Second Communication of the Doctrine of Return
The book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, considered as a whole, constitutes the second communication of the doctrine of eternal return. Here Nietzsche no longer speaks of it incidentally, as though it were a mere possibility. To be sure, he does not speak of the doctrine directly and peremptorily. When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zara- thustra he creates the thinker, creates that other kind of humanity which, in opposition to humanity heretofore, initiates the tragedy by positing the tragic spirit in being itself. Zarathustra is the heroic think- er, and, granted the way this figure takes shape, whatever the thinker thinks must also be fashioned as tragic, that is, as the supreme "yes" to the extreme "no. " And according to the statement that serves as the guiding thought of our own lecture course, everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy. In order to render the tragedy visible, Nietz- sche must first of all create the solitary hero in whose sphere alone the tragedy will crystallize. The ground for the figure of this hero is the thought ofeternal return; this is also the case when that thought is not expressly mentioned. For the thought of thoughts, and its teaching, require a unique teacher. In the figure of the teacher the teaching will be presented by way of a mediation.
As in the case of the first communication of the thought of return, so too in the second the how of the communication is initially more important than the what. The crucial matter is that human beings come to exist who will not be shattered by this doctrine. Prior man is unable actually to think it. He thus must be made to transcend him- self, to be transformed-into the overman. When Nietzsche employs
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 33
the latter word, he is by no means designating a creature that is no longer human. The "over," as an "above and beyond," is related to a particular kind of man; the determinate shape of that man first becomes visible when we have passed through him to a transformed humanity. Only then, in retrospect, can we see prior man as some- thing preliminary; only in retrospect does prior man become visible. The man whom it behooves us to overcome is man as he is today. Man today is at the same time-reckoned from the standpoint of the humanity that overcomes him, that is, from the standpoint of the new commencement-the "last man. " The last man is the man of "mid- dling felicity. " He is incomparably sly, knows just about everything, and is as busy as can be; but with him everything peters out into something harmless, mid-range, and universally bland. In the sphere of the last man each thing gets a little bit smaller every day. Even what he takes to be great is actually petty; and it is diminishing all the time.
The overman is not a fairy-tale character; he is the one who recog- nizes the last man as such and who overcomes him. Over-man is the one who ascends above the "last" man and thereby earmarks him as last, as the man of bygone days. In order therefore to make this opposi- tion palpably clear at the outset, Nietzsche has the teacher of eternal return of the same refer in his first speech-in the Prologue to the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section 5-to the one who must be "most contemptible" to him, namely, the "Last Man. "
"Now I shall speak to them of what is most contemptible, and that is the
Last Man. "
And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
"The time has come for man to stake out his goal. The time has come for man to sow the seed of his supreme hope.
"His soil is still rich enough for that. But one day this soil will be poo~ and tame, and no tall tree will be able to flourish in it.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!
"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in him to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in you.
"Woe! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars.
34 THE ETER~/\L RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
Woe! The time of the mo~t contemptible man is coming, the one who can no longer feel contempt for himself.
"Behold, I show you the Last Man. "
To this passage we ought to compare the section entitled "On the Attenuating Virtue" in Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The last man is mentioned at the conclusion of subsection 2:
"We have placed our stools in the middJe"-that is what your smirk tells me-"equidistant from dying warriors and pleasure-loving sows. "
But this is mediocrity, even though it be called moderation.
However, the fact that the last man is cited as the most contemptible man at the outset of the work, the fact that Zarathustra gives vent to his feeling of nausea at the very beginning, has in terms of the work as a whole a still more profound sense. Zarathustra is here merely at the beginning of his path, upon which he is to become the one who he is. He himself must first of all learn; among other things he must learn how to feel contempt. As long as contempt derives from nausea in the face of what is despised it is not yet supreme contempt. Such contempt based on nausea is itself contemptible. "Out of love alone should my contempt and my admonishing bird soar in me, and not out of the swamp! " (Part III, "On Passing By"). "0 my soul, I taught you the contempt that does not come gnawing like a worm; I taught you the great, the loving contempt that loves most where it most feels con- tempt" (Part III, "On the Great Longing").
When Nietzsche creates poetically the figure of Zarathustra he projects the space of that "loneliest loneliness" cited at the end of The Gay Science, the loneliness that induces the thought of thoughts. Nietzsche does so in such a way that Zarathustra resolves to follow the direction which in The Gay Science is mentioned as merely one possi- bility among others, namely, that of "becoming beneficent toward life," that is, affirming life in its extreme anguish and in its most rollicking joy.
The communication of the thought most difficult to bear, the great- est burden, first of all requires the poetic creation of the figure who will think this thought and teach it. But in such creation the doctrine itself cannot be wholly disregarded. It is in fact portrayed in the third part of
The Second Communication of the Doctrine 35
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was composed in 1883-84. Neverthe- less, whenever the doctrine is directly introduced, it is invoked in a poetic manner-in similes that portray the sense and the truth of the doctrine in images, that is to say, in the realm of the sensuous, so that these images are sensuous-sensible. When Nietzsche pursues the sen- suous presentation of the thought of eternal return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he is following-among other essential motivations-a thought that he had jotted down during this same period (1882-84): "The more abstract the truth that one wishes to teach is, the more one
must begin by seducing the senses to it" (XII, 335).
However, we would be misinterpreting Zarathustra were we to ex-
trapolate the doctrine of eternal return from the work, even in the form of figures of speech, as its "theory. " For the most intrinsic task of this work is the· limning of the teacher himself and, through him, the teaching. At the same time, of course, it remains the case that the figure of the teacher can be comprehended only on the basis of the teaching, of what comes to light in its truth, and of the way in which the teaching-<:oncerning as it does beings as a whole-defines the Being of beings. The implication is that our interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a work can proceed only on the basis of Nietz- sche's metaphysics in its entirety.
After the publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche had oc- casion to rue the fact that he had risked the surrender of his most intimate and loftiest experiences. With the passage of time he learned to endure this anguish as well, knowing that the publication was a necessity and that miscomprehension is part and parcel of all such communication. Nietzsche once pinpointed this insight in the follow- ing note: "The necessary concealment of the wise man: his awareness that he is unconditionally not to be understood; his Machiavellian strategy; his icy rejection of the present" (XIII, 37; from the year 1884).
What is difficult to grasp about this work is not only its "content," if it has such, but also its very character as a work. Of course, we are quick to propose a ready-made explanation: here philosophical thoughts are presented poetically. Yet what we are now to call thinking and poetizing dare not consist of the usual notions, inasmuch as the work defines both of these anew, or rather, simply announces them.
36 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
And when we say that this work constitutes the center of Nietzsche's philosophy, it remains nonetheless true that the work stands outside the center, is "eccentric" to it. Finally, when we emphasize the fact that this work is the highest peak attained by Nietzsche's thinking, w~ forget--or, more precisely, we are unapprised of the fact-that precise- ly after the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, during the years 1884 to 1889, Nietzsche's thinking continued to take essential steps that brought him to new transformations of his thought.
Nietzsche provided the work entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a subtitle: "A Book for Everyone and No One. " What the book says is directed to all, to everyone. Yet no one ever truly has the right, as he is, to read the book, if he does not ahead of time and in the process of his reading undergo a metamorphosis. That means that the book is for no one of us as we happen to be at the moment. A book for everyone and no one, and consequently a book that can never, dare never, be "read" complacently.
All this must be said in order for us to acknowledge how very extrin- sic, how full of reservations, our own way of proceeding will remain. For our provisional characterization of the second communication of the doctrine of return will indicate only quite briefly those "figures of speech," which, more directly than the other utterances, treat of the thought of eternal return.
6. "On the Vision and the Riddle"
The eternal return of the same is discussed quite clearly and explicitly as the fundamental teaching in the section entitled "On Redemption," toward the end of Part II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written in the fall of 1883. But discussion of the doctrine flourishes principally in two sections of Part III of that work, composed in January 1884.
The first of these two sections bears the title, "On the Vision and the Riddle. "* It is not a matter of just any vision or just any riddle about something or other. It is a matter of that particular riddle with which Zarathustra comes face to face, the riddle in which being as a whole lies concealed as "the vision of the loneliest one," the riddle that becomes visible only "in our loneliest loneliness. " But why a "riddle"? What the riddle conceals and contains becomes open to view whenever it is surmised. Yet surmise is essentially different from calculation. The latter discloses step by step, along the guideline of some "thread" given beforehand, something unknown from what is known. But in surmise we take a leap, without guidelines, without the rungs of any ladder which anyone can clamber up anytime. To grasp the riddle is to leap, especially when the riddle involves being as a whole. Here there is no particular being or assortment of beings from which the whole could ever be disclosed. To make surmises on this riddle we must venture a journey into the open region of what in general is concealed, into that untraveled and uncharted region which is the unconcealment (aletheia) of what is most concealed. We must venture a journey into truth. Such riddling ventures the truth of being as a whole. t For Nietzsche knows that he occupies an exceptional
• The second of the two, "The Convalescent," is treated in section 8, below.
t Dieses Raten ist ein Wagen der Wahrheit des Seienden im Ganzen. On the word
38 THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
place in the history of philosophy. During the period of The Dawn,
about 1881, he jots down the following note (XI, 159):
What is novel about the position we take toward philosophy is a conviction that no prior age shared: that we do not possess the truth. All earlier men "possessed the truth," even the skeptics.
Corresponding to this is a later utterance which also characterizes Nietzsche's own thinking within the confines of the position he takes. In the plans for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (XII, 410) Nietzsche remarks, "We are conducting an experiment with truth. Perhaps mankind will perish as a result! Splendid! "
Nevertheless, we would misunderstand the riddle and our riddling on it abysmally if we were to believe that our task is to hit upon a solution that would dissolve all that is questionable. Riddling on this riddle should rather bring us to experience the fact that as a riddle it cannot be brushed aside.
Profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any sort of totalized view of the world. The magic of the opposite kind of thinking: not letting oneself be deprived of the stimulation in all that is enigmatic (WM, 470; from the years 1885-86).
And in The Gay Science (Book V, number 375, written 1887) Nietz- sche speaks of the "addiction to knowledge, which will not let the questionmark behind all things go at a bargain price. "
Thus we must take these words "riddle" and "riddling" in their es- sential importance and scope if we are to understand why Nietzsche grants Zarathustra himself the sobriquet "riddler" (Part Ill, "On Old and New Tablets," section 3). What sort of visage, then, does the riddle which Zarathustra tells have? Again we must pay heed to the way he tells it, to the where and when and to whom, if we are to estimate the what aright. Zarathustra tells the riddle aboard ship, un-
Wagen, related to way, weight, risk, hazard, venture and adventure, see Heidegger, "Wozu Dichter? " in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950), pp. 255 ff. , esp. pp. 259 and 275. See the English translation by Albert Hofstadter in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 99 ff. , esp. pp. 103-04 and 139-40. Heidegger's use of the word in his Nietzsche course antedates that in the Rilke lecture by almost a decade.
"On the Vision and the Riddle" 39
derway on a voyage to open, "unexplored" seas. And to whom does he tell it? Not to the other passengers but to the crew alone: "To you, bold searchers and researchers, and those that ever took to ship with cun- ning sails on terrifying seas. . . . " In the same vein we hear now one of the "Songs of the Outlaw Prince," appended to the second edition of The Gay Science in 1887:
Toward New Seas•
I will go there, and will confide In myself and in my steady grip. Open lies the sea; into the tide Plunges my Genuese ship.
All shines new before the mast! Space and time sleep at midday.
