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History and the Meaning of Life: On Heidegger’s Interpretations of Nietzsche’s 2nd Untimely Meditation

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Heidegger in the Twenty-First Century

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 80))

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Abstract

Heidegger’s recently published 1938 seminars on Nietzsche’s 2nd Untimely Mediation constitute an essential element of his Auseinandersetzung or ‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche’s thinking. These seminars are all the more crucial in that within them Heidegger returns to a text—the 2nd Untimely Meditation entitled On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life—that he had positively appropriated in the 1920s, particularly within Being and Time. The essay examines the revision in Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche’s text, and shows how it turns on the notion of life—a notion that remains unaccounted for within the 2nd Untimely Meditation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Otto Pöggeler, Friedrich Nietzsche und Martin Heidegger (Bonn: Bouvier, 2002), 9.

  2. 2.

    For the relation between ‘Destruktion’ and ‘Auseinandersetzung,’ compare especially GA 65, § 90f. and GA 66, § 14f.

  3. 3.

    For such an approach, see, for example, Jacques Taminiaux, ‘La présence de Nietzsche dans Sein und Zeit,’ in Lectures de l’ontologie fondamentale (Grenoble: Millon, 1995), 231–252.

  4. 4.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben), ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 250. For the English translation, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 62.

  5. 5.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 271.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 77.

  6. 6.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 272.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 78.

  7. 7.

    On the unacknowledged presence of Nietzsche’s text in Heidegger’s lecture course of 1920–1921, see also Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 121.

  8. 8.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 258.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 67.

  9. 9.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5.

  10. 10.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente, 1884–1885, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 11 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 679.

  11. 11.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), § 301, 539. For the English translation, see Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 241f.

  12. 12.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 302.

  13. 13.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1880–1882, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 9 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 494.

  14. 14.

    See GA 29/30, pp. 105ff; see also Marion Heinz, ‘”Schaffen.” Die Revolution von Philosophie. Zu Heideggers Nietzsche-Interpretation (1936/37),’ Heidegger Jahrbuch 2(2005): 174–192. Heinz sees clearly that for Heidegger Nietzsche’s work becomes the measure for all contemporary philosophizing, but, due to the limits of her essay, she does not explicitly bring into question what this would mean for our understanding of Being and Time.

  15. 15.

    Nietzsche writes: ‘Thus the difficult relationship of the Apolline and the Dionysiac in tragedy truly could be symbolized by a bond of brotherhood between the two deities: Dionysos speaks the language of Apollo, but finally it is Apollo who speaks that of Dionysos.’ See Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings: § 21, 104.

  16. 16.

    Heidegger would say an eternal ‘subjectivity,’ but the point, i.e. the critique of the idea of an a-historical, self-grounding principle proper to human being remains, in essence, the same.

  17. 17.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 272.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 78.

  18. 18.

    For the Hegelian background to Nietzsche’s critique, compare especially the section on ‘Self-Alienated Spirit: Culture’ in G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 294–328.

  19. 19.

    See, in particular, section V of Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben).

  20. 20.

    See SZ, p. 229.

  21. 21.

    Taminiaux, ‘La présence de Nietzsche dans Sein und Zeit,’ 243.

  22. 22.

    Anthony Jensen, ‘Geschichte or Historie? Nietzsche’s 2nd Untimely Meditation in the Context of 19th Century Philological Studies,’ in Nietzsche on Time and History, ed. Manuel Dries (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 214.

  23. 23.

    See Christian J. Emden, ‘Toward a Critical Historicism: History and Politics in Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation,’ Modern Intellectual History 3, no. 3 (2006): 1–31.

  24. 24.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 271.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 77.

  25. 25.

    Taminiaux, ‘La présence de Nietzsche dans Sein und Zeit,’ 247.

  26. 26.

    As Alain Boutot notes in his introduction to the French translation of GA 46, ‘tout se passe donc comme si Nietzsche avait en quelque sorte entrevu, dans sa Considération, le phénomène de la temporalisation.’ See Martin Heidegger, Interprétation de la Deuxième considération intempestive de Nietzsche, trans. Alain Boutot (Paris: Gallimard, 2009), 9–10.

  27. 27.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 249.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 61.

  28. 28.

    See Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings: 139–153.

  29. 29.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 14.

  30. 30.

    See Rainer Schürmann, Le principe d’anarchie (Paris: Seuil, 1982), 222ff.

  31. 31.

    Compare amongst many other places in Heidegger’s works of the late 30s: GA 65, § 91, p. 184.

  32. 32.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 5 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 81.

  33. 33.

    Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben): 248.; Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 60.

  34. 34.

    As we have not enough space here to develop the idea of justice with respect to the interpretation of life, we refer the reader to Ullrich M. Haase, ‘Nietzsche on Truth and Justice,’ New Nietzsche Studies 8, no. 1/2 (2009): 79–97.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Ullrich Haase & Mark Sinclair

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  1. Ullrich Haase
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Correspondence to Ullrich Haase .

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  1. Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Tziovanis Georgakis

  2. School of Business, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Paul J. Ennis

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Haase, U., Sinclair, M. (2015). History and the Meaning of Life: On Heidegger’s Interpretations of Nietzsche’s 2nd Untimely Meditation . In: Georgakis, T., Ennis, P. (eds) Heidegger in the Twenty-First Century. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 80. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9679-8_5

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