Being towards Death

1) Dasein:

Dasein is the colloquial German word for “existence,” as in “I am pleased with my existence.” Before Heidegger, the phrase was employed by a number of philosophers, most notably Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who used it to refer to “determined being”, The union of Being and Nothing. It comes from the word Dasein, which roughly translates as “being-there” or “there-being,” however Heidegger insisted that this was a poor translation of Dasein.

According to Heidegger, Dasein can be a method of caring for and being connected with the immediate world in which one lives while always being conscious of the contingent nature of that engagement, the importance of the world to the self, and the always changing nature of the self. The loss of one’s personal significance, destiny, and longevity in favour of a (escapist) immersion in the public everyday world—the nameless, identical world of the They and the Them—is the antithesis of this authentic self. This is every day and inauthentic Dasein.

Heidegger divided Dasein from ordinary consciousness to underline the vital role “Being” has for our understanding and interpretation of the universe, etc., in line with Nietzsche’s critique of the subject as something definable in terms of consciousness.

Heidegger agreed with Nietzsche and Dilthey that Dasein is always a being active in the world: neither a subject, nor the objective world alone, but the coherence of Being-in-the-world. Heidegger used the notion of Dasein to explore the fundamental nature of “Being” (Sein).

Heidegger’s work’s ontological foundation thus rejects the Cartesian “abstract agent” in favour of real contact with one’s surroundings. By projecting into and engaging with a personal reality, Dasein is made manifest. This process of participation with the world as it is mediated by the projects of the self is ongoing.

Heidegger believed that language, common sense, logical constructs, and accepted views conceal Dasein’s true character. Making an authentic choice entails turning away from the collective universe of Them and facing Dasein, one’s uniqueness, their finite lifespan, and their own being.

Heidegger wanted the idea of Dasein to serve as a starting point for thinking about what it means to be a person, including having one’s own being, own death, and one’s own truth. Additionally, according to Heidegger, the question of Dasein goes beyond what is revealed by positive science or by the development of metaphysics.

Scientific investigation is not the only or even the closest form of Being that this creature can have. Additionally, Dasein has a unique quality that sets it apart from other entities; […] it is ontically unique in that its mere Being is a problem for it. The ontological distinction between entities and the being of entities was emphasised in Being and Time: “Being is always the Being of an entity.” (Heidegger) The overarching theme of Being and Time is establishing this distinction.

2) Modes of Being:

Heidegger aims to define three distinct ways of being in Being and Time. Humans fall under the first mode of being, Dasein. This style is distinguished by taking a position on the matter of being, i.e., making being a concern. Heidegger indicates by this that by having specific positions that they fall into holistically, such as “being a mother” or “being a teacher,” humans take a stand on their own existence, whether they are aware of it or not. Outside of the contextual, existential matrix that is created by collective activity, these positions cannot be defined.

The two remaining modes of being are presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand. The latter can be described as the way that human equipment exists. Heidegger argued that tools have a mode of being because they are inextricably linked to the larger context of their use. He illustrates his point with a hammer. Without addressing nails and other tools used in conjunction with hammering, you cannot effectively discuss hammers. The term “present-at-hand” refers to entities that do not have readiness-to-hand and are not Dasein but rather are just “there” in the environment.

3) Being and Nothingness:

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a book in 1943 titled Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, alternatively titled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. By addressing issues including consciousness, perception, social philosophy, self-deception, the existence of “nothingness,” psychoanalysis, and the issue of free will, Sartre constructs a philosophical case throughout the book to support his existentialism.

Sartre read Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), which employs Husserlian phenomenology as a lens for analysing ontology, while he was a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941. Sartre credited his exposure to this work with influencing the direction of his own philosophical investigations. Sartre was deeply suspicious of any means by which mankind could attain a kind of personal state of fulfilment equivalent to the hypothetical Heideggerian “re-encounter with Being,” while being influenced by Heidegger.

According to Sartre, man is a creature tormented by a vision of “completion” (what he refers to as the ens causa sui, which is Latin for “a being that causes itself”); this vision is often associated with what many religions and thinkers refer to as God. One finds themselves inserted into being when they are born into the physical reality of their body in a physical universe. Sartre explores the idea that there cannot be a type of self that is “hidden” inside consciousness in line with

Husserl’s claim that consciousness can only exist as consciousness of something. After arguing that consciousness is fundamentally self-conscious, Sartre goes on to give a philosophical critique of Sigmund Freud’s views.

In the introduction, Sartre critiques preceding phenomenologists, most notably Husserl and Heidegger, as well as idealists, rationalists, and empiricists before sketching out his own theory of consciousness, existence, and phenomena. He considers phenomenology to be one of the greatest contributions of modern philosophy because it disproved the various forms of dualism that assumed the existence of a “hidden” nature for the existent (such as Immanuel Kant’s noumenon); Phenomenology has eliminated “the illusion of worlds behind the scene.”

He describes the existence of two different sorts of being, being-in-itself (the being of things) and being-for-itself, based on an analysis of the nature of occurrences. Being-for-itself is the being of awareness, but being-in-itself is something that only humans can approximate. Being and Nothingness is regarded as both the most important non-fiction expression of Sartre’s existentialism and his most influential philosophical work, original despite its debt to Heidegger.

4) Being-towards-Death and Meaning of Life:

Being-toward-death is a state of being rather than a direction that moves Dasein closer to its conclusion in terms of clinical death. Being-toward-death describes a process of maturing through life in which a particular level of vision directs the Dasein toward acquiring an authentic viewpoint. It is brought on by fear of dying. Time is shown to be a tripartite condition of Being in the investigation of time. Humanity’s perception of time is characterised by temporality, which includes time, the present, and the idea of the “eternal.”

Heidegger rejects the common misconception that time is a linear sequence of the past, present, and future. As opposed to this, he views it as an ecstasy, an outside-of-itself, of futural projections (possibilities), and one’s place in history as a member of one’s generation. Therefore, possibilities are essential to comprehending time; yet, projects, or flung projection in-the-world, absorb and guide people. One of the main modes of Dasein’s temporality is futurity, which is a drive toward the future that constantly encompasses the past—the has-been. Death is a possibility that Dasein cannot possibly experience. As a result, it cannot be contrasted with any other sort of conclusion or “running out” of something. Death is not an empirical occurrence, for instance.

According to Heidegger, death is not relational (nobody can take one’s death away from one another or pass away in one’s place, and we cannot comprehend our own death through the death of other Dasein), it is Dasein’s ownmost, and it cannot be exceeded. As soon as a man is born, he is instantly old enough to die, therefore the “not-yet” of existence is a constant aspect of Dasein. Thus, one’s “ownmost potentiality-for-being, non-relational, and not to be out-stripped” are the three conditions of death.

Death is unavoidable in its certainty, yet a true Being-toward-death recognises the unpredictability of one’s own impending passing; one never knows when or how it will occur. However, genuine Being-toward-death recognises that one’s own personal death has always been a part of one and does not place it in some distant, futural “not-yet.”

All of this is hidden in the typical, everyday (normal) talk of death. The “they-self” talks about it in a fugitive fashion, presents it as belonging to no one in particular, conceals its identity as something that occurs at some point but is not yet “present-at-hand” as an actuality. It loses value and is reinterpreted as a neutral, unimportant, and unworthy component of reality. “One dies” is taken to signify “nobody dies” because it is taken as true.

Contrarily, authenticity removes Dasein from the “They,” in part by disclosing its position within the They. The individual self of Dasein is called out of its “they-self” by authentic being-toward- death, according to Heidegger, and is then free to re-examine life from the perspective of finitude. By doing this, Dasein invites “angst,” which can also be rendered as “dread” or “worry.”Angst, as opposed to terror, lacks a specific target for its dread; instead, it is uneasy toward Being-in-the-world as a whole, or, more specifically, toward Dasein’s own self.

The “call of conscience”, which emanates from Dasein’s own Self when it wants to be its Self, is audible during Dasein’s individuation. Then, this Self is prepared for truth, which is understood as unconcealment. The combining of opposites, in this case truth and untruth, is a recurring theme in Heidegger’s writings. In this instant of perception, Dasein comprehends both what is hidden and hiddenness itself.