ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how a rethinking of force is essential to Martin Heidegger's work across his oeuvre. In many respects, Heidegger could be said to share with Friedrich Nietzsche a set of questions and problems around force. There is a failure of force with respect to carrying through a thinking about the failure of force. This is important for Heidegger, because acknowledging and elaborating the forcelessness bound up with the thought of force opens room for a thinking of our inherence in the world that does not celebrate unthinkingly the mastery of human techno-scientific domination. In his later work, Heidegger emphasizes more overtly the implication of thought and writing themselves within a drama of forces in which forcelessness must be risked and even avowed. The chapter also shows how a rigorous account of force and forcelessness is bound up with and has implications for, ethics, politics, and literature.
