From nothing to sociology

pp. 169-193

in: Kurt Wolff, Transformation in the writing, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

Finally we want to call attention to an essay which... appears to offer insight and a challenge that is similar to ours: Was ist Metaphysik? (What Is Metaphysics?) by Martin Heidegger (Bonn, 1929). We have two points of reference for this opinion [of affinity]. For one, Heidegger claims for science a unique attitude toward life, namely, service to the “Sache selbst” [the thing itself; cf. Husserl’s “To the things” — and Chap. VIII, Sec. 2, above] (p. 9) — the parallel to us might consist in the fact that by this statement Heidegger seems to want to create for himself an ontic anchoring of what he is doing. But much more it is the second symptom that speaks for our view, namely, that this [Heidegger’s] essay tells, with almost poetic immediacy, of his own life, namely, in developing the concept of “nothing,” when Heidegger neither finds nor could accept the possibility of a rational definition but instead reminds us of the feeling in which alone Nothing can be experienced: anxiety. Only out of this ineluctable feeling is the concept of Nothing hypostasized.2