NIETZSCHE'S WORD: "GOD IS DEAD"


synonymous with sight [Gesicht] and seeing [Sehen] in the sense identified by the Greeks, but which has gone through the transformation of "idea" from εἶδος to perceptio. To see is to represent; since Leibniz, this representation has been grasped more explicitly in its fundamental character of striving (appetitus). All beings are representing beings to the extent that nisus is part of the being of beings: nisus, the urge to make an appearance, the urge that enjoins a thing to arise [Aufkommen] (appear) and so determines its occurrence [Vorkommen]. The nisus-like essence of all beings takes and posits for itself in this way a point of sight. The point of sight provides the perspective which it is essential to follow. The point of sight is value.

With values as points of view, the "conditions for preservation-increase" are posited, according to Nietzsche. By the very way he writes this - in omitting the "and" and substituting a hyphen for it — Nietzsche intends to make it clear that value.o; as viewpoints are, in their essence and therefore constantly, simultaneously conditions of preservation and increase. When values are posited, both kinds of conditions must be constantly contemplated in such a way that they remain in a unified relation to each other. Why? Obviously simply because the representing-striving beings themselves in their essence are such that they require these twofold points of sight. For what do values as viewpoints serve as conditions, if they must be conditions simultaneously for both preservation and increase?

Preservation and increase mark the fundamental trait-; of life; these traits intrinsically belong together. The desire to grow, increase, is part of the essence of life. To preserve life is to serve the increase of life. Any life that is restricted to mere preservation is already in decline. For living creatures, it is never the goal, for example, to secure lebensraum; rather it is the means to an increase of life. Conversely, life that has been increased intensifies in its turn the prior need for enlarging one's space. Increase, however, is only possible where a durable resource has already been preserved as something made secure and therefore only then capable of increase. Hence living things are linked by the two fundamental traits of increase and preservation, i.e., they are "complex structures of life." As points of view, values guide seeing in "regard to complex structures." Seeing is always a seeing by the glance of life, a glance which governs all living things. By setting the points of sight for living things, life in its essence proves to be that which sets values (cf. The Will to Power, no. 556, from 1885/6).

The "complex structures of life" are dependent on the conditions of a preservation and of a stability [Beständigung], yet the dependence is such that stability [das Beständige] endures [besteht] only in order to become — through


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Off the Beaten Track (GA 5) by Martin Heidegger