Rachel M.

Coleman
John Paul II Institute

Patristic Medieval Renaissance Conference 2018

Villanova University
Villanova, PA
“How is it with the Nothing?”: A Thomistic Response to Heidegger

In his seminal essay, “What is Metaphysics?” Martin Heidegger proposes that the core of any

truly metaphysical thinking is addressing the question, “how is it with the nothing?”; he states he will

“provide metaphysics the proper occasion to introduce itself,” and this introduction is best achieved

by asking not what metaphysics is or does, but, “Wie steht es um das Nichts?”i We are thrown, as we

always are with Heidegger, directly into his simultaneously enlightening and frustrating use of

language: how can we ask such a question? why even ask it, if metaphysics is the study of reality, of

concrete beings or substances, as Aquinasii so often reminds us in his corpus? Further, we’re not

asking what is nothing (though that too seems an impossible task), but how is it with the nothing? We

thus enter into the essay already off-kilter, which is, I am sure, exactly what Heidegger desired.

I cannot here unpack even all of “What is Metaphysics?” let alone the entirety of Heidegger’s

many-stagéd thought, so let me offer a short sketch of how I understand Heidegger’s proposal in

this essay so that we can move on to thinking about how we might respond to it. Heidegger, in his

normal skepticism with regard to all thinking that has come before him, proposes that in

metaphysics we have more or less lost the ability to ask the question about the nothing because we

objectify—that is, make into an object—anything which we interrogate. But the nothing is not—

cannot be—an object, because it is nothing. When we do approach the nothing in an objectifying

line of questioning, we attempt to understand it as negation, of an object or all objects.

According to Heidegger, however, this line of reasoningiii halts thinking entirely because it

makes the nothing a function, as it were, of beings—albeit beings as logically and conceptually

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negated. But this is not sufficient, Heidegger writes; “we assert that the nothing is more originary

than the ‘not’ and negation.”iv The nothing, he writes, “must be given beforehand. We must be able

to encounter it.”v

Again, we’re left asking ourselves what in the world this could mean, and Heidegger is not

without awareness of the seeming absurdity of his own line of reasoning here. He asks, “where shall

we seek the nothing? where will we find the nothing?”vi He goes on to say that encountering the

nothing seems almost impossible because we only seek that which we at least know in part

beforehand, that we anticipate, in some sense, that for which we search—how can we seek that

which does not exist?

An encounter with the nothing, says Heidegger, only comes when we are finally able to

bypass, so to speak, our oft-used concept of “beings as a whole,” to which we are most often

attuned. This kind of attunement or mood, he writes, “is not wrong, but it does conceal us from the

nothing we are seeking.”vii Thus, there must be a different kind of attunement—a “correspondingly

originary attunement,” he calls it, that makes manifest the nothing. This mood Heidegger calls

anxiety.

Anxiety—Angst—is not fear, but rather something much more indeterminate. In fact, its

indetermination is its defining feature.viii It leads to feeling unheimlich or uncanny; we can’t put our

finger on exactly why we feel uncanny, we just do. And it is in this mood of anxiety, says Heidegger,

that beings recede from us—we can’t quite get ahold of them. This recession is importantly not a

disappearance of beings but an overall feeling of being unable to grasp beings: “we can get no hold

on things.” And this inability to grasp or hold onto beings results in anxiety. And, as Heidegger puts

it, “Anxiety makes manifest the nothing.”ix

Anxiety is the mood that allows us to see, so to speak, that the concept of “beings as a

whole” is perhaps not quite right—not quite equal to our experience, we might say. And this is true

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on two accounts: first, as much as we define or objectify beings, we can never really get to the

bottom of them—they are never really “ours for the taking” and second, when we lump all beings

together into a concept of “beings as a whole,” beings themselves don’t have the space, so to speak,

to disclose themselves. But we see this, says Heidegger, only if we allow ourselves to be present to

the fundamental attunement of anxiety. In anxiety we find ourselves unmoored, not quite at home,

and not knowing where to root ourselves. This is how anxiety makes manifest the nothing, and it is

only in staying present to this mood that we can properly ask, “how is it with the nothing?”

Notice that Heidegger still asks, “how?” and not “what?” here. Though anxiety makes

manifest the nothing, it does not allow a definition, nor does it allow us to grasp or take hold of the

nothing in any way. The nothing is not for us to hold onto, indeed it is a reminder that we are

unmoored. Let me offer here a somewhat over-simple explanation of the nothing according to

Heidegger: the nothing is that which cannot be grasped. It is, we might say, the ungraspable or that

which makes beings ungraspable. And it is when we realize that this is the case that anxiety arises

and the nothing unveils. Notice that this anxiety doesn’t arise in a different moment from knowing

beings themselves, but is co-originary—that is, “the nothing makes itself known with beings and in

beings” and it does so “precisely as a slipping away of the whole.”x

We repeat: the nothing is not a negation of “beings as whole.” In fact, says Heidegger, the

receding of beings from our grasp that the nothing manifests is not a disappearance of beings, but

the turning of beings toward us. In beings’ very slipping away, they are, we could say, shown to us

anew. In what sense? That beings are not nothing. That beings are beings can only be seen because

“the clear night of the nothing” allows them to be seen as such. These two phenomena are co-

originary: that beings are beings and that they are not the nothing.

The nothing, therefore, is essentially repelling, says Heidegger—and this does support our

provisional explanation of the nothing as that which cannot be grasped. This “repelling gesture”

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allows beings to be seen not as a concept—that is, the concept of “beings as a whole”—but in

themselves. This repelling gesture that is simultaneously a letting beings be seen in themselves is

what Heidegger calls nihilation. “The nothing itself nihilates,” he writes. The nothing does not -

annihilate—it does not destroy or negate beings—but just the opposite: allows them to be seen

anew: “The essence of the originally nihilating nothing lies in this, that it brings Dasein for the first

time before beings as such.”xi We can only encounter beings truly with the nothing. The nothing, he

writes, “belongs to their essential unfolding as such. In the being of beings the nihilation of the

nothing occurs.”xii

Nihilation, then, is the key to the nothing. It is the co-originary movement that enables

beings to unfold themselves and allows Dasein to encounter beings. But in so doing, Dasein also

encounters his own unrootedness in the nothing. In anxiety we encounter the nothing.

I’m going to take a step back now to try to explain briefly why Heidegger’s thought is so

attractive, despite its frequent opacity. There is after all some irony in metaphysicians returning often

to a thinker who ends up more or less disavowing metaphysics.xiii However, if metaphysics really is

about knowing reality—and again, following Aquinas, substances—then there is something to

Heidegger’s desire to free substances—or in his words, beings—from our thinking that we already

know them and therefore in allowing man to encounter those very beings anew. Or to put it another

way, to actually allow beings the freedom to disclose themselves to us rather than our anticipating

beings in our very search for them. To encounter beings afresh—what more could we want from

thinking?

There is also something, it seems to me, attractive and somewhat familiar about Heidegger’s

characterizing the nothing over against our tendency to grasp. Every thinker knows that there is

something ultimately ungraspable about his subject. There’s always something not quite articulable

“at bottom,” as we have all found in one way or another, I am sure. Heidegger just seems to be

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saying that this ungraspability is co-originary with—indeed, in some sense what enables—our

knowing beings at all. And this is not exactly untrue.

But then we have some problems here as well, as many have pointed out over the years. The

knowing of beings being necessarily connected to their nihilation does, it seems to me, present us

with a problem of what knowing is at a profound level, and it also presents us with the problem of

what beings actually are. Even if we grant Heidegger the claim that most thinking—up until

himself—has been anticipatory and therefore conceptual, we still have to ask the question of why a

being must be nihilated, or recede from us in order then to disclose itself anew. Why is this push-

pull dynamic necessary for beings to be known?

As much as Heidegger tries to qualify, it does seem as though there is some sort of negation

at the basis of knowing anything at all, albeit one that is co-originary with the positive reality of the

individual being itself.xiv To ensure that there is dynamism in both beings and thinking—that is, to

ensure that we can never settle down into a conceptual and anticipatory way of conceiving beings—

Heidegger proposes a double—we might even say contradictory—foundation to all being.xv But can

contradiction really allow a being to disclose itself in freedom such that it may be known by

Dasein—that is, man, the knower? Contradiction seems to facilitate a constant moving back and

forth between disclosure and nihilation, rather than a being being set free, so to speak, to be known

by another. In order for a being to be known anew, it must be nihilated, in order to for nihilation

not to be the last word on knowledge, beings must disclose themselves, and so on and so forth: all

contradiction seems to disclose is contradiction.

My issue here is with beings themselves, what they are and what they disclose for Heidegger,

in light (or not) of his understanding of the nothing. With the nothing at beings’ backs, so to speak,

are they ever afforded the freedom to be known? If beings can only be known in and through a

contradiction—or, we might say, contradictory forces—then all that is actually disclosed is those

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contradictory forces: the push-pull of disclosure and nihilation. Beings themselves are lost in the

shuffle, so to speak. So in the end, if the question of metaphysics is really “how is it with the

nothing?” then those features of Heidegger’s thought which I said earlier are attractive to us—the

freshness of beings, their ungraspability—end up obscured in the darkness of the nothing’s

nihilation. In fact, this darkness is all that is disclosed.

My question is whether anything can be redeemed regarding Heidegger’s understanding of

the nothing. And indeed, I think there can be, though of course it requires a rethinking of the whole

from the beginning in a radically different light. And this is precisely what the German philosopher

Ferdinand Ulrich does: by thinking with and through Thomas, but with the questions of modern

philosophy in mind, Ulrich attempts to offer a radical response to thinkers like Heidegger.

Ulrich takes Thomas’s assertion that created being is simplex et completum sed non subsistensxvi to

be the key to understanding what beings are, how they can be known, and finally, what they reveal,

that is to say, it is the key to understanding the metaphysical structure of creation. In his first book

Homo Abyssus, Ulrich writes that it is precisely the non-subsistence of being that allows anything to

be at all. Esse, according to Thomas, is the act of all actualitiesxvii, the perfection of all perfections—

therefore it is esse that gives its actuality to every created being, that is to say, esse is each being’s act

of existence.xviii Esse is perfect in itself, thus, Thomas’s description as completum et simplex. However,

at the same time, created esse is non-subsistent: being itself does not subsist—indeed, there is no

“self” of esse. We seem here to come upon a fundamental contradiction, but Ulrich insists that there

is no contradiction to be found here. These two properties of being are not in contradiction, but

each can only be by the other’s presence. In this sense, we might translate simplex et completum sed non

subsistens, “simple and complete because non-subsistent.”

Because non-subsistent, esse is then, Ulrich affirms, nothing. Indeed, he repeats this

throughout Homo Abyssus: “Das Sein ist Nichts.” Being’s fullness, its perfection, Ulrich says, is only

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possible because it is nothing. “Because being does not subsist,” he writes, “it has really handed itself

over to beings.”xix Esse creatum is able completely and totally to give its fullness, its actuality, away

because there is no self in which that perfection can be kept, so to speak. The fullness of perfection

with which created esse is endowed is entirely for the sake of giving that fullness away and it does so

because there is no self or subsistence that contains or limits the actuality that esse is. Esse gives in

the measure by which it is given—that is to say, everything.

Let’s look at this from the other side: esse could not be the perfection of all perfections, the

act of all acts, if it were to retain this perfection for itself, as it were—that is to say, if being wasn’t

nothing, then it could not be given to be perfect actuality, because perfect actuality is infinite and

there is and can be only one subsistent infinite actuality. Created being’s perfection is given precisely

because it pours itself out to beings. Being’s being complete and simple depends on its being non-

subsistent and vice versa.

Esse is, Thomas tells us, the similitudo divinae bonitatis,xx it is the image of the divine goodness.

Ulrich connects this directly to being’s being simplex et completum sed non subsistens insofar as the “the

good is never jealous.”xxi That is to say, it is in the nature of the good to be generous, to give itself

away. Perfection, Ulrich argues, is always naturally generous, never jealously clings to itself. Thus, the

perfection of created esse entails its non-subsistence—its nothingness—and its non-subsistence is

what allows beings to be and to be revealed at all.

Created esse is therefore, according Ulrich, pure mediationxxii between God and the world.

“Ipsum esse,” he writes, “is ‘nothing’ between God and the creature.” Subsistent being is either God

or the creature; “that which is, other than subsistent being itself is ‘nothing.’”xxiii It is then the very

nothingness of being that allows for such mediation, that allows there to be both God and creation.

And the mediation of created being is a continuous giving away or pouring out esse’s given actuality

to subsistent beings.

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 Ulrich calls this pouring out of esse the Subsistenzbewegung, or the movementxxiv into

subsistence. The movement into subsistence is an explanation in some sense of being’s being

nothing: only God or beings are subsistent; being “itself” is nothing because being has always

already given its actuality away to subsistent beings.xxv Ulrich introduces the idea of the movement

into subsistence in order to describe the mark or character of the mediation of esse non subsistens.

Because esse non subsistens is the act of all actualities and at the same time nothing itself, every

individual being is at root, so to speak, marked with and founded upon the non-jealous generosity of

which esse is the image. The Subsistenzbewegung is thus Ulrich’s way of describing the fullness and

generosity that ground every being, and therefore too every being’s revelation of itself.

Ulrich then introduces another term to try and bring to light the radical implications of esse

as completum et simplex sed non subsistens: the term is “Duchnichtung” or transnihilation. According to

Ulrich, transnihilation is the flip-side, so to speak, of the movement into subsistence. If, when we

call esse’s giving itself to subsistent beings the movement into subsistence, we accent esse’s being

complete and simple; when we call the same movement transnihilation, we accent esse’s being non

subsistens. And here we might finally respond to Heidegger’s charge about the nothing and its

nihilating force head-on.

As stated earlier, the non-subsistence of created esse is precisely what allows esse to be the

similitudo divinae bonitatis (though of course the reverse is true as well). And therefore it is precisely

being’s nothingness that allows it to give its perfection to beings themselves so that beings may be

subsistent, that is to say, being’s very nothingness allows it to be pure mediation. Therefore, for

Ulrich, the non-subsistence of esse is just as important for the subsistence and existence of

individual beings as esse’s being complete and simple. Indeed, the perfection of created esse is not

possible, so to speak, without its being non-subsistent, that is to say, without its being nothing.

Being’s transnihilation is exactly where this is brought to light.

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 With the term transnihilation Ulrich highlights that the very nothingness of being, if we may

put it this way, is being transferred through or to individual beings. In the Subsistenzbewegung, esse

gives its actuality to individual beings, yes, but it also gives another property: its very nothingness.

What can this mean: to give its nothingness? For starters, it indicates that beings, though subsistent

in themselves, are never ipsum esse subsistens;xxvi but it is not just a negative reminder—rather, if the

non-subsistence of esse is what allows esse to be the image of the divine goodness, then by giving

over its non-subsistent mark, as it were, as well as its actuality to individual beings, then esse is again

imparting to every subsistent being the character or capacity to image the divine goodness as well.

Non-subsistence doesn’t just make possible the perfection of esse, it is a perfection of esse.

Transnihilation is therefore the name of esse’s imparting that very perfection to every individual

being.

It would be fair at this point to ask what this means or look like: I am asserting, in Ulrich’s

reading of Thomas, that every individual subsistent being bears a non-subsistent mark, as it were,

and that this non-subsistent mark isn’t simply a consequence of sin, but is itself a perfection. I would

hasten to mention that just as esse gives its actuality to individual beings in an analogous way, so

must this be the case in transnihilation. In transnihilation the perfection that is esse’s non-

subsistence is given analogously to subsistent beings. Then the fair question: in what way? Where do

we see this? And this is where I think using Heidegger as our foil is incredibly helpful: the non-

subsistent mark that every individual being carries is precisely a reminder, in their very revelation of

themselves, that no being can ever be fully grasped, wholly conceived, or completely known. Esse’s

being complete and simple and non-subsistent does not only allow individual beings to be known

and reveal themselves because it provides their very act of existence, it also imparts to them their

ultimately ungraspable character.

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 So then, it is the nothing that allows beings to be revealed! Well, no, Heidegger is not so

easily vindicated. As we saw earlier, for Heidegger, the nothing does not belong to beings, that is to

say, is not their source. In fact, the nothing is a repelling movement—a nihilation, which is in a sense

directed at Dasein, and which is co-originary with the disclosure of beings themselves. But the

contradiction present at the heart of every being prevents beings from actually disclosing

themselves; rather, all it discloses is contradiction. This understanding of beings then enslaves and

ultimately superficializes them: they are under the yoke of contradictory forces and do not have the

freedom to be known, so it looks as if there is nothing to know. The nihilation of the nothing

ensures that beings are ungraspable, yes, but this makes them superficial. There is nothing to grasp

at all. Heidegger’s understanding of the nothing, then, essentially thins out reality to the point where

the only thing to do is either objectify beings or withhold ourselves from trying to know beings. We

cannot, as metaphysicians, as thinkers, plunge into the depths of reality—that is, give ourselves to

reality—because there are no depths, neither beings giving themselves to be known, nor beings to

which we can give ourselves, only the opposing forces of disclosure and nihilation. Ultimately, the

nothing is all there “is.”

However, if we look at reality in the light of esse non subsistens, we can redeem the nothing,

and the ungraspability of beings takes on a completely different color. Beings, we see can see in this

light, are ultimately ungraspable because inexhaustible. Their source is not contradiction, which can

only disclose itself, but ultimately the inexhaustible and non-jealous goodness of which created esse

is the image. Beings’ inexhaustibility comes from being given subsistence by created esse, which

itself is nothing. Thus, beings are really given to themselves—themselves being their unique

reflection and refraction of the divine goodness. Notice too that this “mark” of non-subsistence is

precisely what allows beings to reveal themselves: the character of divine goodness that saturates

beings makes it so that beings can in truth give themselves—their very being—to the knower.

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There’s no obfuscation here in order to prevent objectification, but rather a free gift of self on the

side of beings that is of course not intentionalxxvii but is entirely natural. Every subsistent being can

reveal itself inexhaustibly because each has been given itself inexhaustibly by its source.

Thus, it is the case that nothingness reveals beings, as Heidegger seemed to intuit, though in

a radically different way than he thought. For Heidegger, ironically, the nothing does seem ultimately

to take on a subsistent character which conceals the very things which Heidegger desires to unveil

and encounter anew. But Ulrich thinks nothingness much more radically. He writes in Homo Abyssus

that “the non-subsistence of being constantly drives us to the concrete natura subsistens,”xxviii that is to

say, beings themselves. It is therefore only in the light of the non-subsistence of esse that beings can

reveal their inexhaustible depths, and that we can achieve what I believe Heidegger—and every

thinker—desires: to allow ourselves to encounter and be present to the inexhaustible newness of

every being.

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i Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” in Pathmarks, trans. David Ferrell Krell, ed. William McNeill, 84.
ii Summa Theologiae, I.45.1ad2. “Terminus ad quem est tota substantia rei.”
iii Reason, logic, and what it means to know is another theme that runs throughout “What is Metaphysics?” and its

subsequent “Post Script” and “Introduction.” This is not unrelated to what I am about to unfold in this short essay, but
I cannot here enter into it. Ultimately, however, the question that must be posed to Heidegger—and one which I do not
think he ever satisfactorily answers—is what it means to know something. Is knowledge simply objectification and
therefore domination? This seems to be where he lands finally. A small example: in his “Post Script” to this essay, he
writes, “The thinker says being. The poet names the holy” (237), but the subtle implication is that “saying” being
somehow degrades it. For more on this problem in Heidegger’s work, see D.C. Schindler’s The Catholicity of Reason,
especially chapter 2, “Giving Cause to Wonder,” pp. 163-228.
iv “What is Metaphysics?”, 86.
v Ibid.
vi Ibid.
vii “What is Metaphysics?”, 87.
viii It’s debatable that one could finally define anything in Heideggerian thinking.
ix “What is Metaphysics?”, 88. In German: “Die Angst offenbart das Nichts.”
x “What is Metaphysics?”, 90.
xi Ibid. In German: “Das Nichts selbst nichtet.”
xii “What is Metaphysics?”, 91.
xiii In his later “Introduction to ‘What is Metaphysics?’” Heidegger more or less disavows metaphysics, claiming that

metaphysical thinking is intrinsically objectivising, and so we must “get below” even metaphysics—thus the key to real
thinking at all is thinking the nothing.
xiv Heidegger himself explains this in his “On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s Physics B, I” found in

Pathmarks, pp. 183-230.

xv This double or contradictory foundation clearly has something to do with Heidegger’s absolute rejection of archê, as

that which will ultimately dominate and enslave everything that it generates. For Heidegger, there always must be a
double foundation so that a single archê can never control. For more on this in Heidegger’s words, see “Plato’s Doctrine
of Truth” in Pathmarks, pp. 155-182.
xvi De potentia, 1.1c: “Verbi gratia esse significat aliquid completum et simplex sed non subsistens.”
xvii Quest. disp. de Anima 6.2: “Ipsum esse actus ultimus”
xviii SCG 2.52: “no caused being is its own ‘to be.’”
xix “Weil aber das Sein nicht subsistiert, hat es sich den Seienden wirklich übergeben.“ Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der

Seinsfrage, Johannes Verlag (Eisiedeln, 1998), 52.

xx Quest. disp. de Veritate, 22.2.2.
xxi Timeaus 29e: “He was good, and in him that is good no envy ariseth ever concerning anything; and being devoid of

envy He desired that all should be, so far as possible, like unto Himself.” Dionysius takes this up into the Christian
worldview quite radically, and then Thomas takes up Dionysius’s thought. In Homo Abyssus, Ulrich writes that “God’s
self-communication does not in any way cling to itself” (Homo Abyssus, 57).
xxii “reine Vermittlung.“ The first place this appears in Homo Abyssus is p. 15, though it is included too many times to

count.
xxiii “das ipsum esse ist ‘nichts’ zwischen Gott und dem Geschaffenen”, Homo Abyssus, 15.
xxiv It is important to note that this is not a motus, i.e., a movement from potency to actuality. Ulrich writes that to speak

of “being’s movement into subsistence is never to suggest that an ens in-completum follows a path into its subsistence
because esse is no ens, but rather non-subsistence” (Homo Abyssus 33).
xxv This does not mean that esse is not real, nor that it is somehow a placeholder concept for understanding creation.

Esse is real, albeit it is not a thing in itself. Thomas writes in SCG I.26: “Much less is esse commune itself something
beyond all existing things—except in the intellect.”
xxvi “all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20)
xxvii This is why for Ulrich, man is ultimately the most proper reciever of being: he can intentionally take himself up and

give a free gift of self. See, esepcially Homo Abyssus, 397-423.

xxviii “die Nichtsubsistenz des Seins uns immer wieder zur konkreten natura subsistens treibt”, Homo Abyssus 110.

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