A throw of the dice: Nietzsche on the pure notion of «nature»

Abstract

The article explores the meaning of the pure concept of «nature» found in Nietzsche’s 1881 drafts and associated with the project of returning the «meaning to the earth». As a rule, this concept and its historical consequences remain out of sight of researchers studying Nietzsche’s philosophy and Nietzscheism. This omission overshadows some important lines of genesis of modern philosophical ontologies, largely due to the split in the interpretation of nature after the era of romanticism. One of the strategies of this split is embodied in the philosophy of Nietzsche, and, through him, in the poetic ontologies of the 20th century. The study undertaken in this article primarily proceeds from Nietzsche’s texts of 1881–1882, when the idea of eternal return took shape, and then reconstructs the place of the pure concept of «nature» in the general context of the thinker’s works. The paper also analyzes the key interpretations of works by Nietzsche offered in the middle and second half of the 20th century. The greatest attention is paid to the texts of M. Heidegger and J. Deleuze, but also W. Kaufmann, P. Klossovsky, R. Safransky, P. Sloterdijk, and A. Badiou. The result of this hermeneutic and comparative-analytical work is the consideration of the pure concept of «nature» as the «meaning of the earth» through the unity of three concepts — the Dionysian worldview, the eternal return, and the will to power. The paper concludes that the concept of «nature» as immediate expressiveness of existence is opposed to the abstractness of the classical New European concept of nature («natura»). In other words, it is an ontology of «a Throw of the Dice», i.e. ontology of the chance, freeing the singularity from reflexive mediation.