Poetry, Prophecy, and Philosophy: Awaiting New Gods in Heidegger’s Thought

• In Event: Politics and Particularity from Kant to Heidegger

Abstract

Heidegger concludes his 1936–37 Winter Semester lecture course, “Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art,” with a striking interpretation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch as “the man who grounds Being anew—in the rigor of knowledge and in the grand style of creation.” Creation of the highest order, according to Heidegger, is the ability “to estimate, to esteem, that is, to act in accordance with the standard of Being, . . . it is the preparation of readiness for the gods; it is the Yes to Being.” This description of the Übermensch anticipates Heidegger’s description almost three decades later of philosophy in his famous Der Spiegel interview. Responding to the question of whether and how philosophy might “influence this web of fateful circumstances” in our age of technicity, Heidegger asserts that “only a God can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline.” These two remarks indicate the remarkable continuity in Heidegger’s post-Kehre understanding of the philosopher’s task and the centrality of Nietzsche in this understanding of philosophy as the preparation for new gods.

While Heidegger’s understanding of and relationship to Nietzsche has been addressed by several scholars, my paper aims to use Heidegger’s “confrontation” with Nietzsche as a route into exploring the deep connection between Heidegger’s philosophy of history and his radically new conception of the philosopher as incorporating forms of activity traditionally understood as opposed to philosophy, namely, prophecy and poetry.

Heidegger’s confrontation with Nietzsche thus illuminates (1) his account of nihilism, (2) his philosophy of history, and (3) his understanding of the philosopher. These prove to be intimately interrelated, for it is the crisis of nihilism that both discloses the truth of the Western tradition and in this disclosure makes possible a new type of philosophic activity, the core of which consists in providing an account of the advent of nihilism. Moreover, since the account of nihilism is a genealogical account of an unfolding process, then philosophy must take the form of historical inquiries—albeit historical inquires of a peculiar sort. Heidegger’s philosophizing is thoroughly historical in both its conditions and its subject matter. This is necessarily the case since self-knowledge consists in accounting for the conditions of one’s own insight into the crisis of the west. However, it is historical not only in the sense of being retrospective but also insofar as the historical inquires into previous thinkers are propaedeutic to a new openness, a new future. Thus the retrospective dimension of Heidegger’s philosophy serves a prospective purpose. As my paper will argue, Heidegger’s account of nihilism is the condition of hope; his philosophy of history is the logic of the possibility of preparing “a readiness for the appearance of a god.”

Author

• Paul T. Wilford, Boston College