Kabbalistic commentary on Martin Heidegger and the Fourth political theory

Few people speak of the messianic eschatological resonances of the late Heidegger.
In his book, Unterwegs Zur Sprache (“On the Way to Language”), Heidegger writes:

“The end — being the end of the decaying kind — precedes the beginning of the unborn kind. But the beginning […] has already overtaken the end.”

This marks a departure from Heidegger's insistence of death being the ultimate impossibility not-to-be-bypassed. All of a sudden, the end marks a new beginning, from which a new messianic
eschatology springs.

In his book, The Forth Political Theory, Alexander Dugin comments on Heidegger's project and surveys the idea of the “Event” (in German: Ereignis).
Dugin writes:

“Postmodernity, which Heidegger did not live to see, is, in every sense, the ultimate oblivion of Being, it is that “midnight”, when Nothingness (nihilism) begins to seep from all the cracks.”

Dugin identifies postmodernity with the “Destitute Times” of which Heidegger and Hölderlin talk. These times of destitution could be called just as well: Galuth. The Exile of the Shekhinah.
These times of destitution are what Kafka refers to as the “bad mood” or “bad day” of God. They represent the inevitable journey away from ourself into the void beyond ourselves, in order
to shape our personality anew. And indeed, for Heidegger exile is inevitable and necessary for being's enownment. In other terms, there had to be an existence against the ground.
Dugin continues:

“Yet his [Heidegger's] philosophy was not hopelessly pessimistic. He believed that Nothingness itself is the flip side of pure Being, which – in such a paradoxical way! – reminds mankind
of its existence.”

This is what marks the Heideggerian dialectic between being and nothingness — a paradoxical sameness within which existence oscillates. It's the Es Gibt — the fact of being that “reminds”
man of his own existence, that fills him with wonder and feeling of essence.

The descent (in German: Untergang) into the recesses of existence, into the “world's night”, is what we could call — Katabasis, or, in Kabbalistic terms: Descent for the sake of ascent.
The descent is our journey, our cosmic epic, which resolves in finding our true selves in the distance, the evening land (Abendland), a term which Heidegger borrows from another thinker of
Katabasis — Spengler.

Dugin writes:

“Heidegger used a special term, ‘Ereignis’ – the ‘Event’, to describe this sudden return of Being. It takes place exactly at midnight of the world’s night – at the darkest moment in history. […] Thus, at the heart of the Fourth Political Theory, as its magnetic center, lies the trajectory of approaching Ereignis (the “Event”), which will embody the triumphant return of Being at the exact moment when mankind forgets about it once and for all to the point that the last traces of it disappear.”


For Dugin the salvation comes from the depths of the Abendland. From the recesses of the absconding God, from the midnight of the world, from the pale earth, there will spring a new life. This
corresponds to the Kabbalistic concept of redemption as emanating from the embracement of negativity. The journey of the Messiah here is an Orphic journey, down to the spiritual death, to the
Sheol - Hades, where one encounters the forces of nihility and reappropriates them, overcomes them through taming them.

Later in the book, Dugin states:

“Let’s remind that Heidegger mentioned the “inzwischen”, i.e.
“between” while talking about existence of Dasein. The principal
character of Dasein is being “between”. Dasein is «inzwischen». ”

The being of Dasein is always in between: in between Malkhuth and Yesod, Nukva and Dekhora, Oblivion and Memory, or, more fundamentally, between the earth and the heavens. Our existence constantly oscillates in this vibrant nature which bounds all motion within a cycle of exile, self-return and self-rejuvenation.

Let us quote Novalis' Hymns to Night as a final treat:

“Glory to the queen of the world, to the great prophet of the holier worlds, to the guardian of blissful love -- she sends thee to me -- thou tenderly beloved -- the gracious sun of the Night, --
now am I awake -- for now am I thine and mine -- thou hast made me know the Night -- made of me a man -- consume with spirit-fire my body, that I, turned to finer air, may mingle more closely with
thee, and then our bridal night endure forever.”

Our greatest challenge as humans in destitute times is to see the sun in the night — the G-d in Nature. And the way to do so is to create ourselves anew through an embracement of our existence.