File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9810, message 128


Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 19:51:15 +0100
Subject: Re:  Heidegger's explication of truth
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)


Cologne, 31 October 1998 

Paul Im schrieb:
> It seems to me that there are three structural levels concerning death and
> guilt in division two. The first level, as Heidegger intends, is inauthentic
> everyday demise. The second level, we can easily call Sartre's
> existentialism. I am inclined to think that Sartre's interpretation of
> Being and Time is derived from this second level where Dasein acts in
> expectation of its demise (that which happens at the end of Dasein's life).
> But the third level, I think, is what Heidegger is after. This level is Tod
> as an ontological existential structure of Dasein that always already is.
> In Heidegger language, Tod as Dasein's ownmost possibility.
>
> The reason there are three levels of death is due to the fact that we must
> account somehow of why Sartre and many other brilliant philosophers
> interpreted Heidegger as an existentialist. I don't think Heidegger is an
> existentialist, and he explicitly states that he is not in his letter on
> humanism. But it remains that many still think that Heidegger was indeed an
> existentialist--and that is probably derived from division two of Being and
> Time where Sartre only understands, or chooses to understand, the second
> level.

Paul, this seems to be a sustainable interpretation. H. calls the existenzial 
“Sein-zum-Tode”, “being-towards-death”. It is not the event of death at the end 
of life where life ceases that is important, but being towards it, i.e. that 
death discloses itself to us in life whilst withdrawing from us into encryption 
as the greatest mystery of life (existing). 

Later on, Heidegger refers to humans as “die Sterblichen”, “mortals”, the beings 
who can die. This is being-able-to-die (Sterbenkoennen als Seinkoennen) is our 
Auszeichnung, i.e. the mark that sets us apart from non-Dasein. Animals are 
im-mortal. They are not able to die, but expire or perish (verenden) because 
they do not stand in an openness towards death. 

Heidegger does not understand “end” as the point where something ceases, but 
rather as _telos_, “Voll-endung”, the point where something comes into its 
fulfillment, or end as _peras_, the limit from which a being receives its 
essential de-finition and thus comes to stand in the clearing of the openness of 
truth. 

Regards,
Michael
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