NIHILISM

NIHILISM

From the debate between Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger

by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann

Introduction: 'On the Line' -- "On: 'The Line'"

In his Essay 'On the Line'(1) the writer Ernst Jünger initiates a debate with the thinker Martin Heidegger. This debate deals with Nihilism. By recurring to the reflections of the thinker, the writer's experience of nihilism finds expression. The writer speaks in images when he talks of the fulfilment of nihilism in terms of a geographical meridian line, on this side of which humanity has developed historically. This historical stay has the character of a movement with regard to which nihilistic humanity relates to the line as to the nullity of the median. The nullity of the meridian names in images the historical nothingness of nihilism. Jünger also calls the nullity of the median the null point. Everything on this side of the null-line is contained in the movement of a nihilism which strives for fulfilment. The geographical image of the null-meridian also however includes the historical possibility of a transgression of this line. Such a possibility is to be understood out of a new orientation of being, which represents a reaction against the nihilistic orientation. Crossing the null point would be like a historical overcoming of Nihilism. It would amount to the historical possibility of being situated on the other side of a fully developed nihilism.

That Heidegger should have welcomed the debate opened up by this Essay is already evident from the title of the article with which he responds: 'On: "The Line"'(2). The slight change in Jünger's title brings out the difference between the thinker's and the writer's point of view. Inasmuch as the writer's conception is aimed primarily at crossing over the null meridian, at an overcoming of nihilism, the thinker's conception of such an overcoming addresses first and foremost the essence, and even the essential origin, of nihilism. Only by way of an uncovering of the essence and origin of fully developed nihilism can the thinker's conception point to a possible overcoming of nihilism.

The Writer's Experience and Consideration of Nihilism as Reduction

The nihilistic reduction

Prognosis, Diagnosis and Therapy are the titles of the three sections into which Ernst Jünger divides up his Essay. How and as what does Jünger experience nihilism? What are the salient features of nihilism? With a view to answering these questions we will turn to the section entitled: 'Diagnosis'.

Nihilism is a 'mighty Destiny', a 'basic force whose impact can not be avoided'(3). What we are inclined to call nihilism, Jünger takes to be simply the 'symptoms' of nihilism, its most characteristic features. In this way he makes it clear that for him nihilism is not to be identified with its symptoms; rather, that the latter are implicated in an essence which can only be determined by a suspension of its symptoms -- a task which falls to the thinker rather than the writer. Even before Jünger talks about the symptoms he brings out their main features through a concept of the reduction (4). Insofar as the world is characterised by nihilism, it is, 'in accordance with its essence, a reduced world and a world which can always be further reduced (5)', and which as such approximates to the null point. Reduction however implies contraction, and by the latter is meant a negating withdrawal. All the symptoms of nihilism are experienced as phenomena of reduction and contraction. In the nihilistic world the 'dominant sentiment', that which is determinant for humanity in the nihilistic epoch, is this feeling 'of the reduction and of being reduced (6). It is the growing experience that the former 'abundance is being diminished'(7), so that, through this contraction, humanity, in all walks of life, experiences itself as 'used up'(8).

In the life of humanity the nihilistic reduction bears, on the one hand, upon 'the beautiful, the good and the true.'(9) On the other hand, the nihilistic contraction also shows itself in such walks of life as 'economics', 'health', 'politics'(10). At the same time, reduction and contraction also 'apply to other 313e416d spheres with growing power and efficacy (11).'

Other notable features of nihilism Jünger finds in 'the disappearance of the wonderful', the decline in the 'forms of respect' and in 'astonishment as a source of knowledge'(12). The basic attitude of astonishment, the kind of astonishment which inspired Goethe's interest in natural phenomena, has given way to wondering about and bewitchment by 'figures in the spatial and numerical realm (13)'. Science, which originally grew out of wonder, has become 'a science reduced to pure calculation (14). The nihilistic reduction in science is also to be seen in this, that 'rest is deconstructed and wholly given over to movement (15). Even the 'growing tendency towards specialism' in the sciences, the 'splitting off of, and the concentration upon, the isolated item'(16) is seen by Jünger as a sign of nihilism.

Devaluation of the highest values 'leads to new claims being advanced in the thereby evacuated regions'(17). 'Innumerable substitute religions' arise, to which 'natural sciences', 'world views' and 'sects'(18) belong. The historical time of nihilism is a 'time of the Apostle without a mission'(19).

Another field of nihilistic contraction is, for Jünger, that of 'art'(20).

There is no longer any such thing as the perfected work of art'(21).

'Nothingness feeds on the work of art with monstrous force'(22).

As a further area of nihilistic reduction Jünger mentions the 'erotic'(23) whose sensual void is filled with a compulsive drive towards sex.

At the end of his review of the symptoms of reductionistic nihilism, Jünger notes that 'the collapse of the eternal Hierarchies with all the accompanying consequences' has already occurred quite frequently in human history (24) but that hitherto 'vast reserves still remained available'(25). This kind of collapse (in the history of culture) did not arise out of a historical nihilism. The nihilistic contraction on the other hand has taken hold of 'the entire world'(26).

As the most revealing indication of the nihilistic reduction in all fields of human existence, Jünger cites 'the reduction of number to a cipher or even of the symbol to simple systems of relations'(27). The most 'far-reaching reduction' is for Jünger 'that to pure causality'(28).

First of all the already reduced world gets reduced still further in that it approximates to the null meridian. This movement is that of a developing, not that of an already fully developed nihilism. From this historical moment however, a moment in which the line can be crossed, Jünger tells us that 'a new orientation of being' comes about, one through which 'we begin to glimpse what really is'(29).

The Daseins-analytical, Historically-appropriative Meaning of the Nihilistic Reduction

Heidegger responds to Jünger's topographically described nihilistic reductionism by conducting a topological enquiry into the historical essence of nihilism. If we want to follow him in this new line of enquiry, we first need to come to terms with what might be meant by a Daseins-analytical, historically-appropriative characterisation of the nihilistic contraction to the reduced world.

The world that is addressed here is the world of day to day life, the life-world. Life is here however grasped not from the standpoint of consciousness but from that of Dasein. So that the world is conceived as a human world (Daseins-Welt), the world of a humanistic being-in-the-world of human being. By world itself is however meant a whole composed of significant relations, of things making sense by being encountered as meaningful in the context of a world. They are encountered by Man in his life-world or his being-in-the-world, in his concernful dealings with in-human things and in his solicitous dealings with other human beings, those with whom he shares a common world. The inner worldly things with which he is confronted are discovered by him, brought to light, uncovered, in their worldly significance. He is however disclosed to himself, and in himself, through his concernful and solicitous dealings. In this very self-discovery the other is disclosed to him as another human being (Dasein).

The self-disclosure of his own being and the disclosure of the being of the other as well as the bringing to light of inner worldly beings are all essentially historically determined events. The disclosure of self and other and, correlatively, the discovery of entities, alter historically with each historical alteration in the discovery of the world and of being. Nihilism belongs along with this historical alteration. The phenomena which Jünger describes topographically as the reduction of the world and its existential domains give expression to a nihilistic contraction in the way in which the self and the other are disclosed, as also in the correlative bringing to light or uncovering of entities and the whole realm of existing things. The nihilistically reduced world is altered as it is contracted within the worldly comprehension and comprehensive discovery of beings. Just as all forms of sensitivity are rooted in a mode of disclosure of human being so the nihilistic attunement of mankind corresponds to a particular way in which self and other are disclosed.

The Thoughtful Consideration of the Essence and of the essential Origin of Nihilism

Turning to, and away from, Being

The thoughtful consideration of the essence of nihilism belongs 'within an examination of the essence of being'(30). For nihilism is a historically determined way in which Nothingness prevails and the essence of the latter belongs to the essence of being. Examining the essence of being with a view to a disclosure of the essence of nihilism, Heidegger seizes upon Jünger's expression: ' the turning toward of being'(31). What is the relation between being and this 'turning toward'? Being is nothing in itself which might 'in addition and from time to time'(32) be turned toward humans. Rather, the essence of being itself consists in this very turning towards. Already in this initial attempt at an examination of the essence of being it transpires that, from the first, the essence of being can only be exhibited out of this very relation, a relation which, as a turning toward in historically appropriative thinking, can be named en-owning or the en-owning project. In this way the examination of the essence of being is committed to the unfolding of the essence of being as en-own-ment.

So even here where only one feature of the historically appropriative essence of being is distinguished, the analysis already focuses upon the relevance of the nihilistic Nothingness for the essence of being. Being as a turning toward the essence of mankind not only happens alongside nihilism but as nihilism, namely, in so 'peculiar a way' that it 'turns away'(33). What is here called the 'turning away' of being is not the opposite of turning toward but rather a genuine way in which turning toward happens and prevails. So 'turning toward' has to be taken in a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense, the essence of being consists in the relatedness of the relation to the essence of mankind. Hence the talk about a turning away from being can not mean a breaking off of that relation but only an altered mode. Turning toward in the narrow sense names what Jünger has in mind when he talks of the 'new' turning toward which takes place as an alteration of turning away. In the turning away, being withdraws 'into an ab-sence'(34). But this turning away and this withdrawal are not nothing but take place as a change in the relational essence of being, whose most essential feature belongs to the essence of mankind. That the relational essence of being in the mode of turning away and withdrawal does not amount to a breaking off is to be seen in this, that we experience this nullifying withdrawal even more compellingly than the turning toward. We experience the compulsiveness of the turning away as that eerie undertow which draws us forth and which sucks us in, or even sucks up, 'our actions and aspirations'(35). This experience of being sucked in and sucked out is however that very nihilistic phenomenon which Jünger describes as the reduction.

If turning toward and turning away from being only happened 'from time to time and under certain conditions'(36) then not only would being itself but also human being be 'something in itself' that only from time to time and under certain circumstances succumbed to this turning toward and away of being. Contrary to such a conception, the being of human being is so constituted 'that it constantly lives and lasts in this turning toward and away'(37). The examination of the essence of being is now taken up in such a way as to bring out the second feature of en-own-ment, the relation of the essence of human being to the essence of being. The essence of human being consists in its existing. Existence lives and lasts in the turning toward and away of being. This lasting living finds expression in the appropriately human accomplishment of existence. The essence as a lasting living is not a perpetual but a specific mode of being, a historical happening. How does human being ex-sist, how does it live and last in its very being in the turning toward and away from being?

Ex-sisting displays a three in one structure. It takes place specifically, in such and such a way, out of the projective appropriative turning toward and away. In this sense, the lasting living has the character of thrownness. And because thrownness happens as appropriating, the lasting living takes place as appropriated. Brought to light as thrown in and out of the turning toward and away, ex-sistence comes to pass as projective, that is, as the projective disclosure of a mode of appearing. The being of human being lives and lasts in this mode of thrown, appropriated projection. What is historically projected in an appropriating project and thereby appropriatively re-jected as an historically e-jected mode of appearing of being calls for re-covery in and as the un-covering of beings. Re-covery happens as covering, or as an existential letting oneself be covered, or an ex-sisting covering which is itself appropriated. The ex-sisting covering of the pro-jected-re-jected mode of appearing takes place in and as a dis-covering approach to beings. Living lasting, as the being of human being, is carried through as a projective appropriated covering dis-covery.

Not only does the threefold existential essence of human being live and last out of this turning toward and away, or out of what is now better known as pre-sence and ab-sence, it is existing human being which 'collaborates' with being (38). The projective appropriated covering itself belongs within the complete happening of being, in the complete essence of being which, on account of the way in which it takes place is also called essencing. The complete essencing of being displays a countervailing trait: the appropriating pro-ject in contrast to the appropriated, re-jecting covering. Whereas en-owning connotes the former and more primary feature of an appropriating pro-ject, en-own-ment signifies the correlation of approriating pro-ject and appropriated re-jected dis-covery.

Not only is the essence of being nothing in itself which can in addition take up a relation to human being, the essence of human being is also nothing in itself which can just take up a relation to being. Just as the essence of being resides in this turning toward and away from human being so the existential relation to being already pertains to the essence of human being. The relational turning toward and away of being with regard to existence is as such the relation in the sense of a relating and 'needing'(39), which also needs the existential relation of human being to itself.

The counterposed directionality of the relation of turning toward and away from being to the essence of human being and the existential relation of human being to being can now also be characterised as the correlational structures of proposal (Geheib) and disposal (Gehür). The turning toward of the appropriating project happens now and then, that is, historically, as pre-sence to human being and this pre-sence is pro-posal (40), is a call, which, from time to time, that is historically, calls the essence of human being, its existence, into the historically addressed mode of appearing of being. It is only out of the call of pre-sence that the essence of human being 'belongs' [gehört] (41) in the sphere of pre-sence, that is, in that clarification of being to which it is called. This belonging is a new word for the thrownness and approriated character of existence. Only out of this existing belonging (thrownness) can human being exist as attunement to the call. Attunement stands here for the project, the projective disclosure. Existence comes about as a belonging listening, as a thrown appropriated project. Heidegger envisages this belonging listening as 'disposal' [Gehör] (42). 'Dis-posal' is a word expressive of thrown, approriated pro-jection. The complete essencing of being to which the essence of human being belongs, is the 'belonging together of call and disposal (43), or again, of pro-posal and dis-posal.

If the complete essence of being shows itself in the belonging together of call and disposal, then being and the being of human being should no longer be understood as words which isolate and separate. We treat both words as isolating and separating when we look at the relation of being to human being and human being to being. Even the talk of a belonging together of being and human being is only capable of setting the two in an incidental relation to each other. The talk of belonging together is only sufficient if the essence of being and the essence of human being are held in mind not as subsequent upon, but rather as original structures of, a counter-poised appropriating proposal and appropriated disposal. But the counter-poised structure of appropriating proposal and appropriated disposal is nothing other than en-own-ment. If Nothingness as a turning away or, as ab-sence, is a mode of essencing of being such that the complete essence of being still happens as the event of en-own-ment, then even Nothingness belongs in the event of en-own-ment, and the nullifying turning away (in distinction from the turning toward) has to be characterised more specifically as a manifestation of the event of en-own-ment.

The Crossing through of Being+ and Nothingness+

If the essence of being is nothing in itself but resides in the previously examined turning toward, then '"being" is resolved into this turning toward'(44). Being then has to be thought as a turning toward to which existing human being itself essentially belongs. With a view to finding a way to transcribe this insight into the historically appropriative essence of being, the latter [being as crossed through=being+] can only be thought through a crossing out. This crossing out has a negative as well as a positive meaning. What it warns against has already been indicated: Being thought 'as something that exists in itself and so only occasionally emerges as an over against of human being'(45). It pertains to such a conception of being that human being is in its essence excluded from being, that the essence of human being does not inhere in that of being but rather holds itself in this op-position to it. The crossing through of being averts this conception of being and human being as a relation of reciprocal op-position and therewith at the same time points toward the counter-poised structure of en-own-ment. Here, being is no longer an over against of human being because being is envisaged as a turning toward the essence of human being, which essence also makes up the essence of being inasmuch as being needs the projective disclosure of existing human being for its own essencing. In the same way, the essence of human being is, in the structure of en-own-ment, nothing like an over against of being because it only is what it is out of the needful relation of being to it.

In a second sense however, the crossing through is a positive indication, one which connects up with the four ends of the bisecting lines. These four ends signify 'the four regions of the fourfold (Geviert) and their gathering in the place of the crossing'(46). The four-fold names the gathering together of the four world regions Earth and Sky, Divinities and Mortals. Each of these regions is, as possessing worldly significance, a region of meaning. The world-fourfold is in this or that way, therefore is historically illustrated, for example in one of its actual modes of appearing. Hitherto, we talked about the essence of being as en-own-ment, of the presencing of the truth or manifestation of being as en-own-ment. If now the presencing of the truth of being belongs with the world as the fourfold, we are entitled to talk of the presencing of the truth of being+ as the coming into being of the fourfold. We can also however say: The truth of being as the fourfold prevails as en-own-ment. With the fourfold, the question of the being of the world is raised, a question fundamental ontology sees as belonging intimately to the being question.

The being of beings, its very ad-vent, is world-relatedness, and which receives its world-relatedness, its meaningfulness, from the regions of the world. The place where the two intersecting lines cross one another manifests itself in the gathering of the four world regions. This place is however that of beings gathered together in the regions of the world, what, with reference to its historical origin, can be called the 'thing'. But what is at issue here is not the thing-concept handed down through the ontological tradition but rather the thing-concept belonging to the history of en-own-ment. Thereby the word 'thing' designates the way in which beings are disclosed in their being, which is itself to be understood as a way in which the four world-bound regions of meaning are gathered together. The way in which the world regions are gathered together in beings and in their mode of uncovering is, at the same time, the way in which the disclosure of beings recovers the fourfold both as appropriating and appropriated. The gathering of the world regions has to be thought out of the covering and, conversely, the covering, out of the gathering of the fourfold. When henceforward we talk of the turning toward of being+, two things have to be borne in mind. On the one hand, we have to take into account being as crossed through in the manner explained above. On the other hand, being+, as that which is turned toward, is turned toward the truth of being+ as the fourfold. If we only speak of being, this is just an abbreviated expression for the turning toward characteristic of the clarification of being+ as the fourfold.

In order to bring out more precisely how it is that the essence of human being is connected with the complete essencing of being (therefore the clarification of being+ as the fourfold), the turning toward of what pre-sents itself to human being has first to be 'completed, insofar as the latter, human being, is mindful of it'(47). The minding of the turning-toward designates the way in which the essence of human being responds to the turning-toward. In its disclosive minding, the latter is a re-minding recollection. With the result that one can now say: 'Human being is essentially the memory of being, or rather of being+'(48). Here memory is not just memoria but thrown projective covering uncovering. The turn of phrase 'memory of being' is elucidated as follows: 'the being of human being belongs to what, in the crossing through of being, lays claim to being an initiating proposal'(49). The only marginal note by Heidegger to this piece in his hand written copy is to be found here and reads 'en-own-ment'. This marginal note says that the memory of being is to be thought out of en-own-ment. Human being belongs along with that which, as the crossing through of being+, calls forth existence, and that thinking which emerges out of existence, in the claim to an original ,that is, originating (in distinction from beginning) proposal [Geheißes]. 'Belonging' as that which in appropriating projection turns being toward the essence of human being tells us what 'en-owning' [Ereignen] means. The primary meaning of enowning is, as can be gleaned from Beitrage zur Philosophie: human being conceived as the property [Eigentum] of being (50). Out of the appropriating turning toward of the truth of being+ as the fourfold, the being of human being is determined as 'belonging' to being+ so that human being becomes the being enowned of projection and covering uncovering. Being enowned [Ereignetsein] means: being determined as the 'property' of being. The enowning of turning toward and the being enowned of revealing-concealing have to be understood out of this primordial meaning.

The primordial meaning of this counter-poised enowning and being enowned is emphasised yet again in connection with turning toward [Zu-wendung], when Heidegger says that 'human being makes use of it' [in sie verwendet] in order to get 'caught up in' it [sich verschwende] (51). In the appropriating turning toward, that existence which is thereby appropriated gets caught up in the turning toward, so that the existence employed in the clarification of the fourfold gets caught up in the full essencing of the truth of being as the fourfold in its disclosive and covering-uncovering fulfilment. The making use of happens as enowning, the getting caught up in arises out of that particular mode of being appropriated.

To the turning toward of the clarification of being+ as the fourfold belongs also as an essential moment, turning away, the nullifying withdrawal. For this reason, not only being but also that which belongs to its very essence, namely nothingness+, has also to be thought and written as crossed out (52). And because it pertains to the crossing out of being that it belongs to the essence of human being so also it pertains to the crossing out of nothingness+ that thoughtful human being also belongs to its essence (53). So we can also talk of the essence of human being as the memory of nothingness. In What is Metaphysics? Da-sein is determined as the place-holder of nothingness (54). That essence of nothingness which belongs along with the essence of being, its essencing as nullifying turning away or negating withdrawal is to be thought like being as historically appropriate. And because enownment is the essencing of the truth of being as the fourfold, negating withdrawal has its essential place in the en-own-ment of the fourfold. Negating withdrawal is in each and every one of its essential modes connected with the truth of being as the fourfold, is therefore also connected with the lightedness [Gelichtetheit] of world and world-relatedness.

Not every turning away happens as the negating Nothingness of nihilism. In nihilism, that Nothingness which belongs to the essence of being comes to prominence in a quite peculiar way'(55). Only, this quite peculiar mode of essencing of the negating withdrawal is nihilism. That nothingness which belongs to the essence of being is not to be characterised right away as nihilism. With this it is implied that this nothingness, the negating withdrawal, still then also belongs to the essence of being, that is, if nihilism is historically overcome, even for example, reversed. The overcoming of nihilism does not mean the overcoming of nothingness in general, but rather the overcoming of a particular historically determined mode of the negating withdrawal. And it holds of all modes of essencing of the negating withdrawal that existing human being should belong thereto, and indeed in such a way that it participates in the negating process. Hence, 'human being is not merely caught up in nihilism but even participates in it'(56). Just as human being itself belongs to the essence of being and of nothingness, so it also and of itself also belongs to the 'essence of nihilism'(57). As a being exposed to both being and nothingness'(58) human being contributes to that sphere in which nihilism fulfils itself. Nihilism has much of the character of a historically determined mode in which negating enownment manifests itself, inasmuch as the being of human being is appropriatively displaced in order that, as an appropriated existence, it can participate in the historical manifestation of the nihilistic nothingness.

Reduction [Reduktion] with regard to Beings and Production [Produktion] of Being: the Will to Power as the essence of Nihilism

In his essay 'On the Line', Ernst Jünger proposes a 'description of the locus of nihilism', to which there pertains 'an assessment of the place and the opportunities available to human being in the place described by means of the image of the line'(59). This 'Topography of Nihilism'(60) lends itself to a discussion with that thoughtful consideration whose most urgent possibility is the determination of the essence and origin of nihilism. As a thoughtful consideration of the essence, what might be called a 'topology'(61) can be characterised in contrast to the former literary topography. Indeed a consideration of the essence of nihilism belongs in any examination of the crossing through of being+, to the extent that the nihilistic nothingness belongs in general to the essence of being as a historically determined form of nothingness. Just such an examination of the essence of being+ (in connection with that nothingness+ which belongs to it) has already been proposed in the manner indicated above. In this way, consideration of the essence of nihilism has been brought to the point at which it becomes clear that henceforward this essence and this origin can be determined topologically. For it now becomes evident that this nihilistic nothingness, just like nothingness in general, belongs to the essence of being. However it has still not been shown clearly and unambiguously in what way the nullifying withdrawal of nihilism variously announced in the topographically described reduction of the world and of living being in the world, prevails and holds sway.

To take account of this relationship between the topography and the topology of nihilism means that a philosophical topology has to 'precede' a literary topography (62). Above all, this means that what the topology brings to light as the essence of nihilism precedes what can be topographically depicted in terms of the reduction. Thoughtful topology is characterised as 'the exhibiting of that place where being and nothingness are gathered together and which determines the essence of nihilism in such a way that a possible overcoming of nihilism thereby makes itself known'(63). This locus, one which validates the topology of nihilism, is an essential place, the place where being and nothingness are so essentially displayed in their belonging together that this belonging together accounts for the way in which the nihilistic nothingness prevails in the manifestation of being. This historically determined essential place is however a placement in en-own-ment, because it determines the mode of appearance of en-own-ment both historically and nihilistically.

The fundamental question for the topology of nihilism reads: Wherein do being and nothingness belong together and how is the essence of nihilism unfolded out of the inter-play between them (64)? This inter-play between being and nothingness, between turning toward and turning away, names the mode of essencing [Wesungsweise] of nihilism. In the turn of phrase 'being and nothingness' the 'and' expresses the essential belonging of each to the other. The mode of essencing of nihilism is a particular way in which nullifying withdrawal prevails in the turning-toward of being. What is sought is the 'wherein', the essential place of the nihilistic prevalence of withdrawal in the clarifying turning-toward of being. The answer to this question links up with the topographically designated reduction. For it should be possible to grasp the reductive experience and expression of the life-world and of life in the world out of the essence of nihilism. To the experience of a thorough-going reduction there also belongs the insight that the reduction 'is an on-going process of ever-increasing power and destructiveness'(65).

The nihilistic reduction in connection with an ever growing empowerment implies the following for thoughtful topology: 'a process whose depth and originality are ever diminished within the sphere of being in general is not merely accompanied by a growth in the will to power but actually determined by it'(66). 'Within being in general', that is, within the openness and unconcealment of beings, reduction, contraction and withdrawal take place with ever diminishing depth and originality. This 'ever diminishing' is nothing ontic but bears an ontological-historical stamp. For the openness or unconcealment of beings is not itself anything ontic. Beings can only be confronted out of their unconcealment. In their very unconcealment, beings confront us as determined with regard to what and how they are. The nihilistic reduction has been installed in this very unconcealment.

The growing empowerment, linked up with a process of ever diminishing depth and originality within the sphere of beings, is envisaged topologically as an increase in the will to power, a process by which the reduction and the contraction and with it the development of power within the sphere of beings is determined. A distinction is therefore drawn between the growing empowerment within the sphere of beings and the increase in the will to power. That will to power which is identified here under the auspices of topology is not readily contained within the limits of what Nietzsche meant by this phrase; rather will to power here takes on the form of a historical exemplification of the belonging together of being and nothingness, a belonging together from out of which proceeds both the reduction and, in connection therewith, that progressive empowerment within the unconcealment of beings. 'Being and nothingness', in the inter-play between which the essence of nihilism is unfolded, belong together in the will to power, in that will 'that wants itself'(67). The will to power as the will to will thereby shows itself to be the essence of nihilism. The will to power is the withholding mode of essencing of that nothingness which belongs to being and which as such makes up the essence of nihilism. In how nullifying a way does this self affirming will to power prevail?

If the reduction and that progressive empowerment which prevails within the sphere of beings belong to the essence of the will to power and its unending growth it could be said: 'that reduction which manifests itself within the sphere of beings is grounded in a production of being, namely, in the development of the will to power as an unconditional will to will'(68). This 'production of being' is a historical manifestation of the turning-toward of being but of such a kind that there also belongs thereto an overwhelmingly dominant turning-away in the sense of the nullifying withdrawal. In the first instance, this withdrawal within the sphere of beings is characterised by ever diminishing depth and originality. But that withdrawal which takes root in a nullifying mode of being of the will to power is not to be restricted to the above. Since the reduction within the sphere of being rests upon a peculiar production on the part of being, one could say: 'The contraction, the ab-sence is determined out of and through a pre-sence'(69). It is the pre-sence of the nullifying mode of being of the will to power which 'precedes every decline'(70). There where the sphere of beings declines it is not therefore this sphere itself which prevails but precisely something else (71). This decline within the sphere of beings does not means its disappearance and diminishment. On the contrary the ontic sphere can be augmented and exalted as never before, and even then it declines from the standpoint of unconcealment.

In what way however does that ever increasing will to power that wants itself nullify? How can this nihilistic nullification of the will-ful and power-ful be set out as an essential characteristic of being? The will to power as historical, indeed as the most modern and newest mode of essencing of being belongs to the conceptually fabricated historicality of being. As a historically determined ontological concept this word does not name what in everyday language is known as a human machination but 'an essence of being'(72), that essence of being that is decisive for the fabrication of all beings (73). The mode of essencing of being as fabrication means that here, within the process of unconcealment, making comes to the fore. The makeability of being as the will to power is exhibited in the basic makeability of all beings and, correlatively, in the artificiality of the modern subject, a subject whose entire being is centred in this mechanistic conception of everything. The makeability of beings means: everything that is, including human being itself, can be disclosed as constructible. Correlatively, the artificiality of the subject is shown in this, that all of its modes of disclosure are characterised by the artifice of making.

That makeability and artificiality which is exhibited in fabrication 'empowers the power which lies at its root'(74). The most up to date way in which the artificiality of being is displayed empowers itself to the extent that it allows power to emerge in its essence as 'overpowering'(75). The essence of power stems from the will to power as overpowering. Herein what is truly negative shows itself as that wherein the essence of nihilism resides. For overpowering is in itself a 'casting down and destroying'(76). This de-stroying (Ver-nichten) is, like everything else that has to be thought here, not meant in an ontic fashion. It is not a setting aside and clearing away of what is present at hand, not even a 'demolition and fragmentation in the sense of a radical disintegration of what presents itself'(77). The casting down and destroying in question is a much more ontological happening, one that takes place in the very process of uncovering as the 'trans-ition into nullity'(78). The destruction out of the overpowering power bears upon the what and the how of the realm brought to light and therewith the mode of unconcealment that corresponds to it. As utter destruction, the overpowering has more of an 'essential than a cumulative' character (79). The nihilistic negation as destruction does not in the first instance fasten upon whatever beings there might just happen to be, and precisely because it is not an ontic destruction, but rather 'first fastens upon being itself'(80) and this because the destruction proceeds from being itself.

The destruction that proceeds forth out of the overpowering power 'is the 'desertification' [Verwüstung]'(81). But even this is not an ontic waste and wasting of whatever is but an ontological 'undermining'(82) of each and every possibility of deciding. This means that beings can no longer be determined in their former modes of being what and how they are inasmuch as the latter have been drawn back into the nullifying destruction. Desertification is 'no longer being able to go back', because it can only go forward toward the extinction of every possibility of bringing beings as such in touch with their being (83). The will to power negates every ontological possibility of that very being which has been objectified by modern science and technology ever being able to enter into the historically determined illumination of being+ as the fourfold, and this because it is itself uncovered through a covering over of its former way of being what and how it is.

The overcoming of Nihilism as the Recovering [Verwindung] of the Set-up [Ge-stell]

The topology of nihilism is an enquiry into its essence. The will to power has proved to be the essence of nihilism in its destructive prevalence. The place and the placement of this essence of nihilism have been shown to be the place of the prevailing will to power. This essential place is however the set-up as the essence of modern technology and contemporary natural science. The essence of modern technology is that will to will which wants everything exclusively in the thoroughgoing and uniform availability of a standing reserve [Bestand], that is, that commands and 'sets it up' as such (84). This availability means a mode of disclosure determined by the nullifying will to power, while the standing reserve names that mode of disclosure of beings which emanates from the will to power, in that the formerly regulative being what and how of beings is overpowered and destroyed. The nullifyingly destructive will to power is, as the essence of nihilism, the essence of modern technology. The will to power is the 'unconditional unification of such a setting [Stellens]'(85). The unity (Ge) of the commanding setting (-Stell) is the set-up (Ge-stell).

The set-up is however the most recent mode of manifestation of en-own-ment, one in which the turning toward exhibits the basic trait of expropriation, so that human existence is expropriated out of the expropriating turning toward. The set-up as the manifestation of the event of appropriation [Ereignis] is expropriation [Enteignis]. The ex-propriating turning toward says: the being of human being does not belong to the realm of the disclosive manifestation of being. Existence is expropriated to the extent that it does not belong to the disclosive manifestation of being. The Ex-, attached to expropriation and expropriatedness, names the nihilistic withdrawal that takes place in en-own-ment. In conformity with the manifestation of expropriation, the disclosive manifestation of truth (or the illumination of being), as also the disclosive manifestation of the fourfold, are themselves also withdrawn. The nullifying overpowering of the world as that of the fourfold also negates the world-related being how and what of beings.

But even in and through the historical dominance of the Set-up 'being+ is not extinguished (86). In the expropriation of the Set-up the enownment of the fourfold does not disappear but simply undergoes its most extreme withdrawal. But as soon as the Set-up is thoroughly experienced as the enownment of the fourfold, the enownment of the fourfold breaks through with a 'peculiar kind of strangeness'(87). Within the dominant Set-up, the fourfold is experienced through its uttermost rejection. There belongs along with this experience the insight into the possibility of a historical overcoming of the Set-up and therewith also of nihilism in its ultimate culmination. If this overcoming is not just to be a turning away from the nihilistic essence of modern technology then it also has to be experienced and realised as a 'recovery' [Verwindung]. Recovery means here the very opposite of a turning away, namely, a returning toward. In the recovery, we wind ourselves around the essence of nihilism, we range around it and thereby 'go along with whatever this essence itself calls for, insofar as it calls us into that realm within which it is raised into the fullness of its truth'(88). That to which we are called by the essence of nihilism, by the nullifying will to power, the Set-up, is the disclosive manifestation of the lighting of being as the advent of the fourfold. Were we to reach just such a historical reversal in the Set-up through the advent of the fourfold, nihilism would have been overcome historically. The reversal of the Set-up in the self-appropriative fourfold would be the 'new turning-toward of being', with regard to which Ernst Jünger says that what really is then might begin to shimmer (89) -- a reality not of the reduction but of the fullness of the being how and what of being.

NOTES

1 E. Jünger, 'Über die Linie'. First appeared in: Contributions to Martin Heidegger's 60th birthday. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1960, pp 245-284. As a separate publication cited by Heidegger in his response and from which our citations are also drawn, see: E. Jünger, Über die Linie. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a M. 1950, pp 5-44.

2 M. Heidegger, 'Über die Linie'. In: Freundschaftliche Begenungen Festschrift für Ernst Jünger zum 60. Geburtstag. Pub. V. Armin Mohler. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a M. 1955, pp. 9-45. As a separate publication in: M. Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a M. 1956, fourth edition 1977, pp. 5-45. In what follows, we shall cite from this fourth edition.

3 'Über die Linie', p. 22

4 op. cit., p. 22.

5 ibid.

6 ibid.

7 ibid.

8 op. cit., p. 22

9 op. cit., p. 23.

10 op. cit., p. 23

11 ibid.

12 ibid.

13 ibid.

14 ibid.

15 ibid.

16 ibid.

17 ibid.

18 ibid.

19 ibid.

20 op. cit., p. 25.

21 op. cit., p. 10.

22 op. cit., p.40.

23 op. cit., p. 25.

24 ibid.

25 ibid.

26 ibid.

27 ibid.

28 ibid.

29 op. cit., p. 32.

30 Zur Seinsfrage, p. 25.

31 op. cit. p. 26.

32 op. cit., p. 27.

33 op. cit., ibid.

34 ibid.

35 ibid.

36 ibid.

37 ibid.

38 ibid.

39 ibid.

40 op. cit., p. 28.

41 ibid.

42 ibid.

43 ibid.

44 op. cit., p. 30.

45 op. cit., p. 31.

46 ibid.

47 ibid.

48 ibid.

49 ibid.

50 M. Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), Gesamtausgabe Bd. 65. Ed. v. Herrmann, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. Main, 1989, p. 263.

51 Zur Seinsfrage, p. 31.

52 Cf. ibid,

53 ibid.

54 M.Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M., fifteenth edition 1998, p. 41.

55 Zur Seinsfrage, p. 31.

56 ibid.

57 ibid.

58 op. cit. p. 32.

59 ibid.

60 ibid.

61 ibid.

62 ibid.

63 ibid.

64 ibid.

65 ibid.

66 op. cit., p. 32.

67 ibid.

68 ibid.

69 ibid.

70 ibid.

71 ibid

72 M. Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 69, ed. P. Trawny, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, p. 47.

73 op. cit., p. 46.

74 op. cit., p. 48.

75 ibid.

76 ibid.

77 ibid.

78 ibid.

79 ibid.

80 ibid.

81 ibid.

82 ibid.

83 op. cit., p. 49.

84 Zur Seinsfrage,p. 34.

85 ibid.

86 ibid.

87 ibid.

88 op. cit., p. 36.

89 'Über die Linie', p. 32.