Anxiety Reveals the Nothing

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores existential anxiety through the philosophy of death. With Martin Heidegger serving as primary guide, the chapter considers a handful of prominent Heideggerian theses about the close, mutually constitutive relationship between anxiety and death. In particular, (1) that contemplation of death is a (or the) preeminent source of anxiety, (2) that the fundamental “mood” of anxiety is always, at bottom, about the nothingness (or Nichtigkeit) of death, and finally, (3) that anxiety has much to teach us about the attitude it is best to adopt in the face of the fact that, one day, we will be dead.