Volume 6, 1998
Contemporary Philosophy
Laura Laiseca
Pages 165-172
Nihilsmo, Fin de la Metafisica y Secularizacion en el Pensamiento de Nietzsche, Heidegger y Vattimo
The purpose of this article is to articulate Nietzsche's criticism of morality which is centered in his experience of the death of God and the end of the subject of Modernity. Nietzsche considers nihilism as a nihilism of morality, not of metaphysics: it is morality and its history that has given rise to nihilism in the Occident. That is why Nietzsche separates himself from metaphysics as well as from morality and science, which differs from Heidegger's reasons. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche places himself in a primal position in the history of metaphysics, by which he means the consummation (Vollendung) of metaphysics' nihilism, which Heidegger tries to transcend. On the one hand, Heidegger shows us how Nietzsche consummates the Platonic philosophy by inverting its principles. On the other, Nietzsche consummates the metaphysics of subjectivity. Consequently he conceives the thought of the will of power and of the eternal recurrence as the two last forms of the metaphysical categories of essence and existence respectively. On this ground it is possible to understand Nietzsche's and Heidegger's thought as the necessary first stage in the transition to Vattimo's postmodern philosophy and his notion of secularization.