OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
applying Nietzsche's philosophy to life. The name "overman" refers to the essence of the humanity that, as modern humanity, begins to enter into the completion of the essence of its age. "The overman" is the man which man is on the basis of the reality determined by the will to power and for this reality.
The man whose essence is the essence that is willing and willed out of the will to power is the overman. The willing of the essence that is willing and willed in this way must correspond to the will to power as the being of beings. Along with the thinking that thinks the will to power, therefore, the question necessarily arises: in what shape must the human essence, willed and willing out of the being of beings, place itself and develop so that it will satisfy the will to power and thus be able to undertake mastery over beings? Unexpectedly [unversehens] and above all unprepared [unversehen], man finds himself placed, on the basis of the being of beings, before the task of undertaking mastery of the earth. Did erstwhile man sufficiently consider in what mode the being of beings appears in the meantime? Did erstwhile man make certain of whether his essence has the maturity and strength to redeem the claim of this being? Or has erstwhile man been helped along only with makeshifts and by detours that have continually driven him away from experiencing that which is? Erstwhile man would like to remain erstwhile man; at the same time, he is already the being that is willed and willing among beings, the being of which beings is beginning to appear as the will to power. Erstwhile man in his essence is not yet prepared at all for the being that meanwhile prevails over beings. In it prevails the necessity that man go beyond erstwhile man, not from mere desire and not merely arbitrarily, but solely for being's sake.
Nietzsche's thought that thinks the overman originates from a thinking that thinks being ontologically as beings and so submits to the essence of metaphysics without, however, being able to experience this essence within metaphysics. That is why, for Nietzsche just as in all metaphysics before him, it remains hidden in what way the essence of man is determined on the basis of the essence of being. That is why, in Nietzsche's metaphysics, the ground of the essential connection between the will to power and the overman is necessarily obscured. Yet in every obscuration an appearing is already prevailing at the same time. The existentia that is part of the essentia of beings, i.e., of the will to power, is the eternal return of the same. Being, thought in that return, contains the relation to the essence of the overman. However, this relation necessarily remains unthought in its essence that is related to being [seinsmäßigen]. That is why, even for Nietzsche himself,
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