EXISTENZ PHILOSOPHY
47
The peculiar fascination, which the thought of the Nothing has
exercised on modern philosophy, is not simply characteristic of Nihil–
ism.
If
we look at the problem of the Nothing in our context of a
philosophy revolting against philosophy as pure contemplation, then
we see it as an effort to become "Master of Being" and thereby to
question philosophically in such a manner that we progress immediate–
ly to the deed; thus the thought that Being is really the Nothing has
a tremend
antage. asing himself on this, Man can imagine
himself, can relate himself to Being that is given, no less than the
Creator before the creation of the world whic as we know, was
created out of
thing. n the characterizing of Being as Nothing
-there is, finally, the attempt to get away from the definition of Being
as the given, and to transform the activities of Man from being godlike
to being divine. This is also the real reason why in Heidegger
the Nothing suddenly becomes active and begins to "nothing." The
~
"n tries so to
spe~,
1E
reduce to n_Qthin the giyen-ness
of
Bcing,
and to put itself in Being's place.
If
Being, which I have not created,
is t e occasion of a nature which I am not and do not know, then
perhaps the Nothing is the really free domain of Man. Since I am
not a world-creating being, perhaps my nature is to be a world-des–
troying being. (These conclusions are now quite freely and clearly
developed in Camus and Sartre.) This, in any case, is he philoso–
phical basis for modern Nihilism, its origin in the old ontology; the
attempt to stretc t
e
new questions and content to the old frame–
work here takes its revenge.
But whatever the point of departure of Heidegger's attempt, its
great advantage was that it took up directly the questions which Kant
had interrupted and which nobody after him had broached. Amid
the ruin<> of the ancient pre-established harmony of Being and
thought, of essence and existence, of the existing being and the
What of the existing being conceivable through reason,-Heidegger
maintains that he has found a being, in whom essence and existence
are immediately identical, and this is Man. His essence is his existence.
"T,he substance of Man is not mind ... but Existenz." Man has no
substance, the important thing is
that
he is; one cannot ask after
Man's What as after the What of a thing, but only after his Who.
~an
as the identity of Existenz and essence appeared to give a new
key to the question--concerning Being in general. One need only re–
call that for traditional metaphysics God was the bei g in wliom
essence and existence coincided, in whom thought and activity were
identical, and who was therefore interpreted as the otherworldly
