Positive Nihilism

There is a beyond of reason and unreason. It is the human psyche.
—Positive Nihilism

Like many German intellectuals, Hartmut Lange has long grappled with Heidegger. Positive Nihilism is the result of a lifetime of reading Being and Time and offers a series of reflections that are aphoristic, poetic, and (appropriately, considering his object of study) difficult. Lange begins with an abyss (“There is an abyss of the finite. It is temporality”) and proceeds almost immediately to extremity: “The twentieth century was governed by psychopaths. They collapsed the boundaries of moral reason and refuted Kant''s analysis of consciousness.” He reflects further: “But who shall punish whom? One man''s virtue is another man''s crime. Thus Hitler could feel unwaveringly, as he wiped out entire populations, the starry sky above