getting over metaphysics

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Getting over Metaphysics - 1

GETTING OVER METAPHYSICS by MARTIN HEIDEGGER1

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I

What does Getting Over Metaphysics mean? This title merely

tries to help us understand the thinking we must do about the

Revelation of Being, but it can lead us astray if it blocks us from

experiencing the reason for the original disclosure of this

Revelation, that evidencing in which Being itself was

suppressed. Certainly, Getting Overdoes not mean expelling the

scholarly discipline of metaphysics from philosophicaleducation. Metaphysics should be thought of as a mode of

deeming the truth about existence that is based on a concealed

but essential assumption -- the Oblivion of Being. Insofar as we

take Getting Overto be a philosophical achievement, the title

could have been The Metaphysical Past. Of course, this title

would have introduced yet more misunderstandings because

Pastsuggests a passing away and a passing over into what has

been. Because metaphysics has passed away, it is indeed past.

Yet the past includes rather than excludes metaphysics

assertion now and for the first time of absolute mastery over

everything, as existence assumes a truthless form of utility and

objectivity. Yet equally, traced from its original dawning,

metaphysics has indeed passed away in the sense that it has

entered its final conclusion. Its concluding is lasting longer than

all its previous history.

II

1 Vortrge und Aufstze (Vierte Auflage 1978) pp.67-95: berwindung der Metaphysik,

translated by Thomas F. Perkins


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Metaphysics will not let itself be put aside like some opinion.

We cannot discard it like some doctrine that we no longer teach

or believe.

Man, the animal rationale, which nowadays means the

laboring creature, has gone astray in the wastelands of a

devastated earth. This may be a sign that metaphysics unfolds

out of Being itself, thus getting over metaphysics may be seen

as a recovery from Being. For labor today can be classified

metaphysically as the absolute objectivisation of existence that

arises from the Will to Will. If this is so, then we should not foolourselves into supposing that we can release ourselves from

metaphysics simply because we anticipate its approaching end.

Metaphysics does not disappear just because we are getting

over it. It comes back to us changed, continuing to dominate the

difference between Being and existence. The decline in the truth

of existence means that the testimony that existence and only

existence can give about itself has lost its once unique and

decisive authority.

III

The decline in the truth of existence is essential, Indeed it

fulfills metaphysics. This decline approaches completion as the

world shaped by metaphysics collapses, as metaphysics

devastates the earth. The collapse and devastation reach their

ultimate conclusion with the transformation of man, the animal

rationale, into nothing but a laboring animal.

This demonstrates the extremity of our delusion about the

Oblivion of Being. For man willingly volunteers HIMSELF to serve


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the Will to Will. All truth is reduced to the error he needs to

secure his illusion about the Will to Will, which really can will

nothing but empty nothingness. Despite this, man persists,

unable to recognize his own complete emptiness.

Before Being can again unfold in its original truth, Will

masquerading as Being must be broken, the world must be

driven to collapse, the earth must be laid waste, and man must

be converted into raw labor. Everything that exists within

metaphysical truth will perish in the downfall. Only afterwards,

and then very slowly, may the exhilaration of the beginningevidence itself again.

The downfall has already made itself evident and the effects

of the past hundred years of world history are its consequences.

They reflect only an ebbing away of something that has already

ended. The course of events is arranged techno-historically in

conformity with the final stage of metaphysics, in such that what

has already ended is shaped into an illusion of reality. This

illusory system functions in an irresistible way by asserting that

it can get along without any revelation of the true nature of

Being, and it does this so effectively that no suspicion arises that

there is anything at all that needs to be revealed.

Metaphysical man is denied the Truth of Being, which

remains veiled. The laboring animal is abandoned to the

intoxication of his manufactures, with which he may rip himself

to shreds or annihilate himself into empty nothingness.

IV


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To what extent is metaphysics part of human nature? Looked

at metaphysically, man is just one being among many, equipped

with certain special faculties. He is a creature constructed thus

and so. The what and the how of his being, his nature, is

metaphysical -- animal (material) and rationale (spiritual).

Trapped this way within metaphysics, man is dominated by the

difference between Being and existence, a difference that he

never experiences. Characterized this way by metaphysics, man

can discover only metaphysical world everywhere around him.

Metaphysics belongs to human nature. But what is nature? Whatis metaphysics? Who is the man within all this natural

metaphysics? Is he just an I who can only assure himself of his

I-ness by calling out to a Thou and entering into an I-Thou

relationship.

Descartes found the ego cogito present and complete from

the start in all his cogitationes, something enduring,

unquestionable, not to be doubted. The ego cogito is the a

priori, the essential certainty preceding all else, that locates

everything relative to itself and thereby confronts them as

objects.

An object is characterized by its objectivization (essentia

possibilitas) and also by the actuality of its confrontation with

the subject. The object is the persisting unity of these

constituents. Essentially, its persistence depends upon its

fluctuating representations being accepted as presentations of

something actually there. Objects originate in objectivity itself.

Objectivity originates in the I think, understood in the sense of


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percipiere, of the subiectum that has prepared itself in

advance to perceive all perceivables. Within the hierarchy of the

transcendental genesis of objects, the subject is the first object

to be ontologically represented.

Ego cogito is the same as cogito: me cogitare.

V

The modern form of ontology is transcendental philosophy,

which has turned into epistemology. To what extent is there a

parallel in modern metaphysics?

To the extent that we accept as existence the mode ofpresentation that stabilizes2 a representation, existence

becomes objectivity. The question concerning objectivity asks

about the possibility of objectivization as a stable and

computable representation, and therefore really asks about the

possibility of knowledge.

Of course, we are not concerned here with the psycho-

physical mechanisms which process knowledge, but with the

potential for an object to present itself so it may be recognized

and known as such.

Epistemology is contemplation, theoria, insofar as we

conceive the on as an object and interrogate it about the nature

of the possibility for objectivity.

To what extent was Kant able to firmly establish the

metaphysicality of modern metaphysics through his

2 Stabilize is a key word in this essay. It might be more accurately translated by

assure, insure or secure, the last of which conveys the essential idea: to make

something fast and hold it tight against decay or other transformation by the

exercise of sy-tematic power. T.F.Perkins.


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transcendental mode of questioning? Knowing and knowledge

moved to the forefront insofar as truth became certainty, and

the existentiality (ousia) of everything became transformed into

the objectivity of the percipio and the cogitatio.

What we designate by the word epistemologyis basically

only a metaphysics and ontology founded upon a conception in

which truth is the certainty of stabilized representation. But the

whole business of stability only arises because we mis-

understand Being to be objectivity and representation.

Consequently, objectivity goes astray as an explanation ofknowledge and a theory of science.

Epistemology is really only a catchword to describe modern

metaphysics inherent and increasing inability to understand its

own essential nature, and the reasons for this. The talk about a

metaphysics of knowledge reveals the same misunderstanding,

for it is really about a metaphysics of objects -- existence

understood as a collection of objects fora subject.

The ascendancy of symbolic logic merely illustrates the

reverse side of this empiric-positivistic misunderstanding of

epistemology.

VI

Metaphysics approached completion with Hegels

metaphysics of absolute knowledge as the Will of the Spirit.

Why did this metaphysics only approach but not reach

completion? Does not absolute reality yield absolute certainty?

Could this metaphysics have transcended itself? Probably

not. But it did not work out completely its potential for absolute


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correspondence with the Will of Life. The will did not appear as

the Will to Will within the reality it prepared. That was why the

absolute metaphysics of spirit was not complete.

One thing is certain; despite all the glib talk about a

breakdown of Hegelian philosophy; that philosophy alone

determined reality during the nineteenth Century, though as a

metaphysics -- the domination of existence in the sense of

certainty -- rather than as a formal doctrine. The reactions

against this metaphysics were themselves part of it. Everything

since Hegels death has been such a reaction, not only inGermany but throughout Europe.

VII

When metaphysics deals with existentia, it does so briefly

and as something self-evident.

Aristotle was the only exception, although everything

revealed by his original thinking on energia was buried by the

subsequent translation ofenergia into actualitis and reality,

which obscured the relation between energia and ousia.

Hegel thought about existentia, but only in his Logic.

Schelling considered it when differentiating between reason and

existence, but his thinking was rooted in subjectivity.

A confused echo of Being as physis emerged later when

Being was identified with and limited to Nature. Nature was

contrasted with reason and freedom. Since Nature was

understood as all-there-is, freedom and purpose could not Be.

The contrast of Being with purpose led to a contrast of Being

with value. Then finally, as will attained the extremity of


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arbitrariness, Being became simply a value, and value itself only

a stipulation ofwill.

VIII

Through all of its historical stages and forms, metaphysics

was the unique though perhaps essential fate of the West,

providing the prerequisite for Western planetary dominance.

Now as this will to dominate thrusts back into the Western

heartland, once again only a will from the center of the West

arises to oppose it.

The absolute domination of metaphysics is just beginning tounfold as metaphysics affirms those distortions appropriate to it,

delivers its own essence into them and consolidates itself within

them.

As the fundamental engine of European history, metaphysics

is destiny in the strong sense, the only sense intended here. It

has stranded the people of the West in the midst of existence

and left them unable to experience, question or harmonize the

duality of Being and existence either within or through

metaphysics.

Thought through from the perspective of the Revelation of

Being, this destiny is nonetheless essential, because Being can

illuminate the difference it safeguards between itself and

existence only if and after that difference purposely evidences

itself. But how can this happen unless everything first becomes

utterly oblivious of Being, while at the very same time, Being is

achieving in some way inconceivable to metaphysics absolute

mastery in the form of the Will to Will, which latter through its


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assertion of the exclusive primacy of objective realityis

immediately and uniquely compelled to submit itself to Being for

validation?

So, the possibility of distinguishing the difference exhibits

itself in certain ways, at the same time remains hidden and

strangely incomprehensible. The difference itself remains veiled.

Symptomatic of this is the technical-metaphysical response

towards grief -- a predetermined explanation of its essential

nature.

As metaphysics enters into its fulfillment, something else isoccurring that is unknown and essentially inaccessible to

metaphysics: the preliminaries that will illuminate for the first

time the duality of Being and existence are beginning even

though the first hint of the Truth of Being still remains

concealed, the primacy of Beings authority shielded within it.

IX

We need to think about getting over metaphysics from the

perspective of the Revelation of Being. Certainly it is a

preliminary indication of an incipient recovery from the Oblivion

of Being. But it also reveals something more primal though more

concealed -- the original Evidincing itself. So what seems to the

metaphysical way of understanding to be a preliminary

indication of something else should be taken as only the last

glimmer of an original illumination.

But it is only worthwhile thinking about getting over

metaphysics insofar as we think at the same time about the

Recovery -- think urgently about it while continuing to think


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about getting over metaphysics. This kind of attentive thinking

can experience the unique evidence of the appropriation of

existence in which the peril of the Truth of Being lit up,

illuminating the origin of truth and, in its departing, shone upon

humanity. To get over metaphysics means to deliver it into its

own truth.

At first, getting over metaphysics could only be represented

metaphysically as a metaphysical achievement, a self-

surpassing. Recognizing this, the discursive outline in Kant and

the Problem of Metaphysics retains validity to the extent that ittried to rephrase into these new terms the thinking that Kant

had developed from a critique of rational metaphysics, although

it did attribute more success to Kant than he actually managed

to accomplish within the limitations of his philosophy.

Some of the talk about getting over metaphysics may stem

from an identification of metaphysics with Platonism, including

the modern interpretations of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The

latter stayed completely within metaphysics when he inverted

Platonism by making the material world the real world and the

spiritual the unreal. His approach to getting over metaphysics

yielded only a final entanglement in metaphysics regarded as

nineteenth Century positivism. Although Nietzsche appeared to

have done away with the meta -- transcendence into spiritual --

in favor of an enduring material world, in favor of an enduring

material world; in fact, he liberated and spurred forward the

spiritual side in the form of the Will to Power. He thereby

completed the Oblivion of Being.


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X

The Will to Will confronts and opposes destiny. It cannot

know nor can it admit any knowledge of destiny. By destiny

here, we mean any indication of a manifestation of the Being of

everything. The Will to Will hardens everything into objects

without destiny, things outside fate, the undestinied. Its sign is

the dominance of historiography. Its helplessness is historicism.

Should anyone mistakenly attempt to describe the Revelation of

Being in modern historiographical terms, they would only

demonstrate the dominance of the Oblivion of being in the mostpalpable way. The age of fulfilled metaphysics is about to begin.

The Will to Will is characterized by its drive to calculate and

organize everything, but only in order to secure itself absolutely

and eternally.

Within the undestinied world of fulfilled metaphysics, the

characteristic method by which the Will to Will organizes and

calculates may concisely be labeled technology. This label

embraces all those modes of existence that between them

shape the totality of existence -- objectified nature, commercial

culture, fabricated politics and the superstructure of ideals.

Technology in this sense is not restricted to machinery and

manufacturing processes. Mechanical technology certainly

possesses a special significance that needs to be more sharply

defined but which arises basically as a result of the precedence

we grant to material things as a consequence of their

supposedly elemental state and also because they are the most

object-ive kinds of subject.


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We need to understand technology in this sense as

fundamentally synonymous with fulfilled metaphysics. The word

technologyretains the memory of the original techne once

essential in the unfolding of the total nature of metaphysics. The

word also allows us to think about the fulfillment of metaphysics

and its planetary dominance without having to make specific

reference to historiographically demonstrable transformations of

peoples and continents.

XI

Nietzsches metaphysics produced, in the shape of the Willto Power, the penultimate stage of the unfolding of the

immanent will of existence into the Will to Will. The final stage

did not appear to Nietzsche because he was dominated by

psychological concepts of power and mastery, and by a

fanaticism for life. Consequently, his thinking failed to treat

these concepts rigorously and carefully, and lacked calm

historical reflection. Historicism ruled, bringing with it

apologetics and polemics.

Why did the appeal to life in Nietzsches metaphysics lead

some to a contempt for thinking? Because they failed to

recognize that, in his doctrine, a planned representational (that

is, dependable) steadiness of purpose is as essential to life as

ascentand exultation, and also because they only understood

these in the vaporous sense of psychological intoxication.

Consequently, they failed to recognize his decisive insight that a

dependable and steady purpose is required to stabilize

genuinely original impulses and to grant validity to any ascent.


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The Will to Power requires the attainment of absolute mastery

through rational calculations rather than through the nebulous

confusions of a turbid chaotic life.

Influenced by Schopenhauers contempt for philosophy of

the type represented by Hegel and Schelling, and by his

superficial reading of Plato and Kant, the misguided Wagnerian

cult superimposed a mystique of Art upon Nietzsches thought,

which led in the last decades of the nineteenth century to an

enthusiasm in which a superficial and muddled historicity served

to characterize truth.Behind all of this lay a singular incapacity to reflect upon the

nature of metaphysics as it attained its destined supremacy. The

nature of truth consequently changed into truth-as-certainty. As

a result, Nietzsches metaphysics were not thought through in

relation to the simplicity of modern metaphysics. Instead he was

turned into a literary phenomenon that heated the brain instead

of purifying it, a phenomenon that may deter or even terrify.

And in the end, Nietzsches passion for creativity deformed his

conception of genius into the technological sense of the capacity

to accomplish. The two constitutive values conceived in the Will

to Power -- Truth and Art -- are two ways of saying technologyin

its essential meaning as a planned and calculated basis for

those accomplishments and constructs ofcreativitythat inspire

life over and above everyday concerns, and which establish a

culture industry.

This all helped support the Will to Power but the confusion

made it difficult to focus upon its essential nature: the clear light


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of that broad and essential understanding that arises from

thinking about the Revelation of Being.

The essential nature of the Will to Power could only be

grasped through an understanding of the Will to Will. But the

Will to Will might only be experienced after metaphysics had

entered into its final transition.

XII

This sentence of Nietzsches prefigures his metaphysics of

the Will to Power: The Greek knew and sensed the terrors and

horrors of existence. To be able to live at all, he had to setabove him the radiant dream-creation of Olympus.3

We find titanic and barbaric, wild and impulsive, are opposed

here to a beautiful, sublimeappearance. This already anticipates

the need for a will which could allow for exultation and

guarantee a foundation, although it was not yet clearly thought

through, differentiated, and seen from a unified perspective.

However, this will did not at the time emerge as the Will to

Power because Nietzsches thought was originally dominated by

Schopenhauers doctrine of the will. The preface to the work was

written on Schopenhauers birthday.

With Nietzsches metaphysics, philosophy was fulfilled - that

is to say it had completed the circuit of all prescribed

possibilities. Fulfilled metaphysics is the basis of our planetary

way of thinking. It has provided a framework for an organization

of the earth that we expect will last for a long time. This

organization no longer needs philosophy because it is based on

3 Nietzsche F., Socrates and Greek Tragedy, Munich, 1933. (original version of

Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.)


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philosophy. But although philosophy has ended, thinking has not

come to an end as well, but is in a transition to a new beginning.

XIII

In his notes to the fourth part of ThusSpakeZarathustra

Nietzsche wrote in 1886: We are experimenting with truth!

Perhaps humanity will perish through it. So be it!4 A comment

from the Dawn of Day from the period 1880-81 reads: What

is new about our present attitude to philosophy is the conviction

that no previous generation has entertained that we do not

know the truth. All people before us knew the truth, even theskeptics5.

What does Nietzsche mean when he refers to truth? Does he

mean correct? Does he regard this as having a real existence or

as something that validates decisions, behavior and life?

What does it mean to experiment with truth? Does it mean

to offer the Will to Power as the criterion of truth within the

eternal recurrence of the same?

Does this thinking ever get to the question concerning the

location of the essence of truth, and the source of the truth of

essence?

XIV

There can be objects in the sense of objects only where man

has become a subject, where the subject has become an I, and

where this I has become an egocogito; only where the essence

of the cogitare has been conceived as the original synthetic

unity of transcendental apperception; only where the highest

4 Nietzsche F., WW XII p.307.

5 Nietzsche F., WW XI p.268.


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pinnacle of logic has attained truth in the certainty of the I

think. Only then can the nature of an object bare itself in all its

objectivity. Consequently, then and only then does it become

possible and indeed unavoidable to conceive objectivity as the

new, true object and to regard it as absolute.

XVI

Subjectivity, object and reflexivity belong together. We can

only equate Being with objectivity after we acknowledge

reflexivity as the crucial link to existence. To discover this link,

we must experience reflexivity in the reprsantatio, in re-presentation.

But this can only take place after we have converted the

idea into theperceptio. To do this requires us to convert truth-

as-correspondence into truth-as-certainty (although the

adequatio still remains). Through its stabilization of the self,

which means the ability to will ones own self, certainty equates

to iustitia, which validates the link to existence and to the first

cause, and is consequently the dependability of existence.

Iustificatio meant the same to the Reformation as to Nietzsche

in his conception of justice as truth.

The reprsantatio is founded on the reflexio as a result of its

essential nature. Consequently, the nature of objectivity only

becomes evident when we understand and expressly recognize

the essence of thought to be the I-think-something. This is

reflexivity.

XVII


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Kant was moving towards a transcendental, i.e. ontological,

approach to the nature of reflexivity. This is shown by a modest

footnote in Kants Critique of Pure Reason entitled On the

Amphiboly of Relative Concepts. Though merely an addendum,

it is filled with significant insights and contains a critical analysis

of Leibniz (and hence of all previous) metaphysics, insofar as

Kant saw self-hood as the basis for their ontological constitution.

XVIII

On the surface, self-hood may seem merely a further

generalization of, and an abstraction from, the self-nesses ofindividual human selves. From the outset, Descartes obviously

thought of his own self as the individualizedpersona (res cogita

equals substantia finita) as opposed to Kants generalized

consciousness. But Descartes conceived this individual self in

the light of a concept of self-hood that he certainly did not

define explicitly. He introduced self-hood in the shape of the

certum, certainty, which is nothing other than a stabilization of

the representation being represented. The relationship between

self-hood and certainty, both of itself and of the representation

being represented, was already dominant, although concealed in

this concept. The individual self as such can only be experienced

within this relationship. As a self-fulfilling individualized self, the

human I can itself only will in the light of this relationship of the

still-unrecognized Will to Will towards it. No self can be simply

there by itself - a self can only exist insofar as it appears in-

itself, i.e. within self-hood.


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This must hold even when the individual self is in retreat

under the domination of society or of some other mode of

association. Precisely here we find the pure and unadulterated

domination ofegoism, understood of course in a philosophical

sense and unrelated to nave solipsism.

In this age of metaphysical fulfillment, philosophy is become

an anthropology (Holzwege p.91). It makes no difference

whether or not we say philosophical anthropology, for along

the way, philosophy has been plundered by the descendants of

metaphysics, i.e. of physics understood in the broadest sense,which includes the physics of life and humanity - biology and

anthropology. Changed into anthropology, philosophy itself is

perishing beneath metaphysics.

XIX

The Will to Will demands a secure foundation (truth) and the

potential to sublimate instinctual drives (art) for its realization.

The Will to Will then replaces Being with existence. Technology

(assured stability) and absolute aimlessness (experience) first

become dominant within the Will to Will.

Technology and aimlessness belong together; they are the

same. Technology understood technologically is the highest

form of rational consciousness. Aimlessness, opaque even to

itself, is the organized incapacity to relate to anything worth

questioning. We will assume here that we have already worked

this out and understand why it is so and how it has come to be.

There is only one more thing to note, to conclude this

deliberation. In its explanation of everything as the expression


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of man, anthropology does not limit itself to the study of

mankind and human willpower. Even where judgments are

sought rather than investigations, anthropology opposes one

form of humanity to another, acknowledging humanity as

though it were the primal force, the beginning and end of all-

that-is, with existence and its momentary expression a mere

consequence.

And so we confront the decisive question: what is the form of

man? We should think of form in a vague metaphysical way,

i.e. Platonic, as that which IS - determining, though independentof, all that has been handed down to us and of all that is to be

passed on. This anticipatory recognition of man has led us to

search for Being only in the human realm, and to look upon the

individual man himself as human materiel, as the transitory

me on in contrast to the idea.

XX

As the Will to Will achieves extreme and absolute certainty, it

becomes the universal guarantor. As such, it is the sole criterion

of what is just, and hence becomes justice itself. The justness of

the Will to Will springs from its own absolute and complete

certainty. What is to be willed must be just and orderly because

the Will to Will is the only measure of order. The original nature

of truth gets lost within the self-certainty of the Will to Will. The

justice of the Will to Will is absolute untruth. The justness of the

untruth in the realm of the Will to Will is peculiarly irresistible.

But the justness of an untruth that itself AS SUCH remains

hidden is at the same time the weirdest thing that can unfold in


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this perversion of the nature of truth. Justice dominates truth

and does away with truth. The will towards absolute certainty

results in absolute uncertainty.

XXI

Will is the explicitly recognized and consciously organized

execution of the pursuit of an aspiration, where this is organized

conceptually as part of the general representation.

Consciousness belongs to will. The Will to Will is the loftiest and

the most absolute state of consciousness that is attained by

careful and self-confident calculation (The Will To Power, p.458).Therefore, the Will to Will is continually absorbed in a

thorough and unlimited review of its objectives, the resources at

its disposal, and the difficulties it faces. It is forever adjusting its

tactics and strategies, and modifying its goals, based on a

continual self-audit of its performance. All this creates self-

doubt, and leads the Will to Will to concentrate only upon the

security of its own power.

The aimlessness, indeed the essential aimlessness of the

absolute Will to Will fulfills the nature of will, self-proclaimed as

pure will in Kants concept of practical reason. Pure will wills

itself into existence and becomes Being in the form of will.

Regarded as values, pure will and its decrees are formal. Will

itself is the only content of the Form of will.

XXII

From time to time, will is personified in individual strong-

willed men, which makes it seem as though the Will to Will

radiates from them. This leads us to suppose that the Will to Will


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originates in the human will. Actually, man is willed by the Will

to Will, although he does not recognize the nature of this willing.

Insofar as man is willed by and is located within the Will to

Will, the will of his own nature is of necessity also appealed to

and offered as an instance of truth. The over-riding question is

whether individualities and communities originate from this will,

or whether they come to terms with it or strive against it, not

realizing that the outcome is already decided.

The Will to Will admits only one direction for willing, a

demonstration of the uniqueness of Being. The uniformity of theworld of the Will to Will stems from this - a uniformity as far

removed from the simplicity of the Beginning as is the unnatural

from the natural, although they both belong together.

XXIII

The Will to Will rejects all aims and purposes except as

temporary expedients for constructing an arena where it can

play out its part. However, in order to establish itself in

existence, the Will to Will cannot allow itself to appear as the

aimless and catastrophic anarchy that it really is. Consequently,

to legitimize itself, the Will to Will invents the talk about a

mission. Such a mission should not be thought of in regard to

the creation or preservation of anything, but as a target that has

somehow been assigned by destiny, thereby justifying the Will

to Will.

In every crevice a struggle for power is going on between

those who have it and those who seek it. Everywhere, power is

decisive. In the course of this struggle, the nature of power for


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both sides is transformed into absolute mastery. One thing only

is disguised - that the struggle serves Power and is willed by it.

The Will to Will alone empowers the struggle. Power has

mastered the struggle beforehand. Power has mastered

humanity in a way that makes it impossible for man to escape

from the Oblivion of Being through it. The struggle is necessarily

planet-wide. Of its very nature it can never be decided because

there is nothing to decide, because the struggle is outside all

differentiations, outside the difference between Being and

everything-there-is, and consequently it is outside of truth. Itsown energies drive the struggle out into the un-destined, out

into the Abandonment of Being.

XXV

The grief we first must feel and then wring dry is the insight

and knowledge that needlessness is the most high and hidden

need that cries first to us from far-off places. Needlessness is

believing that one grasps reality, that one knows what is real

and what truth is without ever needing to know how truth arises.

From the perspective of the Fate of Being, the nature of

nihilism is that Abandonment of Being in which Being dissolves

into productivity. This dissolution thrusts man into absolute

servitude. It is in no way a decline,andin no sense at all a

negavitity. Consequently, not all peoples are suited to bring

about absolute nihilism in the destined way. Therefore, a

struggle becomes essential to determine precisely which people

is capable of fulfilling it absolutely.

XXVI


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All around are the signs of the final Abandonment of Being -

loud announcements of idealsand values, proclamations

about great deeds and the need for spirit. All these are keyed

into the mobilization mechanisms of the sys-tematic process,

The process itself is inexorable as self-absorbed man seeks the

only escape there is from the void of the Abandonment of Being

by relentlessly using up everything-there-is for technological

productions, so that he may pursue his subjectivity in super-

humanity. Super-humanity is the same as sub-humanity. They

belong together, for the subof the animal and the superofthe ratio are bound inextricably in the unity of the animal

rationaleof metaphysics. Here we need to think of sub-

humanity and super-humanity as metaphysical terms, not as

moralistic appraisals.

Understood in a metaphysical sense, mobilization is the

process whereby man mastersthe brute forces of nature.

Mobilization dictates the sequence and pace at which everything

is consumed. Consumption involves the regulated utilization of

everything to sustain the material base and provide the

potential for ever greater achievements. To be utilized is to be

employed in the service of mobilization. But, since the only aim

of mobilization is aimlessness, and since it leads only to an

indefinitely escalating level of mobilization in the quest for

absolute self stability, such employment really means depletion.

The Abandonment of Being has resulted in world war, in

total war. The world wars have institutionalized a standardized

mode of resource depletion. Man is himself caught up in this


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process. His status as the most critical raw material is no

longer concealed. He is the mostcritical raw material because

he is the subject, the active agent of depletion. As the subject,

his own will must necessarily be merged into the process,

making him simultaneously the prime object of the

Abandonment of Being. World war is a preparatory step towards

the abolition of any distinction between war and peace, as the

world becomes transformed into an un-world of an existence

that has abandoned the Truth of Being. In the context of the

Revelation of Beon6

, worldmeans the non-objective floweringof the truth of Beon for man, whose own nature in turn is

dedicated to Beon. But where Being does not rule (although

continuing to flower) world turns into an un-world of power for

powers sake, i.e. where everything is utilized, consumed and

depleted. Existence in the form of activity is taken to be real.

Activity is everywhere but nowhere is there a worlding of world.

Of course, Being is everywhere as well, but Being has been

forgotten.

Beyond war and peace lies the naked madness of the

depletion of all existence to allow sys-tem to stabilize itself

within the emptiness of the Abandonment of Being. Changed

fundamentally and become indistinguishable from each other,

warandpeace dissolve into the madness and disappear beneath

the self-accelerating pace of production of everything that is

producible. We cannot answer the question: when will peace

6 (Beon is the translation chosen for Seyn, an archaic word used by Martin

Heidegger in place of its modern equivalent, Sein, to refer to a more original mode

or nature of Being. T.F.Perkins)


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come, not because we do not know how long the fighting will

last but because what is asked about no longer exists. War is

now just one way of depleting existence, and the depletion will

continue in peacetime. To reckon on a long war is just an old-

fashioned way of recognizing a new era. This long war is not

going to lead to a traditional kind of peace, but to a condition

which it will not be meaningful to call either warorpeace.

The madness of depletion does not know the Truth of Being,

and substitutes for it a totally mobilized sys-tem. Within the

overall perimeter of the sys-tem, every precinct is stabilized bymeticulous planning processes. The special provinces of human

mobilization necessarily become sectors of the sys-tem. The

poetry and culture sectors are simply two such administrative

districts alongside others, stably planned under their respective

leaderships.Those who dont yet understand what is going on

often direct their moral indignation at the arbitrary and

authoritarian ways of our leaders, but this is really an

unsatisfactory way of appraising the situation. The anger at the

leaders is an inescapable consequence of their offenses, but

each of these only indicates that the leaders are not

independent agents. People think that the leaders contrive

everything themselves during blind frenzies of selfish egomania.

But leaders are simply the unavoidable consequences of an

existence being turned into a mode of madness, whose

spreading emptiness demands a single sys-tem to stabilize

everything. Leadership is urgently required by the calculated


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planning processes that must stabilize existence. Men who are

good at leadership must be mobilized and organized.

The leaders are the critical cadres of mobilization who

monitor the sys-tematic depletion of existence in every sector,

i.e. supervise their entire environment and master its madness

through calculation. Their mode of supervision involves a

capacity to calculate, which is dedicated beforehand to serve

the steadily escalating demands for consolidating sys-tem in the

face of each new emergency.

The across-the-board coordination of every conceivableplanning and implementation effort is called instinct7. This

usage of the word denotes an intellectthat transcends

conventional intelligence, which is only able to deal with

immediate relationships. No input variable required for

individual sector balance calculations can elude the

intellectualism of instinct. Instinct is appropriate for super-

humanity - it is that super-intellect required to integrate

everything absolutely. Instinctwas formerly regarded as an

animal characteristic - something that identified what was useful

or harmful in the animals environment, responded to it, and

strove no further. The absolute certainty of instinct depends on

its blind confinement within an ecological niche. The absolute

authority of super-humanity corresponds to a complete

liberation of sub-humanity. Animal urge and human ratio

become identical.

For instinct to be an essential characteristic of the super-

human means that he is partly sub-human, understood

7 (American English, 1996 = seat of the pants, gut feel. T.F. Perkins.)


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metaphysically, and sub-human in such a way that precisely his

animality is subjugated in every aspect by calculated planning

(health care administration, family planning, etc.) Because man

is the most critical raw material, it can be predicated, on the

basis of modern chemical research, that factories will one day

be constructed to manufacture manpower. Already the

possibility of raising males and females in proportion to demand

has been opened up by the research which has won the City of

Frankfurts Goethe prize for Dr. Kuhn.

Within the culture sector, the administration of literature isnakedly consistent with the administration of artificial

insemination programs (we should not let oldfashioned prudery

make us look for differences that no longer exist). The

mobilization system regulates the supply of manpower in the

same way as it regulates the supply of popular novels and books

of poetry. In the production of a book, the poet is no more

important than the bookbinders apprentice who fetches the

cardboard covers from the warehouse.

The technological production of an unlimited capacity to

produce anything and everything depletes all resources,

including human resources. In some concealed way, this

depletion is instituted by the complete emptiness that surrounds

all existence, the stuff of reality. The emptiness must be filled.

But fullness of existence cannot fill the emptiness of Being,

particularly since its emptiness is unrecognized. Consequently,

an escape can only be found in an unceasing attempt to

organize existence around the permanent promise of sys-tem to


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provide a mode of stabilizing the aimless activity. From this

standpoint, technology is the organization of shortages, because

of its unrecognized relationship to Being. Technology must leap

in to utilize resources and develop substitutes anywhere there is

insufficient for the vaulting Will to Will. But substitutes and

mass-produced synthetics are not just transitory emergency

relief. They are the only possible way by which the Will to Will,

the restless stabilizer of the systematic processes of sys-tem,

can keep itself going and thereby itselfbecome the subjectof

everything.The numerically increasing mass of humanity is a direct

consequence of the planning activities, which never miss an

opportunity to demand more living space for the masses. The

increased space then requires an even greater mass of people

to occupy it. This circular relationship of depletion for the sake of

utilization itself identifies the history of a world turned into an

un-world. NaturalLeaders are those who appoint themselves as

the helmsmen of this process on the basis of their instinctive

certainty. They are the chief executives of the business of

depleting absolutely to stabilize it against the emptiness of the

Abandonment of Being. This business of depleting existence to

ward off unconsciously a Beon that not been experienced,

excludes in advance any differentiation between nations and

peoples as significant factors in decisions. The difference

between national and international disappears, just as the

difference between war and peace becomes untenable. Today,

someone who thinks as a European cannot be labeled an


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internationalist. But neither is he a nationalist, because he

concerns himself with the prosperity of other nations as with

that of his own.

The uniformity of the course of history in our time has not

come about because of some adaptation of the older political

systems to the newest. Uniformity is the reason for, rather than

the consequence of, the military conflicts between individual

administrations, with each striving to exercise authoritative

leadership in the task of stabilizing sys-tem within the depletion

of existence. The uniformity of existence arises from theemptiness of the Abandonment of Being and the discovery of

the computational stability of sys-tem subjugated beneath the

monolithic Will to Will. This uniformity demands one universal

and uniform leadership that is above any and all national

distinctions and for which each government is merely one link

among others in the chain of command. Because reality itself

depends upon uniform planning calculations, man must become

uniform as well, in order to keep abreast of reality. A man out of

uniform today gives an impression of unreality - someone who

belongs here no more.

The Will to Will admits only an existence that expands

without differentiation, governed only by practices and

procedures that underlie the dogma of production. Production

would seem to require a degree of discrimination, but is in fact

entirely arbitrary because the universal aim of all production is

the uniform and pointless exhaustion of every kind of labor to

stabilize sys-tem. The undifferentiated chaos that spews forth


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vividly from this dogma, does not coincide in any way with the

mere leveling-out that comes from abolishing former grades of

distinction. The chaos of total depletion and exhaustion results

frompositivelyrejecting any and any possible level of distinction

under the domination of a futile objective. The disappearance of

distinctions bears witness to the already stabilized inventory of

the un-world of madness. From the perspective of the Revelation

of Beon, earth has become a star gone mad, an errant comet in

the sky.

XXVIIInvisibly, the shepherds dwell beyond the wastelands of an

earth, devastated and subjugated to stabilize the mastery of

man, whose interest is limited to estimating whether or not

something is important to life. Life, in the form of the Will to Will,

demands first and foremost that all knowledge move in the

channels of calculated and evaluated stability.

The humble commandment of the earth preserves it within

the sufficiency of the coming to be and passing away of all

things among the circles of possibility allotted them; the circles

which all follow and none know. The birch tree does not overstep

its own possibility. The bees in the hive dwell within their own

possibilities. Only the will, flexibly girdled with technology, rips

up the earth, depletes it, exhausts it, converts it to synthetics.

Will drives the earth out beyond its accustomed circles of

possibility into the impossible. But neither technological

discoveries nor the swelling tide of novelties pouring forth from

technological projects and processes even suggest that any


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future technological triumph can ever make possible the

impossible.

The realism and moralism of historicity are the last steps

towards completely identifying nature and spirit with the

essence of technology. Nature and spirit become objects of self-

awareness, whose absolute mastery drives both forward into a

uniformity from which metaphysics knows no escape.

It is one thing to utilize the earth; it is quite another to

receive her blessing and make our home within the lawful

commandments of her welcome, that we may protect the secretof Being and shield it from any violation of possibility.

XXVIII

Mere action cannot change the condition of the world

because Being in the form of efficiency and activity blocks all

existence from any such event. Even the immense grief that

stalks the earth cannot awaken a transformation because we

experience grief as suffering - a passivity that is the reverse side

of activity and therefore is also with the essential realm of the

Will to Will.

But the earth stays sheltered within the humble regulations

of her own possibilities. Will has compelled the possible along

the path to impossibility. This compulsion is equipped and

supported by a productive capacity springing from the nature of

technology, assumed here to be synonymous with self-fulfilling

metaphysics. The absolute uniformity of all peoples of the earth

under the devastation of the Will to Will makes plain the

senselessness of completely unregulated human behavior.


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The devastation of the earth began as a deliberately willed

operation, although its nature was not clearly understood nor

was even understandable. It began in that moment when the

nature of truth became restricted to and identified with

certainty, to provide a secure base for human conceptions and

creations. Hegel understood this moment of metaphysical

history as the founding of thought on absolute self-awareness.

The nature of pain, and likewise the nature of joy, seems

almost hidden from man under the domination of Will. May the

excess of human suffering yet bring about a change in this?No change comes unheralded. But how may the herald

approach except within the light of E-videncing that, calling and

needing, eyes the human creature, i.e. begins to see him and,

through seeing, brings mortal man upon the way that leads to

building in thought and poetry?

getting over metaphysics

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