Nothing = Being

20th WCP: What Heidegger Wishes To Transcend: Metaphysics Or Nietzsche

According to Heidegger, Being (das Sein) should not be investigated through an inquiry into entities (das Seiende) as is done in the history of Western philosophy until now, but through an inquiry into Nothing (das Nichts) which Heidegger assumes to be identical with Being. (6) Investigation of Being through Nothing presupposes the question of "what is metaphysics?". This latter question is very important, because it plays a double role: on the one hand it secures the possibility of investigating Being through Nothing, and on the other hand it makes possible to transcend metaphysics . [Emphasis mine]

Bataille, of course, makes a very similar move, in demanding that we should face the meaning of our lives through encountering "nothing"; that is, through confronting the actuality of death, both in the concrete form and in our abstract conception of it.