CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Being Toward Death
It is only in the face of death that man's self is born – St. Augustine
Heidegger’s preceptive statements about Dasein as Being-Toward-Death nullify ludicrous arguments denying the existence of the Self, as propounded by Hume, Pinker, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, et al. Heidegger found the proof for Selfhood missed or ignored by all.
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself – Martin Heidegger
One’s death is one’s own. It starkly drives Dasein to value life and what is his. It drives him to be a Self.
Heidegger’s intention was to reveal how death impacts us on the most mundane levels. What we do every day, semi-consciously or in full deliberate awareness depends on our reaction toward finitude and time we have to be and get things done. For Dasein to become aware of his possibilities depends on this painful recognition of mortality. To recognize the possibility of death means accepting the ending of all possibilities, and of the Self as experiencer.
Dasein’s contemplation of death is not, however, a shared experience. It is, then, categorically, the experience constituting true Selfhood. In this sense we can rightly say that Being-Toward-Death is synonymous with Being-Toward-Selfhood. However, the Self Heidegger gives us back is of a higher octave than any other philosopher offers. It surpasses Nietzschean-type fare such as that of the “Superman.” That Nietzsche exalted such a preposterous creature told Heidegger that he had, as a philosopher, not thought beyond the Metaphysical tradition. Of course, although Nietzsche’s teachings are famous the world over, Heidegger’s improved theories on man’s true identity and role are hardly considered.
One of the most remarkable things about Heidegger’s description of human existence is that it is made without his using the term “man” at all! He thereby avoids the assumption that we are dealing with a definite object with a fixed nature - that we already know…His analysis of existence also takes place without the use of the word “consciousness,” for this word threatens to bring us back into the Cartesian dualism – William Barrett
As we saw previously, transcendence in the Heideggerian sense, refers to the person one becomes after confronting the brevity of life.
One transcends Das Man by thinking more deeply about the value of existence, or one may de-transcend, as it were, by fleeing such thoughts, choosing to live in forgetfulness of life, death and being. In this case, Das Man chooses an inauthentic mode of existence and automatically finds himself threatened by the existence and presence of his nemesis.
