WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?
Martin Heidegger
During the experience of dread we might say: “It feels so strange!” But what is the “it,” and “who” feels it? We cannot say what feels strange. It is simply that way -- as a whole -- for “someone.” All things, and we along with them, sink into meaninglessness -- but not in the sense of simply disappearing. Rather, as things slip away from us, they also turn towards us. The slipping away of things from our world of meaning presses in upon us in the mood of dread and oppresses us. There is nothing to hold on to. As beings slip out of meaning, only this “nothing” remains, and it overwhelms us.
Dread reveals the nothing.
We “hover” in dread. More precisely, dread leaves us hanging insofar as it lets things slip out of our world of meaning. This implies that, right there in the midst of things, we ourselves -- we who are in being -- also slip away from ourselves. In the final analysis, therefore, it is not “you” or “I” who feel strange; rather, it is this way for some “one.” In this unnerving state of being left hanging, with nothing to hold on to, all that remains is our own pure openness.
Dread robs us of speech. Things slip out of our world of meaning, and only the nothing is left to crowd in around us -- and as a result, in the face of this nothing, all utterance of “is” falls silent. True, amidst the strangeness of dread, we often do try to shatter the empty stillness with compulsive talk -- but that only proves the presence of the nothing. And after dread has dissolved, we ourselves directly demonstrate that dread has shown us the nothing: In the lucid vision sustained by fresh remembrance, we are compelled to say that what we were in dread of, and what we had dread for, was, properly speaking -- nothing. And that is exactly right: The nothing itself had shown up.
Dread reveals the nothing.
We “hover” in dread. More precisely, dread leaves us hanging insofar as it lets things slip out of our world of meaning. This implies that, right there in the midst of things, we ourselves -- we who are in being -- also slip away from ourselves. In the final analysis, therefore, it is not “you” or “I” who feel strange; rather, it is this way for some “one.” In this unnerving state of being left hanging, with nothing to hold on to, all that remains is our own pure openness.
Dread robs us of speech. Things slip out of our world of meaning, and only the nothing is left to crowd in around us -- and as a result, in the face of this nothing, all utterance of “is” falls silent. True, amidst the strangeness of dread, we often do try to shatter the empty stillness with compulsive talk -- but that only proves the presence of the nothing. And after dread has dissolved, we ourselves directly demonstrate that dread has shown us the nothing: In the lucid vision sustained by fresh remembrance, we are compelled to say that what we were in dread of, and what we had dread for, was, properly speaking -- nothing. And that is exactly right: The nothing itself had shown up.
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