Heidegger on the Nothing and Anaximander’s Ἄπειρον

Abstract

If Martin Heidegger is a thinker of Being par excellence, he is also one of the west’s key thinkers concerning the nothing. This paper has two main aims. The first is to highlight the continuity of the way in which Heidegger develops the theme of the nothing, in its close kinship with Being, throughout the long arc of his thought: from Sein und Zeit (1927) and his summer 1928 lecture course on Leibniz, through his famous treatment in the inaugural lecture “Was ist Metaphysik?” (1929), his subsequent “Nachwort” (1943) and “Einleitung” (1949) to that work, to his extended letter to Ernst Jünger, published as “Zur Seinsfrage” (1955). However, the second aim of the paper is to bring this extensive thematic thread into close association with Heidegger’s reading of Anaximander, especially his summer 1932 and winter 1941 lecture courses. What emerges is a striking account of the nothing as the Seinsvergessenheit, but also as the “the unlimited” origin of all beings in their “stepping forth” into appearance, and that to which they return. Thus, τὸ ἄπειρον effectively becomes for Heidegger another name for the nothing, or Being in its lethic or “hidden essence”: i.e., the hyperbolic or abyssal excess that is the ἀρχή of the appearance of beings. I conclude with some brief reflections on the sense in which Heidegger considers the vocation of “courageously” and “thankfully” thinking this nothing as perhaps the fullest expression of human freedom.