According to Heidegger, the question of metaphysics and being has been lost, since we can know nothing about metaphysical entities. So, Heidegger proposes to elaborate on a metaphysical question that would not posit anything as being. Science is concerned with beings, but not nothing. Avoiding the presence of entities, Heidegger construes the following question “What about this nothing?”.
Common sense defines nothing by negating the totality of beings. Nevertheless, for Heidegger, the nothing is something that is within the totality of beings. To have access to nothing, we should find themselves “ in the midst of beings as a whole”. The revelation of beings as a whole is concealed in moods such as boredom and love. For instance, genuine boredom is when everything is boring. Likewise, love is when you are in love with a person, and the whole of the world shines up. So, both boredom and love reveal the totality of things and place us before the nothing. One day, the future may become unsure, and fear of everything comes over us. Consequently, all things to which we are indifferent turn toward us. In this context, anxiety is before openness. It reveals the totality of beings in negation. It reveals nothing.
Beings are submerging as a whole because of repelling gesture of the nothing toward beings. But the nothing is not separable from beings, rather it is disclosed in and through beings. The nothing not just negates, but nihilates itself. The nothing shows that there is something, but not nothing. Nothing nothings. In other words, the essence of nihilation is that “it brings Da-sein for the first time before beings as such”. Contrary to logic, the nothing is the origin of negation since the not comes out from the nihilation of the nothing. The process of nihilation is not something over there. It is in life. We are always involving in this negativity. For instance, if somebody shows a pen to me, the presence is between this pen and me. From the other side of the pen, there is nothing to me, but something to somebody who keeps it. The nihilation of nothing also shows up in unrealized possibilities when the actualization of one possibility blocks another one. To put it differently, some possibilities are disclosed only because we obstruct others.
The activity of the nothing in being is withdrawn from us. We are always ahead of ourselves. Since we are finite, the meaningfulness of our existence is defined by this nihilating activity. Choosing some life options, we are transcending towards death when all possibilities come to the end. This transcendence means being held out into the nothing, that is making anticipation of possibilities and then falling back among the things into the things. Hence, making our choices meaningful, death plays a crucial role in temporality of beings. If we were immortal, our life would be completely meaningless. Without mortality, our choices do not make any sense since all possibilities are open to us. Nothing is significant because everything is disclosed and nothing is hidden. Freedom and selfhood of immortal being are not revealed, for there are not possibilities for action. If the nihilation of the nothing does not occur, then there is no relationship to the unfolding of being. There is no being as such, and, consequently, there is no freedom out of being. That is why the description of human life shows normativity. Be yourself means living your life and making choices. Because your mortality is here right now with you, you have to be responsible, that is to decide for yourself.

Bibliography:

  • Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.