Heidegger's mentor, Edmund Husserl questioned Kant's division of the world into phenomena that are only revealing the "secondary qualities" of the British empiricists David Hume, John Locke, and George Berkeley. Empricists said we could not know the things themselves - Kant's Ding an sich," but Husserl said we did reach them in our "Ideas." Information philosophy agrees with this access "to the things themselves" in our perception (at least some of) of their information content.

Nietzsche once wrote, at the time when the thought of return first loomed on his horizon, during the years 1881-82 (XII, 66, number 124): "Let us imprint the emblem of eternity on our life!" The phrase means: let us introduce an eternalization to ourselves as beings, and hence to beings as a whole; let us introduce the transfiguration of what becomes as something that becomes being; and let us do this in such a way that the eternalization arises from being itself, originating for being, standing in being.

This fundamental metaphysical demand — that is, a demand that grapples with the guiding question of metaphysics — is expressed several years later in a lengthy note entitled "Recapitulation," the title suggesting that the note in just a few sentences provides a résumé of the most important. aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. (See The Will to Power, number 617, presumably from early 1886.)¹ Nietzsche's "Recapitulation" begins with the statement: "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being — that is the supreme will to power ." The sense is not that one must brush aside and replace Becoming as the impermanent — for impermanence is what Becoming implies — with Being as the permanent. The sense is that one must shape Becoming as being in such a way that as becoming it is preserved, has subsistence, in a word, is. Such stamping, that is, the recoining of Becoming as being, is the supreme will to power. In such recoining the will to power comes to prevail most purely in its essence.

What is this recoining, in which whatever becomes comes to be being? It is the reconfiguration of what becomes in terms of its supreme possibilities, a reconfiguration in which what becomes is transfigured and attains subsistence in its very dimensions and domains. This recoining is a creating. To create, in the sense of creation out beyond oneself, is most intrinsically this: to stand in the moment of decision, in which what has prevailed hitherto, our endowment, is directed toward a projected task. When it is so directed, the endowment is preserved. The "momentary" character of creation is the essence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being — will to power in its supreme configuration — is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal recurrence of the same.

The aptness of our interpretation is demonstrated unequivocally in that very fragment which bears the title "Recapitulation." After the statement we have already cited — "To stamp Becoming with the character of Being — that is the supreme will to power" — we soon read the following sentence: "That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of Becoming to one of Being: peak of the meditation." It would scarcely be possible to say in a more lucid fashion, first, how and on what basis the stamping of Being on Becoming is meant to be understood, and second, that the thought of eternal return of the same, even and precisely during the period when the thought of will to power appears to attain preeminence, remains the thought which Nietzsche's philosophy thinks without cease.¹

Nietzsche conjoins in one both of the fundamental determinations of being that emerge from the commencement of Western philosophy, to wit, being as becoming and being as permanence. That "one" is his most essential thought — the eternal recurrence of the same.

Yet can we designate Nietzsche's way of grappling with the commencement of Western philosophy as an end? Is it not rather a reawakening of the commencement? Is it not therefore itself a commencement and hence the very opposite of an end? It is nonetheless the case that Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position is the end of Western philosophy. For what is decisive is not that the fundamental determinations of the commencement are conjoined and that Nietzsche's thinking stretches back to the commencement; what is metaphysically essential is the way in which these things transpire. The question is whether Nietzsche reverts to the incipient commencement, to the commencement as a commencing. And here our answer must be: no, he does not.

Neither Nietzsche nor any thinker prior to him — even and especially not that one who before Nietzsche first thought the history of philosophy in a philosophical way, namely, Hegel — revert to the incipient commencement. Rather, they invariably apprehend the commencement in the sole light of a philosophy in decline from it, a philosophy that arrests the commencement — to wit, the philosophy of Plato. Here we cannot demonstrate this matter in any detail. Nietzsche himself quite early characterizes his philosophy as inverted Platonism; yet the inversion does not eliminate the fundamentally Platonic position. Rather, precisely because it seems to eliminate the Platonic position, Nietzsche's inversion represents the entrenchment of that position.

What remains essential, however, is the following: when Nietzsche's metaphysical thinking reverts to the commencement, the circle closes. Yet inasmuch as it is the already terminated commencement and not the incipient one that prevails there, the circle itself grows inflexible, loses whatever of the commencement it once had. When the circle closes in this way it no longer releases any possibilities for essential inquiry into the guiding question. Metaphysics — treatment of the guiding question — is at an end. That seems a bootless, comfortless insight, a conclusion which like a dying tone signals ultimate cessation. Yet such is not the case.

The End of Metaphysics

Because Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position is the end of metaphysics in the designated sense, it performs the grandest and most profound gathering — that is, accomplishment - of all the essential fundamental positions in Western philosophy since Plato and in the light of Platonism. It does so from within a fundamental position that is determined by Platonism and yet which is itself creative. However, this fundamental position remains an actual, actuating fundamental metaphysical position only if it in turn is developed in all its essential forces and regions of dominion in the direction of its counterposition. For a thinking that looks beyond it, Nietzsche's philosophy, which is inherently a turning against what lies behind it, must itself come to be a forward-looking counterposition.

Nietzsche the Last Metaphysician

Yet since Nietzsche's fundamental position in Western metaphysics constitutes the end of that metaphysics, it can be the counterposition for our other commencement only if the latter adopts a questioning stance vis-à-vis the initial commencement - as one which in its proper originality is only now commencing. After everything we have said, the questioning intended here can only be the unfolding of a more original inquiry. Such questioning must be the unfolding of the prior, all-determining, and commanding question of philosophy, the guiding question, "What is being?" out of itself and out beyond itself.

Nietzsche himself once chose a phrase to designate what we are calling his fundamental metaphysical position, a phrase that is often cited and is readily taken as a way to characterize his philosophy: amor fati, love of necessity. (See the Epilogue to Nietzsche contra Wagner; VIII, 206).* Yet the phrase expresses Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position only when we understand the two words amor and fatum and, above all, their conjunction — in terms of Nietzsche's ownmost thinking, only when we avoid mixing our fortuitous and familiar notions into it.

Amor — love - is to be understood as will, the will that wants whatever it loves to be what it is in its essence. The supreme will of this kind, the most expansive and decisive will, is the will as transfiguration. Such a will erects and exposes what it wills in its essence to the supreme possibilities of its Being.

Fatum - necessity — is to be understood, not as a fatality that is inscrutable, implacable, and overwhelming, but as that turning of need which unveils itself in the awestruck moment as an eternity, an eterniy pregnant with the Becoming of being as a whole: circulus vitiosus deus.

Amor fati is the transfiguring will to belong to what is most in being among beings. A fatum is unpropitious, disruptive, and devastating to the one who merely stands there and lets it whelm him. That fatum is sublime and is supreme desire, however, to one who appreciates and grasps the fact that he belongs to his fate insofar as he is a creator, that is, one who is ever resolute. His knowing this is nothing else than the knowledge which of necessity resonates in his love.

The thinker inquires into being as a whole and as such; into the world as such. Thus with his very first step he always thinks out beyond the world, and so at the same time back to it. He thinks in the direction of that sphere within which a world becomes world. Wherever 1 hat sphere is not incessantly called by name, called aloud, wherever it is held silently in the most interior questioning, it is thought most purely and profoundly. For what is held in silence is genuinely preserved; as preserved it is most intimate and actual. What to common sense looks like "atheism," and has to look like it, is at bottom the very opposite. In the same way, wherever the matters of death and the nothing are treated, Being and Being alone is thought most deeply — whereas those who ostensibly occupy themselves solely with "reality" flounder in nothingness.

Supremely thoughtful utterance does not consist simply in growing taciturn when it is a matter of saying what is properly to be said; it consists in saying the matter in such a way that it is named in nonsaying. The utterance of thinking is a telling silence.' Such utterance corresponds to the most profound essence of language; which has its origin in silence. As one in touch with telling silence, the thinker, in a way peculiar to him, rises to the rank of a poet; yet he remains eternally distinct from the poet, just as the poet in turn remains eternally distinct from the thinker.

Everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy; everything in the demigod's sphere turns to satyr-play; and everything in God's sphere turns to ... to what? "world" perhaps?

(Nietzsche, by Martin Heidegger, Volume Two, "The Eternal Recurrence of the Same", pp. 201-8, ed. by David Farrell Krell)

Reality as a problem of Being, and whether the 'External World' can be Proved

Of these questions about Reality, the one which comes first in order is the ontological question of what "Reality" signifies in general. But as long as a pure ontological problematic and methodology was lacking, this question (if it was explicitly formulated at all) was necessarily confounded with a discussion of the 'problem of the external world'; for the analysis of Reality is possible only on the basis of our having appropriate access to the Real. But it has long been held that the way to grasp the Real is by that kind of knowing which is characterized by beholding [das anschauende Erkennen]. Such knowing 'is' as a way in which the soul — or consciousness — behaves. In so far as Reality has the character of something independent and "in itself", the question of the meaning of "Reality" becomes linked with that of whether the Real can be independent 'of consciousness' or whether there can be a transcendence of consciousness into the 'sphere' of the Real. The possibility of an adequate ontological analysis of Reality depends upon how far that of which the Real is to be thus independent — how far that which is to be transcended — has itself been clarified with regard to its Being. Only thus can even the kind of Being which belongs to transcendence be ontologically grasped. And finally we must make sure what kind of primary access we have to the Real, by deciding the question of whether knowing can take over this function at all.

These investigations, which take precedence over any possible ontological question about Reality, have been carried out in the foregoing existential analytic. According to this analytic, knowing is a founded mode of access to the Real. The Real is essentially accessible only as entities within-the-world. All access to such entities is founded ontologically upon the basic state of Dasein, Being-in-the-world; and this in turn has care as its even more primordial state of Being (ahead of itself — Being already in a world — as Being alongside entities within-the-world).

The question of whether there is a world at all and whether its Being can be proved, makes no sense if it is raised by Dasein as Being-in-the-world; and who else would raise it? Furthermore, it is encumbered with a double signification. The world as the "wherein" [das Worin] of Being-in, and the 'world' as entities within-the-world (that in which [das Wobei] one is concernfully absorbed) either have been confused or are not distinguished at all. But the world is disclosed essentially along with the Being of Dasein; with the disclosedness of the world, the 'world' has in each case been discovered too. Of course entities within-the-world in the sense of the Real as merely present-at-hand, are the very things that can remain concealed. But even the Real can be discovered only on the basis of a world which has already been disclosed. And only on this basis can anything Real still remain hidden. The question of the 'Reality' of the `external world' gets raised without any previous clarification of the phenomenon of the world as such. Factically, the 'problem of the external world' is constantly oriented with regard to entities within-the-world (Things and Objects). So these discussions drift along into a problematic which it is almost impossible to disentangle ontologically.

Kant called the inability to prove the existence of an external world the "scandal" of philosophy

Kant's 'Refutation of Idealism' shows how intricate these questions are and how what one wants to prove gets muddled with what one does prove and with the means whereby the proof is carried out. Kant calls it 'a scandal of philosophy and of human reason in general' that there is still no cogent proof for the 'Dasein of Things outside of us' which will do away with any scepticism. He proposes such a proof himself, and indeed he does so to provide grounds for his 'theorem' that 'The mere consciousness of my own Dasein — a consciousness which, however, is empirical in character — proves the Dasein of objects in the space outside of me.'

We must in the first instance note explicitly that Kant uses the term 'Dasein' to designate that kind of Being which in the present investigation we have called 'presence-at-hand'. 'Consciousness of my Dasein' means for Kant a consciousness of my Being-present-at-hand in the sense of Descartes. When Kant uses the term `Dasein' he has in mind the Being-present-at-hand of consciousness just as much as the Being-present-at-hand of Things.

The proof for the `Dasein of Things outside of me' is supported by the fact that both change and performance belong, with equal primordiality, to the essence of time. My own Being-present-at-hand — that is, the Being-present-at-hand of a multiplicity of representations, which has been given in the inner sense — is a process of change which is present-at-hand. To have a determinate temporal character [Zeitbestimmtheit], however, presupposes something present-at-hand which is permanent. But this cannot be 'in us', 'for only through what is thus permanent can my Dasein in time be determined'. Thus if changes which are present-at-hand have been posited empirically 'in me', it is necessary that along with these something permanent which is present-at-hand should be posited empirically 'outside of me'. What is thus permanent is the condition which makes it possible for the changes 'in me' to be present-at-hand. The experience of the Being-in-time of representations posits something changing 'in me' and something permanent 'outside of me', and it posits both with equal primordiality.

Of course this proof is not a causal inference and is therefore not encumbered with the disadvantages which that would imply. Kant gives, as it were, an 'ontological proof' in terms of the idea of a temporal entity. It seems at first as if Kant has given up the Cartesian approach of positing a subject one can come across in isolation. But only in semblance. That Kant demands any proof at all for the `Dasein of Things outside of me' shows already that he takes the subject — the 'in me' — as the starting-point for this problematic. Moreover, his proof itself is then carried through by starting with the empirically given changes 'in me'. For only `in me' is 'time' experienced, and time carries the burden of the proof. Time provides the basis for leaping off into what is 'outside of me' in the course of the proof. Furthermore, Kant emphasizes that "The problematical kind [of idealism], which merely alleges our inability to prove by immediate experience that there is a Dasein outside of our own, is reasonable and accords with a sound kind of philosophical thinking: namely, to permit no decisive judgment until an adequate proof has been found." But even if the ontical priority of the isolated subject and inner experience should be given up, Descartes' position would still be retained ontologically. What Kant proves—if we may suppose that his proof is Icorrect and correctly based—is that entities which are changing and entities which are permanent are necessarily present-at-hand together. But when two things which are present-at-hand are thus put on the same level, this does not as yet mean that subject and Object are present-athand together. And even if this were proved, what is ontologically decisive would still be covered up—namely, the basic state of the 'subject', Casein, as Being-in-the-world. The Being-present-at-hand-together of the physical and the psychical is completely different ontically and ontologically from the phenomenon of Being-in-the-world. Kant presupposes both the distinction between the 'in me' and the `outside of me', and also the connection between these; factically he is correct in doing so, but he is incorrect from the standpoint of the tendency of his proof. It has not been demonstrated that the sort of thing which gets established about the Being-present-at-hand-together of the changing and the permanent when one takes time as one's clue, will also apply to the connection between the 'in me' and the 'outside of me'. But if one were to see the whole distinction between the 'inside' and the 'outside' and the whole connection between them which Kant's proof presupposes, and if one were to have an ontological conception of what has been presupposed in this presupposition, then the possibility of holding that a proof of the `Dasein of Things outside of me' is a necessary one which has yet to be given [noch ausstehend], would collapse.

Heidegger thinks the only scandal is that philosophers keep looking for a proof

The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. Such expectations, aims, and demands arise from an ontologically inadequate way of starting with something of such a character that independently of it and 'outside' of it a 'world' is to be proved as present-at-hand. It is not that the proofs are inadequate, but that the kind of Being of the entity which does the proving and makes requests for proofs has not been made definite enough. This is why a demonstration that two things which are present-at-hand are necessarily present-at-hand together, can give rise to the illusion that something has been proved, or even can be proved, about Dasein as Being-in-the-world. If Dasein is understood correctly, it defies such proofs, because, in its Being, it already is what subsequent proofs deem necessary to demonstrate for it.

If one were to conclude that since the Being-present-at-hand of Things outside of us is impossible to prove, it must therefore 'be taken merely on faith' , one would still fail to surmount this perversion of the problem. The assumption would remain that at bottom and ideally it must still be possible to carry out such a proof. This inappropriate way of approaching the problem is still endorsed when one restricts oneself to a 'faith in the Reality of the external world', even if such a faith is explicitly 'acknowledged' as such. Although one is not offering a stringent proof, one is still in principle demanding a proof and trying to satisfy that demand.

Even if one should invoke the doctrine that the subject must presuppose and indeed always does unconsciously presuppose the presence-at-hand of the 'external world', one would still be starting with the construct of an isolated subject. The phenomenon of Being-in-the-world is something that one would no more meet in this way than one would by demonstrating that the physical and the psychical are present-at-hand together. With such presuppositions, Dasein always comes 'too late'; for in so far as it does this presupposing as an entity (and otherwise this would be impossible), it is, as an entity, already in a world. 'Earlier' than any presupposition which Dasein makes, or any of its ways of behaving, is the 'a priori' character of its state of Being as one whose kind of Being is care.

(Being and Time, Macquarrie and Robinson, translators, pp. 246-9)

Heidegger on the Presocratics

Heidegger is said to have had a turn (Kehre) from the combined existential and ontological concerns in his 1927 masterwork Being and Time to focus on the fundamental problem of ontology - the meaning of "Being." He first studied Aristotle's views on ontology and then looked backward in time to the earlier work in Plato's fictitious Parmenides, then to the few fragments of Parmenides' great Poe On Nature

Heidegger's to the earliest presocratic philosophers was to recover what he called the "question of Being," which he claimed had been forgotten in the sophisticated development of metaphysics by the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. He lectured on Parmenides as early as 1922 and in 1932 started his arguments with Anaximander of Miletus, in a work published in German in 2012 and recently translated into English as The Beginning of Western Philosophy.

Heidegger began lecturing on early Greek thinkers perhaps as early as 1915, and repeated work on their works for the rest of his life. The questions he raised are those first treated by Friedrich Nietzsche in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, which appeared only posthumously in 1903. Nietzsche singled out Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras.