> I really take H's the main point about death, to put
> it in plain English, to be that the fact of our
> mortality is the central issue in the life of a human
> being -- not merely something one has to come to terms
> with and learn to accept,a s it were, philosophically,
> as the Stoics taught, or as a gateway to heaven or
> hell, as Christian dogma, but as the fundamental
> structuring fact about the lives of mortal beings that
> influences, or ought to influence, everything in our
> lives. His revulsion against everydayness and losing
> yourself in business comes from this, as does, I
> think, his reaction (literally and figuratively)
> against modernity, which he thinks promotes mere
> business and forgetfulness of the fact that for each
> of us our days are numbered. And it is what is behind
> his idea of truth as Alathea, openness to the world.
> This is putting it somewhat simplistically. There is
> actually some point to H's technical vocabulary, which
> is much better in German, really. All of this becomes
> keener as you get older. I'm 48, and at my back I
> always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near. If
> that all strikes you as banal rubbish, read again it
> when you're older. I didn't like him when I was in
> college either.
>
Dear Justin,
Heidegger's Profound Reflections on Death:
Heidegger's thoughts on death when made clear are neither profound nor original.
Chris Doss complains about my random quotes. So here I will just summarize Heidegger's views on death. Of course the Heidegerrians on this list will just assume that such summaries only show my stupidity and laziness. I have several points but to begin with two will be enough.
1) HEIDEGGER'S BIG THOUGHT #1: "WE ALL DIE ALONE"
Heidegger's first big claim is that we all die alone. Michael Gelven who wrote what was in the 1980s the best companion to "Being and Time" ["A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time"] wrote that Heidegger "shows us that I alone will die my death" and "when my consciousness becomes aware of death, it projects before me that I am really going to die, and that when I die I will die alone." By the Heideggerians it is stated that such thoughts are a profound breakthrough in philosophy, but really you can get such thoughts from any hard boiled novel and from many a film noir. It is hard to know what to think but many Heideggerians (and I could find the quotes if anyone wishes) believe that Heidegger is the first one in the history of human thought to realize the significance of dying alone.
I don't think that such claims can even be taken seriously. Heidegger is perhaps the first person in all of human thought to put the claim about dying alone into an endless repetion of the ideas about the structure of Dasein. In other words he puts the though into nonsensical ontological verbiage in order to hide from himself and from others the basic conclusion: The proposition "we all die alone" is either banal or metaphorical.
Here is the banal part of Heidegger's philosophizing on death. Nobody can die my death. I am the only one who can do it. True, but this really says nothing. I am the only one that can smell through my nose, that can feel with my fingers, that can walk with my legs, that can see with my eyes. Nobody can digest my food for me, or experience my common cold. When I die my body will go through the process of death and not Chris Doss's body. We can all be grateful.
The Heidegger asserts that we die alone because he believes it is true of all human beings in all ages and it is true simply as a consequence of mortality combined with human foreknowledge. Of course he doesn't mean that we die literally alone. Chris Doss can be at my bedside when I die but still Heidegger claims that I die alone. So in this sense the claim is not quite literal and it is not the banal claim that only I experience my body.
So does Heidegger mean that when we "die alone" we are all psychologically isolated. He never says that this is exactly what he means, because then his notions would be subject to refutation or perhaps the absurdity of empirical investigation. (To ask any kind of empirical question about Heideggerian claims is patently absurd which only points to the somewhat superstitious nature of his claims.) All that I can say is that in my experience some people die "psychologically alone", isolated from those they love or might have loved, and some people don't. But for Heidegger the big profound claim "All men die alone" can simply be deduced from the mere fact of human death.
If the Heideggerian doctrine of "dying alone" has any additional content beside the above and the metaphorical meaning that can be found in any good hard boiled novel I haven't found it.
2) HEIDEGGER'S BIG THOUGHT ON DEATH #2: NO ONE CAN REPLACE ME, SUBSTITUTE FOR ME OR REPRESENT ME IN THE MATTER OF DYING:
This profound discovery is related to the first discovery that we all die alone. Again covers up the banality or untruth of such profound thoughts through ontological verbiage. "With death Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost [eigenst in German = literally "most my own"] potentiality-for-being." [B&T, p. 294] In a very common sense interpretation of this Heidegger is saying that my death is more mine than anything else in the world. There is nothing "more" mine than my death. Furthermore, my death is most my own because it cannot be transferred and it is inevitable and I see it as such. The "possibility of representing breaks down completely if the issue is one of representing that possibility-of-Being which makes up Dasein's coming to an end." [B&T p.284] I could quote lengthy passages of Heidegger's on this subject for the sake of comedy but unless one is a committed interpreter of Heideggerian nonsense these passages are mostly gibberish dressed up in special technical language.
Once again it is hard to emphasize how much Heideggerians think that the above "discovery" of Heidegger's is a great breakthrough in the history of human thought. But it is hard to tell what exactly it means. If it means something like "no one can experience the experiences of my body and death is an experience my body will go through" then I am hard put to understand the profundity. If it means that no-one can substitute for me in a situation where I might have died and then die in my place then the claim is, of course, patently absurd. If the claim is merely deeply metaphorical then it is the kind of claim that I have come across in good adventure novels. There is a short story by Graham Greene (if I remember correctly) where ten men draw lots to see who will face the firing squad. One of the men cheats and the tenth man takes his place in the firing squad. The man who survives lives with the memory of this death over and over again, always projecting forward to his own death as expiation for the guilt of the death of the man who went in his place. A good Catholic story.
Of course this is not what Heidegger meant at all:
"No one can take the Other's dying away from him. Of course someone can "go to his death for another." But that always means to sacrifice oneself for the Other "in some definite affair". Such 'dying for' can never signify that the Other has thus been delivered from his death in even the slightest degree. Dying is something that every Dasein must take upon itself at the time. By its very essence death is in every case mine."
True and trite. So once again with Heidegger's profound claim about death #2 my question: Is the claim merely banal, is it nonsense, or is it metaphorical? In what sense are these claims profound?
3) HEIDEGGER DEEP THOUGHT #3: HUMAN LIFE IS "BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH":
It is here that Heidegger begins to fool himself along with others. He makes the classic rhetorical mistake of using words in one sense in one place in the argument and in another sense in another place in the argument. In fact the great genius Heidegger makes this kind of rhetorical mistake in practically every argument he makes. But Heideggerians either don't care about rational argument or they would rather simply boil down "the essence" of Heidegger, ignoring his actual arguments. In this way they can write not very revealing papers on Greek tragedy.
This "Being-towards-death" is the real heart of Heideggerian claims for the "ontology of death." It is here that Heidegger shows how death is necessarily interiorized as a mode of existence for human beings. How death is constitutive of the structure of Dasein. Death is "shown" not to be external to Dasein but internal. Heidegger shows this by analyzing the very connotations of the word "end" and relating those connotations to the word "dying." "Ending does not necessarily mean fulfilling oneself. It thus becomes most urgent to ask, in what sense, if any, death must be conceived as the ending of Dasein." [B&T p. 289] He then takes us through a very pedestrian analysis of what the word "ending" signifies. And then concludes
"By none of these modes of ending can death be suitably characterized as the "end" of Dasein. 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, Dasein 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. In death, Dasein 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."
"On the contrary, just as Dasein is already its "not-yet", and is its "not-yet" constantly as long as it is, it is it is already its end too. The "ending" which we have in view when we speak of death, does not signify Dasein's Being-at-an-end..., but a Being-towards-an-end... of this entity. Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is." Being and Time, p.289.
These are passages that Heideggerians often point to as the most profound reflections on death. There is not much else there. Heidegger says that Dasein is dying all the time. "Dasein is dying factically and indeed constantly, as long as it has not yet come to its demise." Of course Chris Doss would heap scorn at me if I gave such statements a biological interpretation. This is supposed to be an ontological truth. But again I can find many statements from the ancients and in Catholic theology and in poetry that uses this metaphor of death and life. Why it is such an original ontological insight on Heidegger's part I have never been told. Why it is an insight at all except in a poetic sense I have also not been told.
In Heidegger's view Apple Trees, Dogs, and Chimpanzees are not "Being-towards-death." So it is simply not sufficient for biological death to be imposed on a species for it to qualify as "Being-towards-death." So why is Dasein "Being-towards-death." It is here that Heidegger becomes cagey. He talks about "Everyday Dasein is towards its end -- that is to say, is constantly coming to grips with its death, though in a 'fugitive' manner." [B&T p. 303] What it comes down to is that we as humans have foreknowledge of death. (Perhaps chimpanzees and bonobos also have such foreknowledge but why disturb ontological thought with potential expansion or refutation. I will not do if for Heidegger's philosophy if bonobos were "Being-towards-death" so it is a funny idea.) That is all. The typical anthropological observation that human beings have foreknowledge of their death combined with the psychological hypothesis (which is probably not true) that they are either acting "fugitively" or "non-fugitively" towards Death is Heidegger's big revelation. Where Heidegger's idea is correct it is simply a truism. Where it is profound it is either untrue or just bad poetic metaphor.
What Heidegger does in these passages to show his point is play on the idea of "possibility" and "not-yet." He continually collapses and confuses actual biological death with thinking about death. He seems to assume that thinking about death is death and that the possibility of death is dying. And all of this is supposed to show that death is not an "external" fact but "internal". Supposedly, Heidegger is the first philosopher ever to show this. But there is no way to make sense of his notions of external or internal in these pages that makes his thoughts anything but empty platitudes or simple nonsense.
Jerry Monaco
Please note: For a while I was a research assisstance for Paul Edwards, editor for the "Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Much of the above is drawn from my notes from the time, which Dr. Edwards later used in his own writings. This is only to say that similarity between the above and Edwards' work is neither an accident nor plagiarism.
Quote from Chris Doss about me: Heidegger "is attempting to
describe the structure of the temporally determined
locus of understanding and relate it to its borders,
in terms of which it understands itself and the world,
that is, its birth and death. You probably don't
understand what that means, but that have less to do
with the words or content but with you possibly just
not being very smart.
"Frankly you're coming aross as a real twit, lazy and
"willfully ignorant." Actually a bit of a
pseudo-intellectual.
"That said, I'm not going to engage with you the
subject, cause you don't know what the fuck you're
talking about."
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/