Nietzsche and the Shadow of God

8/18/2019 Nietzsche and the Shadow of God

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N I E T Z S C H E A N D T H E S H A D O W O F G O D

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Northwestern University

Studies in Phenomenology

and

Existential Philosophy

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Founding Editor †James M. Edie

General Editor Anthony J. Steinbock

Associate Editor John McCumber

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N I E T Z S C H E A N DT H E S H A D O W O FG O D

Didier Franck

Translated from the French by Bettina Bergo andPhilippe Farah

Northwestern University Press

Evanston, Illinois

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Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu

Copyright © 2011 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2011. All rightsreserved. Originally published in French as Nietzsche et l’ombre de Dieu in 1998by Presses Universitaires de France, 108 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris1998.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1ISBN 978-0-8101-2665-7 (cloth)ISBN 978-0-8101-2666-4 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[CIP to come]

o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paperfor Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

Acknowledgments 000

Introduction 000

Part 1. From the Resurrection of Body to Eternal Recurrence

1 The Body Under the Law 000

2 Justice and Faith 000

3 One Vision Out of Another 000

4 Circulus Vitiosis Deus? 000

Part 2. The Shadow of God

1 The Double Status of the Body 000

2 The Self-Negation of the Will 000

3 The Great Coincidence 000

4 Speculative Theology 000

5 The Prophetic Translation 000

6 Zeus or Christ 000

Part 3. The Guiding Thread

1 The Plurality of the Body 000

2 The Criterion 000

3 Pleasure and Pain 000

4 To Will, to Feel, to Think 000

5 Organization and Reproduction 000

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Part 4. The Logic of the Body

1 Dehumanization as a Method 000

2 Fear and the Will to Assimilation 000

3 Simplification and Judgment 000

Part 5. The System of Identical Cases

1 Sensation and Evaluation 000

2 The Formation of Categories 000

3 Space and Time 000

4 Representation 000

5 Coordination and Necessity 000

6 The Subject of Causality 000

Part 6. From Eternal Recurrence to the Resurrection of Body

1 Memory 000

2 Consciousness 000

3 The Decisive Instant 000

4 The Incorporation of Truth 000

5 The Priestly Revaluation 000

6 The New Justice 000

Notes 000

Index 000

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Acknowledgments

Heartfelt thanks to Héloïse Bailly, Université de Strasbourg II and Uni- versité de Montréal, for her scrupulous work on footnotes and transla-tion questions. Gabriel Malenfant, University of Iceland, followed the

preparation of this text from start to nish; he is responsible for correc-tions as much as for inspiration. Thanks, also, go to Lukas Soderstrom(Université de Montréal) for extensive research into philosophical andhistorical questions. Marc- James Tacheji (McGill University Law School)provided invaluable help on the nal translation. Thanks are due to theUniversité de Montréal, Département de Philosophie, to Joseph Hu-bert of the Vice-Rectorat à la recherche, and Yves Murray, directeur dela recherche, Faculté des arts et sciences, for their combined materialsupport. Thanks to Babette Babich (Fordham University) and ChristineDaigle (Brock University) for help on questions of Nietzsche scholarship.Finally, sincere thanks to Claude Piché for help on questions of GermanIdealism.

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N I E T Z S C H E A N D T H E S H A D O W O F G O D

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Introduction

I

“Only a god can still save us,”1 Heidegger conded by way of last testa-

ment. Whence the curious testamentary tone of these words, if not fromthe sheer movement of thought that gathers in them and is recapitulatedthere?

What is this movement? How to understand it without abandoningoneself to it, that is, without being straightaway caught up in it and by it?How to describe its appearance and adventure without being concerned,even shaken by it in advance? Indeed, how could we not be so, when itis a question here of our own protection and salvation? If to be saved isto be out of danger, then what is the danger to which we are exposedand from which only a god could now save us? This could hardly be onethreat among others; it must be a danger that tests our very being. Now, we could not be the bearers of an imperiled essence unless that perilcame from our essence itself. The question therefore is not only: How

can the danger arise from our being? But again and especially, how doesthe danger belong to being itself, and to its truth, which governs us andfor which our being is to be its sentry? The danger could neverthelessnever belong to being unless being were itself the danger. However, ifbeing only ever gives or destines itself under the stamp of an age, andour age is that of technology in which “being is in its essence the dangerto itself,”2 then we must begin by determining by what right technologyis—in its essence and for our essence—the danger.

What then is the essence of technology and how do we reach it?The moment that the essence of technology at least governs all appara-tuses and technical systems [tous les appareils et dispositifs techniques ], it ispossible to accede to this essence starting from one of these latter. Whathappens when, for example, we activate an electrical switch? By reestab-lishing the passage of current in a circuit, we switch a lamp on to giveus light. The electricity that brings the laments of the bulb to incan-descence is energy that, to be consumed, must have been produced inadvance. How and where was it produced? In a hydroelectric or nuclear



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I N T R O D U C T I O N

power station that, situated on a riverbank, captures the water to feed theturbines or serve as cooling uid. Thus produced, the electricity is thentransported by a network of cables suspended from pylons to be distrib-uted and consumed everywhere, at will and without delay, through thesimple ick of a switch.

The preceding remarks sufce to show that the slightest technicalmechanism refers to the totality of what is. But how does it do this? Itrefers to the world as that which it requires; a world in which the river isone element in the power station, and the plains, the site for the pylons.Technology is thus a mode of appearing. What is its essential feature?“The hydro-electric plant is set (gestellt ) into the current of the Rhine.It sets (stellt ) the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then

sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current (herstellt ) for which the long- distance power station and its network of cables are set up (bestellt ) to dis-patch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertainingto the orderly disposition (Bestellung ) of electrical energy, even the Rhineitself appears to be something at our command.”3 In challenging natureto deliver all its extractable energy to transform, accumulate, distribute,and consume it, modern technology discloses each thing as a creation ofprovisions [mise à disposition ] and storage for possible exploitation, as partof a permanent standing reserve for exploitation governed by the eco-nomic principle according to which the greatest prot must be providedat the least cost.4 Technology proves to be like such a standing reserve. Itis thus indeed a gure and an epoch of being, a mode of being’s truth,

and of its disclosure that “has the character of a setting upon, in the senseof a challenging forth, a provocation.”5 Through this mode of disclosure, what is no longer unfolds its presence as an object (Gegenstand )—in lightof the destiny of being there is no technical object and the epoch of tech-nology is no longer that of objects—but as a standing reserve (Bestand ),a word that signies more than “stock,” “reserve,” or “balance,” becauseit here takes on the dignity of ontological right or title.

Whatever its perspicuity, is this interpretation of technology and ofits essence not somewhat arbitrary? In no way, because it ties up afresh with the Greek sense of τέχνη. In describing the latter as a mode ofαληθεύειν [alētheuein ] and not as an instrumental apparatus or a meanstoward an end, Aristotle already made techne ˉ a modality of setting intothe open, a mode of disclosure.6 “All τέχνη is concerned with cominginto being (γένεσις),” he specied, “with contriving and considering howsomething may come into being which is capable of either being or notbeing, and whose origin (αρχη) is in the maker (ποιοûντι) and not inthe thing made (ποιοumenw ).”7 Technology is thus relative to produc-



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tion, to ποίησις. What should we understand by this term? Ποίησις is rstneither an artisanal nor an artistic or poetic work but rather, as Platoalready said, the movement that carries something out of non-presenceinto presence. “Production presents something out of its withdrawal intonon- withdrawal ( Das Her-vor-bringen bringt aus der Verborgenheit her in dieUnverborgenheit vor ). Producing comes to pass only to the degree to which what is withdrawn comes into non- withdrawal. This coming rests on,and draws its impetus from what we call disclosure (das Entbergen ). TheGreeks have the word αλήθεια [al ētheia ].”8 Φύσις, or nature, thus belongsas much to ποίησις, thus understood, as to τέχνη. What then is the differ-ence between these two modes of production that are φύσις and τέχνη? Itcannot reside anywhere else than in the manner of coming-into-presence

itself. Whereas the ower appears and comes into presence by itself, ahouse could not do so without the collaboration of an architect. Thelatter sets and installs the house in non- withdrawal. Relative to the speci-city of the technical mode of production, Heidegger continues: “Τέχνη is what concerns, fundamentally, all producing in the sense of a humanplacing [Herstellen, which also means to produce and fabricate]. If pro-ducing (τεκειν) is the setting (das Hin-stellen ) in non- withdrawal [Unver- borgene ] (of the world) then τέχνη designates the being-known-there innon- withdrawal [Unverborgene ] and the ways of obtaining, holding, andfullling the non- withdrawal [Unverborgene ].”9 Τέχνη is thus indeed pro-duction that, as a mode of disclosure, is maintained in the domain ofnon- withdrawal, that is, in that of αλήθεια [al ētheia ]. This determina-tion of τέχνη claries the essence of modern technology, insofar as the

latter could not be a “challenging creation of provisions”10 if τέχνη—from which the creation comes, since it preserves its name—had notalready been understood as a placing or a setting (Stellen )—“a wordthat, assuming that we are thinking in a Greek way, corresponds to theGreek, θέσις.”11

In commanding nature to set itself [se mettre ] or to set its resourcesat our disposal (which comes to the same), modern technology not onlyallows everything that surrounds us to appear as standing reserve, butit further requires that we complete this unconcealment. How is thatpossible? What must be our being, in order to do this? If we derive ourbeing from being itself, then we can only disclose what is, as standingreserve, on condition that we ourselves belong to the standing reservethat is disclosed. Do we not speak of human resources in terms of energyresources? Does genetic engineering not make life into an industrialproduct? So we cannot disclose what is as standing reserve unless weourselves belong to the standing reserve disclosed—and this, “in a man-ner still more original than nature,”12 since we are the executors of this



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unconcealment. In other words, we could not disclose what is, in thetechnological mode, unless we were called to do so by αλήθεια [al ētheia ]from which, on the one hand, we derive our being, since it is the truthof being itself—and, on the other hand, since it is the domain whenceall technology comes, or may come to pass, “whenever it calls man forthin the modes of revealing allotted to him.”13 Because man cannot con-tribute to the challenging creation of provisions without himself beingassigned to them in advance, the essence of technology could not be butan epoch of being, a destiny of unconcealment.

Are we, henceforth, ready to determine the essence of the dangerfrom which alone a god could save us? Not entirely. On the one hand,the mode of unconcealment that governs the essence of technology and

characterizes it as an epoch has yet been named and, on the other hand,the connection between the mode of unconcealment and the domainfrom which it comes still remains obscure. To name the challenge thatinclines man to let what is appear as standing reserve set as his disposal,Heidegger ventures using the word Gestell.14 The choice is risky becauseit implies that this word might be used in an unusual sense. If Gestell, inits current reception, means: chassis, support, frame, carcass, it here de-notes that starting from which, and in which, all that is or implies a posi-tion and a provisioning (which the verbs stellen, herstellen, bestellen, and thenoun Bestand all signify) is assembled and can deploy its reign. “The wordstellen [to set] in the name Ge-stell [enframing]15 does not only mean chal-lenging. At the same time it should preserve the suggestion of anotherStellen from which it stems, namely that producing and presenting [Her-

und Dar-stellen ] which, in the sense of ποίησις, lets what presences comeforth into unconcealment or non- withdrawal. However fundamentallydifferent producing and presenting may appear—e.g., erecting a statuein the temple precinct, and the creation of provisions that challenges,such we are now considerating it—they remain nonetheless essentiallyrelated to each other. . Both are modes of revealing or disclosure, ofαλήθεια [al ētheia ].”16

But what is the domain common to these two modes of uncon-cealment that are ποίησις and Ge-stell, production and apparatus,17 andabove all how do they arise from this domain? Since αλήθεια [al ētheia ] isthe sole domain of all possible modes of disclosure, man could not dis-close what is without having previously been summoned to it in one wayor another. For no disclosure could take place if we did not rst belongto the site of disclosure, of non- withdrawal, which alone could, conse-quently, lead us toward it in such a way that we can disclose what it is. Andif “the unconcealment [non- withdrawal] of that which is always takes apath of unconcealing,”18 how could we take it without ourselves being set



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thereon, that is, sent and destined to it? “We shall call the sending thatgathers [versammelnde Schicken ], that rst starts man upon a way of reveal-ing, destining (Geschick ). It is from this destining that the essence of allhistory (Geschichte ) is determined.”19 Each mode of unconcealment, pro-duction as much as apparatus, is thus a sending of the destiny through which man is governed, since this sending arises from the truth of beingfrom which man derives his own being. Yet this destiny is neither “a fatethat compels,”20 nor consciousness of self as of a foreign power. This isbecause, on the one hand, it does not concern self-consciousness and, onthe other hand, by sending us on the path of disclosure it opens us andfrees us for the truth of being, which is that of our own being. “To theoccurrence of unconcealing, that is, of truth, freedom stands in the clos-

est and most intimate kinship. All revealing belongs within a harboringand a concealing. That which frees—the secret—is concealed and alwaysconcealing itself. All revealing comes out of the free, goes into the free,and brings unto the free.”21

Having thus arrived at the essence of technology as a destiny ofunconcealment, which, qua destining, opens us to the freedom of whatfrees, it is hereafter possible to determine the danger to which we areexposed. As destined to unconcealment, man is by the same token es-sentially endangered. Indeed, because it turns us toward what is uncon-cealed and away from the non- withdrawal to which we are indebted forour essence and our freedom, every mode of unconcealment is danger-ous in itself. If man cannot reveal what-is, save at the risk of the truth ofhis being (which is that of being itself), then “the destiny of unconceal-

ing is, as such and in each of its modes, necessarily, danger.”22 Receivingits vocation from the non- withdrawal, responding to a destiny of uncon-cealment, thinking is in essence dangerous and simply abdicates when itbecomes soothing and pacic, inoffensive or moral.

What becomes of this danger in the age of technology in whichbeing is destined in the mode of Ge-stell, of the apparatus? As long ashe is called to disclose what-is as object, man discloses himself as subjectand still remains (in this status and in his being) different from what hediscloses. The subjective determination of man thus neither obliteratesnor wholly obnubilates the truth, nor “the highest dignity of his being . . . which lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment—and with it, fromthe rst, the concealment—of all essential unfolding on this earth.”23 In other words, in the age of subjectivity—or objectivity, it is the samething—the danger is not yet at its apogee, and it could not be unless we were ourselves completely absorbed in and by that which is uncon-cealed, in such a way that the lost glimmer of the truth of being might becompletely absorbed at the same time. It is therefore only when being is



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destined on the mode of the apparatus that the time of the supreme dan-ger comes about. “This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is un-concealed no longer concerns man even as object but exclu-sively as standing reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is noth-ing but the orderer or commissioner of the standing reserve, then mancomes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing reserve. Meanwhile,man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself and postures aslord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes to prevail that everythingman encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion givesrise in turn to one nal delusion: it seems as though man everywhere andalways encounters only himself.”24

The supreme danger thus appears under two points of view. Ac-cording to the rst one, man, called to disclosure in the mode of theapparatus, himself becomes a part of it and consequently, on principle,nds himself incapable of hearing the call as call, and of consideringhimself as the one to whom the call of being is addressed. Turned awayfrom his own essence, that is, from the truth of being, he no longer en-counters anything other than himself and—this is the second perspec-tive—he assumes the form of master and lord of the earth. In what senseare these two perspectives distinct, or, better, why does the errant man(and “the essence of errancy resides in the essence of being as danger”)25 come to imagine himself as master and lord of the earth? We could notrespond to this question without determining the source of this “form.”It is not Greek, but biblical. In the Lutheran translation of the Bible,

the expression “der Herr der Erde ” [the Lord of the Earth] denotes Godhimself such as he is revealed to Israel and in Christ. Not only does Lu-ther always translate the name Yahweh by “der Herr,” the Lord, but thelatter again receives the title of “Lord of the Earth” in a psalm where itis written: “mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the masterof all the earth.”26 It is with the same epithet that God is invoked in theGospel of Matthew by Jesus who, concerning the Gospel, will say, “I bless you, father, Lord of the heavens and the earth for having hidden thisfrom the wise and the prudent and for having revealed it to the small.”It is again used by Saint Paul, citing the psalmist, when he declares, “ofall that is sold on the market, you shall eat without asking questions orburdening your conscience, for the earth is the Lord’s as is that whichlls it.”27 What does this divine lordship over the earth and the heavensimply? Nothing other than faith in a creator God. God is the master andlord of the earth because he is its creator, because it is his creation, andbecause he can change its landscapes by making the mountains disap-pear. However, as creator of the earth, God is equally so with man. What



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then is the relation between man and God? According to the priestlynarrative of creation that opens Genesis: “God created man in his image,in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”How to understand the character of the image here? The following verseprovides the answer: “and God blessed them and said to them: be fertileand increase, ll the earth and master it, and rule over the shes in thesea and the birds in the sky, over cattle and all the animals that creep onthe earth.”28 How does this verse permit us to clarify the determinationof man as “image of God”? If the term “image” is not taken in a formal,but rather a functional sense, assimilating acts rather than states, thenman can be qualied as the image of God because he masters the earthand the animals in the fashion of God who reigns over the whole of crea-

tion. Man is in the image of God as ruler and because he is God’s trustee. We must, moreover, underscore the violence of the expressions that de-scribe this rule of man over the earth, since the Hebrew verbs translatedby “master” and “rule” rst signied “to trample down,” “to crush,” anddesignated the pressing of grapes.

However, in recalling here and in this way the biblical origin of theexpression “master of the earth,” are we not granting nally a secondfoundation to the essence of technology—which does not mean a sec-ondary foundation? Without any doubt, and Heidegger does not fail topoint this out. After having asserted that Nietzsche recognized the dan-ger to which man is exposed in the instant of exerting dominion overthe earth and of using powers that free the unfolding of the essence oftechnology, Heidegger explains in effect: “Nietzsche was the rst man to

raise the question: Is man, as he has been and still is, prepared to assumethat dominion? If not, then what must happen to man as he is, so thathe can make the earth ‘subject’ to himself and thus fulll the words ofan old testament?”29 In thus citing what he calls “an old testament”—thesubstitution of the indenite article for the denite one is pregnant withmeaning, since it implies, against the witness he himself is bearing, thatthe God of Israel would only be one god among others—does Heideggernot recognize, by the same token, that the unfolding of the essence oftechnology concurs with the biblical characterization of man as will? Andhow could he do so unless the essence of technology had a second origin,other than the Greek, a Judeo-Christian origin?

But the mere citation of a verse from the Old Testament neverthe-less does not allow us yet to assign a second foundation to the essence oftechnology. In order to do so, two conditions are required. It is rst nec-essary that the meditation on the essence of technology would itself beable to recognize that other foundation. It is then and especially neces-sary that the mode of disclosure that is the essence of technology always



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bear the mark of that foundation, always and everywhere. Let us returna moment to our point of departure. As we said, electricity can be con-sumed everywhere, at will, with the simple ick of a switch. Everywhereat will—what does this mean if not that the will is everywhere assuredof what it wants, only to have ultimately to do with itself and with noneother than itself? Technology seems to make of man the master of theearth, because the will, nding itself everywhere anew, has become itsown object. “This will, which, in every intention and every perception, inall that is willed and attained, wills only itself and, more precisely, itselfdoted with the continually increased possibility of this able- to- will-itself[ce pouvoir-se-vouloir ]”—this will, as Heidegger once said, “is the founda-tion and the essential domain of modern technology. Technology is the

organization and the organon of the will to will.” 30 In this way fulllingthe biblical word, the will to will proper to technology so violently mastersthe earth that it tears it out of its circle of possibilities to forcibly carry itinto a measureless devastation. “The birch tree never oversteps its possi-bility. The colony of bees dwells in its possibility. It is rst the will thatarranges itself everywhere in technology that devours the earth in the ex-haustion and consumption and change of what is articial. Technologydrives the earth beyond the developed sphere of its possibility into suchthings which are no longer a possibility and are thus the impossible.” 31 To trample the earth under foot amounts, thereby and nally, to exhaust-ing its being, to tearing it out of being and its truth. Moreover, analyzingthe concept of reection within the framework of a clarication of logicas “thinking about thinking” and “reection on reection”—analyzing

this concept through which logic, deprived of a connection to thingsthemselves, is carried into the void—Heidegger emphasizes that thanksto the care of the self implied in the quest for one’s own salvation onthe one hand, and thanks, on the other hand, “to the technicist thoughtof creation (τέχνη-haften ) which from the point of view of metaphysics isalso one of the most essential foundations of the modern technology,”Christianity has played a role so decisive in the constitution of subjectiv-ity qua the dominion of self-reection, that the same Christianity is inprinciple powerless to surmount the rule of technology. And, that therebe no doubt about the connection between Christianity thus understoodand the very essence of technology, Heidegger continues by asking inthe summer semester of 1944: “Besides, whence comes then the historialbankruptcy of Christianity and of its church in the history of the modern world? Would it take a third world war to show this to it?”32

The biblical thought of creation—which implies man’s dominionof the earth and all that is found in it—is not an object of knowledgebut rather a confession of faith in the creator and redeemer God. Con-



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sequently, we could not truly recognize the stamp by which this thoughtmarked the essence of technology without rst determining the essentialcharacter of the creator god, from which this stamp could hardly fail tocome. Different from a Greek god who shows, indicates, and unfoldsits essence solely in the realm of αλήθεια [al ētheia ], “the God of the OldTestament,” Heidegger reminds us, “is a ‘commanding’ God; His word is:‘Thou shalt not,’ ‘Thou shalt.’ This ‘shalt’ is written down on the tables ofthe law.”33 Before examining the context in which Heidegger was broughtto make this remark and to which the adverbial formation “indeed also”refers, it is appropriate to make a few brief comments concerning thesignication of the Decalogue. Proclaimed to Israel, the commandmentsassume election and alliance. The proclamation assumes election as,

opening with the words “I am the Lord, your God, who led you out ofthe land of Egypt, out of slavery,”34 it is addressed to those whom Yahwehhas ransomed, and it merges with the alliance since the “tables of thelaw” are said to be the “tables of the alliance.”35 In other words, to com-prehend the God of Israel on the basis of the Sinaitic revelation of thecommandments is to comprehend him in the fullness of his salvic workand his justice. But the Ten Commandments reveal God and man as willsconjoined the one to the other. In fact, a commandment is only possible where a will can act upon another will, where a will lets itself act throughanother will. If God speaks and commands—the commandments arecalled “the ten words”36—man responds to God through obedience ordisobedience. It follows that the Decalogue could not fail to dene the very humanity of man facing God, as a creature called to salvation in and

through this very creation, as will. And it does this in an essentially nega-tive way, since the commandment on the Sabbath and the honor due toparents—the only ones presented in positive form—must be consideredas the transformation of old negative forms.37 Given over to that of God,the human will is originally determined by interdictions, that is, by nega-tions. For man is this will that must originally will not to will what Goddoes not want. Now this in no way amounts to willing originally what God wants, for in that case, we would have to admit that the divine will andbeing were directly accessible to human will and being. In a word, thehuman will is related to what it wills through the binding intermediaryof a primary negation, precisely by virtue of divine transcendence. Thehuman will is inhabited by negation just as it is by God; or, rather, it isinhabited by God in the form of negations. Is it not then this will that, with the death of God and in the vacancy of his lordship, allows man toposture in the form of master of the earth? Is it not this will that, havingbecome the will to will with the death of God, fullls—ever and again,in its thrust and as if dazed by mourning—his word? Of man (and to



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praise the Lord) one psalm says: “That you have made him little less thandivine, and adorned him with glory and majesty; you made him masterover your handiwork, laying the world at his feet.”38 Yet if, as long as Godis alive, man though he be scarcely less than a god, remains subject tothe Lord as to a higher, superior power and will, things shall be otherwise with the death of God, which cannot fail to confer on man the possibilityof unfolding absolutely a power that could not be absolutely his own. Ifthe “master of the earth” is a terrifying gure, or even the very form ofthe terrifying, then this is because the human, all too human principle,according to which it unfolds its power, does not measure up to the divine power from which it derives and of which it is the inheritor ab intes- tat. Because it is not before Zeus but before Yahweh that the mountains

melt like wax, does not the essence of technology also unfold like theunfurling of a will to domination, which, as such and as the determina-tion of being, of man or of God, never had anything Greek to it? Anddoes not the unfurling of this will have as its drive a negation henceforthdeprived of the meaning that transcendence could have bestowed onit? Does technology not thus substitute itself for faith; as a displacer ofmountains is it not its prolongation?39

II

Let us provisionally suspend these questions to which in a host of ways we

will be returning throughout and which form the horizon of this work.It is over the course of his clarication of the change that comes to theessence and to the counter-essence of truth—at the time of the transla-tion of the words αλήθεια [al ētheia ] and ψευδος by veritas and falsum —that Heidegger recalls the essential trait of the Old Testament god. Theprivative α- that constitutes the rst letter of the word αλήθεια [al ētheia ] infact indicates that the essence of truth, as non- withdrawal, unfolds in anoppositional dimension relative to a counter-essence: το ψευδος. Falsum, the participle of fallere, is related to the verb σφάλλω: to take down in wrestling, to wreck, or bring to a fall, a verb for which no nominal formcorresponds to αληθές—the way ψευδος would do. No doubt, σφάλλω canbe “correctly” translated as “deceiving.” But how can the “to bring to afall” (das Zu- Fall-bringen ) take on the sense of “deceit” or “deceiving,” orbetter: what is the Greek sense of this “deception” and how is it possible?In the midst of the beings that appear to him, man wavers when some-thing comes to block his path and this, in such a way that he no longerknows what to believe nor what he is up against. Moreover, that man



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could thus fall into this trap, something must rst appear and be takenfor something else, by which precisely he is able to be mistaken. The“deceiving” in question is possible only on the foundation and “withinthe eld of the essence of dissembling and concealing (which constitutethe essence of ψευδος).”40 In other words, if man can only come to beled astray within the realm denoted by the word ψευδος, the “bringingto a fall” in the sense of “to deceive” is but a consequence of the essenceof the ψευδος, and nothing that relates to this “fall” could originally beopposed to αληθές.

But then, why did the Romans translate ψευδος by falsum; why didthey make fallere into the very essence of the ψευδος and name what isprimary starting from what is secondary? “What realm of experience is

normative here, if the bringing to a fall attains such a priority that onthe basis of its essence, there is determined the counter-essence to whatthe Greeks experience as αληθές, the ‘unconcealing’ and the ‘uncon-cealed’?” To which Heidegger responds on the spot: “the realm of es-sence decisive for the development of the Latin falsum is the one of imperium and the ‘imperial.’ ”41 What should we understand by this? Theimperium is the sovereign power, der Befehl, commandment. Imperare is totake, prescribe, or recommend measures such that something be done.Imperare thus signies praecipere, to take possession and to dispose of whatis possessed, as of a territory over which command is exerted. “Imperium is the territory (Gebiet ) founded on commandments (Gebot ), in which theothers are obedient (Botmässig ). Imperium is the command (Befehl ) in thesense of commandment (Gebot ). Command, thus understood, is the basis

of the essence of domination (Herrschaft ), not the consequence of it andcertainly not just a way of exercising domination.”42

These considerations, which—need we emphasize—are philo-sophical before being philological, prepare and introduce the referenceto the Old Testament god. For the latter is “indeed also,” as Heideggersays in the sentence immediately following the one we just cited, “a godthat commands (ein befehlender Gott ).” What justies these considerationsor, more precisely, what is the legitimacy of the adverb also, whose useimplies the assimilation of the biblical command to the Latin imperium ? We must rst point out that the words Befehl and imperium never trans-lated what Israel called the “ten words,” and that the Greek of the Sep-tuagint, the only one held to be inspired and which Heidegger does notmention, translated these by “τους δέκα λόγους.” Luther uses the verbbefehlen in its original German acceptation. According to that sense, befe- hlen does not signify “to command” but “to recommend to . . .” When apsalm says “recommend your fate to Yahweh,” Luther translates: “beehldem Herr deine Wege,”43 and to refer to the commandments he resorts to



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the word Gebot. In the Vulgate, Saint Jerome uses the term praeceptum formed on the verb praecipere. Now, as we have seen, Heidegger (whosubjects praeceptum and Gebot to imperium and Befehl ) understands thelast two terms in an exclusively Latin sense.44 But furthermore, and thisis the essential point, the commandments revealed to Moses—which arethe words whose very hearing calls for response but in no sense ordersto be carry out, and which are assigned to a promise of life or salvationbut not to discipline—could not be understood on the basis of imperialdomination.

Is Heidegger’s translation, that is, his interpretation, unacceptablefor all that? Nothing as yet permits us to assert this, as Heidegger is notspeaking of the god of Israel as such, but of the Old Testament god. It is

thus with regard to Christianity as the actualization and fulllment of therevelation made to Israel that the question must be posed. It is a matterof knowing, then, whether and how Christianity can be thought withinthe sphere of the Latin imperium.

Let us return to the way in which the Latin imperium determined theessence of the falsum. As the essence of domination, command impliesa difference of rank, a hierarchy that could not be maintained withoutconstant supervision. This superintendence watches over that which isunder supervision in such a way that any uprisings of the dominatedagainst the dominant could be put down. In this sense, “the bringing toa fall necessarily belongs to the realm of the imperial.” But this puttingdown can result from a frontal attack or from one coming from behind(Hinter-gehen ). But to attack from behind is to take something cunningly

and therefore to deceive (Hintergehen ). In this case, “the fallen are notdestroyed but rather, in a certain way, raised up again—within the limitsxed by the dominating ones.” Such is the sense of the pax romana, which was never but the enduring form of imperial domination. Heidegger canthereby conclude that “to compass someone’s downfall in the sense ofsubterfuge and roundabout action is not the mediate and derived, butthe really genuine, imperial actio ” and that “the properly ‘great’ featureof the imperial resides not in war but in the fallere of subterfuge as round-about action and in the pressing-into-service for domination.”45

How does this allow us to understand translating ψευδος by falsum or rather, what happens when the rst is thought according to the senseof the second? In light of imperium, which denes the realm in whosemidst and starting from which the Roman world unfolds—and which ina certain way is to that world what αλήθεια [al ētheia ] is to the Greek one—ψευδος ceases to be understood as a mode of closure that dissimulatesby allowing to appear, and allows to appear by dissimulating. In light ofimperium, ψευδος, no longer arising from non- withdrawal, is henceforth



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interpreted as what causes to fall, as what brings down, as fallace. The falsum is always the fallacious.

The translation of ψευδος by falsum is not only what we might calla metaphysical militarization of αλήθεια [al ētheia ], but again “the mostdangerous and most enduring form of domination.”46 In fact, the trans-lation of ψευδος by falsum does not only consist in a transference of therealm of αλήθεια [al ētheia ] toward that of imperium, it implies at the sametime the covering over of the truth of being by imperium itself, and con-sequently the endangering of the truth of being by the latter. As such,this translation, which by transforming the essence of the truth of beingmakes being foreign to its own truth, is essentially dangerous. Moreover,if the essence of technology is indeed the supreme danger, then it too

must draw its source here in the covering over of the truth of being. Buthow? It is impossible to respond without rst asking these two questions.From where does imperium derive the durable character of its domina-tion, which only a thinking that turns back toward and accedes to αλήθεια [al ētheia ] is ultimately apt to put into question? And what must this sameαλήθεια [al ētheia ] have become; that is, how has it been translated suchthat falsum could be opposed to it?

If imperial domination was able to be enduringly exerted, thenthis was because the imperium Romanum gave way to the ecclesiastical im-perium, to the sacerdotium, to priestly domination. “The ‘imperial’ hereemerges in the form of the curial of the curia of the Roman pope. Hisdomination is likewise grounded in command. The character of com-mand here resides in the essence of ecclesiastical dogma. Therefore this

dogma takes into account equally the ‘true’ of the ‘orthodox believers,’as well as the ‘false’ of the ‘heretics’ and the ‘unfaithful.’ The Spanish In-quisition is a form of the Roman curial imperium.”47 The Roman CatholicChurch thus appears as the most enduring, that is, the most dangerousgure of imperium, since it is the domination of domination itself, andsince the latter makes being foreign to its own truth. Conversely, question-ing this Church and its dogma, which always presupposes the revelationof God in Jesus Christ, is indissociable from the thinking of being and itstruth. According to the way it understands itself, the thinking of beingand its truth is as hostile to Catholicism and Christianity (we can neveremphasize this enough), insofar as Christianity merges with Catholicism,as the thinking of being is hostile to that which is Roman. Nevertheless,is it enough to lead the courtly to the imperial, to characterize the Ro-man Church qua church? Nothing is less certain, and this for a numberof reasons. First, the court or curia, which brings together the organs ofecclesiastical government (congregations, tribunals, ofces), is relativeto the authority of the pope as vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. If the pope



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is the visible head of a body whose invisible head is Christ, the churchmust be theologically understood as the body of Christ. Consequentlyand if—as Luther indefatigably reminds us—what is essential is not thepope but the cross, then any attempt to lead the Roman Catholic Churchback to imperium remains insufcient if it does not proceed from thisfundamental theological determination. It is the Christian revelation as a whole that must be led back to imperium, in order that the church mightbe one form of it. Now, that is impossible since the divine commandmentthat Christ comes to fulll absolutely does not unfold in the same realmof experience as that of imperium.

Let us take a few steps back, to understand the implications of theseremarks. As he discloses himself and takes himself as ground, man gloats

in his gure of master and lord of the earth. This mode of unconceal-ment and this gure, the conjunction of which describes and character-izes our being in the age of technology, do not have the same origin.Once it is shown that the commandments of the god of Israel, on theone hand, and the Christian Church, on the other, cannot be essentiallyassimilated to the forms of Roman imperium —that imperium on whose ba-sis the essence of ψευδος was transformed—once it is shown that divinelordship is not imperial domination or that Jerusalem is not Rome, andRome is not a holy city, then it is at the same time established that the g-ure of the master and the lord of the earth could not be led back to thischange in the essence of truth brought about by its Romanization. This isbecause the Romanization through imperium of what is Judeo-Christian,like the thought of creation, does not reach this divine lordship that

man cannot but assume with the death of God. The gure of master ofthe earth, consequently, could not be grounded in the Romanization ofαλήθεια [al ētheia ], that is, ultimately in αλήθεια as the original realm of allmodes of disclosure. In other words, if the unfurling of the will, whichmarks the essence of technology, is not essentially and exclusively of animperial nature, a Roman nature, then it becomes impossible to attributeto αλήθεια [al ētheia ] alone, and to its Romanization, the unfolding of theessence of technology. Before examining the problems that this raises(but to bring out their breadth), let us return to the truth, that is to say,now, to the translation of αλήθεια [al ētheia ] by verum.

The Latin verum derives from an Indo-European root, ver, presentin the German words wehren, to resist; die Wehr, the defense; das Wehr, thedam. Resistance to . . . is nevertheless not the only meaning of the rootver. In old High German, wer also signies: to resist for . . . , that is, todefend oneself, to assert oneself, to hold position and to hold one’s posi-tion, to remain upright and to be in one’s right; in short, to commandand not to fall. “Thus it is from the essential domain of the imperial



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that verum, as antonym of falsum, received its rightful, well establishedsignication.”48 But this acceptation covers another, more original one, which again das Wehr manifests, the dam. Effectively, the Italic word veru or verofe, which designates a door, “rests on an ancient neutral *werom, ‘closure,’ derived from the root *wer- (Skr. vrnóti, ‘it closes, it encloses,’German Wehr ).”49 Consequently, the most original, signicant momentattached to the root ver is that of the enclosure. “The original elementin ver and verum is that of closing off, covering, concealing, and shelter-ing, but it is not die Wehr [‘defense’] as resistance. The correspondingGreek word of this Indo-Germanic stem is έρυμα—the defensive weapon,the covering, the enclosure.”50 This word—related to the Latin verum —thus has in Greek a meaning opposed to that of αλήθεια [al ētheia ], which

verum precisely translates. Nevertheless, this opposition would be impos-sible if the opposed terms did not unfold in the midst of one and thesame dimension. In other words, the Latin verum comes out of the samesemantic eld as the Greek αληθές. However, verum there signies thecontrary and corresponds to the Greek λαθόν.

From the moment that verum is opposed to falsum within the do-main of imperium, the root ver cannot fail to signify covering, in the doublesense of what protects (the covering force) and of what guarantees (thecovering of a risk). The verum is thus what assures imperium against a falland holds it upright. “Verum is rectum (regere, the ‘régime’), the right, iustum.”51 And if verum may be assimilated to iustum, it is because ius, right,is inscribed in the sphere of command, since the word ius signies con-formity to a rule, and the condition necessary to the fulllment of an

ofce.52 “Under the inuence of the imperial,” Heidegger says by wayof recapitulation, “verum becomes forthwith ‘being-above,’ directive for what is right; veritas is then rectitudo, ‘correctness’ [Richtigkeit ], we wouldsay. This originally Roman stamp given to the essence of truth, which sol-idly establishes the all-pervading basic character of the essence of truthin the Occident, rejoins an unfolding of the essence of truth that beganalready with the Greeks and that at the same time marks the inception of Western metaphysics.”53

Heidegger is alluding here to the transformation of αλήθεια [al ētheia ] into ομοίωσις. Initially, αληθές designates that which is not withdrawn. But man could not disclose the non- withdrawn without con-forming to it. The unconcealment to which man is called—and this callconstitutes his being—must therefore conform to that which calls tounconcealment; it must correspond to truth itself. And how could thisconformity (or ομοίωσις), which presupposes non- withdrawal and takes what is not withdrawn for what it is, and is simply the mode in whichunconcealment is fullled—how could this conformity not require the



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λόγος? How could this conformity to what calls to unconcealment (and which draws its very possibility from αλήθεια [al ētheia ]) not have, as itsobligatory site, that by which man responds to the call addressed to him,that by which man discloses: the utterance, the λόγος?54 The conformityof the word to what it lets appear thus becomes “the denitive ‘repre-sentation’ of αλήθεια [al ētheia ]”55 and what is essentially secondary passesby the same token into the foreground. Now, and it is here that αλήθεια [al ētheia ] comes to encounter veritas, “the Greek ομοίωσις as disclosivecorrespondence and the Latin rectitudo as adjustment to . . . both havethe character of an assimilation of assertions and thinking to the stateof affairs present at hand and rmly established. Assimilation is calledadaequatio. In the early Middle Ages, following the path set by the Ro-

mans, αλήθεια [al ētheia ], presented as ομοίωσις, became adaequatio. Veritasest adaequatio intellectus ad rem. The entire thinking of the Occident fromPlato to Nietzsche thinks in terms of this delimitation of the essence oftruth as correctness [Richtigkeit ].”56

This determination of the essence of truth as correctness is, ac-cording to Heidegger, at the foundation of modern technology, whosedomination we are attempting to clarify as the unfurling of the will to will. What then is the connection between the Roman determination oftruth and technology? As we said, if unconcealment must conform to what it discloses, this is because it must take what is not in withdrawal forand as what it is. Latin calls taking something for something, reor. Fromthis is derived ratio which translates λόγος. Consequently, “the essence oftruth as veritas and rectitudo passes over into the ratio of man. The Greekαληθεύειν, to disclose the unconcealed, which in Aristotle still permeatesthe essence of τέχνη, is transformed into the calculating self-adjustmentof ratio. This determines for the future, as a consequence of a new trans-formation of the essence of truth, the technological character of mod-ern, i.e., machine, technology. And that has its origin in the originatingrealm out of which the imperial emerges. The imperial springs forthfrom the essence of truth as correctness in the sense of the directive self- adjusting guarantee of the security of domination.”57

It is thus indeed from imperium and ultimately from αλήθεια [al ētheia ]that the form of domination proper to modern technology proceeds, ac-cording to Heidegger. However, in that case, if the biblical commandcannot be brought back to imperium, and if revelation is inaccessible fromthe Roman path [romanité ], it then becomes impossible to understandhow and why, in the moment of supreme danger, man gloats in the gureof the master of the earth, fullling the word of an old testament. Now, we could not be saved from this danger without beginning by recogniz-ing all its origins. And we could not recognize them without starting from



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concurrent causes, namely on the faculty of knowledge which is in me,and on the faculty of choice or liberum arbitrium; that is, they depend onboth the intellect and the will simultaneously.”62 In what way does errorhave understanding and will for its cause, if the one and the other areperfect in their genres? On the one hand, in fact, considered in itself aspure power to conceive, the understanding could not err and its limitsare not a privation, for nothing proves that God should have given mea different faculty of knowing. On the other hand, and by contrast withthe faculty of knowing, imagination, or memory, “it is only the will [orliberum arbitrium ] which I experience within me to be so great that theidea of any greater faculty is beyond my grasp; so much so that it is aboveall in virtue of the will that I understand myself to bear in some way the

image and likeness of God.”63 No doubt the divine will surpasses ourown in the knowledge and power to be found there, or again by virtueof the objects to which it extends; yet, “considered as will in the essen-tial and strict sense,” the human will is the equal of God’s, “because [it]simply consists in our ability to do or not do something (that is, to afrmor deny, to pursue or avoid); or rather, it consists simply in the fact that when the intellect puts something forward for afrmation or denial orfor pursuit or avoidance, our inclinations are such that we do not feel weare determined by any external force.”64 In short, and considered purelyin itself, the will is none other than freedom.

This is not, however, the freedom of indifference, characteristic ofGod’s omnipotence, since “indifference does not belong to the essenceof human freedom.”65 What then is the essence of human freedom? The

human will is free when it is determined by the knowledge of what isgood and true. “For in order to be free, there is no need for me to be in-clined both ways; on the contrary, the more I incline in one direction—either because I clearly understand that reasons of truth and goodnesspoint that way, or because of a divinely produced disposition of my in-most thoughts—the freer is my choice. Neither divine grace nor naturalknowledge ever diminishes freedom; on the contrary, they increase andstrengthen it. But the indifference I feel when there is no reason pushingme in one direction rather than another is the lowest grade of freedom;it is evidence not of any perfection of freedom, but rather a defect inknowledge or a kind of negation. For if I always saw clearly what was trueand good, I should never have to deliberate about the right judgment orchoice; in that case, although I should be wholly free, it would be impos-sible for me ever to be in a state of indifference.”66 Revisiting in his waySaint Augustine’s concept of freedom as propensity and determinationto the good, Descartes—who, in the fourth Meditation, always associateserror and sin67—makes clear and distinct knowledge of the good and the



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true (inasmuch as this knowledge determines the will) the very conditionof the correct use of human freedom. He does this independently of thenatural or grace-related origin of this clarity. Indeed, divine grace acts onthe will the way clear and distinct knowledge can do, since “the clarity orevidence which can induce our will to give its assent is of two kinds: therst comes from the natural light, while the second comes from divinegrace.”68 And if there really is a difference between the content of a revealed truth and that of a natural one, then this difference only concernstheir respective substance and not the formal reason why we give themcredence. “[For,] on the contrary, this formal reason consists in a certaininner light which comes from God, and when we are supernaturally illu-mined by it we are condent that what is put forward for us to believe has

been revealed by God himself. And it is quite impossible for him to lie;this is more certain than any natural light, and is often even more evidentbecause of the light of grace.”69 However, as we know God through theidea he has placed in us, it is ultimately clear and distinct perception thatcharacterizes all certainty in general, because the latter is for us, in some way, the pure form of all light, whether natural or supernatural.

If divine grace and natural knowledge conrm my freedom, this isindeed by virtue of the certainty that accompanies the one and the other.Consequently, Heidegger can venture that “Descartes transfers what wascharacterized theologically, as the effect of God’s grace, to the effect ofthe action of the intellect on the will.” And he can add that “the clara etdistincta percepta takes on the role of grace,” since it presents to judgment“its characteristic bonum.”70 What is the meaning of this functional iden-

tity of grace with clear and distinct perception, which—we might add—assumes the convertibility of transcendentals? It means rst that, if every will tends toward a good, then it is the intellect that gives, in advance,to the will the perceptum to be pursued or eschewed. As a result, error re-ceives an explanation: “So what then is the source of my mistakes? It mustbe simply this: the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect; butinstead of restricting it within the same limits, I extend its use to matters which I do not understand. Since the will is indifferent in such cases, iteasily turns aside from what is true and good, and this is the source ofmy error and sin.”71 Therefore I only ever deceive myself by using myfreedom beyond that which I conceive clearly and distinctly, and “in thisincorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutesthe essence of error.”72 If error is a usus libertatis non rectus, then this isbecause truth itself has already been understood previously as rectitude,correctness.73

The functional identity of grace and clear and distinct percep-tion has, furthermore and above all, the sense of a “detheologization ” or a



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“secularization.”74 What should that mean? By detheologization, Heideggeris pointing to the movement according to which propositions originat-ing in the realm of the experience of Christian faith are translated ortransferred into that of philosophical knowledge. This detheologizationdoes not proceed without raising serious difculties, whose full sense wemust try to evaluate. Heidegger never ceased interpreting the Cartesianturn that inaugurates and commands all of modern philosophy as a de-theologization, emphasizing for example that the Cartesian demand foran absolute, unshakeable foundation “springs from the liberation of hu-manity from the bonds of the truth of Christian revelation and the doc-trines of the Church, a liberation which frees itself for a self- legislationthat is grounded in itself.”75 The Cartesian determination of the essence

of freedom, from which error originates, thus implies the passage fromthe certainty of faith to that of knowledge that knows itself—and thisin such a way that the certainty of faith is no more than the other con-trary source, from and on which this knowledge breaks free. Yet what istrue for Descartes and for all of modern philosophy is likewise true forthe existential analytic. In fact, if the Christian denition of man, as ens nitum, was indeed “detheologized over the course of the modern age,”it nevertheless remains that “the idea of ‘transcendence’—that man issomethimg that reaches beyond himself—is rooted in Christian dogmat-ics, which can hardly be said to have made an ontological problem ofman’s Being.”76 Because transcendence belongs to the being of Dasein, should we not understand fundamental ontology, and the initial posingof the question of being, as the fulllment of that detheologization, tan-

tamount to modern philosophy? What does this detheologization mean and, above all, under what

conditions is it possible? If detheologization denotes the passage fromthe realm of experience of faith to that of philosophy—a passage that as-sumes or institutes a certain continuity—it cannot fail ultimately to holdphilosophy in thrall to theology. Why and how so? When a concept origi-nates in Christian dogmatics, it preserves in itself the stamp of its site oforigin; that is, ultimately, the stamp of God himself—if only as Creator ofthat nite understanding to which certainty can be introduced. Now, thisstamp of origin could not be erased like some arbitrary stamp, becauseits origin looms over all the others. In carrying a concept from Christiandogmatics into philosophy, by exporting it outside its birthplace, onemay perhaps erase some of its theological traits. But this is also to pro-ceed to a surreptitious and radical theologization of philosophy as such,since one is thereby introducing into reason itself a trace of God, whichis to say, God himself. From Descartes to Hegel—for whom philosophyultimately comes to coincide, in the form of absolute knowledge, with re-



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vealed religion—the path is secure. The Cartesian detheologization hasfor its ultimate consequence the assimilation of speculative philosophyto a speculative theology. In short, it is God himself who may, alone andthrough his death, make us forget him. And only the death of God cangive rise to a radical—but above all denitive—detheologization ofmeaning and word [du sens et de la parole ]. As long as the death of the Godrevealed in Christ has not become the object of a frontal confrontation,as long as the whole of revelation is more skirted than faced, the move-ment of detheologization, which moves from God toward being and pro-ceeds from theology toward a general or fundamental ontology, remainsinsufcient. For, blind to the Christian nature of its point of departure,fundamental ontology invariably risks turning against its own intentions.

Like every movement, detheologization never ceases transporting its ori-gin. In other words, the renewal or return of onto-theo-logy to a modeof disclosure of being is not enough to make us forget that the god of Aristotle was subject to the God of revelation. It is therefore not only theessence of technology, but also the metaphysical realm of its unfolding,that requires that the biblical tradition be put into question anew.

How to undertake such a task? The history of truth ought, by itself,to be able to point the way. If the transformation of verum into certum, which the essence of modern technology requires, was effectuated start-ing from the realm of Christian faith and corroborated the determina-tion of the essence of truth as correctness, then this domain must havebeen previously concerned. No doubt, Descartes transferred to the cogito what Saint Thomas, who placed the certainty of faith above that of knowl-

edge, attributed to divine science alone.77 However, the certainty of faithor of knowledge is not yet that of the believing and knowing ego as such. Whence comes that certainty, and how can Christian faith assure the egoabout itself? By assuring it of its being-in-Christ, that is, of its salvation. After having asserted that the transformation of verum into certum origi-nates with Christian dogmatics, Heidegger immediately adds the follow-ing remark: “Luther raises the question of whether and how man canbe certain and assured of eternal salvation, that is, certain of ‘the truth’;Luther asks how man could be a ‘true’ Christian, i.e., a just man, a mant for what is just, a justied man. The question of the Christian veritas becomes, in the sense just articulated, the question of iustitia and ius- ticatio.” What should we understand here by justice and justication?Must we understand them according to Scholastic theology, as Heideggerdoes when, citing Saint Thomas, by “justice” he understands “correctnessof reason and will”?78 Or should we return more directly to Saint Paul, whose doctrine of justication constitutes, according to Luther, the coreof all Scripture, that is, ultimately, of all theology, since the latter consists



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in interpreting Scripture? In other words, does Heidegger have the rightto determine justice, such as Luther understands it, on the basis of theScholastic theology and philosophy that Luther unceasingly criticizedfor their incomprehension of justication? Clearly not, for this wouldamount to confusing what Luther strove indefatigably to distinguish: thephilosophical sense of justice as formal or active, and its properly scrip-tural and theological sense as passive justice. Recall the magnicent pageon which, shortly before his death, Luther summed up all of Evangelicaltheology in a narrative and biographical mode:

I had been seized by an astonishing ardor to know Paul in the Epistleof the Romans; yet what hindered me at the time was not so much the

chill of the blood in my entrails as a single word, found in chapter I:“the justice of God is revealed in it [the Gospel].” Indeed, I hated thatterm “justice of God” that I was accustomed to understand philo-sophically, following all the Schoolmen, as the formal or active justicethrough which God is just and punishes sinners and the unjust. Yet I, who lived as an irreproachable monk, felt myself a sinner before God, with the most uneasy conscience, and could not nd appeasementthrough my satisfaction; I did not love and even hated this just God whopunished the sinners, and I revolted against this God, secretly fosteringif not blasphemy, at least a violent murmur, saying: as though it werenot enough that wretched sinners, lost through original sin, be bur-dened by all sorts of ills through the law of the Decalogue, why shouldGod add pain to their pain and send his justice and his wrath against us,

even through the Gospel? I was thus beside myself, my conscience infu-riated, overwhelmed, and yet, intractable, I called upon Paul, ardentlydesirous to know what he meant to say in this. This, up until the mo-ment when, God taking pity as I meditated day and night, I would nishby attending to the order of the words: “the justice of God is revealed inhim, as it is written: the just man lives from faith.” I then began to un-derstand that the justice of God is that through which the just man livesthrough the gift of God, which means from faith, and that it is throughthe Gospel that the justice of God is revealed, which means the passive justice by which the God of mercy justies us by faith, as it is written:“the just man lives by faith.” Whereupon I felt myself being utterlyreborn and entering into paradise itself, all its doors being opened.There and then, all of Scripture appeared to me under another coun-tenance. I then read through the Scriptures such as I had them in mymemory and observed the analogy with other terms: the work of Godis what God effects in us; the force of God is that by which he makesus capable; the wisdom of God, that by which he makes us wise; the



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fortitude of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God. As great as wasthe hatred through which I had previously hated those words, “justiceof God,” the more did I now exalt this sweet word in love. In this way,the passage of Paul was truly for me the door to paradise. I then readthe De spiritu et littera of Augustine wherein, against all hope, I saw thathe interpreted the justice of God in the same way: that with which Godcloaks us in justifying us.79

If the question of the Christian truth is indeed that of justice and justication, then, qua Christian, it is not originally one of rectitude.By interpreting, in the wake of Saint Anselm80 and Saint Thomas, the justice of God as rectitude of reason and will, Heidegger surreptitiously

abandons the Lutheran doctrine of justication through the faith alone,in favor of the Thomist and Catholic doctrine of justication by a faithinformed by charity or love.81 In fact, understood as correctness of reasonand of will, justice, though it would not go without faith, cannot fail tocome out of rational and voluntary acts, that is, out of works—thoughthey were works of charity itself. Now, “against the philosophers,” whichis above all to say against Aristotle, does Luther not assert that “we arenot made just by working justly, but rather made just, we work justly?” 82 Against the Lutheran doctrine of justication, and consequently, againstall of Evangelical theology, Heidegger thus subjects the justice of Godrevealed in Christ to that history of truth out of which Aristotle arisesalong with all of philosophy and, by the same token, subordinates thedivine word to that of being. He does this more radically than had Scho-

lastic theology, whose constant adversary was Luther. Now, to reiterate:the confrontation with revelation could not take place principally on thesole ground of the onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics and thatof αλήθεια [al ētheia ]. For, it is im-possible to accede to revelation on thebasis of these, from the moment that divine commandment proves irre-ducible to imperium, and the justice of God revealed in Christ, irreducibleto a justice that rewards merit. Nevertheless, this does not yet allow us toanswer the question of how and from whence to engage the debate withrevelation.

IV

By bringing Luther into the history of truth, of αλήθεια [al ētheia ]— which is not at all self-evident—Heidegger intended to elucidate itsmodern determination as certainty, correctness [ justesse ], and justice; a



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determination presupposed by the essence of technology. After Des-cartes who, as we have seen, understands truth as certainty and correct-ness of judgment; after Kant who, in the Critique of Pure Reason, strivesto justify the use of the pure concepts of the understanding, Nietzscheclosed the metaphysical history of truth by interpreting it as justice. “If we experience and come to know these historial connections as our his-tory, that is, as modern European ‘world’-history”—Heidegger writes tograsp and recapitulate the destiny of the essential transformations ofαλήθεια [al ētheia ] since Plato—“will it then surprise us that in Nietzsche’sthought, where the metaphysics of the Occident reaches its peak, the es-sence of truth is founded on certitude and ‘justice’? Even for Nietzschethe true is the right (das Richtige ), that which is directed (richtet ) by what

is real in order to adjust itself to it and make itself secure in it. The basicfeature of reality is will to power. What is right must conform itself to thereal, hence must express what the real says, namely the ‘will to power.’ All correctness must be adjusted in terms of the will to power. Correspon-dence to what the will to power utters is the just, that is, justice (das Rechted. h. die Gerechtigkeit ). It receives its essence, at the end of Western meta-physics, from the decree of the will to power. Nietzsche very often usesthe word ‘life’ as a title for the ‘will to power,’ and he uses it in accord with the usual ‘biological’ way of thinking of the second half of the nine-teenth century. Nietzsche can therefore say: ‘Justice is the highest repre-sentative of life itself.’ This is a Christian thought, though in the mode ofthe antichrist. Everything ‘anti’ thinks in the spirit of that against which itis ‘anti.’ Justice, in Nietzsche’s sense, presents the will to power.”83

In light of a meditation directed toward αλήθεια [al ētheia ], Nietz-sche’s thought thus marks the apogee of Western metaphysics, since, asthe ultimate consequence of the translation of αλήθεια by veritas, thatthought consecrates the triumph of the Roman way [romanité ]. What canthis mean other than that αλήθεια is henceforth completely covered overby veritas as source, that is, by what derives from it? Nevertheless, if “theeld of the essence of αλήθεια is covered over,” it will not be enough forus to sweep around the ruins to be able to come back to it. On the con-trary, the essential eld of αλήθεια is obstructed by the “enormous bastionof the essence of truth determined in a manifold sense as ‘Roman.’ ”84 Of this gigantic bastion that constitutes metaphysics, Nietzsche’s thoughtis the last stone, the last word that could not be fully “last” without alsobeing rst, in a certain sense. But how does Nietzsche fulll this end ofmetaphysics? How does he lead the end back to the beginning?

In an essay contemporary with his course on Parmenides, and whichconcerns the ontologico-historial determination of nihilism, before establishingthe fundamental metaphysical position of Nietzsche, Heidegger reminds



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us that if metaphysics indeed recognizes that beings are not withoutbeing, this is only to immediately displace being onto beings, or onto abeing, taken in an eminent sense. In other words, in withdrawing beforethe foundation of all beings by way of a supreme being that Plato and Aristotle called θείον, being gives rise to metaphysics as onto-theo-logy.To ask the question of what beings are as such, beings in their essence, isalso immediately to ask the question of knowing what the being most ap-propriate to that essence is, and thereby, to seek its existence. Otherwiseput, if metaphysics, in the guise of ontology questioning beings as such,inquires into their essentia (τί εστιν); in its guise as theology and focusingon the supreme being, metaphysics enquires into its existentia (ότι έστιν). What then, according to Heidegger, is Nietzsche’s fundamental meta-

physical position or, more precisely, how does Nietzsche understand thebeing of beings in light of the dual relation of its essence and of its exis-tence? “As an ontology, even Nietzsche’s metaphysics is at the same time the-ology, although it seems far removed from the School metaphysics. Theontology of beings as such thinks essentia as will to power. Such ontologythinks the existentia of beings as such and as a whole theologically as theeternal recurrence of the same. Such metaphysical theology is of coursea negative theology of a peculiar kind. Its negativity is revealed in the ex-pression ‘God is dead.’ That is an expression not of atheism but of onto- theo-logy, in that metaphysics in which nihilism proper is fullled.”85

In understanding the being of beings as will to power and eternalreturn, Nietzsche species being according to the double relation of itsessentia and its existentia. In so doing, he brings together and combines

the initial metaphysical positions of Parmenides and of Heraclitus. Infact, if, in response to the question: What is a being? Parmenides says:a being is; and Heraclitus answers: a being becomes, then to think will topower as eternal recurrence means to secure for becoming the constancyof being. Does Nietzsche not sum up his own thinking with these twopropositions: “To imprint on becoming the character of being—this isthe supreme will to power,” and again: “That everything returns is the mostextreme rapprochement of a world of becoming with that of being ”?86 Such isthe way in which Nietzsche closes, according to Heidegger, the circle de-scribed by the history of truth. By leading the end of metaphysics back toits Greek beginning, a beginning whose originality he never questioned,Nietzsche did not replace the guiding question of metaphysics, What isa being? with the fundamental and prior question concerning the es-sence, or the truth, of being. In other words, Nietzsche’s thought is anonto-theo-logy because it over and again starts out from the withdrawalof being that gives rise to the distinction between the ontological andthe theological.



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However, would Nietzsche’s thought (which Heidegger takes to bethe apogee of metaphysics originating in Greece) not also be the placefor a confrontation with Christianity [explication avec le christianisme ]? Ifthis were the case, then the question of knowing where and how the de-bate with revelation should be engaged, would nd ipso facto its response.Can we take the doctrine of the eternal return of the same, then, as aproperly philosophical theology, deriving its negativity from the deathof a god that Nietzsche, for his part, always qualied as Christian? Thatsaid, for Nietzsche, the death of God never had an originally negativesense. From the summer of 1881, when Nietzsche warns, in light of thethought of recurrence, that “if we do not make of the death of God a gran-diose renunciation and a perpetual victory over ourselves, we shall have

to endure its loss,”87 he is emphasizing its afrmative sense since it denotes victory. It is always for man, never for the overman, that the death ofGod has and can have a negative sense. Consequently, if the doctrine ofeternal recurrence is not the ultimate philosophical theology—or onto- theo-logy par excellence—then not only is Nietzsche perhaps not “thelast metaphysician of the West,”88 as Heidegger argues indefatigably, butmore importantly, this doctrine risks modifying the entire task of think-ing risks. It is toward running this risk that the present work is, in a cer-tain sense, dedicated.

What then is the connection between, on the one hand, the clari-cation of revelation, whose necessity we progressively drew out of theessence of technology, and the metaphysical destiny of truth—and, onthe other hand, the questioning of the onto-theo-logical character of the

thought of eternal recurrence, which has to serve as counterweight tothe death of the Christian God? Only the determination of the connec-tion between the essence of technology and the onto-theo-logical con-stitution of metaphysics (of which Nietzsche’s thought marks, or shouldmark, the completion) can allow us to answer denitively the questionof how the debate with the word of God must be engaged. Why? Therst reason has to do the historial position of Nietzsche who, accordingHeidegger, fullls the Romanization of αλήθεια [al ētheia ]. Through thisRomanization, however, αλήθεια was not only “immured” in the giganticbastion of metaphysics, it was “reinterpreted in advance to serve as oneof the building stones, hewn expressly for it.”89 Thus, as the ultimate Ro-man metaphysics, Nietzsche’s thought is the farthest removed—of allmetaphysical thought—from the truth of being. From the moment theessence of technology, whose unfolding requires the transformation ofverum into certum, is the mode of disclosure of the being that is farthestremoved, strangest and most hostile to its truth, Nietzsche’s thought(and singularly that of eternal recurrence understood as onto-theo-logy)



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can only be related—and this is the second reason—to the supreme dan-ger, albeit in its way and for the truth of being. Two brief remarks byHeidegger, which conrm this, are also claried thereby. The rst is amanuscript note in the margins of a lecture of 1949, entitled The Danger. There, Heidegger wonders, “assuming that God were, not being itself tobe sure, but the supreme being, who would venture to say today that thisgod thus represented is the danger for being?”90 This strange questionsignies rst that the understanding of God as the supreme being hasthe same origin as the origin of technology, because it assumes the with-drawal of being and its truth. But thereupon, by not placing any articlebefore the word “God,” is Heidegger not suggesting that the ChristianGod who invested metaphysics also has (by reason of his very nature) an

intimate complicity with the essence of technology? And does this sug-gestion not distantly echo a note by Nietzsche, according to which “theChristian god, the god of love and cruelty, is a person conceived quitecleverly and without moral prejudices: really, a god for Europeans who want to subjugate the earth?”91

If this were not the case, then the “Note on the eternal recurrenceof the same” that follows the lecture of 1953 devoted the gure of Zara-thustra, would have no meaning. Indeed, after having cautioned againstany “mystical” misinterpretation of the doctrine of recurrence, about which, in “presupposing of course that thinking is called upon to bringto light the essence of modern technology,” the present age could certainlyset us straight, Heidegger goes on to argue that “the essence of the mod-ern power-driven machine” is “one version of the eternal return of the

same.”92 This second remark does not exhaust the doctrine of return, asit concerns but one form of it. It signies fundamentally the same thingas the rst remark. That is, that the thought of eternal recurrence— whether as the ultimate onto-theo-logy, or because it arises from the es-sence of technology out of which comes the essence of the machine—is the thought in which the entire history of the withdrawal of truth isconcentrated and recapitulated. “The name ‘technology’ is understoodhere in such an essential way that its meaning coincides with the term‘completed metaphysics,’ ”93 as Heidegger once said. Let us emphasizethis once and for all: the confrontation with revelation—whose necessity we established on the sole basis of the description of the technologicalessence of man as master of the earth (thus, on the basis of philosophyalone)—can then take its point of departure from Nietzsche’s thought, whereby metaphysics is completed as the destiny of being.

But that this confrontation might start out from Nietzsche’s thoughtdoes not yet mean that it must do so. In order to do so, it would have to bethe case that Nietzsche’s thought were as much, if not more, the site of a



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clash with revelation, than it was the fulllment of Romanization, i.e., the withdrawal of αλήθεια [al ētheia ]. Is Holy Scripture present in Nietzsche assomething with which he contends? Let us return to justice. By making justice the supreme representation of life, Heidegger asserts that Nietz-sche continues to think in a Christian fashion, all the whil

Nietzsche and the Shadow of God

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