Working with the concepts of loss, greif, and Heidegger and Nietzsche

In my search for the philosophical interpretations of object oriented ontology and its combination with my enquiry into the things we leave behind....

Particularly with regards to loss, nihilism and as objects and artefacts, an interesting and highly relevant book has been suggested to me by Dr Graham Lister, that being the book by Simon Critchley, entitled "Very Little, ....Almost Nothing;  Death, Philosophy and Literature"; (2004), Routledge Publishing, London (2nd Edition), and Psychology Press, (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy).

I have been reading this book for the past week or so during the Easter break and there is much in the opening chapters that has taken a significant amount of thought in order to comprehend...

As an introductory discussion on the ideas of where we sit as humans, observing finitude from within infinitude, the author provides a discourse on Nihilism as a starting point for the book.

In particular for the past week I have been wrestling with the concepts of Heidegger's interpretation and transformation of Friedrich William Nietzsche's ideas of nihilism. Within the book Simon Critchley discusses Heidegger's understanding that Nietzsche used the words "God is dead". In order to understand how Heidegger himself, understands Nietzsche's concept, Simon Critchley provides a delineation of Heidegger's argument. This is the core of what has been puzzling me throughout the past 7 to 10 days. When in the book and I quote directly here Critchley says:

1) Heidegger understands God metaphysically as the name for the super sensory realm of ideas and ideals, the "true world" of Platonism.
2) Heidegger understands niches to have divested metaphysics of its essential possibility by showing how the super sensory world of metaphysics is a product of the sensory world; the true world has become a fable. Metaphysically understood, the declaration of the death of God is the acknowledgement that the super sensory no longer has any effective power.

What I personally understand from this is that whilst Heidegger has taken the logical step of how there is a link between the super-sensory, which arguably could be called "meta-sensory" [my words], together with metaphysics, both as concepts of effective indices of both independent subjects, - what he's doing is suggesting that our perceptions, i.e. the super-sensory as an overall reference to all human perceptions, is in fact just merely a product of the physical world and the sensory world. Therefore in effect it appears that one cancels out the other in terms of logic??....
 My interpretation therefore is that, Nietzsche, in using the phrase of 'God is Dead' or the acknowledgement of the same, then the super-sensory, that is the concept of all sensations does not have any effective power. This is kind of hard to grasp but in order to do so, Simon Critchley goes on to say;

3) if metaphysics is Platonism and Nietzsche's understands his own thinking as the overturning of Platonism, then Nietzsche's thinking is a counter movement to metaphysics.

[...This is a reinterpretation of my understanding above].

4) However, and this is the core of Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche, this counter movement to metaphysics is held fast to the essence of that which it opposes. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche believes that the overturning (Umkehrung) of Platonism is an overcoming (Uberwindung) of metaphysics. However every overturning of this kind is but a self-deluding entanglement within the logic of that which it opposes, and therefore the Nietzschean Umkehrung, or overturning, is simply a Verkehrung, a reversal. Thus Nietzsche's thoughts remain internal to the very Platonist, meta-metaphysical logic it seeks to oppose.

 Thus Nietzsche's thinking is a metaphysics. Heidegger writes:

"Despite all his overturning and revaluing of metaphysics, Nietzsche remains in the unbroken line of the metaphysical tradition when he calls 'that which is established and made fast' in the will to power for its own preservation, purely and simply Being, or what is 'in being', or truth.

In his determination of the will to power as the Being of all beings, as that in which all entities participate, Nietzsche rejoins the metaphysical tradition, even if his work represents the final phase of that tradition...

Again my own interpretation of this has been visualised as I have been creating my wire frame and under body of my fragment of the gnome object. And it is here that my understanding took an additional leap...

 Whilst I was twisting wire, to an equal thickness of wire together, those twists of each turn, similar to a corkscrew or spiral, (or double helix as you may recall, which I have discussed and thought about previously, that is the double helix of DNA), I likened it to the methodological twisting of the idea between the super-sensory and metaphysical arguments that both Heidegger and Nietzsche put forward....
...and these lines of enquiry, or threads of thought, being twisted together and then at the next juncture potentially untwisted is very similar to the physical representation of how the chicken-wire is formed!

This might seem like a crazy notion but it does serve well to explain the ideas of two world-class philosophers of the 19th and 20th century twisting together their ideas to form a cohesive one, that moves forward into the 21st century and hence the writings of not only Simon Critchley, but also the other contemporary philosophers that I am investigating, such as Graham Harman, Brian Massumi and many others.

It is important to close this point, in that Simon Critchley explains with the final comments that

"for Heidegger, nihilism thought in its essence is a history that runs its course with the history of being, and this history is determinative for world history thought in terms of the planetary domination by technology.  Nihilism is not only a history, it is ['s therefore] a destiny."

Conclusions;

1. There is much work to do here.  The observations by Critchley in the opening chapters of this book provide an excellent source of further contemplation and meditation to my work.  
2. I clearly need to read so much more and allow time to assimilate the information before my final presentation(s) over the coming weeks.
3. I cannot "remove my foot from the gas" in terms of production either, as this will be the measure of my interpretations of meaningful engagement with the artefact(s) that I produce.