Abstract

It is my contention that the presence of Nietzsche in FCM is of central importance for both reading this text, and for understanding the stakes of Heidegger's Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche. This thesis will, therefore, endeavour to re-locate FCM within the Heideggerian corpus via a reading of the text “as a whole”. The focus of this re-location, and indeed the locus of this reading as a whole, is the contention that FCM is part of a Heideggerian Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche. This task is a response to the majority of existing readings of the 1929/30 lecture course that regard it as a fragmented work, and subsequently focus on its two most novel elements in isolation. When read out of context, and as a fractured project, FCM appears to straightforwardly reassert the primacy of man in western metaphysics, thus succumbing to the pitfalls of a “metaphysics of subjectivity”. On the basis of a reading of Nietzsche's presence in FCM, I will situate 'Part Two' within a philosophical and hermeneutical context not established in other readings heretofore. This opens the space for the genuine philosophical trajectory of the text to emerge, namely the grounding of a confrontation with Nietzsche as the site of contemporary philosophising. Taking up this trajectory allows for a re-invigorated understanding of the development of Heidegger's Nietzsche reading, and a deepening of the case regarding the centrality of Nietzsche for Heidegger's own thinking.