Death Before Dying: Developing a Multi-Layered Account of Dasein Çiçek Yavuz, Haverford College

Death Before Dying: Developing a Multi-Layered Account of Dasein Çiçek Yavuz, Haverford College

This paper investigates the kind of death mentioned throughout Heidegger’s account of being-towards-death: is it a biological death, or a more existential form of death? Through an examination of Heidegger’s remarks on death as well as William Blattner’s defense of the existential account of death, I argue that the death of Dasein is marked by its utmost condition for its sheer existence: the absolute non-revivability of Dasein. This condition marks the death of Dasein as being inevitably tied to a biological bodily totality. As long as this core condition is fulfilled, the existential deaths of Dasein won’t shatter Dasein’s structure as having possibilities of being.

In Being and Time, Heidegger builds a detailed philosophy of death by developing an account of being-towards-death.1 This framework, however, surprisingly lacks a thorough discussion of death in either a purely biological or purely existential interpretation, thereby creating doubt as to what kind of death his framework refers to. Pieces from Heidegger’s existential analytic necessitate that 2 being-in-the-world (and thus, being-towards-death) must avoid talk of the body as an entity, while Heidegger’s descriptions of death picture it as primarily grounded upon one’s biology. This paper attempts to solve this ambivalence by arguing that 3 Dasein’s death is characterised by its non-revivability: the only condition in which Dasein can maintain all of its properties is that Dasein must not contain, but still be

Heidegger understands time in terms of possibilities, and accordingly, death is for humans a possibility. 1 According to Heidegger, confrontation with death is the most profound factor in the question of the meaning of being. Being-towards-death is a term delineating Dasein’s approach to the possibility of its death: Dasein comports itself to the possibility of death. Because possibilities are integral to our lived experience (and our thrownness), being-towards-death is not just expecting an event in the future to happen, but it is a way of being.

Possibly due to Heidegger’s aversion to the involvement of the body in the death of Dasein, there has been an ongoing debate in Heidegger scholarship about how death in the context of Dasein’s no-longer-being-able-tobe-there should be interpreted. An “existential” reading of the death of Dasein can be understood as a nontraditional interpretation of death: it is fundamentally grounded on a death that marks the end of Dasein’s possibilities of being-in-the-world, rather than the ordinary meaning of death as the end of bodily operations.

Heidegger uses the term “being-in-the-world” to describe Dasein’s activities in the world. Heidegger also uses this terminology to avoid talk of spatial-relatedness, such as an object or subject: Dasein is not in the world as an object is in space. Rather, the term attempts to emphasize that Dasein concernedly comports itself to the world. As being-towards-death is a possibility of Dasein, a view that inauthentically views bodies as entities spatially related to each other cannot be a part of Heidegger’s existential analytic.

made possible by, the fulfillment of the condition of having a bodily totality. While 4 Dasein must necessarily be in a vital dependency relationship with the body, this framework still allows room to conceive of existential forms of death as laying secondary to Dasein.

Throughout Being and Time, Heidegger pays little attention to the body as it relates to Dasein. However, Heidegger’s initial laying-out of the tradition of metaphysics seems to at least hint at the possible roles the body can play in his existential analytic. One of the strongest evidence of such hints is his discussion of, and involvement in, Descartes’ philosophy. Heidegger was essentially bothered by Descartes’ project, because it deemed humans as self-contained subjects that have no roots in a shared worldly context. Heidegger writes, “a discussion of the Cartesian ontology of the ‘world’ will provide us likewise with a negative support for a positive explication of the spatiality of the environment and of Dasein itself” (Heidegger, 122-123, §18). Heidegger builds an argument for Dasein as fundamentally opposed to the substance philosophy. This involvement can hint towards a possible decision that Heidegger’s neglect of the body is a deliberate attempt to overturn the traditional metaphysical conclusion that embodiment must always be in terms of a substance like a body or mind.

In light of an intentional neglect of the body, one might try to extract from Heidegger’s forms of entities to determine the position of the body in relation to Dasein’s being-towards-death. Heidegger mentions briefly that “Being-in, on the other hand, is a state of Dasein’s being; it is an existentiale. So one cannot think of it as the being-present-at-hand of some corporeal Thing (such as a human body) ‘in’ an entity which is present-at-hand” (79, §12). The body can be conceived, according to Heidegger, as a mass of quantifiable properties and as an object of knowledge for the sciences. A purely biological view of an individual’s body does not have a place in the discussion of being-towards-death, however.5 An every-day register of the phrase “being-in” is misleading; Dasein doesn’t exist contained inside a substance. This directs attention to the hypothesis that Heidegger’s presentation of being-towards-death does not depict death that occurs inside a body. Therefore, Dasein must be structurally distanced from entities that are present-at-

Heidegger distinguishes Dasein as a type of being that specifically seeks the meaning of its own being. This 4 does not depict a theoretical or introspective relationship to one’s own being, but it defines the distinct type of beings that humans are.

hand, because Dasein as a being that questions the meaning of its being cannot interact with present-at-hand objects.6

An approach that stays loyal to Heideggerian terminology may also approximate a view of the body as ready-to-hand. The body is something useful for 7 purposes of efficiency and productivity, something that has functionalities that allow human beings to move around and accomplish tasks. In this consideration the body is still closely familiar to Dasein as an external tool for day-to-day tasks.

However, no matter what form of entity we attempt as a potential place to which the body can belong to, each interpretation falls into the Cartesian ontology that separates the self from the body, a view that is wholly rejected by Heidegger, and therefore, can find no place in his thesis. Such discussions of where the body lies overlook Dasein as primordially questioning the meaning of its own being. Indeed, Heidegger reveals a structure in which nothing other than being-in-theworld can precede Dasein:

Being-in is not a “property” which Dasein sometimes has and sometimes does not have, and without which it could be just as well as it could with it. It is not the case that man ‘is’ and then has, by way of an extra, a relationship-of-being towards the ‘world’ – a world which he provides himself occasionally (84, §12).

According to Heidegger, then, discussions of the body attempt to mistakenly root human beings into a material space. The only a priori structure of Dasein is its being-in-the-world. Heidegger effectively argues that any bodily experience of the world is made possible by the primordial factor that is being-in-the-world. This suggests that a discussion of the body doesn't have relevance to Heidegger’s advancement of his existential analytic, and therefore, his neglect of the body actually functions to keep his discussion consistent with the inherent character of Dasein.

The evidence in his general discussion of being-towards-death creates the impression that the talk of the body must not play a role in Dasein’s being-towards-

“Present-at-hand” refers to an approach to comprehending an object in the world. Specifically, something 6 viewed as present-at-hand will be understood conceptually and theoretically, rather than practically. This is best understood in relation to ready-to-hand objects. A tool, such as a hammer, can first be understood as ready-tohand through its practical functions. However, if the tool breaks, it reveals itself not as a tool to be used practically, but a material or an object to be theoretically observed (whereby it becomes present-at-hand). In this framework, Dasein cannot view a body as present-at-hand, because it would contradict an authentic view on human beings as essentially being-in-the-world.

death, but Heidegger surprisingly sprinkles indirect references to deaths that are specifically grounded in physiological death. In his discussion of the Dasein of Others, Heidegger asserts that “the end of the entity qua Dasein is the beginning of the same entity qua something present-at-hand” (281; §47), such as a “corpse”, which is useful for a “student of pathological anatomy” (282; §47). Here, there is a strikingly definitive understanding of death in its very normal form: death that is evidenced by the stopping of biological functions. Similarly, in his discussion of the “they” talk, Heidegger’s criticism addresses the way in which an authentic beingtowards-death is concealed and evaded, and replaced by an inauthentic view of death. However, Heidegger never mentions that everyday approach to death refers to the wrong kind of death8. For instance, when Heidegger addresses that everyday talk replaces the indefinite character of death by “conferring definiteness upon it” (302; §52), the view of death as definite aligns with social trends only when seen as referring to the normal definition of death. Moreover, Heidegger’s criticism of the overemphasis on the “‘empirical’ certainty of death” isn’t directed at what kind of death “they” refer to, but it is directed at the failure of everydayness to understand death as something specified in detail. While Heidegger doesn’t elaborate on what semantic meaning death may have, there exists a number of “hints” through which it becomes evident that Heidegger most likely referred to death in its first, most literal meaning.

According to Heidegger, talk of the body as being part of or interacting with Dasein misunderstands his project of building a method in which the only primordial content to Dasein is being-in-the-world. If references of death were kept consistently “existential” in his later discussions of death, Heidegger’s beingtowards-death could be understood not in terms of a death that must necessarily involve a body, but must instead only fulfill the conditions of authenticity. However, his discussion of being-towards-death seems to view the term “death” in its literal meaning that grounds death to the ceasing of bodily operations. Due to a lack of elaboration on or a direct analysis of the body, however, there is no certainty as to what semantic meaning of death Heidegger wants to address in his thesis. If it is true that Heidegger uses death in its literal meaning, this must unavoidably challenge Heidegger’s initial direction that the existential analytic is devoid of a content of the body. Is Heidegger’s view of death, then, ground upon the body, or does Heidegger offer a purely existential understanding of death?

Everyday talk about death conceals qualities that are revealed in Dasein’s own relationship to its death, 8 therefore being inauthentic. For instance, it assumes that death is an event that ends a life, therefore being an endpoint. This view would mistakenly assume that humans are present-at-hand or ready-to-hand entities, because it would ignore the “authentic” approach to death: for Dasein, death is not an event that merely ends lives, but Dasein constantly comports itself to the possibility of death.

William Blattner’s article named The Concept of Death in Being and Time presents a purely existential reading of Heidegger’s philosophy of death. Here, Blattner poses a seemingly troublesome contradiction between the two notions: (1) death is a way of being for Dasein and (2) Dasein is no-longer-able-to-be-there at the same instant. Blattner claims that the only way to solve the apparent contradiction is through an analytic of Dasein’s being-towards-death purely existentially (Blattner 68): if death had its normal meaning, Dasein would no longer be, allowing for the contradiction. His solution of an existential view of death includes understanding Dasein in terms of two parts: the “thin” part is the part of Dasein that questions the meaning of being, and the “thick” part is the part of Dasein that is able-to-be. In this framework, death can be a possibility of Dasein if Dasein becomes “thin” while letting go of its “thick” side. In other words, Dasein ‘is’ death when it can keep questioning the meaning of its being, but does not have the ability to seek an answer to this question to understand who it is and what possibilities it has.

By ignoring the body, Blattner’s solution lets some possibilities of Dasein to remain untouched. By splitting Dasein into “thick” and “thin”, Blattner essentially attempts to have all of Dasein’s ability-to-be separated and collected into one category of “thick”, and leave an inactive state of being in the category of “thin”.9 This understanding mistakenly assigns to the “thin” Dasein a constant state of maintaining itself. If the “thin” Dasein, now as death, conceptually possesses no ability-to-be, then Dasein’s possibility of death cannot be against the “thin” Dasein, and therefore, it stays essentially unaffected, maintaining its way of being as death. But is it even possible to conceive of death, in the Heideggerian framework, as a continuing state? Heidegger states that Dasein doesn’t possess a way in which it can experience death as a process let alone “understanding it as something experienced” (Heidegger 281; §47). Heidegger’s characterisation of death involves two parts: (1) the instant wholeness of Dasein as an entity, and (2) Dasein’s “loss of being-in-theworld” (280; §46). Death as a constant way of being cannot endure precisely because it lacks the instant transition that Dasein must go through in order to be nolonger-Dasein.

The concept of a “thin” Dasein somehow maintaining its being inevitably leads to a contradiction that the “thin” Dasein has at least a limited number of possibilities. But how can an ability-to-be exist in an inactivated Dasein? In this

Blattner’s thesis is mainly concerned with allowing Dasein to have death as a way of being. He “fulfills” such 9 a condition by this structural split of Dasein. He depicts a type of death in which Dasein is, but possessing a particular blindness that doesn’t give it the ability to produce or seek possibilities. By considering death a limit of ability, and leaving a kind of ‘deactivated’ piece of Dasein to be death, Blattner imagines a death that is not spontaneous, but essentially stagnant and ongoing.

specific framework, Dasein is still able-to-be, precisely because of the requirement that it maintains a state of “thinness” after the instant of splitting. Without any ability-to-be, the “thin” Dasein cannot keep any state at all. It requires a certain level of self-guidance as well as hold in itself possibilities to be in order to be after its split. Blattner’s thesis undoubtedly contradicts Heidegger by misunderstanding Dasein as splittable, and believing that death can be a possible way of being for an insufficient Dasein, and most importantly, claiming that there can ever be a kind of Dasein that is devoid of all possibilities.

Despite such misunderstandings in his thesis, Blattner’s question stays relevant: how can death stand against every single possibility of Dasein, while also being a possibility of Dasein? There appears a way in which all possibilities can be eliminated, without death having to be a purely existential phenomena. Blattner’s mistake was to treat Dasein only through the ways in which it is able-to-be. However, if one keeps seeking to make-impossible all possibilities of Dasein while ignoring the most primordial factor that essentially makes Dasein possible, there will still exist a Dasein, which necessarily possesses the ability-to-be, leaving new contradictions to occur. For death to stand against every single possibility of Dasein, one must not try to eliminate the possibilities that branch out of Dasein, but seek the answer to the question: What makes Dasein itself possible?

How can one securely eliminate any possibilities of Dasein’s being-in-theworld? Establishing such an understanding of Dasein as being made possible enables one to fully conceptualize a detailed framework of Dasein’s no-longerbeing-able-to-be-there by understanding this phenomenon in terms of guaranteeing the impossibility of a revival of Dasein after. Here, the only fundamental force that awakens the possibility and sets the absolute impossibility of Dasein is the body: Once somebody’s vital organs completely shut down, there cannot be any way in which Dasein can continue being-in-the-world. A lifeless body ultimately guarantees that the conditions are simply not sufficient to give rise to a Dasein. In this way, death in a purely physiological understanding erases Dasein by not only depriving it of the ways in which it can be (its possibilities), but it also deprives it the origin out of which it came to be (the possibility of the origin of Dasein). In this way, continuation of bodily operations makes up the fundamental conditions for the possibility of Dasein and its being-in-the-world.

In this manner, the solution to the initial contradiction that Blattner raises must be through a multi-dimensional understanding of “splitting”. On the level of the operations of Dasein, it comports itself to death and it’s inherently a not-yet. Death as a possibility of Dasein refers not to the feasibility of Dasein being able to “achieve” that possibility. The moment Dasein becomes a whole, Dasein becomes no-longer-Dasein, not because of Dasein deciding to existentially go out of

existence, but because the body ceases its biological operations, which results in the failure of fulfilling the condition of the possibility of Dasein itself. The “split” in this framework finds itself in its multidimensional structure: Dasein has its own relationship and character towards its death, which is on a separate plane of operation from that of the body. The end of operations on the plane of the body hasn’t changed Dasein’s character, but instead, it forcefully shut it down.

That the body gains such a vital position in relation to Dasein must not be discussed without addressing problems regarding the talk of the body. Isn’t there the danger that involving a mainly ontic view of the body pollutes Heidegger’s analysis by introducing the body as a contained substance similar to that of Descartes’? Here, the dynamic isn’t to understand Dasein in terms of a substance, nor is it to involve the body as being attached to Dasein. The particular relationship that the body has to Dasein does not pollute the character of Dasein as essentially being-inthe-world. The role the body plays in Dasein’s being-in-the-world and beingtowards-death is a non-invasive dependency: if the body dies, it is inherently always going to entail that Dasein will no-longer-be-able-to-be-there. Here, his inherent cause isn’t grounded upon the body assimilating the existential structure of Dasein. It is instead that the body constantly powers Dasein: the body fulfills its necessary conditions to be, so that Dasein can be-able-to-be-in-the-world.

Such a revelation requires a detailed drawing of what one means here by “body” and its “biological operations ceasing”. Here, the body as it appears before Dasein assumes a particular totality: to maintain being alive, for instance, a person must keep its vital organs functioning without disrupting one’s bodily integrity. These vital organs together create a totality in which each of them is required for a person to have total biological possibility. However, the condition of totality doesn’t mean that one must have perfect health, it instead refers to a totality in being biologically human. One cannot question the meaning of being without the presence of a totality of our body. Animals, for instance, don’t possess a “totality”, precisely because their vital body parts still do not allow for the emergence of the question of the meaning of being.10 Such a totality allows a biological life to the human, fulfilling the condition of the possibility of Dasein. The specialty of the human body is key in allowing for the pure possibility of Dasein itself.

Dasein is involved in a relationship of non-invasive vital dependency with the totality of the body. If Dasein is no-longer-there, then the body’s totality can no longer be there. However, rather than eliminating it, this understanding that the body in its totality as the condition for the origin of Dasein can be applied to

existential forms of death. For instance, one may imagine such a death to be the death of their identity, which refers to the possibility of one’s identity of not beingable-to-be-there. Similarly to Dasein, the being of an identity doesn’t exist by itself but is made possible. For identity to be possible and for its being to be maintainable, there must be (1) the totality of the body, and (2) Dasein, to be present in order to allow for its possibility. Mainly, for somebody’s self-identity to maintain its beingthere, there must first be a total body in order to account for the production of identity. Secondly, for there to be a production of identity, there must be a primordial being that is able to be that way, resulting in the necessary presence of Dasein. Any form of death that emerges from human capability has to be made possible by both the body and Dasein.

The similar dynamic that occurs among kinds of deaths may give rise to the supposition that Dasein stands next to such deaths as their equivalent; however, a further development of this dynamic reveals the structure in which Dasein is a primary form of death, while the existential forms of death locate themselves secondary to Dasein. The primary character of Dasein emerges from its power to maintain the body: while the death of the body entails the death of Dasein, the death of Dasein also entails the death of the body. For Dasein, death is the impossibility of all possibilities of Dasein. Making impossible all possibilities of Dasein requires that the body does not allow any possibility for Dasein to emerge. Definitionally, the totality of the body inherently depends on Dasein’s essential questioning of being. According to this structure, Dasein is non-revivable: once all of its possibilities end, there cannot emerge a new Dasein to replace it.

The same dynamic cannot be applied to existential forms of death: both the body and Dasein endure after an existential death. When a person’s sense of self is no-longer-able-to-be-there, this implies that there are no more ways of being for that sense of self. While this includes the possibility of that self-image, which is a possibility produced by Dasein, eliminating such possibility only means that Dasein loses one instance of possibility. This is because Dasein’s being isn’t inherently dependent on achieving a certain instance of possibility. Similarly, the totality of the body isn’t dependent on one possibility of Dasein, but it is only dependent on the possibility of Dasein to question the meaning of its being and a knowledge of its relationship to its possibilities. In this way, the death of a certain existential death is secondary to the death of Dasein: while existential Being can be replaced by the other ways in which Dasein can be, the Dasein is irreplaceable.

This has certain implications for Heidegger's existential analytic. First, all existential beings and deaths emerge as possibilities of Dasein; therefore, the characteristic of the existential forms of being-there differs fundamentally from Dasein’s. Heidegger’s philosophy of death offers vital qualities to death as it relates

to Dasein: (1) death is Dasein’s ownmost possibility, (2) it is not to be outstripped, (3) it is non-relational, (4) it is certain, and finally, (5) it is indefinite (295-304; §50-52). This framework correctly describes Dasein’s death as it is understood within a vital codependency with the totality of the body. However, these qualities don’t apply to an existential death. For instance, (1) and (3) cannot literally apply mainly because an existential death doesn’t have a sense of mineness to produce such characters: Dasein as the “parent” of these Beings must inherently witness and embody the ways in which a secondary being relates to its death.

However, these characteristics can still apply to the secondary Beings’ beingtowards-death, through facilitating the perception that they apply. For one is threatened in a way that reminds her of an impending existential death, she enters into that possibility to conceive of her Being only inside this form of existence, giving herself the illusion that her fundamental Dasein is this existential Being. This perceptual shift allows all of the characteristics above to apply: an existential death becomes one’s ownmost possibility, because the existential Being has been given the title of Dasein.

That existential forms of death reveal characteristics laid out in Heidegger’s philosophy of death in a non-real way results in the understanding that such a secondary form of being might itself be also perceptual: an understanding of beingin-the-world, according to Heidegger, should not be based upon an idea of a sense of space, in that it shouldn’t be contained inside something else. An existential form of death reveals to have a necessarily spatial and contained structure: any existential form of being is definitionally a possibility of Dasein. In this way, Dasein is always its possibility. However, this existence is only one of the many different ways in which Dasein can-be-in-the-world. An actual consideration of a single form of existential being as an exclusive being-in-the-world that is detached from the greater structure from which Dasein’s other possibilities emerge, therefore, turns this being into a substance that lays inauthentically detached. Therefore, while it is possible to recognize the characteristics of being-towards-death when one perceptually is deceived to see Dasein as inherently existential being-in-the-world, this perceptual illusion doesn’t belong to Heidegger’s philosophy of death and is only indirectly affiliated with it through perception.11

Understanding Dasein in the context of a multi-dimensional structure in which there exists a non-invasive bodily force that makes it possible to be, enables the

This analysis doesn’t necessarily align with the idea that existential forms of death aren’t as important as 11 death that is grounded upon the body. The way in which other existential deaths are secondary to Dasein is due to the varieties of existential deaths that branch out of Dasein, which results in its replaceability. This does not entail, however, that existential forms of death are replaceable perceptually. It seems like in the dimension of human subjective experience and perception, existential death can be viewed as an equivalent to Dasein.

particular reading that Heidegger’s philosophy of death as explained in Being and Time applies primarily on an understanding of Dasein that is irrevocably tied in a relationship of dependency with the totality of the body. This multi-dimensional structure, when applied to the existential forms of death, reveals that existential death is necessarily secondary to Dasein’s being-towards-death, and perhaps only fulfilling the Heideggerian characteristics of being-towards-death in perceptually valid, but illusionary ways. These explorations do not absolutely fit into Heidegger’s general existential analytic: Heidegger not only avoids the talk of the body, but he seems to also deny the presence of anything other than being-in-theworld as a condition that makes Dasein possible. This new framework necessitates that Heidegger’s introduction to Dasein be rewritten to reflect that, while Dasein’s being-in-the-world can never be categorized as a substance that is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand, nor be reduced to physiological death, Dasein still has a necessary relationship with the body inside a conceptually multidimensional structure, in the sense that, the existence and total state of the body is the fundamental condition for the mere possibility of Dasein’s existence.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Blackwell, 2013.

Blattner, William D. “The Concept of Death In Being and Time.” Man and World 27.1 (1994): 49–70. Web.