57 pages • 1 hour read
Martin HeideggerBeing And Time
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1927A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaDivision 2, Chapter 1
Division 2: “Dasein and Temporality”
Division 2, Chapter 1, Sections 45-48 Summary
Division 1 left unanswered the question of how we might escape the they and achieve authenticity. In this respect, Heidegger’s account was incomplete. This incompleteness is, first, ethical and existential. The reader may feel that, having explained at length how our lives are inauthentic, Heidegger has an obligation to show how some kind of authentic life is at least possible. Second, there is a methodological point. If his aim is to give a complete account of Dasein, and thereby Being, this must include an explanation of all its “sides.” Since possible authenticity is implied by the very concept of inauthenticity, for his account in Division 1 to make sense, he must furnish an account of authentic Dasein.
Heidegger begins by examining what authenticity would look like, arguing that at its most general, authenticity means “Being-a-whole” (277). In other words, being authentic involves grasping one’s being and life overall. This means not merely becoming aware of all the different elements of our being, but rather the realization of one’s self as a coherent totality, in which the disparate parts are unified. However, this immediately creates a problem. Dasein, as described so far, exists, as Heidegger says, “ahead-of-itself” (278). That is, it is always constituted in its being by some as-yet unrealized possibility, by what is “not yet.” If this is the case, how can it ever attain wholeness, and authenticity? It seems the only time when we are not related to something still left to do is when we die. This death would surely destroy the very awareness required for authenticity.
Nevertheless, Heidegger takes death as the thread in his analysis here, perhaps understanding it could hold the key to grasping authenticity, and he begins by noting that we do at least on one level “experience” death. We can experience the death of others through their absence, and particularly in forms of grief, but this experiencing is illusory. What we are really experiencing are the effects of death, not its reality. This is because, “No one can take the Other’s dying away from him” (284). While it is possible to substitute in for another in social roles, for example, as a teacher, or a parent, this is not the case with death. The other’s death is irrevocably theirs.
Division 2, Chapter 1, Sections 49-53 Summary
Instead of taking the fact that we cannot “experience” death, either in our own or the other’s case, as cause to give up this line of questioning, Heidegger sees an opening. As the actuality of death is impenetrable, we must look rather to its possibility. That is, we must explore our relation to our possible death, or “Being-towards-the-end” (289). He starts out by clarifying two things. First, such being-towards-death is, like anxiety, a mood. Second, an ontological analysis of this relation precedes and underpins other types of analysis of death, whether psychological, anthropological, or theological.
Like any aspect of Dasein’s existence, further, we relate to it in two main ways. We can orient ourselves to death authentically or inauthentically. Heidegger attempts to grasp the former by first describing the everyday, inauthentic mode with which we are more familiar. In such a mode, Heidegger says, “Someone or other ‘dies’, be he neighbour or stranger” (296). In other words, in the idle talk of the they, death is something that applies to everyone, and at the same time no one in particular. As an event in the world, it is going on all the time, and we acknowledge it as an abstract possibility for ourselves. Equally, though, it does not really affect us. Making death this public, banal, general occurrence tranquilizes and neutralizes it. The disturbing, uncanny threat of death to our everyday world is exorcised and need not trouble us.
By contrast, an authentic relation to death “individualizes Dasein down to itself” (308). What this means is that a proper relation to death highlights Dasein and its possibilities as unique. Regardless of the other ways we are interchangeable with other Dasein, our death is the one thing that is ours. No matter how well integrated we are in a family, workplace, or community, we have no protection from the totally individual responsibility for ourselves that death alone reveals. This revelation is achieved by “anticipation.” While the they construes death as a certainty, but one that is in a present-at-hand future, authentic being-towards-death emphasizes possibility. That is, death in the latter case is something that can happen at any moment. In this regard, such possibility demands an acknowledgement that the meaning of our being is always potentially at stake. So, to be anxiously anticipating death means being properly aware of ourselves as a unique and irreplaceable possibility.
Division 2, Chapter 1 Analysis
With the first chapter of Division 2, the core problem of Division 1 seems to have been solved. That is, with death, a way out of the dominance of the they has been shown. For, as Heidegger says, anticipation constituting authentic being-towards-death “reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself […] in an impassioned freedom towards death—a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the ‘they’’” (311).
In other words, death serves a dual purpose. Related to properly, it can both shatter our hypnotic absorption in the they and bring us back to our authentic, unique selves. Further, it appears do so in a way that is not, like philosophy, already caught in the vortex of the public world. It seems to be a relatively independent resource, emerging spontaneously from outside the otherwise hegemonic structures of the they.
Of course, all this is not to deny that death can be, and for the most part is, worldly. As seen, it is viewed by the they “as a mishap which is constantly occurring” (296). In one sense, it is not only an entirely “known” fact about the world, but the most general, familiar fact about it, and yet death can also announce itself unexpectedly. For example, someone close to you dies without warning, or you almost die in a crash. With such shattering and unprecedented events, one is thrown into immediate and unavoidable intimacy with death’s possibility. The complacent attitude towards death of the they, wherein “one dies,” is disrupted. One might think, then, that such events could provide the basis for an authentic being-towards-death. Not necessarily in all cases, but in some, such experience could awaken exactly the kind of awareness of death as constant possibility that individualizes Dasein and frees it from the they.
Unfortunately, things are not so easy. For Heidegger, these events, while illuminating, are insufficient. Their occurrence alone does not get us authentic being-towards-death. The reason why becomes apparent if we look more closely at the they’s relation to death. Here we will consider how it tranquilizes death not just in general, but in precisely those exceptional cases posing the greatest threat to its rule. First, it neutralizes the effects of such death by making them public. The most obvious and explicit means of doing this is via the institution of funerals. While it exists ostensibly to help the bereaved, and for practical purposes like burial, it also serves the role of immediately stripping grief of its individual character, for funerals oblige us to occupy a social role. We cannot help adopting the posture and attitude that are expected of “one.” Indeed, this is seen with the spectacle of funeral speeches. Regardless of intent, whatever is said about the deceased ends up leveling them, and hence your relationship to them, to a familiar type or model.
Moreover, this process is linked to, and consummated by, the prescribed attitude towards death. A certain period of mourning is permitted, again within a certain public expectation, but then life “returns to normal.” At this point we must adopt the attitude of an “indifferent tranquillity as to the ‘fact’ that one dies” (298). This is a kind of vulgarized stoicism, which dresses up its fleeing from death as courage. Conversely, to continue grieving is to be ludicrous, narcissistic, or mentally ill. At this point, our grief or shock is reabsorbed as part of the they. It loses any ability to disturb us or any power to provoke authentic being-towards-death.
Consequently, Heidegger’s account, at this stage, remains incomplete. Although he has shown that there is a type of mood and attitude that make an escape from the they possible, and hence that make authenticity possible, there is a further question as to how it is reached. As highlighted, death, no matter how traumatic, cannot, for Heidegger, serve this function. This is because of the effectiveness of the they’s mechanisms for absorbing such shocks. That said, one may well question whether Heidegger is too quick to dismiss the radical potential of grief. One could also ask whether more of a role could have been made for it in Being and Time. Still, the power of such doubts will hang on what happens in the next chapter. That is, the relevance of these questions will depend on the convincingness of Heidegger’s own account of how we are to reach authentic being-towards-death.
