Extracts.000002.Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

from Being and Time (1924)

ANGST

Anxiety is not only anxiety in the face of something, but, as a state-of-mind, it is also anxiety about something. That which anxiety is profoundly anxious about is not a definite kind of Being for Dasein or a definite possibility for it. Indeed the threat itself is indefinite, and therefore cannot penetrate threateningly to this or that factically concrete potentiality-for-Being. That which anxiety is anxious about is Being-in-the-world itself. In anxiety what is environmentally ready-to-hand sinks away, and so, in general, do entities within-the-world. The ‘world’ can offer nothing more, and neither can the Dasein-with of Others. Anxiety thus takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, as it falls, in terms of the ‘world’ and the way things have been publicly interpreted. Anxiety throws Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about—its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities. Therefore, with that which it is anxious about, anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualized in individualization.





Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

from “What is Metaphysics?” (1929)

THE METAPHYSICS OF NOTHING


Does there ever occur in human existence a mood of this kind, through which we are brought face to face with Nothing itself?

This may and actually does occur, albeit rather seldom and for moments only, in the key-mood of dread (Angst). By “dread” we do not mean “anxiety” (Aengstlichkeit), which is common enough and is akin to nervousness (Furchtsamkeit)—a mood that comes over us only too easily. Dread differs absolutely from fear (Furcht). We are always afraid of this or that definite thing, which threatens us in this or that definite way. “Fear of” is generally “fear about” something. Since fear has this characteristic limitation—“of” and “about”—the man who is afraid, the nervous man, is always bound by the thing he is afraid of or by the state in which he finds himself. In his efforts to save himself from this “something” he becomes uncertain in relation to other things; in fact, he “loses his bearings” generally.

In dread no such confusion can occur. It would be truer to say that dread is pervaded by a peculiar kind of peace. And although dread is always “dread of,” it is not dread of this or that. The indefiniteness of what we dread is not just lack of definition: it represents the essential impossibility of defining the “what.” The indefiniteness is brought out in an illustration familiar to everybody.

In dread, as we say, “one feels something uncanny.” What is this “something” (es) and this “one”? We are unable to say what gives “one” that uncanny feeling. “One” just feels it generally (im Ganzen). All things, and we with them, sink into a sort of indifference. But not in the sense that everything turns towards us. This withdrawal of what-is-in-totality, which then crowds round us in dread, this is what oppresses us. There is nothing to hold on to. The only thing that remains and overwhelms us whilst what-is slips away, is this “nothing.”

Dread reveals Nothing.

In dread we are “in suspense” (wir schweben). Or, to put it more precisely, dread holds us in suspense because it makes what-is-in-totality slip away from us. Hence we too, as existents in the midst of what-is, slip away from ourselves along with it. For this reason it is not “you” or “I” that has the uncanny feeling, but “one.” In the trepidation of this suspense where there is nothing to hold on to, pure Da-sein is all that remains.

Dread strikes us dumb. Because what-is-in-totality slips away and thus forces Nothing to the fore, all affirmation (lit. “Is”-saying: “Ist”-Sagen) fails in the face of it. The fact that when we are caught in the uncanniness of dread we often try to break the empty silence by words spoken at random, only proves the presence of Nothing. We ourselves confirm that dread reveals Nothing—when we have got over our dread. In the lucid vision which supervenes while yet the experience is fresh in our memory we must needs say that what we were afraid of was “actually” (eigentlich: also “authentic”) Nothing. And indeed Nothing itself, Nothing as such, was there.