Heidegger Against the Editors: Nietzsche, Science, and the Beiträge as Will to Power

Abstract

Since its first seeming surprise publication out of the prescribed order for the Gesamtausgabe, scholars have read and reread the Beitrage without coming to anything resembling consensus regarding its reception.1 Whether today's reader retains a fondness for the of Being and Time or appreciates the transformations of the turn in itself, or in its resultant effects yielding the complex linguistic resonances and thoughtful endeavors of the Heidegger, the Beitrage remains a difficult fit in the Heideggerian corpus. Why so? Superficially, of course, the easy answer ought to be that the publication is too new-too close to us-both in terms of its 1989 publication in German or in the brief decade (by academic standards) until its appearance in English in December of 1999. But this reply seems wrong.2 For whether, as Otto Poggeler claims, never mentioned1 the Beitrage in his own reflections, we do know, in a seeming contradiction, that Poggeler was to declare the Beitrage to be Heidegger's second major work4-a rumor that simmered for forty years in German (and English-language) circles.5 At the very least, the surprise or novelty factor is inexact. propose to explore the relevance of technology and the constitutive role of Nietzsche's thought as aspects of related importance in Heidegger's Beitrage? The latter consideration is tactically more important as it concerns the relevance of style in Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche; the former concerns the enduring complexities of Heidegger's critical take on science in the modern world. Without adverting to Nietzsche's influence and without raising the question of modem science/technology, as the essence of what names' Machenschaft, the function and meaning of the Beitrage in Heidegger's thinking can only elude us.7 In this respect, key emphases in the Beitrage may well be compared to Heidegger's later Zollikon Seminars. And as both Fred Dallmayr and Dan Dahlstrom have noted, commenting on Heidegger's thinking on the question of truth (or modern science or technology), failing such an emphasis on the veritably scientific significance of the question of truth (and modern technology), one runs the risk of mistaking or even denying the coherence characterizing Heidegger's thought from early to later. To this extent, by no means abandons the insights of Being and Time. It is thus important to emphasize the continuity in Heidegger's thinking, early and late. Such an emphasis opposes the tendency to read a readerly construct named Heidegger I (or what Ted Kisiel names the early, pre-Being and Time Heidegger) as if one had to do with another thinker entirely, addressing the personality dynamics of the two Heideggers Bill Richardson apotheosizes in his recent preface to the new edition of his book. The same periodizing reification exacerbates the tendency toward mystifying readings of the so-called Heidegger, the Heidegger who comes after the turn or Kehre. But, as we recall and as himself emphasizes in his original letter to Richardson, and II are to be thought together and ineliminably so because II is already, so expresses it, to be found in I: Nur unter Gedachten her wird zunachst das unter II zu Denkende zuganglich. Aber wird nur moglich, wenn es in II enthalten ist.10 To the perplexities of thinking and II, early and late, a reference to Nietzsche seems only to compound the challenge. For many readers, Nietzsche's name works as a key signifier for irrationalism. Hence Poggeler can tell us that it was nothing but Heidegger's excessive regard for Nietzsche that is to blame for Heidegger's lack of understanding with regard to either Holderlin or Celan. Correspondingly well known is the related assertion that Heidegger's irrationalism (usually articulated in terms of an explicit antipathy to modern science and technology) is what rendered his philosophy vulnerable to or even sets it equivalent to Nazism. …