Micheal, thank you for your elaborations and clarifications of my post.
For the most part I do not think that we are in any serious disagreement...
Here are just a few points of clarification.
On Thu, 23 Nov 1995 us005330@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >Being-towards-death would be Dasein's way of
> >being-towards the possibility of the impending impossibility of death;
>
> Perhaps an accidental mistake here - death is not an impossibility. It
> is the one certainty of human existence which we must all come to terms
> with. This coming to terms with leads us to anxiety (but only as one
> possibility) and other emotional states.
I was thinking of H262: "The closest closeness which one may have in
Being towards death as a possibility, is as far as possible from anything
actual. The more unveildly this possibility gets understood, the more
purely does the understanding penetrate into it *as the possibility of
the impossibility of any existence at all.*
Death is not simply an impossibility, but the possibility of the
impossibility. And this is why it is Dasein's most primordial
possibility, it is the limit of and ground for Da-sein's factical existence.
> >The nullity, or not, belonging to Dasein is always already a
> >possibility in its constant becoming: "...Dasein is dying factically
> >and indeed constantly, as long as it has not come to its demise."
> (H section 52.)
>
> We are always equally close to dying.
Oh, is that all this means? Why not "Dasein is always close to dying" but
"Dasein is dying (active) *factically* and indeed *constantly* as long as
death has *not* come to pass." I am intrigued by this statement, and
others similar throughout these passages on Being-towards-death, *because*
he seems to be claiming not simply that Dasein could at any moment die,
but that in its very existence Dasein is dying factically. Do you see the
peculiarity of this statement, the paradox here?
> (or even better, the crisis of choosing life, not death; the choice we
> may every moment, 'though for the most part without thinking)
> Good ol' W.Shakespeare puts this call into the mouth
> of Hamlet, methinks.
Dasein cannot *choose* life, because Dasein is alway already the 'there'
(Da) equiprimordially. Neither can Dasein *refuse* life by a negation in
suicide, because the 'choice' is not possible for Dasein qua Dasein.
About the 'bro Shakespeare, methinks that it is the very
impossibility of this possibility to which Hamlet gives voice. Both
Derrida, in _Specters_ and Levinas, in _Time and the Other_ explicate
this fine point much better than I ever could.
Is not the question not one simply of 'choice' but of *authentic choice*?
And is not to chose to live authentically also to choose to die
authentically? Can the privation of one's life by oneself ever be
authentically 'chosen'?
Yours,
rita
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