Andrew J. Mitchell (Emory University)
Heidegger engages with nihilism across the years 1940–1948, a phase of transition from his middle period of thinking to his later, postwar period. He is moving away from the central concerns of his middle period, which we might summarize as “beyng-historical thinking,” which involved both the unpublished treatises starting with the Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) as well as the lecture courses on Nietzsche, 1936–1941. And he is moving into the concerns of his post war thinking, which we can now say are first found in the 1946–1948 plans, notes, and drafts for a publication Heidegger foresees to be titled Four Notebooks, and which first presents many of the central figures of his later thinking: the fourfold, Gestell as the essence of technology, the importance of dwelling, the crossing-out of the word beyng, along with many other motifs known through his subsequent publications.
Heidegger himself is aware of the importance of the Four Notebooks project. He notes that he began working on the Four Notebooks as early as 1937, after completing the Contributions to Philosophy and the lecture course Basic Concepts of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic” (1937–38) and records in the Remarks (Black Notebooks) during its composition that the Four Notebooks could be taken as the “much demanded Second Part of Being and Time” (cf. GA 104: XXX; GA 98: 61). The combined material surrounding the Four Notebooks project, including the Black Notebooks volumes from the years of composition (1946–48), which make repeated reference to the Four Notebooks, and the Four Notebooks repeatedly cite them, totals some 1200 pages.1 It is a major (non)work of Heidegger’s, only now coming to light.
Heidegger’s engagement with nihilism thus traverses the middle and late periods of his thinking, from the Nietzsche courses to the Four Notebooks. Attending to the differences in his approach at each time will grant us access to some of the thinking motivating the unfinished project of the Four Notebooks, as well as reveal a striking difference in accounts of nihilism, with the later view emphasizing the positivity of nihilism, the sheltering nature of it, ideas taken up into the Four Notebooks project as well.
In what follows, then, I wish to lay out three moments in Heidegger’s thinking of nihilism, proceeding chronologically:
1) Nihilism as decision. I will refer to this as the “early” view of nihilism. The main text here is the last of the Nietzsche lecture courses, European Nihilism (1940). I also include in this period the 1941 text, “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics,” published along with the lecture courses as a kind of summary of the preceding four years of Nietzsche research and which gives great pride of place to nihilism (as one of the five “fundamental words” of Nietzsche’s metaphysics according to Heidegger, GA 6.2: 233).
2) Nihilism as preservation. By this I mean Heidegger’s “late” view of nihilism as expressed in the text, “The Beyng Historical Definition of Nihilism,” the latest of the texts published in the two volume Nietzsche and itself an extract from the unpublished treatise, “The Essence of Nihilism” (dated 1946–48 and published in GA 67).2 The early and late views of nihilism are separated by the chasm of the conclusion of the Second World War.3 Parts of “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God is Dead’” belong to this late period as well.4 Here Heidegger emphasizes nihilism in its preserving and sheltering role and in so doing locates a differentiation (Unterschied) within nihilism between its “authentic” and “inauthentic” forms.
3) Nihilism as forgetting of difference. Here I show how the sheltering role of nihilism reflects a similar logic found in the thinking of the Four Notebooks from around this same time, specifically the concern over how the forgetting of something (of differentiation) can likewise be its greatest preservation. This leads to a reformulation of Heidegger’s thinking of sheltering and preservation, as we shall see.
Nihilism for Heidegger is tied to Nietzsche’s thinking of values. The history of metaphysics has been a history of values, starting with the Platonic good and the elevation of a super-sensible world of Ideas above and beyond earthly reality. Nietzsche’s avowal of the “death of God” announces the devaluation of all preceding values. The devaluation suffered by these highest values is a devaluation brought about by nothing outside of those values, but one motivated from within, a kind of exhaustion of values. Nihilism is the process of the self-devaluation of values.
But this process is as old as history itself, is history itself: “nihilism is history” (GA 48: 98). Nihilism is thus termed by Heidegger the “lawfulness of history” (GA 48: 91). And to be sure, when Nietzsche announces the death of God through the voice of the madman, he explains that “whoever is born after us will belong to a higher history than all history to this day, on account of this deed!” (JS 129). That “higher” history belongs to the Über-mensch. The Übermensch rejects the world of exhausted values in the name of a new affirmation and a new valuation, a “transvaluation” (Umwertung) of values.
The Übermensch’s transvaluation of values is an expression of the will to power, for “will to power and value-positing are the same” (GA 48: 104/N3: XXX). This goes so far that Heidegger asserts: “Transvaluation thinks being as value” (GA 48: 5/N4: XXX, em). As value positer in a world of values, the Übermensch is the perfection of subjectivity, a development which Heidegger traces from Protagoras through Descartes, and on to Nietzsche; Nietzsche is even referred to as “Cartesian” (GA 48: XXX). As the consummation of subjectivity transpiring within nihilism, the Übermensch is perfectly prepared for utilization within the unworld of will to power (nihilism).
Transvaluation then forms for Heidegger the “consummated essence” of nihilism (GA 6.2: 247/N3: xxx), making up what is “positive” within nihilism, which is otherwise deemed an utterly negative designation and concept. “Thus nihilism does not strive for mere nullity. Its authentic essence lies in the affirming character of a liberation” (GA 6.2: 249/N3: 204). The positivity of nihilism is thus “the liberation from the previous values as a liberation to a transvaluation [Umwertung] of all (these) values” (GA 48: 4/N4: 202). This positivity is understood in terms of a decision. According to Heidegger, to think nihilism with Nietzsche ultimately means “to think the history of western metaphysics as the ground of our own history and that means of future decisions” (GA 48: 12/N4: 11). In “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics,” Heidegger develops this thought a little further, writing that in this “intermediate condition” of nihilism, “the historical peoples of the earth must decide upon their downfall or new beginning” (GA 6.2: 249/N3: 204).
This positive and decisive “essence” of nihilism is itself hidden from the nihilist. Consequently, nihilism “must unwittingly and extremely defend against the knowledge of its innermost essence. Classical nihilism unveils itself then as that consummation of nihilism which precisely sees no need to think that which constitutes its essence: the nihil, the nothing, i.e., being.” (GA 48: 12/N4: 11, tm). The question of being as well as of the nothing remains unasked here, as Heidegger observes:
because Nietzsche only thinks nihilism nihilistically, and can only think it so, the question arises as to whether Nietzsche is at all able to bring to light the concealed essence of nihilism, indeed, whether the essence of nihilism does not itself prohibit a decisive insight into the history (of being) from emerging at this stage for a recklessly come of age human self-consciousness. (GA 48: 19 rep)
Nihilism prohibits an insight into its own essence that would reveal it to be nothing sheerly negative or nihilatory, but instead the condition of affirmation of new values. This is what nihilism harbors in the early view, devaluation is preparation for transvaluation: “The devaluation of the hitherto highest values remains admitted in advance into the concealed patiently awaited transvaluation of all values” (GA 6.2: 249/N3: 204, tm).
What I am calling the “later” view of nihilism is tied to a distinction Heidegger now draws within nihilism itself, between its authentic and inauthentic aspects. To be sure, Nietzsche had drawn multiple distinctions among types of nihilism (classical, ecstatic, Christian, Buddhist, etc.), ultimately distinguishing between active and passive kinds of nihilism, but for Heidegger all of these distinctions miss the fundamental differentiation within nihilism itself. To understand it, we need say a little more about nihilism and its relation to beyng.
For Heidegger, nihilism identifies a state of affairs where the focus is entirely on beings without regard for being itself. Heidegger goes on to show that this is the case for metaphysics as a whole, “the metaphysics of Plato is no less nihilistic than the metaphysics of Nietzsche” (GA 67: 210/N4: 205). All of them overlook being for beings. In such conditions, i.e. within metaphysics, nihilism shows itself as the destructive, negative force it is typically taken for, a destructive force that targets beings. This is inauthentic nihilism, the ontic destruction of beings, while authentic nihilism concerns being itself, the being that has delivered over these conditions, that has done so by withdrawing from here and abandoning these beings.
As Heidegger now puts it, being bleibt aus, remains outstanding, remains outside, remains “in default.”5 This default of being goes unremarked within metaphysical explanations. There is an omission (Auslassen) that accompanies and doubles the default (Ausbleiben). Beings are taken alone for what is. Heidegger elaborates the consequences of this in terms of the unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) of beings. If being is what “unconceals” beings and being remains in default, then the unconcealment, too, must be concealed, despite, or indeed on account of, the very presence of beings, which is why the history of metaphysics is a history of beings.
Accordingly, the nihilism that targets beings for destruction from within metaphysics Heidegger terms “inauthentic” nihilism. Authentic nihilism, on the other hand, is not a matter of these beings, but instead of being. In this context, this entails the recognition that this landscape of beings is only made possible by the fact that beyng remains outstanding, remains in default. The withdrawal of being is the authentic nihilism.
As such, authentic nihilism is nothing that can transpire among beings. In fact, the nihilism that takes place is the cover for the nihilism that has withdrawn:
What is authentic of nihilism, precisely in that it takes place, is not what is authentic of it. How so? Nihilism takes place as metaphysics within the inauthentic itself. But this inauthentic is not a lack of the authentic, but rather its consummation, to the extent that it itself is the default [Ausbleiben] of being and this depends on this default remaining fully itself. In history, what is authentic of nihilism takes the figure of the inauthentic, which brings about an omission [Auslassen] of the default, in that it also omits even this omission and in all this, amid the clamorous affirmation of beings as such, does not, and also cannot, access anything that could concern being itself. The full essence of nihilism is the original unity of the authentic and the inauthentic of it. GA 67: 225/N4: 220, tm, em
Inauthentic nihilism is what transpires, but that means it is not authentic nihilism. And yet, authentic nihilism finds its consummation in inauthentic nihilism, because it is only by taking place that being’s withdrawal can be marked in the first place, i.e. that authentic nihilism be registered. Inauthentic nihilism is the “marker” of authentic nihilism, that it remains outstanding. But this does not mean some intact form of being waits offstage somewhere, instead it means that being itself is this default.
Further, its inauthenticity pursues the forgetting of this, its omission from all accounts (with Heidegger noting that, “the omission of the default of being as such appears in the figure of the explanation of being as value,” GA 67: 226). This complication reveals a new subtlety to Heidegger’s thinking of concealment, Heidegger lights upon it in the form of a question while discussing the default of being, with being understood in terms of the unconcealment of beings: “Insofar as in unconcealment its own ‘un-’ remains away with regard to itself and remains in the concealment ‘of’ being, the default shows the trait of concealment. Now in what sense should concealment be thought? Is this concealing only a veiling or at the same time a putting away and preserving [ein Wegbergen und Verwahren]?” (GA 67: 220/N4: XXX). The answer is in the affirmative, concealment is now a preserving.
Following an almost Hölderlinian logic, being preserves itself by defaulting on us, gives us itself as default, to be sure, and in so doing, Heidegger now adds, being spares us. Being spares us its full presence by remaining in default. That default is again marked, but now it registers as a promise, Versprechen (GA 67: 232). Being spares us in promising itself to us. This thought will lead Heidegger to ruminate on the “eschatology of beyng,” the non-presence of being as promise, in the Four Notebooks. As such, Heidegger’s thinking of nihilism in Nietzsche seems to reflect the same logic of the trace of the flight of the gods in Heidegger’s Hölderlin readings.
The separation whereby the unconcealment of beyng is itself concealed and this by the proliferation of beings, is a separation that Heidegger terms a “differentiation” (Unterschied). The withdrawal is marked by the “un” of uneigentlich, Unverborgenheit, and, indeed, Unwesen. But here, Heidegger insists, “the ‘un-‘ does not first or solely rest upon a negation and its negativity” (GA 67: 229). One might think of the German term Untat, which, rather than mean no deed (Tat) at all, instead means a misdeed; the undoes not function as sheer opposition. Thus Heidegger writes, “If the ‘un-‘ between the traits of the authentic and the inauthentic in the essence of nihilism arise, then it can only be thought in terms of the unity of this essence. It shows a differentiation [Unterschied] which emphasizes the ‘un-‘” (GA 67: 229).6 The un- spaces the differentiation.
This peculiar situation of the un- is what sets up the preservative function. The un- does not function as a negation, it does not designate the antipode of that to which it is prefixed, instead it names the remaining away of the default, of the promise. But this is where preservation is found: “The essencing of the unessence in the essence is nothing negative. The history of the omission of the default of being itself is the history of the preservation of the promise, so freely that this preserving itself remains concealed in that which it is” (GA 67: 233). Omitting the default sets up the world of inauthentic nihilism. But the omission of the default is how the default now shows itself, as though nothing has happened. So the omission of the default is the preservation of the default qua promise. Otherwise put: “What is inauthentic in the essence of nihilism is the history of the omission and, i.e., the concealing of the promise. Assuming however, that being itself spares itself in its default, then the history of the omission of the default is precisely the preserving [Bewahren] of that self-sparing of being itself” (GA 67: 233). Nihilism preserves the promise.
I have made a point of distinguishing a shift in Heidegger’s thinking of nihilism between 1940–41 and 1946–48. My goal in doing so is to show how Heidegger’s later thinking of nihilism is enlisted into the thought of the Four Notebooks, so a few words about that are in order.
There is no work called the Four Notebooks by Heidegger, but instead everything bearing that name (GA 99, GA 104) consists of notes and drafts towards such a work. Four Notebooks has four parts, labeled with Roman numerals, and each part has four sections, in Arabic numerals. Striking in these is the attention Heidegger devotes to language, not just as a content theme (where “conversation,” Gespräch, plays a leading role), but in regard to Heidegger’s own use of language in composing the text. Notes refer to Heidegger’s writing process in a way not seen before in his corpus. For example, in a note about “the division in alteration” (Den Zwiespalt im Wechsel), we won’t go into this, he writes “leave [this] unspoken throughout I (indeed, on that, precisely an emphatic keeping silent, i.e., but then not stated as division and alteration – until I 4” (GA 73.2: 1118).
The notes aim at a work that will present Heidegger’s thinking in a suitable manner and language. At the level of content, we see in these notes Heidegger’s first foray into the thinking of the “fourfold” (das Geviert), the four of which arises not due to the fact that there are four components, but instead there are four components of the fourfold due to the importance of the “four,” which we are also told is not a number in the first place. It is in these notes that Heidegger first breaks with his preceding thinking of machination as the culmination of Nietzschean metaphysics and identifies the essence of technology as Gestell (positionality). The Black Notebooks volumes that parallel the composition are also where Heidegger first writes being as typographically crossed out. This crossing through of beyng permeates the Four Notebooks project.
Further, the atmosphere of the book (or notes thereto) is also noteworthy. It follows from the nihilistic landscape that Heidegger had depicted across his Nietzsche readings. The Four Notebooks is written from this unworld of expropriation (Enteignis), as a thoughtful yet urgent engagement with it. Another way to put this would be to say that if, as we have seen, differentiation through the un- results in a withdrawing that marks itself as promise, then in the Four Notebooks we begin from the forgetting of that differentiation and promise. Heidegger’s agenda is in part to show in the face of such forgetting that there nonetheless remains a forgetting that would be the deepest guarding.
Heidegger distinguishes between the “difference of beings and being” and the “differentiation to beings and being” (Differenz von contra Unterschied zu) (GA 99: 73). Differentiation happens to beings and being, separating and spacing them. What essences of beings and being is the Unterschied. “What essences of the two is the Unterschied itself; neither the being nor being attains an experience of the Unterschied. The Unterschied is not a third to these two, but also not what is first of both” (GA 99: 142).
This spacing of differentiation is targeted by a force of “unguarding” (Verwahrlosung), which arises as the “forgetting” of the Unterschied. “This forgetting as the (event) of unguarding” (GA 99: 40). The plight of the Four Notebooks is the forgetting of the Unterschied. As Heidegger writes, “The forgetting of the Unterschied is the refusal of world” (GA 99: 137).
But this is a peculiar forgetting. To wit, “Forgetting of the Unterschied is not nothing, but the most extreme fullness of refusal [Verweigerung]; to experience what essences of this” (GA 99: 48). What is more: “The forgetting of the Unterschied has delivered the human into the essence of the protection of expropriation [Schonung der Enteignis]” (GA 99: 20). How does this protection work?
Forgetting is not utter loss. For Heidegger, forgetting remains “pivotal” (kehrig), subject to turns (Kehre). Indeed, “The forgetting of the Unterschied turns itself into the Unterschied of forgetting. This turn is the entry [Einkehr] of world” (GA 99: 21). The goal is to move from forgetting differentiation to finding a differentiation within forgetting. Heidegger observes: “The turn guards what is the same [Selbe] of inauthentic and authentic forgetting; guards the event of conversion [Verwindung] of the unguarding; worlds what is inauthentic of the authentic” (GA 99: 30).
The task of the Four Notebooks is to think and say what is here distinguished amid forgettings. For “Thinking is the saying [Sage] of the Unterschied of forgetting and thus the saying of the turn in this” (GA 99: 25). As Heidegger adds, “An entirely different prospect for thinking opens here, that essentially it must enter forgetting” (GA 99: 26).
The Unterschied of forgetting into authentic and inauthentic presents us with a forgetting that can be recalled and remembered (standard forgetting), i.e., inauthentic forgetting, and a forgetting that refuses such recall, authentic forgetting (which is aligned with the default of Seyn). The saying of this is complicated, for how does one name what is authentically forgotten?
Language plays a crucial role in the Four Notebooks, which Heidegger understands as “conversation” (Gespräch): “Saying brings about the conversation of the Unterschied. Conversation is the needing gathering of language, to which the unspoken comes, in order to remain unspoken in it” (GA 99: 7). This unspoken is our concern, precisely in its relation to stillness: “the essence of conversation is the stillness of the world [Stille der Welt]” (GA 99: 8).
The conversation, which Heidegger will also term an Unter-reden (discourse), is not with a second partner. It is not a “dialogue” in this sense. Instead, all saying is a conversation with stillness. The relation is complex: “Saying is only the clearing/lighting of the stillness of the location of the Unterschied of forgetting: the saying of the world” (GA 99: 23). Tentatively stated: saying is a conversation with stillness. What is said therein may remain a matter of ontic beings. But the silence also speaks and speaks to stillness. Heidegger: “The unspoken simultaneity in the saying of the Unterschied speaks clearer and truer than any definition, which necessarily surrenders everything to representation” (GA 99: 29). The “unspoken” becomes a theme of the project. A language that foregoes naming the forgetting of the Unterschied (which only ever falls back into the mire of representation), but instead lets itself be marked by that default, without ever announcing it, this is the language, the conversation, of the Four Notebooks, the non-naming of forgetting which lets itself be marked, indeed, be “written,” by its exposure to default, which Heidegger terms the Inschrift, “inscription.”
Nihilism lets us trace Heidegger’s development from out of the period of beyng-historical
thinking into that of his later work, signaled by the Four Notebooks. It reveals a
shift in Heidegger’s thinking of concealment and sheltering, arising out of the
experience of nihilism. Being itself is rethought, now written with a Y and for the first
time crossed through. Indeed, Heidegger notes in the Four Notebooks that “the y in Seyn
names the fork of difference, beyng as neither a being nor being as what is extant
(beinghood)”
(GA 99: 152).
Heidegger leaves it to us as task: “Someday a few will
consider this: the nothing is beyng; is the unguarding as the refusal of the event of the
forgetting of the Unterschied”
(GA 99: 64).
Doing so will give us a new purchase on
nihilism, as note in the Anmerkungen from this time shows:
The Nothing. Those who always struggle against it only betray how deeply they’ve fallen victim to the nihilating nothing of mere nihilism and remain its tributary. What do they know of the nothing, which a few of the first thinkers have considered, wherein everything essencing of beyng remains placed. Indeed, those whom this stillness has never blown upon will never grasp it. GA 97: 478, em
1 Taking together Vier Hefte (GA 99), Supplement 2 (GA 104), “I.1–4” and “Unterschied und der Mensch” (GA 73.2), Anmerkungen III–VI (GA 97 & 98), and “Das Wesen des Nihlismus” (GA 67); one could reasonably add the lecture “Über die Vergessenheit” (GA 80.2).
2 The dating discrepancy here. In GA 6.2 its 1944–46, in GA 67 it’s 1946–48.
3 [Heidegger snark from end of Angxibasie GA 77]
4 “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God is Dead’” is explicitly devoted to the question of nihilism, the dating of it is somewhat complicated. It was first published in Holzwege in 1951, with a note saying that it stemmed from a widely repeated 1943 lecture of the same name. That lecture, “Über Nietzsches Wort ‘Gott ist todt’” was subsequently published in GA 80.2. The 1943 lecture is 29 pages, the 1951 published text, 58 pages. One cannot tell with any certainty from when a particular passage might stem; those dealing with the preserving character of nihilism might be later additions from our period of concern, 1946–1948, as these notions are nowhere to be found in the 1943 lecture. Further, the opening third of “The Essence of Nihilism” (1946–1948), i.e., the third that did not become “The Beyng Historical Definition of Nihilism,” bears some resemblance to “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God Is Dead,’” indeed, some of the pages of “The Essence of Nihilism” appear verbatim in “Nietzsche’s Word,” complicating the dating further.
5 to follow the Krell translation; check GA 67 TRANS.
6 “Only when we admit the un-essence into the essence, do we understand its full essence” (GA 80.1: 400). 3rd version Vom Wesen der Wahrheit 1930
Andrew J. Mitchell - Nihilism in Transition: From Heidegger’s Nietzsche Lectures to the Four Notebooks