Heidegger's Being and Time; CCWV.LIFE

In 1927 Martin Heidegger publishes Being and Time. His analysis of anxiety and the nothing, and his later lectures on Nietzsche, frame nihilism as the destiny of Western metaphysics itself: the forgetting of Being completed in the age of technology. Heidegger's account becomes the most influential philosophical treatment of the theme in the century.

Tagged: Nihilism

The Event

Date: 1927 (exact)
Era: The Century of Catastrophe; Standard periodization of the nihilist movement and idea
Location: Freiburg; today Freiburg, Germany
Traditions: Nihilism
Streams: Nihilism
Key figures: Martin Heidegger
Key texts: Being and Time

Connections

Illustration for Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals

History Event Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals 1887 takes up Nietzsche's diagnosis as a question of metaphysics

Primary Sources

Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Halle, 1927.

Secondary Sources

Crosby, Donald A. The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. Nihilism Before Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Reginster, Bernard. The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Provenance: HIST-1355; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.