Perhaps so, but I will endeavor to tell you one story. Back in the mid-nineties, when I first had need of philosophical guidance, I chanced upon a bookstore that had a whole lot of books by Nietzsche. I read each one of them voraciously, and in each, he seemed to be instructing me from a position on high, as to how to live my life, as if he were a sage and he knew more than I did.

More recently, in my mid-fifties (although I had always fancied myself a Nietzsche scholar, and was in fact one), I reread a few books. It seemed to me this time that he was merely describing things, the way they are. All of his passages seemed very descriptive of things I had already experienced. They were very empirical.

What had changed?

Thank you for your perspectives Mutih. It is always a pleasure to hear from you. I agree that you paint a reasonable theoretical outline as to why Nietzsche might be taken as an existentialist.

I have a different slant from you, I think a bit. This has to do with my own cultural experiences, as well as a ground shaking one that was extremely definitive for me. I am sure that what I lack in the capacity to articulate to others, at least clearly and to their satisfaction, I nonetheless know deeply and within my bones.

When I read THE WILL TO POWER, I understand completely and exactly that there is, in it a political agenda, to right wrongs, to turn the world the right way up, and so to make it “natural” again.

In the eyes of those who would have my guts for garters (even though I did nothing wrong to them, and did not precipitate this war, my actions and even thoughts are “evil”). But they are not evil. Just different, and in some ways more self-resolved and capable of independent survival.

—I am responsible for myself, and there are “no excuses”. But this is the refrain of someone suffering from existential angst, who dwells in an already fragmented modernity, wherein “the individual takes care of himself”. And presumably he does so in a manner that is quintessentially moral.

I beg to think differently. Only, I do not beg.

Thank you. That really is a great and clear elucidation of Heidegger, a philosopher on whom I hadn’t really focused much, in the past, and also found rather difficult to understand except in parts.

At the same time, I must disagree with you, somehow, that “existentialism” is a universal and general umbrella term that described the moral stance of the philosophers you have listed.

I think Nietzsche’s critique of a universalist or higher (more umbrella type) morality, as a kind of inauthenticity, or dodge from reality, isn’t taken into account. This is a movement away from —not exactly historicity (although that may be one of its component parts) but really the obligation (although obligation is too strong a word, already tainted with morality) to be intuitive, and unconscious.

To say it in another way, Nietzsche’s idea of authenticity is to be found in unconscious drives and impulses. To the extent that one can actualize these in the real world, one is onto a good thing. If one doesn’t lie to oneself (which is much harder), one is a higher human being, who takes things seriously. Most people do lie to themselves in one way or another, and in particular when they take on a position of representing moral virtues. (Nietzsche doesn’t eschew social life, only the virtues of the herd, as they represent them.)

But to get to an underlying question, what may have been Nietzsche’s critique of the virtues of Heidegger? I think he would have criticized Heidegger for squirrelling down to find a way to return to the past, in the manner of glorifying the 19C peasant. Nietzsche’s own idea for a “return to Nature” was to implement this program into the future, by causing people to recognize that what they took for their moral ideals was really their “will to power” speaking through their physiological drives. He would have found Heidegger also to be too much invested in the Establishment, hence too precautionary in terms of defending his intellectual legacy. (This reeks of cowardice, in itself.) Also the political pragmatism in going along with the Nazi agenda would not have appealed to our old Nietzsche. Better to die fighting than to succumb to moral tyranny. (And weren’t the Nazis middle class, or lower-middle class moralists, in all sorts of ways, who wanted to return to the past? In Nietzsche’s own view, the only way forward was to the future!)

Interesting points, my friend. Thank you for them. Something irks me, however, which is that we are implicitly offered two options — historicity or actually general morality. So it seems, but please correct me if I am wrong. These are the ways your answer opens up. The generalized morality option seems to close the door to historicity (the embeddedness in history). At least it SEEMS to provide that alternative, in concept or in theory.

But when I read THE WILL TO POWER I am amazed at this quintessential deceptiveness that comes into play when people think they are embracing “morality” over and above their own original interests in the world — in other words, over their historicity. The only methods by which they can do this is either to become a moral preacher and blabbermouth, always talking the talk about how others need to come in line with their ideals OR by making themselves smaller, very small, so that they become mere bureaucratically managed dots on the landscape. To lose one’s real groundedness in things might seem like the ideal alternative to racism, but it reinforces everything about modernity that Nietzsche, for instance, despised.