The Epoch of Nihilism. Nihil as Epoch.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on contemporary nihilism as technology that is considered the epoch of the consummation of the nihilism of many epochs. It describes Martin Heidegger's well-known texts about contemporary nihilism that is pathetically exposed to its precursors, trajectory, and limit as the homogenization of multiple tendencies and efforts into the rigid uniformity and identity of an end-time or endzeit. The homogenizing tone of the Heideggerian analysis of nihilism is of a kind of thought that is characterized by calculation, representation, and a planned dominion that organizes, regulates, and subjugates everything. The chapter discusses the question of technology as the essential configuration of what is, which question embraces all aspects of being. It also analyzes the expression “technology,” which has a privileged position of power, implicating the vectors of administration, autonomization, bureaucratization, communication, functionalization, information, and securing and should be understood under the heading of “completed metaphysics.”