>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).
>
Heidegger writes: "Death is a possibility-of-Being which Dasein itself has
to take over in every case." (SuZ, 250). Since there are many
possibilities of Being, death cannot be possibility itself. He adds on the
next page: "Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of
Dasein." I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to say that
Heidegger understands death as a possibility.
To see the full impact of what Heidegger is implying, most of us think of
death as the reality of the impossibility of Dasein. When one dies, one's
existence is over; there are no more possibilities. Heidegger is taking
death not as a fact of life, but from the point of view of the living
being, for whom death is not actual, but only yet a possibility. Death is
not THE impossibility of Dasein, but the possibility of the impossibility.
About the "as": Heidegger distinguishes two kinds of as's in Being and
Time: apophantic and hermeneutical. I know of no other option for being
that he gives. All being is being as something or other or in some way or
another. This is what I take to be Heidegger's deconstruction of the
tradition in this respect. There is no substance that precedes the "as".
The substance is only through the "as" and is "as such and such." This
entails rethinking what we mean by substance, but I take that task to be
Heidegger's own.
Chris
--- 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).
>
Heidegger writes: "Death is a possibility-of-Being which Dasein itself has
to take over in every case." (SuZ, 250). Since there are many
possibilities of Being, death cannot be possibility itself. He adds on the
next page: "Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of
Dasein." I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to say that
Heidegger understands death as a possibility.
To see the full impact of what Heidegger is implying, most of us think of
death as the reality of the impossibility of Dasein. When one dies, one's
existence is over; there are no more possibilities. Heidegger is taking
death not as a fact of life, but from the point of view of the living
being, for whom death is not actual, but only yet a possibility. Death is
not THE impossibility of Dasein, but the possibility of the impossibility.
About the "as": Heidegger distinguishes two kinds of as's in Being and
Time: apophantic and hermeneutical. I know of no other option for being
that he gives. All being is being as something or other or in some way or
another. This is what I take to be Heidegger's deconstruction of the
tradition in this respect. There is no substance that precedes the "as".
The substance is only through the "as" and is "as such and such." This
entails rethinking what we mean by substance, but I take that task to be
Heidegger's own.
Chris
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---