MARTIN HEIDEGGERS PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH

By Manuel B. Dy, Jr.

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According to Heidegger, the being of man is a being-in-this-world. Man is primordially directed towards
the world. And he has the power-to-be in the world. His being in the world consists in being alongside
with things, the reayd-to-hand and the present-at-hand, what Heidegger calls concern, and in beign
with others, solicitude. The being of man is Dasein, There-being. There-being is the There of Being
among beings it lets beings be (manifest), thereby rendering all encounters with them possible.

By being in the world, by being involved in it. Dasein has the power to be. Once thrown into the world,
Dasein realizes its own possibilities, it constantly actualizes its potentialities of existence. As such, man
is always ahead of himself; in his being he is always ahead of what actually is. Being thrown into the
world, he discovers himself there absorbed in things and people, and constantly realizing his own
possibilities for being. This is what Heidegger calls Care, the fundamental structure of Dasein.

The primary item in care, therefore, is the ahead-of-itself of Dasein. Dasein as project akways comports
itself towards its potentiality for being. There is always something still outstanding in man. As long as
man exists in the world, his potentiality for being is never exhausted. According to Heidegger, there is
always something to be settled yet in man. Man, as long as he IS, has never ereached his wholeness.
Man always has an unfinished character.

Man reaches wholeness in death. In death, man loses his potentiality for being, he loses his there.
There is no more outstanding in man, everything is finished, settled for him. He is no longer being
there.

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What is death for Heidegger? How is death related to the being of man, and what is mans attitude
towards death? Since death is the transition of man from Dasein to no-longer-Dasein, there is therefore
the impossibility of experiencing this transition. No one has ever come out from death to tell us about
death. How then are we going to describe death? What is Heideggers phenomenology of death?

Our first experience of death is the death of others. We see, hear, people die. IF man is a being with
the other, will death of others give us the objective knowledge about death? But the death of another
persosn, Heidegger argues, makes him no longer a person, but a thing, a corpse, although he may be
the object of concern for those who remain behind. However, we have no way of knowing the loss of
being that the dying man suffers.

We never experience the death of another as he himself has experienced it. Even if, granted that it is
possible for us to analyze the dying of others, we can substitute and represent the dying of any Dasein
for another, will our representation be valid and justified? True, representation is one of the possibilities
of man as a being with others but representation is always a representation in something. But in death,
the totality of man is involved; it Is Dasein coming to an end. Daseins dying is therefore not
representable. :no one can take the others dying away from him. Death is always mine. It is a
peculiar possibility of my being in which my own being is an issue. Mineness and existence are
constitutive of death.

Death is therefore the possibility of man, a not-yet which will be. And what Is peculiar in this
possibility is that it has the character of no-longer Dasein, of no-longer-being-there, and belongs to the
particular man, his very own, non-representable.

We have said that as long as man exists, he lacks a totality, a wholeness; and this lack comes to its
end with death. This lack of totality of man is not the lack of togetherness of a thing which can be
completed by piercing together entities or parts. This totality and wholeness of man is a not-yet of
man which has to be. This not-yet of man, moreover, is something that is already accessible to him.
Dasein, as long as it is, is already its not-yet. This not-yet of Dasein is not like the not-yet of
unripeness of the fruit. The ripeness of the fruit is the end of its lack of ripeness, the end of the not-
yet

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of the fruit. As long as the fruit is not ripe, it is already its not-yet. There is, however, a difference
between the ripeness of the fruit and the death of man. With the fruit, the ripeness is the fulfillment of
its being. In the case of man, on the other hand, in death, man may or may not arrive at his fulfillment.
And hhere Heidegger throws a striking remark: Whatt is unfortunate is that so little is it the case that
Dasein comes to its ripeness only with death, that Dasein amy will have passed its ripeness before the
end. For the most part, Dasein ends in unfulfillment

Dasein therefore, as long as it exists, is already its end. The end of Dasein is not be understood as
being-at-the-end but as being-towards-the-end. Heideggers phenomenology of death therefore is not
a description of death of an after-life, but man as being-towards-his-end, a being-towards-death. If man
is a being-towards-death, and his being in the wolrd has the fundamental structure of care, then the
end of man must be clarified in terms of care, his basic state.

Being-towards-death and Care

Heidegger defines care as ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (the world) as Being-alonside entitites
which we encounter (within-the-world). Care, in other words, has the following chracterisitics of
Daseins being: existence, in the ahead-of-itself; facticity, in the Being-already-in; and falling, in the
Being-alongside. Beig-towards-death must be understood in these terms.

Man, in being ahead of himself, as project, comes to the disclosure of his extreme possibility; the
possibility that he will no longer be there. Death is the uttermost not-yet of man, something
towards which he comports himself. Death is not just something that happens to man; it is something
that is impending. The impending is not that of a coming of a storm, or the arrival of a friend, or a
journey one is going to undertake. The impending of death is distinctive, because it is the possibility
which is ownmost; death is mine, something that I have to take over myself. In death, I stand before
myself in my ownmost potentiality for being, because the issue in death is no other than my being in
the world. Death is the possibility of my no-longer-possible, of no-longer-being-able-to-be-ther; the
possibility

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of being cut off from others and from things. And this possibility is the possibility that must be,
something that I cannot outstrip. My being ahead of myself in my project towards the world with all its
possibilities reveals to me my uttermost possibility, distinctively impending, because this possibility is
my ownmost which cuts me off from others (non-relational) and which I cannot outstrip.

The possibility of my absolute impossibility is not just obtained in my rare moments. As soon as I am
born into the worl, I am already thrown into this possibility. I may not be aware of it but the hact that I
exist in, I exist with the possibility of fraht. This possibility is revelaed only in the basic mood of man,
anziety, in the experience of dread wherein man comes face to face with his potentiality for being.
Anxiety is not fera, because fear is concerned with something determinate which threatens my
immediate involvement of things. Anxiety is of something indeterminate; what I dread is not an entity,
but the world itself, my being-in-the-world.

Many indeed are ignorant of death as the possibility which is ownmost, non-relational and cannot be
outstripped. They are engrossed in the immediate concern with things, thus covering up their ownmost
being-towards-death, fleeing in the face of it. But the fact remains that they are being-towards-death,
the man is dying even in his fallenness, in his being absorbed in the everyday world of concern. Let
us describe further this fallenness of being-towards death.

Everyday Being-towards-death Inauthencity

In the publicness of every days concern, death is known as a mishap that frequently occurs. The self
of the public, the impersonal they talk of death as a case of death, an event that happens
constantly. The they hides death by saying, People dieone of these days one will die too, in the
end; but right now it has nothing to do with us. The they realize that death is something indefinite
that must arrive ultimately but for the moment, the they says, it has nothing to do with us. It is
something not yet present at hand, and therefore offers no threat. The they says, one dies, but the
one is nobody, no one will claim that that is I. In this way, the they levels off death, makes it
ambiguous, and hides the true aspect of this possibility, the mineness, non-relational, and that which
cannot be outstripped.

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This inauthentic mode of man of being-towards-death. He loses himself in the they and forgets his
distinctive potentiality for being. The they has a very nice way of hiding the true nature of mans
being-towards-the-end. When a person is dying, the they talks him into the belief that he will not die,
that he will recover his normal state of tranquilized everydayness. By tranquilizing death, the
neighbors console the dying person and of course themselves. The normal carefreeness of everyday
concern must nit be disturbed. To start thinking about death is considered by the they as a sign of
cowardice, of fear, of insecurity. According to the they, the attitude to the fact that one dies is of
indifferent tranquility. For Heidegger, this indifferent tranquility of course means alienation of man from
his ownmost non-relational potentiality for being-towards death. Everyday being-towards-death is
therefore a falling, a constantly fleeing on the face of death. They everyday man is constantly
evading death, hiding it and giving new explanations for it. Actually, the everyday man even in his
falling attests to the fact that he is a being-towards-death, although he assures himself in the
inauthentic, impersonal they; that he is still living. Even in the mode of tranquilized indifference
towards his uttermost possibility of existence man still has his ownmost potentiality for being an issue.

The impersonal they is also certain of death. The they says, Death certainly comes, but not right
away. The butis at the same time a denial of certainty. This is the ambiguous attitude of the they
with regards to the certainty of death. However, this certainty of the they seems to be only an
empirical certainty derived from several cases of other peoples death. As long as man remains on this
level of certainty, death can never really become certain for him.

But, though man may seem, to talk only of this empirical certainty of death in public, he is really at
bottom aware of another higher certainty than that of the empirical, and this is the certainty of ones
own death. The inauthentic man, however evades this higher certainty in carefreeness, in an air of
superior indifference. He stops worrying about death and busies himself of the urgency of concern,
deferring death as sometime later. Thus, he covers up also the fact that death is possible at any
moment, the indefiniteness of death

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which goes with its certainty. The inauthentic man confers a kind of definiteness upon the
indefiniteness of death by intervening it with urgent matters of the everyday. However, inasmuch as he
flees from death, the everyday man actually derives his certainty of death from the fact that being
thrown into the world is being-towards-death. Death is ever present in the very being of man.

What, on the other hand, is the authentic being-towards-death?

Authentic Being-towards-death
The authentic response of man in his awareness of being-towards death is not of evasdion, of covering
u deaths true implications, nor of giving new expalnations for it. Man msut face the possibility of death
as his possibility, the possibility in which his very existence is an issue. Facing the possibility is not
actualizing, that is, bringing it to happen. That would be suicide, and suicide demolishes all the
potentialities of man instead of bringing them into a whole totality. Nor does it mean that man must
brood over death, calculating it: for death is not something one can have at ones disposal.

The authentic being-towards-death is an anticipation of this possibility. By anticipation, man comes

close to death, not by making it actual but by understanding it as a possibility of impossibility of any
existence at all for him. Anticipation reveals to man that death means the measureless impossibility
existence. This projection of his utmost impossibility will provide him with a vision of his own present
existence, the latent possibilities lying before him.

In authentic being-towards-death, man realized that death is his ownmost possibility, and thus the
awareness comes to him of his potentiality for being, for fulfilling himself, his own being. He must
therefore wrench himself away from the impersonal they and make an individual alone.

Death individualizes man, because death does not belong to everybody, but to ones own self. This
individualizing by death reveals the there; of man, his being alongside-things (concern) and his being-
with-others (solicitude). It reveals to man that his concern and solicitude is nothing when his ownmost
potentiality for being

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Is itself an issue in death. Authentic being-towards-death does
from all relationships; rather it means projecting oneself upon
rather than a possibility of the they self. Death is known to the
with this awareness, he as it were understands and chooses his
the extreme possibility of death as non-relational.
not mean, however, cutting oneself
his ownmost potentiality for being,
authentic man as non-relational and
possibility of relations in the light of

The authentic man does not outstrip death. His anticipation does not evade death: rather it accepts
this possibility. In accepting death as possibility man frees himself. This is to mean that man, by
anticipation, is free for his own death; he is delivered from becoming lost in the possibilities. While
before in the they-self, he was secure in the impersonal but dictated by it, now in anticipation in
accepting death as his extreme possibility, man for the first time, can understand and choose among
the possibilities in the light of this extreme possibility. In authenticity, man guards himself from falling
into the ambiguous they and he is not free to be himself, the person he himself wants to be. His
possibilities are now open before him, determined by his end and understood, thus as finite. In
anticipation of death as non-relational, man gains an understanding of his potentiality-for-being of
others. Since anticipation of this possibility which is not outstripped opens to man all the possibilities
for making himself, man now comes to grips of his wholeness in advance. He is now open to the
possibility of existing as a whole potentiality-for-being.

The certainty of death does not have the character of certainty, which is objective, of the present-at-
hand. The certainty of death corresponds to the certainty of being-in-the-world. Thus, when the
authentic man holds death for true, what is demanded from him is not just one definite kind of
behavior, but full authenticity. In anticipation, man makes certain first his ownmost being in its totality.

The indefiniteness which goes with the certainty of death calls for authentic Dasein to open itself to
the constant threat arising from its being there, a being in the world. The state of mind that is open to
this constant threat is anxiety. In anxiety, man comes face to face with the noting possible
impossibility of his existence. What he is anxious about is no other than his potentiality for being.

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Anxiety individualizes man, and it individualizes him, makes him become certain of the totality of his
potentiality for being. This authentic being-towards-death is essentially anxiety.

Heidegger summarizes this authentic being-towards-death in the following words:

Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the the-self, an bring 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 illusions of
they, and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious.

Karl Rhaners Notion of Death

Heideggers freedom towards death seems to reach a theological development in Karl Rahner. For
Rahner, death is not merely something that occurs to man, an event that overtakes him, nor is it an
evil that befalls him unexpectedly. Death, for Rhaner, is an act of man, an act of self-affirmation in
regards to this acceptance or refusal to be his authentic self. In death, there is no longer any
concupiscence on the part of man. By concupiscence Rahner means the evil that lessens the power of
man to choose between good and evil; it is the power that prevents man from making a total
commitment to either good or to evil. Because of concupiscence, man never makes a total final
commitment to the good or to the evil in the course of his life. It is only at death, that his commitment
reaches his climax. Death brings a kind of finality, a definity to the life-long decision of man with
regards to his destiny.

Death should not be taken as an isolated point in the life of man. Rather, it is to be taken as the
culminating point of his life, the point where he finally reaches a fulfillment, a totality. Death, in other
words is not to be isolated from the other free acts of man; it is understood and I becomes significant
only if it is considered against the background of the totality of mans life. Because in death, the very
issue is nother than mans total being, his total commitment.

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As such, death should therefore be present in every free act of man. Every free act of man should carry
an awareness of his fulfillment to a commitment, a realization that this one free act helps to build a
total decision of his whole being to the good (or to the bad). The very presence of death is in the very
being of man. The anticipation of death brings man face to face with the possibility of being itself in an
impassioned freedom towards death with the possibility of making an active consummation from
within the totality of his being.