Rhythm and Non-reductionist Thinking: Poetry, Literature, and the Overcoming of Nihilism

This article investigates the relationship between rhythm and non-reductionist thinking, arguing that rhythm—beyond its modern reduction to periodic recurrence—constitutes an ontological and existential force that shapes becoming, mediates the disclosure of truth, and resists the mechanization of modernity. Stefan George, Ludwig Klages, and Martin Heidegger each seek to retrieve rhythm’s originary force, a project examined in this article. Ernst Jünger extends this inquiry into the experiential and historical domain. In the novel Visit to Godenholm, rhythm emerges as a counterpoint to modern temporality—accelerated, uniform, and disenchanted—and is dramatized as a force of initiation and symbolic renewal that reopens access to myth and Being. By placing Jünger alongside George, Klages, and Heidegger, the article demonstrates how rhythm functions as a central counter-concept to modern reductionism, bridging philology, poetics, philosophy, and literature. Rhythm thus appears not as repetition but as renewal: the mode through which thought, art, and life resist nihilism.