…And the Whole Music Box Repeats Eternally Its Tune

Abstract

In the following paper, pursuing a lead from Heidegger’s 1937 reading of Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, I look to the 1929/30 lecture course Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik for a corresponding conception of awakening in Heidegger’s own (openly metaphysical) thinking that would indicate a deeper connection of the two thinkers than meets the eye. I locate the awakening of a fundamental attunement, which I explore first, through the meaning of awakening as counterposed to sleep (an image of forgetting for both Nietzsche and Heidegger). As a didactic metaphor, I offer the optic of the lucid dream through which we are given to consider the horizonal negotiation of the everyday self and of Dasein as simultaneously awake. The lucid dream can perdure only momentarily, however, lest we risk life and limb, but it nevertheless has the potential to be transformative of life. Once awakening is properly explored, the investigation shifts to method: how should an attunement be awakened? I demonstrate that Heidegger’s argument turns on the horizonal negotiation of the simultaneous Being-there and not-there of the human being. Finally, focusing on the function of horizon in Heidegger’s positive characterization of attunement, I argue that Heidegger’s deployment of the Weise as melody speaks directly to the Weise of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence.