Death and falling

I know this question has already been asked, but I am still confused about
authenticity and falling in *Being and Time*. In what sense can the
anxiously impassioned defamiliarizing projection of death be a negation of
falling? Given that authenticity is an existentiell modification of the
they-self, is this modification a 'radical individuation' that arrests the
fall into the forgetfulness of the 'they'? And if so, then what is the
existential status of falling? How can it be an a priori existential
structure of Dasein and yet figure only as a negation in the authentic
projection of death?

Is falling and inauthenticity in general then, in a certain sense, the
ground or the possibility for (a reactionary) authenticity? And not merely
in the sense that we are always already falling before we come to the
authentic project, but rather in providing that against which authenticity
can affirm itself. And yet
perhaps falling still remains an essential existential structure in that it
requires of authenticity a constant return back out of falling to its
'radically individuated' self as authenticity.




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Anticipation reveals to Dasein 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, in an impassioned
*freedom towards death* - a freedom which has been released from the
illusions of the 'they', and which is factical, certain of itself, and
anxious.

Heidegger, Being and Time, p.
311.

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Malcolm Riddoch
Murdoch University
Western Australia
Ph: + 61 9 228 0232
Email: riddoch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




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