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Why is death important?

• this is a fundamental ontology

• we’re trying to find out what being/reality is

• since being has shown itself to be oriented towards the future, the possibility that the future is impossible is crucial to telling us what being is H251

• that is, it is not that our being lies in a possibility to be actualised, but that it lies in a possibility which may be impossible

• this makes being and non-being inseparable

• a future possibility of an entity is still its being, still something positive
• but a future possible impossibility of being is nothingness

• this is death, and as a certain possibility, it determines being

• making it always nothingness as well as being

ontology is essentially temporal.

• existence is finite

• the possibility of death belongs to D’s being

• the significance of mortality can only be appreciated when we remember that teh being of things and of ourselves is fundamentally oriented towards the future through its possibilities

• the indefinite possibility of death means that the being of everything can always be cut short
• since being is oriented towards a future which is determined by the possibility that it will not come, death belongs to dasein existentially

• What this means is that interpreted existentially, death does not lay ‘safely’ ahead in some future, leaving us the now to inhabit fully and exist in the present.
• This is because the being of Dasein is not yet, as is the being of everything else

• thus, mortality means for the being of dasein that it is contingent

• Put it this way: its not only that I may not continue to exist, mortality means the possibility that my existence right now is non-existentthus, mortality means for the being of dasein that it is contingent

• Put it this way: its not only that I may not continue to exist, mortality means the possibility that my existence right now is non-existent

• and since I only exist as possibility, it means that I factically do not exist now

And, being is finite. The possibility of impossibility always determines the authentic meaning of possibilities

Inauthentic BTD

https://www.theonion.com/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-100-percent-1819564171

• Inauthentic being-towards-death has its origins in Dasein’s understanding of things as ‘they’ understand them

• in ‘idle chatter’ H252

• What distinguishes Inauthentic being-towards-death is its treating death as a certainty alone, and not also as an indefinite possibility

• this means that death is something ‘not yet’ H250
• treating death in this way makes death safe—it will come afterwards

• which is to say, after we have been

• Death as “not yet present-at-hand” is no threat H253

• But this is not the case, since death is an indefinite possibility ‘at any time’, and since our being is not as ‘present-at-hand’, but as projected upon possibilities

• “Thus the ‘they’ covers up what is peculiar in Death’s certainty—that it is possible at any momenr.” H258

• “evades indefiniteness by conferring definiteness upon it”

• we have not been yet, because our being is oriented towards the future

• therefore belonging to our being is the possibility that it could be impossible H251

• our being is determined by the nothingness which awaits us and threatens to interrupt our plans

• “IN being towards its death, Dasein is dying factically and indeed constantly, as long as it has not yet come to its demise” 259

The threat of death

• the thinking of Dasein and temporality on the basis of the present allows us to indulge in an illusion of death as lying somewhere ahead in the future
• this in turn preserves the present as a time in which we are not yet dead, fully existing

• this is what makes our projects make sense, that they can be accomplished before death

• But if we understand Dasein as projected into a future, it is always cut short

• our projects always outlast us and are not completed
• we never achieve what we set out to achieve

• because everything that we acheive always has its own meaning in the future
• whether building, publishing, having children

• even pleasure

• because our own projects are themselves investments in things with their meaning lying ahead of them in the future, our death always comes before our purpose has been attained

The being of things is determined by death

• since entities also exist as things for use in projects

• and get their meaning and their being from this

• their being is also determined by the possibility that they will not be able to fulfill their meaning
• their being is also nothingness

• let’s examine:

• family
• cars
• movies
• government

Death and Anxiety

• “Being-towards-death is essentially anxiety” H2666

I think anxiety is the recognition of the contingency of the meaning of the world and of life. This is both the recognition that the ‘fallen’ world into which history has thrown Dasein is contingent, but also that the promises meanings produce for purpose, meaning, being of Dasein and its projects are contingent upon not being cut short, but Dasein is always cut chort.

• contingency and meaninglessness
• the contingency that anxiety discloses has two aspects

• historical contingency related to Dasein’s thrownnes into a world from which its meanings derive
• contingency in the sense of not becoming actual

• this has to do with the fact that Dasein and its projects are always ‘cut short’

• that is because Dasein is projected into the future
• but its way of being projected into the future is into projects which themselves have purposes
• we are never projected into something finite

Authentic Being-Towards-Death

• absorption in concern is a fleeing in the face of itself, associated with subsumption in the they

• “Dasein’s absorption in the ‘they’ and its absorption in the ‘world’ of its concer, make manifest something like a fleeing of Dasein in the face of itself” H184

• but concern and solicitude are also “structusres essential to Dasein’s constitution, these have a share in conditioning the possibility of any existence whatsoever” H263
• revelas possibility

• “Since anticipation of the possibility which is not to be outstripped discloses also all the possibilities which lie ahead of that possibility…” H264

• the need to be, in addition to whatever else one is, a chooser

• “one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead of that possibility which is not to be outstripped” H264

• “holding death for true… Demands Dasein itself in the full authenticity of its existence” H265

• “therefore the evidential character which belongs to the immediate givenness of experiences, of the ‘I’, or of consciousness, must necessarily lag behind the certainty which anticipation includes” H265

• This means that the certainty of death is a prior truth, which must be recognised prior to any experience

• I don’t know what my being rejected means unless and until I hold death for true
• when I find myself faced with a political question, I cannot understand without recognising death
• the absence of Pierre in the cafe is determined by my being-towards-death
• so is the value and fragility elicited in the destruction of the hurricane
• But positive things, too, are given their meaning by death

• my good fortune in getting a promotion
• my opportunity to stay loyal to the woman I love or go be single

is authenticity possible?

• “one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead of that possibility which is not to be outstripped” H264

• if possibilities always outstrip Dasein, can possibilities ever be taken up in an authentic way?
• isn’t investment in a possibility always commitment to a future that is beyond (Dasein’s) being?