Sheehan (2015:140-141) – vida como ter-de-ser

Cada ser vivo — e não apenas um ser humano — é marcado com a caraterística essencial de Zu-sein  , que significa tanto ter que ser como possibilidade quanto ter que se tornar ele mesmo como possibilidade para permanecer vivo. Um ser vivo tem o seu τέλος   como auto-preservação (Selbst  -erhaltung) [GA29-30  ]. É levado a sobreviver, a continuar a manter-se, até que a sua capacidade de fornecer a sua própria auto-sustentação se esgote naturalmente ou seja cortada. Isto também implica que tudo o que está vivo pode morrer a qualquer momento. Não nos referimos aqui ao fato óbvio de que o ser vivo, seja planta, animal ou ser humano, se move diacronicamente na direção de seu futuro falecimento. Pelo contrário, o ser vivo está sempre no ponto de morte: zum Ende  , zum Tode.

Every living thing—and not   just a human being—is stamped with the essential characteristic of Zu-sein  , which means both having to be as possibility and having to become itself as possibility in order to stay alive. A living thing has its τέλος as self-preservation (Selbst-erhaltung). [1] It is driven to sur-vive, to keep on keeping on, until its ability to supply its own self-sustaining self-empowerment runs out naturally or is cut off. This also entails that whatever is alive is able to die at any moment. Here we are not referring to the obvious fact that the living thing, whether plant, animal or human being, moves diachronically in the direction of its future demise. Rather, the living thing is always at-the-point-of-death: zum Ende, zum Tode. [2] For any living thing, to live is to live mortally, that is (consciously or not), ever shouldering up against its own ultimate possibility, which is to have no more possibilities and so to be dead. [3]

All of this is structural and essential to life—it is of a priori   necessity. When we speak of the living thing as “thrown” or “appropriated” into possibility, both of those terms indicate a living thing’s “facticity”: that which it cannot not be. (The term “facticity,” like “being at the point of death,” applies properly only to human beings, but analogically to all life. The analogy here is one of proper proportionality rather than of πρὸς ἕν   attribution.) Life entails always being more than it is de facto but never more than it is faktisch  , never more than the self-possibilizing that it is “obliged” to be. [4]