Interpretation of Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation

by Martin Heidegger, Ullrich Haase (Translator), Mark Sinclair (Translator)

Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation presents crucial elements for understanding Heidegger's thinking from 1936 to 1940. Heidegger offers a radically different reading of a text that he had read decades earlier, showing how his relationship with Nietzche's has changed, as well as how his understandings of the differences between animals and humans, temporality and history, and the Western philosophical tradition developed. With his new reading, Heidegger delineates three Nietzschean modes of history, which should be understood as grounded in the structure of temporality or historicity and also offers a metaphysical determination of life and the essence of humankind. Ullrich Hasse and Mark Sinclair offer a clear and accessible translation despite the fragmentary and disjointed quality of the original lecture notes that comprise this text.

Genres: Philosophy

320 pages, Hardcover

Published September 12, 2016

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since it was based on Heidegger's sparse notes for a seminar, this book is incomplete and sometimes difficult to follow. At the end, the book includes summaries of meetings compiled by different students, plus a general overview of the entire seminar compiled by Heidegger's own son – summaries that show how incomplete and brief Heidegger's notes were.
For the young Nietzsche, life stands for both animal and human beings – with the first living only in the present (and as such unhistorical), and with the human being experiencing past, present, and future (and thus historical). According to Heidegger, retaining (as making present) and forgetting (that even forgets itself) are much better at differentiating between animals and humans. As such, only humans are capable of comporting themselves to beings (including the past/history) as beings. According to Nietzsche, “without forgetting it is impossible to live at all”, and thus too much historiology is detrimental to life. Culture, as the dominance of art over life and as unity of style, is also threatened by too much historical sense; and we need culture along with people to produce great individuals/geniuses.
In this meditation, Nietzsche defines three possible relations to the past and the three corresponding living in the present/future: monumental (active and great individuals), antiquarian (conservation and veneration), and critical (release from suffering). Due to his nihilistic understanding, Nietzsche engaged in critical historiology in most of his work – including this one. For Heidegger, historiology is based on history, and this in turn based on temporality. As pointed out in “Being and Time” (where Heidegger mentions these three modes of relating to the past as defined by Nietzsche in this meditation), temporality is the essential ground of the human being by making remembering possible in relation to the past, resolution in relation to the future, and activity in relation to the present.
The meditation is untimely in the sense that Nietzsche struggles with his current Germany. To him, life is oversaturated with historiography that has become science. As such, the inner and outer of human life are out-of-sync and the culture as unity of artistic style is destroyed. The issue of science, raises the issues of truth, objectivity, art, being/becoming, justice and all their relationships with life. As already emerging in this meditation – but especially for later Nietzsche - becoming is more real than being/eternal (i.e. Heraclitus is preferred over Plato), art is more important than truth (“we possess art so that we do not perish at the hands of truth”), “truth has its root in justice” and “is that sort of error without which a particular sort of living being cannot live”, and ultimately “justice is the highest representative of life itself.”