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Temporal Finitude and Finitude of Possibility: The Double Meaning of Death in Being and Time

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09672550701602916

1466-4542

Havi Carel,

Political Theology and Sovereignty

Abstract The confusion surrounding Heidegger's account of death in Being and Time has led to severe criticisms, some of which dismiss his analysis as incoherent and obtuse. I argue that Heidegger's critics err by equating Heidegger's concept of death with our ordinary concept. As I show, Heidegger's concept of death is not the same as the ordinary meaning of the term, namely, the event that ends life. But nor does this concept merely denote the finitude of Dasein's possibilities or the groundlessness of existence, as William Blattner and Hubert Dreyfus have suggested. Rather, I argue, the concept of death has to be understood both as temporal finitude and as finitude of possibility. I show how this reading addresses the criticisms directed at Heidegger's death analysis as well as solving textual problems generated by more limited interpretations of the concept. Keywords: deathHeideggerfinitudemortalitybeing‐towards‐deathtemporality Notes 1 Philipse and Edwards make a few additional minor criticisms, but these will not be addressed here for reasons of space and because they are inessential and derived from the main criticisms discussed here. For the full critical account see Philipse (Citation1998) and Edwards (Citation1975, Citation1979). 2 Dreyfus stresses the difference between his account and Blattner's and criticizes the latter's understanding of being‐towards‐death as being ready for an anxiety attack (Citation2005: pp. xx, xxx; 2000: p. 333). As Dreyfus notes, since an anxiety attack is sudden and unmotivated it is hard to see how one should live in order to be ready for it. 'Blattner does not even try to explain what a life of readiness for an anxiety attack would be like' (Citation2005: p. xix). He goes on to say that it is not clear that Heidegger holds that Dasein can be ready for this kind of attack, and moreover, that anticipatory or forerunning (vorlaufen) resoluteness is already constantly anxious (ibid.). In other words, if authentic Dasein is constantly anxious, it need not be ready for an anxiety attack. Dreyfus further suggests that an anxiety attack is the nearest experience an inauthentic Dasein can have to death. 3 I deliberately bracket their disagreement about anxiety and forerunning resoluteness as the state of preparedness for such an attack, because I do not think that this specific issue is the central one; nor is it the strongest aspect of Blattner's view. 4 Polt suggests the term 'mortality' (Citation1999: p. 86). The problem with this term is that it does not designate the end of Dasein's life, but the condition of being finite. 5 Carman adds: 'indeed failing to take seriously the first/third‐person asymmetries constituting [bodily and mental phenomena] is sure to yield profound philosophical confusion' (Citation2003: p. 277n.). 6 Dreyfus thinks that mineness does not apply to private feelings or sensations, but to Dasein's public stand on itself (Citation1991: p. 26). This leaves statements about death as Dasein's ownmost unintelligible. If Dasein's mineness is 'the public stand it takes on itself' (ibid.), what does the mineness of death, the most non‐public condition of Dasein, mean? Dreyfus also criticizes John Haugeland's (Citation1982) broad interpretation of Dasein, pointing out that for Heidegger 'Dasein designates exclusively entities like each of us, that is, individual persons' (ibid., p. 14). This makes the question even more pertinent, as one clear mark of individual persons is their being a finite organic unit. For a critique of Haugeland's view see Stewart (Citation1987). 7 See also Dreyfus' (Citation1995) exchange with Carman (Citation1994) and Olafson (Citation1994a, Citation1994b) in Inquiry, and Ewing's (Citation1995) response to Dreyfus. 8 For two social behaviourist views see Brandom (Citation1983) and Haugeland (Citation1982). For a critique of this approach see Stewart (Citation1987), especially p. 96n. 9 Many complex questions arise, though, from this objection. What is das Man? What is the nature of social roles? What is the relationship between authenticity and sociality? These questions stem mainly from the overlap of two existentiales that are meant to account for the social aspect of Dasein: das Man and Mitsein. Heidegger does not work out the relationship between the two in Being and Time, and the interpretation of this relationship remains a difficult problem to this day. Moreover, he does not mention the term das Man in other work from the same period. It is notably absent from The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, although naturally it appears in the earlier History of the Concept of Time, a lecture series given in 1925 that is an earlier version of Being and Time. Nor does he return to the notion in later writing, a fact that some interpreters took to signify a rejection of this concept (Olafson, Citation1994a, p. 55). I discuss this issue elsewhere (Carel, Citation2006).