I am not quite sure if you are joking or not. Perhaps you are being ironic. Philosophical reflections on death can be found in Augustine, Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola, if you wish to read honest pre-enlightenment philosophers. Or you can read the Stoics. Later, even Bert Russell has a few reflections on death, dying and mortality.
Heidegger's reflections on death are for the most part silly or they are things that can be said in plain language that he dresses up to be "deep" or to make a ideological point. Again let us give the great Heidegger his own words: (Again these are simply at random underlined passages in my books.)
"By none of these modes of ending can death be suitably characterized as the "end" of Daesin. If dying, as Being-at-an-end, were understood in the sense of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then Dasein would thereby be treated as something present-at-hand or ready-at-hand. In death, Daesin has not been fulfilled nor has it simply disappeared; it has not become finished nor is it wholly at one's disposal as something ready-to-hand." Being and Time, p.289.
[Note the distinction between Dasein and "ready-at-hand" is supposed to be a fundamental distinction between human beings and inanimate objects and plants and animals analogous to the being-for-itself (por soi) and being-in-itself (en soi) n Sartre. Also H. often uses the word fertigwerden which is translated as "finishedness" but which is simply the everyday German for "completion." This explanation of terms will not help you to come to terms with death.]
"The 'ending' which we have in view when we speak of death, does not signify Daesin's Being-at-an-end byt a Beind-towards-the-end of this entity.' Being and Time, p.289.
Or why don't we have Heidegger explain biology for us in his very particular way:
"When for instance, a fruit is unripe, it 'goes toward' its ripeness. In this process of ripening, that which the fruit is not yet, is by no means pieced on as 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 fruit. Nothing imaginable which one might contribute to it, would eliinate the unripeness of the fruit, if this entity did not come to ripeness of its own accord. When we speak of the "not-yet" of the unripeness, we do not have in view something else which stands outside, and which with utter indifference to the fruit might be present at hand in it and with it. What we have in view is the fruit itself in its specific kind of Being. ... The ripening fruit, however, not only is not indifferent to its unripeness as something other than itself, but it is that unripeness as it ripens. The 'not-yet- has already been included in the very Being of the fruit, not as some random characteristic, but as something constitutive. Correspondingly, as long as any Daesin is, it too is already its 'not yet.'" B&T, 287-88.
Somehow I don't think that David Attenborough was at fault for leaving this out of "The Private Life of Plants."
Somebody tell me what this stuff is good for? And yes, I think that the world would be marginally better if every person who has ever read Heidegger instead spent their time reading David Attenborough. I think the world would be better still if every Heideggerian gave up Heidegger and decided that they actually wanted to engage machinists or stone masons (some of the smartest people I have ever met) in conversations about philosophy, ethics, morality and how the world works.
But let us return to Death and mortality.
"We may now summarize our characterization of authentic Being-towards-death as we have projected it existentially: anticipation reveals to Daesin its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, is an impassioned freedome towards death - a freedom that has been relaxed from the Illusions of the 'they', and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious." B&T p. 311.
I don't even wish to make an argument in these quotes. One can actually make sense of them, first by explaining the larger philosophical context, and then discarding the philosophical context and talking about everyday human emotions and fears. But by doing so one will be abandoning all that is "original" in Heidegger, and you might as well have a good conversation with your local bartender, who is probably as intelligent (if not as well-read) in thoughts about life and death as the great Heidegger.
Heidegger's larger point, when made clear, is the usual existential idea is that the emptyness of death incorporated in our being because as a result the running-ahead ["vorlaufen"] of Daesin. In other words we, all of us, are pretty sure we are going to die someday because we, as human beings, are self-conscious and can think of the future. Genius! Real genius! But then he concludes that somehow Death is always inside Daesin. It is within Daesin as a constituent part of his being. This is why we should focus on Death and mortality or in order to fulfill ourselves. This is fulfilling our proper regard for our Being-toward-death.
Give me Ignatius Loyola or good old fashioned Catholicism and hair shirt any day.
Jerry Monaco -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060509/d561fc7c/attachment.htm>