Paradoxically, then, the nothing, which is not something, is fundamental to being. As Heidegger concluded: “Da-sein means: being held out into the nothing.” As ‘held out into the nothing,’ Dasein is already “beyond beings as a whole,” which means that Dasein is already transcendent (‘finite transcendence’). The act of nihilation that presupposes the nothing (das Nichts nichtet), however, is primal not just to beings, but to the being of beings—it is the source of difference between the two; “In the Being of beings the nihilation of nothing occurs.” What does this mean? It means that the nothing is not the opposite of beings, “but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings.” The difference arising from the act of nihilation indicates a primal nothingness—which turns out to be being itself.

It is precisely at this juncture that Heidegger seems to have lost sight of the mystery of being. Despite the promise of his philosophy in his challenge to Scotus’ notion of being, because he assumed a fundamental disjunction between faith and being, Heidegger ended up with an ontology not too different from Eckhart’s (i.e., ‘God as being’). The ontological difference between being and beings was lost on account of the nothing, “which both generates the distinction and embraces it at the same time.” Here Heidegger’s affirmation of Hegel is notable: “Pure Being and pure Nothing are therefore the same.”[65] Being itself is ultimately identified with pure nothing—a univocity of non-being, as Connor Cunningham calls it. What is Heidegger’s notion of the nothing but an obverse onto-theology? Instead of identifying being with an absolute something, it is identified with the absolute nothing; the ontological difference is thereby reduced to a final monism.

¶ 12:20 PM