Death in Heidegger’s Existentialism: Further Considerations

Abstract

If temporality can be regarded as duration-continuum; being becomes a moment on time. The temporalization of being is a constant memorialization of its finitude. Heidegger is clear on the impossibility of the infinite-existential structure of Dasein which again highlights the reality of dread occasioned by Dasein’s consciousness of the limitations imposed by finitude. What is left outstanding is the realization and maximization of possibilities available as temporality-value. This paper investigated the concept of death in Heidegger as the loss of Dasein’s ‘thereness’. The loss of the thereness in Dasein through death is the vanguishing of temporality value-possibilities. But the full comprehension of the concept of death becomes impossible since no Dasein experiences the suffering of loss of being; neither while still participating in the being-with in the world in the ontic mode of existence nor while transitioning to no-longer-being-in-the-world since the fact of transition lifts Dasein out of the possibility of this experience. This escape of the direct experience of the loss of being in the loss of the thereness opens onto the ontological structure of Dasein where the loss of onticity is understood as loss of objective presence in contradistinction to the continuity of the ontological-being of Dasein on the basis on which the lifeless object still merits respect, honor, grief 
and mourning. The finding of the paper is that the discourse on the death of Dasein transmogrifies onto the discourse on life. Dasein has to maximize possibilities available for it in the context of its objective presence on the linearity of temporal duration. The modality for this maximization, the paper opines, is in terms of the now-value disclosures with the capacity for augmentation of Dasein as being-there and again as being-with. It is in this sense that the respect and honor accorded the 
lifeless objective presence of Dasein’s being would have to as a matter of prior significance be transposed on Dasein as living presence existentially. In conclusion, the discourse will open, for the contemporary era, a new chapter of awesome understanding in the relation between needless 
multiplications of death-experiences and Dasein’s onticity. The methodology applied in the research is that of expository/critical-analytic approach.