Introduction to Philosophy—Thinking and Poetizing

Heidegger privileges Nietzsche and Hölderlin in this text for several reasons:

In each (yet in different ways), "poetizing and thinking are interwoven with one another in a single and wondrous way".

According to Heidegger, such interweaving has been seen before only at the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition -- in Plato and Parmenides, Pindar and Sophocles. That we see it again now in Nietzsche and Hölderlin shows that this tradition has been completed.

The German people have a special relationship to these two figures.

Heidegger begins with Nietzsche, suggesting that in the figure of Zarathustra, Nietzsche poetizes his 'thought of thoughts', the eternal recurrence of the same. However, to poetize a thought is not to express it in poetic language. Heidegger reads five of Nietzsche's poems to interpret what this poetizing is and what it is doing in thinking.

The main contribution of the text lies in Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche's poems "The Free Spirit" and "The Thinker Speaks". He argues that the thinker thinks toward what is un-homelike, what is not like home, and for him this is not a transitional phase; rather, this is his being at home. Insofar as being at home, or dwelling, is itself accomplished poetically, the thinker's willing-forward to a new home will be creative, and specifically poetic.