Big Nothing

Kant defends the logical consistency of metaphysical groundlessness from the objection that a groundless being would be grounded on nothing, and therefore, on something—a “Big Nothing.” Instead, what is groundless has non-being for its ground; logic yields a formal concept of non-being as the negation of all that exists. Heidegger goes further in giving a positive characterization of the nothing: the nothing “makes possible the manifestness of beings” and “belongs to their essential unfolding.” Our openness to beings reveals beings as distinct from the nothing. The internal structure of this openness (‘something and not nothing’) is revealed in fundamental attunements like anxiety. I consider objections to Heidegger’s account from Carnap and Wittgenstein and offer a Heideggerian response. I show that Wittgenstein’s final assessment of metaphysical statements is more ambivalent than Carnap’s. Where Carnap mocks Heidegger for expressing his feelings in the form of a theory, Wittgenstein recognizes the direction of Heidegger’s thought, and concludes that what Heidegger wants to express is—Schade!—inexpressible. There is a there there; it’s just that language isn’t capable of saying so. Heidegger’s response is that metaphysics neglects to ask about the condition (being/the nothing) that makes beings possible — it identifies being with presence. Ironically, the attempt to eliminate metaphysics through the logical regimentation of language terminates in metaphysics—a metaphysics of presence. This metaphysics flattens every attempt to think about the world into a consideration of beings without any room for consideration of being, as that which makes their manifestation possible. For Heidegger, by contrast, nothing is the ground of grounds, the reason for reasons. We find things intelligible because of the nothing that allows us to find ourselves in a world of beings.