Heidegger and European Nihilism

Abstract

It wouldn’t be possible to understand the confrontation that Heidegger engages with the great question of nihilism without the long and meticulous interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, and in particular of the posthumous fragments known as “The will to power”. Starting from two apparently marginal passages of the course titled “Nietzsche : The European nihilism”, we will see how, according to Heidegger, more than in a loss, nihilism consists in a chance for western philosophy to remember the authentic ontological mystery. But such a comprehension is possible only because his research leads him to discover that the story of nihilism is, from Plato to the modern technical sciences, the story of metaphysics itself. This result allows him to re-think the constitutive lack-of-Being occurring in the time of nihilism as the necessary modality in which the being historically gives itself to us. Briefly retracing these heideggerian paths, the aim of this essay is to focus on and deepen the relationships of the German philosopher with ancient philosophy, modern and contemporary thought and, last but not least, Christianity.