Nietzsche’s analysis implies that humans and animals occupy distant points along a continuum, from total forgetting to total remembering (later in his essay Nietzsche worries about an oversaturation of historical knowledge). This is not just a pedantic point, for important consequences follow. Rather than unhistorical, Nietzsche’s cattle lack history altogether, Heidegger says. Just as only beings who exist essentially with others can be alone, and only beings who are essentially determined by speech can be silent, so Heidegger claims that only essentially historical beings can exist unhistorically: “only that which is historical can be unhistorical”. It is incorrect to call animals unhistorical, he says. This distinction marks Heidegger’s first major point of contention. The cause of this melancholic existence is our inability to forget, which is why we are historical and animals unhistorical.
These meager creatures with their uninspiring lives achieve an effortless happiness, while we, even in our most joyful moments, suffer the awareness that all moments necessarily pass. Nietzsche begins his second Untimely Meditation ( UM) famously envying the cattle in pasture for their incessant forgetfulness. Rather than itemize these all and run down a list, I’m going to review some of the most important themes so that readers get a sense for what the text at its best can offer. While often repetitive and enigmatic, the text is content to take its cues from Nietzsche’s essay and simply to reflect on what is offered. It’s refreshing, given the expansive nature of some of Heidegger’s other writing from the period, to find a text so focused on a single topic. As Haase and Sinclair note in an insightful article that can be read as a companion piece to the book, Heidegger alters his approving evaluation of Nietzsche in Being and Time to a more confrontational mode in these lectures. The sort of considerations that guide Heidegger’s thinking through the turn are not the focus of this text but they are evident as background assumptions that shape certain lines of questioning. That history is punctuated by certain epochal figures, of which Nietzsche is the last, marking the transition from the ‘first’ to the ‘other’ beginning. In Being and Time it’s clear that Dasein oscillates between authenticity and inauthenticity, but through the Turn Heidegger began to view these transitions historically through the destiny ( Geschick) of Beyng (written so in order to accentuate the verbal, eventful meaning of the term). These lectures appear at the tail end of Heidegger’s decade-long rumination on Nietzsche’s philosophy, a period also marked by Heidegger’s so-called Turn ( Kehre). While Nietzsche scholars may find some items of interest, and should take Heidegger’s overall critique seriously (more below), this text will be primarily of use for scholars and students of Heidegger. Needless to say, readers will also want to know a fair bit of Heidegger, starting with Being and Time ( BT), but The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude ( FCM), and Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning are also advised.
The title describes the contents perfectly: these lectures record Heidegger’s thoughts on Nietzsche’s “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” Readers should be familiar with the latter work to get the most out of Heidegger’s text. Throughout the course Heidegger deepens his critique of Nietzsche, revisits the question of animal life, offers a lengthy reflection on the connection between truth and justice, and extends his reflections on the unity of temporality, historicality, and Being. Originally published as GA 46, the text consists of a collection of lecture notes and diagrams that loosely correspond to the topical sections of Nietzsche’s essay. Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation ( INM) is a translation by Ullrich Haase and Mark Sinclair of a seminar conducted by Martin Heidegger in Freiburg over the Winter Semester 1938-39.
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