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Nonetheless, it is not yet clear what specific function the nothing plays apart from providing an equilibrium to being in the course of the disclosure of beings. If the nothing is to be more than a quasi-logical assertion concerning a space or negation of space that is required in order for beings to appear, then its ‘activity’ requires clarification. What work does the nothing do? As Inwood explains, ‘We are looking for a problem to be solved by the Nothing. But we find a surfeit of problems, all apparently solved . . . by the nihilating of the Nothing.’ Those problems are listed as follows:

How do we relate to beings as beings?

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Why are we selves and why are we free?

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How are we aware of beings as a whole?

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How is negation or denial possible?

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Could God create the world out of nothing?

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Why do we ask why something is the case and look for reasons for it?

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What is the relationship between metaphysics and ordinary everyday life?

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Why are there beings at all and not rather nothing?

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For Heidegger, the Seinsfrage directs all of the above questions. The relation of beings to one another, the awareness of the whole of beings, and the ques-tioning of the origin of that whole, all require the ability to differentiate any being from another. Included in this differentiation is the ability to distinguish by means of negation and hence the origin of negation is also under investiga-tion. Without distinction no being can differ from any other and human being cannot be made aware of any such difference. In order to account for such dif-ference within and between beings, Heidegger asks, does differentiation itself have an ontological origin?

First, every metaphysical question always encompasses the whole range of metaphysical problems. Each question is itself always the whole. Therefore, second, every metaphysical question can be asked only in such a way that the questioner as such is also there within the question, that is, is placed in ques-tion. From this we conclude that metaphysical inquiry must be posed as a whole and from the essential position of the existence [Dasein] that questions.¹⁹ In Heidegger’s recounting of metaphysics, he repeatedly subsumes tradi-tional distinctions beneath the enquiry into the whole. That whole relates to the Seinsfrage and the fact that beings appear at all. Thus, Heidegger cannot proceed until he has drawn out the fundamental ontological distinction between being and nothingness which appears to precede the emergence of beings. Only then can we proceed to question beings and thus to traditional

metaphysics. Consequently, Heidegger guides us away from questions relating to beings (ethics, politics, aesthetics etc.) and onward to face the whole of beings or, as he puts it, ‘the whole range of metaphysical problems’. It is at this juncture that we are asked to consider the whole of beings as a metaphysical problem. However, the path that leads us from questioning this or that par-ticular being (traditional metaphysics/positive science) to the problem con-cerning beings as a whole (fundamental ontology) is, for Heidegger, a radical leap in thinking which surpasses the scope of traditional metaphysics. The turn towards the whole of beings as a metaphysical problem relates to the attempt in Being and Time to wean philosophy off its metaphysical victuals that have most often been described in terms of objective beings, leading to an obsession with the being that receives the knowledge of those objects: human consciousness.²⁰ Hence, Heidegger argues that the Seinsfrage cannot be answered (or even asked) within the limits of traditional metaphysics; for an articulation of the problem a different approach is required. As he declares vis-à-vis the Seinsfrage, ‘There is no gradual transition from the customary by which the question could slowly become more familiar. This is why it must be posed in advance, pro-posed, (vor-gestellt), as it were.’²¹ Heidegger presents the Seinsfrage as preceding enquiries relating to any being in particular. There is a fundamental distinction between being and beings that is given to us neither in rational analysis nor in the course of immediate experience of phenomena. It is this distinction that Heidegger wishes to uncover and describe through the question of nothingness. As such, although Heidegger registers his concerns with negativity and nothingness in certain sections of Being and Time, What is Metaphysics? can be considered to be a development of the problem.²²

When pointing us towards the whole of metaphysical questioning and stating that ‘metaphysical inquiry must be posed as a whole and from the essential position of the existence [Dasein] that questions’, Heidegger is asking a ques-tion concerning condiques-tions: ‘What would be necessary for beings to appear to us as beings?’ Only when the conditions for the emergence of beings as a whole has been satisfied can derivative metaphysical questions be asked. It is in this manner that the Seinsfrage is ‘included in every question’, the conditions for occurrence of beings accompanies every question, a point that appears to escape Inwood:

Why, Darwin asked, do moths fly toward a candle, but not towards the moon?

This question is of no immediate practical relevance. But asking it need not surely commit one to asking, or in some sense presuppose that one has asked,

‘Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?’²³

For Heidegger, the Seinsfrage is in every question owing to the fact that every being which is able to question or be questioned contains within itself the

‘history of manifestation of beings’. As a manifest being, each being is related

to the conditions of its own appearance and hence to the appearance of beings as a whole. However, as Wittgenstein, Carnap and Heidegger himself suggest in separate ways, to talk of nothingness as if it shares the same space as a being is to talk nonsense; the nothing is not a being. However, according to Heidegger, we may speak of the nothing without attaining the nothing itself.²⁴ Metaphysics in Heidegger’s hands begins to shed its traditional distinctions as the search for the fundamental question regarding the appearance of beings turns towards the whole of metaphysical questioning, which is deemed to require a ground or

‘space’ for beings to appear before the traditional distinctions can align them-selves. It is for this reason that Heidegger develops both a phenomenology of the nothing and an antagonistic attitude towards reason and rationality in unison: the nothing is required to ‘order’ beings, and yet the nothing cannot be ‘reached’ via a logical analysis. Reason requires ‘something’ on which to think, that is, a being or entity to inquire into.²⁵ As a fundamental constituent of the becoming of beings the nothing is not a being but a condition for beings to appear and is therefore, in some respect, beyond beings or ‘meta-physical’. With this thought in mind, the implicit criticism of the philosophical tradition is that it has not been ‘meta-physical’ enough. Traditional metaphysics, owing to its fascination with beings, things, entities, has been unable to articulate the condi-tions for beings to appear except through recourse to another ‘being’ and therefore remains silent on the true essence of the condition. Furthermore, the categorization of metaphysical beings has been completed using the thinking that concerns itself with entities – reason. If traditional metaphysics, owing to its methodological trust in reason, is incapable of formulating the Seinsfrage in a manner that will ‘attend to’ the conditions for the becoming of beings, then reason itself will have to be abandoned.

Due to the manner in which it thinks of beings, metaphysics almost seems to be, without knowing it, the barrier that refuses human beings the primordial relationship of Being to the human essence.²⁶

Heidegger regards the investigation into the ground of all being and thinking as containing a fundamental difficulty. What is required is a way of attending to the conditions for beings without articulating those conditions heretically, that is to say, in terms of a material being. How then can the question into what is prior to beings proceed?

Heidegger realizes that when inquiring into the ground of metaphysics he may have to proceed without the use of reason and therefore without the traditional tools of philosophy. Reason, and its requirement to think in terms of concepts and things, already produces a ‘stance’ towards the beings under investigation.²⁷ This ‘stance’ is what common usage understands by ‘ontology’:

the adoption of a metaphysical position or ‘ideology’ towards the world or the object of study. This form of ontology is not the goal of Heidegger’s investiga-tion. Rather, he wishes to formulate or reveal a fundamental ontology that

destabilizes subsequent ‘ontologies’ by disclosing their posterior ontic nature.

The weapon Heidegger employs to these ends is, confusingly, ‘nothing’. It is offered as the ‘antidote’ to positive science and positive thinking. Its technical purpose is to provide the means for thinking beyond reason and beyond the beings that bend us towards their ‘material’ or ‘thingy’ nature requiring us to think in positive terms.

However, a problem arises. If the function of the nothing is to bring us into contact with the ontological condition, then how is the nothing made known to us? If we follow Heidegger’s argument and agree that metaphysics is problem-atic because of its rational preoccupation with beings, then we accept that beings are obstructive, wherein we are in some way assenting to the problem of transition. Heidegger seems to be maintaining that the condition for beings cannot be revealed through an investigation into those beings. There is an aporia that exists between being and beings. If beings are presented as a prob-lem, which prevents Dasein’s comportment to being from occurring, then how is the disclosure of the ‘condition’ to arise? Furthermore, this impediment appears to be contrary to an earlier pronouncement in Being and Time:

We shall proceed toward the concept of Being by way of an interpretation of a certain special entity, Dasein, in which we shall arrive at the horizon for the understanding of Being and for the possibility of interpreting it; the univer-sality of the concept of Being is not belied by the relatively ‘special’ character of our investigation.²⁸

The problem of transition contends that there is no logical or causal pathway between two points and only a ‘radical leap’ in thinking will facilitate the passage from one point to its condition. In this case we happen to come up against the possibility that beings themselves constitute a problem that requires surmounting; a thought that threatens to leave the phenomenological approach of Being and Time far behind. However, the citation above denotes the use of a being, a ‘special entity’, in order to proceed towards the ‘concept of being’, which is made available to the special entity Dasein. This apparent inconsist-ency calls for clarification. The rejection of beings, which seems to be implied in What is Metaphysics? and Heidegger’s later work has its basis in a decision that deeply engages with philosophical and theological history.²⁹ Heidegger is confronting the ancient pronouncement that ‘nothing comes from nothing’

and Leibniz’s rendering as the principle of sufficient reason, ‘nothing is with-out reason’. To take this line of thought to its ultimate conclusion is to reflect on the cause of beings in general and hence the transition from beings to their cause and vice versa. Therefore, the status of beings becomes obscure if they are to be regarded as an obstacle to the attainment of the condition of beings.

It is for this reason, at least as far as Being and Time is concerned, that the entity called Dasein is given special status as the being whose concern is the being of beings, thus the disclosure of the condition of beings in general is a question

of transition that only Dasein can formulate. Dasein performs a mediating function in the investigation that allows Heidegger to accept the significance of some beings while rejecting the status of beings in general.

To recognize the enquiry into the condition for beings to emerge as enga-ging with the problem of transition we are asking if, for one, a transition occurs and, secondly, what is the nature of that event? If no transition is necessary, then there are philosophical implications to this discovery. The problem of trans-ition as found in Schelling and Hegel is the transtrans-ition from the ‘real’ to the

‘ideal’, that is, the real to the Absolute. For Schelling in the Naturphilosophie and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit the problem of transition is resolved by making the ideal and real the ‘other of each other’ and, therefore, precluding the need for a further ground from which their relationship emerges.³⁰ The ideal and the real can be said to identify each other. Heidegger is rejecting this position and arguing for a fundamental distinction between beings and their condition.

The dialectical unification that Hegel produces in his Phenomenology is, accord-ing to Heidegger, another engagement with beaccord-ings, and it is this definition of a metaphysical absolute that is attacked in Hegel’s Concept of Experience.³¹ Heidegger continues in What is Metaphysics? to argue for the occurrence and magnitude of a transition through ‘transcendence’.³²

The exact embodiment of these fundamental principles, ‘transition’,

‘transcendence’, and ‘being’ and ‘nothingness’ as the condition for the emer-gence of beings is not yet described; however, their functions are becoming more refined. It is not that one cannot attend to the conditions for beings through an investigation into, for example, Dasein itself as a being. Rather, Heidegger objects to the metaphysical method. In his view, the nothing has generally been subsumed under the concept of negation and the word ‘not’ as the expressed form of that negation in formal logic. A negation or a succession of ‘not-beings’ reveals neither beings as a whole nor the nothing itself: negation is not sufficient to reveal the whole of beings. For Heidegger, the nothing has a primary ontological nature that precedes the act of negation. As he affirms, ‘We assert that the nothing is more originary than the “not” and negation.’³³ Formal logic will not approach primal nothingness as the applica-tion of negaapplica-tion is dependent upon there already being entities present for the logical consciousness to negate. The crux of Heidegger’s argument rests upon encountering the nothing in a fundamentally different manner that comes within reach of the originary ontological nature of nothingness, and thereby

‘transcendence’.

However, we may pause to consider if this form of thinking is not an overturn-ing of phenomenology’s ‘positive’ treatment of thoverturn-ings as real existences within

‘appearance’.³⁴ In raising the question of nothingness, is Heidegger not simply returning to abstract conceptual thinking, which may or may not have an intentional associate in existence? It is for this reason that Heidegger develops a phenomenological analysis of the nothing as found in human ‘experience’.

He claims that the nothing is not a conceptual negation: it is ‘encountered’.

The nothing gains the rank of ‘thing’ that is not a ‘thing;’ nevertheless, it occurs in the experience of anxiety.

The nothing unveils itself in anxiety (Angst) – but not as a being. Just as little is it given as an object. Anxiety is no kind of grasping of the nothing . . . Rather, we said that in anxiety the nothing is encountered at one with beings as a whole.³⁵

It is experience that retains the ‘positive’ aspect of phenomenology whilst also acknowledging the nonsensicality of a direct encounter with the nothing itself, which would take the form of an absolute negation or annihilation. It is this sense of closeness and repulsion that drives Heidegger’s philosophy into areas that are not traditionally associated with metaphysics. As Werner Brock explains:

A distinction of great significance . . . separates this negative answer [the logic of negation] from the positive one [experience of the nothing]. The totality of all that is can never be comprehended in its absolute sense. This, Heidegger admits, is impossible on principle. But in contrast to this impossibility stands the fact that we, as men, are placed amidst a great multitude of beings within the ‘whole’. This is, indeed, our fundamental position, which constantly repeats itself throughout our life; and this being placed amidst beings within the ‘whole’ (the ‘Befindlichkeit’ of Dasein, as analysed in ‘Being and Time’) opens up the realm of metaphysics; we are thus, potentially, face to face with metaphysics already in our actual Dasein, however, little many of us may be aware.³⁶

Ultimately the totality cannot be ‘known’, nonetheless, we are within some form of a whole that is communicated to us by way of our existence. According to What is Metaphysics?, the conditions for the emergence of the whole are to be made available to us through the transcendence of the nothing.