Being and Time pt. 6
“if we want to understand what it means to be an authentic human being, then it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our death. This is what Heidegger famously calls “being-towards-death””
“Mortality is that in relation to which we shape and fashion our selfhood.”
“There are four rather formal criteria in Heidegger’s conception of being-towards-death: it is non-relational, certain, indefinite and not to be outstripped.”
“Firstly, death is non-relational in the sense in standing before death one has cut off all relations to others.”
“Secondly, it is certain that we are going to die.”
“Thirdly, death is indefinite in the sense that although death is certain, we do not know when it going to happen.”
“Fourthly, to say that death is not to be outstripped (unüberholbar) simply means that death is pretty damned important.”
“At the end of the introduction to Being and Time, Heidegger writes, “Higher than actuality stands possibility”. Being and Time is a long hymn of praise to possibility and it finds its highest expression in being-towards-death.”
“Heidegger makes a distinction between anticipation (Vorlaufen) and expectation or awaiting (Erwarten).”
“freedom is not the absence of necessity, in the form of death. On the contrary, freedom consists in the affirmation of the necessity of one’s mortality. It is only in being-towards-death that one can become the person who one truly is. Concealed in the idea of death as the possibility of impossibility is the acceptance on one’s mortal limitation as the basis for an affirmation of one’s life”
“for Heidegger, the deaths of others are secondary to my death, which is primary. In my view (and this criticism is first advanced by Edith Stein and Emmanuel Levinas), such a conception of death is both false and morally pernicious.”
“On the contrary, I think that death comes into our world through the deaths of others, whether as close as a parent, partner or child or as far as the unknown victim of a distant famine or war. The relation to death is not first and foremost my own fear for my own demise, but my sense of being undone by the experience of grief and mourning.”