In his 1937 lectures, Heidegger pursues Nietzsche’s initial thought of “the Moment.” This paper mimics Heidegger’s pursuit of Nietzsche’s Moment by tracing Heidegger’s own early arrival at the Moment in Being and Time. I argue that Dasein, like Zarathustra, is chased in and out of the Moment by its shadow. While Dasein forgets itself in inauthentically securing its identity in its shadow, which is closest-at-hand, it also confronts its own finitude in witnessing the daily dwindling of its shadow—the everyday passing away of time.

Heidegger’s lecture courses on Nietzsche give prominent attention to the question of what he calls “Nietzsche’s Alleged Biologism.” I will argue that Heidegger is not merely replacing the Nazi biologistic reading with a metaphysical reading, for his metaphysical reading of Nietzsche is biological, in a distinct sense. Although I reject this metaphysical reading, Heidegger aids my project of constructing a non-naturalist, yet physical reading of Nietzsche in at least four ways: 1) he rejects the Nazi biologistic reading of Nietzsche, 2) he sets forth distinct notions of the biological and the physical akin to Nietzsche, 3) he argues against scientific naturalism in favor of an alternative mode of knowing, and 4) he recognizes that rather than reducing everything to nature, Nietzsche anticipates him in intertwining more originary, dynamic notions of physis and techne.