> Seriously, Heidegger's point is that since, according to the analysis
> in Being and Time, human beings understand themselves and the
> world in terms of the future, death is the ultimate determinate for human
> self- and world-understanding. Turning away from death involves turning
> away from the world and oneself.
Perhps the very seed of Heidegger's Nazism.
Certainly the complete opposite to Marx's lifelong Epicurianism. For Epicurus death is not relevant to the living. In a letter to Friedrich Sorge the day after Marx's death, Engels said that Marx would always quote Epicurus: " 'Death is not a misfortune for him who dies, but for him who survives' he used to say, quoting from Epicurus." And Marx's repeated citation to the Lucretian summary of the Epicurian view of death - "mors immortalis." The classic statement of Epicurus is in the Letter to Menoeceus in Diogenes Laertius 10.125: "Death...is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore , it is relevant neither to the living nor the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter do not exist." and 10.126 "The wise man neither rejects life nor fears death. For living does not offend him, nor does he believe not living to be something bad."
As to the Nazi Heidegger's likely response to the Spinoza tag:
> I think Heidegger would regard this as the nec plus ultra of inauthenticity.
> :)
Absolutely correct. Of course the Nazi Heidegger's ne plus ultra of
authenticity wore that odd little mustache...
:)
john mage