RUTH IRWIN HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE; THE QUESTION OF VALUE AND NIHILISM IN RELATION TO EDUCATION ABSTRACT. This paper is a philosophical analysis of Heidegger and Nietzsche’s approach to metaphysics and the associated problem of nihilism. Heidegger sums up the history of Western metaphysics in a way which challenges common sense approaches to values education. Through close attention to language, Heidegger argues that Nietzsche inverts the Platonic-Christian tradition but retains the anthropocentric imposition of ‘values’. I have used Nietzsche’s theory to suggest a slightly different definition of metaphysics and nihilism which draws attention to the ontological parameters of human truths as a struggle between competing sets of conflicting or contradictory values (perspectives) that opens space for rethinking and re-educating human possibilities. How this openness will show up in educational theory and practice is only beginning to be evoked. The two philosophers indicate an approach to issues of morality, decision making and knowledge production which may surprise and disconcert traditional views. As the forefathers of post-structuralist thinking, Nietzsche and Heidegger offer a critique of Humanism while retaining the Renaissance tradition of positioning education as the well spring of values in society. It is through the generation of new knowledges, the development of critique and the nurturing of character that society reformulates itself in relation to the earth. The ethical evaluation of these new forms of knowledge is crucial to the creative and caring regeneration of the human environment, as opposed to the corrosive adoption of consumerism and usury. KEY WORDS: education, ethics, Heidegger, metaphysics, Nietzsche, nihilism, poststructuralism INTRODUCTION Recently the debates over ‘values education’ have hotted up. The neoliberal emphasis on vocationalism and commodification has been perceived as inadequate to describe the scope of the role of education in society. As emerge from ‘developed’ societies try to decades of neoliberal, self-centred and competitive individualism, a dissonance arises in the classroom for an ethical and meaningful approach to life. However, is it enough simply to revisit the existing debate with historical arguments, such as the democratic need for informed citizens capable of making critical decisions, or the redemptive do-gooder ethics of non-violence – or are new contours to the debate required? The issue of environmental damage has Studies in Philosophy and Education 22: 227–244, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 228 RUTH IRWIN changed the scope of ethical concerns in general and educative ethics in particular. The traditional anthropocentric relation of humanity to, as Kant puts it, ‘the manifold’ cannot continue without irreversibly destroying our habitat – in the same fashion as a deadly virus kills its host. Unfortunately, unlike Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars, there are no alternative host planets available for terraforming and recolonising and so the peril of environmental devastation looms large on the horizon of world wide social organisation. There is a tendency to offer technological fixes to what are perceived as technical environmental problems – such as bringing the extinct Tasmanian Devil to life through a combination of genetically engineering the DNA and emplanting the embryo in another related species. Counterpointing the reductionism of technological ‘fixes’ is the Judeo-Christian crisis response of redemptive ethics. Heidegger tends towards the latter. What he is arguing for is a reconfiguring of the relationship between humanity and the world and he conceptualises this through the special significance of the ability of Dasein to apprehend Being. Heidegger relegates the problem of nihilism to the corrosion of the originary force of this relationship into a rigid representation of the language as logos. He describes nihilism as the stagnation of our awareness of Being in an anthropocentric table of values. Pre-empting the neoliberal takeover of liberal terminology, he argues that it is this slippage into monetarist terms such as ‘value’, ‘importance’, ‘weight’, rather than ‘care’ and ‘openness’, that inevitably produces a logic of consumerism between humanity and beings-as-a-whole. In his text, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger outlines his theory of Being. He distinguishes a significant relationship between apprehension of Being by Dasein from the nothingness of mere existence. He takes an ontological position reminiscent in many ways of the emphasis Aristotle places on primary substance. Being is not an abstraction but ‘shows up’ in the ordinary activity of particular beings. In contrast to the traditional view of Being underlying the changing differentials of individuals and groups like a static ‘ground’, Heidegger conceptualizes Being as a dynamic ‘event ontology’. The significance of Dasein is the ‘passion for questioning’ which ‘wrests’ Being from concealment. Heidegger argues that there was a historical shift in ancient Greek thought in the concept of Being from physis to ousia and then to the Roman translation ‘substance’. He argues that this shift is a decline in the originary force of human awareness and ability to show up Being. Plato began the ‘decline’ by positioning Being ‘beyond’ the World of Appearance’ and at a remove from particular beings. Aristotle redressed this problem to some extent but his reliance on the statements of the logos in, for example, The HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 229 Categories, produced a stale representation rather than a poetic, forceful ‘wresting’ of Being from concealment. This corruption has resulted in a degeneration and complacency of society and history. Clearly Heidegger requires language to do more work than classify or designate logical routes of deduction. He regards the significance of humanity as lying in the reciprocal relation between Dasein and Being. His theory of the significance of Dasein as a questioner is important, if anthropocentric. Heidegger’s ideas about the function of language, logic and values have important consequences for the emphasis we place on different fields of human endeavour. In sharp contrast to liberal faith in the ‘sciences of the State’, positivist technology and economics, in many instances Heidegger relegates science to ‘busyness’ and argues that works of art constitute the best way of reconfiguring culture and opening up original aspects of Being. He remains within the modern framework in his Renaissance-like interest in the ideas of classical antiquity and his faith that home and hearth will solve the contemporary problems of consumerism and the nihilist attitude of society. It is his focus on questioning and reconfigurement that gives us a vital indication of motives and a role for education. LIFE-WORLD The issue at stake between Heidegger and Nietzsche’s theory lies in their distinctively different philosophical attitudes to the environment, based on either the solopsitic notion of ‘world’ or a wider, force driven concept of ‘life’. Nietzsche’s upbringing and later rejection of Christianity produces a radical emphasis on ‘Life’ and a subsequent re-evaluation of the relative importance of humanity. Nietzsche’s definition of metaphysics is the unquestioned faith in an absolute truth, either as an ontological ‘ground’, such as the concept of ‘substance’, or a theological ‘beyond’, such as the Christian God, or the Platonic ‘Good’. Truths define the moral laws of society and as such are necessary components constituting the conditions for activity we define as ‘human’. Thus ‘faith’ in truths is not to be entirely abandoned – Nietzsche simply explores the parameters of perception, interpretation and knowledge. By doing so, he situates the busy purposefulness of many forms of social organisation as productive within the limited field of human intelligence. He also contextualises the nihilism of metaphysics as an unsubstantiated call to the ‘beyond’ of nothingness, or the void. Drawing up the parameters of meaning, truth, knowledge and purpose emphasises that nihilism is a meagre way of understanding human life. It is based on an inflated sense of our own importance. Once we have 230 RUTH IRWIN our status in perspective, the daily existence of life is valuable for its own sake. Heidegger, on the other hand, echoes Schopenhauer in another way, by defining metaphysics as the inquiry into the relation between the universal and the plurality, or Being and beings. Heidegger clearly delineates the legitimate field of inquiry of Being into that which can be ascertained by Dasein – rather than extraneous ‘busy’ alien existence, which he defines as nothingness. Following Parmenides and, in a way, Nietzsche, Heidegger is wary of nothingness. He understands nothingness as nihilism which is a road leading to loss, annihilation, or as he puts it, the forgetting of Being. He argues that instead of overcoming nihilism, Nietzsche brings about the culmination of metaphysics by inverting the Platonic and Christian ‘beyond’ in a dualistic opposition that does not transform the problem of Being’s obscurity. Peters argues that Heidegger sets forth “a deepening of humanism, but a deepening that, at the same time, recognises forces somehow beyond ‘Man’ ” (Peters, 2000, p. 6). Beyond Man is Heidegger’s concept of the unique quality of Dasein as the ability to ascertain the nature of Being without relying on a rationalist or positivist position of control ‘over’ nature. Heidegger puts emphasis on the hubris of Humanism, which he argues, ‘forgets’ the unique ability of Dasein to apprehend Being. Peters quotes Heidegger’s statement that, “Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough” (Heidegger, 1996, pp. 233–234). BEING The framework Heidegger finds at the source of Western metaphysics, in the earliest fragments of Greek philosophy is the question: ‘what is Being?’ The mode of questioning is vital. Its etymology and grammar will only get us so far, Heidegger argues. Instead of first asking this question – what is Being? we need initially to find a mode of inquiry which will be fruitful. Logically, the more comprehensive a term, “the more indeterminate and empty is its content” (Heidegger, 1973a, p. 40). The term ‘Being’ is so huge and all-encompassing that Nietzsche argues that its meaning has become ‘empty’ and ‘vaporous’. Thus, Heidegger says it is easy for the question to become “merely a mechanical repetition of the question about the Being as such.” What is required is an engagement with Being which allows its ‘appropriate unfolding’ Heidegger advocates poetry as making the term ‘strange’ and thereby enabling a discerning and fresh revealing of the Being of beings. Plato assumed that the Ideal nature of Being was HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 231 a priori and inaccessible to the temporality of a human. But this is not a limitation that Heidegger takes seriously because the questioning is only viable through a peculiarly human ability to apprehend the ground from which Being springs. As Peters argues, in this way Heidegger is advocating a deepening of Humanism, not a rejection of it (Peters, 2000). In his book An Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), Heidegger looks to the poetry of the early Greeks; Parmenides, Heraclitus and Sophocles as an originating experience of Being. He documents the shift from these vital and ‘originary’ authors to the nihilistic ‘degradation’ of Being by Plato and, to a lesser extent, Aristotle, and consequently the metaphysical tradition up until and including Nietzsche. As Guignon puts it, in the foreground of the book is “the dawn of metaphysics in ancient Greece, its decline and calcification up to the present, and the prospects for rejuvenation today” (Guignon, 2001, p. 67). NOTHINGNESS Heidegger accepts the traditional dualism between Being and Nothingness. He does not expound at any length on nothingness, except to say it is indescribable and, again, best approximated through poetry rather than philosophy: “Authentic speaking about nothing always remains extraordinary. It cannot be vulgarised. It dissolves if it is placed in the cheap acid of a merely logical intelligence” (Heidegger, 1973b, p. 26). His notion of nothingness does not appear to rest significantly on ‘the void’, or ‘madness’, or even outer space, which might be juxtaposed with Being, but rather on not-being which is the removal of the once-being such as the absence of the cup from the bench or death. The question for Heidegger here is – “Why are there beings rather than nothing?” (ibid., p. 2) Being elicits the possibility of nothing – and in that possibility reveals itself (ibid., p. 29). He says that nothingness coalesces with being because it “is nothing.” His analysis begs the question – is nothingness conflatable with Being? That appears to be an entire thesis on its own. A question, perhaps, best left open at this stage. Heidegger distinguishes though, between ‘existence’ and (non)Being in a manner that is surprising. Nonbeing means accordingly to depart from such generated permanence: existasthai, ‘existence’, ‘to exist’, meant for the Greeks nonbeing. The thoughtless habit of using the words ‘existence’ and ‘exist’ as designations for Being is one more indication of our estrangement both from Being and from radical, forceful, and definite exegesis of Being (ibid., p. 64). The term existence for Heidegger then, is an exit, as I understand it, a kind of ‘exit-ence’ from the now. Anything lost or forgotten might qualify 232 RUTH IRWIN as long as it was truly gone, and not simply operating in a hidden or obscured manner. To be comprehended by other animals (for example) is not a qualification for entering the peculiarly reflective human language of Being; ‘existence’ departs from Dasein’s co-representation of Being. The previous short passage is all that Heidegger devotes to existence as non-Being, but in view of his anthropocentric version of Being which only ‘shows’ itself apprehendable to human thought, the notion that existence as nonbeing exits from the encircling of Being is important. Nonbeing is slightly, but profoundly, different from ‘concealment’ because where Being is ‘concealed’ it is still there, simply obscured from view. Nonbeing is partly not-present, but primarily not-present to human apprehension. Thus a corpse might be literally present, but Being is inapprehendable in its being. However, it is a mistake to think that Being means Life (in either a biological or Nietzschean sense). Many aspects of life abound in a manner that humans are completely oblivious to and this is existence, not Being. Indeed, Heidegger argues that expanding the boundaries of human comprehension in regard to the natural environment simply results in ‘busyness’ rather than increased access to the truth of Being. Nietzsche talks about ‘life’ rather than Being or existence. His theory of the Will to Power attributes perspectives to other forms of existence that are outside the parameters of human comprehension. The concept is anorganic rather than being limited to breathing, ‘living’ things. He regards each mode of being as having its own perspective and thus its own ‘world’. For Heidegger, the boundaries of Being, and the manner in which Being is discernible through beings is interesting. On the one hand, the relationship of das Seiende, ‘Being’ to ‘beings’ is fundamental, because “thinking Being in abstraction from being is artificial” (ibid., p. 32). The aspect of human apprehension in relation to Being, and through beings, is vital because Being presents to a view, in other words, oblivion is a poverty of viewing. Our apprehension of Being is limited to its appearance in examples of being. Dasein is a German word commonly designated to mean general ‘existence’. For Heidegger Dasein is a very specific technical term which he uses to refer to humans (and conceivably other beings which care about ‘being as a whole’). Without apprehension by Dasein, the Being in beings could not shine forth, and all would be nothing. The parameters of apprehension are also set by the mode in which Dasein questions. What is important is the relation between the duality of beings and Being. This relation is not based on beings participating in Being, such as Plato argued in the Sophist, but rather on a more Aristotelian notion of beings ascending towards Being (Heidegger, 1968, pp. 222– 223). Dasein moves from ascertaining a particular and transient being to HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 233 comprehending the enduringness of Being. Thus, the essential concepts are Being and time. In the philosophical tradition, ‘Being’ has a static feel to it, as in ‘ground’. Being is usually associated with ‘substance ontology’; it ‘is’ a thing which endures, rests, has weight and importance. Guignon explains Heidegger’s conceptual shift from the static to the dynamic; “Heidegger conceives of human existence not as a thing or object, but rather as an event, the unfolding realization of a life story as a whole” (Guignon, 2000, p. 39). There is an obvious and long-standing contrast in the philosophical tradition, between Being and the dynamism of ‘becoming’. Being shows up in beings, states Heidegger, which bears a relation to Kant’s notion that the universal thing-in-itself shows an aspect in each individual object, or being. It seems that there is a connection between Heidegger’s focus on the relation between Being and beings, and Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will as the One and as plurality. Heidegger’s theory is that Being has no external universal truth independent of the beings it exhibits itself as. Being does not change location as it does for Plato (Heidegger, 1968, p. 227). Being is not a description of the substance ontology of the philosophical tradition, and not quite the force that Schopenhauer’s Will connotes, but rather an unfolding event. Thus, Being is concerned with becoming, or in a manner of speaking which is Schopenhauer rather than Heidegger’s terminology; the ‘One’ is the plurality. Heidegger explains Being as the Greek physis which is the power of emerging and holding sway; In this power rest and motion are opened out of original unity. This power is the overpowering presence that is not yet mastered (bewältigt) in thought, wherein that which is present manifests itself as a (being). But this power first issues from concealment, i.e., in Greek aletheia (unconcealment) when the power accomplishes itself as a world (Heidegger, 1973a, p. 61). Guignon describes the significant shift from substance to event ontology as a ‘retrieval’ of an early Greek ‘pre-metaphysical’ experience of Being. What this retrieval is supposed to provide is a way of replacing the dominant substance ontology in the Western world with an alternative understanding of Being, an understanding that emphasizes the way beings show up in (and as) an unfolding happening or event (Guignon, 2000, p. 66). DAS DASEIN The ‘potential’ and ‘fruition’ of Being has been strongly influenced by Aristotle’s notion of essence – which ‘causes’ the substance to be formed 234 RUTH IRWIN in a way that shows what it is. Guignon argues that Heidegger distinguished himself from Aristotle because neither Being nor Dasein has an inevitable telos. Taking a Nietzschean stance, the subject, das Dasein ‘styles’ her/himself by projecting towards the future (promising), and recouping the past in a process which looks at one’s life as a whole, and as an ongoing becoming. But the future is not linear, as it is for Aristotle. There is no precise goal in this collation of our finite life as a whole. Similarly to Nietzsche, there is no determinant end point; no Ideal of the ‘good’ or heaven to guide or complete a life. Any faith resides in ‘life’, and ‘fate’ for Nietzsche, and in Being for Heidegger. Thus, as an entity, humans are an example of how Being exhibits itself. More than this though, Heidegger argues that humans have a unique relation to Being because unlike any other animal, vegetable or mineral, we are open to comprehending the appearance of Being which ‘shines forth’ from beings, (A) privileged, unique relation arises between (beings as a whole) and the act of questioning. For through this questioning beings as a whole are for the first time opened up as such with a view to its possible ground, and in the act of questioning it is kept open (Heidegger, 1973a, p. 4). On the one hand, Heidegger recognises that humans are insignificant in the scale of the history of the earth, let alone the universe. “What is the temporal extension of a human life amid all the millions of years?” (ibid.). On the other hand, Heidegger has developed Kant’s theory of time, such that time is not simply a priori to subjectivity but emerges commensurately with human subjectivity. There is the pure possibility that man might not be at all. After all there was a time when man was not. But strictly speaking we cannot say: There was a time when man was not. At all times man was and is and will be, because time produces itself only insofar as man is. There is no time when man was not, not because man was from all eternity and will be for all eternity but because time is not eternity and time fashions itself into a time only as a human, historical being-there [Dasein] (ibid., p. 84). The term Dasein was invented in the 19th century as a Germanic transliteration of ‘existence’ (Guignon, 1999, private communication). Heidegger has limited the term into a technical designation for the human relation with the ‘world’. Das Dasein is a play on words. On the one hand, Dasein translates as ‘das’, ‘the’ and ‘ein’ or ‘one’; ‘the one’ or ‘any one’. Alternatively ‘Da’ means ‘there’ and ‘sein’ is ‘being’; ‘being-there’. Anyone being there projects Dasein away from ‘here’ towards a future. Being-there is the movement of potentiality. According to Manheim “he means man’s conscious, historical existence in the world, which is always projected into a there beyond its here” (Manheim’s note in Heidegger, 1973a, p. 9). Being needs to be in relation to the future directed being-there of Dasein. Dasein HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 235 must face the anxiety of her/his own ‘finitude’, in what Heidegger calls being-toward-death. The uniqueness of each individual is that they must face their own death alone. This finitude offers the chance to comprehend their life, past, present and future, as a whole. While constrained by the historical conditions and possibilities into which they are ‘thrown’, Dasein can take a stand and, from the perspective of finitude, style an authentic life (Guignon, 1999, private communication). The finitude of being-towarddeath is the condition in which thinking happens as an openness and receptivity which projects ‘there’ and apprehends Being. For Dasein, the here and now clouds or conceals the present state of affairs because the environment is so familiar it is invisible. Das Dasein is ‘thrown’ into an ‘always already’ public environment. For das Dasein, its own environment is a completely familiar ‘world’, undifferentiated from the self. Guignon explains, “Heidegger’s ‘phenomenological’ approach to understanding the human starts by describing our lives as they unfold in familiar, everyday contexts of action, prior to theorizing and reflection” (Guignon, 2000, p. 39). Heidegger called this transparent integration the ‘clearing’, whose characteristic is that it is too normal and everyday to be overtly noticeable. Consciousness is analogous with the tip of an iceberg – for the bulk of our lives we are ‘objects amongst objects’, and are indistinguishable from our environment. This amounts to knowing and reacting to the lived environment so ‘organically’ or unconsciously that we no longer ‘think’ about a large proportion of our activities. During the 1930s Heidegger expanded the concept of Dasein to encompass das Volk, the people: “Even to speak of our capacity for selfhood ‘does not mean that man [insofar as he is Dasein] is primarily an ‘I’ and an individual . . . any more than he is a We and a community’ ” (Guignon, 2001, footnote 5, including a quote from Heidegger, 1959, p. 156). The public aspect of Dasein is important for overcoming the individual solipsism inherent in Idealism. ‘The world’ is no longer constituted by the subject (and no longer expires with the death of the subject). Guignon explains that Heidegger’s concept Dasein, (R)efers to the fact that there is a (finite) understanding of Being. On the assumption that humans are the only beings with an understanding of Being, Dasein appears in, or at least arises only where there are humans. Having an understanding of Being (i.e., being the opening in which beings can show up) is humanity’s most essential trait (ibid.). Being is codependent with Dasein. It is not conditioned by Dasein (as in humanism) nor is it independent (as in existence), but it retains a certain Idealist mega-solipsism on the part of human kind (das Volk) rather than human individuals. 236 RUTH IRWIN STRUGGLE; BEING AND BECOMING Heidegger specifically rejects the historical presumption that Being is a static mode of existence. He finds evidence of the dynamism involved in Being in three ways; through the coming to presence of Being through beings, the growth and fulfilment of potential, or ‘form’, and finally through the active grammar of language. The dynamism of Being is not achieved strictly through human apprehension and language though. Change is the precondition, the ‘nature’ of Being and it is only when our expectations stagnate and ossify into ‘statements’ rather than an attitude of enquiry, respect and awe, that we fail to find it. Perhaps one of the most important, and the most underworked aspects of Heidegger’s theory is this precondition of change. It shows up in his exploration of Heraclitus and the concept of strife. Heidegger cites Heraclitus as the first to ‘think’ Being as conflict and the ‘becoming’ of flux: “In the conflict (Aus-einandersetzung, setting-apart) a world comes into being. (Conflict does not split, much less destroy unity. It constitutes unity, it is a binding-together, logos)” (Heidegger, 1973a, p. 62). Being has an affinity with beings and has a particular relation to Dasein, but its origin is in struggle which Heidegger finds in fragment 53 of Heraclitus. Heidegger’s translation reads, Conflict is for all (that is present) the creator that causes to emerge, but (also) for all the dominant preserver. For it makes some to appear as gods, others as men; it creates (shows) some as slaves, others as freemen (ibid., pp. 61–62). Struggle initiates rank (gods, men, slaves), and ‘sets forth their Being’. The traditional view of the concept of struggle is to conflate it with violence. Violence is a form of evil that causes suffering and must be righted through retribution. The struggles and conflict over comparative rank and the competition for resources is a significant component of the field of ethics. It is important to be wary of a conception of Being that is anthropocentrically ranked (like Darwin’s Great Chain of Being for example). The ordering of chaotic existence into hierarchical rank inevitably brings with it conflicts of interest. Ethics will continue to grapple with these problems but could leave behind the utopian ideal of a world without struggle. The subtle shift is, as Guignon deduces, that gods or men do not initiate (an ordered) ‘world’; struggle itself does; Against the overwhelming chaos they set the barrier of their work, and in their work they capture the world thus opened up. It is with these works that the elemental power, the physis first comes to stand. Only now does the being become being as such. This world-building is history in the authentic sense . . . . Where struggle ceases, the being does not vanish, but the world turns away. The being is no longer asserted (i.e., preserved as such). Now it is merely found ready-made, it is datum (Heidegger, 1973a, p. 62). HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 237 This insight from Heraclitus along with Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power as the driving force of Life initiates the rethinking of strife and power in post-structuralist thought. Deleuze has generated a theory that strife produces a positive distribution of difference rather than an oppressive negation of the ‘other’ and similarly, Foucault has developed a more positive evaluation of the affects of power that is in the process of shifting the ground of ethics and educational issues. Briefly, Heidegger’s argument is that Plato began the stagnation of the ability of Dasein to apprehend Being from the earlier Greek thinkers’ forceful and originary insights. Plato placed the universal Being beyond the mundane daily shifts and changes of Becoming and appearance. On the face of it, at the root of Greek thought, Parmenides’ exposition on Being as ultimate and enduring appears to oppose Heraclitus saying “panta rhei,” everything is in flux. Accordingly, the traditional interpretation of Heraclitus is that there is no Being: everything ‘is’ becoming (ibid., p. 97). But through emphasis on ‘is’, the flux of becoming is subsumed in the endurance of Being. Heidegger brings Parmenides’ Being to bear on Heraclitus’ flux, arguing that they are both essentially talking about the same thing. Becoming is an engagement of Being with the existence of beings. At the centre of this engagement is dynamic struggle. BEING AND APPEARANCE The initial assumption of the Platonic dichotomy between Being and appearance is similar to the distinction between Being and becoming; Being is assumed to be permanence, whereas appearance is a semblance, it is deceptive, unstable, temporal, emerging and vanishing again. However, Heidegger draws out three aspects of appearance that are based on the ‘shining’ forth of Being. The German term for appearance is Schein, and it has an interpretive range, firstly as ‘radiance’ or glow, secondly as ‘appearing’ or coming to light, and thirdly, as ‘mere appearance’ or semblance (ibid., p. 100). At one end of the range, appearance divulges Being by letting it radiate from beings. At the other end, the variation of the subjective view of the appearance of the being is (in Platonic terms), a deviation, a copy, or even an illusion of Being. Heidegger argues that the shining forth of Being has to be ‘wrested’ from the being, by refusing complacently to accept a view as correctitude. Heidegger admonishes us to ignore “subjective,” “objective,” “realistic,” “idealistic” as the mode of questioning Being. ‘Schein’ in its fulcrum as coming to light, both of the radiance of Being and the semblance of Being, offers the opportunity for Being to be apprehended by humans through beings. Thus, appearing 238 RUTH IRWIN is the means by which Being emerges from unconcealment. Heidegger argues that “Appearing is the very essence of Being” (ibid., p. 101). Dasein apprehends the truth of Being through both manifest appearance and the enduring sway of becoming. Dasein can look at the visual semblance of the appearance and also, by ‘being-there’, partake in the unconcealed radiance of the Being as it is manifested in being. Being as Physis was divided at this early point in Greek thought into three aspects; firstly as emerging, secondly, becoming as presencing, and finally, the appearance as manifesting. The Sophists and Plato ‘degraded’ the distinction between appearance and Being by hardening the difference between concealment and distortion (appearance) as opposed to unconcealment (Being). Heidegger describes Plato as the culmination of the beginning of philosophy (ibid., p. 180), and as such is a ‘falling away’ from the question of Being as it is best explicated by Parmenides. Plato emphasized the mimesis of the appearance, which implies that being is a replica and Being the original, that which re-presents itself as an appearance, or simulacra of the original Being. Furthermore, the Platonic notion of the eidos, or idea derived from ousia, or enduring manifestation. We can see here how the notion of ousia is not simply the more static half of the notion of physis, the degradation from physis to ousia becomes a divorce in terms. The permanence of Being is juxtaposed against the temporal limits of beings. The Idea is in opposition to the illusion, the deficiency of appearance. Being shifts to a model which transcends the mere apprehension of transient objects. The theory of apprehension changes – “it becomes a correctness of vision, of apprehension as representation” (ibid., p. 185). Furthermore, Heidegger argues that the Being of logos as statement is ‘always already’ unconcealed in relation to appearance. It no longer has the ability to inquire into the ground of Being because logos cannot ‘wrest’ Being from unconcealment. Statements discern in-cidents, but logic is a stale form of inquiry. For Plato, physis has congealed with logos so that the emerging radiance, which up until Plato was described as complete unto itself as Being, can only be made apparent as a surface appearance that occupies a place. Logos describes the being’s quidity – its whatness – and appearance designates its quodity – or thatness. Being can be represented as having different properties, such as magnitude and extension. Aristotle’s categories derive from statements as logos, thus, unconcealment has been shifted to correctness. The idea and statement has taken over the possibility of finding the truth of Being in its ground (ibid., pp. 186–188). Christianity and modernity adheres to the metaphysical traditions’ “paralysis of all passion for questioning” (ibid., p. 142). HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 239 Clearly, it is here that the role of education is most vital. According to a Heideggerian reading, the ethical task of education is to inspire a psychology of awe. As teachers know, in the moments when we do achieve this, as opposed to the long hours where students are struggling not to fall asleep, real learning and thinking occurs. The crucial point of Heidegger’s argument in relation to Nietzsche is the ‘degradation’ of the inquiry into Being by Plato, then Aristotle and the tradition of Western metaphysics. Through the reworking of the Idea, Being is reserved as the model of beings for Plato. The appearance is the semblance or simulacra of Being which, through an alwaysalready existing language, thinking can ‘correctly’ ascertain. Becoming also changes from the viewpoint of logos. It is no longer the enduring presence that occupied a place, but is instead the calculable magnitude and movement of space and time. Becoming shifts its emphasis to movement and away from permanent presence, its velocity being calculable as distance divided by time. For Parmenides, Being is a priori both appearance and becoming. But because Being has lost its ‘ground’ in beings, it is susceptible to Plato’s transcending it with ‘the good’. Values impose an ‘ought’ upon Being, and so it no longer intrinsically ‘is’ in a radiant unconcealing through beings. Heidegger argues that the usurpation of Being by values is the beginning of nihilism. Here the human imprint takes over Being; there is no longer a reciprocal relationship where thinking both ‘is’ and at the same time apprehends Being. The staleness of the logos replicates representations rather than wresting Being originally and forcefully from beings. Philosophy remains captured by the logos of values and statements. Heidegger argues that Nietzsche’s thought is fundamentally the inversion of the Platonic Idea (Heidegger, 1982, p. 171). Well before Heidegger was writing, Nietzsche wrote in his book The Will to Power, The great concepts “good” and “just” are divorced from the first principles of which they form a part, and, as “ideas” become free, degenerate into subjects for discussion. A certain truth is sought behind them; they are regarded as entities or as symbols of entities: a world is invented where they are “at home,” and from which they are supposed to hail. In short: the scandal reaches its apotheosis in Plato (Nietzsche, 1909a, vol. 1, # 430, p. 351). Heidegger argues that Nietzsche wishes to ‘naturalise’ humanity and ‘deify’ the appearance rather than the ‘otherworldly’ value of the ‘good’. However, Heidegger argues that Nietzsche’s revaluation of the highest values does not transcend the dichotomy between the World of Appearance and the World of Ideas. It is only inverted, and thus, preserved. 240 RUTH IRWIN NIETZSCHE Nietzsche’s critique emerges from his revelation that “God is dead.” With this flash of insight the entire edifice of Western metaphysics with its faith in universal truths collapses. Nietzsche talks instead in terms of the ‘will to power’ which generates a particular constellation of perspective(s) and constitutes a ‘ground’ from which a person or group will understand their world. Nietzsche describes the will to nothingness, at the end of Towards a Genealogy of Morals, as nihilism. Many of the values that are entrenched in the will to power of people who are dominated by ressentiment are defensive and aimed at retribution. They insist on striving for an overarching universal purpose and meaning at the expense of merely living in the incomprehensible and often mundane daily world. Nietzsche’s argument centers upon a reclaiming of the genuine importance, the ecstatic moment of existing in the here and now, rather than some abstracted heavenly ‘beyond’. He describes this simply as ‘life’. Effectively he has rejected the dualism between God and nature, or come down on the side of nature rather than God. Nietzsche argues that the ressentiment form of will to knowledge promulgates a purpose which is life-denying and, therefore, nihilistic. Nietzsche himself has often been accused of being a nihilist. And in a restricted sense this has some validity. In The Will to Power notes, Nietzsche explains that the disillusionment with the belief in God has resulted in a loss of meaningfulness; “And thus the belief in the utter immorality of nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense, . . . as though there were no meaning in existence at all, as though everything were in vain.” But he does not abandon thinking or decision making in this void. Nietzsche argues that the significance of human life is the ability to be creative and enquire about our environment and ourselves. These enquiries have no recourse to the authority of God, or the legitimacy of the State, or less still the pragmatic paramount importance of the ‘good of the greatest number’. Knowledge is contestable at every level. It is constantly in a state of flux. It is the differentiation, as Deleuze puts it that produces a dynamic democratic ‘rhizome’ of links, overlays, missed connections, and multiplications of meaning. The will to power of different perspectives generates institutions, communities and modes of social organisation, rather than relying upon rigid societal structures as a source of legitimation. Heidegger has a subtly different concept of nihilism to Nietzsche. Heidegger describes nihilism as the forgetting of Being. ‘Nothingness’ is simply existence for Heidegger, which is outside the scope of Dasein’s openness to Being. Nothingness is a false path of enquiry, it is simply irrelevant. HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE 241 He follows Nietzsche’s lead and associates metaphysics with nihilism, for rigidly fixing truth and ‘forgetting’ Being. In the last chapter of An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger describes the Platonic concept of the ‘Idea’ as historically deriving from the original form of Being as physis or emerging and ousia, or enduring presence, with its associated appearance, which is apprehendable by thinking. The ‘Idea’ consolidates appearance into the simulacra, that is, the being is a limited copy of Being. Furthermore, Aristotle’s development of logos into logical discourse, or statement, brings the apprehension of the appearance into an alwaysalready developed language. The idea can only be represented by logos. It is repeatable, and communicable, as correctness, but logos loses the capability of truly apprehending Being. Being retreats into the inaccessible Ideal and becomes conceptualised as the model which beings simulate. The model of Being itself loses validity through the loss of its ground. Thus, argues Heidegger, Plato conceived of the ‘Ought’ which transcends Being as an a priori supreme model of the ‘good’. It is at this point that values are prioritised and imposed on Being. Following Plato, the discourse of values arrived, through logos, at Aristotle’s Categories. Values and categories are a trap which philosophy has been unable to disengage from, and they effectively cloud the relationship of humans to the question of Being. This is nihilism for Heidegger, and he believed that Nietzsche was also caught up in the ‘trap’ of reducing Being to values, or the will to power as a re-evaluating force. In contrast, Nietzsche posits nihilism as a psychological phenomenon, a phase of disillusionment which humanity must pass through, deriving meaning, as we do, from an ethos of purpose. Nihilism is a crucial part of a cycle of decision making as we rid ourselves of outdated moral truth concepts which have become life degenerating rather than life enhancing. Nihilism is something to be overcome through willing, choosing values to motivate our own actions, in the knowledge however, that these motivations will also be subject to question and the disorientation of disillusionment. Whereas for Heidegger nihilism takes a different form. Nihilism negates being as a whole (which is determined by Being) and, therefore, Being is nothing. In some ways Heidegger has a genuine point. By focusing on the significance of the relationship between Dasein and Being he has avoided the technological minimalisation of scientific site specific ‘fixits’ to problems such as pollution and human caused extinction. Nietzsche was taken up by the Nazis in precisely this manner; the Nazi will to power sought 242 RUTH IRWIN to technologically ‘solve’ the ‘Jew problem’.1 Technology is not merely a neutral tool with which we can affect the environment. Heidegger’s analysis of the technological frame within which we find ourselves has no field of vision ‘outside’ of itself. Every attitude we have, Luddite or scientific, is a response to the technological world. Attention to language, a refusal to fall into the ‘stale representation’ of the logos, and an awareness of the creative possibilities of all knowledge as means to a vital, life enhancing culture is the massive task of humanity in general, and education in particular. Values education will have to deal with these issues of scope and the relationship between humanity and the environment at the same time as we analyse our modes of social organisation and issues of equity and difference. This constitutes a new framework for ethics. It is not a return to liberal justifications for vocationalism or critical democratic participation, nor is it a mode of redemption. The debate over educational values is having to engage with the shift in relationship between humanity and life such that consumerism gives way to an ethic of care and co-existence. The tone of redemption is not absent from either Nietzsche nor Heidegger’s accounts of nihilism or its nemesis. But present at the core of their work is a recognition that strife generates life itself. In the form of suffering, strife is not something we can eliminate or return in kind, explain or redeem. Strife is how differentiation occurs. No two items are ever identical. Differences generate the flux of positions that create identifiable perspectives and meaning. Strife is not why life is unbearable or meaningless, it is simply the powerful, chaotic, generation of movement and change. 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