On Tue, 31 Oct 1995 10:38:47 -0500 (EST) you wrote:
Hi Chris,
I have only a little annotation
>Oops, I deleted more than I wanted. I was struck by the line, "Dasein is
>Death" (or something like that). If that were literally true, then
>Dasein would not exist. Since it does... Heidegger gets away with this
>because he interprets death as a possibility, specifically, the
>possibility of the impossibility of future possibilities. It functions
>as the boundary for our possibility, which in this case refers to our
>finitude, or that we have a finite set of possibilities available to us.
>It is our ownmost possibility because it sets us apart from immortal
>beings; the mark of the human being is that it dies.
I think that your formulation that Heidegger interpretates death *as*
a possibility is not correct - in my view. Interpretating X as
something, you make a difference between X and something. In this case
you take X as a substance or - like Heidegger would say - as
"Vorhandenheit" (presence at hand). But: death is nothing that comes
over us like "Vorhandenes" (a stone or a table...). Death *is*
possibility (the last possibility as a potential negation of
possibility) and nothing more (or less).
- Christian
Christian Lotz
chrlotz@xxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
Hi Chris,
I have only a little annotation
>Oops, I deleted more than I wanted. I was struck by the line, "Dasein is
>Death" (or something like that). If that were literally true, then
>Dasein would not exist. Since it does... Heidegger gets away with this
>because he interprets death as a possibility, specifically, the
>possibility of the impossibility of future possibilities. It functions
>as the boundary for our possibility, which in this case refers to our
>finitude, or that we have a finite set of possibilities available to us.
>It is our ownmost possibility because it sets us apart from immortal
>beings; the mark of the human being is that it dies.
I think that your formulation that Heidegger interpretates death *as*
a possibility is not correct - in my view. Interpretating X as
something, you make a difference between X and something. In this case
you take X as a substance or - like Heidegger would say - as
"Vorhandenheit" (presence at hand). But: death is nothing that comes
over us like "Vorhandenes" (a stone or a table...). Death *is*
possibility (the last possibility as a potential negation of
possibility) and nothing more (or less).
- Christian
Christian Lotz
chrlotz@xxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---