Being and Time

by Martin Heidegger

The dying of Others is not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just ‘there alongside’.(2)

No one can take the Other’s dying away from him.

By its very essence, death is in every case mine, in so far as it ‘is’ at all.

We have indicated that death is an existential phenomenon.

When

to master this task successfully, we must presuppose that precisely what we are seeking in this investigation—the meaning of Being in general—is something which we have found already and with which we are quite familiar.

Outstanding, as a way of being missing, is grounded upon a belonging-to.(2)

Ending does not necessarily mean fulfilling oneself.

The unequivocal character of our ontological Interpretation of death must first be strengthened by our bringing explicitly to mind what such an Interpretation can not inquire about, and what it would be vain to expect it to give us any information or instructions about.(1)

God is language.

We have seen that care is the basic state of Dasein.

People who are no acquaintances of ours are ‘dying’ daily and hourly. ‘Death’ is encountered as a well-known event occurring within-the-world.

But temptation, tranquilization, and alienation are distinguishing marks of the kind of Being called “falling”. As falling, everyday Being-towards-death is a constant fleeing in the face of death. Being-towards-the-end has the mode of evasion in the face of it—giving new explanations for it, understanding it inauthentically, and concealing it.

the absolute impossibility of existence.

Yet the ‘dying’ of Others is something that one experiences daily. Death is an undeniable ‘fact of experience’.

One knows about the certainty of death, and yet ‘is’ not authentically certain of one’s own. The falling everydayness of Dasein is acquainted with death’s certainty, and yet evades Being-certain.

One says, “Death certainly comes, but not right away”. With this ‘but...’, the “they” denies that death is certain.

Thus, if by “Being towards death” we do not have in view an ‘actualizing’ of death, neither can we mean “dwelling upon the end in its possibility”. This is the way one comports oneself when one ‘thinks about death’, pondering over when and how this possibility may perhaps be actualized.

Anyone who is intent on something possible, may encounter it unimpeded and undiminished in its ‘whether it comes or does not, or whether it comes after all’.(1)

Dream for death.

To expect something possible is always to understand it and to ‘have’ it with regard to whether and when and how it will be actually present-at-hand. Expecting is not just an occasional looking-away from the possible to its possible actualization, but is essentially a waiting for that actualization [ein Warten auf diese]. Even in expecting, one leaps away from the possible and gets a foothold in the actual.

By the very nature of expecting, the possible is drawn into the actual, arising out of the actual and returning to it.(2)

Dasein fails to hear itself, and listens away to the “they”; and this listening-away gets broken by the call if that call, in accordance with its character as such, arouses another kind of hearing, which, in relationship to the hearing that is lost,(3) has a character in every way opposite.

The Character of Conscience as a Call

In the call of conscience, what is it that is talked about—in other words, to what is the appeal made? Manifestly Dasein itself.

When the they-self is appealed to, it gets called to the Self.(1) But it does not get called to that Self which can become for itself an ‘object’ on which to pass judgment, nor to that Self which inertly dissects its ‘inner life’ with fussy curiosity, nor to that Self which one has in mind when one gazes ‘analytically’ at psychical conditions and what lies behind them. The appeal to the Self in the they-self does not force it inwards upon itself, so that it can close itself off from the ‘external world’.

Conscience as the Call of Care

reticence

This way of coming to owe something to Others is possible without breaking the ‘public’ law.

This implies, however, that Being-guilty does not first result from an indebtedness [Verschuldung], but that, on the contrary, indebtedness becomes possible only ‘on the basis’ of a primordial Being-guilty.

Why does all dialectic take refuge in negation, though it cannot provide dialectical grounds for this sort of thing itself, or even just establish it as a problem?

any taking-action is necessarily ‘conscienceless’,

Conscience is the call of care from the uncanniness of Being-in-the-world—the call which summons Dasein to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-guilty.

The order of the sequence in which Experiences run their course does not give us the phenomenal structure of existing.

Only in keeping silent does the conscience call;

Temporality gets experienced in a phenomenally primordial way in Dasein’s authentic Being-a-whole, in the phenomenon of anticipatory resoluteness. If temporality makes itself known primordially in this, then we may suppose that the temporality of anticipatory resoluteness is a distinctive mode of temporality.

The phenomenon of resoluteness has brought us before the primordial truth of existence. As resolute, Dasein is revealed to itself in its current factical potentiality-for-Being, and in such a way that Dasein itself is this revealing and Being-revealed.

Since resoluteness is constantly certain of death—in other words, since it anticipates it—resoluteness thus attains a certainty which is authentic and whole.

Anticipation brings Dasein face to face with a possibility which is constantly certain but which at any moment remains indefinite as to when that possibility will become an impossibility.

The indefiniteness of death is primordially disclosed in anxiety.

ontical possibilities

Does Being-in-the-world have a higher instance for its potentiality-for-Being than its own death?(1)

the substance of man is existence.(vii)

Common sense misunderstands understanding. And therefore common sense must necessarily pass off as ‘violent’ anything that lies beyond the reach of its understanding, or any attempt to go out so far.

the ‘I’ and the ‘Self’

I am the substance of existence.

Temporality reveals itself as the meaning of authentic care.

care is based on the character

We have called Dasein’s average kind of Being, in which it maintains itself proximally and for the most part, “everydayness”.

Existence can be questionable.

That Present which is held in authentic temporality and which thus is authentic itself, we call the “moment of vision”.(2) This term must be understood in the active sense as an ecstasis.

They are regarded as fleeting Experiences which ‘colour’ one’s whole ‘psychical condition’. Anything which is observed to have the character of turning up and disappearing in a fleeting manner, belongs to the primordial constancy of existence.

Is not the primary meaning of fear the future, and least of all, one’s having been?