Tag: Martin Heidegger

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(Part 3 available here)

1. Will To Power

We have already had occasion in previous installments to discuss will to power (Wille zur Macht), one of the most famous concepts associated with Nietzsche. In this essay, we will go into more detail, and discuss Heidegger’s surprising claim that the doctrines of will to power and the “eternal recurrence of the same” are identical. (more…)

Nietzsche blind to the clearing.

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(Part 2 available here)

1. Nihilism and the Death of God

The preceding installment gave the reader a sketch of Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche. It is now time to go into more detail. Heidegger argues that there are “three axes” of Nietzsche’s philosophy: the eternal return, the will to power, and the revaluation of all values.^[1] Our discussion will focus upon these but also cover other matters important for understanding Nietzsche. Ultimately, Heidegger will show that all the different “axes” or aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy are interrelated, and that a thorough discussion of any one must lead to the others. (more…)

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1. The Metaphysics of Presence

In the last installment, we introduced Heidegger’s claim that Western metaphysics ends with Nietzsche. For Heidegger, metaphysics is the expression of an anthropocentrism that culminates in the meaninglessness and inhumanity of modern technological civilization. With Nietzsche, metaphysics comes full circle and “reverses” Platonism. Nietzsche prepares the ground for the ultimate result of metaphysics, which is not actually a work of philosophy. It is modern technological civilization itself. (more…)

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1. Nietzsche as Essential Thinker

Friedrich Nietzsche is an extraordinarily significant thinker for the Right. His affirmation of hierarchy and natural inequality and his analysis of Leftism as moved by ressentiment are extremely important to us. Yet, viewed from the Right, there are also major problems with Nietzsche’s thought. His historicism and relativism (or “perspectivism”) are both highly problematic. (more…)

Heidegger on a country path, 1966.

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That whereof we cannot speak we must remain silent. — Last line of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The rest is silence. — Shakespeare, Hamlet

Berel Lang
Heidegger’s Silence
Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2018

Martin Heidegger’s association with the Nazis is well documented. Having come to Hitler’s attention as Germany’s leading academic, the philosopher was elected to the position of Rector of Freiburg University on April 21, 1933. (more…)

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Ronald Beiner
Radical Right Ideologues in the Age of Trump: Heralds of Nihilism
New York: Routledge, 2026

Ronald Beiner and I go way back. In 2018, Beiner published Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right, which I reviewed at Counter-Currents.[1] Beiner’s book warns academics that it is dangerous to teach Nietzsche and Heidegger because they are profoundly illiberal thinkers who will corrupt the youth. As exhibits, he points to such Right-wing luminaries as Richard Spencer and Alexander Dugin. (more…)

Detail of Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787.

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“Life is a tricky business. I’ve decided to spend it trying to understand it.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer, Remark made to Christoph Martin Wieland

I am a philosopher, drawn to philosophy from an early age, initially Plato’s Dialogues. I’ve also been rewarded with a long healthy life (I am 78 years old) which has been incalculably enriched by being able to read, write, teach and think about things philosophical. Some of the most intense, satisfying memories of my life are those comprised of recalling a particular book I had read that profoundly challenged or changed my way of thinking—Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion, Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses. (more…)

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Translations: Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Ukrainian

Martin Heidegger is one of the giants of twentieth-century philosophy, both in terms of the depth and originality of his ideas and the breadth of his influence in philosophy, theology, the human sciences, and culture in general.

Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889 in the town of Meßkirch in the district of Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He died on May 26, 1976 in Freiburg and was buried in Meßkirch. (more…)

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Schopenhauer monument, Frankfurt.

All parts here.

The Tragedy and Comedy of Life

We are continuing our discussion of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy of life. In the fourth book of The World as Will and Representation (“The World as Will: Second Aspect”), he writes, famously, “The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.”[1] (more…)

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Schopenhauer as Lebensphilosoph

This introduction to the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer is not, strictly speaking, a part of the series on “Heidegger’s history of metaphysics” that I have been writing now for almost five years. The reason is that Heidegger had little use for Schopenhauer, and not a lot to say about him. To my knowledge, he never taught a course on any of Schopenhauer’s works. (more…)

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All parts here.

Introducing the Clearing

As we discussed last time, Heidegger’s major objection to Hegel is to identify his philosophy as “ontotheology.” In other words, Hegel confuses the “ontological difference,” the difference between being-as-such and beings, the things that have being. In the end, Hegel declares that the Absolute is being. (more…)

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All previous parts here.

Heidegger’s Critique of Hegel

We now turn, finally, to Heidegger’s critique of Hegel. As we noted at the beginning of this series, Heidegger saw Hegel’s philosophy as the completion of Western metaphysics. He thus agrees with Hegel in one very important respect, for Hegel held exactly this view of his own philosophy. (more…)

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All previous parts here.

Absolute Idea

Last time, we were continuing our discussion of Hegel’s Logic and were just on the threshold of its third and final division, the Doctrine of the Concept. (more…)