Continental Philosophy

Heidegger: Death and Resoluteness

Literary Source:

• Sartre, The Wall, pp. 1-17 (Handout)

Background:

With this and the next reading, we are concerned with the role of death in leading people to become authentic persons. The leading commentator on this topic is Martin Heidegger. Like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Heidegger is concerned that in our “average everydayness”, we fall in with “the crowd”, “the public”, or das Man, as Heidegger calls it. The natural capacity humans have for doing this Heidegger terms “fallenness”. As fallen beings, individuals easily lose their individuality in everyday activities, letting das Man dictating the terms of their existence (or rather, by robbing their existence and replacing it with the illusion of an essence). Individuals are reduced to mere tools used to fulfill the ends of das Man. This is what Heidegger calls an inauthentic mode of individual existence. Death is one of the things das Man tries to hide from us (in hospitals, rest homes, etc…), but awareness of our own death makes the authentic mode of existence possible. An authentic person rises out of the crowd, seizes his own existence, and directs it towards the ends it determines.

What compels a person's flight into das Man [through] fallenness? An individual is tempted into the lostness of das Man by the tranquility which disburdens him from having to face his ownmost potentiality-for-Being [i.e., what things I think I can do or become]. In his inauthentic tranquility, a person compares himself with everyone and thereby drifts along towards an alienation in which his ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from him. The fallen person engages in a downward plunge in which he becomes closed off from his authenticity and possibility. A person, as fallen, is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity which involves a leveling down of all possibilities of his Being. In idle talk [i.e., chit-chat or gossip], das Man closes off the hidden meaning and ground of what is talked about. In curiosity, a person is constantly uprooting himself and concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. As ambiguous, das Man acts as though it “knows everything”, yet, at bottom, this understanding is superficial in that nothing is genuinely understood. Das Man is essentially death-evasive in that it conceals a person as Being-towards-death.

[The significance of death:] Death is a way of existing which a human takes over as soon as he exists. “Dying” therefore, stands for the way of Being in which the human being is towards its death. Death, as “Being-towards-the-end”, is defined by Heidegger in terms of the basic state of human existence. Death is “the possibility of the absolute impossibility” of someone. Death reveals itself as that “possibility which is one's ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped”. An individual stands fully before himself as assigned to his ownmost potentiality-for-Being as death, the possibility of no-longer-being-able-to-be-there. Moreover, a person will die alone – death cannot be shared – and, finally, death cannot be avoided. Anxiety, as state-of-mind, discloses human existence as thrown Being towards its end. Yet, proximally and for the most part, people cover up their Being-towards-death by falling.

How does a person, when lost in das Man, “cover up” its Being-towards-death? Das Man does not deny death, but, instead, understands death in the “indifferent tranquility” in which death is seen as an actuality rather than as possibility [that is to say, we do not treat death as a real “possibility” for us at any minute, but some concrete “actuality” which will occur at a specific time, but always a time in the future]. Das Man covers up what is peculiar in death’s certainty: that it is possible at any moment. By assigning definiteness [or “actuality”] upon death (i.e., “I will die someday”), everyday Being-towards-death evades the indefiniteness of the “when” of the certainty of death. When death is understood authentically, it is understood as the possibility of not having any more possibilities. In anticipation, a person is an authentic Being-towards-death by treating death as a real possibility. When we are closest to our death, it is as far as it will ever be as an actuality. If an individual makes death an actuality, then it is no longer death [it is just some “actual” event on the calendar, but right next to the 12th of Never]. An individual cannot understand death in terms of the world as das Man – for death is the possibility which radically individualized a person in that death can only be taken up as his own possibility [das Man does not die – it is not a individual person – hence it cannot help us cope with death]. Death discloses what an individual cannot have: All the possibilities.

Being-towards-death is essentially anxious. Anxiety is the attunement (or mood) of anticipation, and, being so, becomes a way for someone to understand himself in an authentic disclosure of his existence. Anxiety reveals to a person his lostness in das Man in that he is unable to understand himself in terms of the world as concerned solicitude [anxiety is then important because it makes us aware of our being lost in das Man, showing us that das Man cannot help us with death]. As lost, an individual can be brought back to himself since, as fallen, a person has neglected to choose itself [since we have chosen to fall in with das Man, we can choose to leave it!]. Authenticity is a manner of existing. In terms of its possibility, a person is already a potentiality – for-Being-its-self, but he needs to have this attested. This attestation is disclosed as the call of conscience.

The call of conscience [reveals our] existence as a “null basis”. There are two ways existence has a “null basis”: (1) that the person is in the process of “not” being any more possibilities and must, therefore, eliminate choices whenever it makes a choice [when we choose something or a course of action, their remains those choices we said “no” to and did “not” do] and (2) a person is revealed as thrown, as delivered over to Being without Being the author of itself [that is, we have been thrown into the world at birth, and we thus have “no” control over these things and can “not” change them]. Yet, as this “null basis”, a person is [free to form] his own basis. Conscience calls us to appropriate ourselves as the kind of Being that we are [despite these “no-s” and “not-s” we still must seize control of our lives].

A person is authentic in his resoluteness, “in which one is ready for anxiety.” In resoluteness, a person is most fully disclosed to the kind of Being that he is. Resoluteness brings a person into [attentive] Being with others alongside things as one's ownmost self, not as das Man [when resolute, you have resolved to be yourself and not what das Man would make of you]. An individual’s authentic self is uncanny, therefore, pursues [life as] an individual and threatens das Man in which it has become lost. [And so] a person, at first, understands itself in terms of das Man in which it understands itself as a thing. This [relationship], however, covers up an individual's true existence and his primordial understanding of himself as uncanny.

Questions:

• Is death what confers meaning on life, or what removes all meaning from life?
• Are these two interpretations totally opposed, or fundamentally the same?

I love Apache! So should you!