Nietzsche & Nihilism; worksheet on Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” (1929)
Heidegger’s claim on p. 94 that the scientific way of dealing with beings involves “a
freely chosen attitude of human existence” still reflects his early view of science, as
expressed in Being and Time (1927). By 1936, he will reject this view, in favor of the
view that scientific modes of encountering entities are part of our current historical comission of being.
Note: What Heidegger means by “the nothing” is being as such, i.e., the articulated unity
of ways in which we can encounter beings in terms of particular kinds of possibilities,
e.g., as scientific objects, handy tools, other persons as such, or ourselves as such. Recall
that according to the “ontological difference,” being as such is not a being. Whereas the
various sciences, from mathematics to the humanities, investigate different “domains” of
beings, none study being as such.
What Heidegger on p. 99 calls “genuine boredom” is the same phenomenon that he
elsewhere during this period calls “deepest boredom” – “world-weariness” or the French
“ennui” might be getting at the same thing. Like Angst, genuine boredom isn’t about
(awkwardly translated as “in the face of”) any particular being within the world, such as a
boring book or a long wait, but rather about our world of possibilities as such – which
Heidegger somewhat misleadingly calls “beings as a whole”. It’s thus a mood, or
“attunement,” like Angst, in which we catch a glimpse of those finite possibilities that
constitute our own being.
1. Exercise: try to describe how either deepest boredom or Angst discloses not this or that
being within the world, but rather our finite possibilities to us.
Here’s an alternative translation to the first five full sentences of the paragraph beginning
at the bottom of p. 102: “In anxiety there lies a shrinking back before that’s surely no
longer a fleeing, but rather a hypnotized calm. This “back before” takes its start from the
nothing. The nothing does not attract toward itself, but is essentially repulsive. This
repulsion away from itself is as such the referring to submerging beings as a whole that
allows them to depart. In anxiety, the nothing oppresses Dasein as this repulsive
reference to departing beings as a whole; this is the essence of the nothing: nihilation.”
Heidegger’s statement on p. 103 “The nothing itself nothings” was made famous by
Carnap’s attack on it. Note that all that he means by this is that the nothing – i.e., our
finite possibilities as mere possibilities – is not encountered as an entity, but rather in the
rare and unique mood of Angst.
Note: On p. 103, Heidegger uses the term “transcendence” in its literal sense of “stepping
over” – i.e., encountering beings by stepping over them toward the possibilities. Thus
Dasein’s understanding of its finite possibilities (which are revealed as such in Angst)
makes possible its encountering of beings as such.
2. How does Heidegger answer his question (p. 104) about why we’re not always in
Angst? What does it mean to say that “Angst is there. It is only sleeping” (p. 106)?
(On p. 101, replace “one feels ill at ease” with “it’s out of whack”, “it’s uncanny to me”,
etc.)
3. On pp. 106f, Heidegger defines “metaphysics” in the “good” sense. What is this?
(Beginning around 1936, he comes to use it only in the “bad” sense of attempting to ask
the “guiding question”: what is the beingness of beings?)
4. The question with which “What is Metaphysics?” ends is a quotation from G.W.F.
Leibniz, “Why are there beings at all, and not rather nothing?” Leibniz attempts to
answer this in two steps: (1) God exists because His essence, perfection, necessarily
includes His existence; (2) all beings other than God exist because He created them as
components of this, the best of all possible universes. Thus Leibniz attempts a literal
answer of the question. Heidegger, on the hand, asks it on the one hand rhetorically –
i.e., “why does everyone study only beings, and not rather being – the condition of the
possibility of our encountering beings?” On the other hand, he asks it quite seriously:
“how is it possible that we aren’t always in Angst about ‘the nothing’ – i.e., our finite
possibilities – and why do we rather always encounter beings?”