This essay, written between 1944 and 1946, begins with the question whether nihilism, as such, is overcome in Friedrich Nietzsche’s metaphysics. Nietzsche insists that the being of entities is the will to power in the mode of the eternal recurrence of the same. Since he leaves no room for the nothing, it seems that nihilism is overcome. And yet, he misses the origin of nihilism, that is, the history in which there is nothing to being itself. He insists that being is a value, but if being is a value, there is nothing to it. In this sense his philosophy is the completion of metaphysics.
Metaphysics is essentially onto-theo-logical, and therefore we could call Nietzsche’s thought negative onto-theo-logy. He neglects to think unconcealment as the truth of being. The relation of being to being-there becomes the crucial problem for Heidegger. The forgottenness of being is the gift of being itself. To overcome nihilism, thinking must encounter the mystery of being. In this encounter, it can experience the withdrawal of being. In the need and danger of the present age, we can only prepare for the other beginning.