Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being—like a worm

The expression “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being—like a worm” gives vivid form to a central claim: nothingness is not an independent void beyond existence but is encountered within being, sustaining the negations through which realities can appear and questions can be asked.

The Negations Within Reality

The passage first points to realities such as distance, absence, change, otherness, repulsion, regret, and distraction. These are not merely objects of judgment; people experience, oppose, and fear them. Their structure is inhabited by negation as a condition of their existence. The text calls such realities négatités: things that possess reality and efficacy while containing nonbeing within themselves.

Their negation does not function identically in every case. Some realities remain substantially positive, with negation helping fix their outlines and distinguish them; in others, positivity is only an appearance concealing a hole of nothingness. Between those poles lie many gradations. The expression’s worm image captures the unsettling intimacy of this account: negation is not added from outside but is lodged within what is real.

Nothingness as Sustained by Being

The passage rejects the idea that these negations can be returned to an extra-mundane nothingness. They are dispersed through being, supported by it, and operative as conditions of reality. An absolute negation may be attributed to nothingness beyond the world, but the negations discovered in distance and other lived realities call for an explanation that stays within the real.

This produces a deliberate tension. If nothingness is supported by being, it vanishes as nothingness and thought falls back upon being; yet nothingness can be nihilated only on the foundation of being. It is therefore neither prior nor subsequent to being, nor outside being in any general sense. The image of a worm coiled at existence’s heart makes the relation memorable without turning nothingness into a separate substance: its presence depends on what it negates.

From Negation to the Origin of Nothingness

The next section looks back over the inquiry’s steps. It began by asking about being, then examined questioning as a form of human conduct. That examination showed that questioning depends on negation; closer inspection of negation, in turn, referred thought to nothingness as its origin and foundation. Without nothingness somehow being given, negation could not exist in the world and questions about being could not be raised.

The expression thus serves as both a conclusion and a hinge. It gathers the preceding account of negation in lived realities, then points toward the further problem of how nothingness can be given at the heart of being. Its force rests on that paradoxical dependence: nothingness is not outside existence, yet being alone does not explain how negation becomes possible.