Birth, Death, and Femininity: Philosophies of Embodiment

Five. Being towards Death

FivE Being towards Death SaRa hEinäMaa Martin Heidegger presents his much-discussed and often criticized concept of being-towards-death in Being and Time in chapter 4, which deals with being as care and Dasein’s necessary incompleteness.1 In a well-known paragraph on the existential-ontological structure of death, he writes: With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentialityfor -Being. This is a possibility in which the issue is nothing less than Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Its death is the possibility of nolonger being-able-to-be-there. If Dasein stands before itself as this possibility, it has been fully assigned to its ownmost potentialityfor -Being.When it stands before itself in this way, all its relations to any other Dasein have been undone. (Heidegger [1927] 1993: §50 250/294, cf. [1925] 1979: 317–18) And some paragraphs later: “Death is Dasein’s ownmost possibility” (Heidegger [1927] 1993: §53 263/307).What is characteristic to Heidegger’s interpretation of death and what also comes up in these central paragraphs is the idea that primarily death must be seen as a relation to oneself and as a differentiation from others. The argument is liable to many sorts of misunderstandings , but the Kierkegaardian and Husserlian background outlined in the previous chapter helps to delineate and explicate Heidegger’s main point. Heidegger’srelationtothesetwostartingpointsisverydifferent.Whereas he affirms Kierkegaard’s analyses of mortality and anxiety as mainly correct even if preparatory, he explicitly rejects Husserl’s understanding of personal existence and attacks his analysis of time-consciousness (Heidegger [1927] 1993: §10 45–48/71–74, §69a 363/414, 498, cf. [1925] 1979: 165–74/119– 25).2 Heidegger argues that Husserl’s concept of time-consciousness, and consequently his whole account of personal existence, is preoccupied with the present and with the actual, and must be corrected by a new interpretation of being that correctly characterizes the role of future and the possible in our experience of temporality. He does not question Husserl’s arguments about the interconnectedness of the three dimensions of temporality—past, Being towards Death 99 present, and future—but he attacks the assumption that future can be conceived on the basis of the present. Heidegger’s discussion of death gets its special character from this emphasis on the future,and the concept of beingtowards -death must be understood in this light. individuation and Dying Heidegger’s main argument is that my death is an impossible possibility that, when faced, is able to individuate me, to give my life its singularity by distinguishing my possibilities from the possibilities of human life in general (Heidegger [1927] 1993: §53 266/310). Through the impossible possibility of my own ceasing to exist, I identify myself with my own concrete possibilities , which are historically and contextually specific. What is at issue is not any cognitive or objective situating of oneself but an affective, practical, and active engagement. The experience of facing or encountering the extreme possibility of death, the cessation of all my projects and possibilities and the end of my world, awakens me to my being-there (Dastur 1998: 26–27, 38; carr [1986] 1991: 81–82). Thus I am liberated from the false identification with the abstract possibilities of human beings or rational beings in general . Heidegger explains:“[A]nticipation [in Being-towards-death] reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned freedom towards death—a freedom which has been released from the Illusion of the ‘they,’ and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious”(Heidegger [1927] 1993: §53 266/311,cf.241–42/285–86, [1925] 1979: 429/310). This means that in order to understand human finitude, we have to abandon the sense of being that belongs to the objects that surround us in our practical and theoretical activities, but we also have to reject the sense of being that characterizes our relations with others in our everyday dealings . Neither our concernful being-occupied with things nor our being with others can help us in our attempt to understand the fundamental meaning of human death: [A]ll Being-alongside the things with which we concern ourselves, and all Being-with others, will fail us when our ownmost potentiality -for-Being is the issue. Dasein can be authentically itself only if it makes this possible for itself of its...