Existentialism discussion

Hi people

Can anyone help shed light on what Heidegger means when he talks about death?

Firstly he says that death is a possibility. 'Possibility' for him has a specific meaning, however, as a way of comporting yourself in the world. In other words, a possibility is a way of living... Paradoxically, he defines death as the possibility of impossibility.

Secondly he seems to say that death is not the end of your life. He has a name for this end. It is demise. He also says several times that death is neither demise nor the way you are towards your demise....

I know he uses a method of formal indication, whereby he takes an ordinary everyday concept like death and then phenomenologically formalizes it so as to reveal its ontological content. I'm just trying to understand what that ontological content is with death?

Who has read Being and Time lately?

Cheers

I'd be interested in reading your take on the question, Todd, since I haven't read Heidegger in a long time.

I am meeting with my philosophy tutor on Tuesday discussing this very topic, will post with results of my analysis... :)

For Heidegger, Death had absolutely everything to do with authenticity. When Heidegger talks of the "Death" of Dasein, he is not necessarily speaking about existential crises (he values essentia over existentia), nor is he talking about Nietzsche famous "God is dead" remark, though he does discuss God, and doesn't dismiss the possibility of an afterlife.
Death is not the end of Being for Heidegger. Please see the following: II. 1 238

The deceased to Heidegger are "'still more' than just an item of equipment, environmentally ready-to-hand, about which one can be concerned." II. 1 238

Death to Heidegger is not inevitable. He sees Death as an empirical likelihood, not one which is ultimately necessary. To him it is a process that we go towards, but we are not in a constantly dying a state. As he says, when a fruit is unripe it "goes towards" its ripeness. The ripeness is merely not present-at-hand. (i'm paraphrasing II. I 243)

It is important to recognize Heidegger sees Care as Being-towards-death. This has meaningful implications, Division 2 section 3, 330.

The important part of Heideggers analysis on Heidegger's interpretation of Death is his theory on resoluteness. He talks about the Situation in which we find ourselves in understanding, which in my mind brings up an image of a curtain revealing and closing a stage (i.e. authentic potentiality-for-being-in-the-world, "being authentic", Being-its-Self)

For Heidegger, Being "wants to have a consciousness" and thus manifests inauthentic Being-guilty. He signifies Being-guilty as 'having debts' ["Shulden haben"], and Death as a signifier of the end of authentic potentiality. He says, in II. 2 287, "Does not a "summons to Being guilty" mean a summons to evil?"

Heidegger desires an impassioned freedom towards death as he points out in II. 1 311. "a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the "they", and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious"

So how would you differentiate death, demise and perishing? And how is death a possibility?

If death is the death of dasein, then how can death have anything to do with the death of the person? I don't think it can at all, at least not in any necessary way. And if dasein is ontologically the entity that understands being (not the ontical person), then the death of dasein is the death of an understanding of being, of an intelligibility. Only in this sense is death a nullity/impossibility -- these two words signify the same thing.

I'm stepping out on a limb here but, if my interpretation is right then Nietzsche's Death of God can be understood as death in Heidegger's terms also. For Nietzsche, with the intensification of modernity belief in God (i.e. metanarratives) has become, or is becoming, impossible. In Heidegger's terms I think we could say that the ontological framework that makes a certain way of being possible/intelligible has died. In other words, and as controversial as it sounds, the ontological framework that makes Christian world possible has collapsed with modernity.

Todd | 4 comments
>So how would you differentiate death, demise and perishing? And how is death a possibility?
A person "meets" his demise in present being. He does not similarly "meet" his death - he moves towards it. It is thus an idea we go to until our Death falls into the world as being-present. Perishing can only be thought of as perished, perishing, but not necessarily going-to-be perished. You can be going-towards Death, had died, or dying, so it satisfies all 3 tenses. Demise only satisfies the present. The phrase "met his demise" is a descriptor of the Dasein.

Todd, I'm not sure what you mean about modernity. I don't think Heidegger had much to do with that, but I haven't read any of his other major works. But I do know that Heidegger commented a lot on historicity. Heidegger is proclaimed to be an atheist, yet he served one week in training to become a Jesuit before deciding to leave. He was said to have attended Catholic church in his hometown.

Just a side comment — even though you can say: "will demise at the walls of Rome" for example, in this case it is referring to the making-present of a form of Death, thus more descriptive. It is not referring to just the making-present of Death, in my humble opinion, because demise is a state of the presence of a form of Death, not a thing in itself. Demising is not a word that makes much sense, it is a state.

Similarly, perishing can be past, present, but not necessarily future: if you say "will perish" it's a stretch of the imaginary, it is an image of death, in a similar way to demise. If I am "perished" it does not mean I have died. If I am "perishing" similarly, I am not necessarily "dying".

Kenneth I'm finding what you write to be unintelligible.

1. What do you mean by "present being", "being-present" and "making present"?
2. How is demise only present? I can surely anticipate my demise by making a will, funeral plans, etc.
3. You haven't explained once what you understand death to mean, and neither perishing nor demise.
4. How is death a possibility?

Here's the Heidegger quote from Being and Time on demise in case you haven't read it.

"Dasein too can end, without ownedly dying, though on the other hand, qua Dasein, it does not simply perish. We designate this intermediate phenomenon as its demise. Let the term 'dying' stand for that way of being in which dasein is towards its death."

So demise (the end of us as persons) is an intermediate phenomenon. I take this to mean that demise is perishing (which is the biological end of us as living organisms) modified by death (whatever this is). What is death?

Todd, I definitely have finished Being and Time, as I emphasized above. :)
Now in regards to your questions...

1. Present being: Dasein emphasized as in the Being-in-the-world, and present-at-hand

Being-present: Being present-at-hand and Being-in-the-world, See division 2 before the discussion on temporality for more details if I recall. I would say simply this is the "existential" shorthand.
If you want a good grasp on Heidegger's conception of time, it's very important to understand his conception of temporal being, of course.

Making present: I actually meant more Making something present-at-hand. Or in more specific Heideggerian terms, "throwing" Being into a state of fallenness.

2. Demise is in the present tense because as Heidegger says it is an intermediate phenomenon. What that means is it is the process by which one succumbs to that fate. He wouldn't use the term "fate" though.

3. See below.

4. Death is a possibility because Heidegger is not just talking about a "physical" death, so not just in an 'existentialle' manner. There is an empirical probability as you live on longer there is a higher risk of dying. It can lower or raise depending on where you live, what you eat, etc. But it is always a possibility. It can always happen but it is different in that biological organism it must happen. However the Death of Dasein does not end in the same manner necessarily. The sun always rises and sets for example. We don't question that. However, to continue with the sun example, the sun rises and get thrown into the world, and eventually sets, or falls back unto to Death.

Keep in mind these are all linguistic definitions Heidegger uses to describe different phases of his idea of Death. Whether or not colloquially in English we use a word another way is separate from how he defines it here. His conception of Death is not necessarily of an existential one, but more as a completion phase. It does not necessarily mean a biological death, but his conception of Being is very close to some idea of a "human condition" rather than a theological one. But it remains metaphysical.
So he says that Dasein is simply not present-at-hand at its death, but it still exists even after that completion phase. The demise happens as Dasein meets its death. It does not of necessity perish unless it is established that it is a state of perishing. The Dasein is "modified by death" as it does not cease to exist. He says as an example, that if a loved one dies for example, there is clearly something "there" but the fallenness that occurs is one of a thought or conception of the person existing, in the past and being-present. And in the potentiality-for-being for a thought in the future, etc. But the effects of someone living are actual.

Hey Kenneth,

I don’t understand why you are using Heidegger’s opposed concepts of being-in-the-world and present-at-hand to define what you mean by present being/being-present etc. It is confusing because something whose being is structured by being-in-the-world (e.g. dasein) cannot be coherently understood as present-at-hand (e.g. like a rock), and conversely something whose being is present-at-hand cannot coherently be taken as being-in-the-world because it is not. Each ontological concept excludes the other.

I think maybe the cause of this category error might be that you are interpreting present-at-hand to be like a temporal tense, namely the present. While there are surely temporal aspects to the meaning of present-at-hand, as far as I know Heidegger never uses the term itself to describe the temporal tense of the present. For that he uses terms like being-amidst, fallenness, the Present, making-Present, the Now, etc. depending on which kind of temporality he is analysing (originary temporality, pragmatic temporality, world time, ordinary time). He uses present-at-hand on the other hand simply to denote the being of occurrentness or existentisa as opposed to the being of dasein (provisionally existence and later reinterpreted as care) and the being of equipment (ready-to-hand).

Here's a question. If death is a possibility how exactly do you understand that possibility? It seems like above you are using it in the sense of possibility as opposed to actuality. But does this kind of possibility have the being of presence-at-hand? "a kind of being which is essentially inappropriate to entities of dasein's character" (pg. 67). I think it does. Remember dasein's being is existence, which later on gets further interpreted as care. Taking his into account, what do you think Heidegger means when he talks about possibility and impossibility on page 307?