Revenge, for Nietzsche,
is the will’s revulsion against time.
This now means: revenge
is the will’s revulsion against the passing away
and what has passed away,
against time and its “It was.”
The revulsion turns
not against the mere passing,
but against that passing away which allows
what has passed to be only in the past,
which lets it freeze in the finality of this rigor mortis.
The revulsion of revenge
is against that time which
makes everything dissolve in the “It was,”
and thus makes passing pass away…

The revulsion of revenge
remains chained to this “It was”;
just as there lies concealed in all hatred
the abysmal dependence
upon that from which hatred at bottom
always desires to make itself independent
-but never can,
and can all the less the more it hates. (p. 103)

The will becomes free
from what revolts it when it becomes free as will,
that is, free for the going in the passing away
–but the kind of going that does not get
away from the will,
but comes back,
bringing back what is gone.
The will becomes free
from its revulsion against time,
against time’s mere past,
when it steadily wills the going and coming,
this going and coming back, of everything.
The will becomes free from what is revolting
in the “It was”
when it wills the constant recurrence
of every “It was.”
The will is delivered from revulsion
when it wills
the constant
recurrence of the same
(p 104)

What Is Called Thinking by Martin Heidegger, Part I, Lecture X

Chapter 10 of Heidegger’s series of lectures concerning what we mean to say by the term “thinking” reaches a rest-stop in chapter ten. He goes to some length to describe the difficulty entailed in thinking in an unfettered fashion, and I imagine how a child encounters experience. That is to say in the case of a child an avalanche of questions, thought awaits a willing adult after an ordinary day of play.

Heidegger describes in some detail our situation. We are self-aware animals, aware as no other animal of what the progress of time means. The quotation excerpted in Heidegger’s language portrays a smoldering resentment coloring our thinking and skewing our will. In short there’s resentment on account of “unfinished business”, that is the many loose ends, which strike us as woefully, intolerably incomplete in the maw of time. Personally I can think of a few. Much might have been said between me and my Dad. He passed on, before I was able to give voice to what remained between us. That’s a big loss for both of us. The example is enough to mention.

Heidegger writes that we find ourselves in a condition of resentment. He echo’s Nietzsche in this assessment. By Nietzsche’s lights resentment/revenge raises to a even higher power when one has a deeply sense of loss, that they are not, and will not “make the cut” with reference to a divine standard. To sum up, a ground tone, or a “carrier wave” questing for revenge infects our perception, our processing of experience. Our élan vital, our will is unfree on account of our time-bound condition.

With a deft pivot, again the echo of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra story, Heidegger as I understand him says time need not be interpreted as moving in a one way, in linear fashion to a final cul de sac of dissolution. Instead imagine that time brings a return of what we assumed was over-and-done-with. This is the idea of Eternal Recurrence which Nietzsche discovered, time as a never ending (eternal) loop. Heidegger grounds this insight by asserting that Being necessarily contains time, and is not subject to erosion by time. Human nature as one of many beings must partake in the nature of Being,…

I confess that there is a sound logic to the argument. Ironically a paradox, and one needs “time” to get accustomed to the idea.

I’ll write more on these matters, more about eternal recurrence. I feel compelled to do more, more digging to explore where these ideas may lead.

This tune is a sublime compliment to these thoughts we’ve mused upon. Bruce Springsteen, a lyricist for our generation, and The E Street Band with Atlantic City.