Letting Heidegger and Nietzsche Dwell in Turkish:

Different Sprache, Same metaphysics

Hasan Ünal Nalbantoğlu*

In an 1978 article exclusively devoted to Heidegger’s pathbreaking address, Was ist Metaphysik?
(1929), Hans-Georg Gadamer assesses the unprecedented importance of this work in additional
terms:

“Especially the fact that translations into Japanese and later into Turkish appeared so early on says
something, for these translations extended beyond the sphere of the Christian languages of Europe.
Heidegger’s ability to think beyond metaphysics obviously came across a special readiness in regions
where Greek-Christian metaphysics did not form a self-evident and fundamental background.”1

It is interesting to note that the first Turkish translation (1935) is not at all mentioned by Heidegger
himself. In a letter, dated July 31, 1969 to Roger Munier who was responsible for the new French
translation of his now-enlarged work, he exclusively privileged the reception of his thinking through a
Japanese translation which appeared in 1930, the year after the first French translation. As to how
his work in the geographical center of the so-called Western metaphysics was received, Heidegger
was nearly dismissive:

“The reaction to the piece in Europe was: nihilism and enmity to ‘logic.’ In the far East, with the
‘nothing’ properly understood, one found in it the word for being.

In the course of the years, by means of a ‘Postscript’ and an ‘Introduction,’ I attempted to clarify the
text in regard to the return into the ground of metaphysics; for ‘What is Metaphysics’ already pushed
the question towards another dimension. There is no metaphysics of metaphysics. But this other

*
*
Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara,
Turkey.
1
“.. die Vorlesung >Was ist Metaphysik?< eine ganz besonders stürmische und weite Resonanz fand, ist doch
nicht zu verkennen. Inbesondere die Tatsache der frühen Übersetzung ins Japanische und dann auch noch ins
Türkische, die beide über den christlichen Sprachenkreis Europas inausreichen, hat etwas zu sagen. Heideggers
hinausdenken über die Metaphysik stößt offenbar dort, wo die griechisch-christliche Metaphysik nicht den
selbstverständlichen und tragenden Hintergrund bildet, auf besondere Bereitschaft.” Hans-Georg Gadamer,
»Was ist Metaphysik?«, Gesammelte Werke, Band 3 [Neuere Philosophie I: Hegel-Husserl-Heidegger]
(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1987): 209. / “What is Metaphysics?,” Heidegger’s Ways, tr. by John
W. Stanley, Intro. by Dennis J. Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994): 45. [my
emphasis]
dimension, from which metaphysics as such receives what is proper to it, is not yet determined even
today. It remains difficult enough to enter into this determination as a task of thinking.”2

Yet, how to explain the conspicuous absence of any mention concerning Was ist Metaphyisk?’s
availability yet in another language outside the so-called West? Non-informedness about a Turkish
translation of the first version long before Heidegger’s letter to Munier? The reveries of a thinker
who prioritized a partially constructed Greek past deployed against the drift of the Western mind
while remaining largely indifferent to another civilization and consequently taking Turkish as an
unimportant ‘house of being’ at the outskirts of ‘Western metaphysics’ (read predominantly Islamic
‘Near East’). This is unlike a partially informed Gadamer who refers in his article to “regions where
Greek-Christian metaphysics did not form a self-evident and fundamental background.”?

»Die Reaktion auf die Schrifft in Europa hieß: Nihilismus und Feindschaft gegenüber der <Logik>. Im fernen
Osten fand man in ihr mit dem recht verstandenen <Nichts> das Wort für das Sein.
Im Verlauf der Jahre versuchte ich, durch ein <Nachwort> und eine <Einleitung> den Text im Hinblick auf den
Rückgang in den Grund der Metaphysik zu verdeutlichen; denn schon die Frage <Was ist Metaphysik?> rückt
diese in andere Dimension. Es gibt keine Metaphysik der Metaphysik. Aber diese andere Dimension, aus der die
Metaphysik als solche ihr Eigentümliches empfängt, ist auch heute noch nicht zu bestimmen. Es bleibt scwer
genug, sich auf diese Bestimmung als eine Aufgabe des Denkens einzulassen.« Quoted in German Translator’s
Afterword to Martin Heidegger, Seminare (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1986), 414-414. / Four
Seminars, tr. by Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 2003): 88. Evidence of Heidegger’s openness to ways of thinking outside ‘Western metaphysics’ can also
be found in his correspondence with Karl Jaspers. [Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel: 1920-1963,
Hrsgb. von Walter Biemel und Hans Saner (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1990): esp. Heidegger’s
letter dated Aug. 12 1949, p. 181.]. Nor is it merely confined to his exchanges and dialogues with successive
Japanese and Chinese students and colleagues, but further demonstrated in his later encounters, as in a brief
dialogue with a Thai Buddhist monk as well as other conversations with Asian scholars; see, Reden und andere
Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, 1910-1976 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000): “Aus Gesprächen
mit einem buddhistischen Mönch (Herbst 1963)”, 589-593 and cf. Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, Auf einen Stern
zugehen: Begegnungen und Gespräche mit Martin Heidegger, 1929-1976 (Frankfurt am Main: Societäts
Verlag, 1983): »Der Mönch aus Bangkok«, 153-54. / Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger,
1929-1976, tr. by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1993): “The Monk from Bangkok”, 140; 145-46. In return, a sample of appreciations by e.g. Chung-Yuan
Chang, Hoseki Shinichi Hisamatsu, Paul Shih-Yi Hsiao, Jarava Lal Mehta and Keisei Keiji Nishitani are found
in Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger, Herausgegeben von Günther Neske (Pfüllingen: Verlag Günther Neske,
1977). A recent book by James W. Heisig [Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002)] sheds more light on Heidegger’s openness to Far Eastern ways of
thinking.
No easy answers could be provided as to the probable causes of Heidegger’s omission, Still, there are
few clues to his most likely limited knowledge of Islamic art and philosophical tradition 3 which were
not integral to the main thrust of his argument anyway. Not so for us, however.

Therefore,while listening to the voices of particularly Nietzsche and Heidegger in the background to
hear “the song which slumbers in all things” (tu use Gadamer’s elegant phrasing) relevant to our
matter (Sache), present essay takes crucial pointers also from others, most notably, Joseph Needham
and Roland Barthes. Gadamer’s remark awaits rigorous consideration ultimately via Needham’s
monumental oeuvre, but, for the time being, can be related to Barthes’ brief observation concerning
a (read, ‘Western’) regime of meaning/discourse which operated under a single theology (Essence,
monotheism) and in a chain of civilization (Graeco-Jewish-Islamic-Christian) all the way from Plato to
France-Dimanche sold on Parisian kiosques.4

3
It is also significant that for Heidegger “what was called philosophy in medieval times was not philosophy but
only a preamble of reason on behalf of theology, as required by faith [nur das durch den Glauben geforderte
Vorspiel der Vernunft für die Theologie]... Aristotle was precisely therefore not understood in the Greek way,
i.e. on the basis of the primordial thought and poetry of Greek Dasein, but in a medieval fashion, i.e., in an
Arabic-Jewish-Christian way [nicht griechisch und d. h. aus den Anfängen des griechischen denkerisch-
dichterischen Daseins, sondern mittelalterlisch, arabisch-jüdisch-christlich verstanden].” Martin Heidegger,
Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte »Probleme« der »Logik«: »Aus dem ersten Entwurf«, (Frankfurt
am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984): 163. / Martin Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected
“Problems” of “Logic”, tr. by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1992): 141. Besides, Medard Boss provides an easily overlooked anecdote from their trip to Turkey: “In
1965, it was Heidegger’s own initiative that led us to undertake a cruise on the Aegean Sea to Troy, Ephesus,
Pergamos and İstanbul. During this third overseas journey, a new ‘shadow phenomenon’ appeared. As long as
we cruised in the vicinity of Greece and Greek Antiquity, Heidegger was always in the best of spiritsWe had
scarcely left Pergamos and sailed mortheast towards İstanbul, when Heidegger became increasingly physically
and psychically ‘vexed.’..He scarcely regarded the few places of interest which we could induce him to visit. He
seemed rather revolted by them. On the way back..Heidegger’s mood changed as our ship entered Greek
waters again…Our intimacy was such that I could ask him directly what his recalcitrant behavior in İstanbul had
meant. He replied: “The Islamic air simply does not suit me. The stark ornamentation on and in the
Mohammedan mosques lets one feel the absence of any reference to the human being or to anything in
nature. Such extreme reduction and abstraction in artistic creativity freezes my soul.’ What I learned much
earlier from a Mohammedan friend had evidently escaped Heidegger’s attention: namely, the abstention of the
Mohammedan artist from any representation of a living creature does not arise out of his being far removed
from his god, but rather from the deepest reverence for him. It is of such depth that it forbids the
counterfeiting of what has been created by the hand of God. It was a sign of Heidegger’s readiness to accept
criticism that he spontaneously assured me that he would in the future see Mohammedan art with different
eyes.” “Martin Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars,” tr. by Brian Kenny, Review of Existential Psychology and
Psychiatry, Vol. XVI (1978/79): 7-20. [Original in Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger, Herausgegeben von Günther
Neske (Pfüllingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1977): 31-45 [my emphases].
4

Roland Barthes, “Change the Object Itself: Mythology Today,” Image-Music-Text, tr. by S. Heath (London:
Fontana. 1977): 167.
There is more to it, and here is a bold hypothesis awaiting further research: neither in the overall
mentality of the late-Ottoman nor of early Republican thinkers can one find any strong resistance
against Nietzsche’s thought, certainly not stronger than any Christian mentality prevailing in Europe
at the time. Considering Nietzsche’s reception in other European languages, his challenge to and
reception by certain sections of late-Ottoman intellectual circles was mostly a matter of time,and not
a very late one at that.. Here we cannot overlook the degree of exposure occasioned by determinate
historical conditions under which certain centers of learning and culture (notably, Paris) which
exercised a gravitational pull on both the Young Ottomans and their heir,Young Turks. Besides, the
resonances Nietzsche and Heidegger’s work caused in other Sprache are not fully appreciated even
today, save few notable exceptions.5

Such historisch hypothesis is not mere intellectual extravaganza. Intended as a spur for an initial and
necessarily incomplete attempt in a direction yet not entirely known. This also means a deliberate
distancing from the current Wissenschaftsbetrieb and Kulturindustrie in Turkey which is increasingly
geared to “busy-ness” and frenzy of a techno-scientific world-(dis)order under today’s
Amerikanismus, a speeded-up extension of an erstwhile Europe, which presently holds sway over
“mondialisation” (Derrida). 6

Among which are: Graham Parkes, “Between Nationalism and Nomadism: Wondering about the Languages of
Philosophy,” Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives, ed. by Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1991):455-467.The contributions to the following publications edited by Graham
Parkes among a myriad of other articles by him as well as many non-Western scholars are particularly welcome
endeavours in this still largely unexplored region (Bezirk): Nietzsche and Asian Thought, ed. by G. Parkes
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991) and Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. by G. Parkes (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1987).
6

I take it to be a “speeded-up Europe come true,” something Heidegger predicted long ago when he wrote: »Der
Amerikanismus ist etwas Europäisches. Er ist die noch unverstandene Abart des noch losgebundenen und noch
gar nicht aus dem vollen und gesammelten metaphysischen Wesen der Neuzeit entspringenden Riesenhaften.
Die amerikanische Interpretation des Amerikanismus durch den Pragmatismus bleibt noch außerhalb des
metaphysischen Bereiches.«, »Die Zeit des Weltbildes«, Zusatz 12, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1950): 103-104. Others, too, have written on this now-global phenomenon; see especially, Robert
Bernasconi, “ ‘I Will Tell You Who You Are.’ Heidegger on Greco-Roman Destiny and Amerikanismus,” From
Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and desire: Essays in Honor of William J. Richardson, ed. by
Babette E. Babich (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995): 301-314. Additionally, Michael Ermarth,
“Heidegger on Americanism: Ruinanz and the End of Modernity,” Modernism/Modernity, VII/3 (September
2000): 379-400. I believe that the question of Amerikanismus should also be dealt with against the backdrop of
discussion concerning the possibility of ‘community’ in the West. For an excellent discussion, again see: Robert
Bernasconi, “On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community within the West: The Debate between Nancy and
Blanchot,” Research in Phenomenology, XXIII (1993): 3-21. It should also be noted that Ottoman intellectual
Ahmet Midhat has written an article on this phenomenon a century ago [first serialized in the daily, Tercümân-ı
Hakîkat [Interpreter/Voice of Truth] and later republished as a separate book (Dersaadet=İstanbul:
1307H./1890A.D.)] The article was partly based on his first-hand observations (the Congress of Orientalists in
Christiana) and interviews (orientalist scholar Max Müller, in particular) wherein Ahmet Midhat wrote: “Even
though it is customary for the westerners to call Europe “vieil Europe,’ such attribution of oldness can only be a
relative one, i.e. in comparison to the ‘new world,’ the young America. True, the sudden jump from excess to
prudence and vice versa is observed more in this young America than in Europe, and apropriately so considering
its very youth. On the other hand, Europe has not yet reached maturity in [matters of] philosophy/wisdom, in
spite of its relative oldness vis-à-vis America. There is no doubt that its brother, Asia is much older and much
more experienced in such matters. Even so, there is no doubt, however, that this good old Europe, neither in
great hurry as America nor patient enough as Asia, can suddenly lose its cool and get carried away easily by the
cosmetics of the new things [such as this new fad of Buddhism in Paris], “Pariste Otuz Bin Budist [Thirty
Accordingly, overall process of entry of both thinkers into the house of Turkish can neither be
reduced to subjective motives of agents responsible for both translation (Übersetzung) and
interpretation (Auslegung) nor be explained away by pointing at successive historical conjunctures of
politico-cultural-intellectual climate. Ultimately, our attempt should aim at a historical (geschichtlich)
grounding, partly based on and yet far beyond even the most solid and qualified historiological
(historisch) explanations. Moreover, one must constantly be guarding against both the familiar
(orientalist; islamist) prejudices and such boring quasi-touristic clichés as Turkey’s assumed cultural
uniqueness, its bridging the ‘East’ and the ‘West.’ For an authentic >Sorge<, namely, “the task of
thinking,” such attempt must also consider the fact that for a “special readiness” (Gadamer) to
receive Nietzsche and Heidegger to occur, there should have been embedded intellectual traditions
which long predated Turkey’s relatively recent Republican past, traditions as an integral part of the
same “Western metaphysics” in its long-lasting completion and galactic collapse.

So our inquiry is confined to the realm of the »historisch«, and in this tentative state does not claim
any comprehensiveness. We are still at the initial stage of a thinking craft whereby one hopes to
enter both thinkers’ »Denkwege« where a ‘non-willing’reflective thinking may be sparked off by
emergent pointers toward letting both thinkers address us in their Übersetzung with minimum
intervention.

In any case, the roots of today’s more than enthusiastic reception of both thinkers can be traced back
to final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the new Turkish Republic. For this
purpose, I will base my argument on certain important cases of intellectual activity where both
thinkers, Nietzsche in particular, created a resonance among a new generation of thinkers of a
rapidly transforming society, yet another example of what Karl Mannheim characterized as
»freischwebende Intelligenz«.

These young and unattached writers and thinkers were in most part introduced to Nietzsche’s
‘oeuvre’ through translations and commentaries that took place in another language circle, namely
French, which they hastened to bring to the attention of potential readership by way of somewhat
loose translations and commentaries. This took place mostly after the 1908 Revolution when
constitutional monarchy was restored after a nearly thirty years of renewed absolutism under
Abdulhamid. The process was often an unsystematic one where scholarly standards of writing,
quoting and bibliography observed today were not yet fully established and observed, given
especially the absence of relevant institutional setup and a corresponding scholarly ethos. Yet we
should recall that it was the culmination of a period of fundamental transformation. The »fügender
Fug« (if we may be permitted to use Heidegger’s words) erstwhile hierachical social cosmos of
Ottomans with its corresponding differential ‘dike’ (überwältigende Fug =cosmos) was rapidly

Thousand Buddhists in Paris],” republished in Ahmet Midhat, Felsefe Metinleri [Philosophical Texts] ed. by
Erdoğan Erbay and Ali Utku (Erzurum: Babil Yayınları/Seyfeddin Özege Osmanlı Klasikleri Dizisi, 2002):
125/a125.
collapsing and, in its wake, leaving a vacuum which was going to be filled soon by a new
»Machenschaft«.7

Moreover, in such ‘the best and the worst’ of times, intellectual circles were formed around
newspapers and journals where creating a new reading public alongside enlightening existing one
was given priority. An intellectual would simultaneously be a journalist contributing regularly to a
daily (days becoming journées, as one might paraphrase George Steiner), a literary figure writing his
short stories and novels which appeared in installments in the pages of a newspaper or a satirical
weekly, an advocate of a political program, etc.

One can therefore justifiably claim that such state of fluidity has been a part of the late-Ottoman
intelligentsia’s ‘free-floating’ nature, an intelligentsia somewhat different from the earlier generation
whose members of which frequently filled positions within the ranks of the Ottoman government
bureaucracy and army, albeit in a tenuous relationship.

How prepared was then these intellectual milieux for the challenge of European philosophical
currents at the time, especially Nietzsche and Heidegger? A well-known fact is that certain of the
pioneers were already acquainted with Schopenhauer, though mostly via second-hand sources in
French, as was the example of such enlightened Ottoman writers as polymathic Ahmet Midhat Efendi
(1844-1912), a prolific figure by all standards then and well-known for his highly logical and sustained
criticism of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, Voltaire’s thoughts, materialist tendencies of his day, and
such ephemeral fashions as attraction to Buddhism among learned Parisians, and all this in the name
of a tolerant Islam supposed to accommodate Enlightenment ideals. 8

Ahmet Midhat’s views were not necessarily shared by the majority of writers in his generation or
immediately after. Some young late-Ottoman gentlemen could not somehow sustain a meaningful
relationship with their rapidly transforming Umwelt. Most could not cope with it, some perishing at
the warfronts or, at best, ending up with what could be characterized as ultimate pessimism
concerning life. This is particularly true of the pioneering example of Beşir Fuad (1852-1887),
arguably the first positivist and naturalist Ottoman writer, who committed suicide at a relatively

Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1953 [1935]): 123. cf.
also Martin Heidegger, Grundbegriffe [GA, Band 51] (Frankfurt Am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1981 [1941]): 101-123.

8
For a selection recently reissued in latin transcription see, Ahmet Midhat, Felsefe Metinleri [Philosophical
Texts] ed. by Erdoğan Erbay and Ali Utku (Erzurum: Babil Yayınları/Seyfeddin Özege Osmanlı Klasikleri
Dizisi, 2002).
young age, but not before donating his body for scientific study and recording his last minutes in cold
efficiency, again arguably an ultimate proof of ‘free will’ in Angst.9

Given an energy which at times and in certain individual cases going unrestrained, such extreme
cases call to mind the cloud of Angst and boredom -a phenomenon being partly objective, partly
subjective-10 borne by ‘modern’ existential predicaments, and enveloping young and restless
members of an intelligentsia who had to face the challenge of a fast-paced, increasingly faceless
modernity. One could justifiably advance that a commanding order, a »fügender Fug« (Heidegger)
was out of its joints. Things and individuals, especially the freischwebend Intelligenz (Karl Mannheim)
in the cosmopolitan centers of a crumbling Empire were shrouded in the very Angst which I
emphasized earlier. Earlier Comtian positivism, still in currency for its belief in progrès and strong
conservative bent toward ordre,11 wasn’t of much help either. Such positivism which inspired names
for such revolutionary jacobin organizations as ‘The Committee of Union and Progress’ (Ittihad ve
Terakkî Cemiyeti) against Sultan’s autocratic rule served as an ideological lever for change without
endangering the existing order. This hardly helped to overcome the toll Neuzeit collected from
individuals.12
9

See: M. Orhan Okay, İlk Türk Pozitivist ve Natüralisti Beşir Fuad [Beşir Fuad, The First Turkish Positivist
and Naturalist] (İstanbul: Dergâh Yayınları/Türk Edebiyatı İnceleme Dizisi, nd)
10

In Heidegger’s words: »Kurz: die Langeweile – und so am Ende jede Stimmung – ist ein Zwitterwesen, teils
objektiv, teils subjektiv.«, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit, (Frankfurt am
Main: V. Klostermann, 1983): 132. / The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World-Finitude-Solitude,
tr. by W. McNeill and N. Walker, (Bloomington: Indiana 1929-30 University Press, 1995): 88.
11
Theodor W. Adorno restates a plain fact concerning Comtean positivism: “[E]ven Comte himself manifests a
contradictory position; he was equally concerned with the problems of order -that is, of constants- and of
progress. In truth his sympathy was more on the side of order than of progress.” “On the Historical Adequacy of
Consciousness,” tr. in Telos, No. 56 [XVI/2] (Summer 1983): 99; for the original of this interview with Peter
von Haselberg in 1965 see Akzente, 12 (1965): 287-297. One should also note that Comte has sent many letters
to the sovereigns around Europe, seeking support for his conservative vision of “positive polity,” including
reformist statesmen of the Ottoman “Tanzimat” era. For the texts of both Comte’s letter to Grand Vizier Reşit
Pasha (February 4, 1858) and those of certain positivists to Midhat Pasha (August 26, 1877) and his reply
(Turkish translation by Ümid Meriç and Mehmed Ali Meriç; brief contextual discussion by İlber Ortaylı), see
“Mustafa Reşit ve Midhat Paşalarla A. Comte ve Pozitivistler,” [Mustafa Reşit and Midhat Pashas, A. Comte
and Positivists], Tarih ve Toplum [History and Society], February 14, 1985): 102-106.
12

Early unsuccesful suicide attempt of Ziya Gökalp, the ideological sheikh of the Ittihad ve Terakkî, is a typical
example. Yet there were exceptions like Yusuf Akçura who deployed their intellectual reserves for revolutionary
and yet non- and even anti-romantic causes in building a new ‘nation,’ in full awareness that the realm of the
political is a certain manifestation of ‘will to power.’ Akçura’s lectures on “Political History of Contemporary
Europe” (1927-32) at what was initially “Ankara School of Law” is a typical example. At the end of each
academic year he used to remind students of certain facts as these: struggle is the basic principle of life which
demands from humans incessant labor to build mastery over things; only the powerful who derive strength from
labor are capable of having a word at both the individual and societal levels, both for self-survival and for the
survival of others; so, the balance of power is always the prerequisite for any viable international agreement.
Akçura often quoted from speeches of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to that effect, adopting latter’s punchline
sentences as mottos. See, for example: Akçuraoğlu Yusuf, Zamanımız Avrupa Siyasi Tarihi - 6ıncı tedris
senesi (Ankara: Ankara Hukuk Fakültesi Neşriyatı/T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 1930-1931): 4. Akçura’s somewhat
overenthusiastic review of Atatürk’s book, “Nutuk” [Discourse] is in similar vein, praising The Leader’s matter-
of-factness, positively Darwinian bent of his mind, and his unmediated touch with naked reality which saved him
from “mystical and romantic illusions and empty imaginings.” See: Akçuraoğlu Yusuf, “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti
tarihinin aslî menbalarından: Nutuk,” Türk Tarih Encümeni Mecmuası [Revue historique publiée par
Another example in the coming years was Baha Tevfik (1884-1914), brilliant young advocate of a new
“philosophy for the individual” and a co-translator and collator of Nietzsche 13 (albeit from mostly
secondary and dominantly French sources) whose meteorite rise in the intellectual milieu was
accompanied by mounting despair and almost saturnian melancholy, culminating in a dubious death
in his mid-thirties.14 Still, it is to the credit of these young, occasionally self-burning ‘individualists’ of
peaceful anarchistic bent that, beyond existing and not fully digested knowledge of Schopenhauer,
Hegel, Kant, Comte and Durkheim, Nietzsche was brought onto the agenda of discussion.

During this volatile period, it was not only Baha Tevfik and his close circle who were attracted
Nietzsche’s thinking. There were also others, however little informed about his work as was publicly
accessible at the time. Celâl Nuri [İleri] (1864-1944), an influential westernist intellectual and
journalist who was also among early champions of women’s rights, 15 posited bold theses against
metaphysics, old style religion, and philosophy in his three volume book, Tarih-i İstikbâl [History of
Future] (1916). In this work, he deployed highly ambiguous quotes from Nietzsche’s maverick ideas
(apparently, again from French sources) for his own idiosyncratic vision of building a new, modern

L’Institut d’Histoire Turque], Yeni Seri, Cilt I/Sayı 1 (Haziran-Ağustos 1929): 1-25; esp. 17-18. Atatürk’s
book has been translated into several languages among which is Discours du Ghazi Moustafa Kemal,
président de la République Turque: Octobre 1927 (Leipzig : K. F. Koehler, 1929).
13

See Baha Tevfik, Birey Felsefesi (Felsefe-i Ferd) [A Philosophy for the Individual], simplified Turkish ed. and
intro. by Burhan Şayli, subtitled “Anarşizmin Osmanlıcası-1 (İstanbul: Altıkırkbeş Yayınları-Osmanlı Düşünce
Tarihi Dizisi, No.1, 1992 [1332 H./1913 S.D.?]). Baha Tevfik’s various articles on moral matters and pedagogy
were recently collected and published under the title, Yeni Ahlâk ve Ahlâk Üzerine Yazılar [Writings on
Morality and ‘New Morality’], ed. by Faruk Öztürk (Ankara: T.C. Kültür bakanlığı Yayınları/Kültür Eserleri
Dizisi, No. 345, 2002). Bahâ Tevfik’s life and work has been a subject of various studies, some of which appear
to be university dissertations. A valuable study is Rıza Bağcı, Baha Tevfik’in Hayatı, Edebî ve Felsefî Eserleri
Üzerinde Bir Araştırma [A Study on Baha Tevfik’s Life and Literary-Philosophical Oeuvre] (İzmir: Kaynak
Yayınları, 1996). Most relevant to our present purposes, however, is the original cooperative work by Ahmed
Nebil, Bahâ Tevfik and Memdûh Süleymân, titled Niçe: Hayâtı ve Felsefesi: Höfding, Emîl Fâge, Anrî
Lihtenberger gibi mü’ellifîn-i meşhûrenin âsâr-ı tenkîdiyyelerinden [Nietzsche: His Life and Philosophy:
based on the critical works of famous writers, Harald Höffding, Emile Faguet and Henri Lichtenberger]
(İstanbul: Gayret Kütübhânesi/Teceddüd-i ‘İlmî ve Felsefî Kütübhânesi, n.d.). This work has recently been
reissued in latin script and simplified Turkish by Burhan Şayli who also wrote a lengthy introductory essay to the
book; see: Baha Tevfik [et.al.], Nietzsche: Hayatı ve Felsefesi (İstanbul: Karşı Kıyı Yayınları, 2001). Among
the three French authors consulted by Baha Tevfik and his colleagues, it should be Henri Lichtenberger’s La
philosophie de Nietzsche (Paris: Alcan, 1898 [4th ed. 1899]), the only reference I could find in otherwise
comprehensive bibliography to Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Revised
Fourth ed. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974): 503. As for Emile Faguet (1847-1916), he
was the professor of literature at the Sorbonne; cf. Max Weber’s letter to G. Lukács (March 6, 1913), in Georg
Lukács, Selected Correspondence, 1902-1920, tr. and ed. by Judith Marcus and Zoltán Tar (New York:
Columbia Univ. Press, 1986): 221.
14

Given the patchiness of knowledge about Baha Tevfik’s restless life, intellectually dedicated to a ‘new
philosophy for the individual’ as well as the lives of his associates of similar ‘materialist’ bent, we still need to
map out their ‘existential bearings’ in the rapidly changing late-Ottoman social and intellectual world. His
friends and critics alike point to an intellectual stamina tarnished only by absence of ideals and an overall
disorientation. See Rıza Bağcı, Baha Tevfik’in…: 30, 36. Even the deaths of these Angst-ridden and freely-
floating young intelligentsia are shrouded in a cloud of uncertainty, as in the case of the alleged murder of
Ahmet Nebil [Çika?] in Tirana right after the World War II; cf. Burhan Şayli’s introductory essay in Baha Tevfik
[et.al.], Niçe: Hayatı ve Felsefesi…: 17.
15

Celâl Nuri, Op.cit., Vol. III, Chp. Titled “Kadının İstikbali,” [The Future of Women]: 139-146. This chapter
appears to be a condensed version of Celâl Nuri’s arguments in his earlier book, Kadınlarımız [Our Women]
society among the ruins of a collapsing social order, particularly its religious and intellectual debris. 16
Celâl Nuri can loosely be taken as a a hard-headed romantic-modernist believer in the advancement
of science with its experimental methods which he advocated as the sole vehicle for reaching out to
truth in an age totally severing ties with the past, including its philosophical traditions. For him this
meant that such philosophies as those of Kant and Hegel, too, were condemned to oblivion.

Celâl Nuri’s far-out ideas, particularly those feverishly advanced in his book (1916), did not go
unchallenged. Ferid Kam (1864-1944), an Islamist thinker, levelled a sarcastic criticism in a highly
charged article17. What particularly pitched Kam against him was Celâl Nuri’s reckless assertion that
“madness is the foster brother of philosophy” for which he openly referred to Nietzsche’s example.

Kam’s logical counter-argument can be summarized as follows: Nietzsche may very well be both a
philosopher and a madman; yet such mental derangement may encaptivate any member of our
species and does not exclusively hit philosophers and men of science Celâl Nuri champions. Personal
coincidences can not necessarily be taken as a sign of collapse either of a philosophical system or a
scientific one. It is, therefore, beyond any reasonably thinking human being that Celâl Nuri dismisses
the sound sayings of so many philosophers since Aristotle while taking “the jibberish uttered by a
wretched madman, Nietzsche, as the strongest evidence for philosophy’s alleged worthlessness.”
Celâl Nuri’s superficial and indirect knowledge of Nietzsche notwithstanding, the partial truth
intuited from such encounter with Nietzsche which he mobilized for his assessment of the present,
escaped Kam’s attention completely. Besides, no evidence on Kam’s part whatsoever for slightest
acquaintance with Nietzsche’s thought (around 1914) before reading Celâl Nuri’s book.

As to Celâl Nuri’s dismissal of metaphysics, a religious man like Ferîd Kam does not hesitate to call
Celâl a quixotic character, an ignoramus in philosophical matters whose wild speculations were
entirely based upon superficial knowledge without foundation.
16

Celâl Nuri, Tarih-i İstikbâl [History of Future] 3 Vols [on Ideas, Political and Social matters, respectively].
(İstanbul: Yeni Osmanlı Matbaa ve Kütübhanesi, 1331/1916). It is curious that the book starts, in a vein almost
reminiscent of a certain European ‘Romantic’ retreat of mind, with a highly subjective narration of personal
reverie on the balcony of his house overlooking Bosphorus,. In the very first chapter of the Book I on the “Future
of Philosophy” (pp. 7-24), Celâl Nuri audaciously condemns the hitherto ‘speculative’ philosophies (such as that
of Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer) as ‘metaphysics’ in the name of modernity and progress under the aegis of
modern science and technics and their experimental methods. At the same time, he thinks that in the modern
times, philosophy cannot be but both the physiology and poetry of technics (p. 22), and every philosophical
strand accommodates a certain dose of madness. Interestingly, he hits a partial truth when he calls for
Nietzsche’s ( “an invalid”) help towards this end, referring to a variety of latter’s aphorisms which, one suspects,
are taken from unknown-to-us and apparently unreliable secondary sources. Here are some of the (mis)quotes in
direct translation from Celâl Nuri’s own text: ‘I don’t believe any god who doesn’t know how to dance;’
‘Beware of good men,’ ‘There is no truth, so anything goes,’ ‘I see that I’m in the wrong when everybody agrees
with me,’ etc.
17

Ö. Ferîd Kam, “Celâl Nuri’nin Tarih-i İstikbali: Sakız Çiğnemek,” [Celâl Nuri’s book, History of Future: mere
babbling] Original in Ottoman-Arabic script: Ferîd (Kam), “Tarih-i İstikbal – Celâl Nuri Bey,” Sebîlürreşad,
XI/12 (Rebiulevvel 1332/Ocak 1914): 283-287; reprinted in, Süleyman Hayri Bolay, Ferît Kam, (Ankara: T.C.
Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı yay. No. 872, 1988): 65-76.
There is a curious aspect of this story however. It is very interesting that Kam’s defense of
metaphysics against Celâl Nuri’s attack does not solely show a Moslem intellectual’s good grasp of
Cartesian philosophy (a sign of a shared metaphysics à la Barthes, perhaps), but by quoting exactly
the same passage from Descartes with which Heidegger started 1949 Einleitung to his expanded Was
ist Metaphysik?, it almost anticipates the latter’s debate in reverse. 18

Nietzsche’s influence on certain prominent literary figures is also part of this scene. A highly popular
novelist, Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar (1864-1944) being highly appreciative of his mentor, Ahmet
Midhat’s heritage, had been developing serious interest in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche for some
time and, as one biographer wrote, even attempted to translate Nietzsche’s works into Turkish at the
age of seventy (1934) when he increasingly felt the approaching nothingness of an old age. 19
Gürpınar took Nietzsche as an important lead into the enigmas of modern existence, as is obvious
from two articles he wrote.20 Gürpınar’s reflections on Nietzsche’s insights concerning modern man
have in fact helped him to construct certain characters in his novels. 21
18

Original of Kam’s quote from Descartes, as given by Heidegger in full is: “Ainsi toute la Philosophie est comme
un arbre, don’t les racines sont la Métaphysique, le tronc est la Physique, et les branches qui sortent de ce tronc
sont toutes les autres sciences.” [from a letter to Picot who translated Principiae Philosophiae into French]. See
Kam, Ibid.: 73. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Metafizik Nedir?/ Was ist Metaphysik?, original text and Turkish tr. by
Yusuf Örnek (Ankara: Türkiye Felsefe Kurumu, 1991): .
19

Sevengil, R.A., Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar: hayatı, hatıraları. (İstanbul: Hilmi Kitabevi, 1944): 134. Sevengil
provides a vivid description of this key mood in Gürpınar’s late hermitic existence.

20

The first of these articles, “Nietzsche (Niçe) 8 Cildi [Eight Volumes of Nietzsche],” which appeared first in the
Turkish daily, Cumhuriyet [The Republic], August 15, 1939, gives useful information about the origins of
Gürpınar’s interest in Nietzsche. At the outset, Gürpınar informs his readers that he bought an eight-volume
edition of Nietzsche’s works about twenty years ago (1919!). Obviously it was a French edition, for Gürpınar
quotes from La gai savoir (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft), perceptively discussing Nietzsche’s aversion to all
systems of thought and emphasizing the potency of his open ended inquiries into the nature of truth and
falsity. See. Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Gazetecilikte Son Yazılarım, Cilt 2: Zorla Ahlaksız Olduk [My Late
Journalistic Writings, Vol.2: Becoming Immoral by Force of Circumstance] ed. by Abdullah and Gülçin
Tanrınınkulu (İstanbul: Özgür Yayınları, 2002): 119-123. An equally interesting second article on the meaning of
life and the transgression of boundaries, “Niçe, Felsefe ve Delilik” [Nietzsche, Philosophy and Madness] in the
same volume (pp. 159-162) is undated, most probably from his late years of solitude on an island in Bosphorus.

21
For example, portrait of Hikmetullah Efendi, crackpot protagonist of Gürpınar’s posthumously published
novel, Deli Filozof’ [Mad Philosopher] (written during Sept. 24, 1930-May 7, 1931; first pub. 1964). Another
posthumously published book (1968), İnsanlar Maymun muydu? [Have Men originated from Apes?] (first
serialized in the newspaper, Cumhuriyet, in 1934 in which also appears the figure of a philosopher who
condemns effects of modern civilization on man. Gürpınar’s fallback on religion on moral issues may partly be
responsible here. See Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, Deli Filozof (İstanbul : Pınar Yayınları, 1964) and İnsanlar
Maymun muydu? (İstanbul : Pınar Yayınları, 1968). The original dates of the two novels, as they coincide with
So, when the first lights of daybreak for a new ‘imagined community’ dawned on the horizon of
futurality of Dasein among especially the new Republican intelligentsia, and only then, a
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson and Heidegger made full sense and were considered worthy of
translation, this time preferably from the originals. Note that this case cannot be treated as an
example of belated modernity in Turkey. The reception of such intellectual luminaries did not lag
behind long, thanks to the hastened modernization carried forward at full-scale now by a modern
republican administration. The cliché of ‘ten-years’delay in following Europe,’ even uttered by many
Turkish intellectuals today, is at best an ‘idle-talk’ (Gerede) without foundation.

Thus, inspired partly by aforementioned insight of Gadamer, one could justifiably advance another
conjecture that such interest in both Nietzsche and Heidegger wouldn’t flourish merely because of a
crisis caused by the coming of modernity. Surely there existed a mostly amorphous and unelaborated
urge felt by intelligentsia; yet the distant historical roots lay deeper in a metaphysics which was not
exclusive feature of European languages, as advanced by a myriad of ‘eurocentric’ perspectives
without foundation. For a better qualified understanding, following words of Steiner could very well
serve as another pointer:

“How is it possible for poetry or prose thousands of years old, in languages recapturable only in part
and with difficulty, to address us, to inform and move us profoundly? What does it mean to grasp, to
paraphrase a line in Gilgamesh or the Iliad, to attempt translation? And is that question, in essence,
not that which attaches to all human linguistic, semiotic exchanges even in one’s own native tongue
and among contemporaries?”22

Since our discussion is necessarily limited to a possible ‘authentic’ dialogue with both thinkers in
Turkish, it is time now to turn attention to the ethos and mentality of a still younger generation who,
like some of predecessors, were sent to Europe as candidates for future intellectual mandarinate to
serve the new Turkish Republic. It is not a question of merely the influence of an intellectual climate,
especially in post-war Germany or France, or of any particular professor with whom they studied in
their respective, mostly techno-scientific disciplines while being there. Remembering Heidegger’s
discussion of tà mathémata in a Freiburg lecture in 1935-36 (Die Frage nach dem Ding),23, there had
to be an Offene a receptivity in the psyche and noûs of young minds, a readiness to be influenced by
the first wave of translations of Nietzsche and Heidegger, clearly point to a period of growing interest on the
part of Turkish literati.

22
George Steiner, “Grave jubilation,” [review of Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The representation of reality in
Western Literature], The Times Literary Review, September 19, 2003, 3-5. Auerbach’s book which first
appeared in Berne, Switzerland (1946) and later in English translation (1953), was written during his sojourn in
Istanbul between May 1942 and April 1945. This excellent review by Steiner also provides important clues as to
how a thinker of calibre makes best of even the limited literary resources at his disposal in exile to produce a
monumental work.
23
the new even if it first flourished in a different language-world. take Gadamer’s remark should
therefore be taken seriously in this modern sense as well. Such readiness and enthusiasm should also
be traced, through a rigorous study to distant sources which share with the Abendland same
metaphysics in its Anfang but have now withdrawn into concealment in the so-called Middle or Near
East. How could we otherwise intelligibly grasp not only the transmission of Greek classics, but above
all, the peculiar transformation effected by the great contributions of Islamic falasifa, especially their
immense synthesis of Platonic-Aristotelian principles with the actual operation of the political,
especially within the sphere of statecraft? Isn’t there an unconsciously operating spillover effect from
a native national and religious background upon these young students who were sent to study in
Europe and, unlike Turkey today, were still endowed with knowledge of Ottoman language and
script? Such inquiry demands Heidegger’s Strenge over mere historiological Exaktheit. Moreover,
such project subverts illusions and conscious fabrications of a eurocentric identity, a relatively recent
occidental construction.

Professors Suut Kemal [Yetkin],24 Mazhar Şevket [İpşiroğlu] and Mahmut Sadi [Irmak] 25 were the
prominent figures of now-growing interest in Nietzsche and Heidegger during this new period,
coinciding with young Republic’s policy of providing scholarships for higher education in various
fields of scientific activity, mostly in Germany. Suut Kemal’s book ‘Great Sufferers’ (1933) has a
passionately written chapter on Nietzsche squeezed between the chapters on Schopenhauer and
Tolstoy.26 Mahmut Sadi Irmak’s translation of the ‘First Book’ of Also Sprach Zarathustra (hereafter,

Martin Heidegger, Die Frage nach dem Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von den Transzendentalen Grundsätzen,
Gesamtausgabe, Band 41 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984): 69-108. / What is a Thing?, tr. W.
B. Barton, Jr. & Vera Deutsch (South Bend, Indiana: Regnery/Gateway, Inc., 1967): 69-108.
24

Prof. Suut Kemal Yetkin, aesthete, art theoretician and historian who extensively wrote on philosophical
problems, was well steeped in the French language. Beside his interest in a thinker like Nietzsche, he also
collaborated with İpşiroğlu in translating Heidegger’s into Turkish. Prof. Mazhar Şevket İpşiroğlu, a doyen of art
history in Turkey who was also documentary film maker, was educated in Germany.
25

Prof. Irmak, trained as a physiologist in Berlin, also put out original work in his specialty. While still a dozent at
Istanbul University he translated the First part of Nietzsche’s work. He also had a relatively illustrious career in
Turkish politics. In the forties being a deputy in Turkish Parliament representing Konya, he also served in the
capacity of the Minister of Work and Employment in government cabinets (09.03.1943-07.08.1946) during the
terms of both Prime Ministers, Recep Peker and Şükrü Saraçoğlu (second term: 07.08.1946-10.09.1947). Not
long before his death, Prof. Irmak was a senate member of the Parliament and served as prime minister for a
brief tenure during which he gained notoriety for his seemingly naïve remark about the polygamic nature of
males. There are grounds to think that he may have been under the influence of Nietzsche’s remarks on
women, thereby drawing the anger and public reprimand of the advocates of further rights for Turkish women
in both public and private spheres, most notably by Prof. Nermin Abadan-Unat of Faculty of Political Science,
Ankara University, who was herself later a senate member in the Turkish Parliament. The suspicion I entertain
about this Nietzsche inspiration which was particularly disturbing for some, is based on Irmak’s allusion to
Nietzsche’s indictments of women in Also Sprach Zarathustra for having “a modicum of truth.” (Cf. Irmak’s
short analysis to the second edition of Zarathustra translation: “«Zerdüşt» Tercemesine dair Bir Kaç Söz [A Few
Words about the Translation],” in Zerdüşt Dedi ki, Türkçeye çeviren Sadi Irmak, 2. Basılış (İstanbul: İkbal
Kitabevi, 1939): 107).
26
Zarathustra) appeared in 1934, followed by a second edition in 1939. He also contributed a short
preface to the first edition. It was actually the second edition of Irmak’s translation of the ‘First Book’
which has drawn sharp criticism concerning his moral role as an intellectual, particularly from a well-
known social psychologist and leftist intellectual, Dr. Muzaffer Şerif [Başoğlu]. 27 Başoğlu levelled his
criticism in a prominent left-wing intellectual journal, Adımlar (Steps), taking issue with Irmak’s
recent newspaper article where a new position, quite different, in fact opposite of his enthusiastic
analyses in the previous two editions (1934 and 1939) of Zarathustra was exhibited.28 Başoğlu’s
criticism was in fact directed at a whole generation of intellectuals who were heavily influenced by
current conjuncture in Germany of which Irmak was somewhat mistakenly targeted as a
representative.29 In pointing out the discrepancies between Irmak’s recent newspaper article and
earlier 1934 and 1939 analyses of Nietzsche, especially the appreciation of Übermensch,30 Başoğlu
was condemning Nietzsche’s philosophy along with now-collapsing Nazi regime, meanwhile drawing
attention to an ideological shift among certain sections of Turkish intelligentsia from pro-Nazi
sympathies to a hesitant flirtation with Western democracies. Başoğlu’s highly reductionist

Suut Kemalettin [Yetkin], Büyük Muztaripler: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoy [Great Sufferers]:
(İstanbul: Muallim Ahmet Halit Kütüphanesi, 1933). It is also noteworthy that after writing a “Foreword” to yet
another good translation of Also Sprach Zarathustra, Prof. Yetkin was going to republish his book in a largely
revised form and under a new title, placing Nietzsche section after sections on Schopenhauer and Tolstoy. See:
Suut Kemal Yetkin, Büyük Tedirginler: Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Nietzsche [Great Men of Anxiety:
Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Nietzsche] (Ankara: Pars Matbaası, 1976)
27

Muzaffer Şerif [Başoğlu], having a scholarship from the Turkish Government, studied and completed his
dissertation in New Deal America US during the Thirties. There he was exposed heavily to empirical research
traditions while being heavily influenced by American left-wing movements. In some of his academic books as
well as articles which regularly appeared in various left-leaning journals, he often draw attention to the threat of
racism and open belligerence of National Socialism as well as the epigones of that regime in Turkey. In his
criticism of the covert collaboration of scientists and men of ideas with such monstrous regime and its archaic
ideology, he often relied on support from both his social-psychological findings as well as the current research in
particularly the American social psychology. See especially his book, Irk Psikolojisi [Psychology of Race]
(İstanbul: Üniversite Kitabevi, 1943) as well as a collection of certain articles in another small book under his
name, Değişen Dünya [World in Transformation] (İstanbul: Arpad Yayınevi, 1945). In the mid-Forties after his
and his colleagues’ expulsion from Ankara University under the pressure and violence of radical right, followed
by brief imprisonment and inevitable exile back to the USA was going to achieve a well-deserved reputation
within the field of social psychology.
28
F. Nietzsche, Zerdüşt Böyle Söylüyordu: İnsanüstü-Übermensch-nün Felsefesi, Türkçeye çeviren ve tahlil
kısmını yazan Mahmut Sadi (İstanbul: 1934) and Zerdüşt Dedi ki, Türkçeye çeviren Sadi Irmak, 2. Basılış
(İstanbul: İkbal Kitabevi, 1939). Given the fact that the first printing had such an enthusiastic reception and was
quickly out of print, in the revised second printing of still the First Book of Zarathustra Irmak expresses soberly
his wish that a new current of ideas on the topic of Übermensch flourish against the vulgar pursuit of material
interests. Secondly, he draws attention to the inner ‘dance’ and the hidden harmony of Nietzsche’s language
which is very difficult to capture in any translation, especially given the fact that even Nietzsche sacrifices
clarity in order to preserve the hidden rhyming in his text. Lastly, he warns the reader against any misconception
concerning himself as the translator of a highly original German thinker, for the fact of being neither a blind
follower of Nietzsche’s nor a propagandist of a certain regime, also being fully aware that truth can never be
fully represented by the constellation of ideas put forth by a single mind, however rich it may be. (p. 100)
29

“Fikir Hayatımızda Bir Dönme Hadisesi (Faşizmle beraber çöken bir felsefe münasebetiyle) [A Case of
Changing Sides in Our Intellectual Life (occasioned by the collapse of fascism and a corresponding
philosophy)],” Adımlar, Year I, No. 7 (Kasım 1943): 244-246.
30

Prof. Dr. Sadi Irmak, “Faşizmle beraber çöken bir felsefe,” Ulus [‘Nation’],6 Ağustos 1943. The daily, Ulus,
was the official organ of the ‘People’s Republican Party’ (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), the governing party during
the one-party rule which effectively ended in 1950 elections.
evaluation has serious flaws and is indicative of how much even perception from afar is heavily
conditioned by the Nazis’ blatant co-optation of Nietzsche’s thought for their own ends.

Yet the popularity of Nietzsche, now a household name in Turkey was sustained even during the high
decade of ‘Americanism’ with the appearance of later third and fourth editions of Irmak’s now
complete translation of Zarathustra.31 This constrasts with the absence of interest in Heidegger’s
work which could even be the case in mid-Thirties when the translation appeared. A new translation
of Zarathustra by Turan Oflazoğlu in largely poetic rendering was published by Turkish Ministry of
National Education in 1964 among its popular ‘Classics Series’ 32 the colorful styling of which betraying
a spillover effect from translator’s background in philosophy, theater and Anatolian traditions of
folklore. In the early seventies, yet another translation based on the copies in the original, English
and French was to follow, this time by an ex-ambassador who was a former student of Prof. Suut
Kemal Yetkin who was invited to write a foreword. 33 As of today, there are about at least nine
Zarathustra translations, not to mention his other important works. Some are translated at least
twice and rushed by different publishers competing to carve out their share of ever-increasing
Nietzsche readership in the book market.

Therefore, we witness for the first time a flooding of the gates in Nietzsche translations, pioneered
finally by translations of two of his other works, namely, Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der
Grieschen and Die Geburt der Tragödie (aus dem Geiste der Musik). The former was in fact published
as early as 1956, arguably breaking the spell of Zarathustra in Turkey which was wrongly perceived as
the pinnacle and sole representative of Nietzsche’s thought up until then. This was partly a
consequence of its relatively simple and yet commanding language even in translation, 34 quite
31

F. Nietzsche, Zerdüşt Böyle Dedi, dört kısmı bir arada [all four parts], tr. by Sadi Irmak, Third ed. (İstanbul:
İkbal Yayınevi, n.d. [1954?] A fourth ed. with essentially the same analysis and slightly modified wording was
soon to follow by the same publishing house (on the cover: “Tamamı gözden geçirilmiş, haşiyeli 4üncü Baskı”
and again no date, most probably 1959).
32

F. Nietzsche, Böyle Buyurdu Zerdüşt, tr. by Turan Oflazoğlu (İstanbul: MilliEğitim Basımevi, 1964).
[Translation being No. 103 of the ‘German Classics’ as part of the Series, “Translations from the World
Literature,” a great initiative started in the forties by Hasan Ali Yücel, the legendary Minister of National
Education,].
33

F. Nietzsche, Zerdüşt Böyle Diyordu, tr. by Osman Derinsu (İstanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 1972).
34

The first was a reliable translation by Prof. Nusret Hızır (from a Kröner edition), philosopher and one-time
assistant to Hans Reichenbach. [Friedrich Nietzsche, Yunanlıların Trajik Çağında Felsefe, tr. by Nusret Hızır
(first printing: Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1956)]. Given that this was an unfinished
manuscript of what Nietzsche initially projected as a separate book and later as a companion piece with changing
titles to Die Geburt der Tragödie, a project which he finally dropped [ “Introduction” by Daniel Breazeale to
Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, ed. and tr. by D.
Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1979): xviii-xxiii for Nietzsche’s letters to Erwin Rohde
(Jan. 31 and Feb. 21, 1873), to his mother and sister (Feb. 8, 1873) and to Carl von Gersdorf (February 24 and
April 5, 1873)]. The translation of Die Geburt der Tragödie by İsmet Zeki Eyüboğlu, most probably from
German, appeared nine years later [Friedrich Nietzsche, Tragedyanın Doğuşu, tr. İsmet Zeki Eyüboğlu
(İstanbul: Ataç Kitabevi, 1965] with a passionately worded short introduction by Eyüboğlu condemning the
prejudices of an “epigone Europe” and its unfounded myth of the ‘Greek miracle’ and pointing to the awakening
of Asia. Eyüboğlu was just another ‘Anatolianist’ in the footsteps of influential Turkish humanist, Cevat Şakir
indicative of difficulties in the mental readiness of the receiving side (reader) in confronting
Nietzsche.

Ioanna Kuçuradi’s writings on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche 35 certainly played a very important role in
further reinforcing the already-existing interest in Nietzsche, particularly in the direction of the
advancement of ‘human rights’ of which she still is an ardent advocate.

In spite of such high interest in Nietzsche, it can not be claimed that his thought has been received
and appreciated with necessary cool-headedness. Zarathustra figure and the figure of Übermensch
continues to dominate many minds and often for sentimental reasons on the wide spectrum of der
letzte Mensch in Turkey. For part of a new generation of literati, this interest is kept alive, thanks
partly to the effect of Michel Foucault’s work, particularly his announcement in Les mots et les
choses of the ‘end of man’ as a historically transient construct of Western thinking. 36 What is often
overlooked in exhortations concerning Übermensch is not only Sadi Irmak’s reservations about this
concept37 but the very fact that it occupies a rather limited, indeed a minimal place within the corpus
of Nietzsche.38

[a.k.a the ‘Fisherman of Halicarnassus’] who was an old Oxford graduate with a sound knowledge of ancient
Greek language and civilization and carrying the spirit of controversy his alma mater had with Cambridge
concerning Hellenism. Cevat Şakir was tracing many elements of Greek civilization to their Asiatic roots,
Anatolian civilizations in particular, long before scholars in the West have started to admit such heritage.
Eyüboğlu was soon to publish a number of translations from Nietzsche, among which were: Tarih Üstüne[Vom
Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben?] (İstanbul: Oluş Yayınları, 1965), Gezgin ve Gölgesi [Der
Wanderer und Sein Schatten] ((İstanbul: Oluş Yayınları, 1966), as well as “selections” [Seçmeler] from
Nietzsche (İstanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 1973) to which he contributed a 76-page introduction. Last to be
mentioned in this second wave is an Ecce Homo translation by Can Alkor (Ankara: Dost yayınları, 1969). For
Nietzsche’s works in translation the floodgates have now definitely opened. However, the subjection of
Nietzsche to subjective interpretations was only recently brought to attention by Oruç Aruoba, a qualified
translator, who argued that understanding Nietzsche texts is ultimately bound up with the question: “What am
I?” [ Oruç Aruoba, “Nietzsche’yi Anlamak,” [Understanding Nietzsche] Cogito, No. 25 (2001): 267-268;
appended to the article is a passage from Zarathustra in original on reading and writing along with seven
different translations.]
35

See particularly, Ioanna Kuçuradi, Nietzsche ve İnsan [Nietzsche and Man], Revised 2nd ed. (Ankara: Türkiye
Felsefe Kurumu, 1995 [1st ed.: İstanbul: Yankı Yayınları, 1967]). Prof. Kuçuradi, besides appending an earlier
published [1986] article titled, “Nietzsche: Çağı ve Çağımız” [Nietzsche. His Age and Ours] to the second
edition of her work, had already written a section on the concept of ‘tragic’ in Nietzsche in a book on the
philosophical approaches to the phenomenon of art, theater in particular; see: Ioanna Kuçuradi, Sanata
Felsefeyle Bakmak [Envisioning Art Philosophically] (Ankara: Şiir-Tiyatro Yayınları, 1979): “Friedrich
Nietzsche’de Trajik,” 23-35. The present author considers, however, the ‘humanism’ she reads into Nietzsche’s
oeuvre is in many ways untenable, given the very nature of Nietzsche’s treatment of this problematical concept.
36

The way Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch plays a role in Foucault’s thinking is discussed in Alan D.
Schrift’s “Nietzsche’s French legacy,” The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. by Bernd Magnus and
Kathleen M. Higgins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 323-355; especially 328.
37

See Sadi Irmak’s remarks in his analysis [“«Zerdüşt» Tercemesine dair Bir Kaç Söz”] at the end of the second
revised edition of his translation of only the “First Book,” Zerdüşt Dedi ki, Türkçeye çeviren Sadi Irmak, 2.
Basılış (İstanbul: İkbal Kitabevi, 1939): 98-116; for Irmak’s suggestion as to the most preferable rendering of
Übermensch in Turkish [“İnsandan üstün,,], see p. 100.
38
Let us now turn our gaze to early reception of Heidegger in Turkey, keeping in mind that, due to the
ethos of the translators, the introduction of the selected texts by both thinkers into the
language/world of modern Turkish Republic has also suffered from meanings sought in and
interpretations provided. This fact cannot be attributed solely to the political and cultural project of
“contemporaneity” consciously pursued by Republican administrations under successive volatile
conjunctural conditions of world disorder and advancing ‘homelesness.’ Such ethos was largely
shaped by what was then holding sway in European cultures, as evidenced by the translations of
Also sprach Zarathustra and, especially, Was ist Metaphysik?39 In the case of the latter (1935), the
two translators used both the original and a French translation which is fair enough, but their 20-
page introductory analysis clearly misrepresents Heidegger’s project of dismantling metaphysics for
their evaluation of Heidegger’s text partly in the light of Max Scheler. 40

In spite of anthropologizations in translators’ introduction, the appearance of Was ist Metaphysik?

in Turkish couple of years after its original publication should be considered an important event. At
the time, introduction of a radical language reform under the banner of Turkism found its way
somehow into the language of this translation. 41 The nationalistic language reform is often ridiculed
for forcing the invention of strange neologisms which later fell out of usage. The push to purify
Turkish from so-called the ‘pollution of foreign words’ was accompanied by a rather revolutionary
step of adopting the latin alphabet, something which has perplexed, even startled such German
emigré intellectuals and academicians as Erich Auerbach. 42

Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins are quite correct in pointing out that, in spite of the enthusiasm for
Übermensch in popular imagination, this ‘imagistic’ concept isn’t discussed in detail even in Zarathustra, except
for the first speech in “Zarathustra’s Prologue.” See “Nietzsche’s works and their themes,” The Cambridge
Companion to Nietzsche: 40-42. There is, however, evidence from Nietzsche’s Nachlaß that the concept did
not completely drop off his agenda.
39

Martin Heidegger, Metafizik nedir?, tr. into Turkish by Mazhar Şevket and Suut Kemal Yetkin (İstanbul: Vakit
Matbaası, 1935). This original translation was recently reissued with minor changes in wording and with a new
introductory essay, and consequently without the so-called »Nachwort« (1943) and »Die Einleitung« (1949)
added by Heidegger himself to its later editions. [see: Metafizik nedir? (İstanbul: Kaknüs Yayınları, 1998):
with a new introductory essay replacing the original one].
40

Most likely, the two translator/commentators were not informed of Heidegger’s ironic remarks in a Freiburg
Lecture (Summer Semester 1923) on Max Scheler’s metaphysical-anthropological perspective which was not in
print at the time. Cf. M. Heidegger, Ontologie (hermeneutic der Faktizität) [GA 63] (Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann, 1988): 24-26. / Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity, tr. by John van Buren
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999): 19-23.
41

This translation of Was ist Metaphysik? was later republished in a university journal of philosophy seminar[s]
in 1939, but without the learned introductory analysis found in the 1935 edition. Its language was now more
archaic as contrasted with the more ‘Turkicised’ language of the earlier edition and merely prefaced by a short
paragraph signed by the initials, M.Ş. (Mazhar Şevket), simply mentioning Suut Kemal as the collaborator of the
“earlier translation which is now republished after corrections and revisions.” “Metafizik Nedir?”, Felsefe
Semineri Dergisi [İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları: 99, Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Semineri], I (1939): 187-202.

42
There is a degree of legitimacy in the reluctance of academicians of old style who were educated in ottoman
language and arabic script in adapting themselves to the sweeping reforms of the new regime. Erich Auerbach,
then teaching in İstanbul, summarized the situation in his correspondence with Walter Benjamin. Benjamin who
However, it cannot be argued that, until the belated fury of translation of and commentary on
Heidegger in especially post-80s, nobody was interested either in this text or Heidegger’s way. 43
Nevertheless, not entirely absent from the scene, Heidegger’s thought has not created any stir
among intellectual circles during the next two decades. Save few valuable exceptions, 44 it largely
bypassed the attention of the learned, something amazing given the vogue of French existentialism
among such strata.

What about today? The intellectual market is swamped by translations of and studies on the corpus
of both thinkers. While the translations are frequently made from translations into especially the
English language and not from German, there is a small but steadily increasing number of academic
writing on both thinkers. A full assessment of relevant literature, let alone a detailed comparative

may have considered migrating to Turkey, wanted to know especially Auerbach’s intellectual encounters in this
country. In a somewhat distressed letter dated Jan 3, 1937 Auerbach conveyed his judgement of such fast-paced
reforms as follows: “Result: nationalism in the extreme accompanied by the simultaneous destruction of the
historical national character. This picture, which in other countries like Germany, Italy, and even Russia (?) is
not visible for everyone to see: shows itself here in full nakedness....It is becoming increasingly clear to me that
the present international situation is nothing but a ruse of providence, designed to lead us along a bloody and
tortuous path to an International triviality and a culture of Esperanto. I have already suspected this in Germany
and Italy in view of the dreadful inauthenticity of the ‘blood and soil’ propaganda, but only here has the evidence
of such a trend almost reached the point of certainty.” Karlheinz Barck, “Walter Benjamin and Erich Auerbach:
Fragments of a Correspondence,” Diacritics, XXII/3-4 (Fall-Winter 1992): 82.
43

A later example is the translation of both Emil Steiger and Leo Spitzer’s debate with Martin Heidegger on
Mörike’s poem, »Auf eine Lampe« in two separate letters which first appeared in a Zurich-based journal,
Trivium; see. Heidegger-Staiger-Spitzer, Mörike’nin “Auf eine Lampe,, Şiiri üzerine Tartışma, tr. by Fikret
Elpe (İstanbul: n.d.) It is a known fact that Spitzer, coming to İstanbul around 1933-34, has lived and taught in
Turkey briefly until 1936 during which he also wrote an article on problems of learning Turkish which was
translated by Dozent Sebahattin Rahmi and appeared in three parts in the landmark Turkish literary journal,
Varlık [Existence]. See, Leo Spitzer, “Türkçeyi Öğrenirken [Learning Turkish],” Varlık, I. Cilt, No. 19 vd. First
part: 15 Nisan 1934, pp. 296-297; Second part: 15 Aralık 1934, pp. 163-164; Third part: 1 Ocak 1935, pp. 194-
196. For further information about both Spitzer’s and Auerbach’s careers in İstanbul (though a meager account)
and thereafter, see Harry Levin, “Two Romanisten in America: Spitzer and Auerbach,” The Intellectual
Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, ed. by Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1969): 463-484.
44

Two exceptions readily come to mind: First is Prof. Nusret Hızır’s excellently written short articles on
Heidegger, Nietzsche, existentialism and related topics. See, Nusret Hızır, Felsefe Yazıları [Philosophical
Writings] (İstanbul: Çağdaş Yayınları, 1976): especially, “Martin Heidegger” (73-81), “Varoluşçuluk bir Felsefe
mi? [Is Existentialism a Philosophy]” (98-110), “Genç Nietzsche [Young Nietzsche]” (140-149). The other
exception is Prof. Hilmi Ziya Ülken’s book Varlık ve Oluş [Being and Becoming] which is based upon his
lectures on philosophies of existence and published late in the decade of sixties (Ankara: A. Ü. İlâhiyat Fakültesi
Yay., 1968). Unlike Prof. Hızır who was perfectly at home in German language and Bildung, Prof. Ülken
primarily relies on sources in French and almost exclusively cites French translations of Nietzsche’s and
Heidegger’s works available to him at the time. This creates a certain bias, however unwittingly, toward French
versions of existential philosophy with their emphasis upon subjective consciousness in discussing Nietzsche and
Heidegger. On the other hand, Ülken’s command of Islamic philosophy provides his readers with important
insights as to the parallels between medieval and modern approaches to the question of existence. Apart from
these two important figureheads, we may also note among scattered examples a short article by Selahattin Hilav
which first appeared in the journal Sek Dergisi in 1976: see “Heidegger Üzerine [On Heidegger],” reprinted in
his Felsefe Yazıları [Philosophical Writings] (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1993): 214-215. From the
perspective of then-current dialectical and historical materialism, Hilav finds much to criticize in Heidegger
whom he relegates to the camp of ‘irrationalistes.’
analysis of texts in translation to find out if the wording is true to their spirit still awaits equally
spirited and meticulous work45 against the adversities of an increasingly standardized cultural market
wherein both thinkers offer valuable investment opportunities. Hence an ironic situation known only-
too-well, given the strong aversion of both thinkers to Zivilisationsbetrieb and “hollow essence of the
West.”46 Moreover, it wouldn’t be wrong to claim that the late nineteenth-century thinker Ahmet
Midhat’s contention concerning the solidity of Islamic thought vis-à-vis the weakening of religious
traditions both in then a very young America and still young Europe hasn’t come to pass in Turkey’s
intellectual life today. Such is the case in spite of religiously-oriented young scholars’ growing interest
in Heidegger (mostly via Gadamer). This phenomenon further lends support to Heidegger’s crucial
observation that in our age a religious thinker cannot ask the apparently useless question, »Warum
ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts?«.47

A period of enthusiasm which propelled the early tide of Nietzsche and Heidegger and having
prepared the ground for later periodic-conjunctural waves of translation and original study in Turkey
is now long over. But the “task of thinking” demands from any serious scholar in the face of the latest
market of ideas and its ‘language of specialties’ under the hegemony of current “mondialisation”
and »Kulturbetrieb«, is to naturalize both thinkers at the home of Turkish in full alertness to ever-
present danger of creating yet another Gerede. Something of a »fröhliche Wissenschaft«? Likely.

45

A notable analysis is by Doğan Özlem in his Introduction to: Martin Heidegger, Tekniğe İlişkin Soruşturma
[Die Frage nach der Technik], tr. from German by D. Özlem (İstanbul: Paradigma Yayınları, 1995): “Giriş:
Heidegger ve Teknik,” 9-41. Other recent examples are: A. Kadir Çüçen, “Martin Heidegger ve Doğruluk,”
Kaan H. Ökten, “Heidegger’in Aristoteles’teki Phronesis Kavramını Alımlaması,” both in Vehbi Hacıkadiroğlu
Armağanı: Felsefe Tartışmaları [Festschrift Vehbi Hacıkadiroğlu: Debates in Philosophy], ed. by Doğan
Özlem, Hayrettin Ökçesiz and Şükrü Argın (İstanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2002): 161-179 and 300-351. Kaan H.
Ökten, Heidegger Kitabı [A Heidegger Companion] (İstanbul: agorakitaplığı, 2004).There is not any translation
of Heidegger’s works on Nietzsche, with the exception of »Nietzsches Wort >Gott ist Tot<« [see: M. Heidegger,
Nietzsche’nin Tanrı Öldü Sözü ve Dünya Resimleri Çağı [»Nietzsches Wort >Gott ist Tot<«/»Die Zeit des
Weltbildes«], tr. from the German original, Holzwege by Levent Özşar (Bursa: ASA, 2001): ], the so-called
‘Nietzsche Lectures’ and other related writings still await translation. Finally, Sein und Zeit has been translated
in full with German originals, an event which has created public debate as to both quality of translation and
copyright; cf. M. Heidegger,Varlık ve Zaman, tr. by Aziz Yardımlı (İstanbul: İDEA, 2004).
46

I have drawn attention to this tendency in the past, especially in: Hasan Ünal Nalbantoğlu, “Patikalar ve
Otoyollar [Pathways and Autobahns],” Martin Heidegger ve Modern Çağ [Martin Heidegger and Modern
Age], yay. haz. H. Ünal Nalbantoğlu et.al. (Ankara: İmge Yayınları, 1997): 173-229.
47

Heidegger’s statement is not far away from Adorno’s incisive remark that “[r]eligion is on sale, as it were. It is
cheaply marketed in order to provide one more so-called irrational stimulus among many others by which the
members of a calculating society are calculatingly made to forget the calculation under which they suffer. This
consumer’s art is movie religion even before that industry takes hold of it. Against this sort of thing, art can keep
faith to its true affinity with religion, the relationship with truth, only by an almost ascetic abstinence from any
religious claim or any touching upon religious subject matter. Religious art today is nothing but blasphemy.”
Theodor W. Adorno, “Theses Upon Art and Religion Today,” Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1981): 649. [original in English]