How do you see [this] answering the question about what the future brings and how we are to respond, how we are to distinguish between what is to be accepted and rejected, how we are to act toward the future?

That much is sensible. Especially when it reaches to the level of metaphysics and epistemology, knowing a bit of the science of the time really helps understand why they argued things that, absent that context, sound bizarre.

For ethical issues, maybe there's something there.

I suppose this is a matter of personal preference to a large extent.

Regarding ethics, it is interesting that Heidegger started out as a Catholic theology scholar. The anti-modern ethos he espoused in various fashions throughout his life began in the context of those conservative movements that resisted change to what was seen as the proper order.

His views on Christianity obviously changed but his objections to 'scientism' and technology have some connection to the religious expression he encountered early in his career.

He speaks in terms of losing something once experienced and looking forward to something that is closer to that than what we have now but new and different at the same time.

That I do see rather clearly (in so far as anything he writes can belled "clear"), his conservative stance in terms of being rooted to nature and following a certain tradition rooted in quite worldly affairs.

As I have read him in the past, through Dreyfus' lenses, and latter, through Tallis' eyes, I do think his mentioning of science as one way of the various ways we have to analyze and understand the world is valuable.

He seems to me to gain back some strong quasi-religious dimensions in his Contributions, which is really, really obscure - almost unreadable.

In general though, he would not be the best person for ethics I'd think. But frankly, I know very little of it because it's not my area. So, I'll take your word for it.

Please don't take my word for it. I see that you have encountered some measure of the matter in your reading.

Can you explain to me why Heidegger viewed Nietzsche as the last metaphysician? How does one read Nietzsche this way?

Your two questions are excellent. I will take a stab at the first one.

One way to look at it is that Nietzsche saw himself as past metaphysics, abandoning 'explanation' as performed in the style of his predecessors.

Heidegger comes along and says that there is a system where the system has not been competed yet. Nietzsche would have produced it if he had lived long enough. All of those ideas by H are laid out in the Lectures I linked to.

These are at least two different ways of reading the text.

Heidegger comes along and says that there is a system where the system has not been competed yet. Nietzsche would have produced it if he had lived long enough. All of those ideas by H are laid out in the Lectures I linked to. — Paine

That's a tantalizing notion. Thanks for the context. Do you agree with Heidegger?

I am not sure if I have presented two possible propositions where one can be confirmed and the other denied.

Does this count as ambivalence? :wink:

Not at all. My strong preferences are not the same as impartial justice.

Can you explain to me why Heidegger viewed Nietzsche as the last metaphysician? — Tom Storm

A short question that requires a long answer. But I will try to keep it short. All quotes are from the text linked to by Paine, "The Eternal Recurrence of the Same". We must begin with what he means by ‘metaphysics’:

... metaphysics is the inquiry and the search that always remains guided by the sole question "What is being?" (189-90)

He calls this the guiding question. In distinction from this is the grounding question:

For that reason we call the question "What is being?" the guiding question, in contrast to the more original question which sustains and directs the guiding question. The more
original question we call the grounding question. (193)

The genuinely grounding question, as the question of the essence of Being, does not unfold in the history of philosophy as such; Nietzsche too persists in the guiding question. (4)

The grounding question remains as foreign to Nietzsche as it does to the history of thought prior to him.(67)

Nietzsche's philosophy is the end of metaphysics, inasmuch as it reverts to the very commencement of Greek thought, taking up such thought in a way that is peculiar to Nietzsche's philosophy alone. In this way Nietzsche's philosophy closes the ring that is formed by the very course of inquiry into being as such and as a whole. (199-200).

The guiding question of metaphysics, “what is being?” has reached its end with Nietzsche. With its completion the grounding question, the question of the essence of Being, can once again be taken up by Heidegger.

If we interrogate being solely with a view to the fact that it is being, interrogate being as being, then with the question as to what being is we are aiming to discover what makes being a being. We are aiming to discover the beingness of being-in Greek, the ousia of on. We are interrogating the Being of beings. (194)

That is a much more helpful response than mine.

The guiding question of metaphysics, “what is being?” has reached its end with Nietzsche. — Wikipedia

The genuinely grounding question, as the question of the essence of Being, does not unfold in the history of philosophy as such... — Wikipedia

...we call the question "What is being?" the guiding question, in contrast to the more original question which sustains and directs the guiding question. The more original question
we call the grounding question. — Wikipedia

Does the guiding question not imply a search for the essence of being? I don't suppose anyone thinks it seeks after the surface or periphery of being.

Does the guiding question not imply a search for the essence of being? — ucarr

No. He says the grounding question:

sustains and directs the guiding question.

The guiding question is about beings, things that are. The grounding question is not about any particular being or all beings, it is about Being, the wonder that there is anything at all. Heidegger's claim is that the grounding question of Being became lost as the focus was narrowed and guided by the question of beings.

Heidgger put it this way:

In the popular view, and according to the common notion, Nietzsche is the revolutionary figure who negated, destroyed, and prophesied. To be sure, all that belongs to the image we have of him. Nor is it merely a role that he played, but an innermost necessity of his time. But what is essential in the revolutionary is not that he overturns as such; it is rather that in overturning he brings to light what is decisive and essential. In philosophy that happens always when those few momentous questions are raised. When he thinks "the most difficult thought" at the "peak of the meditation," Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. What does that mean, taken quite broadly and essentially? Eternity, not as a static "now," nor as a sequence of "nows" rolling off into the infinite, but as the "now" that bends back into itself: what is that if not the concealed essence of Time? Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return, thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time. Nietzsche thinks that thought but does not think it as the question of Being and Time. Plato and Aristotle also think that thought when they conceive Being as ousia (presence), but just as little as Nietzsche do they think it as a question.
If we do ask the question, we do not mean to suggest that we are cleverer than both Nietzsche and Western philosophy, which Nietzsche "only" thinks to its end. We know that the most difficult thought of philosophy has only become more difficult, that the peak of the meditation has not yet been conquered and perhaps not yet even discovered at all. — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time.

Nietzsche thinks that thought ...

Plato and Aristotle also think that thought when they conceive Being as ousia (presence) — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

I think it would be more accurate if he said that this is how he thinks they thought that thought. But I think he would think that I am not thinking historically:

...until philosophy is forced to think historically-in a still more essential and original sense of that word-taking its own most grounding question as its point of departure. (186)

Greetings, fellow philosophers ! Heidegger is frustratingly elusive at times. How ought one understand the ontological difference ? One approach: "What most properly throws us into terror or wonder is not how but rather that the world is. But what allows us this distance from the whole of things ? ... How do humans manage to experience the strangeness not of this or that anomaly but of the being of the world itself ?" Is grasping being something like grasping the world as a "finite whole" ? Something like grasping the world as a unity that need not be but nevertheless is ? The brute fact of a passing show ?

The guiding question of metaphysics, “what is being?” has reached its end with Nietzsche. With its completion the grounding question, the question of the essence of Being, can once again be taken up by Heidegger. — Fooloso4

Great, thank you. I note you said this earlier:

Like many, I sensed that he had something mysterious and important to disclose. That thinking plays an essential role in to bringing being to presence. In time I came to think that pursuit of the question of "Being" is like chasing the wind. An oracular prophet without a revelation. — Fooloso4

Is this your view about the question "what is being?" more generally, or is it your view of the Heideggerian approach?

Is this question still pursued or relevant in philosophy? I note Derrida's early interest in Heidegger and his formulation of being as presence.

Does the guiding question not imply a search for the essence of being? — ucarr

The grounding question is not about any particular being or all beings, it is about Being, the wonder that there is anything at all. — Fooloso4

This is clear. Now I understand the distinction.

Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. What does that mean, taken quite broadly and essentially? Eternity, not as a static "now," nor as a sequence of "nows" rolling off into the infinite, but as the "now" that bends back into itself: what is that if not the concealed essence of Time? Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return, thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time. — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

Thanks for supplying this quote; it increases my interest in Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Curiously, I'm catching a hint of conflation of a particular being or all beings with Being.

My evidence is the above Heidegger quote. Paraphrasing him, he says: Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. So, by my understanding, Being as will to power as eternal recurrence = the now that bends back into itself.

To me this sounds like a description of a being, a reflexive being. And, moreover, this particular being is time.

My evidence is the above Heidegger quote. Paraphrasing him, he says: Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. So, by my understanding, Being as will to power as eternal recurrence = the now that bends back into itself.

To me this sounds like a description of a being, a reflexive being. And, moreover, this particular being is time — ucarr

That is exactly why Heidegger argues that Nietzsche’s thinking of Being remains within metaphysics. The tradition has always treated being as a persisting presence.

The tradition has always treated being as a persisting presence. — Joshs

Present to who, though? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say being has mostly been thought as persisting existence or simply persistence, rather than persisting presence? Unless you mean presence to denote simply a general "thereness", rather than something perceived, or even merely perceptible in prinicple.

The metaphysics of presence is a key preoccupation of the post-structuralists like Derrida.

Wiki has it like this, although I am unsure of the reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_of_presence

Aristotle asks about "being qua being", what it means to be, if there is one thing that all things have in common. Some think he found a theological answer in the activity of intellect. Others, however, think he did not find an answer. That his answer is we do not know. That we cannot but begin with what is. The latter is my understanding. The theological answer is given because most are not philosophers. They need answers and one that they cannot understand is better than no answer. And one that has the appearance of intelligibility and is the work of a god is even better.

I think Heidegger was attempting to evoke a sense of wonder that there is anything at all, but it seems like mystification. , but for him Being cannot be thought separate from Time. The question or more precisely the questioning prevails, but it is the questioning that grounds, guides, and moves thinking.

I'm familiar with (to the extent I've had the patience to read) Derrida. I'm much more familiar with Heidegger, but that is presenting a different slant, where what exists is understood to be, according to traditional metaphysics, what exists in the present moment, Eternalism and the Block Universe are different views. It would interesting to see where and when the idea of Eternalism originated.

It would interesting to see where and when the idea of Eternalism originated. — Janus

Heidegger seems to put Heraclitus in this role. Cycles of Becoming repeating without beginning or end.

Heidegger seems to put Heraclitus in this role. Cycles of Becoming repeating without beginning or end. — Paine

Interesting, that's a different slant again: I was thinking more of the idea that all moments exist eternally and that there is no privileged present moment in anything but a relative (to us) sense.

That is a different slant for me; Will have to ponder.

It does seem different than Heidegger saying we posit persistence rather than find it.

That's a thought I would not ordinarily associate with Heidegger. I would have thought we encounter persistence with the present at hand...we can stare at many kinds of objects and they persist without noticeable change for as long as we can persist in staring at them.

The theological answer is given because most are not philosophers. They need answers and one that they cannot understand is better than no answer. And one that has the appearance of intelligibility and is the work of a god is even better. — Fooloso4

That made me laugh.

I think Heidegger was attempting to evoke a sense of wonder that there is anything at all, but it seems like mystification — Fooloso4

:fire: Interestingly the words of progressive theological thinker David Bentley Hart frequently come back to the 'wonder of being' or the 'surprise that there is anything at all'.

Coming outside of philosophy, I find the notion of being fairly uninteresting. No doubt there is rigorous and serious scholarship behind Heidegger's work, but it often sounds like high end bong talk. :wink: