Metaphysics and Nihilism: 1 - The Overcoming of Metaphysics 2 - The Essence of Nihilism

by Martin Heidegger, Arun Iyer (Translator)

The two treatises  The Overcoming of Metaphysics  (1938/39) and  The Essence of Nihilism  (1946–1948) do not belong together temporally or formally, but they are brought together in this volume because they both treat a common thesis from the standpoint of different questions – namely, that nihilism is the essence of metaphysics in relation to the history of being. The overcoming of metaphysics is, for Heidegger, the decisive historical moment in which metaphysics is experienced as the history of the abandonment by being and overcome at the same time. The abandonment of beings by being reveals itself in the final and most extreme intensification of metaphysics as the “unconditioned predominance of manipulation.” Manipulation means here the all-dominating producibility of beings. The Essence of Nihilism  is linked to the idea of overcoming. This text deals with the attempt to elucidate the essence of nihilism through Nietzsche’s words “God is dead.”  The killing of God springs from the will to power as the most extreme form of manipulation. The being of beings is grasped here as the positing of values emanating from the will to power.  In this positing of being as value, it becomes clear that being itself remained unthought in metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysics as such is nihilism proper.  These key works by Heidegger, now available in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and to anyone interested in Heidegger’s thought.

Genres: Philosophy

250 pages, Hardcover

Published February 13, 2023

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[TL]

'The overcoming brings to light that the abyss essences as the clearing "of" beyng.

That as refusal, the beyng of the clearing is an inception of the other essence of history.

That refusal (concealment of the concealedness of beyng) is not a limit, a lack and what comes last, but what comes first, the gift and the inception, out of which history arises.

That this arrival actively urges a change in the essence of the being of the human because it eventuates Da-sein.

Beyng eventuates the in-between of the abyss and transfers to this particular in-between, that which is disclosed from the ground of the abyss as a being.

The event "is" in the inceptual sense; it alone lets be.

How beings are constantly scheming to lure being away and through such trickery makes us forget it. Beings grab for themselves historiography and technology as the only structure of their truth and secure for themselves in this way the unconditional capacity to manipulate.

Yet, this age must first fall prey to this double-sided twin violence of historiography and technology before it can give itself up and allow entry into the history of beyng.' (18-9)


'The active intimation of beyng itself in its underlying abruptness of the clearing is the event of the overcoming. This event comes from beyng, as beyng eventuates itself. It is from this event of overcoming (essencing of the truth of beyng) that history is first determined. The essence of metaphysics is unveiled out of this history as that which belongs to the history.

Metaphysics—the groundless truth of beings as such taken as a whole: how the everyday historiological concept of metaphysics originates from here, even though we became familiar with this concept first. Indeed, it is due to this familiarity that the concept has co-determined the essence of metaphysics and its history.' (19)


'When every support for every single standard within beings has been invalidated and there "is" "only" the abruptness of the clearing of beyng, the singularity of the event, then we have history.
There is no calculation of time and no eternity of the in-itself for this history.' (28)


'Beyng never comes face to face with the human being. This would be the case only if the human being stood someplace outside it as a possible meeting point for being. Such a thing happens only in the relations between one being and another.

If the human being were to come face to face with beyng then beyng would have to become the object and the human being would be reduced to the one who only represents. But is this not in fact the case in all metaphysics? Certainly, here being is only the most extreme iteration of the objective. But metaphysics also never knows of beyng. That is simultaneously its distinction and its ambiguity because it engages with beings after all. Beyng is and is revealed to the extent that it eventuates human beings into Da-sein through a transformation of their essence.' (47)

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Heidegger - metaphysics is the truth of beings and this truth is an ungrounded truth. In other words - metaphysics starts and ends with beings and its truth is free-floating. Metaphysics started with Plato and his “doctrine of ideas” (in fact with Socrates) and ended with Nietzsche and technology. Somewhere at the end of this history, Kant placed some limits to metaphysics, but he never questioned metaphysics itself. What is missing from all this and is never accessible to metaphysics is Being. The Greek Ancients glimpsed Being - but with Plato it became the highest idea, with Aristotle the prima cause/mover, with Christianity the most exalted and most elevated being, and eventually with the subsequent history and especially with the modernity it moved into: a creator, an universal concept, representations, reason, systems, grounds, a prior, objectivity, absolute idea, and eventually into total subjectivity and manipulability. In other words, Being in the theological thinking of metaphysics means nothing but just another being – even if the highest or the first being. At the very end of this history, Nietzsche called Being "the last whiff of an evaporating reality".

Nietzsche is in fact the main interlocutor and also opponent for Heidegger here. As all metaphysics differentiate between beings as such (whatness) and beings as a whole (thatness) - or between essence and existence - Nietzsche's metaphysics proposed the will to power for essence and the eternal return of the same for existence. In the name of the “transvaluation of all values”, truth for Nietzsche is the unconditional assuring of beings as such in the empowering of beings as a whole and the predominance of manipulation of beings with an unlimited reach. Within this metaphysics, old values devalue themselves (including the “death of God”) – and this is the “classical nihilism” as identified by Nietzsche.

Much deeper than this “classical nihilism”, for Heidegger “metaphysics as such is nihilism proper” - because “Being itself remains unthought in metaphysics as such” and thus “Being itself stays away and Being itself essences as this staying-away”. In other words, “nihilism proper” (as forgottenness of Being) started with Plato and continued until Nietzsche – with the only difference that Plato had no clue of nihilism, while Nietzsche glimpsed it. As for the “death of God” - we all since Plato are his murderers. Today in our almost total technological/metaphysical world we are without both Being and God. However, according to Heidegger “since it [Being] essences more and is older, the destiny of Being, which is how the truth of Being is refused in the midst of the throng of beings and only beings, is uncannier that the deficit of God.”

To overcome metaphysics and its nihilism, we cannot simply refuse, abolish, or free ourselves from metaphysics. Also, we cannot overcome metaphysics through some spiritual quest, old or new Christianity, a metaphysics of metaphysics, an accompanying “methodology” of philosophical thinking, and so on. In fact this overcoming of metaphysics cannot be accomplished by writing a book about it - like this one for example. All these attempts only promote, confirm, and consolidate nihilism in the end. The overcoming of metaphysics is existential for Heidegger.

Here is a paragraph from this book that summarizes all the above quite well: “What does overcoming mean? Overcoming means: bringing something under one’s sway and bringing what has been so surmounted under one’s sway in such a way that it will have no determining power henceforth. Even if overcoming does not aim at elimination, it remains an impetus against… . To overcome and want to overcome nihilism which has been thought in terms of its essence, means that human beings by themselves take measures against Being itself as it stays away. Yet, who or what would be capable of taking measures against Being itself, in whatever aspect and with whatever intent, and of indeed bringing it under the sway of human beings? Yet, an overcoming of Being itself is not only never achievable, but also the attempt to do it already reflects the intention to pull the essence of the human being off its hinges. For, the hinge of this essence consists in this: that Being itself, whatever its mode, even if in the mode of staying-away, lays claim to the essence of the human being. This essence is the accommodation with which Being gifts itself in order to come to pass in such an accommodation as the arrival of unconcealedness. To want to overcome Being itself means to want to pull the essence of the human being off its hinges.”