3 - Heidegger on Death and the Nothing It Discloses

Summary

This chapter endeavors to explain Heidegger’s intertwined thinking about death and “the nothing” and explore the ontological significance of this connection. As we have seen, “death” (Tod) is Heidegger’s name for a stark and desolate phenomenon in which Dasein (that is, our world-disclosive “being-here”) encounters its own end, the end “most proper” to the distinctive kind of entity that Dasein is. Being and Time’s phenomenology of death is primarily concerned to understand Dasein’s death ontologically. Heidegger is asking what the phenomenon of our own individual deaths reveals to us all about the nature of our common human being, that is, our Dasein (and what that discloses, in turn, about the nature of being in general). Understood ontologically, “death” designates Dasein’s encounter with the end of its own world-disclosure, the end of that particular way of becoming intelligible in time that uniquely “distinguishes” Dasein from all other kinds of entities (BT 32/SZ 12).