OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
mastery for the will to power in relation to man. How the essential relation of the truth of beings as such to the man's essence is in fact to be thought within metaphysics and in accordance with the essence of metaphysics still remains hidden from our thinking. The question is hardly asked, and because of the predominance of philosophical anthropology, it is utterly confused. In any case, however, it would be a mistake should someone take this formula of a value-thesis as evidence that Nietzsche philosophized "existentially." That he never did. But he did think metaphysically. We are not yet ready for the rigor of a thought like the following, which Nietzsche wrote around the time he was thinking about the masterpiece he had planned, The Will to Power:
Around the hero, everything becomes a tragedy; around the demi-god, everything turns into a satyr play; and around God, everything becomes — what? maybe the "world" —
(Beyond Good and Evil, § 150 [1886])
Though it is bound to show a different face if taken from the point of view of histories and rubrics, Nietzsche's thinking, as we must now learn to realize, is no less rigorously substantial than the thinking of Aristotle, who in the fourth book of the Metaphysics thinks the principle of contradiction as the first truth about the being of beings. It has become the customary practice (though not less problematic for being customary) to juxtapose Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but this juxtaposition fails to recognize the essence of Nietzsche's thinking; it therefore fails to see that Nietzsche as a metaphysical thinker preserve.'i a proximity to Aristotle. Although he cites Aristotle more often, Kierkegaard is essentially distant from him. For Kierkegaard is not a thinker but a religious writer, and not just one religious writer among others but the only one who accords with the destiny of his age. His greatness lies in this fact — unless talking in this way is already a misunderstanding.
In the ground-thesis of Nietzsche's metaphysics, the essential unity of the will to power is identified along with the essential relation of the values art and truth. It is from this essential unity of beings as such that the metaphysical essence of value is determined. Value is the twofold condition of the will to power itself, a condition set in the will to power for the will to power.
Because Nietzsche experiences the being of beings as the will to power, his thinking must think outward to values. That is why it is essential to pose the question of value everywhere and before anything else. This question is experienced as a historical question.
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