For Heidegger, modernity is characterised by the comprehension of life in nihilism. This is, moreover, human Dasein's metaphysical culmination. As such, it is the end of a history inaugurated with the Ancients (if not by them) and whose "extreme point", as we will see Heidegger calling it, is reached with Nietzsche. Nihilism is thus an extremity for human Dasein and for the comprehension of life in general. It is the extremity of metaphysics.