| For my project, what is at stake is a re-thinking of Heidegger's much discussed "overcoming of metaphysics," not as the overcoming of transcendence, but as the condition of possibility for the radical opening of thought to what is other. More specifically, Heidegger's understanding of "the nothing" is the mobilization of thinking to break free from the stasis of ontological necessity. Such thinking clears a space for the recognition of Being as given, i.e., as produced rather than deduced. In order to defend this reading, I trace the development of Heidegger's thinking on the nothing, with specific emphasis on the role of the nothing within fundamental ontology and within Heidegger's embrace of metaphysics in the late 1920's and early 1930's. I argue that the nihilation of the nothing is characterized by a double movement of repulsion - the repelling of beings and the repelling of the nothing itself. This double movement is both the opening and closure of metaphysics as well as the opening and closure of nihilism. By way of conclusion, I suggest that Heidegger's nothing attests to the necessity of our being driven into a "beyond" - even when there is nothing in that beyond. We find ourselves bound up with what withdraws from our grasp. The nothing reveals relation to what is other as itself the very movement of Being. It disrupts the solipsism of a metaphysics oriented towards "thought thinking itself." More specifically, I explain that the nothing calls attention to the intertwining of necessity and contingency as the source for both meaningfulness and responsibility. It is in this way that thinking can ultimately show itself as thanking, as gratitude for the gratuity of Being. |
