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The Word of Nietzsche

as conditions of preservation as well as of enhancement?

Preservation and enhancement mark the fundamental tendencies of life, tendencies that belong intrinsically together. To the essence of life belongs the will to grow, enhancement. Every instance of life-preservation stands at the service of life-enhancement. Every life that restricts itself to mere preservation is already in decline. The guaranteeing of space in which to live, for example, is never the goal for whatever is alive, but is only a means to life-enhancement. Conversely, life that is enhanced heightens in turn its prior need to expand its space. But nowhere is enhancement possible where a stable reserve is not already being preserved as secure, and in this way as capable of enhancement. Anything that is alive is therefore something that is bound together by the two fundamental tendencies of enhancement and preservation, i.e., a "complex form of life." Values, as points-of-view, guide seeing "with respect to complex forms." This seeing is at any given time a seeing on behalf of a viewto- life that rules completely in everything that lives. In that it posits the aims that are in view for whatever is alive, life, in its essence, proves to be value-positing (cf. Will to Power, Aph. 556, 1 885-86).

"Complex forms of life" are oriented with reference to conditions of preserving and stabilizing, and indeed in such a way that what is stable stands fast only in order to become, in enhancement, what is unstable. The duration of these complex forms of life depends on the reciprocal relationship of enhancement and preservation. Hence duration is something comparative. It is always the "relative duration" of what is alive, i.e., of life.

Value is, according to Nietzsche's words, the "point-of-view constituting the preservation-enhancement conditions with respect to complex forms of relative duration of life within becoming." Here and in the conceptual language of Nietzsche's metaphysics generally, the stark and indefinite word "becoming" does not mean some flowing together of all things or a mere change of circumstances; nor does it mean just any development or unspecified unfolding. "Becoming" means the passing over from something to something, that moving and being moved


Martin Heidegger (GA 5) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays