Translators' Introduction

This book in front of you is a translation of the second revised edition of volume 67 of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe titled Metaphysics and Nihilism. The volume contains two texts spanning ten years: The Overcoming of Metaphysics (1938/39) and The Essence of Nihilism (1946-1948).

It is clear for us to see, even as the editor informs us, that the two texts constituting this volume are formally different. The first text written in 1938/39 is part of the Ereignis-writings accompanying The Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), which exhibit the immediacy of thought in its emergence and do not possess the polish of a finished written text. We cannot say that of the second text, which is a polished piece of writing, two-thirds of which, as the editor points out, was revised by Heidegger and published under the title "Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being" in the second of the two Nietzsche volumes from 1961.

In abiding by Heidegger's wish to have the reader confront his text directly, this translation has eschewed any mediation in the form of a critical apparatus. There is no index. The only interventions made in this translation are to provide English translations of Heidegger's foreign language citations in footnotes in curly brackets, indicated by the abbreviation TN for Translator's Note, and the original German pagination, which is inserted into the text in square brackets.

A translation is a set of decisions that can always be challenged. In this sense, it is like a performance of a piece of classical music. Just like every performance of a piece, every translation of a text is different, and yet, all the different translations of a text, like all the different performances of a piece, are one and the same. For they are translations of one and the same text and performances of one and the same piece. Every translation has to take some decisions and follow the linguistic consequences of those decisions in the conviction that they render the text being translated into the language of the translation, as it is meant to be read, in much the same way as every musical performance has to take decisions and abide by the musical consequences of those decisions in the conviction that they render the piece as it is meant to be heard.

The following are some of the important decisions I have made as a translator:

1. Ereignis and Er-eignis and related words: Both words have been translated as "event," with the hyphenated German placed in brackets next to its English translation. I have avoided terms like "appropriative event" or "appropriating event" to translate Er-eignis for they end up misleading the reader into seeing acquisition and possession as the primary sense of these words, when in fact they are not. In addition to this, there are reasons of elegance and readability, which I believe are important virtues that aid the understanding of a text, especially a difficult text like this one.

2. Wesen and Wesung: Wesen has been translated as "to essence" and Wesung as the gerund "essencing." In this, I believe I have followed Heidegger's own directions in The Essence of Nihilism (p. 192):

. "[E]ssence" does not mean here what previous reflections unthinkingly assumed. "Essence" does not mean an essentiality, which as something non-sensuous and abstract floats over the actual understood as the sensibly perceptible. "Essence" thought verbally, and, that is to say, experienced in thinking, is the essencing of being itself, which leads all beings into becoming beings as such.

The translations are awkward, as the English language does not grant any conventional space to verbalize the noun essence or to use it as a gerund. The word, as we know, comes from the Latin essentia, which in turn renders the Greek ??s?a. The prefix "esse-" comes from the Latin esse meaning "to be" and the suffix "-ence," according to Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1971), denotes action, process, state or quality and comes from the Latin -entia. So, one can see a verbal sense in the English word "essence" if one notes that the suffix "-ence" does also denote action and process in addition to a state and quality. The Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm1 tells us that the verbal meaning of wesen is leben und weben, which means "to exist, to be there (often concretely elaborated) in a broadly inclusive sense of an intensive and concept-specific life-expression and activity." Now, Leben means "to live" and weben, it tells us, has three connotations: "to move back and forth," "to show oneself and be active" and "to waft or wave." In fact, this mellifluous combination of the words leben and weben was introduced by Luther in his translation of the Acts of the Apostles 17: 28, which in English reads: "For in him, we live, move, and have our being."2 Luther uses weben to translate the Greek ?????µe?a. Heidegger in these texts being translated makes it clear that he wishes to use the word wesen in a way that reminds us of the Latin noun essentia, understood as essentiality but, at the same time, shows us what is overlooked when we are transfixed by the static nature of the noun, namely, the essential moment of beings becoming beings. He does this by verbalizing the very same noun, which in the English language can be executed only in all its awkwardness.

3. Seyngeschichtliches/geschichtliches Denken: Seynsgeschichte translates to "history of beyng." Geschichtliches Denken is easily translated as "historical thinking," which means thinking in terms of history or thinking in a manner that is responsive to history. However, the transition from geschichtliches Denken to seynsgeschichtliches Denken is not grammatically and semantically possible in the English language. Moreover, it is necessary to translate seynsgeschichtliches Denken in a way that preserves the translation of Seynsgeschichte as "history of beyng," if the translation has to convey to an English-speaking reader, the meaning it possesses in German. I have done this by translating seynsgeschichtliches Denken as "thinking responsive to the history of beyng." Yes, one can legitimately complain that this is an inelegant paraphrase of a compact and self-evident term. But in this particular case, I believe that the need to convey the precise meaning of the term outweighs the need for elegance.

4. Machenschaft has been translated as "manipulation." It is usually translated as "machination." But, in the English language, "machination" always carries a morally negative connotation. Hence it is always used in English as a term of moral condemnation. But the German word Machenschaft, on the other hand, does not always carry a negative connotation. The Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm tells us that Machenschaft is a southern German word meaning making, ordering, determining, erecting, which requires further qualifications to give it an explicitly morally negative sense. Moreover, Heidegger is adamant that the terms that he employs in his writings on being do not carry any moral connotation and are not used for the purposes of moral judgment. It is for these reasons that I have used the English word "manipulation" to translate Machenschaft. Manipulation does carry a morally negative connotation but it does not possess only such a connotation. It can also be used in a morally neutral sense to mean adjusting, operating, and working on something in order to make it work for our purpose. Heidegger's use of the word Machenschaft carries precisely this sense of being able to work on things and transform them into things that serve our needs, and viewing all beings as that which can be transformed into serving our needs without any explicit moral judgment on our needs and on our capacity to transform things to suit our needs.

In keeping with the wishes of the publisher, I have attempted to make the translation stand as a text on its own, which can be read and understood without referring to the original German text. This is of course particularly difficult to do in the case of Heidegger, who uses every resource the German language provides him with to express his difficult and highly original intuitions. However, this translation has, as far as possible, avoided the practice of placing the original German words next to their English counterparts in brackets, except in those cases where it is absolutely necessary for the reader to see the etymological kinship between the German words not reflected in the English words chosen to translate them, and there are quite a few instances where this has been done. But, in most instances, I have wagered that the specific significance that attaches to the etymological kinship between the German words will come through in the English language in the way that I have translated those words and the sentences containing those...