ABSTRACT. Drawing on Heidegger’s philosophy of the technological “world picture,” Dreyfus traces our contemporary nihilistic condition to what he terms “objectifying practices.” The drive for objective knowledge threatens to erode our “cultural practices,” a form of life expressing our most intimate way of being-in-the-world with others. Looking to the Pre-Socratic philosophy of Empedocles and the modern “active” nihilism of Nietzsche, I contemplate a view of philosophy that is at once an embodied phenomenon and a “non-objectifying practice,” in that it unfolds in a manner reminiscence of a work of art. Rather than overcoming nihilism, perhaps philosophy, if properly understood, can offer a rich and productive way to attempt to think our way through it. pp. 133–153

Keywords: nihilism, Nietzsche, Empedocles, cultural practices, modernity, scientism, work of art