For Heidegger, will to power, whether you want to call it a force , value-positing or try at which makes beings possible, is that which persists as presence. — Joshs

Here we confront the problem
I mentioned earlier, as to when Heidegger is representing the thoughts of someone else and when he is misrepresenting or going beyond.

“To modern metaphysics, the Being of beings appears as will.” — Joshs

I assume you are quoting Heidegger. The question is: is this true? Does modern metaphysics even address the Being of beings? What, for example, does Hegel say about will that can be regarded as meaning the Being of beings?

extrapolation from members of a set to an axiom of the set? — ucarr

Beings are not members of a set "Being".

Being is a blood brother to moebius-strip_time-loop? — ucarr

I think it best to try and understand a philosopher on his own terms. See the chapter in in Nietzsche's Zarathustra "The Riddle and the Vision".

I decided to start a new thread.

They are still beings in Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche. — Joshs

[Edit; I misread this as "there are still beings". They are not still beings.]

Will to power is a value-positing being. — Joshs

Will to power is a force. It is not a being that resides in beings.

The Being of the eternal return is ‘in time’ rather than temporal in Heidegger’s sense. — Joshs

Heidegger does not say the Being of the eternal return, he says:

Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return ... means thinking Being as Time.

(20)

Thinking Being as eternal return is not to think the Being of the eternal return.

He says "as time" not in time.

The eternal return is not in time, what is in time is what eternally returns.

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

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

The question of Being first proceeds by way of beings - "the Being of beings". But even when the question is guided by a focus on a particular being, there is beneath it the question of what it is to be, what it means to say something is.

thinking Being as Time — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

is not to think of Being as something in time.

Later there is a shift from beings, from what is present to presencing, to Being as the event of coming into and enduring of what comes to presence in time. The will to power and the eternal return are not beings, but that through which and by which what comes to be comes to be.

Ousia does not mean presence, presence does not mean objective representation, and objective presentation does not mean ousia.

And in what way do threats of civil unrest influence the result if not by influencing voters? — Michael

What would Trump say about protest and civil unrest when he is the one who calls for it, as he did with the Capital riot and is now doing with the Manhattan DA investigation? Who is he trying to influence?

Has a scholar who did much to pull apart the veil of Scholastic interpretation of Greek thinkers hidden them behind another? — Paine

Good question. Heidegger combines an insightful and penetrating commentary with a presentation of earlier thinkers that is as much a misrepresentation as it is a re-presentation. Take his claim that Plato and Aristotle conceive Being as ousia (presence).

it worked in the current president’s favor. — NOS4A2

This is the real problem in a nutshell. If making voting more accessible had worked in Trump's favor there would be no objections. This is the same reason why Trump railed against mail-in ballots and wanted to call the results when it looked like he had a better chance of winning.

Election interference is now “preventing or making it harder for people to vote”, according to Michael. — NOS4A2

Not just according to Michael. Preventing or making it harder for people to vote is part of the definition of election interference.

Altering state voting laws in the run-up to an election — NOS4A2

Which changes to voting laws represent election interference? In what way did these changes prevent citizens from voting?

getting social media to censor opponents, — NOS4A2

Specifically, who has done this, by what means, and what is the content of what was censored?

threatening businesses with an army of astroturf protesters — NOS4A2

What evidence do you have of this army of protesters? Who recruited and organized them? How were business targets identified?

This is all just hand waving and gesturing without substantive content.

On whose own admission was there election interference on a mass scale? What did they say? Where can we find transcripts?

It was election interference on a mass scale. — NOS4A2

The accusations continue to appear, but the evidence has not.

Heidegger's influence on progressive theology is strong. Tillich and God as the ground of being is an obvious example.

Hart's "surprise" seems contrived.

He's clearly delusional, but what's depressing is the number of people who get pulled along in the slipstream. — Wayfarer

The desire for a savior is strong. Once found everything is formed and reformed in order to conform to that image. It is fueled by resentment and paranoia that there are powerful forces working against them. Hence the appeal of a strong man who by shear force of will can right the world. Those who do not put him above the law are seen as the enemy harboring sinister intentions. Trump has only to step on stage and play his part.

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.

Trump is so scared right now.

We are even told that Trump’s people are planning to “try and film and document it with their own camera crew, they want a shot of him in cuffs and will release the mugshot. They are loving this stuff.

Political theater and financial opportunism are not incompatible with being scared. I am sure he will get some mileage from playing the martyr.

Followed by studious silence.... — Isaac

For good reason, which I don't expect you would understand. But really you should if you would look at what I actually said compared to what you accuse me of. But this is a game you are only too willing to play. Play with yourself I'm done.

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)

I should ask you the same question about the weather in fabrication land. What evidence do you have of what accuse me of thinking?

Falsification of records seems likely, but as another article in the Times today discusses, there are questions about how they will handle it.

Things are not looking so good for Trump and he looks it.

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.

The deep state — NOS4A2

How is the weather in conspiracy fantasy land? Do you have your umbrella?

District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for instance, is trying to raise a misdemeanor to a federal crime. — NOS4A2

What do you think this misdemeanor is?

There is a lot of speculation, but the fact of the matter is we do not know what he will be charged with.

But it explains the fanaticism of his opposition quite well. — NOS4A2

Vague but broad accusations accusing the accusers explains nothing, but it does once again demonstrate the fanaticism behind the compulsive need to protect the Orange Messiah.

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)

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?

Heidegger isn’t silent on the question of the good. — Joshs

What does he say?

I believe Arendt eventually forgave him - I don't think she was aware of the extent of his involvement with Nazism though. — Manuel

Their relationship raises many questions. What she might have known and whether she looked the other way is not something I will attempt to decide.

... what's the point in judging people with standards they did not have ... — Manuel

I don't see it as matter of judging but of understanding what is said in terms of the situatedness of thinking, in the sense of not being able to fully escape the perspectives of one's time, and of context, of what a term like 'man' and what conditions are put on it.

And Nazism had considerable popularity in Europe and the US — unenlightened

Before the civil rights movement in the US I suspect that the prevalence of Nazism diminished mostly because Hitler and Germany became the enemy in WW ll.

Do you also worship power? — unenlightened

Power? It has its attraction, but for many it is more a matter of counteracting power. And, of course, power comes in many forms.

More to the point of the topic, we all have our prejudices, and no doubt the future will see us differently than we see ourselves. Remove the beam from you own eye and all that, but don't blind yourself in the process.

Not many of those whom he influenced became Nazis though — Manuel

That may be but some notable Jewish students he influenced,including Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Jacob Klein, turned against him, at least initially, because he was a Nazi. But this is not to say their thinking moved passed Heidegger because Heidegger was a Nazi.

But let's not then pretend that Hume, Kant and Hegel were not racists — Manuel

Quite the opposite. These things should be brought into the conversation, but that is not to say they should be "cancelled".

To be a dasein is to already be in the midst of being with others in a world. — Joshs

Right, and so, we need to take our noses out of the book and consider what it means to be in the world with others on the level of our everyday experience of being with others, how we and others treat each other.

Time for Heidegger always comes from the future. — Joshs

Right again. And again, we must consider what this means apart from the text. What responsibility do we have for what happens? What is the gift of Heidegger's "es gibt" (it gives)? As with the notion of God's will, we have no way of determining whether to stand with or against what will happen. It seems clear that the future will bring increased threats that imperil our existence. Do we welcome global warming as what the future brings? What does it mean to "hearken to Being"? Isn't the question of the good of essential importance with regard to what will happen? Isn't it our responsibility to say yes or no? Why is Heidegger silent on this?

It is not simply a matter of his character, or attitude, as if it just personal. It is not just a matter of how poorly Heidegger treated his Jewish students.

Heidegger's understanding of history is guided by notions of providence, fate, and destiny:

But if fateful Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, exists essentially in Being-with Others, its historizing is a co-historizing and is determinative for it as destiny [Geschick].This is how we designate the historizing of the community, of a people. Destiny is not something that puts itself together out of individual fates, any more than Being-with-one-another can be conceived as the occurring together of several Subjects. Our fates have already been guided in advance, in our Being with one another in the same
world and in our resoluteness for definite possibilities.

(II 5, 436 Macquarrie & Robinson, 384)

[Added: I see that @waarala already cited this passage].

But if fate constitutes the primordial historicality of Dasein, then history has its essential importance neither in what is past nor in the "today" and its 'connection' with what is past, but in that authentic historizing of existence which arises from Dasein's future.

(II,5, 438, 386)

As summarized in the SEP:

This phenomenon, a final reinterpretation of the notion of resoluteness, is what Heidegger calls primordial historizing or fate. And crucially, historizing is not merely a structure that is partly constitutive of individual authentic Dasein. Heidegger also points out the shared primordial historizing of a community, what he calls its destiny.

When the contemporary reader of Being and Time encounters the concepts of heritage, fate and destiny, and places them not only in the context of the political climate of mid-to-late 1920s Germany, but also alongside Heidegger's later membership of the Nazi party, it is hard not to hear dark undertones of cultural chauvinism and racial prejudice. This worry becomes acute when one considers the way in which these concepts figure in passages such as the following, from the inaugural rectoral address that Heidegger gave at Freiburg University in 1933.

Heidegger SEP

why so much insistence on him being a Nazi? — Manuel

He was a Nazi. No need to insist on it. Why is it important? I think his address,The Self-Assertion of the German University, linked to earlier, makes it abundantly clear. His understanding of being and time, of history unfolding, cannot be separated from what he claimed had come to be in that here and now, of what the call of conscience, what authenticity resolutely demanded of this people and only this people who were to follow the Fuhrer (literally the leader) and play a central role in world history and the truth of Being.

I too was drawn to Heidegger. 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.

This is not to deny his influence or the value of reading him. He is certainly seductive, but it is for this reason that we must be most critical. The idea of harkening to being, of an openness to what is to be, is not, as he would have it, being responsive to being, but an abdication of responsibility. We all know what came to be in the 20th century.

except that he did away with what Arthur Miller described as executive tailoring, which is almost prerequisite in Washington. — NOS4A2

If anyone else said this I would assume it was a joke. His ridiculous coiffure, his orange make-up, his years with speech coaches, he is the textbook example of executive tailoring.

In historical terms he is either a folk devil or folk hero depending on where one’s allegiance lie. — NOS4A2

He is a demagogue. On this we agree. But I do not agree with Rothbard when he says:

For it is one of the most admirable qualities of the demagogue that he forces men to think

Nor can I agree with him when he says:

Demagogues probably first fell into disrepute in the 19th century, when most of them were socialists.

It was common to cite Plato on the dangers of demagogues when Trump was elected.

And this appeal can be made most effectively by the demagogue--the rough, unpolished man of the people, who can present the truth in simple, effective, yes emotional, language.

Trump, with his penchant for gilding toilets and putting his name on everything, would take offense at the idea that he is rough and unpolished, although he does pretend to me a man of the people when he is not bragging about how special he is.

Rothbard's demagogue is a libertarian. Trump is completely without a political or social ideology.

The Folk is for Heidegger not simply one group or community or people or another. It is a special people with a special historical destiny. The is clearly seen in the Rectorate address. It has been argued that Heidegger's speech is largely rhetorical, designed to please the Fuhrer, and not indicative of his own beliefs. This no longer seems tenable.

If we will the essence of science understood as the questioning, uncovered standing one’s ground in the midst of the uncertainty of the totality of what is, then this will to essence will create for our people its world of innermost and most extreme danger, i.e. its truly spiritual world ...

And the spiritual world of a people is ... the power that most deeply preserves the people’s earth- and blood-bound strengths as the power that most deeply arouses and most profoundly shakes the people’s existence. Only a spiritual world guarantees the people greatness. For it forces the constant decision between the will to greatness and the acceptance of decline to become the law for each step of the march that our people has begun into its future history. (3)

The first bond binds to the national community [Volksgemeinschaft]. It obligates to help carry the burden of and to participate actively in the struggles, strivings, and skills of all the estates and members of the people.

The second bond binds to the honor and the destiny of the nation in the midst of all the other peoples.

The third bond of the students binds them to the spiritual mission of the German people. (4)

But we do will that our people fulfill its historical mission. (6)

It could be argued that Heidegger underwent some kind of transformation between the publication of TB and the Rectorate Address, but it seem more like that when he says in BT:

those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself-those among whom one is too.

He is not talking about mankind but rather those with whom he is one, his people, the Volksgemeinschaft. Heidegger's antisemitism is not simply a personal bias or dislike, it is for him of world historical significance.

So imagine substituting “jews” for “they” in B&T. Would that make any sense whatsoever? No. It’d be completely incoherent. — Mikie

Right, because "jews" are not included in Heidegger's 'they', 'those', and 'others'. These terms all mean 'us', those who are like Heidegger. It makes no sense if we think in terms of the dichotomy 'us vs. them'. The way he phrases it fuels the accusations of his deliberate concealment.

I think it’s worthwhile to go back and look to see if there are any connections, given what we know now. — Mikie

Tom Rockmore's On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy (pdf) came out in 1991, but the book only lends support to what was already well known.

Right, he does not say. I filled in the blank.

They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself-those among whom one is too.

Heidegger is using the terms 'they', 'those', and 'others' as terms of inclusion rather than exclusion.

If we look at The Self-Assertion of the German University address from a few years after the publication of BT I think it is clear who it is that is being included and excluded.

I’ve pored through the details in the Russia case and many others, and the conspiracy theories are just as bunk now as they were then. — NOS4A2

I am as reassured as I would be if I blind man told me what he did not see.

You can go back to any page in this thread to confirm that. — NOS4A2

One need not go back very far in order to see how you lump things together:

I honestly don’t care because everything to the anti-Trump brigade is a serious matter until one looks closely. Every conspiracy theory regarding Trump, whether it was Russia collusion or his tax returns, have been massively and comically overstated, and as a result has turned justice into nonsense, journalism into a joke, politics into circuses, and the US into clown world.

It’s gotten so bad that one can adopt a contrary belief without any evidence to do so and he’ll be right most of the time. — NOS4A2

Who cares? After years of Russia collusion, Covid propaganda, Ukraine warmongering, January 6th handwringings, and all the deep-state dinner theater news outlets have spoon-fed us these past few years, — NOS4A2

You say "until one looks closely", but you do not look closely. Even with the Mueller report you did not look closely.

What do folk make of these recent developments? — Banno

It is good that the case against Heidegger has been made persuasively, but his Nazi sympathies and antisemitism have been known for a long time. It is, however, now more difficult for his apologists to separate the man from his philosophy.

I remember when establishment supporters swore he was a treasonous, Russian asset, and now this ... — NOS4A2

Have you repeated this enough to actually believe it? It is likely you do since you admit:

I don’t know nor care about the details. — NOS4A2

Are you aware that when you bury your head in the sand the world does not disappear? There is plenty of evidence that Trump was and is a Russian asset. What evidence? Evidence you do not know and don't care about.

Heidegger's discussion of others in BT reads differently once one is aware of Heidegger's antisemitism:

To avoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense we are talking about 'the Others'. By 'Others' we do not mean everyone else but me-those over against whom the "I" stands out. They
are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself-those among whom one is too. This Being-there-too [Auch-dasein] with them does not have the ontological character of a Being-present at-hand-along-'with' them within a world. (BT 1.4, Macquarrie & Robinson translation, 154 German 118)

Who are those from whom he does and does not distinguish himself? It is the Volk (the Folk) from whom he does not distinguish himself. Or, as @180 Proof put it Blood and Soil

In 1969 Stanley Rosen published "Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay". It can be described as Plato against Heidegger. Rosen said:

Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good.
— Fooloso4

It's a nice quote but I'm not sure I fully get it. Can you expand? — Tom Storm

Basic to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is the desire for and pursuit of the good. This must be understood at the most ordinary level, not as a theory but simply as what we want both for ourselves and those we care about. It is not only basic to their philosophy but basic to their understanding of who we are as human beings.

Phronesis, often translated as practical wisdom, is not simply a matter of reasoning toward
achieving ends, but of deliberation about good ends.

For Heidegger consideration of the good is replaced with the call of conscience. The call of conscience is not about what is good or bad, it is the call for authenticity. Its primary concern is not oneself or others but Being. He sees Plato's elevation of the Good above being, that is, as the source of both being and being known, as a move away from, a forgetting of Being.

In more general terms, how severing reason from the good is nihilism can be seen in the ideal of objectivity and the sequestering of "value judgments". Political philosophy, for example, is shunned in favor of political science. The question of how best to live has no place in a science of politics whose concerns are structural and deal with power differentials.

I bookmarked the page. Thanks.