overcoming the world 67must have a history and be, in principle, mutable. Th eir mutability is
consistent with the stability that they display in the cooled- down uni-
verse, with its well- diff erentiated and enduring structure.
Th e prevailing ideas in physics and cosmology take a diff erent direc-
tion. Th ey either equivocate about the reality of time or deny it alto-
gether. In rejecting the idea of a fi xed background of space and time
against which the events of nature take place, they nevertheless reaf-
fi rm the notion of an immutable framework of laws, symmetries, or
constants of nature.
If time is inclusively real, and everything is subject to its ravages, if it
is the only reality that does not emerge, there can be no such unchang-
ing framework. On the other hand, however, if there is such an un-
changing framework, there then also exists a basis for a permanent
diff erentiated structure in nature, or a typology of natural kinds, if not
in the derivative and emergent phenomena studied by natural history,
then in the more fundamental constituents of nature that are explored
by physics.
Th e radical metaphysic of the overcoming of the world affi rms the
ephemeral character of all distinctions among types of being, at the
same time that it denies the reality of time. Its similarity to the scien-
tifi c view that I have described is therefore merely apparent. In this
view all structure is mutable precisely because time is inclusively real.
Moreover, the metaphysical conception informing this approach to ex-
istence must account for how and why we come to entertain the illusions
that it dismisses. In so doing, it cannot appeal to our experience, which
is thoroughly penetrated and shaped by those illusions.
By its reliance on this conception, the overcoming of the world
arouses the contradiction that I earlier remarked between the theoreti-
cal and the practical antidotes to the threat of nihilism. Its theoretical
answer to the fear that our lives and the world itself may be mean-
ingless is to cast aside the beliefs, the attachments, and the engage-
ments that prevent us from recognizing our participation in timeless
and universal being. By casting them aside, however, it weakens the
sole practical antidote to the threat of nihilism, which is life itself, with
all its engagements and attachments. On the pretext of increasing
our conscious participation in that being, it dissuades us from the