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Besides bringing out Dasein’s futurity the analytic of death in Being and Time allows Heidegger to establish Dasein’s “being-able-to-be-whole,” Ganzseinkönnen. The hermeneutical situation after the first section of the text is such that Dasein has been revealed as always already “ahead of itself,” which, as outlined above, turns out to mean that Dasein is fundamentally determined by a not-yet. In existentiell terms Dasein hence appears to be unwhole. There always seems to be something lacking, there is always something Dasein could still be doing. Apparently, Dasein is complete only when Dasein demises. The same can be said of something ready-to-hand like a ripening fruit (cf. SZ: 243f/234f). The ripening fruit is also determined by its not-yet being a ripe fruit. The fruit’s becoming-ripe is conditional on this not-yet. On the face of it, the same seems to be valid for Dasein. Dasein appears to be complete only when it has demised because demise makes it impossible for Dasein to continue to project possibilities. Yet, Dasein is not something ready-to-hand: “In death, Dasein is neither fulfilled nor does it simply disappear; it has not become finished or completely available as something ready-to-hand.” (SZ: 245/236 ta) We can die before our time, too young, with unfinished projects. Yet, even when Dasein dies old and fulfilled, there is still a sense of lack, even if only the lack felt by others. Dastur hence stresses that after someone has died they are more present than “he or she ever was in life.” (Dastur 1996: 46) In Chap. 2 I pointed out the difference between ontological death and demise. The conception of death Heidegger is after is such that it allows for Dasein’s toward-structure, its being-ahead- and out-of-itself, but also for Dasein’s wholeness, as long as it is. Even though demise cannot account for Dasein’s wholeness, this ontic phenomenon still formally indicates ontological death as Dasein’s limit determining Dasein’s wholeness.
Heidegger introduces the notions of Ganzsein , being-a-whole, and Ganzseinkönnen , being-able-to-be-whole as descriptions of Dasein’s totality. He wishes to demonstrate the possibility of authentic being-able-to-be-whole precisely because that would provide Dasein’s primordial being, which is unitary (cf. SZ: 234/224). There are certainly echoes of Husserl’s practical I can in Ganzseinkönnen. The I can is Husserl’s response to the Cartesian ego cogito . Husserl anchors the I can in the body. The I can introduces an element of potentiality that underlies all activity. As such the I can constitutes the ego’s practical freedom (cf. Husserl 1989: 129) The ego never completely gives in to a mere course of action the ego is accustomed to. Instead, since the ego always retains the potentiality of the I can, there remains a certain freedom. The I can implies a positive freedom in face of any negative constraints that might arise with new affections. The “consciousness of the free “I can” and not the mere consciousness that “it will come,” “it will happen” frees the subject’s “immediate horizon”” (ibid.: 270) for any future action beyond the current most immediate horizon. In everyday dealings the subject is drawn into a mode of acting where the subject merely executes, but does not really choose what it does. The subject’s most immediate horizon determines the subject’s actions. However, thanks to its constitutive I can the subject can transcend beyond the most immediate horizon. Transcending discloses new possibilities for the subject. For Husserl this possibility is not “merely [a] “logical” possibility … [but a] practical possibility as the to-be-able-to [Können].” (ibid.: 273) This is similar for Heidegger’s notion Seinkönnen, being-able-to-be, which is best thought of as transcendental ability that guarantees Dasein’s positive freedom. While Husserl places weight on the influence of affects on the body and subsequently on the subject’s choice-making, Heidegger investigates the anonymous they-self, which Dasein falls for in its most immediate horizon called everdayness. In everydayness Dasein does as they do, Dasein speaks as they speak. Dasein does so because the they is an existential of Dasein (cf. SZ: 130/122). In order to be free Dasein must wrench itself from the they-self and transcend towards new horizons. Dasein can do so because of its self-understanding as being-able-to-be. This is “the idea of existence” (SZ: 232/221) as regulating transcendental idea. The idea of existence as being-able-to-be means that this idea contains the possibility for Dasein to take on its own being as an issue for itself. The talks of the “idea of existence” also indicates that Dasein is not its own principle, but that Dasein is about experience, thinking, and being-in-the-world. In forerunning, i.e., in projecting itself into the future and transcending itself, each Dasein “can wrench itself free” (SZ: 263/252) from the they. Dasein is able to be whole by wrenching itself free. This, in turn, is possible if Dasein faces death. For the they never dies.
By “holding death for true” (SZ: 265/254) Dasein runs forth toward its ownmost possibility and only in this way can Dasein “first make certain of its ownmost being in its insuperable totality.” (ibid.) This is how “[d]eath is a way to be that Dasein takes over as soon as it is.” (SZ: 245/236) Running forth toward death enables “the possibility of existing as a whole potentiality-of-being.” (SZ: 264/253) Thus, Dasein can be ontologically whole because of death. As Lehmann, I think, rightly puts it: “Death, as limit, determines Dasein as a whole. If this limit were the absolute other of Dasein, then it could not reach this limit as long as it is.” (Lehmann 2003: 410) Moreover, Heidegger argues that “[t]he existential-ontological constitution of the totality of Dasein is grounded in temporality.” (SZ: 437/414f ta) Dasein can be whole insofar as it runs forth to its utmost limit that determines it as soon as it is. This takes place on the ground of Dasein’s toward structure, put differently, on the ground of Dasein’s ecstatic futurity, which death enables, insofar as death is the ultimate “not” and “not-yet” of Dasein. Heidegger speaks of Seinkönnen and Ganzseinkönnen rather than merely of Dasein’s totality, Ganzheit , in order to denote Dasein’s immeasurable possibilities limited only by its ultimate possibility, death. There is infinity in finitude for Dasein. The convoluted claim that the future is “the arrival in which Dasein comes towards itself in its ownmost being-able-to-be” now reads: the future is a mode that lets Dasein authentically relate to itself and the world, if and only if Dasein recognises its ownmost possibility: death. I should mention here that Alejandro Vallega therefore, and in my view rightly so, identifies Dasein’s futurity with being-toward-death (cf. Vallega 2003: 8). Thus, at the most fundamental level Dasein can at all relate to anything because Dasein is mortally finite and directed towards that finiteness: sum moribundus. The future gives meaning and weight to Dasein’s ability-to-be, for the horizon of the future ultimately arises out of death. Dasein is always already constituted as a whole on the ground of being-toward-death, but Dasein must specifically hold that possibility for true in order to assume itself as whole. Realising its ownmost being-able-to-be-whole lets Dasein properly grasp being as possibility.