Pessimism, which Nietzsche sees as the prefiguration of nihilism, is already twofold also, in the same sense. According to Schopenhauer, pessimism is the belief that in this worst of worlds life is not worth being lived and affirmed. According to this doctrine, life, and that means at the same time all existence as such, is to be denied. This pessimism is, according to Nietzsche, the "pessimism of weakness." It sees everywhere only gloom, finds in everything a ground for failure, and claims to know how everything will turn out, in the sense of a thoroughgoing disaster. Over against this, the pessimism of strength as strength is under no illusion, perceives what is dangerous, wants no covering up and glossing over. It sees to the heart of the ominousness of mere impatient waiting for the return of what has been heretofore. It penetrates analytically into phenomena and demands consciousness of the conditions and forces that, despite everything, guarantee mastery over the historical situation.
A more essential reflection could show how in what Nietzsche calls the pessimism of strength there is accomplished the rising up of modern humanity into the unconditional dominion of subjectivity within the subjectness of what is.9 Through pessimism in its twofold form, extremes become manifest.
9. "Subjectness" translates Subjektität, a word formed by Heidegger to refer to a mode of Being's corning to presence in its reciprocal interrelation with what is, namely, that mode wherein Being manifests itself in respect to what is, appearing as subject, as subiectum, as ὑποκείμενον (that which lies before). As such, subjectness has ruled from ancient times, while yet it has changed with the change in the destining of Being that took place at the beginning of the modern age and has reached consummation, through Nietzsche's metaphysics, in the subjectness of the will to power. In like manner, throughout Western history what is has been appearing as subject, though with a transformation corresponding to that change in the destining of Being. What is appeared as the ὑποκείμενον for the Greeks. Subsequently, the character of the ὑποκείμενον was transformed into the selfconscious, self-assertive subject, which, in its subjectivity, holds sway in our age. Heidegger writes elsewhere that the name "subjectness" "should emphasize the fact that Being is determined in terms of the subiectum, but not necessarily by an ego." Subjectness "names the unified history of Being, beginning with the essential character of Being as idea up to the completion of the modern essence of Being as the will to power." (The End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh [New York : Harper & Row, 1973], pp. 46, 48. Professor Stambaugh translates Subjektität as "subiectity.") Later in this essay (pp. 79 ff.), Heidegger will take up the discussion adumbrated in this sentence and this word.