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Phenomenology: Japanese and American Perspectives pp 273–316Cite as

Nihilism: Heidegger/Jünger/Aristotle

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Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 36))

Abstract

Do we live in the age of fulfilled nihilism? If so, can we overcome such nihilism?

This text develops themes that found an initial expression in “Nihilism, Facticity, and the Economized Lethe,” in Heidegger: A Centennial Appraisal (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1990), pp. 28–61. The present text is dedicated, as was the earlier one, to Prof. William Richardson, S.J.

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References

  1. Nos itaque ista quae fecisti videmus, quia sunt; tu autem quia vides ea, sunt.“ Confessiones, XII, 38 (52), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Prima Latina (hereinafter PL), ed. J-P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1844–1864), here XXXII (1861), p. 868. Augustine frequently expresses his related conviction that God does not know things because they exist but that they exist because God knows them; cf. De Trinitate, VI, 10 and XV, 13, PL, XLII, pp. 931 and 1076.

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  2. ZS, p. 27/407, ET p. 75: “der Mensch meinen kann, er begegne nur noch sich selbst.’

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  3. Giambattista Vico, De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia ex Linguae Latinae Originibus Eruenda (Naples: Felice Mosca, 1710), I, 1, i; ET On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language, trans. L. M. Palmer (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 45; cf. “Verum esse ipsum factum,” p. 46.

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  4. Cf. “... halb Klagelied, halb Pasquill, halb Rckhall der Vergangenheit, halb Druer der Zukunft”: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1971), IV, 483 (Communist Manifesto, III, 1.A).

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  5. Martin Heidegger, “Vom Wesen und Begriff der cvat. Aristoteles’ PhysikB 1,” Wegmarken, GA9 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976),p. 239–301, here, p. 364; in the firstedition (1967), pp. 309–371, here, p. 294. ETp On the Essence and Concept of ‘46íS in Aristotle s PhysicsB 1,“ tr. Thomas Sheehan, in Martin Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 183–230, here p. 224. Hereinafter I provide pagination to both the secondand the firstGerman editions and to the English translation. For example, in the present case: Wegmarken, p. 364/294, ET p. 224. For the text of the PhysicsI use W.D. Ross’ edition, Aristotle’s Physics( Oxford: Clarendon, 1936 ).

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  6. ZS, 25/405, ET p. 71.

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  7. Cf. Wegmarken, p. 195, “das vergessene Geheimnis des Daseins” and Martin Heidegger, Beitrge zur Philosophie. Vom Ereignis, GA 65 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1989), #168, p. 293: “Der Entzug aber ist des Da-seins.”

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  8. The togetherness of (1) the “evocation” of the human essence and (2) the human essence’s “response” to (i.e., its being-called-forth by) the evocation is (3) Ereignis as the “appropriation” of the human essence. This is what Heidegger is referring to when he writes: “Dieses jedes Mal Selbe, das Zusammengehren von Ruf und Gehr, wre dann ‘das Sein’?” (the answer he intends is: Yes) and: “In Wahrheit knnen wir dann nicht einmal mehr sagen, ‘das Sein’ und ‘der Mensch’ ’seien’ das Selbe in dem Sinne, da sie zusammengehren; denn so sagend, lassen wir immer noch beide fr sich sein.” ZS p. 28/408–9, ET p. 77.

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  9. ZS, p. 27/407, ET p. 75: den totalen Arbeitscharakter. 25ZS, pp. 42f./424, ET p. 105f.

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  10. ZS, p. 29/410, ET p. 79, emphasis added.

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  11. . Cf. Wegmarken, p. 369/299, ET p. 228f. Also Holzwege, 4th ed. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1963), p. 298 (“die weite Bedeutung des Alls des Seienden”); ET, Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi ( New York: Harper and Row, 1975 ), p. 15.

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  12. No anthropomorphism is intended, here or below, by this use of “self-.” We are indicating, rather, that the entity’s movement (and later the entity’s presentation) is intrinsic to the entity.

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  13. Metaphysics, A 7, 1072 b 7: Ti xtvovv mite) xvtov v. I use Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 2 volumes, Sandpiper Books edition, 1997. See also Physics O 5, 256 a 10–22.

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  14. . And to this concatenation of terms we may add µetal3olri, not in the ordinary sense of “change” but rather as that whereby “something heretofore hidden and absent comes into appearance”: “... daß im Umschlag [µetiaßoXii] etwas bisher Verborgenes und Abwesendes zum Vorschein kommt…, Wegmarken, p. 319/249, E.T. p. 191; cf. also Martin Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare. Protokolle - Gespräche - Briefe, ed. Medard Boss ( Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987 ), p. 201.

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  15. . Metaphysics, a 1, 993 b 30–31: icaatOV c; Irrt To rival, o i ui xa:Eft; eacriAea. Thomas Aquinas glosses the point: “Eadem est dispositio rerum in esse sicut in veritate,” Somma Theologiae I-II, 3, 7, c. Aquinas traces this “transcendental” state (omne ens est verum) back to the creative divine intellect: “Veritas etiam rerum est secundum quod conformantur suo principio, scilicet intellectui divino.” Somma Theologiae, I, 16, 5, ad 2. For the Summa Theologiae I use the text in the series Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 3rd ed. (Madrid: La Editorial Catlica, 1963). See also De Veritate I, 2 (things are measured by the divine intellect in which all created things are).

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  16. Cf. “Weil die Zeitlichkeit die Gelichtetheit des Da ekstatisch-horizontal konstituiert ” (italicized in the original), Sein und Zeit, GA II (Klostermann: Frankfurt, 1977), p. 539 (Niemeyer edition, p. 408.7–8).

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  17. Zeitigung als Sich-zeitigen ist Sich-entfalten, aufgehen und so erscheinen. Natura (lateinisch) kommt vom nasci = geboren werden. 64ats 000000 ieiv (griechisch) = aufgehen im Sinne des aus der Verborgenheit ins Unverborgene Kommen.“ Zollikoner Seminare, 203. Compare Heidegger’s remark to Medard Boss in the spring of 1963: ”Taken as words, neither natura nor 61u have any connection with time.“ ”Weder bei natura noch bei 66at; besteht dem Worte nach ein Zusammenhang mit Zeit,“ loc cit.

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  18. Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt: Klostermann, third edition, 1965), p. 172f. Hereinafter KPM.

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  19. . Parmenides, Fragment 1: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, second edition (Berlin: Wiedmann, 1906), I, 115.29 (e.6xux7`éo = Evxi cX*; cf. EvxvxXov amaipl1S, fragment 8, Diels, I, 121.43). Heidegger cites the first text in his “Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens,” Zur Sache des Denkens(Max Niemeyer: Tübingen, 1969), p. 74; ET in Basic Writings, ed. David Krell ( San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, revised and expanded edition, 1993 ), p. 444.

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  20. Summa Theologiae I, 14, 2, obj. 1 and ad 1. (Since God is self-coincident, any “reditio” is really a “remaining” with his essence.) Aquinas derives the insight from Proclus (410–485), F2OiXE1w01 8eoXaytxri (Institotio Theologica) via its ninth-century Arabic condensation known in Latin as Liber de Causis (also known as Liber de expositione bonitatis purae). See Proclus, The Elements of Theology: A Revised Text, edited and translated by E.R. Dodd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933): proposition 82 (76.29–30): flv To EaucoV yvwattxv rcp avT nay.c1 einaTpE7rttK6v k6T1v (roughly: Everything that is capable of knowledge of itself is one that reverts to itself by way of a complete [return]). In the Liber de Causis that Aquinas used, proposition 15: “Omnis sciens scit essentiam suam, ergo est rediens ad essentiam suam reditione completa,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de Causis Expositio, ed. H.D. Saffrey (Louvain: Editions E. Nauwelaerts, 1954), p. 88; In English, Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, translated and annotated by Vincent A. Guagliardo, Charles R. Hess, and Richard C. Taylor (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), p. 98. In a recent and more correct rendering: “Omnis sciens qui scit essentiam suam est rediens ad essentiam suam reditione completa,” Le Liber de Causis, edited Adriaan Pattin (originally in Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, ca. 1967; I use the text in an offprint form). Cf. his In Platonis Theologiam {the ei Tr)v II7, itwvo OEO7voyav] e.g., II, 4: Kai ei n vov ei avtv arparcrat iced 000000 v iui c ioTt, in Proclus, Thologie platonicienne, 6 volumes, ed. and trans. H.D. Saffrey and L.G. Westerink (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968–1997), II (1974), chapter 4, p. 36 (Greek), lines 22–23. See also Proclus, Elements, prop. 15 (16.30): awatv, which may already be hinted at in De Anima, F 6, 430 b 24: xuptatv; also props. 16 (18.7–8): xuptntfly ovaav ‘exrt rtavt acaco; 43 (44.25): avOvrtotaTov; and 44 (46.1–2): Kai’ ovaiav fnnrpairtcn rcp av.

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  21. . For exam le in Proclus, Elements, propositions 25–30 (pp. 28–34, especially prop. 29), for npobo, and 31–39 for entaTpo471. See also fl äq’ i..vo apoSo in Proclus, In Platonis Cratylus Commentaria, ed. Giorgio Pasquali (Leipzig: Teubner, 1908), p. 2 P., and Théologie platonicienne, IV (1981), chapter 1, p. 7 (Greek), lines 10–11. Cf. Lucas Siorvanes, Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science( New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996 ), pp. 105–109.

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  22. The notion is already found (less thematically) in Plotinus’ Enneads 111111noppori at I1.3.2; npo8o; at VII.5.6; matpo4ri at 1.2.4, V.2.1, etc. Plotinus, Opera, ed. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964ff.).

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  23. See John Scotus Erigena/Eriugena (ca. 810-ca. 877): descensio/reversio in De divisione naturae cf. “descendens” at III, 23, PL CXXII (1865), p. 689B; and “in primordiales causas revertetur, quae sunt semper et incommutabiliter in Deo...” and “mirabilis atque ineffabilis reversio” at V, 8, p. 876B; also “defluunt/redeunt” at I1I,4, p. 632C; “descendens” and “omnium reditus in causam” at 111,20, D. 683A and B/C; etc. Some of De divisione naturae is found in: John the Scot, eriphyseon: On the Division of Nature, trans. Myra L. Uhlfelder (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976): V, 8, p. 876B at p. 288; and III, 4, p. 632C at p. 139. Note the theme in the title of his fragmentary De Egressu et Regresse Animae ad Deem, PL CXXII (1865), p. 1023–4. See Werner Beierwaltes, Eriugena: Grundzge seines Denkens (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), pp. 71, n. 50, 300–307, and passim.

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  24. Es ist das Werden seiner selbst, der Kreis, der sein Ende als seinen Zweck voraussetzt und zum Anfange hat und nur durch die Ausfhrung und sein Ende wirklich ist.“ G.W.F. Hegel, Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), III, 23 (Phnomenologie des Geistes, Vorrede), echoing Proclus’ development of prop. 33 (36.13–14): avventei trl .pX?l t t1,.o5. On Hegel’s relation to Proclus and Erigena, see Werner Beierwaltes, Platonismus und Idealismus, Philosophische Abhandlung, Band 40 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1972), pp. 154–187.(Proclus) and pp. 188–201 ((Erigena).

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  25. . In the third manuscript of his 1844 Paris manuscripts Marx speaks of “Der Kommunismus… als Reintegration oder Rückkehr des Menschen in sich;. als wirkliche Aneignungdes menschlichenWesens durch und für den Menschen;… als vollständige, bewußt und innerhalb des ganzen Reichtums der bisherigen Entwicklung gewordene Rückkehr des Menschen für sich als eines gesellschaftlichen… ”: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke(Berlin: Dietz, 1968ff.), Ergänzungsband (Schriften bis 1844, Erster Teil, 1968), p. 536; in MEGA: 1 /2, 263.

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  26. Wegmarken, p. 336/266, ET p. 204.

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  27. See, for example, Plato, Timaeus 37e.

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  28. ZS, p. 27/407, p. 75: “Vermutlich ist die Zuwendung selber, aber noch verhllterweise, Jenes, was wir verlegen genug and unbestimmt ‘das Sein’ nennen.”

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  29. RZS, p. 28/408, ET p. 77: “Anwesen (’Sein’) ist als Anwesen je und je Anwesen zum Menschenwesen, insofern Anwesen Gehei ist, das jeweils das Menschenwesen ruft.”

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  30. ZS, p. 27/407, ET p. 75: “Wir sagen vom ‘Sein selbst’ immer zuwenig, wenn wir, ’das Sein’ sagend, das An-wesen zum Menschenwesen auslassen und dadurch verkennen, da dieses Wesen selbst ’das Sein’ mitausmacht.” Compare: “Wir fragen nach der Beziehung zwischen dem Menschenwesen und dem Sein des Seienden. Abersobald ich denkend sage ’Menschenwesen’, habe ich darin schon den Bezug zum Sein gesagt. Insgleic Zen, sobald ich denkend sage: Sein des Seienden, ist darin schon der Bezug zum Menschenwesen genannt.’ Was heisst Denken (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer, 1954), p. 74; ET What is Called Thinking trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper 111111 Row, 1968), p. 79. (The Beziehung that enables the Bezug between the human essence and beingness is Ereignis.)

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  31. ‘Wenn die Griechen das Anwesen als ei So verstehen, wenn eio als Wesenszug der wat gedacht wird, so liegt darin eine Bezogenheit des Anwesens zum Menschen.’ bungen im Lesen, winter semester, 1950–1951. April 18, 1951.

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  32. Parmenides, fragment 3: t yp a voev iav Te Kul rivat.

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  33. De Anima F 5, 430 a 20 and 7, 431 a 1: t S’ a aTty rj KaT’ z vpyetav rc rcpcimant.

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  34. . Husserl: “Das Wunder aller Wunder ist reines Ich und reines Bewußtsein….” Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, III: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften, ed. Marly Biemel, HusserlianaV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), p. 75; E.T. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, III: Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences, trans. Ted E. Klein and William E. Pohl (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), p. 64. Heidegger: “Und das ‘Wundersame’ liegt darin, daß die Existenzverfassung des Daseins die transzendentale Konstitution alles Positiven ermöglicht”: in Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, ed. Walter Biemel, HusserlianaIX (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 602; ET in Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931)(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), p. 140. Cf. also Wegmarken, p. 103/307: “… das Wunder aller Wunder: daßSeiendes ist.”ET ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre( New York: Penguin/Meridian, 1975 ), p. 261.

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  35. Cf. Gehei and Ruf und Gehr: ZS, p, 28/408, ET p. 77. 55 ZS, p. 10/389, ET p. 41: eine auerordentliche Gefahr.

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  36. . The divine entity, in whom n vrlai5 Td) voou hvcu pia MetaphysicsA, 9, 1075 a 4–5. Heidegger comments: “Dazu ist sein [d.h. des Gottes] Verhalten ein solches, das in sich selbst TOLo; hat in dem, was es schon ist, nicht im ipyov [d.h. außerhalb]”: Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, GA22 ( Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1993 ), p. 179.

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  37. The fact that the self to which the disclosed world is correlative is not a simple presence but a mortal “thrown project” in no way undoes the endlessness of accessibility and engagement but in fact confirms it. However, the crucial question lies in the “how ’ of that engagement.

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  38. (A) The “what” is clear: The projected status of our human openness (Dasein) is its fatedness to being mortal, and this fatedness is structured as our bivalent a priori movement of (1) being bonded to our dying and (2) returning “from” that dying to the entities of our world. This bivalent movement is primordial Xyo, “existential”ativorat/Sta(pcot, and it grounds the bivalent possibility of “linguistic” avoeat/Stapeat in the original sense of Ansprechen, “relating to something as something,” whether conatively or cognitively.

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  39. (B) The crucial question lies in the “how,” inasmuch as what was said above pertains to openness essentially and specifically, that is, in its species-being as an inter-communicating social co-openness (Mitdasein). Hence, to affirm that the world is “ad hominem” implies (1) that ideally (i.e., in essence) the entities of the world are (ontologically) equally available to all human beings and, all else being equal, no one of us has more claim than any other on the givenness of entities: being (both being-itself and beingness) is materially and formally “democratic”; (2) that entities are available to us specifically in our mortality; or, from the perspective of Ansprechen, that we address entities from our mortality and “speak” our own mortality to them; and (3) to refuse to address entities in this way, or better, to deny that in fact one always already does so, is to relate to them, and eventually to accumulate them, from the illusory point of the self as foundation/fonds/caput/capitalwhich is intimately bound up with a certain, and in fact historically relative, kind of appropriation.

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  40. ZS, p. 21/400, ET p. 63.

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  41. Confessiones, VII, 11 (17), PL XXXII (1861), p. 743. See his “De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de Moribus Manichaeorum,’ liber II, caput I, 1, PL XXXII, (1861), p. 1346: ”Hoc enim maxime esse dicendum est, quod semper eodem modo sese habet, quod omnimodo sui simile est, quod nulla ex parte corrumpi ac mutari potest, quod non subjacet tempori, quod aliter nunc se habere quam habebat antea, non potest. Id enim est quod esse verissime dicitur.“ Compare De Trinitate liber V, caput II, 3, PL XLII, p. 912, where Augustine attributes change (mutatio) to substances that can include accidents (accidentia capere); however: ”Deo autem aliquid ejusmodi accidere non potest; et ideo sola est incommutabilis substantia vel essentia, qui Deus est, cui perfectio ipsum esse, unde essentia nominata est, maxime ac verissime competit. Quod enim mutatur, non servat ipsum esse; et quod mutari potest, etsiamsi non mutetur, potest quod fuerat non esse: ac per hoc illud solum quod non tantum non mutatur, verum etiam mutari omnino non potest, sine scrupulo occurrit quod verissime dicatur esse.“ See his ”De Sermone Domini in Monte,“ liber 2, caput VII, 27, PL XXXIV, p. 1281, where Augustine contrasts ”hodie“ (i.e., ”in hac temporali vita“) with eternity (”ante illam scilicet immutationem“).

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  42. Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 20, quarta objectio [24] in Opera Omnia, Parma edition of 1855 (New York: Musurgia, 1948–1949) V, 17A; ET On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Doubleday, 1955), I, pp. 112–113.

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  43. Wegmarken, pp. 336–340/226–270; ET pp. 203–207.

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  44. Timaeus 37e; Politics V, 1, 1301 b 27: iStoS yp iaata.eta vtvo @v rj iaot. (Here, of course, the form iStoS is feminine [ciSto, -ov]; alternately: ciStrl.)

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  45. Im ad ist es auf das Verweilen und zwar im Sinne der Anwesung abgesehen; das 111111ov ist das von sich her ohne sonstiges Zutun und deshalb mglicherweise stndig Anwesende [...] [Dias Entscheidende liegt vielmehr darin, da das eigentlich Seiende von ihm selbst her anwest und deshalb als das je schon Vorleigendevnoxetevov nptovangetroffen wird.“ Wegmarken, 339/269; ET p. 206 (translation amended and emphasis added).

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  46. Com are Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, p. 172, “ovvia: das eigenstndig bestndig Vorhandene” and p. 201, no. 26: “ovvta: 1. eigenstndige Bestndigkeit. ”

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  47. Heidegger’s bold interpretation of e as “eigentlich”: Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, p. 179.

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  48. ZS, p. 27/407, ET p. 75. “da dieses Wesen [des Menschen] ‘das Sein’ mitausmacht.”

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  49. John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, and New York: Fordham University Press), 1978; Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics(New York: Fordham University Press, 1985). On the latter, see Tomas Sheehan, “A Way out of Metaphysics,” Research in Phenomenology, 15 (1985), 229–234. In this early phase of the discussion, “Left Heideggerians” simply referred to those who understood being-itself as an “absence” that makes possible the presence of entities. The point was to get beyond both Left and Right Heideggenanism. Cf. Thomas Sheehan, “Derrida and Heidegger,” in Hermeneutics and Deconstruction, ed. Hugh J. Silverman ( New York: State University of New York Press, 1985 ), pp. 201–218.

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  50. Some hyperbolic critiques (verging on parodies) seem to believe they have Heidegger in their sights when they accuse him of a “hypervalorization of aletheia’ and claim that ”[in the 1930s] Heidegger’s interest turned more and more toward the search for the Essential Being (Wesen) and Origin (Ursprung) of truth.“ ”[The Kehre consists in Heidegger’s turn to] a deep Essential Being,“ ”a deep, primordial, originary truth,“ ”removed from beings [and] purified of them,“ such that now ”Being waits for an open space and a new god, in German, which is where the saving God will undoubtedly arrive.“ John D. Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1993), pp. 21, 118, 119, 123. This tops even Simon Blackburn’s parody of Heidegger: ”Modern humanity has lost the ‘nearness and shelter’ of Being; we are no longer at home in the world as primitive man was, thought is separated from being, and only a favored few have any hope of recapturing oneness with Being.“ Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Oxford L. P, 1994), p. 169.

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  51. Compare Erigena: “Ea vero, quae per excellentiam suae naturae non solum t?uov, id est omnem sensum, sed etiam intellectum rationemque fugiunt, jure videri non esse.” De divisione naturae (cf. supra) Liber I, chapter 3, PL CXXII (1865), p. 413.

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  52. Nicomachean Ethics, VII, 14, 1154 b 27.

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  53. Wegmarken, 354/282; ET p. 217. The point became a commonplace in Second International dialectics. Compare Ferdinand Lassalle’s letter to Karl Marx, Dusseldorf, December 12, 1851: “[In its moment of fullness, a given historical situation] fat sich. alle seine markirten Differenzen und Besonderheiten, die er, so lange er lebensfhig war, gesetzt hat, wieder aufhebend und in sich zurcknehmend, in sein rein allgemeines ursprngliche Wesen, in seine einfache Totalitt zusammen.” In Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften, ed., Gustav Mayer, 6 volumes (Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt and Verlagsbuchhandlung Julius Springer, 1920–1925), III (Der Briefwechsel zwischen Lassalle und Marx, [1922]), pp. 38–42, here p. 41. Also in Briefe von Ferdinand Lassalle an Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, 1849 bis 1862, ed. Franz Mehring (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1902), pp. 39–43, here p. 41.

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  54. . Cf. Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought(Cambridge U.P., 1951, 1988 ), p. 442–443.

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  55. Metaphysics, A 2, 982 a 31. Indeed, God is maximally necessary, eternal, ungenerated, incorruptible, teachable and learnable: iSro, ecyvriTo, 4eapTo, SiaxT, aerlr: Nicomachean Ethics VI, 3, 1139 b 22–26.

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  56. Metaphysics A 1, 982 a 1–3: n v ovv i ao4a nrp uva; px xa ai cta Tv SfiXov. Cf. A 2, 982 b 9: T6)V rcpu uov pxcv xa aiuwv.

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  57. Metaphysics A 2, 983 a 8–9: Te yp 8E6; Soxe Twv aiTicov To5ozny rivac xa pxri u.

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  73. Heidegger does have a lot to say about the concrete constellation of technologye.g., the massification of modern society, the mechanization of production, or (to use one of his favorite tropes as a synecdoche) the transformation of the Rhine into a waterway for barges. But none of these or his other personal opinions about modern society and politics, which are virtually always negative, have any philosophical or philosophical-political importance. If anything, they encourage a withdrawal from the theoretical and practical tasks that the current constellation of technology confronts us with. Of course, while Heidegger’s personal opinions about modern society, industry, and politics are not philosophically interesting, they do tell us a lot about himas a provincial Catholic from rural southern Germany, as an unreconstructed Wilhelmian and discontented survivor of the First World War, as an unbending conservative with a particular political and social ideology. To get to the philosophically interesting issues one must ask different questions. Does Heidegger’s reflection on nihilism, for all its insi htfulness, run the perennial metaphysical risk of confusing the “history of being” with the concrete history of the world? Did he confuse the so-called Verwindung of nihilism with human liberation? Or if his thought is innocent of such confusion, what can it tell us about that latter topic?

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  1. Loyola University Chicago, USA

    Thomas Sheehan

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    Burt C. Hopkins

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Sheehan, T. (1998). Nihilism: Heidegger/Jünger/Aristotle. In: Hopkins, B.C. (eds) Phenomenology: Japanese and American Perspectives. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2610-8_15

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