At first there seems to be not a trace of truth i n the claim that Nietzsche's philosophy is the consummation of Western metaphysics.* For by abolishing the "suprasensuous world" that has served heretofore as the "true" world his philosophy appears rather to reject all metaphysics and to take steps toward its ultimate abnegation. To be sure, Nietzsche's fundamental thought, "the will to power," still refers in some way to an interpretation of the beingness of beings as a whole, namely, as will. Willing goes together with knowing. In the context of Schelling's and Hegel's projects, knowing and willing constitute the essence of reason . In the context of the Leibnizian projection of the substantiality of substance, knowing and willing are thought as vis primitiva activa et passiva [the originary active and passive force] . However, the thought of will to power, especially in its biologistic configuration, appears to abandon the realm of this project; rather tlian consummating the tradition of metaphysics, it seems to truncate that tradition by disfiguring and trivializing it.
What the word consummation means; what precisely may not be used as a standard for taking its measure; to what extent we can fasten onto a "doctrine" in it; in what way the consummation keeps to the guiding projection (beings' coming to light in Being t ) that articulates and grounds metaphysics as such; whether the consummation fulfills the guiding projection in its ultimate possibil ities, thereby allowing it to stand outside all inquiry-none of these things can be discussed here.
The belief that Nietzsche's philosophy merely distorts, trivializes, and dogmatically abjures prior metaphysics is simply an illusion, albeit
* In a note, Heidegger reminds us that the present text pertains to the lecture course "The Will to Power as Knowledge," which came to an abrupt close in the summer of 1939. See the Editor's Preface to this volume.
† Seiendes gclichtet im Sein. Whether gelichtet should be translated with some form of the word "clearing," Lichtung, is an important and difficult question . Because Heidegger here stresses the traditional metaphysical "guiding projection" (Leitentwurf), and not his own further thinking of it, I have preserved the problematic reference to lumen.