Heidegger: Nothingness
and Authentic Existence
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher who is usually counted
among the Existentialists, even though he rejected the label. Having been brought
up as a Catholic, and having attended seminary in preparation for the priesthood,
he turned away from religion to develop his own radical conception of human
existence. Fairly early in his career as professor of philosophy he published
the book that established his international fame, Being and Time (1927).
In this work he tried to answer an old philosophical question: “What is
Being?” Or: “What exactly does it mean to be?” In the process
of coming to grips with this seemingly arcane inquiry he developed an analysis
of human existence that presented life and the world in a new and somewhat unsettling
light. His discussion of death and the inexorable finitude of human life, for
example, inspired a whole generation of philosophers, theologians, and psychoanalysts
to develop innovative approaches to problems that had never been satisfactorily
solved within the frameworks of traditional thought. In spite of his often difficult
analyses and idiosyncratic use of language, Heidegger gained a sizable following
and a position of considerable respect among academics and the general intelligentsia.
His success and influence notwithstanding, however, Heidegger also had and has
his serious critics and detractors. Many philosophers (Analytic philosophers
in particular) criticize his theory of Being as preposterous nonsense, and his
idiosyncratic use of language as obfuscating and conceptually muddled. The most
widely discussed scandal in Heidegger’s career, however, is the fact that
in 1933 he welcomed Hitler’s ascendance to power, and that—as head
of the University of Freiburg--he became instrumental in transforming German
university life along the lines of Nazi directives. Heidegger never apologized
for his membership in the Nazi party, and he generally tried to pass over the
whole matter in silence. In the eyes of many this discredits him as a respectable
thinker. Others, however, maintain that his philosophy has nothing to do with
his political failings. Philosophers who abhor Nazism still maintain that Heidegger
was one of the most significant thinkers of the 20th century, and that we would
understand much less about ourselves and the world if we were deprived of Heidegger’s
philosophical work. The dispute has never been resolved; it has become a permanent
a fixture of Heidegger’s controversial legacy.
In 1929 Heidegger delivered one of his most noteworthy lectures: “What
is Metaphysics?” In this lecture he expanded certain notes from Being
and Time by offering a detailed philosophical analysis of the mood or feeling
of angst. (In philosophical literature the word “angst”
is usually translated as “anxiety” or “dread” --or else
left in the original German as a technical term of Heidegger’s thought.)
Among all the moods and feelings that people experience, angst is of
particular philosophical significance, according to Heidegger, because it is
a state of mind that reveals most clearly the fundamental nature of human existence.
It is, in Heidegger’s thinking, not by means of conceptual analysis, but
through the emotional experience of angst that we can learn what we
basically are as human beings.
Heidegger starts his explication by distinguishing angst from the related
experience of fear. Fear is always fear of something--of something
more or less specific that exists in the world. A person fears an armed
attacker, a disease, poverty, or some other identifiable entity or event that
poses a danger to him or her. A fearful person is always worried—looking
around for something that may do him or her harm. Angst, by contrast,
is not fear of anything specific, but a state of dread in which that which is
feared cannot be pinpointed or described in any way. Angst is an all-pervasive
feeling or mood that has no object. A person seized by this sort of dread cannot
point to anything that would explain the feeling. If asked what he or she is
afraid of, a person in angst may correctly say: "nothing"--and
yet feel dread. What is happening in such a case, according to Heidegger, is
indeed an encounter with "nothing," or "nothingness." "Angst
reveals nothingness,” as he states in his lecture. (1)
Heidegger’s talk about “nothingness” is not easy to grasp,
and it has caused an extensive discussion among philosophers. What he means
by “nothing” or “nothingness” is not the void brought
about by imagining that everything that exists is gone, for example. It also
is not the result of the logical act of universal negation. To understand what
Heidegger means by “nothingness” it is necessary to pay close attention
to the details that emerge when he describes the experience of angst.
What happens in the experience of angst is described as a “drawing
away” or “slipping away” of the world--the world as a whole.
In the unspecified dread experienced in angst the world in its entirety
turns into something remote and strange. Even very familiar things, things that
make up the ordinary environment of everyday life, turn, as it were, into alien
and uncanny objects. The cares and feelings that usually connect a person to
his or her everyday environment wither away. In Heidegger’s words:
All things, and we with them, sink into indifference. But not in the sense
that everything simply disappears. Rather, in the very drawing away from us
as such, things turn toward us. This drawing away of everything in its totality,
which in angst is happening all around us, haunts us. There is nothing to hold
on to. The only thing that remains and comes over us--in this drawing away of
everything--is this "nothingness."(2)
That things do not “simply disappear” in the experience of angst
is important. Things actually “turn toward us”—as
things that are alien and uncanny. In the experience of angst things
have, in fact, a peculiarly ominous presence. In Being and Time Heidegger
compares the experience of angst with the dread that we may feel in
the dark: Without light we see nothing, yet the feeling of dread arises precisely
because things are present—somewhere out there, vaguely threatening, but
without revealing any danger in particular. (3) It is in this way that the totality
of what exists remains present in the state of angst, even though we
have the feeling that everything is "drawing away." What Heidegger
refers to as “nothingness,” in other words, appears in the presence
of things—in the presence of the world that has become thoroughly alien
and “indifferent.” This shows that the “nothingness”
Heidegger talks about in “What is Metaphysics?” is not anything
like a physical void, but a void—as one might say—of sense, of significance,
or of meaning.
Repeatedly Heidegger connects angst with feeling uncanny. The German
word for "uncanny" is "unheimlich," the literal meaning
of which is "not-at-home." Heidegger deliberately trades on this literal
meaning: he wants to stress that in angst we feel profoundly dislodged
from our ordinary positions, connections, and orientations in life. In ordinary
everyday life we feel at home: We have our more or less regular tasks, familiar
routines, and customary expectations. People have their known occupations and
places, and things their more or less traditional appearances and functions.
Even if occasional changes take place with respect to this or that detail, the
over-all nexus of activities, functions, and goals remains a more or less ordered
environment, a familiar context. Ordinarily we are at home in an organized world.
It is the feeling of being at home in such a familiar world that is suspended
in the experience of angst: Ordinary objects look strange, everyday
activities pointless, and common sense objectives outlandish. Encountering “nothingness”
means to feel uncanny and dislodged in a perfectly familiar world.
There are several reasons why Heidegger finds the experience of angst
important. One of them is the fact that it brings us closer to an understanding
of Being--of what it means to be: "Only in the bright night of the nothingness
of angst does the original openness of that which exist come into view
as such," according to “What is Metaphysics?” For in the state
of angst nothing particular matters anymore; everything in the world
is equally indifferent to a person who is caught by this kind of dread. The
world in its entirety is there, however, and as a strange and enigmatic presence
it impresses itself on the person in angst. The familiar and customary
ways of understanding and relating to the world are all suspended; what usually
seems natural and self-evident is no longer so. Thus the only thing left is
the pure “being-there” of everything, the baffling fact of the world’s
indifferent existence. This existence becomes the ultimate enigma for the person
in angst; it prompts the wondering question: "Why is there anything
at all--and not rather nothing?" (4)
While this question is a gateway to Heidegger’s inquiry into the nature
of Being, it is also a way of approaching and coming to terms with the quality
of one’s own existence. The encounter with nothingness, according to Heidegger,
puts me into a position where I can choose an authentic existence, or where
otherwise I can allow myself to fall back into a sort of life where most things
are decided by others, or by circumstances of a more or less impersonal nature.
Angst, in other words, reveals to me my fundamental freedom.
As ordinary individuals we are part of the world, and thus part of what "draws
away" in the experience of angst. When seized by angst
we become strangers to ourselves: our ordinary identities recede, and the everyday
lives we live become as uncanny as the world around us. Suspended in angst
I am not this or that person anymore, but an undefined being whose only characteristic
is being-there. This pure being-there, according to Heidegger, is our most basic
existence. In facing the nothingness revealed by angst all the activities
I engage in and all the things I represent in everyday life fall away as so
many roles and masks. In this "standing out into nothingness," as
Heidegger puts it, I have a chance to make a new start, and to choose my life
with a conscious resolve that had not been available to me in the routines of
my ordinary everyday life.
Angst is thus not necessarily a negative experience; it can be understood
and seized as a precondition for waking up, for a personal liberation. In ordinary
everyday life we tend to be locked into routine, and being preoccupied by practical
tasks and busy with their execution we rarely question the sense of the whole
system of cares, goals, and activities. To a much larger extent than we usually
realize, the cares, goals, and activities that define our lives are determined
by others instead of ourselves. I do what “one” is supposed to do;
I have the goals in life that people generally have. I follow the herd, as some
philosophers put it. It is, of course, not always wrong to do what others do.
But it is one thing to do so because others do it, or to do it for specific
and sound reasons. Angst relieves us, as it were, from our herd instinct
and enables us to make our own personal decisions. Angst can be the
means to become our own selves. By prompting us to become genuine individuals,
it can make our lives authentic.
To experience things as unfamiliar and strange is a specifically human capability.
Animals are in no position to develop this sort of distance between themselves
and the world in which they live. The capacity to wonder and inquire, grounded
in that distance, is a manifestation of a fundamental freedom, the freedom to
conceive and re-conceive the world in many ways, and to change one's relation
to it accordingly. Instead of being locked into a particular cultural tradition,
for example, with its fixed and established ways of looking at and relating
to things, human beings are endowed with the capacity to take a step back from
everything and to look at the world at any time as if it were entirely new,
i. e., strange. This capacity constitutes a unique way of being in the world,
and it is the basis for the possibility of taking a hold of one's life in a
way no other kind of being has.
Heidegger describes another way in which a person can encounter nothingness,
and thereby take hold of his or her existence authentically: by facing death--the
inexorable finitude of one’s being. Again, this is not accomplished by
simply thinking about the matter, not even by very serious thinking. According
to Heidegger it is only the feeling of angst that genuinely
reveals nothingness—in this case the possible not-being of everything
that I personally am. Onlythe feeling of angst reveals death
as my death, the death that only I will die. And in doing so angst
individualizes my existence, for the life that I live authentically is
the life that is defined by my personal death.
In an abstract way all people know, of course, that they are mortal, and that
they can die at any moment. In ordinary life this knowledge tends to become
diluted or diminished; most people suppress the awareness of their own possible
death by keeping themselves occupied by all sorts of other things—comparatively
trivial things for the most part. Only in exceptional circumstances will we
realize the full reality of our inexorable demise--and the nothingness that
threatens to engulf our personal being. Once this happens, however, once we
become truly aware of the finality of our being in the way Ivan Ilych did in
Tolstoy's classical story, for example, we will relate to our lives in an entirely
different way. The full awareness of my death brings my existence into a clear
focus that is absent from the average sort of life that is frittered away on
unimportant details and cluttered with superficial distractions. A conscious
"being-toward-death" will encourage me to stop running with the herd,
escape the anonymous dictates of what "one" is supposed to do, cease
moving through life like a somnambulist--and actively take hold of my life with
conscious resolve and deliberate determination. Facing my death in earnest provides
me with the possibility to make my life truly my own, and thus authentic.
( From: Jorn K. Bramann: Educating
Rita and Other Philosophical Movies )
"The Eclipse"
Bramann