CHAPTER THREE

Death and Anticipation: The Ontological Dimension

Introduction
In this chapter I try to explain the concept of death according to the
Heidegger’s thinking. The question of death maybe one of the boldest questions ever
asked in the history of human beings. In Western philosophical tradition death is
mostly described as an event, a coming of a final chapter of every human's life with
which his course of life concludes its narration. In Martin Heidegger the conception
of death is an existential constitution of human being, announcing and revealing the
Nothingness of the world. He interprets death as a way of life, alongside the Nothing
that equally shapes the meaning of every experience.

3.1. Heidegger’s Concept of Death

Martin Heidegger reflected on the mystery of death in his works, Existence
and Being, and Being and Time. Whenever he mentions “death,” he does not mean
how one thinks at the time one is dying, for someone at the point of death may not
be making a reflection. Again, he does not imply one’s feeling at the time of death,
rather, what one understands the coming of death to be when drawing close towards
death. Sequel to this, Heidegger defined death as “the innermost and irrelative
potentiality of being, certain and indefinite as to its “when” and not to be over-
come”1.

Affirming that death is a mystery beyond human comprehension, Heidegger

refuted the claim that man’s experience starts with his birth, and ends in his death.
His intention is to posit how the being-in-the-world (Dasein), who is the being-
towards-death can comprehend his own death in an authentic way, as well as his
attitude and behaviour towards his death. For him, this cannot be solved by

1
Martin Heidegger, Existence and Being, USA: Henry Regnery Company, 1965, 60.
observing the death of others, but by grasping the proper nature of the not-yet
element involved in Dasein’s existence2.

According to Heidegger, the imminent nature of death reduces man’s

happiness and anxiety to be short-lived. Thus, death is a potentiality of being that is
to be taken by Dasein himself. Death’s potentiality cannot be escaped by Dasein, for
the existence of the latter pre-supposes that his is already thrown into this
potentiality. For this, Heidegger admits that so long as man is a being-in-the-world
(Dasein), he is a being moving towards death. Explaining this he says:

Being-towards-death is a potentiality-for being of that entity whose kind of being is

anticipation itself. In the anticipatory revealing of this potentiality-for-being, Dasein
discloses itself to itself as regards its utter possibility[…] death is Dasein’s own-most
potentiality-for-being in which its very being is the issue3.

3.1.1. Death is a Way to Be, Not a Way to End

For Heidegger, death is not only that which one experiences at the departure
of life, while life itself is not just a clear road that invites the occurrence of death.
Death penetrates as if it constitutes the existence of time for in the moment, Dasein
is thrown into the world. Using the analogy of an unripe fruit to explain death as a
way of life, he posits:

When for instance a fruit is unripe, it goes towards its ripeness. In this process of
ripening, that which the fruit is not yet, is by no means pieced on as if something not yet
present at hand. The fruit brings itself to ripeness, and such a bringing of itself is a
characteristic of its being as a fruit4.
The above analogy of Heidegger indicates that insofar as man is a being in
existence, certain element of achievement is in place. For just as unripeness is the
first state of a fruit, so also is life the first state of the Dasein, while as ripeness can
be predicated of a fruit, similarly, death can be predicated of man. This is because as
the fruit tends towards being ripe, so also is the Dasein a being towards death. Thus,
as long as he exists, death is already it’s not-as-yet that is, something yet to be
realized in the life of Dasein or man5.

2
EMMANUEL KELECHI IWUAGWU, Martin Heidegger and The Question of Being”, Journal of
Integrative Humanism, 8/2, 2017, 30.
3
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 307.
4
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 287.
5
M WHEELER, Martin Heidegger’s Death and dying , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/ [ accessed on November 20, 2022].

36
 It could also be said that Heidegger’s analogy implies that the natural
phenomena of ripeness and death are not something external to fruit and man
respectively, but something that are part of them. The ripeness of a fruit is not
accident, for it is in its nature to be ripe. The death of the Dasein is not by accident,
neither is it an accident; it is that which is innate in man. Once a man is alive, he is a
being towards death. In fact, what proves that man ever existed in history is the fact
that he died.

3.1.2. Man, a Being Towards Death

One clear point in Heidegger’s reflection on death is that the Dasein’s
knowledge of the shortness of his existence is an advantage on his side. So, he
would be compelled to follow his endeavours in a careful way. Therefore, the
thought of death is a stimulant which enables man to be focused on how to live his
life as best, and demand a peaceful co-existence with others. The authentic
existence is the Dasein’s being towards a potentiality, which he described as “a
running forward in thought” to be potentiality, that is, that man is always aware of
his death such that this awareness uncovers itself in and for its being as potentiality 6.
Hence, anticipation of one’s death turns out to be the possibility of understanding
one’s own ultimate potentiality-for-being, in other words, the possibility of authentic
existence. Heidegger claims that:

Being towards this possibility enables Dasein to understand that giving itself
possibility of its existence. When by anticipation, one becomes free for one’s own death,
and one is liberated from one’s lostness in those possibilities which may accidentally
thrust themselves upon him. So, death has meaning for man’s existence 7.
In the same place, Heidegger argued that in Dasein’s composition,
something is not yet achieved, which is death8. Death is not just the ending of man’s
life, or some unpleasant incident that happens man, rather a vitalizing structural
component of the human nature. Therefore, man is a being unto death; he begins to
die the very day he is born, which is equal to the saying that man is born to die.

6
MICHAEL GELVEN, A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being And Time, Haper & Row publishers,
1970, 138.
7
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, 308.
8
M WHEELER, Martin Heidegger’s Death and dying , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/ [ accessed on November 20, 2022].

37
 The end of Dasein, does not mean to stop, to get finished, or to disappear.
For none of these properly characterizes death’s nature as the end of Dasein insofar
as Dasein is already not-yet, for its not-yet constantly as long as it is, is already its
end too. The ending in Heidegger’s thought when reflecting on death is not that
Dasein is a being-at-an-end (in German Zu-Ende Sein), but a being-towards-the-end
(Sein-Zum-Ende). Death is a way which Dasein follows, for as soon as man comes
to life, he is at once old enough to die.9

3.2. Death and Being-Towards-Death

The ultimate possibility and inevitability are that we all have to deal with the
death. this is not a philosophical orientation that brings dasein closer to its end in
terms of scientific death but is rather a way of being. It is too easy to get lost in the
everyday until we face death and start thinking about who we truly were ironically
for the first time we actually live for ourselves without spending time thinking about
the approval of other people on who we are. When we asked that how can we
recover authenticity, for this Heidegger replies that we should simply spend more
time in graveyards. To live authentically is to recognise the inevitability of death in
the context of our everyday living so as to live life to the fullest. This is what we say
being to death.

3.2.1. Death, They-Self and Ownmost

Heidegger referred to the inauthentic self as the “they-self”. This is the self
that is influenced by the crowd rather than by its unique potentialities. The Theyself
sees the death as a subject producing “cowardly fear, a sign of insecurity” 10.
Therefore, Heidegger says that it is a fit topic to be avoided. The avoidance of death
can be attained by an evasion technique. According to Heidegger that technique is
the “constant tranquilization about death”11. By doing this the they-self does not
permit us to anxiety and helps to face the death with courage and also promotes an
untroubled indifference about death. They-self argues death as something all human
9
HAROLD WEISS, “Philosophy of Death”, April 2017,
Https://www.northampton.edu/Documents/Subsites/HaroldWeiss/Death/Phil of death. [accessed on
November 20 2022]
10
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, 209.
11
JOHNSON J. PUTHENPURACKAL, Heidegger Through Authentic Totality to Total Authenticity,
Leuven University Press, Belgium, 1987, 48.

38
beings will experience one day in the undetermined future, which can be easily
ignored. People may see death every day and everywhere, but they draw conclusions
about their death by seeing all the death of others.

As Heidegger stated: “One of these days one will die too, in the end; but right
now, it has nothing to do with us” 12. This statement explains that we are all using the
same excuse for our own life, that someday I will die, but right now it's not the
problem worth concerning. No one thinks about when that someday will come. But
for Heidegger, Death is not the experience that can be shared at all. Death is one's
“ownmost” with some qualities: nonrelation, not to be outstripped. Heidegger
wanted to help us to overcome from this Throwness, to switch the button, to change
Dasein from its inauthenticity state to authenticity state. The way is to pull us away
from the They-self with an appropriately intense focus on our upcoming Death13.

Death is the unthinkable and unavoidable truth of human being. Everything

that we do, say and think is a reaction to our represent anxieties in the face of
singularity and isolation of death. It is death and death alone that individuates. In
death, we all are entirely alone, and we cannot outstrip from our death. When we
anticipate our death, then we become resolute about our life. So that all of our
decisions and actions become enlivened as our own.

3.2.2. Being-Towards-Death
Heidegger emphasized that human is the only kind of existence have the
possibility to aware that they will die. None of the other animals has that possibility.
Animals can fight each other, to survive as instinctive activities without mindful of
the fact that Death may come to them. A deer run away from the lion, but it can
never know that its death will occur if the lion wins in the race 14. Which mean,
awareness of death is a unique part of a human, and distinguish a human being from
every other thing in this world. But in most of the time, most of us seem to be
successful by forgetting this fact. We are living with the denial of death, and
12
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, 308.
13
NGUYEN VU HAO, Martin Heidegger’s Conception of Death in His Work Being and Time, A
Publication of The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Tansian, Nigeria, 5/2, 2017,
13.
14
M WHEELER, “Martin Heidegger”, https://plato.standford.edu/entries/heidegger [accessed 0n
November 27, 2022].

39
according to Heidegger, that is what responsible for people living empty,
purposeless lives. We can never be able to fulfil our lives without acknowledging
that we are dying.

Heidegger said the human being must understand that he or she is a Being-
towards-death. “As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die” 15. So,
then what is death? "Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of
Dasein"16. Therefore, the awareness and the acceptance of death is a requirement for
authentic existence. We know that this is the time for us to overcome from our
Throwness and be more conscious about of the “Nothing” and by thinking about of
our death we own ourselves to escape from the authorities of the chatter for the sake
of Authenticity.

3.2.3. Freedom Towards Death

As we have mentioned above, Dasein temporal and finite compared to the
Time. Dasein was thrown into its existence. Finding itself is already existing in this
world; it is seeking meanings by throwing itself to the front, in other words keep
projecting towards the future. Which mean, Dasein is in the present, but at the same
time, it's not in the present. It is always Being-ahead-of-itself. Dasein is still
incomplete, and the completion of Dasein is Death, thus, Being-towards-Death. As
an inevitable result, Dasein confronts with a predicament. It cannot understand the
whole meaning of its ontology since its projected towards the possibility of the
future and is always incomplete. However, when Dasein's existence is complete, it
no longer exists to understand it17. It is still incomplete, and then at the complete
mode, it cannot acknowledge this itself. Therefore, for Dasein to thoroughly
understand its existence is problematic.

Dasein can never experience its death, but it is possible to have a limit taste of
it through the death of others, as Being-with-others. “When Dasein reaches its
wholeness in death, it is simultaneously losing the Being of “Being-there- Dasein”18.
15
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, Harper Row, New York And Evanston, 1962, 298.
16
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, 294.
17
EMMANUEL KELECHI IWUAGWU, Martin Heidegger and The Question of Being”, Journal of
Integrative Humanism, 8/2, 2017, 67.
18
WILLIAM IRWIN, Death By Inauthenticity: Heidegger’s Debt To Ivan Ilích’s Fall, Tolstoy Studies
Journal, 25/2, 2013, 16.

40
By its transition to it gets lifted right out of the possibility of experiencing this
transition and of understanding it as something experienced. Surely this kind of stuff
is denied to any particular Dasein in relation to itself. But this makes the death of
Others more impressive. In this way, the termination of Dasein becomes
"Objectively" available. Dasein can thus gain experience of death, all the more
because Dasein is mostly with Others. In that case, the fact that death has been,
therefore “Objectively given must make possible an ontological delimitation of
Dasein's totality”19.

A one's death cannot be outstripped, which mean, even though Dasein can see
another's death in relation on its being, or even its dying, but in the end, Dasein still
cannot experience its own death. we can see that someone around us dying, and we
know that one day we may die in various unexpected ways, but it just something on
the surface. we only see that person is dying but we cannot share the same
experience with the death of others. Because death is Dasein's ownmost possibility.
It is Death that completes Dasein. Heidegger uses a comparative metaphor as a
simple but effective to signify the end of Dasein. The way death complete Dasein
just like the ripening of the fruit completes its life circle. Dasein's relation to death is
shown through projection toward the future, thus, as a possibility 20. This relation can
be existentially understood during life and not during the very instant of death.

“Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein. Therefore,

death reveals itself as the possibility which is one's own most, which is non-relation,
and which is not to be outstripped”21. The death is the death of an individual Dasein
so, my death is mine, and mine only. When my being ends, at that moment my
relationships also end and my possibilities are no longer exist. This non-relational
aspect is my own most. This death is the possibility of my being, so it brings my
being into authenticity by making it central and crucial. Being authentic, on the other
hand, allows for the possibility of facing my death in a particular way: I am sure of

19
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, 237.
20
Cf Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1972, 63.
21
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, 294.

41
my death, my death is unavoidable, my death is a non-relational possibility and the
end of my being always ahead of myself22.

Dasein as Being-towards-death is essentially in its being towards life. Death is

the background against which we see life. It is a way to be, not a way to end. Being-
towards-the-end is a way of Being-towards-Death. Being-at-the-end is the non-
existence of Dasein. It is in Being-towards-Death that Dasein can have the freedom
to be what it truly is. Death releases Dasein from the inauthenticity of the “they” and
it allows Dasein to become what it entirely is. Death takes part in every possibility
of Dasein. And for Heidegger, as potentiation, it can be anticipated. Be able to
anticipate signifies an authentic mode of Being-towards-Death.

Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the Theyself and brings it face to
face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concern full
solicitude, but of being itself, instead, in impassioned freedom towards death
freedom which has been released from the illusion of “they”, and which is factual,
certain of itself, and anxious” 23. They self, will drag the Dasein in the hole through
their idle talk, and keep it still in there. So that Dasein escape from the death and
wait for the future instead of projecting it. The “They” leads Dasein away from its
authenticity. And to prevent Theyself from doing it, Dasein has to take itself from
the irresoluteness of the Theyself to the resoluteness of its authenticity. Then the
question arise that how can we resolutely keep Dasein in its authenticity? Heidegger
say that it is due to the openness of Dasein to the call of its conscience24. Because
when Dasein knows that it is not alright to be in the inauthentic mode, that it is not
in its full potential being, only then there will be resoluteness in the actions that will
release Dasein from inauthenticity.

22
Cf KIVERSTEIN, “Martin Heidegger”, https://plato.standford.edu/entries/heidegger [accessed 0n
November 27, 2022].
23
ZOHREH SHARIATINIA, “Heidegger’s Ideas About Death”, Pacific Science Review B: Humanities
and Social Sciences, 1/6, 2016,
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/pacific-science-review-b-humanities-and-social-sciences/
[accessed on November 28 2022].
24
S. N. MAHAJAN, Death and The Meaning of Human Existence, Indian philosophical quarterly,
16/2,
1989, 216.

42
3.4. Moods and Death

According to Heidegger, moods are not simply emotions or feelings but are
the person’s antennae, which attune her and dispose her toward beings and others.
Moods are similar to alternating sound frequencies. The person is constantly tuning
into one mood and out of another. Moods act as filters that are phenomenologically
prior to sense perception and cognition, they also reveal essential truths to the
person. For example, Heidegger thinks boredom as an especially helpful mood. It is
not boredom for this one thing or activity, but a profound and fundamental boredom.
This mood is vital in experiencing time and the world differently as it awakens the
person from her inauthentic slumbering through the world25.

Heidegger thinks anxiety is the most revelatory mood because anxiety is

triggered in the face of death. Like boredom, anxiety is a fundamental mood, and is
not anxiety about any single worldly thing, but a mood concerning being-in-the-
world as such26. One might say that anxiety makes the person reflexively aware of
the core truth of his being-in-the-world, which is that it both reveals and conceals his
being. He understands the ground of her inauthentic mode. As being-in-the-world,
he is always choosing and moving through possibilities. It reveals beings and a
public in their everydayness. At the same time, by moving through these
possibilities he covers over the truth of his being as he flees from the world and
avoids the ultimate meaning of being-in-the-world. This covered truth, which is the
basis of his existence, is that Dasein is his thrown disclosure. Disclosure reveals the
person as thrown-ness, which means that he is merely cast into the world that is
going to be familiar and significant to his, and also be the reason for his absorption
in everydayness. He is always concerned with the nearest thing, and, as a result,
does not take notice of his thrownness. In his everyday inauthentic mode, his site of
thrown disclosure does not register. But anxiety looms27.

25
MICHAEL GELVEN, A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being And Time, Haper & Row publishers,
1970, 154.
26
PAUL VADAKEORAM, Heidegger Visions of Human Existence in The Expression and The
Appropriation of Being, Paurastya Vidyapitham, Vadavathoor, 2007, 118.
27
Cf MARK MANALDO, “Death In Martin Heidegger’s Being And Time”, September 2021,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354591764 [accessed on November 27, 2022].

43
 According to Heidegger, anxiety is not the dread associated with an outcome,
such as becoming ill; it is not an affliction, and there is no cure. When properly
agreed to anxiety, the person’s involvement with things and others is interrupted,
which breaks the seamless chain of everyday possibilities and relationships. Thus,
anxiety interrupts his very being, establishes his facticity to himself, and may attune
his to the truth that he is a being-toward-the-end. Anxiety clears a path for his
authentic understanding.

3.4.1. Misunderstandings of Death: Inauthentic Mode

Before Heidegger explains authentic being toward death, he walks us through
three inauthentic misunderstandings of the person’s experience of death. These
misunderstandings originate from the public interpretation of death. These public
meanings are essential because they are the standard ways the person interprets
himself. Yet, each misunderstanding eventually points to the authentic being-
toward- death.

Death is not a distant and abstract possibility. Death is not astatistic, or an

event that happens. Finally, death is avoided and viewed as demise. As an
abstraction, the person understands that one dies or people die. But this
understanding is always distant and peripheral because it happens to someone that
means to a stranger or a neighbor. Death counts, fatality rates, and lifespans distort
the phenomenon and encourage the notion that death belongs to no one 28. In truth,
death is the person’s ownmost potentiality of being. The person misinterprets death
as an end, particularly as an event. When he worries out loud that “I am going to
die,” he is interpreting death as something that will happen to him. However, death
never occurs to the person because he cannot participate in such an event. Death
itself is closed off to the person who dies, so he cannot be present in her own death.
Since the person is separated from the experience of his own death, as long as the
person exists, there appears to be something outstanding in his being.

Heidegger observes that death marks a change to no-longer-being-there, and

what is outstanding is liquidated, while the representable character of the person is
28
MOHSEN SOHRABI, “Heidegger’s death in sympathy of the dead”, Journal of Languages And
Culture 11/7, 2016, 109.

44
dissolved. This liquidation presents a paradox, because death, does not provide
wholeness. It just ends what is outstanding. Death, therefore, must mean something
within the person’s outstanding character. To clarify the meaning of
outstandingness, Heidegger offers an analogy to ripening fruit. When a fruit is
ripening it possesses two simultaneous characteristics. At each stage of ripening, the
fruit has both ripeness and unripeness character. In Heideggerian form, we can say
that the un-ripe fruit contains it’s not-yet. The potential for what the fruit is and can
be is contained only in the fruit. The fruit achieves its fullness in highest ripeness.
Like the fruit, the person also contains him not-yet in his being. he moves through a
steady stream of lived possibilities, but he always contains the seed of his owmost
possibility. He is in life and toward death. Unlike the fruit, the person never reaches
fulfilment or a finished state in death29.

Death is not the final end of the person’s because it is neither a state the person
can enter into it or something that appear before him. Since there is no direct
experience of death, so it cannot mean something for the person apart from her
existential structure. The death is an extreme. This simple truth about the person is
indisputable, but he stubbornly clings to the notion that death is a separate thing. he
misinterprets death as the demise of a living being lurching toward its end 30. The
sciences are also support to this misunderstanding. Our common views of human
death have their basis in biology and psychology. Our ideas about death gives
meaning to those who are dying. But Heidegger argues that dying and death are not
the same. These distinctions are significant for the living. And this form of
misunderstanding gives rise, according to Heidegger, to the anthropology of death,
which is the variety of ways that societies handle death and dying as a social event;
but, the experience of dying is another modality of living and does not reveal the
character or nature of death itself 31. These three misunderstandings points that death
as a distant or abstract possibility, death as static, and death as an event point to the
power of the inauthentic mode of death.

29
J. L. MEHTA, The Philosophy Of Martin Heidegger, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1971,
206.
30
Cf M WHEELER, “Martin Heidegger”, October 2011, https://plato.standford.edu/entries/heidegger
[accessed 0n November 28, 2022].
31
Cf MARK MANALDO, “Death In Martin Heidegger’s Being And Time”, September 2021,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354591764 [accessed on November 28, 2022].

45
 The public avoids and veils death by comforting the dying about the prospect
of everything returning to normal, as if dying was a social nuisance. This approach
to dying does not permit the person “to have the courage to have Angst about
death”32. However, the inauthentic misunderstanding of death is not totally incorrect.
There is a public certainty about death. The public tells the person that, “You are
going to die.” Yet this public proclamation is also an evasive movement because it
enables the person to understand death as an “event in the surrounding world, the
certainty related to this does not get at being-toward-the-end. Once he has addressed
the misunderstandings and fleeings from death, Heidegger begins his movement to
an authentic understanding of death.

3.4.2. Anticipations of Death: Authentic Mode

Death is always close to home because it is possible at any moment for the
person. But there is no clarity concerning when it will happen, and this uncertainty
marks death with indefiniteness. He may die in childhood or old age, slowly in the
suffering of a disease or all of sudden. It is the indefiniteness of death that makes it
completely strange. This is a strangeness that the person is usually not agree to,
because he keeps busy taking care of everyday “urgencies and nearby matters” 33.
The person must cross a long arc of attunement to awareness. In the mood of
anxiety, and in attunement to his being, he is pulled away from his inauthentic state
toward an authentic one. In authenticity, the person has the possibility of
understanding himself as a being toward death, which is, according to Heidegger, his
“ownmost non-relational possibility not-to-be-bypassed”34.All roads lead to the
person’s death, and it is his alone. Authentic being-toward-death is not one of the
person’s lived possibilities, which means that it cannot be “actualized.” For
example, the person does not become authentic by teetering close to the edge of
death through morbid brooding or “thinking about death”35.

32
J. GLENN GRAY, “Heidegger’s Being”, The Journal of Philosophy, 49/12, 1952, 420.
33
Cf EMMANUEL KELECHI IWUAGWU, “Martin Heidegger and The Question of Being”, Journal of
Integrative Humanism, 8/2, 2017, 33.
34
Cf MARK MANALDO, “Death In Martin Heidegger’s Being And Time”, September 2021,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354591764 [accessed on November 28, 2022].
35
OBI PASCHAL CHISOM, Martin Heidegger’s Concept Of Death, Journal of Languages And Culture
12/8, 2017, 128.

46
 For Heidegger, death is a pure possibility, and if the person is authentically
willing to death, he does it only by anticipating death. Anticipation is unlike any
other of his possible relations in the world. In everydayness, different beings become
available to the person as something to take care of; thanks to the influence of the
public Theyself, the person can be just about anyone except for his ownmost self,
which is an authentic being toward death. In contrast to his inauthentic mode of
being, anticipation of death brings the person near to an understanding of “the
possibility of the measureless possibility of existence”36.

The person experiences a measureless possibility when the anticipation

permeates his atmosphere; it affects him and changes his character. He chooses to
listen instead of neglecting anticipation. In anticipation of death, he stands in an
openness to his primordial disclosure as a being-toward-death. In other words, he
lays himself open to this fact of existence, during his whole life he is with death.
Once he anticipates death, but now he is free and capable of grasping death as death,
and no longer he tries to outrun or avoid death.

It is difficult to understand and to form an image of what Heidegger means by

authenticity. But it is contrast that the person’s inauthenticity serves as a helpful. In
everydayness, the person is ensnared in a worldliness that turns with endless
possibilities. The person presses into these possibilities. the inauthentic
understanding pulls him into a spatial and temporal movement, as if gravity were
working on him. It misinterprets things presently at-hand, including his sense of self.
In contrast, authentic being-toward-death shocks the person out from his movement
in everydayness. This breaking attunement makes a startling announcement, that his
existence is founded on nothing at all. The measureless possibility of existence is
groundlessness. There is no other possible way to be for the person. Being-toward-
death is both a measureless possibility and an absolute necessity.

As an authentic being-toward-death, the person becomes free. He does not

liberate himself from the world and others. He becomes free to release himself to his
authentic movement, which is “project”37. Authenticity is not a monkish
disengagement, according to Heidegger, as the person never ceases being-in-the-
36
MAURICE GREENE, Martin Heidegger, London, 1957, 21
37
Cf J. L. MEHTA, The Philosophy Of Martin Heidegger, 208.

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world and moving through her lived possibilities. It is a modified engagement,
because he is torn away from the they. It is the first time the person feels a sense of
lostness, confusion, and insecurity about his identity. He realizes that his ownmost
self and public they-self are misfit 38. Lostness is the condition for the person’s to
becoming free; since the death is unavoidable, freedom from the fear of death
enables a vivid grasp of existence. At the same time, he has no awareness with his
own non-existence, since non-existence is a non-relational possibility.

Death is the one thing that holds the person existentially together, since he
does share his own death with no one else. Yet, nothing in his experience can help
his understanding of no longer being here. Therefore, according to Heidegger there
can be no philosophizing about death nor a learning to die. Death radically
individualizes the person, and it opens up the person for possibilities that are not in
everydayness, fallen-prey, or ossified roles of the public they-self 39. As an authentic
being-toward-death, the person inhabits the whole potentiality of her being.
Wholeness is not a moral condition in which the person reaches greater human
fulfillment. Indefiniteness is the characterizes of his full existential understanding.
Through anxiety, the person is particularly agreed to this indefinite certainty, and he
is free to stand in the face of its thrownness. That is, the person has one foot in the
existential movement of things that matter to him in the world, and the other in an
“absolute threat to itself arising from the ownmost individualized being of Dasein” 40.

As an authentic being-toward-death, Dasein is attracted to the core of what it

means to be. Yet, to be in this attuned authentic state depends upon some sort of
existential suspension. The person is an absolute danger to itself. As an authentic
person, he is now ready to live resolutely, in his strange and ungraspable freedom.
Through these he can own his being-toward-death, and choose his possibilities in
light of their alterity. That is, his ways of being are irreducible to the objectifiable,
conventional, or taken for granted. He can not only project himself as authentically,
but also can able to live with others in this way.

38
Cf JOHNSON J. PUTHENPURACKAL, Heidegger Through Authentic Totality to Total Authenticity, 48.
39
MOHSEN SOHRABI, “Heidegger’s death in sympathy of the dead”, Journal of Languages And
Culture 11/7, 2016, 109.
40
MICHAEL GELVEN, A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being And Time,140.

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Conclusion
This chapter was an attempt to understand the concept of death according to
Heidegger’s view. In Heidegger’s thought, we see death as a reality, which means, a
possibility showing that man is a being towards death. Death as that which is
individualistic, unavoidable, universal, imminent, unescapable, and fearful. The
concept has been traced within the Heideggerian image of man, which affects the
concept of death. Instead of merely being an existential, death becomes an element
in man’s relation to his own being, so that a being-towards-death signifies not only
the affirmation of the structure proper to Dasein, but also the deepest possible ‘yes’
to being itself.

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