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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
The two treatises The Overcoming of Metaphysics (1938/39) and The Essence of Nihilism (1946-1948) do not belong together temporally or formally, but they are brought together in this volume because they both treat a common thesis from the standpoint of different questions - namely, that nihilism is the essence of metaphysics in relation to the history of being. The overcoming of metaphysics is, for Heidegger, the decisive historical moment in which metaphysics is experienced as the history of the abandonment by being and overcome at the same time. The abandonment of beings by being reveals itself in the final and most extreme intensification of metaphysics as the "unconditioned predominance of manipulation." Manipulation means here the all-dominating producibility of beings. The Essence of Nihilism is linked to the idea of overcoming. This text deals with the attempt to elucidate the essence of nihilism through Nietzsche's words "God is dead." The killing of God springs from the will to power as the most extreme form of manipulation. The being of beings is grasped here as the positing of values emanating from the will to power. In this positing of being as value, it becomes clear that being itself remained unthought in metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysics as such is nihilism proper. These key works by Heidegger, now available in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and to anyone interested in Heidegger's thought.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Translator’s Introduction
The Overcoming of Metaphysics
The Overcoming of Metaphysics
1. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
2. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
3. The History of Beyng and the Overcoming of Metaphysics
4. The Vanishing of Being
5. Metaphysics and the Predominance of Beings: The Impotence and the Vanishing of Beyng
6. “Overcoming”
7. On the Formation of the Text
8. On the Correct Grasp of the Whole
9. The Overcoming of Metaphysics through Beyng
10. The Overcoming as the History of Beyng
11. The Other Inception
12. The Transition
13. Metaphysics and the Question of Possibility
14. The Question of Possibility as the Mode of the Question of Essence
15. The Truth of Beyng
16. “Truth” (Cf. Winter Semester 37/38)
17. Truth [Clearing of Beyng (Event) and the Correctness of Representing]
18. The Essence of History
19. On the Overcoming of Metaphysics
20. Correctness
21. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
22. The Overcoming of “Metaphysics”
23. Overcoming
24. “Overcoming” and “the Human”
25. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
26. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
27. The Overcoming of Metaphysics at its End
28. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
29. Over-coming is only in the Other Inception
30. “Worldview” – “Ideology”
31. The End of Metaphysics
32. The End of Metaphysics
33. The Clearing of Beyng
34. Nietzsche and the End of Western Metaphysics
35. The End of Metaphysics as Consummation in the Unconditional Corrupted Essence. (The Metaphysics of Nietzsche)
36. The Metaphysics of Nietzsche as the Consummation of Metaphysics
37. The Consummation of Metaphysics: The Positing of Value as Nihilism
38. The Consummation of Metaphysics Comes to Fruition
39. Beyng – (Event)
40. Metaphysics
41. Metaphysics
42. The Consummation of Modern Metaphysics
43. Metaphysics as the History of Beyng
44. Metaphysical Errancy
45. Metaphysics and the “Universal”
46. Metaphysics (cf. “Basic Words”)
47. Basic concepts (of Metaphysics)
48. The Essence of Metaphysics in Terms of the History of Beyng
49. Metaphysics and “Physics”
50. The History of Being (The Overcoming of Metaphysics) – Being and Time (The Question of Being)
51. Metaphysics
52. “The Metaphysical”
53. The Role of “Science” and Philosophy as Metaphysics
54. On What is Metaphysics?
55. On What is Metaphysics? The Nothing
56. On the Essence of Ground: Ground – Freedom – Truth – Beyng
57. “Ground” and “Truth”
58. Projection and Eventuation [Er-eignung]
59. “Ground”
60. “Ground”
61. On the Essence of Ground
62. The Differentiation
63. Metaphysics and the Differentiation
64. Metaphysics
The Overcoming of Metaphysics I. Sequel
I. The Differentiation
65. The Differentiation
66. The Differentiation (and the Question concerning the Nothing)
67. The Differentiation (Beyng is the Nothing)
68. Being and Beings – Metaphysics – the Differentiation
69. Differentiation and Event
70. Differentiating Being from Beings and the Distinctness of the Two
71. The Differentiation and What is Borne Out
72. Metaphysics (“Being” – an Empty Word)
73. The Differentiation
74. Being and Beyng
75. The Differentiation – What is Borne Out
76. The Differentiation
II. On the Concept of Metaphysics
77. Metaphysics and the Thinking that is Responsive to the History of Beyng
78. The Overcoming of “Metaphysics”
79. The Transition of Metaphysics within the History of Beyng into the Other Inception of the Truth of Beyng
80. The A priori
81. Metaphysics and the A priori
82. The “A priori” – Character of “Being”
83. Metaphysics and the Differentiation
84. Metaphysics
85. “Metaphysics”
86. Being Conscious and Being (Modern Metaphysics)
87. Metaphysics and “Theology”
88. The Relation to Being within the History supported by Metaphysics
89. “Metaphysics” and the Thinking of Beyng
90. Metaphysics as Theology
91. Metaphysics and Modern Humanity
92. Metaphysics and “Theology”
93. Nietzsche and Heraclitus (“Metaphysics” and the First Inception of Philosophy)
94. The History of Beyng: “Overcoming”
95. Kant and Metaphysics
96. “Metaphysics” (“Subjectivity” and Substantiality)
97. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
98. The Essence of Metaphysics and its Overcoming
99. The Consummation of Metaphysics
100. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
101. The Consummation of Metaphysics
102. Metaphysics – Consummation (Inversion into the most Extreme)
103. The Interpretation of the Cogito
III. Art and Metaphysics
104. In the Lectures on the Origin of the Work of Art
105. “Art”
106. When Metaphysics Ends, so too does Art
IV. Metaphysics and “Worldview”
107. Metaphysics and Worldview
108. Worldview is the Perishing of Metaphysics
109. The Consummation of Metaphysics (Nietzsche)
110. “Worldview”
111. “Worldview” and “Philosophy”
112. “World-view” (“Life”)
113. Metaphysics – Worldview: The True, the Good, the Beautiful
114. Metaphysics and Worldview and the Thinking Responsive to the History of Beyng.
115. Metaphysics and Worldview
116. Metaphysics and Worldview
V. Being and Time in the History of Beyng Insofar as This History is Experienced as the Overcoming of Metaphysics
117. Being and Time and Metaphysics
118. Time and Eternity
119. On the History of the Concept of Time
120. The Essence of Time
121. Time and Being
122. Being and Time
123. Being and Time
124. Being and Time
125. “The Sense of Being”
126. Being and Time
127. Being and Time
128. Being, the Understanding of Being and Beyng
129. Da-sein and “Care” – “Attunement”
130. Being and Time
The Overcoming of Metaphysics II. Sequel
I. The Consummation of Metaphysics the Abandonment by Being and Devastation
131. Metaphysics and “Science”
132. At the End of Metaphysics
133. Inception and Metaphysics
134. The Essence of the Consummation of Metaphysics in terms of the History of Beyng
135. The Consummation of “Modernity” within the History of Beyng
136. The Nothing and Devastation
137. Abandonment by Being
138. Abandonment by Being
139. The Abandonment of Beings by Being
140. Manipulation – Technology – Beyng
141. “Technology”
142. Manipulation
II. The Origin of Metaphysics in the History of Beyng the Origin of Metaphysics and the Essence of Truth in the First Inception
143. Overcoming
144. One of the Characteristic Features of Metaphysics
145. The Age of “Theologies”
146. The Essence of Metaphysics: Theology and Mathematics
147. “Truth” and Metaphysics (Grades of the True)
148. On the Essential Determination of Modern Metaphysics in its Consummation
149. If Being is “Will”
150. Metaphysics and “System”
151. The A priori
152. The First Inception and the Origin of Metaphysics
153. Being as ἰδέα and the Collapse of ἀλήθεια
154. ἡ τοῦ αγαθοῦ ἰδέα: The Beginning of Metaphysics and the Crash and Collapse of the Ungrounded ἀλήθεια
155. How Metaphysics Begins and Peters Out
156. “Watching” and “Thinking” (The End of Metaphysics)
157. The History of Being and Metaphysics
158. “Worldview” and “Metaphysics”
159. Animal rationale – absolutum (causa)
160. Truth as Certainty: Modern Metaphysics (Leibniz)
III. Metaphysics the Individual Basic Positions of Metaphysics
161. From Whence the Appearance that the Thinking Responsive to the History of Beyng is Only a Modification of Hegel’s Metaphysics?
162. Hegel’s Concept of History
163. Beyng – Event – Inception (Meant from the Standpoint of “Metaphysics”)
164. Beings as a Whole and their Entirety (Metaphysics and Beyng)
The Essence of Nihilism
Appendix
Addendum to: The Essence of Nihilism
Editor’s Afterword
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Translator’s Introduction
Begin Reading
Appendix
Editor’s Afterword
End User License Agreement
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Metaphysics and Nihilism
1. The Overcoming of Metaphysics2. The Essence of Nihilism
Martin Heidegger
Edited by Hans-Joachim Friedrich
Translated by Arun Iyer
polity
Originally published in German as Metaphysik und Nihilismus. 1. Die Überwindung der Metaphysik. 2. Das Wesen der Nihilismus © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 1999. 2nd revd. edn. 2018.
This English edition © Polity Press, 2022
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4006-8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939601
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com
Translators’ Introduction
This book in front of you is a translation of the second revised edition of volume 67 of Martin Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe titled Metaphysics and Nihilism. The volume contains two texts spanning ten years: The Overcoming of Metaphysics (1938/39) and The Essence of Nihilism (1946–1948).
It is clear for us to see, even as the editor informs us, that the two texts constituting this volume are formally different. The first text written in 1938/39 is part of the Ereignis-writings accompanying The Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), which exhibit the immediacy of thought in its emergence and do not possess the polish of a finished written text. We cannot say that of the second text, which is a polished piece of writing, two-thirds of which, as the editor points out, was revised by Heidegger and published under the title “Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being” in the second of the two Nietzsche volumes from 1961.
In abiding by Heidegger’s wish to have the reader confront his text directly, this translation has eschewed any mediation in the form of a critical apparatus. There is no index. The only interventions made in this translation are to provide English translations of Heidegger’s foreign language citations in footnotes in curly brackets, indicated by the abbreviation TN for Translator’s Note, and the original German pagination, which is inserted into the text in square brackets.
A translation is a set of decisions that can always be challenged. In this sense, it is like a performance of a piece of classical music. Just like every performance of a piece, every translation of a text is different, and yet, all the different translations of a text, like all the different performances of a piece, are one and the same. For they are translations of one and the same text and performances of one and the same piece. Every translation has to take some decisions and follow the linguistic consequences of those decisions in the conviction that they render the text being translated into the language of the translation, as it is meant to be read, in much the same way as every musical performance has to take decisions and abide by the musical consequences of those decisions in the conviction that they render the piece as it is meant to be heard.
The following are some of the important decisions I have made as a translator:
1. Ereignis and Er-eignis and related words: Both words have been translated as “event,” with the hyphenated German placed in brackets next to its English translation. I have avoided terms like “appropriative event” or “appropriating event” to translate Er-eignis for they end up misleading the reader into seeing acquisition and possession as the primary sense of these words, when in fact they are not. In addition to this, there are reasons of elegance and readability, which I believe are important virtues that aid the understanding of a text, especially a difficult text like this one.
2. Wesen and Wesung: Wesen has been translated as “to essence” and Wesung as the gerund “essencing.” In this, I believe I have followed Heidegger’s own directions in The Essence of Nihilism (p. 192):
… “[E]ssence” does not mean here what previous reflections unthinkingly assumed. “Essence” does not mean an essentiality, which as something non-sensuous and abstract floats over the actual understood as the sensibly perceptible. “Essence” thought verbally, and, that is to say, experienced in thinking, is the essencing of being itself, which leads all beings into becoming beings as such.
The translations are awkward, as the English language does not grant any conventional space to verbalize the noun essence or to use it as a gerund. The word, as we know, comes from the Latin essentia, which in turn renders the Greek οὐσία. The prefix “esse-” comes from the Latin esse meaning “to be” and the suffix “-ence,” according to Klein’s Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1971), denotes action, process, state or quality and comes from the Latin -entia. So, one can see a verbal sense in the English word “essence” if one notes that the suffix “-ence” does also denote action and process in addition to a state and quality. The DeutschesWörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm1 tells us that the verbal meaning of wesen is leben und weben, which means “to exist, to be there (often concretely elaborated) in a broadly inclusive sense of an intensive and concept-specific life-expression and activity.” Now, Leben means “to live” and weben, it tells us, has three connotations: “to move back and forth,” “to show oneself and be active” and “to waft or wave.” In fact, this mellifluous combination of the words leben and weben was introduced by Luther in his translation of the Acts of the Apostles 17: 28, which in English reads: “For in him, we live, move, and have our being.”2 Luther uses weben to translate the Greek κινούμεθα. Heidegger in these texts being translated makes it clear that he wishes to use the word wesen in a way that reminds us of the Latin noun essentia, understood as essentiality but, at the same time, shows us what is overlooked when we are transfixed by the static nature of the noun, namely, the essential moment of beings becoming beings. He does this by verbalizing the very same noun, which in the English language can be executed only in all its awkwardness.
3. Seyngeschichtliches/geschichtliches Denken: Seynsgeschichte translates to “history of beyng.” Geschichtliches Denken is easily translated as “historical thinking,” which means thinking in terms of history or thinking in a manner that is responsive to history. However, the transition from geschichtliches Denken to seynsgeschichtliches Denken is not grammatically and semantically possible in the English language. Moreover, it is necessary to translate seynsgeschichtliches Denken in a way that preserves the translation of Seynsgeschichte as “history of beyng,” if the translation has to convey to an English-speaking reader, the meaning it possesses in German. I have done this by translating seynsgeschichtliches Denken as “thinking responsive to the history of beyng.” Yes, one can legitimately complain that this is an inelegant paraphrase of a compact and self-evident term. But in this particular case, I believe that the need to convey the precise meaning of the term outweighs the need for elegance.
4. Machenschaft has been translated as “manipulation.” It is usually translated as “machination.” But, in the English language, “machination” always carries a morally negative connotation. Hence it is always used in English as a term of moral condemnation. But the German word Machenschaft, on the other hand, does not always carry a negative connotation. The Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm tells us that Machenschaft is a southern German word meaning making, ordering, determining, erecting, which requires further qualifications to give it an explicitly morally negative sense. Moreover, Heidegger is adamant that the terms that he employs in his writings on being do not carry any moral connotation and are not used for the purposes of moral judgment. It is for these reasons that I have used the English word “manipulation” to translate Machenschaft. Manipulation does carry a morally negative connotation but it does not possess only such a connotation. It can also be used in a morally neutral sense to mean adjusting, operating, and working on something in order to make it work for our purpose. Heidegger’s use of the word Machenschaft carries precisely this sense of being able to work on things and transform them into things that serve our needs, and viewing all beings as that which can be transformed into serving our needs without any explicit moral judgment on our needs and on our capacity to transform things to suit our needs.
In keeping with the wishes of the publisher, I have attempted to make the translation stand as a text on its own, which can be read and understood without referring to the original German text. This is of course particularly difficult to do in the case of Heidegger, who uses every resource the German language provides him with to express his difficult and highly original intuitions. However, this translation has, as far as possible, avoided the practice of placing the original German words next to their English counterparts in brackets, except in those cases where it is absolutely necessary for the reader to see the etymological kinship between the German words not reflected in the English words chosen to translate them, and there are quite a few instances where this has been done. But, in most instances, I have wagered that the specific significance that attaches to the etymological kinship between the German words will come through in the English language in the way that I have translated those words and the sentences containing those words.
Mumbai, July 2022Arun Iyer
1.
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm
, digitized version in
Wörterbuchnetz
of Trier Center for Digital Humanities.
2.
The Holy Bible: King James Version (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
The Overcoming of Metaphysics
The Overcoming of Metaphysics
“Transition” and “overcoming” are inadequate determinations of the history of beyng (conceived historiographically and technically) even though in what follows “overcoming” is construed historically.
[5] 1. The Overcoming of Metaphysics1
We must be able to experience: The abandonment of beings by being in the primacy given to beings; the groundlessness of truth (of its essence as the truth of beyng); the necessity of grounding its essence; the abolition of the “human” (οὐσία and animal rationale; subjectivity and the human being as “subject,” the will to power, anthropomorphism – that anthropology is to be first grasped as that which is no longer equal to anthropomorphism and which employs it only superficially); truth as clearing of beyng; the history of beyng.
*
Introduction as Preview of the Individual Parts (cf. p. 19f.)
What is metaphysics?
On the essence of ground (truth and the differentiation)
On the essence of truth
On the origin of the
work of art
understood from the standpoint of metaphysics comprehended in terms of the history of beyng. (“art” –possible only within metaphysics, “art” and “poetry”)
Laying the ground for the modern world-picture through metaphysics (the metaphysics of subjectivity) (cf. the guiding statements on the essence of modern science)
2
The dominance of logic (essence of logic, summer semester 1935),
3
cf. 1.
Metaphysics as physics (Aristotle,
Physics
B. 1).
7.a The beginning of metaphysics
[6] 8. The inceptual φύσις, Anaximander – Heraclitus ((πόλεμος aphorism), Aristotle Metaphysics, Θ 10 (τὸ ὂν ὡς ἀληθές),4 Parmenides τὸ αὐτό
9. The inversion of metaphysics (will to power, Nietzsche’s metaphysics)
10. The essence of technology (τέχνη – machine technology), “end of art”
11. The overcoming and Da-sein (Being and Time and the concept of existence)
12. The history of beyng
*
Who are we? We are the ones who, having our inception in the history of beyng, experience the overcoming [Überwindung] of metaphysics, join into the winch of this overcoming in order to get over [verwinden] what is ungrounded and disjointed in the transition.
What all of us experience but none of us can know is this: Unleashing beings into being as unconditional manipulability with unlimited reach. Unleashing them brings about the total abandonment of beings by the truth of beyng, a truth that can be grounded.
The metaphysical differentiation: that is to say, the differentiation that joins together everything that pertains to the essence of metaphysics – this differentiation and the “truth” of beyng.
The differentiation (cf. basic words) – of beings and being. Its ground and its truth.
The decision: whether we are made appropriate for the overcoming through beyng or whether we, fixating on beings, unleashed into unconditional manipulability, also become fully forgetful of being.
Whether this ungrounded differentiation and what it passes off as [7] decided, has ungrounded and ungrasped predominance and power or the truth of beyng is grounded as the tranquillity of the event.
The tranquil grounding of tranquillity, which does not exude power and does not even reign.
The separation of beings and being, to which all metaphysics is subordinated without decision, till it reaches the fulfillment and consummation of its own essence: in keeping with this separation, beings gain primacy and being is allowed to become something supplemental and merely general.
Subjectivity and anthropomorphism (cf. Mindfulness;5 the grounding of the modern world picture through metaphysics, Remark 8 on Protagoras and Descartes;6 cf. basic words: Subjectum).
Truth as “unconditional” assuring of beings as such – the empowering of beings as a whole and the predominance of manipulation. Subjectivity and anthropomorphism (cf. Schelling lecture, summer semester 36, Addendum).7
The abandonment of beings by being – the forgottenness of beyng – blindness.
To simply speak of the overcoming as the history of beyng (essencing of truth – Da-sein).
To allow one to see indirectly the hidden coherence and the grades and aberrations of what is inevitably metaphysical, from the history of beyng.
Overcoming becomes commensurate to Dasein historically in an abandoning of metaphysics (de-tachment), but this abandonment is in itself a placing-back of metaphysics into its essence founded in the history of beyng.
Abandoning on the basis of being eventuated [Er-eignung] into the other inception; no bridges.
[8] 2. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
The essence of history can only be experienced “historically” by belonging to it, that is to say, in the impoverishment from poverty, that is to say, the essence of history can be eventuated [er-eignet] only by history itself. The knowledge “of” the overcoming of metaphysics (cf. there) is indispensable to this experience.
This overcoming stems from beyng itself and takes its inception in the abandonment of beings by being, which intones a fundamental attunement, from which the knower first emerges as the one who inquires after the truth of beyng.
Overcoming is the distinctive essencing of the truth of beyng in contrast to the omission of its grounding in the first inception; overcoming lets the essential consequence of this omission become manifest.
Through the overcoming as history, metaphysics itself emerges out of its semblance to a mere opinion and doctrine into the decision of the difference between being and beings, a difference which has fallen away from the inceptual essence of being (φύσις).
3. The History of Beyng and the Overcoming of Metaphysics
are not be linked to reason and world-process; they simply cannot be thought “metaphysically.”
The uniqueness, rareness, estrangement, momentariness of this history; the temporal course of this history; the long stretches of time during which nothing happens and everything is surrendered to the occurrence of beings.
Time, which takes the essence of beyng – its own truth – into the ground, which is the abyss.
Beyng – in its truth sets the essence of history free – wrests itself from the predominance of beings and thus from the metaphysics, which is grounded upon this predominance and which seems to perpetuate this predominance by itself.
[9] Beyng – as the risk of thought – of any thought and therefore even of the thought that does not make representing the guiding thread for the projection of beings upon beingness.
Overcoming – not abolition and putting behind us –through “refutation,” for instance; the irrefutability of any “philosophy.”
The winch – in the clearing – the disclosure of the refusal (event).
In contrast to (1) (cf. 5ff.) completely from beyng, while in (1)from the most comprehensive deterioration – cognition of beings (positive); (2) (cf. pp. 7–8) neither the one [from beings] nor the other [beyng] and yet at the same time both; (2) what “is” metaphysics – the relinquishing of history into the abandonment of beings by being; uniqueness of history; (1) persistent juncture – and yet still arbitrarily authoritative.
Over-coming – toward persistence in the truth of beyng, i.e., toward Da-sein; over-coming through beyng itself. For “our part” only preparation of a preparedness for the event. Giving oneself over questioningly as displacing oneself into the fundamental attunement of active hearkening.
4. The Vanishing of Being
How often it seems as though being would never be able to accomplish something against beings and for beings as it vanishes immediately into a mere thought, which becomes completely ineffective when admitted as a means of ordering (categories). If this “seeming” is not a true disclosure, what is beyng even supposed “to accomplish?”
This seeming is not accidental; it springs from the fact that beings are already reckoned to be effective (capable of accomplishing) and the same claim is made of being.
[10] 5. Metaphysics and the Predominance of Beings: The Impotence and the Vanishing of Beyng
Not only the habituation to metaphysics but also what is inceptual in the first inception establishes an unavoidable predominance of beings. Θύσις in withdrawal releases “beings” toward presence and thus toward their own arbitrary authority. The withdrawal – how and why? To what extent?
The presence and the appreciation of what is at hand. To experience being and know of it only from the standpoint of beings in its orientation toward beings (cf. 6. “Overcoming”, pp. 14–15), is this not entirely in accordance with the “sense” of beyng? – That it is in this way forsaken in its withdrawal!
Has this “from the standpoint of ‘beings’” not already forgotten being? Does it not keep to a course of oblivion, so that this course that forgets cannot be reversed anymore, ever since being disclosed itself and placed the human being under interrogation.
Must beings first testify in favor of being for the latter to become worthy of question?
This happens in such a way that it is not the metaphysical jointure itself but this jointure in its lack of an inception and an end that holds on to the question-worthiness of beyng in its disavowal. Could we question beyng from a standpoint other than that of beings? Certainly not – yet, what does “from the standpoint of beings” mean here? First and foremost: A being is experienced as such by the very fact that we name it. Yet, in an equally decisive way this means: Being is, even if not grasped, pro-jected; and thus, we have the possibility of something that is essentially undecided, that we must not take negatively, but must bring it out in its veiled fullness into a question (the differentiation).
6. “Overcoming”
“To overcome” – to put something behind or to bring something under; either just putting it behind so that it is abolished, or bringing it under, so that what is overcome [11], having been transformed through the overcoming, is at once assimilated in the overcoming other.
The overcoming must grasp itself beforehand and step into the essential. It must at the same time attempt to constitute that which is to be overcome as such. So, in Being and Time the metaphysical question of being is “repeated” [wiederholt] by means of the question concerning the “sense of being.” It is in fact retrieved [wieder geholt] and as a more original question, to boot, which is also asked in a completely different way. This question goes back to the ground of the hitherto existing question of being (“fundamental ontology”); this “ontology” and “metaphysics” are thereby overcome, transformed into something else – more clearly, the transition to something else is accomplished in all decisiveness, but at the same time the will to reclaim tradition in its essence for the future, is still alive. Hence the endeavor to designate even the other question with titles that are still prevalent. Firstly, this endeavor does not remain a mere matter of “labeling.” But it rather impedes the decisive development into the other question. This is because this question just does not unfold in the manner of an always determinate execution of a plan. Rather, unfolding here means: coming to terms with the unavoidable transformation of this question itself until we come to realize that the active questioning of the truth of being may simply no longer be accomplished and interpreted from any kind of “perspective” on the hitherto existing question of being; indeed, that this very question already puts philosophy itself into question and must move in an even more essential realm.
Speaking from within the history of beyng, overcoming as the history of beyng; not the planned accomplishment of the human being; the only task that remains for human beings, and that too only when they are wrenched into the transformation of their essence, is to be prepared for the transition into the overcoming. How does the overcoming arise in such a history? Overcoming of the abandonment of beings by being; the abandonment by being is however the work of beyng and at the same time the most extreme form of metaphysics, whose final upsurge is to be experienced as the history of the unconditional predominance of manipulation. In the instant [12] that metaphysics is overcome through beyng, things get serious with philosophy because a decisive moment in the history of beyng arrives; philosophy cannot wish to console itself with its knowledge, cannot wish to seek solace, cannot wish to traffic in such solace.
The course of the first attempt goes like this: To begin with, the first step of overcoming and its preparation (Being and Time), then the determination of what is to be overcome (What is Metaphysics?)1 and the (Kant-book);2 that which is to be overcome must now be placed into its essence, which has been veiled so far; it must be elevated to its essentiality; only then does the overcoming itself first receive the essential resistance into itself, to be able thereby to transform into its own essence. Thus, we need not only carry out the overcoming, as if it were from now on the only clear and irrevocable task awaiting fulfillment. It is necessary above all not to resist the essential transformation of the overcoming itself and not to succumb to the danger of restricting the overcoming to the realms and the manner of thinking of that which is to be overcome – metaphysics – only expanding metaphysics, and accordingly applying metaphysics to itself and turning metaphysics on itself – “metaphysics of metaphysics.”
Something similar, as Kant’s approach evinces, is essential within the realm of metaphysics and leads, where the seriousness and sobriety of Kantian thought reigns, to an abyss; nevertheless, through the pre-dominance of metaphysics itself the essential other way of questioning is not only suppressed, as if it were already there, but also expelled altogether to a place outside the circle of what is possible. Kant’s critique of speculative metaphysics is so little an overcoming of metaphysics that it rather only now provides metaphysics in its modern essence with its opening credits. Whether in the aftermath of Kant’s step, it is absolute logic that defines metaphysics (or, even as a countermeasure, Schelling’s positive [13] philosophy), or whether, as in the nineteenth and the twentieth century, metaphysics splits itself into an academic ontology and an “inductive” metaphysics that propagates itself on the basis of the sciences and their “results,” does not in the least change the predominance of the fundamentally metaphysical character of what remains of “philosophy,” which continues to assert itself and whose metaphysical character is no longer questioned.
When rightly seen from the standpoint of the essence of that which happens in the “overcoming” (the active grounding of the truth of beyng – the history of beyng), it is no more an endeavor to attempt thinking, but the history of beyng. That is why everything depends upon accomplishing the leap into this history and to preserve it in its essence: to know “overcoming” in an essentially different way and to join its pathways.
“Overcoming” here does not mean an academic change of opinion and doctrine through the assembly of such opinions and doctrines. It is rather the historical transformation of the essence of beyng out of beyng itself – belongingness to this transformation from the grounds of an essential transformation of the human being. (Clearing of the history of beyng).
Because it is about an overcoming of “metaphysics” conceived in this way, this overcoming cannot be thought along the lines of the metaphysical concept of “sublation,” which Hegel posited as the law of movement of “history.” This is a history of the coming-to-itself of absolute knowledge and of what it knows, from the essence of transcendental subjectivity–objectivity.
Disregarding completely the essential distinctness of historicity, which is determined as the essencing of the truth of being, overcoming is neither a tollere*, nor an elevare*, nor a conservare*, nor is it all of these in their unity; only in negation does there exist a certain overlap with it: overcoming does not merely abolish but just as little is it only the saving of what is past. It is rather the freeing of an essence (of ἀλήθεια and φύσις) that cannot be grounded inceptually, through which what appears to be only a past is elevated into its essence (disclosure of the self-concealing [14] as such) and acquires the character of what was, which cannot be sublated in what belongs to the future, but which, to the contrary, departing entirely away from what belongs to the future, places itself back into itself as the inceptual. (cf. 23. Overcoming, 28. The Overcoming of Metaphysics)
Everything pertaining to Hegel’s “sublating” is taking over and taking on. Overcoming is (here thought as) getting over the pastness of what is overcome – restoring it into the inception of the inception – getting rid of and casting off all historical and inherited strands, which still connect what is overcome to what follows after and which are thus tied up into its essence. (cf. 29. Over-coming is only in the other inception, 31. The End of Metaphysics)
The first inception is not a level, the immediate, that requires mediation to reach its truth. It is rather of a unique essence, encompassing all inceptions – even that one, which as omission – essential forgetting – of the first inception is not experienced. This omission (cf. Winter semester lecture 37/38)3 testifies only to the unfathomable and to the essence of the first inception that is not be recovered again in any subsequent inception.
The decisive aspect of the overcoming lies in a rift that is opened between the beingness of beings and the truth of beyng. This is a rift from which what is separated first comes into its own, without metaphysics perhaps being able to be “sublated” into the thinking responsive to the history of beyng. It is from this point on that the differentiation between beyng and beings is first grounded in an abyss as that which belongs to the history of beyng.
“Overcoming” [Überwindung] could be spoken of as a word related to the history of beyng, which thinks the winding [Windung] as the winding [Windung] of the winch [Winde]. The winch lifts high – pressing at the same time into the ground; winding as lifting into another essence (belonging to the history of beyng) and at the same time the active grounding of the ground.
The winding [Windung] is a rotating [Drehung] and turning [Wendung]; insofar as the winch [Winde] is embedded in the essence of metaphysics itself – insofar as it emerges from [15] its hidden ground (beyng), metaphysics is elevated into the clearing of beyng and grounded (as that which was).
Metaphysics here means the jointure of the opening of beings into the openness of beingness (constancy of presence).
The over-coming [Überwindung] means this winding [Windung], which transforms into something that is not metaphysics any more: the winding [Windung] as essencing of beyng.
The over-coming belongs to the history of beyng, arises from this history as its first clearing, is not an accomplishment in the manner of a modification in the teachings and doctrines of philosophy by other such teachings and doctrines. The overcoming is that history of beyng, which first grants philosophy a possibility to be (the question of being as the question of beyng). The preparation of philosophy as human resolve is only capable here of the preparation for the preparedness for taking history over in a grounded truth. Winding [Winding] is the essential turning [Wesenswendung] of beingness into beyng as the disclosure of the refusal (event).
The winch – and its needfulness lies in the event-character of beyng itself. (cf. below, p.15; 23. Overcoming, p. 31f.)
“Metaphysics” in its consummation becomes a consolidation of the abandonment of beings by being in the predominance of manipulation. (On the essence of manipulation cf. Mindfulness4 and Ponderings XIII5).
Over-coming the abandonment by being – as the rotation of abandonment toward the refusal and its disclosure.
“Consummation” of metaphysics – means the fulfillment of its essence; consummation here does not mean perfection in the sense of the exclusion of that which corrupts the essence, but rather the unfolding inclusion of that which corrupts the essence; the corrupted essence of metaphysics consists in the fact that in metaphysics – in the question of being supported by it – being simply does not acquire dominance in its question-worthiness. [16] Neither being nor beings become questionable, rather everything is salvaged in the unquestionableness of what is feasible through manipulation. “Ontology” is as obvious a task as zoology is research into animals.
In metaphysics, what holds sway is the projection upon beingness from the standpoint of beings (cf. 5. Metaphysics and the Predominance of Beings); from this point on, being is misplaced. No “proximity” to beings, no such “animated” engagement with beings ever reaches the essencing of beyng.
The overcoming of metaphysics is a distinctive historical moment – distinguished by the fact that the essence of history first emerges in its individuality and becomes decisive for the truth of beyng in this overcoming and as this overcoming. For, history is the essencing of the truth of beyng.
The overcoming of metaphysics is the first historical revelation of the essence of history.
To overcome metaphysics is to ground its essence in such a way that the truth of beyng is experienced and withstood as the abyss. The groundlessness of metaphysics is the avoidance of this abyss that remains unfamiliar to metaphysics, an avoidance which is essential to metaphysics and thus continuous with it. There is an avoidance even of the unfamiliar and this is the most disastrous.
Overcoming metaphysics – this might appear like a transcendence of what is the highest in metaphysics – what it soon called θεῖον and thought theo-logically; and then for this reason, we have the introduction of the Christian God, fittingly equipped with reason in order then to conceive of it secularly and emptily as the unconditional and absolute.
Overcoming metaphysics – does this not mean creating “new,” different gods? But who creates them?
Or indeed going beyond gods – that we no longer need them, in turn to be enslaved more than ever by such a lack of need, to what is past, unfamiliar and historiographically exhausted?
Or is over-coming completely different – not an elevated-beyond of a super-metaphysics, but an acceptance and recognition of a lapse – something very slight and peculiar and [17] simple, whose continued existence makes “demands” on the more essential capacities of the human being than the ascent into the making and despising of gods, both of which belong together, balancing each other out.
Overcoming metaphysics: Overcoming the submissiveness of being toward beings through being itself, insofar as its truth, as that which is proper to its essence, is eventuated into an urgency, making it necessary to throw oneself off into this history of overcoming. (cf. above, p. 14).
However, to throw oneself off is to already be thrown by beyng itself. This throwing oneself off is announced in the abandonment of beings by being as self-denial. It is announced everywhere and every time the abandonment by being, reflected in the supremacy of manipulation, disturbs [entsetzt] human beings, without their being able to know from where this disturbance arises (from beyng and the essence of its ungrounded truth) and into what it displaces [versetzt] them (into the transformation of their essence toward the guardianship of the truth of beyng).
As soon as this disturbance touches human beings, who are mired in historiography, they will be compelled to begin questioning and doubting, which will initially seem like a historiographical analysis and determination of their situation. This historiographical dismembering that lusts after situations is so far from all reflection that it cannot even be rejected as the opposite and corrupted essence of reflection. However, this dis-turbance affects human beings so essentially that they must become aware of their relationship to being (understanding of being as the ungrounded essence of what is known to date as “reason”), whose essence they bear unbeknown to themselves. If that happens it can awaken the experience of the shattering, initiated by being itself, of the abandonment of beings by being, and, displacing beings as a whole into another unprecedented question-worthiness from the essence of beyng and through this essence. This dis-turbance pulls human beings out of the manipulation of beings and displaces them into the ungroundedness of the truth of being, such that they “know” not yet what is “happening” to them and how. In the experience of fading away and of the indifference [18] perhaps still persisting and of the mere “calculability” of all goals, we can recognize and register the mere superficiality of all goal setting and the calculative apparatus of reckoning with just useful “facts.” (On as-tonishment and dis-turbance as the fundamental attunements of the first and the other inception cf. lecture winter semester 37/38.)6
This experience, which is actively compelled by beyng through disturbing human beings from where they have been so far into something ungrounded, but more essential than everything before, can be prepared by various forms and modes of acceptance, although it can never just be engendered by oneself.
The overcoming of metaphysics is the transfer [Übereignung] of the truth of beyng through beyng into the urgency of the grounding, in which transfer the essence of history is eventuated [ereignet] and the abandonment of beings by being, the final form of the predominance of beings over being, is taken back into the inceptual nature of the first inception. This happens without disrupting the inevitability of the primacy of beings in the ordinary behavior of human beings. This inevitable aspect is based upon beyng’s refusal of itself, as a consequence of which it unleashes beings in their forward thrust. This forward thrust appears, within the metaphysically determined history of human beings, as a distinctive predominance of beings themselves over “being.”
The overcoming of metaphysics does not bring about the disappearance of the metaphysical determinateness of history, which is precisely this primacy [of beings over being], but rather grounds it as something that is no longer. Even after the overcoming, the question of being always appears to question from the standpoint of beings and the questioners too experience themselves as beings.
In essential history no “interests” dominate; essential history does not “depend upon something,” but rather the event [Er-eignis] attunes [stimmt] beings into the truth of beyng, placing everything back upon the [19] determination [Be-stimmung]. In this way we have the possibility of a pure “happening,” which inceptually subordinates all intentions and deeds to itself.
The question: Why are there beings at all rather than nothing? is considered a fundamental metaphysical question, which is answered metaphysically in such a way that the result is an explanation of beings from a cause and a ground. The “are” pertains to the thatness of beings – the thatness of their presence-at-hand, for which an explanation furnishes a justification that takes the form of a reduction to another – something – a being that produces itself.
However, the thinking responsive to the history of beyng implicitly already asks this metaphysical question already differently insofar as it does not place beings under an explanation but thinks beyond the primacy of beings, that they keep thrusting forward as such. The answer emerges from the knowledge of the abandonment of beings by being, which itself springs from the essencing of beyng as refusal: Beyng concedes to beings, abandoned by beyng, a predominance and deprives even the nothing of the knowledge that it essentially belongs to beyng as refusal.
7. On the Formation of the Text
No one who re-flects should be spared the very same routes along which the original thinker has to travel. That is why the versions of the lectures and essays not published so far were reviewed once more and what was often incomprehensible in them due to too succinct a formulation was elaborated.
