William McNeill

Rethinking the Possible: On the Radicalization of

Possibility in Heideggers Being and Time
In his lecture course of winter semester 1925-26, Logic: The
Question of Truth, Heidegger makes a claim that will be altogether
programmatic for Being and Time and for his phenomenological work
of the 1920s. The concept of possibility, he remarks, is entirely
unclarified in scientific philosophy hitherto. [...] The meaning of
possibility and the type of structures of possibility belonging to
Dasein as such have remained altogether concealed from us up
to the present day (GA 21 228).1 The radicality of this claim can
scarcely be underestimated: Heidegger, in his work of the 1920s
and beyond, will in effect inaugurate a new thinking of possibility
that will exceed the parameters set by the first, Greek beginning
of philosophy, which became established in Aristotles ontology.
Central to this re-examination of possibility is, as this quotation
intimates, the uncovering of Dasein as the site where possibility itself
is opened up in a most radical way. In my present remarks I shall
begin to trace what I regard as Heideggers radical displacement and
rethinking of both the concept and the phenomenon of possibility
in his magnum opus of 1927, Being and Time. The Introduction to
that work indeed provides a first indication of this displacement
in its assertion that [h]igher than actuality stands possibility. The
understanding of phenomenology lies solely in taking it up as
a possibility (SZ 38). This statement not only announces what
appears to be a reversal of the traditional priority of actuality over
possibilitya priority that goes back to Aristotles privileging of
energeia over dunamisbut also sees phenomenology itself as one
possibility of philosophizing, a possibility that, when taken up and
enacted in its own radicalization, may itself undergo transformation,
as did Heideggers own phenomenological thinking of the 1920s.
The transformation and eventual abandonment of phenomenology
from 1930 on as inadequate or inappropriate to the thinking of Being
is not unrelated, I would suggest, to the rethinking of possibility that

Being and Time initiates.

In the present essay I shall suggest that inherent to
Heideggers rethinking of possibility are two, seemingly
irreconcilable claims: first, thatcontrary to what much of the
political rhetoric of our time would have us believenot everything
is possible. And second, that, nevertheless, Dasein, by its very way
of existing, makes possible even the impossible. What these claims
entail, I shall try to elucidate with respect to Heideggers thinking
of possibility in Being and Time. To this end, I want to begin to
trace the contours of this rethinking of possibility via the analytic
of Dasein presented in Being and Time by outlining six key points
of the analysis. These points, taken together, emphatically indicate
the centrality and primacy of the phenomenon of possibility for the
entire phenomenology of Dasein.

I.
The ontological determination of Daseinthat is, of the
being that we ourselves in each case areis primarily possibility.
Dasein, Heidegger writes, is not something present at hand that
in addition has [or possesses] the ability to do something; rather, it
is primarily being-possible [Mglichsein]. Dasein is in each case
what it can be and how it is its possibility (SZ 143). We are not
primarily something actual that has the additional feature of being
able to do something, or of having possibilities. Rather, insofar as
we are actual, this being actual, this actuality of ourselves as actual,
is already held or suspended, as it were, within the dimension of
possibility. Moreover, we do not simply have possibilities, we are
possibility: our being is primarily being-possible. Possibility in this
sense, Heidegger emphasizes, is not to be understood as that which
is not yet actual; it is not a modal category that is ontologically lesser
than actuality or necessity:
The being-possible that Dasein in each case is existentially [i.e.,
ontologically, in terms of its very being] is to be distinguished just
as much from empty, logical possibility as from the contingency
that attends something present at hand insofar as something can
happen to the latter. As a modal category of presence at hand,
possibility signifies that which is not yet actual and that which
is not always necessary. It characterizes the merely possible.
Possibility as an existential, by contrast, is the most primordial
[or originary] and ultimate positive ontological determinacy of
Dasein; initially, [...] it can only be prepared as a problem. (14344)

The centrality and primacy of possibility for Daseins being

could scarcely be more emphatically stated. Several points bear
emphasizing with regard to this initial sketch. First, if possibility, in
the sense of being-possible, is not to be understood as that which is
not yet actual, it is because it is that which already is, the dimension
within which everything actual is already suspended. But this
indicates only that the being of possibility, its already being, is not
reducible to, and cannot be understood phenomenologically in terms
of, actuality. What kind of being pertains, then, to possibility? What
is strange, peculiar, even uncanny actuality, or perhaps better,
force? In what way is Dasein as possibility? Second, in hinting
that the modern, Kantian understanding of possibility as a modal
category refers to the not yet actual and the not always necessary,
Heidegger indicates how the traditional understanding of being as
primarily the actuality of presence at hand has itself led to a reductive
understanding of the possible as that which is less than either the
plenitude of actual presence or of that which always is, the eternal.
The task of the phenomenology of Dasein, unfolding in and through
a destructuring of the history of ontology, will thus be to begin to
thinkor to prepare, if only as a problemthe being of possibility
outside or beyond the parameters of the traditional prioritizing of
presence or actuality. Thirdand this is a more general pointwe
might do well to remind ourselves here that to exist primarily as
being-possible characterizes not only the being of Dasein, but the
being of the living in general. If all living is a being underway, then
every living being, as living, has always already surpassed what and
how it actually is, surpassed it in entering into and maintaining itself
within the dimension of possibility or potentiality: its living is its
being capable, its possibility of being otherwise than it already is.
Where such a being is no longer able to breathe, to sense, to nourish
itself, or to die: there we say the being is dead. And correlatively,
death is a possibility only for the living. Of course, there is much
more to be said here, and we cannot simply conclude from this that
being means the same thing for Dasein as it does for other living
beings, or that being-possible is the same, or that death and death
are the same. For it is not possibility as such, Heidegger will argue,
that is the sole or critical issue here, but the relation to possibility,
the opening up of possibility as possibility.2

II.
This question of the opening up of possibility as such, as
possibilityan opening up that Heidegger will elsewhere describe
as an irruption into possibilitybrings us to a second major point
(GA 29/30 531; Metaphysics 365). Not just Dasein itself as possibility,
but the being of all beings, is first opened up, as possibility, in what
Heidegger terms projection (Entwerfen). Projection is what
enables understanding, which is always an understanding of the
being of beings. Dasein understands not only itself in terms of what
and how it can be, in terms of its potential for being (Seinknnen),
but also and at the same time all other beings within the world: we
understand the tree, the wood, the table in terms of what and how
they can be, what we can do with them, how we can let them be,
and so on. The tree grows, flourishes, or decays, but the possibilities
of its growth, flourishing, or decay are not disclosed as possibilities
except in and through the projective happening of Dasein. Likewise,
we understand the other Dasein in terms of how we can be with him
or her in terms of our worldly engagements. At one and the same
time as this opening up of other beings as such, as potentially being
this or that, what is opened up is the horizon of a world, in terms of
which or from out of which beings are given as a whole.3 Already in
Being and Time, Heidegger describes this projective opening up of
possibility in terms of an antecedent giving, a freeing and releasing
(Freigabe) that first enables beings to appear within a world: the
freeing of intraworldly beings releases these beings with respect to
their possibilities (SZ 144). Projection thus opens up the realm
of freedom: it opens up both the being of Dasein and the being of
other beings in terms of the meaningful possibilities that are given
within a particular worlda world that, as we shall later indicate,
is also always already given as a historical world. As projection,
understanding projects the being of Dasein with respect to that for
the sake of which it exists with equal primordiality as it projects
Daseins being with respect to the significance that constitutes the
worldliness of a particular world (145). That for the sake of which
Dasein exists is its own potential for being, the possibility of its
own being, or its own being as possibility. Yet such being, as beingin-the-world, is never separable from, but is intimately bound up
with, the being of other beings that have appeared within a world,
and, before and beyond this, with the world itself that constitutes
the primary horizon in terms of which such beings appear. This
antecedent binding or directedness constitutes Daseins facticity;4
projection opens up what Heidegger terms the leeway of [Daseins]
factical potential for being (145).

III.
A third point follows from this. The fact of facticity
which, like possibility itself, can at this stage be grasped only
as a problem (SZ 56)constitutes, as it were, an ineluctable
restriction on the freedom of Dasein as possibility. To say that
Dasein is primarily possibility does not mean that it is sheer,
free-floating possibility, an undifferentiated freedom that can be
determined by the will: [p]ossibility as an existential does not
mean a free-floating potential for being in the sense of the liberty
of indifference (libertas indifferentiae) (144). Daseins freedom
is not absolute: to say that it exists for the sake of its own being is
not the equivalent of autonomy, for its own being is a being-in-theworld, and thus a being that never entirely belongs to Dasein as a
self. This is to say that all projection is thrown (geworfen), and
this thrownness complicates and restrains the freedom opened up
in projection. Dasein is thrown possibility through and through
(144). This thrownness also comprises the way in which Dasein has
already found itself, its bodily attunement in its here-and-now
situation in the world:
Finding itself essentially attuned and situated [...] Dasein has in
each case already entered into particular possibilities. As that
potential for being that it is, it has let certain possibilities pass it
by; it is constantly waiving possibilities of its being, taking them
up or mistaking them. This means, however, that Dasein is beingpossible that has been delivered over to itself, thrown possibility
through and through. (144)

The possibility of being has in each case its own historywho and
how I can be at the next moment depends on and comes out of,
approaches me from, who and how I have been, not exclusively
(for it also depends on events and beings beyond my history), but
nevertheless essentiallyand yet this history can never entirely own
itself, for it is enabled by and already inscribed within (thrown into)
a greater history, which is that of a historical world. As directed in
advance toward a world that precedes and exceeds it, Daseins being
as possibility is always situated by, and only ever responsive to, an
already prevailing historical world into which it has been thrown.
Not everything is possible in any given era or at any given time.
I shall come back to this point. For now, I want to highlight
what Daseins having already found itself as possibility necessarily

implies, namely, that such possibility has also and unavoidably

already lost itself, that it can never entirely be itself. Which is to say
that the possibility that I can be, can, nevertheless, never be mine,
can never appropriate itself. I can only ever pursue this possibility
of being. I can only ever anticipate this possibility of being that I
potentially can and must be, yet never will be. (This anticipation,
this pursuit, is what Heidegger will designate as a running ahead
[Vorlaufen]which, as pursuit, is always a running after, a running
after something that has shown itselfthe running ahead that
constitutes Daseins very way of being, or Dasein itself as way, as
the opening up of a path, a path that is not pregiven, but opened
up only in a being underway.) Heidegger insists that this loss is
not only possible, but necessary and inevitable: it is intrinsic to the
being of possibility, to the possibility of being. Through projection,
Dasein understands itself, the potential for being that it is:
And only because Dasein is its There in the manner of understanding
[i.e., projection] can it run astray [sich verlaufen, this time] and
be mistaken with regard to itself. And insofar as understanding
finds itself attuned and situated, and as such exposed existentially
to thrownness, Dasein has in each case already run astray and
failed to recognize itself. In its potential for being it is, therefore,
delivered over to [berantwortet: more literally, it must answer
or respond to] the possibility of first finding itself again in its
possibilities. (SZ 144)

Dasein, as the potential for being, has always yet to appropriate itself
in terms of what is possible for it at any moment. Yet the necessity
of this task is only a testament to the antecedent disappropriation to
which it itself, as the potential for being, is exposed. Disappropriation,
the force of thrownness, which is that of a continual being thrown,
or finding oneself in the throw, is primary here; appropriation is
secondary and can occur only after the event (the event of being that
Heidegger will later term Ereignis). We have always yet to be, we
have always yet to find ourselves again in terms of the possibilities
of our being, only because we have always already lost ourselves.
As Heidegger elsewhere puts it: Possibility falls away, and an ever
new appropriation is called for (GA 18 190).
Now this possibility, namely, the possibility of first finding
itself again in its possibilitiesthis possibility is not just any
possibility (SZ 144). As the primary possibility that Dasein is, it is
an altogether distinctive one, even thoughand this is what is most
peculiarit is not a determinate one, despite what the grammatical

use of the definite article might seem to indicate here. This leads us
to our fourth point.

IV.
Dasein as possibility is, in Being and Time, thought
hyperbolically, as it were, in terms of its most extreme possibility:
that of its death, of the possibility of impossibility. This negativity,
the not of impossibility, continually haunts Dasein as the being that
exists as possibility. Where there is possibilitywhere possibility
is disclosed as such, as possibilitythere lies, necessarily, the
possibility of impossibility, of failure, of not actualizing or realizing,
of not accomplishing, what could have been and nevertheless was
not to be. Is this not to say that Dasein makes possible even the
impossiblenot in the sense of actualizing it, but in the sense
of letting the impossible be as a possibility, of raising even the
impossible into the dimension or element of the possible? Indeed.5
Yet, one might argue, the converse is surely just as much the case: if
the impossible becomes a possibility, everything possible is no less
an impossibility. Or to put it another way, every success on Daseins
part, every actual accomplishment, is, in a sense, an impossibility,
for it can never be fully actual. Yet would this not be to reduce
possibility to the possibility of actuality, or of pure presence,
once again? Far from being an impossibility, all accomplishment
(Vollbringen), which Heidegger comes to see as the essence of
action, occurs within and actualizes itself (presences) from out of
the element of the possible.6 The possible is its very dimension.
Now it is this dimension that Dasein has always already
assumed in taking upon itself the possibility of its death as a
possibility of being. A number of points need to be emphasized
here. First, Dasein has to take upon itself this possibility in order to
be: it is not Daseins choice; Dasein does not decide to assume or
take on this possibility. Thus, Heidegger writes: whenever Dasein
exists, it is also already thrown into this possibility (SZ 251). It is
thrown into this possibility as into the mode of being of projecting
itself, for being thrown into this possibility first enables and anchors
projection as such.7 To be thrown into this possibility means: to have
been projected, continually and already, in the direction of and right
into this possibility, in a projection that constitutes our very way
of being as such. This projection of our way of being as a being
toward death as possibility is the primary projection of our being,
for, prior to any determinate choice or decisionprior, that is, to
any appropriation of this or that possibility on Daseins partit has

always already happened. It is as this excess or excedance that will

always already have surpassed every determinate possibility that
death as possibility is not to be outstripped or surpassed (nicht zu
berholen), and it is as this excedance that death as possibility is
projected hyperbolically, as the most extreme possibility (250).
Strictly speaking, Dasein cannot take this possibility upon itself,
however, because prior to this hyperbolic projection it is not yet
a self, or does not yet have the possibility of being a self. It is the
subjection (of something that is not yet Dasein) to this projection
that first enables and necessitates individuation, that makes this
most extreme possibility Daseins ownmost possibility. It first
brings Dasein before itself: [w]ith death, Dasein stands before
itself in its ownmost potential for being (250). To say that this
possibility is Daseins ownmost possibility, however, does not mean
that Dasein owns this possibility. Quite the contrary: for to say that
Dasein owns this possibility would mean that Dasein had exceeded
or outstripped it. Rather, being thrown into this possibility means
having been subjected to, having undergone, the disappropriation
that first enables any and all appropriation. This possibility has taken
hold of, hasquite literallypossessed, Dasein. We seen here the
entire paradox of Daseins mineness or (in a weak, non-modern
sense) subjectivity: what is most my own, that which no one else
can undergo for me or in my place, is nevertheless not my ownit
is not something I own or possess, or dispose over.
Second, however, death as possibility, as the possibility
of the impossibility of existence as such, is not the possibility of
nonbeing, or of sheer nothingness, but a possibility of being (SZ 262).
Or rather, if it is the possibility of nonbeing, or of impossibilityof
the impossibility of my existencethen the genitive here does
not signify a relation of belonging. This possibility does not belong
to nonbeing or to impossibility. It belongs to being as such as its
innermost preserve. Dasein relates to this possibility of impossibility
constantly and always in one way or another; its relation to this
possibility is what constitutes Dasein as mortal and its way of
being as dying. Dying, in this existential-ontological conception, is
not, therefore, a one-off event that occurs at or near the end of a
life; rather, [d]ying is to be taken as a title designating that way
of being in which Dasein is in relation to its death (247). Dasein,
accordingly, is factically dying, so long as it exists (SZ 259).8
Third, and very briefly, I want to draw attention here to the
profoundly paradoxical and aporetic structure of this happening of
death, of this being toward death as the possibility of impossibility. It
is paradoxical not only because the impossible is not the opposite of
the possible here, and is thus precisely possible as im-possible; it is

also paradoxical because death as this possibility is on the one hand

utterly determinateit is irremediably mine and as such absolutely
certainand yet indeterminate, as that which is possible at any
moment (SZ 258). This paradoxical structure indeed constitutes,
Heidegger says, the ownmost character of possibility pertaining
to death: certain and yet indeterminate, that is, possible at any
moment (258). This determinate indeterminacy is fundamentally
temporal: it is the indeterminacy of the future that, as indeterminacy,
precisely already iswhich, however, is to say that it is within the
determinacy of the unfolding of my thrownness, my having-been.
It is the element within and from out of which my being thrown
unfolds.

V.
Daseins relation to possibility is, precisely through this
hyperbolic projection, shown to be one of anticipation or running
ahead (Vorlaufen)but this means that its relation to possibility
is always futural in the radical, ekstatic sense that Heidegger
gives this futuricity. In its average everydayness, Dasein tends to
avoid, to conceal and cover over, the most extreme and ownmost
possibility of its own being by falling, by interpreting itself in terms
of determinate possibilities, ways of being proffered by others and
by a world into which it has been thrown. Seeking to actualize itself
through action in enacting real life, it forgets itself in its ownmost
possibility, loses itself in the They. It overlooks or fails to see
the very element of the possible. In contrast to such evasive being
toward death as possibility, Heidegger, in section 53, sketches what
an authentic being toward death must entail. Daseins maintaining
itself (sich halten9) in an authentic being toward death, as a way of
being in relation to this possibility, must, by contrast, not evade or
cover over this possibility, but let it be as a possibility. An authentic
being toward this possibility, as a way of being, cannot mean
actualizing this possibility: within the field of everyday concern,
which is concerned to actualize possibilities, such actualization
has the tendency to annihilate [or abolish] the possibility of the
possible by actualizing it (even though, Heidegger notes, such
actualization is only ever relative); in terms of the possibility of my
death, actualizing this possibility, perhaps through suicide, would
abolish the possibility of being in relation to this very possibility
(SZ 261). In an authentic being toward death this possibility
must, by contrast, be understood without being weakened [or,
hyperbolically: ungeschwcht] as possibility, be cultivated as

possibility, and in relating to it, be sustained as possibility (261).10

Such being toward possibility is termed a running ahead into
possibility [Vorlaufen in die Mglichkeit] (261). Now such running
ahead, which is a projection and thus a disclosive understanding
of possibility, not only unveils possibility as such, as Heidegger
writes, but it unveils it hyperbolically, as that which has altogether
no measure, as the possibility of the measureless impossibility of
existence (262). In a sense, it intensifies or enhances possibility,
but only because this possibility is already there, latent within all
existing as such. It brings to the fore the measureless within the
very possibility of existence (and the measureless here also means:
that which cannot be measured, thus calculated, the incalculable).
To say, therefore, that [b]eing toward death, as a running ahead
into possibility, first possibilizes11 [ermglicht] this possibility and
sets it free [or releases it] as such does not, it would seem, mean
that running ahead first makes possible this possibility, but only
that it intensifies this possibility that is already thereand yet not
yet there as possibility, not yet unveiled and set free as such (262;
my emphasis in bold). It is running ahead into the possibility of
impossibilityinto the impossibility of existence as such, which is
to say, into the impossibility of possibility, the impossibility that
attends all possibilityit is this running ahead that first releases the
possibility of existence as such, first lets it be as the possibility it
is. Yet if running ahead unveils, hyperbolically, the possibility of
the impossibility of existence, this is only because this authentic
mode of being is itself only the retrieval, the self-recovery or autorecovery, as it were, of that very way of being that first enables
itself as possibility: [b]eing toward death is running ahead into a
potential for being of that being whose mode of being is running
ahead itself (262). Running ahead, thus retrieved (wiederholt),
therefore means: understanding oneself in the very movedness of
ones being, existing fully within the unfolding of ones ownmost
being from out of its ultimate ground.
The phenomenon of running ahead articulates the movement
of Daseins being, its way of being as being always already ahead of
itself, which is the primary moment of Care. Daseins being ahead
of itself is its projective being toward itself as potentiality for being,
as possibility:
Being toward its ownmost potentiality for being means
ontologically, however: Dasein is in each case already ahead of
itself in its being. Dasein is always already out beyond itself,not
as a relating to other beings that it is not, but as being toward the
potential for being that it itself is. (SZ 191-92)

Now this being ahead of itself first enables Daseins coming toward
itself as a coming back to itself, a return to or retrieval of itself as
a thrown having been, as being-there-in-the-world. Yet this not
only means, once again, that the Dasein whose being is enabled as
possibility, in and through this being ahead of itselfthat such Dasein
is not yetnever yetitself. It also means, more radically, that this
primary not yet that Dasein is does not belong to Dasein itself, to
Dasein as an already existing self, for it first enables Daseins coming
toward itself, that is, it first enables the appropriation of itself that
has always yet to happen. It is this, Daseins coming toward itself,
that constitutes the ekstatic phenomenon of the future, according
to Being and Time. In section 65, Heidegger unfolds this sense of
future phenomenologically starting from the phenomenon of being
toward death. Daseins being toward its ownmost possibility
is possible only in such a way that Dasein can come
toward itself in its ownmost possibility in general, and
sustains this possibility as possibility in this letting itself
come toward itself. Such letting itself come toward itself
in this distinctive possibility and sustaining this possibility
is the original phenomenon of the future (325).

Future here, Heidegger emphasizes in alluding to the sense of

coming or approach (Kunft) inherent in the German Zukunft, does
not mean a now or present that is not yet actual and has yet to
be, but means that coming in which Dasein comes toward itself in
its ownmost potential for being. Just as possibility is the primary
and most originary determination of Daseins being, so the ekstatic
phenomenon of the future is primary within the unity of the ekstases,
first enabling having-been and the yet more derivative presence that
futural having-been awakens (329). It is the disappropriation that
grounds the possibility of the futureof the future as the possibility
of Daseins coming toward itselfit is this disappropriation,
however, which is thus also more primordial than having been, that
undermines the coherence and unity of the supposedly self-like,
unitary structure of ekstatic temporality as the ekstatikon pure and
simple, as the originary outside itself in and for itself, thereby
grounding the very selfhood of Dasein in irrecoverable loss (329).
Indeed, this not yet, the ekstatic happening of this
originary future or coming as the grounding possibility of
Dasein, is so primordial that one must question whether the term
disappropriation adequately articulates what is to be thought
here. For disappropriation implies that appropriation has already

occurred, that Dasein has already been constituted as such to thus

undergo the expropriation of its being. Yet must there not be a closure
that antecedes, or is more primordial than, such disappropriation, if
the future is indeed more primordial than having been, if having been
(Gewesenheit) in a certain way first springs from the future (SZ
326)? This, presumably, is why Heidegger here, in discussing the
finitude of the future, writes not of a disappropriation, disowning, or
expropriation, but of a closure as the most fundamental characteristic
of the futural ekstasisa closure that first opens the possibility of
projecting or understanding ones own being in terms of nothingness
(Nichtigkeit) or the possibility of impossibility: a closure, therefore,
that first opens possibility as such. The fundamental question
concerns
how such coming-toward-oneself is itself originarily determined
as such. Its finitude does not primarily mean a cessation, but
is a characteristic of temporalization itself. The originary and
authentic future is the toward-oneself, oneself, [already] existing
as the unsurpassable possibility of nothingness. The ekstatic
character of the originary future lies precisely in the fact that it
closes our potential for being, that is, it is itself closed, and as
such makes possible [ermglicht] a radically open existentiell
understanding of nothingness. (330)

Heidegger here indicates how this primordial, originating closure,

this closed (geschlossen) dimension of the future, first enables an
authentically and radically open (entschlossen) projection of ones
own being upon the possibility of the impossibility of existence, or
the possibility of nothingness.12 Authenticity, an authentic relation
to ones ownmost finitude, is thus itself a derivative possibility of
being in the sense that it is grounded in and presupposes this more
primordial closure. Even though the originary and authentic future
share the same formal structure of the toward-oneself, Heidegger
here suggests that they do not coincide: it is the originary future that
first enables or makes possible the authentic future as an explicit
running ahead, a recuperation or retrieval of a movement of being
that has always already happened.

VI.
This futural dimension of Daseins Being must ultimately
be understood in terms of historicality: that is, in relation to the
phenomenon of birth that testifies to what Heidegger calls the
quiet force of the possible [die stille Kraft des Mglichen] (SZ 394-

95). What is important here is that it is the irrecoverable loss of

presence, the finitude implicit in Daseins futural ekstasis, which is
essentially closed, compelling the disappropriation in being toward
death, that first gives birth to individuation, and thereby to finite
possibilities of being. The disclosive running ahead into possibility
as such, sustaining the possibility of impossibility, individuates
Dasein in casting it back upon and returning it to its factical There,
turning it toward and into the horizon of possibilities that approach
it from out of an already existing world. Daseins birth, its coming
into being as the birth of the possible, which is the originary event of
individuation, is implicit within, and compelled by, the closure of the
future that constitutes Dasein as being toward death. Just as death,
ontologically conceived, is not an event at the end of life, so too
birth is not an event at the beginning. Factical Dasein, Heidegger
emphasizes, exists in the manner of birth, and in being born it is
also already dying in the sense of being toward death (374).13
The factical historicality of Dasein, as the concrete, horizonal
event that coincides with the birth of the possible, is thematized in
Being and Time in response to the question of the source of the
factical possibilities of existence (SZ 383). The factically disclosed
possibilities of existence cannot, as such, be drawn from death as
possibility, since the latter precisely has no content and no measure.
Rather, Daseins way of being ahead of itself, as being toward death,
intrinsically casts or directs it back toward the factical, already
existing world that is in itself a world of others, a world borne and
sustained by the already existent Dasein of others to which it has
been abandoned, a world that thus precedesand, as an event,
continues to precedeeach and every birth. Each and every birth
of Dasein, as the birth of the possible, is thus nourished in advance,
so to speak, by the historical ground or heritage (Erbe) that it has
had to assume in its thrownness (383). And this means that implicit
within the very disclosure of the possible there lies concealed a quiet
force, a latent power that as yet approaches us, that has yet to arrive,
whose content and direction we do not dispose over, but to which
we can, at most, be responsive. The openness (Entschlossenheit) of
Daseins factical coming toward itself as a coming back to its having
been conceals within it a transmission of possibilities that have
come down, although not necessarily as having come down (383).
An explicit openness toward this concealed force of the
possible is precisely what is enabled by our anticipatory being toward
death, that is, by our running ahead into the dimension of what is
possible at any moment, and yet never calculable or determinable:
the dimension of indeterminacy that permeates all existence as such.
Running ahead into the dimension of possibility to come, Heidegger

writes, holds the moment at the ready: it brings about (temporalizes)

a fundamental readiness for the possibility of a retrieval or recovery
of our own having-been, of existence that has been there (SZ 34344). Yet to the extent that our own having-been is never simply ours,
but always also that of a historical world, a heritage, the enactment
of this thos of openness, this readiness, also bears within it the
possibility of an explicit, i.e., knowing, appropriation of ones
heritageand this is the full sense of retrieval (Wiederholung) for
Heidegger. Retrieval, writes Heidegger, in the sense of a knowing
appropriation of ones heritage, is neither a reactualizing of a Dasein
that has been, nor a return to the past, but is a response or replya
reciprocative rejoinder (Erwiderung)to a possibility of existence
that has been there (386). As such, however, it is a disavowal or
revocation (Widerruf) of what is working itself out as the past in the
present, in the present day.
The task of retrieval, in other words, is understood by
Heidegger as essentially critical with regard to the present. It is
what he explicitly calls an unmaking or undoing of the present
(eine Entgegenwrtigung des Heute14) an undoing that understands
history as the return of the possible. Such authentic historical
inquiry, which is the task of destruction (Destruktion), is a freeing
oneself from today, a critique of what appears to be the present
(SZ 397).15 In other words, destruction as critique retrieves, and
in so doing transforms and rethinks, reappropriates, the concealed
forces at work in the present day, which for its part is a mere facade
of history. It is in this sense that Heidegger invokes the quiet
force of the possible as that which is to be disclosed by authentic
historical inquiry (394): such inquiry has the (always preparatory)
task of disclosing history that has been there in such a way that the
force of the possible impacts factical existence, that is, approaches
that existence in its futural character (395). The possible, this force
of the possible, is that which approaches us from out of what has
been: it is what will be appropriated in and through a thinking that
remains always yet to come.

***
By way of conclusion, I would simply like to indicate that
the significance of Heideggers rethinking of possibility in Being
and Time is signaled by his own retrieval of precisely this theme
and by his renewed appeal to the quiet force of the possible at
the beginning of what is arguably his most important text from the
1940s, the Letter on Humanism. In this later essay, Heidegger

again recalls the necessity of freeing our thinking of possibility and

of the possible from the orientation of logic and of metaphysics that
has dominated the history of philosophy and that thinks possibility
and potentiality only in relation to actuality and existentia (that is, in
relation to presence, conceived as mere presence-at-hand):
Our words possible [mglich] and possibility [Mglichkeit], under
the dominance of logic and metaphysics, are thought solely in
contrast to actuality; that is, they are thought on the basis of a
definitethe metaphysicalinterpretation of being as actus and
potentia, a distinction identified with that between existentia and
essentia. When I speak of the quiet force of the possible I do
not mean the possibile of a merely represented possibilitas, nor
potentia as the essentia of an actus of existentia; rather, I mean
being itself, which in its favoring [mgend] presides over [vermag]
thinking and hence over the essence of humanity, and that means
over its relation to being. To enable [vermgen] something here
means to preserve it in its essence, to maintain it in its element.
(GA 9 316-17; Letter 242)

The quiet force of the possible is now thought as that of being itself,
as the element that enables (ermglicht) thinkinga thinking
that is more originary than philosophy as determined by the Greek
beginning. From the perspective of the Letter on Humanism,
we can now appreciate that it is this element, from out of which the
historical destruction or retrieval of the history of philosophy itself
comes to pass, that was first uncovered and exposed as such through
the analytic of Dasein in Being and Time. In the Letter, the essence
of the possible is conceived in terms of an enabling (Vermgen)
that refers, not to the capability to accomplish something, as the
ability belonging to Dasein or to a Subject, but to a more originary
embracing, loving, bestowal, or favoringthus in each
case to the felicitous giving of a gift, an excess that first gives rise to
the possible, that constitutes its very emergence:
Thinking isthis says: Being has embraced its [i.e., thinkings]
essence in a destinal manner in each case. To embrace a thing
or a person in their essence means to love them, to favor them.
Thought in a more original way, such favoring means the bestowal
of their essence as a gift. Such favoring [Mgen] is the proper
essence of enabling [Vermgen], which not only can achieve this
or that but also can let something essentially unfold in its provenance [Her-kunft], that is, let it be. It is on the strength [or,
by force: kraft] of such enabling by favoring that something is
properly able to be. This enabling is what is properly possible

[das Mgliche], whose essence resides in favoring. From this

favoring being enables thinking. The former makes possible
[ermglicht] the latter. Being is the enabling-favoring, the maybe [das Mg-liche]. As the element, being is the quiet force
of the favoring-enabling, that is, of the possible. (GA 9 316;
Letter 241-42)

Here, the quiet force of the possible is thought as the propriative

force of being that, in a destinal manner, lets thinking itself be,
that is, lets it arrive in its very coming, its provenance. Heidegger
here hyphenates the German word for provenance, Her-kunft,
to indicate once again the primacy of that coming (Kunft), of that
originative force that, in Being and Time, was thought in terms of
the priority of the futural ekstasis in which Dasein comes toward
itself. Here, in the Letter, however, this coming is thought in
terms of the arrival of being itself as the element of the possible.
Heideggers discussion of the quiet force of the possible in terms
of favoring, embrace, and bestowal here, moreover, unfolds what,
in Being and Time, remained relatively undeveloped within this
invocation of a quiet or gentle force: namely, that the word
Kraft, which in German does not carry the overtones of violence that
the English force may suggest, is not to be understood in terms of
any metaphysical or modern conception of potentiality, power, or
energy, but rather in terms of a gentle strength or resourcefulness
that comprises the hidden preserve of being.16
In this displacement from the futural happening of Dasein
to the destinal happening of being itself as the quiet force of the
possible the emphasis is still on the primacy of the future as the
dimension of the possible. The thinking of being, however, entails
a shift into a happening and a force of thrownness from out of this
very dimension that antecedes and exceeds any subjectivity of
Dasein.17 This force of thrownness, the destinal happening of being
itself as the transmission and freeing of possibility, neither belongs to
Dasein, nor is it a possible object of hermeneutic phenomenology,
which seeks to appropriate and bring to manifestation, through
interpretation, the being of beings that has already been understood
implicitly, that is, projected in advance in terms of its possibility.
The dominant interpretation and implicit understanding of being
in terms of presence-at-hand and actuality, emerging from the
Greek beginning of philosophy, is, in Being and Time, traced back
destructively to the horizon of its possibility in temporality and
thereby shown to be but one, historically configured interpretation
that itself emerges from, and is itself a response to, a destinal and
historical happening of being itself, an antecedent configuring of

possibility, or, in other words: the quiet force of the possible.

Notes
All translations, whether of works without an existing English translation or of
works with an existing English translation, are the authors own. Pagination will
be given in the German edition, and where an English translation exists, in the
English as well. The original German pagination of Being and Time, found also in
the margins of both the Macquarrie and Robinson and the Stambaugh translations,
will be used for citations throughout.
1

On the intrinsic belonging of possibility to the essence not merely of the animal,
but of the living being in general, see in particular the 1929-30 course Die
Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: WeltEndlichkeitEinsamkeit. Gesamtausgabe
Bd. 29/30. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983). Translated by William McNeill &
Nicholas Walker as The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude,
Solitude (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). Here it is once again
a question of the actuality of possibilitythe latter conceived as being capable
(Fhigsein)where possibility is not to be conceived as mere logical possibility
and the actuality of possibility is not to be reduced to the actual deployment or
actualization of such capability:
2

In the last analysis, possibility and potentiality [Mglichsein und

Knnen] belong precisely to the essence of the animal in its actuality in
a quite specific sensenot merely in the sense that everything actual,
inasmuch as it is at all, must already be possible as such. It is not this
possibility, but rather being capable which belongs to the animals
being actual, to the essence of life. Only something that is capable, and
remains capable, is alive. (GA 29/30 343; Metaphysics 235)
Correlative to this sense of being capable as intrinsic to the essence of life in
general is the possibility of death and of being dead:
Something which is no longer capable, irrespective of whether a
capacity is used or not, is no longer alive. Something which does not
exist in the manner of being capable cannot be dead either. The stone
is never dead, because its being is not a being capable [] Dead
matter is a meaningless concept. Being capable is not the possibility
of the organism as distinct from something actual, but is a constitutive
moment of the way in which the animal as such isof its being. (GA
29/30 344; Metaphysics 236)
Once again, it is significant that Heidegger can here, at this level of the analysis,
move back and forth, apparently seamlessly and unproblematically, between the
animal and the essence of life in general; and where we can speak of the actuality
of possibility as determinative of life in general, there we can also speak of death
in general, of death as a possibility of life. Yet only apparently unproblematically:
at another level of analysis, Heidegger will problematize precisely whether
death and death are the same in the case of man and animal, thus whether life
and life are the same, whether (the actuality of) possibility and possibility are
the same (GA 29/30 388; Metaphysics 267). And Heidegger proceeds here to
distinguish between dying (Sterben) as a possibility of the human being and
coming to an end or perishing (Verenden) as the animals only possibility in

relation to its death. At issue here, therefore, is ultimately the being of possibility,
the way in which possibility is as a relation of being. Possibility, Heidegger
will try to show (already in this 1929-30 course), can be given as possibility, as
being possibility, only where there is logos, and only there can the possibility of
impossibility be disclosed, thus, a relation to death as or in terms of possibility.
The being of logos itself coincides with the thrown-projective character of
Dasein, with its irruption into possibility, an irruption that ruptures possibility
itself, quite literally takes it apart, dissects it, and only thereby is able to gather
it as such. Here, we can only note in passing that this question of the being of
possibility in relation to logos will be analyzed more incisively by Heidegger in
the summer semester of 1931, in the course on the being and actuality of force
or dunamis in relation to Aristotles analysis in Metaphysics . See Aristotles,
Metaphysik 1-3: Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft. Gesamtausgabe Bd.
33. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990). Translated as Aristotles Metaphysics
1-3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force, by Walter Brogan & Peter Warnek
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). We should note, furthermore, that
Heidegger will maintain the distinction between dying (as a possibility of the
human being) and perishing (as the possibility of the animal) throughout his
later work, and ground this distinction in the phenomenon of the as, enabled by
logos or the essence of language. For example, in the essay Das Ding (1950),
where he writes: [t]he mortals are the human beings. They are called mortals
because they can die [sterben knnen]. To die means: to be capable of death as
death [den Tod als Tod vermgen]. Only the human dies. The animal perishes.
In: Vortrge und Aufstze (Pfullingen: Neske 1985), 171. Translated by Albert
Hofstadter in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 178.
Or in the essay Das Wesen der Sprache (1957-58): [m]ortals are those who
can experience death as death. The animal is not capable of this. Yet the animal
also cannot speak. The essential relationship between death and language flashes
before us, but is as yet unthought. In Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske,
1979), 215. Translated by Albert Hofstadter in On the Way to Language (New
York: HarperCollins, 1982), 107. For an exploration of some of the stakes of this
delimitation of the human from the animal see especially Jacques Derrida, De
lesprit (Paris: Galile, 1987), and David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger
and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
This opening up of the horizon of a world, correlative with the irruption into,
and configuring of, possibility, is what Heidegger will thematize more explicitly
in 1929 and 1930 as the antecedent event of world-formation (Weltbildung) that
first enables any particular comportment of Dasein. See in particular the 1929
essay Vom Wesen des Grundes in Wegmarken. Gesamtausgabe Bd. 9 (Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1976), 123-75. Translated as On the Essence of Ground by
William McNeill in Pathmarks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
97-135; and the 1929-30 course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:
World, Finitude, Solitude. (op. cit.).
3

The concept of facticity is said to entail the being-in-the-world of a being

within the world, such that this being can understand itself as bound up
[verhaftet] in its destiny with the being of those beings that it encounters
within its own world Sein und Zeit. 17. Aufl. (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 56.
Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson as Being and Time (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1962). Also by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1996). See also The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World,
Finitude, Solitude. (op. cit) section 73, where letting oneself be bound (Sich4

bindenlassen) by beings is said to characterize the specific capability of the

human, in contrast to the capacity of the animal.
One is here reminded of Hegel, who in the Preface to his Phenomenology
writes of the magical power or magical force (Zauberkraft) that converts the
negative into being and death into a non-actuality. The proximity of Heidegger to
Hegel here is conspicuous. See Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1952), 29-30. Translated as Phenomenology of Spirit by A. V. Miller
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 19.
5

In referring to the element of the possible here, and to the essence of action as
accomplishment (Vollbringen), I am alluding to the later discussion of possibility
at the opening of the Letter on Humanism. (1946). See Brief ber den
Humanismus. in Wegmarken. (op. cit.). Translated as Letter on Humanism
by Frank A. Capuzzi in Pathmarks (op. cit).
6

Thus Heidegger writes that, as thrownprecisely as thrown, thus as

temporalizedDasein has been thrown into the mode of being of projection.
(SZ 145.) This is not Daseins choice. Paradoxical though it seems, we can catch
and hold in presence what has been thrown only by releasing it, only by letting it
go, and we can let it go, start it on its way, only by projecting it, by projecting it in
terms of a possibility. Yet if it is not primarily or in the first instance Dasein that is
projecting here, then what is it? What is it that first starts a possibility of being on
its way? This primordial or originating force of thrownness, which Heidegger will
name the quiet force of the possible, I shall suggest, is what is later thought by
Heidegger as the destining or destinal happening of being (Geschick des Seins).
7

See also SZ 254.

See SZ 260.

The translation offered here differs from that of the existing English translations
in rendering ausgehalten as sustained. An authentic relation or comportment
toward this most extreme possibility of being does not merely put up with it
(Macquarrie & Robinson) as something adversial; nor does such comportment
merely endure it (Stambaugh). Rather, ausgehalten, the only past participle that
Heidegger italicizes here, conveys the sense of a letting be of possibility as such, a
sense that will be further explicated in the following paragraphs.
10

Again, I am suggesting a different translation of ermglicht here than the

Macquarrie & Robinson and Stambaugh translations, both of which have makes
possible.
11

Entschlossen and Entschlossenheit, commonly rendered as resolute and

resoluteness respectively, do not carry the sense of a willfulness closed off to
other possibilities, as these English translations suggest, but ratherquite to the
contrary, as Heideggers pairing of geschlossen (closed) and entschlossen here
indicatesthe sense of a radical openness toward the closure of the ekstatic
future, thus, toward the nothingness that Dasein must factically ground as it
affirms its own being in and through action (which, Heidegger insists, must
be understood in a broad sense that encompasses all of Daseins comportments,
including theoretical concerns: see SZ 300).
12

The German here reads: Das faktische Dasein existiert gebrtig, und gebrtig
stirbt es auch schon im Sinne des Seins zum Tode (SZ 374). The existing English
translations render existiert gebrtig by exists as born, implying that Daseins
birth is an already accomplished fact or event, quite contrary to what Heidegger
explicitly states here. It is significant that gebrtig conveys both the sense of
being born, being birthed in the sense of coming into being, and of giving
birth, in the sense of helping something come into being, and indeed is altogether
undecidable with respect to these two inflections. The natality that Hannah Arendt
would subsequently emphasize as belonging to the essence and possibility of
action is here already seen as intrinsic to Daseins historicality.
13

14

See SZ 391, 397.

Significantly, Heidegger here embraces Nietzsches conception of critical

history.
15

Again, it is significant in this regard that Heidegger chooses the German Kraft
as the primary translation of Aristotles dunamis in his 1931 course On the
Essence and Actuality of Force (op. cit.), but also employs the term Vermgen in
the (more restricted) case of dunamis meta logou. The language of possibility
(Mglichkeit) is conspicuously absent for the most part, although Knnen,
potentiality (as in Daseins potentiality or potential for being) is also used
at times. On the issue of terminology, cf. especially GA 33, 71-74. In his later,
1939 essay On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotles Physics, B1,
Heidegger chooses not Kraft, but Eignung, appropriateness, to render its
primary ontological sense: see especially Vom Wesen und Begriff der physis.
Aristoteles, Physik B,1 in Wegmarken. (op cit.), 286-87. Translated as On the
Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotles Physics, B1, by Thomas Sheehan in
Pathmarks (op. cit) 218-19.
16

In this reading, I am also arguing against Derridas suggestion, in his interview

Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject with Jean-Luc Nancy, that
thrownness, Geworfenheitwhich Derrida rightly identifies as a being-thrown
that would be more primordial than subjectivityis subsequently given to
marginalization in Heideggers thinking. See Who Comes After the Subject?,
edited by Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York:
Routledge, 1991), 106-107.
17

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Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy. New York: Routledge,

1991.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Spirit. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1977.
Heidegger, Martin. Aristotles Metaphysics 1-3: On the Essence and Actuality

of Force. Trans. Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek. Bloomington:

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- - -. Aristotles, Metaphysik 1-3: Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft

Gesamtausgabe Bd. 33. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990.
- - -. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 1996.
- - -. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford:

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- - -. On the Essence of Ground. Trans. William McNeill. Pathmarks. Ed.

William McNeill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- - -. Sein und Zeit. 17. Aufl. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1993.

- - -. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude

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- - -. Vom Wesen und Begriff der physis. Aristoteles, Physik B,1. Wegmarken.

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