NEGATIVITY AND QUESTION: ORIGINS OF “WHY-QUESTIONING” IN PHILOSOPHY OF HEIDEGGER

Abstract

The article constitutes an analysis of the question “why” in its transcendental and existential foundations. Based on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, this question is shown to be the fundamental question of metaphysics. In his works written after “Being and Time” Heidegger increasingly focused on the “why” question, particularly as regards the inquiry as to “Why there is something rather than Nothing.” The latter constitutes the question of all questions and the key question of philosophizing. According to Heidegger, it is precisely though the capacity of “asking why” that human essence can be explicated. On this issue Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is at variance with Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology, since “asking why” is more primordial than “saying no” favored by Scheler. However, Heidegger never seems to clarify the relationship between “why?” and “no!”. Therefore, in this article I will try to fill this gap by confronting Scheler with Heidegger as far as the problems of negativity, questioning, metaphysics and human essence are concerned. By reading Scheler’s The Human’s Place in the Cosmos and Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics? as reflections on the origin of metaphysics, one can draw the following conclusions: 1) Orientation to nothing is as fundamental for subjectivity as Scheler’s “saying no”; indeed, the Nothing which nothings gives access to that-what-is and establishes the World as openness. (2) The power of negativity in both cases reveals the strangeness and contingency of being. The fundamental question is made possible by the wonder at the experience of nothingness. (3) Therefore, Heidegger’s “asking why” appears to be derivative from “saying no”. However, in the conclusion I suggest an opposite interpretation based on the foundationless character of Dasein. Thereby “No” becomes possible only based on the permanent “Why” motivated by Dasein’s impossibility to know its own foundation.