A
What Death is not
Before I can begin to say anything meaningful on the role of death in Heidegger’s Contributions I need to clarify how we should not understand death in Being and Time and what experience Heidegger makes with his analysis of that ownmost possibility of Dasein in his foundational text.
First of all, death is not to be taken as demise. Thus the ontological phenomenon of death Heidegger is after in Being and Time has nothing to do with the measurable end of someone’s life, with passing, or dying in the ordinary sense of the word. Yet, death, and this is the crux, is neither of merely metaphorical meaning nor does death have nothing to with mortality, as, for example, Blattner (1994) maintains. Blattner defines death in Being and Time as an episode of psychiatric depression that Dasein has to live through. For Blattner “death” in Being and Time has nothing to do with mortality. In a recent paper on the distinction between death and demise in Being and Time Thomson (2013) has attempted to synthesise claims that “death” is but a marker for global world collapse Dasein must experience with the fact that Heidegger does not appear to speak of death in purely metaphorical terms. In a nutshell, Thomson argues that death in Being and Time means momentary “global collapse of significance” (2013: 263) and that we each have to live through such an episode of utter meaninglessness – at will – in order to make peace with the fact that we demise at some point. I disagree with such readings. Heidegger clearly says that “edification” or “rules of behaviour toward death”(SZ: 248/238) are not at all at stake in Being and Time. Death in Being and Time does something else entirely. Death as the utmost and ownmost limit of Dasein’s existence is precisely the condition for world to arise but is not the cause of the world’s collapse! In Being and Time I argue that we should rather understand death in transcendental terms. Hence in Davos Heidegger explicitly stated that death – of all phenomena! – is brought into play in Being and Time in order to disclose the horizon of the future: “the analysis of death has the function of bringing out the radical futurity of Dasein.” (GA3: 283/177), i.e. of a radical openness after the closure of metaphysics. Death is what gives Dasein orientation precisely because death co-constitutes the horizon of the future in concert with Dasein’s thrownness and past, Gewesenheit. Note also that Heidegger understands limit, Grenze, in the Greek sense of peras, i.e. as the very boundary thanks to which something begins and thanks to which something is freed for its essence.
Furthermore, Heidegger’s distinction between demise and death intends to make clear that ontic and scientific assumptions about demise are not the primary concern and do not directly influence his ontological investigation. What we usually call death is what Heidegger calls demise. Ontological death, as Heidegger wishes to show, is the ground for our understanding of ontic demise. Dastur puts it as follows: “If Dasein as such did not already have an inherent relation to death, it could never be put in such relation by any event in the world.” (1996: 51) Hence the analysis of death is “prior to the questions of a biology, psychology, theodicy or theology of death.” (SZ: 248/239)
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