Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 4, Issue 1/2, 2004

Issues on Brentano, Husserl and Heidegger

Heidegger’s Early Nietzsche Lecture Courses and the Question of Resistance

It is well known that Heidegger described his Nietzsche lecture courses as confrontations with National Socialism. Traditionally, this sense of resistance was seen firstly in the fact that Heidegger read Nietzsche at the level of metaphysics and explicitly rejected those ideological appropriations which attempted to reduce Nietzsche’s philosophy to the level of biologism or mere Weltanschauung. This essay argues that the way in which Heidegger framed his interpretation of will to power in his first and second Nietzsche lecture courses can be seen to contain a more explicit critique of the contemporaneous “official” Nietzschebild than has customarily been said.