{"id":701,"date":"2016-09-21T11:08:59","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T15:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/?p=701"},"modified":"2017-03-31T13:30:55","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T17:30:55","slug":"quick-thoughts-on-heidegger-twisting-free-from-platonism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/quick-thoughts-on-heidegger-twisting-free-from-platonism\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Pletcher: Quick Thoughts on Heidegger Twisting Free from Platonism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charles Pletcher<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this brief response to the seminar on September 8, 2016, I want to look at the vertical axis of Nietzsche\u2019s inverted Platonism through the lens of Heidegger and the interventions of Babette Babich and Taylor Carman. Throughout Professor Babich\u2019s intervention ran a current of how easily and how often Nietzsche has been misread. Nietzsche leaves his readers winded by leading us up and down a vertical axis that he finds in Plato \u2014 we can see this axis most clearly in the Phaedrus <\/em>and Republic<\/em>, texts that Heidegger tackles in his early lectures. Moreover, Nietzsche\u2019s own techn\u0113<\/em> exposes us to the dizzying heights and depths of his philosophy as art. Professor Carman\u2019s intervention focused on Heidegger\u2019s reading of the eternal recurrence of the same, which served as a turning point for Heidegger\u2019s views on Nietzsche. In this response, I want to read Heidegger reading Nietzsche\u2019s Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em>, particularly the passage where Heidegger unites Zarathustra\u2019s downgoing (on the vertical axis) with the beginning of tragedy. Heidegger, with Nietzsche in tow, reads the beginning of tragedy as the site where the performance comes into being and where it unconceals, through the perspective of the viewer, what had formerly been hidden. These two actions, which we might call (in Heideggerian shorthand) \u201cbecoming\u201d and \u201cBeing,\u201d respectively, are always in tension \u2014 tragedy puts us in the middle of the tension. We go down to tragedy both to experience change (becoming<\/em>) and to look into what Being<\/em> consists in.<\/p>\n

Nietzsche often reminds us that Zarathustra must go down <\/em>(untergehen<\/em>). Zarathustra proclaims, \u201cFor that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and still bring light to the underworld, you over-rich [\u00fcberreiches<\/em>] star\u201d (The Gay Science<\/em> 342).[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Heidegger reads this passage in his lecture on the eternal recurrence of the same, quoting from The Gay Science <\/em>and not directly from Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em> (which, Heidegger notes, begins with a nearly identical passage) because in The Gay Science, <\/em>Nietzsche prepends, \u201cIncipit tragoedia,\u201d while still closing the passage, \u201cThus Zarathustra began to go under [\u2018began his downgoing,\u2019 Untergang<\/em>]\u201d (ibid.). Nietzsche aligns Zarathustra\u2019s descent with the beginning of tragedy, and tragedy begins with Zarathustra\u2019s proclamation to the sun. At the same time, Nietzsche superimposes this beginning onto the vertical axis defined by \u00fcber<\/em> and unter<\/em>. Zarathustra must move along a vertical axis in order to disperse his wisdom, \u201cto become man again\u201d (ibid.). Zarathustra\u2019s downgoing thus coincides with his becoming something other than he is; downgoing takes on a fundamentally transformative character. Nietzsche carefully channels and upends Plato here: contrary to Phaedrus<\/em>\u2019s chariot soul that goes up <\/em>to fill itself with truth, Zarathustra goes down<\/em> to empty his cup of truth. Nietzsche also notes Plato\u2019s source: Plato picked this vertical space, the notion of going up and going down, out of Homer (see especially Elpenor\u2019s fall and Odysseus\u2019 descent to the underworld in Books 10 and 11 of the Odyssey<\/em>), and Nietzsche channels the Homeric axis in Zarathustra\u2019s waking with the \u201crosy dawn [Morgenr\u00f6the <\/em>\u2014 a nice pun].\u201d<\/p>\n

Heidegger warns us that inverting Platonism cannot mean simply reversing this vertical axis in his lecture on the Phaedrus<\/em>: \u201cThere can be an \u2018above\u2019 and \u2018below\u2019 in cases of mere distance and opposition, but never in the case of discordance, for the former do not share an equivalent standard of measure. The \u2018above\u2019 and \u2018below\u2019 are fundamentally different; in the essential respect they do not agree\u201d (Nietzsche <\/em>I, 190). For Heidegger, we misunderstand the question about Being \u2014 as Carman put it, the question becomes unavailable to us \u2014 if we view it along this axis, regardless of which end is up. Part of Heidegger\u2019s problem with Nietzsche\u2019s inverted Platonism comes from his view that Nietzsche merely turns the axis over: Nietzsche turns Platonism on its head by dislocating the supersensuous world above and putting in its place the realm of lived experience and the act of becoming.<\/p>\n

Plato also turned the axis on its head once, in the myth of Er that concludes the Republic <\/em>(614b\u2013621d). In contrast to the earlier allegory of the cave, where the supersensuous world in the light of the sun corresponds to the world of true Being and the world within the cave corresponds to the world of mere (\u201cmere\u201d) experience, the myth of Er\u2019s vertical axis has capital-T Truth at both ends. In the myth of Er, the souls of the dead take two paths: the upper path, for souls who led good lives, contains pleasant truths; the lower path, for souls who led bad lives, teaches harsh truths through punishment. Er leaves us with a twist: the souls who traveled on the upper path tend to make worse choices than the souls on the lower path when it comes time to choose a form for reincarnation. This twist leads in too many directions to follow any of them up here, but I bring it up not only for the way that it troubles the \u00fcber<\/em>\/correct \u2013 unter<\/em>\/incorrect axis that Heidegger finds in Plato and Nietzsche but also for the way that it reveals the collision of truth (unconcealedness, al\u0113theia<\/em>) and untruth: all the souls in Er\u2019s myth must drink from the river L\u0113th\u0113 (\u201cforgetting,\u201d \u201cconcealedness\u201d) before they can be reincarnated.[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Heidegger rejects this simple inversion of up and down: \u201c[The new hierarchy] does not wish to put what was at the very bottom on the very top. A new hierarchy and new valuation mean that the ordering structure<\/em> must be changed. To that extent, overturning Platonism must become a twisting free of it\u201d (Nietzsche<\/em> I, 209\u2013210). Nietzsche does not, according to Heidegger, twist free of Platonism, and rather than overcome the Platonist notion of truth as correctness, Nietzsche posits truth as error (The Will to Power <\/em>493). Heidegger interprets this passage in The Will to Power<\/em>,<\/p>\n

Truth, that is, the true as the constant, is a kind of semblance that is justified as a necessary condition of the assertion of life. But upon deeper meditation it becomes clear that all appearance and all apparentness are possible only if something comes to the fore and shows itself at all. What in advance enables such appearing is the perspectival itself. That is what genuinely radiates, bringing something to show itself. (Nietzsche<\/em> I, 215)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Heidegger\u2019s view, Nietzsche stops short of looking into the nature of Being because Nietzsche\u2019s inverted Platonism ultimately leaves us back where we started. We cannot escape the illusion of semblance simply by eliding semblance and truth, because doing so only allows us to see that<\/em> things are (that they exist) and not what <\/em>things are (what they consist of).<\/p>\n

Professor Velasco introduced the idea that philologists end up interpreting symptoms, and Heidegger seems to have caught Nietzsche playing doctor. Nietzsche correctly points out the symptom of taking correctness for truth, but he does not really supply an antidote. Rather, Nietzsche points out that we are sick but that we must soldier on anyway. Our sickness affords us fleeting glimpses of truth, and we should celebrate them \u2014 but they do not cure us:<\/p>\n

We are really for a brief moment primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena now appear necessary to us, in view of the excess of countless forms of existence which force and push one another into life, in view of the exuberant fertility of the universal will. (The Birth of Tragedy <\/em>17)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In that \u201cbrief moment\u201d when \u201cwe are really primordial being itself,\u201d we forget Being itself and focus only on becoming.\u00a0 That is, we experience Being as becoming, but we do not look into the nature of what Being is. We are <\/em>Being, but can we then name it as such? In this moment, we go down<\/em> to tragedy. Put another way, the tragedy begins by pushing us into life. Nietzsche takes a wrong turn, in Heidegger\u2019s view, by abandoning the question of Being at this beginning, rather than asking what Being itself is.<\/p>\n

Heidegger does not necessarily want to rescue Nietzsche from his wrong turns, as both Babich and Carman point out; and Heidegger at the same time builds up his own question into Being out of the errors he perceives in Nietzsche. Carman points out that Heidegger takes off in many ways from the collision between al\u0113theia <\/em>and l\u0113th\u0113<\/em> in the eternal recurrence of the same, but eternal recurrence fails to account for Being in time \u2014 it understands only moments (Augenblicken<\/em>) as becoming. In Heidegger\u2019s interpretation of The Gay Science <\/em>342, he writes,<\/p>\n

When Zarathustra\u2019s tragedy begins, so does his downgoing. The downgoing itself has a history. It is the history proper; it is not merely an end. Here Nietzsche shapes his work by drawing upon his profound knowledge of great Greek tragedy. For Greek tragedy is not the \u201cpsychological\u201d matter of preparing a \u201ctragic conflict,\u201d of \u201ctying the knots,\u201d and such. Rather, everything that one usually takes as constituting \u201cthe tragedy\u201d has already occurred at the moment the tragedy as such begins. (Nietzsche<\/em> II, 31)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Heidegger follows Nietzsche \u2014 and Zarathustra and the tragedy itself \u2014 in their downgoing. At first, he seems to make an obvious point, that the story contained in a tragedy and the performance of a tragedy are not the same thing; but cast against the backdrop of the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same (\u201cthe hardest to bear,\u201d he reminds us [Nietzsche<\/em> II, 30]), Heidegger demonstrates how the performance of tragedy, its downgoing, presents the possibility of returning upwards \u2014 the \u00dcbergang<\/em>, or transition. Zarathustra\u2019s thought precipitates his downgoing: Zarathustra\u2019s thought is \u201ceverything that one usually takes as constituting \u2018the tragedy.\u2019\u201d Tragedy, or rather each performance of a tragedy, has an indeterminate start. Its beginning is not the beginning of the plot, but is rather the start of the audience\u2019s engagement with the unfolding of the tragedy as such. The tragedy has already occurred, and the actors only ever reperform it. Tragedy, then, is the place where the audience, like Zarathustra, becomes other than it was before \u2014 and the audience does so, Heidegger would add, while still in view of the Being of the tragedy on the stage.<\/p>\n

Heidegger continues his reading reading,<\/p>\n

The \u201conly thing\u201d that happens in tragedy is the downgoing. The \u201conly thing,\u201d we say, quite ineptly, for only now does the proper matter begin. Without the \u201cspirit\u201d and the \u201cthought,\u201d all deeds are but\u2014nothing. (Nietzsche <\/em>II, 31)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zarathustra, in Heidegger\u2019s view, thinks the wrong question because he thinks the question in terms of its motion up and down the axis \u2014 in terms of its becoming. He sees only the change in himself and does not look into the Being that is already present in time. In so doing, as Carman points out, Zarathustra forgets Being by overprivileging the performance, the action and the change alone, instead of its collision with what it reveals and conceals. Heidegger, on the other hand, demands that we revise our downgoing to account for its extension through time. We must not only experience<\/em> the primordial being of the performance, but we must also examine<\/em> what \u201ccomes to the fore and shows itself.\u201d We must stop ourselves from considering the thought or the tragedy as happening all at once; we must instead think through it as it unconceals itself. \u201cThe utterance of thinking is a telling silence. Such utterance corresponds to the most profound essence of language, which has its origin in silence\u201d (Nietzsche<\/em> II, 208).<\/p>\n

\n

Footnotes<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> References to Nietzsche\u2019s texts refer to text and section number; references to Heidegger\u2019s text refer to text, volume, and page.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> It bears mentioning that Heidegger takes up this very myth in 1942, in his course on Plato\u2019s Parmenides<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charles Pletcher In this brief response to the seminar on September 8, 2016, I want to look at the vertical axis of Nietzsche\u2019s inverted Platonism through the lens of Heidegger and the interventions of Babette Babich and Taylor Carman.… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1644,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38960],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-1-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1644"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}