MARTIN HEIDEGGERS PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH

By: Manuel B. Dy, Jr.

According to Heidegger, the being of man is a being-in-the-world. Man is
primordially directed towards the world. And has the power-to-be in the world. His being
in the world consists in being alongside with things, the ready-to-hand and the present-athand, what Heidegger calls concern, and in being 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 encounter 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 he 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 always 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 reached his wholeness. Man always
has an unfinished character.
Man reaches his wholeness in death. In death, man loses his potentiality for being,
ge loses his there. There is no more outstanding in man, everything is finished, settled
for him. He is no longer being there.
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 nolonger-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 other, will the death of others then give us the objective knowledge
about death? But the death of another person, 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 othersm
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-longerbeing-there, and belongs to the particular man, his very own, non-presentable.
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 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 of
the fruit. The ripeness of the fruit is the end of its lack-of-ripeness, the end of the notyet 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 th other hand, in
death, man may or may not arrive at his fulfillment. And here Heidegger throws a
striking remark: What is unfortunate is that so little is it the case that Dasein comes to
its ripeness only with death, that Dasein may will have passed its ripeness before the
end. For the most part, Dasein ends in fulfillment
Dasein therefore, as long as it exists, is already its end. The end of Dasein is not to
be understood as being-at-an-end but as being-towards-the end. Heideggers
phenomenology of death therefore is not a description of death of an after-life, but of man
as a being-towards-his-end, a being-towards-death. If man is a being-towards-death, and
his being in the world 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 Bieingalongside entities which we encounter (within-the-world). Care, in other words, has the
following characteristics of Daseins being: existence, in the ahead-of-itself; facticity, in
the Being-already-in; and falling, in the Being-alongside. Being-toward-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 notyet of man, something towards which he comports himself. Death is not just something
that happens to man; it is something impending. The impending is not that of the coming
of the 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-tobe-there; the possibility 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 reaveals 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 world, I am already thrown into this possibility. I
may not be aware of it but the fact that I exist in the world, I exist with the possibility of
death. This possibility is revealed only in the basic mood of man, anxiety, in the
experience of dread wherein man comes face to face with his potentiality for being.
Anxiety is not fear, 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 are indeed ignorant of death as the possibility which is ownmost, nonrelational and cannot be outstripped. They are engrossed in immediate concern with
things, thus covering up their ownmost being-toward-death, fleeing in the face of it. But
the fact remains that they are being-towards-death, the man is dying even in his
falleness, in his being absorbed in the everyday world of concern. Let us describe
further this fallenness of being-towards-death.
Everyday Being-towards-death -- Inauthenticity
In the publicness of everyday 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, and
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 yetpresent at
hand, and therefore offers no threat. The they says, one dies, but the one is nobody,
no one will claim that it is I. In this way, the they levels off death, makes it ambiguous,
and hides the true aspects of this possibility, the mineness, non-relational, and that which
cannot be outstripped.
This is the 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-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 care-freeness of everyday
concern must not be disturbed. To start thinking about death is considered by the they
as a sign of cowardice, of fear, of insecurity. The they does not permit us the courage
for anxiety in the face of death. Instead the anxiety in the face of death is taken as a sign
of weakness. According to the way, the attitude to the fact that one dies is that 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 constant fleeing on the face of
death. The 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 but is 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
is 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 the
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 which goes with its certainty. The inauthentic man confers a kind
of definiteness upon this 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 beingtowards-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
evasion, of covering up deaths true implications, nor of giving new explanations for it.
Man must face the possibility of death as his possibility, the possibility in which his very
existence is an issue. Facing this 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 anticipation of this possibility. By
anticipation, man comes close the death, not by making it actual but by understanding it
as the 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 possibility will provide him with a vision of his own present existence, the latent
possibilities lying before him.
In authentic being-towards-death, man realizes 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 own most potentiality for concern and
solicitude is nothing when his ownmost potentiality for being is itself an issue in death.
Authentic being-towards-death does not mean, however, cutting oneself off from all
relationships; rather it means projecting oneself upon his ownmost potentiality for being

rather than upon the possibility of the they self. Death is known to the authentic man as
non-relational and with this awareness, he as it were understands and chooses his
possibility of relations in the light of the extreme possibility of death as non-relational.
The authentic man des not outstrip death. His anticipation does not evade death:
rather it accepts this possibility. In accepting death as the possibility, man frees himself.
This is to mean than 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 to be
outstripped opens to man all the possibilities for making himself, man now comes to grip
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-theworld. Thus, when the authentic man holds death for true, what is demanded from him is
not just one definite kind of behavior, but the 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 out form 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 nothing of possible impossibility of his existence. What he
is anxious about is no other than his potentiality for being. 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, and 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 itself,
and anxious.