One possible access to Heidegger’s changing thought can be gained by analysing his changing relation to Nietzsche. As a theology student Heidegger had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the ascending star of Nietzsche. But he already was positively impressed by Nietzsche in 1909, and one can argue that his break with Christianity and theology was influenced by Nietzsche. There are positive references to Nietzsche in early Heidegger’s work, including Being and Time and his (in)famous speech on “The Self-assertion of the German University” in 1933. However, from the mid-1930s Heidegger becomes increasingly critical of Nietzsche, interpreting National Socialism, and, more broadly, modern industrial society, technology, culture, and art as deeply implicated in what Nietzsche describes as the will to power. Heidegger’s rejection of modernity is cast in terms of his Nietzsche critique, delivered in his Nietzsche lectures and seminars between 1936 and 1946. But that still leaves many questions open. Is Heidegger’s Nietzsche a strawman? Was Heidegger an active nihilist around 1933? Is Heidegger’s own version of overcoming metaphysics and nihilism a “parallel action” to Nietzsche’s? Does Nietzsche’s counsel “to be faithful to the earth” play a role in Heidegger’s Fourfold? Both Nietzsche and Heidegger are extremely unsettling philosophers, hostile to many aspects of modernity, and yet, they are committed to an entirely new, original, and modern form of philosophizing. In what sense are Nietzsche and Heidegger still relevant today?
Course Schedule
Week One: From Heidegger’s early ambivalent stance towards Nietzsche to his qualified endorsement.
Texts
- “All Souls’ Moods” (1909),
- “War Triduum in Messkirch” (1915),
- the Nietzsche quotation in Being and Time,
- “The Self-Assertion of the German University.”
Week Two: Heidegger’s Critique of Nietzsche.
Texts
- “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God is dead’ (1943),
- Nietzsche’s “Madman” from The Gay Science,
- excerpts from Bernhard Welte’s oration “Seeking and Finding” on occasion of Heidegger’s funeral May 28th 1976.
Week Three: Heidegger’s Nietzsche Lectures (I) “The Will to Power as Art” & “The Will to Power as Knowledge.”
Week Four: Heidegger’s Nietzsche Lectures (II). “European Nihilism,” “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics,” “Metaphysics as History of Being.”
Week Five: Heidegger as Nietzschean?
Texts
- Heidegger, “Overcoming of Metaphysics,”
- Habermas, “The Undermining of Western Rationalism through the Critique of Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger” in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.
- Excerpts from Foucault on Critique and Enlightenment.
Some familiarity with Heidegger and Nietzsche would be helpful, but this is course is not a master class in Nietzsche or Heidegger studies. All are welcome who want to discuss the intricate but fascinating story of Heidegger’s philosophical attempt to come to grips with Nietzsche.