Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Heidegger’s
Phenomenology
of Death
• According to Heidegger, the being/essence
of man is a being-in-the-world. This is an
important assertion since it highlights that
man’s being is not other-wordly, that man is
man precisely because he is a being in the
world.
• Consequently, if man is a being in the world,
then man will cease to be as man when he
is no longer in the world.
• Heidegger specifically denotes man’s being
as Dasein, a German term which means
“being there” (Da – There, Sein – Being)
• By being in the world, Dasein is able to realize
itself. Like a plant that needs a soil to grow, the
world serves as place where self-realization and
actualization is made possible for Dasein.
• By being thrown (“thrown” since the human
person did not choose to exist in the world before
he was conceived) into the world, Dasein realizes
its own possibilities, and it constantly actualizes its
potentialities of existence.
• Hence, by being in the world, man’s potentiality for
being is never exhausted. For example, “I cannot
say that I will only actualize my potentials and
realize myself for twenty years, then after that I
will no longer do actualization and realization”.
• Man, as long as he exists, has never reached his
wholeness. “Man has always an unfinished character.”
• If by being in the world I am a “not-yet”, an unfinished
project, then by being no longer in the world ,
everything is already done, already finished. Man can
no longer “be” when he is no longer in the world.
• Being no longer in the world is only possible in death.